Meliora - Emanate - 14

[lady_mab]

Rhys Darcy

The plants are more adept at hindering my progress than the gates were, and I’m left to constantly pull myself free as the bramble snares my pants.

“I think I took the wrong entrance,” I murmur, more to myself than Kaito on the other end of the line.

“The other was grown over,” he says as a wave of noise rushes in when he turns off the mute.

“This one is grown over!” I make a small disgruntled noise as I have to hop on one foot to free myself.

His possible response is drowned out by a cheer and I hear his drawn out sigh. “Game night,” he says by way of explanation. “You would think that with Eminence not having their own team it would diminish the amount of enthusiasm. But no.”

“Kaito.”

“What?”

“You suck at this.” I ignore his protests as I continue to pluck my way carefully through the underbrush. “I thought there were two entrances.”

“Were,” he repeats indignantly.

“And this tomb that this vampire was seen at. Which side is it on?”

Kaito says something triumphantly in response, though I can’t hear it at first. “It was just a general haunting, thank you very much.”

“Oh.” I enjoy his mimicked ‘oh’ in response. “So I’m just going to, what, crawl through foliage that’s older than me in hopes of finding a vampire? Alone? At night?”

“I am still holding out hopes you will traipse. Also, you’re not alone. You’ve got me.”

A grin flickers across my lips, and I spend several paces wondering how audible it is in my tone as I reply. It’s easy enough to pass off the rapid pace of my pulse under the guise of the unexpected exercise. “You’re on the other end of the line, safe in your bar, while I have to deal with brambles catching in my sweater. Oh, fuck.” I snag one particularly prickly patch on my forearm, wincing as it unravels a thread. “I was being sarcastic, Mr. Bush.”

Kaito whistles on the other end of the line. “If it’s got you swearing, then it must be bad. I hope that isn’t your favorite sweater.”

“I don’t have a favorite sweater,” I grumble as I work the thread loose without having to pull it further.

“You do too. That lumpy grey one you wear all the time.”

I catch myself before I ask if it’s the one that he bought me for Christmas a few years ago -- because as soon as he says that, I know exactly which one he’s talking about. I do tend to wear that one more than others, though I hadn’t thought to consider it my favorite. “I would never wear that sweater out in public.”

He gasps. “I’m insulted.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, so I concentrate on pulling myself free. “Don’t you have a bar to tend?”

“It’s just a Friday.”

I swear again, ignoring Kaito’s amused laugh. “Listen here, No Kaito, when I come back into the office on Monday to review the numbers, there better not be a slip because you’re slacking off--”

“I wouldn’t consider this slacking.”

“I just have to find a QR code to scan and then be on my merry way.” After the tour of the ALICE building, the codes have been popping up at the site of every little event we have been sent on. Unlike the ones in ALICE, they don’t surrender any sort of background information of where we are or why we might have been sent there. They merely offer up a thin, automated Thank you and then it’s mission complete.

“Are you going to come by Temple later?”

I snort, because he already knows the answer but he asks anyway and I want to tell him to stop asking every time. But I can’t, because it’s routine. Because I tell myself that one day I’ll say yes. “No, I’m going home to sleep. Or shower then sleep. Damn it, Kaito, you definitely didn’t send me to the right entrance.”

The other line has gone silent, but I know that it’s just because he put me on mute so I don’t have to hear his work at the bar.

There is a full moon overhead, though it doesn’t do nearly enough to completely illuminate the path before me. Or more appropriately, the lack of a path. I’m already abusing the battery of my phone to maintain this call with Kaito -- I’m not certain I want to risk using my flashlight app as well.

Besides, there’s a light up ahead, an old yellow streetlight sort, forgotten as the city upgraded to newer, cleaner methods of lighting the tight city grid. I set my path toward it, still careful of where I put my feet and the branches in my way.

The odd thing is that it always seems to be just out of reach.

Every time I glance away to adjust my path or work my way around a cluster of headstones, I look up to find it slightly off from where I last saw it. And after walking toward it for nearly five minutes, it hasn’t gotten any closer.

“Bleeding will-o-the-wisps,” I mutter, stomping through the underbrush with my eyes trained on the light just as the sound of the bar rushes back into fill the silence in my ear.

“You sure you okay over there?” There’s a slight edge to Kaito’s tone, despite the humorous lilt. “You’re swearing more than usual.”

“Yes, I’m fine, I’m just being lead on a wild fucking goose chase--” The rest of my sentence ends in a startled yelp as I finally push my way into a clearing.

The yellow light hovers just overhead, and the first thing I see is a hunched figure facing off into the tangle of plants to the right, one gnarled finger extended before it.

“Rhys?”

My words lodge in my throat, attempting to flee the scene as my heart attempts to crawl out of my body using the same path.

“Rhys!” Kaito’s voice jumps in pitch, and then the noise is slightly muffled. He must have put his hand over the earpiece to try and hear my end better. The sound is enough to bring me back to the present.

“A statue,” I say, the sounds blurring together in something unintelligible. “It’s a tombstone or some other gaudy display of wealth. Jesus, that scared five years off my life.” My heart has returned to the confines of my chest, but beats an erratic rhythm against my ribs.

His sigh is a rush of static through the earpiece. “Christ alive. I almost dropped a glass.”

My pulse refuses to return to normal, and my hands are shaking as I draw out my phone. I don’t quite trust my legs to carry me the next few steps so I use the branches of overgrown trees and smaller grave markers to pull me closer. “That’s what you get for trying to multitask.”

“Oh? As opposed to not knowing what is happening to you?”

“You don’t now! I’m not giving you a play by play. You’re more likely to jump to conclusions based on what you hear.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line, and for a moment I think he’s hit mute. But then a frustrated sigh floats through the earpiece. “Do you want me to hang up?”

“I--” The thought doesn’t finish, because I realize that I’m not entirely too sure what I want. “No,” I finally say. “Stay on the line.”

I can’t hear it, but I can imagine the smug little grin that takes over his expression as he reverts back to that nineteen year old eager to impress. “Five quid says you wouldn’t have been able to get Lysander to stay on the phone with you like this.”

I don’t tell him that I wouldn’t want to stay on the line with Lysander, that the only reason he’s there now is because it’s him. Instead, I say, “I know better than to bet against you on anything.”

Kaito laughs. I hear the sound of a chair being pulled out, and the background remains silent. “Okay, so where were we? Right, freaking out over a giant statue.” He’s remaining in the back office, and I’m tied between scolding him as his accountant or silently thanking him as his friend.

“Alright, you’d freak out over it too if you saw it suddenly loom out of the darkness.” I send him a picture, and a moment later I’m rewarded with his startled laughter.

“Shit, that thing is ugly.”

“Yeah.” The trembling has subsided now that my brain has processed that the statue is not a threat. The first few steps are still a bit wobbly, but my legs steady quickly beneath me. “Hm, it doesn’t seem to be a grave marker… There’s no writing on it.”

“It’s a clue!”

“It’s an eyesore.”

“I’m sure someone thinks it’s art.”

I make one lap around the statue, which is larger than I am and seated on a low stone pedestal that looks like a sarcophagus. “I’m sure that someone is long dead.” The stone is porous and splotched with dark moss. It certainly looks right at home in the overgrown cemetery, though a little too in-tact to have been here for any great period of time.

Moving to stand before it, I study the snarling human face, mouth too full of sharp teeth, hollow eyes glaring out at some point above my head. “At least its eyes don’t follow me as I move. That would be a little too much.”

Kaito snorts as I reach out for the finger. I give it a gentle tug, and I’m surprised to find that I’m a little disappointed when nothing happens. “It’s not a secret entrance to anything.”

“No code?”

“Nothing.”

“Follow where it’s pointing?”

I look over my shoulder to the tangle of wildlife similar to what I had recently emerged from. “I’m not some sort of intrepid jungle explorer.”

“No, for that you’d need a pith helmet and a posh British accent.” He mimics someone that sounds suspiciously like one of my supervisors, right down to the pinched, nasal quality.

“What, are you saying I can’t be Irish and a pioneer?”

“Of course not. Stereotypes and all that. The only sort of new path an Irishman finds is the way to a new pub.”

“Oi!”

“Present company excluded,” he says, his normal charming tone place and I roll my eyes at how easy he knows how to tease me.

I pull up the compass on my phone and align myself with the outstretched finger. “Mute your line. I want to try and concentrate on the sounds.”

“Holler if you need me.” And then his line goes quiet.

Setting my feet in the vaguely eastward direction indicated by the statue, I dive back into the tangle of underbrush.

I fight to keep my thoughts to myself. Without Kaito’s chatter on the other end of the line, but knowing that he’s there, I want to start rambling. About how I’m glad the twins aren’t with me, about how I’m thirsty, about how I would much rather be anywhere else than trudging through the overgrown cemetery.

I’m on that path for several minutes before I hear something. My feet stop short, and I have to catch myself on a tree to keep from tumbling over. Another silent minute ticks by before I hear it again -- a soft droning hum like a bright light or a hornet, accompanied by the snap of a twig.

While I haven’t been stealthy with my own approach by any means, whoever it is that I hear doesn’t seem to be taking caution in regards to anyone else in the cemetery. Which, if they are here at night, it means that they are likely up to no good. I’m not even certain if I’m up to any good or not at this point.

The humming gets louder as I move, but there’s no light source, not even the comforting butter yellow of the old light bulb in the statue’s clearing. Perhaps it is coming from a generator, powering the few lights that still work.

After taking one last look at the compass, I store my phone back into my pocket and carefully pick my way through the final layer of brush separating me from the next clearing. When I step through, my breath catches in my throat and I just barely manage to choke back another yelp.

The good news is that the source of the humming, while not a generator, is not a giant hornet as a part of me was starting to believe.

It is, however, not any sort of creature I'm familiar with.

The thing is vaguely human-like, with two long, dragging arms that are set into slumped shoulders. The hands are large, clawless, but easily bigger than my head. One smack from those would render anyone unconscious. Its skin is pale and stretched thin over the disproportionate limbs.

It hesitates, but doesn't turn toward the sound of my arrival. It seems to be far more occupied with whatever is on the other side of the mausoleum door it stands in front of.

"Jesus," I breathe, the word barely audible even to myself.

"What is it?" Kaito's voice comes back in a loud rush, and I jump in surprise. I had forgotten the line is still active.

The movement is enough to attract the attention of the creature, and its head swivels on the long thin neck to look back at me.

The eyes are round and a blind pale blue, but I don't need to think that it needs them to see better than me in the dark. The strange humming that fills the clearing flares to life like I kicked the metaphorical hornets’ nest. The creature turns, slow and cautious, to completely face me. Its head tilts to one side as I retreat a step and collide with the tree behind me.

"Rhys?"

I can't manage the voice to tell him to be quiet. Even muting my own line wouldn't be enough, because he's worried now. My hand fumbles in my pocket and, with trembling fingers, I disconnect the call.

For a brief moment, all I hear is the silent beeping of the dead line, and then the humming rises to take its place. It seeps into my ears as the outline of the creature wavers. It doesn't move as I scramble around the tree and duck back into the bushes.

Only the humming follows.

It reaches up one hand toward me in a strange mockery of the statue with the single finger extended back in the direction that I had come. That's still not enough to make my feet work, despite my brain yelling for me to go, every nerve in my body on end.

I want to run, but I can't move.

It takes a lumbering step toward me, revealing the mausoleum door broken open.

A second blind face staring out of the darkness is enough to make me finally spring into action.

I take several stumbling paces backwards before I trip over a root and my vision turns into pops of bright white. A second later, I'm blinking up at the tangled treetops and the humming swirls around me like an ocean.

I scramble back to my feet and, without sparing a glance backward, fight through the plants toward the clearing with the statue. I just need to go. To put as much distance between myself and those things.

My feet move without a single thought, now spurred by fear. The humming softens, then abates completely before I realize that I don't actually know how far off course I have gone.

“Shit.” The word escapes me in a gasp and I skid to a stop. My chest burns, but the sound of hornets has not pursued me through the tree line. I take another breath, forcing my lungs to work. “Shit.”

What were those things? Did it look like it could have been a vampire? The figure cloaked in darkness that someone saw three hundred years ago and thought that the undead walked among them.

Whatever they are, I have no doubt that they’re the reason that the cemetery is considered haunted.

I tug my phone free, ignoring the texts and missed calls from Kaito over the last three minutes. He’ll have to wait until I can breathe again and form a coherent thought. Right now, my brain is just a swirl of confusion and swearing.

It takes another three minutes to find my way back to the statue, which manages to startle a yelp out of me a second time even though I expect it.

At the base of the sarcophagus, visible as the finger points accusingly in my face, is the needed QR code.

“What the actual fuck?” I ask the statue, kneeling down before it and pausing long enough to listen for any humming.

Another call from Kaito lights up the screen just after the app tells me a cheerful Thank you, Rhys Darcy, so I hit the green accept button.

“What in the actual hell, Rhys? Are you okay? What happened?”

Guilt overwhelms the fear still hammering away in my chest, though I’m not too sure which I prefer. “Sorry, I--I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

I wonder how much he can tell over the phone or if he’s just saying that to scold me. “I’ll tell you about it later--”

“Rhys Darcy, I swear--”

I cut him off with a soft, simple, “Hey,” and he immediately goes quiet. I move around the statue so I don’t have to look at it or in the direction of the humming. Instead, I stare at the flickering yellow light. “About the offer for a drink…”

He’s silent on the other end, but I can hear his frustrated breathing. I know that it will be last call by the time I get over there, even though that rule never applies to me. “Alright,” he finally says. “I’ll make up the couch for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Rhys,” he says before I can hang up.

I don’t reply, already starting my trek back toward the entrance he gave me coordinates to earlier.

“Don’t do that again.”

“Do what, Kaito?”

It’s his turn to not reply. And by the time he finally says, “I’ll see you soon,” and hangs up, he never does clarify.