Requiem

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

~John 1:5

____________

He was standing at the foot of a hospital bed. 

Mara lay in front of him. Her face was bone-white, her dark hair fanned across the pillow in jagged streaks, a thin sheet drawn up to her ribs. At her waist, the white fabric was drenched in red. A dark, spreading pool of blood. 

Help me. Her voice, ragged and gurgling, broke the stillness in the room. She was looking up at him. Her eyes were sunken, glassy and jaundiced. Just like his mother's. Please. 

Then a shiver seemed to pass through her and she went still. 

"Mara?" He came closer to her bedside, a tremor entering his voice. She did not answer. Marks began to crawl up the skin of her throat, the same dark, jagged lines he remembered from his mother's last days. 

"Mara?" He repeated, a lump in his throat. Machines beeped steadily in the silence that followed, like nothing was wrong. The brightness of the room, the warm, pale sunlight that streamed in through the windows, felt unsettling now. 

"Jacob." 

The voice was his mother's, and he turned. She was standing in the middle of the room, wearing the same white gown she had died in. But she looked healthy, like she had in his childhood memories.

"I've missed you." She smiled, and his chest tightened with an old echo of grief and longing. For a moment, just a moment, he wanted to believe. He had always wanted to believe. The first few years after her death had been marked by similar, quiet visitations; moments where she would appear to him, dressed in the same white gown, her voice full of love and warmth.  

It had once given him a sense of peace, of calm.

But not this time. 

This time he felt the cold. Thinking back on those visitations now, it had always been there, something that hovered just beyond the warmth. Something out of reach, something vast and empty, something that had never let the peace in him fully settle. The more he focused on it, the sharper the cold became, until the warmth fell away and became something else. 

The dark, abiding presence behind the light.

"It was you." He growled. It felt like something had been stolen from him. Something irreplaceable. "It's always been you." 

Her smile did not waver. The eyes were wrong, too deep, full of a watching stillness that had nothing to do with love. He could feel the same terrible weight of it now. The same presence in the red room, just wearing a different mask. 

"I am more your mother than she was." The woman said tenderly. "I have always been with you, watching over you." 

"You wanted me broken." He felt the prickle of tears in the back of his eyes, his voice shaking now with something colder than fear. “You killed her. You wanted them to hurt me. So you could use me." 

The thing wearing his mother’s face stepped closer, her feet making no sound. 

"No. It was they who wanted you empty, wanted you alone, wanted to mold you in their image." She said serenely, her hand lifting, almost touching his cheek. “They worship me, but they do not understand me...they are tools, nothing more. Searching for tastes of a world they will never understand and power they will never truly possess. But you are one of my chosen...I gave you your gift. I can give you the power to destroy them." 

For a heartbeat, he felt the pull of it, the terrible rightness of revenge. "No." His voice was quiet at first, then stronger. "No."

"This will be her future." She said, glancing at where Mara's body lay still on the bed, blood dripping down the sheet. He hoped it was a lie, but the terrible fear crept in anyway. "But death holds no sway over me. I can bring her back. Her and your mother." 

He did not speak. Her fingers were on his cheek now, ice cold. The weight upon him became almost unbearable, like he was deep underwater, a silent, unrelenting pressure to submit. 

In desperation he reached out for something, for anything to anchor him against it, drawing strength from somewhere deep inside of him. A strength he didn't know he possessed and didn't feel like his own. 

"Get out." He demanded, and her smile faded. The pressure weakened, for just a moment, but it was enough. "Get out!" 

Her face darkened. The cold surged around him- 

And the hospital room shattered, falling away into a dark, bottomless void. 

Then he was rising, rising up to the light, as if some unseen power had delivered him from the abyss.  

_____________

Awareness came slowly, like he was surfacing from a deep, murky river.

His eyes opened, lids heavy as if weighted. Even though he didn't recognize it exactly, the room felt familiar, with blue curtains and white walls. A hospital room. The words settled sharp in his mind, painful. Once he'd left this place, he thought, he didn't think he'd want to step inside another hospital ever again. 

"Hey." Erika said softly. She was sitting in a chair beside his bed. She looked tired in a way sleep didn’t fix; dark circles beneath her eyes, shoulders held rigid. But relief was visible on her face, too, like a spark of light in a fog. "We thought we were going to lose you." 

Jacob swallowed. His body felt like it had been scraped raw, inside and out. But somehow he knew the cold presence had left him, and it gave him a fleeting moment of peace. "Where am I?" 

"Saint Agnes Hospital. In a little town near Brookhaven." She replied. "You've been in a coma for the past few weeks. Both of you." 

"Is Mara alright?" He asked, sitting up and ignoring his body's protests. 

“Mara woke up yesterday.” Erika said, but her face was darker now, uneasy. “The doctors haven't been able to explain what happened to either of you. There were no signs of trauma or injury and White Dahlia wasn't found in either of your systems." She paused, as if the next words were caught in her throat. "After Mara woke up, when the doctors examined her...she's pregnant, Jacob." 

He felt sick to his stomach, a terrible guilt settling in his mouth like ash. Memories were coming back in flickers and fragments. Memories that were not his own. Of the cold air on his skin. Of standing before the altar. Of staring down at her dark, empty eyes. Of her face, frozen in a blank, almost lifeless expression. 

"It's my fault." He looked away, unable to meet her eyes, his voice getting shakier. "They...they wanted us to have a child. They did something, some ritual, made us..." He stopped, swallowing hard. "I don't know how to explain what happened, but...something came into me. I couldn't stop it, it was like I was..." 

"Possessed?" Erika asked gently, once a quiet had settled between them for a few moments. There was less skepticism in her voice than he thought there would be. 

"Yeah. Maybe." He sighed. "I don't know how to describe it without sounding crazy." 

Erika watched him for a long moment. "I don't think you're crazy." She said, looking away, towards the window. "I don't know what happened, but all I know is, there's a lot of things that happened that I don't think anyone can explain." 

He nodded. It wasn't agreement, not exactly. But it was trust, and that was enough. 

"The feds have taken over the investigation now." She continued, grimly. "Whatever this group did, whoever they are, it doesn't seem like Mara is their first victim. There's been a handful of cases in different parts of the state that go back quite a few years. Each of the girls involved claimed to have been abducted and impregnated during some kind of occult ritual. All were institutionalized at some point in their lives and had a history of mental illness. No one took them seriously."  

"They're breeding these girls." Jacob said, feeling a chill at the realization. How many others had they hurt? "To make children like us, children they can use."

She was silent, but he could feel a question hanging in the air between them, unspoken. Why? But he did not have an answer.

"Feds haven't made a single arrest yet." Erika said after a moment, a bitter frustration simmering in her voice. "They haven't found anything. Just like the lodge." 

He wanted to be angry. He should have been angry. But at the moment he just felt heavy and hopeless, like he'd been expecting it. Beth's voice echoed in his memory. They stay in the shadows. 

In the dark, where no one can see. 

______________

The hallway to Mara's room was long and quiet.

The stillness made his thoughts fester, the guilt grow sharper. A part of him couldn't bear the thought of looking her in the eyes. But another part did not want that horror to be the last she saw of him. 

Her door was open, and he lingered at the threshold for a moment. The room looked warm and comfortable, curtains half-drawn against the afternoon light. 

Mara sat propped up in the bed, her face pale and withdrawn, staring up at the ceiling. Something about it looked eerily similar to his vision, and he could almost hear the cold, echoing voice of the presence that wore his mother's skin. This will be her future. 

It was a lie. He hoped it was, at least.  

"Mara." He said, stepping into the room, and she looked at him. Her eyes looked normal again, no longer holding the black, terrible emptiness they had on the altar. "I'm sorry." He continued before she could speak, approaching her bedside, his throat almost too tight for words. "I'm so sorry." 

Mara looked up at him for a long moment. "It wasn't you." She said, finally. Her face did not hold any anger or blame, just a numb, heavy despair. "I know it wasn't you." 

"I would have done anything to stop it." Jacob swallowed hard, shame burning behind his eyes. "I...I hope you know that." 

She nodded silently. She looked so young. Too young. "I don't know what's inside of me.” Her voice wavered, broke. There were tears in her eyes now. "What's going to happen to me?" Her hand drifted over her stomach like it was a painful wound. "This...what if it's...wrong?" 

"I don't know." He said quietly, sitting in a chair beside her bed. “But we're going to be here with you. We're not going to let anything happen to you." Mara nodded, and he felt some thick, unspoken tension ease between them. What had been done could never be healed. Not completely. But it was something, and that was enough. 

“They’re not going to take me back to the group home, right?” She asked, fear clouding over her face. 

“No, they won't.” Jacob said, shaking his head. “You'll be turning eighteen soon. You'll never have to go back to that town again. Sherriff Mayfield and I will help you with anything you need." 

She nodded, a breath leaving her like she’d been holding it for days. “Thank you.”

Jacob nodded and rose to his feet. “I'll talk to you again soon.” He promised, leaving the room and heading back out into the hall. Erika stood near the nurses’ station at the end of the corridor, arms folded, watching him approach. She read his face easily.

“How is she doing?” Erika asked.

“As well as anyone in her situation could be, I guess. She’s a strong girl.” He replied, before hesitating. She wasn't a girl. Not anymore. That had been taken from her a long time ago. 

"She is." Erika assured. "That's why she's going to make it through this."

Jacob was quiet for a moment, turning and approaching the window in the middle of the hall. His face reflected faintly in the glass. 

"They're still out there." He muttered, looking out at the amber sunlight and low, grey clouds. The thought was stuck in the back of his mind, keeping his nerves from truly settling. The doctor, the secret society, those things...they were still out there. For now they had retreated back to the shadows. But he doubted they would stay there.

"We'll get them, one day. No one's untouchable forever." Erika said firmly, joining him by the window. "They're going to get what's coming to them. If not in this life, then after." 

"Do you really believe that?" He asked, quietly. His voice held no judgement or accusation. Curiosity, perhaps. He had seen more evil than he had ever cared to, human and supernatural. The thought that there was a power that was good and just, a power greater than any of those evils...it was comforting. 

He wouldn't have believed it not too long ago. But now...he hoped it was true. More than anything, he hoped.  

"It's what keeps me going as a cop. That justice is something eternal." She mused. "That there's someone or something out there that cares about it just as much as we do." 

Then she left him, heading back down the hall. 

He stayed alone at the window, looking out at the muted world beyond the glass. The sun was going to set soon. For now, though, there was light.

He watched it for as long as he could.