The Depths of Darkness

by Laurie Bowler

  The wind had kicked up around me; the dust swarmed directing itself at me so I had to squeeze my eyes tightly shut. When I opened them, they’d gone and the hut was empty.

  “Oh great,” I mumbled, struggling with the bindings.

  A sudden surge flew through my body, my spine stung and I crumbled to a heap with no idea what it was that had just hit me. It felt like I’d been battered throughout my entire body; I ached and burned everywhere. Tears seeped from eyes. The heaviness of my burden hurt my soul and destroyed the remainder of my heart. My anger set itself free and I felt another wave of the surge surround me and I used it to my advantage.

  Using the powerful surge, I shoved the bindings, panting in exasperation and tugged, pulled and pushed until my hands came free. Sighing with the instant relief, I released my ankles. My own strength amazed me; it wasn’t a strength that had ever surfaced before until now. The sudden capacity overwhelmed me and I felt the urge to run as fast as I could to the house to find Lilly.

  Unbound and running as fast as I could, my feet hurtled along the ground, the bushes and trees flew past me at an inhumane speed. It felt like the witches had given me a little more than they’d told me, in actual fact they hadn’t told me they’d given me anything, so why could I run this fast? I didn’t care; the scent of the ammonia coming from the house was strong and stifled the freshness of the night. My mind elapsed into something akin to obsession. I was obsessed by Lilly; her face consumed my mind causing me to run that much faster until I felt the painful stitch begin to start in my stomach.

  Breathing deeply, panting and gasping for breath I rested with my hand against the bark of nearby tree. Nature had put itself to bed for the night. Usually if I remember owls would hoot here in Matace’s land, but tonight nothing. There was pure sensational silence. I listened harder for the sounds of scurrying animals along the floor, if they were nearby I could hear them but I couldn’t. Nothing was the same; it was an illusion, a very devious frightening illusion summoned by Lilly. I was not trapped inside the dimensional world she’d created and set down for me to fall into, her way of showing me she was the director and narrator of this whole saga.

  “Think again bitch!” I muttered through gasps of breath, still bent over holding my stomach, “I’ll never let you win. Don’t you see you that?”

  I was talking metaphorically, as if she was here with me. I knew she was nearby the whole area stunk of her; it was as if she’d only just vacated the area. Moving cautiously through the thickness of the thickets, my pain subsided a little more with every step. As long as I didn’t run it would hold up and I could preserve some strength and the new intense strength for when I met her later on, a head to head battle.

  The movement up ahead, and the bushes moving aside made me aware of the person that was around me. I knew it was Lilly. All this time she’s been watching and waiting; her next move would come soon enough and I didn’t have to wait long for it.

  Stepping around the bush she’d just run through, I saw the house. Its grandeur never ceased to amaze me, even now knowing she’d been inside and had ruined all the precious memories of Matace, and just as equally knowing what Matace had done in deceiving me by not telling me who I was, or how I was made. I sort of understood. If he’d told me my mind wouldn’t have been able to accept the honesty let alone the information, I would have likely destroyed myself and his experiment would have been a complete waste of time and the world would still be doomed by the evilness of others.

  I stepped towards the house, aware of the sounds of the battle that had risen through the silence. Maybe it had been me concentrating so hard on the pathway through the forest that I hadn’t noticed any other sounds, or it may have been a mirage created by Lilly to make me think I was completely alone. It was her own way of telling me I still had no one and belonged nowhere.

  The backdoor was open, swaying gently on its hinges. The pounding of feet inside the house brought my curiosity to an all time high. I wanted to investigate but it was probably a trick, another one of her harmful deceitful tricks of mockery sent to try and hurt me and weaken my resolve to make me a weak adversary so she would have a better chance of winning against me. But it wasn’t going to be like that, there was no way I’d let her win and take everything that didn’t belong to her.

  Walking through the doorway and I peered around the edge of the door, scanning slowly every section of the dark room inside. It must be a back way in that me and Luke hadn’t seen the other day; it was so dark and spooky. Cobwebs sprang from every corner, glittering maliciously while the spiders watched, settling themselves to wait for me to stop so they could try and catch their prey, some morsels for their stomach. Their large over sized legs, bodies and googly eyes staring down at me, they weren’t from this world but from another darkened dimension Lilly had visited; she’d stolen these horrid creatures to bring them to earth, to undoubtedly show her resistance to anything that we did.

  I stepped through, backing myself as close to the wall as I could, and I looked up to the ceiling above my head. The large black spider began to tunnel itself a web directly towards me, its many eyes watched me and waited for me to move rapidly so it could spring. I slowed my movements so it wouldn’t be startled and slithered along at a snail’s pace towards the other door.

  Lilly had certainly out done herself, setting trap after trap to lie in wait for my arrival. She was avenging whatever had turned her and she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Her own mind was set on destruction and ruling, my mind was set on destruction of another kind to avenge Matace and others she’d killed without good reason, and to set the human race free from harm.

  Eventually I found the handle to the other door, I twisted it and to my mystification it was locked. I shifted my weight so it rested heavily against the door frame and I forced it to open. Surges of strength soared through me making it easier for my newly found bizarre inhumane strength to work and open the door. Stepping through felt like walking into another world, this room was bright, almost too bright, so much so, I had to cover my eyes. There were dancing fairies in the centre, their smiles rapidly dissolving and turning into evil grimaces as they flew towards me; their weapons readied to attack. Simultaneously, I planted my protective shield in place, and sent them rattling towards the wall as they one by one bounced off the front; their screams of horror and defeat was deafening. Fairies have a high pitched scream, easily it could deafen a normal human, but someone like me built for other purposes and bestowed with some weird strength I merely shrugged and walked through to the other side. Their anger was forcing my irritation but fairies could not be harmed. They’d been taken over by evil and it wasn’t their fault. Once Lilly was destroyed they would return to normal and to their own distant world where they would be their own gentle selves helping others and visiting earth occasionally to spread warmth not hatred.

  “Nice touch!” I snorted when they continued to attack me. They couldn’t quite get their heads around the fact that my shield meant I was untouchable and they spread themselves wide in their haste to attack. Continuously they somersaulted across to the other wall, shaking their heads and flawlessly flying directly back to me before being sent back the way they’d just came.

  “Oh stop it!” I shouted at them exasperated at their pathetic efforts. Dazed by my approach to them and my lack of fear, they sulked in a group, staring with dark wide eyes full of venom but at least they stopped in their frantic and confused attacks.

  I left the room and walked through the corridor. My pulse picked up and raced frantically; I could hear it as I walked. The paramount of fear began to enter into my veins as her smell draw closer to my location, and I realised she was somewhere in this house or had just vacated it. Either way I’d find her; my determination was her undoing and I would make sure she would die tonight.

  Entering the white washed room Luke and me had hidden in earlier, its smell of blood was overwhelming and I gagged on a sudden burst of bile that shot up from the pit
s of my stomach and entered my mouth. Rot, grime and hand prints of blood were etched across the room, its filth was disgusting and I was sure Matace hadn’t left it like this. I didn’t understand the full nature of the room and I stopped and searched the room in depth. Taking in the details and swallowing rapidly when the gruesome sights filled my vision. The room I’d entered was some kind of laboratory, filled with horrible things.

  The lab was atrocious, the many pots and subjects marked as ‘tests’ were sickening, staring into the half formed faces of myself and the partially formed bodies made me feel instantly sick. I threw up when the one test subject stared back at me, some kind of weird cross breed, horns and a tail but everything else resembled myself. Holding onto the wall for support as I released my stomach contents, shaking with disbelief, my iron will was rapidly dissolving into nothing. I hadn’t ever seen anything like this, I gasped at the faces that stared back, unable to take my eyes off of them.

  In the corner an archway had been messily smashed in to reveal another room, and I was intrigued to see what horrors were inside. I went straight through it and found myself inside another laboratory, more test subjects but of someone else. Sliding down the uneven floor, and looking back into alien resembling faces, the eyes seemed familiar. The skin seemed to subtly cover the skeletons that weren’t formed accurately, nothing had been written down beneath these people, no names not even the name ‘tests’ like in the other room.

  Shocked I stood still, staring back at me was the smiling face of Lilly. Her sockets were empty the same as the skeleton reflection, the only part of her body that appeared to be formed was her head; it was like the rest of her hadn’t grown properly.

  I felt like I knew why I was here, seeing this showed me the many attempted that had been made to create myself. The same attempts Lilly had tried in vain to conclude and make another of herself in hopes of fighting me skill for skill, strength for strength. It was evil beyond any recognition and anything that Matace had ever taught me.

  “This is absolutely horrific,” I muttered to myself as I walked around. “I hate this place. Why do this?”

  I touched the hand that flopped out of the covered trolley on my left, and revealed a half formed body of myself. Gently I wrapped it back up and cried at the many losses. These subjects must have lived and then shortly died due to their partially formed state; they’d taken years to resurrect me, and I was the only one left to breathe but soon to die.

  My question will always remain unanswered since it was obvious Lilly and I had to destroy each other, both of us were as powerful as the other. Her headed monster protectors were either captured by now or destroyed by Luke and his followers which had led me here. Curiosity had gotten the better of me and I’d felt the need to explore Lilly’s secret surroundings. Another dividend led into a much smaller room, where the source of the smell became much worse.

  I stepped over the dividing threshold that led into another smaller room; the lights were dimmed but the chaos was catastrophic. Everywhere Lilly had left a trail of destruction. Demons lay on top of the table partially opened and medically examined, some of their insides had been removed and lay dumped on the side; blood dripped from the tables and the stains of dried blood splattered the walls.

  “What the hell is this place?” I asked myself.

  Inside the room more examples of test subjects had been strewn about, the tables full with attempts at another cross breed laid out, some with multiple tries on top of each other. In Lilly’s craze she hadn’t bothered about the cleanliness of anything of the sort. Her attempts at making another super witch like me but resembling herself had failed countless times. Her final wish was coming true though because she’d finally be able to destroy me and anything else that was connected to me.

  She’d left nothing short of a horror show behind her in her awful efforts to try and salvage something from the experiments that had been carried out to make me, and it had left its mark on her soul demeaning her lower than those criminals banished to the other realms. I stopped short in my pace when I saw the remnants of her portal left behind, the place she’d just vacated and her perfume roamed around me. Its sickly sweet scent entering my nostrils and covering the smell of rot and grime.

  The blood still remained in my mind, filling my every fiber with the disgusting nature that I was about to leave behind. The house was ruined beyond repair and whether I lived or died there was no way I’d be entering this place again. The best thing anyone could do is burn it to the ground, taking away the experiment and killing it before anyone else found out what had been happening around them and decided to take advantage the same that Lilly was doing.

  On the side, a book laid open with the scrawny handwriting I’d often read in the past, the handwriting of Matace, clearly laying out his plans and the failed experiments while trying to breathe life into me. I read, and I turned the pages flipping through with the building excitement of a school child, but there was nothing here about how I’d been made. The only source to even trying and figure out my intricate DNA was by the failures, and there had been a few. More failures than was visible in the rooms across from me, none of them had been named but some had lived for short periods of time. I read his excitement and his disbelief when they eventually stopped breathing, their words when they spoke to him were of a world pure and graceful many realms away from here and not one he’d heard of.

  The final page must have been written after I was born and he realised the baby he’d created was living and ready to fight, breathing and wailing according to his notes. He’d carried me to the orphanage and dropped me on the door step. He hadn’t wanted to let me go, my fist scrunched to my mouth at the sorrow that seeped from the pages. His tears and pain I felt almost as if it was my own.

  I threw the book away when I’d finished reading he final page, which had been recorded about my status inside the realm. The entire time I’d been a little witch, not believing in any powers or the magic that I contained and could control at my own will, no one had taken the time to teach me. They’d been afraid the person I would become if I knew too much and they didn’t want to risk me taking over their precious ruling.

  I jotted a quick note to Lilly asking her to meet me at the hill beside Matace’s house where it was concealed to the outside world and sent it through the portal she always used, knowing she would get it and be willing to meet me. The humans would be kept safe and so would the secret of all involved with the realm. The location was deliberately chosen by me to keep Luke and the others away; this wasn’t their fight. According to Matace’s diary, I was supposed to be the high witch, hand chosen and genetically made to bring goodness and harmony across all the living demons and creatures in every realm, since I’d found out I had most of their DNA combined with that of a human.

  The note I flung into the remnants of her portal knowing it would land inside the whichever world she’d fled to and would find its way to her. The paper was called ‘destination’, a spell made by Matace that was created to always find the person it was written for and never to give up until it reached its way home.

  A very strange feeling stole over me, and I hurriedly left the rooms leaving the dark atrocities inside, and slamming the door behind me. This was Lilly’s and Matace’s world and I was an intruder, at least I felt like an intruder. No one would understand, not even Luke, the horrible visions I’d seen and been subjected to. It was far too awful by its demeanour to even try to discuss and certainly wouldn’t make a good conversation over dinner.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The night hour struck, the usual witching hour where all kinds of ferocious demons came out to play. Lilly stood dressed in her white robe dress that floated around her with the breeze. She was a picture of pure angelic loveliness from the outset but knowing everything she’d done and what she was capable of, I knew she was far from being angelic; she was monster.

  “Lilly,” I called. “Are you here?”

  “You,” she spat jabbing her f
inger in my direction, “have made a huge mistake asking me to join you here. Oh and where are your followers?”

  “Its juts you and me,” I replied. “Why did you do this Lilly?”

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you,” she sneered. “Lab rat, that’s all you are. Some genetically made super human witch. Do you know how much time I spent pouring over spells, books and every word Matace said?”

  I shook my head, her jealously was shining through and her hatred for me was also frighteningly clear.

  “I spent hours,” she explained. “Endless nights, and for what? Nothing because you are his heir and some weird scientific experiment that they finally managed to get right. I wonder how they did it because everything I used didn’t go to plan.”

  “I don’t know Lilly,” I replied sadly. “You don’t have to do this. If you stop now I’ll make sure you get a fair trial.”

  “You’re dreaming,” she screamed furiously. “A fair trial? Listen to yourself, after all that I’ve done for you, keeping you in the realm when I knew I should have kicked you out, especially when I found the documents pertaining to your birth.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It would have aroused suspicion and I couldn’t afford to do that,” she said. “And besides, for a while I liked you. I actually began to like some messed up experiment. Did you know that considering you’re a lab rat, it doesn’t make your life worth living? It’s all wrong,” she shook her head and her stance changed immediately as she became a warrior witch.

  Lightening blasted around us. The overpowering circle of a battle began to climb its way around us both, capturing us both inside the walls where no one else would be able to enter unless either me or Lilly was dead, but in this case both of us. Fascinated I watched the walls climb higher and the steely shiny surface shot itself around, swarming in circles as it built up its own speed, unaware of anyone or anything that it might be destroying in its wake. Its only notion was to cover the fight and keep it away from others. The spell had worked and I was emphatically pleased if not overwhelmed by my sudden surge of magic and strength.