Silent Ground Part 2 Read online

  Who the fuck was lying, and who was telling the truth? There were two conflicting stories, and Sasha had no idea who the hell to believe.

  “Kheva’s a lunatic,” Rob said behind Sasha. “He’s a murderous psychopath who covets new nightcrawlers like precious stones. He wants you two as his obedient slaves and nothing more, and he will do everything needed to make sure you stay with him in his twisted self-serving world forever.”

  Sasha felt a hand rest on his shoulder. “Do you know what that means, Sasha?”

  Kheva will do everything needed to make sure we stay with him?

  Jobe and Lex.

  Is he going to go after Jobe and Lex next?

  “Yes,” Rob said soberly. “He will go after Jobe and Lex. It might not be for years, but he will. He wants all of you to be his, and right now, you have two tethers that pull you away from him.”

  Sasha stared forward at the bear rug on the floor, a thousand and one thoughts taking over his head. Every positive memory he had of his time with Kheva, Kheva holding him, teaching him, treating him with kindness… suddenly they all seemed tainted and corrupted. It had all been… lies.

  “They’re terrified right now, Sasha,” Rob said. His hand squeezed Sasha’s shoulder. “Do you know how worried they are about you?”

  Sasha turned just as Rob walked around to the front of him, Sasha’s eyes followed. “You… know?”

  Rob stood in front of the television resting in a wooden cabinet, and kneeled down. “I don’t have the range that Kheva does, but I don’t need it.” He opened a wooden drawer and inside were rows of VHS tapes, all recordable ones with labels on their sides. Rob sorted through them as Sasha looked down on him with a sinking feeling, and after shifting several aside, he stood up with one in his hand. It was inside of a blue and green case, with a label on the side that read simply read SZ News.

  Without a word, Rob put the VHS into the player and picked up the remote.

  “He’s been taping every news report on you,” Rob said casually. He took another drink of beer and placed the bottle beside the television. “He won’t show you however, he doesn’t want you to see them anymore.” And with that, he pressed play on the VCR and a staticky white screen appeared.

  Then a female news anchor with dark hair and a red dress broke though the static and dissipated it, and Rob turned the volume up.

  “And forward to our next story. The disappearance that has a town searching and a family worried sick. Alexander Zakharin, known to his loved ones as Sasha, hasn’t been seen or heard of since April 2nd. Now, three weeks later, the young man from Cranden is still missing and his uncle, Lex Zakharin, is doing everything he can to find the man he describes as his son.”

  The picture on the television changed and Sasha’s heart broke when he saw Uncle Lex and Jobe, both in the driveway of Lex’s house speaking to the camera.

  They both looked like shadows of their former selves, their eyes staring off into different dimensions, each seeing their own custom-made horror, their clothes dishevelled and their hair a mess. Lex’s green eyes were cradling dark bags, and Jobe’s just seemed drowned in fear.

  The two of them were worse than they were when Sasha had seen them a couple weeks ago. How could they not be though? It had… it was coming up on a month since he’d ran off.

  The guilt hit him with a crippling weight. As they both took turns speaking, their voices breaking as they said how sick their nephew and friend was, how scared they were for him, Sasha sat down on the wooden coffee table and buried his face into his hands.

  “We know he’s out there––” Sasha’s shut eyes squeezed back tears when he heard Jobe’s broken voice. “––and we just want to know he’s safe. He doesn’t have to worry about being taken away. We’ll… we’ll figure something out, Sasha, just please come home. Let us just know you’re okay. Just please…

  … please don’t be dead.”

  There was silence. Sasha looked up to see that the camera was back on the woman in the news room, a shocked and sad look on her face.

  Then she swallowed. “If – if anyone has any information about the whereabouts of Sasha Zakharin, they are to call their local police department, or if it’s an emergency 9-1-1.” She blinked away tears. “We’ll be back after the break.”

  The video ended.

  “Oh fuck,” Sasha cried desperately. He shook his head back and forth, the guilt eating him from the inside out. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.” How can he still be here? How can he just continue to let the two people who have meant the most to him think he was dead?

  Before, he’d tried to escape and got punished severely for it. But now… Kheva was treating him better, his powers were developing. Was he still a prisoner here? Would Kheva let him at least call Jobe and Lex to let him know he was alive?

  I have to do something, Sasha said. I fucking can’t just stay here and let them think I’m dead. I’d never be able to live with myself. They don’t deserve that; they were just trying to help me.

  “I can tell you now, Kheva isn’t going to let you contact them,” Rob said. He ejected the tape with the remote and took it out of the black VCR. “Weren’t you listening to what I just said, my friend? Kheva is as possessive as he is psychotic, he’s not going to share his property with anyone.”

  Sasha looked up at Rob, tears stinging his eyes. “I’m not his property,” he whispered, unsure of his own words. He felt so… trapped here, but not entirely in a bad way. There was a comfort in not being responsible for your own life. He’d already made such a mess of it, and he’d enjoyed belonging somewhere. He enjoyed being lorded over by someone who knew a hell of a lot more than he did. “I’m nineteen, an adult. I’m not asking for much… I just need them to know that I’m alive.”

  Rob slid the video back underneath the cabinet and closed it with a low click. “It doesn’t matter to that monster,” he responded apathetically. He grabbed the beer that was resting beside the TV and swirled its contents. “You think he let my boyfriend and my family know I was alive? Nope. He destroyed me, brought out Kel, fabricated a past for him, and he’s been Kheva’s slave since then. If you don’t think Kheva’s going to do the same to you… you’re just plain stupid.”

  The guilt was devouring Sasha like a rampaging beast, consuming the cautious security he’d found in Kheva’s recent treatment of him. How could he be complacent here? How could he be fine with being at Ciel Lake when Jobe and Lex were suffering this very moment? He – he had to get the hell out of this place, or at least find someway of contacting them.

  Then Sasha’s head rose and his eyes focused on Kheva’s office door. “The satellite phone…” Sasha whispered. “I could call them on the satellite phone.” He rose, but Rob held up a hand.

  “He brought it with him, he always does,” Rob said. “He knows the moment he leaves Kel alone, I may come and attempt to contact my family. Where the phone goes, Kheva goes. It won’t be that easy.” He turned and looked towards the office, the wood door askew from his previous infiltration. “You’re stuck here until you escape. He’ll never let you go on your own.”

  Sasha felt like a statue, an ornament put on display in a museum to show all those who passed the true definition of guilt and misery. He couldn’t move, breathe, all there was to him now was a hand cupping his mouth, unsure of what to do, only knowing that he had to do something.

  I already tried, I already tried escaping. He’ll find me. If it wasn’t for the Dead Zone, he would know all of my thoughts and string me up like a fucking animal to be butchered.

  Not only did Sasha have to tell Jobe and Lex that he was alive…

  He had to prevent Kheva from hurting them.

  “Not now, not tomorrow,” Rob said. He casually walked up to Sasha, his light blue eyes looking like the cold sky above the Arctic and twice as frigid. “Not even a year from now. He’ll wait until you’re completely under his control, so when he does kill them… you won’t know, nor will you care.” Rob then lowered a hand. “I
f you want to help them, and help yourself… it is time you get more serious about bringing me those hidden memories of our Mr. Madden.”

  “Mr. Madden,” Sasha whispered. That was his real last name, Kheva Swift was just a cover, as Keluva Swift was. He looked up at Rob, and slowly his own hand extended. “I… no matter how much he’s training me, no matter how much I feel like I belong here… I can’t just forget Lex and Jobe exist. I can’t just fucking – just fucking let them suffer. I love them.”

  When Sasha grabbed Rob’s hand and shook it, the smallest of smiles appeared on the man’s face, a man who looked identical to Kel in every way, but with all mannerisms his own. “We have people who love us,” Rob said quietly. He kneeled down in front of the sitting Sasha, and a second hand grasped his. “Unlike Kheva. We need to go back to them, and let this fucked up, manipulative tyrant spin in the grave he dug for himself.”

  Rob’s words made Sasha feel sick, but the ends justified the means. He couldn’t be selfish; he couldn’t let his acceptance here overshadow the need to do what was right.

  And what was right, was protecting Jobe and Lex. He’d… he’d find a way to cope with his own life after.

  Rob, once again reading his mind, squeezed his hand and smiled. What a strange smile it was, and even though Sasha ignored it, there was something fundamentally unsettling about that cut grin.

  “We’ll give each other the stock we need to get rid of the headaches,” Rob said, trying with every muscle in his face to make that smile look supportive. “I have other nightcrawlers I can introduce you to, ones who aren’t like Kheva. We will take care of our own, without the shackles of Kheva holding us back. Would you like that?”

  Sasha nodded. “I would,” he said, flickers of relief popping up around the unease and apprehension like flares of fire in a shroud of smoke. “I – I’ll do everything I can to get into his head. I just wish I knew how.”

  Rob’s smile widened, the aroma of beer on his breath.

  Not Kel’s smile. There was nothing about him that was Kel…

  “It’s actually quite easy, Sasha,” he said. He slipped his hand from Sasha’s and rose to standing, then put the bottle of beer to his lips. After a long swig, the suction broke with a pop, and Rob glanced down at the label as if it held interest to him. “You’ll do anything to draw those memories, will you?”

  Sasha looked up at him and nodded slightly. “If it means… I can contact Jobe and Lex, and I can keep them safe.”

  “Then it’s rather simple, Sasha,” Rob said. His eyes flickered up, and there they burned into Sasha’s. “Sleep with Kheva.”

  The shock of Rob’s words had Sasha rising to his feet. “Sleep with him?” he said. Sasha didn’t know whether to immediately shoot down the idea, tell Rob he was out of his fucking mind, or both. “I’m not doing that. No. It’s bad enough what Kel has been fucking doing to me, I’m not going to enable that.” But as he said these words, the brain behind his eyes was working, digging up past incidences then presenting them to Sasha with a grim look.

  Every time he’d done something sexual with Kheva…

  …he’d slipped into Kheva’s mind. He’d seen those memories. He’d fucking… been there, been with Kheva when he was a child, pinned underneath that… monster.

  Oh fuck.

  Sasha felt sick. He couldn’t exploit such fucked up memories. “I can’t do that,” he whispered. And when he looked up at Rob, he saw the cut grin gone, and in its place, a flash of anger that was so brief, Sasha wasn’t sure he’d seen it at all.

  Then Rob stalked towards him, fast enough for Sasha’s body to flinch away, expecting a physical blow.

  But Rob didn’t hit him. Instead, he grasped Sasha’s wrist with one hand, and with his other, he placed it against Sasha’s head.

  And with that touch, Sasha felt his mind get pushed backwards into the darkness, until the living room around him melted, and instead, a memory dripped in all directions like a coating of thick paint.

  It was brief, but he saw it. He saw it with such clarity, he screamed.

  In the real world, he screamed.

  It was Jobe and Lex. They were hanging side by side by rope bound around their legs, grey, pale, their torsos split open with their innards removed and resting in a bucket beside them.

  And their blood, draining into twin white buckets.

  Pitpitpitpitpit.

  Their heads were still on their bodies, their eyes sunken in and shrivelled, staring off into nothing with nothing staring back, mouths slacked with blood covering their faces, staining their teeth as it drained into the buckets.

  Jobe then moved. Sasha focused on him and saw behind Jobe’s dangling body, the African serval, licking and nipping at Jobe’s arm.

  Then, just as Sasha gathered up all of his energy to push him out of this living nightmare, he heard the sounds of Kel’s bone saw.

  “ENOUGH!” Sasha cried.

  The room disappeared and the living room came back. Sasha dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his face.

  “Okay,” he cried. He grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and pulled as hard as he could. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it. FUCK!” Sasha slammed a hand down onto the hard wood floor and cried out, guilt stacked upon guilt crushing him with its thousand-pound weights. He physically sunk to the floor, his forehead touching the edge of the bear skin rug and cried. “I’ll do whatever you want… just… just don’t let him hurt them.”

  And Rob smiled.

  “Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Nate’s focus was always on the ground, as if the young man was too scared to make eye contact with anyone. He spoke to the floor more than he spoke to Jobe and Lex, and at the slightest hint of anger or frustration from either of them, he was wincing like he was half-expecting to be struck.

  Jobe had begun to feel sorry for the poor kid. He’d discovered from small talk that Nate was living with three other men in a crappy house on the shiftier side of Courtenay, the only family he had were the foster brothers that Lariat’s mom, now passed on, had adopted and he didn’t have many friends.

  He was a nice guy though. Whenever Jobe or Lex had a question about Sasha he answered it with honesty, even if it was a difficult one, and he always seemed willing to help them.

  And because of that, and Nate’s rather hard-luck story, Lex and Jobe had both decided to extend a hand of friendship towards Nate. They’d invited him over for lunch before they headed off to Courtenay to investigate where Nate had seen Sasha, and were hoping the invitation would lead to Nate and Lariat both becoming their friends.

  Admittedly, the extended hand of friendship wasn’t all selfless, Jobe and Lex had decided it was in their best interest to make Nate and Lariat comfortable around them. They quickly wanted to bring their relationship from working, to friendly, in order to learn as much about Kheva and Rob as they possibly could.

  And the more they were around the two, the easier it would be. They had to get Sasha back at all costs, and not only that, they had to learn their enemy, and the only way they could achieve that, was to make friends with the people who had been close to him.

  “This just brings me back to my childhood,” Nate said with a half-hearted laugh. He was sitting around the dining room table with grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade chicken noodle soup. Jobe had decided to only work weekends with this new information regarding Sasha’s whereabouts, and with the extra time on his hands, he’d made soup from the roasted chicken Lex had made for dinner the previous night. “My foster mother used to make soups like this. I remember I’d clear driveways with Ian for extra money and once we’d return home she’d have chicken soup on the back burner, ready for us to eat.”

  Jobe smiled, quite proud of the compliment. “I’m so used to taking care of Sasha,” he admitted quietly. “It’s been hard not having him to focus on, but at least you and Lex can get the spill off of my need to mother things.”

  “It’s called smothering, not mot
hering,” Lex said with a smirk, then he flinched as Jobe kicked him under the table. “I can only imagine how bad things are going to be once Sasha comes home. You’re going to turn into some monster Martha Stewart nightmare, aren’t you?”

  Jobe didn’t even deny it. “Yeah, I will,” he said. “I hope he’s ready for it.”

  They ate with light back and forth chatter, Jobe and Lex both glancing at the clock periodically. Lariat had other engagements so he couldn’t come over for lunch, but the plan was for him to come to the house at two in the afternoon, and then the four of them would drive to Courtenay.

  Jobe was getting butterflies just thinking about it. The thought of being nearer to Sasha, or even just being in a place that Sasha had been, was filling him with apprehension and excitement. There was still a part of him that didn’t believe any of this, but the signs around him and the proof he’d already been given, had just been too great.

  And also… even with his doubts, he had to do this for Lex. Lex’s heart and soul were both in this now, and Jobe worried that if all of this fell apart… there would be no recovering from it. Lex was already hanging off of the ledge enough as it was.

  “So, how many foster brothers did you have, Nate?” Lex asked after he’d swallowed down a bite of biscuit; specially-made baking powder cheese biscuits, a family recipe.

  “We had dozens… but only a handful of them I really saw as family. We’re still as close as brothers,” Nate explained. “The others, some of them were only with us for a few months, some even had their families apologize and welcome them back which was nice.”

  “And… do they know who Rob was?” Lex asked curiously. “The ones you consider your family?”

  Nate seemed to hesitate for a moment, then to further prolonged the silence, he took a bite of his biscuit and chewed it slowly. “Some of them do,” he said after he’d swallowed. “The ones closest to Rob, but others… they just know he went missing.”