Chapter 11

 

Caleb glanced at Kay with a slightly confused look, She can see the future? he thought, idly wondering just what he was getting himself into.  Whether because he was too tired or had just gotten past the point of anything surprising him he just shook his head and glanced back as Ell placed a pile of strawberries, kiwi and pineapple in front of him.  She smiled and beamed at him as if waiting for something.

“Well…?”

“Well what?” he asked between mouthfuls of fruit.

“How long?”

Caleb stopped chewing for a moment as his cloudy mind began to slowly place pieces of the puzzle together.  “You were talking to me?!?”

Kay spoke up, “I don’t think he’s fully grasped exactly what he’s doing.”

“Really?  Fascinating.“  Ell continued to stare at him, her eyes somewhere between awe and a little girl who pulled the legs off of grasshoppers and poked their eyes with sticks.

Caleb slowly chewed as what she had actually asked him began to settle in, but before he could speak, Ell spoke again.

“He’s definitely used it, though; the aura is unmistakable.”

“I know.  He’s even begun to interpret them.”

“Oh?”

Kay nodded, “He saw Bane coming for us while he was a block away.  He warned me in time to cloak us.”

“Bane?  Was he looking for you?”

Kay nodded, “He was stalking Jayden, who was apparently stealing money from him.  Caleb saw him kill a shade and you know how Bane feels about witnesses.”

Ell nodded, still staring at Caleb as if studying him in preparation for a dissection.  “So he interpreted the vision well enough to warn you?  That’s…wow.”

“I gather he shouldn’t be able to do that?”  Kay asked.

Ell shook her head, “Not this early.  He should barely be able to distinguish them from reality.  It usually takes years of training in order sort through visions properly.”

“Or dumb luck.”

Ell giggled, “Or that.”

Caleb’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two enigmas.  “Wait…are you talking about me?”

Kay gave him that look that women give you when you’re supposed to know something despite them not telling you.  He looked to Ell for help, but she managed to affect the same look in the middle of her eerie fascination.

“Who else would we be talking about?”  Kay said, smirking.

“I can’t see the future.”  He said with a little less surety than he had hoped for.

“Of course you can, silly.”  Ellyahna said with a little grin.

“Uh…no, I can’t.  Look, I’m sure you guys are usually right about this sort of stuff, but this time you’re just wrong.”

Kay spoke this time, “Remember when you told me about your girlfriend…”

“Ex-girlfriend.”

“Whatever.  Remember what happened on the way up?  The weird vision you saw of you punching some man?”

“It wasn’t me that punched him, it…” Caleb paused, digging through his memory.  It had been him.  He could recall his fingers bloodied from….from what?  Hitting the rockstar who had been kissing Tiff?  But wait, he hadn’t actually hit the man.  “No see…there’s the proof.  I saw myself hitting him and didn’t hit him.  It never happened.”

Ell giggled, “Silly.  What good would it be to see the future if you couldn’t do anything about it?”

He supposed she was right.  And he had wanted to hit the guy, but when he remembered his vision, he had decided not to.  He started replaying last night’s events over and over again.  His vision about the oriental man--Jayden?--and how that had come true…sort of.  And the his vision about Bane.  What the hell was happening to him?  He took a deep breath and sat back in his chair, mind spinning from the implications.  

“But…what good is it if it only comes when it wants to?”  

“Well, no good, of course.  That’s why I brought you to Ell.  So she could train you.”

“Train me?”  He asked, looking very unsure of what that entailed.  “Can you see the future, too?”

“Oh no,” she asked, her scientific face being run over by her 10 year old girl face, “I’m only a wizard.”

Caleb shook his head, “’Only a wizard.’  Right.”

 

* * *

 

Kay’s car pulled into the parking lot where he had left his jeep last night--a hundred years ago.  The sun had already begun pounding the manmade landscape of Vegas with crushing heat as she stopped next to it.

“You sure you’ll be ok?” she asked.

“Yeah.  It’s just…it’s a lot to digest at once.  I keep hoping I’ll wake up any moment now and this will all be a vivid and crazy dream.”

She flashed him an odd smile--did she look disappointed?  “I understand.  I still feel that way sometimes.  But it’s not all bad.  Sometimes it’s sort of nice to know that you’re special…different.  That you can affect the world in ways nobody else can.  Other times…”

“It’s terrifying.”  He finished for her.  They sat for an odd, long moment before he spoke again.  “Listen, Kay.  Um…I never really got to thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.  You’d have done the same for me.  And like I said…sometimes being different like this actually feels pretty good.  Last night was one of those times.”  She smiled that smile and he had to nearly pry his eyes away from her when she did.  He blinked a bit and shook his head.  It hadn’t even been 24 hours since he’d found Tiff with…since he’d broke things off with Tiffany.  And here he was tripping over his tongue about some other girl.  It was probably just lame rebound emotions, anyways.

“Yeah well…yeah, ok.  See ya later.”  he said about as awkwardly as possible and opened the door.

He walked to his jeep and started the behemoth up, turning the wheel and rumbling his way out of the parking lot and home.

 

* * *

 

Caleb’s jeep rumbled up to the apartment and sputtered to what sounded like a permanent death, though Caleb knew better.  He sat in the seat for a few moments, breathing deeply as he ran his fingers through his hair.  He felt lost as he thought about the last day.  It was like some raging giant had torn through his life, flipping everything it didn’t just crush, and he had been forced to sit in the middle and not get ripped to pieces by the debris.  But the debris always got you.

Blinking away tears that threatened to overwhelm him if he let them get a foothold, he stepped form the jeep and began the slow climb up the same stone steps he had sprung up hours before when he had been excited to move his relationship to the next level.  We’ve reached a new level alright.  

Finishing his climb, he stepped onto the landing that him and his neighbor shared and moved to unlock his door.  But then it tried to bite him.

He stared at the handle for a moment as its polished brass surface contorted into the face of a raving, rabid beast.  Caught somewhere between man and creature, the maw snapped and snarled at him, threatened to devour him if he tried to open the door.

Caleb blinked and the mouth was gone.  His hand still inches form the handle, he waited.  It took him a moment to realize that the doorknob had not actually changed at all.  He had imagined it, he thought for a moment but then it hit him.  Had he imagined it, or had he seen something?

Stepping another step back from the door, he rubbed his temples and thought furiously.  What did it mean?  Ellyahna had said he could see the future, change it once he knew the outcome.  But what did his doorknob morphing into some deranged man-eating beast even mean in the first place?

Man-eating?

Suddenly realization dawned on him, and he stepped further back, grabbing the rails to the steps and moving to go down, but he was too late.  The door clicked and swung towards him.

“Hello, Mr. Lewis.” a deep, gravelly voice that seemed stretched too thin, like something that had been meant to fade and decay long ago but had been forced to continue on spoke in a deep, German accent.

Caleb turned and fled as fast as he knew how down the steps, expecting the thing to be breathing down his neck before he took two steps, but instead the creature known as Bane merely chuckled a deep, throaty chuckle.  Somehow that was worse.

He made it to the next landing down and suddenly his foot stopped moving and he pitched forward, his face slamming into the metal safety rails.  He felt a tooth crack and blood filled his mouth as he rolled onto his back in a daze.  The steps leading down began flowing like water away from his sight, a river that led to paradise; safety.  Under him the landing burned like fire and the cold promise of imminent death.  

The world was going mad.

He rolled anyways, grasped at the steps; the river; safety; and found himself rolling down even as he watched Bane crash into the landing where he had been a second before.  The concrete sighed a puff of dust and cracked as the creature’s weight hammered into it and tore it from the rest of the staircase, sending it pitching over the side to shatter 20 feet below on the pavement, Bane still clinging to it.

Caleb watched in horror as the beast and the stone slab disappeared, then stood shakily and continued down.  He made it to the next landing and looked back to see Bane shaking his head an muttering something at the bottom of the steps.  Acting quickly, he turned and hurdled the railing, dropping from the lower landing and rolling in the rocks ten feet below.  Sharp cuts lanced through his back and he cried out from the pain as he rolled shakily to his feet and stumbled off away from Bane but also away from his jeep.

One thing he had to his advantage was that he knew the apartment complex better than Bane-at least he hoped he did.  He ducked into a small hallway between buildings then out the other side.  Checking quickly behind him, he scampered across an open field of manicured lawn and ducked into the coin-op laundry room, rushing through and knocking baskets over as he sped through and emerged on the other side.

One more long lawn before the street.  The apartments were on a busy street not too far from the strip, so he knew a taxi would be nearby.  But he had to make it that far.  He had seen no signs of pursuit, but he doubted his pursuer was so easily hurt and he knew he was not so easily lost from his chase the night before--had it only been last night?

He watched the open area before him and the Laundromat behind him alternately, frozen by fear of the monster that chased him.  Why couldn’t he see the future now?  Why couldn’t he call upon his ‘gift’ when he needed it?

Deciding that going in the open was a bad idea no matter how he spun it, Caleb thought of something else.  It would hurt like hell, but it also might work.  Slipping out of the Laundromat, he quickly slipped to his right and trotted up the stairs to the second floor.  This particular apartment complex had once been a hotel, so all of the apartments had balconies that ran the entire length of their buildings on both sides.  He quickly moved to the outside apartments and glanced up and down the long driveway that ran along the outside of the complex before he moved, running as fast as he could manage without making too much noise.  He glanced behind, then ahead again as the street neared and he began to see cars drive by.  He was two steps away when a bus drove by, and Caleb for the first time in his life associated hope with public transportation.  He rounded the last corner and sprinted for the steps down to his salvation on street level, a bloody, broken-toothed grin splitting his face as he hit the first step.  He nearly fell down them in his attempt to stop, then, his feet slipping and kicking the railing as he pulled himself back up in a panic.  Too much noise!  Stop making so much noise!

But it was too late.  At the bottom of the steps, bloodshot eyes shot up and narrowed at the sight of him.

“It is rare that I miss a target twice, Mr. Lewis.  But I have never missed a third time.”

To his unending, unrelenting horror, Caleb believed him.