 
### Black Enigma Part 1

#### By Eve Hathaway

#### Published by Publications Circulations LLC.

SmashWords Edition

All contents copyright (C) 2013 by Publications Circulations LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, companies and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

**~ ~ ~ ~**

### The Boy from the Sea

Blood Waters Part 1

### 

### Chapter One

"IT'S A GOOD thing the tourist season begins after the school year," said Mila's mother, Gloria, as she barged into Mila's room with a full laundry basket balanced on her hip.

Mila opened her eyes, keeping her expression neutral. The clock on the wall said it was six in the morning, but the halo around the curtains meant that the sun was high and hot already.

"These need to be ironed and folded," Gloria said, dropping the basket next to Mila's bed. The sheets inside sighed softly, as though relieved. Gloria Alvarez, standing an even five feet tall and weighing barely more than a hundred pounds after a full meal, was not someone to be argued with. "Remember, we have guests tonight."

"Yeah," Mila said. Poor suckers, she added silently. The bed-and-breakfast the Alvarezes ran would have been pretty cool had they been anywhere near a decent town. But it was halfway between Tulum, which few people had heard of, and Cancun, which nobody ever left. Their visitors came expecting a deserted beach, not realizing that along with a deserted beach was a semi-deserted, dying village which couldn't even be bothered to give itself a name. Ten fishing families, a plantain farmer, and a restaurant didn't even warrant a dot on the maps of the region.

Mila made no move to get out of bed, a small rebellion against the tyranny of having to wake up at all. Yesterday was her last day of school-she took intro-level online courses at the Universidad Quintana Roo, since there were no schools here-and that warranted some kind of break. Thankfully, Gloria left with only a small humph of disapproval, and did not launch into yet another tirade about how hard they were working and why couldn't her daughter bring herself to work a little rather than daydream about boys. These arguments had been going on between them over the two years since they'd moved to Mexico. The Yucatan, more specifically: some of the people here were a bit touchy about being called "Mexicans."

Mila counted to ten before she threw the blanket off herself and swung her feet from the bed to touch the cool stone floor with her toes. Theirs was a large house, even by American standards. It was once the small manor home of a local official, the realtor had told them, and then launched into a long spiel detailing the history of the place and the artful mosaics that had been laid into the floor. Not that she paid any attention to those details. Two years ago, she was just too angry: at her grandparents for being so ill, at her parents for dropping everything in the US and not giving a damn about her, at the economies of both Mexico and the US that made it more worthwhile to stay, at the crazy language the locals spoke that made it impossible to make friends-not that there were people her age to befriend. The people here were old and bitter, and their children had more sense than her father did because they left and never returned.

She was still angry, but, during the winter, her father had at least installed air conditioning in the bedrooms, so now it was merely a resentful simmer instead of a full-on rage.

The house was a sprawling single-floor structure, built in the shape of a rectangle around an open courtyard. It was once beautiful, even Mila had to admit that. But size and beauty didn't matter so much when they discovered that the roof leaked in a thousand places and the house had to be rewired in order to handle the electrical load of a refrigerator.

Since the moment they'd bought it, it seemed like they'd done nothing but repair things; and even though the exchange rate greatly favored the dollar over the peso, George still blanched a little whenever he sat down to calculate how much he'd spent on repairs. Mila could see the conflict between her father's pride and the stark financial reality whenever she mentioned moving to the city-when he'd sunk this much money into building them a new life, he wasn't just going to give up, damn it. The difference between her father and her, though, was that Mila no longer felt guilty for wishing that he would.

But for now, she had to iron and fold the sheets. Of course, the laundry was on the other side of the house, where the abuelos lived in what was once the servants' quarters. Her mother did this on purpose, of course-otherwise the grandparents-Jorge and Victoria, Pablo and Elena-would never see their granddaughter.

Mila couldn't make her parents realize how awkward it was for all of them-a granddaughter they'd never seen, who might as well have been from Mars, for all they knew of Boston. They had literally nothing in common, except Gloria and George; and lately those two had become strangers to all of them. Fortunately, at this hour, the grandparents wouldn't be up yet, and Mila could slip past them without having an awkward, just-out-of-politeness conversation.

As Mila ironed and folded and stacked the sheets in neat piles, she became aware of how still the morning was. It was unusual, and the silence sent shivers down her spine. Normally, there were monkeys chattering in the forest and birds raising a ruckus everywhere.

Today, though, even the chickens seemed subdued, and the stray dog she'd cleaned up (though for some reason she couldn't find a name to fit him) only burrowed deeper into his bed when she filled his bowl with kibble.

She finished the sheets and went to the backyard to collect the eggs. The chickens had gathered around the feeding trough but there was no frenetic back-and-forth squabbling for feeding space. She poured more feed into the trough and added more water to their pan. That seemed to get them going, but even then their clucking seemed muted. A dozen eggs today-at least they weren't too sick to lay eggs, she thought. She could drop off half a dozen with the abuelos and she might be able to barter with Paulo-the only fisherman in the village whose Spanish she could understand, as the others spoke a mixed language of Mayan and Spanish-for some fish with the rest.

Still, it was unsettling how quiet everything was. A quick glance at her watch told her it was already eight in the morning. It was the time when Grandpa Jorge and Grandma Victoria-the nominally-healthier of the two pairs, with heart failure and emphysema being their two complaints-usually make their coffee and set out the massive tray full of sweet buns. But the servants' kitchen the four elderly people shared was empty today. Mila didn't dare knock on the bedroom doors. She left the eggs in the basket on the counter. They'd find them. If they haven't died in the night, Mila thought; and then she crossed herself, feeling guilty for having thought that. Angry though she was at her father and mother, she couldn't quite bring herself to wish that on them.

In the main kitchen, only her mother was awake, scrambling yesterday's eggs while the water for coffee boiled on the stove and the balls of masa harina sat on the counter, ready for pressing into tortillas.

"I swear, I don't know what's gotten into your father," Gloria grumbled as she poured the eggs in a pan. "He wouldn't wake up this morning, and he said he was going to fix the abuelos' toilet."

Mila sat down at the table. Her mother had finished cooking the eggs and was now spooning them into a plate.

It would be no use asking her mother if she noticed anything unusual, Mila decided, as she helped herself to a portion of scrambled eggs and poured herself a glass of juice. Gloria was a practical woman. If the chickens weren't being normal, it was because they were sick. If the old people were still asleep, it was because they were tired. If things were quieter than usual, it was because the weather was strange. It was that simple. And the weather was strange, come to think of it. A heavy stillness hung in the air; as if the normal ocean breeze had something far more important to do.

"When you finish your breakfast..." Gloria began.

"I'm going to see Paulo," Mila said, at the same time.

The air was electric with tension as Gloria stared at Mila. How dare you, Mila read into her mother's scowl, when there's so much to do here?

Fuck you. I never wanted to be here, Mila thought, returning the scowl. The sting of injustice at having been awakened at six in the morning on her first day after classes had ended seeped into her memory; and she straightened her back slightly and lifted her chin, daring her mother to say something.

"Bring back something nice," Gloria said, finally.

And just like that, she turned back to the stove and the business of pressing the tortillas. Mila, too relieved at having avoided yet another fight, scurried out, bewildered at her good fortune.

There was something strange going on, she thought, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose as she ran out of the house. She didn't believe in ghosts or spirits or anything; but it wasn't until she was well away from the house, hot and flushed from the sun cooking the air around her like an oven, that she could bear to look back at the place.

She felt silly, even as she glanced back. It wasn't the house that had changed, after all-it was everything else.

### Chapter Two

THERE WERE NO boats on the pier, which meant that the men wouldn't be back. In this calm weather, it didn't surprise her. Fuel was relatively expensive, so the men preferred to use sails; but without any wind, they might not get back for another few days.

Mila turned and headed towards the opposite direction, away from the cluster of huts at the end of the desolate pier and the women rocking themselves in their paltry shade. Forty miles of sand later and she would reach Cancun. It was not the first time this thought had occurred to her.

It was easy to lose track of distance when she walked next to the sea, and sometimes she wished she could just walk all day and all night and disappear from the village and the little squalid nothings that kept the people there. But her father would drive out to bring her back; and he'd look so hurt that she'd have to lie and tell him that she was on her way back but she was just so tired.

She wasn't good at lying-her eyes were too honest. But he'd pretended to believe her the one time she had tried that, and, oddly enough, she was grateful that he did.

Her hair was a mix of rich brunette and sun-bleached highlights of honey and gold. Had there been a breeze, it would have floated around her like a waist-length cloak. Her eyes were an odd blend of gray and brown. She walked with the assurance and grace of an athlete, though she'd never been one in her former life, back in Boston. She liked to swim, but her school didn't have a swim team. In the pool of the YMCA, she used to glide through the water almost without effort, doing flip-turns with ease. It wasn't speed she was after, so much as the feeling of being alive, feeling the currents curl their way down her body. It was the only thing that got better after the move: what could be more alive than swimming in the ocean?

It was getting hotter by the minute, and she finally turned away from the beach and headed towards the scrub-mangrove trees and some other nasty and probably poisonous plants that grew until the soil became sand. She hoped to find a sandy spot under a tall tree, so that she could at least get some respite from the sun. No luck, at least not on this stretch of beach. She looked back at the house, now a small box that seemed an impossible distance away, thinking longingly of her air-conditioned bedroom. And then she thought of her mother and the never ending lists of chores she'd have for her.

A movement caught her eye, and suddenly she noticed-how she failed to see this just a minute ago was beyond her-a body lying on the beach. The upper half was lying on the sand, the lower half being licked by the gentle waves of the ocean.

She gasped, not knowing what to think. A dead body, she thought, as she found herself tiptoeing towards it, wondering if it was as terrifying as the movies made it seem. It-it felt odd to think of something human as an "it"-was naked; the water-logged skin lending a queasy gray cast to the dark olive skin. Setting down the egg basket she carried in one hand, she bent over him-she could see now that it was a young man-and pushed him over onto his back.

He rolled over, gelid and cold. His lips were blue, and the circles around his eyes were so dark one might think they have been painted on his face. His body was speckled with bruises and the skin on his elbows and knees looked as though someone had taken a cheese grater to them. Mila felt her face curdle with displeasure, but she forced herself to do the one thing she remembered from her lifeguarding course: she pressed two fingers to the cool and clammy skin under his jaw.

With a jolt, she pulled her fingers away from his neck when she felt the unmistakable pulse of life. It startled her-he was still alive-and for a moment her mind blanked and she caught herself scrabbling backwards away from the body.

Then the routine took over: check his airway-two-finger sweep, what her training partner (and-maybe-boyfriend) called "the real tonsil hockey"; tilt his chin up, blow two breaths, inflate his lungs. Check pulse again-still there. Another breath. Check pulse. One more breath.

He nearly cracked her forehead with his when he rocketed up to a sitting position, spewing water and gasping and coughing all at once. Mila caught his arm and smacked his back as his breathing slowly returned to normal. Once the water stopped coming up, he kept coughing for what seemed like an unspeakably long time. But eventually even that stopped, and when he looked at her for the first time, he realized the state he was in and moved his hands to cover himself.

Mila averted her eyes, which wasn't hard to do because his eyes were a startling shade of green-the color of a deep pool. And like a deep pool, their color seemed to change slightly depending on the light. There was a certain sadness about his eyes that made him seem very old, even though his body-from what she could see of it through the patches of sand that coated him-was clearly a young man's. His skin was tanned to a dark brown, while his black hair had matted into dreadlocks.

In her literature course at Quintana Roo, there had been a discussion board full of what one could discern from appearances: how accurate they were, how informed the impressions were by pre-existing stereotypes. What would they say about him, she wondered, besides the fact that he's indigenous?

"Are you okay?" Mila asked.

He cocked his head, but didn't answer. She tried again in Spanish, and finally in (bad) Yucatec. At least he recognized the words, unlike the other locals who pretended not to understand her, and he smiled and nodded gratefully.

"My name is Mila," she said. "What's your name?"

"I am...." And then he turned so pale she was afraid he was going to die, after all. "I don't remember."

Mila let out a breath she didn't realize that she'd been holding. "Well, then, what do you remember?" she asked.

He frowned with the effort, but his eyes began to well up with tears of fright. He reached for her hand and she took it, worried at how violently it was shaking.

"Nothing," he said, finally. "I remember nothing."

"Nothing?" Mila said. "How did you get hurt-"

"I remember nothing," he said quietly. But underneath the calm she could hear the edge of desperation, sharp and cold, as it threatened to cut through his demeanor and turn him into a quivering wreck.

"Well," she said, sitting next to him. "Come and stay with us until you do."

He smiled at her, relieved. "Thank you," he said.

Mila went up the beach a little ways and found a piece of fishing net that had washed ashore. She disentangled a disgruntled crab from it. It stank of dead fish and seaweed, but it would do to cover him. Not that there was anybody here to see, but her mother would probably have a slightly better opinion of him if he didn't show up in their house stark naked. As she went back to him, she saw him coming back out of the water, cleansed of the sand. For a moment, he looked like some kind of god, coming out of the calm waters, a dark and sensuous version of Boticelli's Venus. Then he caught her eye and turn red, once again reminding her that he was just a kid who'd nearly drowned and now had no memory of who he was. She handed him the scrap of fishing net, saying, "We've got stuff you can wear at home."

He walked back with her. Mila tried not to look at him, because she had the feeling that if she did, she would be hypnotized by his eyes and never break free of the spell. And, she had to confess to herself, the way the light slid around his body ignited thoughts and feelings she didn't think she would ever have as long as she was stuck in this little Yucatan village-and she wasn't sure she wanted them.

THANKKFULLY, HER MOTHER was busy setting up the guest rooms, so it was her father who greeted them. George smiled wearily at them as they entered through the kitchen door. He'd been eating lunch-a plate with tortilla crumbs and streaks of salsa was in front of him-and doing some more planning on a well-worn legal pad. He was a big man-he used to play football for Texas State-so it always caught people off-guard when they realized he wrote with delicately-nibbed fountain pens and sketched beautiful, pensive doodles in his margins. Lost in his abstractions, he didn't immediately see the young man come in after Mila. It wasn't until Mila said, "This is my father," that he looked up.

"Dios mio," he murmured. "And what did the cat drag in?"

"I found him, half-dead from drowning, on the beach," Mila said in Spanish. "He doesn't remember where he came from, or who he is, or how he got here-anything."

Her father sighed. "Mila," he said.

"At least let him have some of your old clothes," Mila pleaded, before he could flat-out refuse. "He's got literally nothing. If you're going to insist that he move on, you should at least let him be clothed properly."

"Mila," George said, again, but she could tell that he wasn't going to send him begging. "The government-"

"What government?" Mila snapped. "We live in the middle of nowhere. He could have washed in from Cuba, for all he knows."

She watched her father consider this. It was a delicate matter, negotiating with her father-she had to be sharp enough to goad him, but she couldn't piss him off or else he would dismiss her altogether. George began to doodle on the pad where he'd been planning things out. After a moment, Mila relaxed. She knew she'd won.

"Go get him cleaned up," George said, standing up. "I'll see if I have anything that will fit him."

Mila translated as best she could: He could stay. It wasn't the entire truth-there was still the matter of Gloria's permission, and the abuelos might object to a young man to whom she wasn't wedded living under the same roof, but George had tipped over to their side. Gloria couldn't argue with them, not when there were guests coming in a few hours; guests who would probably not appreciate her turning away an amnesiac in the middle of nowhere.

His eyes lit up with a smile when she told him that. "I will work," he said, as she led him to the bathroom. "I can work."

She reached over and squeezed his hand. It was strangely cold, in this heat. "Your help will be welcome," she said. "We must give you a name," she added, "at least, until you remember your real one."

He slid into a pensive stare when she said that. Mila cursed herself, silently. She had to stop reminding him of his memory loss. Otherwise he won't like me. It was odd how badly she wanted him to like heIThe last time she felt something like this was when she was twelve years old and crushing hard for the boys of 'N Sync. This feeling was not as intense; but it had a presence, a seriousness that prevented her heart from fluttering every time their eyes met and her hand from shaking whenever they touched, but at the same time kept drawing her eyes to him.

She drew a bath in silence and helped him into it. George came in, then, left some clothes and said he would set up a cot in one of the empty bedrooms until they could get him a bed.

"And does Mama know?" Mila asked.

Her father pursed his lips and whistled. "I told her I could use the help," he said. "She actually agreed."

It must be a cold day in hell, indeed, Mila thought, smiling despite herself. But then again, what else could she do? It wasn't as if there was anywhere he could go, anywhere he could be sent to. A wave of pride at having finagled something so major from her mother flooded her. Then she caught his liquid green eyes watching her, and she felt appalled at being so petty in front of him.

### Chapter Three

THAT NIGHT, THEY christened him Tomas. Along with their guests-two flabby, pasty couples from Connecticut, the Vernons (Jeb and Anna) and the Greenes (Alex and Jackie)-around the table, they raised their pale beers and cheered as they bestowed the name upon him. His face turned red and said nothing; just bowed his newly-buzzed head-earlier that afternoon, Mila spent an hour trying to brush out his dreadlocks and finally took a pair of shears to them-shyly and bit into his tortilla. He ate delicately, like a bird, nibbling his tortillas and poking the chili and crispy fried plantains suspiciously.

"I have the feeling that I've eaten these before," he explained to Gloria, who was about to take offense at his critique of her cooking, "but I can't remember having them like this." He ventured a bite then, and the delight that spread across his face went a long way towards mollifying her.

During the meal, George and Gloria kept the Vernons and the Greenes occupied as they recounted their hellish flight: the flight attendant who had the nerve to make a snide remark about Jeb Vernon's weight (Mila was surprised they limited themselves to his weight. The man's teeth were terrible, there were large pimples in his thinning hair, and he was wearing a neon-green pair of Bermuda shorts), the terrible turbulence over the Bermuda triangle, the nasty cab drivers, and how hard it was to find a car rental when they didn't know Spanish.

Mila wanted to yell, "Well, why the fuck did you travel, then?" But she managed to curb her tongue and, when the last grandfather finished his food, she began to clear the table. Tomas took his cue from her, and rose from his seat to do the same. Gloria nodded her approval of them. Overall, it was a quiet evening. Mila ran the hot water and started doing the dishes, and let Tomas bring out the dessert: a massive plate of fruit ringed by a rainbow of Jello cubes. They were now talking about life in Mexico-how Mila had to take her classes online, how quiet life was here, the many repairs the place needed.

Tomas came back. "Yo hablo Espanol," he said, before she could screw up a "hello" again. "I understand, but you must speak slowly," he added.

Mila didn't quite know what to say. "Bueno," she said, to fill the air with something other than his expectation. She'd spent the afternoon trying to avoid him so that she wouldn't inadvertently remind him of his memory loss. It should have been easy in a house this large-sometimes there were days, literally, when she didn't see one parent or the other, after all-and yet he seemed to pop up everywhere, wanting to carry something or do something or hold something. Eventually, she'd retreated to her room and closed the door; only coming out when their guests arrived. It was always a big deal when they arrived, mostly because they always missed the turnoff the first time and had to drive to the next little village before they realized their mistake. Some of them never did find the turnoff, and ended up renting a room in Cancun. Gloria and George always had champagne waiting, and it was Mila's job to smile and put up with being ogled while introductions were made. This time was no different, except that the Alvarezes couldn't quite figure out how to introduce the one they'd later christen Tomas, and in the midst of all the ums and ahs, Mila slipped away, only to run into Tomas in the kitchen. Again.

"Are you afraid of me?" Tomas asked suddenly, jarring her out of her blank-minded state.

"What? No," Mila said. "Why would you think so?" The question was out of her mouth before she remembered how skittish she'd been acting. "I'm just- I've never had a- Never mind." She caught herself before the word "amigo" could escape her, because he wasn't her boyfriend. Why did her subconscious insist on acting as though he were? "It's just... strange, I guess."

"I will try not to be strange," Tomas intoned.

Despite herself, Mila had to smile at him. He was so serious, so sincere. The word "cute" came to Mila's mind, but she squashed it with a hard blink and merely nodded. "It's late," she said, finally. "I should probably go to bed. It's going to be a busy day we'll have a lot of work tomorrow."

THE NEXT MORNING, Mila was awakened at five-thirty by the sound of something scraping the stone in the courtyard. Bleary-eyed, she got up and stumbled out of her room, wondering why their guests were trying to tear up their courtyard. It was ugly, sure-full of weeds and a fountain that didn't work-but that didn't give them the right to wake the world at this ungodly hour trying to destroy it.

What she saw, though, when she stomped out of the house, was Tomas, on his hands and knees, attacking the cracks between the stones with the point of a crowbar. He was at the other end of the courtyard, where the kitchen was, opposite the bedrooms and the servants' quarters. So far, Gloria was not in sight and Mila considered warning him to stop with the noise already. But Tomas saw her at that moment and waved.

"I am cleaning the courtyard," he said, as she walked towards him, not giving her a chance to ask. "The dirt between the stones is enough to grow the grass, and their roots run deep and crack the rock elsewhere, see?"

Mila nodded, even though the words washed over her meaninglessly. "Why are you awake so early?" she asked.

Tomas shrugged. "I couldn't sleep," he said.

Mila sighed. "Well, at least let me make you something to eat," she said, going past him to the kitchen. She wondered what had happened to the eggs she was supposed to take to Paulo the previous morning. She couldn't remember if she'd brought them home, or if she'd left them on the beach. But wherever they were, they weren't in the kitchen. She'd have to get more from the chickens.

She grabbed the egg basket on her way out of the kitchen, remembering how oddly quiet the chickens had been yesterday. She hoped they were doing better. The sun was rising now, and the jungle's usual cacophony was beginning, floating over the walls of the house on the sea breeze. Everything was back to normal again, Mila noticed. When did that happen?

She couldn't remember, and it bothered her. She'd been distracted and flustered yesterday, so it was impossible to be certain, but the hairs on the back of her neck rose as she realized that it was likely that everything went back to normal when Tomas was resuscitated. Did it happen the moment he took that first gasping breath? She couldn't be sure; she'd been so focused on him. Then she remembered that she didn't believe in ghosts. Irritated, she tried to dismiss the idea that Tomas had anything to do with the life returning to the area, but instead she was only reminded that the abuelos had been sparky enough to leave their area and join them for dinner-all four of them.

Mila gathered the eggs and brought them back to the kitchen. Tomas stood up when he saw her, and reached for the basket with a little bow. Mila was still too sleepy to protest. She followed him to the kitchen, and began pulling down the bowls and the whisks and taking out the cutting boards and things to make eggs and tortillas and orange juice.

"Can I help?" Tomas asked.

"I guess you can crack the eggs," Mila said, fishing out some tomatoes from the dish they sat in. "I'll make the salsa." She began chopping the tomatoes and onions, pointing him at the bowl.

Tomas stood behind the bowl and cracked an egg. They both jumped back when a chick came flying out, cheeping its protest.

"Maybe it was an old egg," Mila said after a moment. The chick was scrabbling around the bowl, trying to find some kind of footing on the smooth surface. Mila tilted it back into the basket and carried it to the henhouse, wondering how the egg had managed to escape her notice yesterday. She let it scurry to the feeding trough, where the other chickens had congregated. If the other birds didn't kill it, then maybe they would have another chicken one of these days.

An anguished cry broke the morning calm. It came from Tomas, and Mila ran back to the kitchen, hoping that he hadn't hurt himself or cut off his finger with a knife. She could hear Gloria's voice sneering in her head, Men don't belong in the kitchen.

"What is it?" Mila asked as she barreled through the doorway. Tomas was sitting on the floor, his face wrenched into a combination of horror as he pointed at the bowl on the counter. Mila couldn't see into the bowl, but she didn't have to-the soft cheeping noises the baby chicks made said it all.

"What did you do?" Mila demanded, even as she knew it made no sense to blame him. But then she realized that there was no way ten eggs would have escaped her notice yesterday. The flock numbered only fifteen birds, and if they had been old eggs, it would have meant that ten eggs had escaped her notice for three weeks. She knew she wasn't that inattentive.

"I don't know," Tomas said. "I don't know."

Footsteps outside the kitchen door approached. Mila felt a surge of panic running through her. There was only one other person who would be awake at this hour; and Gloria would not be pleased at the fact that ten perfectly good eggs had spontaneously hatched when there were guests who would be expecting breakfast. Mila shoved the cheeping bowl under a towel and stepped in front of Tomas, her heart racing. Please, God, let her be in a good mood, Mila pleaded.

"What is going on here?" Gloria demanded as she came in. "First I hear someone tearing up the courtyard and- What's that?"

Mila felt the need to come up with a semi-plausible lie, only there was no good lie that would explain how ten newly-hatched chicks ended up in the mixing bowl. Gloria scowled at her, and then at Tomas. "What's going on here?" she demanded an instant before she saw the birds. "What is that? Are you planning on cooking baby chickens for our guests-""No, Mama," Mila said, hurriedly. "I just-"

"A neighbor dropped them at the edge of the jungle early this morning," Tomas said. "I felt bad for them, so I picked them up."

Mila's mind blanked. Tomas had told the lie so smoothly that, for a moment, even she believed it. She could actually picture him in her mind leaning over and scooping up the chicks into the bowl, and bringing them to the kitchen because he didn't know how to open the chicken run.

Gloria weighed what he said-true, or false? Mila fought the urge to take Tomas's hand. It would give them away. And indeed, it was "them" and not just Tomas, because with those two sentences he'd cast his lot with Gloria alongside hers. "Very well," Gloria sighed. "Were there any eggs this morning, Mila?"

Mila shook her head, no, pointing to the empty egg basket. "They must be having an off day," she said. It did happen occasionally. There was nothing to do then but drive the five miles to the nearest store in Playa del Carmen to buy the eggs. Gloria waved her away with an impatient flick of the wrist. "Go then," she snapped. "I need you to get back before nine."

Mila felt lighthearted, almost giddy, as she grabbed Tomas's hand and pulled him out from the kitchen to her father's Jeep before her mother could change her mind. "Get in," she said, vaulting into the doorless vehicle. She started the engine and rolled the Jeep onto the matted vegetation that constituted the path to the main highway.

"What did you do that for?" she asked him when they were safely out of range of the house. "Why did you lie to my mother?"

He shrugged-or maybe they'd hit a lump in the jungle path that caused his shoulders to rise. In the rainy season, the dirt road was insurmountable in anything less than four-wheel drive, and only in the lowest gear. Mila had the Jeep in second. "I thought you might be in trouble if I didn't," he said.

"I always get in trouble for everything," she said, shortly. She was concentrating on driving, hoping the deep-treaded tires would catch rather than slip. The sunlight through the trees speckled the jungle floor, and Mila always had a hard time discerning the innocent shadows from the ones that meant a hard lump, so she took her time; easing the Jeep along, feeling her way through the obstacles by the rumble in the gas and the stick. "I can handle it."

"But it was my fault," he said.

"Yeah," she agreed. "What was that with the eggs? What did you do?"

"I don't know what happened. I just cracked them like you asked me to do, and little chicks came out," Tomas said. His voice trembled as he recalled the horror of wasting all those eggs. He understood, all too clearly, how dependent his stay was on Gloria's good graces. "I don't know anything, I swear," he said.

"Bullshit," Mila snapped. "Either I missed ten whole eggs for three weeks, or you did something to make freshly-laid eggs hatch."

"I really don't know," Tomas said. "Please believe me," he pleaded.

Mila sighed. Christ, this kid needs a backbone, she thought. "All right," she said.

She pulled onto the "highway"-the two-lane paved road that connected Cancun to Tulum-and shifted out of second. The road was pitted with potholes, and during the hurricane season, frequently flooded and sometimes washed away. But they were out of the jungle, and she could at least see the potholes. She turned off the four-wheel drive, and the Jeep leapt forward. Tomas sat in silence next to her, glum with reproach.

After a minute of this, Mila sighed and pulled off the road. "All right, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that," she said as she cut the engine. "It's just- I know I didn't miss ten eggs for three weeks."

"And I swear to you, I don't know what happened in your kitchen," Tomas said.

Mila shrugged. "Well, when we buy these next eggs, you'll let me hold them," she decided.

Tomas smiled. He does have a nice smile, Mila thought. And then they both blushed. Mila re-started the engine before things could get any weirder.

### Chapter Four

OVER THE NEXT few weeks, Tomas redeemed himself for the eggs. He cleaned and weeded the courtyard, cleared the property behind the chicken shed so that they could have a garden, and started the garden, negotiating with the plantain farmer for the seeds. The seeds sprouted quickly in the tropical heat and the garden grew well. Even Gloria grew to anticipate being able to collect fresh tomatoes and peppers. The first harvest was reaped in a little less than two months-by then, they had a Dutch family staying with them-and they had a bit of a party with the succulent tomatoes and crisp peppers.

Mila tried to help him recover his memory, but he couldn't write down his dreams because he didn't know how to write. Gloria had shrugged when Mila told her about this. "In the poorer parts of the Yucatan, children don't go to school very long," she'd said. Any word-association games they'd tried ended in awkward silences-Tomas either didn't know what she was talking about and was too ashamed to admit it, or the answer he gave was so bizarre Mila couldn't understand how it related to him. His response to "Banana," for example, was "The soul needs only to be pure." Neither of them could understand where this scrap of his past, a disjointed fragment of who he was, came from. There wasn't much time, in any case, to understand him. After he'd fixed up the courtyard, George drafted him to help fix up the other bedrooms, grout the bathrooms, plant trees in front of their door, and reinforce the roof. Tomas was eager to help; and there were days when Mila worried that her parents asked too much of him. One instance, she found him collapsed, asleep on the kitchen floor during after-dinner drinks.

"You're not our slave," she told him on these nights. "If you are too tired, say so."

"You don't understand," he told her one night. He'd been living with them for almost three months now, and it was getting to the end of the tourist season and the beginning of the hurricane one. "This is the only way I can find out who I am."

She blinked, confused. "You're right," she said. "I don't understand."

They were in the kitchen-all of these conversations took place in the kitchen, while her parents were doing their accounting for the day or having drinks with the guests-wiping down the counters, putting away the dried dishes, sweeping the floors. Mila could detect the faintest whiff of ozone over the artificial lemon scent of the cleaner. A storm was coming.

"You have a lifetime of memories," he said. "I have only these..." he counted on his fingers, "seven weeks. If I never recover my memory, then who I am is-this." He waved around him, gesturing to the house, the roof, the courtyard.

"Tomas, you are more than the work you do," Mila protested.

Tomas shook his head. "You are very kind, Mila," he said. "But I know. I am just your-handyman, right? In English? You see more in me because you will be more someday. One day you will leave for the city and university, and you will find a boyfriend, return to the United States and get a good job and never come back. But I am not you. I cannot write, I can barely read. There is nothing for me out there. This is my life now. This is who I am."

"That's not true," Mila said, though she couldn't find fault in his words. "I couldn't-like-" not love, Mila dearest, she thought, frantically, "-you so much if you were only the sum of your work."

"So, we are friends?" Tomas asked, after a moment.

Mila gave him a weary smile. "Why do you think I join you in the kitchen every night?" she asked playfully, tapping him on the arm with her fist.

"Because it's mango season," he said, tossing her a mango he fished from a tray. She gasped in surprise, but managed to catch the perfectly ripe fruit before it splattered on the newly-cleaned floor.

"I don't like them that much," she retorted, tossing it back to him. And just like that, the moment-the window where she could have told him how she truly felt about him, her opportunity to plant a kiss on his lips, her chance to take his hand and hold it-passed and, once again, they were two young people stuck together under one roof, making the best of things.

For the most part, Mila was grateful that these moments passed. As much as she liked joining him in the kitchen at the end of the day, a part of her still held on to the fantasy of getting on a plane and going back to Boston and just resuming her life there. Even after two years, she still wasn't over Boston, or Tre Davis, the guy whom she might have gone out-and fallen in love-with, had her parents not packed up and headed south. He was two years older than she was, and walked with just enough of a swagger to let other guys think that he was one insult away from jumping them and cutting their throats; but he also had a quote from Shakespeare to cover just about any occasion. The first time Mila saw him, she was waiting for friends by the rust-and-fiberglass bleachers of the dilapidated track, and he walked onto the crumbling surface, did two stretches, and lit out. She could still recall how her breath caught in her throat as she watched him fly over the track, the grace with which his long limbs floated over the ground, and the steely determination in his eye as he kept what seemed an impossible pace. Her friends had laughed at her when she asked them who he was. "Don't you know? That's Tre Davis! He's like, only the biggest track star Middlebrook has ever had."

"I'm going to ask him out."

Which she never did. Instead, she went to the track every day after school; and just watched him run for up to half an hour-that was all the time she had, because she needed to get to the pool to do her laps. Sometimes he said "hi," and on those occasions, she'd wave shyly.

"Why are you here?" he asked her, one cold November day.

"I like to watch you run," she said.

"No, I mean, why are you here?" he repeated, grinning.

"I like to watch you run," she said, smiling back.

"You think you can catch me?"

"Haven't I already?" she retorted.

And he blinked in surprise, and then he smiled. That was when she knew: she'd won him over.

They never dated. Her parents spent December making plans to move to Mexico, and in January, they boarded the plane. There simply wasn't enough time to progress from slightly-awkward-friendship to possibly-in-love in a month, especially since he was two years ahead of her. They'd exchanged emails before she left, but they never wrote each other. At first, it had simply been a matter of there not being anything to say. And then, it was just too awkward to break the silence.

As time went by, the silence began to serve a different purpose: it allowed her to imagine that it was still possible to climb on a plane, fly back to Boston, and pick up where they'd left off. For two years, Mila had clung to this dream; to save her sanity, to mitigate her loneliness, to remember that there was a world where things worked and the water was safe to drink and people lived in houses that didn't blow over in a hurricane. But tonight, for the first time, Mila began to seriously consider that maybe her life in Boston was over. She began to think about a life with Tomas. Factually, of course, her life in Boston had ended when she boarded the plane to Mexico. But before Tomas, there had always remained a bit of hope: maybe Tre wouldn't have a girlfriend, maybe she might be able to find a job that miraculously paid well enough for her to get an apartment and a car and eat. Accepting that that part of her life was over was a lot easier now that she had someone to start a new chapter with.

Of course, this was based on the premise that Tomas liked her as well. She was fairly certain that he did. The confessions he'd made to her were not the sort of things Gloria would appreciate hearing, or George would understand. But she couldn't know for sure, because if Tomas trusted her enough to tell her the secret fears of his heart, then that implied that she should trust him with her great secret: her plan to get herself back to the US. And that was something she just couldn't do, because making him her confidant would require him to lie to her parents.

It wasn't hard for her to justify stealing from her parents-a dollar here, five there, padding the exchange rates to cover a ten. To her mind, they'd brought this upon themselves, moving her into the middle of nowhere. At least in Mexico City or some of the larger cities, she could have gotten a job and made her own money. It didn't feel right, but it did feel justified, a distinction which explained why she could now buy herself a plane ticket back to Boston, if she ever had an excuse to go to Cancun.

But Tomas-what would he think? He wasn't stupid. He'd know that she'd have taken the money from her parents. He would be honor-bound to report her, because even though she'd saved his life, her parents were the ones, after all, that permitted him to live with them.

Mila glanced at the clock. It was two in the morning. The storm had come and gone during her musings, and now the night was quiet. Shit. Well, if she wasn't sleeping now, she wasn't going to sleep tonight. She got out of bed, silently glided out of the cool, air-conditioned cocoon of her room, through the courtyard, and out the door. The beach was empty; and in the sky, the moon was a graceful sliver of light. The sea seemed to glow faintly; and in the distance, the lights of Cancun created a faint glow in the night sky. Being so isolated does have its upside, she grudgingly admitted to herself as she scraped out a little seat for herself in the sand. The stars were never this bright or numerous in Boston. She didn't know any of the constellations other than the Big Dipper, but that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate how beautiful they were.

"Can I join you?"

She startled and nearly fell over backwards. It was Tomas. "Sheesh, you scared me," she said, patting the sand next to her. Tomas sat down, folding his legs against his chest like she'd done.

"I couldn't sleep," she said.

"Me, neither," Tomas said. "I come out here a lot, actually. Sleep doesn't come easily to me. It feels like there's a memory hiding just beneath the surface; one I can only find if I am asleep. But the harder I try to sleep-"

"-the harder it is to fall asleep, " Mila finished.

"And so I come out here," he said. "To lose myself in the stars."

"They are beautiful," Mila agreed. "You can't see them like this in Boston. Too much light."

They sat in silence for a while, staring up at the sky. Mila found herself wishing she knew what Tomas thought of her, just as a meteor went streaking across the sky. She glanced at him, even as she reminded herself that she didn't believe in silly children's tales, and was surprised to find that he was watching her.

"Some people say that when you see a falling star, you make a wish and it comes true," she said.

"I have heard that somewhere."

"Did you wish for anything?"

"I wished for-"

She waited, holding her breath. Could he possibly love\- She didn't dare finish the thought. After a moment, though, it became apparent that he wasn't going to finish the sentence. "What did you wish for?" she prompted.

"This," he said, reaching towards her in the dark. His cool fingers brushed her cheek. When she made no move to dislodge his hand, he moved closer, tilting his head for what could only be a kiss.

Even now, she hesitated. The moment grew longer in her mind, as she mentally zipped through all of the scenarios with Tre that she'd made up in these last two years. Was she ready to give up with Tre? Was she really ready to start something new? To give up Boston?

To hell with it, she thought, and leaned in to kiss Tomas.

### Chapter Five

INSTINCT KEPT THEM from mentioning anything to Gloria or George. But the shift was palpable. When Mila stopped thinking about getting back to the US and started thinking about going to the US, the resentment she'd been harboring towards her parents evaporated, and instead became channeled into making plans for their future. Her parents didn't quite understand what brought this on, but they were nonetheless relieved that the fighting and arguing and tensions dropped.

Mila and Tomas would meet on the beach after the manor house had darkened into sleep if the weather was good, or Mila would go to Tomas's room-it was farther from her parents' room. They would talk quietly; which is to say that Mila would talk quietly while Tomas listened, awed by her descriptions of Boston and New York. She had to describe snow to him-he didn't even know the word. It was both touching and a little frightening, how naive he could be.

What Tomas lacked in worldliness, though, he made up for in his ability to read and understand people. He was the one who pointed out that Gloria wasn't actually a mean person, just stressed out and under an incredible amount of pressure to make sure everything went off well. "The next time she starts to get to you, ask her what she wants you to do," Tomas advised. Mila was skeptical, but she tried it, and he was right-it worked. Gloria told her to mop the floors, and the tension evaporated faster than the water did.

"You're like a mind-reading genius," she said that night.

"I don't read minds," he said. "I understand the heart."

"So tell me about mine," she said.

It was now a month after their kiss. They were in Tomas's room, lying side by side on his bed, his left arm intertwined with her right one, surrounded by the dark and his scent-clean. They had shared a few more kisses since then, but nothing more. It wasn't just the fear of what Gloria would do, though that contributed some. It was mostly that neither Mila nor Tomas felt the need to go further. They could wait. It wasn't like high school, where every other girl wanted every other boy and sealing the deal was the only way to guarantee (and sometimes, not even that would do it) a certain degree of monogamy. They had oceans of time-and an ocean they could sit next to; the infinite waters recalling the infinite nature of love.

"Are you sure you want to know?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, simply.

He rolled off the bed and took her smooth hand in his calloused one. She could feel his fingertips tracing her palm, kissing her knuckles. "You want something more from this life," he said. "You want me to give it to you."

"And will you?" she asked.

"You want me to say, 'Yes'," he said. "But I don't know if I can."

She sat up. "Well, that was romantic."

He sighed. "You said you wanted to know."

True, she thought unhappily. But then, what was the point of pursuing this relationship if Tomas didn't think he could make her happy?

"You are more than I could ever hope to be," Tomas said, as she stood up. She shook her head, furious with herself for asking, furious with him for being so honest. What was so terrible about a white lie every now and then, she wondered. Why couldn't he be sweet, for once? It wasn't like she expected him to bring her flowers or anything.

His grip on her hand tightened. "Please don't go," he said.

"Give me a reason to stay," she retorted. "Give me that 'something more' that I'm supposed to be looking for then."

Tomas dropped her hand and backed away from her, fading into the darkness. "No, Mila, not like this."

It wasn't until she felt the pang of disappointment that she realized what he was saying. "That wasn't what I meant," she began, but even as the words faltered she understood that it was, indeed, what she meant, what she wanted. Blood rushed to her face, and even though it was dark she had the feeling that Tomas could see her blush.

She left him without saying another word and slipped back into her bedroom, furious-at him, or at herself, she couldn't tell. But either way, she wasn't sleeping that night, and she wasn't going to the beach, either.

MILA WAS AWAKENED the next morning by her father. He knocked on her door and brought her a tray with sweet buns and a cup of coffee. "What's going on?" Mila asked, suspiciously. Her father didn't normally bring her breakfast.

"It's your birthday," he said.

"Shit, really?" She glanced at the calendar hanging above her desk. "It is. Holy crap. I can't believe I forgot," she said.

"I thought maybe you might want to go with Tomas to Cancun today," he said, setting the tray down. He sat down at the foot of her bed, smiling at her as she dug into the food. "You know. Do a little shopping. Show Tomas what a city is."

Mila understood the unspoken part of the suggestion: her father wanted her to run some additional errands as well. She wondered how to tell him that she didn't want to go anywhere with Tomas, not after last night. Refusing to go to Cancun altogether would make him worry.

"I hadn't made any plans for the day," she said, stalling for time.

"It's okay," George said. "We don't have any guests right now, so your mother-" he dropped his voice to a stage whisper, "-wants to throw you a surprise party."

"Papa, you're not supposed to tell me that!" Mila said, laughing. "And anyway, since when does Mama throw me a surprise birthday party?"

George shrugged. "Okay, well, it's not actually a birthday party. But we-and I mean the abuelos and Tomas and everybody-thought we'd celebrate finally getting this place into shape."

"At the end of the tourist season," Mila said. It was a bit mean, but she couldn't help it. George, fortunately, didn't seem to mind.

"Yes, it's the end of the tourist season, but we do have another set of guests coming in a week. University people. They're coming to look at the cenotes, or something."

Was anybody planning on telling me these things, Mila wondered. Just when she was hoping not to have to share "her" bathroom any more, too.

"Anyway," George said. "The Jeep is filled up and ready to go. Tomas is ready to leave whenever you are."

Of course he would be, she thought harshly. She was surprised at how bitter she was about last night, as if he'd insulted her. And now she was expected to go to Cancun with him? George stood up and left her to finish her breakfast-or, more accurately, to pick over the rest of the sticky buns and then toss them out the window.

Still, she thought, as she returned the tray to the kitchen, where Gloria was busy shaping the tortillas for the day. A trip to Cancun was a trip to Cancun. And there was one thing she could count on Tomas for, and that was being quiet. It would be awkward, but, well, she'd be able to enjoy herself, at least.

Gloria nodded at a pile of pesos on the counter, and a note underneath it. "That's what we need you to get in Cancun," she said. "We've given you a little extra to buy yourself something nice."

"Aw, Mom," Mila said.

"Happy birthday," Gloria said. Her hands never stopped rolling out the balls of dough.

This was probably as celebratory as it was going to get in the house, Mila realized. She picked up the keys to the Jeep, gathered the money and the list, and went to find Tomas. He was in his room, kneeling next to his bed. "Hey," she said. "Let's go."

He didn't say he was sorry for last night, which was just as well, because it would have been a lie. But at least they would have been talking.

As they walked to the Jeep in cold, stony silence, Mila couldn't help but think that maybe all relationships were built on lies.

### Something Wicked

Requiem for a Dream Part 1

### 

### Prologue

THE SALLOW GLOW of the candelabra cast a dim, haunted glow over the sparsely decorated room. The house was quiet now, quieter than it had been for many, many weeks. The servants had been dismissed by the master in a fit of hopeless fury and they fled, leaving behind the monstrous manor and the cloud of death that hovered above.

Yes, death walked the hallways of this place, leaving traces of his breathless caress on every aspect of the property. He had been a visitor here for the past several months, reducing the mansion's ruler from a tall, powerfully built former general to a withered husk of burgeoning humanity.

Now his large hands had shriveled into brittle twigs and his once tanned skin was almost translucent, revealing a network of blue veins and splotches all across the balding skull. So crumbled was the once great man.

He was dying. Oh yes, the shadow of death moved closer and closer every night. He could see the black feathers as they reached out to brush him softly across the face. All his wealth, his power, and his connections -- everything was worthless now. He had nothing left that could save him from this creeping specter.

He reached out a frail hand and seized up a bowl of cold soup that had been rotting by his bedside for several days and threw it with all his might at the encroaching spirit. However, the dish just passed right through it and shattered on the opposite wall, leaving the remains of his final meal to decorate the floor.

"Be gone, Demon! Leave me in peace!" His voice had once been powerful, thundering over the heads of troops without the aid of a microphone, but now it emanated in a faint, croaking rasp. The shadow was silent.

"Take me now then," the old man hissed. "Dispense with your waiting game and take me now! I won't tolerate this cankerous weakness any longer! Curse you, curse you! Curse everything you stand for! Take my soul if you must have it, what would I not give to be rid you?"

Spittle and blood sprayed from the dying man's cracked lips as he screamed obscenities at his haunter, at God, and at the Universe. Bloodshot eyes rolled madly in their sockets and the old man fell panting backwards on the bed in exhaustion from his wild outburst.

When he opened his eyes, the dark shadow had vanished. The room was as empty as it had been in the days of his health. The old man blinked his rheumy eyes in disbelief and squinted for a better look, for he suddenly realized that while death's shadow was certainly no longer there, something had indeed replaced it.

Three somethings. Three disembodied shapes, as they appeared to his failing vision, encroached upon him.

"Who are you?" He demanded, the fear sickeningly obvious in his voice. "What do you want? Speak up!"

"Why boy, is that any way to talk to your associates? I was under the impression that you had something to offer."

The voice was cream and iron, honeyed steel, smooth but powerful and disembodied, belonging to no man who walked the earth. It struck a cold blade of fear into what was left of the old man, numbing him as if he'd been touched by poison. No longer did he feel any physical discomfort.

"Now," the voice continued, "What you have to offer is, I'm afraid, hardly worth our time. The question is, how much are you willing to give up?"

"Anything! Everything!" The old man rasped in desperation. "I will give you anything you ask! I am the master of my bloodline, every drop is yours! Only stave off the demon!"

A terrible, booming laugh echoed through every corner of the mansion. Never had the man heard such an awful sound in his life. It struck horror into his very soul and he drew away, every nerve in his body trembling.

"You misunderstand," the voice chided with amusement, "it is the Angel of Mercy whom I stave, I shall pin her wings to the wall. We, we are saviors of your mortal soul. We are much more worthy of the name Demon."

"Whatever you are," the man replied, "angels, devils, whatever. I ask that you protect me from the netherworld and deliver me from death. My bounties, bodily and otherwise, are forever yours. Grant me the immortality I seek and even my descendants will repay you. My bloodline is yours. Take what you will."

The light of the candles flickered with a phantom wind. A pair of smoldering eyes materialized over the elderly man's bed, and he suddenly felt cold, as though he had been doused in icy water. When he opened his eyes, the three shapes had faded away, leaving behind only a lingering whisper.

If that is your wish.

THEY TOLD ME I was special.

They assured me I was about to change my life.

But where I used to dream of the world and all its strangeness and splendor, I now only see oiled darkness and gnashing teeth when I close my eyes. They're eating me alive.

Tell me...what day is it?

### Chapter One

I AM GOING mad.

Even as I speak, the words are twisting away from me, writhing like living creatures to whisper horrible things. They mock me, push me, tempt me to obey their lewd commands, and it is all I can do to resist them.

Nevertheless, I know that I must be heard, I must communicate my hell to the world so it can know what I know. So it can be warned. I have seen evil. Actual, true evil and I have looked it in the eye. Seeing something like that fractures the soul, and mine has been ground to powder.

The darkness is coming. Now my mind is clouding and the veil smothers me, but while I still have the strength to speak, I will tell my story until the last rattling breath escapes my broken esophagus.

Time has no place in this god-forsaken place, whether I have been here for a hundred years or a few hours, it is impossible to tell for sure. I only know that I can see the end to my hourglass. I am going to die. Death for me holds no fear but, but being forgotten...the thought terrifies me. I need to tell you who I am.

I was born Judas Stoker III, on January first in Albany, New York, to my mother, Ella Stoker. My father had long since faded from the picture and I neither knew nor cared to know his name.

My mother raised me by herself in a little apartment in the city, both of us perfectly content with each other's company. I remember we had a fat white cat named Moses who used to sit on my mother's violet beds and drove her crazy. Those memories are almost evanescent now.

The one constant blight to our peaceful lives, however, was my constant hallucinogenic nightmares. The darkness blurred the lines between reality and fantasy for me, and I became catatonic at times in my terror.

On more than a few occasions, I would wake up after an episode to find myself surrounded by four white walls with my wrists secured to a bed and my mother white-faced and large-eyed at my side.

"Oh Judas!" she would let out a shaky sigh and embrace me, her cheek, wet and salty against mine. "You're safe, baby, you're safe."

I remember looking down to see long, red scratches snaking up my arms and my fingernails reduced to bloodied stubs. These hospital visits would end in a long, boring session with my psychologist, who always concluded that a new brand of medication was in order.

Needless to say, my education suffered drastically and I spent more of the school year at home than in a classroom. Still, my mother did her best to teach me herself and thanks to her, I made it into high school with the rest of my class.

But I digressed. All of that is meaningless now. The happy, smiling faces of my schoolmates are a thing of the past. I doubt I shall ever see a single one of them ever again. I need to tell about The Night. The Night! The Night! The cold, thundering, September night when my mother left for work and never came home.

### Chapter Two

I CAN REMEMBER every fraction of every second of that night with crystal clarity. I remember being curled up on the sofa staring blankly at the flickering TV screen while my ears strained against the rhythmic drumming of the storm outside.

Each time there came the familiar swoosh of a car pulling in from the street, my heart leaped and I'd peer fruitlessly out to the window, only to be disappointed.

As the hands of the clock dragged themselves agonizingly across its face, I became more and more uneasy. Midnight was approaching and my mother hadn't yet come home. Worse, her cell phone seemed to be off, and no matter how many times I dialed and redialed her number, I was greeted with only her voicemail.

I felt like an animal in a cage as I paced around our apartment in agitation, always returning to the window to gaze out in the bleak night with no new results. In my core, I knew something was wrong.

The jangling of the cordless phone startled me out of my own head and shattered the remainder of my nerves. I jumped in fright and only after the third ring did I violently snatch it up.

"Hello? Mom?" I demanded breathlessly.

"Mr. Stoker?" The voice on the other line was cracked and muffled, and I could barely make out the words. All I could tell was that it was female. "Mr. Judas Stoker?"

"Who is this?" I shouted, unsure if she could hear me or not.

"This is Lana Christopher from St. Stephen's Hospital. May I speak to Joshua Stoker?"

My heart contracted in my chest with such force that for a moment I found myself temporarily robbed of breath. "Y-yes, this is he," I managed to push out.

"Mr. Stoker, is there someone you can call who can bring you here to the hospital?" The voice sounded clearer now, more business-like. "I'm afraid there's been an accident."

"An accident?" I repeated stupidly. "What accident? Who?"

There was an excruciating pause.

"A Ms. Ella Stoker, car accident. She is currently under intensive care, so if you could come down here and fill out some paperwork for us..."

The rest of Lana Christopher's sentence went unheard. The cordless slipped from my paralyzed fingers and hit the floor with a crash, spinning out of sight beneath the bookcase. Horrible images played through my mind as I imagined my mother's car crushed beneath the wheels of some metal monstrosity. Miniscule droplets of cold sweat beaded on my neck and forehead as I remained frozen in my horrified trance.

No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. My mother could not be hurt. She was invincible, all-knowing, and all-seeing. She could not be brought down by anything. My mother was God.

And yet...

Forcing my mind to stay shut, I grabbed the emergency cash from the jar on the fridge and fled from the apartment to hail a cab. We had no relatives to help us, no friend willing to risk their own safety to drive the troubled boy in apartment 21B to the hospital to find his mother.

My mother and I were all we had, and I couldn't let anything change that.

The following events passed in a haze of webbed misery. I can't recall the drive to the hospital or even talking to the front desk, trying to make them understand that my mother was there somewhere. They looked at me with pitying eyes and told me to wait until a broad, male nurse came to escort me to the room where they were working on my mother.

The male nurse would not let me through the doors, but I could see through the square windows the huddle of masked faces, each one with hands painted red. The body on the table, obscured by the gargantuan bodies around her, was too small to be my mother.

My mother was tall, like a runway model. She could not possibly be that small, sad, crumpled thing on the metal table. Someone had made a mistake. My heart leaped with hope at the notion. Yes! It was all just a big mistake! My mother was fine, probably at home wondering where I was. I should go home and be with her.

I turned away from the windows, clumsily knocking into the nurse as I did so. I had no control over my body, and my limbs moved jerkily, like a poorly coordinated puppet's. I felt strong hands steady me. I tried to explain their mistake, but my words came out jumbled and nonsensical. They looked at me with pitying eyes that infuriated me.

"Mr. Stoker, please calm down!" The large male nurse and his female associate guided me gently but firmly to one of the seats against the wall. Someone thrust a plastic cup of freezing water into my hand but I knocked it to the floor. I was crossing into hysteria by now in my desperation to make them understand that there had been a case of mistaken identities.

### Chapter Three

THERE WAS A clatter of swinging doors, and a tall man in white with salt-and-pepper hair walked out and pulled the mask down from his face. He looked solemn. Too solemn.

"Mr. Stoker?" He inquired briskly. I could see him fidgeting with his fingers, absently rubbing the whitish string circling his finger where his wedding ring should have been.

For some reason, I couldn't take my eyes off his hands. There was a tiny splash of blood on the cuff of his white coat where the plastic covering had failed to protect it.

"You are Judas Stoker?"

I nodded dumbly, unable to bring myself to answer him. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder and gave me what I'm sure was supposed to be a sincere look of deep apology.

"I'm very sorry, Judas. I'm afraid there was nothing we could do for your mother."

"What?"

"She didn't make it. I'm very sorry." The doctor gave my shoulder a squeeze and I resisted the urge to attack him like a wild animal. What language was he speaking? The words had no meaning to me.

"She can't have." I insisted stoutly. "My mother has to be okay."

"I'm sorry," Dr. Sickening Sympathy rearranged his features to a more professional, no-nonsense look. "I'm afraid she's gone."

No. No, no, no.

His voice was drowned by the panic in my ears. The world spun and dipped, making it impossible for my feet to find the floor as earth and sky reversed their roles. I couldn't get the image of red out of my mind, and when I looked down at my hands, I was horrified to see them coated from fingers to elbow in thick, glistening blood.

My mother's beaten face stared up at me from the street and I saw her ruined body on the pavement, a broken doll.

"Why Judas?" her voice echoed boomingly through my mind. "Why did you let this happen to me? You were supposed to look out for me! You promised! You're such a bad son!"

"Stop it!" I could hardly recognize my own voice in its terror. I was vaguely aware of being restrained, my arms being pinned to my sides as I struggled, but the horror branded on my eyelids was all I could see. Before I could regain control, the melancholic blackness had taken me.

The following weeks slid by to make one long, heartbreaking day. I found myself institutionalized for the first time in my life without my mother helping me. Every time I opened my eyes, I saw her battered, bloody corpse at my bedside, accusing me of murder.

Instead of her unshakable support, I had now earned her wrath and hate. She hounded me relentlessly with her unanswerable question: why?

I could never reply to her. I didn't even try. I had no idea how long I was destined to be locked away in this white box with only the silent orderlies for company. For all I knew, this was how the rest of my life was going to be.

Now, looking back, I long for those four white walls! They are a distant, unattainable heaven to me now. I would give anything to be back, safe and isolated.

### Chapter Four

MY SOLITUDE IN the sanitarium was short lived. Bear with me, my dearest listener, because I'm about to share with you the true origin of my suffering. My linear existence was interrupted by the early visit from the mothering female orderly that cooed and petted whenever she came to see me. This time however, she was not alone.

"Judas, poor lamb, you have a visitor! Isn't that wonderful?" She smiled down on me as I forced my eyelids to rise. She was so close that I could see the unsightly dark hairs sprouting on her chin and smell the overpowering odor of cheap cologne on her blouse. Behind her, my mother's corpse hovered in the corner, mouthing hateful curses.

"Who?" My voice was weak and fuzzy, my tongue swollen and parched and difficult to maneuver. My hands were free but it didn't matter. I was far too weak to even consider standing unassisted. My eyes dropped to the floor, and I noticed a pair of shiny black shoes, freshly polished and clearly expensive.

The shoes stepped forward and my gaze traveled upwards to the freshly pressed black pants, the custom tailored suit, and the white gloved hands with extraordinarily long fingers.

"Young Master Judas," the voice was startlingly deep and sent goose bumps across my skin.

The mothering orderly moved aside, allowing me my first proper glimpse of my warden. I found myself craning my neck to see the face of the man who introduced himself only as Blu. Blu the Butler.

His age was impossible to discern, he could've been anywhere from twenty-five to mid-forties. His skin was very pale, almost transparent, and he had the bluest, fiercest eyes I had ever seen in my entire life. They burned with a cold, cruel fire that set my nerves on edge.

Even then, I knew there was something evil that lurked behind his facade of normalcy.

"I assume you are wondering why I am here," he spoke perfect English, but with the curious clarity of one to whom it is a second language. I noticed, as he spoke, that his teeth were very white. For a moment I imagined that they were pointed, but when I peered closer, I decided that it must have been a trick of the light.

"What do you want?" I rasped weakly, my voice was like two bits of paper sliding against one another.

The strange man calling himself 'Blu' reached into the vest pocket of his overcoat and withdrew a neatly folded envelope. "This is a letter from your great grandfather, Judas Stoker I." The name stirred up faint, far-off memories of a rambling, gargantuan mansion with maze-like halls and limitless properties.

Blu set the letter down on my bedside table and continued, "Your great grandfather would like to extend to you an invitation to come live with him. As your last remaining, or at least last reputable relative, he hopes to become your legal guardian."

Blu's words shocked me. My great grandfather had hardly been a passing thought for many years. I recalled that my mother had taken me to visit him when I was very young, but there had been a terrible fight, after which we never went back.

To be honest, I was equally shocked to learn that he was still alive as I was to learn that he wanted me to come and live with him. I hardly knew what to say.

"Think about it," Blu said, almost as if he had read my thoughts. "Just decide whether you would like to spend the rest of your adolescence as a bird in a cage, or if you would like to step through the door and seize an opportunity for greatness."

Thinking back to that time, I remember perfectly how much I longed for family. No one could ever replace my mother of course, but the idea that I might not have to be so alone was too tempting for me to turn up. Poor blind fool! I didn't need the night to decide whether or not I wanted to spend my life institutionalized. I accepted the offer right away.

Ah, misery.

### Chapter Five

THE FIRST PINK fingers of dawn inched their way over the horizon, breaking apart the streaks of night that continued to linger and illuminate the soft, rolling mist that blanketed the ground.

Tall, bare trees swayed overhead as the car driving me towards my great grandfather's manor crunched over the gravel. The branches reached out thin, groping fingers to snatch at the windows as we passed by.

In the back of my mind, I'm sure I felt the nagging urge to leap from the moving vehicle and make a mad dash back to the nearest town. And yet, I ignored it. I was determined to find beauty in this barren estate no matter what the cost. Besides, I reasoned to myself, I'll only be here for a few more years before I'll be off to college.

I rested my chin on my palm as I tried to make out the property that was about to become my home. Upstate New York was so different from the parts I was used to, it was almost like being in another country; a nearly obscured one.

My eyelids drooped and I leaned my forehead against the cold window, watching as my breath made little puffs fog on the glass.

"There's the gate." Blu's voice was oil on steel, luring me into alertness with a nasty stab of something to my gut. My lashes flickered and I saw the enormous iron-wrought gates looming over us.

They were twisted, barred and spiked, with heavy chains securing them firmly in place. I wondered whether my great grandfather was trying to keep something in or out.

The car rumbled to a stop and Blu stepped out, producing a large key ring he used to unlock the chains. The gates swung open at his touch, and the car rumbled into the round driveway.

I couldn't help but give an audible murmur of astonishment as I stepped out of the car. My recollections of this place had not done it justice by any means. The mansion was enormous! A masterpiece made of brick with at least a hundred darkened windows and a plethora of ivy plants fighting for dominance over the walls.

"Allow me to take your bags," Blu murmured as he stepped out of the car.

"No, that's fine," I jumped in, grabbing my things before he could get to them. I didn't want to be parted from the only remnants of my old life I had left. Blu's mouth tightened but he didn't protest, instead he gestured towards the mansion and led the way to the front door.

As we approached, it began to creak open slowly, startling me. I half wondered if it had done so of its own accord, but that ridiculous notion was dropped seconds later when a young maid stepped out from the other side.

I hadn't had much experience with girls, my condition always made me shy and self-conscious. This girl was beautiful. I felt my cheeks burn when she looked at me with her soft brown eyes. Her own creamy skin took on a slight flush. I could see a few silky flaxen strands of her hair peeking out from under her cap and I quickly looked away, lest she caught me staring.

"Master Judas, allow me to introduce the manor's housekeeper, Bast," Blu said mildly. "Say hello, my dear."

Bast dropped her gaze and gave a quick, jerk bow, never once allowing her eyes to leave the ground. "Hello, Master Judas," she was barely audible.

"Just Judas," I corrected. I could feel my ears reddening with embarrassment at the formal title. "It's nice to meet you, Bast." I extended my hand and she stared at it as though she had never seen anything quite like it. I withdrew it awkwardly and tried a different tact.

"So have you both worked for my great grandfather long? I don't remember you from when I was a child. I remember there were a lot of servants back then. Is Isadora still here? She was so kind to me."

"Isadora?" There was the smallest hint of amusement in Blu's voice as he tongued the name. "No, she isn't employed here any longer. In fact, none of them are. Bast and I are the only servants the house needs."

"What? Just the two of you?!" I gasped in astonishment at his casual statement. The manor was bigger than any I had ever seen, and I was convinced that it was ludicrous to imagine it being managed properly by only two people.

Even then I remember being struck by the sheer oddness of not just my situation, but the entire scenario. It was so fragmented from reality that it was almost like the events were happening not to me, but to someone else and that I was merely an observer of my own existence.

Meekly, I followed my great grandfather's servants into the manor, and I was struck with the overwhelming feeling of childhood nostalgia. Nothing had changed.

The foyer was exactly as it had been years ago with its rich oxblood upholstery and matching mahogany furnishings that probably dated back several generations.

As I walked down the hallway behind Bast and Blu, I felt my consciousness blurring and my entire body going numb. I was a child again, keeping close to my mother, clutching her skirts as we were led inside by a very different pair of servants: a plump, smiling Spanish woman named Isadora and the short, shriveled, ancient butler named Logan who had been at my great grandfather's side since they were boys.

"Your grandfather is expecting you, Miss Ella. Why don't you leave your son with me? I have something he'll enjoy in the kitchen, I think!"

"Thank you Isadora, I'm sure he'll be thrilled!"

The scene broke, and as it melted away, I could almost feel my mother's warm hand guiding me to Isadora, and once again my heart broke.

"Master Judas?" Blu's voice brought me snapping back to the present. "Here is your room."

My eyes widened as I entered through the massive double doors. Never in my life had I seen such an extravagant room, though it was severely outdated. The bed the tripled the size of any I had ever seen, and was surrounded by black velvet curtains.

There was an enormous bay window overlooking the courtyard and a collection of nautical equipment, no doubt collected by my great grandfather from his traveling years. The ceiling of the room was not flat, as one would expect of a ceiling but instead was curved like a dome. I watched as Blu set down my bags and I instantly moved closer to them.

"Where is my great grandfather? I want to see him."

Seemingly startled at my forwardness, the butler stepped back and pivoted his gaunt body towards me. His face was completely void of expression but his eyes snapped maliciously.

In the shadows of the room, I almost imagined that they flickered from ice blue to deep red, but when I blinked, they had returned to their normal, piercing selves.

"Your relative is not available at the moment," Blu informed me curtly. "He is currently...indisposed."

I had no idea what that meant but I had a sneaking suspicion that he was mocking me in some unknown way. I felt a spark of fury in my chest.

"Why can't I see him?" I demanded.

Once more, Blu's face was unreadable but he offered a low bow and stepped artfully backwards, both hands resting on the handles of the double doors. "Bast will bring you your dinner shortly. Rest now, Master Judas, you must be very tired after your experiences today. Tomorrow you will be renewed."

"Just Judas!" I tried to correct him, but before the words even left my lips the heavy double doors had been slammed shut and I was alone in the room. Well, almost alone. I slowly relaxed my aching body against the bed and closed my eyes, concentrating on evening out my breathing with slow, even measures. It was a trick taught to me by my mother when I was just a child and used to suffer from severe attacks of anxiety.

### Chapter Six

"MY CHILD, MY child, my ruined baby..."

My eyes popped open and I spun about the room, looking for the source of the heartbreakingly familiar voice. Against the misted glass of the window I could see my mother's corpse clutching herself as though she was dying of cold.

Was it me or had something changed in her? Even in death, her flowing hair had always floated around her shoulders like a halo and her skin a flawless marble. Now her hair appeared snarled and ragged and I could see gashes on her protruding cheeks that bubbled and frothed with maggots.

My apparition was changing. Impossible, I knew, she was merely the figure of my own corrupt imagination.

"Judas, my wretched son, how could you do this to me?" She sobbed quietly and I turned away from her, unable to bear what she had become.

"I'm sorry Mom," I whispered. I unzipped the pocket of my biggest bag and withdrew a framed photograph my mother and I, taken on our first trip to Coney Island when I was about ten.

It was my favorite picture and even now, when I concentrated hard enough, the image was enough to bring back the faintest whispers of laughter, the smell of hot dogs, and the thrill of the roller coaster....

### Chapter Seven

I HADN'T REALIZED I had fallen asleep until I woke up.

The cobwebs of my drowsiness heavily clung to me as I squinted in confusion at the darkened room, recognizing nothing. Silver splashed over everything, let in through the bay window, and I slowly recalled my transfer into my great grandfather's estate. There was no sign of my mother's corpse.

As I sat up in my bed, I could feel my heart thudding painfully against my ribs. Something had roused me from my sleep, but I couldn't remember what. The heat in my body was unbearable and I moved to get off the bed. My muscles screamed in protest, causing me to gasp in shock.

My entire body felt as though it had been mercilessly beaten with bags of sand. I took a moment to massage my legs before standing and limping over to the window to press my sweating forehead against the frosted glass. The cold felt incredible.

Almost as soon as I had cooled myself down, I was hit with a pang of ravenous hunger. I had eaten only sporadically the past few days and now I felt my stomach growling in desperation. I limped over to the double doors and opened them, relieved to see that, Bast had left a covered tray on a little stand just outside.

I brought it into my room and removed the cover to reveal a steaming bowl of soup, a plate of assorted cheeses and crackers, and a piece of mousse cake. Ravenously, I tore into the food, tasting nothing in my desperation. Nothing had ever been so satisfying to me.

"Ju -- das!"

The disembodied voice echoed throughout the room, swirling into every nook and cranny, swelling in volume. The fork clattered onto my plate, and I raised my hands to my ears, my body twisting horribly with discomfort.

The voice grew louder and louder in my ears until it was no longer a voice but a powerful, clangor of enormous bells.

"Ahhhgg!" The scream ripped from my throat and I threw myself backwards onto the bed. "Stop, stop, stop!" I shouted, but my voice was drowned out by the unbearable racket. I was sure my head was splitting open. I bit my lip until I tasted blood.

Then it stopped. The horrible ringing ceased just as quickly as it began, leaving behind a void of deafening silence.

Shaken, I opened my eyes and looked around in confusion.

"Mother?" I whispered hesitantly, half-hoping that she would respond.

More silence. I stood to grope the wall for a light, but as I got to my feet, they curved under me like jelly and I crashed to the floor.

"What the..." I tried to stand again but my legs refused to cooperate. The room was spinning and I blinked furiously, trying to clear my head. I managed to drag myself up but it was all I could do to wobble back to the bed, which seemed miles away. It was almost impossible to string two coherent thoughts together.

Only one notion stuck with me: Had I been drugged?

It sounded crazy just to imagine it. Who would want to drug me? I had no money. I had nothing of value on me at all that anyone would want to steal. Nothing made any sense.

I couldn't entertain these alarming ideas anymore for I was then drowning in a deep sea of silk sheets. The following passage of time might have been as long as a lifetime or as short as a few minutes. The exact amount, I shall never be certain.

My mind drifted in and out of coherency and my thoughts and nightmares became garbled with my reality.

### Chapter Eight

STRANGE FACES WITH red eyes and large, unnatural smiles blinked and chattered at me from the darkness. High-pitched and exceptionally low voices bickered at impossible speeds in singsong voices ranging from nearly inaudible whispers to deafening roars.

"Judas!" The distant voice was not threatening this time, but faint and gentle. It drew me steadily from my feverish delirium and guided me to the window where a glimmering light bobbed up and down in the courtyard.

I squinted at the dancing light and realized that it wasn't a light at all, but a brilliantly white gown worn by a girl.

No, not a girl, it was Bast. She seemed to float along the grounds like a ghost. Her face lifted to the window and she stretched out her pale hands towards me, beckoning.

Without thinking, I tore myself away from the window and stumbled down the hall. To this day, I have no idea how I found my way to the correct door. Instinct, I suppose. The night air caressed my skin but I had no time to enjoy it, so entranced was I by my desire to find the maid.

"Judas!" Her voice sounded like tiny tinkling bells, beautiful and serene to my ears. As I pushed open the gates to the courtyard, I found myself face to face with her and she took my hand in hers.

She looked radiant in the moonlight with her nut brown hair flowing freely around her shoulders and her bejeweled gown billowing around her slim form. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

"What are you doing out here?" I asked her.

She smiled and squeezed my wrists, pulling me across the courtyard to a small, bolted door. "Come!" she whispered encouragingly, drawing me through the door and into a magnificent hidden garden.

The moon was huge and hung in the sky like a swollen balloon, shedding a silver light over everything. The garden was flooded with shimmering crystal water bedazzled with blooming lunar flowers and lily-pads that clung to our legs as we waded through to a tree of golden apples.

I had never seen anything so tranquil before and as I gazed up at that magnificent tree, I was almost ashamed to be such an ungainly creature as a human. I reached out to touch one of the shining fruits but Bast laid out a hand to stop me.

She pointed up into the branches and I saw an enormous black serpent coiled around the trunk, glaring at me with wicked ruby eyes. I pulled back with a cry and felt Bast's hands slipping over my eyes, blinding me.

"Have no fear, Little Master. He won't harm you." Her lyrical voice was instantly soothing to me, but I could not shake away the fear of that serpent. I felt her lips against the shell of my ear, leaving burning marks in their wake. When her hands came down, she was standing before me, a visionary angel in white.

"No fears," she repeated, smiling up at me. Slowly, nervously, I reached out to brush back some of the silky hairs that clung to her cheek, but a rustling from the darkness distracted me. From within the black shadows of the tree, a tall figure unfolded itself from the ground and the towering frame of the butler loomed over us both.

A warning scream trembled and died in my throat as I saw him lurch forward jerkily like some gangling puppet. His face was deathly white and his eyes were bloodshot.

Blue veins crisscrossed over his face and he seemed to swallow Bast's white form into his own, spreading his arms wider and wider until they folded her up.

"Bast!" I made a grab for her but my fingers clutched only air. The white dress vanished into the folds of black, and the butler, or demon, or whatever he was thrust his distorted face into mine, paralyzing me with terror.

His breath coiled with mine, and I breathed in the rank scent of death and decay. His white skin bubbled and burst with maggots and flies as they chewed their way through his rotting flesh.

I stared into the inhuman eyes of the devil and he cackled at me, a shrieking, howling laugh that turned my blood to ice. My breath froze in my lungs, and I felt the ground giving way beneath my feet. The garden melted around me, sending my body plunging into the freezing water. Instinctively, I kicked out my legs but the vines of the lily-pads ensnared them.

Panic filled my brain. I thrashed desperately trying to free myself, yet the harder I struggled, the more tightly the vines held. My eyesight grew dimmer and dimmer as the water filled up my nose, mouth, and lungs...suffocating me, ushering me into cold, jellied oblivion.

The last thing I saw before the jellied blackness took me was the horrific grin of the demonic butler.

### Chapter Nine

I WOKE TO the tightening of silken sheets at my throat and the sharp taste of bile on my tongue. My stomach churned painfully, and I rolled off the bed just in time to vomit all over the floor. My body trembled violently and my skin was so drenched in icy sweat that my clothes clung to me.

Every breath I drew burned, and the events of the previous night permeated my being, stretching my nerves to their limit. Even the bright sunshine was menacing to me.

With every ounce of my strength, I forced myself up and made a dash to the window, half convinced that I would find the landscape some sort of gate to Hell.

Nothing.

My view was extraordinarily ordinary. The courtyard was barren and cold, nothing out of place. There was no sign of the massive tree or the lake of lily-pads and lunar flowers. No demonic entities.

Just a courtyard.

"It was a dream!" I murmured aloud in relief. Of course it was a dream. What else could it have been?

I decided I had eaten something that hadn't agreed with me, and my mind had conjured up a very realistic hallucination.

"Just a dream," I repeated, sick with gratitude. How stupid of me.

A knock on my door roused me from my thoughts. Blu entered, bearing a breakfast tray in his hands and a change of fresh clothes folded over his arm. I discreetly took a long look at his face in order to satisfy to myself that there were no bulging blue veins or bloody eyes this time.

He looked perfectly normal. No maggots, no dripping fangs.

"Good morning Master Judas," his voice was light and pleasant. "I hope you find yourself quite well rested this morning, you seemed to be under a lot of strain last night. We were worried for your health."

"I'm fine, thank you," I replied weakly as I accepted the tray and the clothes. The food smelled delicious and my stomach groaned eagerly at the concept of sustenance.

Blu laid out the fresh clothes he had brought for me, though I had never seen them before in my life. They looked ordinary enough though there was something...aged about them.

"I want to see my great grandfather," I told him. "Is he up yet?" I was quite sure that my persistent tone bothered the butler but he made no comment towards it. Instead he offered me yet another of his enigmatic smiles.

"I'm afraid not, Young Master. You will be unable to see him today. He is not himself."

"Are you kidding me?" I burst out angrily. "I want to see me grandfather. Why won't he see me?"

Blu said nothing but continued to tidy up my room with not so much as a glance in my direction. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation, making me feel like some sort of insect set up for his amusement.

Whatever game he and my great grandfather were playing, I was sadly unaware of it and was proving to be a very poor player.

"If you are not feeling well, Young Master, I suggest you stay in bed. If you must get up you are more than welcome to explore the manor and its grounds. They are quite something."

This time it was my turn to stay silent and I did so quite sullenly. I had hoped that in coming here, I might have had some semblance of family restored to me. Nothing in this world could ever take the place of my mother, of course. But I had hoped that perhaps I could find some form of solace in a relationship with my great grandfather.

We never had one when I was a child, but things were different now.

He had cared for my mother hadn't he? Cared for me? That was why he brought me here to live with him. There was no other logical explanation. He had been gruff and anti-social in my youth, but now he was reaching out.

Abruptly, I grabbed my clothes and began dressing, frantically stripping out of my sweaty things and making myself more presentable.

"I'll go for a walk," I said. The solution to my problem suddenly seemed so obvious to me. Blu was toying with me and I was in no mood to keep up with him. If he wanted to keep me separated from my relative well... that was fine. I would seek out my great grandfather without his help.

I hurriedly left the room, feeling the goose-bumps that had erupted over my skin dissipate as I left the butler's presence. Something about that man set my teeth on edge, as my mother would have said.

I ducked down the hallway, turning before I reached the main door. I had no idea where my great grandfather would be residing, the manor possessed more doors than I could possibly imagine.

Rows and rows of them, some containing single rooms, others larger ones that branched off into each other and still others containing more twisted hallways with more doors. To make matters worse, the lighting was dim, the faint bulbs coated with dust and cobwebs, making everything look identical.

The only technique I learned to find my way was by looking at the oil paintings that lined the walls. My great grandfather had the largest collection I had ever seen. Some were classic portraits of people and families, others of animals with scenes of fox hunts and deer, but my favorites were the scenes ripped right out of the literary greats. Dorian Gray, the Nautilus, Hannibal, Anna Karenina... all stared at me from their exquisitely life-like canvases.

Every detail was perfection. It was as if the artist had somehow photographed them in paint. They became my guides through the house and every time I came across one I had already met, I knew that I had taken a wrong turn and somehow looped back around.

Somewhere in the recesses of this house was my great grandfather and I was determined to find him.

Most of the rooms I explored that day were remarkably ordinary. Many were filled with books, each room dedicated to a specific subject. At first I lingered in each one, reading a little, yearning to know what my relative knew in order that we might find some common ground when I finally met him.

Gradually however, as the rooms began to blur together, I spent less and less time in each one and more and more time frantically moving from one to the next.

The house seemed to be playing tricks on me, switching hallways and staircases, convincing me that I had already seen one room when all the others around it were completely unfamiliar. I felt turned around and anxious and in a perpetual state of deja vu. I was no longer even sure which way would lead me back to my room.

"Juuuuuuudaaaaaas!"

The haunting moan sent prickles of ice down my spine and I spun around in alarm.

"Mother?" I ventured.

There was no reply but something rustled in the room to my right and I stiffened my body in concentration. Again, the tiny scratching sounds, barely audible. I didn't realize I was holding my breath.

"Hello?" I gave the door a gentle nudge and it drifted open, revealing to me an empty room. Or so I thought, until a streak of white launched itself at my legs with lightning fast speed, causing me to yelp and stumble backwards. My heart was thudding so violently I thought it might come crashing out of my chest, my lungs contracted painfully against the strain.

"What the -- !"

I watched as the white streak darted under a bureau and glared at me with twin coal eyes. A cat! I realized with relief. Just a cat!

"Master Judas!"

The soft voice made me almost leap out of my skin and I nearly broke my neck. I whipped around so fast to find myself almost nose to nose with Bast. Her skin was flushed and rosy and several of those silky brown strands of hair had escaped from under her maid's cap.

She stared at me with the same eyes I remembered from the night before and I felt a hot blush creeping up the back of my neck.

"Miss Ba -- Bast!" I hated myself for stuttering. "You startled me. I didn't think there was anyone in this part of the house."

She shifted her gaze from me to the bureau where the cat hid. I watched as she crouched to the ground and extended her pale hand. Slowly, the pearl white kitten emerged to sniff her fingers and offered an approving lick and a purr. Bast cradled the animal and I felt myself liking her even more.

"He's so beautiful!" I said, thrilled to finally have something to say to her that didn't make me sound like a complete moron. "Is he yours? You must love cats." Maybe not.

"Ah, Bast, there you are. I see you've found another friend."

The deep voice of Blu interrupted anything she might have said to me, and I saw the red flush on her cheeks instantly drain to white. The butler towered over us both, his slitted eyes casually sliding from one to the other.

"I am sorry, Master Judas," he went on, "sometimes her pets escape the kitchen and find their way here."

"It's alright," I said, staring at the cat now purring contentedly in her arms. "I love cats."

"Is that so?" Blu offered a bow. "Forgive my presumption then. Your great grandfather abhors them. In any case, there is a matter for Bast to attend to in the cellar. Master Judas, it's nearly six 'o clock! You've been wandering around this house all day. Why don't you return to your room and enjoy a nice hot meal. I've taken the liberty of unpacking your things for you so everything is organized."

His words left no room for negotiation. Bast vanished as silently as if she was a ghost, taking the pearl kitten with her, and I had no desire to remain in the hallway with Blu. Every hair on my body stood up on end whenever I even looked at him.

### Chapter Ten

AS I MADE my way back to my room I felt a cloud of dread following after me. Everything seemed different; even the paintings I had previously admired now appeared to leer at me from their frames. I was acutely aware for the first time that I was utterly alone in this friendless place with only their smug faces to accompany me.

The labyrinth of the mansion engulfed me once again and despite the fact that Blu had pointed me in the right direction, I kept taking the wrong routes and I found myself staring at the same rooms again and again. The same paintings kept cropping up in front of me and I was beginning to get frustrated.

I sat down on one of the ornate wooden benches that lined the hallways, designed for admiring the art. The painting before me was a massive one, colored with dark hues depicting a scene from Faust.

The artist had created a pale-faced Mephistopheles leering out of the shadows at the unfortunate alchemist as he sat despairing in his room. The more I stared at the picture the more life-like it seemed to be. Was it my imagination, or were the demon's eyes blinking crimson?

Impossible! I insisted to myself. It's just a trick of the light that's all. Nothing more.

And yet...

The painting was changing. My mouth opened in horror as the demon looked from his intended victim to me, a smile stretching his lips to incredible lengths and beckoning to me with a boney finger.

It was all too horrible. There was no way I was hallucinating again. I tried to get up from the bench and run, but my legs were caught in something strong and sticky, like the web of a giant spider.

I stumbled and kicked, my body convulsing with fear as I heard Mephistopheles shriek with laughter behind me.

I tore the gluey threads from my body, throwing every fiber of my being into action as I strained to escape. The lights in the hallway flickered and died, dousing me with darkness and intensifying the sickening cackle of Van Goethe's demon.

"Help me!" I tried to scream but the words came out garbled and almost inaudible. Somehow my hands closed on the knob of a door and I twisted, desperate for freedom but it wouldn't turn. My fingers scrabbled at the wood, scratching helplessly and drawing blood from my fingertips as my nails splintered from my frantic efforts.

I heard the faint sound of tinkling laughter as I pressed my eye to the keyhole. What I saw made my stomach twist into painful knots and I tasted bile in my throat.

Bast and Blu were waltzing around an enormous ornate ballroom dressed like royalty and wearing decorated masks. Even though I couldn't see their faces, I was sure it was them.

Blu was no longer in his butler's garb but was wearing a richly tailored suit entirely in black. I could even see the glint of his gold buttons. Bast was dressed in a trailing gown of black, trimmed with golden peacock feathers.

Her hair was curled into a mound of perfect ringlets, and there was a radiant laugh on her lips that didn't quite belong as they floated around a gargantuan marble dance floor.

It was then that I saw that in their hands, they clutched wicked looking pitchforks. Every so often, they lashed out at each other as though they were fighting. Then they would come together to complete the dance, each moving in perfect harmony with the other. Step, slash, step, step, and dodge gracefully.

It was like watching some sort of bizarre macabre ritual. I tried to call out and get their attention but my voice would not come. Ropes of sticky thread looped around my neck and face, blocking my vision and robbing me of air. My bruised fingers struggled to be free of the constricting bonds.

The more I thrashed, the more hopelessly tangled I became until I could no longer move anything on my body but my horrified eyes. The threads were gradually constricting, beckoning the darkness to claim me. My confusion was almost as great as my terror. What was going on?

What happened next, I cannot tell. Somehow my body was moved from its position on the floor and eventually propped up against the wall. My mind retreated into itself and I observed nothing.

I woke to the sound of laughter, and I struggled to open my eyes only to realize that my face had been heavily bound with bandages. Through a slit in the gauze I could make out the dining room, set up with a mountain of fruits and sweets.

On either side of the table sat Blu and Bast, still dressed in their finery, partaking of the desserts.

They were laughing and giggling like naughty school children and I watched as Bast speared a plump strawberry with her fork and raised it to her rose-petal lips. The ripe fruit slid off the cutlery and thudded to the floor, rolling inches away from me.

Bast turned and my breath constricted when I saw her face. She was fiercely lovely, but her eyes were gleaming bright red with slit pupils, and her teeth were pointed into sharp fangs. Blu had also changed and wore the bloodied gaze and web of navy veins across his face.

In my fright, I must have made a noise, for Bast raised her face to me and I saw a terrible grin stretch her lips.

"Oh my, he's awake!" She giggled girlishly and crept closer to me. A tiny gurgle freed itself from my throat and I saw a flash of fierce distaste in her eyes. "Hush now, Little Master. Keep staring like that and you'll hurt my feelings! Then I'll blind you myself."

It was difficult to hear such threats pour from her musical voice.

"Now Bast, away with your claws!" Blu stood from the table, and I saw the long pitchfork was still clutched in his hand. "He is important! No, invaluable. Such a perfect specimen, don't you agree?" He leered at me and my entrails clenched at his terrible face.

Drops of congealed blood oozed stickily from the tear ducts in his eyes and his rotten breath, hot and humid, caressed my neck. The bandages around my face made it impossible for me to form words but I'm sure that my thoughts translated themselves with perfect clarity to my tormentors.

I felt Bast raise her hand and pet my cheek exactly the way my mother used to. She left a long, wet smear across my face that tingled and I saw that her fingers were dark with crimson. At first I thought it was the juice from the berries, but there the liquid was far too thick, far too metallic.

"Are you afraid of me, Young Master?" She cooed dovelike into my ear. Her fingers slipped beneath the bandages and forced apart my lips. I gagged at the salty taste of blood in my throat and she giggled with fiendish delight. "You have a taste for it."

"Bastet! Enough!" Blu's voice was rolling thunder and the coquettish succubus snatched away her hand, allowing me to gasp for clean air. I managed to shift my position to get a better view of the table and I saw that the candied fruits and exotic chocolates were only the parameter of the table.

In the center of the lavishly decorated table was an enormous golden platter piled high with what I suspected was human entrails. I saw the coiled intestines, the sliced heart, the liver and pancreas coupled with a silver knife so as to make serving oneself more convenient.

The blood that still coated my tongue tasted sour and I felt a wave of intense nausea crash over me. This was a nightmare, it had to be. Perhaps this was what was known as lucid dreaming. Maybe I would wake up in a moment to discover I had simply imagined all of this.

"Please return him to his room, my dear." Blu sounded farther and farther away each time he spoke. I could no longer see him or anything else. I felt Bast's thin arms wrap around me and hoist me to my feet, which promptly gave out. She hissed in annoyance and looped my arm around her neck to support me.

My head lolled against her shoulder, and I felt the silk of her skirts brush against my legs as she guided me through the ever-changing hallways of the manor back to my assigned sanctuary.

As we entered the room, I felt her tearing away the heavy threads that immobilized me. Her hands wandered across my body, checking for injuries and I heard her hum lightly to herself as she undid the buttons of my shirt, relieving me of my sweaty, bloody clothes.

Despite what I had just witnessed of her, some part of me still yearned to reach out for her acceptance. I didn't know what was real and wasn't, I only knew that she had been the only one in the house who had appeared to be sympathetic towards me.

I clung to the hope that there was something to that.

"Bast," I pleaded as she laid me down on the bed and covered me with a blanket. "Is this a dream? Please tell me I'm only dreaming. Please." I clutched her hand desperately and though I couldn't see her face, I felt her return the pressure.

"Yes, Master Judas. This is just a dream. It's all in your head my love." Her lips pressed softly against my forehead, instantly calming me. "Sleep, Judas. Sleep and forget."

I tried to concentrate on her voice, on the faint memory of her dancing beneath the full moon in her billowing white dress, of the feeling of her lips lingering on my burning flesh. Yet those sensations tore away as fast as I could conjure them, and I was left to the embrace of my own darkness.

The last thing I heard before sleep overtook me was the distant wail of a child crying somewhere in the depths of the mansion.

**~ ~ ~ ~**

### Related Books

**How to Beat Procrastination**

Procrastination is the habit of putting off responsibilities until the very last minute. People have different reasons for procrastinating, but the end result is almost entirely the same; work is completed late and of a much lower quality than it would be if completed on time. Some people will claim that they work better under pressure and that procrastination is just part of their genius. This is all well and good if the procrastinator is writing an epic novel or trying to build a ship in a bottle, but when others depend on work being done on time and as requested, it seems unfair to rely on the excuse that genius prevented the work from being done. If it's a boss in a corporate setting who expects work to be done at a certain time and in a certain way, failing to meet expectations could result in professional stagnation, inability to promote, and feelings of "always being looked over" for special assignments. If it's a client in a contract setting, failure to have work completed as requested could result in being unable to collect payment for work done or, worse, losing the client to the competition forever.

Fortunately, like other bad habits, procrastination is a habit that can be broken. It might take a little time and a little patience, but there is no quick fix for habits that have been a part of who we are for who knows how long.

If there's one thing you shouldn't put off, it's reading this guide on improving productivity by eliminating the beast of procrastination from your life. The advice offered is simple to follow and requires minimal effort to implement, even for the the habitual procrastinator.

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#### How to Beat Procrastination

First, Still the Mind

One of the main reasons people procrastinate is because they feel like they have too much on their plate, or too many responsibilities to manage at once. Even if the person was able to sit down and get started on one of their tasks, he might feel an inability to focus or concentrate because of the nagging feeling that he is neglecting other responsibilities. This kind of response is often brought on by an overactive brain; a brain that tries too hard to work and worry about several things at once.

Relaxation techniques like meditation and deep breathing have been reported by practitioners to be very successful at helping the brain stay cool, calm, and collected, even in the face of seemingly endless tasks.

A few minutes of meditation may not make the workload seem any lighter, but it can keep the person more motivated to finish their tasks by relieving them of the mental and emotional worries they were experiencing.

The type of meditation or breathing technique used doesn't even matter. Any relaxation technique that helps the person calm down and feel more comfortable with the tasks in front of them is a good relaxation technique. One of the most popular techniques is to sit comfortably in a chair, back straight, palms down on the thighs, feet planted flat on the floor, and eyes closed. From this position, which can be accomplished in any office chair, the person will imagine being in front of the ocean, on a beach, watching the water move in and out from shore. Once they have this image in their mind, they will begin to focus closely on their breaths, evenly spacing and drawing out breaths so that each inhale and exhale is the same length. After focussing on their breathing for even just a couple of minutes, and after spending a few minutes in an imagination vacation, the person will notice that they seem less stressed and probably less "on edge" about their daily tasks.

When a feeling of calm is reached, the person can begin chipping away at their tasks one by one. If at any time the feeling of stress begins to creep back, the person can try repeating this phrase, an ancient proverb, as they work:

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

This means that, no matter how daunting and long a list of chores might be, there is no way to ever accomplish them without first taking them on one by one.

Second, Energize the Body

There are no two ways about it; many procrastinators just feel lazy. They probably can't explain why, but unless a deadline is looming overhead, they would rather rest and relax than get down to work. This kind of attitude can often be attributed to a lack of energy in the person. Sometimes, a cup of coffee or energy drink is enough to get a person through their responsibilities, but these are only short term solutions, and it's just not healthy to rely on sugary drinks to get through work.

To give the body more energy to make it through the day and to face the tasks it has to face, a healthy diet should be incorporated into every person's daily routine. This isn't the same as going on a diet, but a strategy for long term health and energy by introducing healthier foods into every meal.

The best source of long lasting energy are raw fruits and vegetables. Unlike processed foods, which are full of empty calories and artificial preservatives, raw fruits and vegetables provide healthy doses of vitamins and minerals that can energize better than any sugary energy drink. However, many people don't' even get their full daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, much less enough to give them all day energy. This might be because they don't like the taste of raw fruits and vegetables or because they like the tastes of other foods too much. So, instead of trying to replace entire meals with buckets of fruits and vegetables, people looking for more energy throughout the day should infuse raw fruits and vegetables into each of their regular meals. For example, eating a bowl of fruit before a bowl of cereal will give the person energy throughout the morning and will even make them feel more full and less likely to reach for a mid-morning snack. At lunch and dinner, salads before meals have the same benefits; they make the person feel full longer and gives them real energy that they'll feel almost immediately.

Juicing is another way to make sure the body gets all of the fruits and vegetables it needs to stay energized. Juicing is a preferred method of getting fruits and vegetables because it's simple and blends flavors of fruits and vegetables together into tolerable and tasty concoctions that are easy to drink.

By eating a bowl of fruit or salad before each meal, and by drinking home made fruit and/or vegetable juices throughout the day, people may soon notice that they have enough energy throughout the day to avoid sugary coffee and energy drinks. Not only will they feel more energized and have more motivation to face the tasks they've been putting off, they'll probably even end up shedding a few pounds in the process.

* * *

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