Chapter 5 Noon at Midnight #2
Ella turned as he tossed her something. Catching it out of the air, she examined the coin.
“It’s my lucky coin. It saved my life out in the field more than once,” he said. “Take care of it and maybe it will take care of you.”
“Thanks, Mark,” Ella said, lifting it up with a smile before he nodded to her and shut the door. She and Kay started back to the inn across the street.
“Don’t you hate that nickname?” Kay asked as they rose up the stairs and entered to pay for their rooms.
Ella balanced the coin on her hand as they waited at check in, rolling it over her fingers and back before catching it with her thumb.
“He means well,” she said.
“They didn’t when they gave it to you,” Kay said.
Ella rubbed her thumb over the scratched surface of the coin, deeply warmed by the thoughtfulness of the gift. Mark had always been a hard and gruff man, but not to her.
“His cousin was executed for murder when I was in medical training,” Ella said as Kay handled the check-in process.
They both started up the stairs to separate rooms. “It had been my turn that month to take the bodies back to their families. I had his cousin and the man he’d killed on my rotations. You know the rest.”
They started down separate hallways, exchanging glances and stopping as Kay’s expression softened. “I see what you mean,” he said, but kept looking at her, his bag hanging in his hand. Ella waited for him to keep speaking.
“Why did you start doing that?” he asked, “stitching people’s bodies back together even though they were dead already?”
Ella glanced down the hall to her room. Looking back at Kay, she added, “if you ever had someone deliver a family member to your doorstep, even if they were a criminal, you’d understand,” she said, “the world can be brutal, but it doesn’t always have to be.
I never wanted anyone to see their loved one in pieces. ”
Kay smiled. “I remember when Jade introduced me to your team. With names like Crow and Stitches, I wasn’t exactly excited.”
Ella laughed, “Don’t forget, Jade and Alex’s parents were both Madness worshippers. I think you have a type. Makes me wonder what’s wrong with you.”
Kay rolled his eyes, “No kidding. Well on that note, goodnight Stitches.”
“Night, Grape Eyes.”
“No,” he objected firmly, waving her offas they went to their separate rooms and settled in for the night.
???
Their journey started early the next morning, and getting to the forest was easy enough. They’d been warned that the thicket was too dense for the horses and they left them in Mark’s care. One thing was clearly true from the stories. The woods had been deserted.
Tunedyl forest looked ancient a thousand times over with the trees and abundant brush to speak for its years. Had one not known the stories about the woods, Ella felt that it would be easy to assume people wanted to live in the untouched woods and never return.
There was peace in the sunlit canopy, Ella and Kay discovering and rediscovering overgrown paths while Kay referenced old maps he’d pulled from the town library.
There were no bodies or bones, no sightings of cursed warriors set out to hunt them.
Ella was pleasantly surprised when they arrived at the pool with little to no disruption at all, the noon sun inching above them.
Kay double-checked the map. “This must be it,” he said, peering over the small pool of water surrounded by trees. “Suspicious we got here so easily though.”
She looked up into the canopy, spotting an old wooden ladder nailed into the tree nearest the pool. She pointed, and Kay traced the trajectory from a particularly high branch into the pool.
“You’re kidding me,” Kay breathed.
“Maybe that’s why no one makes it back,” she said, releasing a long whistle as she approached the tree to climb.
“Yeah, they misstep by an inch and hit the side of the pond. It really only just occurred to me, but what if they only threw objects down as offerings or something? Have people ever even tried this?”
“I’m sure,” Ella said, trying not to sound suspiciously confident and give away her doubts.
“For non-sacrificial reasons?” Kay replied with a nervous nudge.
“Not sure. I’m just the doer. You’re the knower.” She lifted herself up and started climbing the tree. Kay folded up the map before following her.
She scanned the terrain below as they started on the long climb, reaching a great, wide limb that extended over the pool.
There was still no sign that anyone else had been there.
Maybe the mutated man had died after all?
Or it was really just a man trying to scare people off for some reason?
Either way, the forest seemed untouched.
“So that’s it? We just jump in?” Kay asked as Ella walked out on the limb, peering over the edge. Kay balanced out with her, crouching closer to the limb so he could touch it with his fingers.
“Do you want me to push you in? Good sign is I don’t see any skeletons down there anywhere.” Ella inspected the pool below, tossing down a piece of bark and watching where it landed.
“Great to know. Thanks.” Kay said back to her dryly.
The sun was almost perfectly reflected in the pool, and Ella felt a distant, floating sensation as she stared into the ripples. Something seemed to materialize in the bottom of the pool and ease up slowly toward the surface. It glimmered like a white, reflective pan.
“What if this is the wrong pool?” Kay second-guessed, drawing Ella’s attention as he disrupted her from a hypnotic haze.
Looking back up at Kay, a flash of adrenalin shuddered through her body before she could mentally register the sight. Her body moved on its own.
“It’s not!” she shouted, charging forward and yanking Kay back just as a sword covered in vines and moss swung down over him.
She looped in front of him, she and Kay clearing enough distance to see the silent monster that appeared at their backs.
He wore moss-eaten riding boots, leather around the knees clipped into a fold by a metal plate and tied down around his ankles.
His utility belt extended to straps around his knees, carrying a set of rusted daggers.
His thick jacket was ingrown with an assortment of vines.
Crude, steel-reinforced gloves bled with rust at every joint, and most clear of all was the black and white mask, ingrown with plants, a symbol of a less peaceful time, and a much less peaceful cult.
The helmet and gear accentuated an already sizable man, and as if pulled from lore his appearance gave every impression that he was the monster worthy of the town’s tall tales.
“Jump,” Ella breathed. “Kay, you have to jump now,” she said louder, and a moment after she issued the order, a sound reverberated through her. It was like a voice, a distant echo, and instantly she saw a white table set out before her, perfectly square.
“Ella,” another voice echoed. “Ella!” it screamed, just in time for her to snap back and dodge another swing of the sword. She hurled herself back into Kay, knocking him off the limb. He shouted as he scrambled for a hold, hugging the limb as the rest of his body dangled below him.
Ella took the opening this time, drawing her gun and firing multiple shots into the chest of the ROSE. The monstrous figure grabbed her arm and slammed her back against the trunk of the tree, its strength snapping the air out of her lungs and the gun out of her grip.
“Let go!” she wheezed to Kay, gasping for breath as she loosened her knife from her belt.
“No way! I’m not the do-er remember!” Kay shouted as he kicked his feet in the air. “I’m not sure which one of us will die faster!”
The ROSE swung for her again, crushing layers of bark on the tree behind her as she ducked.
She launched herself forward from the tree.
The ROSE caught her knife in a gloved hand, her arm trembling with force as it levitated over the ROSE’s chest. Face to face, Ella sensed no waver in his breathing. The gunshots had done nothing.
She dropped her weight, coiling her body around one of his legs and shoving the other sideways at the knee.
She heard a large crack as the joint buckled down, Ella shouting as she re-directed the knife and slammed it once into the ROSE’s shoulder.
It went in halfway, she hammered it again with her fist. It sunk.
The ROSE’s body fell limp and slid off the limb, hurtling down and crashing into the brush and out of sight.
Panting heavily, Ella nodded to Kay, “I guess you would have died faster.”
Kay peered down uneasily before attempting to hoist himself back up. “I think we need to re-consider this plan,” he said. “At least you can fight. I forget you and Crow graduated together,” he groaned, kicking at the air as he tried to pull himself up. “A little help, please?”
“At least I can fight?” Ella huffed, offended as she crawled over to him and latched onto his forearm. “I’m the reason he got as good as he did,” she said, trying to heave Kay up.
She used to tease Crow that he’d have no status without her.
It had been a badge of honor to be pursued as his sparring partner.
She could have had her own Scout team had she wanted, her own glory, but she’d held back to stick with the team that she loved.
For the first time, she questioned that decision.
“Ella!” Kay said, snapping her out of another strange daze. “Quit drifting off and pull!”
Just as the words left his mouth Ella heard a loud scraping sound.
She looked back to see the monster climbing the tree again like a creature possessed.
The speed and strength of the motions were violent, the hands clawing into the tree bark with trembling force, faster than before with the knife lodged into the crook of its shoulder.
The motion jostled the limbs, the loose bark slipping under Kay’s fingers as he stared down into the water. “What if this is how they all died?” Kay exclaimed.
Ella straightened and eased away from Kay as the monster mounted the final rungs of the ladder.
“Right now, we’re running out of options!” Ella shouted.
The monster was on the limb again, swiping at her with the sword. Ella scrambled back, noticing that the blade had a vine-laden casing around it. If she could trap it--
Ella scrambled back after dodging another swing, stepping on Kay’s hands.
“Ella!” he accused as his hand came free from the branch and he fell, limbs flailing as he crashed into the pool.
Ripples still lapped below but there was no sign of him. “Sorry!” she shouted and jumped after him.
The monster dove for her, catching her in the air as they hurtled toward the water. They broke the surface hard, Ella struggling to breath as the ROSE fell into the depths with her, hands coiled around her throat.
Ella thrashed, eyes on the mask as they sunk deeper together. Lightheadedness crept into her brain as she struggled to get free, but the ROSE had a vice grip, growing tighter by the second.
Feel. Samual’s words filtered into her brain like the light drifting in from the water’s surface above her. It was so bright, and Ella remembered lying in the grass with her eyes closed in the middle of the woods. Samual always told her to feel. It had been so easy then.
Why was it so much harder now?
She stopped struggling. The feeling of timelessness intensified as she inched toward The Quiet.
As she looked at the mask of the ROSE, she could now see the curse behind it.
Dark and loathsome, it twisted and coiled like a poisonous snake around the victim’s mind.
She sensed that there was something imperfect about how it had settled on its host, like a strong tug in the right place would break its already imperfect hold.
She reached for it, extending her life like a hook as if she might filter past the curse and reel the person free. Instead, the curse uncoiled like a snake and bit her, Ella sucked into its nightmare by the venom.