Black Rose (Scenes 1-5)
Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal . . .
—H. P. Lovecraft,
“The Tomb”
1
When the telephone started ringing downstairs, their father got to his feet and told Mara and Nico that it might be their mother, or at least he hoped it was their mother. With any luck, he told them, he might be able to convince their mother to come back to the house and talk things over. Then their father went downstairs, and when they heard him picking up the landline phone in the kitchen and talking to their mother, both girls sprinted into their room. Nico and Mara came to their phone on the nightstand beside their bed, and Nico picked up the receiver, holding it between herself and Mara, so they could listen in on their parents' conversation.
". . . down, okay? Calm down!" their father said. "Just tell me what's going on."
Her voice came on the phone, huffing and puffing through the static and saying, "I'm in a weird place, but I . . ." The connection cut itself out, then came back on with more huffing and puffing as she went on, saying, ". . . and someone's after me! I can . . ." The connection cut itself out, then came back on again.
"Did you call the police?" he said, raising his voice. "Fuck's going on here? Hey, hey, are you there?"
"I did, but . . ." The connection cut itself out, then came back on again.
"Where are you?" he said. "I can barely hear what you're saying! There's too much noise! Where are you?"
". . . don't know where I am right now! I just . . ." The connection cut itself out for a few moments, long enough for their father to curse over the line, then came back on again. Now their mother was sobbing through the static and saying to their father, "Paul, I need you to get out of here! I just wanna get out of here . . ."
The connection cut itself out again, with only their father yelling at the other end of the phone, saying, "Lucy? Lucy? LUCYYYYY?" Yet no answer came back, and no static ran through the line, and only the dial tone came through. "Fuck!" Paul said, slamming the receiver onto the cradle of the phone downstairs and killing the connection. Then their father yelled from downstairs, saying, "Girls, call the cops! Something's happened to your mother!"
Nico slammed the receiver on the cradle, then picked it up and dialed 9-1-1, holding the receiver with shaky hands and saying, "Something’s happened to my mom! . . . Her name's Lucy Cairns, and this is her daughter, Nico Cairns! . . ."
Footsteps came running up the stairs and into the upper hallway, and he barged through their door and said, "I'm gonna go get one of the neighbors to watch over the house. Stay on the line, till I get back, okay?"
Mara said, "But Dad, we—"
"No ‘buts,’ just watch over the house," their father said. "I'll be back with the neighbor!" And he ran back down the hall and down the stairs and opened the front door.
All the while, Nico kept talking to the dispatcher at the other end of the line, saying, "I don't know where she is! All she said was that she was in a weird place, but I don't know where! . . . She called the house, and my dad answered, and my sister and I listened while they were talking, and we heard our mom say someone's after her! . . . I don't know!"
While her sister was talking over the landline, Mara rushed to their bedroom window and opened the shutters, looking over the front entrance, where she saw her father rushing out and running down the street to the next-door neighbor's house—
Before disappearing into a dark haze.
Mara sucked in breath and said, "What the hell? Where did he go? I can't see Dad anywhere!"
Nico took the receiver from her ear, saying, "WHAT?"
"I saw Dad disappear!” Mara said. “I can't see him anywhere!"
Nico rushed to the window, dropping the phone with the voice at the other end of the landline that was screaming for what was going on, before the connection cut out completely.
Nico pressed her face to the window beside Mara, and both sisters looked outside.
Nico said, "Where is he?"
"I don't know! He just flat-out disappeared!"
Both sisters were about to start an argument when they witnessed a man that wasn't their father appearing out of the haze, almost out of nowhere like a ghost. On getting a closer look at him, they saw him wearing a white suit over a black undershirt and possibly wearing black gloves. He seemed strange enough but still human, till he raised his gaze to their window with a pair of red glowing eyes.
They slammed the shutters from the sight.
But then Mara remembered that the front door had not clicked itself shut ("Ah, shit!"), so she sprinted out of the room, saying, "Dad forgot to close the door!"
Nico cursed, following her sister through the upper hallway and down the staircase, both siblings now racing through the living room towards the foyer and the door before the stranger could get inside the house.
And as one both sisters slammed the door closed and locked the knob, then backed away from the foyer towards the foot of the stairs, listening for footsteps coming down the walkway entrance, but heard nothing sound there at all. Then they looked at their surroundings inside their house, and both sisters in the living room noticed some of the shutters were still open during their parents’ fight.
"Close the shutters!" Nico said, running towards the windows in the first floor of the house and slamming all the shutters in the family room and kitchen and dining room and living room, while Mara ran up the stairs and into the upstairs bedrooms and home offices and slammed all the shutters there.
Mara then raced back down the stairs and met her sister dialing 9-1-1 from the family desk phone in the kitchen, holding the receiver up to her ear. Nico held it out between herself and Mara to listen, but both sisters only heard the monotone sound of the dial tone.
"Fuck!" Nico said, slamming the receiver on the cradle. "Mara, check the phone upstairs! I forgot to hang it up!"
Mara cursed, then sprinted back up the stairs and through the upper hallway and into their bedroom, where she saw the receiver lying on the floor where Nico had dropped it. She ran to the receiver, swooping it up and slamming it back onto its cradle on the nightstand, then ran back into the upper hallway and yelled from upstairs as she was descending, saying, "It's back on! You should be able to call the police now!"
Mara hastened down the stairs and ran through the living room into the kitchen as her sister was dialing 9-1-1 again, and she and Nico listened as Nico held the receiver between them, but instead of the police dispatcher from before, a different voice came on the line.
The voice said, "Ah, it took you long enough!"
Nico said, "Who is this?"
"Oh, just a visitor from the Phantom Realms," the voice said. "I've heard you had a family emergency, so I came to your house to see if you were doing okay, and it seems you are!"
"You're the creep outside our house!"
The voice on the other end chuckled. "Creep? Creep? That word doesn't describe me at all! Don't just label a man when you haven't walked a mile in his shoes, till you know what it's like to lose the very people you hold dear, and you haven't lost a FUCKING THING since you were born!"
Mara grabbed the receiver in Nico’s hands closer to her and said, "Hey, don't fucking talk to her that way! You're not getting in, so what do you want?"
"Oooooh, a different voice, and a feisty one, too," the voice continued, chucking over the line. "Now that I've heard of both of you in person, let me guess your names. Hmmmmmm . . . How about this? Mara Cairns and Nico Cairns! Am I right? Am I right? Am I right? Am I fucking RIGHT?"
Both girls slammed the receiver back onto the cradle, cursing as they spoke.
"Who the fuck was that guy?" Nico said.
"How should I know?" Mara said, sprinting out of the kitchen and into the living room and back up the stairs and into the upper hallway towards their bedroom, with Nico following in tow. "He's probably got all the landlines tapped!"
Both girls ran into their bedroom and slammed the door shut behind them.
"Get the smartphones!" Nico ordered, while she got a chair from the desk and propped it under the door knob.
Mara grabbed both of their smartphones from the nightstands and threw one of them for Nico to catch, then turned hers on and waited for it to boot up, then dialed for 9-1-1 and prayed that for the police dispatcher—
"Hello, hello, hello," the same voice said.
"Fuck you!" Mara said, then threw her smartphone against the wall, shattering it to pieces.
Nico, however, didn't call for 9-1-1: she called for her mother's phone number and was now waiting for her mother to pick it up on the other end.
Mara came over to her sister, saying, "Any luck?"
"I'm trying to call Mom," she said, and she held it out between herself and Mara, so that they could listen together, both sisters hoping against sanity that this would work, hoping to hear their mother's voice on the other end of the connection, hoping for an end to this crazy nightmare.
"Who is this? Who are you?" their mother said over the line.
"MOM!" both girls yelled.
"Mara, Nico, is that you?" Lucy said.
"Oh my God, where are you, Mom? Are you okay?" Mara said.
“I’m still here, honey,” their mother said.
"And where's Dad?" Nico added.
"He’s here with me right now," their mother said and started sobbing and sniffling. "Oh my God, I’m so sorry, girls! I shouldn’t have gone out like I did. I was just— . . . Hey! HEY, GIVE IT BACK, BASTARD!"
And another voice, the same voice that had been dogging the girls in their own house, said over the connection, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to see your parents?"
"WHERE DID YOU TAKE OUR PARENTS?" Nico screamed.
"No need to shout!" the voice said. "Tell you what I’ll do, darling: I'll personally take you both to your parents, and it'll become a family reunion!"
And no sooner had he said those words when a darkness more than night flooded into their bedroom, blacking everything out into a nameless and formless void, where all things are one and the same, where the first meets the last, where everything meets nothing, where the past meets the future, and where eternity meets the now. Here, there was no happiness, no hope, no love, no life, and even no soul. Here, there was nothing to raise the spirit or set it free from the dark night of the soul that was about to face its judgment from the hands of an evil man in a white suit. Here there was only the sleep of eternity—
Only the sleep of death.
2
During their interval of sleep, another girl with bobbed dark hair and teal eyes, dressed in a Shad-Row Academy uniform and an oversized hand-me-down jacket, rushed down through the backstage area and spotted Rancaster smoothing out the creases on the sleeves of his white jacket just before he entrance onstage. She caught up to him, saying, “Rancaster!”
The man turned and greeted her with a smile, saying, “Ah, I’m glad you could make it, bambina,” and he patted the back of her head as she was bent over trying to catch her breath. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show up, but you know what they say: better late than—”
“Enough already,” she said, regaining her breath, then walked up to him and looked him in the eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m doing this for you,” he said.
“I don’t want this!” she said. “Let them go!”
“Oh, come, come, bambina,” he said and led her up the backstairs towards the far side of the stage close to the pulleys and ropes operating the stage curtains, where he pointed out Paul and Lucy Cairns in a pair of chairs beneath the track lights, both parents calling out to their daughters sleeping in another pair of chairs on the other side of the stage. “Those girls over there, do you know them?”
She shook her head but added, “Don’t do this.”
“You don’t know them, bambina,” he said, “just as they don’t know you. You’ve never walked in their shoes before, nor have they walked in yours. You’re complete strangers.”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“What about those two before us?” Rancaster added, pointing to the frantic parents of these sleeping girls yelling for them to wake up. “Do you know either of them?”
She said, “No, I don’t, but—”
“That’s right, bambina,” he said. “You don’t know them, but I do. I’ve watched those two tyrants wage endless arguments over petty matters between themselves, putting their daughters through an endless succession of sleepless nights. You’ve never witnessed the torments those two girls have had to suffer, just as they have never witnessed the hell you’ve suffered at the hands of your own father. Your experiences and theirs are mutually exclusive, but misery loves company.”
“Don’t do this, please,” she said and grabbed a hold of Rancaster’s sleeve before he went onstage.
Yet he grabbed her hand, freezing her in place under his psychic restraint, and said, “Whatever you may be thinking right now, I’m doing this for you, bambina. Remember that. Just wait here like a good little girl, and once those girls over there wake up, just enjoy the show.”
3
When Mara and Nico finally woke up, they found themselves lying on the stage, blinded by the limelight from the back wall, in front of a theater filled with spectators, who applauded their awakening into the show that was tonight's entertainment in the labyrinthine thoroughfares of the Phantom Realms.
Both girls looked at their surroundings and then saw their parents sitting on chairs on the other side of the stage. Both girls got up to their feet, calling out to their mom and dad as they bolted towards them, then slamming against an invisible barrier in the middle of the stage and knocking themselves out on impact and falling backwards with two heavy thuds onto the stage like wrestlers performing a bump.
Laughter broke out amongst the crowd, followed by a grand applause, while their parents squirmed and struggled against Rancaster’s psychic restraints keeping them fixed to their chairs, their mouths also kept shut with another of his psychic restraints.
More laughter broke out over their parents' antics, nudging their chairs as they struggled to get free and merely making incoherent noises.
Then the host of the show walked onto the stage, spotlighted in the limelight, whistling Scott Joplin’s ragtime tune, “Weeping Willow,” as if he was out on a morning stroll through town in mid-May. He wore a white suit over a black shirt and black gloves like before, and he was swinging a cane around in circles in one hand, while his other hand remained inside his pants pocket.
Then he stopped where the girls lay unconscious on the floor, then looked up at the audience, then looked back down on the girls and said, "Now that's gotta leave a mark."
Another burst of laughter rose from the audience at his slapstick observation.
He then removed his hand from his pants pocket and raised it in the air and snapped his fingers, and a table and two chairs plopped onto the stage. He snapped his fingers again, and two revolvers plopped onto the table. Then he snapped his fingers a third time, and the two sisters disappeared from the floor of the stage and reappeared in both chairs, seated at the table with the revolvers.
When the parents saw this, they panicked and struggled against their restraints, till they tired themselves out and slouched forward in their chairs. Their antics only made the audience laugh at the futility of their actions.
But ever the showman, the man stood before his audience and said, "Before we begin tonight's main event, let me tell you something about this family," and he gestured at the girls slumped over in their chairs and their parents still struggling against the restraints in their own chairs.
"This family is a broken family, one of a myriad of broken families in this godless world of ours. They were once a happy family, but like all broken families, their happiness could not last, because the very pillars that should have held them together crumbled. You see, although they say they loved their children, they couldn't see the pain their constant bickering was causing them, until it was too late. Their children loved them unconditionally and saw past the very faults that they themselves could not reconcile within each other; hence, their appearance here tonight."
In the silence of the crowd, his words moved many to tears of sympathy, yet the tears the parents of Nico and Mara Cairns shed were those of shame. Nonetheless, they bowed their heads low in penitence, their faces scrunched up in agony as tears trailed down their faces and unthinkable thoughts flooded their minds and unshakable feelings flooded their hearts.
But the host wasn't moved at all by their tears. He just glared at these two sufferers, saying, "You cry now like you cried then in that shattered house of yours: only at the very end, when it was too late to reconcile, and only later (as now) do you realize your mistake. You two make me sick! In the course of your married lives, you've forgotten what it was like to be children, to sympathize with their needs and their wants! Instead, you two were consumed in your own needs and your own wants to the point where you were blinded by your own selfish selves, and your children paid the price! I’ve seen their bedroom antics, how they’ve defiled themselves, while you two were sound asleep. They looked for love in each other’s bodies, because they could not find it in YOU!"
He then turned to the audience and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, let the show begin!"
4
After witnessing the straining effects her blood spell put her through, Colbie and Kendra wanted Celia to rest for a while, but Celia wouldn't have it. She put on her sweater and overcoat and said, "There's no way I'm letting you two go out there alone. You need my help, and you know it!"
"But that spell took a lot out of you," Kendra said. "You need to stay here and rest!"
Colbie added, "I'll teleport us there myself!"
"Colbie, you can't teleport that distance!"
"I can try, damn it!"
"I won't let you," Celia said. "The greater the distance, the worse your accuracy!"
Colbie took her last remark like a low blow, curling her hands into fists and saying, “Don’t be an asshole about it, geez!”
“I’m just telling the truth,” she said.
"Celia, be reasonable," Kendra said. "You heard what Connie said. There's something out there that has the whole police department on edge. You'll become a liability if we can't protect you and Mara while we're there! It's not only our lives on the line: it's Mara's, too!"
Celia paused, giving it thought, then said, "I'll teleport us to Mara's location, and then I'll teleport Mara to the hospital. After that, I'm going back there with you, and you can chew me out all you want. I don't care! But I'm not letting you out of my sight, got that? And if you've got a problem with that, you can shove it up your asses, 'cause I'm not taking 'No' for an answer!"
Colbie and Kendra just stood there, silent, because they rarely ever saw Celia get this angry.
So Kendra said, "Fine, have it your way."
With that, Celia released her spell, and a magic circle of pink roses appeared on the ground encompassing herself and her friends before blinking them out of her dorm.
5
Mara and Nico woke up to another riotous applause from the audience and found themselves seated around a table and facing each other but unable to move from their chairs. Both sisters squinted under the harsh light of the limelight spotlighting them and their table under its glaring heat. Then both sisters saw the revolvers on the table, and both recognized the peril they were now in.
They looked around the stage and saw the man in the white suit standing between their parents on the other side of the stage, the man that had dogged them in their parents' house now wearing a sardonic smile that crept hideously into his eyes. And from those eyes blazed the fires of Judgement and Hell like those of an otherworldly judge.
He was standing between their parents, still seated at their chairs on the stage, still restrained under psychic restraints invisible to human eyes, still psychically gagged and unable to speak but still able to struggle helplessly in their seats. And both sisters saw the panic in their parents’ eyes and the slick sheen of tears on their cheeks, their expressions contorted into hideous portraits of unimaginable guilt and fear.
“Oh, my God, no!” Mara said.
So Nico screamed through her own sobbing, saying, "Why are you doing this to us?"
"Why do you have to be so cruel?" Mara screamed, now starting to sob. "We never did anything to you!"
"If you survive this game, I'll tell you," the man said, then added, "but I'm not as heartless as you think. To most, I am the Raven Man, but as a gift to you brave girls, you'll know the real name of your judge. I am Lord Aaron Rancaster, 6th Baronet Rancaster, the last of the Rancaster Baronetcy."
At those words, collective gasps resounded through the audience, for there on the stage in their midst stood a living legend, long thought to be dead after decades of rumor and hushed whispers.
Then a silence fell upon the theater.
But ever the showman, Lord Rancaster announced, "The rules are simple. You'll only have one shot, one chance."
Both sisters started cursing at the man, both hot with vengeance and fear, then started begging him to stop with tears streaming down their faces, while their parents renewed their struggles on their chairs but to no avail.
He continued, saying, "You have two six-shot revolvers before you, both loaded with six rounds each. I will give you until the count of ten to grab your guns and aim them at your heads and fire. Should both of you or one of you survive, I'll set you free to go. And should you wish for it, I'll even let you say your final farewells to your parents before you go out into the world as new women liberated from the tyranny of your parents. But," he stressed, "should both of you die in the attempt, I'll kill both of your parents immediately. Whether you go to Heaven or Hell, it matters not to me. In the end, I'm only a mortal judge. I'll let God judge for Himself."
He then raised his hand in the air and snapped his fingers, and now the game began.
A psychic force flooded through the sisters' bodies, taking control of their bodily movements and moving them in sync with each other, despite their struggles to resist.
"One!" Lord Rancaster said.
They struggled and struggled against their movements, contorting their faces in agony, trying to restrain themselves, but both reached for the guns.
"Two!"
They struggled and struggled, renewing their efforts to take control of their arms and hands, straining against their chairs, while their parents looked on in agony, but both girls picked up the guns from the table.
"Three!"
They continued their helpless struggles against their movements, doubling their efforts as they now began sweating and squinting and contorting their expressions into uglier portraits of terror, struggling against Rancaster’s psychic hold raising their guns to their heads.
"Four!"
But then a miracle happened. With all their strength of will, both girls managed to stop the advance and halt the guns from pointing directly at their heads, eliciting gasps of shock and awe from the audience.
"Five!"
Both girls continued their struggles, neither one making much progress, both straining against the psychic force that threatened the end of their lives.
"Six!"
But during their mutual struggles, Mara Cairns awakened her latent psychokinesis, and waves of psychic energy flooded the stage and swept through the crowds, rousing them into an uproar when they witnessed her pulling the gun away from her head with her own bodily strength.
"Seven!"
But her sister Nico lacked the strength to endure any longer, and little by little, inch by agonizing inch, the barrel of her revolver lowered and lowered and lowered as tears now trailed down Nico’s squinting eyes.
"Eight!"
Now in a panic of tears welling up in her eyes, Mara screamed, "Nico, please, please, you have to keep trying!"
"I am, but I can't! It's too much!"
"Nine!"
"You have to keep trying," Mara screamed, her tears streaming down her face now. "I'm begging you, sis, I'm begging you, keep trying!"
But neither words nor strength of will could reach her sister in time as the gun now leveled itself out and pointed directly at her sister's head. A defeated Nico was now sobbing and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, sis, I can't do it anymore! I'M SORRYYYYYY!"
"Ten!"
And just before both shots rang out across the stage and through the theater, Mara screamed, "NICOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
