Oblivion: Chapter 1, Part 2
Buy me a coffee?
A/N: Sorry this next part took so long, I had headaches for the last few days and couldn’t look at my laptop for the same amount of time. Please make sure you read part one before this, or you might not know how this whole thing works. :)
Warnings: minor gore, blood mention
Characters: Detective Inspector George Wallace, Henry Schneep, Jameson Jackson, Marvin Jones, Robert Davies, Chase Brodes
Word count: 1225 words
“Dr. Schneep, I know you’re very busy, but I just need the full story.”
“I understand, Inspector, but my story does not have any connection to Anton.”
“It will help us understand Chase’s story.”
“Ah, I understand now. I shall tell you what I know.”
It had been a long night at the surgery. Henry rubbed his eyes as he climbed into his car, yawning as he started up the engine.
As he drove home, he turned on the radio to listen to the news, shaking his head against the drowsiness. He bought a coffee from the drive-through café before parking in the front drive of the house. The mailbox was full, so Henry knew Chase was still out, looking for his missing family.
When he opened the front door, the smell of his grandparents’ fabric softener wafted out. He looked at his coffee, downing the final drops, then stepped inside.
A man stood on the stairs, the colours of his clothes and appearance bright against the monochrome of the wall and stairs. The intruder stared at him, blue eyes wide in fear.
“Who are you? How did you get inside?” Henry closed the door behind him, pulling his phone out and ready to call the police.
“No, please, do not call the authorities. I do not know how I got here. One minute I was climbing the stairs to my room, and the next I was here. I am just as confused as you are.” Henry lowered his arm, stepping forward to look at the intruder more closely.
“Come down those stairs. Let me put the kettle on.” He watched as the visitor walked down the stairs, walking into the kitchen as if he owned the place. The doctor put the kettle on, then stepped back outside to look at the stairs. It was as though someone had turned off the colours on that one patch of stair and wall. Chase is not going to like this.
He pulled out his phone again, calling his cousin’s number with shaky hands. When the vlogger answered, he told him to come home and call Marvin. After putting the phone down, Henry made tea for the visitor, and another cup of coffee for himself.
“What is your name?”
“Jameson. Jameson Jackson. My friends call me JJ.”
“Can I have your name for the record?”
“Jameson Jackson.”
“Age?”
“Twenty eight.”
“What is your relation to the Brodes and Schneeple families?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m related to them at all.”
JJ whistled as he ran the duster along the shelf, sneezing as the dust flew everywhere.
His sister had gotten married over the weekend, and he was getting used to the new-found silence around the place. He still couldn’t play any records at full volume, because the walls were thin, and he hated that fact.
Having completed the cleaning downstairs, JJ picked up the basket of folded clothes and headed upstairs. The staircase was old, veneered wood that creaked on the fifth, tenth, and fifteenth step. He looked at the peeling yellow paint on each step as he manoeuvred the basket past the railings, making a mental note to repaint the whole staircase as soon as possible.
When he reached the dreaded tenth step, instead of a creak JJ heard mutterings echoing through his house. He strained his ears to listen, not quite understanding the dialect nor the language. He blinked, thinking his eyes had begun to play tricks on him as the colours began to wash out around the place, then dropped his basket as the world spun around him.
When at last he opened his eyes again, he was on the steps of his – no, someone else’s house. It looked like his own, but the house was painted pastel green instead of his custard-yellow, and questionable devices were set up everywhere. He looked at his feet, seeing that he was standing in a space on the stairs that had its colour drained from it.
He started as the door opened, revealing a man in a sharp suit, staring at him in shock and confusion. The man walked inside, taking something out, possibly a new-age device to call the authorities. JJ, fear coursing through his blood, pleaded with the man, telling him truthfully that he didn’t know how he got here.
Accepting an offer for tea, he showed himself into the kitchen, which obeyed the layout of his own house, and sat down.
“What is your name?” JJ bit his lip, unsure whether he should trust this man, but opened his mouth anyway.
“Jameson. Jameson Jackson. My friends call me JJ.”
“Name.”
“Shut up. I’m concentrating.”
“Marvin, for once can your family actually do what I ask?”
“Nope.”
Marvin’s newest grimoire arrived on his windowsill, wrapped in several layers of silk and brown paper. After Jackie and Anton left the house, he began to unwrap his new item. As the storm raged outside, Marvin prepared his ingredients to try yet another summoning spell.
He had been interested in advancing his necromancy skills to summon his mother and ask her about his family, and the suspiciously cheap pricing on the spell-book had made his plan easier to work on.
Carefully, he began to recite the spell, focusing on his mother: her appearance, her voice, the smell of her perfume. Then he began to think about his family tree, and how he knew next to nothing about it. He wondered if his mother knew her father, or even her grandfather. Suddenly, the pile of ingredients burst into flames, signalling the completion of his spell.
There was no sound outside the door. No smell of his mother’s perfume, no distant hum of her voice. Marvin put his items away, sighing in defeat. He had failed, for the first time in at least a decade. Disappointment made Marvin crawl into his bed and hide under the covers, ignoring the ringing phone and waiting for either Jackie or Anton to return home.
“Name.”
“Robert Davies.”
“You say you were dead?”
“Yes.”
“And somehow you’re related to JJ and Marvin?”
“Maybe…”
The storm was fierce outside the cemetery. At the top of a hill, isolated from other family members, a tombstone loomed. The name and dates had been worn off the surface, but everybody knew the grave had been made twenty years ago.
A bolt of lightning illuminated the stone surface, and the dirt before it shifted. As rain pelted down on the ground, white stumps began to emerge from the ground. Slowly, as if a plant was growing, the stumps grew longer, thinner, and eventually converged into a hand.
A large crack was heard in the distance, followed by a second bolt of lightning, splitting the tombstone into two. The hand continued to emerge, growing into an arm, a shoulder, a torso, and finally, a head.
The eyes were white and milky, blinking in the rain as the mouth opened, gasping for air. A second hand reached out of the ground, less intact than the first, with the forearm missing. As the figure pulled themselves from the ground, they noticed they also had a hole in their throat and a large hole on their left leg.
The creature reached back into the ground, retrieving their missing arm, then stood on shaky legs and left the cemetery.
