The Twins: Xuroborous, #2

By Jeffrey Batchelder

Andy had been forced into the world of vampires and monsters. Now he was expected to chase down the most horrible of creatures to keep his world from falling into their dark grip.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strong Dog Creations, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732108035

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

TO DIE IS SO MUCH BETTER

Clark awoke from a bad dream into a horrible reality. It was too dark to see anything. He felt around with his hands and found a solid stone wall to one side and a stalagmite surrounded by wet ooze on the other. Everything he touched was gooey and sticky; he felt things crawling around him and over him. Tiny legs and feelers were touching and exploring him. His brain imagined all kinds of things out there in the dark, and all of it was bad, some of it was too scary to think about. He pushed the images away in his mind, moving on, trying to rationalize what he remembered. Maybe it was nighttime, and he was close to the cave entrance. Whatever he had drunk had not been water, it seemed like water, and it tasted like water, but what it had looked and smelled like after he had poured it down his throat was something like cheese and vomit. He sat up and something pulled against his neck; it was some kind of metal band around his neck, and it was bolted or locked or something. He pulled at it; it wouldn't come off! He yanked at it and pulled at the chain. It was attached to the wall behind him. Then he heard a growl, something deep and deadly, it was not happy, and Clark froze.

Somebody woke up, Angra, and I think he wants to play, Az purred like a giant kitten as she spoke.

Who is there, what is going on here! Clark heard his voice tremble as he spoke. He knew that wasn't good, whoever this was, would hear the fear in his voice and know he was weak and afraid.

Oh, it's a little afraid, thinks maybe it's being held by bad people, who are going to do bad things, poor little thing, like a baby bird grabbed by a nasty old possum, who’s going to gobble it up. Angra, he thinks we are bad people, are we bad people Angra? Az spoke in a calming psychologist voice, but somehow it was threatening and disruptive to Clark's mind.

He is half right Az, we are bad, but we are not people this voice was cold, hard and precise, like a surgeon.

What is going on, where am I, can you please turn on the lights? Clark had given up all hope of convincing them he wasn't afraid, he just wanted to get out of this horrible place, things were biting him now, things with small, hateful mouths and he wanted all of this to end.

Light would make your fear so much worse, tiny man, what you imagine is so much less scary than what is happening. Angra was the thing that growled, and he did it again after he finished speaking.

Its name is Clark, my sweet Angra. Let's call him Clarky, I like that, a cute little name for a cute little pet. Who's a cute little pet, are you a cute little pet Clarky. Something touched his face; it was cold and unclean. A small thing, a bug or something fell off of it and landed on Clark's neck, he screeched and knocked it off with a quick brush from his hand.

I am not a pet, and I am not Clarky and you FUCKING people need to let me out of here! Clark was immediately scared of what their reaction would be, and he grew silent.

It's not very friendly Angra; I think it needs some training and maybe a timeout. Az's voice had grown cold and threatening, like a cute little cat that suddenly begins to hiss at you.

Agreed, Angra said, his voice unwavering. When you have lived so long and in such a dark way, and you understand the human condition at the dark end, as Angra and Az did, you master all the arts with a focus on causing agony and despair. As a species, the Wampiri were not cruel, but Az and Angra had been made in the worst possible way and left to their own devices from their conception, and they were dark beyond centuries of darkness. Angra reached out and pushed his steel hard fingernail into a point in the trigeminal ganglia on Clark's face. His nail went deep, just where it would cause the most pain without doing physical damage, and Clark screamed.

Clark felt the fingernail enter his flesh, just behind the temple. Suddenly there was pain; it exploded everywhere in his head. His vision flashed bursts of color, and his jaw clamped shut so tight he felt a tooth crack under the pressure. All the muscles of his face contorted, and his skin became hypersensitive to touch. It was so sensitive that even the air touching his skin caused ravaging pain. He curled up into a ball, screaming and crying. He could hear Angra, but even though it sounded like his growl, it was pulsating; Clark realized that this thing, this monster was laughing at his pain. It was all he could do, to lie curled in a fetal position, hopelessly battling the agony.

There are over 400 points like that in your body, that was about level two on the scale, we will explore higher levels later. Az, why don't you give him a taste of your skills. Welcome to-day one of kindergarten little Clarky, Angra seemed to move away, Clark couldn't tell how far or where, all that he had was the pain, it was beginning to subside now, the flashes of light faded and the tension in his face began to loosen.

Poor Clarky, he thinks he is afraid now, but somewhere, deep inside him lives real fear, fear so black and dark, so big and horrible that he has blocked it out. It's trapped it in a dark little room in his brain, it must be so lonely and sad, let's let it out to play, shall we? Clark didn't understand what she was talking about until his mind began to fill with fear. Horrid fear from his infancy and his childhood. Then fear from his school days piled together with primal fear. Together all this emotion made one giant unrelenting tidal wave of fear. He was filled with dread. Soon his mind began to fill with future possibilities of horrible things to come. He closed into a tighter fetal ball shivering and bawling like a baby, abandoned by its mother. His brain was reeling with every fear he had ever felt. It mixed with every dark possibility he could image. Eventually, he passed out, and Az reached into his unconscious brain and began to make some changes. Angra and Az were making a thing out of Clark, a thing for them to play with at first, and later to use in their battle plans. This thing could not be in Clark's imagination; it was a thing more frightening than any of his imaginings.

CHAPTER TWO

JOE'S JOURNEY

He drove down the road at almost twice the speed limit; as he turned the corner, he had driven past a hundred times he slipped onto the curb and overcorrected into the far lane. Fuck, he said, luckily it was 5 am, and no one was out for him to hit. He pulled a pack of Americans out of his pocket and lit one.

Motherfuckers are gonna fire me; we are gonna see about that, nobody fires Joe Armstrong, I am suing them and that fat fuck Mark and every company that stupid security company has for a client. They are gonna wish they never started that fuckin chickin shit outfit. He drove up onto the curb again Fuck he said, dropping his lighter between the seats. He couldn't get it now, it was too small a hole for his giant fist, and he yanked the wheel of the old Chevy truck and pulled onto the curb on purpose this time. Jumping out and reaching down between the seats, his ham fist found the lighter and struggled to get it out. He was like one of those monkeys on National Geographic, trying to get the fruit out of the jar, but refusing to let the fruit go to get his hand free from the jar. He grunted and threw the lighter towards the front of the seat, it tumbled out near the brake, and he reached down to grab it, hitting his head on the steering wheel. Shit, Fuck he screamed. He had hit himself right where that punk ass Andy had smacked him with the time clock. It was still sore after almost a year, the doctor had told him it was a hematoma, or some such shit and it would take a while to clear up, but he just kept hitting it on shit, and it would well up and be sore for days.

Andy, pussy motherfucker! He screamed out loud. This is all his fault; if it hadn't been for that thieving ass wipe, I would never have had to push fat Mark so hard. He never would have called me a stupid nigger, and I never would have put him in the hospital, Fuck you, Andy. Joe hated Andy, ever since he had met him and especially since he had gotten away with robbing the warehouse which had got Joe's ass in a world of hurt and lost Allied Security the contract. He thought for a minute; Andy’d be back. There had been this girl looking for him, from some investigation company, trying to get him arrested or something. She said he was in Maine, last seen in Ebeemee," maybe it was time he took a drive and beat the living shit out of that little fuck.

The thing about being a mean, hateful person with no friends is that you don't have a lot of people to spend your money on. This combined with the fact that Joe was cheap, just like his mom had been. When you add all that to the meanness and hatefulness, you got a guy who lived to screw everyone else out of every penny, and that was Joe in a nutshell. He had well over 100,000 dollars in his bank account and more in retirement and investment accounts, so he didn't need a job for a while, and he was planning on getting more out of the Allied Security and the owners and anybody else the lawyers thought was a good mark. He was a suing son of a bitch, and he had lawyers who loved him for it.

For today though, he was taking a trip to Maine. He was going to find Andy, and he was going to make him pay. Had he known the circumstances in which he would find Andy and what he would become to find him, he would have just gone back to suing and being mean where he was, but he had no idea Az was in his head, and he was driving to his own worst nightmare.

Driving is hypnotic, long drives especially and there was no fast way to Ebeemee Maine, so Joe spent a long time in road hypnosis which was useful for Az, she was exploring Joe's psyche and looking for a way to make him hers. It was a sporadic effort since she was playing in Clark's mind at the same time, but that was a different effort, she was setting off various fears and anger responses and then watching and playing with them in Clark's mind. With Joe, it was about the anger and how to use it to make him pliable and useful when the time came. That anger, mixed with a bit of coaxing, to make his focus on Andy more powerful, was her primary tool. She was adding neural pathways to reinforce the memories of the fight and the injury and amping up the humiliation to help feed his rage. Joe was staring at I-95, miles of white lines and guardrails passing by, trees going on forever, so boring and his mind was wandering. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel as the memory of Andy hitting him with the time clock flashed back in his head. It started a flood of people and situations that had hurt him, and he squeezed the steering wheel till his hands screamed in pain. It was a 5-hour drive to Ebeeme, and he was two hours into it. He had replayed the Andy incident in his head a dozen times now. He was getting road weary, Joe saw a Texas Roadhouse on the Google maps and pulled off of I-95 onto 17, then headed for the Roadhouse. He was the only black man in the place and felt a little like the ultimate stereotype ordering the chicken combo but fuck them. He looked around at all the old farts and local punks, not a challenge in the restaurant, he could take down any of them. He started staring people down with a you want to go look, and they all looked away. Shit-eating Mainers, he thought. Not worth the shit they are made of.

He left about 45 minutes later, and everyone was happier, except the waitress he didn't tip after he had asked for more water and sugar and extra sauce and a dozen other things to keep her hopping. He got in his truck and got back on I-95. During the next 3 hours, Az had found some childhood traumas to play with, useful in making a killer, she changed his perception a little and added a little murder where a beating had ended in tears. Now his aunt was dead, in his mind. She was alive and had left the guy who beat her when Joe was 11, but Az needed some deeper crisis to activate the homicidal side of him, and this would be just the thing. She wandered through his mind, deleting his aunt from Christmases and family gatherings and she replaced a funeral of his ancient great-aunt with his close aunt to seal the deal. Then she associated Andy's face with the violent aunt killer.

Joe pulled into a rest stop, his mind was reeling, he hadn't thought of his aunt in years and that guys face, was he related to Andy? Wait, my aunt dated a white guy? he thought, and there were so many confusing thoughts and conflicting memories, he felt dizzy. He pulled into a parking space, locked his truck and fell unconscious. It wasn't so much a sleep as a coma, his brain was out of alignment somehow, and it was unable to reconcile all the issues and still maintain conscious thought.

Oopsy, I spun my top too fast, Az said, Now Joey is all mush-headed, and I can't fix him. She let go of his mind and just let it try to compensate for the rapid changes and deep conflicts. Time to play with Clarky, she said and went back to making a monster at home.

Joe lies unconscious for hours, reconciling, throwing things away, and storing things deep down below the remembering level. His brain was doing anything to keep reality as a flow and not separate rivers appearing and disappearing inexplicably out of nowhere. When he woke, his head hurt, he had heartburn from the chicken and his mind was still not fully reconciled. He was, somehow different, not smarter or more focused, just more prone to explosive outbursts. He proved this by trying to buy a Pepsi from the machine for $2.00, and the machine failed to function he turned the machine over. That machine weighed close to a ton, screaming and swearing and stomping like a five-year-old. He stormed back to his truck and pulled out in a rage. Before he returned to a less enraged state, he reached 105 miles per hour, and he was free of fear, no worries about police or accidents or death, just pure rage and a freedom from thought.

As he returned to a calmer state, he slowed down to the speed limit and wondered what had just happened to him. It was odd, but he was strangely attracted to that state, that freedom of rage. He felt invincible and unfettered by silly emotions of guilt or fear. He wanted it back; he wanted to be that thing, maybe forever. Az smiled, her razor teeth dripping from a session with Clark. I made a new baby for Andy to play with Angra, he needs a ride home though. She petted Clark's unconscious head, playing with the wounds and scabs that were already forming.

I'll go get him after he does a bit to prove he has really changed. Angra climbed out of Clark's pen and stretched his legs.

Okey Do key, I'll fire him up soon. Az curled up around the bloody mess that was Clark and dozed off.

Joe pulled off the highway onto route 6 in Howland and headed west. From here it was another hour till the hit the Ebeeme Township. What a shit-hole Maine is, he said, watching a local trudge down the road in the Maine spring mud. Most Mainers called this time of year mud season because it was everywhere, and it was a cold, shitty and sticky mud. He drove past an old red building; it looked like it might have been a mechanic's barn or something years before, but now it had a dilapidated trailer beside it that someone had chosen to paint kind of puke yellow. Without any wheels on it and with blankets for curtains, the trailer looked like an ad for starving kids in America and the kind of retarded looking kid sitting in the mud outside, playing with a broken toy truck, sealed the deal.  No parents in sight and no fence to keep him from running into the road. Probably how he got retarded in the first place, stupid frigging white people. He drank the rest of his red bull and drove on through Lagrange, it wasn't a town really, just a 3-door fire department building with no one in it and a statue of some guy dressed in what looked to Joe like a Confederate uniform, with a 1917 date on the bottom of the statue. Of course, there were a couple of churches and a convenience store that called itself an All in One, the door was open, but there were no cars in the parking lot, so either the guy who ran it lived there and didn't have a car, or it was a pay when the plow job pays you store. Joe hated it here, he hated the cold and the mud and the people, in fact, he just hated in general now.

He got to Brownville and crossed the Pleasant River, it was spanned by an old iron bridge with rust and chipping paint, Joe saw a