When War Calls(9)

The peaceful currents vanished suddenly and his senses peaked. No longer did he feel relaxed in his natural bed. An erratic motion had come out of somewhere in the ocean-like play and disappeared in the same moment. It felt like a spear; a shaft but of nothing solid. It was something deadly. Somehow he knew it was not right, that what he had just experienced was not something that would put him at rest any further. Whatever it was, it was a threat.

He searched his consciousness, moving around in the way that one does through their mind, as if actually able to explore an imaginary world. He hoped to discover the origin of the spear, to understand what it had been, but it was nowhere to be found.

The spirals gained in speed, first at a gradual rate, then more rapidly as more seemed to join the strange orbit around him. It made him feel dizzy, no longer sure of which way to turn. Everything now appeared confusing, as if he were a lost child stumbling through a haunted maze. He almost thought he had felt the presence of monsters lurking in the darkness, hissing silent threats and groaning with hateful misery. They would not attack him, yet, but their threat would linger.

In the commotion, he felt something shoot past him again. It was another spear of a sort. It had happened too quickly. He still couldn’t tell what it was. Two more crossed by him, followed by another that almost made contact with his shoulder. He did his best to analyse what they were, but failed as the spirals enveloped him once more. His head was spinning so quickly now that he couldn’t keep up with it. He was going to fall soon, without anywhere to fall to. He could feel the spears beginning to shoot past him again but at a more constant rate. His panic increased with the speed of the spirals, but still he could not command sense or limb. He was at the mercy of whatever it was that was controlling him.

As he tried to sit up with all his strength, he was greeted with success, gaining a little control as he arched his back up from the ground. But he was then met with a sharp pain in his back, as if one of the spears had shot straight into him, forcing him to relinquish his control and lie back down. It had felt as if an actual blade had been thrust straight through him, skewering him on its metallic point but allowing no blood to go free. Through the haze of pain, he was drawn by two oval outlines that had appeared ahead. They were almost invisible against the gray sky behind them, yet he could hear something, or feel it. It was as if they were calling for him to come forward, to get away from the pain, to come closer, to...

The ovals disappeared as suddenly as they had come. The pain ever present and still feeling paralysed, Jaden tried to think back to his talks with Vennoss, trying to find something that would save him. There had to be something he knew, something he could do to escape this nightmare. Vennoss had often spoken of strange things such as this, stories in which people would describe an incredible hurt in their sleep, only to die days later, or become gravely ill for the remaining weeks of their life. It all seemed a fantasy. How could it be? Could it really be happening? Was this the end of his life as well, just as it had been for theirs? Was this the sickness his father suffered?

No. He couldn’t let it happen. He had to break free. He fought against the pain, trying to flinch from the blade as his body arched and convulsed from its attack, but it was no use. Each time he gained control more pain would strike him and then increase the grip holding him to the earth.

He had to keep trying, he thought. There must be a way.

In one final attempt, he would move every part of his body in order to flee the ghostly restraints. It took him some time to work up the courage again. The blade-like pain was consistently stabbing at his consciousness, making it almost impossible to take the breath he so desperately needed.

He knew he had to try no matter how hard it seemed. He could do nothing else. Slowly he counted back from three, biding his time before he made the attempt.

Three…

Two…

One…

With a sudden burst of strength, he freed himself from the blade and rose to a sitting position. He could no longer feel the strange movement in the ground, nor the spears crisscrossing underneath him. It had worked. He was amazed to find himself free … or was he? No more than a second had passed before he realised it had been too easy, and that he was not sitting up at all. His eyes were still closed, and then there was the strange sinking sensation of knowing what was about to come.

Horror. Anguish. Death. It struck then, a pain so terrible, a feeling so raw and crippling that it threatened his very sanity as it washed over his body and mind alike. It felt as if a giant claw-like hand had reached up through the dirt and grasped him, pulling him back with such incredible force that it would take him deep below even the ground itself, to a hidden lair of a beast that would feast upon his flesh, content until its next unsuspecting prey came along. The threat of the monsters lurking in the darkness had come to pass.