Chapter 18: Chapter 18 – HISTORY

I was two hours into my solo Christmas Eve train ride when Esther called. I stared at my buzzing phone in the dark as the empty train car chugged westward. It went to voicemail and the screen turned off.

I left the phone on my lap. A few minutes later, it buzzed again, a text appearing on the screen: What happened?

I lowered my head into my hand. This was so unfair. Things had been going well before the Grey City. I was going to cause my family a lot of pain again. Leaving in the middle of Christmas Eve? Why don’t I just break my mother’s heart again, that’s fine.

I was such an idiot; I should have told them something instead of sneaking out. I hesitated before sending a return text: I had to go back to Toronto. Something came up.

What is going on with you? her reply was immediate. I thought you said everything was fine!

If I could have stayed, I would have. This isn’t something I can help, I sent, then hesitated, wondering if it would sound like an excuse. A friend really needs my help right now.

Really? Can I call? I want to talk!

I was far too tired and stressed to have a conversation with Esther. I’d probably break and tell her everything, and then she’d think I was hallucinating or brain-damaged. I can’t. Need to wait for another call.

This isn’t the 60s, you can drop my call if another one comes in, she sent back.

Don’t want to risk it. I’ll tell you everything later, I said, just hoping to placate her.

You could have told us you needed to go back! Why would you sneak out?

Because I’m stupid and I was scared and didn’t want you to think I was just making excuses. I don’t know. Say sorry to everyone for me.

A short gap before her next reply: You better call later and apologize properly. Mom’s upset.

Damn. I really couldn’t focus on that now, but I felt terrible. I’m sorry. I can’t really talk about what happened, but someone really needs my help just now. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Something serious? she texted. Okay… Please tell me everything when you can. It’s kind of brave for you to drop everything to go help someone. Let me know if you need anything.

I felt a rush of relief and gratitude. Man, was I ever lucky to have someone who would believe me and listen to my side, even in this situation. I will. Thanks, Esther.

She sent back a heart emoticon, and I leaned back into my seat, looking out of the window at the trees and power lines whipping past. It looked like my future had been chosen for me. Huang or I could leave the Grey City, but it that would condemn the person who stayed. Unless I could convince him to leave Toronto as well, we were stuck.

Hell, maybe he was right. Maybe there were consequences to leaving that we weren’t able to understand yet. I sighed and wrung my hands, hoping desperately that I wouldn’t be too late. Five hours was a long, long time.

It was midnight by the time the intercom announced, “Now arriving at Exhibition, Exhibition Station,” to the empty midnight train. I jumped to my feet and grabbed my bag, my sleepiness disappearing. I’d called Huang about four times and each time I’d been put to voicemail.

“I’m so stupid,” I muttered, realizing the enormity of what I was about to do. It had seemed like my only choice was to come back, but I had no idea what awaited me there. If Huang was being overwhelmed, what hope did I have?

I stepped off the train and onto the platform. It was cold and dead-silent, almost like the Grey City already. There was nothing to do but start walking home.

Down the first street and the next, nothing happened. When I turned onto the third, I felt a shock go through my body as my spatial sense suddenly reactivated. For the previous day, I’d received no feedback at all from it, but it was suddenly back as strong as ever: the texture of the pavement beneath my feet, the cold movement of the air—I could feel everything again.

Then, it all shifted; an intense sense of vertigo clutched my spatial sense as all of those textures disappeared and were suddenly replaced by others—similar, but not quite the same.

I looked up and saw dark fog overlaying the empty streets of the Grey City.

It was still and silent.

Did that mean I was too late? I quickly darted into an alleyway to make myself less visible, then stowed my luggage there. The bag was probably a lost cause, but maybe I’d be able to come back for it later.

In the visions Leviathan had shown me, I had seen demons rising from the water. I hadn’t been able to tell where the Gargoyle had been, but the waterfront seemed to be my best option. Spying some pipes on a building across the street, I jogged toward them and started to make my way deeper into the twisting layers of the Grey City.

In only a few turns, I reached the Waterfront. It looked very different. The fog had cleared up, but it revealed a dark ceiling of clouds above, occasionally flickering with lightning. The water, usually so still, was churning.

The Leviathan’s patrolling mantra—If the water is still, all is well—came to mind. Something was very wrong.

I stepped forward and, without deciding to, transformed in an instant into the Leviathan’s body. Its instincts roared around me, but this time, I as Camilo remained vaguely conscious.

I had foolishly left my territory, and enemies had invaded it. There was only one thing to do.

I ran toward the water, claws sinking into the pavement with every step. As I drew close, the source of the rolling water became clear. About forty or fifty demons of all shapes and sizes were rising from the water like a tide. They were of familiar kinds, but had been twisted into new, more aquatic shapes—bone cats now bore a set of flippers on their shoulders and snake sentries had traded hind legs in for a whale’s tail.

Each time they drew near the shore, something dropped from the sky to ward them back.

The Gargoyle was in terrible shape. It was missing large portions of its feathers, and glowing yellow blood collected in a multitude of wounds across its body. It barely seemed able to stay airborne, but after slashing at the faces of a few demons, it clawed its way back into the sky, disappearing into the clouds.

Unimportant, my instincts informed me. All that mattered were the creatures invading my territory.

I dove into the water like an arrow, feeling the weight of my body disappear. The nearest demon appeared in front of me almost instantly, a snake sentry paddling with its now-webbed claws.

I snapped my jaws shut on its neck and leapt out of the water, crushing it and flinging it away. It died in the air, leaving a trail of dissolving ink as it fell.

“What are you doing here?” Huang’s voice demanded, hoarse.

I plunged back into the water and dove deep, casting my senses up to evaluate the situation. There were forty-three demons of varying strength and swimming ability.

Beneath them, I could sense a current. As I watched, the current suddenly twisted, and another demon clawed its way out of it, a bone cat with its shoulder flippers flapping awkwardly. It started to flail its way toward the surface.

I darted forward and slammed into it before it could get anywhere close. It tried to claw at me, but my own reach was longer and I slashed its head apart.

Below the dull roar of anger in my head, I was starting to feel almost gleeful. These things were no match at all for me in the water, even with their little mutations.

I singled out a demon who was nearing the shore and shot up toward it. Again, I snapped it in my jaws as I leapt high out of the water and flung its remains back toward its brothers.

“Camilo, please tell me you have a hold of yourself,” Huang called as I dove back into the water. “I can’t fight you and the demons.”

It seemed like I could… remember, vaguely, how to reply to him. “I can keep control as long as you stay in the air,” I said. I felt the words carry to him from afar.

“I’ll try,” he replied grimly. I hoped he’d be able to—as long as he stayed up there, the Leviathan didn’t seem to consider it trespassing. And it seemed like I could keep control of my own thoughts, provided I shared the Leviathan’s goal of killing demons. When I drifted too far from that focus, its instincts threatened to overwhelm me entirely.

Something sliced deep into the Leviathan’s tail. Before I could even react to the pain, I was pulled town with incredible force, the water closing in over my head. I thrashed, but the grip on my tail only settled in deeper.

My spatial sense described what was dragging me to the depths: a demon unlike any I had seen before. It wore a thick, spiral shell and appeared almost like a hermit crab, but fifteen feet around and possessing a collection of limbs like a Swiss army knife: crustacean legs, tentacles, and bladelike harpoons, several of which were wrapped around or piercing my tail.

I twisted around to sink my teeth and claws into the limbs gripping me, but others started to wrap and pierce my front legs. As the opening of the shell angled towards me, I saw its face was a spiral of sharp teeth. It started to draw me toward its mouth.

Camilo would have freaked the fuck out in this situation and gotten ready to die, but the Leviathan knew what to do. Focusing my spatial sense on the creature revealed that the joint between its face and shell was its weakest point.

I had to wait to strike as it drew me nearer and nearer to its mouth. Just as those rings of teeth nearly brushed my front legs, I head-butted the divet of flesh just beneath its shell several times until something crunched. Then, I dug my teeth in.

Its limbs started to retract, and I kept tearing and digging until thick ink began to mist the water. I was able to tear myself free of it and surge back toward the surface as its motionless form slowly sunk deeper.

In my brief absence, the demons had gotten closer to the shore. A brief question rose in the back of my mind: why were they coming through the currents, if it was so inconvenient to them? They had been able to reach the shore before with no trouble, hadn’t they? Or had they always been emerging through the water, and we hadn’t known about it?

I continued to pick them off from below while the Gargoyle kept them from nearing the shore. I did not see another spiral-shell. My superior size, senses, and speed made quick work of the others.

Time seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, and suddenly there was only one remaining demon. The water was thick with ink and bits of demons still dissolving. My senses detected that the ink was sinking down below and into the currents, where it was filtered away.

The final demon was similar to a crow with six talons, like the one I’d seen Huang transform for the first time to fight. As I shot up from beneath it, the crow suddenly lifted into the air, unfolding a pair of feathered wings on top of its finned ones. I leapt up after it and snapped my jaws just short of its feet as it flapped up higher.

“Incoming,” I told Huang, plunging back into the water. As the waterfront started to calm down and no more demons emerged through the current, the Leviathan’s rage was abating. I was starting to feel the overwhelming urge to go and patrol the territory.

“I’m trying to retreat…” Huang said faintly. I rose to the surface and peered up at the sky. The crow had risen high into the clouds and was barely visible—ahead of it, a faint glint of light floundered.

“It’s just one,” I told him, treading water.

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“I don’t think I can take one,” Huang said.

I had to fight hard to stay interested: the Leviathan couldn’t care less what happened to Huang, it just cared about its territory. I was starting to lose my grip on my own thoughts.

I needed to get to shore and become human again before I lost it completely—but then I would be powerless to help the Gargoyle. The Leviathan’s instincts pulled me insistently towards the water. I felt frozen.

I’ll patrol the perimeter first, I thought, trying to find some kind of compromise. Some demons could have reached land before I got here. I should see.

My instincts were still focused on the water: but the surface was still, so all was well. If there were demons on the shore, I should kill those as well: and so, I was able to break free of my mental stalemate and swim toward land.

Was this how it had to be? Rather than fighting the Leviathan’s instincts with everything I had, did I have to compromise with them? The thought was chilling to me. In a way, it seemed like giving in to it. But I didn’t have another choice, and I had far more important things to focus on just now.

I climbed to shore and pushed my senses out in all directions, scanning the area for demons. There was nothing nearby, though up above, I could still see the faint shape of the crow and the even fainter glint of a shining dragon.

“Lure it down toward me,” I said, beginning to walk my slow perimeter check of the waterfront.

He didn’t reply, which was worrying—I kept my gaze on the sky, watching the two shapes. The crow was certainly travelling at a faster pace than the shining dragon.

The two neared each other and seemed to exchange blows, then the shining dragon took a downward plunge. I stiffened, watching it fall straight down toward the water. The Leviathan’s instincts zeroed in on it, intent to see whether it was a threat or not.

Ally, it’s an ally, I thought desperately, but the Leviathan’s instincts didn’t understand that concept. Huang came into full sight and I felt a rush of relief: he wasn’t falling, but had entered a steep dive, legs and wings tucked in. He’d done it to pull ahead of the bird demon, who was entering a dive not too far behind.

Just as he neared the water he flared his wings and caught himself, resuming his flight with a few ungraceful flaps. He shot past overhead, trailing flecks of golden blood.

The crow followed even less gracefully. It skimmed the water with its webbed talons and started to gain height laboriously, still chasing Huang—headed right towards me.

I crouched low, gathering the strength in my legs, then leapt. It tried to swerve out of the way but my lunge caught it off-guard and I sunk my teeth into one of its wings with a crunch. It thrashed as I took it with me into the water.

From there, I made short work of it. Back to the shore, I thought, working with my patrolling instincts. It was a bit easier to keep a hold of my thoughts this time, as long as I held onto the intention to patrol later.

I rose onto the wooden deck that outlined the water and took a good look around. There was no evidence of any demons, nor was there any sight of the Gargoyle.

I should transform back into a human, so I could go check if Huang was okay. But being ‘human’ now felt like a strange and foreign concept.

I came all the way back here to make sure Huang didn’t die, I reminded myself. What gives, Leviathan? You forced me to come back to save him, and now your instincts won’t let me?

No one responded to my question. I was coming to realize that Leviathan, who spoke to me in my dreams, didn’t actually seem to be attached to the form I now took. Or if he was, there was no way to communicate with him while I was in it.

Regardless, I needed to be human again, now. Maybe being human was pretty useless overall, but I’d made a promise, and I’d sacrificed a lot to be here. I wasn’t about to throw that away for no reason.

It wasn’t easy to keep my focus on that, but it worked. The Leviathan’s instincts vanished and I abruptly returned back to my own form, crouched down on the docks.

I stood and headed towards the buildings on shore, in the direction the Gargoyle had flown over me. I kept my senses spread out around me.

It didn’t take me long to find Huang. There was a trail of pale yellow blood drops along the pavement, as well as near the tops of the buildings. I picked up the pace a little, following them to their conclusion: a shorter building just out of sight of the waterfront, nondescript besides a collection of pipes on one side.

I peered up at the roof and, to my relief, saw Huang sitting on its edge, calm as anything, his feet dangling. “Hey!” I called up. “Are you okay?”

“You know the dragon’s injuries don’t carry over to me,” he said, which was a great non-answer. I sighed and approached the building.

“Well, are you going to come down?”

“Just give me a minute,” he said.

Grumbling to myself, I started to test the sturdiness of the pipes. Seemed all right. After a minute or so of Huang not budging an inch, I started to climb. It was much easier without any demonic monsters on my ass.

“You got some nerve,” I informed him as I pulled myself up onto the roof.

He frowned at me. “Wait a second, you were in Ottawa. Why are you back?”

“The Leviathan sent me what I can only describe as a very unpleasant voicemail,” I said, taking a seat myself a short distance away. Wasn’t much to see up here, just the dull boxy roofs of buildings extending out into the mist. The sky above had returned almost to normal, without the dark clouds or lightning. “He knew you were in trouble, told me not to let you die. I came back to help.”

“… After you left, things started to get weird,” Huang said. “There were way more demons than usual. Kinds that I’d never encountered before. Nothing like the spiders, nothing I couldn’t take care of myself. But after a while I noticed there were more of them the closer I got to the Waterfront. So I followed them to the lake, and I guess I got overwhelmed.”

“There are these currents deep under the surface of the water,” I said. “While I was down there, I could actually see them coming out of the currents.”

“Weird,” he remarked. I sighed.

“Look. Huang. I know we’re not exactly friends. We’ve just been thrown into this whole situation. But whatever is wrong with you is having consequences. If you had been thinking straight, I don’t think you would have gotten into this situation.”

He gave me a guarded look. “I was thinking just fine…”

“Should I spell it out for you? When all this started, you were way more into solving the mystery of this place than I was,” I said, crossing my arms. “Then, all of a sudden, you don’t care at all. You tell me to go to Ottawa in no uncertain terms: not just because I want to leave, but because you want me to leave. And then, instead of being your usual careful self, circling around the Sanctuary, you dive headlong into a lake full of monsters.”

“I guess when you put it that way, it’s a bit unusual,” Huang said.

“Ya think?” I started at him expectantly.

“I don’t really know what you want me to say,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

I flashed back to Esther’s words earlier that day. “Just tell me what’s wrong. I’m not going to make fun of you, or whatever you’re so afraid of. Listen, I… I kind of recognize a bit of what you might be going through.”

That made him glance at me, so I took a breath and committed. “Here’s the deal. I haven’t had the best time of things mentally. There wasn’t ever really that much wrong with my life; things were tight money-wise sometimes, but I don’t think that had anything to do with it.” I let out a breath. “I have depression.”

He shifted uncomfortably and said nothing, which told me I might be on the right track. “Started when I was a kid, maybe fifteen. And it was weird, because it wasn’t like I was just sad all the time. It was mostly like I was empty. And I got into all kinds of shit trying to fight that feeling off. I started drinking way too much, until I couldn’t stop. I was high all the time, got in fights all the time, and hung out with people who encouraged that sort of thing.”

It felt very weird to just unload the whole story. I spent most of my adult life trying not to think about it, but apparently, the story had been fully formed in the back of my head and was just waiting for an excuse to tumble out. “And did that ever have consequences. I didn’t care how much I hurt and worried my family, I said and did some really awful things to them. And they were just trying to help.

“It only got worse. When I was about 17, I barely felt human anymore. I was always either drunk, high, or both. It’s a blur. I dropped out of High School.” I hesitated, not sure if I should keep going, but almost unable to stop. “It’s an honest to God miracle I survived. I credit my sister for saving my life. The night where it was the worst, when I had nothing to drink or smoke and no one to fight… I was on the edge of leaving home, joining a gang, or throwing my life away completely. She said she still cared. She said that God cared.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Huang said quietly. “I’m sorry, that’s all really rough.”

 “I’m saying I get it, okay? It wasn’t easy, but I’ve been through the other side. This isn’t just you throwing a tantrum, is it?”

“Maybe you should be the psychologist,” he sighed, swinging his feet. “Yeah, fine. I’ve got my own issues. They crop up this time of year, when I have to see family. I’m sorry my stupid personal stuff has put you in danger.”

“Depression?” I asked. He nodded hesitantly.

“It’s not… usually this bad. When I was in High School, my dad remarried. His new wife seemed nice, but she was… what I can only call abusive. Not toward him, or toward any of my other siblings, which I guess I should be grateful for. She saw me as an adult, someone who should get out of her space, ruining her perfect little family.” He shrugged. “I just tried to muscle through it for years. Never told anyone. Still haven’t told anyone, except for you, I guess. I thought I was handling it fine, but I guess those things have an effect. Especially when I have to pretend everything’s fine with my family. I get into these spells.”

“So, what should we do?” I asked.

“I don’t know when I’ll come out of this,” he admitted. “Sorry. I know it’s stupid. I realize we can’t afford this kind of thing right now.”

“It’s not stupid,” I said mildly. “You of all people should know that, psychology student. It’s happening, and we need to deal with it somehow.”

We sat in silence for a bit, and then I shook my head. “Okay, here’s the deal. Until you feel more like yourself, however long that takes or whatever you need to do, we don’t do this splitting up thing. If one of us enters alone, we go straight to the Sanctuary and wait it out. If we’re always in a team, we’ll always have a buffer against stupid impulses.”

He glanced at me. “That could work.”

“Good. No more self-destructive shit like this, all right?”

“Okay,” he said, then gave me a hesitant smile. “Camilo… thanks. You’re right that we were thrown into this, so we probably would never have been friends otherwise…. But you’re a good guy.”

I snorted. “Well, you don’t make it easy for me.”

We chuckled and soon started climbing down the building, back into the empty streets of the Grey City.

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