Super Dark (Super Dark Trilogy) (35 page)

W
hen I awoke it was the middle of the night. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. My head and throat hurt like hell, and my pillow was bathed in a steaming halo of sweat. Glancing beneath the covers, I saw that I was dressed in freshly washed pajamas that smelled sweetly of fabric softener.

I scanned my surroundings. The bedroom was shrouded in darkness, but parts were bathed in shards of milky lamplight that filtered in through the net curtains.

I put my hand to my forehead. It felt pretty swollen and for a moment, I forgot what had happened.

“How’s your head?” asked a voice. “Feeling better?”

Startled, I looked up and saw Elliot standing by the window. For a couple of tense moments, I didn’t move. I could only stare at him, my mind trying to reconcile the madness of the past few hours.

Bizarrely, the most vivid memory I had was wetting myself. I wondered how I managed to smell so clean and fresh now. And come to think of it, what had happened to the dirty tracksuit I’d been wearing?

And then I realized, with a shock, that Elliot must have cleaned me up and changed me into the pajamas. The thought of him seeing me at my most vulnerable disturbed me.

“What time is it?” I whispered hoarsely.

“Just past midnight,” he replied. “You’ve been out cold for two hours.”

“That long?” I closed my eyes again for a second. “Is my mum home yet?”

“No,” he said. “She left a message on the answer machine saying all the trains were canceled so she’s spending the night in Sevenoaks. She’ll be back tomorrow morning.” His voice brightened. “But don’t worry. I’ve tidied the living room and left some money to re-plaster the wall and buy a new dining table. The cash is in an envelope on the sideboard.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t understand how he could sound so calm about everything. Fixing up the living room was the least of my problems right now.

And then I remembered, and everything hit me like a slap in the face, infusing me with a sense of dread that was completely overwhelming. The horrible apparition I’d seen in the living room … More memories from earlier came flooding back, like fragments from a dream, and my confusion turned to terror. I thought of Greg’s foul breath, his slavering jaws, and the pure venom in those cold yellow eyes.

I let out a low groan as a sharp pain suddenly shot through my temples. Grimacing, I clutched the side of my swollen head.

Elliot moved toward the bed, his brow knotted with concern. “Why don’t you let me take a look at that?”

I raised my arms as if to block a punch. “Stay back!”

“Please let me look at it,” he implored. “I can help to ease your pain.”

“With your ‘healing hands?’” I shot back sarcastically. “Frasier was right. You’re not normal.”

Not normal didn’t even begin to scratch the surface, but it was all I could think to say.

I squinted at him through the darkness, trying to read his expression. “What the hell was that, Elliot?” I demanded. “All that stuff with the mist. What was it, some kind of crazy magic trick? And if you tell me ‘it’s complicated’ one more time, I’ll scream,” I added sternly.

He sighed deeply and crossed back to the window. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t give me that!” I hissed. “I was almost killed tonight. I think I deserve to know what’s going on. You owe me that at least. What
was
that thing in the living room?” I shuddered at the memory.

“Are you sure you really want to know?” he asked softly.

“Yes!”

“Because if I tell you, there’s no going back, you know. I’ll be putting your life in danger, and perhaps your mother’s, too. Nothing will ever be the same again.”

“Do you think it could ever be the same now, after what I saw?” I asked. “Elliot, I just saw my mother’s boyfriend transform into something out of a Stephen King novel. How much crazier can things get? Whatever happens, I’m screwed, so you might as well just spit it out. So I repeat, what was that thing in the living room?”

“A gresvelt,” he replied quietly.

“Come again?”

“A gresvelt.”

“What the heck is a gresvelt?”

Turning his back to me, Elliot stared out the window and was silent for a long time. Then he started talking in a soft, low voice, as if preparing me for a bedtime story. “I don’t even know where to begin. So much has happened, it’s unreal.”

“Just begin at the beginning,” I snapped.

“Okay.” He paused to take another deep breath. “Basically, it all started that night I got snatched. After they let you go, the Gruesome Twosome drove me around for a while before heading into the country somewhere. I don’t remember where. I was so terrified. I was convinced they were going to murder me or something. In a way, what they had planned for me was much worse.” He swallowed hard and licked his lips. I could tell this was really difficult for him, and my heart went out to him.

“Go on,” I breathed. “What happened next?”

“I spent the first night sleeping in the back of the van under a dirty blanket. My captors didn’t speak English, so I had no idea what they wanted from me. The next morning, we drove to a field near one of the big highways. The woman, whose name I later learned was Saura, got me to stand by the roadside, waving to passing vehicles in the hope of flagging one down. She wanted me to pretend I was in trouble, to get their attention. The first time she told me to do it, I went along with it because I thought it might be a good opportunity to escape. How wrong I was …” He shook his head sadly.

“Why? What happened?” I asked.

Elliot exhaled slowly. “Eventually, one of the drivers stopped and came over to see if I was okay. I told him my parents had been involved in a car crash and led him to the field where the Gruesome Twosome were waiting. As soon as the man got there, they jumped on him.” He hesitated. “That was the first time I saw them transform into gresvelts. I think I must have fainted or something, because I don’t remember much of what happened.”

“Wait a minute,’ I interjected. “You’re saying the Gruesome Twosome were like Greg? They were gresvelts?”

Elliot nodded grimly.

“But what exactly
are
they?”

He shrugged. “Monsters. Carnivores. I don’t know. How do you describe the indescribable?”

“This is insane.” I reflected for a second, but then said, “So finish your story. What did they do to the man?”

“What man?”

“The guy you lured to the field. Did they hurt him?”

Elliot shifted his weight awkwardly. “Like I said, I don’t remember a lot. All I know is, I woke up in the van and the whole place was covered with blood. It was everywhere. The man’s blood. Everywhere. I believe they’d eaten every last bit of him, even the bones …” He spoke the last part so quietly, he was barely audible.

My stomach churned and I swallowed again and again, fighting to keep from throwing up. Words couldn’t express how disgusted I was, and for a few minutes I was shocked into silence.

“He was the first, but he wasn’t the last,” Elliot continued. “They started making me do it all the time, at least once a week. Sure, they ate other types of meat: foxes, rabbits, sheep, whatever they could get their hands on. But nothing tasted as good as human flesh. They had a craving for it that could never be sated. They used me as bait. I’d stand by the roadside, flag down a car, tell some story about being involved in an accident—and lead them to their doom. And it worked, most of the time. After all, who could resist a cute little seven-year-old in distress?”

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did they need to use you as bait? Surely the Gruesome Twosome could have done the slayings themselves?”

He shook his head. “They didn’t like going out in public. They lived in the shadows, looking for victims to feed on, and I guess they figured a human child with a sob story was the perfect ruse. I also think they got some kind of a sadistic thrill out of it, like it was all a game.”

Fury rose in my chest. “Didn’t you try to escape?”

“Many, many times,” he said. “But they always caught up with me. They beat me, tortured me, and starved me. Sometimes, I was so weak I could barely stand. For days on end, I had nothing to eat but water and dead leaves. I mean, I wasn’t exactly going to partake in their diet of human flesh, was I?”

I shivered at the thought.

He continued even more softly. “After a couple of weeks, I started to pick up bits and pieces of their language. Ghunnaic, they called it. Soon, we were able to have full conversations. It was then that the man, Forntas, warned me that, if I ever tried to escape again, he’d slaughter my whole family. He swore that, wherever I ran to, he would track me down and kill every single person dear to me. And I believed him. I mean, I was just a frightened kid, and these were really terrifying monsters. What was I supposed to do?”

“I’d already seen what they were capable of, so I didn’t try to escape again after that. But I’m not gonna lie. I thought about suicide, almost every day. I couldn’t live with the guilt of what they were forcing me to do. All those innocent people losing their lives. It was sick …” Elliot broke off, his lips quivering with emotion.

Tears pricked my eyes, but I managed to hold it together. For some reason, one of the lines from
Streetcar
came to mind:
Show me a person who hasn´t known any sorrow and I´ll show you a superficial.

I needed to hear this out to the end. I couldn’t let myself cry in front of him—at least, not yet.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, keeping my voice level. “You were just a child, Elliot. A child! You weren’t responsible for what happened. They forced you to do it. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“I know,” he whispered, “but it doesn’t make me feel any better. I guess it’s something I’ll have to think about for the rest of my life.”

For a moment, our hearts connected with overpowering force. I felt his pain and misery, and I wept inside for him.
This could so easily have happened to me. Had it not been for Elliot’s brave sacrifice, I could have been a pawn in the Gruesome Twosome’s deadly game.

The mixture of relief and guilt I felt was overwhelming. Those two emotions would forever be entwined with my memories of Elliot.

He sat at the edge of the bed. I thought I could see tears in his eyes, but perhaps that was just my imagination. In the night gloom, it was difficult to tell what was real.

When he spoke again, his voice was stronger, more composed. “We moved around the country a lot, never staying in the same place twice. During the day, we stayed in the van. At night, we slept in fields and deserted car lots. The whole country was searching for me, and the Gruesome Twosome knew only too well how careful they had to be.”

Elliot’s eyes had a faraway look. “But after a while, the police stopped looking for me so intensely. My captors started to relax a little. They even started sending me out to shopping malls. They disguised me in a wig and gypsy clothing, pierced my ears and forced me to wear lots of jewelry, which I hated. They wanted me to look like them, be part of their warped family. I despised them for it but I didn’t have a choice. I had to learn to steal for my supper. We needed fuel and other amenities to survive, and the money I stole helped to fund that.”

He scratched the side of his chin. “You know, it’s funny. One time a woman recognized me from a missing child poster and tried to call the police, but I swore that I wasn’t the boy everyone was searching for. In the end, she believed me, but she took a lot of convincing.”

My tears flowed slowly, bitterly. “Why did you keep going back?” I whispered. “You had so many opportunities to escape.”

“Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said?” he shot back fiercely. “I told you, they threatened to kill my family. I couldn’t take the risk. And after what I’d been through, I didn’t feel I deserved my parent’s love, or anyone’s love. I felt tainted. I actually started to believe I truly was evil—that I somehow deserved the cruelty inflicted on me.”

I flinched, the words stabbing me like a poker. “Oh Elliot … I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

He shrugged. “In the end, I got so sick of everything, I just didn’t care anymore. I could have walked in front of a train and not felt anything. I looked to the future, and all I could see was blackness. I felt so dead inside, like a burnt-out husk. But one thing kept me going, and that was the thought that I might one day see your face again. Hear your laugh. See your smile. That was all I had to hold on to when I was at my lowest.”

“I really meant that much to you?”

“Yes. You still do.”

We stared at each other a long time, my heart battering in my chest.

Eventually, I cleared my throat: “So, where are the Gruesome Twosome now?”

He fell silent, his eyes on the floor, fingers tinkering with the hem of the blanket. “One night when I was about eleven, a sentinel broke into our van and slaughtered them both. Ripped their heads clean off.” He shuddered at the memory.

“What’s a sentinel?” I gulped. “Some kind of guard?”

He nodded. “Put simply, a sentinel is a gresvelt assassin.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You mean, there are more of these creatures?”