Then they attracted more attention. The clouds lumped together, clumping together above them. They seemed to be drifting towards them, stretching out for them like long, thin arms of cotton, reaching for them… with long, sharp, knife-like fingers. Banshees.
Still the teenagers remained ignorant, oblivious to everything. The back tires of the beige Toyota Tercel slid and fish-tailed as they exited the sixth gate and began searching for the seventh. The drive was long, and the liquor was beginning to sap their energy, wearing them down. They were losing steam, and that was when the moaning and complaining began. We’ve been driving forever… I’m bored… Where’s it at… This is all crap… There’s nothing out here… Yeah, let’s turn around… etc, etc. They weren’t wrong, and the only miracle they had witnessed so far was that they were still alive and hadn’t crashed or flipped the car while they were swerving through the prior gates or on any of the razor-sharp turns of the gravelly back-country roads of their voyage.
Their fatigue wore on as they got lost on the old backroads. The way to hell isn’t a straight shot; it has many paths—and so do Midwestern country roads. After each passenger giving their own set of bad directions, they now had a solid half-hour of wasted time under their belt, but they eventually found their way. All the while, the crowd of their hellish spectators had grown considerably large, and the fields seemed to be packed with glowing red eyes—so packed that the creatures were now lashing out at each other as they fought for elbow room. The banshees hadn’t given up either, and they were trailing the car tightly, looking more like gray smoke shooting out a coal-burning train’s smokestack than the vengeful spirits that they were.
The teenagers wooing and laughter returned after the boy in the backseat made a stupid joke. I told you so. You were supposed to go left after the corn field. No, the other corn field. But after a few turns, more gravel roads, and a few hundred yards, they were finally approaching the seventh gate, the entry to hell—or was it an exit from hell.
The driver hollered and pounded the car horn exuberantly. Everyone else joined in the hollering and whooping, slapping the back of the front seats of the car and slapping the dashboard. Wooo! Let’s see some ghosts. Wooo! Let’s see hell. Wooo!
But they still hadn’t seen them. The car’s headlights skimmed over the tops of fields of golden grain like spotlights… and flashed over the swarms of shadowy figures that were hiding in them. Perhaps it was for the best that the teenagers were too drunk and distracted to notice them. They continued on with their night of debauchery.
Closer to the final gate—one curve and two hundred yards away—the car grew quiet, and a cold—frigid—chill ran up their spines. Goosebumps puffed up over their scrawny teenage arms, and the alcohol and excitement couldn’t dull their fears. What if the legends were true?
Staring into the gate, the dark hole beneath the overpass, everything seemed to darken and time slowed. The smeared graffiti on the walls of the overpass brightened into rainbow swirls and slowly flooded the black hole it surrounded. The overgrown shrubbery on the grassy slopes and hung down from the overpass melted, dripping down before becoming a swarm of wild snakes, thrashing about and striking out at each other.
A pitch-black spot appeared in the center of it all, growing larger and darker, until it grew brighter—into shadowy flashes then into a cloudy mixture of blood and bleach. A desolate metropolis formed inside of it. Gargoyles came swooping by. Some paused and seemed to be staring at the teenagers. Demons came next, swooping past the gargoyles, then at them, tearing apart the gray, stone-skinned gargoyles.
An oversized beast came from below, swatting away the demons and gargoyles like they were gnats. Its oversized paw grabbed onto the side of the hole, like it was climbing out of it. The snakes that were surrounding the overpass hissed at it, lashing out at the beast, but when they went to bite it, their fangs got stuck in its matted black fur. The snakes thrashed around as the matted black fur sucked them in. Then they reemerged elsewhere on the beast’s flowing black mane, having now become one with it. Now the snakes were focused on the car full of teenagers, hissing at them, as the beast opened it mouth widely, ready to swallow them whole. Everything slowed down even more and grew larger, and the teenagers were about to enter hell. They were about to be swallowed by the beast, to see if the legends were true.
They never would. The darkness returned; a bright light flashed—blinding the teenagers, and they were brought back to lucidity.
Time returned, and everything came back just as fast—faster than they remembered. The car’s engine was growling loudly. The car was rocketing forward at a reckless 80 mph while they wildly bounced around as the car’s decrepit shock absorbers made every bump feel like a boulder. As the car’s tires spit up handfuls of gravel, a cloud of dust trailed them, almost completely hiding the banshees that were also trailing them. The car’s headlights were working once again, shining brightly, back-and-forth across the dark tunnel, the seventh gate. But when the driver finally steadied the car, they didn’t see hell or hellfire inside the tunnel… only darkness… and a girl.
Standing underneath the overpass and within its darkness, one lowly girl—in an oversized t-shirt and jeans—was blocking their slide into hell. They hardly noticed, but her face was stern. And though they couldn’t see them, her eyes were stern as well—hazel and colder than any eighteen-year-old’s eyes should ever be. As the car of bouncing, screaming teenagers came barreling at her, her golden-blond hair gently drifted behind her, over her thin shoulders and away with the late-night breeze.
The driver of the car, a handsome rogue of sixteen, saw the girl first and turned white with fear. And while he didn’t remember hitting the brakes, when he went to slam on the brakes, the pedal was already floored. The wheels locked up. The car screeched and wobbled. And the mystery girl seemed unimpressed and emotionless.
The car’s passengers were having substantially different reactions, mostly fear. Their screams drowned out the shoveled gravel and the screeching brakes as their lives flashed before their eyes. Then, no more than five feet from the mystery girl, with a slight and slightly dramatic slide, the car finally skid to a stop. Bouncing around, the car’s passengers were beyond frightened, and all of them were peeking through their hand-covered eyes, scared to death that they had just killed someone. They hadn’t, and the girl, for some inexplicable reason, was just standing there with her hand up. She still looked stern and unimpressed.
A different song was blaring out of the car windows. While it was still dubstep, it a different song. Still, it sounded no different than the acid-remix from earlier, and it had just dropped the beat. The hard, mechanical, vibrating chords suddenly and strangely became overly appropriate for the moment. But Mea didn’t think so, and the song made her half-want to kill the teenagers herself. She didn’t and instead decided to kill the music. Flicking her extended hand at the hood of the car, the radio sparked, shorted out, and the music stopped. Much better, she thought and cracked a smile.
“Go home,” the mysterious girl, Mea Harris, told the car of teenagers, “the gates are closed.” She took a few steps forward, and the teenagers watched as Mea’s oversized t-shirt grew longer, larger, and darker and then, somehow, stretched and morphed into an oversized hoodie. The teenagers were too drunk and too shocked to trust their own eyes or judgement, and they tried to blink away the strangeness; but they couldn’t. In the end, they decided not to mention it—not to anyone and not at all. Who would believe them?
While the teenagers were watching Mea, her eyes were somewhere else. The fields, the ones filled with all the glowing red eyes—and the few green and yellow ones that had recent joined them. They almost looked like blinking Christmas lights. She gave them a stern, sideways look then did the same to the clouds, the banshees.
She had just warned them. Tell them, I’m coming for them, she’d said. Not two hours earlier, she proclaimed, all gods must die. The other creatures got the message and had scattered almost immediately.
But these ones, they obviously weren’t getting it.
It was an unusually warm fall night, but when Mea’s nostrils flared, trails of warm steam puffed out of the ends of them. The air turned cold. Mea made a fist, and a frozen-blue aura began forming around it. And when she stretched out her fingers, thin squiggles of winter-smoke danced from her fingertips. Her eyes turned the same color becoming frozen sapphires or flames—blue and white flames.
After that the lurking creatures seemed to finally understand what Mea was saying. Leave or die. The flock of blinking red eyes fell away to the shadows, one by one. Others retreated into the corn fields and the solemn trees that lied behind them, fading into the shadows. From above, the banshees hissed at her then swirled around and disappeared into the cloudy night’s sky. And whatever demon, spirit, or mysterious creature that was left crawling through the nearby fields or floating overhead scurried away as well.
The teenagers in the car watched as Mea stepped through the glowing lights of the Toyota Tercel and the white cloud of dust that now surrounded it. And despite the innocuous black hoodie she was now wearing, Mea still looked quite mysterious.
The girl in the front passenger seat, a few years younger than Mea, yelled out the window. “Hey! Who are you?”
Mea sighed, pausing a moment before walking over. During the five steps it took her to reach the car, a thousand thoughts raced through Mea’s head. I’m the girl that came from hell, from heaven. I’m a killer; of demons, of angels. I’m the banisher; of angels, of my brother. I exiled him, mutilated him, abandoned him. I failed him; failed the world, abandoned it—like I abandoned my brother, left it to die… I’m a god, she thought. Instead she said, “I’m just a girl.”
Just a girl? She didn’t look like just a girl. The two girls in the car, both on the passenger side, were just girls. Despite being cute cheerleader types, they were both just girls. And their faces were frozen. Rubbing their shoulders from the strange coldness that just arrived, they stared up at Mea, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Spellbound and hypnotized, they were dazzled and frozen in awe, and they struggled for something to say. Thank you? Sorry? What the hell just happened?
The silent moment turned awkward, and Mea glanced at the girls like someone might glance at a homeless person—a weird homeless person that they hoped wouldn’t approach them. She vaguely remembered that she once wanted to be like them; carefree and careless enough to enjoy life with reckless abandon. Though it was just a few months ago, it might as well been a millennia.
The two boys on the driver side were cute but young—the sort that high school girls swoon over, probably football players. Right now they weren’t nearly as impressive. Pale with fear and struggling to control their bladders, they were… boys, just boys.
In another world Mea might have been jealous of them—not now, not anymore. That’s the past, she realized, dead and gone. Still, in some sort of karmic revenge, she couldn’t help but to enjoy the fact that, for once, she was the one being admired and envied.
The girl in the backseat was finally able to muster some words. “Are… are you okay?”
I’m far from okay, Mea thought, holding back the temptation to vent. The world is ending. You’re all going to die. After sighing, Mea said, “I’m fine. I’m…”
A strange thought snuck into Mea’s thoughts. Candice. When I tell Candice, she’s going to be so worried about me. I have to text Candice. Strange, these aren’t my thoughts, Mea realized. Who’s Candice? I don’t know any Candice. Her eyes drifted over to the boy in the backseat, the one that was looking away. They’re his thoughts, she realized.
“Hey,” said the girl again, “are you going to be okay? What are you doing out here?”
Mea snorted, growing nervous and sad. Change the subject, she thought. “You should be more worried about him.” She said, nodding at the boy next to her, “and why’s he texting Candice.”
The girl’s mouth dropped open and twisted angrily. She snapped towards the boy, obviously knowing who Candice was, and said, “Peter.” She slapped his arm. “I can’t believe you,” she started, building into an angry rage as her slaps soon became wild punches. “You told me—“
“Yeah, Peter,” Mea said. “Go on. Check his phone. You’ll see.” And as Peter scrambled to find and hide his phone, knowing what incriminating information was on it, it was already flying past his eyes and through the air, and right into Mea’s hand. And through some other bit of hidden knowledge, she swiped her thumb across the cellphone’s screen and unlocked it with ease. “Here,” she said, tossing the phone to the girl. “Look for yourself.”
And before Peter could attempt to snatch back his phone filled with sins, Mea was already scolding him. “Don’t!” she ordered, wagging her finger at the boy. “Don’t you dare.” And like a whipped puppy, Peter huffed, crossed his arms, and looked away in shame.
“Go home,” was Mea’s last command as she stepped away from the car. Now eyeing the flashing lightning in the horizon—and the flying shadows that lit up within it, she added, “It’s not safe here.” Then Mea snapped her fingers and walked away.
The teenagers heard an explosion. The sound of crumbling concrete followed and broke the spell that was hypnotizing them. The noise wasn’t coming from Mea; it was coming from the gate. The teenagers snapped their heads forward, following the beams of light shining from the car’s headlights. A cloud of dust.
The seventh Gate of Hell was gone and replaced by a cloud of white-powdered concrete atop a mole-sized mountain of rubble. Indeed the Gates of Hell were closed. That also meant that the entrance to hell was closed, and all the same, yet more importantly, another escape from hell was also closed.
Mea glanced back at the crumbled overpass—her doing—and saw a piece of intact concrete off to the side. Sprawled across it was a crudely drawn, spray-painted face with devil horns sprouting out of its forehead. Through the cloud of concrete dust, she saw the words that were captioning the crude spray-painted drawing. It was captioned, “Eat the rich.” Mea smiled and thought, the Wolf would like that.
CH 3: Everything’s Gone to the Wolves
Fenrir stood in front of stone throne. His glaive was strapped down his back, beneath his thick cloak of wolf-fur. Its blade was thick and wide—and black and shiny as polished onyx—and glimmered as it dangled just behind his left shoulder. Scratching his thick, shortly-cropped black beard, he scanned over his throne room. Again it was covered with wolves— wolves the size of bears. Beneath the stone staircase leading up to throne, the wolves sat—all sitting on their hind-legs and gazing up at his with their glowing yellow eyes, staring up at their pack leader, the wolf-god.
Atop the stone staircase with Fenrir were six others. Five men and one woman, they were neither wolf nor human, not now. All clad in glossy black armor; they were all down on bent knees with their heads lowered. “Seven are one,” they chanted.
“Aye,” said Fenrir, nodding and scratching his beard. “And the one is seven. Before you were only shadows, glimmers of myself, incomplete. No longer.” He squeezed his fist and bright red trickled out of his clenched palm and splattered on the polished marble floor. “No longer will you be shadows. No longer will you be incomplete… for you have taken of my spirit, my flesh, and now… you have taken of my blood.”
“For the blood is power, and the blood is life.” The six chanted, in unison.
He looked over them. The men were large, some with short dark hair, others with long curly tangles. One was pale-skinned while the others were ethnically diverse as the world itself.
The woman, the one woman that knelt beside the five domineering men, was a mystery. Her olive skin darkened in the light and lightened in the shadows. Her eyes were the shape of large almonds and dashed angrily towards her narrow nose and the indent of her almost-plump lips. Though they were lowered at the moment, her eyes were darkly mesmerizing—both gorgeous and vicious.
Her hair was dark, almost black, with streaks of fading gray in it—like the coa
t of a timber wolf, and it had crisp white stripes in it as well, white as an artic wolf in fresh snow. Long with shapely waves, it was as exotic and ferocious as she was.
Fenrir looked down on them with pride but her most of all, and he had to hold back a smile. She was his favorite, his most prized pupil. Loyal, strong, with so much potential. He forced himself to look away before giving away any hint of favoritism. He failed. They all knew she was his favorite. And she was the best, and they all knew that as well. So, as Fenrir held back his smile, and she held back her own, the five kneeling men held back their glares. Ignoring the tension—there was always some tension between the anointed, Fenrir continued with the ceremony.
Like a proud father, he patted each of their shoulders as he passed in front of them. “And now that you are no longer shadows, no longer incomplete, it is time to evolve. You are now equals—my equals… equals in power, equals in voice. You now share my blood, the blood of the gods. Raise your heads.”
The six did as they were instructed. Still kneeling, they raised their head and looked up at Fenrir. Their eyes flashed brightly—like sunlight at dawn—then dimmed, then brightened again—into crisp, cold, sparkling sapphires that were nearly identical to Fenrir’s own.
“Now rise,” roared Fenrir. “Rise and claim your name… for now and all eternity, for all of history to remember… for this age and all ages to come.”
And one by one, they stood up and did as they were instructed. And each claimed their names.
The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones) Page 7
