The Right Spin

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock. Over and over it goes in Gabriel’s mind like clockwork. Tick. Laughter that is more painful than the worst kind of torture. Tock. His wife and daughter playing in the next room. Tick. Flashes of long buried memories forced to the surface by an invincible enemy. Tock. Gabriel clenches his fists tighter on his pillow and wraps it over his head. He bites his lower lip until it bleeds, trying, without hope, to stop the tears from welling. From his throat he lets out a deep and grief stricken groan. Still the images and voices come and no matter how he tries to fight it a part of him will not accept the truth.

His daughter and wife have been dead for over three years.

“Daddy,” Anna, his daughter, calls out, “come here!” Under his breath Gabriel whispers a desperate prayer for release. As expected the recipient does not respond.

“Gabriel, honey, please come out. Anna and I have something we want to show you,” Rachel, his beloved wife, beckons. Her voice is as sweet and light as he last remembered it. While the rational part of his mind cries out for him to stop, the other part that desperately misses his family and is determined to see them. His chest ached, his face was wet with tears and his feet inched their way towards the edge of the bed. The whole world seems surreal like all of this is a dream. His body pulls itself upright and his feet touch the cold hardwood floor.

Tick. The cycle would continue. Tock. Once again they had won.

The floor creaks under his weight. The sounds from the next room pull at his soul, beckoning him to embrace the illusion. Again, laughter and the angelic voices of his beloved wife and daughter. Gabriel feels the will drain from his body as he takes his first step away from the bed. The gray shorts he wears are drenched with sweat and cling to his legs making each step seem harder than it should have been. Perhaps, he wonders, this was a blessing. He knew in his heart what awaited him and yet he did not have the strength to resist. A second step is followed by a third and then a fourth.

In his minds-eye he can see Rachel and Anna as they once were. Warm and vibrant and full of hope for the future but all of that was doomed before it began. Gabriel is touched with a gift or, more likely, he feels, a curse. That curse separates him from the rest of humanity because he couldn’t bear to look at the reality of the human heart. The few people he met whose hearts were pure and kind were quickly buried by the darkness inherit to the human condition. The Christian Bible says mankind was born into sin and a fallen nature. So very few could comprehend how far the fall really is. He is forced to look into that hell everyday.

Gabriel forces his eyes closed and walks blindly into the living room. A breeze chills him as it wraps around his body. He left the windows open this night as the heat reached an all-time high this week and the central air hadn’t worked in two months. The whirring of a fan in a window reminds him that this is all quite real. Anna once again calls out to him.
“Daddy look, look what mom gave me. Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks. Gabriel didn’t have to open his eyes to know what she was talking about. It was one of his fondest moments with the both of them. Rachel had given her a small music box that belonged to her great-grandmother. It was a sort of custom with the women in her family. The music box would be passed down to the first born daughter when she had reached an age in which she could appreciate it properly. Anna was exceptionally mature for her age. She seemed to sense things that even her parents missed. Gabriel secretly feared that his curse might have been passed down to her. One screwed-up gift when compared to the music box.

Gabriel heard that old tune, whose name had been long forgotten, play lightly on the air. Slowly one note is plucked after another and another. Again Anna asks him to open his eyes just as she had a hundred times before. The music plays in rhythm with the ticking in his head. Tick-di-tock-di-tick-da-tock-didi-tick-dada-tock-di. Each note pounds in his head like a spike. Gabriel falls to his knees and grabs the sides of his head as if to muffle the dreadfully enchanting music.

“Anna,” he rasps through clenched teeth, “please go. Get away from here. It’s not safe.”

“But Daddy,” she begins to protest. “Don’t argue with me!” Gabriel barks more harshly than he intended to. Then there was silence. No music, no breeze, no voices and no ticking. Gabriel opens his eyes and sees that he is kneeling behind the couch. He knew that this night’s torment had just about run its course. There was one more thing left to do and that was the most painful. For no matter how much he wished for the voices and images to go this was what he feared most. With the effort of a defeated man he reaches out and pulls himself up to the back of the couch. And looking at the spot where he had heard his wife and daughter his greatest fear is confirmed. He is truly alone. It doesn’t take long for grief to sweep over him and it is then, laying uncovered, behind his couch, curled into a tight ball, that the silent laughter came.

They always came after an evening like this, to delight in their handiwork. Gabriel saw no specific pattern to their actions, only the conclusion. Him, defeated and reminded of mistakes made throughout his life. He should have never followed Rachel’s advice. He should have remained hidden and out of sight. But Rachel would never have that. She said he had a gift and that it should be used to help people. Now all of those lives depend upon what Gabriel does each and every day. He’d have ended his life years ago if it were not for that fact.

“In case you get self-righteous,” they told him, “and try to end this lesson, remember this: That which has befallen your family will come upon those you’ve have aided and their families. They will be there to greet you on the other side knowing that it was indeed you, their good friend, who did this to them. Their blood will be on your hands and their lives are now in them.” Many nights have passed with Gabriel but mere inches from ending his own life. In the darkness he could hear them urge him to finish it.
To give them his life. It would seem that he was somehow protected from them. Sure, they could destroy everything around him but they could not kill him.
This only further fed Gabriel’s guilt. Now, a hidden force protected his life from the shadows within shadows yet would do nothing for those he cared for. Hope, it would seem, had left his life.

Until she entered it.

Her name is Samantha Martinez, a Special Agent with the FBI. It was pure coincidence that she was here to take a look at his case. She is a specialist in the field of Ritual Crimes and Abuse. She happened to be in New York for a conference when she was asked to look at Gabriel’s case file, interview him and render an opinion. That was three years ago and she is still here. She suspected that there was more to Gabriel’s story than he was telling her and something inside her wouldn’t let it go. She requested to be stationed out of the Bureau office in New York City and act as liaison between them and the local police departments in the five boroughs. She’d assist in any and all crimes classified as “ritual” in origin. Her superiors agreed and contacted the Mayor’s office in New York City. While fulfilling her duties as “special liaison to the FBI” she uses as much free time as possible to further investigate Gabriel Christian’s case. While deemed closed by both the NYPD and FBI, Martinez continues to dig while keeping her actions hidden from prying eyes. Unbeknownst to her is that more than just mortal eyes are watching.

It was late this Thursday evening and Samantha planned for it to be even later when she finally left. The desk she sits at smells of mildew and spilt coffee. The precinct captain didn’t go out of his way to make her comfortable and Samantha was sometimes honestly surprised when she was given a professional courtesy. “White, black or brown, we all bleed blue,” the mantra from the police academy went. She wondered what the local PD felt the FBI bled. While the friction between the police and the FBI wasn’t as stereotypically bad as TV would show, it also wasn’t always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes things would go wonderful. It could be a truly productive give-and-take relationship. When egos got involved, however, things went to crap fast. Samantha could feel that in the air when she walked into some precincts. Eyes followed her every move and conversations hushed as if they suspected she might use a misspoken word from an officer to further elevate her position. To her all this political garbage meant nothing. It was the child who claimed to have been stuffed into a dog carcass or the family whose daughter was missing after “meeting god” only to be found crying hysterically about her baby being given as sacrifice to the sect; that mattered. Ironically she could look into evil and find hope yet couldn’t stomach human politics. Federal, interpersonal or otherwise. Evil does evil because that is what it is, its nature. Humans, on the other hand, are equally capable of both in great measure. One is crystal clear in its motive while the other is terrible complicated. Samantha didn’t need or want complications in her life. Dealing with the complications of the rest of the world when she had to was more than enough for her.

Samantha pours over the forensic documents she’s read a hundred times before hoping something she might have missed would jump out. Long ago she admitted to herself that this was one of the most bizarre cases she had ever seen.
The majority of ritual crimes are committed to appease a deity, complete some pattern of events, or bring about some kind of prophecy. All of which pointed to a god in one form or another and attempted to bring about a change. Be it good or evil was irrelevant at the time. What is good or evil exists in the mind and what is appalling to one is perfectly natural to another. Gabriel Christian’s case was different. While, at first glance, it did appear to follow the standard archetype there were two major differences. First, there was no real evidence that this was a sacrifice any deity. Runic writing of some sort could be expected to be found at most scenes like this. There was nothing. The bodies were not destroyed, which was also highly unusual. Animal carcasses were sometimes found but never a human corpse, let alone two and one being a small child. The second difference was Gabriel. He was alive. Samantha knew he saw everything yet refused to talk about it. Violent cults like the one that took his family did their best to stay hidden. There were never witnesses left alive except those who were members said cult. Early on Samantha determined that Gabriel was not a member and in fact seemed to put up some resistance during his ordeal. As the horror of the events sunk in he also began to show symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome: a common affliction to those who survive ritualistic crimes. She remembered him, half joking, talk of hearing his wife a daughter in the next room calling out to him. Sometimes he would believe that it was actually real. Secretly Samantha sometimes wished the same.

In the three years that have passed since their initial meeting she has come to consider Gabriel a good friend. Possibly the only friend she has in the state of New York. While slow to open up at first, and quick to clam-up without the slightest provocation, Gabriel came to show her more than he ever intended to. She appreciated this for a number of reasons not the least of which was that she actually cared for him. She spent many nights awake in bed thinking about him. Not as he related to his case but as a man who had been deeply wounded whom she dearly wanted to aid. She saw a light in him she was sure he had long since buried and forgotten. A light that shown most bright whenever he spoke of his wife, and in particular, his daughter. It was during these precious moments she believed the man Gabriel used to be could be salvaged. But, just as fleeting as these moments were, so too seemed the possibility that Gabriel would welcome this. He blamed himself for everything that happened to his family and, she was sure, a whole lot more. The weight of the world seemed to be upon his shoulders and he was no Apollo. Samantha loved him, not as one would a romantic partner, but as the only man she’d allow to touch her heart in the way he has. She recognized the spirit within him that his wife must have saw. That stubborn nobility, as the saying goes, inherit to humanity. A part of Gabriel refused to die quietly no matter how fiercely it was squelched. It fought back and Samantha promised herself that she would see it win.