Session 04 (Agent Jason)

Morning Dew Caravan Park, Catskills Mountains

A stabbing pain in his shoulder and chest woke Jason up. He rolled over and tried to get comfortable on the thin mattress of the 'bed'. In the dim light of the bare, low-wattage bulb he could see the shape of Jasper on the other side of the caravan.
Jason stared at the ceiling, marked with water stains. The musty smell of this piece of junk was starting to get on his nerves.

He listened to Jasper's soft snore for a while, then sat up and inspected the wound. Still black. It seemed to be healing, but a large part of it was still the same colour as when he received the wound.

He got up and silently moved through the caravan, reaching over for the bottle of vodka. While he did this, the door creaked open, and Norman stepped inside.

"One can always count on you to smell the booze..."

Jason reached and grabbed another glass.

"Sit down and keep quiet, he's asleep and i don't want him to wake up". 

Jason gestured to the little sitting area and put the bottle and glasses on the dirty and cracked yellow Formica tabletop.

"What do you want?"

"Hey, pal, that's no way to welcome your old friend. Word is that you got wounded, so I thought I'd come over and check up on you. Brought some grapes, but I ate them all on the way over here." 

Norman looked around for a few moments.

"Nice, pal... very stylish. Did you decorate it yourself?"

Jason ignored him and stared outside, into the darkness.

"So... something bit you? Something nasty?"

He ran his hand through his graying hair and nodded.

"And you and your merry bunch wiped out O-cell. I'm sure Adolf won't be too pleased about that..."

"I had no choice, Norman. We arrived there and the lock had been cut. I had a sick and a wounded agent in the back. I told them to bring up the rear while Jasper and I took point with the shotguns. When we came through the door the whole thing started off badly, them drawing on us, us refusing to drop our weapons. It was clear they were in a bad shape as well, and it was even more clear that this Oliver character was far gone. He booted Jude to the ground straight away and anything could have tipped him over the edge and turn Jude into a new coat of paint..."

"Well,.. from what I heard last, that would have been a good thing, no?"

Norman chuckled as Jason ignored him.

"Okay... so, why didn't you just defuse the situation by dropping your guns? After all, they were Delta too, no?"

"I know... I just felt that with at least me covering their cell leader, we had some kind of control in the situation. That guy wasn't going to to lower his gun anyway."

Jason lit a cigarette and took a decent swig of the vodka.

"Something didn't feel right. The cell-leader, Oscar, had said there was someone else in the back, wounded. He just seemed shifty about it. It took us a while, but in the end I got him to allow Jagger to see her."

Another long drag and swig.

"Anyway.. .long story short, Jagger came back after a while and I could tell from the way he looked something was wrong. I tried to get them to tell us what had happened, but Oliver went all regulations on me..."

"And we all know you hate regulations, right?"

Jason ignored him and continued.

"... which I would normally accept but in this case I had my cell in there with them, so it was something that concerned us. I went in with Jagger and Oscar to check on the wounded Ophelia, after exchanging a look with Jude and Jasper. They understood what I meant, things could go nasty really quickly."

Jason fell silent for a second when Jasper mumbled something and rolled over. He finished off his glass of vodka and turned back to Norman.

"From what I heard from Jagger, Ophelia was heavily pregnant. But hadn't been the day before. When I pointed out to Oscar that this just wasn't possible, he refused to see reason. He didn't want us near her. I told him he had to sort his own mess out, and that's where it got nasty. He pulled his gun..."

"And you blew him away. Wow. Alright, well, at least the kids know now not to fuck about with Uncle Jason, I guess. So... I gather it went Reservoir Dogs really quickly then?"

"Yeah... shots were fired in the garage and uhm... Jagger and I looked back inside for Ophelia, who was now dangling from the ceiling on spiders legs, shedding her human skin. Jagger couldn't take it and ran off. Not that I blame him..."

"And you went Clint Eastwood on the bitch? Looks like she got at least one in..."

"Yeah. I have no clue what that thing was, Norm. But I shot it twice up close, then it bit me, and i squeezed off another shot, and everything went black. I woke up some time later, the others had put the thing down, as well as Oliver and the wounded guy, Oswald."

"Sounds like they saved your bacon. So you're all one big happy family now? That why you treated one of them on a weekend to a luxury retreat? Or is he keeping an eye on you in case you go Goldblum? Yeah... that's what I thought. Good call though."

Norman got up.

"I'd love to chat a bit more, but I've got places to be and you've got...," he gestured about "... other things to do or whatever... always great catching up with you, pal. Just ehh..." He walked towards the door and opened it "... give them some slack. i know you and me never got to that part really, but I should have. Just so you know."

"Hey, Norman... What does Lazarus mean to you?"

"You know I never did well at Sunday school... but I guess it was something about a guy who died and was raised from the dead or something? Bit like you, no? Why, you thinking to transfer to L-Cell?"

"Never mind..."

The door closed silently behind him and Jason lit another cigarette while he watched Norman's form being swallowed by the darkness outside.
He turned around and looked at the filthy interior of the caravan, with its grimy windows. He put the cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray and looked at the two glasses, one empty, one full. Jason took a deep breath and let out silent sigh, and emptied the glass in one go.

3 weeks later.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"... so what do you think, Dad?"

Jason, leaning heavily on his cane, nodded.

"Dad? I asked what you think about me studying art when I finish."

He snapped out of it and gave his daughter a smile.

"Sorry Emily, I'm just a bit tired. I think I should sit down for a bit. You go ahead and have a look in the next few halls and come and get me. We'll do the other areas together and get something to eat afterwards..."

His daughter nodded and walked off, examining a few of the paintings a bit further of.

Jason let out a sigh and he sat down. His leg was aching, as it usually did in this weather, and his recent wound was still sore.

He watched her as she moved from painting to painting. He was happy he had made time for this, they needed to be together more often. He had missed Christmas because of his research on the Skoptsi and Magna Mater. 

It wasn't until he had faced that thing in the green box that he had realized that.  In a fraction of a second, when the thing came was hanging from the ceiling, shedding its human skin, all he could think of was Emily, and how this thing could take her over, like it had taken Ophelia over.

Unless someone stopped it.

Unless he stopped it. 

He looked over and saw her move into the adjacent hall, but his gaze was fixed upon her shadow, which looked like thin, long legs, like that...

He snapped out of it and blinked a few times. It was gone now. He took a deep breath and looked at the brochure he was holding.

"The William Blake exhibition presents more than 175 works drawn from public and private collections in Britain, the United States, and Australia"

He looked around, his eyes falling upon a large painting in a corner. He limped over to it and sat down opposite it.

After what could have been hours or seconds, he heard a voice behind him.

"Couldn't you pick something a bit less depressing to look at?"

It took him a few moments to reply.

"Don't you think it's strange, Nancy, that I didn't see the woman until now? All I saw was that thing standing over her..."

The woman sat down next to him, and looked at the painting.

"I guess we all see what we want to see. Or what we need to see... I heard about what happened."

Jason nodded.

"It was a bad position to be in, Jason. But I think it was harder for Oscar. Imagine it was our cell. That it was me instead of Ophelia. We both know that something like that could have happened that night."

Jason didn't reply and swallowed.

"What if our cell would have made it back, and it was Norman laying there, bleeding out, and me in that back room. Would you have handed me over to some other cell that came barging through the door? Would you have shot me?"

His shoulders sagged.

"I don't think you would have. Norman, yeah, I reckon you would have shot him. But I don't believe  you could have killed me. Not until it would have been too late. So let go of it. You did the right thing, and your cell did too. I know you know they saved you there. Let go of it. You've got a good group there. Jagger took it upon himself to contact A-cell. Jude and Jasper did what they had to in the garage. You heard Jasper, he would have taken you out if there was any doubt, just like you expect them to. Open up to them. Connect with them. Because in the end, it's only them you can truly talk to when the nightmares come..."

"I can't, Nancy. Not after what happened to us. I'm doing the job. Because someone has to. Because I'm good at it. And because I don't give a fuck about pulling the trigger. But let me tell you this: we were sent on a mission to clean up. The usual "make it disappear" job after an agent dies. Nothing out of the ordinary in the briefing, about doubts, or misgivings. When we got to the bottom the former agent had somehow used... magic... to raise his dead wife. Or possessed her corpse with something. That thing almost killed Jude."

"Things like that happen, Jason..."

"I know they do. But the operation was called Lazarus. Like "Raised from the fucking dead"- Lazarus. That's what they called the Op."

Jason looked over and saw his daughter walk into the hall, looking for him. He got up.

"I think they knew... And we were given no warning..."