What Crawls Below

6 § Cocaine and Other Highs

Cyrus dreamt again that night. However, when the darkness overtook him, he didn't see Tuesday.

He saw himself.

Cyrus had never seen a movie before but imagined it was like this: from the outside looking in, watching a character perform. It didn't feel like he was himself. It was completely real, though.

His dream replayed his second kill.

He and Acheron waited in the shadows outside the drug den for hours until a lone figure came stumbling out. The man passed inches away from Cyrus, drenched in the smell of cigarettes and booze and oozing a twitchy sort of energy that was just tangible. He walked along the side of the house into the darkest corner of the nearly nonexistent yard.

The street was deserted. Inside, the faint beat of a techno song reverberated from the house. Acheron, just above a whisper, said, "They won't notice. And even if someone did..."

The demon was as black as night, the only visible features being his eyes: two red pinpoints in the darkness. Beside him, Cyrus looked more like a little boy, his shoulders hunched and at full height only reaching the other man's chest.

In a voice that could cut through steel, Acheron said, "No one believes a druggie."

Cyrus watched himself, disconnected from the scene, as he pulled the ceremonial dagger from his pocket. Some of the priest's blood was still clinging to the hilt; a dozen washes hadn't scraped the last of it away.

The crackhead had dropped his pants, relieving himself in the grass. Cyrus waited as the man zipped up and turned, shuffling by again. He stuck out his foot and the man went sprawling without a sound.

Still in a stupor, he barely struggled. Cyrus was on him in an instant, pressing the man's body back down into the concrete. He could feel his bones. He could hear his heart thumping erratically. And when he put the knife to the tender skin of the man's throat, he felt his blood. It had given way to his knife so easily, like that neck had been made for the gutting.

The man shook beneath him, but had nowhere near the strength it would take to throw Cyrus off. He choked on the blood, fingers spasming in vain at his slit throat. And then the dream went off the rails, showing him something he didn't remember. Something that hadn't happened, when until that point, it had been a picture-perfect reenactment.

Gurgling over the blood, the man said, "What goes around....comes back...."

He twitched several more times in Cyrus's grasp before going still. The dream melted away and he awoke on the floor, tangled in his blanket.

The second thing he noticed: shards of glass were strewn about the floor, the mattress, and he even picked some out of his hair. The bedroom door opened, and both he and Acheron slowly turned their gaze upward to the empty base where his ceiling light had used to be. It had shattered in his sleep.

"You're getting stronger," Acheron murmured, voice as cold as it had been in the dream. That's all he said before leaving the room again.

Cyrus stared at the remnants of the light, still picking pieces out of his hair. A sliver or two lodged in his skin but he didn't register the pain.

Beyond any sort of manifestations of his energy that deterred people from him, Cyrus had never affected the physical world. After his first kill, he'd been able to put Delilah at ease, if only temporarily. After his second, he was—what, breaking shit now?

He picked up a particularly large shard of glass, throwing his whole focus into cracking it; nothing happened. Strong emotions were triggering these responses, not any exertion of control over himself and his surroundings. He had been desperate with Delilah; the dream must have really shaken him, even in unconsciousness.