Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

Then another sensation filled me and I began to feel a great fear. It felt like somebody… no, not somebody, some thing was hunting for me with deadly intent. I was beginning to get very scared now. I still couldn’t move my head because of the traction, so I began to search the room as far as my eyes could reach. At the same time, I reached for the call button to summon the nurse. Before I could touch it, though, there came a contact.

There was a distinct sensation of terror. There was also a worry that the thing I had sensed before was going to discover the person I was now sensing. Then the feeling of self came. The person was female and she was scared that if the thing found her, the best she could hope for was that it would kill her. The real terror, though, was that it would have a far worse fate in store for her. I could feel her fear and it was as real for me as it was for her. Trembling with that fear, I could feel sweat forming on my forehead. I closed my eyes, and, as the room was cut off from my vision, another source of input flooded into me. With it came an identity: Lynarra! I had thought the previous conversation with her had been a dream. Now I was beginning to believe otherwise. After all, I had never before had contact with a dream character while I was awake.

In my mind’s eye, I could see that Lynarra was trapped. A gnome was coming into the room in which Lynarra was crouched behind a huge block of stone. The gnome had not yet seen her, but discovery was bound to come soon. Five yards away was a window, the only means of escape, yet too far for her to attempt to reach. The gnome would have her as soon as it caught sight of her. I stared with my mind’s eye at the gnome and felt my sense of contact with Lynarra fade away. Swiftly, contact with the gnome came to me. Feelings of pain, anger, carnage, malice, and many other forms of evil intent caused me to reel with dizziness. Only because I was lying down in bed, back in my hospital room, did I keep from losing my balance. I clenched my teeth and grasped the sheets under my hands with all the pitiful weakness I had. Never before had I known that much evil could reside in any one creature.

I braced myself against this feral malevolence and sent tendrils of my consciousness at the gnome. I was staggered with surprise when I found myself inside this creature’s mind—if it could be called that. It was like I was in a hallway with corridors branching off in various directions. One corridor led me to a memory of this creature bowing down to an evil that paled its own evil in comparison. A name came with this memory and it shocked me because I knew the name: Zernebock—Master of the Hodekin. I rapidly backed off and turned into another pathway. Here I found another memory, a memory of a race called the Ancients. Instantly, the spells and enchantments, charms and sorceries, the mantras of magiks, all of the things the gnome had learned became a part of me. I knew that I could defeat this creature if we ever faced each other in battle. But I knew that I would also be placed in great peril by such a battle.

The next corridor led me to a buried memory of this creature’s birthing. I found myself suddenly present at that awful event. An old woman, old in years and experience, was lying on a cot, near death, wracked with pain, unable to pass the oversized newborn through her withered birthing canal. A midwife had been called, but she was at a loss at giving any aid to the old woman. Two other people were present in the room with the old woman and the mid-wife. Two men: one clad in mail and armor, dirk and sword hung at his side; the other, the old man who owned the wayhouse. The armed man was speaking, angrily.

“I tell ye Lucinda, it bodes evil that this child comes this night! Th’ storm outside be but an omen that ill comes with this birthing! Dinna be party to this!”

“But Swordmaster Kierkin,” the old man pleaded, “if Par-caminia dinna birth soon, she’ll die.”

“Look at her, Cauponis! Durst ye ken that ’twould be relief to her?!”

At that moment, the door crashed open and a cloaked and hooded figure entered with a swirling fall of raindrops, Swordmaster Kierkin’s hand was instantly on the haft of his sword as the way-houseman and midwife cringed away from the figure in the doorway. Before Kierkin could draw his sword, a bony hand emerged from the cloak and pointed at him. A horrible voice boomed forth from the hood.

“Stay thy hand, swordmaster, or die before a new breath be drawn!”

Kierkin looked up at the figure and must have realized that the threat had not been an idle one, so he dropped his hand away from his sword and bowed his head. The figure then buried its bony hand back in the cloak and addressed the three people standing around the old woman.

“Yon babe shall be birthed this eve to the woe of many! It shall be mine bondsman and many wilt bend knee before it! Nou leave this room ’ere thy lives be worth naught!”

Thoroughly cowed, all three walked out into the rain as if all will had left their bodies. Without a hand touching the door, it swung closed behind the cloaked figure. As the figure approached the old woman, her rheumy eyes opened and she warily watched it come nearer. The hood slowly slid back of its own accord, and, as the old woman saw the face that, until then, had been hidden, she gasped and then lost consciousness. The figure looked dispassionately at the dying woman and then moved to stand next to the cot. Raising its hands, the figure began to make intricate designs that glowed in the air above the old woman. The unconscious woman drew a breath, a second one, and then, before her chest could rise a third time, the figure closed its left hand in the air and the old woman’s chest sank, never to rise again.

Suddenly, the cloaked figure froze and the head slowly turned to look directly at the point from which I had been viewing everything thus far. I flinched before I remembered that I couldn’t possibly be seen, that this was nothing more than a memory of the creature that was stalking Lynarra. But the figure did appear to be staring directly at me. The eyes glowed with a sickly, pale-yellow, and pupils that were thin slits of bright red. The skin of the centuries old, wrinkled face was a mottled shade of putrescent green that had a decidedly unhealthy glow. The bald pate was shiny with a sheen of febrile dampness that gave it a look of decayed death. The figure then brought its thin, liver-colored lips into a hideous, humorless grin and began to mumble.

At first, the words seemed to be random phrases of nonsense, but, as I listened, I began to recognize the language as one long dead on both this world and mine. Somehow I knew this person to be one of the Ancients. A member of a race of beings that made a study of alchemy, the working of magiks, sorcerers and wizardries. These Ancients had wandered the various dimensions at will long before mankind had begun to proliferate on my own world. And I also knew somehow that this Ancient one was the outcast known as The Wicked One—Zernebock!

I began to withdraw from the memory, while still watching the smile and pure evil intent of the eyes. Suddenly, the figure flung its left hand in my direction and a wave of inky darkness flew toward me. As the darkness seemed to wash over and through me, I felt nothing, but the macabre tableau before me was blocked from my view. Then the darkness passed by me. Once again I could see what was happening in the room.

The belly of the old woman was now split open and Zernebock was pulling the child out of the woman’s womb. There was surprisingly little blood spilled, as if the body had been completely drained of blood before the child had been removed. From my viewpoint, the old woman’s body now looked like nothing but an empty husk. The body now forgotten, Zernebock cradled the infant in the crook of one arm and started to turn around. As the malevolent eyes passed my viewpoint, Zernebock froze. Once more this Ancient one appeared to be staring into my very soul. A frown turned the thin-lipped grin into a terrible grimace, and again the strange language was spoken. This time I had no trouble understanding it.