INFRARED – 2
Alia never has trouble finding transportation. She should be scared; the odds of her being victimized are not slim when she travels alone and entrusts her safe movement to strangers, but she is the Alia and her talents give her unparalleled intuition. It seems that she irresponsibly follows a changing wind that only blows for her, but her incredible brain is always working to help her avoid tragedy.
When she decided that she wanted to be at Clay’s house, she stepped onto a quiet neighborhood sidewalk with nice, mostly two story brick houses lining both sides, and she waited. She allowed herself to look up into the sun and there was a chaos of red that felt familiar, like when she tried to connect to Ivan’s mind.
“You need a ride?” the man asked across his passenger’s side seat when he slowed his car to a stop on the curb next to Alia.
Alia looked down and smiled while her eyes adjusted. When she saw the man offering her a ride, she nodded, “I’m going kind of far though.” She knew that she was at least a town over from Clay’s current location.
“No problem at all.”
Alia was quiet when she wasn’t giving directions to Clay’s house. The driver didn’t mind that she didn’t have an exact address; he was content to have her lead by whatever feeling told her in which direction she would find Clay.
As she navigated, Alia was distracted. She felt a call from the mental plane that she had to answer and even though she could not detach completely from her physical body, she was able to receive a message. She didn’t know the ancient looking woman that she caught glimpses of when she closed her eyes, but she heard her voice softly in her mind.
“… help … fight against the Red …”
Alia enjoyed the way the woman felt in her mind. The sensation was similar to commiserating with her old friends at the Institute for Brain Function, Elia and Aile, and she suddenly felt a pang of regret that she had lost touch with them.
Alia sent the woman information about her destination, the name of the town where Clay lived and as clear a picture of his house that she could reconstruct from her probing of Clay’s mind. She figured that if the woman was another villain, she and Clay could defeat her together, but she would not refuse help in her confrontation with the mysterious and powerful force that had been manipulating her for months.
Alia was extremely excited when the car arrived on the street where she saw the quaint looking,one story house in a neatly kept lawn with a sizeable hill leading up to the sidewalk. She thanked the driver who nodded and continued on when Alia ran from the car to wrap her arms around Clay’s neck.
She hasn’t ever really stopped to think about who she is. She has never really been more than the mission; the aliens that were definitely coming, finding a way out.
But that turns out to be hysteria. Or is it? Because, even though things won’t happen the way she sees them, the things she sees always makes an appearance. The aliens are already here, just see the doctor in Georgia and the thing in the magician’s head. They are already here.
But what else is out there? She is about to find out, and she is happy to be in Clay’s house, an old friend who is one of few people she could even imagine calling family.
She just lost a family. She was with them, they cared for her, they fed her. But it was all a trick.
“A jinn?” Clay asks. His face is a ball of confusion and frustration.
“That’s what he said.” Alia relaxes on Clay’s couch and he sits on the edge of a chair.
“I punched a spider out front,” Clay says.
“I think we have a situation.”
“This Red Father,” Clay nods. “We have to figure out what he did to Ivan, and where he has Brittany.”
“He sent the jinn and the spider? But why us though?”
“You’re the Alia,” Clay says, and he smiles a real smile for the first time in a while. “We’re not like normal people, you know that. Speaking of, where’s the magician? We could use him.”
Alia shakes her head. “We split up, haven’t seen him in over a year. And that ain’t it. We just have bad luck.”
Just then, the Don enters the living room. He had been cleaning himself up and he sits next to Alia on the couch.
“Things only ever look up for us when we’re a group.” Alia smiles at the Don. “It’s not a coincidence that you showed up. And there might be others.”
“Like who?” Clay asks.
Alia shrugs, “Hopefully someone with more answers.” She looks to the Don again. “I had hoped to talk to Ivan, see if he knew anything or if he could find out something that I can’t. Do you know what’s going on?”
“My grandson possesses awesome powers that he did not gain through hard work and dedication to wisdom. He was born with natural proclivities that make things easy for him, it makes him a natural. I did not know that he had any connection to these abilities. I assumed that he left them in the deserts behind my house. But I was foolish. And maybe he has angered someone or attracted the wrong attention to himself…”
The Don stops and he looks gravely down at his feet.
“What is it?” Alia asks.
“He has angered the wrong energies.” The Don scowls at Clay. “The two of you should not be living together like you do. You obviously attracted the dark magic that has my grandson.”
Alia looks to Clay who nods and looks away.
“We can work to free him together, but you must separate or invite this very same fate, or much worse on yourselves in the future.”
Neither Clay nor Alia interrupt the Don as he explains where he last saw Ivan’s body, in a neighborhood not far from Clay’s house.
“What is your plan to rid my grandson of the parasite who disrespects the ancient rites?”
Alia is speechless. It’s true the Don is from an older generation and culture that is not comfortable with homosexuality, but Alia is stunned that he can disrespect Clay to his face in this time of crisis.
Alia lifts a hand and places it on the forehead of the Don. She focuses and she pushes knowledge of her abilities into his mind. The Don’s eyes roll back and then he pulls away, breathing heavily.
“If I get close,” Alia says gently, “I can see what the white light does to him.”
The Don nods furiously and his brow is furrowed. He removes a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and rolls a cigarette.
“That is fine,” he says. “We should go in the daylight, when you would seem to have an advantage. Excuse me.”
When the Don is outside smoking, Alia tries to comfort Clay who has not said a word in a long time.
“We’ll find him and free him because you love him,” Alia says. “This isn’t your fault.”
Clay silently agrees.
The two decide to rest up for their coming confrontation and Clay insists that Alia use his room for the night.
Alia can hardly sleep. Her dreams are tortuous and there are moments throughout the night when she is unsure if she is awake or asleep. It all starts when the woman whose voice she had heard earlier as she made her way to Clay’s house, seems to stand in front of the window in Clay’s room. She assumes that she had drifted off while she relaxes in Clay’s bed because it is more comfortable than the bed she had enjoyed at the home of her fake family. The woman is old and shriveled and she has a glowing, sky blue outline around her body that makes her seem ethereal.
“He came back because he could. He never rested. Every day that passed, he said to himself that he would get back.”
Alia sits on the edge of the bed, or she thinks she does, maybe she does it in a dream, but she feels her body move and she asks, “What does he want?”
“His manhood,” the woman says and she struggles to stifle a rousing laugh. “Forgive me. But, he is pitiful. You are lovely, as was the first, Mou, who many men wanted to make their own. But she was not made, she was always a maker. The Red Father, he was Ssi then, a jealous and insecure man who gained his status because he cast an intimidating shadow. But Mou made him the man he was, until she left and returned as a new god, and people saw her as their true leader.”
“What does any of this have to do with me? I’m nobody. I don’t even have a family.”
The old woman half smiles pitiably and then she approaches Alia and looks down at her.
“You have the first mother in you, the first queen. He needs his revenge and he will take it on your DNA,” the old woman cackles. “The first mother wounded his pride but you can do what she never did. You can show mercy where she was spiteful and rid the world of Ssi’s spirit forever.”
“How is that mercy?” Alia asks.
“If you understood his fate over these long centuries, the small prison that his soul has inhabited, then you would know. The first mother had her own petty ideas of revenge for Ssi.”
“What do I do? How do I stop him?”
The woman shrugs. “You don’t need my help with that. You only need to trust yourself. And my Anesu will be here soon enough to lend her hand. She is coming along nicely, the strongest medium of our family yet.”
“I’m confused,” Alia says. “Who is coming?”
“Sleep child,” the woman says calmly and she begins to disappear before Alia’s eyes. “Let your dreams remind you what you already know, and I will give you what knowledge I can. Sleep now.”
PRL Serials 