Tenebrism III part 2
part 1
They didn’t come back until it was already dark.
I was burned out on the couch, flipping uselessly between the news and the food network and eating leftover Halloween candy like a slob, when the front door opened and somebody slipped in. I heard a kitchen chair being pulled softly across the linoleum, and when I looked over into the kitchen Rysa was just sitting down in one of them, her profile to me. She combed her fingers back through her hair and shook it all out. The kitchen lights reflected a purple tint off the waves kinked into it. She stretched her neck over the back of the chair and closed her eyes, breathing out slowly. It looked like a tired, didn’t-accomplish-shit kind of slouch.
“So, uh. No luck?” I said to her, slinging my arm over the back of the couch and leaning on it. I hit the mute button on the remote and the Iron Chef America cheddar cheese battle kept on going noiselessly in the background.
Rysa lifted her head and gave me a little smile. “Unfortunately. You were right about our abilities not working fully here. It’s been rather...trying.”
“That sucks,” I said. But I wasn’t real surprised, and I could just imagine what a ‘trying’ day with Keyd would be like; no wonder she looked fed up with everything. “What exactly are you looking for, anyway? I mean-how’re you gonna know if you’ve found these guys?”
“A grove.”
“A...grove,” I said. Was that a translation error or something? “You mean, like...trees?”
Rysa nodded, that same smile pulling at the side of her mouth. “Similar,” she said. “But if the clarbach are truly here, it’s what they will try to create. To see if it can feed off the energy here-if your world is useful.”
“Useful,” I said. Jesus. That sounded...well. Really fucking bad. “Is this gonna be some kind of invasion here?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine.”
“But people would notice that, right? I mean, if some kind of alien trees were growing around here people would fucking know about it.”
“You would be able to see them, because of your ability, but they might be invisible to others here.” Rysa cricked her neck to the side then leaned forward over her knees, suddenly serious again. “That’s often the case, especially in muted worlds. As you said, if others here don’t seem to be aware of anything unusual, then they probably aren’t.”
Well, that’d explain why no one had been talking about seeing giant frogs.
“Why can I even see this stuff? I mean-why is it me who wound up like this?”
Rysa shook her head. “You just did. We don’t know everything about the way this works, either. Some worlds have the Presence touching them, and some don’t. Some natives to those worlds have the talent to use its power, others don’t. Our own world was always connected, but for a very long time our race couldn’t access it because we didn’t have the capability to do so. And your world is muted, and yet you have a natural ability. It’s all very unpredictable.”
“Fucking fantastic,” I said. “Is the whole abilities-not-working-here thing part of that too?”
“Not exactly.” Rysa laced her fingers together then pulled them apart again, those magic tattoos dark against her skin. “There’s something here, other communications, that are interrupting how our energy works. It’s been difficult even between Keyd and myself. Nearly impossible to sense anything else.”
Other communications. “What, you mean like radio or WLAN or other shit like that?”
She eyed me. “What are those?”
“Uh,” I said. “Like that, over there.” I jerked my thumb at the DSL router that was sitting on a shelf of the TV cabinet. Rysa shoved back from the table and came over into the living room.
“No, the smaller thing,” I said, when she started looking the TV over. “The grey box with the lights-yeah.”
Rysa moved her hand down near the router, kept it there for a few seconds, then nodded. “This is at least part of it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess you guys can’t compete with wireless signals.”
“What does this do?” Rysa said, leaning down and peering at the router. The whole row of green lights on the front were all starting to flicker crazily. Maybe her energy was messing with the signals back. The TV was even kind of going fuzzy and snowy, and I turned it off.
I could have explained exactly how the router worked in a lot of geeky techno-speak, but I didn’t think that’d actually mean much to her. “It, uh... it makes a little network so all our machines can connect to each other without a lot of wires. And I’m guessing none of this is really making sense.”
She laughed. She had a nice laugh, and she didn’t seem to mind doing it. Not like Keyd, who didn’t even smile. “None of it at all.”
“Okay, well...it puts out signals into the air, maybe kinda like your energy does. But it’s definitely for communicating.”
“There’s a lot of this here, then.”
“Yeah, everywhere. Radio waves, Wi-Fi, satellite-it’s all over. There’s not really gonna be a place where it isn’t around, so you’re kind of out of luck there.”
Rysa moved away from the TV, coming up to the couch and settling her hip on the arm of it near me. “Well,” she said. “That means any clarbach here will be limited in the same way. They won’t be able to find us here, the same way we can’t find them.”
“Would they be looking for you?” I said, and her eyes flicked away from me. “...do they know you’re here?”
“I can’t answer that,” Rysa said. She was still carefully not looking my way. “Not without being more sure about what’s happening.”
Before I could say anything else, a tinny noise shrieked from inside my pocket and I nearly jumped off the couch. Fuck, I was just getting a call. I tried to ignore the way my heart had started banging around in my chest, dug my phone out and hit ignore without really looking at it. Seriously not in the mood. I pocketed it again, my heart still fluttering a little. Christ.
“What is that?” Rysa said. She was looking at my pocket.
“It’s...well, it’s kind of like the way you and Keyd do your...whatever, sensing each other. It’s another communication thing,” I said. “I can talk to other people with it.”
“Oh,” she said, like that made perfect sense. Maybe it did; she didn’t have to understand technology to get the concept.
“Hey, where is Keyd, anyway?” I said. “Did he come back with you?”
“He’s here,” Rysa said, and nodded towards the patio doors. I leaned around her so I had a better view through the half-open blinds. In the orangey light from one of the walkway lights I could sort of see a person-shaped dark lump out there, leaning against the patio fence. He was holding so still and blended in so well there was no way I would have ever noticed him.
“What’s he doing?”
“Being frustrated about this,” Rysa said.
“Seriously? It’s only been one day.”
Rysa folded her fingers together on her leg. “He likes results. And having our abilities limited like this is something new for us. It’s certainly not improving his mood.” She slid off the couch arm and stood up. “I should tell him that you figured out why it’s happening.”
“Sure, right,” I said, and watched as she went across the room and pushed the sliding door open. The stretch of shadow that was Keyd moved slightly, lifting its head and saying something to her, then Rysa closed the door behind her and any sounds were muffled behind glass.
I thought about turning the TV back on, but even the idea wasn’t holding my attention anymore. So I went back to my room for a while, because I probably had homework or something and maybe I should get it done. But it was hard to even think about doing any work-it seemed kind of pointless if we were gonna have a fucking alien invasion here. How much did a passing grade in calculus really matter? Or the project for my photography class? Before Friday night those had been the things that’d seemed the most important, the only real immediate things I was worrying about. Somewhere past that had been anxiety about graduation next semester and what the fuck was gonna happen afterwards with my life, but now even that seemed stupid.
For a while I just lay on my bed and stared at the lumpy white ceiling, drumming my fingers on my stomach. A couple of times I had to stop my leg from jittering up and down. At some point I realized Martin had come back; his muffled music was coming through my wall. This was as good a time as any to talk with him about all this. I rolled myself off the bed, went over to his room and rapped on his door with the back of my hand.
“Yo!” he yelled from inside.
I pushed the door open but didn’t go in. Martin’s floor was always completely coated by a layer of stuff, and last time I’d walked in here I’d stepped on a plate that’d been under a pair of jeans and broken it. I didn’t know how he got in and out of here alive every day. The doorway was as far as I’d go anymore.
Martin was sitting at his desk-which was made out of a big wide plank of wood balanced on two file cabinets-and on his computer. He was clicking through some pictures of girls in underwear, but he minimized it as soon as I’d opened the door.
“Man, I’m not your mom,” I shouted at him over the blast of Def Leppard. “Plus the Victoria’s Secret site is not even porn.”
“Just habit, dude,” he said, and cranked down his stereo about halfway. “Claire’s birthday’s next week. She seriously told me to get her cute underwear. Victoria’s Secret is cute underwear, right? Or is that just sexy underwear? This is so much pressure, man!”
“You’re the one with the girlfriend,” I said. “You should know these things.”
“Uh huh,” Martin said, then kicked off his desk and swiveled his chair all the way around to face me. “By the way, dude, how was your weekend?”
Huh. That wasn’t something he usually asked. Then I realized; he’d amscrayed out of the apartment for the whole weekend, right after I’d told him that Rysa was my girlfriend. My new girlfriend.
So that was both thoughtful of him and a little awkward. Now I could either keep up the fake lie about Rysa being my fake girlfriend, or make up some other fake story about who she actually was that would also be a lie.
Or, third option, pretend like I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Fine,” I said, giving him kind of a look.
He laughed. “Okay, okay, I got it.”
“Hey, but, about her. And the other guy. I should explain...both of them.”
“Yeah, I’d like to hear. Do they even speak English?” Martin said. “‘cause that dude, man, he looked at me so mean when I tried to say something to him.”
I winced. Jesus, Keyd. “Well, not…to each other, really, no. The guy’s my cousin,” I added, on an impulse that just came out of nowhere. “Really distantly. They’re just in town for a few days and need a place to crash. I told them it was cool to stay here, but I really should have checked with you first.”
“Hey, man, it’s all right,” Martin said. “I mean I’ve never really asked you if it was cool that Claire stays here sometimes. So yeah, it’s all good.” Then he hesitated, and raised his eyebrows slowly. “That Lisa chick isn’t your cousin too, is she?”
“No! What? Jesus, Martin, no. She’s just his friend. Not related. To either of us.”
“Oh. Good.” Martin gave me a thumbs up. “You know, you should have told me about this, man. Then I wouldn’t have told Chelsea you were, like, single.”
Chelsea, the girl who’d invited me to the Halloween frat party that I really should have fucking gone to, because then I wouldn’t be in this whole insane situation. I had no idea why Martin was even bringing her up.
“Uh, okay?”
“She’s always asking about you and shit, like if you’re gonna come to any of the parties in the frat block. So if Lisa doesn’t work out or she has to go back to Uzbekistan or whatever the hell she’s from, you got more options.” Martin grinned and gave me a double thumbs up this time.
“Thanks,” I said, and almost laughed. Uzbekistan. Rysa was from further away than that. “Anyway. Thanks for being cool with this.”
“Yup,” Martin said. “Dude, though, what’s with the face thing on your cousin?” He pointed at his left eye. “Is that shit for real? Like, permanent?”
“I don’t even know, he just showed up with it,” I said. And then, because it was true, “he’s kind of weird.”
Martin popped his eyebrows up again. “No kidding.”
“I’d just stay out of his way,” I said as I ducked out of his room. That’d gone pretty smoothly, considering. Considering it was the worst cover story ever.
“Hey, by the way, dude,” Martin yelled after me. “Are we really out of all that cleaning stuff?”
#
My weekday alarm went off at eight-thirty on Monday morning, and I woke up with a helpless sense of total disbelief. Holy shit, did I really have to go to class? It seemed just as pointless as doing my homework yesterday had been. I didn’t even get out of bed for at least an hour, rolling around and hitting the snooze button every five minutes until I couldn’t even pretend I was asleep.
Keyd and Rysa had already left by the time I hauled myself out to the kitchen. They’d probably gone out looking for the clarbach already. It was clearly going to take some serious time if they had to crawl over every inch of the town manually, since their energy sonar or whatever was out of commission. Clearly they were committed as hell to it, too.
I wasn’t sure if it made me more or less nervous that they were always gone all day-maybe they were out of my way, but they were in everybody else’s. They might scare the shit out of somebody just looking the way they did. Like…Mrs. Hadley, who was seventy-something and lived in the apartment backing mine and Martin’s and gave piano lessons to eight year olds and watched soap operas so loud the sound came through our walls. She’d probably drop dead if she saw either of them and their magic tattoos.
But Keyd had been running around town before and nobody’d seen him or called the police on him, so maybe there wouldn’t be any problems at all.
I drove to campus and got a spot in the topside lot. There were tons of other students around, headed to classes or just milling around. For a minute or two I just sat in my car, watching through the windows. Everyone and everything looked so fucking normal out there, and I wasn’t even sure I could handle it. They were all acting normal because everything was normal. I was the one out of place, even though nothing had really changed.
When I finally got out of my car and edged into the main part of campus, it was almost like I’d never seen my own goddamn school before. Like that feeling you get when you sit in a movie theater and then go out into the real world and everything looks the same but too bright and distant and muted. It was like looking at some bizarre copy of the world, where the details weren’t exactly right and everything was just off. Even the voices of people around me were too loud.
I couldn’t even get anywhere near the library. I took a stupid huge detour just so I wouldn’t have to walk by it, seriously glad that scheduling hadn’t put my class in ones of the computer labs in the basement. Instead it was in a computer lab in a building just sort of near it. Not a big room, just a classroom with two long rows of work tables facing a whiteboard at the front, two 22” monitors to a table. The graphic design major wasn’t a real popular one at this school, so most classes related to it could be stuffed in these tiny rooms. Most people were here already, including the professor; I slunk to a computer near the back corner.
I was fishing around in my bag for my cell phone to switch it to silent when somebody dropped into the workspace next to me. I jumped, and my knee banged into the table leg. Fuck, ow. And it was just Chelsea, who was tiny and blond and kind of a ditzy sorority girl and not scary at all.
“Hey, Alan,” she said. Usually she looked real put together, but today she was in worn jeans and an oversized t-shirt with her hair tied up into a sloppy bun. She looked about as tired and beat as I felt. She wasn’t even wearing any make up, because I could see freckles on her nose and cheeks that I’d never known she had. They were kinda cute.
“Hey,” I said back. It had only been two days since I’d last seen her, in this same class last Friday, but it felt like fucking weeks had gone by. “How’d that Halloween party go?”
“Oh my god it went practically all weekend,” she said, slinging her bag down off her shoulder. “I can’t even believe I made it to class today. Were you there? I can’t remember if you were there or not.”
“Yeah, I didn’t actually make it.”
“Oh.” Chelsea said. “That’s too bad. I’d-”
Whatever she’d been about to say was interrupted by class starting. And right away, I knew showing up had been a giant fucking mistake. I was on edge and fidgety the whole time, I couldn’t concentrate, and I changed maybe one thing in my project. Then I changed it back because I didn’t like it. I was looking at the clock about every thirty seconds, and whenever Chelsea tried to talk to me I only managed stuff like, “huh” and, “hmm” and, “oh, yeah?” After a while she gave up. But then being stuck in my own head with just my nervous thoughts was almost worse. What were Rysa and Keyd doing right now? Had they found these other aliens by now or not? And which one would be worse?
“Alan, hey.” Chelsea’s voice broke back into my thoughts and I looked around, startled. I’d been spacing out on my screen; class had ended and most people were gone. Chelsea looked a little worried, and hovered around the back of her chair as I started packing up my stuff. She dropped into step with me as I headed to the door. We were the last people out of the room.
“I’m gonna head over to the caf and get lunch,” she said to me once we were in the hallway. Another class was getting out a couple rooms back behind us, and noisy voices were ringing off the walls and echoing up to us. Chelsea tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and looked at me. “You want to come with?”
We hit the front doors to the building before I could answer, and I pushed one open and held it for her. She slipped through under my arm. Then like six more people pushed past while I was standing there all fucking chivalrous and everything, and I had to stand there like an idiot and keep the door open.
Chelsea was still waiting for me when I finally got outside. “So, uh. Did you want to...you know, go eat?” she asked.
“Actually I have-I need to go,” I said. “I’ve got some family in town.”
“Oh.” Chelsea bit at her lip. “Sure.”
“Hey, but, some other time though, yeah?” I said, shouldering my bag from where it was slipping off my arm. “I’m just kinda busy....now. Sorry.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding more cheerful. “I’ll hold you to that!”
“Sure,” I said, not exactly sure what that meant, at all. What was so special about lunch at the cafeteria? I ate there almost every damn day. So did everyone else. I watched as Chelsea swung her bag onto her arm and headed off towards the building that housed the cafeteria. That long free strand of her hair fluttered behind her in the sun, like a wave goodbye.
I shook my head and pulled my focus back in. Clearly I couldn’t handle fucking classes today. I was just gonna ditch the rest of them, since I’d been pretty much useless in the one I’d even gone to. I had to get home to make sure my visitors hadn’t blown the apartment up with magic sparkles and phantom dogs.
#
The apartment was quiet and empty when I got back; no sign of either Martin or aliens.
I made myself some lunch, throwing a few frozen things into the microwave and nuking all of it until it was more or less edible. I was just about done eating when a shadow flitted down behind the drawn blinds of the patio doors, and I heard a light thump of boots on concrete. One of them was back.
I’d told them to use the patio to go in and out instead of the front door, since Martin and I liked being able to keep that locked. Plus the patio was shielded by a fence and a hedge and our apartment didn’t face a big traffic area of the complex, so nobody’d be likely to see people with giant wings going in and out. That’s what I’d hoped, anyway.
The sliding door pulled open and Keyd came in through the blinds, alone. He managed to do it so smoothly that they barely even clattered around him. It’d been warm today for early November, and he looked a little sweaty. His hair was damp and raked back off his face. It had to be a pretty good workout, flapping around under his own power like he did.
“Hey,” I said to him.
Keyd looked over at me like he had no idea how to react to that. Like instead of ‘hey’ I’d said ‘go screw yourself’. I was starting to think that this guy just didn’t know what to do around people who weren’t Rysa. Or maybe it was just me. Or maybe it was because the last time we’d had something close to a conversation, I’d tried to punch him in the face.
“Hello,” he said, finally.
“Where’s Rysa?”
“Nearby.”
“Okay.”
And....now I was out of things to say. There was just something about Keyd that set me on this weird edge, made me over-aware of anything I said and did. Even if he and Rysa were both warriors from another planet, Rysa knew how to not come off as so fucking alien. It was easier to forget that she wasn’t from here. And I genuinely kinda liked her. She was real cool and together and she even joked around sometimes like a regular person.
But Keyd was just weird. Even just standing there doing nothing. The way he held himself, the way he looked at me, even the way he breathed; just the way he did everything. All of it was slightly off, like he was out of sync with the whole world. Was he like this on his own planet? Did he have friends, other than Rysa? It was kind of a sad thought, but I couldn’t imagine that he did. He just seemed like a loner. And clearly he had no fucking people skills.
“I apologize,” Keyd said, out of fucking nowhere.
“Uh,” I said. “What?” He still wasn’t looking my way, and I wasn’t sure if he was actually talking to me. But there was no one else here.
“For the things I said to you the other day,” Keyd told the wall. “It was out of place. I understand this is not familiar to you, and I expected too much.”
“I-it’s...okay,” I said. The last thing I’d expected from him was an awkwardly sincere apology. And it was definitely that. “I get it. You were worried about Rysa.”
“Yes,” Keyd said, and finally looked at me. “I was.”
So this was like Keyd’s one giant redeeming trait that I could actually get behind. He cared about Rysa a lot. More than a lot; almost more than anything else. He’d made a fucking terrible first impression because of it, but since then he hadn’t actually been so bad. Mostly just quiet and distant. Except for the second time that he’d gotten all wound up about her. But I was starting to get this pattern now. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy overall, and maybe I should cut him some slack.
“I’m sorry I tried to hit you,” I said, for a start.
I almost-almost-thought I saw Keyd smile at that. It had been just a little twitch at the corner of his mouth, and it disappeared in the next second. But it might have been a smile. Maybe. More like a smile baby. That could maybe one day grow up and turn into a real one.
“I’m sorry you felt that you had to,” he said, which was the weirdest thing I think I’d ever heard anyone say. I was still trying to figure out what he’d meant by it-if he was actually apologizing again or just accepting mine-when there was another light sound of feet touching down on the patio. Rysa came in the sliding door a second later, her wings flashing back down through her clothes as she did.
“Hey,” I said to her. Thank fuck you’re back, I didn’t say.
“Alan,” Rysa said, brushing her hand along the back of Keyd’s neck as she passed him. He was staring at the wall again, arms stiff at his sides, and didn’t react at all to the touch. He didn’t even stand like a normal person; his shoulders were always set back with his spine really straight and he never fucking moved an inch. Like a mascot for good posture. It really screamed military and reminded me, just a little, of my dad.
I dumped my dishes from lunch into the sink and sloshed some water over them-I’d get around to actually cleaning them later-and while I was wiping my wet hands idly off on the front of my jeans, I thought of something.
“Hey, Rysa,” I said, and she glanced up. “Do you guys eat?”
They’d been awake and conscious here for over two days by this point and they hadn’t even brought it up. And they were both tall and in shape and doing lots of physical things and they seriously had to need some kind of food. Unless they had weird alien metabolisms that digested air or something. That’d be kind of cool.
Keyd actually answered me. “Not as often as you do,” he said.
“How often is not as often? I mean, I can’t really cook worth shit but I could, you know. Make you guys something. I can do sandwiches.” I didn’t think they’d appreciate Hot Pockets or microwaved corn dogs. But I had a shitload of groceries now from my errand spree on Sunday.
Rysa rested her hands on the back of a chair and looked at me. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t,” I said. “But if you’re saving my planet from a giant frog invasion, I can make you lunch. That’s a pretty good trade.”
“That sounds fair,” Rysa said with a smile. And over her shoulder, I saw Keyd almost doing the same thing. Almost.
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