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5. The Document is a work of fiction; any and all resemblances to actual people, either living or dead, are completely coincidental.

The Nature of Man

By Kenn Ghannon

Chapter 9: In hidden moments

For a very long time, Eric sat, back pressed against the wooden headboard of his bed, arms dangling by his sides, and stared vacantly at the door his cousin had left by.

Nice?  Brave?  Him?  He hadn't done anything to deserve being called those things.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  He was nothing more than a failure.  A big, fat, brutish failure.  He had failed to do the only thing his mother had ever asked of him.  He had failed to protect Christine.  He had failed to take care of his family.  Of course, his mother had said to take care of his sister but Eric knew intuitively that it wasn't so much what his mother had said as what she meant that mattered.  Besides, wasn't Christine like his sister now?

He had failed.  Failed miserably.  His father was right.  He was worthless.  A weak worthless coward not worth the pot to piss in.  And to hide his weakness, his failure, he had attacked someone.  He had attacked the person who had shown him how weak he was.  He had dredged up all the hatred and anger that his father had used every day and had attacked Evan.  Evan hadn't been the problem.  It wasn't Evan's fault that he had been so weak.  The fault lied within him.  Within his very soul.  If it had not been for this weakness he would have been able to stop Evan; he would have been able to protect his sister.

His sister.

Eric's thoughts drifted back, going deeper and further into his memory.  It wasn't memory, though.  Not really.  He couldn't really remember the day itself very clearly -- he had only been 5 or 6 years old.  Things were very different to someone that young; it was difficult for an older mind to firmly grasp the thoughts that churned within someone younger.

In his mind's eye, though, he was standing with his mother.  Her arm was draped lovingly around him, holding him close.  A warm sun blazed across him, blurring his vision.  Everything around him seemed at once real and unreal, flickering in a halo of frosted light.  The sunlight seemed to blind him slightly, yet he could still see clearly somehow.  The wonder of it tugged at his consciousness, but he pushed all thought aside to live within that single moment.

The room smelled sugary and sweet, the scent of honey.  It lapped at the periphery of his senses, a small thing yet seemingly so important.  The scent of his mother, the perfume she wore, intermingled with it.  Hers was a flowery perfume, so light and airy that you could never even be sure it was there but made all the more real because of it.  He loved that smell, the way it seemed to play with your nose.

The way his mother's arm draped around his shoulders, the warmth of her body and the sun, the smell of her perfume combined to make him feel happy.  He felt comfortable and cared for.  At peace with all the world.  In a word, he felt safe.

Before him was a crib and as he looked down into it he saw a vision.  Something that looked so radiant it could not possibly be real.  It was the perfect image of a baby, asleep.  A small, white coverlet was tucked lovingly around it seemingly caressing the soft, beautiful skin.  It's eyes were closed and you could just barely make out the soft gurgling of its infantile snores.  As the sunlight struck it, the baby seemed to take on a light of its own, outshining the sun.  It was simply perfect.

"This is your sister, Gwen, Eric," his mother's appropriately hushed voice said to him.  Her voice had always seemed so shrill, so lost.  But now, her voice was strong and vibrant even in its hushed tone.  It made her seem happy and proud, and her arm clenched around him just a little tighter as she spoke.

For a long time they stood there, just staring down at his little sister.  The room seemed to grow even warmer and more comforting as time went on.  It was a perfect moment that lasted for days...and Eric was happy to let it last as long as it wanted.  With his mother holding him and his sister laying before him, life simply could not get more happy or more perfect.

The sound of the slamming of a door somewhere outside the perfect little room changed that.  The sun hid and the room grew cold.  The light that had given the room an ethereal quality suddenly turned to frost.  Even the walls around him seemed closer and tighter.  His mother's arm, which had once seemed so comforting and protective now seemed heavy and clinging.  It pulled at him, pulled him hard against her, almost choking the air from his chest.

Everything seemed to darken and decay before him. The white paint of the crib peeled back to reveal the gnarled roots of an old, rotting, dead tree.  The white coverlet surrounding his sister turned a dark, sinister black and seemed now to clutch at her more than simply covering her.  Around him the rooms walls ran the dark red of blood as if they knew that the time to bleed had come.  Smoke filled his nostrils, and he gagged and choked, unable to draw clean air.

He heard footsteps slowly thudding up the stairs outside.  Pounding, pounding as they ascended.  Each deepening thud brought them further and further, closer to where his mother and he stood.

"Where are you bitch?" came the voice of his father, but the sound seemed to take on a sinister quality he had never heard before.  It was a carnal, gutteral sound as of a raging beast barely able to contain itself.  It sent a shiver through him and his mother's arm pulled him even tighter to her.

He turned to look at the vibrant beauty that was his mother, but now all he saw was a poor, beaten-down, old lady.  Fear and loathing owned that face, written plainly across the cracks and crags within it.  He watched as she turned to the door, the light of her eyes dimming and fading until nothing was left.  The fear that crossed her face as the thudding footsteps grew closer scared him.  He wanted to run, but his mother's arm held him so tightly he couldn't even move.

The thundering footsteps stopped suddenly, but rather than feeling relief, a great fear overcame him.  The silence was ominous in its intensity.  He watched helplessly as the cracked, beaten face of his mother turned slowly to the great, black door of the room.  As he turned his own eyes to that door, it seemed to grow harder somehow, more sinister.  It was foreboding, and angry, a testament to pure evil.

The distraught face of his mother turned to him, a forbidding sorrow filling her eyes.  As he watched, a small droplet of blood rolled down from her hairline.  He was mesmerized by it, slowly rolling down her forehead.  Soon, it was followed by another, and then another.  The blood just seemed to keep flowing, coming from some unseen place.  Absently, his mother wiped at the blood not really understanding what it was.  But all she managed to do was smear it across her forehead.

"Eric, my Eric," her voice had resumed the shrill listlessness of hopeless despair.  He could not manage to look away as yet more blood seeped from her hair.  It held him enthralled, unable to take his eyes from it.  He was unable to see anything but the flow of blood from her hairline as it grew steadily stronger, flowing a rich red.  "You're Gwen's protector, Eric."  His mother wiped harder at the blood crossing her forehead, but it was just smearing everywhere.  Soon her forehead was coated with a smeared layer of dark, rich, red blood.  "You have to protect her, Eric.  That's your job.  Promise me, Eric.  Promise me to always watch out for your sister.  Promise me..."

Her voice faded into the background as his attention was pulled to the door.  If anything, it looked darker now.  It bulged and struggled with its frame as if it were alive.  Something was behind that door.  Something was coming that was strong and dark.  

Suddenly, the door slammed open and his father was there, but not quite the father he had remembered.  This man was tall and strong, built thick around the chest and arms.  An ogre of a man.  He wore a football helmet that partially obscured the dark, leathery folds of his evil little face; a face that Eric could not really recognize but that seemed all too familiar.  An awful sneer crossed his features making him look even more disturbing than before.

Eric shrank in horror from that face, not knowing what to do.  He wanted with all his being to run, but his mother clutched and grabbed at him, keeping him at her side, holding him in place.  His eyes were glued to the malevolent face that was and was not his father.  He couldn't turn away from the stark foulness of that hideous face.  It called to him, beckoned to him.  It was almost as if he recognized something else in that face.  Something beyond the evil thing his father had somehow become.  It absorbed his attention and refused to let him look away.  Then, beneath all the darkness and evil, beneath all the anger and hatred, he saw it.  The face behind that evil mask was his own.

He screamed, loudly, longly.  A pitiful wail that put into sound all the fear and self-loathing that he had ever felt.  He went on and on even as breath left him.  It couldn't be.  He could not be that horrid man.  He could not be like his father.

And all the time he could hear his mother's shrill voice getting higher and higher in pitch.  "Promise me, Eric.  Promise to protect Gwen, Eric.  Promise me."

In stark terror, he turned to his mother to tell her that he would.  That he would never let anything hurt Gwen.  That no matter what happened, not matter how hard he had to work, he would never turn into the evil man that was his father.  But when he turned he couldn't see his mother's face.  It was all bloody and there was a big hole...

Eric screamed himself awake.  He couldn't remember falling asleep but he could remember the nightmare.  It clung to him turning him nauseous with fear and anguish.  Even as he awoke, he screamed into the daylight.  The sunlight streaming through his window seemed so cold, so like the frosty sunlight of his nightmare, and he shivered despite the great runs of sweat running from his body.  He had not had a nightmare this bad in a long while.

It took him a minute to notice Shawn standing just inside his door.