The Birth of Bane (11 page)

“
I haul my ass through the house and take the stairs two at a
time, stopping in the corridor, craning my head like a dog, hoping
to hear the sound again. But, there’s nothing. So, I start
searching. What I was looking for, I couldn’t tell you, but I had
this overwhelming urge to
look
. I go through the
spare bedroom and the rumpus room – nothing. I look all over the
Elijah’s room, your room, Jer. I even look through the closets and
the bathrooms. I find nothing. I’m stumped, so I began to walk
towards the library when it comes again. I stop to make sure, but I
know before it’s even stopped. I know it coming from behind the
library door.

“
I’m thrilled by
now. I go barreling through the door, headlong into the room beyond
and I’m suddenly plunged into darkness. It’s so thick, I can’t see
my hand before my face. I turned around, trying to find the
doorknob, but I can’t feel it. When I step back to where the door
should be, there’s no door there. I’m not sure if I should be
scared or excited or what. The fact that I had a choice was
indication enough this wasn’t a situation to fear. So, I swing back
around, slowly, steady my breathing and wait.

“
I can’t tell
you how long I waited, because it was a dream and time is always
somewhat distorted, but I don’t think it was all that long. I’m
standing there, hands at my side, when the ringing comes again.
Only this time, it was softer, tentative. You know, it was still
calling, only not as loud, because it didn’t have to. It was as
though it knew I was close and didn’t have to yell.”

“
You make it
sound like it was alive,” commented my sister,
enthralled.

My mother
clicked the roof of her mouth. “It was.”

“
How do you know
that?” I asked, beginning to think this whole matter was heading
south – to the Looney-Land -real quick like.

“
I have to
finish, smarty-pants,” she chided. Her grin was goofy and splitting
the lower half of her face.

We remained
silent, though my sister squeezed my mother’s hands.
Go on, mom
, she’d said without verbalizing it.

“
I was amazed to
see there was a light shining from underneath the only other door
in the library.”

“
The one leading
to the storage area that goes under the stairs leading to the
attic?” asked Valerie.

My Mom nodded.
“I walked toward the door and turned the knob. It opened and I
walked through.” She paused, giving my sister’s hands a shake. “It
was floating in the air, surrounded by a golden light.”

“
What was
floating?” I asked, coming forward, taking a knee.

“
A
knife.”

“
A knife?!?
” It was Val’s
turn at unbelief.

“
Yeah, a knife,
but not a knife in the true sense of what a knife is, if you catch
my meaning,” answered my mother with total inadequacy.

“
I’m lost,” was
all I could think to say.

“
It was actually a replication of a sword, a Saracen sword,
like the ones in
Ali Baba and
the Forty Thieves
.” She was so
delighted she was squirming.

“
How do you know
it was a Saracen sword, mom? I mean, it was a dream, right?”
Valerie’s eyes were bunched with intense thought.

“
I found
it.”

I felt like the
sky was about to fall on me – big time. “Found what?”

“
The
knife.”

Before either of
us moved, she reached around and pulled forth a gold-colored,
seven-inch representation of a sword straight out of the
Arabian Nights
or
Sinbad and the
Seven Seas
. It was a replicant
of a Moorish sword.

“
Oh my god, is
it made of gold?”

My mother’s head
went back and forth in the negative. “Naw, it’s too
light.”

“
B-but, I don’t
understand. I thought you said it was a dream,” implored my sister,
leaning back away from the knife-sized sword.

“
It
was.”

“
But how -,” I
tried, but my mother cut me off.

“
After I woke up
this morning, after I took you all to school, I came home and
looked for it,” she said simply. “I spent the entire morning
looking for it. About half an hour before I was supposed to pick up
Eli at school, I found it.”

We all got out
early on Tuesdays, so she meant around 1pm.

“
Where?” I had
never seen complete astonishment on Valerie’s face
before.

My Mom didn’t
hesitate. “I found it exactly where my dream said it would be, in
the storage area under the stairs leading to the attic. Only it
wasn’t floating in the air.” She giggled again. “It was wedged in
between the wall and the framing of the staircase itself. It was
wrapped in burlap with the words, ‘Affliction’s Key’, written on it
in red marker. It’s etched upon the sword as well.”

“
Affliction’s
Key?” I repeated, tasting the words in my mouth. I didn’t like the
feel of them. They were too auspicious.

“
What do you
think it means?” questioned Valerie.

“
What – the
words or the sword?”

She shook her
head and spread her arms out to either side of her, palms up. “All
of it.”

“
It’s freakin’
scary,” I said, compelled.

“
This house is
special,” was all my Mom said. Her eyes became distant. She stood,
pocketing the knife/sword once again. “I’m gonna check on Eli. Why
don’t you guys get something to snack on. We can talk more about
this later, ok?”

She didn’t wait
for us to answer. She walked away.

Valerie and I
stared after her, unsure of the entirety of what we’d just
experienced. We had missed something, something
critical.

We never had the
time to figure it out.

I wish I had
known then what Affliction’s Key could do, maybe things would’ve
turned out different. Or maybe, I’d have been better
prepared.

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

Chapter Seven:
The Root Cellar

I heard Eli gasp
and then cry out through the window in the downstairs bathroom. The
one Valarie shared with my parents. I’d been standing before the
sink, gazing into the mirror, horrified over the
Mount-Saint-Helen’s-sized zit I’d developed on my chin when I heard
my little brother’s harsh intake of air and the quailing screech
that followed. It took only a split second for me to realize he was
in the backyard, then I was moving like the wind through the
house.

I plowed through
the dining room, the kitchen, the back porch and through the door
to the backyard before any conscious thought registered. I whipped
around the edge of the back corner of the house and Elijah came
into view.

He was standing
with his back facing the entrance of the toolshed, one foot upon
the stepping stones of the path leading back toward Bruce’s
apartment, the other upon the stones leading to the portal itself.
He must’ve been poking around in the shed, rummaging for something
to play with and decided to leave. He appeared to have taken no
more than three steps before he verbalized astonishment and froze
in place.

My eyes were
searching over his person as I came toward him, still running. I
couldn’t see any injury. He wasn’t holding an elbow or an arm, or
hopping on one foot as if he’d hurt his leg. He wasn’t bent over,
clutching at his mid-section. He wasn’t cradling his head in his
hands. He was just standing there - one foot before the other, his
jaw slack, though his lips formed a lopsided “O”. His eyes were
wide, their gaze steadfast upon the trees in the neighbor’s yard.
His hands were splayed to either side of him.

My initial
assessment had been correct – he was frozen.

I leapt the last
of the distance between us, both hands settling upon his tiny
biceps as I knelt before him. “Eli!” I implored anxiously. “Eli,
are you ok?”

He remained
immobile.

“
Eli! Eli!
ELIJAH!
” I said forcibly,
rattling him slightly, trying to get his attention without jarring
his brain within his skull. I didn’t want to hurt the little
guy.

He started,
visibly shaken as if someone other than me had resumed the rattling
of his small frame.

“
Elijah, are you
ok? What happened?”

His small orbs
peered into mine, recognition pouring into them.
“Jerry?”

“
Yes, Eli. I
t’s me, Jerry.”
I hadn’t known I could sigh with relief as mightily as I had right
then. “Are you ok?” I massaged his upper arms, reassuring myself he
was there. He was real. He wasn’t hurt.

He blinked
rapidly, a ragged exhalation seeped from him. He seemed overwrought
as if he’d witnessed something monumental as was left astounded by
it.

I realized he
was cold to the touch and began to rub some warmth into his arms.
He was so pale, like he’d seen… What the hell had
happened?

A solitary tear
fell from his right eye and onto the ground between us.
“Jerry.”

“
Yes, Elijah. I
am here. You’re ok,” I uttered quickly, unsure why I said precisely
that, but it felt right. Why was I out of breath, again?

Suddenly, his
look sharpened, a laser pointed poised directly at me. And then, he
did the unexpected. He smiled.

I snorted a
sneer.
What’s going
on?

“
She knows me
now, Jerry,” he said, his face abruptly aglow.

“
Who, Elijah?
Who are you talking about?”

“
Her.” He placed
his hands on my arms as well. We were holding one another. His
smile broadened. “She knows who I am.”

I was flummoxed
and almost stood. Was the little guy playing a joke of gigantic
proportions on me? Was he fooling around? Had he fabricated the
entire scenario, so he could make fun of the way I had looked.
Being scared out of my gourd? Could Eli have done that? Could his
sense of humor be that cruel?

Then, he said
something that stopped me cold.

“
I can smell Her, Jerry. She’s all over my clothes.” He was
bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet, holding his
sweatshirt out away from his body, toward me. “Smell Her, Jerry.
Smell Her. Isn’t this the coolest thing
ever
?”

Still expecting
some sort of prank, I leaned forward tentatively, waiting for him
to say something cliché like “Haha, got ya!” or “You dork, Jerry!
You just smelled dog poo! Aaaaah-hahahahaaa!” But, there was none
of that. There was no prank. He continued to hold out his
outer-garment, hooking either side with his thumbs by the
seams.

I
inhaled.

The scent was
familiar at once. I had smelled it before. It was the day Myra and
I had tried to lose our virginity and failed. I had been gazing out
of the kitchen windows after her when someone had hugged me from
behind. When I had turned about, there’d been no one there, only
the smell remained.

This was the
very scent covering my little brother from head to toe.

“
How is this
possible?” I asked the air about me.

“
She walked
through me, Jerry. From behind, from the toolshed. She likes it in
there.”

I stared at Eli,
my heart drowning in dread, my stomach turning to acid, my throat
parched and scratchy.

“
She walked
through me…”

*****

On a Friday
afternoon, sometime later, my mother found the root cellar and
things were never quite the same.

She acted in
almost the same manner she had the Tuesday before. She came running
down the walk, her shirt streaked with dust, her hair pulled back
in a ponytail, but it was peppered with long ropes of dirt held
fast by age-old spider webs, her face flushed with excitement. She
had on her beat-up tennis shoes, leg-warmers over leggings and a
baggy, cotton shirt.

“
You guys aren’t
going to believe what I found in the basement!” she gushed,
grabbing us both by the wrists, already pulling us
along.

From the patio:
“Its super neat, you guys! You’re gonna love it!” It seemed my
mother’s fervor had seeped into Elijah as well. He was wearing a
faded royal-blue, t-shirt under a pair of old overalls, scuffed and
dirty at the knees and a pair of old boots. It was his “yard work”
outfit. He’d definitely been helping my Mom.

“
I’m
not
going into the basement,” stated Valerie
definitively. “I will not set foot in there.”

My
m
om glanced over her shoulder.
“Don’t be such a big baby. It’s about time you realized nothing
here is going to hurt you.”

“
Whatever,”
muttered my sister under her breath.