Something New. (Start Here)
(Start here)
For a long drawn out moment, Aaron stared at the generic numerical clock tick its second hand down the right side, all the way around, then up the left to start its journey again, for several minutes of every day this was his habit, it took place at the same time, it didn’t matter where he was, nor if there were a real clock to stare at, deep down, somewhere in the pit of his very being, he would know exactly what time it was and stop to stare up into the sky as if searching for something, but there was never anything but empty space.
“Yo-Aaron… Earth to Aaron!” A very familiar hand waved in front of his face knocking his concentration and sending him, all most painfully plummeting back into reality.
“What is it Christy?” Aaron turned his attention from the clock to his closest friend, and that wasn’t saying much, she was three years younger, sitting in his junior class only because of some freak accident of nature, or careless act of god, the girl was born with a bright and eager future in being some sort of brain wiz at anything and everything pertaining to scientific and mathematical job fields… or maybe she was just smart, and he cared a little too much about adding fluffy airy big words to his mental descriptions…
Christy blinked carefully watching the blank look on his face turn into a frown, whatever it was running through his mind was making him upset. “I was just wondering why you always stare at the clock as if expecting someone or something to happen… at the same time every day?”
“You notice everything don’t you?” Aaron sighed.
“I do, it’s a passion you know? I wanna be a great detective one day, like Sherlock holms!” Her childish nature shown like a bright burning beacon from the depths of a lost-out-to-sea lighthouse, it made him appreciate her spirit a little more when she acted like this.
“You are aware, that he was only great, because of Watson right?”
“Yes, I’m hoping you’ll take that position, but I do have a “Help wanted” ad sitting on my facebook page.” He couldn’t help but to give a small tinny smile in response to her childish grin, she was more like a little sister, than a friend some days.
“You’ll end up attracting old thirty five year old perverts that way you know?” He was silently laughing.
“Pish, I already have smarty face, besides… I did get this really interesting post… it was strange only in the fact that it wasn’t for me at all, it was for you.”
Aaron froze for a moment to take in a breath. “What? I don’t even keep one of those silly sites, I hardly ever get on line anyway… much less use my real identity or personal information…”
“That’s true, which is why I thought it was odd, it was from this strange user name “Dancer of Powers” I looked the profile up, and there was nothing but a black page, you know some people like to hide their stuff by making it all black so you have to highlight it to see what is written? Well, I figured someone high jacked the html and did that, so I tried highlighting and… there was nothing at all, a blank void.” She looked truly disappointed. “So I tried tracking the source computer… and came up with ten thousand hits … I thought it was a mistake, so I tried several more times in different ways, and came up with the same results so I figured it was some kind of fluke…”
“Huh, what did this ‘person’ want?” Aaron murmured slightly interested as he watched over his friend’s shoulder at the front of the class room, their teacher was grading papers while the class quietly read their books.
“I can’t honestly remember it all, but it had something about the time you stare at the clock, and knowing, and warning you about something terrible…though there was an address on the bottom of the post, I yellowbook’d it, found out it’s a little odd’s and end’s shop down town, in the not-so-safe part of town, I was hoping you’d walk with me there after school?”
“Sure, I’ll protect you little girl.” He smirked as she flailed out and smacked him in the shoulder.
“Mrs. Swan, Mr. Adams, if you please.”
“Sorry Ma’am” They said in unison, and went back to their books.
*****
Aaron couldn’t shake the strange sensation of déjà vu that crept up his back as they walked down the street as he kept an eye out for anything remotely strange and out of place, rush hour traffic was speeding by as fast as thirty miles per hour would allow, people walked in the opposite direction, everyone was on their way home, like they themselves should be.
Christy shifted next to him, hoisting her shoulder bag higher on her arm and flipping through her google map print out. “It shouldn’t be too far now…” He yanked her to the side before she walked into some random business man on his cell-phone. “Thanks.” She coughed. “Oh, there it is!” She shouted in glee pointing down a side ally to their right.
Grabbing his hand she tugged him down between two tall brick buildings that acted much like tall cliffs, looming down and taunting, trapped now they seemed to say, ours now…
Gulping he followed Christy into the shop, the glass door was shabby and covered in grime… the place inside wasn’t much better, dust covered everything, it was stifling, no extra air to breath freely and there was only the slightest glow from an oil lamp towards the front of the shop, but Christy moved through the tinny shop too interested in the odd little jar’s and baskets full of tubes, powders, dried herbs, flowers, weeds, anything and everything… to even bother with caution.
This was a strange place and Aaron felt uncomfortable, even in his own skin.
His friend had gone off and left him standing in the middle aisle of the dirty shop, every little warning bell inside his mind was screaming in a defining cacophony, the only real meaning he could get out of the heightened paranoia and tinny shivers running down his neck was to leave, and leave quickly, but there was something else, something foreign and subtle that whispered beneath everything else, something, Aaron realized, a part of him wasn’t willing to ignore.
Fed up with just standing in one spot, and feeling a little nervous and left behind, he took a few steps forward listening hard for any signs of life, especially for Christy, who seemed to have vanished all together.
Just as the urge to call out to his younger friend surged into his throat and began forming words, he silenced the attempt with a quick clutching hand to his lips as he ducked low and pressed himself as small and insignificantly as he could to the floor and towering shelf he now hid behind. That was Christy’s voice alright, but the canter and tone had changed… and another voice reacting to her whispered words. Inching as closely as he could Aaron strove to listen, to decipher the whispered exchange to find out what was going on, he wasn’t sure what told him to stay silent and out of sight… but he listened to it, and the conversation.
“You know very well Destiny has nothing to do with this, and Fate is just as ignorant as the rest of them…” Christy’s voice was muttering.
“You’ve doomed the boy, and any hope he’s had at being normal this life time by bringing him here…” The new voice snapped not ashamed of its words, speaking heatedly, and as loudly as it desired.
“You also know good and well that he was never going to live a normal life! Besides, Power contacted him… which means… something is going to happen, and soon.”
“What… ?!”
“I take it Power hasn’t informed you of anything…”
“If power is visiting…”
“If He finds out that the Sun is still alive…”
“More like… if She finds out you mean?”
“Don’t even mention that here… not here.” Christy sounded fearful.
“You were always afraid of Her… even during the ages of war…”
“I’m not sure what’s going on here…” Aaron’s voice cracked slightly as his mind and stomach flopped under the pressure of being in some kind of life altering danger. “But I’m ready to go home Christy…”
A dark furred cat sat silently on the floor at Christy’s feet as Aaron shifted around the shelf, coming to his full five feet seven inches, a frown creasing his expression.
The cat shifted its head to the side, large pointed ears twitching from back to front, a tail that twisted around the felines legs uncurled and tapped heavily against the dusty wooden floor making a sound that Aaron thought greatly resembled the sound of a gong, the deep voiced ring ebbed in his ears and he fell to his knees, suddenly eye level with the cat, large… seemingly too large; green eyes stared into his.
“His presence is well hidden, I hardly recognize his soul.” Ears twitching, the cat’s mouth never moved.
Aaron blinked in confusion.
“You’ve kept him blissfully ignorant of the mysteries and the paranormal haven’t you?” The question was directed at Christy.
“He’s done a fine job of that himself.” She answered mater-of-fact-ly. “Even when he went through that “I can see ghosts” phase… he still ignored the fact that he could see things no one else could.
“You talk about me…” Aaron murmured darkly. “As if I weren’t even here.”
“Fine, big man.” The cat hissed. “You can see me, you can hear me, then you must know something’s strange, a normal cat wouldn’t have ears, tails and-” Heavy feathered wings suddenly lifted off of the cat’s back, hidden before in the shadows, now translucent airy feathers fluttered as the wings flexed folding and opening before settling heavily back onto the cat’s back. “wings like this aren’t normal and you realize now that Christy is more than she seems, and that you stand in the safest safe house this side of the holy circle, and sacred sands and that the walls outside of this place seemed malicious and suffocating, will you deny my accusations, that sense infancy you have had the ability to see things no one else can, and you hold the knowledge of passing from one world to the next without really knowing how you could move through the fabric of a wall, yet you’ve done it before?
“Will you deny even your own existence, and that nothing strange has ever happened, and that the deaths of your human parents were just mere accidents and not pre ordained by another source, higher than the light above, and lower than the pits below? Will you leave here pretending that nothing mentioned or shown within these walls ever existed, or happened? Deny it then, your own existence, and parish like the rest of the rats passing for humanity in this world, because we can wait another thirty thousand years for a real believer to appear.” The cat’s long silver whiskers twitched as it licked the air before closing its mouth, staring right at him. “Tell me, then boy, the answer I seek.”
“I…” For a moment Aaron couldn’t focus on any single thing, memories and visions flooded his mind of a child hood he had desperately tried to suppress. “I…” Aaron couldn’t move past the anger rising in his blood, this creature was asking him to … forget he even existed, it was a suicidal request…
“You can’t make him give you an answer he doesn’t yet know.” Christy sighed. “I’ll take him home, he won’t remember he was even here…” Christy grabbed a hold of his hand and pulled softly, causing Aaron to stumble to the side, breaking the fury rising, and settling a subtle calm over his frayed nerves.
“You brought him all this way just to take him again?” The cat was laughing. “Really now Guardian… were your fears miss-founded then? Because I sense otherwise and I know different.”
“…”Christy had nothing to offer in response.
“Keep a wise eye on your charge, the look in his eyes gives me all the answers I will ever need.”
For a long drawn out moment, Aaron stared at the generic numerical clock tick its second hand down the right side, all the way around, then up the left to start its journey again, for several minutes of every day this was his habit, it took place at the same time, it didn’t matter where he was, nor if there were a real clock to stare at, deep down, somewhere in the pit of his very being, he would know exactly what time it was and stop to stare up into the sky as if searching for something, but there was never anything but empty space.
“Yo-Aaron… Earth to Aaron!” A very familiar hand waved in front of his face knocking his concentration and sending him, all most painfully plummeting back into reality.
“What is it Christy?” Aaron turned his attention from the clock to his closest friend, and that wasn’t saying much, she was three years younger, sitting in his junior class only because of some freak accident of nature, or careless act of god, the girl was born with a bright and eager future in being some sort of brain wiz at anything and everything pertaining to scientific and mathematical job fields… or maybe she was just smart, and he cared a little too much about adding fluffy airy big words to his mental descriptions…
Christy blinked carefully watching the blank look on his face turn into a frown, whatever it was running through his mind was making him upset. “I was just wondering why you always stare at the clock as if expecting someone or something to happen… at the same time every day?”
“You notice everything don’t you?” Aaron sighed.
“I do, it’s a passion you know? I wanna be a great detective one day, like Sherlock holms!” Her childish nature shown like a bright burning beacon from the depths of a lost-out-to-sea lighthouse, it made him appreciate her spirit a little more when she acted like this.
“You are aware, that he was only great, because of Watson right?”
“Yes, I’m hoping you’ll take that position, but I do have a “Help wanted” ad sitting on my facebook page.” He couldn’t help but to give a small tinny smile in response to her childish grin, she was more like a little sister, than a friend some days.
“You’ll end up attracting old thirty five year old perverts that way you know?” He was silently laughing.
“Pish, I already have smarty face, besides… I did get this really interesting post… it was strange only in the fact that it wasn’t for me at all, it was for you.”
Aaron froze for a moment to take in a breath. “What? I don’t even keep one of those silly sites, I hardly ever get on line anyway… much less use my real identity or personal information…”
“That’s true, which is why I thought it was odd, it was from this strange user name “Dancer of Powers” I looked the profile up, and there was nothing but a black page, you know some people like to hide their stuff by making it all black so you have to highlight it to see what is written? Well, I figured someone high jacked the html and did that, so I tried highlighting and… there was nothing at all, a blank void.” She looked truly disappointed. “So I tried tracking the source computer… and came up with ten thousand hits … I thought it was a mistake, so I tried several more times in different ways, and came up with the same results so I figured it was some kind of fluke…”
“Huh, what did this ‘person’ want?” Aaron murmured slightly interested as he watched over his friend’s shoulder at the front of the class room, their teacher was grading papers while the class quietly read their books.
“I can’t honestly remember it all, but it had something about the time you stare at the clock, and knowing, and warning you about something terrible…though there was an address on the bottom of the post, I yellowbook’d it, found out it’s a little odd’s and end’s shop down town, in the not-so-safe part of town, I was hoping you’d walk with me there after school?”
“Sure, I’ll protect you little girl.” He smirked as she flailed out and smacked him in the shoulder.
“Mrs. Swan, Mr. Adams, if you please.”
“Sorry Ma’am” They said in unison, and went back to their books.
*****
Aaron couldn’t shake the strange sensation of déjà vu that crept up his back as they walked down the street as he kept an eye out for anything remotely strange and out of place, rush hour traffic was speeding by as fast as thirty miles per hour would allow, people walked in the opposite direction, everyone was on their way home, like they themselves should be.
Christy shifted next to him, hoisting her shoulder bag higher on her arm and flipping through her google map print out. “It shouldn’t be too far now…” He yanked her to the side before she walked into some random business man on his cell-phone. “Thanks.” She coughed. “Oh, there it is!” She shouted in glee pointing down a side ally to their right.
Grabbing his hand she tugged him down between two tall brick buildings that acted much like tall cliffs, looming down and taunting, trapped now they seemed to say, ours now…
Gulping he followed Christy into the shop, the glass door was shabby and covered in grime… the place inside wasn’t much better, dust covered everything, it was stifling, no extra air to breath freely and there was only the slightest glow from an oil lamp towards the front of the shop, but Christy moved through the tinny shop too interested in the odd little jar’s and baskets full of tubes, powders, dried herbs, flowers, weeds, anything and everything… to even bother with caution.
This was a strange place and Aaron felt uncomfortable, even in his own skin.
His friend had gone off and left him standing in the middle aisle of the dirty shop, every little warning bell inside his mind was screaming in a defining cacophony, the only real meaning he could get out of the heightened paranoia and tinny shivers running down his neck was to leave, and leave quickly, but there was something else, something foreign and subtle that whispered beneath everything else, something, Aaron realized, a part of him wasn’t willing to ignore.
Fed up with just standing in one spot, and feeling a little nervous and left behind, he took a few steps forward listening hard for any signs of life, especially for Christy, who seemed to have vanished all together.
Just as the urge to call out to his younger friend surged into his throat and began forming words, he silenced the attempt with a quick clutching hand to his lips as he ducked low and pressed himself as small and insignificantly as he could to the floor and towering shelf he now hid behind. That was Christy’s voice alright, but the canter and tone had changed… and another voice reacting to her whispered words. Inching as closely as he could Aaron strove to listen, to decipher the whispered exchange to find out what was going on, he wasn’t sure what told him to stay silent and out of sight… but he listened to it, and the conversation.
“You know very well Destiny has nothing to do with this, and Fate is just as ignorant as the rest of them…” Christy’s voice was muttering.
“You’ve doomed the boy, and any hope he’s had at being normal this life time by bringing him here…” The new voice snapped not ashamed of its words, speaking heatedly, and as loudly as it desired.
“You also know good and well that he was never going to live a normal life! Besides, Power contacted him… which means… something is going to happen, and soon.”
“What… ?!”
“I take it Power hasn’t informed you of anything…”
“If power is visiting…”
“If He finds out that the Sun is still alive…”
“More like… if She finds out you mean?”
“Don’t even mention that here… not here.” Christy sounded fearful.
“You were always afraid of Her… even during the ages of war…”
“I’m not sure what’s going on here…” Aaron’s voice cracked slightly as his mind and stomach flopped under the pressure of being in some kind of life altering danger. “But I’m ready to go home Christy…”
A dark furred cat sat silently on the floor at Christy’s feet as Aaron shifted around the shelf, coming to his full five feet seven inches, a frown creasing his expression.
The cat shifted its head to the side, large pointed ears twitching from back to front, a tail that twisted around the felines legs uncurled and tapped heavily against the dusty wooden floor making a sound that Aaron thought greatly resembled the sound of a gong, the deep voiced ring ebbed in his ears and he fell to his knees, suddenly eye level with the cat, large… seemingly too large; green eyes stared into his.
“His presence is well hidden, I hardly recognize his soul.” Ears twitching, the cat’s mouth never moved.
Aaron blinked in confusion.
“You’ve kept him blissfully ignorant of the mysteries and the paranormal haven’t you?” The question was directed at Christy.
“He’s done a fine job of that himself.” She answered mater-of-fact-ly. “Even when he went through that “I can see ghosts” phase… he still ignored the fact that he could see things no one else could.
“You talk about me…” Aaron murmured darkly. “As if I weren’t even here.”
“Fine, big man.” The cat hissed. “You can see me, you can hear me, then you must know something’s strange, a normal cat wouldn’t have ears, tails and-” Heavy feathered wings suddenly lifted off of the cat’s back, hidden before in the shadows, now translucent airy feathers fluttered as the wings flexed folding and opening before settling heavily back onto the cat’s back. “wings like this aren’t normal and you realize now that Christy is more than she seems, and that you stand in the safest safe house this side of the holy circle, and sacred sands and that the walls outside of this place seemed malicious and suffocating, will you deny my accusations, that sense infancy you have had the ability to see things no one else can, and you hold the knowledge of passing from one world to the next without really knowing how you could move through the fabric of a wall, yet you’ve done it before?
“Will you deny even your own existence, and that nothing strange has ever happened, and that the deaths of your human parents were just mere accidents and not pre ordained by another source, higher than the light above, and lower than the pits below? Will you leave here pretending that nothing mentioned or shown within these walls ever existed, or happened? Deny it then, your own existence, and parish like the rest of the rats passing for humanity in this world, because we can wait another thirty thousand years for a real believer to appear.” The cat’s long silver whiskers twitched as it licked the air before closing its mouth, staring right at him. “Tell me, then boy, the answer I seek.”
“I…” For a moment Aaron couldn’t focus on any single thing, memories and visions flooded his mind of a child hood he had desperately tried to suppress. “I…” Aaron couldn’t move past the anger rising in his blood, this creature was asking him to … forget he even existed, it was a suicidal request…
“You can’t make him give you an answer he doesn’t yet know.” Christy sighed. “I’ll take him home, he won’t remember he was even here…” Christy grabbed a hold of his hand and pulled softly, causing Aaron to stumble to the side, breaking the fury rising, and settling a subtle calm over his frayed nerves.
“You brought him all this way just to take him again?” The cat was laughing. “Really now Guardian… were your fears miss-founded then? Because I sense otherwise and I know different.”
“…”Christy had nothing to offer in response.
“Keep a wise eye on your charge, the look in his eyes gives me all the answers I will ever need.”