INFRARED – 3
Clay’s memories of his own grandfather were couched in family gatherings; before his father, Leo, got lost in the idea of his potential success at boxing and it went to his head, when his mother, Clea, was still alive and she would wake early on Saturdays to fill the dining room table with breakfast food because it was usually the only time Clay’s father was home. Back then, Clay’s family was a solid unit and he was treated poorly by his three older brothers, and one of his older sisters, who liked to make fun of him until he cried, and then called him a crybaby. They loved him, but he was closest to his sister Brittany even then. They both had fond memories of trips to the South Carolina Lowcountry where his grandfather had been a servant at one of the country clubs into his sixties. He had made good money, enough to afford the small home that he and Clay’s grandmother had retired to on Port Royal, and Clay loved the island. It made him forget the sometimes brutal poverty of his childhood when his father was not bringing home money as a boxer, and his mother barely kept the family afloat with her salary as a receptionist at a local government agency. Clay never wore shoes on Port Royal, and sometimes distant relatives were there who talked very differently. His older siblings made fun of their speech, and honestly it took awhile for Clay to adjust and comprehend them without trying. Since the tragedy of his mother’s death, Clay has been disconnected from that family who loved his mother like she was born of their family and never forgave Leo for his part in her death.
Clay’s grandfather loved to fish and he had a small boat that he used to navigate the nautical neighborhood of the Sea Islands. Clay and Brittany liked to fish with him and he liked to tell them stories of brer rabbit, the trickster who could talk his way out of anything. Clay hated brer rabbit, he was always slipping out of tight spots that would have ensnared someone with worse luck, and he liked that aunt Nancy, the spider, was smarter than even him.
“De ansi ugly too much,” the old man said in Gullah when Clay expressed his opinion. Then he said in English, “She is smart, fo’ sho’, but she be mean, too. Rabbit can’t spin you up and eat you like ansi can.”
Clay would come to forget that life with his grandfather after the destruction of his close family and he has not seen the Sea Islands in decades.
“The two of you should not be living together like you do. You obviously attracted dark magic that has my grandson.”
That’s what the Don had said to him. He seemed to resist saying it, but he hadn’t minced any words and it was clear how he felt about Clay’s relationship with Ivan.
It was good that Alia had arrived unexpectedly, she had proven to be skilled at diffusion of the tensions between them, but her presence had also seemed to allow the Don to be more honest than Clay thinks he would have been in her absence.
When Alia goes to bed and the Don is outside in the backyard, Clay tries to rest in his sister’s room. He has had trouble sleeping because of his worry for the safety of his sister and sleeping without Ivan next to him; tonight is no exception. The three of them could save Brittany and Ivan, he just has to believe, even though the image of his love shrouded in red still haunts him.
Clay does eventually doze off and his dreams are the conflicts he has engaged in since the emergence of his abilities; the brawl with the zombies at Ivan’s apartment complex and then the showdown with the assassin Desperation. He sees his own punches, his high jumps like a highlight reel, then he sees each blow that he sustained, to his torso and face, and he feels them so realistically that he wakes up roaring his battle cry that shakes the walls. He sits up in a flash and his body is bigger than it had been when he lay down. He breathes heavily. He knows that Alia and the Don must have heard him, and Clay stands from the bed to go and apologize, but before he can reach the door, he hears a loud yell in the distance. It is familiar, but he can’t place it and he wanders out of his room, then out of his back door, into the dark of the early morning where both Alia and the Don are already standing and looking off in the direction of the loud roar.
“Is that him?” Clay asks.
“No,” both Alia and the Don say in unison, and then Alia continues, “it’s that woman.”
“Whatever it is, is close to Ivan now,” the Don says.
“What woman?” Clay asks.
“I can’t remember what Ivan called her, she was one of those zombies,” Alia says. “Not a zombie though, I can’t feel those, but the first thing they made at the apartments.”
Clay is still bigger than normal from his unsettling dreams, and he flexes.
“It’s Crude, I’m going.” Clay remembers the first time he encountered the woman when he was looking for Ivan and was attacked unexpectedly.
He prepares to jump in the direction of the roar, but Alia stands in front of him.
“We should all go. Don’t jump off by yourself. We can walk or take a car.”
They decide to walk and the Don guides them directly to the location of Ivan, while Alia keeps Clay from attacking Crude.
“We’re going to the same place, we’ll beat her there,” she assures Clay.
The neighborhoods they travel through are unusually quiet, though Clay does not notice until Alia points it out.
“It’s like nobody’s home,” she says as they pass houses on the sidewalk.
“Everyone is sleeping,” the Don says. “That thing is taking energy from everyone, I can see it.” He can see the gauzy gray streams like fog on strings all leading to a single spot in the distance. He had surrounded the group in a manifestation of his own energy that shines like Ivan’s power could in an orb that resists the magic of the Red Father. Clay can see it, and he enjoys the sensation inside of it, though he would not tell the Don this. Alia can’t see things as they can.
As they get closer to the house where Ivan’s physical body, that had increased in size like Clay is known to do, levitates in a back room, they are on a street with cracked sidewalks and broken chain-linked fences. The Don has led the way and as they get closer, he slows, like he is straining to walk.
“I can sense the realm where Ivan is being held. This thing is channeling it through the house and the winds, the screams coming from it are hard to navigate.”
Clay can see it, like a wind storm sweeping through the street from the house where the ghostly lines of energies are leading, and he can hear a faint yell when Crude’s roars don’t drown it out.
“That’s where we’re going,” the Don says, pointing at a sad looking house in an overgrown lawn. The windows are smashed and there appears to be destruction, like furniture and other things inside had been thrown out. And the trio notices piles of unconscious bodies in the yard, some in police uniforms like they had tried to enter the house, but were zapped of their energy before making it to the front door.
They stand under a streetlight just three houses down from Ivan and then they see Crude like an angry green monster approach the house. She is taller than Clay and her skin in a sick, pale green. Her face is a horror, even at a distance, slanted like she is unable to control all of the muscles in her face, and her hair is ragged on her head that is larger than normal. Clay can see a steady stream of energy leaving her body, but it does not drain her completely like it had everyone else outside of the Don’s sphere of protection.
“Hey!” Clay roars at Crude who had not noticed the trio and is headed angrily to the house where Ivan is.
Crude breaks her concentration on the home and sees Clay.
“She can feel the Red Father pulling her energy,” Alia explains to Clay before he can charge her. “I think we’re all on the same side.”
“It’s a monster!” Clay yells and this makes Crude growl in response, and then she charges Clay.
“Don’t you dare!” Alia yells and she stands in front of Clay, lifts a hand as Crude gets closer, and the monster stops fast on her heels, staring blankly at Alia. Then the monster collapses and her body reverts to that of a normal, smaller than average white woman.
Alia looks back at Clay and the Don, who are both shocked at the sight they have witnessed.
“She’s a woman who changes when she gets mad. I don’t really know how I did this, but let me see if I can help her. You two figure out what’s going on in that house.”
The Don leads Clay to the front door. He is straining because he struggles against the Red Father’s powers that only intensifies as they get closer.
“You go first,” the Don says with effort, and Clay kicks the door off its hinges. It splinters and wood flies all around.
The inside of the house is an eerie red that issues from the back in the otherwise dark house.
“Ivan!” Clay yells and then he heads toward the source of the light.
“Wait!” the Don says and puts a hand on Clay’s shoulder, but it is too late. There is a rush of red energy, a violent and concussive force, that hits Clay and the Don, knocking them back out through the front door.
Clay’s body is largely unharmed, he is mostly taken by surprise, and he looks up at the sky that is relenting the darkness to the slowly rising sun. He stands slowly as the Don recovers; Alia’s attentions are focused on the woman who is still unconscious.
“It knows we’re here,” the Don says.
“I want to punch it,” Clay says.
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