Say Yes

This was all a big mistake.

I should have known that they weren’t done with Arnold. No, not at all. Arnold had everything taken away from him, except for one last thing; his willingness to move on and make a new life for himself. But those… monsters. They took that away from him by taking him out of the equation. Forever.

There’s no body to bury, there’s no blood spilt on the ground. There is absolutely no clean up involved in this case. 

The things left in Arnold’s apartment are his last remnants in this world.

I was Arnold’s last bond to this world.

I drove to the reported location, and I could tell immediately that he was still in the surrounding area; or at least, something related to him was happening there. The entire area was engulfed in an artificial darkness. You wouldn’t have noticed from the outside, but once you entered the area, it was pitch black. I had to go back to my car and get a flashlight.

I searched in that blinding black mist for at least ten minutes before I heard any sign of human existence. A wail… one piercing shriek, echoed in the darkness. I turned to it, and ran towards it. I thought that Arnold was hurt… or something even worse than that...

And I was right, but not in the way I thought I would be.

I almost tripped through the doorway of a house. I pointed the light into the house, and spotted tiny blood splattermarks everywhere. I think that was the point I started screaming out Arnold’s name.

A long hallway later, and I finally trip over something. I crawl over it, noting its mysterious, skin-like texture, and get up. I shine my flashlight on it, and…

A body. A dead one. Not Arnold, but a man about his age.

I hardly noticed before, but at that moment my hand felt sticky and wet. I raised it before my eyes, and saw blood drip off of my fingers.

“Fuck…”

I called in the death. Not only had there been definite Fear manipulation, there was definite Fear aggression as well. I needed backup, pronto.

I got up, and began to search for Arnold again. I ran into furniture and stumbled over corners as I moved though the living room. I entered a hallway, and called for Arnold.

Something in the darkness whispers. The flashlight shakes as chills run up and down my arm.

“James… I’m right here…”

“Arnold?”

He doesn’t respond.

I try to shine the flashlight down the hallway, but the light stops, as if there was some wall in the way. I take my hand and try to feel it, but there was nothing there that would logically prevent the light from shining down the hallway.

“Arnold, I’m going to need you to show yourself… where are you?”

“I can’t do that, James.”

I had a bad feeling. I had it ever since I got to this place. Something just wasn’t right.

I gulped. My throat felt so tight, so scratchy.

“Why not?”

He doesn’t respond in words this time, but with footsteps. The steps get closer and closer, and yet I do not see any sign of him.

My blood started to pump faster, faster; heart danced along with the pumps, beating to a standard rhythm, that I was quite familiar with: the pattern of beats when violence was about to arise.

And then Arnold’s face appears, out of nowhere. Only his face is visible… everything else is covered in shadow.

“Ar… Arnold?”

His facial expressions, instead of being ones of a slightly tempered persuasion, were now dull and unmoving. He looked upon me with a slight amount of transcended arrogance, and nothing else.

“James Rivers; the one who the Stringed Brat continually pines over.”

And then I knew. I knew from the start, and I tried to deny it. Arnold had been dead for a long time. This wasn’t Arnold. This was…

“The Nightlanders…” I whispered.

I backed up a bit.

“What do you want?” I asked them.

I could feel the darkness around me begin to spiral. The shadows were on the move, dancing around me. I had to get out, as fast as I possibly could.

I ran, and the house turned into a hurricane of shadow. The physical parts of the house transformed, into something more. I wasn’t really running, but swimming through darkness, as if it was some deep lake. I didn’t feel anything; everything was past the point of touch.

I don’t know how I made it out of the house. Hell, I don’t even know how I made it out of that area. I just did. And as soon as I escaped, as soon as I felt the sunlight bounce off of my skin, as soon as I felt that warm concrete, the dark, enshrouded area collapsed in on itself.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The darkness was now centralized, focused, on one area of space. All of the land and sky distorted towards. I felt myself being tugged, lightly. I won’t ever be able to fully describe what it looked like… the best I can say is like, a whirlpool, with reality spiraling into it.

The whirlpool itself then morphed into something else. The space around it started to… widen? And a white, blank space suddenly popped up. It’s as if it finished tearing off, and chewing up reality, so that there was only pure space left. The ball was tiny, and yet I felt as if I was staring at something that seems tiny from far away, but was actually incredibly big.

Like the Sun.

I stared at it, like a complete idiot. I was perplexed by it. I felt drawn to it. I should have gotten into my car, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave.

The manifestation changed again. The ball bends, and contorts, until it starts to resemble a shape. It changes into a man-shaped figure. It starts to refine its shape, becoming much more detailed.

The shadows convert into skin. A naked man appears before me. He looks like Arnold, except for the eyes. Instead of white pupils, dark holes filled with leaking shadow replaced them.

“James...James…”

“Arnold…”

“I took care of it. I set right what was once wrong.”

“Wait…what? What are you talking about, Arnold?”

“He lived. The man who killed my family. He lived. He was in prison, but he got out. I waited for him. For years. I waited, without knowing I was waiting. Inside of me… I wasn’t missing a soul. I was missing purpose. And when he was released, my insides… these insides… knew…”

“Your… insides?”

“These creatures. They were with me, all along. I never knew it, but they were… they were with me! They lived inside of me! I was never alone! They were there… always… even when you weren’t…”

The Nightlanders had apparently outsmarted our detection techniques. I do not know how they were able to. I guess, even with the best equipment… sometimes it just misses stuff. It’s understandable, when something such as the Nightlanders are involved.

“James, they knew my pain. They had a purpose for me. They wanted to help me! They knew about justice! They knew that nothing would be right unless wrongness is destroyed! That’s why. That’s why I let the shadows take me away. At first, I resisted. But I eventually gave in. I tracked that man down, with their help. I broke into his house, with their help. I had a weapon, with their help. And then, when he was alone in his living room, I snuck up behind him, and stabbed him 27 times in his back.

The blood stained everything but I felt cleaner than a whistle.

Revenge may be bad, but let me tell you James.. it feels really damn good.”

My hand was shaking. My grip on the dying flashlight tightened.

“This isn’t the Arnold I know. This isn’t the Arnold I know.”

He smirked. That fucker smirked at me.

“Maybe you never really knew me at all. How would you…? You agents are all the same… how could you even BEGIN to understand the pain I’ve been put through!? How dare you! How DARE you act as if you could ever know me!

My life has been a neverending struggle. I’ve never been happy. Even when I thought I was… I genuinely did want to, James. I did feel happy about getting a new life, all because of you. But it’s too late now. It was too late years ago. My heart has always been dark. It’s about time I just let it consume me.

They latched onto me because they could sense my heart had no purpose. So they gave it one.”

“Except that’s not true.”

He seemed startled by me saying that. As if he didn’t expect it.

“What?”

“That’s just not true at all, Arnold. We both know the truth. You got weak. That’s why you let them overtake you. You’re a good person, with a good heart. There isn’t just darkness in that chest of yours, there’s much more. Don’t let them, for a second, try to change what’s right about you.”

“But… but it’s all I have…”

“No. No it’s not. You have yourself. You have me. You have all the people at the sanctuary.”

“It’s too late.”

“It never is. Reject them, Arnold. You’re more than a just a shadow of your former self. You’re more than just what happened.”

“But… I killed a man… how can I ever rectify that?”

“No one needs to know about that… think about it. You just absorbed all the evidence to the crime. There’s no court in the land that will be able to convict you now. Just tell me, Arnold. Did you mean to do it? Did you really mean it.”

“…No. I. I didn’t Honestly. I didn’t mean any of that. I wanted revenge, sure. But. This doesn’t make me feel complete. This makes me feel empty.”

I couldn’t believe it. I was talking him down. I was actually convincing him.

If only I knew that it wouldn’t be that easy. It never is easy when dealing with these Monsters, is it? I never get any breaks. There is always a catch.

“Arnold, you can redeem yourself. Reject them. Push them out.”

“Can… can I really… come back?”

“Yes! Of course, you can always-“

That’s. That’s when Arnold disappeared, for good. His skin melted away and the shadows overtook his entire body. There was no scream. No final yelp or screech. Arnold probably… hopefully, never felt a thing. He was gone.

And then, the strongest Nightlander I’ve ever encountered in my entire career stood before me. I haven’t encountered many, but from my experience, they are nowhere near as powerful as that was. The shadows it was composed of were solid, its eyes were blood red, its head resembled a cartoonish crown, and it seemed to be far more pronounced in its body shape; as if it was quite muscular.

But the appearance change wasn’t what tipped me off, truly, to its strength. It was the space manipulation. The blank space where it stood started to vibrate, and then slowly increase. I felt the ground under me push away from it, like a carpet.

It spoke, with a loud, commanding voice. It used Arnold's knowledge to speak in English.



“James Rivers, you are now staring into the abyss. You are staring into the lake of shadow. You are staring into a multitude of us, the ones of the nightlands.”
I stutter, but try to sound confident. “I… I h-heard.”

“With our business finished, we will now leave your realm. We do not wish to cause any harm to you or any other humans. We were only here for the man and the man he hated. We were only here to set right what was once wrong. Surely, you, of all humans, can appreciate that.”

“Fuck that. Fuck you. Fuck all of you! You bastards… why Arnold!? WHY NOW!?”

“Puny human. Puny, foolish human. You know why now. And you may not know why Arnold, but we know. You may never know. But we will always know.”

“Because you… you Fears just know everything don’t you, huh?”

“No, we do not. But we do know more than you, in all of your life, would never have the chance to fully learn, let alone grasp at, understand, or even be aware of.”

“You all are really clean freaks, deep down. OCD motherfuckers. You just couldn’t sit back and let things… be? You go around trying to fix things, saying that it’s better for all if things are how they are naturally, and yet you use chaos to do this. What’s your justification for that?”
I was pissing them off. They were holding back, because I was claimed by another Fear. But I could tell they just wanted to snap my neck and be done with it.

“Human, we are not here to argue. We are lea-“

“I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU FUCKS. At all. Come on…. I know y’all want to… kill me. Tear me apart.”

That’s when their voice escalated into a shout.

“Oh, do you know how much we would LOVE to do that!? If we could, we would! We would make you feel the heat of a sun, the pain of a dozen swords piercing your side, the terror of your nerves popping!”
I smirked. Even chuckled.

“Then do it. Set right what’s wrong on this earth. Set me right.”

I was ready to die. I was ready for them to tear me apart. I wanted to die. I had reached my limit. The last few months had been too much. I know I seemed normal at the start of this blog, but the unrest had started far before it. I was alright for a while. I somehow numbed the pain with alcohol and women. Those were some dark days. And I couldn’t get past it. So I decided to stop running.

What I said angered the Nightlanders. They roared, and began to shout something in a human voice, but soon it evolved into something foreign; something alien. An alien language pierced my ears.

They charged. And as they did, I retreated into my own mind. I had… a sort of flashback.

I heard, faintly in the background, Elliot Smith strumming his guitar and singing lyrics to his song “Say Yes.” I always loved that song. So beautiful. She loved it too. I think that’s why.

I was sitting on a bed. If it was a clichéd movie, I would have been smoking a cigarette. I felt confident, but also vulnerable. But that had nothing to do with being naked, which I was. The ceiling fan pushed the imaginary smoke away. The pre-Summer air clung to my skin just like the lust had.

She walks back into the room. I forget what she was wearing. She might as well have been naked, it wouldn’t have mattered. I saw her as her now.

She jumps onto the bed, and crawls to my side. She was so sexy, but also beautiful. And I couldn’t believe she was mine.

What she says now isn’t what she said years ago.

“James, what’s your purpose?”

“I have none.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re gone.”

She frowns. Her frown…

“Porquoi?”

I acted like I hated it when she switched to French… but I always loved it.

“In English, please?”

“But why.”

“There’s nothing else. My family is in shambles, my job is shitty, and I have no hobbies. I have no reason to live anymore.”

She laughs.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“James….” She looks at me, as if she expects me to know. “You’re being quite silly.”

“I…”

“You know you’re not that type of person. Why make such a big deal out of it? Where’s that boy I knew. The boy I knew who told me that the only reason he was alive, was to find a reason to be alive. And to keep living as well.”

“That boy is dead…”

“Stop being such a cliché, James. You know as well as I do that boy is simply a disillusioned man now.”

“Disillusioned…?”

She nods, and smiles.

I look away.

“I’m just afraid of the dark still. I’m afraid because I know that whenever I go in with someone else I always come out alone....why is that? Why does that happen?”

“James… I’m going now…”

And just like that, it ended. The vision. It always ends abruptly like that. I don’t know why. Elliott Smith faded away and the warmth of her skin disappeared. I was back on my feet, and ten feet in front of me were the Nightlanders, about to rip me to shreds.

I closed my eyes, and remembered her scent. It comforted me.

But.

They were stopped. They didn’t make it another three feet.

Because that bastard, Jack of All, had stopped them. He stood there, facing me, with the back of his hand blocking the Nightlanders. It shined on as a brilliant red, and it seemed as if there was some sort of invisible shield helping him block them emanating from it.

“You really thought we would just let you die that easily, James?” He laughs.

“You… you…” I couldn’t even say it.

He turns towards the Nightlanders, giving them his full attention.

“The Wooden Girl has two things for you. First, a message.”

The Nightlanders growled in another language at Jack.

“The message is as follows: You idiots. The man is mine. Don’t cross me again.”
The Nightlanders quieted down, and seemed to use a calmer tone for their response.

“Yes, she’s aware. See, she simply doesn’t care. Next… she has a delive-“

Before he could finish, the Nightlanders were trying to escape. Because the delivery Jack was about to mention… it was deadly to them.

He opened his palm, uttered something under his breath, and a giant beam of red light destroyed them.

“There’s your delivereh! Fucking. Fuhgeddaboutit.”

He turns towards me. “That was on the house. See, I treat my clients nice and swell.”

“Didn’t want to… saved…” I cried out. I was practically in tears. I clutched at my body… her scent had left me.

“I wasn’t talkin aboutcha! I was talkin about the Girl. By the by, she gives her regards.”

I think that was about fainted, because I don’t remember what happened after he said “regards.” Next thing I knew, I woke up in a Lonely Hearts makeshift ambulance.

I’m typing this out a week later.

I don’t know.













Earlier.

I said that I was Arnold’s last bond to this world. That was false. He had the memory of his family.

What do I have?