The Phantom

Chapter 15

I stood, gazing out over the city that I had once known so well, and once meant nothing to. My eyes swept over streets, across buildings, and through the trees. So little time had passed, and already none of it was familiar. My breath shuddered with the wind. Slowly, the pale mask pivoted on the shadow of a body, and the black, eyeless sockets stared at the Impeccable. She shivered.

"Are you ready?" She asked. The ghost didn't respond.

I was no longer a part of the world. The past half hour had proven that to me. The moment that I put on the mask, I cut myself off from the world. A different man, someone named David, might have been aware of everything, followed up with each step, or taken action to prevent the next catastrophe before it happened. It had stung. Still, just as Julia had said: it wasn't too late to help.

I had not been the only one to give the police trouble, and in terms of the damage that I had done, I was last on their list. Unfortunately, when Julia came after me, it was because I was the only one that she believed to stand a chance against. She had sought to level the playing field from five targets to only four. She continued to remind me how grateful she was that it hadn't come to that.

Every other figure I had seen in the news, the ones that I had once frowned upon and glared at, the ones that my friends were convinced to have "super powers", were the other four, and each of them did indeed have extraordinary abilities.

Siren, although first to be discovered on the news, was last to reveal the threat she posed, and in the end, she was more aptly named than anyone could have expected. After each incident, it seemed that her voice could do nearly anything that she wanted, though most of the time she only used it for the same two effects. At first it would be anyone on the street near enough to hear her. They would be taken over by an insatiable lust, and follow the source. The police were certain that she could simply make them follow without the attraction, and she must add she sexual excitement to it for a personal reason, though no one has ever witnessed whether or not that is true. Regardless of what happens after they wander into her bedroom, ripping off their clothes as they go, they never leave. At some point, her voice changes pitch, and the sweet song that dragged anyone in, and stripped them of their willpower and restraint, then begins to kill them. Sometimes they die instantly, other times it's clear that she let them writhe naked on the floor and suffer for hours before allowing them to die.

When she began, she was halfway across the country, but with such a thirst, she began to move. It was coincidence that she happened to get closer to my town — if I can even call it that anymore — every time she traveled, and because it was also where the Impeccable stationed herself, it was a bad coincidence for her. For Tea, the Siren.

Yet, even as she continued to move closer with each step, and Julia knowing her exact location the entire time, there was little they could do. Sometimes it seemed like the woman didn't need to sleep, or breathe. The police would come close, in the dead of night, and enter the house undetected. They would kick down her door, guns at the ready, only to find that she had been waiting, singing the entire time, and that they had come on her terms rather than their own. Just like the rest, the next time those officers were seen, they had already passed from the world. Julia could tell anyone exactly where Tea was, but she couldn't say if she was awake or asleep, and no one knew just how far her voice could travel.

Then, there was Drake: Caesar. Unlike the Siren however, Julia was not the only one who could say exactly where he was. He did it himself. It was a game to him in fact. After a while in hiding, he emerged, and made another dramatic appearance, just as he had the first time, only he did not run away afterward. Instead, while a number of bodies lay motionless and bleeding at his feet, Drake laughed as more and more police arrived on the scene. Then, he told them to go home, and they did. He was similar to the Siren in that way. There was power in their voices, but unlike the Siren, Caesar's effect seemed to be indefinite, whether you could hear him or not. Police officers would never pursue the man again, so long as he told them not to. When questioned as to why they had given up the case, they could only respond that they had to, no matter how much they clearly hated themselves for it. Next, of course, he had to show off more of his power. Instead of killing another innocent soul, he made someone else do it. It was one of the most disturbing videos ever caught on news. Caesar had handed a young man, perhaps not even out of high school, a handgun and a knife, and then told him to kill as many people as he could, except for Drake and himself. Then, the young man did. His emotions while going through the actions was the disturbing part, and to watch them for myself tore me in half. It was too similar to what I had experienced. The man cried when he pulled the trigger the first time. He was screaming by the third. When he ran out of bullets, he had also run out of tears, and his whole body convulsed as he tore through anyone he could find with the knife. It was as if I was watching someone else hear a similar voice in their head, commanding them to do something that made them want to die, but the voice in his head was entirely evil. Eventually the police had to kill him. Drake laughed at the entire thing. He was just playing. He was just showing off. Then, he told everyone to go home for the day, and they did. The bodies were left in the street until the next morning, and the families of those bodies stood inside of their homes, and cried out the windows.