The Medium

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

They didn’t drive. Sebastian led him along tenderly, whispering him deeper and deeper down until he forgot that he’d remembered how to think. It was all familiar, comfortable. There was even a poisonous sweetness to the way Sebastian helped him walk, kept him from tripping, always touching, petting, filling his brain with sensation so there would be no room for memory.

“It’s okay. Don’t worry, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to. You would never go, wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

“Never.”

They stepped into Sebastian’s apartment, the same musty hole with the same green wallpaper, tables strewn with tattered westerns, pervasive pall of muted suffering.

The ghosts drifted out of the walls to watch. They remembered this one, the one who could see them, and there were so many more, now. They crowded the small space, overlapping one another, blending into one another. This time, though, he didn’t look. Sebastian had his whole attention.

The Spaniard slammed the door and bolted it shut. He taped another layer of foil across the windows, a layer across the air vents. Then he crouched in the chair and regarded the other man with quiet speculation.

“Tell me what happened,” he ordered. “Tell me everything.”

He told him everything—everything he’d done, everything that had been done to him, everything that had passed through his mind. It took hours, working around his painful stutter. He talked about the memory with no face, and the ghost, and the young woman who touched him without leaving marks.

“So that’s why you didn’t try to leave. You want to stay there, don’t you?”

Blue eyes met brown and saw he wasn’t really forgiven.

“N-no, I t-t-tried, b-but I didn’t…”

“A token effort. Just so you could say you tried. You think I’m stupid?”

“No!”

“You’re dirt. You’re lower than dirt. You’re nothing and no-one. You don’t have anything but me. I am the only thing standing between you and them. You think they wouldn’t kill you as soon as you gave them what they wanted?”

“I t-tried!”

“They’ll kill me, and then they’ll kill you. Because you’re an animal, a killer.”

That was impossible, but possibility didn’t matter, because when Sebastian said it, it was true.

“I tried.”

A hand tangled itself in his hair and jerked his head back so hard, his neck cracked. He felt a flash of numbness, then a spreading pain. Then he met Sebastian’s eyes, and the pain receded. He felt nothing, and then… anticipation.

“You thought about going back, didn’t you? You like that worthless witch. You know what? Too bad. I’m not done with you.”

The hand tightened and pulled him up off his feet, dangling him by his hair. He hung limply, waiting. A fingertip traced his carotid artery, riding the ridges of scar tissue, inducing a shiver. His chest jumped with a minute gasp; his pupils dilated.

“You don’t have anything but me, now. I am your will. You understand? And now I’m going to cripple you, and you’re going to let me.”

Sebastian’s teeth pierced his throat.

His brain liquefied and seeped into his veins, and each time Sebastian gulped him down, he took a little more memory, a little more self.

Losing himself was bliss. It pounded through his body, pulsing in the pit of his belly like his absent heartbeat. It resonated through his mind. Weakening, he lost the strength for worry, for fear. The emptiness was exquisite. He envisioned his spirit being drawn out and dispersing among the ghosts, disappearing, being destroyed. There was a kind of freedom in that idea. It would be so good to be free, to give up, give in, let Sebastian think his thoughts for him, let Sebastian do whatever he was going to do. It would be easy, restful, peaceful. He couldn’t imagine how three days had made him forget that, how necessary it was that he quiet himself and disappear.

That admission brought its own wave of pleasure, seductive warmth that relaxed his mind further and drew a sigh out of him.

Sebastian dropped him, and his head hit the corner of the table, but he didn’t feel it. The stars filling his vision were beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I love you. I’m sorry. I love you.”

“Shut up,” Sebastian snapped, and his throat sealed itself.

“Go to sleep.”

Darkness slammed him down, and he embraced it.

*

She. That was how he thought of Her, a pronoun with a capital letter, because She had never told him Her name. She never spoke at all. He thought it was because of the chasm of a scar splitting Her forehead, separating Her brown eye from Her crimson one. So deep a scar must have damaged what was underneath. She held his head between Her knees, so tight he was sure his skull would burst like an overripe fruit, gripped a handful of his beard, and ripped the last of his dignity away, along with half of his face. He screamed, and Her mind closed around his like a vice, choking his soul, until his body twisted and jerked with the agony of it.

Some vestigial reflex seized control of his mouth and he cried out in Latin, the native language of his heart.

“Salvame,” he shrieked. “Pie Iesu, salvame!”

The name seared him into silence, and he lay still while She unmanned him.

He’d pitied Her once, had been ready to do anything it took to save Her, poor, ravaged creature. He’d pitied Her and been repaid with venom. But that was a memory, unwelcome, and the memory quickly became a dream. Suddenly, he stood tall and powerful, as strong as he’d been hours ago. He was the dominator. He was in control. He broke Her neck and beat Her, shredded Her until She was nothing but viscous, red liquid. Even then, She tried to run, and he burned Her. He laughed. He felt the pressure of Her mind ease and exulted in the pleasant tearing sensation as the link between them was shorn away, all messy edges and fresh, necessary wounds. It was worth it to be rid of Her.

But She came back, She always came back. She was out there somewhere, waiting—no. She was dead. Dead and gone forever. If She came back, it would be with a different face, some new tormentor. A thousand faces, a million. Seven billion. She was everywhere. She wore a man’s face, unkempt, with shaggy blond hair and blue eyes…

Sleep fled, and he sat up, peeling himself away from the spot of dried blood his split scalp had left on the carpet. The sense of peace was gone, replaced by a deep, quivering need to be taken again, to be emptied, quieted. He crawled to where Sebastian slept in the chair. His limbs trembled with that need, with pain and thirst, and the need for all of that to be transformed into ecstasy. It twisted inside him, narcotic and disorienting, and it never even occurred to him to wonder why he’d been dreaming another man’s dreams. He laid himself at Sebastian’s feet.

He woke again when he felt the sun rise. The door opened and closed, and for a while Sebastian was gone; he came back frustrated and quietly seething.

“They flew the coop. I knew I should have burned them out yesterday.”

That rang a bell, faint but clear.

“They said someone wants to k-kill you.”

“Yeah, I know. You said that already. It’s taken care of.”

He didn’t understand how it could be taken care of until he realized the place smelled like industrial cleansers. A motel room. He hadn’t even noticed. The tenement, presumably, was far away. That was a comfort; he couldn’t have said why, but that ugly green wallpaper had put him on edge. And here, there were fewer ghosts watching him, waiting for help he couldn’t give.

“They won’t give up just because I ran. No, don’t worry about it. I left false trails all over the city. And I can’t possibly be that high on the priority list. It’ll take them a couple of days to wrap up whatever they’re doing in Amarillo and get down here. We’ll wait a few hours and then leave. San Francisco, maybe. Someplace big. Not too far east, though. I don’t have a lot of friends on the East Coast.”

Sebastian sat on the edge of the single bed and stretched. “Well, hell, I’m already bored. Let’s do something.”