Possession - J.M. Dillard [1]
He watched until a figure emerged from the shad ows: his father, just as he had known. Skel dampened the surge of intense, irrational relief he felt as he watched the older Vulcan turn the corner of the hallway as if coming from the meditation room. His hands appeared first: they grasped a large heavy object of gleaming metal that took Skel some seconds to recognize as a lirpa, an ancient ceremonial weapon that had belonged to his mother’s ancestors.
The sight made no sense to the bewildered boy’s eyes; of all things, his father should have carried a medikit to tend to his suffering wife. But as his father passed near Skel’s door and turned to reenter the room he shared with his wife, his face became clearly visible—providing Skel with an even more disturbing sight. For the elder Vulcan—a gentle, serene man devoted to the study of logic—was …
Smiling?
Smiling? His father?
No, not smiling. Skel recoiled from the sight, scarcely daring to breathe. He had seen humans and Andorians smile, and this was not a smile—but a leer. A grimace. An expression, he knew from his studies of other cultures, of pure sadistic evil.
As he stepped back from the door, he closed his eyes; yet the horrifying image of his father’s face remained. It was an image, Skel knew, that would remain forever imprinted on his memory.
In that instant, such terror consumed him that Skel grew convinced he was still dreaming—trapped in a nightmare, and all his logic, all his training could do nothing to dam the flood of fear and anguish that engulfed him.
Another sound: his mother’s soft low moan from the bedroom. But this time, it rose shrilly into a scream—a scream which made him want to clap his hands over his sensitive ears.
“Run! Skel, run!”
He froze, too horrified to believe such a warning, until it pierced not only his ears, but also his mind, as his mother T’Reth cried out to him with her dying thoughts. The sound of her mental screams throbbed in his head, drowning out the terrible, real sound of her strangled shrieks.
RUN! RUN, MY CHILD, RUN! DO NOT RETURN. RUN AND HIDE! NOW! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! AND NEVER, EVER LOOK INTO ANY VULCAN’S EYES!
The terrible voices would not stop—not the one in his head, not the one in his ears.
RUN! RUN! RUN!
All his carefully honed Vulcan discipline fled as Skel became what his ancient ancestors had been before the Reformation. Like a wild animal, he bolted for his window, opening it wide to the cool night air of the desert, and leapt from the low-built dwelling in sheer, animalistic panic.
He obeyed the voice, and ran and ran and ran, over the soft, cold sand toward the distant black mountains. His short legs pumped frantically with all his youthful energy, until, more than a kilometer away from his own house—his house where logic and rational thought had once reigned—he slammed into an immovable object, and looked up to see …
His father’s leering face.
The elder Vulcan’s eyes were wide, demented, and blazing with bizarre emotions as he clamped powerful hands around his son’s head, forcing Skel to stare up, open-eyed, at that terrible visage. The voice inside the child shrilled louder, DO NOT LOOK INTO HIS EYES. NEVER INTO HIS EYES!
As Skel’s father roughly pulled the boy’s small face toward his, the child fought with all his strength to look away, to escape those imprisoning hands. But the crazed countenance of his father loomed closer, closer, until there was nothing left for Skel to do but disobey the terrifying, commanding voice in his mind. The boy blinked, and against his will, he stared up into those once familiar golden-brown eyes, eyes once serene that now burned with murderous rage …
And found the face he confronted was his own.
The Vulcan, Skel, sat bolt upright in his bed, panting heavily as if he’d been running.