The Windy City in Spring
Chicago. This is home for me. As in I grew up here. My family roots are deep in the muck that is Chicagoland. Gary, Chicago, Evanston, all old stomping grounds for me. Here I am on a plane flying into Chicago.
I don't want to be here, but I need to know what happened here to my family, my sister and her kids. So I met a Settite named Steven a while back, he came up with some answers that might yield some solutions, or a shit ton more questions. I'm betting on the questions.
Behind me in second class are my niece, nephew, and the older woman who has been helping me care for them the last four years. I am bringing them back to the family seat because I had to declare war back in New York in order to protect the domain I was given. I pissed in a bad guys Cheerios. He is gonna want some payback. The kids are just sitting ducks during the day without me. At night too, I have things I have to do, and can't sit and protect them.
The kids have been a good thing for me. I needed a reason to not be a monster. I needed a reason to climb out of the hole of death and destruction I was sliding towards. Though this whole morals and consequences thing makes being a vampire much harder. My life is much easier without all those morals, but also very dark and empty. Bad enough that I eat the flesh of the dead and drink the blood of the living...for a while there I was a real whirlwind of destruction. Sad when the Sabbat is the eye of the storm...the calm place to recover.
I feel the plane get cold. Not temperature cold. Supernatural cold. As in the dead are walking by. So I take a deep breath and look across the shroud. My vision greys out. I can see a shattered plane, wires hanging, blood and bits on the walls. Somebodies body chunks on the floor. I look out the window and see a figure crawling up the wing of the plane. It is broken, limbs bent wrong. It's a ghost, a wraith, whatever you want to call it.
Taking the next step I use the senses of the creature. Whoever it was, the eyesight sucks. It doesn't feel the wind, or the rain. I watch is slide through a crack in the plane that will be there someday. It begins to examine the passengers looking for someone. I notice it seems to be looking at men closely. If I were alive, I would be getting goose bumps. What are the chances? Luckily it seems to be at the back of the plane, and moving slowly in an odd fashion.
I get up and go back, balancing the view of the dead lands, and the reality my body has to move through. I mumble something to Steven, letting him know I will be back. I am sure he is giving me a weird look. I pass the stewardess, she is going to die of a head wound. I see a couple of heart attacks, a couple of strokes. Being able to see others deaths isn't for the weak of stomach. Taking my time I finally get to where the wraith is looking passengers over. I can see it...her.
She is a brunette. And her body is pretty messed up. My logical brain categorizes the damage...either she was in a car wreck or a building fell on her. With her back to me I feel a tug of recognition. When she turns toward me my stomach drops to my feet. It's Susan.
Susan Catherine Allegria Hall. My wife. The reason I fought back from the depths of my ptsd after Nam. The person who kept me going so that I graduated college with a medical degree. The mother to Catherine...the one in the end I couldn't maintain without. Losing Susan tore my grasp of reality away. I swirled back into the darkness of the war. My grief was so deep I only kept going because of Catherine. But everywhere I turned I saw Susan. I could swear some nights I would wake up after her death and smell her next to me. I was sure some mornings she had just kissed me.
But this wasn't that Susan. This was the after death Susan. This was the memory she had of her mortal body, of the pain she suffered before she died. I knew if she would will it, that her corpus would heal itself, but she might not know that. I didn't want to talk to her. I sure as Hell didn't want her to find me here. Who knows what a mess she might cause in the skin lands if she freaked out here. Of all the ghosts from my past I dealt with...I am still not comfortable with her.
I went back to the front, and heard the Captain say we were landing soon. Thank God. I just wanted to get away from her. She didn't make it into first class with me until we were on the ground. I grabbed Steven, and we were the first ones off the plane. He looked at me like I was mental, and I suppose in this case I am. As we started out of the cabin, I glanced back and saw her lean over my seat, smelling me. Her wail cut my senses still attuned to the deadlands and I heard her cry out pitifully, "TREMEN!" I practically ran from the plane.
