Sin-Eater: Destiny - Chapter Twelve

It’s Christmas time and Grady and Amy are getting ready to hit the mall to do some shopping. They are both at Grady’s apartment and Grady is being a complete pain about getting out of bed. Outside the sky is cold and slate gray and it is spitting snow and to Grady this looks like the kind of day meant for the two of them to spend in bed doing naughty things to each other and then ordering pizza. Amy wants to head out towards the airport where there sits on of those large malls like everywhere and mix with the throngs of other Christmas shoppers.

They have been, for months now, essentially living together. Technically speaking Amy has her own place but she does little more than keep a few articles of clothing and a phone number there. She still isn’t sure how her mother will react to the idea of the two of them living together. She imagines the worst and Grady, not having what he feels is a true parental perspective, is completely unable to assuage her fears.

Grady holds Amy to him. They are naked and sweating and Grady feels Amy’s heart racing against his own chest and feels it slowing to normal. He does not want to let go because he knows that when he does she will start talking about heading out in the gray city beneath the spitting sky. She kisses him.

“All right you. You got what you wanted now let’s get out of here. “

“Oh, don’t put it like that. I seem to recall you were enjoying things as well.”

“I never said I wasn’t but you know I am not going to let up about shopping. So, the best thing you can do is get your ass out of bed and into some clothes.”

“I think we should stay out of our clothes and stay in bed.”

“Yes, you have made that abundantly clear. The funny thing is that none of these Christmas presents are getting bought on their own. With our schedule you know this is the only real weekend where we’ll be able to get it done. So, let’s just bite the bullet and get it done.”

“Damn those pesky presents.”

She laughs and kisses his mouth then playfully bites the end of his nose. She leaves the circle of his arms and gets out of bed. Grady moans and then swings his legs over the side of the bed. He hears her close the bathroom and then the shower starts. He lets the mask drop and he sighs into his hand.

He has not seen the auras in months. He has been happier than he has ever been in his life for months on end and each day that ends with him looking into those eyes is better than the last. However, as the summer has turned into fall and the days have gradually gotten shorter and grayer and the air has gained a bite that was not there he has started to feel shaky. It isn’t anything he can put his finger on. It’s like a constantly tingling at the back of his neck or a kind of itch in the middle of his back that he just can’t scratch. He doesn’t know why this is but he feels as though things are slipping from his hands. He is finding himself concentrating on not seeing things or feeling things. He is focusing more and more on Amy and he knows she can feel it and he knows she will eventually crack under the pressure but he cannot stop. She is the only thing that helps ease the unease and momentarily scratches that itch.

He cannot shake the feeling that this trip to the mall is a bad idea. Once again this is a feeling he cannot explain. Since he cannot explain it to himself he cannot possibly express it to Amy. He rubs his face and stands. He goes to his window and stares out at the streets. They are alive with people and cars. The sky is spitting snow and he sees the sky is broken with streaks of blue and he marvels for a moment at the beauty of it. He finally turns from the window and he heads for the bathroom.

They head out of the apartment building and into the wind. Amy is smiling and bundled in a winter coat, scarf and hat. Grady is bundled into a coat but he wears gloves and a baseball cap. His smile feels all right to him as they walk the blocks to the subway that they plan to take to the mall. He tries his best not to notice the people walking on either side of him on the busy streets. The tingling is strong at the back of his neck and he tries hard to keep the conversation with Amy going to distract him. He reaches out to hold her hand and only realizes he is squeezing it too tightly when they reach the steps to head underground into the subway and she cries out about the pain in her hands.

The subways in Toronto are not like you think of when you think of places like New York. They are brightly tiled and brightly lit. They are also almost unnaturally clean. The subway cars are wide and long and huge. The trains are also strangely clean as if the entire system is run by some obsessive compulsive creature determined that not a speck of dirt shall reside within the system. Still, once you get past the stations in the parts that are underground the tunnels are as dark as any other subway system.

However, as Grady starts to head down he feels as if darkness is closing in around him. His breath quickens. The platform is crowded with people carrying bags and packed with presents. He feels warmer than it actually is once on the platform. When he looks down the track into the darkening maw of the tunnel the darkness seems to be moving and writhing like something alive. He closes his eyes and tries to steady his breathing and then he holds Amy’s hand and tries to focus on her. His attempts to keep the conversation going start reaching desperate measures and she starts looking at him strangely.

“Are you all right, Grady?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little nervous about crowds.”

“You’re not having one of your, you know –“

“No. Just a little more claustrophobic than I would have thought.”

“Will you be OK?”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Just then he gets a sudden flash. He sees a small boy huddled in darkness. The boy is hidden under the front porch of his house. He and his brothers are playing hide and seek. No one has found him yet and he is just waiting for his brother to call him out. As he sits, peering out of the wooden lattice-work that makes up part of the front porch, he feels something crawling on his legs. He turns to look and sees the biggest, blackest hairiest spider he has ever seen. He is paralyzed with fear. It crawls on him and it moves up his legs. Finally, at last, his legs free up and he screams. He is the loser of the game but he scrambles out from under the porch.

Grady reels from this memory. He turns around and sees a man standing near him who has to be in his fifties. He is turned away from Grady entirely, talking to a woman who has to be his wife. He sees no aura around him but he knows this is the man whose memory he has just witnessed. He is about to say something to Amy when the train pulls up and the doors open in front of them.

Grady pushes forward into the train. He and Amy manage to find a seat and Grady puts his arm around Amy. She smiles at him and nestles her head against his shoulder. He smiles back but now the smile truly feels false. He looks back and watches the man and his wife make their way toward the back of the car, behind Amy and himself.

The car fills up quickly. Grady sits on the aisle and feels himself pushing against Amy. She doesn’t say anything and he hopes he is not smashing her into the wall of the train. The legs of passengers stretch out next to Grady. The train starts to move and the tunnel, filled with darkness, swallows the train. Grady closes his eyes. When he opens them and peers out the window he sees faces looming in the darkness. He sees open mouths and gnashing teeth. He closes his eyes again and shudders.

“Are you sure you’re OK, Grady?”

“I’m sure. I think I’ve just got a headache.”

“I have aspirin if you need it.”

He smiles. Suddenly he is looking through the eyes of a young woman. She is sitting on the edge of a bed in a hotel room. Her clothes are in a pile at her feet. She only barely remembers what happened the previous night. She remembers a party and she remembers a young blonde man with nice eyes. She looks over at the form huddled under the blankets near her and she thinks this may be the same man. She cannot recall his name. Her head is pounding and her mouth tastes like she just ate an entire package of cotton balls. She cannot remember if she used protection last night and she cannot remember whether or not she took her pill the day before. She holds her head in her hands and slowly tries to climb out of bed and get dressed without waking him up.

Grady gasps as the memories slam into his head. Amy clutches at his leg with concern. Grady shakes his head at her and she relents her grip on his leg but her look of concern does not leave her face. Grady looks up and sees a young red-headed woman standing next to him holding onto an overhead bar and swaying with the rhythm of the train. She looks to be in her mid-thirties. The memory he has just witnessed had to have been ten years old or so. Once again there is no aura around her of blackness or light.

Grady straightens in his seat. His mind is hit suddenly with the memories of another young man. He is driving his car along a crowded street and he clips a car as he tries to round the corner. With a sickening wrenching sound the front bumper of the car comes off and clatters in the street. He thinks about stopping and leaving a note but he looks around at the streets and sees that no one is looking at him and quickly drives on.

Grady whips his head around and sees a man sitting behind him. He is in his forties and appears to be dozing in his seat. Grady knows this is the man whose memories he has just witnessed. More importantly, he is seeing their sins. He is seeing the bad they have committed throughout their lives.

All around him people press against him. The train stops at another station and more people crowd on. Someone brushes against him and he sees the redhead flinch for a moment. Suddenly he is experiencing a moment when she was a little girl and she is sneaking around in her parent’s bedroom. She finds the Christmas presents that her parents have hidden. She roots around in the packages and hears something crack and break. She finds the piece of crystal her father was going to give her mother. She quickly crawls out of the room and later lies when her father asks her about it.

“Grady, what’s wrong?”

“N-nothing…”

“Stop lying to me. You keep acting like you’ve been shocked.”

“I – I don’t r – r - really know what’s going on. I’ve never had this happen before. I’m seeing memories of people.”

“Who?”

“People around me.”

“Can’t you stop it?”

“I’m trying to.”

He closes his eyes. She reaches out and clutches at his hand. He concentrates on what is going on around him and then pushes it away. He tunes out everything around him. He imagines his white room. He is alone. He imagines building a wall around himself in that room. He imagines his hands planting stones around himself, isolating himself. He hears something coming toward him in the white room and catches a glimpse of something black and formless reaching for him. He places more stones around himself and the roaring sound fades into the background.

“Grady?”

“I think I’ve managed to push it away. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. We can go back to the apartment if you want to.”

“No. I’ll be all right. I just may need to head to bed sooner than normal tonight.”

She smiles again and squeezes his hand. She leans in and kisses him. He sees a flash of her as a child and quickly closes his eyes and pushes the memory away.

The train pulls into the station for the mall. The doors open and most of the crowd pushes out of the train car. Grady and Amy stand and push their way through the throngs. Grady holds Amy’s hand tightly and holds his breath as the group of people crams closer together toward the doorway. He breathes again once they are standing on the platform.

The sound of traffic assaults his ears. The train station here is an elevated one and located in the middle of the highway. They walk along the platform and head toward the stairs that will carry them up and over the highway and into the mall. There are shoppers everywhere. Bags and winter coats are packed in tightly against the people who carry them. There are smiling children and laughing couples. Somewhere someone is playing a lone saxophone and playing a Christmas carol. It takes Grady a moment to realize it’s “Jingle Bells.”

His head feels clearer now that they are moving. He leans in closer and kisses Amy. She kisses him back. He lets her take the lead since she knows this mall like the back of her hand. They head up the stairs and then cross over the highway through a walkway. The walkway has clear plastic windows and Grady watches the cars pass beneath them. Up ahead of them the din of the mall reaches his ears. As they walk past the traffic they pass the man with the saxophone.

Grady suddenly sees a young black man lying bleeding at his feet. He looks down at his own fists and sees that they are covered with blood. He is breathing hard. The man at his feet said something to him that he only barely heard. His friends told him that he said something insulting and began taunting him. Before he knew what he was doing, and with the beers he had been drinking roaring through his head, he was pounding on the other man. He kept beating and beating and beating him. Now he is wondering if the man is dead.

Grady looks at the man playing a saxophone and watches his face. The man misses a note in his song. He shakes his head for a moment and then goes back to playing his song. Someone drops a coin into the case at his feet.

Grady closes his eyes. He imagines the wall again. He opens his eyes before he runs into someone else. The din of the mall fills his ears. He hears more Christmas music from the speakers in the ceiling. He hears bells coming from somewhere.

They enter the mall and they are immediately surrounded by shoppers. They push past with their hands and arms filled with bags and packages. Grady focuses on Amy. Amy’s eyes are alive and dancing. She starts talking about the route she wants to take and which stores she wants to hit. Grady agrees and he smiles. The memories are fading. He has a task to focus on. He is able to push past the uneasiness and take a moment to enjoy the season.

Grady has always liked Christmas. It is a hard holiday not to like in some form. While he has never enjoyed crowds very much he likes the lights and the music and the goofiness of it all. He likes the Santa Clauses in the malls and the people made to dress like elves. He likes the fact that, generally speaking, the entire season seems to make people smile more and be friendlier.

They head into the first store and Amy starts looking through the clothes. She is looking for something for her older sister. She is muttering to herself in that way that Grady loves when she shops or working hard on something. He wanders around the store. He pauses to look from time to time at an article of clothing. He sees a young woman looking at jeans and she looks at him as he draws close. He smiles and nods and she smiles and returns the nod.

Grady suddenly sees a young woman standing over a pile of clothing in some other store somewhere. This young woman is about sixteen years old. She is terrified. She wants the blouse that her fingers are touching but there is no way she can afford it. She looks up and around and studies where the people who run and work at the store are situated. Surprisingly they are not looking at her. She notices that there is no alarm tag on any of the clothes on this table. She quickly grabs the blouse and stuffs it into her bag. Without another look she turns and walks out of the store. No one stops her.

Grady staggers against a rack of clothes. The woman turns and looks at him curiously. His head throbs and he puts his hand to his forehead. His forehead is slicked with sweat. He tries to smile back at her but the smile only curls one corner of his mouth. He decides to move away from her and he looks for Amy. Amy has an armful of clothing and she is standing near one of the dressing rooms.

“I think I found something I like as well. Maybe some guy I’ll meet will buy it for me.”

“You never know.”

His voice is weak and Amy looks at him with concern. She sees the sweat standing out on his forehead in the lights. She reaches out to him and touches his hand.

Grady jumps back with a gasp. His head is suddenly filled with memories from Amy. They flash through his mind he can barely discern one image from another. A million little sins stab him through the head in rapid succession like being caught beneath some giant sewing machine. He feels his legs giving out from under him and barely makes it into a chair.

“Grady? Grady, are you all right?”

“S – s- something wr – wr – wrong. I d – d – don’t – “

He puts his head in his hands. He rests his elbows on his knees. He closes his eyes. More images begin to flash through his head. He gets images from the girl behind the counter. He gets another image from the man standing in the aisle near the door holding his girlfriend’s purse. He tries to conjure the white room. He sees the wall in the white room lying in ruins around him and he tries to imagine himself rebuilding.

“Grady, what’s wrong?”

“The images are flying into my head. I can’t seem to stop it.”

“What do you we do?”

“I don’t know. They’re dying down now.”

“You said that before. They keep coming back. Something’s wrong, Grady.”

“What would you have me do, Amy? Should I go to the hospital and tell them I am seeing people’s sins? How long before they put me in an asylum.”

“You should contact your father.”

“No, dammit. I am not calling him. I am not admitting I cannot handle this.”

You’re sitting in a store with your head in your hands and memories pounding your brain. I don’t think you can handle this, Grady.”

“I’m going to be fine.”

The memories are gone now. His head is pounding. He stands up and then leans over and kisses Amy.

“I’m fine.”

He can tell she isn’t buying any more of his bullshit. She kisses him back and then heads toward the counter to check out. She looks back over her shoulder. He nods and follows. There is a short line of people waiting at the register. He manages to get through the line and pay for her clothes and give her her present.

Things manage to go all right for the rest of the morning. They shop until Grady thinks his feet will fall off. His arms hurt from holding bags. They eat in the food court. Grady eats a meal out of French fries and gravy that the Canadians call poutine. He has no idea how to properly say this meal despite the many times Amy tries to correct him.

His head feels better with the food. He is sipping on a Coke while Amy takes her tray to a garbage bin and leaves the tray. He is smiling. His head is buzzing and it is a constant buzz and he thinks as long as this general buzz is still at the back of his head, like some kind of interference, he will be all right. He looks out over the mall from the vantage point of the second floor food court and sees that the place has managed to get even more crowded than before.

“Maybe we should see a movie.”

He turns to watch her come up to him. She pauses long enough for him to kiss her again. He breathes in her scent.

“What am I going to do with all of these bags?”

“We could rent a locker.”

“With all of these bags we would need about ten lockers, I think.”

“Yeah, you may be right. I think I’m just about shopped out.”

“You had better be. Remember, we took the train in. That means we have to carry all of this stuff. No sticking things in a trunk.”

“You are always the practical one, Grady.”

“I will take that as compliment.”

She kisses the tip of his nose.

“Don’t, it just means you are a total buzz-kill.”

He laughs at that.

“I want to make a stop at the bookstore.”

“Lead the way, madam, you always know I love a good bookstore.”

He watches her walk away. He gathers his bags under his hands and he walks after her. He has a smile on his lips and he feels good. Around him families move and walk. Two children run past his legs. He sees a mother run after them. A couple holding hands momentarily part to let him pass through. He smiles at them.

He looks up and sees a dome of glass above him. Outside the sky is gray and more snow is spitting against the window. As he stares up at the glass he suddenly gets the sensation that everything is spinning beneath him and above him. For a moment the dome and the ceiling seem to disappear down a long tunnel. The smile freezes on his face and he shakes his head and drops his head down.

He looks around. People are all around him. He is in a round section of the mall that is a kind of cross section that leads to many other branches of the mall. It is like being in the middle of a wheel with spokes radiating around him.

He feels a great weight on his chest. His head spins. He turns in a small circle looking at the throngs of people. Voices assault him from every angle. Somewhere, above the din of the crowds, the Christmas music keeps playing. He hears that bell ringing somewhere. It begins to recede from his consciousness. Everything around him begins to recede. He feels himself being sucked into the white room. He opens his mouth to scream but even his voice is gone now, a long thin strand of drool starts to form from his bottom lip.

Amy has pushed into the crowd unaware of what is happening to Grady. He is alone in a sea of faces and voices. They crush into his head. His ears are ringing. His eyes bulge from their sockets. Everyone around him becomes dim as though he is a long way away. For just a moment, in the instant his knees give out and he starts to crumple to the floor, he is in total silence.

He imagines the white room. He is alone. In the white room he is standing. He whirls around in the white room and he sees the darkness. He sees the darkness all around him. It is like the white room is now the center of a wheel just like the mall. From each spoke there is darkness. It is more massive than any darkness he has seen yet. Then it launches at him. All at once from all sides the darkness comes for him and he opens his arms wide.

In the mall Grady falls to his knees. The bags slip from his hand. His mouth is open. His eyes are open but they are blank. His eyes roll back into his head. The memories start pounding his brain. His hands come up to his head.

Amy is halfway to the bookstore before she realizes Grady is no longer behind her. She is panicked at first. Then she turns. She starts to weave through the crowds. She notices the crowd is thicker and more gathered near the area below the food court. She cries out Grady’s name.

It is then that Grady screams.