by J G Smith
“Now,” I urge.
Bradley almost steps out of the tent, noticing that I didn’t follow in after him, but Skye steps over and stops him. “I wanted to ask you something,” she begins, not quite happy with me. I imagine Bradley will feel the same soon.
I walk with the girl hurriedly, away from the campsite. She hands me my bag along the way and I throw it over my shoulders. “Skye thought you might need it,” she tells me, followed by, “Why didn’t you let Bradley come with?”
She struck a nerve. “He’s my person,” I tell her.
“Whatever that’s supposed to mean,” she mumbles.
I shrug it off. “We don’t actually know what we’re doing,” I remind her, “and three people are dead because of this mess. I can’t let him be number four.”
She gives me a funny look, not quite understanding my position.
Just before we arrive at the gate, a little distance from the campsite, my phone buzzes. Bzzt. Bzzt. It’s a message from Kyle. The girl looks over inquisitively.
I’m sorry for leaving, the message reads. It’s my dad. You know how he can be. I hope it didn’t ruin everything. I just wasn’t feeling it, especially with ‘Steve’.
I hit the reply key. It’s okay, I understand. BTW, Steve’s gone.
A reply comes just as quickly. Are you referring to Steve or the poser?
His response comes as somewhat of a surprise, but all-in-all makes sense. Before I’m able to reply to his message, he sends another. I have a terrible feeling he’s done something to Steve.
He has, I think to myself, but can’t bring myself to tell him.
I look up from my phone as we arrive at the gate, with the girl just in front of me, and freeze.
“Are you okay?” she asks, turning to face me.
“Yes,” I answer. “But I’m going to need you to remain absolutely still.”
“What is it?” she asks, just as a vile, throat-clicking sound fills the air. Her face goes pale. “Can you see it?”
“Yes,” I reply, softly.
“Well… What is it?” she asks, raising her voice slightly.
“Shh,” I hush. “It’s a gilligator.”
She tries asking more questions, but I put my left index finger to her lips. That’s interesting, I think to myself, feeling a tingle in my finger, heart and… Get a grip, Robert. This isn’t the place.
Her nose then begins to twitch.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
The lanky reptile cocks its head ninety degrees and flares its faded blue scales. It’s most intimidating feature is its razor-sharp teeth, rumoured to be able to clean the flesh off of any animal.
I put my phone into my pocket and “Achoo!” The girl sneezes.
The gilligator jumps onto the gate hissing and, in a fright, I stretch out my right arm and move my left to hold the girl. A spike of electricity escapes my fingertips and electrocutes the reptile, leaving it seemingly lifeless on the ground.
A dull ache then runs from my neck to my fingers. What just happened? I think to myself. Where did that come from? And—Breathe, Robert. I remember the incident in the restroom, leading to the experience with the ghost. It’s related. Something inside of me is causing this to happen. Is this what Lighkame is looking for?
“Is that all?” belittles the girl, clearly not affected by the fact that electricity just came out of my hand. “We were standing still for that thing? It can’t be any bigger than my arm.”
“That was a fully grown gilli—”
“That thing was fully grown?” she mocks, barely able to contain her laughter. She takes the key out and unlocks the gate. “It was even on the other side.”
“Could you please not interrupt me when I’m talking?” I request, irritably.
“Yes, dad,” she replies, upsetting me even more.
“Don’t,” I demand. “Just don’t.”
“Ooh,” she teases. “Someone has daddy issues, I see. Tell me more.”
I feel my blood boil. My tongue catches in my throat and I squeeze my hands into a fist. Yet, she eggs. She keeps asking with a large grin on her face.
“Stop!” I snap. Even the next breeze moves through with caution.
“That bad, hey?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell her.
She nods her head, now a little more sensitive to the situation.
I walk through the gate. She locks it behind her and rushes ahead of me.
Now I have Stephen on my mind… and that stupid document.
CHAPTER EIGHT
STATUES AND TOMBS
At school, we’re encouraged to dream big. Ambitious career goals are incentivised to encourage our generation to seek out advancement and discovery. That’s something Lithon is lacking at the moment. According to Gaianasian Discovery, my favourite what’s what television show, there hasn’t been a new invention or finding in almost one hundred years.
Some believe we’ve unearthed all there is to unearth and learnt all there is to learn. I don’t – not by a longshot. If we leave out the anomalies I’ve recently experienced and look only at the Phantom Forest, there is still much we don’t understand. The presence of wild and feral animals is only one reason we’re kept from going inside; remnants of a lost civilisation is another.
I remember Dylan and I fantasising, in our history class, of being archaeologists and anthropologists. We’d be the heroes to unveil the mysteries of the ages. We’d be the first to uncover what happened to the people who lived in the forest before – the Mai.
“Where do we go from here?” asks the girl as we reach the river.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I thought you were leading us.”
“I’ve been following you,” she says.
“What?” I return. “You rushed ahead of me.”
The two of us start to panic. It’s been the blind leading the blind. To add on top of that, my phone begins to ring and it isn’t someone I’m ready to speak with now.
“Who is it?” asks the girl.
“Bradley,” I reply, barely able to let his name out.
Just as it stops, it starts again. He isn’t giving up.
“Aren’t you going to answer?” she asks.
“And tell him what?”
“You didn’t want him to come,” she reminds me, unsympathetically.
As it stops the second time, I turn it off and put it into my bag. We should be out of range soon enough, but I can’t bear another phone call.
The girl shakes her head.
“What?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she moves on and suggests crossing the river.
“Do you realise how cold that water is?” I ask, flabbergasted by her proposal.
She doesn’t seem fazed. She hands me her scarf, boots and socks, and enters the water, without even a shiver. “Keep that in your bag for me,” she says (it doesn’t sound like she’s asking).
I don’t have much of a choice, it seems. Though, I won’t be swimming over in my clothes, as awkward as it sounds. I strip down to my boxers and put my clothes and shoes in my bag. At least it’s waterproof. Mostly.
“I see you don’t have much of a colour range,” mocks the girl, already halfway across the river.
I quickly cover my groin area with my bag and look down to hide the nervous expression painted on my face. Yet another reaction the girl takes for playful taunting. If things had been a little different, she may have fit in quite well with the gang and their endless jesting.
When she finally looks away from me, I hurry into the water. Instantly, the cold hits. “How do you not feel that?” I ask as she continues to swim casually to the other side.
She gives a nonchalant shrug, says she’s warm and continues. Completely normal, I think, feeding my craving for sarcasm. I lift my bag over my shoulders and begin paddling myself through the almost frozen body of water. My teeth begin to clatter. This is crazy.
She tries speaking to me from her comfortable lea
d, but I can barely hear a word. My focus is on getting to the other side as fast as possible. I don’t really know how much water the bag can take before things start getting wet inside. I don’t know how much more of this icy torture I can take.
Though, an echo returns to push me forward. The ghost. Why does this feel so important? I ask myself. Maybe because she’ll have answers? But the ghost said she wouldn’t explain to me.
After what feels like an eternity, I reach the bank of the river. The girl’s busy wringing out her hair and squeezing out as much water as she can from her clothes – still on, of course. Clean thoughts, Robert.
I take the opportunity to dry off with a towel from my bag, and change behind a tree. My boxers I wring out, fold up and put into the least cramped compartment of my bag. I won’t be wearing that anytime soon.
I bring the girl a towel, her scarf, boots and socks. She only wants the towel and her scarf.
I crouch down to put the rest away and notice a somewhat tribal tattoo on her lower left ankle – a portion of which looks similar to mine.
“It looks like we have a few things in common,” I tell her, looking back and forth between hers and mine.
It grabs her interest, momentarily, as she lets out a verbal pause. “Where did you get yours?” she asks.
With an awkward smile and a half-hearted shrug, I tell her, “I don’t know. It’s been there for as long as I can remember.” I’ve always found that quite interesting – having the tattoo grow with me.
“Same here,” she says, laughing a little. She’s trying to be funny. “At least we don’t have the dreams in common,” she adds.
“Well,” I begin, looking away and opening up about my dream – the one with Lighkame and the all-too-familiar scene.
She dries off, adjusts her scarf and curls her toes into the soft grass as she listens, rather intently.
“It sounds like Christmas,” she comments, referring to the tree and tinsel.
“What now?” I ask, perplexed.
“Christmas,” she says. Her brows twist and her lips flare with expectation.
“Are you sure that’s even a word?” I ask her.
She gets fired up. “Christmas is a celebration with gifts and singing and family and friends. It happens once a year.”
“Not on Lithon,” I break it to her. “But Falgrons, I believe, celebrate something similar.”
She hands me my towel, almost devastated. I pack it away and we slowly make our way further into the forest.
Our conversation evolves quite rapidly as we walk, stopping more than a few times to catch our breath. We talk about Skye, the electric phenomenon, her dream and my experience with the ghost. We even speak about the animals in the forest; how most of them are nocturnal predators and how confused I was seeing the gilligator awake during the day.
I try asking about her, but there’s always nothing. “I don’t know,” she says, recalling only that her favourite colour is teal (I think that’s what she said), that bit about Christmas and how strangely familiar I looked to her. That gets me ticking even more.
I look to the sky and see blue, and a hint of red; it’s late afternoon. If it gets any darker—
“There it is,” declares the girl, pointing to something in the distance. I can barely see it with all the trees, but feel a sense of relief nonetheless. We’ve been travelling for quite some time.
Her pace increases and, as I move to keep up, I notice what looks like trapdoors in the ground. Could these be Mai houses? I feel a flurry of excitement rush through my body. As the girl moves faster and faster toward the building, I fight the urge to investigate below these doors.
“Rex!” she shouts.
Who’s Rex? My focus now shifts from what could be underground houses to the girl, and whoever it is she could be speaking to.
“Hurry up!” she calls, creating even more confusion in my mind.
As I catch up, I notice her standing in awe before the building. The stone walls, rough on the edges, glimmer faintly beneath Lightaia’s now reddish rays. The large double-door, which seems to be made of a dark inya wood, takes up most of the space on the front wall. While the roof, spiralling upwards, takes centre stage. Even I’m brought to a veneration of its features.
After a moment, I remember to ask about the person she called out for: Rex. She thinks for a moment but, ultimately, ends up visibly perplexed. “The name sounds familiar,” she says, “but I was actually calling you.” There is a bit of a quarrel over who said and heard what but, unable to resolve the matter, we agree to let it slide.
“I think it’s a church of sorts,” I say, turning back to marvel at the structure.
She questions my assumptions with a quick retort before moving closer to the door. I deflect by bringing up the issue of her amnesia, attempting to destroy the credibility of her assertion. It bounces right off. “Even with amnesia,” she teases, “I’m a lot more clued up than you.” I’m left without a comeback, simply letting out a baffled gawk as she grins boastfully.
I press my hands against the sturdy door. The girl does the same. She’s on the left; I’m on the right. With a bit of effort (okay, a lot of effort) we’re able to push it open, slowly. The area over my tattoo burns as we do and, from the corner of my eye, I notice a bit of crimson light bleed through my jacket.
Distracting me, though, is the sound of each threshold scraping against the stone floor. It causes my skin to crawl, along with the equally horrendous grating from the old hinges.
The girl grabs her left ankle as we finish. Did her tattoo burn as well? I ask if she’s okay and she nods, giving it a quick rub. “Better than okay,” she says. “We’re here.”
Inside is a small room – mostly empty. The only light shining through comes from the open double-door and the apex of the spiral above. Cracked and shattered mirrors lining the walls create the illusion of more, illuminating and replicating six grey statues; three to my left, three to my right. Three women, three men.
“Wow!” she marvels, appreciating the scene. I agree, except for the cutting cold from inside. To which she seems unaffected, still. She moves carefully to investigate, looking for something specific. A way to the tomb she saw in her dream?
I, on the other hand, have my attention on the statues, made of solid stone. I’m like a kid in a candy store, leaving my bag to ogle over the scene. I imagine who these people could’ve been and what they could’ve done to have earned the honour of being immortalised this way.
One statue in particular stands out with her tight and strapless dress, slightly flared from her knees to her feet. There’s an item of clothing wrapped around her neck and over her forearms (shoulders and upper chest exposed), and forming an elegant cape of sorts on her back. Her hair is hanging loose, slightly wavy and fitted with a fair crown, barely visible from a distance.
Still, there’s something more. The look in her eyes, her posture. Something about her nose, and lips. I look at the girl and back at the statue – middle left of the room. “This one looks sort of like you,” I tell her.
Sceptical is what I get from her as she walks over, scrutinising every last detail she finds. “An older version,” I suggest, trying to defend my point. Not working.
Or so I think. She crouches down to the left of the statue, observing a slit in the dress. As I draw nearer, I notice a faded symbol on the bare ankle – much like the girl’s tattoo. I can’t help but smile. “You were saying?”
“It must be a coincidence,” she says, standing up drenched in indifference. I’m flabbergasted. I realise how strange this must be. I realise it may or may not have anything to do with her, but if there’s a chance, even the smallest. I mean, if it was me who’d forgotten everything, I’d be all over it.
“It’s not what I saw in my dream,” she says. “Oliver Curie. That’s what we’re here for.”
I’m… I’m beyond words. How can she be so naïve? I feel my blood on the verge of boiling, frustrated by her unwillingness to even conside
r anything else. But I let it go. I let her continue on her mission, despite my feelings.
She walks to the other end of the room, bringing my attention to an outline in the floor. With rather soft features, I notice its design is similar to that of the trapdoors outside; though, without any seeable way to lift or open it. “We need to go down here,” she ascertains.
The look on my face questions her sanity. “And how would you like us to do that?” I ask, voice raised to emphasise my nonplus.
“I don’t know,” she says. Her emotions are just as heightened as mine. “There must be a way to open it. Look around. Figure it out.” She’s determined, issuing orders to accomplish her task. Quite demanding, I think to myself.
I step back, not willing to let this turn into a fight. “I’ll look this side,” I tell her, turning to the statue opposite the one we discussed.
“More statues?” she fires. What is with her vehement aversion?
“Do you have a better idea?” I ask. She simply rolls her eyes in response and scans the room, looking everywhere but at the statues. I think she’s hiding something.
The light in the room settles. It’s twilight and nighlops begin beeping outside. That incessant noise.
In front of me, however, and behind the statue, is a curious array of reflections. The wall is made of shattered mirrors and reveals a different image in each shard. There is my reflection and the one from my bathroom mirror. The others look like me, but not. They keep shifting positions, acting out their own scenes. It makes me feel queasy.
I try my best to focus, but my stomach is turning—my head is spinning. What am I looking at?
I take a breath. What do you see, Robert? Three prominent reflections with a number of others dancing around them. What else? I step backwards. My eyes shuffle rapidly between the reflections and the statue. Then, as I see it, I think, How did I miss that? He, the statue, has the same haunting look as the person now accustomed to replacing my reflection. His features are the same, only older. My thoughts are rampant. Does this statue look like him or me? Or is it one and the same?
His outfit is rogue-looking, almost medieval. He has boots, gloves, trousers and a vest (with a hood hanging down) – all of which seem padded and ready for battle. Leather? Kevlar? Around his waist is a thick belt (revealing what may be a dagger’s hilt) and a tattered piece of material running down his left thigh. Well, a sculpted representation thereof.
