by Troy McCombs
"Hold on, Jennifer!" He looked into her eyes. She managed to believe he had her. "I got you. Trust me." He assured her with a smile, got his bearings, and pulled again, this time with both hands. Every muscle in his upper body vibrated and ached, but his efforts weren't paying off.
"Come on! You have to help me. Climb!" He tried screaming over D'kourikai, whose earsplitting screech was beginning to die off.
Its face still smoldering, its head wobbling, it spewed acidic saliva from its bulging mouth. Some of the fluid sprayed dangerously close to Jennifer's back.
She propped her feet on an outcropping of wood protruding from the wall, and pushed. Her calves burned. Her feet trembled. John re-situated himself. His palms were so sweaty, he was losing his grip. It was like trying to tug an octopus by its greasy tentacle. Besides that, he was not in the right position. He needed to be standing with his feet under him, not lying on his stomach.
"Jennifer!"
"John! Don't let me go!"
He couldn't help it. He did. Her hands slid out of his. She began to fall. John felt his stomach fall with her. He thought she was a goner. I can't save anybody.
But she only ended up falling three feet before something miraculous happened. A board jutted out from the canyon in the attic floor, offering her a ledge to land on. It was small, stable, and intentionally produced by some nearby, benevolent force intended to save her life.
Jennifer stumbled, her hands still skyward, where John grabbed them. He was now standing, with a look of resolution on his face. He yanked her out of the hole with ease.
They ran to the staircase, which was now open. Jennifer darted down, but John looked back at D'kourikai, who was now shaking off its injury, its sharp roar fizzling out. And standing near It, dressed in old, nineteenth-century clothes, was the apparition of an adult male figure who looked familiar to John.
It was the ghost of Charles Prestillion.
He looked sad, pleased, tormented, and peaceful all at once. He nodded to John right as John left the attic, as if thanking him.
Forgetting the manifestation microseconds later, Rollings tumbled down the attic steps and landed by Jennifer's feet. She quickly helped him up. They then ran down the main set of steps and out through the front door, into the clearing, where some fifty soldiers were waiting for them.
John did not stop running, nor did Jennifer. They continued to flee from the house like it was going to explode. Vaul watched them retreat toward the main road of Mayberry, wondering who the Native American woman was and how she'd gotten here. Meanwhile, a young, bald soldier standing by the porch walked up to the door and peeked inside the dreadful house, in awe. Another nearby soldier, a small-chested woman with a big nose, saw him getting too close. Her mouth dropped open and a scream came out: "Jimmy!!"
Vaul swung his head back to the house, eyebrows raised. "Geeeeeeet awaaaaaay!"
It was as if a bomb had gone off. Chaos was the first reaction, the united connection rushing through everybody in one moment's notice. The young bald gentleman peeking inside the doorway was sucked into the dark house like an ant into a vacuum. He didn't even have the chance to grunt. However, another noise resonated loudly.
Spissssssh!
Every window of the house exploded at the same time. Glass scattered, tinkling down toward everyone in the vicinity of the clearing. Some people covered themselves; others turned away or ran. John finally stopped by a tree near the northernmost corner and looked back to see what was going on. Jennifer stopped farther ahead and did the same. Shards of the sharp, shiny matter fell like confetti, spreading out as far as sixty yards away. Then, something strange happened. Every piece of descending shrapnel slowed down in velocity, as if it were being stopped by some divine force. It slowed even more, and more, until it simply stopped in midair. Everyone who was already turned away, turned back to see the spectacle of a lifetime. None could believe it. Nobody could exhale. Sparkling bits of transparent glass hovered only feet away by nothing. One soldier, a big ogre nearest the house, reached up to grab a piece, mouth ajar. The small-chested woman with the big nose gasped, her own eyes sparkling. Had the world stopped?, one man wondered. Had God saved them from certain injury? another man questioned himself.
No, John told himself as he stared up at the house. It was not the work of anything remotely heavenly.
D'kourikai is the one who manipulates time like that.
"Roooooollings!" Its immensely loud, powerful voice, blaring through the opening of every broken window, was heard by all in the clearing.
"Oh shit," John muttered, preparing for the worst.
Not one breath could have been drawn before a bigger catastrophe occurred. The suspended fragments of glass were set into motion again, this time as fast as high-speed bullets. Several people were hit by the debris and killed instantly. Those that were not hit, or were only maimed, were airborne themselves.
A strong, hurricane-force wind suddenly blew through the clearing, knocking people off their feet and whirl-winding them skyward. John and Jennifer were the first to grab onto the branches of a tree for support. Grass was ripped from the ground. Expensive military computer equipment fell off tables and smashed together as they flew upward. People reached for land way after their bodies were yanked out of their shoes and toward the real origin of the gathering current—the Mayberry House. Many were sucked in through the broken windows by a vacuum more powerful than a million Dysons. Some slammed fatally against the brick monstrosity before entry. None screamed once they entered; all screamed on their way.
Vaul fell and slid across a patch of mud, bumping into a scared young soldier clutching onto a tree root. The boy couldn't have been any older than twenty, his eyes filled with tears, his rationality completely gone. His face was bleeding profusely from where small particles of projectile glass had struck. Drool oozed from his bottom lip. The root he was clinging to looked strong and deep, a testament to stable life.
"Momma! Momma!" He screamed, looking around blankly, his eyes glazing over. Flying twigs hit him in the face, drawing extra tears. His clothes fluttered harshly. The vacuum was so strong, it took with it beads of the youngster's blood before it dripped to the ground.
Vaul broke eye-contact with him when his own two-hundred-pound frame began to skid farther across the clearing. In a panic, he plunged his fingertips into a mound of dirt, gripping onto fastly-crumbling soil that would not hold him for long. He scanned the immediate area for something stronger, and noticed the young soldier's feet quivering only a few yards away. Hopefully, if he grabbed onto a boot, and that boy's grip was firm enough, he could ride this out.
He crawled toward it using the ground as a sturdy counterpart.
One unfortunate victim bounced off dry land thrice, went violently into the air toward the uppermost window, missed it completely, and slammed against the house so hard, he died upon impact. His abruptly-limp body lapsed over the roof and was subsequently sucked down in through the chimney. Another man, trying to outrun the mayhem, stopped mid-stride; the vacuum yanked him backward with brute force, where his back collided horribly with the edge of the porch roof. The growing force of the wind immediately ripped his arms and legs apart. His right arm and leg went in through the right window, and his left arm and leg, the left. His torso went in through the doorway. His blood splattered everywhere.
John and Jennifer, their lower bodies now hanging in the air, remained clinging onto two crisscrossed tree limbs. Her long hair blew every which way, an overwhelming, waving mass of black strands obscuring both their vision. John squinted his eyes carefully, struggling to see through it. However, with that and her assiduous scream in his right ear, attention was hard to come by. Still, an idea began brewing in his head, an important piece of information with the capacity to help him better understand the full extent of D'kourikai's perceivable power.
Flying pebbles cracked him in the face; Jennifer's hair got into his mouth. Despite them, John looked toward the outside entrance of the woods
that ultimately bordered the path to the house. His eyes focused in on a chewed point in the grass where the ground was undisturbed by the raging winds, where nothing on the ground was moving at all—the boundary point of D'kourikai's utmost capability. His sight and power cannot penetrate as far as I thought. Only with my hair sample can he extend his sixth sense. Three feet prior to the military barricade. That's it. D'kourikai controls the clearing and everything beyond by about a half-mile radius.
A bulky computer system crashed into a porch column, where it obliterated into pieces. A dying shrub went into a lower-story window, while another lifeless body bashed against an upper-story window frame before flying in through it.
Down in the clearing, hardly anybody was left. The psychics were still dangling from a tree; two male soldiers were clinging to the bumper of a small jeep; one young, injured female had a firm hold of an outcropping of a rock; and Vaul was still struggling to reach the soldier's foot.
Just when he grabbed it, the kid panicked and kicked him in the face, cutting his lip wide open.
Still, he continued forward. Grabbed it again. Again, the kid booted him, harder this time. Blood run from Vaul's nose and trailed across his face.
"Asshole! Help me!"
The soldier didn't look back, didn't hear him, or just didn't care.
Vaul could hold onto earth no longer. He needed something more tangible.
Clinching his teeth, he reached out and grabbed the kid's boot once more. The young soldier cocked his leg back and power-heeled him. Hard. For a second, Vaul forgot about safety, about gravity, about everything. His brain had been rocked. He was dazed. His body turned to jelly. The scale-force winds picked him up and back toward the Mayberry House he went, only gaining his complete consciousness in mid-flight. As he rocketed toward the downstairs window, the unexpected happened. The commotion, the noise, and the powerful vacuum, ceased.
John and Jennifer dropped safely in the grass. The girl holding onto the rock relaxed her grip. Vaul's ongoing momentum, however, continued but diminished greatly in speed. He descended in an arch and landed safely by the house's foundation, shaken but all right.
The worst was finally over. A peaceful cloak of silence enveloped the clearing. Every remaining survivor sat or lay still, none able to accept it all—or any of it, for that matter. It was too incredible to be real, too chaotic an experience for the ordinary mind to process. The soldier who'd booted Vaul in the face was the only one making noise, crying. Jen looked over at John, who, in turn, looked at her. She was the first one to speak. "Maybe you were right. Maybe I should have waited before coming out here."
John laughed. He didn't mean to, but it came out like an involuntary burp.
Vaul examined his surroundings, his remaining men. Only four were left out of more than fifty, the majority swallowed whole by a non-living structure. Next time, he made a mental note, I bring only essential patrons who know what's really happening here.
The two soldiers by the jeep loosened their grip on the bumper but didn't actually let it go, just in case complete pandemonium broke out again. One man was in shock; the other, a stubborn, hard-headed veteran, looked energized by today's event. The girl lying close to Vaul let go of the rock and looked up at the house, unable to believe the windows were once again in their original places, without so much as a scratch on them. Twenty yards away from her, the hysteric, disturbed boy still clutching onto a tree root, stopped calling for his mom and began to chant a new phrase over and over again...
"Rock'a'by Rollings. Your time is near. Your soul will be going, and mine will be soon here! Everywhere!"
***
A dirty, red Blazer screeched around a descending curve on Robin's Pike. Rocks flew up from the rear tires, striking a guard rail with a specific ting-ting-ting sound. Behind the wheel wasn't some crazy old drunk, it was Jennifer.
"I thought I knew what I was getting into. I guess I was sorely mistaken." She struggled to hold onto the wheel with her trembling hands. John sat in the passenger seat beside her, not near as tense. They were both headed back to her new stay.
"It's okay. The first few times in this line of work can be...a memorable experience, you might say. I'm so glad you had more of these Wolfs banes with you! I can't live without them now—"
"Memorable?" She held back a chuckle. "That's to say the least. You know how many nightmares I'm going to have for the next four years? Night terrors, not just nightmares. That was intense! My mind's still trying to tell me I either hallucinated or was dreaming."
John let out a heavy breath. "What we saw was a hallucination, or dream, in a sense."
"What do you mean?" Confused but interested, she flicked the turn signal and spun the wheel.
"What if I said there are no such things as hallucinations or dreams? Every single thing you can imagine is real in some metaphysical way. In other words, if you can picture it or feel it, it can, and does, exist. Y'see, dreams aren't really a window into the subconscious, but rather a glimpse into such planes of existence as the Mayberry House. People who get high on acid or PCP—what they see or hear or feel may be considered a distortion of the mind induced by illegal drugs, which is kind of true, but it goes deeper than that. There are things surrounding us at all times that we can't see...worlds around us that our imagination can't fathom unless we use those drugs or have a psychic eye. There are even some drugs that induce the same exact visions from one person to the other. Whereas acid may make one person see the Easter Bunny, and another, Frankenstein, Ditotin can make five different people from five different walks of life all see Godzilla."
Jennifer shook her head. She could not believe it. "Y'know, I had one relative once who was crazier than me."
"You're not crazy, Jennifer."
She smiled. "Well, thanks. Anyway, my great uncle was normal his whole life. Well respected, had a good job, a good family. Then one day he fell down a flight of stairs. He bumped his head pretty good. After that, he complained of insects crawling on his skin. He said they wanted to devour his entire body over and over. He even saw bugs crawling on his daughter, son, brother, and sister. So, one day he gets desperate, takes a knife, and attacks them in an attempt to kill the bugs. He almost killed Sharlie, my aunt, in the process. After that, they locked him up in an institution. Last I heard, he was in a strait jacket, foaming at the mouth, and saying things that had no relevance. All because he hit his head on a wooden step? It doesn't make sense!"
"What does make sense? We're six billion people walking around on a spinning round blue ball magically suspended in a vast expanse of darkness, without any real clue at all. In reality, nothing makes sense. Not life, not death, not our purpose in this world. We're obviously not meant to know too much, and we're obviously not meant to travel too far past a given boundary. We think we have so many answers, that we're so high on the food chain. In my opinion we're nothing more than ants crawling around in a miniature farm."
Jennifer flicked the turn signal again and turned into her driveway, behind a black Sedan. After placing the gear in park, she gestured to the small, white house on the right. "Here's my place. Well, my new place."
John got out and looked at the vinyl-sided bungalow. It was trailer-shaped, had recently been painted, the porch grossly decorated with wicker crafts corresponding to Native American symbolism. The entire perimeter was enclosed by one tall, wrap-around chain-link fence. It served the purpose of keeping three dogs—and Lucky—from running off. Lucky was already sitting and waiting near a dilapidated dog house, tail wagging, excited to see John once again. The other dogs were barking up a storm somewhere behind the house.
"Lucky!" Rollings reached over the fence to pet his best friend. The dog jumped up, set his front paws on his master's shoulders, and licked his face. "I missed you, pal. How have you been? How are you doing? Have they been treating you good here?"
Jennifer got out and shut her car door. A smile emerged on her face as she watched them reunite. This was exactly what she needed
to see after enduring the most nightmarish experience of her life. "He's been whimpering around for you. I think he missed you more.”
John scratched Lucky's side and patted him on the back. Both, man and mutt were smiling. "Did you miss me? Did you miss me? You were whimpering for me, huh? You're such a good boy!"
***
The interior of the house smelled heavily of jasmine potpourri and looked spotless. The wood-laminated floors were still sticky from an early-morning mopping. Dream catchers hung from every major window John could see in view; other objects of similar use and origin were set up on tables and stands or were hanging from hooks on walls. To the left was an open kitchen, where a small Maytag fridge rumbled quietly. Straight ahead stretched a long, narrow hall that led to bedrooms and a bathroom. To the right, through an arched doorway, was the living room: a small, carpeted space accompanying a wooden Indian and a pretty large HDTV—the kind John always wished he had. Currently, the channel was tuned to Judge Judy. She was busy telling off a young, dumb-looking adolescent.
"Make yourself at home." Jennifer brushed past him and entered the kitchen. "You want something to drink? Got water, soda, even got beer, if you like. I suppose you're not in the mood for orange juice right now?" She chuckled.
"Soda's fine."
She grabbed two from the steel beast. "What do you think did it?" She handed John a Pepsi. "That—thing—had a severe allergic reaction to orange juice. Vitamin C? Citric acid? What chemical do you think burned it like that?"
"I have no idea." Standing dumbly in the hallway still, John watched the television.
"Come on in. As I said, make yourself at home. I need to kick back for a while anyway." Jennifer opened the front door for a moment. "Come on, Lucky!"
Lucky flew inside, going straight to John's side.
"We usually don't let them inside, but it'll be all right just this once." Jennifer closed the door and entered the living room. John followed her in. She took a seat on a recliner; he sat on a small suede sofa.
