Madisonville Murder, Part 6
Madisonville Murder, Part 6
Lost in the Dark
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Machosias didn’t reappear, but that wasn’t much comfort under the circumstances. I was floating in a black void somewhere in my own mind with no obvious way to escape. I floated around for a while, but I found no sign of an exit route. Nor was there any kind of landmark to prove I wasn’t just floating around in circles.
Back in the real world, Gavin, Alma, and Mrs. Jenkins were no doubt trying to bring me back to consciousness, but I still couldn’t feel my body. Even the sensation of a hammer resting in my palm had faded, though I still held a hammer in my mental hand.
I almost wanted Marchosias to come back, if only to have something to pound. I kept thinking I should be able to find a wall, pound it to rubble, and free myself. But no wall ever appeared.
Since I was conscious, my mind shouldn’t be empty. Had Marchosias severed my soul’s connection with my mind? If that were the case, I shouldn’t have my memories, but they were still there—for all the good that did me.
“Chris!”
At first, I thought I was hearing Gavin again, but the tone and volume weren’t quite the same. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was in my mind with me. There were probably people who knew enough magic to do something like that. Gavin was even acquainted with some, and one of them, Carla, had helped save me from my own stupidity when Satan first thrust his claws into me. But none of them had been available when Gavin texted, and I doubted that had changed fast enough to mean that any of them had reached Madisonville.
“Chris!” I jumped, or at least, I approximated jumping as well as I could without a body. That voice sounded as if it were right next to me.
When I felt a hand on my shoulder, I almost screamed. But it was a human hand, not a demon claw. I was sure of that.
“Gavin?” I asked as I turned and saw him right behind me, smiling as if we had nothing in the world to worry about.
“Not quite,” he replied. “Real Gavin is still outside your mind, probably working to save you.”
“Then who—or what—are you?” I asked, drifting a little farther away from him.
“What do you think I am?” he replied, still smiling.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose you could be Marchosias, but he didn’t strike me as that subtle.”
Pseudo Gavin laughed, and a warm feeling spread through me.
“Your struggles here conjured me up. I’m a product of your memories and your hopes.”
“So you’re…a mental version of Gavin? Can you help me get out of here?”
Mental Gavin shrugged. “I’m afraid I only know what you know. That’s means I can’t answer a question unless you already know the answer.”
“Then what good are you?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
“Ask your subconscious mind that question,” replied Mental Gavin. “You would have been better served if it had conjured up an archangel. Then again, it wouldn’t have been a real archangel, so—”
I began to wonder if Mental Gavin was just a clever torture device created by Marchosias to break me. But I still felt better having some version of Gavin here than none.
“Is that your subtle way of needling me about not having enough faith to get myself out of here?” I asked.
“If you know enough to pose the question, you already know enough to answer it.” Mental Gavin paused. When I didn’t respond immediately, he added, “In other words, yes, if you had faith, you wouldn’t be in this mess. Real Gavin heard the same words that you read. He even touched the book. But he’s still in the real world, and you’re still trapped in here. What does that tell you?”
I hadn’t really thought about that—consciously, anyway—but yeah, I’d exposed Gavin to the same words I’d read, but he hadn’t become trapped by a demon.
“Look, even if you’re right, I can’t suddenly develop faith. If that’s the only way out of here, I’m stuck.”
“If you think you’re stuck, then you will be,” he replied. He looked more serious now. “Isn’t that how supposed pacts with the devil work? People are only bound by them because they think they are.”
Based on what I’d seen, that was absolutely true. But could escaping from my own mind be that simple?
“Perhaps even simpler,” Mental Gavin said. For a second, I thought he was reading my mind. I had to remind myself that he was part of my mind.
I decided I would try to break free by concentrating as hard as I could, but before I could do that, the darkness congealed around us as if it were some kind of solid substance, like thick grease, rather than just a void.
“Help me!” Mental Gavin cried out as shadowy hands reached out of the solidifying darkness, grabbing him and pulling him away from me.
Caught in the glop that had once been shadow, I couldn’t move toward him. I swung my hammer repeatedly, but I might as well have been trying to pound a liquid. The hammer sank into the semi-solid shadows without doing any real damage. As soon as I pulled it out, the dent I had created immediately repaired itself.
“Help me!” repeated Mental Gavin, sounding fainter as the distance between us increased.
He was very literally a figment of my imagination, so I wasn’t sure why I felt as if the real Gavin was in trouble. I felt tight all over. I wondered if the stress would make me explode if I couldn’t save him. Had I been physical, I would have felt my heart beating like a drum, my lungs hyperventilating.
I responded more from instinct that from conscious thought. I swung my hammer over and over, making the congealed darkness vibrate even though I was doing no real damage. I moved faster and faster, shedding the limitations of the flesh as I sent earthquakes shuddering through solid shadow.
Gavin was being sucked away by the darkness despite my best exertions. No matter what I did, I couldn’t move an inch closer to him, just as would have been the case in a nightmare.
“Gavin!” I yelled, but he had vanished completely, leaving me alone in the darkness.
It began to form hands that grabbed me.
But a different kind of hand took mine. It was warm. It felt human.
When I opened my eyes, I became aware of the physical world. I was lying down, and the real Gavin—at least, I hoped he was the real one—was standing over me, holding my hand.
“Thank God!” said Gavin. “Until you called out my name, I wasn’t sure you were still in there. I was afraid—”
“Something’s burning,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
Gavin smiled. “Among other things, we burned that book. The fire consumed it right before you called out to me.”
I sat up despite the fact that doing so made me feel dizzy. “That date book was the only lead we had! How are we going to help Cynthia without it?”
Madisonville Murder is related to the Soul Salvager trilogy. (The action falls between the prologue and chapter one of the first book.)
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