Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Page 23

  The disappearing ocean was so profound and eerie that the battle had been placed on hiatus. All of the Durori, the soldiers, and the cherubs had stopped in the fight to watch as the water spilled into nothing.

  It didn’t stop there. The ground began to crumble and the enormity of the hole in the world inched closer to the palace. Meghan and Valerie began to back away from the chaos that was unfolding in front of them. They had already seen first hand what could happen and knew not to be anywhere close. A figure shot from around the corner, startling both of them. Valerie screamed. They realized that it was The Mistress, Carolina Rimbault. She was dressed in the same blue ball gown that they had seen her in at the laboratory. She still wasn’t wearing her mask. She looked at Meghan and Valerie, smiled, and then turned her attention to witness what was unfolding in front of her.

  Meghan remained silent. She knew that this was a pivotal moment in Carolina’s life. She remembered how Thomas had told her that The Master had been so obsessed with Carolina that he had used the Era of Love as a way to trap her there in Fractus. He had sent a cherub to mark her, but it had been out of a crazed obsession. Meghan understood that Carolina, like her, had been marked and had no choice in the matter. The difference was that Carolina had been marked to be with someone evil. Meghan stepped closer to Carolina and grasped the other woman’s hand in hers. Together they watched as the palace trembled in front of them and a second later came crashing down onto the ground. The reverb from the fall of the slabs of large stone was enormous. The ground shook even more than it already was because of the rumble. The pieces of stone were falling into the ever widening chasm. Meghan looked at Carolina.

  “You need to get out of here,” Carolina told Meghan and Valerie.

  Neither of the women had time to say anything back. The ground was already splitting and the rest of the landscape was falling in. Just as she turned to run back into the woods, the piece of ground that Carolina was standing on gave way and she fell down, disappearing into nothingness. Meghan and Valerie stayed there a moment longer, needed closure, and just what they were hoping to see appeared in front of them. The white light came bursting up with such force that it was an exclamation of freedom. Like Thomas and Rebecca’s had done, it began to spin around, and then the wings flung out to each side. Carolina’s angel flew high into the sky. She never paused as she made her way into infinity. Meghan tore her attention away from the Carolina angel long enough to see that there were several of the soldiers that were making their way toward her and Valerie.

  “We’ve got to move it,” Meghan said.

  They turned their backs to the approaching soldiers and ran into the woods. Like before, everything around them was crazy. It was even worse now. Some of the lanterns had come loose from their rusty handles and the flames had caught on the dead leaves of the ground. They had to run around several fires that were taller than either of them and were obviously spreading at a dangerously quick pace. This time, when they emerged from the woods, they were in front of their own plantation house. Embry and Darren were both in their Durori form and were fighting off several soldiers that were attacking. Jericho was on the ground at Embry’s side, barking and growling. As they ran across the stretch of ground between the woods and the house, Valerie stumbled and fell. Meghan heard the cry of pain as she hit the ground, but by the time that she turned around to help, Valerie was getting to her feet.

  “Are you OK?” Meghan asked.

  Valerie had her right leg bent at the knee and was studying her foot. “Damn shoe,” she said. “The heel broke clean off.” She removed the shoe from her foot, lifted her other leg and did the same.

  There was a large, dark storm cloud that had appeared in the blue sky behind Valerie. The cloud was so big and colored just so with purple, blue, and black that it looked like Valerie was standing in front of an oversized, 80’s portrait studio backdrop. The way that Valerie was dressed in the letter jacket and her teased hair made it easy to imagine the scene being found within the pages of a high school yearbook. Meghan didn’t notice that the cloud wasn’t a cloud until it was too late. It was the creature that Thomas had told them about, the eater of worlds. The darkness that loomed behind Valerie was the monster’s open, bottomless mouth. The jaws closed like a bear trap on Valerie, biting her in half at the waist. Meghan screamed in horror at what she had witnessed. Valerie’s legs remained standing for a moment longer. Steady jets of blood pumped out of what was left of her until it all fell over.

  “Valerie! No!” It was Darren screaming from behind Meghan. He was rushing toward the nightmare.

  Meghan grabbed his shoulder as he was passing by her toward what was left of his wife. “Darren!” She yelled. “She’s gone. We have to get out of here!”

  Darren was in tears as Meghan wrapped him into her arms, consoling him. “Valerie,” he said. “No. No. No.”

  Then Valerie’s angel appeared from where she had been taken away. As she hovered into the sky, she looked down at Darren and smiled, reassuring him that she was OK.

  Embry had scooped up Jericho and was rushing toward Meghan and Darren. Behind him, the house was falling apart. The wall that stood around The Master’s tree crumbled into nothing and the tree fell over into a fissure. Embry wrapped his hand around Meghan’s and began to lead her back into the trees. Darren ran behind them. Trees were falling all around the three of them. They came out of the woods onto the stone overlook. The portal was open in the atmosphere. There was not the usual sound of crashing waves since the water had been pulled away.

  “We have to get into the portal,” Embry said. “Everything’s almost gone.” All around them, the sky was dark with an emptiness that was hard to comprehend. It was the black of nothing, the space between worlds and time. What was left of the trees was disappearing at an alarming rate. “Let’s go,” Embry said again and began to lead them toward the portal.

  As they ran, there was a loud crack from behind them, and when Meghan turned around to see where the sound had come from, she saw that one of the tallest pine trees in the woods was falling toward them. It was so quick that they barely had time to move, but she and Embry got out the way. The tree fell onto Darren, crushing him against the ground. The breaking sound that his body made between the wood and stone was sickening. The tree wasn’t what killed him though. The mouth closed down again, taking Darren, the tree, and half of the overlook with it.

  Time was running out, and Meghan and Embry scrambled toward the portal, hand in hand. Embry was carrying Jericho. He climbed in first, and as Meghan was entering, she could feel the light behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw Darren’s angel rise up from the darkness. She watched him ascend and saw another angel flying toward him. She could see clearly that it was Valerie as they wrapped each other in their arms.

  The inside of the portal was changing every moment. It started out as a series of steps, but quickly changed to a thick abundance of tree root that ran through dirt. Salty water crashed over them. Meghan knew that like the rest of Fractus, it was coming undone. It was every portal that had ever been created wavering in and out. When the water was gone, a casket came out of nowhere and slammed into Embry. It slung him against he wall, pinning him there. He roared in agony. His wings were wide from his back. He was holding Jericho up, out of harm’s way. Meghan crawled onto Embry, trying desperately to slide the casket back to where it had come from. She managed to help him get his body free from behind the mass. Above them, there was the Earth’s moon as she helped Embry climb out of the portal.

  OCTOBER 31st

  THEY EMERGED from the portal through the ground of a small cemetery. There was screaming as Meghan and Embry were crawling out of the ground. Meghan looked and saw several costumed kids running away from the scene. There were three of them. One of them had been wearing a classic white sheet as a ghost, one’s face had been painted as a skeleton, and the third was a cowboy. She watched as they disappeared into the field and realized that it was Halloween night. The ki
ds had probably been there in that old cemetery, telling ghost stories when they had seen Meghan and Embry emerge from the ground. Meghan thought that it must’ve been terrifying, especially with Embry’s Durori form. She assumed that she and Embry would become a legend of their own as the kids ran home and told their friends what had happened to them.

  Embry was leaning back against a tombstone. Meghan was kneeled down next to him, and Jericho was pawing at his arm.

  “I’m weaker now that Fractus is destroyed,” he said. “I can’t heal myself the way that I used to.”

  Meghan felt a lump forming in her throat.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you were asking me before, about my life before all of this. I remember now and I want to show you,” he said.

  “Embry, why now?”

  “I want you to know that I was a good man.”

  His eyes erupted into a bright, blue luminescence. The light twirled around them and soon the cemetery disappeared and Meghan was placed dead center of a battle field. Explosions were going off everywhere. Dirt was being blown into the sky. There were gunshots firing all around her. She looked and saw that Embry was in one of the trenches. He was wearing a confederate soldier uniform. He had a gun held to his shoulder and was firing away. She watched as a bullet tore into his chest, flinging him onto the ground. By the time that she walked closer to where he lay in the trench, he was already panting for breath. There was a pool of dark red blood underneath him. He reached into the pocket of his breeches and pulled out a black and white photo of a beautiful, smiling woman. He traced his thumb over her. “If I don’t make it out of here, I want you to know that I love you,” he said to the photo. “And I would want you to find somebody else that you could be happy with.” A masked, cloaked figure began approaching from across the battlefield and Meghan realized that it was The Master.

  The scene turned bright blue again, and Meghan found herself in the cemetery. The battlefield had disappeared into wherever it is that past events go.

  “At first I was afraid when I saw him approaching,” Embry said. “But then I thought that just maybe he had been there to save me.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Her name was Faith,” he said. “She was my wife, and I loved her so very much. She was what I lived for everyday. She was my reason for being. I can’t believe that I’ve forgotten about her for all these years, or that The Master was able to take the memory of her away from me.”

  Meghan knew that Embry would have died from the gunshot wound that day. According to what Thomas had told her and what she had seen of his former life, if she would have changed him back then time would have caught up and he wouldn’t even be alive. “I caught a glimpse of a house through those trees. Let’s try to get there.”

  She helped him to his feet and put her arm around his waist. In tandem, he flung his arm around her shoulder as she helped to guide him. As they walked, he changed from his Durori form into one that was strikingly human. The closer to they got to the house, the clearer its structure became. It was just like the plantation house where they had lived in Fractus. In fact, it was like all of the houses in Fractus, and Meghan knew without a doubt that all of those had been created to be an exact replica of this one. It was Rimbault Plantation that they were walking toward.

  THORN WAS sitting on the back porch of the plantation house. It was a pleasantly cool October night. There was a light breeze in the air that caused the tree branches and tall weeds to sway. The dry leaves on the trees caused a soft rustle and several fell to the ground. The amphitheater was close enough that he could hear Mandy playing through the trees just like the Rimbaults had been able to hear the banjos from the slave quarters long ago. Even from the distance, she sounded good. It was nice to hear her twang ridden voice with a full band of instruments backing her up. It had been a longtime dream of hers to stand on a stage in front of thousands of people, and now she was living it. Thorn felt confident that her musical career would only progress by leaps and bounds from that night on. Since the concert was sold out, to hear her was the reason why he had come to the house.

  Sitting in the same spot where Stanwood had often sat gazing across the fields and using the patterns of clouds and the goings on of birds to predict the weather, Thorn flipped through the Apps on his phone. He checked the hour by hour weather for the rest of the night, just to make sure that the remainder of Mandy’s show was in the clear, and then he checked the extended forecast. There was no rain in sight. He looked at the local news and played a video from that night’s broadcast.

  The news reporter was a heavy set man. He was wearing a blue shirt and black tie. “In what could have been a Halloween nightmare for neighborhood kids has sent area residents into a state of worry. It was here,” he was standing in front of a park, “that it happened.” There was a shot of the playground equipment. The sliding board and swing set were collapsed and leaning over into a deep hole that was in the ground. “But luckily, since it is trick-or-treat night, there were no kids in the park at the time. The sinkhole is the third today within a thirty mile radius. Local scientists say that the recent amount of rainfall and the type of ground,” he stomped his foot, “that is in the area could be a contributing factor.” A map popped up on the screen, showing three pulsating, red dots among crisscrossing lines of streets, indicating the locations of the sinkhole phenomenon.

  There was movement through the camellia trees to Thorn’s left. When he spun his head around, he saw that it was two people emerging from the darkness. The unexpected sight of seeing anyone else out there was frightening. He stood from his seat and the cell phone clattered to the porch floor. As the couple approached, he could see that it was a man and woman. They were looking like they had been through the ringer. Each of them was dripping wet. There bodies were caked with dirt and what looked like blood. The man wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the woman’s was plastered to her body and ripped in several places. The moonlight sparkled against the obnoxious, glittery heart that had been emblazoned across the front. Thorn could tell that the man had been hurt because the woman was practically holding him up and helping him along. There was a small dog tucked into the man’s arm.

  “What were they saying?” The woman asked as they continued to walk closer.

  “Who?” Thorn asked, taking a step back.

  “On your phone,” she said. “I heard them say something about sinkholes.”

  “There’s been three of them already today,” Thorn answered back.

  By then, the woman and man were standing in front of him, near the edge of the porch. “Is there a map or something that shows their path?”

  Thorn bent over, picked up his phone, and searched. “There’s this from one of the local stations.” He held the phone out toward her.

  Meghan took the phone from him and looked at the map that was on the screen. Lowering the phone, she looked at Embry. “It’s headed this way,” she said. Her voice was full of worry. “It’s not going to stop until it gets the Fractus box.” She looked toward the line of trees at the far end of the field. “Is that music coming from an amphitheater?”

  Thorn nodded.

  “How many people are there?” The tone of her voice worsened.

  Thorn shrugged his shoulders. “Thousands,” he said. “It was sold out.”

  “The amphitheater is directly in its path to get here,” Meghan stated. “All of those people will die if we don’t stop it. Are you a Rimbault?”

  Thorn nodded. “I know this may sound crazy and all, but I know exactly what you’re talking about here,” he said.

  “You were the one to release it?”

  Thorn nodded again. “It is believed that only a Rimbault that has fallen in love can open the door and gain access to the box,” he said.

  “We can arrange that,” Meghan answered.

  The three of them went into the house. Meghan eased Embry onto the floor where he sat up, leaning against the wall. He held onto Jericho. Thorn stood across from them
, next to the cellar door. Meghan pulled one of the arrows out of the bag that was over her shoulder.

  “These arrows are magical. They are what the Durori use to mark people with so that they will fall in love. It’ll only hurt for a moment,” she said.

  Thorn lifted his shirt.

  Meghan raised the arrow behind her head. She hesitated for a moment. What if it kills him, she wondered. When she brought the arrow down onto Thorn’s chest, right at his heart, he cried out in pain, and his hands instinctively went to where the arrow had penetrated him. Meghan pulled the arrow back out, and blood trickled from the open wound. She stepped back. From within the wound on Thorn’s chest, there was glowing, red light. Thorn lowered his hands. It was evident to Meghan that the pain was disappearing.

  Thorn turned from her and stepped closer to the door. He reached out his hand and placed it in the center of the etched heart. The heart lit in a red glow and there was the sound of locks clicking within the door frame. Since the locks had been in the same position for over two centuries, the sound was loud in the quiet house. Thorn tried the doorknob and it turned. He pulled the door open. The air that escaped smelled exactly like a cellar that had been shut up for over two hundred years should. Thorn went through the door.

  The steps were dark. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and used it to light his way. Directly ahead, at the bottom of the steps, he could see what he knew was the Fractus box. After picking it up, he looked around the space. To his horror, there was a skeleton that was sitting in a chair. He knew that it must have been Stanwood. He hurried back up the stairs. Meghan had sat down next to Embry and pulled herself close. It was obvious that Embry was getting weaker with each moment that passed.

  “We’re going to stay here,” Meghan said.

  With the box held tight in his hand, Thorn ran out of the house, pounded down the steps and jumped into his car.

  From where Meghan and Embry were sitting on the floor, they could hear the slamming of the car door and the tires as they spun out from the dusty driveway.