Anomaly : Part 2

“Not necessarily,” Nathan answered. He set the glass down on the counter. “When it comes to attacks, Caleb is very skillful at what he does. He wouldn’t just come here right away. He’ll make some kind of plan first. And what scares me, is that I think he’s gonna try to get to you guys first.” Nathan looked solely at Justin. “If I were you, I would try to keep Ryan out of this. He already knows more about us than he really should. You don’t want him to get hurt.”

Justin wanted to say that he would be able to protect Ryan, but truthfully, he did not know if that would be an accurate assessment. He agreed with Nathan, though. Ryan did have more knowledge about their skills than he ought to have. Being associated with Justin could endanger Ryan’s life as it had done previously.
Does that mean we need to break up? Justin wondered.

“I didn’t say you need to break up,” Nathan said, answering Justin’s thought aloud. “But it would probably be best if the two of you stayed away from each other for a little while.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure you and Blake won’t have to spend time away from each other for a little while,” Justin replied resentfully.

Nathan did not respond right away. He and Blake looked at each other. They seemed to be transmitting secret thoughts to each other. Of course, because they were telepathic and Justin was not, he was always left in the dark.

“Ryan is ‘normal’,” Nathan finally stated to Justin. “He wouldn’t have any way to defend himself against Caleb.”

“You talk like you’re related to the Devil,” Justin said.

Nathan stared at Justin with a sharply grave expression in his eyes. “I am.”

C H A P T E R F O U R
T H E S E C R E T

IT WAS almost two in the morning. Justin had gone to his own bedroom after the three of them finished their discussion concerning Caleb’s unexpected arrival. Nathan and Blake remained in the kitchen after Justin left, sitting at their small dinner table, concluding their conversation.

“So are you gonna give me some more details?” Blake asked as he leaned back in the old, wooden chair.
Nathan got up from the little table where they had been sitting and went to the refrigerator. “Are you still hungry? I can make you something right quick.”

“Stop trying to avoid the subject, Nate. I don’t like when you do that.”

“What is it that you wanna know that you think I haven’t told you?”

“I wanna know if it’s really true that Caleb killed your mom.”

Nathan had been reaching into the refrigerator for the bag of bread, but he froze.

“I heard you tell Russell that,” Blake continued. “Back when that Shadow thing happened to me. You told him that the car crash wasn’t an accident.”

Nathan braced himself against the refrigerator. He never expected or intended for Blake to know that information. It was unwise of him to even reveal that to Russell at all. He tried to block the onslaught of painful memories that detonated in his mind, but it was too late. The whole course of events leading up to and following Rebekah Grayson’s death ravaged Nathan’s brain.

“No, it wasn’t an accident,” Nathan said softly. He did not want to think of his mother’s face, but her image came to him anyway. She was only forty-five when Caleb killed her. Nathan had been fourteen years old.

“I can’t believe a person would do that to their own mother,” Blake said.”I mean, it just sounds fuckin’ crazy.”

“Caleb is crazy. There’s really not even a word for what he is.” Nathan found himself unable to breathe. He sat at the table again, directly across from Blake.

“Guess I just don’t understand why he would do that.”

Nathan tapped his fingers on the wooden table top. “My parents separated when I was thirteen. Caleb was eighteen, but he was still living at home. My father wouldn’t let him move out of the house.”

“Why?” Blake asked.

“He thought Caleb wasn’t ‘ready to go out into the world yet’,” Nathan responded. “My father still wanted to train him, to strengthen his powers. He wanted Caleb to be more powerful than him. My mother wanted to leave for years, but she was too afraid. Finally, one night…it was like three o’ clock in the morning, she made me get up and leave with her. We didn’t take any clothes, any money…nothing. We just got into the car and left.” Nathan stopped tapping his fingers on the table, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe.

Blake reached out and grabbed Nathan’s hand. The warmth of Blake’s touch stabilized Nathan a little bit, but even Blake’s warmth was not enough to comfort the chill that squeezed Nathan’s heart.

“It was scary as hell the way it happened,” Nathan continued. “We were driving. And then I got this feeling that somebody was watching us. But I knew it was only me and my mother in the car. For some reason I kept feeling that there was another person in the car with us.”

“Caleb?”

Nathan nodded. “At first, I thought ‘how did he sneak in the car?’. I thought maybe he had been hiding in the car the whole time, waiting for us to get in there and leave. And that was before I even knew that Caleb was psychic—that I was psychic, too…but it wasn’t Caleb. It was his Shadow. His Shadow was in the backseat of the car. It just came out of nowhere.”

Blake was clearly compelled by the story. “What did he do?”

“My mother couldn’t see Caleb’s Shadow, just me. At first I thought I was imagining it. But you should’ve seen the way he…I mean it looked at me, Blake. It was like seeing a person and a monster at the same time. It was nothing but evil and hatred in those eyes. It was blaming me with those eyes. This was my fault, his eyes were saying. You were going to leave me alone with him. You're the reason why I don't have a mother." Nathan stopped and gazed at Blake, who was looked at him with rapt attention.

“Blake, do you remember what it was like when the Shadow was in you?”

“It’s too hard to forget,” Blake responded, “even if I wanted to. I felt like I wasn’t myself and at the same time I felt like I was everything I wanted to be. It was like being drunk or high off drugs times ten or something. I didn’t care about anything or anyone. It was like a long-ass outta body experience.”
Nathan nodded again. “Caleb put his Shadow into my mother and she lost control of the car and we crashed. She died instantly. Me on the other hand, I didn’t have one scratch on me.”

“Caleb didn’t want to kill you?” Blake interpreted.

“He basically killed me when he killed her. I had to go back to living with Caleb and my father. I spent another four years of torture with the two of them. When I was eighteen, I finally got away from them...for a while at least.”

“You were goin’ through this all through high school, and you never told me about any of this,” Blake said. There was a touch of sadness in his voice. “You kept your whole life a secret from me, even `til this day.”

“If you went through what I went through, you would understand why I keep certain things a secret. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Blake. It’s just that sometimes it’s better to keep things to yourself.”

“Well, Nate, what I know is that shit you try to keep hidden, never stays hidden. It was always comes back for you. And right now it’s comin’ back for you. Now you have me and Justin to back you up. But you can’t keep hidin’ things from us. I know it’s hard, but you still gotta do it.”

“I don’t want either one of you to get hurt because of me. This isn’t like what happened with Kyle. Caleb is much stronger than that.”

“Nobody is gonna get hurt,” Blake promised. “We’re gonna find a way to deal with your brother and things are gonna be okay.”
Of Blake’s many excellent personality traits, his optimism in the cold face of adversity was such a striking feature about him.
“You better hope you’re right,” Nathan replied.

* * *

Around four o’ clock that Sunday morning, Nathan decided to go for a walk.

He had been awake for the last few hours, ever since he and Blake went to bed, thinking about their conversation in the kitchen—thinking about Caleb. Somewhere he was out there, close.
But just how close? Nathan fretted.

Unlike the psychic link Nathan shared with Blake, Nathan had no telepathic link with Caleb, despite their familial bond. He could not predict any of Caleb’s actions in advance, the way he would be able to predict Blake, Justin’s, or any other persons’. Caleb could have been standing right outside his bedroom door and Nathan would not have known.

Nathan listened to Blake’s rhythmic breathing and wished he was able to sleep as peacefully as Blake, but he could not, not until he knew Caleb was gone for good. Slowly pulling Blake’s arms from around his waist, Nathan climbed out of bed and pulled on the same jeans and shirt he wore earlier. Nathan heard Blake shuffle around in the bed as he stepped into his shoes and hoped that he would not waken Blake. He did not want to interrupt his sleep or for Blake to ask him what he was doing up. Nathan grabbed a sweat jacket from his closet and silently walked out of his bedroom, closing the door gently behind him.

The darkness never scared Nathan as much as it did now. He could not see anything in front of him or the sides of him as he walked down the short hallway from his room to the staircase. Nathan passed by Justin’s bedroom and heard light snoring coming from inside. Justin and Ryan were in deep sleep. Nathan continued down the hallway, reaching the staircase moments later.

Should I really be going for a walk right now? Nathan asked himself.

It would have obviously been safer to stay indoors, in bed, with Blake, but his restlessness was overwhelming. Taking a short walk would help alleviate some of the stress plaguing his mind.
He descended the staircase, and with every step, Nathan’s heart rate accelerated. Just go back to bed, he told himself. You can take a walk when the sun is up.

Yet he still felt forced to go outside.

Before going out, Nathan made sure he had his cell phone and house keys in his pocket. He opened the front door and walked out into the crispy, early April morning. The stinging cold bit his earlobes and he was tempted to put his hood over his head, but he did not want anything to block his peripheral vision. He wanted to be able to run just in case someone or something suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Nathan made a right turn at the corner of Willow Street and Encinal Avenue, and began his stroll upward, towards Webster Street, which was the small town of Alameda’s busiest commercial district other than Park Street.

The town of Alameda, comprised of a population of a little more than seventy-thousand, was a small island, adjacent to the city of Oakland, and whose waters connected directly to the San Francisco Bay. Unlike its neighboring city, Oakland, known primarily because of its shocking number of violent crimes, Alameda was a serene, community-based town that mixed old-town values and traditions and modern city life. In short, Alameda was the type of place a person—man or woman—could walk down the street at four o’ clock in the morning and not have to worry about being robbed at gunpoint or killed.

Well maybe everyone but me, Nathan thought.

Nathan kept his hands in his pockets to stay warm and every once and a while, he looked behind him to make sure that he was not being followed. Nobody was behind him. It almost felt like he was the last person left in the world. He liked the silent solitude of the night; the way the leaves of the tall birch trees whispered to each other, the way the darkness was painted on the huge Victorian homes, some of which were beautifully restored by their owners, and some which had been abandoned and looked—and probably were—haunted.
If it were not for his constant worry about Caleb’s whereabouts, Nathan may have been able to fully appreciate the quiet beauty of his surroundings even more. He walked for a long time, with no real sense of direction. By five in the morning, the mostly starless night sky slowly shifted from a blackish-violet to a deep blue. Dawn was approaching soon and Nathan was finally starting to feel a bit fatigued, but he also felt the urge to keep walking.

How am I gonna protect them from Caleb? Nathan mused.

In the years since their last encounter, Caleb’s psychic abilities had surely grown significantly. Nathan had barely been able to fend himself from Caleb’s powerful attacks. Now, if and when they came in contact again, even with Justin’s telekinetic skills (which to Nathan were not as developed as they should have been) and Blake’s telepathic capabilities, they were no match for Caleb’s power.
Which means I’m gonna have to use my power to try to stop him, Nathan thought. And even then, I don’t know if that’s gonna be enough.

Justin and Blake were only aware of a portion of Nathan’s power. For them, they thought Nathan’s abilities were limited to telepathy and a relatively fair level of clairvoyance; but there was a greater power in him that he had hoped to keep a secret from them. With Caleb’s arrival, it would put Nathan in a position where he would have no choice but to use it.

Nathan continued to walk until he ultimately reached the Alameda Marina on the far end of town. By now, the sky shone with touches of gold and fuchsia, and in the distance, he could see the sun rising. There was a short walking trail that wrapped around the Marina, which was filled with boats, medium-sized yachts, and other water vessels. A flock of ducks swam closely together in a small pond that was surrounded by a series of modern homes that overlooked the waters.

Do you think you would be able to kill him, when the time came?

The question lingered in Nathan’s mind for a long time. Caleb’s presence meant that he was here to kill Nathan. There would be no placating his brother’s unremitting desire for revenge. Their future encounter would result in Nathan’s or Caleb’s death…perhaps even both.

Will you be able to do it? Nathan asked himself again.

This was not like the time three months ago, when he was under the influence of a Shadow and almost killed Andrew Dominguez. He had not been in his right mind in that instance. Killing Caleb would require a miraculous amount of power, skill, and luck. If he failed at putting a final end to Caleb, which he should have done when he was eighteen-years-old, then Caleb’s carnage would continue indefinitely.
The group of ducks, for what seemed like no reason at all, began squawking at once and they took flight, gliding gracefully though the air towards the rising sun. He walked over to the pond and stared at the rippling water, barely able to see his own reflection. After some time, the water became very still and Nathan saw himself on the water’s smooth surface.

I need to make a plan to get rid of Caleb, Nathan thought. And it’s got to be perfect.

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