I trailed the spoon around the edge of
my bowl, moving the last of the noodles through the little puddle of broth remaining
in the bottom. I couldn’t help but marvel at the absurdity of the situation
–here I was, sitting in a beat-up old shack, in the middle of outback
Queensland, eating soup, while some corporation which was responsible for my
birth was now making it their business to be responsible for my death. And to
top it off, I just learned that super-powers are real, and I am one the few who
possess them. It was ludicrous.
A burst of laughter escaped my lips.
Both Richard and Abigail looked at me scrutinisingly, as if they might soon
need to medicate me.
Abigail said to Richard, “We must have
missed the joke.” Then asked me if I was okay.
“No. I’ve never been less okay in my life.”
Richard was taller than me, even sitting
down he had to stoop for his eyes to meet mine. He seemed concerned.
“Then why are you laughing?”
“If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right?”
I took a breath deep into my lungs and let it out slowly. “This is all so
insane. I think I’ve had enough crazy shit happen in my life, why can’t it just
be normal for once?” Tears spilled down my cheeks. “It’s too much. What did I
do to deserve this?”
“Maybe you were Hitler in a past life,”
Richard joked.
Laughter came again, through the tears,
and I buried my face in Richard’s chest, letting the sobs abscond into his
embrace. He held me. Nothing else, just held me. I felt a little hand on my
leg. Bailey had seen my distress and, leaving the masterpiece he and his sister
had continued on after their soup, came to comfort me.
“It’s okay, Mummy,” he said, tucking his
arm between Richard and myself, and hugging me tight. I lifted my arm and
wrapped it around him, prying myself away from Richard enough to look Bailey in
the eye.
“I know, Sweetheart.” I got up from the
bed and walked to the kitchenette to wash my bowl. “I think I just let my
worried feelings turn into sad feelings.”
I looked through the small window above
the sink, into the vast night. Fractured by trees, the moon threw silver
ribbons of illumination splashing into the cool, dusty earth below. A bandicoot
scurried through the underbrush, darting from the base of a giant blue-gum to
the hidden safety of a fallen branch. He pawed the earth around the branch
momentarily, searching for his dinner –a hearty meal of witchetty grubs,
beetles and earthworms, if he was lucky. He darted out of sight again.
My thoughts were drifting through the
forest, following the trail of the now-invisible bandicoot, when I felt a hand
from behind clamp over my mouth. My instinct was to gasp and struggle against
it, but I felt the soft skin and small hands of a slight female and I smelled
Abigail’s floral scent. I stood, frozen in place, and I waited for an
explanation… then it came.
“There’s a soul-seeker coming. He’s
close, I can feel him. Search with your mind, you will feel him too,” she
whispered, her mouth pressed so close that I could feel her lips brushing the
minute hairs on my ears and smell the sweetness of the breath rushing out of
her mouth and across my face as she spoke.
As I struggled to focus on whatever it
was I was supposed to be feeling, Abigail gave me instructions on where to find
a small map.
“Do you think you can find it?”
The rest of me still frozen, I freed my
head and nodded.
“Good,” she whispered. “Take the map and
meet me at the car.”
Turning my body away from the window, I
searched the room for Bailey and Sarah. They were sitting on the floor where
they had been drawing, Richard crouched in front them with a single finger to
his lips, his eyes wide with panic.
My body thawed, and I quickly swept
Sarah into my arms. I ordered Richard to grab Bailey. He did.
“Shush, don’t make a sound,” I whispered
to Sarah, placing a finger to mouth as Richard had done.
Bailey’s eyes widened. “Are the bad guys
coming?” he responded in a low squeak.
I nodded and turned back to where I had
left Abigail by the sink. She wasn’t there. My eyes swept the small space and
found her. Her shoulder was pressed against one of the cupboards and she was
forcing her weight onto it, pushing it aside to reveal a small door. She
intended for us to exit through –I felt like Alice in Wonderland.
As I crossed the room to the little door
it hit me –a wave of energy from outside of myself pulsed through me. Like a
tidal wave of heat, it engulfed me. It radiated inside me, outside me, and like
flames from a raging bushfire it pushed at me with such force that I stumbled
momentarily. I knew I had to get my kids as far from it as I could… as fast as
I could.
After taking a peek out the doorway to
check that the coast was clear, I squeezed through with Sarah still in my arms.
Then Richard sent Bailey. He went willingly but I could sense the fear in him.
He trembled and reached out at me, grasping at empty air, until I took his
hand. Once we three were out, Richard followed, but not Abigail. I poked my
head back through the open door.
“Come on Abigail.” My voice rose to a
half-choked scream. I wanted to sound urgent, yet I did not want to yell.
She shook her head. “Go!” She commanded
and slammed the small door in my face.
A loud crash came from behind the
sprite-sized door and I could feel the new energy stronger than before, like an
atomic bomb had been dropped at my feet. There was more than one. I could feel
them now, feel their individual auras, their nasty, malicious auras. There were
two, and they were in there with Abigail. I shuddered at the thought of Abigail
in that little room with two monsters. I could feel their hunger, their burning
desire. A desire I didn’t care to feel –desire for death, for pain. A thirst drove
them, compelled them, to do a deed so heinous, so unthinkable, that I rejected
the motives that pulsed inside me now… their motives.
“Go to hell you soul sucking demons.” I
heard Abigail’s angered shout.
Richard pulled me away from the
building, the building in which my new best friend was facing down two things that, to me in that moment,
epitomized evil. He tried to drag me to the car but I had to get the map.
“Take the kids. Wait for me in the car
with the motor running. If I’m not there in two minutes, go.”
“No, Charlie.” He pulled at me again,
and I resisted again.
“You’re wasting time. Go!”
Though I could see in his he’d wanted
to, he didn’t argue with me this time. He took Sarah and Bailey around the
north side of the building, where he wouldn’t have to cross the doorway to get
to the car, while I rounded the other side of the building.
I found the pile of firewood easily
enough. A foot from it sat a rock, roughly rounded, about the size of a bowling
ball cut in half. I flipped it over and there, just as Abigail had said, was a
steel flap acting as a lid. I opened it and a folded piece of paper –a little
tattered on its edges– claimed residency within the perfectly cut square in the
fake rock.
More yelling came from inside, then a
crash and a thud. I edged closer to the building, I couldn’t just leave like
she had told me to. I needed to know that Abigail would be okay.
I leaned forward on tiptoe and peeked
cautiously inside, one eye breeching the frame of the kitchen window. I had
been right, there were two of them. Their backs to me, they were draped in dark
hooded cloaks that brushed the floorboards, hiding all traces of the beasts
within.
Abigail’s eyes were wide, reflecting the still-burning candles. But she
didn’t look afraid, she looked… angry. A wild fury burned bright in those eyes.
I thought the two soul-seekers might burst into flames from the sheer ferocity
of that glare. That didn’t happen, though. I wished it had.
One of them moved toward her and reached
for her throat. Before he could reach her, Abigail waved her hand in a large
sweeping motion and the monster flew through the air and hit the far wall. He
tumbled to the floor with another hard thud. The second soul-seeker lunged at
her, and before she could raise her hand he had both of her wrists in an iron
grasp.
Abigail struggled to free herself. By
now they were two again, and four hands held her resisting body in place.
One of the monsters –the one farthest
from me; he was turned so I could almost see his face inside the hood of the
black cloth– released his right hand from Abigail’s throat. He held his hand,
open palmed, only inches from her chest, above her heart.
A smoky waft lit her skin. A burning
orange cloud passed from her to the waiting hand, like dusty, red-brown smoke
being drawn into a vacuum. They weren’t soul-seekers, they were soul-suckers. As they sucked her essence
away, her skin turned a milky shade of grey and she collapsed.
Looking at her contorted on the floor, I
realised just how much I needed her. Not just as a guide through this
terrifying chaos, but as a friend and a confidant.
A wailing scream tore from my lips.
“RICHARD!” I screamed but didn’t look
away from the window.
The two cloaked figures turned. They
stared at me and I stared back. Four eager black eyes glared at me for an
immeasurable moment. A smile –no, not a smile, a smirk– broke across one of
their faces, the one nearest me.
Adrenalin coursed through my veins, and
something else, a flow of energy from the air around me, drawing into me,
filling me to the brink of explosion. My palms burned with the excess of energy
and a brilliant blue-white squall drew toward me, like the funnel of a tornado
that touched down on the top of my head.
It wasn’t a painful burn, though. It was
an intoxicating vigour. I didn’t want it to stop; I was greedy for it. I felt
invincible, drunk with the power of all that exists in this universe. This was
a good trip, on a good drug, and I was injecting a steady supply of it directly
into every cell in my body. I sucked in more and more, like filling a water
balloon until it is ready to burst. But I did not think I would burst. I could
have drunk in infinite amounts of this energy, this life-force. It would just
keep coming, compacting inside me, accumulating in mass and potency.
Through the provocative inebriation I saw
Abigail, on the floor of her cabin, broken and unconscious, maybe dead. The
fire in my palms burned hotter.
I needed to put her back together. Failing
that, I needed to avenge her. I needed to destroy the evil in front of me like
I needed to breathe. It was not a choice, it was a compulsion, programmed into
me at the most fundamental depth.
I lunged my hands forward, toward the
creatures who would kill me given the chance, and maybe had killed my friend, throwing the energy with such force it nearly
knocked me off my feet as it burst from within me, like a flamethrower, from my
palms. The window shattered and I regained my footing, planting my feet firmly,
and angling my body forward, grunting with exertion as I pushed against the
ferocious backlash. I took control of the energy that flowed through me,
drawing it in and releasing it at my target.
I was the conductor through which the
energy flowed, the catalyst linking two elements. Like oxygen and hydrogen
combine to create water, I combined the force of the universe with my tangible
desire to end the soul-seekers and created a force I had no measure or name for.
The two creatures seemed to be frozen in
place, their black eyes wide with the knowledge that they were about to die.
For a moment I almost felt empathy for them –not enough to let them live. I
drew a deep breath in through my nose, and pushed it out hard from my mouth.
With my breath whooshed out I exerted maximum effort into the fire in my hands.
The two soul-seekers burst into flames.
As the fire ate at them, soft clouds of
orange danced away from the soul-seekers, one by one, just like the red-brown
smoke they had syphoned from Abigail only minutes ago. At first I thought they
were part of the flames that were steadily consuming the two creatures. Soon,
though, it was clear that wasn’t the case.
Most of the perfectly round clouds drew
away from the soul-seekers, and from the shack, almost like they had a mind and
a purpose, and darted into the night. But one floated gently down, toward
Abigail’s fallen body.
Suddenly Abigail gasped in one mighty
breath and sprang upright. She was alive.
I don’t know how long Richard had been
behind me, but I noticed him when he said, “Holy shit!” I didn’t respond, but
let my hands fall, and with them the flow of white-hot energy ceased.
On all fours, Abigail scurried from the
shack, stood, and ran to where we were.
Together we watched in silence as the
flames which devoured the soul-seekers dissipated, leaving behind only ash.
Abigail, Richard and I climbed in the
car without a word. I looked in the back at Bailey and Sarah. They were in the
middle of the backseat, clutching one another, their faces pale and horrified.
Their eyes bulged and their lips trembled. Bailey stroked Sarah’s hair
soothingly. Tears streamed from their four eyes and dripped from two quivering
chins.
The low growl of the engine echoed
beneath the silent trees. Richard slammed the gearstick into first and drove
his foot down on the throttle, harder than he intended. The Monaro lurched
forward. Dirt and rocks sprayed everywhere, propelled by the spinning wheels. I
glanced out the back window, as Richard navigated the serpentine track, at the
small shack that was untouched by the flames which had burned so fiercely
within it.
Dust billowed from the tyres, lighting
up in the glow of the taillights. The red dust-cloud followed us until the
shack was well out of sight and we reached the sealed surface of the highway.
