Friends In Dark Places - Part Four: The Friars Tale

[Non Compos Mentis]

“The Yeoman and the Summoner...” Altman sat himself down in the olde-style pub located somewhere on the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina. It would have been a far cry to compare the Rusty Penny to the Tabard Inn of Geoffrey Chaucer's fables but America had an astounding lack of 14th century ale-houses and that seemed close enough. A brief moment of confusion and contemplation passed over the Cleric's face as he stared across the table to me.

“Are you quoting English literature to me again, Mr Rhodes?” The upright Altman asked as he spied the pint glass filled to the brim with the cheapest beer in the establishment. A slight grimace that could have been mere disapproval but more likely disgust crept across the Cleric's face.

“Maybe I'm just trying to work out whether I'm the Yeoman, the Summoner... or the Widow.” For all the image of a homeless vagrant, I'd had an education that most aspired to and that had come with the exposure to classical literature. The Canterbury Tales seemed oddly fitting as I sat in that bar, mid-odyssey to try and find something I wasn't quite sure still existed. Now I exchanged tales and information with a man whom my destiny had become entwined with.

“A demon, extortionist or victim? I'd hardly say you resemble any of those.” The copper shock of hair tilted as Altman removed a handkerchief from his pocket and cleansed his hands of his environment.

“Some days it seems like all three.” I'd had some sobering thoughts recently, combined with the need to make sense of images I hadn't properly comprehended. To counter that, only the cheapest brand of brain-rotter would suffice. I gulped down a mouthful of the filthy liquor to hasten the numbing of my senses... something I hadn't been partial to in many years, medication and self-restraint considered.

Through steel-rimmed specs the man of The Order watched patiently as I downed the liquid and then spent a long minute admiring his surroundings in silence. The television mumbled incoherently in the background, locals grumbled more incoherently still all around, but we remained quiet. Altman must have sensed my troubled mind, he couldn't have escaped it since the moment he'd walked in, and it was he who broke the stalemate. “Do you have something for me, Sean?”

It was why we were meeting, of course. I'd made arrangements to meet without full knowledge of what I would tell him. Was it a mirage? Dare I say a hallucination? And lost in the middle of these hazy thoughts was the result nobody had seen coming; the defeat of the newly crowned World Champion. I'd believed I could do it, hell I'd done it before, but somehow people believed this was a Grimm nobody had seen before; leaner, meaner and even more ruthless after he destroyed his very own brother.

But was the reverse true? That shedding his reviled company had, in fact, revealed the weaknesses beneath. With no Billy Sadistic, Justin Michaels or Mikey Wryght standing by his side, Grimm was an older, weaker and more dependant version of his past-revered self.

“Nothing concrete... hell, nothing I can even tell you was definitely real.” Still the win was a blur in the corner of a bloodshot and exhausted eye. The thoughts that surrounded my mind in the build up to my meeting with Altman all revolved around the events of three weeks earlier.

“But...?” Altman urged.

“But I saw something, something... weird after the show a few weeks back. Been trying to wrap my head around it ever since.” I shifted uneasily with a squeak of wooden leg on wooden floor. My eyes drifted down to the table as I tried to compose the sights I'd seen into words. They'd never come naturally, and now the images they had to do justice to were anything but natural. I stared at the half-empty drink for what seemed an eternity before a terse cough from the Cleric lifted my head. “I'll get to it, don't fret Cleric.”

I should have been wondering whether Mr Showtime would try to take advantage of me in a week's time. An opportunist like him would undoubtedly want to exploit my victory over Grimm; beat the man who beat the Champion and you're just as good. Instead I thought back to the night of our last meeting, the night the Black Hand collapsed, the night I saw the darkness. “I saw Kelli after she was nearly choked to death, struggling to breathe with the doc seeing to her.”

“Nothing unusual there.” There was a coldness in Altman's voice and I didn't know whether he referred to the concern of a doctor or Kelli's unfortunate condition. Either way he was too ready to dismiss the issue.

“Like I said, I'll get to it.” I caressed the glass for comfort and resolved to use whatever words came forward then, no matter how much like gibberish they sounded. “There was something else in that room, all around her. It was black. One moment like smoke, the next like liquid, swarming over her whole body.”

The spectacled Cleric stared intently at my face for a moment, measuring it for signs of fabrication. Finally he sat back in his chair, casually placed his hands on the table, and spoke. “And only you could see this?”

“No, Doc Suresh saw it but didn't think it was anything to worry about... what do you think?” Altman lifted a hand to say 'enough' of my sarcasm.

The fact that he denied nothing, that he thought immediately of how many witnesses there had been and how much damage needed to be contained, was disturbing and even more so when I knew there was more than just Kelli's involvement. “But that wasn't all. It looked like it left a trail, like muddy bootprints but in the air... that's the only way I can describe it. I followed it and at the end I found Nathan Saniti, coated head to toe in the shit just like Kelli.”

Again Altman appeared stoic, silently composing his thoughts and assessing the situation. “A thick, black, 'swarm'. You're sure that's what you saw?”

“I know hallucinations, Altman. This wasn't one of them.” I couldn't blame him for any hint of doubt that he showed. My past had been chequered with shadows and invisible beasts, creations of the mind, but that was in the past. The present concerned one looming threat, and that was certainly no cerebral concoction. “Is this connected to her? They both came into contact with her that night, got beaten until I turned up and scared her off.”

Altman looked to speak and halted himself before a single noise was uttered. He wanted, I could see it in his eyes, to deny it. He wanted to say that the woman in question was nothing to be concerned about, but his fastidious nature stopped him. Unlikely as it may be, he had to consider the evidence. “It's possible, but it would take a being of truly exceptional... wrath.”

And so we both sat; myself contemplating what I had seen and what was to come, Altman cogitating on the ramifications if his hidden theory turned out to be correct. Somewhere in the mess of the Black Hand disbanding I'd become caught up in this business with Altman. In all of this I should have been looking forward to teaching Mikey another lesson in humility, it seemed the last a little over a month ago hadn't done him any good.

I'd beaten the International Champion once, played mediator to the destruction of an evil conglomerate, conquered the World Champion when nobody thought it possible... and now I had the opportunity to prove the dominance of my North American title once more by beating Showtime for a second time in as many months. I should have been thinking about that, but instead I was entwined with Altman and his agenda.

“Maybe I am the Summoner.” I muttered after another vile gobful of beer. “The Summoner met the Yeoman and the two grew closer. The Summoner showed all his sins and the Yeoman revealed himself as a demon. I showed my colours when I went after Alexa, and now she's shown hers.”

Altman's face became sterner somehow. He'd been deep in thought but my morose musings had snapped him out of that state. “This is not The Friars Tale, Shaun. For a person to create a manifestation of hate so intense that it could bind to a person like that... they'd need to be something beyond human.”

I sulked like a child who had been told off by a parent, wondering if my claims were wildly exaggerated and my comparisons of Alexa to a Demon were wholly inappropriate. The circumstances were too convincing though, the smoke's appearance after her disgustingly violent assault of both its targets.

Altman's words continued to ring in my mind, dredging up long forgotten memories. Perhaps Altman's particular nature had done it, his incredibly specific wording. Wrath, he had said. Not anger or hate but singularly wrath. It called forth familiar images of darkness and a face.

“Months ago, when I was trying to find out what happened to Ezra, I saw something else. Didn't think much of it at the time, I wasn't exactly in a right state of mind. I had a vision of Nathan, taunting me with the scene of Ezra's death, tell me that I could have saved him if it wasn't for my Sloth.”

“Your Sloth?” Altman was almost mocking in his tone and cocked an eyebrow above his steely rims.

“In the spiritual sense. I had found no faith in The Order, in any gods or beings anybody could show me. I was guilty of the sin of Sloth in that my inactivity and my lack of faith caused me to hesitate when I should have grabbed his hand.” The recital of what I had seen was monotone, I sought not to relive the crippling emotion of the act even if I'd been assured Ezra was, in fact, still alive somehow.

Altman, however, was not interested in such trivialities as feelings. “And this is relevant because...?”

“In that vision Nathan took something from me, the essence of my sin, and a darkness like the one I saw was there for just a moment. He told me he was taking the sin, and he targeted a lot of people around then. He's been capturing the essence of sins, but only one has influenced him like this. Everything Alexa Black does is driven by wrath, I've seen that first-hand. Is it that hard to believe that she caused this?”

“If you knew what I do, then yes. The powers needed to create what you're describing are incredible.” With his hands now clenched on the edge of the table as if physically struggling with his own skepticism, Altman spoke in spite of himself. “I need you to get close to her again, no matter what it takes. Your match with Wryght cannot get in the way of this. I need you to confirm that she is the source of this manifestation.”

The need for knowledge and preparedness drove Altman to ask so much of me, I knew that. He tore me in his direction when I had my commitments to uphold and my own battled to fight. In his own way, he had reminded me on the tale I'd imagined when I walked into that pub. Chaucer's tale of the Summoner, the Yeoman and the Widow.

“You know in the end the Widow condemns the Summoner unless he repents, and the Yeoman drags him all the way to hell. Used to see myself as the Summoner, taking from people and walking side by side with the devil.” Had I convinced a man to throw himself into a pit to get what I needed, though? Had I taken a desperate man and given him a suicidal way out that only helped myself? Not in a long time at least... but I found myself on the other end now. And in that subjugation I found a bizarre form of power. “Now I'm starting to see that, maybe, being the Widow has a few perks.”

“Are you calling me the Summoner, Sean?” Altman quizzed as he cupped his hands in his lap.

He wanted me to throw away the prestige of a champion versus champion match, the chance of giving Mikey Wryght another ego-check and a reminder that the North American title is something special when in the hands of its true and rightful owner. He wanted me to do that for a closer look at Alexa Black, an act I had very little natural compulsion to do. “I'm saying that you make a living from making deals with folk you can take advantage of; that every action I've ever witnessed from The Order has been toxic and two-faced. I need a show of repentance, a show of good faith, if I'm not going to condemn you to hell.”

With all the confidence of a man well-versed in mind games, leverage and blackmail, Altman cocked a sly grin at the very corner of his mouth. We knew, both of us, that we were stuck with each other until this business was concluded. He would need to keep me satisfied if I were to keep his goals alive. “And what do you suggest?”

There was one thing I needed, one thing I had sought for so long and found nothing but obtuse hints and blind promises instead. Not a win over Michael Wryght, I could manage that by myself and had done before. No, I needed evidence of life from one very special person. “I need to know Ezra is still alive. You get me that proof the next time we meet and I keep helping with our little spider problem.”

“You'll have your proof, Sean. Now get me mine.” Altman stood from the table and fled with a turn of speed of a man glad to be rid of the grimy establishment. With the promise of the first morsel of proof that Ezra was still alive, I closed my eyes and let the thoughts fill my mind of how I'd get close to Alexa again.

I noticed then the shaking, the tiny but uncontrollable trembling of his hands as I thought of her wrath and how the Cleric had reacted. But the shake was not fear, I'd been afraid nobody other than myself for so very long. I grabbed the glass and downed the last dregs of beer, clenching hard to keep it level. This was something else. Something I hadn't felt since the very darkest of my days.