Chapter 20 #2
“Think, Meadow,” I order myself. I have to do something and fast or I’m going to get ripped apart by these things. Fog rises up around me making it hard to see exactly where the tentacles are. They’re there and then they’re not with the next swirl of fog.
“Trust yourself, Meadow.”
I look down and see the warm glow of the bond I have with Jaak.
It shoots out from me and into the fog, the light gone when it’s hardly a foot away from me.
I could follow it to him. He’d figure this out but…
but…I’m the backup Charlie summoned, aren’t I?
Didn’t my best friend face down scarier things to save me?
And Jaak soul-bonded me, nothing can hurt me, at least not indefinitely.
“Trust yourself,” I whisper and close my eyes. Granted it’s not the best locale for a soul-searching moment but one should always make lemonade out of lemons, or in this case, give a tentacle a black eye to save her husband.
I take in a steadying breath as the sound of the tentacles comes faster.
It’s close, it’s looking for me in the fog too.
It has to be or it would have found me by now, and that’s when I realize something.
It can’t see any better than me in this fog.
That’s an opportunity I can make use of.
I back up and move into the aisle behind me.
The move comes just in time as a tentacle slaps down where I just was but I don’t give it much thought.
There’s something happening, it’s just the barest brush, so light that I might have missed it if I wasn’t desperate for it.
“Clear your mind,” I whisper again to myself and sink down to my knees. I don’t know where Jaak is. I can’t hear him anymore. The only noise I hear is the drag of the tentacles, the whipping sound they make as they cut through the air and shelves crashing to the ground.
“Meadow, you can do this. You can do this.” I reach out like I did before for the power I know is out there, that I know belongs to me.
Fear washes over me and this I know, this I understand.
I’ve been scared all my life from my dreams and through every hour.
Fear is well known, my constant companion.
I have always, always, run from what scares me.
I’ve done everything I can to hide from what scares me but not this time.
Not this time.
I’m not going to run. Jaak is right, sometimes you need to take a stand and fight.
I take in a deep breath and let it out, and give myself over to whatever is about to happen.
My mind goes silent and the sounds stop like a light someone flipped off.
I take a deep breath and sink deeper into the silence.
When I was a kid, I used to pretend that I was an adventurer or princess waiting to be rescued by her prince charming.
It was easy to slip and fall, break a leg or sprain an arm, I knew that but it didn’t stop me.
That edge of fear and danger worked itself into me bit by bit that I learned not to freeze.
I learned to keep climbing and turn off my brain.
The older I got, I climbed jungle gyms and trees, higher and higher up.
I moved on from jungle gyms and treehouses to the tops of buildings.
My favorite had been the Hall of Worship because it was the tallest in town.
I’d climb out on the roof and go higher until my fingers ached from holding my weight when it was too steep to stand.
I’d lay there and watch the sun go down and the stars come out.
It was so still and quiet in those stolen hours that I swore I could hear the earth move.
Right now is just like that.
Fear. Danger. Anxiety.
All of it rolls itself together until I can’t tell one from the other, it remakes itself, swallows me whole, and forces me to become something new too. The end result?
Power.
The lesson I learned as a girl comes back tenfold now.
The only way to get through the fear is to own it, to go through it and not around.
Only then does it become something useful.
Power hums and snaps through my body, making me feel like I’m coming apart and being forced back together all at once, like a rubber band that’s been stretched too tight until it finally snaps back to where it should be.
The power floods in more, so do other things.
Memories.
I see Jaak’s home. I know it’s his home, it’s the one I saw before but now it feels like my home.
Lush, verdant, peaceful. There’s a song being sung in my ear while I’m being rocked, no, we’re being rocked.
Mother. She sings of happiness and sleep, of the good tomorrow will bring.
I’m calm, so safe. I see her again, the way her hand fits over mine as we walk through a field filled with flowers.
They’re orange and red, they look like the sun.
Delicate petals slide beneath my palms when I hold my hand out as we walk.
Everything changes and goes cold and there’s screams and the heat of a fire on my face. I’m too small to do anything but scream. The fields of flowers are on fire, my mother is gone. There’s no one left.
No one.
No one but me and then the man who comes. He crouches down to look at me and smiles. His face is wrong. There’s hate in his eyes, so much hate that I can feel it but I don’t move. He’s the only one here, there’s nowhere for me to go.
He flips a coin and smiles at me.
“I’ll make you a deal.”
“Meadow.”
My eyes snap open and air rushes back into my lungs.
I wasn’t breathing. I don’t know if it was only a second or an hour.
However long it was, I didn’t move a muscle, not even to breathe.
I get to my feet and look around the foggy toy store for whatever is out there yapping at me.
I don’t feel the same but that’s because I’m not.
Anger burns bright in my veins when I hear my name again.
“Meadow.”
It’s not Jaak calling to me, it’s the garbled voices, the hundred voices that sound like they can’t decide if they’re screaming or speaking. Definitely the tentacle monster. I stalk through the aisle and towards where I last saw the tentacles.
“Get out here and show yourself,” I demand and wave a hand in front of my face to get rid of some of the fog. “Also, can you go easy on the fog machine? It’s really giving middle school dance if I’m being honest.”
I’m a liar. I’ve never been to a middle school dance with fog, but I saw it once on TV so it has to be true.
There’s a growl and a rumble as a tentacle goes flying in the air towards me. “Silence! Run while you can!”
I don’t bother listening to the tentacle. When the tentacle gets close enough to me I grab hold of it and pull. The voices let loose an inhuman roar, so I pull more. I pull so hard that I feel the exact moment the tentacle rips and comes clean off in my hands.
I fall back on my ass and toss the tentacle away. “Gross.”
“You dare harm me! I am centuries old, the servant of-”
“Of Toys ‘n Things? So does that make you like an assistant?”
“You insolent girl!”
A tentacle comes whipping out of an aisle and right behind it I see the shadowy forms of what I think is an army of toys. There’s all kinds of toys on the move, action figures, dolls, a remote control car, if it’s stocked in the store it’s on the move.
Behind me there’s a few thuds. I slowly start to spin in a circle to see each aisle has come to life.
Lights flash in some and electronic beeps come from others.
A basketball goes flying at my head. I have half a second to dodge it, which I go to do but it turns out I don’t have to move at all because a hand comes out to catch the basketball.
It’s a very big hand, so big that it makes the basketball look small.
It’s not just any hand, it’s covered in a dusting of hair, and attached to a muscular arm that’s also hairy but… no, it’s not hair.
It’s fur.
It has to be because when I look up at the person’s face it’s not a person, it’s not jus a person.
It’s a bull. I blink and try to process the fact that I’m now looking at a big man with the head of a bull, or at least I think it’s a bull?
Ivory horns curve up towards the ceiling, brown and black fur move when he turns to look at the tentacles still writhing and moving through the store.
His head is big but so is the rest of him.
He’s at least two feet taller than me, I’ve never seen anyone this big before.
Broad shoulders and a sculpted torso lead down to a trim waist and thick thighs.
I take a step closer to get a look at him.
The tentacle monster could throw a dozen basketballs at my head and I wouldn’t notice.
He has a maw like a bull, broad flat nose curving down to meet their mouth and a sharp jawline and muscular neck.
I don’t know what this being is but I know he’s beautiful.
There’s a severity to him, a kind of gravitas that I used to feel when the cult leaders made us pray to our god.
The one they swore kept the world spinning.
It’s a heady thing to think you’ve cracked the code, that you’ve been chosen by a god, the god, and it’s your words and prayers that fill their ears.
It’s exhilarating, overwhelming and electrifying.
I’m awestruck.
In those moments, I felt the way I do looking at this mix of man and beast. I never thought I would feel that way again but here in this demonic possessed toy store it’s found me once again. He turns his head to me and all it takes is one look at his eyes flashing silver and I smile at him.
“Jaak?”
He squeezes the basketball and the basketball pops, the air coming out in a long, sad whistle. Jaak drops the ball and takes a step closer to me. “Yes, it’s me.” He ducks his head, almost like he’s trying to shrink into himself and I don’t understand it.
“You didn’t tell me you would become this,” I tell him.