Disturbed Lincoln

9

"I don't think you ought to be searching for a girl when there's no hope of finding her. Who knows, if you look too deeply, you might just get the blame placed on you. You don't want that, do you?"

"Who are you? Why do I keep seeing you?"

"I'm a lover of mystery, so answering questions that I didn't ask myself is not so interesting."

"Well, then what do you want? Do you want something from me? Why were you attached to Stella's earring? Why are you here now?"

"Surcease this. I'm not fond of interrogation. If you want answers, then you should look for them. I'm just here to inform you that sometimes knowing is worse than ignorance. The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. Heard that quote before?"

"I just want to know where she is. Did you take her?"

"I may have not taken her, but I'm aware of things you are not. The world is more than a petty human plane. If you want any answers from me, then analyze that fact more than anything."

     Horns departed following that cryptic speech, leaving me mystified and slightly nervous. "What did you see, Lincoln? You were talking to someone! Did they say anything? Was it the same guy?" I felt on the edge of panic, though the medication must be working because it's more manageable now. These kinds of medicines don't usually work very quickly, so maybe I'm just getting better at controlling myself. That would be equally good news. "Yes, it was the same guy. He didn't want to tell me anything. He said 'There's more than the petty human plane' or whatever, and that I should analyze that sentence? I don't know, he spoke super enigmatically." Clyde pulled out his phone and shoved it into my grasp. "Type that down in my notes app. I'm going to look that up and see if anything significant shows in the results. Also, draw me a picture of that guy when you get home and send it to me. I'll spend the whole night researching if I have to—I'm going to find something."

     I did as he asked, typing the sentence to the best of my memory then handed him back the phone. "Anything else you want me to do?" I asked him. "Yeah, actually there is one more thing. Come with me after school tomorrow. I'll want to show you what I discovered, even if it seems like nothing." At this point, I felt like I was following him blindly. Before any of this, I'd probably just shrug him off or ignore his requests, but I just feel emotionally powerless and resisting seems futile, despite chasing hallucinations like I'm in the Mystery Gang and being yanked around on a leash like Scooby-Doo. The next day rolled around seamlessly, and after the final school bell rang, I poured out of the front door along with the other hundreds of kids eager to speed home. I lacked an equivalent enthusiasm, however, so I differed in that sense.

     Clyde stood outside on the corner. I noticed a few times in school as well: His eyes were darkened and exhausted. He'd stayed up all night, I'd bet, and yet he still wore that serious look; the same one he'd worn yesterday, equally mournful but determined. In a way, stoic, but stoics have peace in some way, and his peace has been affected in a way that might have changed him for good, almost similarly to the way he said Stella changed after her sister's kidnapping. Whatever it is he found—naught or much—I hope he got it out of his system, and from here out, his energy will be used for self-care and tending rather than playing detective. "Let's go," he said curtly, then took me by the wrist to drag me behind him. "Hey, I'm coming! You don't have to pull me!" Ten minutes later we reached our destination and went in and to his room. He unplugged his laptop and then put it on his desk, where he pulled up an extra chair for me to join him.

     "Check this out," he said, maneuvering the mouse. "When I looked up what you typed, it just showed me a bunch of articles about airplanes. So, I refined my search to just 'what other planes are there besides the human one?' and it became more spiritual. That's when I clicked this site, and look at what I found!" The page loaded slowly, and when it fully appeared, its style alone frightened me. It was all black and the text was red and in an archaic-designed font. It was crude and basic, yet imposing and intense. As he scrolled I saw a pattern of photos in between paragraphs, and when he reached the bottom of the page, there I saw a picture of Horns. "What the hell? What's it say?!" I asked. He read the caption beneath the photo aloud to me:

"His appearance varies amongst depictions as his looks were never explicitly described. He's briefly mentioned in the Bible and more significantly recognized in the Jewish Book of Enoch, with the biggest commonality between both texts being that he is given the sins of humanity to bear himself. The above depiction was drawn by an unknown artist whose rendition became a large trend for artists attempting to capture a new likeness of the being. It is unknown where the artist gained inspiration for this unique design, but one rumor is that he'd drew the figure originally for practice, but after hearing voices calling to him from the canvas, decided to attribute it to the already-existing Azazel."

"I don't know about you, but that second theory attracts me more than the first one," Clyde said.

"Yeah, I don't think a Bible demon is troubling me, but I do think there's a connection between that artist hearing voices and myself. Anything else on the site important?"

"Not to me. I can show you something else that you might find extra interesting, though."

"What is it?"

"A news article that came last evening. You're going to want to hear this."