36: Imperfect Recall, part I
“Dude, you’ve been hanging with Dante a bit now, so I thought you might have noticed a few things,” he said, “That shit Byron was spouting is kinda half true. I did talk Dante into going to the club and he did have a bit of a breakdown there, but I don’t think it was just some anxiety or drug thing. Dante’s always refused to touch drugs ’cause he’s scared of what might happen to his brain. Thing is, I know he’s affected by…” he paused, “Dude, this might sound a bit weird, so don’t judge okay? Dante’s kinda affected by that shadow thing they called Erebus. You know, that demon god that gets talked about as being the cause of all the world’s problems?”
She’d told Joel and the others all about Erebus and the Great Cataclysm before – or at least the faerie version of events – but it appeared their knowledge was another victim of magic.
“Man, I’m sure we’ve had this discussion before,” he said, confirming her suspicions, “Well anyway, it’s just that Dante kinda freaks out whenever it’s brought up and you know there’s that huge mural in the club…”
The mural imbued with generations of negative energy. It had been more than enough to tip Phantasia over the edge, so it was understandable that someone as fragile as Dante would be affected by it too. Maybe that was another reason he kept his aura behind protective walls….
“I think that mural did it,” said Joel, “Had I known it would’ve freaked him out that much I’d have never taken him there. I thought he’d find it cool ’cause he was always drawing pictures of that thing. Well, until he realised what it was anyway. Makes me wonder if those reports of that thing taking over dreams are true and all,”
The ‘primordial darkness’ was a difficult concept to grasp. Everyone had different opinions on what it was, from an amalgam of humanity’s negative feelings to an ever-present shadow that lurked in the collective subconscious of the whole world. That such an entity had never appeared in the thousands of years of history before the Great Cataclysm did scupper most theories, though, but only added weight to the faerie belief that ‘Erebus’ was of human creation.
“I still don’t understand it myself,” he continued, “But I guess it’s not like he’s the first person to have those thoughts. That Erebus clings to life through the memories of others, like some kinda tumour or something. Maybe Dante just saw it when he was a kid and it’s buried itself inside his memories. Which reminds me…”
Phantasia hadn’t a chance to get a word in, but that didn’t bother her. Joel’s analysis and concern were more than she’d ever thought to give him credit for.
“Dude, have your memories been messed up lately?”
Another one! “Not really,” she said, talking slow so she didn’t reveal something unintentionally, “But I have noticed other people having trouble with their memories. It doesn’t seem to affect me,”
“Man, that’s proper lucky,” said Joel, “Kao’s having the same trouble as me. We both keep diaries but stuff isn’t adding up. Like there’s all this shit about shadow demons and stuff under the World’s End. It’s like anything strange that happens gets wiped from our memories. You ask me its all those crazy teachers doing it. Never trusted them myself. Well, except Kao’s mum, obviously.”
“What about my mum?”
