Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2)

by Liam Donnelly

  “No. I wouldn’t go back and undo the accident,” Jane replied with a quiet, firm confidence.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Jane said as she pushed back against the tremendous, overpowering force of the entity’s mind, “because then I would have never met Max. He would have never found me, and I would have never been drawn into this world. It’s terrifying, but it’s the truth. I’m scared, but I’ve also never felt more alive in my life. Up until then, I was living a half-life: half in and half out of everything. Now, I’m truly living. It’s real.” She paused and glared at the entity who presented itself to her as her mother. “I mean, of course, life itself, and not this… artificial house you’ve created to manipulate me,” she said, glancing around, “whoever… or whatever the hell you are.”

  She felt the psychic fingers reach out with more force, and Jane threw up her own barriers and pushed back as hard as she could. But she knew there would be no hope in the long run of overcoming the being’s psychic energies; they were indeed vast, and to Jane, it felt like it was drawing from a dark river of energy flowing nearby.

  A strange light began to emanate from Nora’s eyes. “You know, Jane, you could just let it go‌—‌the responsibility, I mean. You could give up having anything to do with the Machine. Let it be someone else’s concern.”

  “But if I did that, wouldn’t I be giving up myself too? Would I lose myself?”

  “No, of course not.”

  The rest of the illusion lost its hold on Jane then, and she remembered everything. Her mind raced. How do I get out of here? she wondered as she glared at the woman in front of her who she knew now was not her mother. How could she have been manipulated like that?

  “You know he can’t save you, and neither can your friends,” Nora said as she sat up straight on the stool. She appeared to be growing in size.

  Jane’s eyes grew wide at the sight of that. The kitchen grew darker behind her until the separate utensils became more difficult to make out.

  “I wouldn’t expect them to. They didn’t follow me through the gate.” Jane glared up at the being’s growing, shifting presence, and her neck craned as her eyes followed it. She found the will to utter the words that she knew would hurt it. “But Max did.”

  Nora’s hand shook at the mention of Max, and the cup she had been holding fell from her hand and smashed on the ground.

  Jane watched in horror as the being’s face grew into a terrible grimace. The kitchen behind her exploded backward, and only a swirling vacuum of darkness was visible outside. She stood up off the stool, and it quickly flew upward and disappeared into the vortex behind them. Jane leaped from where she stood toward the hallway, pushing herself with all of her power. She didn’t know if the reality she now occupied was real or not‌—‌if this was actually her house, or just a complex, fabricated illusion. As she moved toward the hall, she saw the creature raise its hand sideways, as casually as one might swat a fly.

  Jane was moving quickly when she felt the colossal wave of psychic energy follow from behind her. The tiles that lined the kitchen wall exploded, each and every one of them. The doorframe buckled, and a hundred fragments of wood followed her into the hall. A shockwave gripped her, flowing upward from her feet and altering her momentum as it moved up her body. She flew through the air toward the wall in the hallway, and her back slammed into it. She fell to the floor, heaving for air. Her ribs had still bothered her up until this moment, and now, with every breath she took, there was incredible pain. She sucked in air through her mouth as she turned over and lifted her head to see the shifting form of the being‌—‌which had previously presented itself to her as her mother‌—‌enter the hallway.

  Jane backed away toward the door, pushing with her feet, as debris continued to fall all around them, but Nora still moved toward her. With incredible strength of will, Jane rose to her feet just as the entity, which now only resembled Nora by about 60 percent, approached her. She reached out her arms to fend it off, and the entity grasped them. Jane pulled her arms free, and they both lashed out with the power at the same time. Jane pushed harder than she ever had in her life, and for a brief second, she was glad to see the shock register on the melting face of the creature as it was thrown backward toward the kitchen. It flew through the air and hit the wall just beyond the entrance there.

  Jane knew she had gotten lucky, and only her rage had prevented her from being pulverized by this creature’s awesome psychic power. So she reached out for the only option she knew she had left. If she remained here for much longer, there was a very good chance she could slip into the illusion again, and at that point, anything would be possible. She looked down the hallway and saw the entity thrashing around in the rubble. The image that it had presented to Jane of her mother was fading completely, and now it was just a terrifying, flowing black mass that barely resembled a person. It screamed as it moved around in child-like frustration in the debris it had created upon crashing back into the kitchen, and that was one of the most horrible sounds Jane had ever heard.

  Jane closed her eyes, glanced to the left, and looked for the rings much more intently this time. She picked a time and a place and hooked into that electrifying energy. She opened her eyes again as the creature bounded down the hallway toward her, shattering the walls with its screams. But now the blue wall of energy appeared and passed over her, and with a flash of light, the dark, terrifying, fabricated home was gone.

  ***

  All around Jane there were long reeds, and the sun beamed down from overhead. She was immediately too hot, and she guessed that the temperature must have been in the nineties. She took off her denim jacket and tied it around her waist. Behind her, she saw there was a bank of fir trees. In front of her, in the distance, there was what looked like a house, and she walked toward it now. After a short while, she found a well-worn path through the thick, long grass, and she began to walk along it. As she approached the house, she saw a red car on her right. The hood was open, and there was a man leaning over it, working on it. There was something familiar about him.

  For a moment, she glanced around‌—‌at him, the surroundings, and the house. The scene struck her as incredibly lonely. She took a few steps closer, and then, seeing the man’s body up close, she knew who it was.

  “Dad?” she asked in surprise.

  The man jerked upward in shock and turned around. He backed away from the car, gaping as he stared at her. “Jane! What are you doing here?” he said, and stepped toward her.

  She hesitated. “I suppose I wanted to see you.”

  He caught his breath quickly. “You look beautiful… But how did you get here?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Would you like to sit on the steps with me for a while? We can talk about how you got here later, and… What I’m going to tell your mother.” He looked her up and down with a curious expression on his face. “I don’t even see any luggage‌—‌I don’t understand this at all.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to.” She heard a screech behind her somewhere and jerked around toward the forest.

  “What is it?” he asked, and she could hear the concern in his voice as he put the pieces together. His only daughter had suddenly appeared out of nowhere after his absence of many years. Clearly, something unusual was going on, and his voice betrayed his knowledge of this.

  She turned back around to face him. “I can’t stay. I’m sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She paused. “Something’s following me.”

  She closed her eyes, concentrated, and again found the rings spinning in their incredible orbits. She hooked into the energy and focused. Getting the hang of this, she thought. The second she had that thought, she felt something else. There was something out there in the dimensions, something incredibly powerful. The truth suddenly hit her. The Machine was not the object that was sought. This other artifact was, in fact, something far more potent‌�
�‌an object of immense cosmic power. She caught only a glimpse of it. Its color was blue and red, and the surface glinted with the most beautiful diamonds she had ever laid eyes on. It occurred to her then just what the object might be, and the Machine was merely the means to reach it.

  She opened her eyes just as the blue light passed over her once more.

  She had planned on something specific, but was surprised to find herself on a dark, empty road somewhere with rain drizzling down on her. She had been distracted by what she had sensed waiting somewhere out there in the universe and had thus not ended up where she had meant to. Looking up, she squinted, immediately removing the jacket from around her waist and putting it on. She zipped it and folded her arms. The cold wind blew at her, and although it was filled with rain, it spoke of summer, strangely, rather than winter.

  She looked around some more. On her left, the edge of the road, which was marked by reeds, seemed strangely familiar to her, but she didn’t know why. She looked to her right and saw a cliff that was mostly brown, with wet rock that looked like it might crumble with a touch. She was about to walk toward it when she heard the revving of an engine somewhere behind her. She turned on her heel as a pair of headlights appeared over the crest of a hill that was only thirty feet away. Just then she realized exactly where‌—‌and when‌—‌she was. She ran to the side of the road and placed her back flat against the mucky, brown surface of the cliff. Everything happened fast.

  The car swerved violently, and she watched in horror as it skidded on the rain-soaked road. Then she saw her father overcorrect, struggling with the wheel, and the car flew out into the darkness below.

  “NO!” she screamed as she ran toward the edge of the road. She approached the edge and watched in awe as the car began to slow down. After a couple more seconds, it came to a sudden, jarring halt. She heard the glass crack and the grinding of metal echo out into the night, though the rain muted its sound. The car was frozen in the air, but Jane was losing her grip on the road. In her heightened emotional state, she had neglected to watch what she was doing. The earth beneath her was giving way; mucky reeds, rocks, and rubble were slipping beneath her.

  She screamed again, and in desperation, she thought of the only thing that might save her just as she began to lose her grip entirely. She closed her eyes and reached out for the Machine. Immediately, she found the rings, tapped into them, and activated the transport mechanism.

  There was a blue flash just as she began to fall, and then the reeds she was grasping and the rocky mountain above her disappeared.

  The flash of light faded, and she once again found herself on a similar road. There was still rain pouring down, and in the distance, she heard someone cry out. She turned in that direction. The sound had come from the road directly ahead, which curved up and to the right. She broke into a run immediately, then stopped as she reached the peak and the scene came into view completely. She knew immediately what it was, and she knew that the gravity‌—‌the emotional charge of the event‌—‌had dragged her here once again.

  “No,” she said in a weak voice, grimacing.

  Her father was standing near to her, about fifty feet away, and she walked toward him. She stopped when the distance between them had shortened to ten feet. Staring down at the car below, she watched her mother as she crouched over her younger self, cradling her frail body and crying. She glanced out to the left where the car had disappeared over the embankment, but there were only muddy tire tracks and flattened, broken reeds there. She could hear her mother calling her name, but it seemed distant to her.

  Jane chose to focus on her father instead; it was as though she could hear his breath distinctly through the thin rain and the short distance that separated them. His head turned to the right, just a few degrees, as if he sensed her presence behind him.

  She didn’t move.

  Her father turned quickly on his heel to face her just as she closed her eyes and reached out for the rings again, knowing where she was going. The blue flash of light enveloped her, and then she was gone.

  CHAPTER 20

  GOING BACK

  Jane had focused on reaching the desert again, and as the transparent, blue window passed over her, the clear red sand came into view all around her. Scanning the area, she found that there were fragments of metal and glass everywhere, and after a moment, she realized they had come from the car.

  “That’s what I had to do to get out of the car,” Max said from behind her with a lilt in his voice. She turned and looked at him. He was still standing tall, and looked as magnificent as ever, but for a brief second, she detected a trace of weakness in him, and a tiny spark of fear ignited somewhere within her. She quelled it immediately before it had a chance to take hold, for, on some level, she knew it was an indication of what was to come. For a moment, an image of herself with gray hair came to mind, older and wiser‌—‌as though from another world‌—‌with some terrible pain having creased her face. She stifled a gasp.

  Walking to him, she took his hand, and then they both grasped each other tightly.

  “You’ve been on some journey,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

  “Yes. Scary.” She hesitated, frowning, trying to scan his mind. He, of course, could see into hers without any effort whatsoever. “You’ve been… to Paris?”

  He smiled. “Yes. I got caught in some kind of psychic fugue.”

  For a moment, there was silence between them, and he stared into her eyes.

  “Although he held names on various mortal worlds before when he walked among their populaces, in reality, he holds no name. I kept the name Max because I hold humanity in high regard, and… there were other reasons.”

  Jane caught a glimpse of his thoughts and understood that there truly were many more reasons that he kept the name, chief among them the people he had come to know during his human life.

  He kept his eyes on her for a moment longer and then walked out into the desert. She followed him and watched as he leaned down close to the earth. He placed his hand just over the ground, and a swirl of dust began to flow in a circular motion just underneath his palm, rising off the surface. He turned his hand over, and the dust rose up along with him. Then he stood and turned, so he was facing her. There was now a sphere of dust in his outstretched palm, and it swirled around, creating a beautiful reddish globe. Now and again, the particles of dust would part just enough for Jane to see hints of light through them.

  “This is the power, Jane. The power to affect the world with your mind,” he said as he continued to look down at the swirling mass.

  She pulled her eyes away from the small, spinning world and looked into his. Sighing deeply, she asked, “Max, what happened? On the road, you were so unclear. You said he destroyed a continent. You said millions of people died‌—‌six million.”

  He glanced at her, and his clothing began to change. Jane could hear a crackle around him as the molecular structure was altered. Now, the beautiful black scarf was around his neck again. To Jane, he appeared almost like a deity.

  “Yes,” he replied. He looked back down at the swirling mass, and then other tendrils of dust rose from the ground below, reaching over the top of his hand and joining it at the center of his palm. The globe began to change. When its new shape had formed, Jane recognized it immediately as the incredible structure of rings that had drawn her through time and space.

  “This is what he was after.”

  “Obviously, yes,” she said, surprising herself with her directness as she stared at the beautiful, intricately moving mass of particulate dust in his hand. She turned and looked up into his glacier-blue eyes again. They were fierce now, and Jane knew that he was thinking perhaps a hundred thoughts at once, and the effort of maintaining the psychokinetic effect in the palm of his hand was minor. “But that’s not… really… what he was after, was it? The Machine is just the means to get somewhere else, isn’t it?”

  Max’s eyes shifted, moving
by mere microns it seemed, and then he glanced at her. Automatically, the moving dust in his hand swirled outward to a distance of fifteen inches, once again forming a complex pattern, except this time, it had no explicit form, and it was composed merely of streams of light and dust.

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “The Machine is not what he wants.”

  “No. How did you come upon that information?” He asked, frowning.

  She shook her head. “I guess I just sensed it‌—‌while I was using the Machine. I could feel something else out there calling to me. It was very obvious, like a siren.”

  Max nodded. “It’s why the accident happened. Although I suppose it wasn’t really an accident. I must show you.” Then he shook his right hand, scattering the dust in the air. It flew away in the light desert breeze and disappeared. Turning, he began to walk toward the sun.

  “You’re worried about what happened at the site of the accident, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Jane replied, following him.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get to that, but first, we have to go there. Not enough time to take the trip physically. We will take it psychically.” He stopped walking and looked toward the horizon, lit with twilight. “But first, we have to get to the Road. That’s the best vantage point for such a journey.” Squinting more, he looked around, scanning the environment. “He’s not far from us, but I think we have time.” He turned toward her. She was standing just beside him. “You really hit him hard back there, Jane. Not bad.”