Gaslighter

1 The Negative AffirmationJonah lay face down, confused. The thing that pulled his attention at the moment was the powerful scent of grass in his nose. But the grass wasn't the only scent. There was another one present. Jonah didn't know how he could smell it, but he did. It was the smell of evil. In its purest form. Jonah rose to find himself on the crest of an extremely elevated hill. Another thing that he knew, once again without knowing how he knew, was that the hill wasn't natural. It had been constructed…just for him. The hill overlooked a valley that was strangely barren; it was the complete opposite of his lush hilltop. It would have been entirely unremarkable except for some type of movement that Jonah could only make out in his peripheral vision. If he looked head on, he saw nothing. What was the source of that movement? He tried to adjust his head so as to accommodate his peripheral vision a bit more when a bee stung him on the back of his arm. Immediately he reached there, but saw nothing. Then he felt a sting on his neck. “Ah!” Jonah swatted at the area, but felt nothing there, either. There was another sting on his back, and then front of his neck. Through his pain and anguish, Jonah realized something. There were no bees. He'd diligently hunted around, but there were no bees, or any other stinging insects for that matter, to see. Unless he was experiencing some type of physical hallucination, the source of the issue was something else. It was when a sting caught the side of his head (which prompted him to jerk his head in discomfort) that he saw something. There was another abstractly elevated hill miles away to the west. It mirrored the one that Jonah was on; it was even lush and green like his. But whereas his hill was only large enough to accommodate him, the other hill strained under the weight of dozens of people. Even though Jonah couldn't make out their faces, he knew that they were all focused on him, with their left hands raised like engaged students in a classroom. The strange thing was the fact that their hands all gleamed specific colors, with the exception of four or five, which had faded to black. Wait. Five hands were pitch-black dark. Jonah had experienced five stings. Were they the source of it, then? He saw a hand go from green to black, and felt a sting on his left arm. Three more darkened. Three more stings. Jonah felt like the stung portions of his body were on fire. He didn't know what to do about it. His mind went into panic mode, but he had no way to defend himself. What if all the hands went dark at the same time? Would the stings stop his heart, or something like that? Jonah collapsed to his knees as three more hands went dark. The more this went on, the worse the stings felt. He didn't know how much more he could take. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a third hill elevate from nowhere. It, like his, only contained one person. Jonah couldn't make him out, but the man didn't waste any time with attempts to be seen or recognized. He yanked that largest bow that Jonah had ever seen from his back, notched an arrow that gleamed gold, and fired directly into the crowd atop the second hill. Through the haze of pain, Jonah wondered if the man had enough arrows to make a difference on that hill, but he needn't have worried. The archer's first arrow downed almost a half-dozen targets, but the man hadn't shot at random. He'd aimed for the people whose hands had gone dark. When they were attacked, the colors returned to their hands, and Jonah's pain subsided. The archer sent two more gold-gleaming arrows into a crowd, but with the disarray it caused, it may as well have been a volley. The crowd was in utter chaos; they trampled over each other, and fell to the ground. Some even threw projectile weapons at the third hill, but with an ease that was almost frightening, the archer shot arrows at each weapon and derailed each one. Once he'd destroyed the weapons, he resumed shooting arrows into the crowd. The mass of people there was in true panic now, like Jonah had been earlier. He watched as many of them collapsed to their knees, and many more fell flat on their backs. And then a final arrow flew from the archer's bow, and the last enemy fell. Jonah tore his eyes from the second hill and looked over at his savior in awe. “Who are you?” he called. “I mean, thanks and everything—I'm grateful and all that—but who are you?” The archer looked in Jonah's direction, but he was still too far away for Jonah to see his face. “We've met before, you and I,” he said. Jonah frowned. The voice definitely triggered something in his memory, but he didn't remember much else. “I can do this no longer,” said the archer, but why did it seem like it was more to himself than Jonah? “Not this way. The lost spirits do all they can to survive.” It was in that moment that Jonah noticed it. It was as if his Spectral Sight decided to function on a delay. The movement on the barren land below the elevated hills were spirits. Hundreds of them. They looked to be the most defeated spectral beings that Jonah had ever seen. Under other circumstances, Jonah would have wondered why he'd had trouble seeing them at first, but that wasn't the most troubling thing. It was how they looked that troubled him the most. The poorest, most malnourished alms beggar on the street would have looked healthier than these spirits and spiritesses. Their spectral skin hung from their bones. Lifeblood dripped from nicks, cuts, and bruises from all over their bodies. Most of them tried to pull themselves to standing, but simply couldn't make it. “Why are they like this?” he shouted in the archer's direction. “What has happened to them?” “Jonathan told you long ago that spirits and spiritesses could still be hurt, even in the next life, Rowe,” the archer called back. “It's crystal clear—or should be, anyway—who would benefit from this.” The second Jonah thought about it, thought about him, a shadow darkened the hills and the valley. Both he and the archer threw their gazes skyward. A huge crow flew over the landscape. Its eyes were full of hate and intelligence as it surveyed the scene. Jonah was horrified, not only because of the crow's presence, but because it wasn't new. There was no way he'd forget that overlarge monstrosity. But if he was seeing this crow again, that meant… At that moment, the crow realized that it was being watched. It ignored the archer completely, made a smooth turn, and flew straight for Jonah. “Run, boy!” the archer snapped. “You must run!” Jonah heard him, but it took a few minutes for his legs to cooperate with what his brain told him. He finally turned to flee, but then he felt claws at his shoulders, and hit the ground chest first. For some reason, he didn't hear the archer anymore, and everything had gone dark. That didn't matter. Those claws were still on his back, ready to tear at him like so much meat—he had to bat them away— Then he stopped struggling, confused. If there claws on his back, then they had to be by far the dullest ones he'd ever felt, not that he had any point of reference. He reached behind his back, grabbed at what was there, and grimaced. It was a wire hanger. No, two of them. Then that meant— Jonah looked to his left, and saw the empty bed. He shook his head. He hadn't hit the ground chest-first, he'd hit the floor, when he'd rolled out of bed. The two wire hangers he'd left on the night stand must have fallen on his back when his ungraceful thud jostled the thing. There was no crow. No hills, no lost spirits, and no archer. And everything had gone dark because he'd awakened in a dark room. It had been a damn dream. Now that he'd had that realization, his chest smarted with discomfort. He heaved himself off of the floor, and plopped down on the bunched mass of sheets and blankets on the bed. It had just been a dream. He was glad that he was alone, and no one was around to see him make a fool of himself over a nightmare just now. But there were some truly odd things that stuck out about that dream. Those people, the multi-colored hands that brought about stinging pain whenever the colors turned dark. It was no mystery who they were. The Deadfallen disciples. They'd been malicious as hell in that dream, the way they'd consolidated their endowments on him like that. But the Deadfallen disciples were all killers, so they wouldn't balk at causing agony. Then there was the archer. Jonah was willing to swear that he'd seen him before. He'd definitely recognized the voice. Even though it had been a dream, it was nice to have had someone on his side in it. And those lost souls…Jonah didn't know what to make of them. He had seen shackled spirits before. They'd been emaciated and drained; looked as though they'd never known a moment's peace. But those spirits in that dream… Life never ended. It merely changed form. But if that was what the spirits' lives had become, then he was just glad that it just had been a dream for their sakes. And that crow—that had to have been Creyton. Or some representation of him, anyway. No wonder he ignored the archer. Jonah closed his eyes. Creyton wasn't just a Spirit Reaper. He was the Spirit Reaper. He was looked upon as fearfully amongst Eleventh Percenters as the Tenth despots of old. But Creyton didn't call himself “Chancellor,” or “Fuhrer” or the things that the dictators in the past called themselves. He called himself the Transcendent. And the Transcendent was Jonah's mortal enemy. They'd crossed paths before, and through luck, or testicular fortitude or whatever, Jonah managed to beat him and (or so he thought) force him to the Other Side. But the latter part hadn't happened. Through ethereal circumstances that Jonah still didn't understand, Creyton had been killed, but his spirit never went to the Other Side. He spent the equivalent of many years researching the means of a resurrection—a fact made possible by the lack of influence that time had on the Astral Plane—and had achieved Praeterletum, a literal return from the grave. He was the first Eleventh Percenter ever to manage it. His plan had come to fruition through the actions of his most loyal disciple, Inimicus, who was Jessica Hale. Jonah had very nearly lost his physical life— Jonah swore loudly and smacked his own head with an open palm. He didn't hit his head too hard, though; he'd suffered a concussion that night Creyton achieved Praeterletum, which had only been rectified through ethereal healing. Still, he wouldn't help matters by scrambling his own brains. He fought the thoughts each time his mind wandered to Creyton. He pushed them down as far as they would go whenever they reared themselves. Most of the time, his brain was pretty quiet, but then thoughts of that house, Jessica's betrayal, and that cold fire that burned Ant Noble to nothing but bones— Jonah punched a nearby pillow. The thoughts had reared themselves again that quickly! He abandoned his seated position. Sleep wasn't an option at the moment. He went to the bathroom, and silently surveyed himself in the mirror. Jonah's profile had changed since he'd discovered that he was an Eleventh Percenter. His brown hair had elongated somewhat in the absence of barbers that he knew and trusted. His hazel eyes, upon inspecting them, very much resembled his mind at the moment; slightly haunted, confused, and full of memories that he didn't want. But there were two marked changes that had only occurred since he'd been road-tripping along the Outer Banks. His waistline was trimmer now than it had ever been. He didn't smile at his reflection in the mirror, though, because he was of two minds about it.