by Chanel Smith
She trotted into the knee-deep water until she reached a small piece of land. From it, she was able to hop to several more and then finally the island. That odd scent grew more powerful the closer she came to the island, until it was overwhelming.
And under the trees was a crumpled form, barely alive from the looks of him. How did he get here, of all places? He wasn’t exactly dressed for a stroll in the bayou as he was wearing a filthy toga. That was truly odd, but she had no time for questions. She needed to get the man out of the swamp and back to Melina’s place, where the doctor could see him.
He appeared to be unconscious as she leaned over and attempted to pick him up, all but certain she couldn’t do it and wondering how she’d get him out of the swamp otherwise. To her surprise, he weighed nearly nothing. She gently hung him over her shoulder and turned back toward the house.
***
The bed landed in darkness.
Before Raya could say a word, the odd mode of transportation took off once again – this time, horizontally through a tunnel. Raya hated to think of how fast they must be moving as they approached a distant circle of light. He didn’t even bother to think about how they were even being propelled through the space. Just as they were about to get to the light, up they shot, like the world’s fastest and oddest elevator. Within moments, the bed eased to a stop.
Of all places, they were in a wine cellar.
“We’re only lacking a large rabbit in a top hat and some mushrooms,” Raya muttered as he followed the two guys up a flight of stairs into a brightly-lit kitchen.
“Those can be arranged,” Aman said from behind him.
Raya wasn’t listening; all of his concentration was focused on an incredible sight. He was looking through the kitchen windows at something miraculous. In the distance, he could see snow falling heavily. It banked up against an invisible surface and dark, gray, menacing clouds overhead spoke of a large storm.
He saw the snow, the clouds, could almost see the frigid air swirling around the distant mountain tops.
But.
He was sweating, as were the others. He stepped through the kitchen door. Outside, it looked like a bright summer day with flowers, fruit trees in full bloom and people wearing shorts.
Looking up, he could see some kind of surface separating reality from whatever this was. He couldn’t see the enormous bright lights he knew had to be up there, or the blowers providing hot air. It was an enigma, and he was speechless.
“I invented that too,” Aman said. “If you happen to be flying over us, all you see is a deserted mountain top. We shot it from every angle. I’m really proud of the sun!” He pointed. “That took some doing. It crosses the sky just like the real thing: it should, it’s right where the real one is.”
“Christos, this is unbelievable. I assume no one knows you people are here?”
“Only the village below,” Nesto said.
“What do you do if climbers actually head up here?”
“There really isn’t a reason for anyone to climb here. We’re not the highest mountain, not even close. Nothing amazing about our mountain at all; it doesn’t even have a name.”
“I’d imagine the length of the journey to get here would be off-putting, too,” Raya said.
Both guys laughed. “Yeah, you mean the commercial flight to Prsriuka, then a small plane through the pass and a quick landing about three miles south?”
Raya’s mouth dropped. “I went through all of that for nothing?”
“I wouldn’t say nothing,” Nesto said with a wink. “We’ll get to that. First, look at this.” He led them to an expansive living room, walked to a desk and picked up a large map. “What do you think mountain climbers would do with this?”
Raya examined it. There were a cluster of mountain tops, with several others nearby. At the edge of the cluster, the mountaintop had just enough space for perhaps six people to stand. The other peaks were exactly that. “Well, it’s not great, but you and a couple of friends could peak at the same time.”
The guys looked at each other and grinned. “They sure could! But they wouldn’t be anywhere near us. This mountain is the one you’re currently standing on,” Nesto said, pointing to a sharp, jagged peak slightly south of the central peak.
Not even a bird could stand there, Raya knew. Not with the incredible winds at this altitude. “Your people whacked the entire top of this mountain off.”
“Yes, we did. And it wasn’t done overnight, either.”
Petra would absolutely flip when she – his heart sunk. She’d never know. That was the entire reason he was here. “It’s truly a feat, but it’s time for me to ask you a question.”
“The Illuminati never respond to hypotheticals,” Nesto said immediately.
“Hypotheticals?” Raya frowned. What was hypothetical about this question? Not a thing. He voiced that.
“Do you really want that to be your question? Most people never have access to one answer. No one ever has had two,” Nesto warned him.
Raya thought.
“No, definitely not. This will take some thought.”
Chapter Four
“Honest to God, Petra,” Melina said. “An old man half-dead in a toga on my living room couch? You think this is a hospital or a shelter? What were you thinking?”
“He was way out in the bayou,” Petra responded. “Couldn’t leave him out there like this to be eaten by alligators, could I?”
Melina sighed.
“Suppose not. Well, Doc’s just going to have to...”
“No doctor,” came a whisper from the couch. “Swear it or I must leave.”
The two women eyed each other, and then Melina shrugged.
“OK. It’s no skin off our asses, but we can’t just wait on you night and day, either. We do have our own lives.”
“Two days,” the man said. “Then I’ll go. And no waiting on me – my needs aren’t what you think.”
“Needs? What do you mean?” Melina asked with a frown.
“I don’t eat as you do, for one thing.” His voice weakened.
“You a vegetarian?”
He simply gave his head a small shake.
“What are you, then?”
“Vam…”
“Can’t hear you. A bit louder?”
“Vampire,” he managed to get out before losing consciousness once more.
“Yeah, why not? Got a werewolf right here after all,” Melina said with a grin. “That’s just clear as shit! Maybe he’ll tell us the truth when he comes to.”
That night Petra had the first of what proved to be an endless series of dreadful nightmares. In this first, she was walking through a large city that she’d never been to before. The streets were deserted, until she came to a major intersection.
It looked as though the street had been full of traffic that had just stopped. Cars were standing in lines that stretched to the horizon, going one way. Not one vehicle was on the other side.
The scene changed, and there were young girls dancing in a circle.
Maypole, Petra thought as she listened to the chant.
Dying, dying, blood needs blood.
“Dying, dying, blood needs blood. Help us! Save us, from the flood. Dying, dying, blood needs blood. Help us! Save us, from the flood. Dying...”
The dancing girls faded as night fell. Occasional fires lit up a square where seesaws and swings marked a playground. Now, though, it was anything but playful. Dead wolves lay sprawled, awful seeping sores visible on their bellies. Human corpses nearby had the same affliction, except the sores were on their thin arms and necks.
The sight was so awful that Petra sat bolt upright, awake, jumping up with a thin scream.
Melina came stumbling in.
“What? What?”
“Bad dream,” Petra mumbled. “It was a real doozy.”
“Go back to sleep,” Melina commanded her as she turned and left.
Easier said than done. All those wolves, all those people… and th
e eerie rhyme, ‘Blood needs blood.’ An obvious warning, but what did it mean? Any of it?
Dawn was breaking before Petra fell asleep again, this time drifting into a peaceful lack of dreams.
***
Raya was preparing for the journey back; even though it was a lot shorter than he’d thought, he wasn’t dressed for the weather at all.
“We’d be happy to outfit you for your trip, but in return we require one small favor,” Aman said.
“Depends on the favor,” Raya said warily. He didn’t want to agree to something without any notion of what was involved.
“We just need you to take something back with you,” Aman assured him.
Raya agreed, and the brothers brought him warm clothing, a backpack, dried foods, and even boots to descend the mountain. He changed into the warmer clothing and wondered what the tribe needed him to take away.
He didn’t have long to wonder. Nesto walked in leading a very young girl by the hand.
“Oh no! No way. I’ll get out of these clothes right now,” Raya said.
Lead an 8-year-old girl down such a dangerous path? Not a chance.
“She isn’t what she appears,” Aman said.
“And how’s that?”
“She was, ah, born last week.”
All three of the men fell silent, eying the child who looked right back at them calmly from enormous brown eyes surrounded by masses of long, curly black hair that fell to her waist.
“I can show you the best way down the mountain,” she said, in her high child’s voice.
Those eyes were anything but childlike, Raya thought. They stared at him directly into his own eyes, filled with wisdom and a glint of humor. What in hell?
What did it matter? At least it, she, might keep his mind distracted from other, awful thoughts. Yes. He’d agree.
***
Several days later, they’d descended the mountain and were walking through a dense forest. Obviously, the thicker bushes grew on that side of the mountain as well, Raya thought as yet again, his entire arm became trapped and the cloth ripped from his jacket. “Christos, will we ever get out of here?”
“Raya, I’m not feeling so great,” Cilla said. She looked to have aged at least a year in the past few days, Raya thought.
“Why don’t we stop for the night, then? I’ll make a quick fire and warm you up.” He was as good as his word, and even managed to throw together a crude A-frame shelter from downed branches.
But Cilla grew worse overnight. She refused to eat or drink, and just lay shivering with cold no matter what Raya did.
Maybe she’d eat real meat, he thought. The dried stuff from the tribe might be nutritious, but it tasted awful. A quick hunt, that was the best thing. He informed Cilla that he’d be back before nightfall, and took off.
For hours he walked, examining the ground for tracks – any tracks whatsoever. A rabbit. A deer. This forest had to be full of them! He even had a shotgun that Aman had loaned him for just such a cause. He was to leave it with a tribe member who lived in a village they’d cross on the other side of the forest.
But what good would the weapon do with no targets? Finally, he had to turn and head back to camp, lest he be hunting for it in the dark.
Cilla was noticeably worse after the five hours he’d been gone. She was moaning continually, thrashing about on the rude bed of branches. Hell, she was really sick, Raya could see that. She needed a doctor badly, and night was falling.
Nothing he could do now, but first thing in the morning he’d be heading off.
But she woke him much later with loud groans. He could tell she was literally burning up with fever, and he had only one thought. He’d passed this spot on his useless hunt.
He dressed by firelight, picked up the thin body and set off through the night. After half an hour they arrived at the spot: a small creek roaring down from the mountain.
He stripped Cilla and put her entire body in the icy water, standing in it himself to hold her head up. His feet rapidly froze until he couldn’t feel them, but he didn’t notice. Instead, he watched with incredulity as steam rose from Cilla’s pale body.
Finally, her temperature seemed to lower, so he dressed her and carried her back to the crude shelter. After all that expended effort and so little food, he fell asleep rapidly and heavily.
More heavily than he ever had, he realized, as he woke to a thin stream of sunlight coming from between the trees. His neck hurt like hell and there was blood all over his upper torso.
He reached up and gently felt his wounded neck. Blood was still oozing, and he could feel that it had been ripped into. Christo. Cilla! He sat up, his neck pounding with pain, and looked at her bed.
Empty.
He groaned. The tribe would be furious at her loss, even though he’d had no way of stopping it.
The forest began swirling around him, so he quickly lay back down on his own branches. He couldn’t leave right now at any rate; maybe Cilla would return.
Nearly six hours later she did, and she looked indescribably bad.
She’d gained at least 10 years as well, as she was nearly 5’7” with full breasts. And covered with mud, filth and blood.
She was crying as she entered camp.
“Cilla? Is that you?” Raya didn’t know this young woman at first.
“It’s me, I guess. What is happening to me?” She went from crying silently to full-out bawling, and Raya struggled to get up and go to her. The dizziness came back with a vengeance and he was forced to lay back down.
“I didn’t do that, did I?” Cilla asked in a near whisper, staring at his neck with huge, horrified, dark eyes.
“I don’t know,” Raya had to answer.
She sucked in a deep breath preparatory to a scream, then exhaled and relaxed. “I don’t know a thing about it if I did. Thing is to help you now. Tell me what to do.”
He directed her on cleansing and wrapping the wound with strips of an extra shirt that Nesto had given him, but he really needed nourishment. How she’d provide that he’d never–
An absurd sound cut through his thoughts like a knife: an enormous, rumbling passing of wind.
Cilla’s eyes went wide as she whipped around and looked into the forest.
“What did that!”
Suddenly Raya knew.
“Don’t worry, Cilla, and don’t move. I mean it. Not a hair,” was all he could get out before the large form lumbered into the clearing.
Cilla choked back a scream as the bear dumped a large salmon out of her mouth before heading back into the forest.
“Dinner is served,” Raya said with a grin.
“What kind of creature was that?” Cilla asked, still wide-eyed. “It’s neat that it feeds people.”
“More accurately, if you put the word ‘on’ after ‘feed,’ you have the real animal,” Raya said.
“Oh. That’s weird. Well, I have some good news of my own!”
“And what might that be?”
“I learned to do something fun by mistake. Tell me about where you’re taking me.”
Puzzled, Raya told her about Heureuse: what it looked like, what the weather was like this time of year. He was still talking when an enormous crack sounded. For a moment, he thought they’d been hit by lightning until he was able to open his eyes… and then he had a serious shock.
He, Cilla, and even his backpack and the trout… all were sitting in the driveway in front of Heureuse Manor.
Chapter Five
Joseph was still on the couch, unconscious. Melina and Petra had checked on him all day; he hadn’t even moved from the spot Petra had put him. Petra thought he was disintegrating right in front of their eyes.
How long had it been since he’d eaten, she wondered? He’d had nothing since she’d brought him to Melina’s place late the afternoon before, and it was 4 p.m. at that moment. She’d heard that if you starved long enough, your system began to digest even your own muscles… still, Joseph looked like he was dropping at le
ast ten pounds a day. How that could be, she couldn’t understand.
“… blood,” Joseph muttered.
Petra leaned over.
“What? I couldn’t hear you. Do you need anything?”
Together, Melina and Petra had managed to give Joseph a bath that morning, and Melina had even found an old robe that had belonged to her father. It nearly swallowed Joseph, the dark red material, making his pale white skin all the more dramatic. He had rough, gray hair, long and hanging in clumps, even now that it was clean.
During that bath when he’d been naked on the couch, Petra had noticed that his entire body was wrinkled. It was one of the oddest things she’d ever seen. It reminded her vaguely of a friend she’d had when she was in college. The girl had weighed nearly 500 pounds, and had been determined to get her life back.
She’d had a gastric bypass operation, where her stomach had been stapled into one smaller part and one larger. The food she ate went into the smaller so she felt full after eating a lot less. It had worked and she’d dropped an unbelievable one hundred pounds so rapidly that her belly, legs, and arms were left wrinkled with loose skin. In a year, she was down to 170 and skin just hung off her. She’d had plastic surgery to remove it, and she’d been a new girl.
The way that she’d been so wrinkled, though – looking at Joseph definitely reminded Petra of that. He was still out cold, but he was also very restless. His head flipped back and forth on the pillow, eyes moving rapidly behind closed lids.
“Blood needs blood,” he said clearly and went right back out again. His muscles began jerking, and Petra ran a gentle hand down his arm.
“Joseph. It’s OK. You’re dreaming.”
He relaxed, rolled onto his side.
Petra looked at his sleeping form and grimaced. Evidently she wasn’t the only one having nightmares. She’d had yet another, the same as the first with the children chanting and singing, the dead wolves and people with the god-awful, suppurating sores.
Well, it was only a dream. People and wolves didn’t catch the same diseases, especially not one that resembled the later stages of Ebola. She shivered at the thought, then shook herself.
