Others Within 2: Something Seen

Meredith pursed her lips. The sun glared, making it very likely that the image ahead and below them was nothing more than a mere mirage. Deep down, she knew better.

“How is this possible?” Parker leaned as far forward as his seatbelt would manage, eyes wide. “This is—”

She put a soft hand on her son’s knee. His emotions trembled on his expression—too eager, too hopeful. “Parker, this is an amazing sight, but, for the love of God, please don’t get your hopes up this time. It gets harder each time you’re disappointed.”

The boy turned his attention on her, startling eyes stripping her away. As always, it was a painful experience, but she didn’t let on. She forced a smile.

“I know, mama, I know…” He paused, and the mountain drawl made the hope in his voice all the more endearing. “I try, but look down there! It’s exactly like the map says. It’s frozen, burning and living and dying. It can’t be anything but that. I don’ know how much clearer this Earth could give us an answer to the riddle.”

Meredith patted her husband’s arm as she felt the plane begin its descent, circling the forest—if one could call it that—to land in the desert sand that edged the small plot of life. The sand was unlike any she’d seen, the deep color of red fire. Her husband glanced toward her. “Meri,” he said, “I’ve been with you through a lot of this, but this isn’t natural. I’ve never even heard of this place. I mean, look at it.”

She watched the land come closer to meet her. There, half in the line of trees was an oasis in the desert, a pristine blue so perfect it matched one of Parker’s eyes, a small lake rested and froze. Meredith frowned. He’s right, she thought. It’s not natural. This can’t be natural. But, then, had anything she’d experienced since coming into contact with Parker been natural?

“Get us close, Zeke. Let’s check it out,” she said as her answer. “We’ve come this far.” Her husband hesitated, stealing a quick glance at his stepson, before nodding. The little plane shook in turbulent air. Zeke gripped the steering wheel tighter. It was not hard to see how nervous he was. He was surprisingly supportive even though he’d only been in their lives for a short time. You’ve been good to this broken, taped-together family, she thought as she squeezed the hand that was on his arm. You’ve faced things for my Parker and helped me shoulder the incredible burden my boy is.

Zeke placed a brief hand over hers before taking a deep breath and saying, “We land in a moment. See what the map says now.”

Meredith didn’t want to touch the old parchment. Each time left her feeling dirty and each new riddle seemed to strip a piece of…something…away from her. She grabbed the thick, rolled paper—what she could only hope was paper, but felt more like sun dried, toughened leather. Little imagination left her wondering what it was. She pulled the seal to allow it to unroll in her lap. She watched the dark words of old blood—she knew, without doubt, that the ink was certainly blood—rearrange and fade away into a new riddle.

Frozen in Flames

Blue and Green and Red.

Boy of the two realms.

Walk the water.

Shoulder the weight.

Burn the Light.

She read the words aloud and glanced at Parker. He kept his view away from her to keep from hurting her, continuing to look at the frozen lake.

“It’s more like instructions this time,” he whispered. She barely heard him over the thrum of the plane’s engine.

“Parker, don’t act too hastily. We don’t understand what’s going on.” We don’t understand you. Her thought remained unspoken, but it hung in the air. She knew he’d likely heard it.

“I know, mama.” He put a hand on her arm, his pale fingers a stark contrast against her dark skin. As always, the touch tingled.

The plane skipped, slid and landed with a muffled thump in the shallow sand. Zeke turned the engine off and she could hear the wind howl around them in the otherwise silent surroundings. “I’ll set up camp,” he said. “You and Parker should explore.”

Meredith unbuckled and slid out of the plane to the storage area, grabbing the wheel chair that had tires with thick tread. She had a feeling it would be needed in this environment. She went and picked Parker up, carrying him out of the plane and setting him down in the wheelchair. She was very careful to not look over his shoulder for fear of what she could glimpse.

Meredith’s hiking boots crunched the sand, but she could feel solid ground not too far beneath. The line of trees almost reached out shadows to touch her as the sun made its trip down the horizon. The air was hot and arid.

“Do you know what’s unsettlin'?” he asked. His eyes roamed around them, and she watched the wind follow his gaze.

“The silence?”

“All I can hear is the wind in the sand.”

Despite the tires, it was hard to push his wheelchair forward, but she managed. The ground beneath them had given way from sand to the rocky terrain, tree roots snaking their way into the barrier between the unnatural amalgamation of forest and desert. They’d nearly reached the edge of the lake when the ground suddenly dropped off.

“Well,” she said, “time to travel without the wheels.” Meredith leaned forward and he put an arm around her shoulder. She took a deep breath and picked him up, cradling the twelve year old that was nearly as tall as she was the best she could.

Parker was small framed with barely any meat on his bones, lanky and should have been feather light. He was immensely heavy. Unnaturally so. It always seemed to her that she carried something else with him, and she remembered the one time she’d seen it. A memory best left untouched and in the back of her mind.

She struggled down the steep drop off, taking care not to drop her son. When she was standing on solid ground once more, she looked up, and she could barely make out the treetops when she looked up. Roots reached out past the cliff, weaving in and out of the sand and dirt, like the vestiges of a prison cell.

Meredith looked past the lake. It was a small lake by anyone’s standards. Past the body of water, there was only wavering red and desert loneliness.

“We are truly alone,” Parker said in agreement with her thoughts.

“Parker, you really should stay out of my head.”

“I try.”

“I know you do, and hopefully this trip will end all of this.” She took a moment to readjust her arms around her adopted son before she started walking toward the beach.

“End what?” Parker sighed. “I don’ even remember how I was before the accident, and I don’t remember what it was like before it latched onto me.”

A shiver played with her spine at his words. He didn’t speak often about what had happened to him, and even more rarely did he say anything about his abilities. She stopped at the edge of the beach and set him on the ground, sitting beside him.

“I wish I could say this is beautiful.”

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s terrifying. It don't feel right. Something horrible is going to happen here. I don’t know what, but I can feel it.”

The lake laid out before them, still and solid and sparkling in the desert air. Despite herself, she couldn’t help but reach out and touch the ice. It was terribly cold and solid, leaving a film of frost on her fingers when she took her hand away. Find the forest of death and ice in a land of fire, she thought. That had been the parchment’s instructions, with a map written in its ink of unknown blood. She’d certainly found it; the small patch of unwelcoming trees looked tropical in origin. She knew that this was an impossible phenomenon. She sat outside the realm of human understanding.

“I think we should leave,” Parker said. “Nothing good can happen here.” He turned his mismatched eyes—one pale blue that matched unnatural ice, another a deep, iridescent green that matched the treetops above them. Tears choked his voice and she glanced back at him just long enough to see red tinged tears. He was crying in his own strange way. His gaze reached past her own eyes, and she could feel something stir around in her mind and rake through her thoughts. She turned her gaze away.

“We can’t leave until we figure out what we’re supposed to do.” More than anything, she was sure that this was the last step in this nightmare. She was so close to helping her odd son, the boy that had seen such strange, indescribable things and come back scarred in ways that failed words.

“You don’t understan’.” He leaned his head on her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I can’t lose you too, not after everything. I would take this weight, these eyes, just so I don’ lose another parent.”

She remembered four years ago, when she’d first fostered this boy. He’d been in the system for over a year before they passed him to her. He hadn’t spoken since they’d found him amongst the pieces of his family’s bodies—not until her. That, and the one time she’d glanced over her shoulder at him at the wrong time and saw…it…

Such a frail child you were, she thought. Eight, terrifying and terrified. Despite all the medical attention given, they’d never figured out why he couldn’t walk. Children and adults alike were afraid of the dichotomous eyes that scraped through the mind and left it bare, and the scars from the attack had scratched away any semblance of innocence in Parker’s face.

She’d loved him instantly despite that—or perhaps because of it, she thought—and had been drawn to him. She traced a nail down her own scar beneath her right eye. It was a reminder that she should never look and try to see what the boy was carrying. It had been nothing but a glimpse, barely seen, out of the corner of her eyes. The one night she’d tried to help, it had let go of him long enough to try to gouge her eye out.

She turned her thoughts away once more before she could remember it. It’s image was enough to cause pain, a headache that bore deep into her skull. Before Parker, she had not believed in the supernatural, and now it was all that consumed her.

“You aren’t going to lose me,” she said, her voice soft. “I will always be here to protect you. You’re my son.”

Parker hugged her tighter and for the briefest moment Meredith felt an unnatural strength in the withered arms. “It ain’t worth it. I can carry it forever. Just take me home.”

She stood up and braced herself before picking him up. He wrapped himself around her. “Give us one day, Parker. It’s getting dark, but let’s at least stay the night and try tomorrow to figure out the map, okay? There has to be a way to get rid of it.” That hideous parasite, she thought.

Parker didn’t answer, his silence saying more than words ever would. His fear weighed around them both. The boy knew something she did not, but she was determined to help him. The map—scroll, parchment, spell sheet, whatever anyone wanted to call it—had promised her he would be safe if she followed its instructions, and she’d followed it for over a year. She’d done so many things, not all of it savory, and Parker did not know all of it. Parker deserved a good life, and, as his mother, she was going to give it to him.

Meredith hugged him tight, starting to walk up toward where she’d left his wheelchair.

A deep, resounding voice spoke. The voice was slick, like oil. She heard ages in the tone, felt the civilizations that had come and gone in its existence. “Shoulder the weight, walk the water to the center and burn…”

The trees swayed with the words, and Meredith watched them go up in a blazing red. She squinted her eyes and made out the barest shadow that walked against the moon toward the water and cracking ice.

Meredith startled awake. She immediately reached out to find her son. The pallet beside her was empty, and she could make out the empty wheelchair in the flickering light.

Flickering light? She sat up and stumbled out of the tent, not bothering to wake Zeke—this isn’t his battle—and not bothering with shoes. The trees that lined the camp smoldered, echoing red and black flames that seemed to not burn the branches. Against the light, far ahead, she could see the shadow of something horribly tall and horribly thin walking. It dragged something behind it, something much smaller.

“Oh God, Parker.” She started to run toward the flames and toward the lake. “Parker!”

The creature paused as she got closer. It was hard to see anything more than a silhouette as she approached, but she realized that it was her son that stood and stared and regarded her in indifference. She knew immediately that it wasn’t her Parker she looked at. The shadows behind him told a different story. It was so much bigger than the twelve year old boy, stretching out to the trees with hands like claws, a bowed back. There was a body in the shadow’s grasp, much smaller and child-like, struggling as it was dragged.

“Let my son go,” she whispered. “We followed the instructions you sent. I know it was you. Nothing good would be written in magic and blood. I followed each curse and each clue despite it all, just to save this boy. Give him back to me.”

“Meri…” A voice, not human, called out to her from the wind. The creature that was Parker remained still, but the shadow raised a hand and she felt a force collide into her abdomen, stealing her breath away. She collapsed to her knees, coughing.

“Run, mama.”

Meredith shook her head, trying to catch her breath. She looked up and in the little time that had passed, Parker and the shadow had already started to descend toward the lake. By now the trees burned in the fire and the wind kicked up red sand. Meredith forced herself to stand and she began to run. She ignored the tree roots that reached to trip her, stumbling down the steep cliff.

It stood at the edge of the ice. Or, rather, Parker stood and held it. It had latched onto him, no longer a shadow, covering his eyes with long fingers. A featureless face regarded her as it laid its head on her son’s shoulder. Long legs wound around his body, reminiscent of a snake. The two in front of her were silent, despite the crimson tears that streamed beneath the creature’s fingertips.

“Parker…” She reached out, but he ignored her as he turned around and stepped onto the ice.

CRACK!

Like a gunshot, his foot broke through the ice and sent swirling cracks that glowed. He didn’t stumble, but took another slow step that also broke through the ice. He didn’t sink, seemingly walking on the water beneath the ice. Each step he took, the ice cracked and moved and broke, and he continued to walk until he was in the center. All around him was a perfect circle of emerald light emanating from cracks. She could see designs—runes?—in the cracks. There was power in the symbols, an ancient language that screamed old, old words in her mind when she looked at them.

“I bring the innocence and the love,” Parker said, though his voice was deeper and inhuman. Something deep within her seemed to change. There was a compulsion. She couldn’t stop herself from stepping onto the lake. Now, the water was warm, bits of ice floating around her. She stepped forward and realized that she was stepping on the water, not into the water. Her body walked her to the center of the lake where Parker stood in the final piece of solid ice. The creature lifted its head from Parker’s shoulder as she stepped within the circle of runes.

“Where fire froze the light, I burn it away.”

Parker knelt and placed the creature on the ice. Meredith’s heart pounded in a sickening fear as the wind picked up, pulling the fire from the trees behind them, circling the red and black flames around them, following the glowing cracks of ice. There seemed to be a shimmer in the air in front of her, as if she was looking through the sheen of a hot summer’s day.

Meredith realized that it was a break in the world. A connection to something different than she couldn’t possibly understand. The place of the Others, something that the parchment had spoken of in the beginning of the journey. She tried to step backward, but her body held her in place. There were screams from within that rift, screams and echoes that seemed to change the world irrevocably.

Meredith shut her eyes.

When the world was silent, she opened her eyes slowly. Parker was standing in front of her, and for once his gaze did not hurt her. His eyes were hazel, and there was a scared, soft smile on his face. There seemed to be a lightness to him.

“Parker? Is it you?”

“I did it mama,” he said. “I burned the light.”

She smiled, despite the fear the words sent trickling down her spine. She put a hand on his cheek. “My boy, I’m so proud of you.” She hugged him, tight, to her body. In front of them was a writhing mass on the sinking ice and she buried her son’s face into her chest, holding him protectively.

Bones snapped and moved and the figure stood and stumbled forward. It was so much thinner and taller than her that she had to lean up to look at it. Its face was featureless, but it had Parker’s old eyes.

“The love of a mother,” it whispered with no mouth. The words reverberated in the air. The creature seemed to be made of seeping sludge and she could feel it smiling. “I am risen.”

“I’ve done it,” she whispered as she closed her eyes. In the depths of her, she realized that whatever creature this was, she had been the one to release it into the world. She was responsible for the destruction it would leave in its wake. Images flashed in her mind, quick images of broken bodies and burning homes. It gave her the visions and an understanding of what was to come. Of what she had helped bring into fruition. She knew without words she would meet it again, that it would not be done with her. It and others like it would come for her. We come for the Scholar, the Witch, the Mother and the Little One. The world will weep. Tears fell from beneath her eyelids. Her son was safe. That was what mattered. “Go. Find your serpent and leave us be. You’ve broken him enough.”

Silence met her words and she opened her eyes. They were alone, but she caught something flying with long, thin wings out of the corner of her eye.