Part 23 (2/2)
”That is a journey that would take an ocean of time to cross, Janey.”
”Don't call me that,” she bristled.
”Isn't that how siblings speak?” the man's voice asked innocently.
”We're not siblings; we're nothing. I don't even know who you are!”
”Of course you do, Janey ... sorry, Jane,” he corrected himself. ”You knew the second that I allowed you to. I don't mind admitting that I was starting to worry if you'd ever be ready.”
”Ready?”
”For me, for us. I've been pus.h.i.+ng you hard, I know, but you'll thank me soon, I promise.”
”This whole time you've been pus.h.i.+ng me? Torturing me is more like it. What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?”
There was a long empty pause which Jane felt herself slide into. The darkness began to lighten around her and this was a side of the Shadow World that not even she had seen before.
Here, everything was the past and the present side by side, running in unison. Pictures floated and merged into each other, bubbling along on a tide of emotions. She could see herself as a small child and feel the excitement of a Christmas morning and the aching loss of her first pet's pa.s.sing. All of the images were of the most intimate nature and she had no idea just how this man had managed to gain access to her own private vault.
”I know you, Jane,” his voice cooed lovingly. ”I know every inch of you and your life. I know that you like comic books and, more specifically, you're a big Incredible Hulk fan - his ambiguous nature appeals to you. The Hulk isn't good or bad, anymore than a hurricane is. He is simply a force of nature and that's how you like to think of yourself. I know that you feel guilty every time that you forget to fill up the wild bird feeders in your garden as you believe that they judge you with their beady watching eyes. I also know that sometimes you have nightmares about those same birds pecking your eyes out while you sleep and that you'll wake up blind.”
Jane listened to the voice and found herself unsurprised by his knowledge. The whole thing was bizarre, and yet a lifetime with her own gift made the bizarre less unlikely.
”I don't understand any of this,” she sighed.
”Do you remember your childhood? Do you remember a time when your family was whole?”
It was a time before her father had left, a time that so was cherished to her that to even peek into that past was to tear open a barely healed wound. Her home had been happy and her childhood blissful. The house where she still lived had been full of laughter and happy faces, right up until he'd left, leaving a gaping hole behind. Her mother had always refused to talk about the man who'd left his family and, as time pa.s.sed, Jane's will to keep asking had strangely faded.
”It was her. She clouded your mind, eroding all questions until you couldn't bear to keep looking backwards anymore.”
”She wouldn't.”
”Oh, but she did.”
”You shut your mouth. You know nothing about my mother,” Jane snapped, feeling the rising tide of anger reaching the surface.
”I know everything, Jane,” he laughed loudly. ”There are no corners in your soul that are unseen to my eyes.”
”Bulls.h.i.+t, you're just a voice in the darkness, a faceless coward hiding in the shadows.”
”Is this our first fight?” he asked hopefully. ”Brother and sister tearing it up in the backyard.”
Jane felt a childlike edge to this man's nature lurking beneath his tricks and power. Whatever was the truth, he firmly believed everything that he was saying.
”Are you going to try and tell me that my father, my father, cheated on my mother and you are some kind of b.a.s.t.a.r.d offspring?” she snorted. ”Because if you are then let me tell you that my father would never have cheated, never!”
”But wouldn't it answer so many questions as to why he left?”
”I don't believe it, I won't.”
”Something broke your family apart, Jane - something big.”
Jane was tired of his attempts to smear her father and her family and was glad to finally grasp hold of something solid to fire back in his direction. ”The only trouble with your theory is that my gift comes from my mother, not my father,” she said triumphantly. ”If we shared a father then you would not share my gift.”
”I never said that we shared a father,” he said softly. ”We shared a mother.”
”No,” she stated firmly, closing her eyes against his voice, blocking his words.
A picture floated up in her mind of home and of family. It was a summer afternoon and they were playing in the back garden. She was just a child running through the warm gra.s.s, playing happily beneath the hot sun and endless blue sky. Her mother was sitting on a garden chair, sipping something cool from a tall gla.s.s and her father was chasing her, his hands held out like monster claws as he growled and laughed. The memory was comforting, like a warm woollen jumper taken from the dryer on a cold winter's day. It was one of many images that she held in her mind, snapshots of a happy childhood surrounded by love and family.
As she watched the image move like a flickering sepia home movie, it started to buckle and blister. The faces began to fade in and out, as though fighting for survival. There seemed to be another image underneath that was determined to push its way out into the world, given birth and life for the first time and struggling to breathe.
”Don't, please,” she whispered fearfully as her world threatened to be torn apart.
She tried to hold the memory together as fiercely as she could, but reality was stronger and the scales fell from her eyes.
Her father had been long gone by the time she would have noticed his absence. Her childhood had been full of a father, but it had been an image projected by her mother's love. The man had died not long after Jane had been born and he had only been kept alive as a shadow.
”I'm sorry, Jane,” the man said with genuine sympathy.
”Please,” she begged.
”It's better this way, Jane, trust me.”
She watched the film play on as her mother sat upon a garden chair, her face creased and sweating with exertion as she made a father run with his daughter and consequently the child would never know heartbreaking loss too soon.
Off in the background there was another man working on the vegetable patch. He seemed oddly familiar; it wasn't his appearance, so much as his presence.
”My father used to do some odd jobs around your place when you were growing up,” the man said fondly. ”Your mother was a good woman, Jane. I don't want you to think poorly of her; she was just lonely.”
”I don't understand how she was able to project my father's image to me. I've only ever been able to see the dead, never project them.”
”Don't worry, Jane, you will. I'll teach you,” her brother said happily. ”There's a whole world for me to teach you. Trust me, you've yet to scratch the surface of what we can do.”
”Wait, wait a minute, what about Marty Kline? What about the Crucifier? What about all the deaths?”
”Martin Kline was a deeply disturbed soul. So much torture and pain in that boy, it seemed like such a waste. I helped him to fulfil his potential, to realise his dreams and shape his destiny. We all have parts to play, Jane, in the grand scheme of things. I needed a case to pull you back from your exile, something that would be too powerful for you to pa.s.s up. Your guilt over the original Crucifer case was the key. I took young Martin and used his abused past to forge a new future for us, Jane.”
”What about the school? What about St Joseph's? All those girls?”
”Call it a..., flair for the theatrical,” he laughed. ”You're a tough cookie, Jane. I couldn't have you catching up to me before I was ready. I had to split up your team in case you found me too soon. Inspector Meyers was proving to be far more of an adversary than I had ever expected. The Crucifier had served his purpose and so Martin's time was up. He died and I had to b.l.o.o.d.y my hands at the school in order to shut Meyers' investigation down. Once it was clear that he had led his team into the fire at the school, even if the flames didn't get him, at the very least he would be removed from my path through his own incompetence.”
”Why? Why would you take advantage of a sick mind like Marty's? Why would you use Martin to kill those women like the Crucifier did? Why couldn't you just do it yourself?”
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