23 December 2007
Chapter 4: Free Association
“Come on,” Jake urged, almost dragging Matt along down a smaller side street. The streetlights were all on, now, and though Seattle didn’t have many alleyways, some of the shorter, smaller streets were more dimly lit than others. Jake doubted that city crews had been around changing light bulbs in the past hour; the darkness that had follwed him all night must have had something to do with the creature. Maybe it fed on the lights, or just preferred the shadows and somehow switched the lights off? In any event, now that they needed shadows, they were hard to find.
“It’s gone,” Matt whined behind him, trying to stumble to his knees on the grass and rest. All the energy had gone out of him, and he was disoriented, sluggish. “I made it go away, so let’s just sit here a bit. So tired.”
Jake listened and heard the first sirens. This neighborhood wasn’t used to disturbances, and he was sure all of the neighbors had called this one in. The buildings on either side of Jake’s were completely lit up, with people standing in doorways and windows, looking around; there wouldn’t be an easy way for them to get inside without being ratted out by onlookers. Jake hadn’t the slightest idea how he would explain to the police his and Matt’s role in what had happened, and didn’t relish the prospect of trying. He jabbed Matt in the ribs a bit to get him up, and urged him on.
“Ow! Fucker!” Matt snapped. He punched Jake in the arm weakly, but he could hear the sirens now, too, and mustered whatever energy he could to keep moving. “My friend Cat’s near here. We can go there.”
They jogged along, Matt leaning on Jake at times, and Jake keeping lookout behind them to make sure they hadn’t been spotted by emergency crews. Matt’s baggy pants were a mess of mud and oil stains and the button above the fly had come off; from time to time Matt stepped on the cuff and pulled them down dangerously low. Jake snaked an arm around Matt and a finger through one of his belt loops to keep them up. He was about to crack a joke about Matt’s fashion sense when he caught a good look at his face in a streetlight as they crossed a larger street. There were pronounced dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and his skin was much paler than he’d remembered. He looked like he was having trouble breathing, as well.
“That really took a lot out of you,” Jake said, taking off his jacket and putting it around Matt’s shoulders. When they got to the other side of the street, Jake guided Matt off the sidewalk and laid him against a big tree in its shadow, studying him with concern. He put a hand on Matt’s face, feeling his cold skin, and a wave of emotion came over him. “It’s okay… you’re going to be okay.”
“Let’s just walk a while,” Matt said, pulling Jake’s coat around him and trying to push off from the tree. “You’re right, keep moving. Cat’s apartment is a few blocks away, still.” Finding it difficult to overcome the intertia, he reached his hand out to Jake, who took it and pulled him into a walk. Jake continued to hold Matt’s hand as they walked, and although Matt wanted to pull his hand away at first, after he got over his initial surprise it was strangely comforting. He went with it. It was no stranger than everything else that had happened this evening.
Jake kept wanting to say something, but every time he started to speak, what he was about to say didn’t make any sense. He felt like he was in one of those medical experiments he’d read about, the one where someone had electrodes attached to a part of his brain and would make a certain motion or make a sound whenever the current was switched on. He didn’t know what his “current” was, but there was definitely something in his brain, tickling at him, dredging up strange thoughts and feelings. He looked at Matt and had the strongest urge to say that he was glad to see him again, when what he really meant was, “I’m glad we made it out of that alive.” Jake was used to being able to find the right words and express himself easily, so he got frustrated and didn’t say anything at all.
And if Matt was thinking of anything to say, he was still too exhausted to speak, so they walked in silence.
Before long, they arrived at their destination, and they were relieved to find that sirens and lights hadn’t followed them. Matt led Jake up a half flight of stairs to a front porch and fished in one of the mailboxes for a small copper key. They let themselves in, closed and locked the door behind them, and started to climb the stairs to Cat’s apartment. They took the stairs slowly; they were in much less of a hurry now.
“Neither of you are making any sense,” Cat repeated, with blonde, bed-head hair and bloodshot blue eyes, bleary from lack of sleep. Based on looks, a newcomer to the conversation would likely nominate her as the candidate for mental illness in the room… unaware that the other two claimed to have been battling monsters not an hour before. “You were both followed by some slimy monster that tried to tear you apart, but you went all ‘ninja’ on it and then cast some kind of spell to make it go away?”
Even though they squirmed at her delivery, neither Matt or Jake could dispute the summary. Matt had an idea and sat up straight as if he was going to launch into an explanation that would clear everything up, but instead he got a frustrated look on his face and slumped down again.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Matt grumbled, picking at stray threads on the arm of the couch.
“So how do you suddenly know how to make monsters go ‘poof’?” Cat pressed. Matt thought it over and didn’t seem to arrive at any conclusions that were worth sharing. Cat’s tone didn’t exactly inspire him.
“The spell was…” Jake began, helpfully, but faltered. “Well, it was like…” He replayed the scene in his memory, looking for the words to explain it, but once again coming up short. He shrugged his shoulders to finish his sentence, instead.
“I’m making coffee,” Cat decided, heading into the kitchen, leaving the two to mull over the evening’s events some more. “It’s almost dawn, and I would have had a hard time sleeping anyway, what with the two of you describing special effects nightmares to me in graphic detail.” She shuddered as she made her way, her brown fleece-lined slippers scuffed on the floor as she walked. “And if I’m staying up, you’re staying up.”
Matt had recovered from his “drainage,” and was now full of nervous energy, rocking his feet back and forth from heel to toe on Cat’s loud, thrift store rug. He had been examining his hands, maybe looking for any remaining sign of the feat he’d pulled off earlier, but they were unremarkable; he just had a lot more dirt under the nails than he’d started the evening with.
There was a rustling sound at the window, and Jake was on his feet in half a second, eyes darting around the midnight blue screetscape showing through the glass. Matt reached a hand up and caught Jake’s, pulling him back down onto the couch.
“It’s gone,” Matt said in a soothing voice. Jake looked into Matt’s eyes and saw that he was absolutely sure this was true, and Jake found it easy to believe. “It’s a squirrel. They get into Cat’s window boxes.”
Jake was acutely aware that Matt hadn’t let go of his hand.
“You know,” Jake began, reaching his other hand over to clasp Matt’s as well. “I’ve got this… feeling. I know it’s going to sound…”
“Sugar?” Cat called from the kitchen. Matt didn’t answer, and Jake realized that she was only asking him, since she already knew Matt’s preferences. Matt let Jake’s hand go and slumped back onto the couch, looking to the kitchen door.
“Lots,” Jake replied. “And milk, if you’ve got it.” It wasn’t uncommon in Seattle to find oneself in a milk-free household, and some people got indignant when you expected dairy. Paid to ask. Personally, he didn’t much mind soy or rice milk on his cereal in the morning, but it left a lot to be desired as a coffee creamer.
“Whipping cream all right?” Cat said, tantalizingly. Jake made a theatrical “yummy noise” in reply. Cat re-entered the room with three cups on a white plastic tray, two of them were inky black, the third the color of caramel. She set the tray down on the coffee table and she and Matt took one of the black ones.
“Perfect,” Jake said, taking the last cup. “Thanks.”
Cat took a seat on a battered armchair, another thrift-store “find,” by the look of it, and sipped at her coffee. She must have caught her reflection when she was in the kitchen, because her hair was a bit more under control and her demeanor had relaxed a bit.
Jake took a big sip of his coffee, which was much cooler due to the cream, and made a disgusted face before he could stop himself doing it. He immediately flushed red with embarrassment and tried to smile it off, but Cat had already seen.
“Not enough sugar?” Cat said, making as if to get up and go to the kitchen for more. “I never take any so I didn’t know if two teaspoons would be enough.”
Jake noticed that Matt was having a bit of trouble with his own cup, as well; his eyes were pinched with every sip and he looked into the coffee questioningly. Cat looked at the two of them impatiently, waiting for yet another weird story.
Jake reached out and gently took Matt’s cup from him, and handed him his own in exchange. They each took a tenative sip, then took a longer, satisfied one. They each studied the others’ face with amusement. Cat looked on with far less.
“Okay,” Cat said with an air of finality, “that’s fine. Enough, already. So you take drugs with some strange guy and share a hallucination. So you wake me up at various points throughout the night to tell me what’s going on, or to show up to tell ghost stories. This is all starting to feel like some big joke that you won’t let me in on, and I’m getting really tired of it.”
Matt got a sheepish look on his face, started to say something, but thought better of it and took a drink from his cup instead.
“And if either of you does that ‘false start’ thing one more time, I’m going to scream!” Cat said, the hostess façade gone completely. “Whatever it is, just say it already. Do you have something to admit to me? Did you do something illegal? Did you fuck him or something? What?”
“My hands are too big,” Matt blurted out quickly, in a plaintive voice. He blushed even redder than Jake had done, and looked down into his lap.
“Your what!?” Cat asked.
“Something doesn’t seem right about me, either,” Jake suggested, after everyone drank their coffee in silence for a few moments. “But…” He couldn’t quite describe it.
Cat seemed to have a flash of inspiration that explained the entire situation, and changed her irritation to amusement instantaneously.
“Well, then,” Cat said, putting down her cup and standing up. “If that’s how you guys are going to be, then it’s game time.”
“Make sure you’re comfortable,” came Cat’s voice from the couch. Matt’s eyes were closed and his back was pressed against Jake’s. They were sitting on the floor, legs crossed, facing in opposite directions.
“I don’t understand,” Jake said, cracking an eye open to look at Cat, who scowled at him. He quickly shut his eye again.
“The point is, you can’t see the person you’re talking to, so you can take bigger risks… open up completely,” she explained patiently. “You can stop worrying about making sense of everything and just free associate. Just say whatever comes into your head.”
“And you got this bright idea… how?” Matt asked.
“Group counseling with my parents. Ah, those were some good times,” Cat explained with a sarcastic hint in her voice. “You’d be surprised at the things you can say to your mom when you can’t see her reaction.”
“So…” Jake offered tentatively, “you think this will help us figure out where that creature came from?”
“No,” Cat responded sternly, “what I think it will do is help you get the freaky drug thoughts out of your system and show you how stupid and non-profound you’re being. In fact…” Her voice faded as she got up and left the room. They heard her footsteps returning a minute later, and heard the sound of a small, hard object being placed on the table.
“For posterity,” Cat said, “and to play back whenever I want to remind Matt what a good and patient friend I am. Or just torture him. Either one. Now, get to it.” Both men could hear a small “click” as Cat started a portable minicassette recorder.
At first, they just sat quietly. Matt found it relaxing to just sit after all the craziness and surprises he’d been through. He relaxed and let his weight rest against Jake’s back, which was quite warm, and let his mind wander. He thought back to the thing they’d faced earlier, to the strange abilities they found they had.
“I’ve got something,” Jake said suddenly. “There’s a hill.”
“There’s hills all over Seattle,” Cat sounded unimpressed, in the distance. Apparently she’d gone into the kitchen and was looking in the cupboard for something.
“With a circle of oak trees,” Jake continued. “My grandfather planted them long ago when he was a boy.”
“I love those trees,” Matt added, picturing them in his mind: heavy, papery, round-edged leaves fluttering gently in a night breeze, illuminated softly by a half-moon. “I thought someone must have intentionally planted them since they were so perfectly arranged. Why didn’t you tell me it was your grandfather?”
“I didn’t want to bring him up,” Jake said quickly. “You had nothing to do with him leaving, and my grandmother… and I didn’t want you to have to defend…”
Cat’s slippers shuffled back into the living room, and they could hear the crinkling of a bag of potato chips as she pulled them open. She didn’t say a thing, and sat down heavily on the couch.
“I understand why he did it,” Jake said in a low voice. “Your father was frightened of the Strigoi, as we all were. He didn’t understand what we were trying to do.”
“You don’t have to defend him, either,” Matt said in a determined voice. “I knew he was wrong, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He never listened to me.”
“That’s his dad, alright,” Cat mumbled, then stuffed a few potato chips into her mouth and crunched them. Then, as if remembering that she wasn’t meant to be part of the conversation, “Oops. Please, continue your nonsensical ramblings.”
Quiet settled on the room again, and neither Matt nor Jake spoke again for a bit. Cat soon became aware of how loud her snacking was, and held off chewing or reaching into the bag until their conversation resumed.
And when it resumed, she still couldn’t understand a thing they were saying.
Not that she could understand much of what they were talking about before, but now she literally couldn’t understand. They were speaking Russian… or something, perfectly accented, and at a steady clip. She knew that Matt was a shitty student, and that he could barely speak English right, let alone a foreign language. She listenened to them talk and tried to figure out what they could be discussing from their tone and their body language, but it was difficult.
At first, they were talking in normal voices, as if they were having a regular conversation, but then they suddenly stopped, and both craned their heads as if they were listening for something. After that, they whispered back and forth for a bit.
Cat was about to say something to try and get their attention when Jake suddenly yelled something and jumped to his feet. Whatever he said, it startled Matt and seemed to break the “trance” that he was in, and he stopped speaking. Jake snapped out of it as well.
Cat slowly reached over and pressed “stop” on the cassette recorder, and looked at the two of them.
“Either this is the most fucked-up practical joke you’ve ever tried to pull on me, Matt, or you two are into some freaky Christian thing and speaking in tongues, or… or… something really weird is happening.”