Gaslighter

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Book excerpt

Chapter One - The Negative Affirmation

Jonah 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.

Jonah was very pleased about it, no doubt about that. He'd always been between twenty and thirty pounds overweight throughout his life, so the fact that he was nearer to a flat stomach now than he'd ever been in his life was a great thing. The-not-so-pleasing part of the thing was the fact that, through his whole weight loss process, he'd discovered that it was simply wasn't in his genes to have a washboard stomach, or even visible abs. It wasn't a huge blow or anything such as that. It wasn't ever Jonah's life ambition to grace the cover of Muscle and Fitness, anyway. It was just that Reena had almost convinced him that through fitness gains, the sky was the limit. For his stomach, however, it seemed that the limit was the sky. Oh well.

Jonah's eyes rose back to his face, and he pondered the second change.

He'd grown a beard.

It wasn't even a deliberate thing. It was more attributed to laziness than anything else. But it was a new dynamic. The facial hair was nothing dramatic or overly dignified, but it did make him look older, more mature. It made it look as though life had shown him a thing or two. And that was a good thing, because that dream scared the hell out of him.

“Just great,” he muttered to his reflection. “What is a summer without shit?”

Jonah managed to get back to sleep for several more hours before he officially began the day. He showered, dressed, straightened up the bed out of respect for the incoming maid, and checked out of the motel. It was the last day of the “vacation” that Jonathan mandated. He was cool with the fact that it was over, but he had to admit that he'd taken a great liking to this final stop.

The town, Coastal Shores, was mere miles from Manteo, and very quiet. Maybe twenty-eight hundred people resided there, which made it even smaller than Rome. But as Jonah took in the morning sun and the ocean, he couldn't make a single complaint about the place.

Despite his newfound affection for the place, Jonah still felt that it was time to return home. And it wasn't because of the dream.

Throughout his road-tripping, he'd stayed in contact with Terrence and Reena. Even though they'd always kept the conversation short out of respect for his being on “vacation,” they'd kept him up on things around Rome. There had been nothing of note to report on their end, which relieved Jonah because his friends hadn't experienced any discord, but also unnerved him because it felt like Creyton wanted to lure them into a false sense of security while he and his disciples planned something even worse than what they had the last time. But Terrence and Reena hadn't spoken of anything sinister; Terrence spoke about helping the other janitors get the high school ready for the kids to come back at the end of summer break, while Reena spoke about assisting Kendall in self-defense now that she knew about the Eleventh Percent.

But something had changed in the past few weeks. Terrence and Reena were still upbeat and cheerful whenever Jonah spoke to them, but something in their voices was different. The positivity seemed a bit contrived at times. It was nothing obvious, but Jonah knew his brother and sister well. And he also knew a falsely cheerful voice when he heard it due to the fact that he had so much experience with using one himself.

Jonah wanted to know what was bothering them, but he also knew why they chose to hold back on him. Jonathan had probably told them that giving him negative information would be antithetical to his time away. But, oddly enough, Jonah didn't know how appreciative of that he was. He was beyond grateful for the time to collect his thoughts, but the estate was his home, too. He wanted to be in the know as much as everyone else. Especially if they really needed him. He still couldn't believe that Creyton had figured out that phobia.

Task at hand, Jonah, he reminded himself rather forcefully, but seconds later, he sighed.

The night he'd escaped Creyton and the Deadfallen disciples, he'd used anger to offset his fear and worry. It'd worked well enough, so he'd attempted the same approach whenever Creyton fell on his mind. But the tactic that saved his physical life that night just wasn't a healthy one to do in everyday life. He wasn't in threatening situations on the pier. Or at the beach. Or at the movies.

Or at breakfast in a diner, where a waiter had just seen his momentary scowl and began to back away in apprehension.

Smooth.

“I really wasn't trying to bother you, sir,” said the waiter meekly. “I was just trying to make small talk, forgive my curiosity—”

“No, no,” said Jonah hastily, “I wasn't even listening—”

The man deflated, and Jonah sucked his teeth. Not a great thing to say.

“You didn't hear anything I said?” said the waiter, who looked forlorn.

“I didn't mean it like that, sir.” Jonah shook his head so as to play up the confusion of the situation. “I didn't mean that I was ignoring you, it was just—just a brief bout of reticence. I've got a lot on my mind.”

Jonah waited, and breathed a sigh of relief when the man looked less depressed.

“Is that right, son?” he asked, sounding rather surprised. “You don't look like you're old enough to have a mind full of stress. Don't look like you've been in the world long enough to even have enough life to analyze.”

Jonah gritted his teeth. It aggravated him something fierce when older people said things like that. He'd just turned twenty-six, and that was more than enough life to analyze. Hell, he had enough life to analyze with just the three years he'd known he was an Eleventh Percenter. “Right,” he mumbled. “Now, what was it that you asked me?”

“I was asking you if you were thinking of putting down roots down in Coastal Shores, or were you just passing through?” said the waiter.

“Just passing through,” replied Jonah. “Took the whole summer to myself to quiet my brain. De-stress and all that. Been throughout the Outer Banks, and Coastal Shores is my last stop before going back home.”

The waiter nodded as he topped off Jonah's iced tea. “I've always said that young people move through life too fast,” he remarked. “But I promise you that there isn't anything going on in your life that church can't fix.”

Jonah swallowed. Not one of those types. “I suppose you're right.”

The waiter regarded Jonah with narrow eyes. “You religious?”

“Not in any real sense,” said Jonah, trying hard not to roll his eyes, “but I go to church.”

“Really?” The waiter didn't even say it like a question. “What's the name?”

Jonah started to think that maybe he should have allowed the man to think that he was reticent a few minutes ago. “Serenity Road Faith Haven,” he muttered. “Senior Pastor is Cassius Abbott.”

Jonah waited with almost bated breath as the man regarded him further. But then he nodded, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“You've got a good foundation, son,” he said. “Get more involved, and you'll be fine.”

“Right,” said Jonah, mentally willing the man to leave.

Mercifully, the man remembered that he had a job, and left Jonah be. He glared after him for a moment. Some people in the world were just so damn nosy. And of course the nosiness had to be followed by free advice. If the man had known who Jonah truly was, then he would know it would take more than couple Sunday morning invocations to assuage his issues.

He was just about get up and pay his bill when a man lowered himself into the booth. He was lanky and thin, and stank of cigarettes and beer. The color of his stained teeth went along with that. His hair was a rat's nest, and his beard looked as though it could comfortably lodge a flock of birds. His presence annoyed Jonah even further.

Great. First, the religion-fixated waiter wanted to help me with salvation, and now the town drunk wanted a meal.

“Look, man—”

“Silence, Rowe,” hissed the man as he bared those nicotine-stained teeth.

Jonah's eyes hardened for a half-second, but then he realized the guy referred to him by his last name. Now every sense was on alert. “How did you know my name?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

The man looked at Jonah with a kind of hungry delight. “Nothing in particular. Just having some fun by showing you how easy it is for you to be gotten to.”

Instinctively, Jonah moved a hand to his pockets, where his batons lay, but the man shook his head warningly.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” he said quietly. “One wrong move, and I'll kill everyone in this place. Surely you don't want another diner massacre, do you?”

Jonah's eyes widened. “Creyton—”

“The Transcendent,” corrected the man.

“Yeah, him,” snapped Jonah. “He wouldn't appreciate you drawing attention to yourself like this.”

It was a gamble. Jonah hoped that it was true.

The man chuckled, and then a middle-aged woman sitting near the bar shook her head slightly and coughed. The man with her looked at her in concern.

“Honey? What's wrong?” he asked.

“I…I don't know,” responded the woman. “I couldn't catch my breath for a moment. Think I might need my inhaler.”

The woman's husband patted her back, still looking concerned. Jonah looked at the man in front of him utter horror. He was still chuckling.

“Who's drawing attention?” he asked politely. “As quietly as a rat, I could bring about a repeat of the Crystal Diner. And I know you don't want that, Rowe.”

Jonah used every ounce of resolve he possessed as removed his hand from his pocket. The man smiled evilly, like he was in total control.

“Backup is an option for me as well, just so you know.” He pointed to bruising at his throat. “You're outnumbered, unendowed, and stuck in the middle of all these precious, delicate Ungifteds. So if you want them to be safe, you will sit there like a good little boy.”

Jonah's fingers gripped the table. If everything this Deadfallen disciple said was true, then there was nothing he could do without endangering the Tenths around him. Why did he stop here for food? Why didn't he just roll on back to Rome? These two dozen people in this diner would be safe right now if he'd done just that.

No. This stupid disciple of Creyton was the one endangering people. He had his finger on the proverbial trigger, not Jonah.

“This isn't about any of them.” Jonah kept his voice very quiet, so as to not bring attention to the two of them. “Let's step outside, and handle this there.”

The man flashed those badly stained teeth again. “No thank you,” he said gleefully. “Now answer this question: Did you have the dream?”

Jonah's eyes widened. There was no way he could know about that.

The man smiled. “I can see by your expression that you did have it,” he said. “That's all I wanted to know.”

And the bastard actually rose to leave. Jonah looked at him, shocked. Was he serious?

“Oh, hell no,” he snapped. “What was that dream supposed to mean?”

The man ignored him and headed for the exit. Jonah, temper and alarm rising with each passing second, followed him.

“What does it mean?” he demanded. “Answer me!”

The man said nothing, but Jonah distinctly heard another chuckle. That pissed him off even more.

“You hear me talking to you?” snarled Jonah, who didn't really notice that his words were now attracting stares. “You will not leave here without answering me!”

He reached for the guy's shoulder, but then the woman at the bar started having breathing issues once more. Jonah looked at her, concerned, but then his expression returned to anger once he looked at the man again.

“Stop that!”

The man's chuckle became a full on laugh.

“Leave her alone! If you want a victim, take me!”

More laughter.

And that was when Jonah lost it.

He threw a wild haymaker. The man slammed against the wall before he slid down to the floor. There were exclamations of shock and horror, but Jonah turned his attention to the woman who'd had her breathing obstructed.

“Ma'am! Are you okay—?”

But strangely, the woman's husband shielded his wife from Jonah, looking ready to throw a punch of his own. “Don't you come near her!” he yelled.

Jonah looked at him in confusion. “What? I meant no harm, sir!”

“No harm?” repeated the pious waiter in disbelief. “Are you joking?”

Jonah frowned, but then realized the situation. “You don't understand!” he tried to shout over the angered and panicked people. “That man over there was—”

He paused. What could he tell them? They wouldn't believe a word of it. Plus it seemed like they'd formed their own opinions of Jonah anyway.

He looked at the man on the floor, whom (conveniently) no one paid any attention to. But Jonah wasn't thinking about them at the moment.

The man rubbed his throat roughly…and wiped away the bruise. It had been makeup.

Makeup?

The guy's bloodied visage showed nothing but joy as he glanced outside. Jonah did the same.

A woman stood outside, calmly resting her weight against a trucker's rig. She ignored the commotion completely and looked straight at Jonah.

It was a white-haired woman. India Drew, one of Creyton's Deadfallen disciples.

She smiled widely as she gave Jonah a mock salute, and then—nothing could have prepared Jonah for what she did next—shape-shifted into a crow. She literally shrank into that accursed avian shape in the span of three seconds, cawed once, and took flight. Her bloody-nosed accomplice slunk out of the diner's entrance, but no one was the wiser.

And Jonah was in the middle of the diner, having just assaulted someone in front of multiple witnesses and having no explanation to give.

The fresh hell had descended. On the very last day of his vacation, his negative affirmation had come true.