Necromanson (Beta) Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Henry broke through the fence, following the plow that rumbled forward, churning up the earth as it went. His commander led the way, cutting a path through the chaotic, ear splitting din of noise. His friends howled around him, shooting controlled bursts toward the concrete fortifications as they trotted along.

Concussive sounds, more felt than heard, travelled through Henry’s organs as the plow began pushing mines out of the ground, detonating them toward the defenders. Henry wore a fierce grin, trotting with his friends, entirely unchecked. They were going to make them pay, have justice for every indignity visited upon them.

Henry spotted a pasty face raise above the lip of reinforced concrete, and he dropped to his knee, sighted his AK-47, and fired in a breath, just as he had trained. Henry’s keen eyes made out a splash of blood against the wall behind the enemy soldier, and he jumped up with a cry of joy, jostling against his teammates in his exhuberance.

Thrown off balance, Henry stumbled one, two steps away from the path made by the plow. A blast flung his legs out from under him, and Henry found himself laying on his back, coughing. Henry spotted his gun, resting beside him and seized it, climbing to his feet.

Or, that’s what should have happened. Henry grabbed the gun, tried to put his legs under him, and flopped onto his side. Henry tried once more, and a wave of pain swept through him, radiating from his legs. Henry put his arms beneath him, and looked downward. His legs ended six inches above the knee, ragged and bloody.

A thin wail erupted from Henry’s lips, as he dragged himself away with his hands, leaving a crimson trail backward through the overturned dirt as his friends parted around him like a river around a stone.

I wanna go home, I wanna go home. Henry chanted in his mind, as he dragged himself away from the noise and chaos, tears flowing down his face. His arms grew weak, and Henry found himself unable to pull himself any further as he reached the broken fence. Dizziness overtook him, and the world went white.

“So let me get this straight, you were celebrating, because you thought you’d killed me, then you fucked up and got your legs blown off, and decided to haunt me?” Henry said, returning to the same featureless void he always did after a nightmare. “Ever consider that had things been different, I’d be the one haunting you?” Henry faced Halil, who puffed on his cigar.

“I would relish it,” he said, blowing smoke from his nose.

“Huh,” Henry grunted, leaning on the table slovenly. “So why’d you stay when your buddies took off? Seemed to me like getting eaten would be a bad thing.”

“The annihilation of the soul,” Halil said, staring at Henry. “They were cowards, unwilling to risk the True Death for a chance at greatness. Halil picked up a chip from in front of him, and held it out. The chip in his hand seemed to dissolve, revealing a mote of brilliant light.

“What do you think this is?” Halil asked, balancing the mote on his finger, his face illuminated by the light.

“I thought it was a poker chip,” Henry said guardedly, his eyes on the brilliant light.

“This is a person,” Halil said, as the mote returned to a chip. The spell we went through stripped everything away from every man, woman, and child in that building,” Halil set the chip down on his side of the table. “And converted them to power.”

“And you want to keep yours?” Henry asked, his tone dry.

Halil leaned back, fixing Henry with a solemn stare. “I do,” he said, simply. “I’ve spent almost as long dead as I had been alive, and it has done little to quell the dissatisfaction I had with the time I spent on earth.”

Henry tapped his fingers on the table. “So what makes you think it’s okay to use those people to pad your reincarnation pension fund?”

Halil shrugged. “The deed has already been done, I had no part in it, why let some demon amass more power? Simply denying it from him is a good in itself. Henry squinted his eyes at Halil’s emphasis of ‘I’.

“Are you saying I had something to do with it?” Henry asked, his voice a low growl.

“You know you had something to do with it,” Halil said, running his fingers along the stacks of chips in front of him. “You laid the circle that lies underneath the fountain, fixed all the complications with such a haphazard system. Knowingly or not, you helped kill everyone in that building.”

Henry seethed, his anger making his vision red. “What do you mean by everyone.” he demanded, clenching his fists.

In response, Halil held up another chip in the palm of his hand. “This was a woman named Leanne,” Halil said as the chip resolved into the woman herself, in miniature. She was nude, limp, stretched across Halil’s palm in apparent death. “You told her to stay indoors, and then strung wires across the emergency exit and elevators to prevent anyone from escaping.”

“That’s not why I did it!” Henry shouted, slamming his palm against the table.

“It’s the result that we’re concerned with, though, isn’t it?” Halil said, taking another puff of his cigar. “You trapped those people inside their homes with fear, and profited greatly from it.

“If I profited, then where are my chips?” Henry asked,

Halil smiled. “You already made your wish,” he said, blowing stinging smoke into Henry’s eyes.

Henry blinked, wiping the gritty glue of sleep out of his eyes. Henry sat in an old couch, a beam of light across his eyes, making him squint. He was in a modest cabin with a worn fur rug and unpainted wood panels built around a sturdy stone hearth. A scratchy wool blanket was wrapped around him, and Henry found his fingertips throbbing with pain where he had held it tight over himself through the night.

Craning his neck to take in the living room, Henry spotted a change of clothes laid out for him just beyond his reach. Weary and aching from the abuse his body had endured the night before, Henry reached out for the faded jeans folded atop the end table. Straining, Henry couldn’t quite make his arm stretch the full distance to the clothes. It was becoming increasingly likely that he’d have to leave the comfort of his blanket.

“Get over here,” Henry snarled at the jeans, feeling his whole body stretch. The pants rose to meet his hand. Henry stared at the pants in his hand. Only when the frigid air painfully tightened his nipples did Henry close his mouth and break out of the trance. Henry focused on the shirt and reached out for it. “you too.”

The shirt flew to his hand. Henry started giggling, flinging the clothes on, mindless of the early morning chill. Henry chortled, unable to contain his joy. Henry ran out the door, his gaze scanning the surrounding forest. Henry focused on a nearby rock and tried throwing it at a tree. It wobbled to the tree, tapping it with a disappointing clack.

“not super impressive, but…” Henry said, musing. “I can move things with my mind!” Henry tilted his head back and howled in pure joy. Henry danced and hopped in place, unable to control himself, until he collapsed to a seat, panting.

Henry looked at the rock again, his eyes narrowed in concentration. He had tried to pick up and throw the rock the first time, but he found himself mostly fighting to keep it aloft, so this time, Henry pictured the rock in the sling of a large slingshot, pulling until he felt a tangible strain in his mind. It felt as though his brain was being doused in the lactic acid usually reserved for one’s muscles.

With a mental snap, he released the sling, and the rock shot off of the ground, embedding itself in the tree with a much more satisfying crack! Henry whooped, nearly delirious with joy. Just imagine if it had been a claymore, Henry thought to himself.

The tree exploded.

Henry threw his hands over his face, a little voice in the back of his mind telling him that it was pointless. Explosions happen faster than you can blink, whatever shrapnel was going to burrow into him had already done it long before he raised his arms. It was pure reflex action.

“What the hell was that?” Athena leaned out of the second story window, her brown eyes first landing on the shredded tree, then locking onto Henry, who was leaning against the wall of the house, his face covered in soot. “What happened?”

Henry brushed his hands over his body, like he’d been trained, looking for painful or itchy spots. Once Henry was confident he’d taken no damage to a major organ, he looked up at Athena, who leaned out over the windowsill.

“I can do magic,” Henry said with a grin.

“What the hell?” Athena said, pulling her head out of the window. Henry heard clomping resonate through the house as she barreled down the stairs. Moments later, the door flew open as Henry was coming to a stand. Athena burst out, still shrugging on a jacket.

“What the hell did you do to the tree?” Athena demanded, stalking toward Henry with a thunderous expression.

“Sorry,” Henry said, glancing at the shredded tree trunk with chagrin. “I just had a stray thought when I was shooting rocks at the tree with my mind, and it exploded.”

Athena crossed her arms. “Really,” She said, a brow raised, sarcasm oozing from her.

In response, Henry made a pebble float in front of the two of them, holding it perfectly, unnaturally still. He snapped the slingshot in his mind, and the pebble flew away, embedding itself in a tree a great distance away. Henry pictured that the stone was a directional charge of C-4.

The tree in the distance burst into shards of wood, showering down into the woods surrounding them. Athena stood stock still, her mouth agape, until Henry said her name twice and waved his hand in front of her face. Athena brushed his hand away and glared at him.

“Okay, let’s say you can do magic,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “Stop blowing up my trees.” Athena emphasized her point by poking Henry in the chest.

Henry leaned away from her fiery glare, and glanced at the tattered wood stumps on the treeline. “No more destruction of property, got it,” he said, scratching his head. “Do you know a field or sandlot or something I could play-“ Henry coughed. “Experiment in?”

Athena pointed to the other side of the house. “there’s a trail behind the house that leads to a lake. No one’s been there in twenty years, go nuts.”

Henry nodded and broke into a trot, grinning from ear to ear, jumping and waving his arms, whooping as he ran down the trail.

***Athena***

Athena watched Henry disappear behind the house and sighed. “What have you gotten yourself into?” she asked, climbing up the rough wood stairs, walking through the open door and sitting down in front of the T.V.

Athena turned on the tube, the old T.V. flaring to life. The last time she had used it had been a late night four years ago, bored out of her mind, surfing the high three digit channels. A televangelist was on channel eight hundred and fourty three, where she had left it before finally surrendering to sleep.

Athena watched the man with the angular face declare himself the son of god, and chortled before switching the channel to the news. The news was running a story on the rash of missing people since Henry Stein’s mass murder and subsequent escape, suggesting that human trafficking might be how he had funded the two dozen armed men.

Athena grunted. In the distance, she heard another explosion, followed by a whoop of delight. Athena could not picture that man as the mastermind, not someone who acted the way he did. Athena stood, tossing the remote onto the table, ready to go for her morning exercise. I should probably avoid the lake until he gets making things explode out of his system. She thought, as the remote hit the wood surface.

Athena set out jogging, taking a path closer to the road, further away from the echoing explosions. The cabin didn’t have any neighbors, so she wasn’t worried about being reported. The last few days re-ran in her mind as she switched to a rough, root-infested trail, scampering over the uneven ground. Athena thought back to the feverish look Henry had given her, chock full of desire, before he artificially pinned his gaze to her face.

Athena found herself smiling. Henry had the body of a man who had begun the downward slide into apathy, developing just a bit of a stomach, but his blue eyes, honest smile, and awkward avoidance of raking his gaze up and down her body was endearing. She might have gone on a date with him, had he not been America’s Most wanted, and currently exploding things with his mind.

Athena’s brows furrowed, her thoughts turning to the night before. As soon as she saw the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to take Henry pass through the guard’s eyes, his chest burst outward, like a cheesy alien movie, except with warm blood covering your blouse. Athena shuddered. None of this was the way it should have been. She still didn’t know for sure if Henry was completely innocent.

Her job, she felt, was to believe in her client’s innocence, but there had been many a guy who she wouldn’t trust alone with her. So why had she taken him to Toby’s cabin? There had to have been some truth to his story, evidenced by the rumbling explosions coming from the lake.

Athena leaped over a fallen tree before the woods cleared, revealing the two story home that had been left to her care. She had gradually picked up her pace while she was running, finally noticing her momentum when she slid to a halt in the gravel driveway. Athena trotted to a stop, panting. She looked down the trail leading to the lake, her ears registering no explosions.

Judging it potentially safe to investigate, Athena grabbed a water bottle, filled it up with the squeaky steel pump, and went to see what Henry was up to. Athena strolled down the trail, admiring the verdant green glowing from the noon day sun filtering through the trees. The only issue was the mosquitos.

Athena hadn’t been bothered by them on her run, as she didn’t spend enough time in one place for them to catch up. On the trail to the lake, sweating from her morning run, the mosquitos came out in force, and Athena found herself jogging again, just to keep them out of her face.

Athena got to the lake panting, not wanting to slow down long enough to develop her own cloud of insects. She swept the lake with her gaze, looking for Henry. “Henry!” she called out, beginning to run around the edge of the lake. “Where-“ Athena’s words died in her throat when she spotted Henry face-down in the water, floating like a corpse.

Athena sprinted out into the lake, the water spraying around her as she plowed through the knee-high water. She grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled his head out of the water, but no breath escaped his slack face, water rolling down over open eyes.

With a surge of panic, Athena dragged Henry to shore, her muscles burning from the strain. She dropped him on the muddy bank, his legs still in the water from the knee down. Athena, not knowing CPR, made her best guess. “Henry,” She shouted, slapping him roughly across the side of his cold cheek. Athena climbed on top of the bigger man, and channeled her weight down on his diaphragm, trying to force the water out of his lungs.

Henry’s eyes shot open, and a blast of water sprayed out of his mouth. “uagh…” he said, in between wracking coughs, forcing the last of the water out of his lungs. He finally noticed Athena mounted on his waist, her knees in the muck beside him. “Mouth to mouth?” Henry groaned as he asked, squinting his eyes against the noon sun.

Athena shook her head. “No, you woke up without it.”

“Damn.” Henry muttered to himself. Athena blushed.

“What the hell were you doing floating face down in the water, anyway?” Athena asked, trying to change the subject. “If I hadn’t come to check on you, you’d be dead. If I looked right instead of left, you’d be dead.”

Henry glanced around, taking in the shredded trees, and the little wood fort he’d been putting together with his mind, and shrugged. “Guess I got carried away?” he said, with a little smile and a shrug.

Henry sat up, and found himself face-to-face with Athena, who was still perched on his waist. The moment stretched on, and Henry found himself wanting to kiss her full lips. Heartbeats went by as they stared at each other silently, and Henry opened his dumb mouth.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“What?” Athena said breathlessly.

“You’re still sitting on me, did you hurt yourself?” Henry asked, glancing down at Athena’s legs wrapping around his waist.

Athena considered Henry for a moment, then planted a kiss on his lips, pressing herself against him. It lasted for a heart-pounding moment that must have only been a second, but Henry’s mind was still reeling when Athena stood, smiling down at him, the sun creating an aura of bright light around her.

“Since you missed out on the mouth-to-mouth,” She said with a mischievous grin.

Henry got to his feet, his heart hammering. “Thanks,” He said, taking a moment to process his feelings. If Athena found him an umpteenth as attractive as he found her, maybe he had a shot. A sudden thought wormed its way into the back of his mind.

One of the things he had childishly wished for when he was young and stupid, was the ability to control people’s minds. He’d never put a lot of thought into what it would be like from the other side, but he had seen a T.V. show that explored the concept to horrific results, thoroughly turning Henry off of the idea permanently. Even so, Henry knew that a small part of himself would be tempted by it.

The question was, was he capable of it, and had he done it already? The only way to find out was to try it…

Henry smacked himself in the face.

“What the hell?” Athena said, frowning. “Was it that bad?”

Henry shook his head, “No, I almost did something stupid just now,” he said, using his mind to pick up a rock and tumble it in front of him, focusing his attention away from Athena before he could find himself thinking along those lines again.

Athena slapped the top of his head, derailing his spiraling train of thought. “Cut that out,” She said as the rock fell to the ground. “It’s probably why you passed out in the first place.”

Henry chuckled. “You’re probably right,” he said, his destructive train of thought broken. Henry looked down at his mud covered clothes, noting the burning hunger in his stomach. Henry looked back at Athena. “ I think I’m going to need another hosing, and then lunch.”

“you can take a shower tonight when I run the generator, but we’re on our own for lunch,” Athena said, gazing around the lake. “I haven’t stocked this place in five years, and you probably scared away anything with meat within a few miles of here.” Athena waved a mosquito away from her face.

Henry pantomimed rolling up his sleeves and squared his shoulders. “Okay, I’ll gather stuff for lunch” he said, marching toward the house, his eyes searching the underbrush for edibles.

Athena walked Henry back to the house, keeping a close eye on him for signs that he may pass out again. He waited outside while she got the hose and a basket. After a quick hosedown to remove the mud, Athena handed him the basket.

“Take this, and try not to pass out again,” Athena said, as Henry took the basket away from her, shivering. “And If you do pass out, try not to do it face down in the water.”

“I’m not sure I can guarantee that,” Henry said, hefting the basket. “It seems to manifest anything I think about hard enough, but sometimes I can’t control what that it. It’s like a four year old wetting the bed, or a teenager getting a boner at awkward times. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“That’s an interesting comparison,” Athena said, crossing her arms “And not very comforting, what happens if you think the wrong thing?” she asked.

“I slap myself in the face,” Henry responded, straight-faced.

“Ah,” Athena said, a smile coming to her lips. “Well, good luck with that. There should be some rhubarb around the house, and there’s a wild strawberry bed about a hundred feet into the woods that way.” Athena pointed into the woods just off the trail to the lake.

“Got it,” Henry said, snapping a salute before turning toward the woods.

Athena watched Henry walk into the woods a moment longer before breathing out her anxiety in a sigh. “I really hope he’s okay,” she said to herself before getting to work.