Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
“Meadow!” Charlie yells. He runs to me and drops to his knees beside me. “Are you okay?”
Above me the stars spin and swirl in the sky.
It takes me blinking a few times before they come into focus.
I don’t think anything is broken. I pat myself down and take a mental inventory of my body searching for any injuries, but I’m okay.
The only thing sore is my backside. I definitely landed on my ass. Thank the gods.
I cough and suck in a lungful of air. Sweet, sweet, life giving air. “Mostly. I think. Are you okay?”
“Fuck no, I got knocked like ten feet back. Almost landed on my knife.”
“What?” I jackknife up and look at him. There’s twigs and leaves in his hair and I can see dirt smeared on the side of his face. “Are you hurt?” I reach out to start patting him down but a roar stops me.
I turn to look at the rock. The place where I blasted my energy glows bright silver in the moonlight. It’s not as bright as it was when my magic first hit the stone, and it’s growing fainter by the minute. There’s a flicker and I see a shadow cross the opening.
“Uh…what is that?” I whisper.
“I think it’s a dinosaur,” Charlie whispers and helps me to my feet. “I hope it’s a dinosaur.”
The growl sounds again. It’s louder and this time there’s a thud.
The sound of rock against rock. It happens again and debris flies out of the fissure.
It takes me a second before I realize whatever is in the boulder just chucked a rock at the fissure.
Another rock smashes and more rock shrapnel shoots out to land near us.
We’re fifteen or so feet away from the boulder.
Whoever is in there is strong. Real strong.
“That’s not a dinosaur. It’s a demon,” I whisper back to Charlie. “Definitely full-sized variety judging by the rocks it’s throwing.”
“It could be a dino. You never know. No one’s ever seen a living one. What if that’s what they do? What if that’s where they went?”
“Charlie-”
A roar pierces the air before we hear the voice again. “Free me. Free me now. You must make haste.”
“I didn’t-who is that? I didn’t summon something, right?
” Panic fills me at the thought. Of course the first day I’m a witch, I’d summon something by accident and nearly blast myself into next week.
For as BWIT as Charlie says I am, my handle on my powers is nonexistent.
What was I thinking coming out here to prove myself?
I should have waited for Buffy. I can’t believe that I ever thought I was going to be able to help her. I’m not a hero. I’m in too deep and-
The thing I might have summoned roars and stops my existential crisis. Charlie and I both scream and grab onto one another.
“Come closer.” A dark shadow moves and the red light vanishes. “Witchling, let me out.” It’s so close that it’s blocking the light. “Let me out if you want to live. Your end draws near.”
What the hells?
“If I want to what?” I squawk and drop to my knees to grab the mini bat that’s miraculously landed near us, but when I grab a hold of it, I see all that’s left of it is the handle.
I pick it up anyways and point the sharp end at the boulder. Maybe it’s not a demon. Maybe it’s a vampire. I could handle that. Nina says they aren’t that scary.
“What is that?”
Charlie doesn’t get to answer me. The thing does.
“Why don’t you come and see who I am, witchling. I won’t bite. You know me well, after all.”
“That feels like a lie because I don’t even know you,” I say.
“That’s absolutely a lie. Stay the fuck away from that rock, Meadow.”
I intend to do exactly what Charlie says, I really do and I think the demon or maybe vampire knows that too because when it speaks again, it has something I want.
“I can help you stop the ones you fear. The voices. Your dreams will end. I know your dreams well. You can stop the ones eating the friend you’ve brought with you.”
Eating?
It means Charlie. Somehow the demon knows all about the voices. That has to be what he means. It’s tough to say, with how scared I am and it feels like the demon is speaking in half riddles.
“What do you mean eating?” I call out.
“His mind is delicious. I’ve seen them feasttttt.”
“Wow, hey,” Charlie holds up his hands, “no one is eating my anything. I do not consent to any feasting. This is not an all you can eat buffet.”
“Your dreams are dark. They speak of worlds you’ve never walked, but I have. Memories…memories for Meadow. I know the places you have been. I know the darkness you’ve been locked in.”
“You don’t know anything,” I tell the demon but my voice shakes.
“They aren't memories.” They can’t be, is what I want to say.
There’s no way the terrible and awful things I’ve seen are real.
I don’t say it, though. I’m not certain in what I’m saying and as much as I want answers, I’m scared.
We both know it. Even in the rock the demon is running the show.
“The basement. How many years did they slide the lock in place and leave you all alone and there I was.”
In an instant, I hear the lock of the basement door click into place with a snk.
That sound echoed in my ears while I lay in the dark, counting the seconds and minutes.
I can see the basement. The pitch black that pressed down on me until I could hardly breathe.
The demon is right, I wasn’t alone when I was down there.
“Meadow, be still…”
It’s a voice from so many years ago, one that I started to rely on more than I should have considering I thought it was a figment of my imagination and proof I was finally losing it. So how does the demon know all about it?
“How do you know about that?”
“At my age I know many things. At my age I’ve seen many things. You most of all.”
“You know a lot of things? Except getting out of a boulder? Big yikes, buddy!”
A terrifying roar rips from the rock in answer to Charlie’s sass.
I jab my elbow into his ribs. “Charlie, come on. Don’t piss the demon off,” I tell him but I’m grateful he did mouth off. He snapped me out of my shitty childhood memory and brought me back to the present.
“What? This isn’t good cop, bad cop? That’s what we’re doing, right? I’m the bad cop here. You’re obviously good cop.”
I take in a deep breath and shake my head. “I love you but you’re insane.”
He throws his hands out. “Obviously. That’s why I was able to convince you to come out here.”
I chuck the handle of the mini bat at Charlie and turn my attention back to the rock.
“Ignore my idiot friend. How do you know what’s happening with him?
Who’s eating his brain? H-how can you help us?
” I ask, tacitly avoiding any mention of my dreams or the voice that whispered in the dark.
One crisis at a time and right now we’re dealing with Charlie’s brain being eaten.
“Free me first, witchling. Then you’ll have the answers you seek.”
“Why should I trust you? You’re a demon.”
“Demon or not, you know me and you know I do not lie. Make haste, witchling. Tick tock. The clock runs fast and your dreams are coming for you again. There’s a tie between you and I.”
I nearly puke when he says that. Yes, he, because I can tell from the tone of his voice that he is a he, and if he knows about the dreams and the basement then has he been in my head. Is he the voice that’s whispered to me?
How many times did I answer back thinking I’d just fallen into a new dream, not a nightmare, but a proper dream.
I was never scared the times I heard the voice and I thought I was just experiencing a true dream.
If it was really him then…how is a demon in my head?
I thought only Wrath could do that, and even then there were rules.
If we invoked his name he had an all access pass to the thought factory, but this is a demon I’ve never met. At least not in the real world.
I point a shaking finger at the rock even though I’m sure he can’t see me. “You stay out of my head, and Charlie’s too, a-and no one is eating him, okay? Or I swear, I’ll go get a cement truck from town and seal you up in there like one of those scary movies.”
I wish I could name a single scary movie but I’m not good with names, and I’ve only ever seen a few of them scrunched in close to Nina on her phone.
She tells me about them while we watch. The actor’s names, where they were filmed, why the theme was important for the genre.
It’s interesting stuff even if I’m hiding behind a pillow for most of it.
“Like the one where those climbers get stuck with those mutants. Do you hear me? You’ll be crawling around in that boulder till doomsday in your very own creature feature! That’ll teach you to go into people’s dreams!”
Charlie claps in approval. “That’s ice cold. Totally bad ass threat.”
“Thanks.” I nod at Charlie before I start back in on the demon. “What do you know about my friend and why are you locked up in a rock?”
“I’m not…’locked up in a rock’,” he says with obvious effort. It seems someone doesn’t like to admit he’s been trapped when I can clearly tell he has been. “This is the gate to the Hell Maw. I’ve been…restrained.”
“Hell Maw? You mean like…hell hell?”
The Founders warned us about hell and what awaited us there if we didn’t seek absolution through Wrath and obeying the Founders' edicts. Hell was always there—hanging around our necks like a rope to be tightened at the Founders’ decision.
Any misstep or disobeyed order could land any of us on the fast track to hell.
A place of unfathomable pain and suffering, a place where our souls would be damned for all eternity, from this life to the next.
Fire shoots out of the crevasse and my mouth falls open. “What other hell is there, witch?”
In all the aftermath of the cult falling apart, hell was one of the things I thought was just a fairytale. Guess I was wrong about that. Turns out Hell is one hundred percent real. Who knew?
“What kind of demon are you? Full-sized, right?” I ask.