The rain was gradually starting to come to a stop, though the wind was still intense. I could still feel a presence behind me, but I couldn't muster the nerve to look back. I was on high alert, cautiously waiting to see if the stalker would make even the slightest move. But who was it? Could it be the killers? I thought as raw dread gripped my whole being. My best bet was that they had found me and followed me out there where no one would possibly hear my screams to finish me off discreetly. I waited long enough, yet, to my dismay, I didn't hear any further sound, not to mention sensing 'slight' movements. It was as if they had read my mind and decided to be super quiet. I was becoming really uneasy. I suddenly felt this infectious and greatly irresistible temptation to look back and check out who was there. Unable to hold my curiosity, I stole a quick glance over my shoulder, only to find standing there behind me, a skinny dark boy, probably about my age, staring right at me. I sighed as I looked away, momentarily relieved it wasn't who I feared it might be.
"There's nothing to see here," I said to him, "please leave."
The boy looked almost like one of those outworn skeleton exhibits you'll find in some prehistoric museum, so deficient and vain, I wasn't sure if I should be worried about him. I had already witnessed so much trauma that night alone than I'd ever experienced before in my entire life, so I just didn't feel I could be worried more about anything else in my life ever, especially not some terribly emaciated coloured boy, except for him being a total creep, following me out to the hillside and staring at me the whole time as I laid Dom to rest, which rather added to my indignation.
There was no response from the boy, who still remained where he was, as though my words meant nothing. I was starting to get more upset at this point as I wondered why he had even followed me up there in the first place. Some creepy daring bastard, I thought, a little stain on the boots.
"Did you not hear me?" I asked him, brusquely, "I said go away!"
He still stood there, like he wasn't even hearing the words I said. Who was this nervy douchebag, I thought, and what could possibly be his problem? Whatever it was, I couldn't care less. I just wanted to be alone and mourn my brother, crying the loudest my voice could carry, whilst cursing myself, the world, and the very purpose of existence.
I turned to look at him again, this time more closely. He wore a grey paperboy hat and an oversized long-sleeve shirt that clung onto his body in the rain, revealing his body frame that seemed malnourished to a fault. His pair of black cotton trousers were barely his size, as they stopped halfway below his knees with several visible patches. I could see his two big toes through holes in both his pairs of fairy-worn-out shoes. With his overtly poor appearance, I could tell he didn't come from neither much nor little, but from naught, abject nothingness in fact. Probably orphaned, or homeless, or both, but what was his motive, I wondered. I got up and went to him.
"See, I don't care who you are, I'm really not in the mood for silly games," I told him in my meanest voice.
He had a look of sympathy in his eyes as he took off his hat, signalling something with his hands. I was at first confused, but then I later realized that the signs he was making were actually sign language. He was trying to express his sympathy for the demised - my brother.
"You can't speak," I muttered thoughtfully.
He nodded in response. This meant only one thing.
"Wait… it was you, wasn't it, you're the one who led the killers away from us," I said.
He nodded.
"Well… my brother is gone now," I muttered. I paused to dry my eyes. "Turns out, it was all in vain after all," I added, my voice cracking at that last part.
"It's not safe out here," he gestured using sign language, "I know somewhere you can lie low for the night."
"Lie low, huh…" I muttered under my voice, as I burst out in tears again. "My whole world is gone!" I cried, "It's all gone! So, what's the point of running, what's the point of anything…now."
I felt his hand touching me by the arm. I looked into his eyes, they were glistening with tears.
"I understand how you feel," he gestured, "I lost my parents too, and my twin sister."
"How do you know about my parents?" I asked. I was surprised since I hadn't made mention of my parents' demise to him.
"I saw everything in a vision," he replied, "before it all ever happened."
"What?…" I muttered, my eyes squinting with puzzlement.
"That's impossible, I mean…you obviously picked that up from those killers, didn't you?" I doubted.
"Your father gave you that chain necklace right before he willingly sacrificed himself to stay behind and slow down the killers, and your mother was shot twice in the back with an arrow right before she sacrificed her life for yours," he replied. "She didn't die in vain".
"Wait…what?" I muttered almost in a whisper, so shocked and immensely mystified by all that he had just said, I could feel chills of goosebumps all over my body. He looked so much like the regular peasant you would find in the streets of Romania with certainly no speciality or relevance, yet somehow he seemed to know a great deal of things about me that he shouldn't have known. Who could he be, I wondered. There were so many questions running through my head at the same time, I couldn't get hold of myself.
"How did you know all that?" I finally asked, "Who the hell are you?" He asked me to come with him, and he would explain everything to me. I couldn't have gone, but my curiosity at this point was too much for me to resist.
I followed him back to the city to some obsolete church building which seemed like the last time someone entered there was not less than ten years ago. This was supposedly where he lived. Just like I assumed, he was an orphan, a homeless orphan, In fact, thus, I found us alike in a way. However, according to him, the likeness we both shared was even much more than I thought. He claimed he possessed some sort of paranormal psychic abilities passed down to him by his late father, among which was the ability to foresee future events before their actual moment of occurrence, hence predicting the future, which explained the whole spookish Cassandra act he pulled off back at the hill. He told me that just like Mother was, his father was also accused by the government of meddling in the dark arts, thus they were all sentenced to the Russian penitentiary. However, it soon came to their knowledge that the government had other intentions other than just mere imprisonment. Having learned of their diverse unique abilities, the Soviets, backed up by several other world leaders, initiated a secret research program for the illegal study and experimentation of mutants and outcasts. Basically, they were to be used as lab rats. Having learned this, they attempted an escape, but all met their deaths in the process, all except himself, who barely escaped at the skin of his teeth. He said it was the government that sent the killers to us and that they were still on the hunt, so I had to keep a low profile.
"I don't understand, it wasn't the government that sent those killers," I explained, "They were some kind of…cult, I could tell by the weird dressings," I added.
I was really confused because the killers didn't even look anyhow like people who were working for the government, and I even recalled my father confirming that they weren't from the government. Also, he was saying that the government's actual aim was to study and experiment on us, but from my experience with the killers, it seemed their only objective was to kill. He said that they were probably disguised as a cult because the research program was illegal, but it still wasn't believable enough.
"Even if you're right, why would the government want anything to do with me?" I asked, "I'm not like you. I don't possess such special abilities as they seek."
"I believe you do," he replied, "You have your mother's blood, so that means you're also a witch."
"Me? A witch? That's rubbish! That's just…absolute rubbish!" I exclaimed, "I can't possibly be a witch, I mean…my mother wasn't even a witch, she had no dealings whatsoever with the dark arts, it was all false accusations," I explained.
"I don't believe your mother did seek power from the dark arts," he replied, "because just like her, my father was also wrongfully accused of that, but one thing the government wasn't wrong about was his status as a psychic, and I think the same applies to your mother."
"Just think about it," he continued, "Why would they want to have anything to do with your mother if she wasn't a witch, why would they come after you if you were a normal human?"
"I am a normal human!" I replied, clearly offended, "You know nothing about me."
"I know I don't," he replied, "but at least see the sense in what I tell you."
"Well, I see no sense at all!" I objected, tears gradually filling up my eyelids as I kept my eyes wide open to keep them from escaping my eyes, "I don't believe you."
"Most times, the truth can be so hard to accept that we end up deciding to believe what we want to be, rather than what is. I've been there before," he said.
I gave no further response, I just sat there in silence. His words had gotten me into very deep thoughts. What if he was right, I wondered, what if all along I'd instinctively ignored the truth because of how much it might change my life, about what I've always known about my parents?
"Have you always been like this?" I asked him, finally breaking the silence, "I mean…not being able to speak."
He managed to force a smile as he looked up at me.
"No, I wasn't always like this," he replied.
He continued,
"Among my abilities, was the potency to compel others to my will, by just a single voice command. When we were arrested, they hampered my speech to prevent me from using my powers to escape."
"Is it…permanent?" I asked, curiously.
"As far as I can tell, yes," he replied.
"I'm sorry," I muttered, sounding as genuine as possible.
I continued.
"Back when we were at the house, something happened, something I couldn't explain, let alone comprehend. While the killers had us at gunpoint, there was an explosion, and while it was supposed to take out everyone including us, it shockingly knocked out only those that surrounded us, leaving us who were present there as well, still fully mentally conscious, and totally unharmed. It felt like we just fell out of mere panic and not due to the impact of the explosion, unlike the killers. Again, something else more strange happened on Lonely Street. I know this may sound crazy, but when Mother got hit, we saw time stop around us right before our eyes, the raindrops, the approaching killers, the wind, literally every moving object around us instantly paused wherever they were, and the craziest part about this was that Mother seemed totally fine about it like it was normal," I explained,
"I didn't want to think too much about it because, as much as it was totally inconceivable, and merely reasoning it might make me go bonkers, I was scared."
I sighed.
"You were right, the signs have been in plain sight all along, but I've been choosing to bluntly ignore them, maybe to enjoy a little moment of sanity, maybe because I'm scared that this changes everything, scared of accepting a reality that I'm not really for, scared she might actually be what they said she was…evil," I explained.
"Your mother was willing to lay down her life for you," he replied, "I don't think anyone evil can have such a heart as hers. See, there are very few of us this world has termed so many things; outcasts, monsters, freaks, weird, all of which we are. They can only call us what we are, but one thing they can't do is tell us who we are. Good or bad, the choice is ours."
"The world hasn't been so kind to either of us, has it," I said to him, "I have no more family, I can't go home 'cause… I don't know if I might die, or worse, get captured for some crazy science project, so technically, I have no home anymore. The government is after me, a group of psycho serial killers are after me, and I'm now a fugitive on the run, and for what, I'm my mother's child? I don't even have someone else left I can trust."
"You can trust me," he told me after a brief wait, "And you won't ever have to call yourself homeless anymore, because you're in luck. I'm officially offering you free accommodation, you can stay here for as long as you wish."
"Really?" I muttered in genuine disbelief, my eyes squinting with questioning and puzzlement.
He nodded.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked him, "I mean…You don't even know me, I…I'm literally a total stranger".
"Well, not anymore, you ain't," he replied. "I'm helping you because it's what I'm supposed to do, and besides, I'm in real need of company, living here alone can be really boring sometimes".
"You really don't have to, you know," I said, with slight hesitation in my tone, "I…don't know what to say".
"Just say thank you," he said with a warm friendly smile.
"Thank you," I finally told him, a faint smile slightly brightening up my sullen face.
"You're welcome."
There was a lasting moment of silence. I just sat there glancing around in my vain effort to avoid eye contact with him. It was almost turning into an awkward moment, so I began to think of something to say to break the silence.
"I was wondering, how come you understand so much sign language?" he finally said. I guess he noticed the awkwardness too.
"Long story," I muttered with a shy smile that brought a blush to my cheeks.
"Guess you just wouldn't cease to amaze me," he replied.
"You hungry? I've got a few leftover peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I can spare," he said as he took out an aluminium foil wrap from a small brown carton.
I immediately returned the sandwiches to him after noticing holes in them, probably nibbled through by rats.
"Uh, thanks, but I'm not really hungry," I said.
When he saw that there were holes in the sandwiches, he thought that was why I returned them; at least that wasn't the main reason. The truth was, like I told him, I really wasn't hungry, and I already had enough food and snacks with me in my bag.
"I guess I forgot to mention my other company; mice, lots of them. But they're not that bad, I promise," he said, "and they still can't stop me from eating my sandwich."
I was surprised he was still going to eat the already contaminated food. This revealed so much how miserably impoverished his state was, I couldn't help but feel pity for him. I could only imagine how it was going to be for me. I offered him my snacks and bread to have, instead of his sandwiches. The beam of the smile on his face was so contagious, and the genuine happiness he expressed felt really satisfying. It was as if it was his first time having potato chips and pot roast. He wouldn't stop raining praises on me, like I had just offered him gold.
"This is so good, you should try some," he said as he ate with great relish.
I smiled.
"You're not really offering me my own food, are you?" I asked jokingly, "I already told you I'm not hungry. Don't worry, I'll have mine in the morning."
"My name is Natasha," I finally told him, "Natasha Magus."
I thought it was time he finally heard my name, even though it wasn't in any way practically necessary, since he wouldn't be able to call it. He smiled back at me, then he found a pen and a piece of paper on which he penned something down before passing it to me.
"Henry," I read out loud. That was his name.