Chapter 71

Tears streamed down Melinda's face as she pounded her fists against the glass. Each blow was weaker than the last, her arms like lead weights. Her mother lifted her head and gave her daughter a forlorn look. Melinda slammed her fists against the prison one last time and slid slowly to the ground, weeping.

She heard slithering in the dark. A chill passed over her as tendrils of Dark power closed in. She did not bother to will herself back into her own body. If she retreated from her mother's mind in defeat, she would become Jo's sex slave and eventually the Darkness' minion. If she stayed and let it take her, she simply cut out the middleman.

Melinda shook her head violently as the spotlight dimmed with the encroaching Darkness. "I have to do this!" she screamed, and the tendrils remained at bay for now. Melinda struggled to her feet and let off another flurry of blows, but the energy she had extracted from the dwindling pool through sheer force of will was already waning. Her legs trembled, and she felt near total collapse.

Memories of previous struggles lost against the Darkness marched through her head with cruel clarity. She shuddered as she recalled her time with the cult. They had let her remember everything. She had been fucked by men as old as sixty. She had been used as a sex toy by people she had seen in church. She had sucked the cock of one of the ministers of the church itself.

She pounded her fists again, and another tiny crack appeared. An icy chill passed through her, suffusing her mind as well as her ethereal body as the Darkness played along the surface of her mind. She heard its soft and seductive whispers trying to convince her of the foolishness of her effort.

Melinda shook her head again, but with little conviction. She banged her fists impotently as she slid down the glass. She was on the last of her reserves. She had just enough energy to keep the Darkness at bay and extricate herself from her mother's mind.

Her face twisted in anguish. She could not abandon her mother; her struggle to overcome her hate would be for naught. She was doing this as much for herself as her mother. Now that she had seen what she had become, she hated it as much as she had hated the "old" Heather.

Melinda forced her leaden arms above her head. She gritted her teeth and brought her fists down upon the glass. She seized the link to the other Harbingers and channeled all her remaining energy into a single desperate shout.

Richie lay on the ground, whimpering as tears trickled from his eyes, his knees drawn up to his chest. His father's torrent of epithets and cursing blurred into a stream of noxious noise. Both cheeks stung from blows, the skin red and swollen in a pattern of his father's fingers and knuckles.

He shook his head and sobbed. Why was his father preventing him from saving his mother? Why was he so savage in his attack? He never remembered his father being this way, unless he was simply misremembering. Maybe that was it. Maybe he had blocked it out. He had always been such a dick his whole life, so why wouldn't his father take it out on him like this?

Richie had no more words to placate his father. Was this supposed to be his confrontation? If so, he had failed. Again. He finally understood that his whole life had been one failure after another. It was little wonder why Jason took so long to help Richie with his mother; even he knew that whatever he did, Richie would find a way to fuck it up.

Richie forced himself to his feet, and the stream of obscenities stopped. He stared at his father, hoping for some change, something which would tell him he had suffered enough and would be allowed to do what he had come to do.

"So what do you have for me now?" his father demanded, as if sensing his thoughts. "What does the little fucking crybaby have now? You goddamned fucking wimp."

Richie said nothing, as nothing mattered. No matter what he said, it would be thrown back at him. Something still did not make sense. How was his father here in the first place given the interference of the line? If he could figure that out, maybe he could block out his father somehow, at least long enough to...

Richie suddenly gasped and staggered as a shrill cry rose in his head like a siren. "Melinda?!" Richie cried, spinning around as if expecting her to suddenly emerge from the enshrouding darkness.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" his father demanded. "Oh, yeah, that's right. She's another convenient wet twat you just love to dip your wick in. Even now you're thinking with your dick!"

"Shut up!" Richie cried, and had he been in a different mindset, he would have been shocked when the image of his father obeyed. He shuddered as the cry came again, and he trembled with the force of the imagery which swamped his mind from the link. It was fuzzy and choppy, forced through the corruption of the line. Only by virtue of the short distance between Richie and Melinda's house, as well as the sheer force of Melinda's desperation, was he able to sense it at all.

His heart sank. Debby had been right. The half dose had not been enough.

He looked towards his mother. "Fuck."

He remembered Melinda being taken away by the cult. "Fuck!"

To save Melinda this time, he had to abandon his mother and leave her to the Darkness. Again.

"FUCK!" Richie screamed.

He was hurtled back through the tunnel, retreating far faster than he had entered. In a split-second he was back inside his own body, yet his father's epithets continue to blast him, as if his father had not realized that the confrontation was over.

Somehow during his experience, he had gone back to fucking his mother, as if his body had been on autopilot. His mother was on all fours, Richie fucking her from behind, while Cathy masturbated furiously beside her.

Richie yanked himself from inside her mother with a faint, wet pop. He scrambled off the bed and grabbed his clothes. He stopped only to don his briefs before dashing out of the room to the confused cry of his mother.

Tears blurred his vision when he took one last glance at her as he crossed the threshold and saw her still-churning Aura. He wiped his eyes as he struggled into his other clothing, his father still screaming at him in his mind.

He stopped at the front door to finish dressing before bolting into the winter chill without so much as a jacket.

In the silent blue depths of the node, the Darkness raged.

It felt the sudden surges of resistance, first from Penny, then Sandra, and now even Jason. From where were the Harbingers drawing such power? How were they managing it while facing their greatest fears?

It was forced to pull back some of its energies from the corrupted line in order to defend against the assault. Yet even as it fended off Richie's attempt and possibly Melinda's as well, it now faced that infernal thief who had begun pushing its influence from Audrey's mind.

And Cassie was still assaulting Jason.

It could be content in that Cassie may as well throw herself against a brick wall for all the good it would do. If none of the others could overcome their fears, then neither could she. It had observed the pitiful battle between Richie and the image of his father. The Darkness had wanted to laugh when Richie curled up on the floor and cried like a baby.

No, it need not worry. While its lessened influence over the line energies meant Melinda was able to pierce the interference with her desperate call, it would do her no good. She was close to breaking and becoming its slave. It would concentrate its power there.

Melinda will fall, and then its energy would be shifted to Audrey and stave off that attack. It need not concern itself with Jason, for Cassie could never overcome him when he had the power of the Inn at his command.

Diane soon realized that simply coming to terms with her greatest fear did not free her from it.

When the chain did not immediately yield, she fought a renewed sense of helplessness. As her arms strained, she tried to recall the praise Debby had heaped upon her, but realized that was just approval-seeking. She had to find the conviction within herself.

She had never had to do this before and now understood how her fear had come about. She had always latched onto strong personalities as far back as kindergarten. That way she could rely on their strength and never have to worry about finding her own.

Everything sprang from that. All her fears of enslavement, her excessive submissiveness, her willing obedience of authority, it all stemmed from the same shared roots.

Diane again questioned her heart to make sure her love for Heather was not based on a need to avoid helplessness. If she had any doubts at all, her efforts would be for naught, as she would only be playing to her weakness and do no good at all in the end.

She received her answer when one of the links of the chain began to separate.

Richie raced down the street, heedless of the lingering ice and snow. He slipped once and landed hard on his knee, scraping his jeans almost through to his skin. He limped for a few steps until he could push through the pain.

He wiped his eyes as his father screamed at him in his head, demanding to know what made him think he could do this for a friend if he couldn't do it for his own mother?

"You didn't let me do it for Mom!" Richie suddenly bellowed, causing a head to turn from the front yard of a house as he passed.

Nagging questions for which he had no answer plagued his already tortured mind. What was it he had confronted? Did he harbor a festering hatred of his father? Did he really think that badly of his father leaving, or of him doing the horizontal with Heather and Melinda's mother?

He didn't know what to think anymore. Nothing made any sense. He cursed himself for not being as smart as the others, just another thing to add to the growing pile of self-recrimination.

Richie turned down the walk of the Sovert home and stopped at the front door. He closed his eyes for a moment, then let out an explosive series of vile curses. He had hoped this would be close enough. He had no idea how he was going to get inside. He tried the doorknob, despite knowing it would in vain.

To his shock, the knob turned, and he opened the door.

Richie did not stop to ponder his luck. He raced inside and bounded up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He had never been this far into the Sovert household, so he had no idea where he was going; he was simply following instinct. He stopped at the first door he found and flung it open.

Richie took no more than two seconds to take in the scene, long enough for his eyes to find Melinda's mother. As soon as his gaze made contact with hers, he spiraled into the void.

He stumbled as he hit ground but remained on his feet. Instead of the absolute blackness which had enveloped him in his foray into his mother's mind, he saw the dimming spotlight in the center of a vast glut of twisting and slithering tendrils, all circling the failing light like vultures waiting for their prey to expire.

His breath caught in his throat as he saw Melinda, whimpering and crying, her trembling hands clawing the glass. The tip of a tendril brushed the side of one of her breasts, another caressed her thigh. She trembled and let out a pitiful moan.

He saw the cracks above her head and understood. He balled his hands into fists and plunged forward.

The shape rose before him so fast he had no time to stop. His head snapped to one side, and he crashed to the ground, his cheek stinging from a fresh bruise.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you little asshole?!"

Richie's lower lip trembled as he looked up at the hulking form of his father, the hand which had struck him still curled into a fist. Only then did he realize that he had not been slapped but punched, something he had never seen his father do.

Richie looked past his father. Melinda acted as if she had heard nothing. She struggled to stand, beating her fists in impotent blows against the unyielding glass of her mother's prison.

Richie pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the pain. "What the fuck are you doing here?!" Richie screeched. "This isn't my mother! This isn't even my house! Why don't you leave me the fuck alone?!"

"You think you can run away from me?" Mike thundered. "Think again, you little shit! Oh, wait, that's right, you can't think! Your brain's only good enough to move your dick from twat to twat!"

"What are you trying to do, make me hate you?!" Richie screamed, tears running down his face.

"Hate me? Hate me? You think I would care about that? Like I would hate you in return? You assume I even loved you to begin with!"

Richie staggered, his hand clutching his chest as if stabbed.

"What the fuck is there to love about you? You think I ever loved you?"

Through the tears came a memory.

He saw his father giving him the baseball on his fifth birthday and spending the whole day playing baseball with him. He remembered his father's office calling several times, and each time Mike told his mother to take a message for him.

He suddenly fast-forwarded to a moment two months later. He had taken a nasty fall from his bike, and the next thing he knew, he was staring at the inside of a hospital room, a bandage on his head. He saw his parents racing into the room, and it was his father who came to him first and hugged him.

His father, a man usually far more reserved in his displays of affection, had hugged him.

"YOU FUCKING LIAR!" Richie screamed.

The image of Richie's father was finally given pause.

"I know my father loved me! Don't give me this BULLSHIT that he didn't!"

"Then explain to me why I'm here now!" his father thundered. "Why am I here telling you these things? Why am I giving you exactly what you deserve?!"

Richie's face screwed up in anguish. "Because all of this is coming from me, not you! I'm the one that hates me, not you! I-I'm the one that can't s-stand what I've become!"

The image of Richie's father staggered back as if struck.

"You're not real! You're not my father! It was me who was screaming at myself all the time! I was just using you because I didn't want to see it! I even pretended not to hear it when I was near a line. I didn't want to admit how much I h-hated myself. NOW GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!"

Richie raised his fists above his head and barreled forward as the image of his father vanished like smoke. His fists struck home, bashing against the glass with a terrible report.

Melinda flinched and looked up, her eyes widening. "Richie?? What the hell--?!"

"Stop talking and help me!" Richie cried. He smashed his fists against the glass. "Come on, I can't do this by myself!"

Melinda stood as renewed strength burned in her eyes. She raised her trembling fists and brought them down between Richie's blows. Once, twice, three times before another crack finally appeared in the glass.

Both Richie and Melinda drew back. Both brought their fists down in concert.

Glass shattered in crystalline report.

The figure of Penny fell through the disintegrating shards, and the spotlight burst into blinding brilliance. A terrible, shrill scream arose as Dark tendrils whipped and writhed as if in agony as the light touched them, shriveling to dust.

It was the last thing Richie saw before he was yanked backwards into the spiraling gray.

Diane remembered how she had helped the Harbingers crack the code of the potion by suggesting the primer was in the code itself and pulled.

She recalled how she had used her new power to save Mrs. Radson from falling to the Darkness in the form of Jason's mother and pulled.

She recalled how she had escaped the influence of Heather's mother and pulled.

She reminded herself how Cassie considered her an important member of the Harbingers and pulled.

She gathered up every moment when she had made a difference, when a course of action or conversation turned on something she had said or did, when she had guided her own destiny, and pulled.

She remembered her times with Heather, how she rather than Heather had guided their lovemaking, how she had set the pace for her own pleasure, and pulled.

"I am not helpless!" Diane cried with a conviction she had never felt before about anything, and PULLED.

A brilliant flash of light arose from the center of the chain, and a great metallic snap resounded through the void. Diane fell back as the free end of the chain still attached to the post whipped like a snake having yet to realize its head had been cut off. A thin scream arose from it as Heather fell forward, the collar around her neck falling apart.

The black void suddenly shuddered, then joined in the horrible, shrill chorus. The end of the chain in Diane's hand burst into blinding blue-white light, sending tendrils of Dark power scurrying like cockroaches.

Heather slowly stood, and her body glowed. The light stretched out and pushed back the void. The lingering tendrils of Laura's power circling in the distance burst into final flame and fell as fluttering ash.

Before Diane could reach out to this light-enshrouded vision of her lover, she hurtled back, pulled into the great gray spiral and out of Heather's mind.

The initial sense of triumph had worn of quickly for Cassie as she became frustrated at every turn.

She had been right in that the cybernetic parts grafted to his ethereal body were symbolic of control. She imagined herself as a hacker breaking into each part's electronic brain and reprogramming it so that it was slaved to her instead of the Darkness.

Whenever she managed to gain some headway, parts would flip back under the control of the Darkness, or a new part would suddenly appear. Her empathic sense finally told her that she was not fighting just the Darkness but Jason himself as well.

She shuddered as she realized the extent of the corruption. The Darkness had turned his own logical mind against itself. She imagined it had worn away at his will by making its alien thoughts seem as logical as possible, tricking him into believing they were his own.

"Jason, you have to help me!" Cassie cried. "I can't do this if you keep fighting me!"

"I need no rescue," said Jason in his increasingly unemotional monotone. "I am Haven. I am One. I will assimilate the other Harbingers. Then we will all be One."

"You can't do this. The real you could never even conceive of such a thing."

"Non sequitur. I am here, and I am real. There is no 'pretend' me."

Cassie sighed, realizing he would keep sending her spinning in little circles of warped logic. She had no idea what to do, and her husbanded energy was waning. She had thrown much of it into her initial attempt to take control of Jason from the Darkness.

She was about to protest again in a vain hope that she might stumble on something which would turn him around when from the void came a shrill and pleading cry. Cassie gasped and staggered, wincing as her empathic sense amplified it into a psychic blast. She brought her gaze back to Jason in time to see him tremble for a second.

"You felt it, too!" Cassie cried. "That was Melinda! She's in trouble. Oh goodness, she's going to fall if no one can--"

"Melinda will be assimilated," Jason said.

Cassie stared, her eyes wide. "I-I ... I can't believe you just said that."

Jason hesitated. It was for only a fraction of a second, but for someone playing the part of a vast collective accustomed to instant response, it might as well have been an eternity. "She came to me with the idea herself. She wished to be assimilated. I can oblige her."

Cassie mouth dropped open. Melinda actually had approached him about being his slave despite everyone warning against it.

"She will be assimilated," Jason repeated.

"What do you mean will be?!" Cassie shouted. "It's happening right now!"

"Non sequitur," said Jason. "She is not here, therefore I cannot be assimilating her."

"You're not the one who's doing it!"

Jason remained silent, the pinpoint light from his Borg eye playing on Cassie's face.