Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Terra Incognita ❯ Terra Incognita ( Chapter 1 )

Terra Incognita


At the end of the street there’s a flowershop. At the end of the flowershop there’s a door, opening to a staircase which leads down to a shadowy passage. The light switch of the first room flicks on to reveal a lumpy sofa and a screen mounted on the wall, glowing black and opaque, like a lidless eye. The silence here is warm and alive, echoing with the footsteps of recent departures. But the passage stretches on into the dark, where the silence deepens, magnified perhaps by the ticks of an invisible clock or the sound of the walls breathing. With every damp, chilly puff of breath, flakes of plaster peel off and drop to the sagging floorboards. At the end of the passage something waits.

*

“Hello?” Omi shouts from the top of the stairs, narrowing his eyes. “Who’s there? Who are you?”

Nothing emerges out of the shadows to greet him. Only the echo of his own voice, slamming against walls and bolted doors, returns to him in a slurred half-whisper. youyouyouyou--

*

He tells the others about it the next evening, one the way home after a failed mission. Blood has pooled into Omi’s left shoe, trickling down his calf and soaking his sock. Lucky escape, it would have been much worse if Yohji hadn’t thrown himself against glass sliding doors to get Omi out on time. They don’t believe a word he says.

“It’s your mind playing tricks at you.”

“You’re still too young, imagining things.”

“There’s nothing at the basement.”

“Nothing for you yet to find.”

His cheeks burning with humiliation, Omi scowls and tries to move faster, but they’re already far ahead, not waiting for him to catch up. They move in the same pace, broad shoulders linked together, forming an impenetrable wall. Only Yohji turns to look at him for a moment, shaking glass shards from his hair.

*

Balancing a tray with a sandwich and a glass of milk on one hand, Omi limps along the dark passage, stabs of pain shooting from ankle to thigh with every step. He has left the door behind half-open, a narrow streak of light falls to the floor, guiding the uncertain way ahead.

“Hello, can you hear me? I’ve brought you something to eat.”

A quick movement at the edge of his vision. But it’s only a mirror, and his face reflected in its depths, a circle of pale void that tells him nothing about himself. The scratched surface scratches his reflection and Omi touches his forehead, his cheeks, half expecting to trace the roughness of scars under his fingertips.

Then the door slams shut, like a fist against his back. He can’t see anything. He blinks, no change at all, the darkness as solid as the darkness behind his eyelids.

And then something starts moving at the end of the passage, slowly coming towards him from all directions, like a swarm of spiders. A screeching noise, and someone whispering into both of his ears. Or perhaps there is no voice to be heard, only the sound of a breath, inhaling and exhaling to the rhythm of his own lungs, a heart drumming like the twin of his own, as if he has suddenly become twice alive.

Hair standing on end and unable to scream, Omi tries to run. He drops the tray with a clutter and tripping over it, he falls face down to the floor, motionless.

*

The seasons change rapidly, or perhaps not at all. The sickly white, defeat-coloured sky framed in the kitchen window could belong to an April or a September. Lower, the tree branches are frozen in threatening gestures.

“You think you want something, but you just don’t understand,” Yohji says, leaning against the formica counter. His sweatpants are riding low, exposing the vulnerable curve of the hipbone. “You’re too young.”

“I’m not that young any more.”

There’s dried blood under Omi’s nails from last mission, and he gnaws at his thumb, trying to peel off the thin red sickles with his teeth.

“You don’t know anything yet.”

“I know there’s a boy at the basement.”

“Fine.” Yohji is sucking on a piece of orange, juice dripping down to his wrist. Then he swallows the whole chunk, rind and everything. “If that’s what you want, then fine. Take a flashlight, the lamp’s broken.”

*

These must be Yohji’s fingers wrapped around Omi’s wrist, but he can’t be sure. He can’t see clearly, like a blindfolded captive, not knowing where he is being led, or by whom.

“Wait, Yohji. My leg hurts. I don‘t want to go any further.”

“Changing your mind now? Too late. This was your idea from the start.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeats, ashamed, convinced he has somehow made a enormous promise he won’t be able to fulfil.

“Come on, Omi. Don’t you want to see the boy?”

Omi can hear the smile in Yohji’s whisper. An arm coils around his waist, and the flashlight falls from his hands and rolls away, slicing into the darkness. He is slowly pushed towards the wall, the crumbling plaster like the skin of gnarled trees against his back. Yohji’s mouth is citrus-bitter, and his hands leave sticky fingerprints on Omi’s face. In the dark, the white of his eyes has turned candlewax yellow.

“Don’t be scared, Omi.”

In the jagged white circle of the flashlight he can see their shadows growing taller on the opposite wall, tangled in the shape of some two-headed creature, with no clear beginnings or ends. Their limbs are impossibly elongated, the curve of Yohji’s back as he bends down to kiss him has turned into a grotesque hunch. Shadows of lips over lips, shadows of arms over arms, profiles highlighted, the outlines of the chin and nose sharper, unrecognisable, as if not their own, but belonging to some strangers, in some strange world.

Yohji’s hand is clutching at Omi’s neck, bunching up the collar of his sweater. When it begins to move away, Omi feels as if a hook is being pulled out of him, tearing his throat apart on the way.

“Come and see.” Yohji laughs, his voice coming from far ahead already.

“Yohji, be careful.” To his horror, Omi realises his eyes are welling up, the darkness gleams behind his tears, everything submerged, every movement slow, leaving a silver trail behind.

“We’re waiting for you. Come and see.”

“It’s too dark, I can’t,” He stumbles over cardboard boxes, holding on to the walls for support and trying to stop himself from crying.

There’s the scratch and flame of a match at the end of the passage. But Omi has shut his eyes, already knowing everything he doesn’t want to see.

That, that’s not a boy. That--

*

At the end of the passage there’s a staircase. At the end of the staircase there’s a door, hanging lopsided on its hinges. Behind the door, the flowershop stretches empty and quiet. It’s a few minutes past midnight, almost yesterday still. A cigarette is burning itself to death on an ashtray, the twists of smoke tinted blue in the dark, ghosting the air like unspoken words. At the end of the flowershop, there’s the street, where the mad chorus of traffic can be heard in the distance.

A neighbour hurries along the sidewalk, head bowed, shoulders hunched, drooping beneath some inexplicable midnight weariness. The streetlamps draw broken lines of light across his torso and arms. He walks by the flowershop without stopping. The street is now empty, apart from a yellow bicycle, propped up against a wall.