Part 1: Come Home, Michael
Bullies. Even when you let yourself get comfortable in life, there’s always another one lurking in the shadows. No matter what we may accomplish, the powerful friends we grow closer to, or even the wealth we may accumulate, there’s always another damn bully just waiting for the opportunity to remind us of how small and worthless we are.
The events at the old mill introduced me to far greater threats than I ever could’ve imagined, but I had no idea how deep the scar tissue had festered. The time I spent with my parents, Jensen Orchid and all of his high-priced goons, and even the Devil himself could never have prepared me for what was still to come. Perhaps those two years of stress-free living allowed me the briefest of moments to think I had escaped all of the torments life had in store for me. Unfortunately, it would seem it was little more than the calm before the storm.
I hadn’t told Brandon the entire truth of what happened that night. Given the revelations of who my closest and dearest friend was all along, I didn’t think that would make for an easy discussion. How he awoke with no bullets buried in his chest cavity, along with his regrown fingers, I just chalked up to us having been drugged by the head of Orchid industries. It wasn’t the most well-thought-out pile of bullshit to account for the insanity of that night, but our tax-free prize was enough to distract him from seeking out the actual truth. I’m sure he had his suspicions, but he never pushed it any further.
As for Grant’s disappearance, I had to get a little more inventive on that one; explaining that our mutual friend had been an undercover operative the whole time. I claimed he had been investigating the corruption of the company for some time, ultimately leading him to spend years on the job. Given the nature of his work, he could neither stick around when the dust cleared nor enjoy a share of our winnings, as he couldn’t risk exposure for future assignments. I was positive he didn’t buy any of that for a minute, but he went along with it either way.
When Brandon met Ashley, he grew far more at peace than I had ever known him to be. Yes, he attended regular therapy as he was still haunted by that week, along with some rough times in his youth he had never quite been able to get over, but he was content. I tried talking to a shrink myself once, but it wasn’t for me. Maybe I’m simply not the best at talking things out, or perhaps I just prefer to write it all down before I decide if there’s the remotest chance my thoughts are even rational. Who knows?
Regardless of what brought us to where we had arrived in life, we were happy; something neither of us expected when we were younger. Even Ash had grown to feel like a sister to me, especially since she spent just about every day at the house since around the second week of she and Brandon becoming an official couple. They weren’t married yet, but I had overheard a conversation or two. Of course, I didn’t let on that I thought they may be rushing things a bit, having only been together for a few months, but it wasn’t my business. Plus I didn’t want them to think I’d been snooping or anything.
I loved Brandon like a brother, which not only made me feel worse about lying to him but caused the impact of what came next to leave yet another deep and gnarled scar across my already tarnished subconscious. I’m getting ahead of myself, apologies for that. A lot has happened since we last spoke, so to speak. I suppose I’m still dealing with a lot of it, but all may not be lost just yet, or so I’m hoping anyway. It wasn’t Grant’s arrival that night that caused things to go sideways, but it was most certainly a factor.
God knows, pardon the expression, that I was absolutely thrilled to see my dearest friend again, but I wish I’d listened to his recommendation that we just meet at a neutral location before heading on that road trip. It was my fault that I convinced him to come to the house. I suppose I wanted him to see the fruits of our labor in that maddening place; along with seeing my closest friends together again. I should’ve just listened to him in the first place, but I don’t think either of us was prepared for what lay ahead.
After some back and forth, we agreed to meet at the house around eight. I had already packed up everything I hoped I would need for the time away, though I wasn’t entirely sure how long we’d be gone, nor did I have any clue where we were headed. Either way, I had the Bronco loaded up with at least a good week’s worth of supplies, so I had no responsibilities left for the day until Grant would arrive later that night. I was especially anxious, both in anticipation of seeing my friend, as well as where our quest would lead us, so I decided to swing by the bar to kill some time.
It was only four in the afternoon, but Brandon was already up on the small platform we called a stage, playing his guitar and singing directly to Ash, regardless of how many other patrons were enjoying the show. I just sat on one of the barstools, and leaned back, nursing a wonderfully chilled beer, while admiring the skillful strumming of my friend and business partner. As I stared off; daydreaming with the soothing musical score in the background, I became aware that someone was watching me.
My eyes blinked back to reality to meet those of a gorgeous brunette at the back of the bar. She just stood there in a slinky red dress, gazing at me while sipping from her glass. As her lips formed a slight half-smile, I suddenly felt inspired to approach her. I turned to the counter to set my drink down, but when I spun back around, she was gone. I looked around to seek her out, but there was absolutely no trace of the beautiful woman with the silky dark hair.
Shrugging off my momentary distraction, I turned my attention back to my drink and got back to allowing my mind to wander some more.
“Not half bad, is he?” A familiar voice spoke from beside me, snapping me back to the real world once more.
“Holy shit!” I said, immediately wrapping my arms around my old friend.
An equally as enthusiastic, “Holy shit,” called out from the stage, amplified by the microphone Brandon had been reciting the lyrics to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” into, accompanied by the sound of his guitar practically being dropped to the floor.
Before I knew it, the three of us were huddled up at the bar, in some awkward manner of a group hug. I hadn’t even told Brandon that Grant was going to be in town, only that I was planning a small get-together at the house later. Even after I released my arms from around my old mate, Brandon still gripped him tightly. Given that the two hadn’t seen each other since that crazy week came to its bloody conclusion, I couldn’t blame him for the enthusiasm.
“You must be the infamous Grant,” Ash said with a chuckle after she wandered over.
“How’d you know?” Brandon asked, finally ending his embrace.
“Well, I guess the ponytail sort of gave it away,” she replied, still giggling softly.
Grant put on his best humble gentleman routine; bowing his head to her, before lifting her hand to his mouth, giving it a small peck of his lips. We all laughed at his attempt to come off all dignified and such, but I couldn’t help but notice Ashley’s cheeks reddening a bit.
For the next few hours, we drank, smoked, and laughed; not unlike those brief moments of joy over our week away from life as we knew it, at the expense of Orchid industries. It felt so good to catch up, though Grant couldn’t exactly divulge too much of his day-to-day life over the past two years, especially around Brandon and Ash. After a while, we headed back to the house, from where my friend and I planned to leave out early the following morning. Given that my head was already swimmy from the alcohol, I was thinking it may not be quite as early as we had previously discussed after all.
“Bloody nice place you got here, boys,” he said, after taking the tour.
“Not too shabby, right?” Brandon said.
It wasn’t until we all gathered in the quite sizable living room while discussing whether or not we wanted to take some drinks out to the pool or the beach that Ashley interrupted out of the blue.
“Now that I have you all here, I have an announcement to make…”
She was smiling while she spoke, but something had changed in her eyes that I couldn’t quite put my finger on at the time. Grant and I looked at each other, and I assumed we were on the same page; that she may be about to reveal that she and Brandon were engaged, but when I turned to him, he looked a bit confused himself, and even a little unsettled. I thought I may have been reading entirely too much into things, but when she spoke again, I couldn’t think of a single word to respond.
“It’s time for you all to come home…”
“Um, we are home, babe,” Brandon said, glancing back at Grant and me as if to reassure himself.
“This isn’t where you belong…” she said, as the lights began to flicker, “not anymore…”
“Ash, what are you talking about…”
I didn’t have a chance to finish my question, before the ground started shuddering, tipping lamps to the ground while causing picture frames to fall.
“You belong with me…”
Her eyes darkened to a glossy black; the same color the walls had begun to bleed. The entire house was quaking, while the room transformed before my eyes. As Ashley’s skin paled, darkened veins lined behind her almost translucent flesh; each visibly throbbing, while her voice deepened to something hauntingly foreign from who I had thought her to be. Even the tattoos across her arms and chest appeared to be morphing into something else.
“It’s time to come home now…”
As the walls completed their transition to the same pulsating glossy black that lined the halls and rooms of the building we almost lost our lives in, I could feel the voice, not only from the now barely recognizable girl who had spent the last months in our company but calling out from within me as well.
“Michael!” Grant shouted, “Brandon, we have to get out of here!”
I could barely make out his words above the shuddering of the entire house, which now sprouted a seemingly endless stairway to the rear of the living room, as the ceiling skyrocketed upwards and out of view.
“Come with me…come back to me…”
She outstretched her hands, cutting her blackened eyes between each of us, one by one.
“Back home…where you belong…”
Brandon almost seemed in a trance as he paced towards her, reaching his hand out as he neared.
“BRANDON! NO!”
I grabbed him by the shoulder, but I couldn’t so much as to cause him to hesitate. Even when Grant reached for him, he would not stop placing one foot in front of the next.
“…back home…” he said, almost breathing the words, barely more than a whisper.
“DAMNIT BRANDON! SNAP OUT OF IT!!”
Grant and I both practically tackled him, but we couldn’t so much as force him to miss a single step. We both skidded our feet against the floor, attempting to pull him back, but this only served to drag us closer along with him.
“Don’t be afraid…just come home…”
As soon as Brandon’s fingers intertwined with those of what used to be his girlfriend, he took his place beside her; his own eyes mimicking her empty stare.
“Come home, Michael…” both voices spoke; now echoing that haunting tone.
“Come home, Grant…” they each outstretched their hands towards us, as I fought to not be pulled in like Brandon had.
“We have to go, mate,” Grant said, grabbing me by the arm.
“We can’t leave him like this!” I said, feeling my heart race with pure and exhilarated panic.
“He’s already gone…we can’t…”
“I WON’T FUCKING LEAVE HIM!” I screamed, turning to meet the gaze of my friend.
He grabbed me by the shoulders, staring deep into my eyes. I tried to turn to face the approaching husks of what were once two of my dearest friends, but Grant screamed my name once more, pulling my attention back to him.
“If we don’t leave now, they’ll pull us back with them…”
The horrendously vibrating floor and walls were beginning to make me feel queasy; that, along with the haunting twin voices, calling out from somewhere beyond my subconscious.
“We can’t help them if we’re dragged back there too!” Grant said with frenzied panic in his voice.
I could feel the outstretched arms drawing closer, as the words that echoed through my mind and body began to seduce me.
“Michael!” I heard from somewhere in the distance.
“Michael, we have to go, now!” The voice was further away now; somewhere beyond the reach of the only words that mattered…I had to go back home…
“MICHAEL! WAKE THE FUCK UP!”
I felt a sting on the side of my face. “Where did that come from?” I thought as I began to pace towards those who would return me to where I belonged.
“That’s right…there’s nothing to fear…come home, Michael…”
“DAMNIT, YOU BLOODY WANKER! SNAP THE FUCK OUT OF IT!!”
Another sharp pain; far more intense than the last. The other voice was getting closer again. I knew that voice…Grant! That was Grant! My friend! I felt my mind escaping the clutch of those droning and haunting tones. My eyes regained their focus on the two blank and sunken faces only feet from where I stood, dropping my arm back to my side.
“You with me, mate?” He was panting, with sweat practically pouring from his brow.
“Yeah…I’m with you, man…”
He gave me a nod, before outstretching his hand; not towards those who still edged closer by the second, but in the direction of where I thought the front door to my house to have once been located. The glossy black wall violently shuddered, far more aggressively than the others that lined the room, which appeared to be growing more monstrous with every passing moment.
“NOOO!” The twin voices screamed in a shrill chorus, practically causing nausea I had been experiencing to drop me to the trembling floor.
Grant grabbed me by my shirt, pulling me away from the two who quickened their pace towards us, while cracks formed across the violently shuddering wall. As I looked back at Brandon one last time, practically begging him to break free of this maddening spell, an explosion forced my attention back to where my other friend stood, now pulling me in the direction of the fresh opening to the outside world.
“But, Brandon…”
“We can get him back, mate. I…I hope we can, anyway…”
We ran side by side to the midnight blue Bronco, while I dug around in my pocket, preying it still held my keys within.
“We can’t just leave them like this,” I said, feeling my heart skip when I wrapped my fingers around the keychain.
“We can’t help him if we’re sucked in too, mate.”
As we climbed into the large SUV, I cranked the engine, flipped the shifter into reverse, and reluctantly pressed the pedal down.
When I slammed on the brakes, spinning free from the lengthy driveway while pointing the hood in the direction of the open road ahead, I took one last glance back at the house I shared with my friend and business partner. Even its exterior looked like a shrunken carbon copy of that enormous and horrifying building I still see in my nightmares. The gargoyles perched upon the roof almost appeared to be gazing right into my own quivering eyes.
I watched Brandon and Ash strolling hand in hand through the opening Grant had made to allow us to escape. They each still held one arm out, while they echoed their deepened and haunting words…
“Please…come home, Michael…”
I couldn’t deny there was a part of me that almost begged me to return; pleaded for me to allow them to lead me back home. Before giving them a second opportunity to pull me back in, I once more forced the accelerator pedal to the floor, speeding away from the house I once shared with a dear friend; someone I swore I would find a way to rescue.
For the next hour or so, neither Grant nor I spoke a single word to one another. I couldn’t speak for my friend, but I, for one, couldn’t even think of anything to say. I had no idea what direction we were headed, nor if I was even going the right way at the time, but the radio was still cranked high from the last time I was in the car. I was happy for the distraction, even if my ears were still ringing from the events I would have never escaped without Grant’s intervention.
“It almost got me too, mate.”
I glanced over to the passenger seat, both surprised by his words and curious at the same time.
“I could hear them in my head, and…bugger me, mate, I almost gave into it myself!”
“Seriously!?”
Not only did my knowledge of who and what Grant truly was make me assume he would be immune to what caused me to lose my senses, but his words made me even more intimidated by it.
“I think we may have left a piece of ourselves in that place. It’s powerful, mate, far more so than I.”
“But what you did…I mean, you opened a door to Hell in that place. If it was so powerful, how could…”
“That wasn’t the building itself. I think it was some sort of, I don’t know, maybe a sort of waiting room or something that connected it directly to this world. When we were in the heart of that ruddy place, I was powerless. Wasn’t until we crossed into the hallway, I felt it coming back. Even back at your place, it took everything I had to blow that wall out.”
“Wait. So when we were all beat to shit, you were…”
“Just a man. Yeah. It stripped me down. Scared the shit outta me too!”
I laughed. I wasn’t sure what inspired me to give that particular reaction to this revelation, but it seemed to fit the madness of it all. Grant gave me a slightly annoyed look before he cracked up too.
“So you were pretending to be just an average asshole that whole time,” I said, still gasping for breath between belly laughs, “and that bitch turned you into one. Isn’t that ironic?”
“Don’t ya think?” Grant replied, wiping tears from his eyes in between chuckles.
It was most certainly a strange topic to have inspired such random levity, to an otherwise painful and brutal night, but it finally allowed me to begin to accept what happened and attempt to find a way to move on.
“We’ll get him back, mate,” he said, after our laughter died down, leaving only the radio keeping the silence at bay.
“Do you really think we have a chance in hell of pulling that off?”
“I don’t know, mate, but if a chance in Hell is what we need, I’ve got it covered.”
“Cute…”
“I thought so.”
He chuckled again, inspiring me to join in once more. Once upon a time, I never could have imagined I would find a reason to laugh when faced with such insanity, but I never could have planned for having the Devil himself as my closest friend either. Perhaps it was just the fact that I had been through far more than my fair share of extreme situations, that allowed me to find my way back from things so traumatic, they may have left someone far less experienced in a catatonic state.
“So, where exactly are we going, anyway?” I asked when we settled down from our moment or borderline losing our damn minds.
“For tonight, I’m thinking we find a hotel. I don’t know about you, but I’m bloody exhausted.”
“Do you, I mean, no offense and all, but do you actually need sleep?”
It felt strange to ask such a question, especially to someone who I had known to sleep a lot during our time together before I knew the truth. I suppose I hadn’t considered these kinds of things, even over the last couple of years, but this was the most substantial time we had spent together since I got to peek behind the curtain.
“When I’m in this,” he said, patting himself on the chest, “I require just about everything a human body needs if that makes sense.”
He spoke almost nonchalantly, as though this was a perfectly average conversation.
“So, um, that’s not…you? I mean, I’m not necessarily looking at, like, the real you right now?”
“Mate, this is me!” He held his hand to his heart again, “Think of this like nothing more than a change of clothes, in a way.”
“So, are you, I don’t know, like, possessing someone right now?” I chuckled at the question, but it was more from how awkward it felt than from actually being funny.
“It’s not like that,” he laughed; far more genuinely than I, “this is sort of an empty husk, for lack of a better term. I step inside it, and I’m Grant, but I’m also, well, me.”
“So, do you have, like, a closet of Grant suits?” My chuckle was far more real this time.
“Oh yeah! Just like my ‘day of the week’ undies!”
We were still laughing while I drifted onto the nearest exit, in search of a hotel for the night. Within minutes, we were driving alongside everything from roadside motels, to far more classy, multilevel hotels. After arranging two rooms for the night at one of the more fancy locations, I gave my friend one last hug, before turning to my room, across the hall from his.
“I’ve missed the hell out of you, man,” I said.
It had been a rough day, and I was still terrified of what lay ahead, as well as whether or not we would be able to bring Brandon back. Still, it felt good to have Grant by my side again. Yes, between Orchid senior, and whatever Ashley had become, we had our work cut out for us, but I hoped we could pull it off.
“Yeah, mate. You too!” He replied, before walking through his door.
As soon as I let myself fall upon the plush mattress, I realized how exhausted I was; both mentally and physically. I allowed the weight of potentially losing Brandon to consume me for a moment. I attempted to keep the moans that accompanied the tears silent when I let them loose, but once they kicked in, I couldn’t even hope to contain them. I pounded my fists against the soft mattress while trying my hardest not to scream out from the pain in my chest.
After some time, I managed to convince myself to settle back down, but I would not accept this loss; not without a fight. Even if the powers behind that building could strip Grant of his gifts, I still had faith that we could find a way to bring our friend home. With that very conviction in the back of my mind, I allowed the throbbing in my chest to dissipate. What tomorrow may hold; well, surely it couldn’t be any worse than what this day had presented us with. That was my hope, anyway. Of course, things are never that simple.