After The Gods Have Died Chapter 5

This Voiceless Cry

“You did it anyway.”

The now all too familiar voice buzzed in Callum's tired ears when he was reaching for his building's front door. He couldn't tell if it was a whisper he'd been meant to hear or not, when he spun on his hell to face the demon there was no one in sight, not even a glimmer of magic. The exorcist was too grumpy to deal with this shit, he hated this kind of game.

“What, afraid to face me now that you know what I can do?” Callum wasn't quite shouting but it would be no surprise if the residents on the first few floors had herd him. Nothing came back in reply, even when the redhead tried to goad him once more. Fine then. If he didn't want to have another cryptic conversation then that was alright by Callum, he just wanted to get upstairs and into bed. For some reason this job had ended up being particularly draining, even after all the excitement this was more exhaustion than usual. He didn't even have the energy to check out the strange ring. He just stripped to his boxers once in his room, ring on top of his phone on his nightstand as he fell onto his bed. He was asleep within moments.

Dreams were not something that came easily to Callum unless they were nightmares. Those seemed to find him with more ease. Usually after a job he would be blessed with a night of nothing but rest, a peaceful break from his mind in nothingness. Of course nothing had gone as usual today and instead of sinking into a pause he sank into a world of purples and blues who shadows were as dark as the stars were bright. The stone he stood upon was massive and mostly flat despite the crags and divots in its surface. Even without a moon the light from the stars was such that everything around him was illuminated. His stone was not the only one, there were others, both larger and smaller in size but still relatively flat. Filling in the cracks between them was a thick fog that seemed determined to keep still, almost frozen. It was so heavy there was no clues as to what might lay beneath its surface. As far as he could see it was only stars and stones and fog. He shivered without cause.

He could only stand still in this eerily quiet dream for so long before he couldn't stand it anymore. This was the kind of silence that pressed in, covering more than just his ears with a physical weight. This wasn't a nightmare, at least not one of his regular ones but it did make him extremely uneasy, this emptiness, this silence. He was lucid enough to know he didn't have to stay here, that he could look for someplace less unnerving or at least someplace with better coverage where he wasn't so visible. This made him feel like a target. Backing up a couple of steps he ran forward, jumping to the next stone. He'd probably not needed the momentum but the last thing he wanted was a foot falling into that fog and finding out what was underneath it. Even if it was just a worry from his subconscious it felt important because of the dreamstate. It was strange, how everything could feel so real, so solid in dreams.

Callum jumped again, looking for anything that might be more ground than these little islands but there was nothing more than fog and starlight. One stone, two stones, three, he lost count of how far he travelled from his starting point. With no changes he wasn't even sure if he was really moving at all. Even though it was a dream it was tiring, his legs and knees complaining with every weakening hop. This might not have been a traditional nightmare but it still have him trapped in a walless maze of stones and fog. Eventually his knees just gave up, letting go of his weight on one jump, leaving him to slam hands into the flat surface, foot almost dipping into the low hanging cloud. It didn't hurt, he wasn't surprised by that, it was the lack of sound from his fall that made his stomach knot unpleasantly. Had he heard anything at all since this dream had started?

“Hey!”

Callum opened his mouth, formed the shape of the word, he even pushed air through vocal chords he could feel vibrating but nothing reached his ears. He tried again, shouting until his throat felt funny but still he heard nothing. It wasn't a silence but a deafness that pressed in and threatened to crush him. The loss of that sense left his heart racing. He needed to wake up and wake up now.

When the rumbling began he felt it, even if he strained he still heard nothing. Callum had only just righted himself and the trembling of the ground made his legs threaten to give up once more. The ground had him so preoccupied that the dreaming redhead didn't notice the source of the rumbling right away. When he finally did, he swore, a physical reaction that he couldn't hear. This was definitely a nightmare, no pleasant dream of his or anyone's could craft something like this.

The night sky parted itself, the stars and wispy clouds curving into plump lips. The mouth that had formed was massive, it looked as though it could easily swallow any moon that dared face it or its sky. He watched with a dread that climbing into his throat and lodged itself there as the lips started to come apart, the movement slow and drawn out. The teeth that had been clentched behind star-flecked skin were a bone bleached white, almost glowing in the pit of darkness that was pooled around them. They too started a slow separation from one another, making Callum's heart feel as though it might explode with the tempo it tried to keep up. Would he be able to wake himself before he was swallowed whole by the black hole that was sure to reside withing the galactic maw? He tried, fingers and nails biting at soft skin on his arm but he couldn't feel it. It wasn't that it didn't hurt, he just couldn't feel it at all, not even the feel of skin on skin. He could physically feel nothing.

The massive teeth parted to reveal and even brighter white orb, the light it held seemed impossibly bright. Its edges were fuzzy, the light so strong it was hard to look at it directly. For a moment Callum wondered if it was in fact a moon, if the mouth had devoured it but then it spun in place, whipping around to expose it as an eye, giant and searching nestled behind star dusted lips. The iris looked like a swirling nebula, the pupil acting as the black hole that he'd expected to see in a larger scale. It searched the fog and stones until it found the exorcist, its teeth and lips widening as its gaze bore into him.

Was it getting closer? It grew in his vision, drawing closer until it filled his own gaze entirely. It was huge, bigger than the moon, a massive orb that shouldn't have been able to even fit into the sky, the dream bending universal rules to bring this unnerving horror to life. When it was so close Callum could have reached out and touched it, sleep finally released him. For a brief moment the memory of the eye lingered in his sight, a faint impression upon his ceiling but a few drowsy blinks willed it away.

The exorcist would be happy to never have a dream like that again. The lack of senses was terrifying in a way he didn't was to dwell on but it wasn't something all that easy to forget. He almost cheered when he head his phone buzzing on the old hardwood floor, still plugged into the wall, for it meant he could hear things again. Rolling out of bed to answer his phone led to a hard landing on the ground, rattling the ceiling below him and aggravating the ache in his weary muscles. He prayed whoever was contacting him wasn't looking for work to be done today. He needed to rest.

Well it wasn't anything for work at least. A couple of text messages had come in to pester the redhead, this was why he never gave out his number, people took it as an invitation to contact him whenever they wanted over nothing. Nobody had twisted his arm into giving that vampire his number but in the clear light of morning he was questioning his decision, blaming it on his concussion from the accident. It was too late now, Nile had his number and seemed determined to actually use it, in this case for a random greeting, no other substance to the note. Callum would never admit to being lonely but it was that buried emotion that had him texting a reply instead of just deleting the message immediately.

From Callum: 'What are you still doing up?'

From Nile: 'Oh good you're up too! I can't sleep, thinking too much. Want to go for a drink tonight?'

Well at least he'd not said he was thinking about Callum too much. The exorcist had never seen a vampire with such a reckless attitude over their life, they would usually go out of their way to avoid someone they knew was in his profession. There were some of the more sentient demons that lurked in the shadows, they were often lethal in their intelligence, more than one exorcist have been lost to a vampire's trap. Callum knew that, he knew it well, he'd lost an uncle that way and yet he'd not typed in his 'no' yet. His fingers actually hovered over the keys, rebelling, refusing to let him reply so briefly. Was he seriously considering this? With no reply just yet he tossed his phone back down, on the bed this time. No. He wasn't going to do this. What he was going to do was hunt down breakfast.

It was as he was getting up that a glint on his finger caught his eye. That fucking ring.

He'd taken it off before bed, he was certain of that, he'd left it on his phone on the side table. With his phone on the floor this morning the ring should have been there too. When had it ended up on his hand again? Callum must have put it on in his sleep, there was no other way this could have happened, plus that would explain how his phone had ended up on the floor. He'd probably knocked it off. A reasonable possibility but he still didn't like it, tonight he'd leave it somewhere else.

He slipped it off, taking a real look at it for the first time now that he wasn't drained from his boogyman fight. It was nothing more than a thin band of black metal, so light that the exorcist wasn't surprised he'd not noticed it's secret arrival on his finger. It was warm, though all that meant was that he'd put it on a while ago, while he was still dreaming about the lake of fog and stone. There were no markings or gems, no engravings on either side of it. Altogether it looked harmless and if the circumstances of it's appearance hadn't been so suspicious he might have just shrugged it off and added it to his wardrobe. Unfortunately the timing of its arrival was too convenient and he wasn't just going to risk it. It was pulled off Callum's finger and tucked away inside an unused drawer on his end table. The last thing he needed was for it to be some tracking method of his grandmother's.

That thought brought him back to the previous day's conversation, about how he'd been recommended to that family. Surely it couldn't have been his grandmother, she hated his work. The only reason she was even trying to find him was to drag him back to her beloved tradition, to keep him from disgracing her good name. A small part of him hoped his sister's search for him was fuelled at least a little by love but he wouldn't bet a cent on that. She was very much under their grandmother's thumb and always had been. The favoured grandchild. Thinking about his family only made him restless and before he really knew what he was doing, he made a terrible decision.

From Callum: 'Where and when?'

From Nile: 'Nine @ that bar again. We can walk to the good one from there.'

There was still time for Callum to back out. He could just say no way and pretend this never happened.

From Callum: 'k.'