Encountering Darkness Page 7

  Amy struggles to stop shaking, but she closes her eyes and falls asleep. She is asleep for what seems to be a long time.

  Amy still has her eyes closed, but she hears voices in the background. It is the boy and girl. She tries to hear what they are saying, but she cannot hear very much. The most she comprehends is, “Should we tell her?” Strange she would only hear that statement because now she wanted to know more.

  Amy rolls over to where the voices are, but sees no one.

  “Hey, where are you?”

  There is silence for a few moments, and then the boy speaks, “You are going crazy Amy, we are right in front of you. The question should be where are you?”

  “What? I’m right here, but where are both of you?”

  “We have always been here, from beginning to the end.”

  Amy hears a loud thump and a yell from the boy. “Hey that was unnecessary!”

  “No, it was necessary,” states the girl, “You are the one who’s crazy and you’re only confusing this poor dear.”

  Amy has to shake her head in disbelief. The boy, acts like a boy, a jerk–a boy really and the girl acts like a caring women.

  What was going on?

  “Okay, so I’m going to count to ten and both of you are going to appear, then, I can breathe easily.”

  “You are already breathing tho…” The boy continues, but another thump ensues.

  “Stop that,” says the girl. “We are already here, and you are already here. You cannot see us, but we can see you. You are not crazy, but you are in danger, and you need to get away from here. We cannot help you; you are not on your own, but you do not know it yet. We thought for sure your friend would continue to follow the help, but he strayed. Because of his failure to follow, he is now gone for good. Let it be a lesson to you, my little one. You must follow the voice of truth.”

  “But how do I know which voice that is?”

  “You can never be sure, but it is a voice that is hard to hear and easy to ignore.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” Amy says while shaking her head.

  “It makes sense, but not to you right now. Your friend made the wrong choice. He is gone because of his choice. There is nothing we can do for him now, but we can help you find the way.”

  “What is the way?”

  “Right.”

  “You mean this way?” and Amy turns her head to the right to determine.

  “No, we mean that the way is right.”

  Frustration fills Amy. “What does that mean anyways? Just tell me what to do.”

  “You already know what to do; it is what your father did long ago.”

  “My father disappeared and left me. He said he was hearing voices, and everyone thought he was going crazy. You’re saying he was not crazy?”

  “My child, your father was crazy, in a sense, but that’s what it takes to find the way. You will go through many trials, and it will be quite hard, but I believe you have a chance, unlike your friend.”

  “You mean there is hope I can make it to where my father is?”

  “Yes, but it is more than that.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Follow the voice, when it tells you to move, move; when it tells you to stop, stop.”

  “What if I follow the wrong voice?”

  “Then you die like your friend.” The boy states quickly so the girl can not stop him.

  The girl sighs, but soon after states, “He sadly is right, you must follow the voice, or I’m afraid you could be gone too.”

  “Can you both help me? I'm not sure what to do.”

  Amy waits for a response, but after a few minutes of asking and waiting, she hears nothing in response. At this point, Amy sighs and rolls over in the grass to her left.

  “Ouch!” Amy screams and quickly rolls over back to her right. Her back hurts immensely and she gets up to examine what she rolled onto. Looking at the location, and because of the tall grass, she cannot make out what happened, so she moves on her knees and works her way through the brush. She comes across a large metal object and after picking it up, she notices it is a shield.

  This could come in handy, Amy thinks to herself.

  Now the shield has dirt covering it, but Amy can tell this is from a different tribe than hers. The shield is light, and she can tell it is made by a skilled craftsman.

  Amy looks around at her surroundings and finds there are fields as far as the eye can perceive. She turns every way to see where she came from in regards to the forest. She even looks for Pete, but recognizes that he, too, cannot be found.

  After looking around for a while, she spots something far in the distance, so far, that she cannot tell what it might be.

  Amy makes her way towards the something. As time passes on, she notices it is a building of some sort, and she also notes that the sun is much lower in the horizon than what Amy expects, so she runs.

  She glides through the grass in her warrior dress, a summer dress every warrior wears during the heat of the year. Even as Amy is in top shape, being a warrior with great skills from her tribe, she realizes she does not tire from running and she moves quickly.

  It is as if the grass helps me, pushing me along. Amy pushes this thought away because she understands the sun is setting and continues to run with quicker strides.

  As Amy makes her way to the building, she runs clear around the building to find the door. After looking around the whole building, she cannot find any opening.

  This building is simple, made of brick and is a decent size, but Amy wonders if she is imagining the building, so she walks up to it and touches it. The building feels cold to the touch, but when she does touch it, something happens. Words appear.

  A story of old would help you here; this building is impenetrable to everything. Walk around this building 7 times then scream; it's possible something might appear.

  “Well, that's just stupid,” says Amy out loud. “That makes no sense.”

  Amy takes her hand from the wall and the words disappear. She puts her hand back on the wall, but the words do not come back.

  Seeing that the sun has almost set, and she has no other options, she does as the writing on the wall says and walks around the building.

  After walking around the building 7 times, she stops and then screams as loud as she can. She continues to scream until all the air departs her lungs.

  “Yeah that did n.…”

  Amy stops speaking, because in front of her, a door appears. Amy runs to the door and tries to open it. It opens with ease, and she steps inside.

  Inside, everything is dark and quiet. She searches the side of the wall for a light switch, then realizes that this world does not have electricity. It is at that moment, something else clicks in her. Amy remembers light switches and electricity, but how? And why?

  She laughs at herself and turns around to walk out the door, but the door closes. Amy runs to the place where the door once was, but finds it is now just a wall. She is in complete darkness and turns her back once again to the wall and rests her back on it.

  “What do I do now? I need light!”

  With those words there appears a bright glow that fills the room with light. The shadows on the walls scatter. She looks to her left, to where the source of the light is, and finds the shield glows brightly. In fact, it is too bright to gaze at for long.

  The room she is in is not too wide, but quite long. She cannot make out the end. The walls are empty, as is the whole room. The floor is a grayish rock color; she touches it and it is cold. At that moment, she realizes there is a cool draft coming from the direction she faces. Amy moves forward towards the draft.

  As she makes her way across the hallway, she looks back to which she came. She cannot see the wall on the side to which she came and, although she has been moving through this hallway for a while, still cannot see anything but moving darkness in front of her.

  Amy has the strange sensation something watches her. The things watching her d
o not want her here. She looks around in all directions. There is nothing in the hallway, but still the strange fearful sensation remains. She remembers an old poem that her father use to tell her when she was afraid. It went something like this:

  Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me.

  Amy now wonders who the 'you' is in that poem. She cannot remember, it seems so long ago, like a different lifetime.

  She continues to make her way in the hallway, and with each step, which brings her more fear, she stops and mumbles to herself. “I am a Gheon warrior! I have been through worse things than this. I can do this!”

  She continues to move once again, but she hears whispers. At first she cannot hear what they say, but they grow louder as time passes on. Soon she can understand the whispers jeering.

  “I am a Gheon warrior. Hehe. I have been through worse things than this. I can do this. Hehe.”

  The voices mock her, and soon they shout from all around her.

  She stops in fear and looks around.

  The shadows are moving! She thinks to herself. They are real and alive!

  Amy panics and hyperventilates. She cannot keep moving forward, nor is she able to turn around. She is stuck in fear and cannot move, so she falls to the ground on her knees. Something pushes her down! She looks up. There are shadows coming towards her on the ceiling too! Whatever it is, it makes it hard for her to move and breathe, like there is a thousand living things in the room, and they are all taking up space.

  “Please!” She whispers with her face now on the ground. “I cannot do this alone.”

  She soon after remembers the conversation she had with the two children and she pleads for their help.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Amy awakens in a daze and tries to move her body, but she cannot. With her head also fixed in place, she can only move her eyes. Her legs are sprung high in the air with her head close to the ground, but she is off the ground. She is at a 45-degree angle to the ground with her body being straight. Amy moves and tries to cry out, but her lips do not move.

  Her body makes its way into a room and she can see an end table with a lamp on top of it. Footsteps are heard from a distance and then two human legs appear in front of her. Amy can only see from the knees down. She hears a voice say to her: “Do not listen to your advisers.”

  With a startle she awakes on the cold floor. Amy grabs her head, and tries to remember where she is. She lifts up from off the floor. As she stumbles to her feet, she realizes that she can now see everything in this hallway. She looks all around her. In every direction she can make out the floors, the walls, and the ceiling. Amy looks at the ground, finds the shield, and picks it up, but this time she notices an inscription on the back of the shield.

  The shield glows in time of need and gives light to shadows. Be wary of the shadows, for you cannot fight them and the shield cannot help you.

  Amy puts the shield back on her left arm and moves on to the door at the far end.

  After taking a step she stops.

  Amy wonders, The hallway is not that large. I felt like I moved for hours before and never made it to the door, but now the door on the opposite side is only a few feet away. What could make this so?

  Amy then thinks of the strange dream she had. I feel like the dream was real, but who are my advisers?

  Amy shrugs off the thought and opens the door. The light from the shield fills the room and she notices a table in the middle of the room. She walks to the table and finds a necklace on top. Amy grabs the necklace off the table and feels a warm sensation go through her body. She looks at the charm that is on the necklace, but there is nothing special about it. It is a standard necklace and she puts the necklace around her neck.

  At once, in front of Amy appears a door. She moves to the door that stands right in the middle of the room and looks at both sides. There is a door handle on either side, and Amy wonders which end she is suppose to go through. As she contemplates, her neck begins to burn. She grabs for the necklace, but finds it is not around her neck; it has burned its way into her skin.

  Amy now in extreme pain, is on the ground and screaming. She tries to get the necklace off of her.

  At once the pain stops and she grabs for the necklace around her neck, but still cannot find it.

  Amy sighs and pushes off the ground. The doorway with two entrances is still right in front of her.

  She opens one of the doorways and steps inside.

  Her body twists and warps as she enters. She feels a quick cooling sensation and recognizes she is moving into a different world. This world differs from her own, and she is not sure what the different buildings that are forming in front of her are, but soon, the buildings disappear.

  She looks at the ground she is on and realizes it is firm. She cannot remember ever stepping on this type of ground before. Amy notices that the color of the ground is black. The smell coming from it differed from what she had ever experienced. She looks about herself and finds she is in the middle of a long stretch of a black surface with yellow line marks.

  Amy, bending at her knees, reaches down and touches the ground. She is in awe, and has a shocking expression on her face, as she looks from the ground to the surrounding area.

  She steps to the other side of the black surface and stops in front of a sign. The sign has a drawing on it, and as she continues to stare at it, she begins to remember she use to know what the drawings meant.

  What was this called? This must be a type of way for people to write down what they spoke. Like what her tribe would do. Although, the words are all strange and don't look like anything she has ever seen before.

  Turning to the left and right, looking past the sign, Amy sees only a long stretch of nothing. On either side of the black path are trees, which slope down from the path.

  Amy turns around and heads towards the middle of the black path and turns right, when, there is a loud noise to her left, and then silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Amy wakes up in a gasp and finds she is on the floor. Straight behind her is the doorframe, and she tries to reach for it, but finds she cannot move. Her head and her body will not respond to what she thinks. She panics and realizes that she cannot feel anything, from her head down, but the pain in her head is unbearable.

  There are voices all around her. They are whispering terrible things inside her head, telling her things like, “It's over, just give up, there is nothing you can do, look how you failed. She sees a darkness begin to fill the room, but the voices and the darkness disappear.

  After a few moments, Amy notices she is not the only person in the room. In front of her she sees a white light moving back and forth. She cannot tell what this is, except that the light is bright and it cannot be looked at.

  The bright light moves towards her and flies past.

  At that moment, the door to her back opens and Amy hears shrieking. The outer door to the place opens, and soon after there is silence.

  The silence is painful, but Amy hears a pair of soft footsteps. The steps are running towards her, and she can understand words coming from them. It is the voice of the kids.

  “Get up Amy! Get out, you are not safe here! Quickly!”

  Amy gets up, without realizing it, grabs the shield, turns around, and heads straight through the doorframe, and then through the door to the room. She stops for a few seconds at the entrance to the hallway, but taking a deep breath, she runs as fast as she can through the hallway to the open door at the end.

  She reaches the door and rushes through. Enjoying the bright light on her skin and the fresh breeze, she runs a short distance from the building and collapses onto the grass.

  What just happened? She asks herself.

  She looks herself over and she seems to be okay.

  Amy takes a few minutes to recuperate and falls asleep.

  ***

  When she wakes up, the sun shines bright and she hears birds around h
er. I must be okay! Perhaps this was all just a dream!

  Amy stands up and looks around. She sighs and shakes her head as she spots the building she ran from yesterday, and puts her head down on her hands as she begins to weep. She hasn't cried for ages, a Gheon warrior doesn't cry, but since she believes she is alone, she doesn't care.

  Once Amy is done sobbing, she still is not sure what to do. She looks all around her. There is the building in front of her, but nothing else. As far as the eye can perceive, there are trees, grass, and some very distant hills.

  Amy walks up to the building and looks for a door. Not finding one, she touches the same area she touched yesterday, but nothing appears. She runs around the building 7 times and yells like before, but a door doesn't appear.

  Amy realizes she needs to get back to that land she was in for a short time yesterday, but there seems to be no way back the way she came.

  She turns around again and rests her back on the wall looking out from the building. She looks and waits for something to happen. Then she remembers!

  “The kids will know what to do!” she says aloud.

  Amy calls out for them, but after a while she gives up after hearing no response.

  She realizes she is hungry, so she walks away from the building and heads towards one tree. As she makes her way through the tall grass, she looks about herself to make sure someone is not following her and to determine where she is. As she looks about, she is aware of a strong tug on her left hand. The shield falls from her hand and she trips over it, landing with the left side of her face hitting the ground first. Even as she is in a daze, a rush of excitement stores up in her.

  There in front of her is the shield. She grabs it and instinctively studies the back of it. The words from yesterday are gone and new words are in its place.

  “Yup…it's over.”

  “Now what does that mean?” Amy asks aloud.

  She looks again at the shield and new words form once again.