Yesterday's Gone: Seasons 1-6 Complete Saga

by Sean Platt

  The beautiful light was turning black.

  No!

  Another dark memory swallowed the light — this one from Pirate Boricio, sitting helplessly in the cell while Will ordered the execution of Rose.

  They all saw — and felt Boricio Bishop’s pain — as the fire engulfed the cell and destroyed everything.

  The vial was turning black.

  Soon, the Darkness in Pirate Boricio would fulfill its mission.

  Soon, it would corrupt the light.

  Boricio wanted to reach out, but they were all still transfixed, now in anguish as the Darkness unleashed a torrent of miseries upon them, hundreds of thousands of murders from the moment It was first unleashed, as it murdered the world’s men, women, children, and animals, engulfing and ingesting all into Itself.

  “Stop it!” Mary cried out.

  Will was shaking violently.

  Luca sobbed, squeezing his eyes tight, as if he could dim, or unsee, the horrors in his head.

  He couldn’t.

  Boricio wanted to seize the vial, take it, and use it to do whatever would destroy the Darkness across from him, smiling from behind Boricio Bishop’s mask.

  Only Luca can touch It.

  Only Luca is pure enough.

  Boricio wasn’t sure where the thoughts were coming from, until he realized they were bleeding from both Will and Luca; a shared dream or thought, where Luca was the rightful heir to the vial — the child who smothered the Darkness.

  But Luca isn’t touching It!

  He’s frozen like me!

  Then, Boricio knew.

  He had to go into Luca’s head.

  Boricio was no longer in Other Luca’s bedroom.

  He had no idea where he was, but it looked like a forest of Tim Burton’s nightmares, with crooked trees and giant worms pushing their mottled bodies through rows of bloody soil.

  Between the two rows of fat, crooked trunks with long and gnarled roots, and thousand-fingered branches braided above Boricio’s head, Luca lay sprawled across the forest floor, crying.

  Luca was no longer old.

  He was young, so young he seemed almost tiny.

  As Boricio ran through the forest toward Luca, branches clawed at him from both sides, trying to pull him back into the black.

  “Luca!” Boricio screamed, trying to get the boy’s attention.

  Luca didn’t answer, he only made his crumpled figure smaller, huddled and crying and sobbing in a pile, begging for help.

  The darkness from the forest was creeping into Boricio’s lungs like a thousand pounds of smoke. Boricio ran faster and harder, pumping his legs until he finally reached Luca, where he dropped to his knees and pulled the boy into his arms.

  “You gotta wake up, Kid. It’s time.”

  Luca shook his head, still sobbing. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t fight when the Terrible Scary is everywhere.”

  “The Terrible Scary?”

  “Yes, The Terrible Scary,” Luca nodded. “The Black Pieces. The end of everything.” He looked up at Boricio, then fell back on his palms and scooted back, gasping. “The other one of you!”

  “No,” Boricio shook his head. “That’s not me.”

  Boricio could feel the horror on the other side of reality, ready to end everything as his friends stood frozen.

  He stood, then held his outstretched hand to Luca. “You can’t be scared of the Terrible Scary.” He shook his head. “Not now or ever again.”

  Luca lay on the ground, cowering and unconvinced, as worms began to erupt from the soil, inching their slick, segmented, plump bodies toward him, trying to drive him away.

  Boricio snarled another order, at Luca but the boy still lay there.

  So, Boricio roared:

  “The Terrible Scary is nothing!” he yelled as the black started whistling around them. Boricio could feel the Darkness growing in power, shaking the trees around him in the world in Luca’s head, and dimming the light in the real world his body still stood in.

  The Darkness would soon swallow them both if Luca wouldn’t stand and fight. “Do you remember when you went inside my head back when you were being held in that dungeon? How I huffed and puffed and tried to blow your house down? But you stood up to me. You found the part of me that was broken, and you . . . fixed me, Luca. You fixed ME, a monster! Don’t be afraid of this. It’s nothing, unless you let it be.”

  Luca nodded, and said, “I’m scared.”

  “The Terrible Scary tries to hold you down, bury you inside your deepest fears, because it can smell your power, Luca. It burns with black, and that makes It terrified of your light. If you let It win, you will never see your family again. Your daddy, your mommy, your sister, you’ll never see them again. Ever. Stay scared, Luca, and you ruin the world. Stand now to save us all.”

  Boricio held his hand out to Luca, hoping the boy would take it.

  He did, then the world around them went white.

  The gnarled trees on either side of the Terrible Scary straightened as the road paved itself with a row of freshly laid brick, neatly trimmed with rich green grass. The sky went from oil to azure and the clouds from coal to milk.

  Once the Terrible Scary was entirely gone, they found themselves back in Other Luca’s room, now flooded with a light so white it was as though no other color existed.

  Luca blinked his eyes, though Boricio could barely see him.

  Boricio screamed, “You know what to do?” and was sure Luca nodded, even though he couldn’t see.

  Boricio stepped into the brilliance as Luca’s fingers curled around the vial. The man-kid flickered; a skeleton, then a child, then, for the thinnest slice of a second, nothing but light.

  The Darkness swallowed Boricio Bishop, as Luca was born from the Light.

  The room began to shake, wind howling through the shattered window, as the light dimmed from blinding to bright. In a voice that no longer belonged to Luca, but to eternity itself, Luca thundered:

  “Go! Run!”

  What was left of Team Boricio bolted out of the bedroom, but the Darkness reached out with a knotted spear of sable, goring Will through the back, then bursting through his chest as he was inches from the door. Will’s body was yanked back into the room, then into the vortex of swirling Darkness, as it spun Will’s body, sucking his blood and guts into its center, then spewed them across the room.

  The poor old fucker couldn't even scream.

  The house shook violently around them as the wind raged outside. Luca, now nothing but a brilliant orb of growing light, thundered again, his voice now a hundred souls speaking from the inside of a single scream:

  “GO! GO!”

  Every window shattered at once as wind, rain, and debris swarmed through the house, as if the foundation were birthing a tornado.

  Mary should have been running, but she stood rooted beside Paola, both fixed to the floor in horror, unable to move.

  Boricio grabbed two arms, one from each girl, and shoved them both out the door, then down the stairs and through the swirling chaos. They made it outside just as the house collapsed and was siphoned into the two swelling, swirling tornadoes — one as wretchedly black as an infinite night, the other as white as Siberian snow, both of them spitting debris to the sky like the heavens were starving.

  Sullivan and Ryan were still battling a couple dozen aliens on the ground. Boricio was shocked to see them still standing.

  The white tornado suddenly spit sparks of bright light from the gaping mouth in its center, disintegrating the remaining aliens.

  “Holy shit!” Boricio shouted.“Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

  Mary ran to meet her mutant husband, dragging their daughter behind her. Halfway there, a piece of the black reached out and grabbed Ryan like a twig, then plucked him into the air screaming into its widening vortex.

  Mary lost her voice in an anguished bellow as the Darkness turned toward her, swirling its hungry tendrils and grabbed her, too.

  “No!” Bori
cio and Paola both screamed.

  The white tornado sent a swirl of bright, crackling light into the heart of Darkness, pulled Mary from its horrible depths, then dropped her gently on the ground next to her daughter. Mary stood up, wet and scratched to hell, and picked Paola up and began to run away.

  Boricio heard Luca’s voice inside in his head, “Use the orange ball!”

  “What?” Boricio screamed at the bright tornado that was once the man-kid Luca, or the vial, maybe both.

  “The orange ball,” it bellowed. “Tell Sullivan to use it.”

  Boricio shouted to Sullivan, “He said use the orange ball!”

  “Who?!”

  “That!” Boricio said, pointing at the Light tornado snaking around the Dark one.

  “We’ll all die!” Sullivan screamed.

  The pair of vortexes started to yank surrounding trees, dirt, rocks, and debris into themselves, gathering mass so fast, that every one of them was sure to be pulled into the swirling chaos in a matter of seconds.

  Sullivan held the glowing orange sphere in his palm.

  He squeezed the ball hard, and the orange light grew brighter and brighter, until it started screaming red.

  Everything vanished in a blaze of impossible light.

  Sixty-Six

  Luca Bishop

  Black Island, New York

  April 2012

  SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …

  Keep swimming!

  Luca kept going, faster than he’d ever swum in his life, trying to find a way back to the other world, where he’d been safe and sound in the other Luca’s bed.

  But he could never return if he was unable to concentrate.

  Luca swam for what felt like forever, until his entire body was aching, his limbs turning to rubber. He could float no longer, though he was finally a safe distance from the falling stuff.

  He saw the source of the falling stuff in the distance — the two largest tornadoes Luca had ever seen. While Luca had only seen tornadoes on TV, he was sure they didn’t usually have balls of lightning and fire swirling from their middle.

  Luca couldn’t tell how far away the tornadoes were from each other, but they seemed inches from collision. He had also never seen two tornadoes at once, even in movies. It was like they were fighting to see which could gather and spit the most terrible stuff into the sky as they continued to drift closer and closer.

  Luca finally realized that it wasn’t just stuff they were spitting into the sky.

  The tornados were spitting what was left of Black Island.

  His eyes widened as he screamed.

  Our Earth

  Los Orillas, California

  April 2, 2012

  SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …

  Luca woke in his bed, soaking wet, and screeching.

  But no one could hear his scream through the hand on his mouth.

  Luca stared in disbelief as the other Luca, the one who belonged here in this world, the one whose life he had stolen. But he was young again, not old. He sat across from him on the bed, his palm pressed hard against Luca’s mouth, trapping his scream mostly in his throat.

  He’s come to take his life back.

  He’s mad, and he’s come to get me!

  “Shhh,” the other Luca whispered, looking at the closed bedroom door, then back to Luca. “Okay?”

  Luca nodded, and Other Luca slowly removed his hand.

  “What happened?” Luca said, “How did we get here? How did you get here? What happened to the island?”

  “It’s all gone,” Other Luca said, his voice calm, no emotion. “The Darkness won.”

  “What?”

  “The Darkness. It had another name long ago. Now it is just the Darkness. It took over everything.”

  Luca swallowed, thinking back to what happened on Oct. 15 — how the old preacher man had taken the vial from his brother and opened it. When darkness spilled out and started to swallow everything, Luca had managed to get away, and pulled Boricio away, too, though he wasn’t sure where he’d pulled his brother to.

  That’s when he wound up here. It was the last time he’d seen his brother. Luca had tried to contact Boricio several times, but was never able. Instead, he only saw the Other Boricio, with the Other Luca and Will.

  “Was it the vials? Is that what was in the vials Boricio asked me to get?”

  “We are the Light, but also can be made into Darkness by intervention from dark souls. We changed you when your brother used us to cure you. And you carried the Light over here to this world and put it in this child. But then you changed us when you found us again. You, your brother, and the others, tainted some of us — turned them into the Darkness. Our only hope was this child, Luca.”

  “What do you mean this child?” Luca whispered. “You’re not Luca?”

  Other Luca began to softly glow, as an impossibly bright light seeped through the child, then spilled onto the blankets and wall.

  “What are you?” Luca asked.

  “What are we,” Other Luca answered, pointing to Luca’s stomach, which, to his surprise, was glowing with the same light.

  Luca let out a startled yelp, as Other Luca quickly returned his hand to the boy’s mouth. When skin met skin, a spark of electricity shot through him, causing him to jump from the bed, in surprise rather than pain.

  He stepped back from Other Luca, trying to figure him out.

  “No, I’m human. I’m still me,” Luca said.

  “Yes, you only have a part of us inside you. This child, Luca, opened the final vial. His purity, his kindness, gave us strength to fight. But we could not defeat It. Despite all the people I pulled over to fight, we were not enough. Now the war is over, and that world is lost.”

  “Where is my family?”

  “Your father is dead. Your brother has become the Darkness, Chaos, The Void. I could not destroy it. I could not bring him back. I had to leave before he murdered us all.”

  Luca cried, swallowing tears, along with the urge to wail and wake his — Other Luca’s — parents.

  Luca suffered through a long silence, where Other Luca stared at him as if observing a rare insect even though he was the one glowing more, until he finally asked, “What happened to everyone? The other people I saw with you? The other Will, the other Boricio? Are they . . . dead?”

  “Will died. Boricio Wolfe, he is alive. Many died. Many are now part of the Darkness. Others, I saved, as I did you, and returned them back to their world before the Darkness could claim them.”

  Luca fell to the floor, sobbing. “I’m so sorry. I thought I was helping Boricio. I thought he’d save Rose.”

  “I know your intentions were good,” Other Luca said.

  “And I didn’t mean for you to be taken from your family and brought to my world,” Luca cried. “I didn’t mean to take your family. But I didn’t know where else to go, and I was scared. When I came here, you were gone. I didn’t know you were gone. Then, when I did see you over there, and tried to switch places back, tried to talk to you, you couldn’t see me.”

  “It’s okay,” Other Luca said as his light began to burn brighter.

  “What’s happening to you?” Luca asked.

  “I have to go.”

  “Go? Go where? Don’t you want your life back?”

  “That’s not possible.” Other Luca shook his head. “We are now one — Luca, and the Light. We cannot stay here.”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  The glowing child began to fade, barely there and about to vanish.

  “No!” Luca cried. “Don’t leave me here! I don’t belong here. I can’t look at your family knowing I took you from them. Please. Come back. Or whoever, or whatever you are, come into me, and give Luca his life back.”

  “We can’t,” Other Luca said.

  “Why not?”

  “You are not pure.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Luca cried. “I’m not Luca! They aren’t my parents. I feel like a big phony!”


  Other Luca’s eyes stared from behind the light. “Do you want to forget? Do you want to be the other Luca?” Its words were everywhere and nowhere at once.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can give you his memories. We can erase yours, except your recent ones, which we can partially remove. You will wake up believing that you are him. With his memories. Your parents will never have died. You will never have known Will and Boricio Bishop. You will be Luca as he was before the Darkness.”

  Luca stared into the light. “You can do that?”

  Other Luca nodded.

  But can I? Can I forget everything? My family. My real family — my mom, dad, and sister who died? And then my other family, Will and Boricio? Do I want to forget them?

  “You must decide now.” Other Luca’s body was gone already, and now the light was disappearing too. “We must go. But we can take your pain with us.”

  “And what happens to you, to the Other Luca? Where are you going? Won’t you miss your family?”

  “We are one, now, you and I, Luca. I feel what you feel. I can be with them through you. Feel their love. Feel them. But I cannot live here in body. I’ve grown too weak. I’ve changed too much. But you can forget it all. But you must decide now.”

  Other Luca’s light began to flicker.

  It’s now or never.

  All the pain. All the regrets. Everything can go away.

  “Will I still be me?”

  “Yes, but you must … ”

  The light crackled. The Light was almost gone.

  No, don’t go!

  Luca cried out, “Yes! I’ll do it!”

  Other Luca flared, and the light went so suddenly bright that the room seemed as though it was nothing but pure white.

  Then it went dark and back to normal until Other Luca was only a mist.

  Am I too late?

  Luca couldn’t see the hand he felt on top of his head, but he felt it there like the nose on his face or the arm hanging from his shoulder.

  Warmth spread through his body.

  Luca’s eyes fell involuntarily shut as shadows crept around the edge of his memory. He thought of his little sister — his real sister. The first time he looked into her crib and made her laugh. And how excited he was.