Chapter 2: Boy of the Third World
Aiden’s chilled breath purred from his mouth and made a swirling eddy in the air. He watched intimately as the breath turned to water droplets by condensing on the door glass of his home. The darkness hadn’t passed but the moon light was strong enough to reflect the manic glint of a silver knife at his side.
He stood, waiting, waiting. Remembering the baby in the vision he screwed up his face tightly and clenched his teeth in pain. This time there was no magic involved, this was his own pain. The pain of ambivalence. He had to make a foul choice between the world and whether he trusted the Boatman enough to trust him.
The hooting of an owl pulsed through the air, he traced the sound to a gnarled yew on the road side where two yellow eyes watched him. He shook with fear, he knew this was only an owl. But. Those eyes burned and smouldered the night with power. He wondered if they may belong to the fiend who tormented him with this choice. The bird left the yew and flew towards the moon which was full and whole, clinging to the counterpane of night in the sky.
“What do I do?” He whispered to himself. The answer to anyone else was simple: don’t murder. The fact he was thinking this tortured him more. Murder was evil and there he was, forced into doing it. Wanting to do it.
The babies skin flitted in and out of his mind, the white purity flared into nothingness in the gloved hand of evil. He had made the choice. His hand extended and reached for the door handle, he held it then tightened his grip. The door swung open with no force at all.
Facing him were the stairs: a straight path for a straight choice. He paced to the first step and held the banister as he climbed ahead. He was on the landing, three doors facing him. The first, his own room, a comfort he had held for many years. It would have to be sacrificed now. The second was storage, his old things that he deemed useless now. They just lay manifesting there. And, beyond the third door were his parents, those who clothed him. Cherished him. Loved him. They were his light – taught him life and how to deal with it. His head filled with memories of laughter and happy times. He wouldn’t cry. He kept telling himself he wouldn’t cry.
The door opened before he touched the handle to reveal the bed with his mother and father lying in a soft sleep, in a land where only dreams played their music. The picture of the baby became more vivid, its tears as the gloved evil held it, its wails as he picked it from the floating debris. Then its death.
The knife seemed to meld with his hand, he could no longer see it as an object but as part of him, almost a limb.
His legs were point-blanc with the bed, his mother right below him. She was breathing. He spoke silent prayers and begged that they would forgive him, he asked for mercy for this and hoped they understood. He opened his eyes and looked straight ahead as he threw the knife down and waited for the screams and blood.
But none came.
A barrier had stopped him, the knife would not surpass it. The snores from his parents echoed him away from them and made him drop the knife. A reason unknown had told him to kill them. His chest heaved quickly, he turned and vomited frothy liquid over the floor.
The barrier had stopped him. It was more power, more strangeness. He looked around expecting yellowed eyes and a harsh punishment but the Boatman was no where to be seen.
He backed out of his parents’ room and ran into his own, diving into his bed and covering himself in his sheets. He wanted to forget what had happened in the past few hours and never wanted to remember it, but a soft childs voice that flowed into the room told him that he never would.
”I stopped it,” the voice was a boys. Aiden lowered his sheets and peered over the top to see a child in denim all over, looking at him, unflinching. “I couldn’t let you kill your parents,” the small boy said again, almost in a whine.
“Who are you?” Aiden screamed at him, leapt out of bed and threw a soft toy at him. He picked up an ornament and hurled it through the air where it met a shield at shattered a metre before the boy. “Get away, get away, GET AWAY!” Aiden had had enough, the strangers had taken control. First the Boatman forced him to do something against his will, now a small boy had accessed his house and stopped him from…from….
“You cant hurt me,” the boy spoke in a mock tone followed by a childish giggle but then the boy changed. All colour went from his face and his laughter stopped, instead a another, deeper voice came from his mouth.
“This night,” the voice began almost shaking the furniture. “A man of the fourth world visited you.” Aiden nodded, he knew this, he wished the voice not to remind him of what he almost did.
The boy soot and rocked on the floor while the voice still spoke. “And forced you to almost kill your parents.” The boy rocked faster and shivered, eyes aflame, rippling with the reflection of the vision – a small baby being burned into nothingness.
Aiden shook his head looking into the boy’s eyes, “N..n..no” he stuttered backing away further.
“We stopped you.” The boy stood and hovered in mid air, he shook and sent a wave of chill around the room. “And did it for you.” The last words echoed on and on, reverberated through the bedroom and pinged on the metal bedposts. “Your parents are now dead.” The boy giggled again, this time with cruelty, this time with passion.
Aiden didn’t move, he seemed to be frozen to the spot, unblinking, and unflinching. They had killed his parents. They had done it so he didn’t have to. It didn’t change anything, he wasn’t grateful; he wanted to kill the boy in cold blood.
“It is natural to be mad but do not harm my son. We did it so you could be spared of guilt. The man of the fourth world was right. That baby would have been killed in the rivers of blood if your parents had not been killed.”
Aiden was failing to see how his parents would influence anything, how could they? They were normal. Normal. Aiden didn’t even think that was a word he would use again. I wanted to kill them, he kept telling his self. Its for the good of everyone else.
He found himself launching at the boy, flailing with his arms and legs, grasping, punching, seething. But he only encountered a barrier with the little boy giggling on the other side. He waved and then vanished allowing him to fall and crumble into a wailing mess.
For the entire night he wailed with anger, guilt and loss, not moving from his place and not daring to venture into his parent’s room again, he knew almost a day later from the scream of next doors child and sirens that followed that the little boy was very much telling the truth.
