A Darkness Below: Chapter 4

Thank you everyone for your tremendous response to the story so far! This is one of the reasons I absolutely love Steemit. Thanks to all of you, I have rekindled my absolute love for writing fiction...and writing in general. Enjoy my fourth chapter! The chapters were a little long since they were originally written to be printed, so I carved up the actual chapter four into smaller pieces to make it easier to read. Upvotes and comments are always appreciated!

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Marcus…

He didn’t bother opening his eyes. It was all in his mind anyway. If he opened his eyes, he’d see the same dank, dark cellar he’d been chained to for the last twenty years. It would simply remind him of the desperate gnawing in his gut, the brutal hunger that still prodded him and urged him to tear his hands through his bindings to escape.

Marcus…

Who the hell was Marcus anyway? That had never been his name, so why his mind was whispering the name to him was a mystery. Perhaps it had been one of his victims, from the multitude he’d left in his wake.

He tried to focus his mind, to remember what he’d seemed to have forgotten, but it was no use. For twenty years he’d picked his brain, trying to figure out where it was he’d come from, and who he’d been, but the earliest memory he could recall was the shifting sands of the desert under the pale light of the moon. It was a moment of clarity in what he recognized was a beastly state. Whatever way he’d ended up this monster, he’d been so lost in it that, up to that point, he’d behaved like an animal, preying on the bedouins and hiding beneath the sands from the sun. Yasim, they’d called him. He was the terror in the darkness. For more a thousand years, the bedouins spoke in hushed whispers of the evil lurking in the shadows, just out of sight. For a millennium, they’d chastised their children to obey their parents, lest he take them. No, Marcus wasn’t his name. It must have been someone else’s. Someone else in his long, bloody history.

“Jaaaaaaasen…”

That name, on the other hand, was one he was keenly familiar with, and he was anything but curious as to the voice repeating it. He kept his dull eyes closed. That sing-song voice wasn’t a welcome distraction, even in his solitude. He would have preferred the hallucinations he occasionally was able to enjoy than talk to that voice.

“Come now, Jasen. We haven’t talked in ages.”

“Because I’m choosing to ignore you. Go away.”

“Why? We were such good friends. Remember? Such good friends. When you let me in and helped me, we both had such a great time.”

His mind thought back a couple of centuries and dug up the memories. There he stood, on a grass field bathed in blood, standing on top of a pile of bodies, sword in hand. He could almost feel the thrum of power in the blade; that ecstatic sensation of stealing life from people was almost as fantastic as feeding was. He didn’t just like it. He loved that feeling, of being the hand of God. In a lifetime punctuated by madness and lost time, it provided him perfect clarity.

“That wasn’t me. That was you. You did all of that.”

“Oh ho, don’t act like you weren’t thrilled. You sat right behind me, drinking it up.”

He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness ahead of him, the sconces having lost their flame hours ago. The muted light of a cloudy day provided a thin sliver of illumination across the floor, separating him from the other half of the room. He swore he saw something shift on the other side of his cell, but there was nothing there. It was his mind playing tricks, he told himself.

“Jasen, you and I made a fantastic team. When you plucked me from my solitude, remember what I told you? I promised you the world. And didn’t I deliver on that promise? Didn’t I give you everything you wanted?”

Jasen said nothing in response. What could he have said? He was right. The promise of absolute power had been real and deliverable. Whatever terror he’d instilled in those years wandering the sands and the mountains as a beast paled in comparison to the power he wielded at the end of that blade. It was phenomenal, even if he had to sacrifice his bodily autonomy to attain it. He’d done so willingly, accepting that he’d become a slave to its desire to take life.

“That’s not who I am anymore. I broke your hold on me, remember? You’re locked up in some deep dark hole somewhere. Again.”

“Waiting for your chance to break free, friend.”

The sound of footsteps making their way down the hall and the flicker of torchlight against the opposite wall from his cell door interrupted the conversation he was having in his head. He curled his lips into a smirk, worn flesh cracking as the right corner of his mouth turned upward.

“Two times in a week, Sullivan? Is the weight of leadership really such a heavy burden?”

“I’m not my father,” she said curtly. She fumbled with the key for a moment before managing to turn the latch and open the gate. Tucking the key back into her pocket, Maggie stepped into his cell, closing the gate behind her.

“No. No you’re not,” replied Jasen, sounding perplexed as he watched her enter his room and make her way in front of him. She threw the small glass bottle at him, hitting him in the chest. Fortunately, he managed to cup his legs together to catch it before it hit the ground; with the prospect of food directly in front of him, his atrophied muscles sprang into action to save it from being shattered against the ground. Jasen took a few deep, unnecessary breaths, marshalling his strength before the darkness beside him shifted.

Maggie stood in front of him, leaning her weight on her left leg and crossing her arms over her chest as she watched him. She didn’t catch the shadows moving, not at first, but once the two tendrils crossed over his torso, she froze. She watched in silence as the one tendril took a hold of the bottle and the other unscrewed the top. Halfway caught between terror and fascination, she kept watching as the darkness brought the glass bottle up to his mouth, where he hungrily devoured the thick, red fluid contained within. Once the bottle was finished, the bottle was set down at his feet, and the shadowy appendages disappeared back into the darkness.

His eyes were the first part of him to recover from the infusion. Instead of the dull, flat red they had been, they took on a new vibrancy; the eyes of a predator chained in a cage. His skin mended itself, abolishing the flakes and cracks that plagued his countenance. His muscles remained atrophied and his body was still gaunt, but in a matter of seconds, he looked healthier than he had in a month. Jasen took in another unnecessary breath and exhaled slowly, a smile crossing his thin lips.

Maggie took all of this in quietly, standing stock still as the creature was restored. Her focus was broken only by the sound of the wooden chair sliding across the stone floor, which caused her to spin around, reaching for the dagger at her waist. Another shadowy appendage slid the chair until it rested in the sliver of daylight across the floor, stopping right where she stood.

“Have a seat. Stay a while.”

She took a step away from the chair, confining herself to the light on the floor and turning her attention back to Jasen. The last time she’d wandered down here, she was fourteen and trying to mock the boys in her class about how much more of a man she was than them. She’d made it down the stairwell easily enough, without any concern or care, but once she’d hit the floor of the dungeon, an uneasy feeling settled into her mind. It only grew worse as she approached his cell door, seeping right into her bones. She hadn’t even bothered to get a good look inside; her heart had practically stopped when Jasen had shifted against his chains, and she bolted back up the stairs faster than she’d ever imagined she could run.

Now that unease had returned. She chided herself for it and for how childish it was; she’d been much closer to other similar monsters, and she hadn’t missed a beat. Then again, those other monsters couldn’t command the darkness that pooled around her in all directions. They couldn’t create tentacles out of the shadows and drag her into the abyss with them. No, they were far easier to deal with than this. She didn’t move, keeping her eyes on Jasen quietly.

“Or don’t. Just figured you might like to take a seat and make yourself comfortable.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m going to be comfortable around you,” she replied brusquely.

“Trust me, my dear, if I had wanted you dead, I would have done it the moment you set foot in my cell. No, I’m here by choice, and I accept the chains that come with the decision, literal and figurative.”

“Sure, I’ll bet you do, and I’m sure you’re not thinking of how delicious a meal I’d make while you’re sitting there,” she spat, squeezing her upper arms. Jasen rolled his head back and looked at her from behind his curtain of wiry hair, now finer and thicker than it had been before.

“Never said that, Sullivan. Just that I’m going to keep myself confined to his wall. You don’t have anything to worry about from me.”

“My father is William Sullivan. Please don’t call me Sullivan.”

“What would you prefer then?”

“....Maggie.” She had taken a second to consider whether she wanted this thing calling her by such a familiar term, but being referred to by her last name somehow felt even more uncomfortable. At least her nickname would give her a greater sense of control over the encounter.

“Maggie it is. So what did you do to get you sent down here? To feed the beast in the dungeon?”

“None of your concern. You done?”

“Oh come now, I’m just trying to be friendly. At least your father isn’t quite so curt with me. Just talk with me a minute, Maggie. No one else comes down here except your father; would be nice to have different company for a change.”
She shifted her weight onto her other leg, before swaying back, mulling it over in her head. Her father had told Warrick to send her down here and feed him, and she’d done that. She could make up whatever story she wanted about what she talked about. She didn’t have to sit here and actually have a conversation with him. She made up her mind; she wasn’t about to indulge this monster with conversation. It had been her father’s decision to spare him, and it was going to be her decision to leave him to rot. Without another word, she turned and headed for the door to the cell, a little too quickly for someone who was supposed to be composed.

“Goodbye then,” Jasen said, closing his eyes again and leaning his head back against the wall.

She shut the door behind her and locked it back again before she hurried down the hallway to the stairwell. The sooner she was out of the dungeon, the better she was going to feel. Still, his farewell bothered her. It wasn’t angry, or bitter, or even mocking. It was strangely polite, and that politeness, even in the face of her brusque manner, bothered her. What bothered her more was the fact she did feel a little guilty for leaving so abruptly. She put those thoughts out of her head as she stepped through the heavy wood door at the top of the stairs and back into the hallway between the typing pool and the offices.

She almost jumped out of her skin when Warrick greeted her on the other side of the door, but she was quick to catch herself and snapped to the position of parade rest to mask her surprise. Warrick looked at her oddly.

“When the hell do you snap to any position when I run into you? Relax, Sullivan.”

“Caught me off guard is all, sergeant. I finished feeding it and I was going to head to the typing pool to type up my after action report.”

“Fine fine. What’d you talk about with...it?”

For a moment, she was at a loss of words. What the hell would they have talked about if she’d stuck around down there to exchange words with him? What could she have talked about? She imagined it would have been easier lying about having a conversation with a dog than this.

“Well, the weather, actually. Sounds stupid, I know, but that’s what he asked about. I guess he misses being out of the castle. Who the hell knows, sergeant.”

Warrick wasn’t pleased with the answer but showed no signs of probing further, and she was relieved she didn’t have to elaborate on that lie. She could lie in a pinch, and she was certainly good at putting on an act when she was working, but she didn’t like to lie to people she trusted. For as much as she disliked Warrick’s unbending stubbornness, he’d never been unfair or cruel.

“Suppose so. Alright then, carry on. Get me that report when you’re done with it. You’ve got until the end of the day to be done with it, so get to it.”

She snapped her heels together before turning to her left and walking down the hall at a fast clip, leaving Warrick behind. It dawned on her that lying about the conversation made her feel worse about cutting it off so abruptly in the first place, and part of her seethed at the fact she actually felt bad for not giving that thing proper consideration. She chided herself as she made her way through the doorway to the typing pool, crossing it with a determined countenance. At least typing out her report would deaden her mind and drive the thoughts she was dealing with out, if only for a short moment.

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Andrei Chira is an anarcho-capitalist, former 82nd Airborne paratrooper, vaper, and all-around cool guy. He's a father to one wonderful little girl named Kate, lives down in Alabama, and spends his time writing stories, posting to Steemit (not as much as he probably should), and cultivating the mental fortitude to make it through three years of law school.