Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ Bloody Hands ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

"Sometimes they come back."
----Stephen King----

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________

He dreamed of them again. They haunted him in dreams, they haunted him in reality, and they haunted his thoughts. He could go nowhere to escape them. It was like the barbaric punishments of the old times Van had heard of, when the guilty parties were tied to a dead body and left in a desert where they would have to drag that heavy, stinking carcass around with them until their throats were dry and cracked, and they finally laid down and died with that dead body still strapped to their back.

Van Fanel thought he was going insane. Maybe he was.

They were alive, but in the worst sense. How, he didn't know. He just knew that the bastards weren't dead. Those Zaibach bastards. And they wanted him. They wanted him to come with them. That's what they kept saying.

Come with us
Come with us
Come with us
Come on, you bastard, come on.

'They're dead. You watched them die.'

'You watched them come right back too, didn't you? You watched them come right back and protect their commander.'

'I had to do it.'

Murderer.

"Shut up!" Van Fanel shouted out loud to the voices that argued in his tortured head, and his voice struck the silent room like a smack in the face as he hunched over the Zaibach military files. He opened the first one and started to read. He'd finally decided to find out just who the hell they were. He'd been awakened by the nightmares, and had been up all night, digging through the files, trying to figure out why they were still here.

'But they're not. They are not still here.'

'Oh but they are. They've come back. All fourteen of them. All of them except the one that Zongi killed. Hell, maybe he wants me to. Maybe he's with them too.'

Van sighed and scanned the file.

'Gatti Aldour,' it read.
'Birth- Orange 13
Birthplace- Astoria
Hair- Blonde
Eyes- Blue
Height- 5'6"
Weight- 130'

"And which one was
(is)
he?" Van muttered to himself. He flipped a few more pages and found a picture. A strapping young man with a charismatic grin, broad shoulders, and bright blue-green eyes stared back at him. He was handsome. Quite handsome. He looked like he could have been a great general one day. He looked like he could have been someone very, very important. More than a subordinate for that damned creation of Zaibach's.

Murderer.

A single drop of fresh, bright crimson blood fell from nowhere and splattered on the white paper and on Van's cheeks. Van squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. The blood was gone. He went back to his reading.

'Personality: Outgoing, outspoken, direct, honest, energetic'
m u r d e r e r
'Murdered By: Van Fanel'

Van squeezed his eyes shut again. He read the paper again. The last few words were gone. He turned the page calmly, and saw that his hands were covered in bright red blood.
He didn't squeeze his eyes shut this time. He screamed when he saw that horrible liquid, and jumped out of his seat. He ran into the bathroom and turned the sink on, leaving red streaks on the glass knobs. Van put his palms under the faucet and let the water run over his hands, which were, perfectly clean. Van let out a deep, wavering sigh. He looked up into the mirror and noticed his own reflection. Behind him, the bloody, mangled, bruised, pale face of Gatti Aldour glared back at him. He parted his blue, cracked lips to say something and Van spun around. There was nothing behind him except the empty shower.

Van left the bathroom and screamed into his open bedroom.

"WHY DON'T YOU SHOW YOURSELVES??! YOU FUCKING BASTARDS, WHY DON'T YOU COME OUT AND SHOW YOURSELVES?!"

Van backed against the wall and slid onto the ground, holding his hands over his head like a child anticipating punishment. A blue vase slammed against the wall above him with so hard a force that the wall shook. Van tucked his head between his legs as the fragments fell on his raven-black hair.

A soft, hoarse whisper flowed through the empty room. It echoed. Their voices always echoed in the strangest ways.

"....maybe if that little bitch from the Mystic Moon were still here you could see us...."

And that evoked hysterical laughter from all of them. Evil, maniacal laughter rang out, so loud in the empty room, and then faded away, as if being carried off.

Van lifted his head.

"You're cowards!!!! YOU ALWAYS WERE!!"

Pain jumped out of the nothingness and burned Van's cheeks. The force was so hard that his head snapped back sharply and banged into the wall with a sickening thump. This angered him, and he stood up.

"YOU'RE COWARDS!!!"

The pain came again, with a loud sucking and hissing, exploding onto the raven-haired boy's face, this time knocking Van Fanel to the floor.

"You're COWARDS!!!!!" Van shrieked at the empty room. He held himself up with both arms, long ebony bangs hanging in his face. His voice cracked as his said it, and he started to sob. This amused them so much that none of them hit him for saying it again. Their cruel, rich laughter rang out, so loud and shunning, so boisterous and deafening. So wholly evil and so wholly happy. Van clenched his teeth.

".... did you hear that, Gatti....?" came that strange, hoarse, echoing voice, "....he called us cowards...."

They laughed. They laughed. Oh gods, how they laughed.

".... he's the one lying on the floor crying like a child...."

"Why don't you....WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?!" Van cried helplessly.
An eerie silence flowed through the room like a raging, deafening river. And then the pain came again. Van could tell it was a heavy armored boot sending a fierce kick to his stomach, but he couldn't see it. That was the trouble. Sometimes he saw them and sometimes he didn't. When he saw them, it was so horrible a sight that he begged the gods for them to go away. And when he couldn't see them, they were laughing and taunting, beating him to a pulp, and he wished that he could see them so he could defend himself. They made him feel so inferior. They made him feel like a caged animal being tortured by schoolyard children. They made him feel so vulnerable. That's what they wanted, Van knew, and it delighted their undead spirits so to see him curled up in the middle of the floor, holding his stomach. Oh, how they loved seeing him suffer. They were so like their general now. They thirsted for Van Fanel's pain. His pain gave them energy. And Van knew they would never stop on their own. He also knew there was some way to stop them. Some way, he had to find, to stop them.

Van lifted his head and saw them. He immediately wished he hadn't.

There were three of them, standing in the open doorway. The one called Gatti was the closest to him, standing in the front, assuming the position of their leader now, with his mangled, bruised face and his chapped blue lips. On his left was the shortest one, whose hair once glittered golden in the sun, whose eyes once shimmered with vigor. Now his blue eyes were dull and gray, his hair tangled and matted with dried, maroon-colored blood, the same dried blood that caked all of their faces, where it had once run like a river out of their mouths. Now those big blue eyes were gray, and would never shimmer with life again. His eyes were dull and filled with an empty look of hate.

On Gatti's right was the one with long, shoulder-length black hair (well, it looked black. Van knew by the files that the one named Dalet had brown hair), streaked red, and dark eyes. There were dark blue circles under those dead orbs, deep bruises that scarred his once beautiful face even now. He was quiet and introverted, Van knew. And now that once quiet and introverted Dragonslayer stared at him with a hate that was so intense that it twisted his heart.

They were so silent and so still. Van hated it when they moved. When they did, their movements were shaky and wiry, as if their bones were just barely holding them together. They were so weak, yet so strong. Strong enough to kick him in the stomach and punch him across the face so hard that it sent him into tears.

"Please...," Van sobbed. Sometimes he tried begging them. He knew they liked it. Sometimes he tried pleading with them. It was never any use. "Just let me sleep. Just let me get...one night's sleep."

Gatti moved, and Van lowered his head so that he couldn't see it. He stood right next to him, towering over him like a god about to pass judgment. So close that Van could smell his death. It wasn't the foul stench of a dead body. It was the musky, thick scent of death. Van didn't know how to describe it. He'd never smelled anything like it.

"....are you asking me....for mercy...?" Gatti asked, his words sneering and scowling like a whole other being all by themselves.

"Please," Van moaned. "Gods.... please.... just give me one night of peace."

"....PEACE!!!" Gatti roared. He slammed his fist into Van's cheek. The ebony-haired king of Fanelia collapsed on the floor. "....You....MURDERER!!! YOU MURDER ME, YOU MURDER MY BEST FRIENDS, YOU TAKE MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE RIGHT OUT OF MY HANDS.....AND YOU HAVE THE AUDASITY TO SPEAK TO ME......OF PEACE!!!!"

Van hugged his knees to his chest.

"Mother Gaia, Father Sky, blessed be the meek, blessed be the peaceful, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me. Deliver me of the evil, deliver me of the evil...."

Gatti spat on Van's cheek, disgusted with the weakling cowering below him. Dilandau hated weakness. Gatti hated weakness. Van didn't even raise a hand to wipe the saliva away. He rocked himself back and forth, muttering wildly.

"Mother Gaia, Father Sky, give me strength, give me strength, give me strength, give me strength, give me strength...."

"....I once....almost admired you... But you're nothing without your Escaflowne. You're not even a man....," Gatti sneered. His hoarse voice echoed through the room as Van huddled inside of his own tormented mind.

"....deliver me, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me. Deliver me of the evil, deliver me of the evil...."

"No one's going to deliver you, Van. Your gods turned their backs on you when you murdered us."

"You burned down my country," Van replied sullenly. "I lost Balgus..."

"I lost my life...," Gatti said, and for once, there was an emotion other than hate in his voice. But then, it disintegrated, and crumbled away. The wall of hatred burst into flames. "I hate you, you son of a bitch. I'm going to make your life a living hell. I'm going to torture you forever for ripping me away from Dilandau-sama."

With that the Dragonslayers left, gone for now. But they would be back. Yes, they would be back later, shrieking and howling and screaming.

"Tell me what to do....," Van whispered, "Someone....please....tell me what to do...."