Wherein I come to a revelation.
I went to bed after the house stopped moving. It lowered itself in a stretch of wasteland that looked very much like the last place it was. Had we really gone anywhere? Was this place all the same? How could the old man tell we’re in the right place?
When I woke up the sun was already going down. Days seemed very short in this place and nights seemed endless. I had no real way to time them, since there was not a single clock in the house. I had lost my watch long ago. The only other way to keep time was to count in my head, and I didn’t care that much. This left the passage of time so subjective amongst the other weirdness going on.
“We go into the Dark again tomorrow night.”
It was the old man’s casual declaration over dinner. We sat at the old table acting somewhat civilized with white plates and cheap silverware. It was just him and I; as far as I knew, he was still unaware that I knew about Emily. Our dinner was the roasted meat of a bird. It seemed somewhat like chicken, somewhat like quail, yet neither. After thinking about it for a while, it was no bird that I had ever seen or heard of. At that moment I decided to stop thinking too much about it, in case I found myself unable to finish dinner.
“Why are we going back in there?” I asked.
“Unfinished business,” he said. “I finally have my opportunity to strike at the one that marked you.”
“I mean, why are we going back in? I’m not really worried about him anymore. I can sit this one out.”
His face twisted into a dark glare. “While you are in my house, you follow my commands.”
“Sure, Dad, but I was kind of interested in leaving at some point anyway.”
“Your debt is still unpaid.”
“When will it be paid? I appreciate you saved my life, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but how much is enough? You keep mentioning things I have to do, but not telling me until the day before what I need to do. I guess I just want to know when that debt will be fulfilled.”
“I will tell you when you are done and no longer needed,” he said icily.
“Great, I’ll just hang around here while you string me along. I’m sure some day I’ll be useless and you’ll let me know. So what wildly dangerously thing do you want me to do this time? Hock a loogie in the Devil’s face? Ride the world serpent? Steal fire from the gods? Tell Goths that Peter Murphy isn’t really that great?”
The old man stared at me with dark eyes for a long moment until I calmed down. “We are simply going into the Dark together and search for the one who marked you. I demand no crazy stunts, nor anything more complicated than you following me. I will ask you to carry a few things.”
“So you just need a pack mule?”
“It is more than that,” he said. “But as far as what you will need to actually do, it is just follow and carry. I will take care of the rest.”
I leaned back in my seat and scanned his face. I didn’t buy it. There was something missing.
“And when do I get to leave?” I said, changing the subject. “When is all this done?”
“When your debt is – “
“Yeah, yeah, I get that,” I said. “You can say that over and over. And sure, it’s probably true. But you have some sort of secret Debt Meter in your head that I’ll never see. I need to know how close I am. How long will it be? When will be the last time I need to do something for you?”
He said nothing and simply rubbed his chin in thought.
“Will this be the last time? If I do this for you, will I be able to go?”
I looked at him expectantly. I had such hope that this would be the last time, and that after this I could go. Maybe I could finally go home.
“No,” he said flatly.
I was crestfallen. I frowned and tried to latch onto hope. “What about the time after that?”
“No,” he said again.
I almost flipped the dinner plate in front of me into the air with rage, but I held onto myself. “You know what, fuck you,” I said and got up front the table. I walked out of the house, while the old man said nothing behind me.
I walked outside to the deck and leaned on the railing while I looked out into the utterly desolate crap of the universe. Truly this was a wasteland; nothing but crap for miles around, while I was in the crap capital, the goddamn Fortress of Shit Solitude. How had I gotten here? How could I get away?
I fixed my vision as far as I could see, and I saw nothing. I wanted to leave, and that meant by foot. But no matter what direction I looked in, there was nothing for miles. How did one get out of this place? How did I get into this place? I had seen bones out there; were those from others who had tried to walk away?
I debated with myself over the old man’s intentions. He was definitely dealing with some hardcore shit here, some dark shit. That didn’t exactly make him Mr. Nice Guy. But when I fell almost dead on his doorstep, he did take me in and get me back to health. He did remove the mark and protect me from the hound that came after me.
On the other hand, I had Emily’s warnings. The old man only used people. If he helped me, it’s because he got something out of it or because he wanted me to owe him. He certainly had a debt on me now. She had said he would keep using me until he used me up; only then would he let me go, if there was anything to let go. With his arbitrary debt scale, that could be the case; I already felt like he was just stringing me along.
I thought for a while as the night sky shifted. I was tempted to just step off the deck and start walking. There was a certain liberation in the idea of just walking away from the whole situation, even if there was a possible death out there. I had walked across a desert half dead before. It was that memory which narrowly kept me from doing it. Instead I continued thinking, exploring the worst possibilities.
The worst possibilities were what Emily had said. He wanted to use me. How would be the worst? He could secretly be some monster, and once out in the Dark he would devour me. Scary and possible, with all I had seen. But if he wanted my death, he had many opportunities, so why wait? On the good side he could want an apprentice, but that seemed unlikely.
Why would he still want me? What did I have that he wanted? I had no power, I had no possessions. So far the only thing of value was my link to Swearing Jim, and that the old man had removed. The old man had some kind of feud with Jim, but what could I do? It seemed they were going to fight or somehow bargain for power.
I stared off into the desert before a thought crawled up my neck, causing my hair to stand on end. Worth. Bargain. Power. Jim. My only worth seemed to be in my connection to Swearing Jim. He wanted me for some unknown reason. The old man wanted power, which Jim seemed to have. He had just moved the house here based on some reading he got from the hound. Tomorrow night I was simply to follow the old man into the Dark. Something in my mind put together a horrible thought.
The old man was going to trade me to Swearing Jim for power.
I tried to think in my mind of reasons why this might not be true. I knew I was jumping to conclusions. But somehow that crazy intuition screamed in my mind, something deep inside me said it was right. But then I had second thoughts. Even though he was an ass, the old man saved my life, so I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. I wondered if maybe I should go talk to the old man. Even if I didn’t ask him outright, maybe I would see something in him to make me doubt my conclusion.
I walked back to the dining table, but it had already been cleared, the old man long gone. The study door was closed, as always. I walked around the first floor but didn’t find him. I returned to the dining area and sat down at the table in thought. I remained fixated upon the tumult in my head before I became aware and heard the noises.
Most late nights I had been in my room so I hadn’t been able to hear it. But here the sound radiated from the ceiling. The old man’s bedroom must have been directly above the dining area, which would have been an odd choice if the house’s layout wasn’t cramped. And here as I sat, I heard it and it made my stomach crawl.
From above me came the noises of what it other contexts could be called “lovemaking”, but there was no love involved. Here were the noises of sex, brazen and rough. I could hear the pants and grunts of the old man. While creepy and disgusting to think about, that’s not what disturbed me. No, I could hear Emily as well, but her sounds were not of enjoyment. They were of pain and sorrow, plaintive cries falling upon deaf ears. I could hear in those noises the essence of their relationship, the essence of the old man’s control.
It made me shudder, it made me uncomfortable. It fueled a rage in me like none other. For all the things that the old man might have done to me, all of that paled next to the wrongs he had done her and continued to do to her. No, at that moment it was clear the old man was my enemy and to think of him as otherwise was to be misguided, deluded.
In my rage, my own darkness settled upon me. I began to develop a plan. One of desperation, one of vengeance.
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