Hold the Light (7 page)

The cloaked figure grew angry and the orb whispered warnings to Mural.

"But I do have an offer," Mural stated. He wasn't about to be obligated to this cloaked stranger, even though something in his mind felt the figure spoke the truth. This would be a fight. But Mural had fought for years against own his demons only to end up one himself, and since a chance of redemption seemed at hand, there was only one thing to do.

"Do continue," its tone peaked with curiosity, coupled with a strange sense of urgency.

That tone warned Mural, suggesting that the sinister man before him might be trying to deceive him, but Veronica hadn't deserved the musket ball in her back.

"Forgiveness," Mural said.

"Do you actually believe you know what that is any longer?"

"For her," Mural stated, his hulking frame sulking, pointing at Veronica's body.

The figure pondered with it's eyes over it's shoulder as if it was fleeing. The shadows shifted unnaturally around the silhouette's dreary robes, seemingly reaching for Mural. The movement fully unveiled the figure's blood red eyes. The skin around the figure's eyes was sunken, coarse and old, with wrinkles that webbed along charred flesh.

"Dear God, this thing is evil," Mural declared in his head.

The whispers from the orb finally pieced together in a vibrating mutter that shivered down Mural's spine. It's words came as an impression rather than a voice.

"Run," the blue orb pleaded, "Please run. He is a great deceiver."

Time seemed to speed up as this demon, yes a demon, began to speak.

"How do you plan to do this?" The demon asked.

"Allow her to live and I'll do what you ask. You're obviously here for me."

"What makes you think that? What makes you think I can do these outlandish things you ask?"

"I do not know what you are, but the sphere does, and it speaks to me. You come at this terrible time with such theatrics that you must have some influence. This is no coincidence."

"Well, at least you are right about the orb, it does tend to babble," the demon hoarsely chuckled.

Everything noble within Mural seemed to compile on his lips without any thought to himself. Mural began to feel human again.

"I will agree. Deal." The dark demon spoke so quickly that Mural got his second hint of a mistake. "Kneel," it ordered. Its blood red eyes ached, glaring deeply into Mural's eyes, "Time is of the essence."

Mural lowered his massive frame to his knees as the blue orb still quivered on the palm of the dark hand before him. Clouds of baleful cries poured from the sphere and pilfered Mural's psyche telling him that he was making a grave mistake, but his love for Veronica still clung and itched to exist.

The blue sphere shuttered so quickly that it appeared elliptical. Its screams were so loud in Mural's mind, he expected the whole city far behind him to wake. The shrieks gored his brain until the hand closed its fingers into a fist to contain the orb. The demon's forefinger and thumb came down and pinched Mural's nose shut. Blue light pierced out through the small gaps between the demon's fingers and shot off in heavy filaments, while the other hand waved with a curl of the fingers at Mural's gaping mouth, egging something out.

Subtle movements stirred deep within Mural, slowly turning into sluggish jerks, as something reluctantly woke inside him. With another beckon from the demon, this thing within Mural climbed from his chest, clenching sharply up his throat. It scrambled, one hold after another in ascent, until it finally crept from behind his tongue and leapt out of his mouth. Left dumbfounded, he watched a frail glob of light, a darker blue than the orb, shoot from his mouth to the open hand of the cloaked figure.

The demon balled up the object into its fist and placed it atop Veronica's mouth. Mural's liberated dark blue bubble sat wedged between her lips with the demon's fingertip nestled in the cleft above her upper lip. The blue entity wiggled in the divot between her violet lips until the stranger pressed its finger down. Its finger seared into her skin and burned down to the front of her teeth. Mural's dark blue ball sucked down into Veronica in a sick slurp.

Mural sat and watched, light-headed and dazed, as slivers of life gathered, causing shakes in her fingers and twitches in her legs. The demon's finger was pressed firmly on her lips when her body awakened as if she burst free from submersion. Veronica's eyes fluttered and color returned to her face, clinging loosely to her cheeks like it knew full well it wasn't supposed to be there.

Fastened to the ground with fatigue, Mural was lost in a feeling of incompleteness that spread throughout his body, and became more and more sorrowful of the cavernous space within him that used to harbor his soul. The demon removed its finger from her mouth and she slowly leaned up. A notch that was once her cleft, previously extending from the bottom of her nose to her upper lip, reached further down to her chin. Her lips were sealed shut. Veronica tried to speak, but only vague sounds sputtered out the sides of her mouth.

"A piece of your soul has been barricaded inside her. Your soul will sustain her."

Mural longed for his wife more passionately than ever. He watched and pitied her, knowing the curse she bore was rightfully his. She had a piece of him again.

"She will live, but not without my care. Now open your mouth."

Reluctantly, Mural opened his mouth and watched the demon's other hand open to expose the blue orb again. As soon as the orb felt the open air, it was forced into Mural's gaping mouth, crammed down into his chest. Anchored in a vacant place, the blue orb sifted around inside, searching for a niche. It snaked and wormed through Mural's soft innards, finally resting in the void of his fragmented soul.

Knees shaking in the mud, Mural pounded his fists against the ground, splashing clumps of grass and earth, reacting to the sensations slipping around inside him. The confusion grinding about his chest forced him into convulsions. Swarming like bees behind his ribs, the orb settled and secured a hold in his throat as well. A steady silence enveloped his consciousness as his senses stopped completely. The blue orb shifted and settled in his chest and sent pulses throughout his body, getting a feel for its new home as it clamped onto his shattered soul. Mural could feel it joining. It hooked on like a monkey in a tree, gripping tightly around two places to keep a hold. Those paws curled around his throat, forming a constant lump at the bottom of his neck. It bobbed as he swallowed, always threatening to choke him as he gulped. He coughed and hacked nonetheless, wanting with all his might, to spit up this awkward presence. The other paw gripped somewhere in his essence, an area that he knew to exist but never located. It clutched his emotions strangely, touching his heart and mind at the same time.

His compassion sank and his sorrow fixed on Veronica's sealed lips. The couple's sorrowful eyes met and teemed with tears. She stared at him curiously and immediately noticed a drastic change in her alienated husband and it showed in her eyes. Mural wasn't the same and would never be again. All she could do was watch.

Mural went pale. The convulsions assumed control of him as his blood turned to ice, slowly sliding through his veins. With teeth clattering and knees shaking, blue tints replaced the pink in his cheeks and nose, as all natural color left him. All heat sped from him and leaked into the night, escaping with his breath into the air in a gray cloud, puffing from his purple lips up into the hot air, condensing and hovering around him. He wrapped his long black coat tighter and felt no warmth as the constrictions of the deal he had made continued to suck the heat from him. The demon slithered over to Veronica.

"From now on my puppet, assuming that you wish to see her again...well, I'll put it simply, just stay alive. Enjoy the gift." It hissed and gently clutched Veronica's hand.

Mural watched as the demon lead her off over the dark horizon, her hand raised in a dreamy reach for her husband. Yearning to save her, Mural reached out as well, but that was all the movement he could muster. They stretched for each other until she disappeared into a haze of enveloping shadows that covered the demon's departure. With one last wave of her pink hand, she disappeared.

His search began after that night. A hunt that lasted for two hundred years. There were no expenses to be spared; she meant everything.

Chapter 10

Walking away from the night he lost his wife again, his entire purpose became darker than his previous murders could have ever whispered. For the first month Mural couldn't stomach much food; the lumpy blue orb, this gift, clogged his throat almost completely. Liquid proved to be the easiest substance to get past the gift. His life was bleak once again.

Veronica was gone for a second time, but this time she needed to be saved. He needed to recover his soul and her life. Love's return proved harder than its departure; everything human inside his chest beat for only her.

No matter how callow or abundant his emotions, the gift struggled with his feelings, taunting and influencing what happened inside him. It seemed to study his every notion and mimic his reactions, trying to fit in. After the gruesome night on the porch, all that was inside of Mural, everything he thought or did, felt as if he had little or no part in it.

If a feeling came to him, there was no way for him to be sure it was genuine.

Most of his sensations felt skewed or mangled by the gift. The stubborn feelings it radiated swayed him heavily for the first month. After a week it began to pity itself, constantly moaning in melancholy, yearning for its home, wherever that was. After two weeks, Mural struggled to find where it was stolen from. The gift began to resist him with such vigor and passion that he started to pity it. He wondered how to set it free. So alien was the feeling between them that the first time he sneezed, he kept his hand far away from his lips, hoping it would shoot out. But it burrowed deeper within him, further down than his past heartbreaks, and it rested in his guilt, sharing space with his shattered soul.

After a month, survival was trying in every aspect. Mural sat in his living room chair, shivering and shaking with each stir within him. An everlasting cold possessed him. His convulsions became uncontrollable and ice water seemed to have replaced his blood. Time stretched into oblivion as Mural stared into his fireplace at ashes he could identify with. He was banished, never wanting to walk the streets again, but he attempted it nevertheless. One day he ventured out. His hatred for solitude forced him to his front door, pushing out into the fresh air he'd missed for so long. He had walked no more than twenty yards when his body began to shiver uncontrollably. The sidewalk began to vibrate at first as he reached out for the brick wall to keep steady, but the wall shook as well. His weight quickly became too much to bear as he fell into the brick and slid down to the ground, quivering in the fetal position. Mural's arms and legs curled up into his chest and his fingers jittered. His head jolted up, stretching to the end of his neck like it was trying to run away. Mouth open wide, without trying to make a peep, a scream skipped past his mouth and leapt right into his head. He began to cry, coiled up within himself like a snake.

Then he abruptly stopped and went stone cold.

An onlooker with very acute vision would have seen a thin blue streak soar from his face. This beam shot away from him and left him lifeless. He became a pale, crumpled ball for a few seconds until the streak returned with the same speed it left. Mural woke with a jolt of a horse kick. His eyes fluttered vehemently trying to gain bearing on where he was, as if he himself had left. The alien mass in his chest grew heavy, resettled in its newest home, and left Mural confused. Weak and battered, he rose and hobbled home using the wall as a brace, feeling his way down the coarse brick towards his doorstep. While walking up the narrow stairs into his home, images began to pop into his head. A barrage of images slid before his eyes, playing out a violent show of murder, one he hadn't remembered committing. It was fragmented with settings and areas that he had never been to, with monuments that he recognized, but had never visited. As the flashes slowly became even more familiar, more intimate than deja vu to him, Mural caught a glimpse of what he had become. Unnerved with the loss of control, not because of the murder, but because that didn't remember committing it, Mural began to shake. He was losing his grip on the gift nestled in his chest, trying to decipher it from his actual memories.

Mural's maroon leather chair was the only place comfortable enough to keep his thoughts away from suicide. He would live to see Veronica again. Just the sheer thought of her with that venomous, thieving creature kept him from standing all day. He imagined the perverse pleasures the demon would wipe all over her body if he were to die. As the vivid visions of the gift inside him drove him towards death, thoughts of Veronica drove him toward life, but those red eyes, so deep and evil and devastating and bloody - that red could transcend his colorblindness. Red had always been able.

So he sat for a month.

Standing only when his stomach cried out for food, he would venture to the kitchen for some scraps, and hurry back to the chair to stay safe. The convulsions came with great frequency, bearing down like lightning - sharp and painful. On rare occasions, Mural would grow more used to the convulsions and attempt to walk around his house, trying to wean himself into old patterns, but the old whispers never came back and he felt alien in his own life. The gift eclipsed everything.

Time crawled. Thirty days had passed more like years.

Melancholy took him and, ironically, gave him his first familiar notion. Mural knew how he dealt with that before. And as soon as he thought it he found himself at a wash basin. Leaning over slowly he picked up a shaving blade and looked into the mirror at his shaggy face. His eyes were glazed and dull like a cows. His beard was thick and tangled. With trembling hands the blade pierced the tuft of curly brown hair that covered the point where his jaw line met his neck. The razor indented his skin and he thought, with trembling longing, of opening his throat and finishing what he started but stopped those short years ago on the hill. Yet, almost against his every urge, he slowly cut away his ragged beard. After shaving most his facial hair off, a convulsion took him. His hand shook the blade against his sandpaper cheek. The straight razor pressed against his jugular as the convulsions grew worse and blood ran along the blade's edge. His control diminished but his mind tried to lurch back to the day he sat on the hill, blade to his throat, ready to end it all over Veronica. But now, his wife was the safe driving force pushing in the opposite direction.