Castle High

42. Vendetta

It couldn’t be.

“Uncle Levi?” Jake repeated his previous words, as the same amused face staring at him nodded in affirmation. It couldn’t be real, he had to be in a trance of some sort. This was his dead uncle of five years ago, only with scars and dents across his face. Same Dark-ebony, bushy brows, dim-green colored eyes, maroon colored lips and every other facial quality that ran in the family.

It couldn’t be true. None of it made sense. Was his uncle the one they were referring to as the one? The man who had escorted him to this meeting had given a bow of respect to him before taking his leave. No, it couldn’t be so. There had to be some sort of mix-up. Perhaps he was a new escort to the real – the one. Maybe he was just compromised like many other people.

That had to be it.

“I–I don’t…understand.” Jake’s haphazard reply came in a monotone laced with incomprehension, fright and fear. “You’re supposed to be dead, right? From five years ago? They told me you died.”

Levi advanced towards his nephew, and dragged the chair by the window with him. He tilted his seat to face Jake's, sunk into it and clasped his hands. “There are different forms of death, Jake. The sort of death everyone thought befell me however, wasn’t the one I passed through.”

“So you didn’t die?”

“Of course, I didn’t.” Levi grinned peevishly once more. Previously in the past, his uncle’s trade-mark smile would have gone a long way in easing tension, but presently it was working in the contrary. “I’m right here, sitting in front of you.”

“I just–this is a lot to process, right now.” Jake inhaled sharply, before dispersing the air out of his lungs. “So are you like–compromised in all these? Just like me also, where is the person who is supposed to meet me.”

Levi let out a boisterous laughter. He leaned backwards into his chair, and held unto both of his ribs while shriveling in continuous laughter. After laughing to his fill, he sat up straight in his chair once more. “It’s funny the way you think that I’m not here of my own free will. I’m the one you’re supposed to meet, Jake. I’m the one.”

Jake’s heart-rate picked up. “W–what do you mean? You mean you’ve been the one responsible for all the misfortune that has befallen me in the past year?”

Levi’s grin was complacent on his face. “Uhm, yeah and plus all the prelude that led to it. But let’s leave that for a while, though. Let me share the experience of how I became what I am today. I’ve been dying to tell someone. I’ve not had a real conversation with anyone in five years, now.”

What the hell!

“After my apparent death in the car accident, well the whole world pronounced me dead after seeing my car go up in flames and spotting glimpses of a derailed corpse at the accident site. No one cared to do an autopsy or anything, since I was the only one in the car. Well that’s not the true story – Jake, what actually happened was that I did have an accident.

Not exactly an accident, since I’m sure you know how my death came to be because of the powers I messed with. I was dead for a while and convinced that I was not returning. I was trapped in this void, chasm of inexistence. Bland darkness and life-less. They say something about a life after death, but I didn’t experience it or rather my journey there didn’t come to fruition because I was plucked out of it before I got to the destination.

Yes, my journey didn’t reach a conclusion, because I was rescued. The burnt corpse found at the accident site wasn’t mine, it was a dead body already dressed to look like a newly-dead one put in place by my captors. Yes, my captors they didn’t rescue me, no. They abducted me for some ominous purpose. They belonged to a cult, a German cult actually on the outskirts of an unknown island. It was their ritual – abduct almost-dead people mostly caught in car accidents, fire outbreaks and other events in which the public wouldn’t investigate deep before pronouncing its victims as dead. These people are then inducted into their cult to serve for their purpose.