by Sara Clancy
Devil’s Rise
Black Eyed Children Series Book 2
Written by Sara Clancy
Edited by Emma Salam
Copyright © 2017 by ScareStreet.com
All rights reserved.
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Welcome,
Sara Clancy
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
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Chapter 1
A sudden gust of wind struck the gondola. It rocked the hanging carriage to the side, metal squealing in protest. Under the howl of the chilled air, Ruby could hear the machinery whirl as it carried the carriage closer to the wall of mist above. Her nails dug into the cool vinyl of the bench seat as she tried to fix her gaze on the rubber covered floor. Don’t look out the window. She steadfastly followed her own mental advice, but it didn’t help. All of the walls were constructed out of thickened glass. It didn’t matter where she fixed her gaze. The world beyond was always playing across the corners of her vision. Her heart lurched into her throat as the gondola swung back the other way. The motion gave her small glimpses of the miles of empty air that separated her from the broken shards of rock below. Despite the trembling roll, they continued to steadily climb into the blanket of gray clouds that hid the tip of the mountain.
The mist swallowed the gondola carriage. Within a moment, the fledgling morning sun was blotted out by the clouds. It was impossible to see anything beyond the muted haze. All that existed was the bellowing fog the color of slate stone. The rocking increased. The squeal of metal on metal pierced the air. She could feel every bump as the carriage clung to the cable. Her knuckles strained against her skin as she tightened her grip.
But it was the notion that she could soon plummet to her death that made fear pump through her like a toxic sludge. It was the sensation of being watched that had settled upon her shoulders the moment she had sat down. With each broken breath, the feeling increased. Her stomach dropped when the gondola hit a supporting post. The structure around her rumbled. She could almost feel a chilled breath ghost down her back, making her skin prickle, like icy fingers tracing down her spine. Gulping down a cry, she whirled around. All that met her gaze was her reflection, mirrored back to her by the glass and shifting fog. Her heart was hammering against her ribs as she studied the fog. For a moment, just the briefest of seconds, Ruby caught a glimpse of obsidian eyes lurking just beyond the glass.
She hurled herself back from the window. Her startled cry cut off sharply as she slipped off her seat and dropped heavily onto the rubber lined floor. The impact made her blink. That was all it took. One blink and the eyes were gone.
It wasn’t them, she told herself as she struggled to breathe. They’re dead. It wasn’t them. I killed them. But all the reassurances in the world wouldn’t help calm the twisting iron in her stomach. It never did.
It had been months since her last encounter with the black eyed children. Winter had come with all of its ferocity and was gradually making way for the spring. But the memories wouldn’t fade. Those three nights were as crisp as they had been since they happened. Perhaps more so, now that the desperate push for survival couldn’t serve as a distraction. Every moment came to her in her sleep. And those hideous, bottomless eyes consumed every second she was awake. I killed them. The thought didn’t help as it had once before. It was as if just the knowledge of the black eyed children was steadily devouring her sanity.
Forcing her breaths to slow and deepen, she scrambled up and back into her seat. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to put her back to the window as a part of her still expected to see the ghostly gaze hovering there, watching her. Waiting. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself and hunched forward. But the sensation didn’t abate and, eventually, her eyes were drawn upward once again. This time, it wasn’t just her imagination. She had forgotten that she was sharing the carriage with Tristan.
She cringed and tried to go back to no longer being worth his attention. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Months ago, before the children, her mantra had concluded with ‘Never make eye contact.’ Now, she always made eye contact. Always searched everyone around her for any sign of black eyes.
“Well?” Tristan asked, his voice pulling her from her thoughts.
Ruby barely spared him a glance. Her attention was relentlessly skipping across the window, still searching for another glimpse of what her mind promised wasn’t actually there. Don’t move. Don’t speak. He’ll soon get bored. Working in different stations, she and Tristan had never really had to interact. Still, his limited attention span was legendary.
“Hey,” Tristan waved a hand to draw her attention back to him. “We’re in an enclosed space dangling in the air. You can’t just randomly shriek and not tell me why.”
For all the interest his words seemed to imply, his gaze still drifted down to his mobile phone. Ruby, in turn, focused her attention squarely on his eyes. It was the only part of him that she could stand to look at. For her, the world had always been populated with living dolls. It was a fault in her brain. She could see people, the features that made them who they were, but there was always something missing that left them looking not entirely human. For better or worse, she had learned how to endure it.
That, too, was before her encounter with the black eyed children. The three had worn the disguise of human children. But with all of them, the charade was incomplete. Their faces hadn’t moved as they should. Their skin had been too pale, too even. They had been like porcelain dolls given life.
Tristan looked like a doll.
From his flawless skin to the natural curl of his golden hair, his features were undeniably masculine yet delicate. While his eyes still fell into this strange, surreal category, they were the most vibrant, incandescent blue she had ever seen. It was a shade that was impossible to mistake for black, no matter how the light hit them. Sometimes, they were the only thing that stopped her from setting him on fire.
Feeling her stare at him, Tristan met her gaze. When she maintained her silence, his fingers stopped scrolling and his eyebrows inched up his forehead. Still, she didn’t say anything. He heaved a sigh.
“What?” he asked. “Come on. It’s called verbal communication. Use your words.”
She shifted her eyes to the side.
“Ruby,” he said a little louder.
“It’s nothing,” she mumbled.
“Nothing?” he said. “Would you look at that? You managed to be both succinct and utterly meaningless at the same time.”
It was hard to keep her mind on the conversation when she was constantly trying to pinpoint where his accent was from. It was subtle and only curled around every other word, but it was there. Maybe somewhere in East Europe? His next question jarred her from her thoughts.
“Are you an acrophobe?”
�
��What?” she said.
“Acrophobic,” he over pronounced each syllable. “From the Greek akron, meaning ‘summit’ or ‘peak’.”
She blinked at him, brow furrowing.
“Do you have a fear of heights?” he asked, bracing himself as the carriage swung wide.
Ruby latched onto the handle bars but still slid slightly across the seat. “Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Because I have vocabulary.”
She glared at him. “No, I’m not afraid of heights.”
One side of his mouth tipped up into what she thought was a smirk. She didn’t know how to respond to that, but it didn’t matter. He dismissed her with a wave of his long-fingered hand.
“So, if it’s not the height that’s the issue, why don’t you ever work at the top? And, of course, I’m still curious about all this?” His hand flicked through the air again, indicating her white knuckled grip as he slumped deeper into his bench seat.
“I get home faster.”
She bit her lip to keep the rest of her explanation from slipping out. Not many people ever believed her about the children. Far fewer ever openly admitted to it. As such, she had become very selective about who she told things to and when. It must have been clear that she was holding something back, however, because his head tipped to the side and his eyes narrowed their focus. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but gathered that he didn’t find it.
“Is it true that you have a mental problem?” he asked suddenly.
Her shoulders hunched.
“I’m not judging,” he said. “Just merely looking to increase my understanding. Besides, you stare a lot. At me. I know, a lot of people do. It’s a drawback of being gorgeous. But your way is a little creepy.”
She took to tugging at the edges of her regulation snow jacket, constantly readjusting it back and forth.
“I have social-emotional agnosia.”
“Ah,” Tristan said. “The inability to read or gather any meaning from fluctuations of tone or facial expressions. Essentially, you can’t read people.”
Ruby snapped her head up. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Nope,” he wiggled his phone. “But I do have access to the internet.”
“Oh.” She slumped slightly.
Just once it would be nice not to have to go through it all, she thought as she opened her mouth, ready with her usual speech. But Tristan cut her off.
“Okay, let’s have a look.” His words trailed off as he scrolled through whatever he had brought up on his screen. “Hm. So, from what I gather here, you’re not too quick to pick up when people are angry at you.”
“Or any other emotion.”
“Right,” he said as he pointed at the ceiling. He looked over the rim of her phone to meet her gaze. “That’s got to be boring.”
That caught her off guard.
“Boring?” she quizzed. Haven’t seen that reaction before.
“Could you imagine having to live like that?”
Yes, she thought. I call it reality.
“No tone or expression. No room for subtlety or subtext. I’d go out of my mind. Even Twitter allows you to use pictures. Hey, can you read emotions if they’re shown in a photo?”
Instead of looking to her for an answer, he had already begun to thumb at his phone again.
“No.”
His eyes flicked back up to her. For a long moment, he watched her carefully. Then he shrugged and went back to his phone.
“That sucks.”
The gondola swayed again, harder than before. She clutched the handrail with one hand while the other tore at her seat. Tristan didn’t seem to care. Without looking up, he lifted a long leg and braced himself against the wall. Wedged into place, he continued with whatever he was doing. As far as Ruby could tell, his interest in her had run its course, and he was prepared to continue the last of their trip in silence.
In actuality, the Bear’s Run Resort didn’t have much to its name. The hotel itself, nestled at the base of the mountain, was little more than your average highway hotel. But it did have two key draws. The first was the crisscrossing trails and ski slopes. She supposed the gondola had been a pricey construction and they had felt compelled to put something other than a drop off point up there. That’s how the Bear’s Run Restaurant was founded.
Ruby had only been to the top once before and wasn’t ready for the sharp temperature drop. A creeping shiver played down her spine as the building seemed to creep out of the mist above them. The structure jutted out over the edge of the cliff and was kept up by long metal posts that blended in with the fog. The effect transformed the building into a gaping mouth that looked ready to consume them.
A sharp gasp escaped her as the gondola hit another stabilizing post. With a clunk and grinding whirl, they jerked over the last bit and rolled into the building. The track looped back on itself in a wide arch before continuing its journey down the mountain range. Much like a ski-lift, the gondola didn’t stop itself, which was the sole reason for Ruby’s employment. It was her job to manually slow them down so people could get on or off. It took surprisingly little strength. But since they were the first to arrive, there was no help from the outside.
Without a glance up from his phone, Tristan nudged open the flap that covered the emergency release button. He tapped it with his heel and the doors whooshed open. The mountain air rushed in, filling the carriage, the force making it swing wide enough to knock her off her feet. Tristan slipped out with practiced ease. Ruby stumbled out behind him.
Instantly, the shadows rose up around her. They draped over everything, turning every object into a silhouette of a child. Her gut twisted with a primal fear she hadn’t felt in months. Go! Get back in and go! Turning, she reached for the next passing carriage. But Tristan called back to her as he disappeared into the darkened hallway, breaking her from her blind panic.
“Maybe you should keep to working the bottom end,” he commented.
As the echo of his voice rolled away, Ruby was left alone on the open platform. The cold clawed at her with sharp hands. Each breath of wind whipped up to attack her. Relax. Just breathe. Pulling her staff radio and earpiece out of her jacket, she tried to reassure herself that it was all in her head as she hooked herself up. As soon as the fog lifted, as soon as the lights were on and guests were clogging the halls, her paranoia would fade. She was working the looped arm of the earpiece into place when she clicked it on. Tristan’s voice instantly bombarded her.
“Are you seriously going to make me come all the way back there? I should be aggravated, but I’m just so impressed that you somehow managed to achieve something so stupid.”
Hitting the little button on her microphone, she waited for a break in his long string of ranting to ask, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m questioning how you could possibly manage to lock yourself out,” came the instant reply.
Ruby hesitated. An icy chill swept across her skin as she glanced around. There was only darkness, shadows, and the restlessly shifting fog. “I never said that I was.”
“Well, someone was just asking me to let them in.”
Excuse me, Miss. The memory of the demon’s voice whispered within her mind, ringing as clear as if the words had been spoken straight into her ear. Can we come in?
“Did you say yes?” she snapped.
“Of course not,” Tristan said. “I thought it was you. Protocol dictates that I mock you mercilessly and openly question your intelligence before lending assistance.”
Can we come in? the voice repeated, somehow sounding closer.
“Tristan,” she snapped. “You can’t say yes!”
There was a moment of dead air that made her skin crawl. Her eyes darted to every corner, every shadow, as the steady whirl of the gondola filled the frigid air. The shifting wall of precipitation twisted shadows across the bare concrete walls and made her uncertain if she saw everything or nothing.
“What is going on out there?”
Tristan asked.
She glanced around once more. “I don’t know.”
Chapter 2
A hundred conversations bounced off the walls at once. People shuffled to and from the gondola carriages, the tide controlled by the staff member in charge of taking the souvenir photographs. Ruby couldn’t quite remember the girl’s name. She might have felt sorry about that if the girl didn’t repeatedly call her ‘Melissa’. With every passing person juggling gift bags, winter gear, and sports equipment, the noise was nearly unbearable. Every so often, her radio would crackle within her ear. The room was too loud for her to make out any of the words with certainty, leaving plenty of room for her mind to play tricks. Every time, she swore that she heard the children’s voices.
By the time the sun had gathered enough strength to thin the haze, a new notion had formed within her mind. They got out alive. It repeated in her head every time the radio clicked. Grew louder as she spotted an increasing number of people with their eyes hidden behind snow goggles and sunglasses. They got out alive and they’re coming for me. She found herself keeping pace with each carriage she slowed. It was getting harder not to leap into one of them and ride it back down the mountain. They’re here. Beams of sunlight slipped through the coverage, bathing in the snow and glistening off of anything with a shine. She flinched and whirled towards every glint, certain each time that she would find herself staring into the lifeless, dead eyes of a demonic spawn.
“Melissa!”
Ruby snapped her gaze away from the little girl she had been glaring at and looked up to the photographer. The woman’s shoulders heaved in what Ruby assumed was a huff. Holding Ruby’s gaze, the woman tapped one finger to her earpiece. It was only then that she heard the crackling.
Ruby pressed the button as she shuffled away from the little girl. “Sorry, I missed that.”
The only word she could make out of the reply was ‘lunch’. Relief flooded through her until her knees almost buckled. After she replied, it still took forever for someone to arrive and take over her position.
