Bright light, screaming, a warm surface beneath him, and vaguely, in some disconnected sense, pain, some searing pain. Despite the warmth of the surface he lay on, a numbing cold, seeming to emanate from deep inside his own body, overwhelmed him. In a chilled daze he felt his grip on the world slipping, shadows moved in his sight, shadows that could not be real. Such shadows never walked the Earth! Their distorted silhouettes could never support life, could never even stand upright, and the way they moved, the articulation of their limbs was entirely beyond reason. A shrill terror settled over him as he realised what they were, and as if seen from a great distance, a larger shadow approached, he knew it came for him.
No! This must not happen! He struggled to sit upright, but his body refused to respond to his mind's urgent command. Still he lay there, and still the shadow approached. A sound reached his ears, a thin whistling, strangely astringent and yet wholly melodic, piercing his entire consciousness, getting louder, closer, nearer, touching him. His eyes flicked upwards in his skull, and suddenly he saw... She knelt before him, his head cradled in her gentle hands, his pale skin a stark contrast against her own ebon flesh. He could barely feel her touch, yet such a feeling of wellbeing flowed through him that he could almost forget the cold that seeped continually through his body, pervading his every sense. Almost forget the pain, the shadows (what were they anyway?), and the contents of the satchel clutched beneath his body, hidden entirely from view. He looked up, into her dark yet somehow luminous face, and what he saw there terrified him.
It was plain she was a celestial being, endowed with some spark of the Divine Fire itself, he could see it shining behind her eyes, suffusing her whole being with its sublime light. And then there were the wings. Softly white, they towered over he head, and drooped sensuously down to touch her ankles where she knelt on the road beside him, the white feathers warmed his mind. The expression on her angelic face was what confused him. She gazed at him with sadness, this he understood - his current state was not one to aspire to, that was sure. She gazed at him with sadness, love and ... righteousness? She looked at him in sadness, not at his state, he realised, but at what she had come to do. He tried to pull his head from her cradling grasp, and found he could not. He began to ask what she intended, but found he could not speak.
His eyes flicked open again, she was not there. He realised he was still alive, he could hear the street around him, he could here the drawn out gasps of the people gathered around him, he could hear the sobbing of the woman who had run him down. He saw the street-lights, the head-lights, the gutter, the warm surface of the asphalt on which he lay. He closed his eyes, he could still see the street, the lights, but he could see Her. She continued to cradle his head, and appeared to be frozen by ... indecision? While he could not move his body, he realised that her mission here was not to help him, perhaps, but a less benevolent goal. While she remained indecisive, he decided to act.
Drawing on the knowledge he had only recently gained, only recently translated from the book he hid in his satchel, beneath his bleeding body, he visualised the required symbol, and mentally spoke the words.
Xia! Xia! Xi Anna Kanpa! Xi Kia Kanpa! Dzu Thr'gyneth Y'gethro Ch'Charag Yog-so-thugram!
She remained frozen above him, and he opened his eyes. She was there! He could see her, and he heard the gasps of the people gathered around his fallen body as they saw her too. To them she must have sprung into being in an instant, an occurrence so out of their world-view that they would be right now convincing themselves that she had always been there. He wondered how she appeared to them, were her wings reduced to mere party costume accessories, or did they see them as awesome facets of her Divine nature, as he did? It did not matter.
He twitched his fingers, he could move that much at least! Slowly, at least to his accelerated mind, he felt the health flowing back into his body. He looked up into her face, the expression there had been replaced by a caring, loving and openly giving one. The power that flowed from her fingers into his frame was wholly of her own volition now. The initial pull of his spell must have had further reaching consequences than he thought, not simply drawing energy from her spirit into him, but also convincing her that it was of her own choice! Not merely drawing off energy like a Vampire, but fully transferring the hypnotic nature of the Vampire's Kiss, entrancing the victim, making her want what was happening! He cared not, his need outweighed his conscience and made him a voracious feeder.
He knew not how much he drew from her, but he could feel his consciousness expanding out around him, touching each of the onlookers, feeling their minds, reading their thoughts and responses to the scene before them. He felt the mind of the woman who had hit him, she had collapsed into a near catatonic state of shock, ashamed and devastated by the wreckage she had unintentionally visited on his person. He felt the macabre curiosity of the onlookers, stunned by both the violence of the accident which had flung him sprawling into the gutter, and the sudden presence of the winged woman, cradling his head with such gentleness. His consciousness expanded further, he felt the paramedic staff approaching, in their speeding vehicle, racing to their third pedestrian casualty tonight, or so they thought. Closer, he felt a gap, an empty space, a numbness in his mental vision, and are he could not see easily into. An alleyway nearby, dark and shrouded by the garbage piled there. He pushed harder, and saw. Saw the men, clustered in a small loose group, he recognised one. Simeon! He was here!
" What did he want? Why was he here? How had he found me?", too many thoughts whipped through his mind, driven by the maelstrom of panic he felt at the presence of those who had pursued him, and who he thought he had eluded. In a survival-instinctive driven spasm of self-preservation he drew with all his strength from the angel entranced before him, taking deep into his soul the strength she had, with no regard nor understanding of the rape he enacted. As she collapsed onto the mundane and earthy, soiled road before him he made to stand.
"Woah buddy! Lie down sir!", the voices of the paramedics.
"No! I - I'm fine, get away!" he began to demand but the face-mask descended and as he drew his next breath to protest, a sweet white fog of anaesthesia enshrouded him in it's warm embrace and took him away.
Awaking again, this time to crisp white sheets and an ammoniac stink, his eyes fluttered in the too-bright light that filtered through the stark white venetian blinds in the window by his bed. Pale sunlight poured though in stratified beams, dividing his bed and himself up into parallel slices of brightness. He took a moment to take in his location. A standard hospital room, stark white, untenanted apart from himself, grave silent and antiseptic stench. A small white vase of pale pink flowers was the only concession to humanity, resting on the typically white chest of drawers beside his ergonomically uncomfortable hard bed. A small blank screened TV was fixed to the ceiling in a swivelled rack, facing directly towards him. With the usual hospital accoutrements, the bed-head radio and TV controls, the neatly turned down crisp white sheets and pale blue blanket, the linoleum floor and the whitewashed walls, the room was completely and utterly uninspiring.
Instinctively he tried to sit up, but found himself bound to the bed by soft leather restraints tied firmly to the bed frame. Squirming in discomfort and claustrophobia, he felt the call-button resting on his palm almost fall to the floor. Catching it quickly before it fell, he thumbed the button and heard an accompanying bell tinkle in a nurses' station obviously just down the hall. The shuffle of soft-soled shoes on carpet approached and he closed his eyes briefly to compose himself. Much had happened since his first chance discovery, and now he seemed in no less danger than that he had been trying to escape.
He had been struggling through University, another anonymous student in a sea of thousands, supporting his studies with a part-time job at a local bookstore, serving customers with a smile on his face, always intrigued by the books they purchased. An avid reader himself, he had always retreated into the warm, safe and secure world of books when the normal world became too harsh and too difficult to deal with. Many times as a young boy he had been molested for his unseemly bookishness, and always, despite any beating he endured or mocking he tolerated, no matter how many times it was denied him, he returned to his beloved books at every chance he got. Now, older, recently crossing the border that separates childhood from adulthood, and freed from the shackles of others approval, he was able to indulge his desires to their fullest. University studies satisfied him, but moved at a pace too slow for his liking, so he sought extra stimulation from his tomes.
Having exhausted local libraries and denuded local bookstores of their more common fare, he had turned to more eclectic studies, studies that brought him into a new and always obscure realm of subject matter, that of the Occult. The Occult, smiling he mused on the very idea of the word, the literal meaning, "Secret", "Obscured", and more recently it had come to mean more. "Forbidden". This is what had attracted him, that and the vast richness of the field, the myriad variances of even well-known myths. A thousand little differences and embellishments on even the most popular of mythologies, these had at first caused him some consternation. He remembered when he first discovered a discrepancy between two accounts of the meeting between Perseus and the Medusa of Greek Mythology. He had been certain that one of them was incorrect, small though it was, Perseus' use of a Brass rather than Steel sword, the discrepancy made him realise something. Mythology was only a recollection of the perspective of the teller, not hard fact.
Fuelled by his own thirst for knowledge, he had begun a course of investigation that soon rivalled his studies in terms of their demands on his time. Local New Age booksellers grew to know him by name, and he welcomed their familiarity, for it allowed him to ask various favours and gain access to certain books and editions which he might otherwise have never encountered. Many were the nights he spent pouring through obscure tomes, or their English equivalent, before finally purchasing the work for further study at his leisure. This is not to say he bought everything he fancied. As he recalled, he had been a poverty stricken student no different to any other, he simply had a more strict sense of self-control, and marshalled his funds in favour of his solitary pursuit of knowledge. He relived many nights spent huddled in the back of some dusty bookstore or other, hidden behind a bookshelf, or under a desk beneath a table-cloth, waiting until the owner had departed so that he could browse at leisure through the tomes on the shelves without having to drain his lean coffers to purchase them.
It had been during one such midnight expedition that he had finally been caught, but Luck had smiled on him. Recognising he was studious and honorable, despite his midnight capture, driven only by the thirst for knowledge and his meagre funds to such dishonourable deeds, the shopkeeper had instead hired him as a helper. On the proviso that no damage be done to the books the shopkeeper had allowed him to spend as many nights as required pouring through the multitudinous volumes after hours, as long as all work was completed for the day. Recalling sleepless nights of fabulous discovery, he smiled in his crisp white hospital bed.
He recalled clearly the day it had all ended, the day his idyllic exploration of obscure knowledge had ceased, and his life had taken on the proportions of Mythological Legend.
He had entered the shop, as usual, a little earlier than required, but he liked to have all in readiness for the day's trade. It was common for nothing to happen, no customers to arrive, for several hours after opening, but still he liked to be prepared. A noise in the upstairs store-room has fallen to his ears like the first harbinger snowflake before the blizzard, innocent and barely noticed before it melts and is gone. Ascending the stairs, he had heard nothing, in fact the silence was absolute, no whisper to betray whatever had made the sound, no warning of what was to greet him in that lofty chamber. The stairs, brightly polished by frequent use, had small piles of paper dust gathered in the corners of each step, he remembered looking down at the tiny drifts and thinking of the necessity for cleaning. That thought was quickly eclipsed by the recurrence of the sound which had first attracted his attention, a faint whispering gasp, and the creak of floorboards as somebody's weight shifted from one leg to another. A snippet of conversation, " ... welcome here ... after so much time ... knew we'd be back ...". Unknown men's voices, strangers, and the returning voice of the proprietor of the shop himself, " ... Simeon ... more time ... can't have it!" The last slightly louder, but muffled by a closed door and distance.
He reached his hand to the door handle and some instinct made him pause, before noiselessly opening the door a crack to observe what lay beyond. The store-room appeared no different to normal, it's very familiarity making the presence of these people a heretical thing. Tall men in long coats, shielded from the cold, and the room was cold, colder than usual. The temperature difference was enough to cause a slight breeze that gently pulled the door from his fingers, allowing it to swing open, disclosing the fullness of the scene within. The tall men in coats surrounded the proprietor of the store in a semi-circle, each held his hands at hip height in front of him, palms up. A frosty mist filled the room, condensed water vapour in the air frozen to a gentle icy haze. The mist seemed to form slowly coiling ropes that passed from hand to hand and man to man, swirling slowly and dissipating like cigarette smoke in a still room. Before the proprietor stood another man, dressed lightly despite the chill and seemingly unaffected by it. The ropes of crystalline mist formed a nexus in the middle of his back, making him seem like some malevolent spider enthroned in the middle of a diaphanous web. The proprietor himself knelt on the floor, obviously the victim of some "roughing up" by the heavies surrounding him.
"Where is the book?" enquired the man at the centre of the web, "This is the last opportunity I will afford you, and I'm not a patient man."
A muffled whimper escaped from the proprietors lips before his eyes raised and recognised the as yet unseen interloper in this darkly private scene. Seeming to draw strength from the presence of his underling, the proprietor drew himself up slightly.
"You are simply going to have to tax that small reservoir of patience you do have Simeon, I simply don't have it here. Besides, my studies are not completed, and the book is worthless to you without my translation."
A moment passed, a brief moment that somehow seemed to stretch for an inordinate amount of time. The men in long coats, enmeshed in their misty veil, gasped. It was obviously not a common thing for somebody to defy this man, this "Simeon".
"Well my dear friend," spoke Simeon, not a hint of surprise in his voice, "you disappoint me, yet I applaud your courage. Very few are those I would allow to deny me that which I desire. It has been several months since I entrusted M'ythagir D'Ahkrabu Tempus to you, and my patience has run out. Despite your poor opinion of my scholarly skills, I no longer am in need of your learned translation. I... have other means."
Simeon raised his hand and held it casually above the head of the proprietor, almost as if he were about to stroke the man's hair or deliver some benediction.
"No! No.. Simeon, I can retrieve it! Give me more time! I've proved my dedication to your cause, time and time again! Surely you can afford me one more week! I can ... I can return the book! No need for ..."
But that was all he spoke, Simeon’s hand became the focus of the room as the mist dispersed, or more accurately condensed, into a single point of light below his palm. The light dropped gently to the proprietor's face, and slipped down his throat with the proprietor's terrified gasp. The men in long coats lowered their hands, and Simeon stepped back slightly, brushing his hand on his leg as if it had burned him. Meanwhile, on the floor, the proprietor of the shop jerked backwards in a wrenching convulsion before collapsing to the floor. His hand raised, he reached towards the silent observer, who stood stunned in the doorway, as yet unnoticed by the foreboding group of men and their sinister master.
"The cabinet! The key! My desk! Go!" gasped the proprietor, the last followed by a fading shriek as whatever Simeon had done to the man took hold, and quieted him. He folded in on himself, clutching at his chest, clawing at his flesh as if trying to exorcise some internal beast that tore at his vitals. His screaming stopped as his thrashing slowed and finally he lay still, spread-eagled on the floor. Dead, or was he? For his body still vibrated, and then began to shrink, contorting as if being devoured from within, collapsing into a central point, folding into itself as if some immensely strong gravity field rested in his chest. Clothes hummocking and writhing as the flesh beneath collapsed, finally the man himself was gone. Only an empty set of clothing lay obscenely balled up on the floor to betray the fact that a man had ever lain here. Finally something black and oily trickled from one out-flung sleeve.
But that was all that was seen, for before the men could turn to see him, he had darted back down the stairs in a panicked effort to escape these men, lest they enact such a grisly ending on his poor body. Down the stairs, back through the shop, only pausing to rip open a drawer in the proprietor's desk and extract the keyring before darting out into the street and into the night. All thoughts of a normal nights study and relaxing amongst the books gone as he ran, and ran, as if he could deny the events he had just witnessed. Running from pure terror, and confusion, ripped from his sane, cruel but very normal world into this new plane where people such as this Simeon could take life so easily, without a touch!
"Let him go!" commanded Simeon, "He'll have to come back, his curiosity will force him to do so, and then we will have the book, and this man's sacrifice," pointing down at the loose ball of clothing on the floor, "will be wasted."
The thin oily something continued to trickle slowly from the sleeve onto the floor.
"Waste not want not!" shrugged Simeon, "Come!"
Snapping his fingers, he turned, and the oily shadow gathered itself together, before flowing swiftly forward to merge with Simeon's own shadow, lending it a darker hue and a palpable texture. Without ceremony, Simeon and his cohorts strode down the stairs, through the ruined bookshop and out into the dimly lit twilight beyond.
Yes, much had happened since that dire evening, he had returned to the bookshop after the strangers had left, somehow avoiding whatever watch they might have kept for him. Inside, fearing to remain long, he had headed straight to that one cabinet he had never been permitted to open. A simple thing, that cabinet had been located behind a small cardboard box in the second store room beneath the stairs, it appeared to have been intended as a safe at some point, but no safe was installed there. Plain wood, engraved with some small, graffiti-like markings that didn't seem to have any meaning, he had discovered it while extracting some less popular copies of older texts for some pedantic little old woman from the barrio on south-side. Before his curiosity could be further tickled, the tiny senorita's voice had screeched at him from the front room, returning him to his duties. No doubt as to which cabinet his employer had intended he pillage, no other cabinet could possibly be the one for which the key was made. He recalled the nervous excitement as he slid the key into the keyhole, and twisted it, opening the door to reveal only a simple leather-bound book with what appeared to be a stylised Aleph character on the front. Swiftly and efficiently wrapping the book in a cheesecloth he had hurried from the shop unchallenged.
"Yes sir?" the nurse greeted him as she entered the room.
"My bag, the bag, where is it!?" he demanded, causing the nurse to flinch at his severity. Seeing her response, he moderated his voice, "I'm sorry, it contains some items very important to me. Is it here with me? I can't see it."
Without speaking and still with a slightly insulted look on her face, the nurse walked to the bedside table, and opened the small cupboard beneath.
"Your things are in here sir, and your clothes in the 'robe at the foot of the bed. I'll tell the doctor you're awake, and I'll be back shortly with some paperwork for you to sign."
Her soft footfalls receded along the hallway as she made her way unhurriedly back to the nurses' station.
Attempting to lean over in his bed, he came up against the restraints again. In his eagerness to see his belongings, and distracted by his musings, he had forgotten their presence. In impatient frustration, he lay back and awaited the nurses return. All the while, in the back of his mind he felt the need to be up, up and away from this place, away from the world, he needed time to finish reading the book, time to protect himself from the likes of Simeon. So soon after his encounter with the men he had come to know as The Assembly, he was eager to avoid any place with a high public profile, any place that could be easily infiltrated, and it's systems queried, any place where he could be easily found. No doubt, Simeon and his men had noted the district that the paramedics serviced, and would swiftly track him down in one of a very short list of possible casualty wards.
"It's good to see you're awake, we have some questions we need to ask you."
He turned his head to see the nurse returned with a white-coated doctor in tow. Schooling himself to patience, he smiled up at them from his restraints.
"We need to know some more details about you, state law prevents us from treating a John Doe's injuries if we are able to determine the patient's name. You're not in dire need of medical attention and are remarkable uninjured so we've been able to allow you to sleep briefly while we dealt with more urgent cases. Let's begin with your name?", continued the doctor while the nurse brought over the hospital table and some stationery.
"Why am I restrained doctor?" he asked in his best imitation of confusion, he suspected he knew the answer already.
"When we brought you in here, you were quite disturbed. Thrashing about, and exacerbating your injuries, clutching that bag of yours and shouting about someone called 'Simeon', you caused quite a commotion! To protect you and our staff, we restrained you and sedated you. IF you can promise me you'll be more, forgive the pun, restrained, I'll have Nurse Hamilton remove them."
"I understand doctor, I'm sorry for any problem I've caused. I'll ..."
"Nurse!", the doctor interrupted, "Remove his bonds. Now, let's start with your name ..."
Despite his protestations, it seemed the bureaucracy of the Medical System would not be delayed.
"Mi ... Mitchell Lawson", declining to use his real name.
"Address?"
"Urm .. Dorm 6, Thybalt University, Theta Kappa house."
"A student then?"
"Yes, um, for the moment"
"What are you studying?", the doctor enquired, pausing in his notations.
"Theology and Chemistry, a dual-degree."
"Oh? That's an interesting combination," the doctor chuckled, "in previous times you'd probably be called an Alchemist..."
How close you come to the truth, he thought as the nurse removed his restraints.
"Is this going to take much longer?" he asked as he made to sit up.
"No, not much longer. No, don't get up Mitchell. Can I call you Mitch? Just a few more questions."
"Ahh, OK.." as he remained sitting on the side of the bed, rubbing his wrists where the restraints had left already fading marks.
"Mitch it is then. Tell me, how did you come to be struck by a car last night? I'm assuming the University Fund will be carrying the cost of your stay here? That'll be all nurse, please get Mr Lawson's release kit."
"Yes, I have medical coverage under the Uni Fund. Urm, someone startled me and I stepped from the sidewalk in reaction. My timing sucked." he responded in a wry tone, watching as the nurse left the room from the corner of his eye.
"Yes, it did. OK, well you've not sustained any serious injuries, just some cuts and abrasions, and they already seem to be on the mend. I must say, you certainly have quite a metabolism Mr Lawson, err .. Mitch, you came out of the sedative before we thought you would and your wounds have healed up swiftly. Swifter than I would have expected. Just lie back a moment until the nausea from the sedative passes. The nurse will return with your discharge pack, just a few pills to settle you down and see you off."
The doctor returned his notes to a clip-board and writing across the bottom in large letters "Discharge", returned the board to the base of the bed.
"Get well Mitch, a letter authorisingUni Fund payment will be forwarded to your Dormitory in the next few days. Keep out of the traffic OK?"
"Ha, yeah, OK doc.." Mitch replied as the doctor left the room.
Once the door swung almost shut, he leant over, feeling none of the nausea the doctor predicted, and retrieved the book-bag from his bedside cupboard. Quickly opening the bag and removing the cheesecloth package within, which he hastened to unwrap, he finally held the book in his hands. Outside, in the hall, he heard approaching footsteps and quiet words spoken by the nurse, "Yes, he's still here. And you are?"
"An old friend," spoke a familiar voice, too familiar. The adrenaline hit him with a rush as he recognised Simeon's voice.
"Sure, he's just getting ready to be discharged now, are you a family friend? Perhaps you could give him a lift back to his lodgings?"
Shit! They were here already!
Mitch dived, book in hand, off the bed and threw himself inside the clothing cupboard at the end of the bed. Slamming the door behind himself, he grabbed his clothes as they hung on the clothes-hangers inside, and immediately began the chant.
"Xi Anna Kanpa! Xi Kia Kanpa! Ch'roth Ny'agath .."
"Out of the way! He's trying to escape!"
The sound of a body hitting the wall with a muffled grunt of indignation as footsteps ran towards the hospital ward.
"... Jhy'rigt pr'rehgt nyagi! Mig'yt cho Rhyth'ss! ..."
The ward door flung open, the doorway framing Simeon as he paused before darting snakelike inside, head whipping around as he heard the continued chant.
" ... Dzu Y'gthryg!"
"Dammit! He's leaving!" Simeon howled as he ran towards the clothing cupboard. With a howl of rage he wrenched open the doors to reveal ... a shadow of a man, clutching clothes, followed immediately by a pop of in-rushing air, crashing in to fill a suddenly empty void. Turning, Simeon spied the book-bag on the disturbed bed clothes. Gathering it up he turned to face the nurse and orderlies as they burst into the room behind him.
"Sir! There's no need for that! He's not going ... "
"He has already gone you foolish girl! Now get out of my way!" spat Simeon as he pushed past the orderlies and stalked out into the hallway, leaving the nurse bewildered and alone in the empty, windowless room.
"... anywhere," spying the empty bed she turned, "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Sir! Sir?"
The orderly made the mistake of reaching out to grasp Simeon's arm. As his hand closed around Simeon's thin and bony wrist, Simeon spun backwards and brought his right hand up until it rested on the man's chest, a faint sizzling sound and the orderly fell back against the wall, gasping for breath before he collapsed awkwardly to the floor, bent at an unnatural angle on his left side. A burnt smell emanated from his otherwise unmarked clothing. A later examination would expose a hand-shaped patch of darkened skin on the mans chest and a series of fractures that lead in a straight line all the way through to the man's spine, which was shattered beyond recognition.
"DON'T ... touch me," was all Simeon was heard to say as he continued, now unimpeded, on his way through the crowded halls. As he walked he mused to himself.
"Maybe I can use this bag to find him, maybe something of himself remains attached to it, some echo of his presence. I can find him, I MUST find him. He holds what is mine, with the knowledge contained in that book and the results of what we found last night I will be able to merge power with wisdom, and take my aspirations higher, up to the very vault of Heaven!"
Smirking to himself, Simeon turned down a less crowded hallway, and ducked into the fire stairs. Here he slung the bag over his shoulder, brought his hands together before him on a mockery of a prayer, then spoke a single word, and vanished. Unseen, the nurse peered in amazement through the frosted window as he vanished. Clutching her hands to her mouth at his sudden disappearance, she muttered to herself, "Tina, you're going to regret seeing that, you really are!"