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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Into the Gloaming
A "Vorare" story
By
Ivan Ewert
Start from the beginning of the Vorare Series

They sat, the three of them, at a kitchen table meant to seat no more than two. Carol had taken the narrow end of the table, to avoid the issue of which man would sit to her side; and the tracks of her tears had been dried.

"You're both going to have to understand something," she began. "I'm not used to being ordered around, not for a long time. I told you I've been afraid, Gordon, and that's the plain truth. But there's a difference between being afraid and being cowed."

"I don't want to give you orders."

"Let me finish," she said, her voice low but a little sharp. She hadn't taken her eyes off Gordon since they sat to the table, not even when Ben Harris tried to take her hand. "You're in trouble and I know it. You say it's bad - bad enough that the police might not be any help. I've figured that much since the reports came out of Wisconsin. I had the sheriff here more than once those first few months, but after a while that had to be set aside. They have real work to do, and I was jumping at shadows.

"You look terrible. If it isn't drugs then I don't know what it could be, and I don't think I want to know. You're alive and I thank Jesus for that but this is something that's going to haunt you until the day you die. Am I right?"

Gordon had kept his own gaze steady with hers. The face was different, now - older, of course, and more worn than he remembered. The change was nothing to those he had gone through but it was there, the drawn and pinched look that said she'd lost something, lost something she hardly ever expected to regain. Something she hungered for in the quiet watches of the night when sleep danced just beyond her grasp - and now he was back, but it wasn't at all what she had wanted.

"I think so," he nodded. "I don't know. But it would be safest to think so."

"Then if I did leave - not to come with you, but to go away somewhere with these papers - I still might never see you again. I wouldn't know if you were ... dead," she said, fighting to get the word out, "or hiding, or lost, or being held against your will. Not for years at a time again. And Gordon, I won't do that. I can't do it. You don't know ..."

She stopped, watching his face; and decided against finishing that sentence. "I can't do it. I'd rather be near you, even if it meant I'd be in danger, too."

"Mom, listen." Gordon wanted to stand, to pace. He wanted to be somewhere away from this tidy little kitchen under its warm lights, away from the rose-colored marble of the table and the cheery red wrought-iron chairs. He thought of the woods behind the house, the darkness that enclosed them and the rise and fall of the surrounding hills. His eyes flickered to a framed canvas on the wall, embroidered by hand with a bible verse: Those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.

"I've ... it was a cult."

The silence in the room grew heavier.

"I wasn't there willingly," said Gordon, "but I was brought into their compound. Starved, beaten, and kept captive. They had guns, and dogs, and more at their hands. The compound was in Minnesota but they said they had friends here in the southeast, and I don't think they were lying about that."

Carol took her eyes off of him, turned them into her lap.

"How did you get out?" Ben's voice was no longer unkind, but it still held the tone of a man not entirely ready to believe what he was hearing.

"Some fighting started - member against member. I snuck away while they were occupied and then made it into the woods, but I was lost for a long, long time. Even here in Newberry County we've got more towns than they do in the back country that far north."

"You didn't come across a road?"

"Mister Harris, I was terrified." Gordon spoke frankly, not entirely lying, not telling the complete truth. "Remember all I'd been through, and the constant thought that local authority would be tied in with this group. I found roads but when I could help it I didn't go into towns. When I needed food ... I stole it, or made do with what I could find. I think I went a little crazy, maybe more than a little. In the end I started thinking about revenge."

"Gordon." His mother's voice was low and soft. "I hope ..."

"I'm here now because the cult knows the house. They said as much - knew your name and knew dad's as well. They knew Whitmire, and it's not hard to find the house even if you don't have the exact address, mom. This isn't a big town."

"And this revenge?" Ben broke in again.

Gordon looked at his hands, now clenched tight upon the tabletop. He didn't speak, and after a few moments his mother stood and busied herself at the coffee maker. Pouring three cups, she brought two back to the men, and remained standing.

"Have you sinned so much?" She asked. "Gordon, how far away have you gone from me in these years?"

"Far," he said, in a voice less contrite than any at the table would have liked. "So far I'd never have darkened your door if I didn't believe you were in real trouble."

The room was quiet. "You'll stay here tonight." She looked into her coffee cup, not at either of the men. "You'll sleep under my roof tonight, for me. For my sake you'll stay and you'll pray for forgiveness for whatever it is you've done."

The Ally writhed beneath Gordon's shirtsleeve, feeling for all the world like a serpent wrapped around his arm. He could feel the rough edges of his shirtsleeves scraping now against the inside of his flesh, the edges of skin and muscle laying themselves bare, and he pictured in his mind the contortions of the worm-pale flesh, the rasping of vein and tendon against fabric.

"I won't ask you to go to church. If you don?t want the world to know you're here then I don't want to attract attention to you, and that includes the police, Ben. If they show up at my doorstep I'll tell them they're mistaken and you won't be welcome any longer."

"I don't know that I will be anyway," said Ben, preparing to stand.

"You're wrong. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I don't mean to leave Whitmire but if it came to it there's a place I could go that's not tied to the family. I don't mean to leave you alone, Gordon, but if it comes to it then we'll see what God decides. And I don't mean to push you out the door, Ben."

He seemed about to speak, then simply breathed a heavy sigh. "I don't like it and I want that plain. The police ought to know what's happened. Even if a bad egg's in with them they can't all belong to this cult."

"It's plain, and I'm not saying you're wrong." Carol sipped her coffee. "But my own father told me plenty of stories about his father's time, Ben, and you weren't born to these hills. Family's more important than what any local law might want."

"Even to assault?"

"It's family," she repeated, "and God decides what comes to those that break His laws. It's not my place or yours.

"Gordon is staying the night here. He's praying for wisdom and it'll come to him." She sat again, reaching forward to take hold of Gordon's still-clasped hands. "Until then, my son's home, and he's welcome here."

***

It was unclear if it was delicacy, manners, or a distaste for sleeping under the same roof as Gordon; but Ben Harris made his excuses at ten o'clock that evening. With a promise not to reveal what had passed, he took his leave with a chaste kiss from Carol in the foyer, out of immediate sight.

He took advantage of this time to visit the bathroom, and ran hot water along his hands, splashing it up into his face. He no longer slept, he no longer ate. He could conceal the former easily enough but eventually the latter would press itself home on her if she insisted on staying at his side. He sat on the closed lid of the toilet, face in his hands and wondering why he had ever revealed himself - why he had ever come home.

"Would we could weep," came the Ally's voice from beneath his sleeve. "Would we could cry."

"Be quiet," hissed Gordon.

"She does not hear, O host of man, and she does not see. She is admirably made for the art of suffering."

Gordon became very quiet. After several minutes of stillness, he unbuttoned the shirtsleeve and pushed it past his elbow, exposing the taut lips of his Ally stretched across the arm.

"You don't touch her. Agam doesn't touch her. None of you will ever touch her. She is inviolate," he hissed, with all the grim anger and determination which coiled beneath his ribs, "and she belongs to a different God."

"Of course - of course," said the Ally. "But so long as you are near her she will suffer, as she is made to. You see it, and should you leave once more what protection does she have against the spirits made flesh, the spirits of civilization? For now she is inviolate, but there will be nothing left of her when once your protection is withdrawn."

"Then she stays under my protection."

"Then you break your word to me, and that is no little thing."

"You know they'll come here looking for me."

"And if they find you, what then? How many bodies can that lake hold before someone grows suspicious? How many intruders will pass so easily below the notice of your neighbors here? No, O host of man. You will not win so long as they bring you to bay, and you will not win surrounded by prying eyes and choked by concrete and steel. You will take again to the woods, and you will take up the tools of blood and bark and bone, and we as one will shatter them as hunters should."

"She can't be protected."

"You have declared her inviolate, and so must she be."

"How? How can she be under my protection when I'm gone?"

"Gordon?" The voice made him leap, frantically buttoning at his shirtsleeve.

"Sorry, mom. Sorry ... I'm coming." He flushed the toilet and ran the water in the sink once more, bringing his hand to his face and whispering.

"You think on that. How can she be under my protection if I'm off killing the Ghouls?"

"It is all but done already," came the whispered reply, "though it will mean blood, and blackened shadow."

He opened the door, and she was right there.

"You were talking to yourself," she said.

"I've been alone a long time. Guess I fell into the habit."

"You need to be talking to God tonight, Gordon. Not to yourself and not to your imagination."

"I know, mom. I will, I promise. As soon as you're off to bed."

"Sit up a while longer. I've told you all the family news but I'm not ready for bed just yet." Her eyes said more - said that she didn't expect this peace between the two of them to last, that she didn't know what would come. "Will you sit up and keep me company while I work on this cross-stitch?"

Gordon nodded. "Sure, mom. I'll keep you company tonight."

It was past midnight when he gently rested his hand on her shoulder to wake her, and helped her to her feet. When he brought her to the bedroom door she threw her arms around him, exhausted with late hours and emotion.

"I wish you'd never left home," she said. "I wish you'd never left Charleston."

"I know, mom."

"I wish you'd never left me," she said, and he could feel hot tears burning through his shirt.

"Me, too, mom. But God decides." He held her tightly in return, wishing with all his heart that he could believe his words, wishing he could weep.

Story and image by Ivan Ewert, Copyright 2007