Splintered Souls

Splintered Souls

By

Curtis Ray Jones

Page 1

At first glance no one would think Chase Gillette was a haunted man. He was only twenty-five, lived right on the beach, in a rustic little beach house, left to him by his rich sympathetic uncle. That, along with a Four-hundred-thousand-dollar inheritance should have painted a perpetual grin on his boyish face. Hardly the profile of a man, possessed.

But as he peered out over the Atlantic ocean, on that cool late September morning he, like so many times before, found himself peering over the crashing surf for something or someone he knew could not exist.  

Feeling like a fool he reached over to grab his first mug of steaming black coffee from the deck railing he had been leaning against, as the familiar hush and roar of the pounding surf gently tugged him back into the real world.

“Lost again,” he murmured, as though someone might be listening. He even glanced up from the enthralling waves to make sure no one was near.  “Old habit. Thanks Mom.” He said a bit more loudly, seeing nothing but empty sun- bleached sand and seagulls.

A white Adirondack chair sat a few feet behind him. He eased into it, cup in hand, and waited. Which was his morning ritual. Not that he meant to wait. After all there was nothing to wait for. Today would be the same as yesterday, would it not? But this time, something stirred deep inside, as the question melted away.

A sudden breeze whipped his long blonde hair over his eyes. It was as if someone had slung a great door open. His skin pimpled from the unexpected rush of cold air. His gray zip up hoody, jeans and sandals scarcely shielded him from its’ icy grip.

Clasping his mug, more to warm his hands than anything else. He took a long sip, longer than he expected. It was already cold. Odd that. It was after all, still summer and his coffee, brewed mere minutes earlier. Funny the weather man said nothing about a cold front moving in from up north.

The sun shone bright just above the distant sand dunes and hotels far to the west. It made him squint but warmed him not at all. Strangely the wind had ceased but the air remained icy. Made no sense.

Rising from his chair, to go back inside, he looked out across the glittering swell, than scanned the deserted shoreline. Something was amiss. Returning? A part of him knew what is was, feared what it was. But he had buried that part, that dark impossible part under a mountain of foolish childhood terrors.  

It couldn’t be. It was not dark. He was not six. He no longer squirmed under his mother’s brutal thumb, hiding his eyes from their eyes. Hiding his fear from his mother’s narrow prodding glare.

Their white, pin prick, unblinking eye lights peering at him from every cavernous shadow of his gloomy childhood bedroom, had blinked out long ago, had they not.

 

And his mother was in a rest home ten miles away. Moreover, he lived in Atlantic beach, his happiest place on earth. The sky was clear. The sun was bright. There were no shadows. No darkness.

But it was still there lurking in the cold light. No. In his mind, in his heart. His old reality, buried but, clearly, not deep enough.

Trying to feel foolish again, he smirked, turned toward the sliding glass door that led to his living room, when his stomach cramped so violently he dropped to his knees. A sheet of darkness suddenly blocked out the sun as waves of fiery pain burned through every cell of his violently convulsing body.

No one saw him sink from sight. His mind blinked off extinguishing the fire, a millisecond before an invisible hole swallowed him and spat him out miles from his home.

The sweet pungent smell of pine needles teased his mind back from the darkness. The distant chirping of a happy little bluejay gently tapped his ears. He groaned as he sucked in a cleansing deep breath of cool sweet air. Dampness chilled his right hip and kneecaps, as his jeans soaked up moisture from the wet forest floor.

His eyelids cracked open. The blinding golden glare from the setting sun streamed through the pines and shook him awake, but not fully aware. He had not yet realized what had happened to him, much less where he was.

How could he know? Teleportation, nonsense, fanciful drivel. But here he was, sitting in a forest he had never seen. How, and more importantly why, he came to be here, time would certainly tell. However, for now, he was mercifully unaware.

It took several moments before he looked up and saw where he was.

“What! No! Can’t be!”

He jumped to his feet slinging his head around as if an easy explanation was sitting on the pine straw looking up at him. Of course it was not.

Then it hit him. The eyes. His mother’s glare. The waiting, the searching, pretending he was normal. Struggling to embrace this hateful world, a world made more hateful by a Mother who always made him feel a stranger.

He hugged his chest. Yes he was still alive, still corporeal, but he was more, so much more. An odd comfort began to seep in. His name was Chase Gillette. This he knew. But that was a new name. But, somehow, he knew he had another name. An ancient name.

 This realization stung his conscience. He knew not why.

His question would have to wait. A man yelled off to his right. Lust! That and anger suddenly hung in the air like the smell of putrid carrion.

“She headed for the lake,” another man yelled. “Head her off Mitch!”

Her? He knew instantly someone was in dark trouble.

He sniffed the air. Water, sodden wood, animal excrement, directly ahead. He tore through the trees, briars and underbrush, tearing his clothes but not his skin. His hoody and jeans ragged but more intact than his sandals, lost to the woods forever. He emerged from the pines to find himself standing on the sandy shore of  a large glistening lake.

“There she is,” yelled the rapist wanna be.

He jerked to his left. His eyes watered. His body went slack at the sight of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Weirdly, she was sitting on the beach, head bowed. Waiting? An odd white garment covered her slight wonderfully proportioned frame. Her hair, blindingly white in the last rays of the dying sun draped over her delicate bare shoulders all the way down to the wet sand, which seemed to be serving her up to these soulless brutes like a tasty meal.

“My prey!” The words burned into his mind, as more of his true- identity revealed itself to him. Frozen in place by the sudden knowledge he was sent here to kill, not to save. He could only watch as the two men surrounded their apparently helpless victim.

Mitch, a tall heavy -set man dressed in grimy coveralls dropped to his knees, right in front of her. Neither he or, his friend Marvin had noticed Chase. All their attention was fixed on this pretty young thing, sitting spread legged on the cold wet sand just begging for it.

“Now lets’ see here,” Mitch continued, as he reached up to pull, what he assumed was her dress, down. “Like to see what I’m getting into,” he laughed, “If you know what I mean.”

The girl pressed her hands in the soil letting wet sand ooze up between her tiny fingers.

“What sort of dress is this,” he asked, tugging at something more akin to fine feathers than cloth.

She lifted her head and stared at him with cold onyx eyes. 

A silver filament snaked up from her head, now carelessly tilted to one side. A tight tiny smile bent her pink flower pedal lips, as more strands of shiny hair fanned out from her delicate lovely frame. With bird of prey speed and accuracy they slashed through the air, wrapped around his arms sliced through his flesh with such ferocity, he could only shriek and tremble.

Crimson bands of blood coursed from his bone deep wounds and was instantly absorbed by her thirsty living hair, as it quite efficiently syphoned off as much blood as her deceptively childlike body could absorb.

For the first time in his useless miserable life Marvin finally did something selfless as he flung himself at the girl. His first and last honorable act. An invisible strand whipped out and neatly parted his head from his dirty overall clad body. It crumpled to the ground, flinching in the sand until it finally collapsed in a lifeless blood spurting heap.

Chase’s mouth sagged open as he watched Marvin’s head slowly spin to a stop several feet from his friend’s lifeless husk. It was then she looked up at him. Her eyes, no longer black, but sparkling-blue diamonds. Her body and face, flawless, but blood soaked, and surprisingly slack. Slack with satiation, resignation, shame? He could not tell. She reared up effortlessly and slowly walked into the cold lake water until she was chest deep. Stooping beneath the water only to emerge with a double hand full of mud and gravel.  She then proceeded to roughly scrub her body. She did not stop until every speck of blood was washed away.

Her head bowed, her feathery covering plastered to her perfect petite body like wet toilet paper; she sloshed out of the lake toward him. Every fiber in his body screamed run. But a deeper, older voice said stay.

A moment later she stepped up to him, her head still bowed. Then ever so slowly she lifted her trembling chin, until her throat was fully exposed.

It took a few moments until her desire finally wormed its’ way into his thick human skull.

“You want me to kill you.” He stated flatly.

She closed her eyes, clenched her little fists and waited calmly for the killing blow to rip out her windpipe.

Her eyes clamped tightly together. She shivered before him, resigned to her fate. Moments passed then warmth, soft caressing warmth.

“I know its ragged and dirty, but my hoody will have to do, until I can get you somewhere safe and…”

She reached up and gently laid her right hand over his mouth.

Her flesh against his triggered a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions. He had saved her. Was this some form of gratitude or was he about to die. His legs grew wobbly as he sank before her. Feeling drained but not of blood, but of his muddy past, at least some of it, the part of it that made him fit for this world. However, his world was over. It was time to step into another. In his new world moving from one place to another was simply a matter of cutting a hole in the air and stepping through to any place you knew.

She did not take his blood. She simply gave him a small particularly useful piece of her past, but only because it was also a part of his past. She had merely helped him remember. He had, after all, spared her life, not that she wanted that, at least she didn’t until now. He had sparked her curiosity and something else she could not yet fully embrace, something impossible…