The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  Luckily, a seven-year-old punch wasn’t as powerful as her ethereal form punch.

  “You’ll show me that memory if I have to torture you to do it!” Elisha’s violet eyes were livid.

  Roland was quickly by her side and ready to hit me when she said hit me. Wow. Such a great minister. Religion was awesome.

  “Torture me all you want. You must have seen all my other memories. I’ve been through everything imaginable including blowing up my mother! What do you honestly think you could do that would be worse than that?” Take that. Serial killers, zombie attacks, guns, and grandparents. Nothing would make me show her that memory.

  Elisha paused and she was calm again. “Now you were right about something. I can’t kill Ryan, I need him too much. But I can do something else.”

  I struggled to break free out of instinct. Not Ryan. Please not Ryan. “What are you going to do to him?”

  “Well, well, now that I’ve got your interest.” Elisha looked up at Ryan’s comatose face and touched his cheek lovingly. Then she turned back to me. “I’m not going to hurt him, silly. I’m going to make him better.”

  “What do you mean better?” I asked. I was so helpless tied to this chair! Concentrate! I was almost starting to sense the black swirling holes on the hillside. Concentrate. Concentrate.

  “Oh simple, really.” Elisha smiled and leaned in to my face. “I’m going to erase all his memories of you.”

  Um.

  Could she do that?

  “No,” I said and I could hear the shake in my voice.

  Elisha smiled. “Aaww, does that upset you?”

  Unbidden tears started to flow down my cheeks. Ryan wouldn’t even know who I was. He wouldn’t know I loved him. And he wouldn’t know he loved me. We’d be strangers. It was worse than death. To have his mind stripped of everything we had been through…

  I couldn’t even speak.

  Elisha smiled triumphantly. “Give me that memory and I’ll let him keep his.”

  And even though the thought of Ryan never knowing who I was or how we felt was excruciating, I knew I could never let Elisha see the spell that would give her my power.

  “No,” I said and I said it with as much confidence and attitude as I could muster. “Never going to happen.” I followed it up.

  Elisha was so angry she even screamed a little, which inspired Roland to step forward and slap me.

  Elisha put her hand up to stop him and steadied herself, her eyes alight with rage she said to me, “I’m going to wipe his brain anyway, just to spite you. And in the end it won’t matter anyway because I’ll break down Roberta’s magic bubble and see that memory. You saying ‘no’ to me will all be for nothing.”

  Elisha motioned to Roland. He started to untie me.

  Huh? Was she letting me go?

  Elisha’s expression was amused as she said, “There’s one torture I don’t think you’ve experienced yet.” Elisha hit a button on the console.

  Frank and another guard walked in carrying a large metal box about six feet long and three feet wide. It looked an awful lot like…

  Oh crap.

  A coffin.

  Elisha laughed as she saw the recognition in my eyes.

  She turned to Frank with a smile. “Bury her.”

  I felt a small prick in the back of my neck and I could barely focus enough to see Roland pulling away a needle. The last thing I remember seeing were Ryan’s eyes, fully aware, looking at me with desperation.

  Ryan…

  Then everything went black.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday December 4, 2320

  “Don’t panic,” Roberta’s voice called out in the darkness of my dreams.

  Panic about what? I couldn’t seem to open my eyes. I was in that comforting half-sleep mode where I didn’t want to wake up yet, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t quite think clearly. My head started to hurt and wait a minute…

  …Why was I lying on the ground?

  I opened my eyes.

  It wasn’t ground. It was metal.

  A metal coffin.

  Short quick gasps. That’s all I could get into my lungs. It wasn’t enough. My head started spinning. It felt like I stood up too fast, but I was lying down. Breathe. Breathe. I couldn’t. I couldn’t!

  I flailed my arms in the darkness only to hit the coffin’s metal roof and walls. I kicked my legs only to smash my knees on the ceiling. I tried to sit up only to whack my head.

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  No air was reaching my lungs.

  I…

  I…

  I…

  Blackness.

  “I told you not to panic,” Roberta’s voice cut through the darkness again.

  All of a sudden an oak forest materialized around me. It was the oak forest near my trailer park. One of the places I would go to read a book or just be by myself. I was instantly calm as I looked down at my hands and legs and stretched them in the crisp autumn air.

  Roberta appeared in front of me. At least it looked like Roberta. Roberta of the past before all her surgeries and injections. She was actually quite beautiful. Like a pretty version of my father. Her black hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail and her midnight color eyes didn’t hold the same kind of cruelty they normally did. It was strange and comforting seeing Roberta like this. Like a human being.

  “I’m taking this form to keep your heart rate down, and besides…” Roberta primped herself, “This is how I looked when I was young and beautiful. If I could look like this forever…” Her eyes stared off in to the distance, sad. Then she re-focused back on me. “Never mind all that. Now, I know you hate me, but I’m going to get you through this. Do you understand?”

  Through what? I was in my old oak forest. This was great. Why would I want to leave here? “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Oh boy.” Roberta walked over and studied my face for a moment. “Denial, I see.” She sighed. “Well, it’s better this than putting yourself into a coma. It’s a start.”

  Huh?

  “But I’m home,” I said in confusion. What was she talking about, denial?

  Wait.

  How did I get here?

  I’m not really here.

  It came back to me in a flood.

  Tied up. Ryan’s eyes. Metal coffin.

  Buried alive.

  I started to hyperventilate.

  “Okay. Calm down.” Roberta placed her hand on my back. I shrugged her away.

  The last thing I wanted was comfort from the woman who killed my mother, and laughed at me when I was in pain, and…

  “Get away from me,” I practically snarled.

  Roberta stepped back. “Your basic instincts are kicking in. You could tolerate me before because you thought you were safe. Now that you realize you’re locked in a box… well… Despite what you might think, I’m here to help you.”

  No. “I said get away from me!” I screamed.

  My eyes opened.

  Blackness. Metal walls. No air.

  My heart started racing. Too fast. Too fast.

  No air. No air!

  Can’t breathe!

  I screamed and screamed until my voice was cracked and hoarse.

  I felt like I had ants crawling in every part of my body and that my brain was going to explode.

  Why? Why? Why?

  Breathe. Breathe.

  I can’t. I can’t… get… enough… air!

  I started to cry and gasp at the same time.

  Mom…

  Dizziness.

  I was going to pass out again.

  Good.

  No air…

  “You really need to get a grip on yourself.” Roberta was in front of me and we were back in the oak forest, and she was her young, beautiful self. I hated to admit the fact that I found having anyone there comforting. I wished it was Ryan, or Nancy, or let’s face it Jill would be better than psycho Grams, but, even knowing that Roberta and my surroundings weren’t rea
l, it calmed me down immensely. I never thought I’d be grateful for the whole astral projection thingy.

  “I’m going to run out of air, aren’t I?” I said, trying not to go to pieces.

  “No. Elisha fitted the coffin with an oxygen tank and a feeding tube. You could stay down here for months.” Roberta’s voice was calm and collected. I could tell she was trying to keep me from a full-blown nervous breakdown, even in my unconsciousness, and I grudgingly appreciated it. “When you wake up the next time, try to figure out everything you can about where you are. Geoffrey put a tracer on your shoulder at the school assembly, but we can’t find you anywhere on our radar.”

  “Maybe Elisha found it and destroyed it,” I suggested, not knowing why I wasn’t screaming at her for Gramps planting a tracking device on me. I knew why. Because it was my only hope at being found at this moment and the grandparents actually seemed like they were trying to save me. Wonders never cease.

  Roberta shook her head. “This device is undetectable: it crawls into the skin and attaches itself to blood cells. Elisha would have had to dissect you to find it.”

  “Are you joking?” I said a little too sharply. “I have a tracking device in my blood?!” I was getting angry now.

  “Calm down. It was for your own good. We needed to keep an eye on you and apparently, we were right to do so.” Roberta crossed her arms for emphasis.

  I lay back on the ground in exasperation. “So what would cause your device to malfunction?”

  Roberta was quiet. She looked nervous.

  “What? Is it bad?” I asked, sitting up with a surge of dread rising up to my throat.

  “You need to relax.” Roberta sat crosslegged in front of me.

  I took her advice and tried to slow down my heart rate. “Just tell me.”

  “I’m going to tell you, but you have to promise not to be alarmed. Can you do that?” Roberta was talking to me like I was a bomb about to go off.

  “Yes! Tell me!” My patience was gone.

  Roberta took a deep breath. “The only way we wouldn’t be able to read the location of the tracer would be if it were too far away to track.”

  “What does that mean? I’m not in Havenville anymore? I’m in another country or something?” I was trying not to freak, but failing miserably.

  “No, we’d be able to track you anywhere in the world. We just can’t track down.” Roberta looked at me like I was supposed to guess the rest.

  “Down?” Where was she going with this… “Oh, down.”

  Roberta nodded her head slowly. “Elisha has buried you so deep, we can’t find you.”

  I stood up and started pacing.

  Oh man. Oh man.

  Roberta was up next to me in milliseconds. “It’s far worse for you to panic while you’re unconscious. I debated whether or not even visiting you, but when we couldn’t find you with the device, I knew I had to. But, Chelsan, listen to me.” Roberta grabbed my shoulders and made me look directly into her midnight colored eyes. “In your unconscious state your body is calm and rested. If you keep your heart rate pumping this fast for too long, it could cause you to have a heart attack. I need you to wake up and figure out where you are.”

  I nodded, trying to breathe, knowing that whatever I was doing here in my head, I was doing to my body. “Okay.” Deep breath. “I’ll try and find something dead to help me.” Deep breath. “Okay.” Deep breath. “I think I’m good.”

  Roberta’s face didn’t seem to agree as she let go of my shoulders. “Chelsan, I think the metal she buried you in contains a compound that prevents you from connecting to the dead.”

  “What?” Oh man. That stupid crap!

  “It’s not that bad.” Roberta tried to sound soothing. “You’ve been able to break through it before. It’s the same ingredient we inject into our corpses so people like you can’t take over their bodies.”

  “But I do take over your bodies.”

  Roberta actually smiled, and, seeing her without her frozen stretched features, it was actually the first normal moment of our insane relationship. “Yes, you do. Which is why I know, if you concentrate hard enough, you’ll be able to break through past the coffin to help yourself. Elisha will have put a high concentrate of the compound in the metal to prevent that from happening, but at this point it’s your only hope of escaping. We’ll continue our search for your tracer, but…” Roberta let the sentence hang and for the first time I felt something other than loathing hatred for her. And, frankly, I was too scared to feel guilty about it. She was really trying to save me and not kill me. It was kind of nice as messed up as that sounded.

  “What exactly is this compound?” I decided I’d ask.

  “Do you really want the details? I promise you won’t know what I’m talking about.” Roberta didn’t come across as patronizing. She honestly believed it was something way over my head.

  “Try me,” I answered. Even if I didn’t know what she was talking about, I could tell Ryan and he most definitely would.

  Ryan.

  He was conscious and aware, strapped into Elisha’s brain contraption.

  Unless I was imagining it.

  I honestly didn’t know for sure.

  But it helped me to believe Ryan was fighting Elisha. And I hoped her attempt to erase his mind of all our memories together would fail.

  “It’s a form of anti-matter,” Roberta’s voice cut through my thoughts. “I really don’t know the science of it. I’ve always been a bit more of a black arts kind of girl myself if you haven’t noticed.” Before I could respond to that, Roberta said, “Your powers are a mixture of both…”

  SPLASH!

  I was startled awake by the liquid slop pouring on my face. It made me choke uncontrollably not to mention the parts of slop that actually entered my mouth were disgusting. Like liquefied wheat barley. Not that I’d had a lot of wheat barley in my life, but... Yeah, gross. I moved my head out of the way as the rest of the liquid food splattered to the bottom of the coffin. In the darkness I could hear it draining into the ground below.

  Listening, I was calm enough to hear the hissing of the oxygen tank Roberta had told me was there.

  Okay. I wouldn’t run out of air or food. That was something.

  But the darkness.

  The enclosed space.

  Breathe.

  It was really hard to.

  No matter how much my brain was telling me to calm down, my body just wouldn’t listen. I could already feel my heart pounding in my chest and my palms were sweating.

  If I could just see!

  I reached up to feel how tall the metal box was and to my surprise it was higher than I expected. At least two feet. Enough so that I could sit crosslegged with my back hunched over, which I did immediately. Somehow sitting made me feel slightly better. I felt around for the feeding tube opening: it was a few inches from the front edge of the box. I made a complete inspection of my coffin with my hands, confirming that the only openings in the box were for the oxygen, food and drainage.

  I decided to take Roberta’s advice to try and sense anything dead outside the box. I concentrated as hard as I could, but whatever this anti-matter was, it was doing its job pretty well. I guess we were right when we thought that whatever protected the corpses’ black holes was the same stuff in the metal at Brady’s place. Small comfort, but still, it was good to know from Grams that it was a singular ingredient. It gave me hope that I would be able to break through it and get out of wherever I was buried.

  Regardless of how I felt about my grandparents, for whatever reason, they wanted me to escape, of that I was certain. And even if their motivations were evil, (of which I assumed was the case) their advice would probably be sound.

  So.

  Black swirling holes.

  Where are you?

  I decided to lie back down, to really focus.

  But once I was on my back, my stomach felt like it was on fire. I sat up too fast and hit my head on the ceiling. I flipped myself over
so I was on all fours. I was going to vomit, I could feel it. And at this point, I felt like it would have been a relief. My nerves were getting to me and my body was losing control of itself. I needed to calm down, but the fear was just too strong to ignore.

  I was buried in a metal box underground.

  I couldn’t see.

  I couldn’t do ANYTHING!

  Tears streamed down my face and I felt like I was going to lose my mind.

  I pounded my fists on the ground and screamed as loud as I could.

  I started to cry uncontrollably again.

  No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t seem to keep it together.

  Maybe because I was buried alive!

  Breathe.

  I had to break through this metal. I’d make bugs work. Or maybe I could figure out where I was based on what’s around me. Then Gramps could find me. And…

  And… Kill me?

  What was I thinking?

  Did I really think Turner would save me?

  After everything?

  Yes.

  I couldn’t explain it, but I knew he would.

  Maybe it was desperation.

  At this point I didn’t care. It was something.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t have faith in Nancy, Jason and Bill to find me, it was that I knew they didn’t have the resources Turner did. Maybe Jason got in contact with Turner. Maybe Roberta told them I was buried alive. Nancy and Bill wouldn’t be able to rest until they rescued me. For better or worse it was the truth.

  And Ryan.

  If he even remembered me. He wouldn’t let me rot down here.

  I had plenty of highly intelligent people trying to rescue me. I just needed to calm down and get them the information they needed to find me. I just wished that Nancy could do the whole astral projection thing. It would be so much more reassuring to visit her in my unconsciousness instead of Roberta. Though Roberta was definitely on her best behavior and her best appearance, it was still hard to be civil to her after what she did to my mother. I couldn’t think about that. It wasn’t helping me.

  Then I thought about what Roberta has said just before I was awoken by slop. Your powers are a mixture of both… Science and black magic. She definitely knew more about my gift than I originally thought. I wanted to ask Roberta a slew of questions, but for the time being that would have to wait.