The Narrows, page 16
The knave did not turn back to provide its answer, focusing on the route through which it was leading him. “The Narrows are all over,” it said. Oliver found its voice unnaturally smooth now, like it could slip right through his fingers. “Orrum and Gamyrdean are the only Eidolons that roam throughout this area, and only Orrum presides over it.”
“So other Eidolons control other parts of the world?”
“Precisely.”
“Why?”
The knave uttered that low, guttural, laugh-ish sound again, but gave no actual reply.
So Oliver tried a different approach. “What other Eidolons are there?”
It chuckled heartily again before shutting him down. “You ask many questions, Oliver,” it said. “You are here but for one purpose. Do not lose sight of that.”
Though he yearned for more context and understanding of the Narrows, he had to concede the knave was right. No real need to cloud his mind with Eidolons and the rules of the world, pondering the fabric of existence.
He was here to find Noah and get out. He was set to cut ties with the knave as soon as humanly possible.
On their left was what, in the real world, was Ash’s house. Oliver eyed it as they sauntered past. The front door was ajar, hanging off one of its hinges, and most of the glass was broken in the windows. Paint peeled off the walls and there was a sizeable dent in the side of the house, as if a bull had rammed into it. As he tried to imagine what sort of monster was responsible, he suddenly wished he had Ash’s gun with him.
They rounded the corner and the knave came to a stop in front of what was probably one of the better-looking houses in the neighborhood, though its condition was still below standard. The door was functioning properly and closed tight, but glass was entirely missing from all of its windows, from which emanated a faint, multicolored glow like Christmas lights.
The roof was partially caved in, never repaired after seemingly having a tree collapse on it or having Orrum climb atop. The mailbox out front (Oliver found the notion of anybody having mail delivered here comical) was snapped in half at its post, the tin can lying open and empty in the patch of grass below.
It was also, without a doubt, the primary source of the aroma floating through the Narrows, though Oliver assumed that the scent could likely be traced to every object there.
“We have arrived at our destination,” said the knave.
Oliver cocked an eyebrow at the building, unconvinced. “Noah is in there?”
He did feel a strong pull toward the house, some sort of energy stemming from it, but he couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was. Maybe that energy was indeed Noah. The tug he had been expecting.
“What you seek is inside,” the knave replied, edging forward toward the doorway.
Great, it’s being vague. Surely a good sign.
He trailed behind the knave, which came to a halt at the front step, moving aside to grant Oliver entry. It gestured toward the doorknob, indicating he should be the one to enter first.
That gave Oliver pause.
“What’s inside?” he asked. Even as he voiced his suspicion, he was oddly compelled to grasp the knob and fling the door open.
Whatever the house contained, it was calling out to him. Practically screaming. It reverberated in his chest, pounding at him.
The knave stared up, silent. Its stillness was unnerving, and Oliver momentarily longed for its skin to bubble again.
“Fine,” he said, ignoring the thing and grabbing the doorknob. “Whatever. Fuck it.”
He pulled. Then gasped. And the knave slid past him, entering the house.
He followed.
~
Oliver knew innately that Noah was not in this house. That it was completely and totally abandoned, and probably had been for months, if not centuries. But he was still astonished by what he saw inside.
The house was filled to the brim with gems.
They cluttered the floor, piled high to the ceiling, hidden underneath chairs or stuffed into the fireplace or lining moldy bookshelves. Gems precisely like the one Oliver had extracted from Christopher Pedraza littered the house, scattered all over the floor except for a trail of walkable space that led through each room.
There had to be hundreds of them, if not thousands. Their colors varied wildly, from blue to green to purple to red to orange and every shade imaginable of each color. Many sparkled, though no light shined upon them. They had their own inner glow. Others, though, seemed to have dulled. Their surface was almost gray, with only a hint of their former sheen peeking out.
But a majority, by far, were dead.
The gems had caved in on themselves, their surfaces caked in grime or otherwise split apart like rotten fruit. Like the corpse flower in bloom. These decaying gems were the origin of the stench that permeated throughout the Narrows.
And it was the gems that had been calling out to Oliver. Their pleas were overwhelming him, a tightness developing in his chest that caused him to stagger further into the house, leaving the front door hanging open.
Something pulsed within him.
My gem.
Oliver was stunned by the energy blasting outward from the multitude of gems lining the walls, filling the cupboards, stuffed into every crevice. When he’d been confronted with only Christopher’s, he had been able to sense the man’s presence within it. Being surrounded by so many now, that same feeling exuded from each one, coalescing into one colossal, indeterminable howl.
The knave wound its way through the entry hall, into the living room near the back of the house. Oliver remained in a daze at the doorway.
Once the preliminary shock wore off, it dawned on him what this scene actually meant. The amount of people the knave had killed in order to remove their gems. It was a baffling number, far beyond too many to count.
Innumerable people had suffered the same horrific fate as Eric Breen and Christopher Pedraza, and for what? To fuel the knave’s bizarre collection?
And then another realization dawned: it would be impossible to find Noah’s gem among these, if it was even there at all. If there had only been a few, it would be simple to identify which one contained his friend’s essence, but with so many, and with that howl…
Unless the knave was leading him to it. With a thousand gems in its possession, what would it matter to part with just one?
Oliver had to remind himself not to trust the knave too much, but still he composed himself and crept through the house, following the knave’s trail, ignoring every instinct in his body to turn heel and run.
“Are you coming, Oliver?” the knave beckoned from around the corner. Oliver barked out a hoarse response in the affirmative.
He carefully navigated the room, stepping over discarded gems, covering his nose as he passed a mound of decomposing husks.
In the pathway was a small, silver gem that still shone brightly. Oliver leaned down and touched a single fingertip to it, running his skin across the jagged edges before wrapping his hand around it.
He could feel the girl it had belonged to.
Elizabeth Ren, something said within him.
Oliver shuddered and let go.
The next room was likewise filled with gems, most much fresher than the rest, their gleam nearly blinding Oliver as he entered.
The knave stood before a broken-down desk in the corner, which rested beside a dusty television with a shattered screen that couldn’t have been more than thirty inches. It was an old piece of technology, the type of boxed television that his parents owned in the 90s. Gems filled the opening in the screen, spilling out of the plastic cube.
A smile stretched across the knave’s face. It was pleased to find Oliver joining it. Its body obscured the contents of a desk drawer that had been pulled open.
“Is Noah’s gem in there?” Oliver asked.
Once again, the knave ignored his question.
It moved with ferocious speed across the room, the wretched smile still splayed across its face. It leapt into the air and latched onto Oliver.
He toppled backward, banging his elbows and the back of his skull on the hardwood floor.
“Thank you for coming and making this easier,” the knave said. Oliver could feel and taste its hot, fetid breath.
The knave was on top of him, its legs sinking into his chest, its body a shadow erupting from within him. It held on to both sides of his head, like it had when it was removing the buzzing from his ears.
Black saliva dripped from its starving maw as the knave ran its left limb across Oliver’s cheek, scraping over his lips, brushing against his lashing tongue as he screamed for it to get off of him. But the knave shook its head unapologetically. It would do what it needed to do.
Fuck, was all Oliver had the capacity to think. He struggled against the knave, but in spite of its diminutive size, it was remarkably strong. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
With that productive thought, the knave’s limb extended into his mouth, slipping through the gaps between his teeth, flowing over his tongue, strangling his words as they tried to escape.
The darkness caressed his throat, rubbing over the ridges of its pink flesh. There was a heat to the knave’s skin, like swallowing a flaming sword. He was a street performer, flailing helplessly on the ground in a decrepit house in another world.
His arms were free. The knave wasn’t restraining him.
He grabbed its body, his two hands almost reaching entirely around the thing’s waist, and pulled it away from him.
Fuck, he thought again.
While he lifted the knave’s body away from his own, its arm protracted in kind, never leaving Oliver’s throat and reaching further down to find its prize in the cereal box.
The smile on its face had grown so wide it threatened to split its head in half, and a giddy snicker lilted through the room.
Bile coursed up from Oliver’s stomach through his throat and erupted in an orange geyser. It burned his insides even more than the knave’s touch. His eyes welled with tears and he could no longer distinctly make out the creature he held above his head. It was an amorphous, blurry black blob.
The thought of succumbing crossed his mind. Just laying back and letting the knave have what it wanted. One more gem for its vast collection. Tossed carelessly onto one of the numerous piles.
He wondered what color his was. His favorite color was green; would that be it?
No.
“Stop,” he sputtered. The syllable was mangled, his tongue lapping on the knave’s arm as he somehow pushed past the vomit. And again, the plea, “Stop.”
The knave said nothing.
Oliver could feel its arm surpass his trachea, reaching further past his collarbone, and his eyes widened with painful, choking sobs. How far did it need to go?
Move.
He released his right hand from the knave, still holding it above himself with the other hand. Without thinking, he grabbed hold of the knave’s arm and began to yank hard on it.
He felt it move back up his throat, ever so slightly.
Oliver dropped the knave, which tumbled down onto his stomach with a rough thud that would have knocked the wind out of him under other circumstances. With both hands, he began to pull at the knave’s arm, sliding it slowly but surely out of his body.
The knave was obviously displeased. It wrapped its free limb around Oliver’s arms, constricting like a snake. Oliver yelped out in agony, but continued pulling.
After a few seconds, however, the pain that bloomed in his arms was overbearing. They were fit to burst in a splattering of red mist.
Oliver shifted his weight and flung himself to the side, turning over so that the knave was pinned underneath his stomach. The maneuver caused a sharp sting to cut through his throat, but it caught the knave off guard as its head slammed into the hardwood and its grip loosened enough for Oliver to redouble his efforts.
He could feel the arm was back up past his trachea, closer to his larynx. Progress was slight, but he kept pulling while the knave was disoriented.
More orange vomit burst out of his mouth, staining the floor and spraying onto some nearby gems, but he was in the final stretch now. The tip of the knave’s limb tickled the back of his throat.
With one final, forceful tug, the black arm came shooting out of his mouth and smashed into a puddle of orange muck on the floor, splashing more of it onto the colored stones and up onto Oliver’s face.
Oliver pushed himself up off the ground, gave the knave a swift kick for good measure, and took a few stumbling steps in the direction of the entryway. He tripped over his own feet as he rushed toward the open door, bumping a few gems in the process.
Behind him, the knave loosed an incomprehensible screech.
He wiped spittle from his face and pushed past the door, slamming it shut behind him.
Then he finally obeyed his instincts and ran.
~
The Narrows were like a nightmare as Oliver raced down the sidewalk, the knave’s bellows dwindling with every step.
He dashed through a dead garden, nearly crashing into a fence built of soft, rotted wood. He curved around the fenceline and continued onward, not wasting time checking to see if the knave was in pursuit. His breathing was shallow and his throat still burned from the assault.
Oliver failed to swat away panic as he sprinted through the field behind the neighborhood. Hardened grass crunched underfoot.
Suddenly the ground was gone, and he found himself rolling down the slope, coming to a crash at the bottom of the drainage ditch.
It contained around a foot of standing water that buzzed with large insects and soaked him up to his knees. He sat up and righted himself, wiping water from his eyes. His vision cleared, and he nearly screamed at what he saw.
Halfway submerged in the water was a corpse, its lower half concealed by the thick, filthy water. Its upper body lay resting on the downward slope, sinking into the patches of mud. Red hair stuck to its cheek and forehead, twirled in thick, wet strands. Oliver immediately recognized that hair.
Eric Breen.
Without the hair, there would have been no way to know it was Eric that lay a few feet away. The head lacked any facial features whatsoever. Oliver had witnessed the eyes and nose and ears melting away back in Shumard Springs, and they had not reappeared here in the Narrows.
But Eric’s mouth was intact. If it could be called “intact.”
The mouth was there, but it hung open abnormally wide. The jaw was broken, probably in several places, and Eric’s tongue lolled out of his skull, with a deep laceration at its end.
I wonder what color his gem is.
Oliver dismissed the morbid thought and shut his eyes.
The cold of the water seeped into his clothes, into his body. He needed to leave.
He pictured Shumard Springs. The real Shumard Springs. The freezing cold wind, the smell of the trees, the quiet of sleep. The peace.
All the while, he could not stop imagining the gem inside of him. How it might sparkle, how it might glow.
What does Noah’s gem look like?
He opened his eyes, and he was back. The haze and the smell and the terror were all gone.
He breathed in the cold, fresh night air. It cleansed him.
~
It was March of 2014, their final semester in college, when Oliver’s father died.
The man had contracted lung cancer. He’d had back pain for a long time, thinking it was due to his age, just a regular part of growing old. The family had chalked up his chest pain and shortness of breath to old age as well. Oliver’s mother insisted he schedule a doctor’s appointment, but he brushed her aside and assured her he was “just an old bastard.” When he began coughing up blood, it was not something he could easily blame on being an old bastard.
A tumor had grown in his left lung, and by the time doctors discovered it, the cancer had spread throughout the lung and to the lymph nodes on the other side of his chest, as well as up near his collarbone. It would soon be stage four.
Chemotherapy was unsuccessful, and Mark Farro died a few months later.
The funeral was held on March 7th, a Friday. Oliver had two midterms that day, but given the circumstances, his professors allowed him to delay the tests until after everyone returned from spring break. A distant part of him was grateful for the extra week of studying time, though he mentally berated himself for even framing the situation in that way.
Noah had been unable to attend, still holed away up north in Oregon, spending the chilly spring days preparing for his own exams. Oliver’s father was not a close enough relation for Noah’s professors to cut him any slack, so he had to remain there for his tests.
He apologized profusely for having to miss the funeral, and Oliver had assured him it was okay; no one aside from his own family would be able to attend either. Sophia was in New York, similarly slogged with school, he and Amber had broken up a month earlier, and Davontae was stuck in Austin for his tests, though he promised he’d drive down to Shumard as soon as he finished.
So Oliver spent the day at his mother’s side, the two of them sharing stories and crying intermittently when it all became too much to handle. They got through the reception dry-eyed, except for when his uncle gave a short speech that brought the whole room to tears.
Oliver sat alone at a plain card-table decorated with a thin tablecloth while his mother mingled with the guests, thanking them for coming, for their condolences, for whatever else. The jittery noise of the crowd was drowned out by his tired thoughts.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He scanned the room, seeking out his mother. She had warned him at the start of the day that she would be furious if he was on his phone at any point. He had to be respectful, had to interact with their guests. When he noted she was preoccupied, he pulled it out and read a message from Noah.
“Just finished my last test. It was brutal. How are you holding up? I’m thinkin of you over here. I wish so badly that I could’ve gone to be there for you, but I know you’re strong. You’ll get through it. Love you, dude.”
Oliver read the message, then read it a second time, and a third, and by the fourth he was tearing up. After a fifth, tears streamed down his cheeks. He started to compose a reply, but all he could muster was “I love you too.”
