DISCLAIMER: Devil May Cry is owned by
Capcom Co. Ltd.
All these characters and materials are used without permission, and I'm
not profiting from this piece of fan fiction.
Author's
notes: For angel_remus and abyss_goat. Abyss_goat showed me what she
started and dissuaded me from a fic direction which would have been
illegal in the real world; Angel dictated what she wanted appearing in
the story. And my muse took off with the info & ideas they fed me
^^;;
Phantoms of the Mind
By firewolf
March 2005
@>;-'-
"I see
Demons."
"And what
are they doing?"
"Running
away from me."
"Why are
they running from you, Dante?"
"Because I
hunt them. But..."
"What is it,
Dante?"
"Some don't
run away. Some-- they want-- the ones that ran away are coming back
now-- cause-- cause-- I can't hunt them..." Nothing more is said as
doctor and patient fall into a long silence.
"Dante? Can
you tell me about the demons?"
"You can't
see them."
Dr.
Conrad Spencer sighed again as he recalled
the first conversation he had ever had with this silver-haired patient.
Whenever he sat down to review Dante's file, he had to ask himself if
it had been such a good idea to take up his friend's offer of a job at
this asylum. Sure, it had been the opening he needed after his earlier
breakdown and retreat into a bottle following his wife's death near her
place of work under mysterious circumstances. Spencer figured too that
he owed it to his friend for pulling him out of the gutter of a
temporary life as a homeless street artist, and cleaning him up before
putting him back in charge of his latest patient.
He
knew he had to count himself fortunate to
have a posting at this very old and distinguished sanatorium. Truly, it
was one of the best in the state and well known as a place for the most
hopeless cases to spend the rest of their lives comfortably and in
peace. Situated nearly two hours away from the nearest city, and
surrounded by nothing but trees and woodlands, the asylum was beyond
doubt a quiet and isolated piece of heaven away from the noise and
stress of the 'big' city.
However, some six months since the Police had
dumped the patient on his lap, demanding that he extract information
from him about a possible murder, and Spencer still had nothing to show
for all the time and effort he spent with 'Dante'. No one could even be
sure that 'Dante' was his real name.
The
detectives had certainly run his prints
and dental x-rays through all the possible agencies, but nothing had
come up; or certainly nothing plausible. It was still up in the air
whether anyone would believe this young man to be a Dante Sparda, which
his information seemed to match; however, this twenty-something young
man couldn't possibly be the same person. A grandson perhaps; at
the least some sort of blood relation, but he certainly could not be a
man who should have been in his eighties.
Unfortunately, there was also little else to
be uncovered about 'Dante Sparda' beyond his name and his deceased
family… and unusual notations on his known associates; most of whom
apparently having died under atypical circumstances. This young man had
himself been discovered in a rather curious situation. He had been
found sitting on the pulpit of a church on Central Avenue, soaked in
blood. The police had wanted to know whose blood he was covered in and
Spencer had been engaged to try and pull the man out of his catatonia.
Treating the man, however, had been a virtual
study in frustration. When Dante did choose to break his silence, all
he would talk about were demons. Otherwise, he would sit in his corner
and stare into space or he would sleep.
Spencer could not understand how or why a
young virile man like Dante needed to sleep as much as he did in the
day. However, medical evidence did show that the man was indeed often
in a state of exhaustion, as if he had run a marathon during the night
instead of sleeping as his nurses reported. There weren't even very
many observations made of the man having nightmares or disturbed sleep
patterns at night. It was quite unlike his sleep in the day.
Occasionally, Dante would cause embarrassment among the nurses, male or
female, because he would start writhing and moaning in his restraints
in the unmistakable, though at first seemingly unusual, motions of sex.
However, these vivid terrors weren't apparently happening very often at
night.
Spencer did take note that Dante never called
out a woman's name in these nightmares. The only name he ever uttered
in his throes of phantom sex belonged to a man. 'Remus.' Spencer prided
himself as a non-judgemental man. He had to be in his job as a
psychologist. However, the revelation of Remus's name had inflamed in
him an unprofessional anger for this person.
Dante's complete physical had revealed that
his body was not a stranger to anal penetration. Indeed, the many
silvery scars found on him were distressing evidence that he was
familiar with rape as well as torture and abuse. Given that the man's
name was, more often than not, uttered as an expression of despair
rather than passion, Spencer thought it rather logical that this
'Remus' was obviously an abusive lover.
Providing this name to the police, however,
produced nothing by way of leads. Neither was there any missing person
reports made by anyone for someone matching Dante's description. So...
Perhaps 'Remus' was not a recent acquaintance.
Another scenario had popped into Spencer's
mind, though it had been a speculation that he was far too fond of spy
thrillers to have come up with the theory. Spencer found himself
wondering if perhaps Dante had escaped from an abuser who had kept him
prisoner for a number of years, thereby ensuring that there would be
few if any recent acquaintances who would remember him. It was even a
romantic notion that the blood Dante was covered in could have belonged
to his abuser or abusers as the case may be.
Spencer sighed again as he looked at the
reports in his hand, wondering if he should try to acquiesce to the
polite request of the head nurse to free Dante from his restraints.
Knowing, from physical evidence, that the man had been previously
raped, and with strong suspicions that he was physically restrained
during the events, Spencer did want to dispense with the straitjackets
and chains more than anyone else at the hospital. He was quite sure
that the restraints only added to Dante's trauma. However, the two
previous times they tried to leave Dante unencumbered in the day, the
nurses had had to rush into his room to prevent him from eviscerating
himself with his finger nails as he tore at phantom hands that were
holding him down.
Curiously, despite the horrendous injuries
he'd inflict on himself, Dante never kept any scars from those events.
His cuts would scab over and heal within a day, showing smooth
unblemished skin when the bandages were removed. However, blood and DNA
tests revealed nothing uniquely different in the man. No one had an
explanation for this strange medical phenomenon. Given too that the man
appeared able to heal without scars, the silvery scarring became even
more suspect. So... what could have caused the marks on his flesh when
he showed that he could heal without scars?
Spencer did not believe in demons. But
sometimes when he looked at Dante, he did wonder if it would be easier
to believe since doing so would let them rationalise what had happened
to the young man. As fantastic as the idea sounded, if they believed
that demons existed, what would that make their silver-haired patient?
*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
"Dante,
would you tell me about the demons."
"Don't
believe me..."
"I want to.
Would you tell me about them?"
They
talked of nothing else since, with
Spencer recording all their conversations for later transcription. On a
whim, he had bought a large sketch pad, retrieved the crayons he had
used for a while when he had lived as a street artist and began making
some sketches of the creatures Dante described. When shown the pictures
of the 'demons' drawn though, Dante would smile as if in amusement for
the romanticised images.
Spencer had at first thought this was the
breakthrough he had been waiting for. That perhaps this exercise in
turning Dante's demons into actual drawings would help him emerge from
the unreal world of his mind. With gentle prompting, Dante did talk a
whole lot more about his 'demons' and spent less time staring into
space. In fact, it appeared as if Dante looked forward to seeing him
when he approached with his 'art' bag of sketch pads and crayons in
hand. At the least, Dante was more lucid and well behaved during the
day now and though he still had his moments where he enacted a past
rape during his afternoon nap, the events also became less
frequent. He had the night nurses' assurance that Dante's
evenings were quieter as well.
As
the days passed though, Spencer was
becoming slowly disillusioned with the effectiveness of this therapy,
and started wondering if perhaps he had gone the wrong direction in
asking about the world in Dante's head. It was a troubling exercise for
Spencer to note how clear and concise Dante was with his details. He
never got his demon identifications mixed up and he was always precise
with his descriptions. Even when Spencer secretly changed a few details
on his sketches, Dante could spot the 'abnormalities' immediately and
inform him of the inaccuracies. It was a depth of delusion that Spencer
had seldom dealt with in his patients. And he was beginning to worry
that Dante believed in his demon world too deeply to ever be convinced
that it didn't exist.
Spencer was also becoming alarmed with some of
the pictures he was creating for Dante. There were some drawings that
seemed eerily familiar to him. It had taken him some months to realise
why and the revelation had shocked him when he finally
remembered.
Some
three months before his wife died, she
had confided in Spencer about some strange dreams and images she seemed
to be having in the day around her work place. Out of whim, he had made
some sketches based on her descriptions. They had had a good laugh over
some of the more fanciful characters she claimed to have imagined
seeing in the alley outside her office window.
Back
then, he had chided her for day dreaming
at her desk and loudly wondered if she had been watching horror movies
on the sly without him, for her to have imagined seeing demons,
dimensional portals and the like. She countered that her real work was
so boring it was unsurprising she'd idly imagine seeing demons stepping
out of a wall to disguise themselves and merge into the masses of
humanity. They would then go on and speculate who among their
acquaintances could be a demon in disguise. All in all, it had just
been good fun...
The
sketches were among the few things he had
kept of his wife after her gruesome murder in the alley beside her
office building. He had only wanted to remember her as she was then;
with tears of laughter in her eyes when he showed her his exaggerated
sketches of her imagined fiends.
Now,
however... Spencer stared at three of
Dante's pictures which he had placed beside three pencil sketches he
had made for his wife over two years ago. The similarities were
uncanny... Spencer had no explanation as to why or how two so disparate
people as his wife and Dante could have imagined and described the same
delusional characters.
The
simplest explanation was that they had
both described what they had seen. But the idea was preposterous.
Demons did not exist.
It
was only then that Spencer began to
guiltily suspect that he had somehow involved himself too deeply in his
patient. That perhaps he had projected his longing for his deceased
wife into some of the pictures he drew for Dante.
Still, Spencer was unwilling to completely
halt the only therapy where he could get a response from his patient.
So, he instead removed the pictures that he thought were similar to
those that he drew for his wife and started asking Dante for
behavioural detail of his demons. Perhaps that would be when he could
start the man's thoughts towards accepting that the demons were not
real and only existed in his imagination. However, this direction in
their sessions proved to be very disturbing since Dante started going
into the sexual habits of the creatures.
Spencer could not understand the matter of
fact way Dante would describe the size and shape of the demons' cock
and how much it hurt to take them in him. When he looked over his
notes, Spencer would often wonder if, perhaps, Dante had been held as a
prisoner for a long period of time and thus created this demon world to
cope. If, perhaps, Dante demonised his attackers and saw them each as a
uniquely featured monster when they attacked him; and that remembering
them only as demons was the man's way of dealing with the memory of his
rape and abuse.
A
creature Dante called an Abyss Goat,
especially, featured strongly in nearly all of the silver-haired man's
tales of abuse. It was a demon that greatly fascinated him though Dante
was reluctant to say very much about it. Uniquely, this monster alone
of all the others appeared to be capable of taking on human guise as
Dante also described him as a man of great stature. However, Spencer
could tell that Dante clearly disliked him since it was described as a
striking man with hair and eyes the colour of constipated shit and
piss. Spencer was to later learn that this demon was the infamous
'Remus' whom he had documented as the tormentor Dante would frequently
imagine was raping him.
Spencer had spent a great deal of time trying
to persuade Dante to talk about Remus. At the back of his mind, Spencer
still had thoughts towards assisting the police in clearing Dante of
his suspected murder charge. He had hoped that if they could find out
enough about 'Remus', they could have the police handle the matter and
make sure the man and his cohorts would never hurt another living being
again; as they had hurt Dante.
However, Dante seemed rather insistent that
Remus was abusing him almost nightly. A fact that Spencer was assured
couldn't be further from the truth. The rooms were monitored 24/7, no
one would be able to slip by security without the guards or the nurses
knowing of it. The night nurses had even provided Spencer with tapes
showing Dante sleeping peacefully, or trashing about as the case may
be, and *alone* in his rooms. So… Spencer was left with the impression
that Remus was just a hallucination.
He
found himself leaning over his files on
Dante and ready to scream out his frustration. Pursuing the 'Remus
factor' had been a dead end and Spencer realised that he was taking
this too personally. He was losing his professional distance with this
patient, and his conscience was telling him that he needed to back off
or he would never be able to help Dante. And he did so desperately want
to help the man and give him back his life.
*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
Spencer abandoned the line of asking Dante
about his demons, not willing to let him continue with his delusion. He
started to focus instead on convincing Dante to believe that it was all
in his imagination.
At
first, the man had become belligerent;
insisting he wasn't lying and that he knew what he felt was happening
at night. But Spencer countered his arguments with tapes of Dante's
room at night, showing him alone in his slumber, be it peaceful or not.
He even asked Dante why he had waited so long to tell him and the staff
that the rapes was real; why, though he knew Spencer was there to help,
he never sought to tell him or the nurses that their security was
breached.
Spencer had stayed overnight with Dante after
therapy that first day, and Dante had gone on and on to him that he
would be killed if he interfered; that Remus would not be thwarted. But
though it had proved to be a turbulent night since Dante was locked
into frequent violent nightmares, he was visited by his 'Remus' only in
his dreams.
Discomforting though it was, Spencer had also
worked out that night how to most quickly distract Dante's nightmares
and soothe him into untroubled sleep. It was rather distressful for
Spencer to determine that Dante needed to be 'touched' and caressed to
help him settle down into a less fitful sleep. Fortunately, keeping to
touches on his face and lips appeared sufficient and Spencer did not
need to fear that the professional ethics of the hospital would suffer
as great a blow as he originally feared if he passed on these
instructions to the nurses.
During the day, they were to later discover
too that Dante appeared to sleep more calmly when he was tended by the
male nurses. However, it was to Spencer's dismay that Dante responded
most favourably to the nurses who best fitted his description of Remus.
Though uncomfortable, the male nurses had gamely done their duty to
caress Dante's face when he'd turn his face blindly towards them.
Occasionally, Dante would even want to lick or suck on their fingers.
Most of the time though, it was fortunately enough that they'd run
their fingers through his hair as if they were stroking a fond pet.
Spencer often wondered what Dante was seeing in his mind's eyes when
they did this for him. Considering the man's frequently expressed
dislike and hatred of Remus, this unconscious desire for receiving
comfort and 'approval' from the Abyss Goat was disturbing.
Dante did not seem to report further problems
sleeping during the day or at night. He also did not tell Spencer about
being raped nightly anymore, apparently believing now that it really
was all a figment of his imagination. On some nights, before he left
for the day, Spencer would give the male nurses a break and sit with
Dante, singing softly to him until he went to sleep.
It
seemed he was the singular exception to the
appearance rule because of their long therapist and patient
association. Most times, Dante stayed silently staring into space. But
sometimes he would talk of his demons again; speaking fondly to Spencer
of the special ones that he had found as guardians and friends. It had
amused Spencer to hear Dante talk about a sword (Alastor) and a pair of
Gauntlets (Ifrit) as if they were living things. Though it was curious
that his guns Ebony and Ivory were not accorded the same reverence.
Dante had given him a strange look once when he asked him why the guns
weren't as inventively named. The silver-haired man had declared that
they were just guns named so because one was black and the other white;
and that Alastor and Ifrit were special entities that he hadn't named,
but had earned the right to carry and use.
Spencer had checked with the Police lock up
and curiously, they indeed were holding an ornate sword, a pair of
gauntlets and a matching set of black and white pistols which belonged
to Dante. As a lead, they had been a dead end too since Tony Redgrave,
whose name appeared on the guns and who allegedly gave them to Dante,
died several years earlier.
He
once debated having them brought in to see
how Dante would react, but dismissed the idea almost immediately
knowing the Police would never have allowed it anyway. When he thought
of these weapons, Spencer would marvel over how completely Dante
appeared to live in his otherworld to have commissioned them. He wasn't
to know that his world and belief was soon about to be shaken beyond
his ability to understand.
*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
His
initial discovery seemed quite innocent at
first. He had been reviewing the tapes recording the activities of
Dante's room at night. As he was looking over tapes and dates, Spencer
found a rather troubling anomaly. He had been looking at the previous
day's tape but it instead appeared to be a recording taken from two
Tuesdays ago when he had last sat with Dante until he fell asleep.
It
could have been an honest mistake. However,
with growing unease, Spencer had gone over the tapes for the last month
and by comparing his observations to Dante's chart, he realised that
someone had rather cleverly been showing the same scenes of certain
nights again and again. So... just what did it mean for the other
unmonitored nights?
Spencer did not waste time pondering this.
Dante was his patient and he was charged by oath to protect the man and
see to his well being. Not for the first time, Spencer bemoaned the
fact that the sanatorium was a good two hours away from the city and
his apartment. It meant it would take him an extra day to set up what
he wanted without anyone the wiser, but he had no choice.
When
he checked on Dante early the next
morning, Spencer was careful to note that the man still exhibited
symptoms of exhaustion despite an apparent full night of peaceful
sleep. Spencer had to control his emotions and reactions when they
conducted their usual conversation of the day about demons. He had to
force himself to look pleased as Dante told him that his delusions
appeared to be frustrated with him when he told them that it was all in
his mind and that he wasn't being raped after all.
At
the end of their conversation, Spencer had
presented to Dante one of his drawings which he had framed for him. The
silver haired man just smiled indulgently at him as he took down one of
the other pictures in Dante's room and proudly hung up the one he made.
Spencer sincerely hoped that no one would pay
very close attention to the framed drawing to discover the small
digital video camera he had strapped into it. He had paid a near
fortune for the tiny device, but if he was to protect his patient,
Spencer would count it as money well spent. He didn't know what he'd
find when he was finally ready to record a video, but he also hoped
with all his heart that he was going to be proved wrong. However, in
the meantime, Spencer was going to put plans in place in case his fears
were substantiated.
That
night and for the next few days, Spencer
stayed with Dante through the night and into the morning, and returned
to his apartment only in the afternoon. Remembering the apparent
patterns he had seen with the hospital tapes, Spencer couldn't be sure
that he would manage to capture anything on his video camera if he left
it to chance.
In
any case, while he hoped that it was only
paranoia that currently guided him, Spencer had used his 'free'
afternoons constructively by returning to his memories of his homeless
days to look up old 'acquaintances' and shelters to check out how he
could assist someone to disappear from the system if he had to. If
indeed, this 'distinguished' sanatorium had nurses involved in a
conspiracy of raping their more attractive inmates, Spencer was going
to kidnap Dante to protect him and hide out until he could somehow
present his video evidence to the proper authorities.
It
pained him to have to consider this course
of action behind the back of the friend who had literally pulled him
out of the gutter and given him a job. But Spencer couldn't even be
sure he could trust his friend, and he somehow hoped that his friend
was truly innocent and ignorant to the cover up of what was happening
at night.
After four nights with Dante, Spencer had his
backup plans in place to sneak Dante out the next evening if the video
evidence did corroborate his fears. So with great reluctance, Spencer
petted the silver-haired man on the head on the evening on the fifth
night, flicked a switch on the remote control that was in his pocket
and left Dante peacefully sleeping alone in his room.
As
he drove home that evening, Spencer said a
little prayer to a God he had not believed in since his wife's murder
two years earlier. It was 'show time'. Dear god… Spencer did not want
to dwell too long on the speculation that some of the night nurses were
wilfully gang raping the poor man at night without anyone's knowledge.
It was to him unbelievable. The sanatorium was very well respected for
its professionalism and conduct. Spencer just could not believe that
the administration would have hired rapists. He desperately hoped that
he was just being paranoid, and that all his plans and precautions were
really for naught.
*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
Spencer had wished to be disappointed, but he
wasn't. However, the tape he had carefully retrieved from the exhausted
man's rooms that morning did not contain anything he had expected at
all.
Demons…
He
was seeing *demons* carelessly strolling or
energetically bouncing off the walls into Dante's room to grapple and
pull the pants off the unresisting, strait-jacked man. As Spencer
watched in horror, the demons held Dante's legs wide open and bent at
the knees to expose him to the human like man who approached the bed; a
man who had raven dark hair and golden eyes.
“Constipated shit and piss…” Spencer whispered
as he recognised 'Remus' from Dante's descriptions.
“Miss me,
dear heart?” The man asked as he climbed between Dante's spread legs
and reached out a hand to comb his fingers through Dante's silver hair.
“You're not
real.” Dante did not bother looking at him.
“You are
just too amusing.” Without the courtesy of stretching or even the
application of lubricant, 'Remus' unzipped his pants and stabbed his
eager cock into Dante's vulnerably exposed pucker. “Are you sure this
is not real, Dante? Can't you feel me ripping you to pieces?”
Spencer had his hand over his mouth to catch
his vomit as he desperately flailed his other hand under his desk to
grab for his trash bin. His eyes refused to leave the small screen of
the video camera as it captured the brutal rape of his patient by a
being he had once thought was just a hallucination.
Dante did
not even react to the pain despite the tearing and the blood which soon
started to stain his sheets. “Not real. Doctor showed me videos. It's
all in my mind.”
“Precious.
You are just too precious, Dante.” Remus gripped his head and
forcefully turned his face towards him so that he could kiss the man
brutally. “Has being near the portal truly addled your brain so much?
And here I thought you held out so well?
“So your
precious doctor has finally won, has he? He's finally convinced you
that you're crazy.”
“Not real.”
“Oh, Dante.”
Remus laughed as he fucked the helpless man; carelessly tearing Dante's
anal passage with each brutal thrust of his cock. “I am so fond of you
when you're like this.”
Spencer could not watch the tape anymore. He
had called his secretary to have a janitor remove and clean his waste
bin, and nodded to her in thanks when she offered him a hot tea and
biscuits from the cafeteria along with a couple of aspirin. She had
taken one look at his grey features and gently suggested that he call
in sick and take the rest of the day off. But Spencer was determined
not to leave without Dante. He instead waved her off cheerfully and
scoffed about just needing a bit of fresh air; and perhaps legitimately
goofing off while doing so by taking his patient for a stroll through
the gardens. She just smiled at him as he reached for his small bag of
what she thought was art supplies.
Knowing that he was going to be with Dante for
one of his supposed art therapy sessions, the nurses would not go in
search for them until they were gone for a full hour and a half.
Spencer was going to hope that they would manage to cover some
substantial distance by then and be near enough to the main road where
he could call ahead for a taxi to pick them up before anyone realised
they were missing.
Spencer hoped that with Dante dressed in the
clothes he had packed into his 'art' bag he would look decent enough
not to be taken as an asylum patient trying to escape. Spencer had to
hope too that the shoes he had purchased for Dante were not too large
and that he could easily compensate for differential sizes with the
socks he packed for the man.
Once
they were well out of sight of the
buildings and parks, Spencer quickly stripped off Dante's straitjacket
and asylum issued pyjamas. The clothes he had chosen for Dante
thankfully fitted him well. The shoes were probably a little bit
tighter than he expected, but that was better than having them easily
slip off to trip the man as they walked at a good clip for the boundary
of the property. They had made good progress through the woods, with
Dante improving the further they got away from the sanatorium. Spencer
was supposing that this was due to his distance from the 'portal' that
'Remus' had spoken of; a portal that demons emerged from.
Demons…
Spencer tried not to think of it right now.
His foremost concern was to get Dante as far away from the sanatorium
as he could go. He had to get the man away from the demons who abused
him, who had been abusing him throughout his stay at the asylum; who he
did not believe in...
His
wife had seen demons too. They were real.
She had described them to him and he had drawn them; just like he had
drawn them for Dante. They were real. He had seen them on the video. He
had seen demons. Demons killed his wife. They were real and they killed
his wife.
Far
behind them, Spencer thought he heard
screaming; not the siren that called for the asylum to be locked down
when one of their more dangerous inmates broke loose or escaped, it was
*humans* screaming. Oh God… He had thought only of Dante's safety, he
never gave a single consideration to the other inmates or the staff at
the sanatorium.
As
he continued to pull the silent man along
after him, Spencer tried to shut his ears to the cries that were fading
as they moved further and further away from the asylum. He had already
committed himself to getting Dante safely away from his abusers; he was
not going to turn back now. If he had to do it again…
Spencer pulled Dante after him at a faster
pace. They were clearly in no danger of being chased down by the
hospital staff, but it was the demons that Spencer was worried about
now; the same demons who were probably slaughtering the humans at the
hospital...
But
why? Why now? Why when Dante departed and
not before?
An
eerie howl rose from far behind them.
Spencer knew then that there weren't anymore humans alive at the
sanatorium; that the demons were starting after them now. Behind him,
Dante had stopped following docilely and halted to turn and look behind
them.
“Remus?”
“Yes, Dante.” Spencer tugged at his arm and
dragged the silver haired man after him. “Remus. Demons, Dante. I
should have believed you.” I should have believed her...
“Demons…”
“Dante, run!” Spencer turned to grip the man
about the arms and stared at him in the eye. “Run with me, now! We have
to get away.”
“Demons…”
“Yes! Demons! They're real!” Spencer pulled
him into a proper run instead of the shuffling, stumbling gait they had
used earlier. “Run with me, Dante. Run!” More cries and howls drew
closer as Spencer pulled the still dazed man after him as fast as he
dared.
“Demons…”
"Yes! Dante, and if we don't hurry they'll
catch us." Spencer threw a glace behind him as they ran. "Dante, can
you try to remember a locker number and combination?"
"Demons..."
"Not
demons. Lockers! At the bus station.
1165." Spencer had money and notes stashed there. The demons were
catching up. If they didn't make it, perhaps Dante would get to it
himself another time. "Can you remember that? 1165."
"1165."
"Good, Dante. 1165 the combination is your
name. Can you remember that?"
"My
name?"
"Yes, your name."
"At
1165..."
"Yes, that's right."
"1165..." Spencer pulled him along as they
lapsed into silence again.
The
world was ending as Spencer knew it.
Demons were real-- lived among mankind. Some could walk among man.
Dante's Remus-- Hair like constipated shit and eyes of piss…
Spencer had told Dante that Demons didn't
exist. Repeated it to him often enough and showed him tapes that
falsely showed him alone when Dante knew that demons had come in to
rape and abuse him. And Dante believed him… believed him enough that he
told the demons who were hurting and raping him that they were just
figments of his imagination; faced by the truth, and yet still
believing Spencer's lies… Just like his wife.
She
had seen demons too. He didn't believe
her. He had laughed at her delusions; made her not believe... He-- he
had made her not respect the danger she was in. Her curiosity must have
led her to the alley. Because she did not believe, she didn't know to
avoid it. She was killed for her curiosity. His fault… it was his fault…
A
ball of flames struck the ground to one
side, throwing them off their feet. Spencer immediately spread his
doctor's coat out and huddled over Dante protectively to shield him
from the shower of dirt and gravel. He didn't dare look up; he could
hear and feel the arrival of many presences.
“For
shame, doctor, this isn't exactly the
right procedure to discharge a patient.” Spencer recognised the voice
as one he had heard earlier.
A
hand, dripping with blood, casually caught
him by the collar, dragged him off Dante and flung him against a tree a
short distance away. “No! Stop!” Spencer painfully crawled to his feet
and tried to stand himself between Remus and Dante.
The
statuesque man gave him a sardonic look as
he purposely strode past to kneel beside Dante. “Surely you don't think
you can stop me.”
"You
never gave him a chance to defend
himself. He's still not exactly there..." Spencer croaked trying to
fight down his fear to move as he felt a surge of protectiveness in him
for his patient, as the bloody figure raised a hand to touch Dante's
face.
“Why
would it matter?" The demon in human
guise stroked his bloodied hand through the silver hair almost
affectionately, reminding Spencer of how he and his nurses had learnt
to stroke Dante to calm him enough to sleep. "I was told his mind was
gone anyway."
Spencer fell to his knees; his last hope gone.
It wasn't proximity to the 'portal' that caused Dante's problems. He
had thought that by taking him away-- No... Spencer forgot... the
police had found Dante at Central Avenue already catatonic. The
silver-haired man's mind was gone long before he was brought to the
sanatorium; before the demons got their hands on him.
"I
suppose, I should thank you for taking care
of him as best as you could." Abruptly, the doctor looked up to notice
that the man--demon was standing over his kneeling form. "And it was
very commendable that you were willing to sacrifice your career and
life to protect your patient. So, thank you."
Spencer close his eyes as Remus leaned
forward, and felt him lay a kiss on his forehead. "A--abyss goat?"
"Why, yes." The demon smiled at him
congenially.
"Remus." Both human and demon turned towards
the voice to look upon a Dante who was exhibiting a glowing blue aura.
"Full of constipated shit and piss…"
The
last thing Spencer would ever remember was
the sight of a violet glowing sword flying through the trees closely
followed by a pair of ornate gauntlets, carrying a black and ivory gun
in each palm.
*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
The
young doctor looked through the window of
the padded room at the miserable figure hugging his knees and slowly
rocking in place. He remembered being a bright young intern under this
man and feeling eternally grateful for the senior doctor's guidance and
patience during his tour of duty. To see Dr. Conrad Spencer as he was
now broke his heart. "So... he's the only witness?"
"He's the only survivor!" The detective
snorted. "Out of an asylum of over one hundred twenty-two nuts and
caregivers, he's the only one who made it out alive. Everyone else was
slaughtered. Some were even eaten!"
"He-- isn't a suspect?" Though he bristled
internally from the very suggestion, the doctor had to ask. It was
procedure.
"Heh, we found him in the woods pretty far
away from the carnage; can't miss a trail that even a blind man could'a
followed.” The detective snorted. “But he's no suspect, not unless he
learned how to remove his own lips to plant one on his forehead and
reattach them again."
"The
hell!"
"Beautiful set of bloody lip prints on his
forehead. Besides, the doctors verified that the last things that
passed his lips were a bit of biscuit from the cafeteria and some tea,
not human flesh. So he wasn't the cannibal that tore the other poor
sods apart. The kisser though...” The detective squirmed at the
thought. “That guy probably chewed on a few of the victims."
"So... You're not having much hope that he'll
be coming out of this anytime soon, are you?" The young doctor sighed
as he made a couple of notes on his pad and lead the detective out of
this hospital wing.
"What do you think? It was a slaughter house
in there. Whatever he saw, whoever he saw... Maybe we're better off not
knowing."
"But
the murderers?!"
"Found dried bones, bits of teeth and ashes
too, kid; most of it surrounding the good doctor here.” The detective
jerked a thumb back in the direction where they came from. "The teeth
had human flesh on them."
"Fuck!"
"Yeah...” The detective shrugged with a sigh
and repeated the statement he had believed would prevail over this
highly irregular, mass murder case. “Maybe we're just better off not
knowing."
*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
"Dr.
Spencer? Hey, it's me." Dante settled
beside the silent man sitting at a table in one of the peaceful little
gardens the home had scattered about the grounds. "Sorry it took so
long for me to look you up.
The
man ignored his visitor as he drew on the
large sketch pad with his crayons. Dante scratched his head awkwardly
as he leaned back on the seat beside the silent man. "I want to thank
you, you know, for getting me out of there?
“Bad
piece of luck, with the police sending me
back to the place I was escaping from... You got me far enough
away from the portal to let my head clear up. If the damn police didn't
send me back there that time, I would have come back to myself
eventually. Fucking portal was just messing things up in the old
noggin'.”
The
former psychologist just continued to
draw, showing no sign at all that he heard a word Dante said to him.
The silver haired man pulled at his hair in frustration as he looked
over the unresponsive man. “Look, I-- got to the locker you set up.
Remember? 1165? At the bus station?
“First I had to figure out which station you
could have meant. You-- kinda forgot to tell me. Then I forgot the
combination. Heh, but I didn't forget my name. Figured it out
eventually... Clever bit with the key pad looking like a phone's.
"It
was good of you to set things up for me,
Doc. I was glad you left some money there too. I had to get out of
those shoes you got me, Doc. I mean you did your best, and I'm grateful
for it, but man did they pinch!
“I'm-- I'm sorry I left you behind, but I
knew-- I thought they'd take care of you fine. After all, there was no
way anyone would ever pin the murders back to you. And I could come
back and find you; and you'd be okay, and we could--”
Silence still greeted him. Then Spencer looked
up at Dante, and the hunter felt a brief flare of hope in him that he
had managed to get through. However, that did not prove to be the case
as the man had looked at him only because he wanted to show Dante a
sketch. Dante's heart gave him a little twinge as he recalled the
familiar gesture. The doctor had made this offer frequently during the
months they spent together in 'art' therapy.
Examining the sketch, Dante sighed rather
wistfully to note that the doctor's drawing of the Death Scythe was now
more true to what they actually looked like. A pang of guilt hit him to
remember the romanticised figures that the doctor used to draw for him.
After Dante appeared to give his drawing sufficient attention, the
Doctor took the sketch pad back, flipped the page and started drawing
again.
“Right…” Dante pinched the skin between his
eyes in defeat. “Least-- At least the police won't be after me anymore
since they think I died back at the nuthouse.” Dante smiled wryly at
him. “So I'm in the clear. To visit, I mean, without the police poking
around.
“I
guess-- I guess it's good bye till then.”
Dante rose to his feet and lightly rested a hand on the doctor's
shoulder. “The state's supposed to take care of you, seeing how you're
the only witness of a disaster and all that… I-- I guess I'll see you
around-- when I can.” The silver haired man waited a while longer
before he gave a last friendly squeeze to the silent man's shoulder and
left.
It
was about a half hour later that the silent
Dr. Spencer received another visitor; a statuesque man with raven black
hair and golden brown eyes. “You know, doctor, I should be angry enough
to kill you for making me lose my little toy.
“Because of you spiriting little Dante away, I
lost my temper and took it out on one of our oldest hiding places for a
portal in this pathetic little state.
“An
exquisitely beautiful setup, I've always
thought. No one would have noticed the portal's effects on the human
psyche when the inmates were already slightly deranged to begin with.
And there was ready entertainment as well whenever we wished it.”
The
demon in human guise sighed as he slumped
in the seat beside the silent man. “Now it's crawling with cops and
biohazard workers. We had to close the portal or risk it being
discovered. It'll be *decades* before we can even think of trying to
restart this little investment.”
Remus turned towards the quietly drawing man.
“I would kill you-- Except it would be more of a mercy now that you're
like this.”
They
sat together in silence for a long while
before the doctor put down his crayons and offered Remus the sketch
pad. Taking it in puzzlement, Remus looked at the drawing and blinked
as he found a portrait of himself staring at him. It was a pretty
accurate rendition at that, down to the glint in his eyes and the smirk
Remus would wear on his lips when tormenting Dante.
Out
of mischief, Remus reached for a red
crayon and autographed the picture before handing it back to the
artist. The doctor stared at it blankly for a moment before flipping
the page and taking up a crayon to start drawing something else.
Remus shook his head and stifled a laugh for
the man's sad state. “Good bye, doctor." He petted the head of the
unresponsive man. "I hope you live a long life.”
Then
Spencer was left alone again in the
garden to draw his pictures under the distant, though watchful eyes of
the many nurses scattered about the area with the other patients. None,
however, were close enough to notice the former psychologist speak
again as a new demon took form on the paper.
"I
see Demons."
~Owari~
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