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The Dreamcatcher
Part II : Amber Alert
The city life slowed to a
grinding halt as the black night sky drifted over it, slowly enveloping it in a
thick blanket of darkness. The moon shone through the gaps between the
skyscrapers, creating shadows like prison bars on the pavement. People made
their way home from work, unaware of what was happening.
For within the city limits, from within every reeking
sewer and alleyway, from every depth of despair and depravity, a huge mass of
evil, almost as dark as the night itself, was in
gradual formation. It twitched…it scuttled.
Thank God that’s over,
Bubbles thought with relief as she and her sisters did one final aerial swoop.
It felt like the FBI in there…all those questions…
“OK, girls,” Blossom instructed.
“
“Got it,” Buttercup replied, and watched as the other two
set out in a two-way fork. She, meanwhile, headed towards the south sector.
This was the perfect time for something sinister to happen, but she couldn’t
see anyone as the buildings fleeted past below her, not even in the intricate
labyrinth of alleys that snaked through the city, not even through the
billowing clouds of steam that rose from them.
So far, so good, she noted as she continued, ticking off locations on a mental
itinerary. Fortunately for her, she found nobody, which was slightly unnerving;
she had the eyes of an eagle when it came to spotting troublemakers.
Nevertheless, it meant she could get home that little bit earlier. Great, she
thought. Now to get back to the others…
As she was about to take off back towards the centre of
town, something caught her eye. It seemed like a little dot of black, tucked
away in the corner of her eye.
…What was that?
She turned to see
where it came from, but she couldn’t find anything. Just your imagination, she
told herself, and started to return towards the Mayor’s office. But then she
heard a slight scurrying sound, the one made by hundreds of little feet
pitter-pattering along concrete, carried on the cusp of the wind. Cautiously,
she began to trace the noise, following it like a metal detector. It was quite
a long way away, but her ultrasonic hearing hardly ever let her down. Sometimes
when she changed her direction it got louder, other times it got softer. The
suspense became almost maddening as she thought over what it could possibly be.
Her mind seemed to resonate with the faint crackling as she tried to locate it.
What is it?, she thought. What makes a noise like that?…
At last, she decided she was getting warmer as she
approached one of the many skyscrapers that epitomised Townsville and hid
behind it. She was definitely close, the noise was much clearer now, although
its amplitude had hardly been raised. Peering out around the corner of the
wall, what she saw made her heart stand still.
A huge, creeping entity was clawing its way through the
city, almost like an ominous, black tentacle. Its colour was so dark that the
yellow light from the street lamps couldn’t penetrate it. Buttercup stared in
silent terror as it slid effortlessly over parked cars, crawling torpidly
towards the epicentre. She strained to decide what it was, but it was
impossible to tell whether it was one creature or many tiny ones joined
together. It slithered further and further along the pavement, pushing forward
evenly in the direction of its target.
No way, she affirmed herself, I
can’t fight it on my own. I need the girls…
With that, she hurtled off into the night, praying that
she found her sisters before the monster did.
“All clear where I checked.
What about you?”
“One minor disturbance, but I dealt with it.”
“OK,” Blossom noted. “I wonder where Buttercup is?”
“Don’t ask me,” Bubbles said. “All I know is that she
went off towards the southern part of Townsville.”
“She probably caught someone,” Blossom deduced. “Let’s
give her a few more minutes.” So they waited. The large clock tower in the
centre of town slowly ticked away the minutes one by
one. Waiting for Buttercup seemed for them to take aeons, although it was in
reality only a couple of minutes. Such is the passage of time when one has
nothing to do.
Finally, they saw a familiar figure gliding towards them
through the sky, its face dimly lit by the glaring street lamps below them.
“There she is,” Blossom noted as their sister came
towards them. “Where’ve you been, Buttercup?”
“Quick,” Buttercup told them, wiping sweat from her
forehead. “You’ve gotta come with me! You gotta see this!”
“What is it?” Bubbles asked. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s this huge,
black creature coming up through Townsville!” she said. “It’s getting close to
the city centre! We gotta stop it and fast!”
“Whoa, whoa, take it easy!” Blossom said, trying to calm
her. “Where is it?”
Buttercup pointed towards where she had just come from.
“You’d better follow me,” she said. “I think I know where it is.”
“All right. Lead the way.” With
that, Buttercup took off, and the other two followed her carefully. As they
darted between buildings, Bubbles felt a bit uneasy – what if this thing was
some horrific, deformed abomination that they couldn’t stop or, even worse,
felt too afraid of to even try? Oh, God, she thought, it could be anything…
After a short time, Buttercup stopped abruptly in
mid-air, and they almost crashed into her.
“What’s the hold-up?” Blossom asked, giving herself some
space. “What’s wrong?”
Bubbles watched as Buttercup scanned the area, in the
same way as one would regard a view from a hilltop. Having found nothing, she
looked around robotically, trying to relocate what she’d seen, or thought she’d
seen, before.
“Where’d it go?” she said, her head still looking
erratically from side to side. “I could swear it was here…I could swear it.”
“Maybe you oughta have a rest
when we get home, Buttercup,” Blossom recommended.
She knew that what her sister said was for the best, but
Buttercup felt slightly irritated by this. What Blossom had said sounded almost
like a personal insult to her at this time. There had been something there, she
knew it. She had seen it ooze towards the centre of town, like an amoeba in
water, clutching and clawing.
“Buttercup?” Blossom asked,
tapping her on the shoulder. “We should go home. It’s OK, you’re probably just
tired. It was just a figment of your imagination –”
“No! It wasn’t!” Buttercup protested vehemently. “There
was something there, less than five minutes ago! I could see it,
I could hear it…this huge, black evil crawling towards Townsville!”
“Maybe it went away from here,” Bubbles suggested.
“Yeah,” Buttercup accepted. “It’s moved on. That means…”
She stopped in mid-sentence. “Oh, God.”
“That means it’s getting closer!” Blossom realised.
“Buttercup, which way was it travelling?” Buttercup pointed north-east, towards
the city centre. “Quickly! Follow it!”
They sped off again, keeping their eyes peeled for any
sign of something large and black creeping along below them. Shouldn’t be too
hard to miss, thought Blossom, if it’s something that big…
But they found nothing. As they swooped over the tops of
buildings, nothing seemed to indicate in any way that there was something
there. Blossom started to worry whether Buttercup was compos mentis. She had evidently been hallucinating, yet she swore
that what she’d seen was real. This triggered images in her mind of Buttercup
sitting in a padded cell, bound in a straightjacket, yelling at men in white
coats on the other side of a pane of glass, “It’s all true! I’m telling you,
it’s true! Why doesn’t anyone believe me?” That last, desperate moan resounded
around her head, and she began to think a bit more clearly. We’ve all had these
weird dreams recently, she thought. Maybe they’re getting to her. She might be
getting a bit paranoid…
Maybe she’s having us on? She might be just joking around
–
Yeah, funny joke. Ha ha.
She resolved to keep looking as all three landed on the
ground.
“Still nothing,” Bubbles said as she set foot on the
road, now completely devoid of traffic, for some indiscernible reason. “You
sure you saw that thing, Buttercup?”
“Positive!” Buttercup replied. “It was so disgusting, it had to be real!”
“Maybe we missed it. We’ll see it when it comes,” Blossom
said, purely for Buttercup’s feelings. But, in the farthest reaches of her
mind, she could sense what her sister could – the inexorable feeling that
something was creeping up behind them, as would a snake on its prey.
She looked around. The scenario seemed pretty normal to
her – a couple of solitary businessmen making their way home, holding leather
briefcases by their sides; the yellow beams of light from the street lamps,
illuminating the pavement with a subtle, amber glow; a couple of windows
standing out from the darkness of some of the skyscrapers, evidence of some
poor guys working overtime. It certainly didn’t seem as though something was
wrong. It all looked, to her, very quaint and tranquil. Glancing at Buttercup,
she began to feel very pitiful as she watched her sister looking occasionally
over her shoulder, as if there were a mysterious assassin lurking in the
shadows, ready to spring out and attack her.
Buttercup jumped slightly as she felt someone lay a hand upon her shoulder, but she found that it was only
Blossom, who smiled at her. She managed a weak smile back, but she couldn’t
shake off the overwhelming tension in her muscles. Maybe it is just tiredness, she thought. I don’t
think I slept so well last night –
You slept fine, her more fearful side told her. This is no dream. Remember the quicksand? Remember that? That was real, wasn’t it? You felt it! It was all real, and so is this –
And that’s when she felt the ground begin to shake.
Bubbles said, “Hey! What’s happening?” when a slight
tremor underneath her feet knocked her slightly off balance. Blossom noticed it
too, and swayed as the pavement jerked arrhythmically.
“It’s an earthquake!” Bubbles whimpered.
“It can’t be!” Blossom retorted. “We’re nowhere near any
major fault lines!”
On the sidewalk to their left, a man was walking casually
down the street, whistling as he went. He stopped when he felt the pavement
tremble, and took a cautious look behind him. The girls were startled when he
screamed in terror and ran off into the night, shrieking, “Run!
Run for your lives!”
Turning to look at what he’d seen, they gasped. A
colossal, black tsunami was rolling towards them, except with a fraction of the
noise, like in one of those old silent movies. They simply watched as it
splashed against the buildings, and small droplets broke free, then rejoined the group.
“What the hell is that?”
Blossom shouted.
“That’s it!”
Buttercup answered her, pointing accusingly at it, “That’s what I saw – ” But she said no more. Rooted to the spot with sheer
horror, they were knocked forcefully to the floor as the inky tidal wave reared
up and crashed down upon them. Blossom cried out in pain as her head smashed
against the concrete with the full velocity of the blow; Bubbles screamed.
Meanwhile, the deluge washed over them, seeming to
stretch infinitely out into the night.
Buttercup lay consciously still on the floor, with her
brain going flat out to try and figure out what this thing was. It wasn’t
really a tidal wave, it just moved like one, flowing and crashing against the
buildings like a flash flood. A jet black torrent of evil, the spawn of a
twisted and sinister force, crawling over them…
Crawling.
She shuddered as she felt a huge army of tiny creatures
march over her skin, her arms, her face…every single
footstep made her flesh creep. Risking a glance at her arm, she opened her
eyes.
She felt sick.
Cockroaches. Hundreds
of thousands of them, making their horrific journey over her body. Oh,
man, she thought desperately, this is disgusting! She swiped at a few of them
as they approached, but there were too many, and she retched in intense hatred
as they proceeded forward determinedly…
Bubbles nearly screamed again, but stopped herself, and simply lay trembling on the ground as the
roaches crept over her. She abhorred cockroaches – they all did – and having a
countless number of them drift overhead like a water current did nothing to aid
her intense fear of them. They just looked so repulsive, with their antennae
and weird bodies and six legs… She prayed silently, Make it stop. Please, just
make them go away…
Blossom’s head was reeling from her injury, but she
snapped back into consciousness when she felt something run hastily across her
face…and multiple somethings along her arms. Forcing
her eyes open, she saw a horde of insects scuttling past and over her. One of
them crawled over her arm, and she instinctively smashed it on the ground. She
took her fist away to reveal a dead, and squished, cockroach, with some of its
vital fluids leaking out of its body.
Ugh, she thought, flicking some of it off her hand. But
then, the roach twitched. As she watched, a new one began to form on top of it.
Then it in turn generated five or so copies of itself, which started scurrying
towards her. “No…” she whispered in disbelief. “This can’t be happening…”
Buttercup tried to look up at her sisters, but the
immense weight of the roaches forced her head back down onto the pavement. She
knew what it was – it was happening again. The same thing
that had happened with the quicksand, the snake, the wasps that very morning.
They all feared cockroaches, and now they were lying at the bottom of a heaving
sea of them, as helpless as if they were embedded in concrete blocks. She
feared that they were also running out of air, but the number of cockroaches
meant that they were pinned to the ground. They were gonna
drown…
Just ignore it, Blossom told herself, and it’ll go away.
But ignoring it was impossible, the sensation was so real, all those tiny feet
pressing down upon her skin…
Squirming uncontrollably, Bubbles began to wonder whether
they were going to get out of this alive, and she closed her eyes again, still
begging tacitly for an armistice…
Oh, God, we’re gonna die in
here –
You’re not real, you’re not there –
Make it go away…please
–
Don’t give in.
The same thought flashed simultaneously in their minds
like a neon sign. Don’t give in. That’s what it wants you to do. Getting scared just makes it stronger, keeps
giving it energy until it becomes invincible…
All three of them took heed of this telepathic warning,
and tried to ignore the accumulating fear inside them. It was arduous to
attempt, with each of them feeling the overwhelming loathing and claustrophobia
brought on by the vast ocean of cockroaches, and the incessant scuttling noise
they created. But it began to prevail.
Buttercup took a deep breath of fresh air as a rip was
made in the black blanket above her face, tearing it apart at the seams.
Blossom watched as the roaches on her arms vanished into thin air. Bubbles
breathed a huge sigh of relief as the flow of insects slowed and no longer felt
so rapid. In a stunned silence, they watched as the roaches began to disappear,
platoon by platoon, and the moon began to show through the ebony-black cloak,
stabbing at it. The soft, scurrying sound gradually diminished, as if fading on
the wind, and became softer as they faded away from view, travelling back
through invisible portals to where they had come from until they were no more.
As she felt the last one disappear, Buttercup looked up,
squinting as the light from a street lamp shone directly into her eyes. The
burden on her body was gone, and she got steadily to her feet. “Guys!” she
called. “Everybody OK?”
“Yeah,” Blossom replied, pushing herself up on her hands
and then assuming an upright position. She looked behind her and sighed in
compassion when she saw Bubbles curled up into a little ball on the ground,
shaking slightly. Putting a hand on her shoulder, and after hearing a muffled
whine emanate from the ball, she said, “Bubbles? It’s OK. They’re gone now.”
Bubbles took her hands away from her face, and regarded
her surroundings with caution. It was true, the cockroaches were gone, but she
was still scared of what was happening to them. She felt violated and insecure,
because she didn’t know how to make it all go away. All she could do was depend on the mercy of whoever was doing this to them…
“Man,” Buttercup wheezed, “this is getting too scary.
What’s next?”
Blossom considered this for a moment. What was next? If this was anything to go by,
then their worse fears might amount to something even more horrific than what
they’d already experienced. She put her head in her hands and answered, “I
don’t know.”
“Please, can we just go home?” Bubbles pleaded with them,
on the verge of tears. “God knows what’s still hiding out here…”
The Professor was getting
worried, and it began to affect his thinking as he paced around the kitchen.
His mind kept conjuring up terrible images of the girls in trouble, in the clutches
of a hideous monster, or something worse than that which he couldn’t bear to
think about. A sigh of relief escaped him when he heard a knock on the door,
and he ran to it and flung it open. The girls flew in, and the anxiety began to
swell inside him again. They each looked pretty distraught, Bubbles especially
so, and he asked them, “What happened this time?”, although he was unwilling to
hear the answer.
“Cockroaches,” Blossom replied, “loads of them. They just
came out of nowhere, and started crawling all over us…”
“It was disgusting,” Buttercup added, “these
thousands of insects just scurrying across our arms and faces,” and she
retched.
“I see,” he noted, cupping his chin in his hand. “But…you
weren’t hurt, or anything?”
“No,” Blossom answered him. “Not hurt –
”
“Just grossed out,” Buttercup quipped.
“That’s good,” he said, and noticed Bubbles looking up at
him, her eyes wide and shimmering with a tear. He said sympathetically, “Aw, Bubbles,” and knelt down and hugged her tightly. “It’s
OK, honey. They’re gone.” He knew for a fact that Bubbles hated roaches more
than any of them, and she looked frightened out of her mind. Poor kid, he
thought, first those wasps, and now these cockroaches…
Bubbles squeezed back, and whimpered, “Oh, God, Professor,
what’s happening to us?”
“Yeah,” Buttercup added. “It’s like our fears are…coming
to life around us.”
“I don’t know,” he responded, setting Bubbles back on the
floor. “I can see where you’re coming from, it’s just impossible to explain.”
He sighed and massaged his temple with his finger. “It just…happens. That’s all
I know so far.”
“We don’t know what’s causing it, either,” Blossom added.
“All we know is that it must be pretty powerful if it can do something of this
calibre.”
The Professor murmured in agreement, and said, “Well, I
can’t do anything at the moment. You’d better have something to eat, just try
and reserve some energy.”
Later, after he had tucked them into bed, he was walking
back down the stairs, half sorrowfully pitying the girls, half seething with
rage. Bubbles seemed very apprehensive to go to sleep. ‘What if it comes for
me?’, she had said, and he could imagine the raw
terror that must have been travelling through her. The thought of lying, wide
awake in the dark, heart jumping at the slightest sound, half-expecting the
glowing, red eyes of a monster to slowly open like car headlights in the
darkness…
How dare it?, he thought angrily
as he went into the living room, How dare it do this to them? If only he could
figure out what it was, then all their problems would be laid to rest.
With a certain sense of emptiness all too apparent inside
him, he opened up his newspaper.
*
The girls sighed with
exhaustion as they flew back towards their school. They’d just been on another
“errand” for the Mayor, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.
Buttercup stretched and said, “That settled his hash,
huh?”
“Yeah,” Blossom agreed. “It’ll be a long time before he
tries something like that again.” Bubbles giggled as she flew alongside her.
Today had been good, so far. Nothing had yet happened, and she was beginning to
feel a bit more at ease with herself.
But – there it was again. The same feeling she’d had
before Blossom was attacked by that snake…the feeling that something was amiss.
She stopped flying, and tuned in to the brain wave.
Blossom noticed Bubbles drop out of formation, and she
flew back towards her, Buttercup following her lead. “Hey, Bubbles,” she asked,
“what’s wrong?”
“My sense’s tingling again,” Bubbles replied, frowning in
her deep concentration. “Something’s
going on…” She pointed to her right. “…that way.”
“Think we should check it out?” Buttercup asked.
Blossom shrugged. “Better safe than
sorry.”
They took off,
Bubbles indicating a change of direction whenever it was needed. The feeling in
her mind was unmistakable, as though what she’d located was emitting signals
which were received in her brain. Eventually, they neared a large gap in the
trees outside Townsville, in the middle of which was a placid, blue lake. There
was a clear reflection in the water as the Sun shone down upon it. By now, the
signal was much stronger, and she told them, “It’s down there in that clearing.
I’m going to check it out.”
“We’re coming
with you,” Blossom said firmly.
“No, you don’t
have to – ”
“Yes, we do.”
“It’s probably
nothing serious – ”
“Maybe, but we
can’t take that chance. At least let us keep an eye out for anything.”
“All right,”
Bubbles conceded, and she started to spiral down towards the ground. Blossom
and Buttercup followed her, Blossom feeling wary of what was down there, and
waited patiently as Bubbles set foot on the grass.
As she landed,
Bubbles looked around at the scenery. It seemed pretty normal to her – trees,
grass, a couple of butterflies flittering in the
breeze. As she looked to her left, she saw two people standing near the lake, a
man and a boy, and began to walk towards them. She noticed that the man was a
lot older than she had perceived him to be as they came into clearer view,
leant over as he was on a wooden walking stick, and the boy was wearing what
looked like a pair of swimming shorts.
The pangs of fear
began to well up inside Blossom again as she saw Bubbles disappear underneath
the boughs of a tree, and her brain began to play tricks on her, formulating
reflective pictures of creepers shooting out like arrows from the forest,
ensnaring Bubbles in their clutches, and whisking her off into the gloom before
she’d even had a chance to scream. Her muscles became tense, and she swallowed.
Buttercup noticed
this, and said, “Don’t worry, Bloss. She’ll be all
right.”
Bubbles raised
her hand in greeting, and said, “Hello,” to them.
The old man
looked up from his admiration of the lake, and replied, in a gentle, elderly
voice, “Well, hey there, young lady. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Looking out over
the lake, Bubbles could see his point. The lake sparkled as the sunlight beamed
down on it, and the sky above was a beautiful, clear ultramarine colour.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess it is kinda pretty…”
“Pretty ain’t the half of it, little missy,” the man said. “Name’s Menzies Rhodes, by the way, and this is my grandson, Josh.
Say ‘hello’, boy.”
Josh looked up at
her, and said, “Hello,” timidly before turning back to the lake. He looked
about her age, perhaps slightly older, and his hair was on the verge of dark
brown, but he still had little tufts on blonde on his sideburns.
“Nice to meet
you,” she said courteously. “Why are you here, Mr. Rhodes?”
“I come here all
the time,”
He’s a stranger,
Bubbles thought, you shouldn’t be talking to him –
He’s just a kind,
old man. What harm could it do?
“What do you have
in mind?” she asked him.
“Well, little
Josh here wants to go swimmin’ in the lake,”
Josh chuckled and
said, “Grampa,” in a pseudo-embarrassed way as
“Anyway,” he
continued, “I was just wondering if you could lean over and test the water for
him? I mean, just dip your hand in there, or somethin’?”
“Sure,” Bubbles
replied. “Yeah, that’s OK,” and she started to walk out towards the lake.
“Look, see, there
she is,” Buttercup told Blossom as Bubbles re-emerged from beneath the tree.
“She’s fine.”
“What’s she going
to the lake for?” Blossom asked quizzically.
“Don’t know,” she
answered her. “Can’t be anything serious, though…”
When she reached
the water, Bubbles crouched down and drew her hand through it, ploughing it
through gently. It felt cold, but the kind of cold that relaxes someone,
particularly on a hot day such as this one. “Yeah, it’s kinda
cold, but – hey!” she yelled as she felt someone shove her roughly in the back.
Trying to regain her balance was in vain, and she fell forward into the lake,
the splashing resounding around her head.
As she was
testing the water, Blossom was saying to her sister, “Oh, God, Buttercup, I’m
scared.”
“Scared of what?”
Buttercup replied inquisitively.
“Of all this
weird stuff that’s been happening recently,” she explained. “Oh, God…I just
don’t feel like we’re safe from anything any more…”
Buttercup noticed
the slight quiver in her voice, and said, “Hey, don’t worry, Blossom! It’ll be
OK!”. However, she felt the same way as her sister.
There was no hiding it. “I’m scared, too,” she comforted her, rubbing her
shoulder affectionately. “But we’ll get through it. I’m sure we – ” She broke off abruptly when he heard a disturbance from
down below, someone shouting in exclamation, and then silence. “What was that?”
she asked.
“What was what?”
Blossom responded.
“I heard
something from down there,” she said. “C’mon!”
With that, she
flew towards the ground in a divebomb, Blossom
following her and muttering, “Oh, God, oh, God…”
As they landed on
the ground, a lump formed in Blossom’s throat – Bubbles was gone, nowhere to be
seen. Impossible, she thought, we only turned our backs for a minute –
She watched as
Buttercup looked around frenziedly, muttering, “Where the hell is she?” When
she too joined in the search, she caught sight of two people standing by the
lakeside, seeming to peer down into the tranquil blue. They must have seen
Bubbles before she disappeared...oh, God, they had to have done.
“Excuse me?” she
asked of them, “Have you seen our sister anywhere?”
Bubbles felt
extremely cold as she floated in the water, looking at the shimmering image of
Josh and his grandfather watching her through the undulating water. They both
appeared to be smiling.
She clenched her
fists in fury – it must have been the boy. That does it, you little creep, she
thought, you’re gonna get what’s coming to you.
Propelled by her angry determination, she tried to swim back up, kicking
furiously at the water below her, but it did nothing. The two of them came no
closer to her, even as she forced herself upwards with all her might, her arms
moving up and down like oars. In fact, they seemed to be getting ever so
slightly farther away, despite her efforts.
All of a sudden,
she saw Blossom and Buttercup walk up to Josh and his grandfather, Blossom
mouthing a question to them. There they are, she thought, they’ll help me out…
“That’s her!”
Buttercup answered, and hope sprang alive once again. “Did you see where she
went?”
“Sure did,”
Blossom breathed
a sigh of relief, and said, “Thank you, thanks so much!” Gesturing to Buttercup
to follow her, she lifted off into the sky.
Hey! Where are
you going?, Bubbles thought desperately as her sisters
started to fly away. I’m right here! She was starting to get worried now, for,
try as she might, she couldn’t get within a foot of the surface. It was almost
as if something had latched onto her like an octopus, holding her back.
And still, the
quaking image of the two of them seemed to rise further away from her… The
realisation hit her as would a punch.
She was sinking.
An invisible current was dragging her to the bottom, and it had impaired her
otherwise normal ability to swim. Threshing frantically as she plunged through
the water, which was slowly darkening around her due to the absence of light,
she called out to her sisters, praying that they heard her. “Girls!
Help me!” she yelled, but it came out in a gargle as a torrent of large bubbles
escaped from her mouth and floated up to the surface. Hurriedly, she closed her
mouth, and looked helplessly and yearningly up at the surface as the lake
continued to cut off her oxygen, to strangle her. She began to panic, because
soon she would run out of air, and she would wrestle with the elements to try
and get back onto dry land as water gushed into her lungs…
But as she did
so, Buttercup noticed a fatal flaw in the old man’s story. “Hey, wait a
minute,” she said, turning round accusingly to face them, “we would’ve seen her
– ” The man and his boy had evaporated, without even
leaving any footprints.
“Buttercup! What’re you
stopping for?” Blossom asked, and then she said, “Where did they go?” when she
saw the empty patch of grass where the two had been standing.
“I don’t know,”
Buttercup replied. “But the old man was lying. Bubbles couldn’t have flown off, otherwise we would’ve seen it! That means she’s still
around here somewhere!”
“Oh, God, you’re
right!” Blossom realised. “And we’ve got no idea! Oh, no, where could she be?”
Her voice began to crack with the stress.
“Calm down!”
Buttercup said, although she felt pretty much the same way. “She’s gotta be in this area – ”
“Hold on,”
Blossom interrupted her, and pointed at the lake. “Look!”
As Buttercup
followed her arm, she couldn’t see anything. Until something
scampered across the surface slightly to the left of her line of vision.
Turning sharply to look at it before it went away, she could
just see the remainder of a collection of ripples, dissipating slowly away
towards the banks. “I can see some ripples,” she noted. “Must’ve come
from something pretty big if they’re still here – ”
“Exactly!” Blossom
answered. “And look where they come from!” The epicentre of the shock waves was
located about a yard out from the water’s edge. “This means that…”
“Oh, God, she
must’ve fallen in!” Buttercup said anxiously.
“Worse than
that,” Blossom added. “Look how far out the centre is! She was pushed! And
she’s afraid of deep water! We’ve gotta go in and get
her!”
Not needing any
further persuasion, Buttercup charged towards the water and dived headfirst
into the lake. She heard a splashing sound as Blossom copied her, and, as if
she were salvaging a sunken wreck from the sea bed, she swam downwards towards
Bubbles.
Spinning around
slowly in her marine suspension like a baby in the womb, Bubbles began to feel
drowsy as her oxygen dwindled. Her eyes were closed, and her limbs trailed
limply in the water. She thought, What’s going on?, as
the black in front of her was ripped apart by a sudden barrage of colour –
images were forming. Oh, God, she whimpered, my life is flashing before my
eyes…
My kingdom for a
scuba mask, Blossom cursed as she followed her sister into the gaping body of
indigo that stretched before them. Scanning the area wildly, she couldn’t see
Bubbles anywhere, until she looked down and saw a forlorn figure slowly sinking
through the depths. Kicking as hard as she could, she forced herself downwards,
gritting her teeth as the pressure began to mount on her.
Bubbles felt an
uncomfortable sensation in her ears as the forces in the water pushed forcefully
against her head. Meanwhile, the movie was continuing. She could see images of
her fighting various, vicious monsters and apprehending criminals, flying,
battling, playing with her sisters, as though she were
reliving the experiences all over again. Then the bad things that had happened
returned to haunt her, and she thought, No, not like this, when an image of
Buttercup appeared, evidently shouting at her in another one of their petty
arguments. Some criminal mastermind laughing mockingly at her
as she lay in a daze on the floor. Her vision blurring with tears as one
of the kids said something really mean to her… She cringed as all these
memories came flooding back, and begged that they would go away…and then she
saw herself again, falling through the abyss of water, trying desperately to
get back to the surface…
No, she thought
miserably as the reminiscences faded away. Blossom…Buttercup…where are you?…help me, please help
me…
This is insane!, Blossom inwardly exclaimed as she tore through the water,
The lake isn’t even supposed to be this deep! Running on pure adrenaline, she
and Buttercup swam down desperately towards Bubbles, who was slowly twisting
away from them in a steady helix. Buttercup lunged forward to grab their
sister, but missed by little more than an inch. Both persevered, but their air
was dwindling too.
Trapped inside her own memory, Bubbles whimpered as the movement in her
arms and legs gradually began to give out. A cold chill overcame her, and her
mind continued to project an image onto her eyelids – the water she was
floating in. Far below, a small light was flickering, a mere dot amongst the
blue, like a star in the sky, but the globe started to expand. It was getting
closer – and so was what it was attached to. For out of the deep swam a huge,
terrifying angler fish, its gaping mouth open to reveal scores of vicious,
white teeth. The fish looked at her with a murderous glint in its eyes and
surged forward, the water seeming to roar around it as it did so…
What the hell’s
going on?, Buttercup thought in irritation as Bubbles
slipped away from her again. Every time she’d made a grab for her, she’d seemed
to sink that little bit further. It was as if she was doing this on purpose, to
try and tease her –
It’s it, her mind explained to her. It’s
pushing her away. You gotta move quicker –
Blossom darted
forward to help Buttercup when she saw the difficulty she was having, and tried
to swing her arm forward quickly to catch Bubbles, but missed as her sister was
pulled further through the deep.
The drowsiness
enveloped Bubbles again as her heart rate began to slow. Oh, my God, she
thought frantically, I’m dying, I can actually feel it…
Buttercup waited.
She pushed up against the water, levering herself downwards, and waited, just
for the right moment to arise –
No! Please, no!, Bubbles begged as the darkness rose
up again, blotting out the angler fish’s throat which had opened like a tunnel,
as black and ominous as death, in front of her. God, please…I don’t want to
die…
Blossom felt her
chest burning as Buttercup floated patiently beside Bubbles, as if waiting for
something. Hurry, she urged her telepathically, hurry up so we can get out of
here –
There was a
flurry of water as Buttercup’s hand snapped forward like a moray eel and
grabbed Bubbles’ dress forcefully. Gotcha!, she
thought triumphantly as she pulled her up and began to swim back towards the
surface, the sunlight glimmering enticingly on it.
Thank God,
Blossom thought, relieved, and followed her sister upwards, it’s finally over…
But it wasn’t
over. Blossom’s fear began to amount again when she heard a low, swooshing noise behind her, the sound of fins flapping
against water. Cautiously, she turned around to look behind her.
They were so
near, probably within another ten metres or so…it seemed to Buttercup like
making that final journey to heaven, running through the black to reach the
rapturous light at the end… All of a sudden, she heard a muffled scream escape
from behind her, which could only have been Blossom. Turning around to see what
the matter was, she stared in horror, not daring to let the last of her oxygen
escape into the water.
A ferocious
angler fish was charging at them, its bottom lip sticking out as though it were
bloated, revealing savage, curved teeth, sharp as knives.
Noticing Blossom out of the corner of her eye, she yelled at her desperately to
get out of the way, but she didn’t move, either through ignorance or fear. If
it weren’t for the water rendering her cries impossible to understand, she
could’ve helped her sister…but she was too late.
Blossom yelled as
something the size of a bus crashed into her, and she was hurled off into the
depths, her nerve endings screeching with the pain. With the force of a
speeding train, the bubbles surging around its hideous form, the monstrous
leviathan shot past, its full force pushing Buttercup off to the side, and
seemed to dissolve into the water as it neared the surface, speeding away until
it vanished like a train into a tunnel.
A horrible
blanket of fear swept over Buttercup after the fish had passed her – Blossom
was gone. The thought of, She’s been eaten alive!,
came gracelessly into her mind, the terrible, recurring shrieks echoing around
it… With her head swimming, she kicked furiously at the water, harder and
harder as the sunlight came ever closer…
The water erupted
in a spurt as Buttercup rammed through it, gasping desperately for breath as
she did so. Holding Bubbles’ head above the surface, the rest of it hanging in
the fluid below, she swam to the banks, hoisted her sister up and then crawled
out herself. For a couple of painful minutes, she lay
on her back on the grass, staring up at the sky, gulping in breath after
blissful breath. Having recovered her energy, she rolled over to look at
Bubbles, her skin almost pale, lying sprawled on the ground. A tear rolled down
her face as she made frantically for her, moaning, “Oh, God, Bubbles, please be all right…” Bubbles’
distressed face, her expression one of intense suffering, looked back at her,
eyes closed and mouth hanging open gormlessly.
Hurriedly, she put her head to her sister’s chest and listened for a pulse. It
was very faint, but her heart was beating very slowly, slowed down to a
minimum, the ‘lub-dub’ thumping maddeningly around
her skull. Panting with fear and determination, she put her hands on Bubbles’
rig cage and jerked down aggressively, but to no avail. She tried again – still
nothing. She tried one more time – and a soft groan escaped from Bubbles’
mouth, hushed by her loss of energy. Gingerly, Buttercup sat her sister up,
taking care not to hurt her, and asked, “Bubbles? Are you OK?”
Bubbles murmured
again wearily as she tried to realise where she was. As her eyes opened
sluggishly, the green and yellow and blue of the beautiful Townsville morning
flooded into her eyes. Then the water she had swallowed came back up, and she
spluttered in a great, hacking cough. Her eyes watering slightly, she looked up
and saw Buttercup looking down at her, her hair dripping water onto the grass.
“Huh? Where am I?”
“It’s OK!”
Buttercup replied. “You’re alive! You’re back on land!”
“I’m a…alive?”
Bubbles asked, her speech slurred. “You mean I…didn’t drown in there?”
“No!” Buttercup
answered her, overjoyed by her sister’s active response. “Blossom and I came in
and got you, and…” She trailed off. “Oh, God.”
“What?” Bubbles
inquired, her voice slightly trembling.
“Blossom…”
Buttercup began. “We got separated, and…oh, man, I don’t know where she is!”
“She’s gotta be around here somewhere,” Bubbles told her. “Maybe if
we go looking for her…”
“Yeah, yeah!” she
agreed readily. “We gotta
go find her!”
Bubbles groaned.
“I’m too tired to fly…” she said disdainfully, but truthfully.
“It’s OK,”
Buttercup compromised. “I’ll carry you.” With that, she lifted Bubbles carefully
over her shoulder and took off into the air, frantically searching to try and
spot Blossom. “Blossom!” she cried out into the clearing, her voice skimming
across the lake like a stone, “Blossom!”
*
Further down from them,
there was a slightly more sandy area beside the lake, one that was reminiscent
of a beach. Waves lapped at the sand, occasionally stirring up great spirals of
froth as they cannoned onto the shore. As Buttercup was pushing Bubbles up out
of the water, nobody was around to notice the waves carrying a forlorn-looking
body up onto the sand, as if it were on rollers. Hands trailed limply behind
it, swaying with the smooth motion of the waves.
Blossom felt the sand slide underneath her arms as the
undulating water washed her up onto the sand, like a shipwrecked sailor, and
spluttered. She felt sick after nearly suffocating under the water, and she had
a migraine. Shivering due to the dampness on her body, she crawled on her hands
and knees up the beach, her arms shaking with the extra effort. Eventually,
after getting off the beach, she lay down on the grass and let herself dry off
in the sun, breath cascading into her lungs in harsh wheezes.
As she stared up at the calm, blue sky, questions began to form in her mind while a soothing breeze blew overhead. What am I doing here?, she thought as clouds drifted lazily above her. I got hit by that huge fish, it must’ve knocked me away from the others…were the others OK? Bubbles was –
“Oh, God,” she realised, “Bubbles!” Getting up from the grass, leaving a darkish-green imprint in it, she ran hurriedly towards a dune that led up from the bank. Gotta get to them, she thought, I have to help them –
Something sank its teeth into her arm, and she cursed when she felt little, jagged needles pierce her flesh. Raising her arm, she gasped in horror when she saw a black pellet nestling on it, the sunlight glinting off its body. She initially perceived it to be a slug, but then she saw the small trickle of blood running down her arm.
It was a leech, and it had its vicious teeth buried in her skin. Its oozing presence on her arm filled her with terror and loathing. But her arm began to shake when she caught sight of two more of them, both nonchalantly sucking her blood from her veins. There were two on the other arm as well, doing exactly the same thing, and she jerked when she felt the same thing happen on her leg. For part of her clothing had ripped just below the knee, and another leech was settled there, a red tributary forming at its mouth…
But then she saw more begin to materialise. One appeared out of nowhere on the tip of her hand, and she felt the slight pain as it attached itself to her. It pulled its body further up her arm and brought its tail around, clamping onto the surface. Then it did the same with its head. Blossom felt a choking sense of disgust as the leech writhed its way up her arm like a thick, black worm. And still they came, out of thin air, doing the same thing, and she shuddered uncontrollably as their revolting, moist bodies slithered across her skin. Paralysed with fear, she whimpered as one of them made the ascent to her shoulder and bit into it. Blood was leaking from about ten small orifices, scarlet capillaries standing out from the pink innocence of her skin.
She simply stood motionless as they crawled across her arms, sending waves of revulsion resonating throughout her nervous system. As she felt another one bite into her hand, she called out desperately, “Buttercup! Bubbles! Where are you?” But all the while, the leeches remained where they lay on her skin, slowly draining her of blood, and all she could think was, Get ‘em off me, for the love of God, get ‘em off me!…
“Blossom!” Buttercup called one more time, her voice echoing through the trees. “Where could she be?”
“Did she…come down with you?” Bubbles asked faintly, summoning the energy to speak. Her voice frightened Buttercup somewhat – it was deathly quiet, and it rattled. It was as though she was carrying a live corpse over her shoulder.
“Yeah, she did!” she answered her. “She figured out that you’d been pushed in the lake, and then we came in to get you – ”
“Oh, man, Buttercup, I was so scared!” Bubbles moaned, on the verge of tears. “I couldn’t swim back up, and I was afraid I was gonna drown – I actually felt myself die!” Buttercup’s chest tightened up as she recalled her macabre ordeal, and Bubbles continued. “My arms and legs gave out, and then everything just went black, and when I came to again, I was just…staring up at the sky…”
“Yeah,” Buttercup said. “I managed to grab a hold of you, but then this huge fish came out of nowhere and swam past us…and when it had gone past, Blossom was gone – ”
“Fish?” Bubbles asked, eyes widening.
“Yeah, this huge fish with massive teeth and a light attached to its forehead!”
“I saw something like that!” she said, her voice distant and far away. “Just before I blacked out…this huge fish was swimming up from below, and it looked pretty fierce to me…I thought it was gonna eat me alive!”
Like Jonah and the whale, Buttercup mused absent-mindedly. “Well, wherever it came from, it vanished, and Blossom’s gone too…oh, God, where is she?” she panicked, “Maybe she was swallowed by it!”
“No, no!” Bubbles responded, refusing ardently to believe what her sister was saying. “Maybe she was washed up on the shore! Like, further down the lake!” This was supposed to be my fear, she thought, how come it affected the girls as well? Oh, God, this is worse than I imagined…
“We’ll scan the area!” Buttercup resolved, interrupting her agitated contemplation. “We’ve got to find her!” She accelerated forcefully, and Bubbles groaned as she felt her body jerk forward painfully. Driven by determination and anxiety, Buttercup kept a sharp look-out for anything that looked remotely like Blossom sprawled on the sand. And all the while, that same dreadful thought was echoing around in her mind :
Like Jonah and the whale…
Blossom’s breathing rate began to increase as the leeches clambered up her arms, the one on her leg still gorging itself with her blood. Sobbing quietly, she closed her eyes and retched as they continued to slither over her skin, their soft, damp bodies inducing a horrific feeling of fear and antipathy that rocked her to her very soul.
Another bite, on her shoulder and now dangerously close to her face.
Please, she prayed, Bubbles, Buttercup –
She began to tremble as they continued to snake up her arm, leaving odious trails of damp and blood behind them, mixing in with the beads of perspiration that gradually melted into trickles.
Where are you guys? –
Her accumulating fear eventually overwhelmed her, and she fell backwards, groaning as her back hit the ground. But the leeches were undeterred, still endeavouring to reach the top of the mountain they were climbing, and they crawled their way up, their cold skin slipping effortlessly over hers.
She screamed, “Please, help me! Anybody, please help me!”
We’re never gonna find her!, Buttercup’s inhibited side screeched at her, Blossom’s gone! We can’t do anything about it! –
Shut up!, she thought angrily back at it, Just shut up! Blossom’s not dead, I know she’s not dead! But as they flew over the lake, she was beginning to lose faith. They hadn’t found a trace of Blossom anywhere so far, and they’d been searching diligently for quite a long time. However, they still had a chance, remote though it was. The lake had not yet been inspected, and they still had a bit of the perimeter to scour. There was still hope…
Carefully, Buttercup lay Bubbles down on the grass, explaining that she was going to check the lake. After worried opposition from her sister, she assured her that she would be all right, and dived into the water, taking a deep breath before her head punched through the surface.
It no longer seemed so gloomy under the water now that Bubbles’ nightmare had concluded, and was now a lot more clear and pure than before. As she swam through the vast ocean of blue around her, Buttercup scanned the lake floor delicately, half-expecting to see Blossom floating near the bottom, hair straggling and waving in the currents. Fortunately, though unfortunately at the same time, she wasn’t down there. A small school of fish flitted past her as she swam back up to the surface, completely ignorant of her dilemma.
Bubbles heard a splash in the water as Buttercup rose from the water like an aquatic monster in a sci-fi movie, and her hope rose as she waited to see Blossom’s head also emanate from the water. But it sank again as she saw that Buttercup was alone, that her search had come to nothing. “Oh, God,” she whimpered as her sister heaved herself onto the grass and walked over to her. “Maybe she’s gone…gone for ever – ”
“Don’t talk like that!” Buttercup screamed at her, shocking her into silence. Realising what she’d just done, she said, “I’m sorry, Bubbles. I mean, I don’t know whether Blossom’s still here, but we can’t give up! She wouldn’t do that if she were in this position, would she?” She watched as Bubbles tearfully shook her head, and she was suddenly filled with overwhelming remorse. Nearly drowning, and now Blossom had gone missing…this was all too much for her. Sympathetically, she hugged her sister tightly, and Bubbles squeezed back, letting loose a few restrained sobs. Hoisting Bubbles, still sniffling, up over her shoulder, she set off again. They couldn’t be far off now, if Blossom was still in the area. “Don’t worry, Bubbles,” she said soothingly as her sister wiped her eyes, “we’ll find her. I swear to God, we’ll find her.”
But as they flew over a small hillock, she felt like crying herself as the lake began to curve back around towards where they started, which was only a hundred or so yards away by now, still with no sign of Blossom. Her stomach turned with the thought of her sister being lost forever, or even worse, dying painfully slowly deep within the forest, clawing her way through the undergrowth, dragging a bloody stump of a leg behind her…
Suddenly, the gruesome images vanished when she heard someone shrieking from beyond the next dune. That was when she noticed a more sandy area of the bank, where waves were lapping calmly against the shoreline. The frenzied cries of terror stirred up a vague sense of belief that had been lying dormant for the past fifteen minutes, but also made her shiver with the raw horror that was present in them. Carried on the wind, she heard them yell, “Anybody, please help me!” in an urgent, agonised tone of voice. Supporting Bubbles on her shoulder, Buttercup tore off in search of whoever was crying for help and as she flew over the sand, she caught sight of someone down on the grass at the top of a slope which led down to the waterline. She could see who it was, even from that far up.
It was Blossom. Laughing joyfully, she flew down to land, hardly restraining the desire to hold her sister in her arms when she’d almost been taken away from them… But these feelings gradually ebbed away, and were replaced by ones of dread and confusion when she saw black blotches begin to appear on Blossom’s skin, reminding her of dark specks of mud.
Bubbles’ eyes watered as the air billowed past. Travelling downwards at a lethal pace, she could see someone lying on the ground and squinted to make the picture clearer. “Blossom!” she cried happily when she saw her sister beneath them. But something wasn’t right. As the black spots on her sister’s arms came to her attention as well, she noticed Blossom’s face, pained and distraught. What’s more, she could see that her eyes were clenched tight shut, and tears were rolling down her face. She’s crying, she thought, oh, my God, she’s crying…
“Blossom! Are you – ” Buttercup began as they landed, but the full horror of what she saw cut her off. Little rivers of blood were flowing from a vast number of small cuts on Blossom’s arms, and they gradually trickled to the edge of them where they fell off onto the sand, staining the ochre-coloured grains a deep, bitter hue of red. The black blotches seemed to have clustered near the tops of her arms, and Blossom was moaning terribly, her terrified whimpers echoing inside hers and Bubbles’ minds. Then, one of the pellets on her arm wriggled, and crawled sluggishly up Blossom’s arm, to their intense disgust, first swinging around its lower body, then doing the same with its upper.
Blossom’s eyes opened, and jerked open further when she saw Buttercup and Bubbles standing before her, staring in revolted fascination at what was happening to her. “Bubbles! Buttercup!” she cried. “Help me! Get these things off me!”
“What are they?” Buttercup asked hurriedly, her eyes still transfixed on them.
“Leeches!” Blossom replied, her eyes still wide with horror. “Please, help me! Get them off me!”
Buttercup searched frantically in her head for what to do – she had no idea of how to rid someone of leeches, only of how to administer them. “I don’t know what to do!” she cried, looking at Blossom with an expression of utter helplessness.
“Just pull them off!” Bubbles said, snapping into action at the sight of her sister’s suffering. “That oughta do it – ”
“No!” Blossom corrected them hurriedly. “If you pull them off, their mouth parts’ll stay in and I’ll get an infection!”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Buttercup yelled.
“Fly me up towards the Sun!” Blossom answered, “The heat will make them drop off!” Another leech bit into her arm, and a short exclamation escaped from her. “Hurry!”
Without further ado, Buttercup helped Blossom up and took a hold of her arm, taking caution not to touch those horrible little things. She watched as Bubbles took a hold of the other arm, and they lifted their sister off into the sky. Bubbles shook with disgust as she observed the godless creatures, writhing like huge tadpoles on Blossom’s skin, a small flow of blood emanating from wherever they had bitten into her, and she gritted her teeth as the both of them carried Blossom closer to the Sun like a fallen angel.
Buttercup squinted as the fiery orb glared back at them, a sudden burst of light in an otherwise calm and peaceful sky. Man, she thought, this getting too scary. First the snake, then the quicksand…what’s happening to us –
Her contemplation broke off when she felt something soft, damp and squishy wriggling on her arm, and retched when she saw one of the leeches flopping about on her skin like a fish out of water. Uttering a sharp cry of indignation and abhorrence, she snapped her arm sharply and dislodged it before it had the chance to bite, sending it plummeting to its death. Her mind still cursing, Ugh, that’s so disgusting!, she turned back to look ahead. Before them, the Sun was a solitary supernova of light in the sky.
Why don’t
they just go away?, Blossom moaned silently as they
climbed higher and higher into the atmosphere. Her nerves sent hectic,
panic-stricken impulses surging through her body as the leeches continued to
crawl over her, as would maggots over a corpse. As the glare became too much
for her, she looked away and saw one of the leeches detach its mouth from her
arm and drop off into oblivion. It was working. Relief was a comforting blanket
as she felt minuscule sets of jaws detract from her flesh, and her skin could breath again. The one below her knee appeared to shrivel in
the intense heat, and then fall back to earth. But she could still feel the
remaining few, dragging their bodies up her arm, persevering so that they
reached the summit…her head. In a mild delirium brought on by her fear, she saw
that it was a bit like climbing a
mountain. Every incision in her skin was a base camp, as though her arm seemed
to them like an Everest, a
Buttercup’s and Bubbles’ airborne journey paused and they held her up in the air, her dangling body making her look like a limp crucifix against the sky, which glowed a brilliant sapphire-blue in the midday sunshine. But the picturesque scenery around her could not keep Blossom from fearing the leeches’ determined advance, nor did it seem to deter the leeches, striving for their goal to reach the top, the pinnacle –
Her stomach froze when she felt one of them bring its body up like a Slinky near the bottom of her cheek, the dampness oozing on her face, and she uttered a horrified whimper as it snaked its way up…
Visibly sweating due to the heat, and beginning to feel the energy sapped from her arms again, Bubbles heard Blossom’s shrill moan from beside her, and turned to look at her to see if she was all right. She screamed when she saw the hideous, black slug crawling up her sister’s cheek, with Blossom desperately trying to get a view of it from out of the corner of her eye.
“Bubbles! What’s wrong?” Buttercup asked nervously, startled by her sister’s terrified shriek.
Bubbles was so appalled by what she was seeing that she couldn’t even think of the right words to say. As she struggled to express her disgust, the leech crawled further up Blossom’s face, a tear falling from Blossom’s eye as it did so. Like a snake, it drew its fearsome sucker back, its body almost in a perfect arch…
“It’s on her face!” Bubbles shouted piercingly as its teeth lunged forward.
“What?” Buttercup answered in stunned horror.
Blossom yelled as the leech’s teeth sank into her flesh one more time, planting a demonic, razor-toothed kiss on her cheek. Then she felt the blood, a soft, sanguine trickle, run down her face as calmly as a teardrop…
Buttercup cringed as Blossom’s cries rang through the heavens. How could there still be any left when we’re up this high?, she thought in befuddlement. It’s insane…
Her arms shaking uncontrollably, Bubbles watched Blossom’s eyes clench as the leech’s fangs penetrated her skin, and a little streak of red, ruby red, flowed down her cheek. Blossom sobbed as the frightening entity stayed clamped onto her face, and Bubbles watched in strangling terror as the vampiric monster brought its head back, as if to shriek terribly at the sky…
Then it vanished, without so much as a puff of smoke. The legion of black, sprawling pellets also began to disappear one by one, silently and effortlessly.
“Blossom!” Bubbles cried with relief. “They’re going away!”
“Huh?” Blossom murmured in reply. She could feel her skin being relieved of a burden, a horrible, moist, sticky burden –
“They’re going away!” Bubbles repeated joyfully. “They’re disappearing!”
Buttercup viewed the arm she was holding and, where she’d expected to see an infestation of a black, squirming mass, she saw none but two of them, twisting furiously as though they were being cooked from the inside. Then, before her very eyes, one evaporated from view, and so did the other. Bubbles watched as the same happened on her side.
Blossom breathed a tearful sigh of relief. “They’re gone,” she said, her voice quivering with the emotion, “they’re all gone.” Viewing her arms, she groaned when she saw the spiteful, carmine fissures that stood out like sores on each arm, and the trickles of blood that emanated from them. Her skin was marked with thin, red lines, now beginning to smudge in the beads of sweat that had formed on her arms. She felt a slight, sudden chill as the wind cooled the perspiration on her forehead, but also a cooling draft of relaxation. The nightmares were over, for now at least.
“Blossom!” Buttercup said, trying to get her attention. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she replied, feeling slightly disoriented, “yeah, I’m OK.”
“We’ve gotta get you home!” Bubbles said, her depleting energy slowly weakening her. She tilted her head sideways as a signal to Buttercup, who then took off with her. As they flew back towards their suburban home, Bubbles said to them, “What are we gonna do, girls?”
“What can we do?” Buttercup answered morosely. “We don’t know what it is, the Professor can’t identify it…what are we supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Blossom slurred. “Whatever it is, we’ll just have to deal with it, piece by piece.”
“What’ll happen next?” Bubbles whimpered. “If things like this happen now, then what lies ahead? Oh, God…” She broke off and cried quietly.
“God, she’s right!” Buttercup realised. “What’s gonna happen now? It could be anything…our worst nightmares just coming alive…”
Blossom responded to neither of them as she was hung against the sky, like Christ on the cross. The same thought kept echoing down a never-ending tunnel in her mind : next time…
Dozing in his armchair, the Professor was startled by the sound of someone knocking at the door, and jerked out of his slumber. Blinking a couple of times, he got to his feet and lumbered, still half-asleep, over to the door. As he opened, he was surprised to find the girls floating down below near the doormat. “Girls?” he asked, “What’s going on? Why aren’t you in – ” He shrieked when he saw the cuts on Blossom’s arms, as though someone had been stabbing her devilishly. He knelt down hurriedly and examined them. Each of them seemed relatively fresh, they couldn’t have been more than half-an-hour old. Panting with parental anxiety, he asked Blossom, “What happened to you, honey? Who did this?”
“It was leeches!” Blossom replied, pronouncing the last word with particular revulsion. “See, Bubbles went down to check something out, and she got pushed in the lake by these ghosts – ”
“Yeah!” Buttercup continued. “Then we figured out where she was, so we swam down after her to try and rescue her – ”
“Oh, my God,” the Professor groaned, raising a hand to his face in complete disbelief. “Bubbles…was pushed?”
“By a ghost,” Bubbles answered, on the verge of tears. “I saw this old man and a boy standing by the lake, so I said ‘hi’ to them, and the old man asked me to check the water for the boy, so I did. But then I felt someone pushing me hard in the back, and I lost balance and fell in.” The Professor wiped his brow with his hand, and she continued. “I tried to swim back up, but I couldn’t…it was like something was holding me down there, trying to make me drown…” She gripped her head with both hands as her recollection began to get more and more tearful. “I blacked out…I felt my arms and legs give out, and then my life flashed before my eyes. But after that, I saw this huge fish with these great, sharp teeth coming up at me from the deep…”
The Professor couldn’t take any more of this, and it was obvious that Bubbles couldn’t, either. As she released a few, faint sobs towards the floor, he pulled her close to him, and hugged her tightly. “It’s OK, Bubbles,” he said, kissing her hair. “It’ll be all right, I promise.” With Bubbles weeping into his lab coat, he turned to face the other two and asked, “So what happened then?”
They
told him, with every terrifying detail, and he retched as he heard their
accounts of what had happened; Buttercup telling him about the fish roaring up
from beneath them and how it separated them from each other; Blossom describing
vividly the horrible sensations of leeches on her skin, and the punctures that
they made in it. Examining her like the
“You’re probably right,” Blossom agreed and slowly walked upstairs, her breathing shallow and soft.
“What about you, Bubbles?” he asked. “Are you feeling better?”
Bubbles sniffed. “A little,” she replied. “But I’m so scared, Professor! This thing that’s out there, it’s gonna get me as soon as I step outside! I nearly died this morning…oh, God, I don’t wanna go back outside…”
The Professor hushed her soothingly, and said, “It’s OK, Bubbles. You can stay in.”
“What about me?” Buttercup asked.
“You should probably go back to school,” he said. “Sorry, Buttercup, but Bubbles is very distressed. Knowing Blossom, she’ll probably go back, too, a little later.”
With slight resentment, but sympathy as well, Buttercup replied, “OK,” and flew back towards school, giving Bubbles another reassuring smile before she left. As she returned to the classroom, she was thinking, thinking hard. What is it?, she asked tacitly as she sped over the towers and office blocks, What is it that keeps doing these things to us? When’s it gonna strike next?…
Sighing, she re-entered the classroom, apologised for her lateness and, after Ms. Keane’s query, falsely explained her sisters’ absences. Ms. Keane accepted her fabricated excuse, and turned back to the blackboard. Buttercup rested her head on her hand as the chalk scraped quietly down the board, leaving white imprints of settled dust as it went.
*
Later on, as they were flying over the city, Buttercup looked down and saw the Professor’s car trawling along below them. He insisted that he come with them tonight, to just make sure nothing happened to them, and he’d said that it might not hurt them if they were accompanied by someone. That was what they called it now – it. A kind of taboo had evolved around it, and each of them was equally frightened and unwilling to talk about it, so they just called it it.
Blossom had come to school in the afternoon, as the Professor said, but a barrage of questions ensued as soon as she flew in the door, her arms covered as they were with crusting scabs, because she looked like a leper. She had lied to them when they asked about how she’d got them, fabricating an entirely different story featuring them fighting a particularly vicious monster. “So why didn’t Buttercup get any?” Robyn had asked. “It held me in its teeth,” she had replied, “and then Buttercup and Bubbles got me out.” She’d told her story remarkably well – if she’d been hooked up to a lie detector, they’d be checking to see if the dumb thing was functioning properly.
A policy of collective security had been established around them. Each of them had separately resolved to look out for one another. That evening, Bubbles had eventually been coaxed outside after the Professor had reassured her that they would be OK. Buttercup looked over pitifully at her, her face still pale with shock and her eyes darting in every direction, scanning the streets below closely. I’m so sorry, Bubbles, she said telepathically to her sister, I’m really sorry this is happening to us…
The skyscrapers seemed to glow with an eerie, silver-blue aura as the moonlight shone down on it. It was also quite chilly, and it felt even chillier to them now that they realised that their protection from it was slowly being compromised.
But it didn’t to Buttercup. She felt strangely warm, as if a soft fire was being kindled inside her. However, she thought nothing of it and flew with her sisters over the top of the city, the Professor keeping a close eye on them from below. The buildings fleeted past as they did so, keeping their eyes peeled for any signs of crime. Some lights were still on in the tower windows, creating a chiaroscuro effect in the night sky –
Buttercup felt a bead of sweat form on her forehead and begin to run down her face. Looking around for any signs of a blaze downtown, she thought, Why do I feel so warm? I mean, it feels nice, but it’s unnatural – She found nothing, and returned to the manhunt. They wove between another cluster of buildings, and Buttercup noticed the heating turn up another notch. More droplets formed on her brow, and she wiped it dry with the back of her hand, some of the sweat clinging to it. It felt almost like a hot summer’s day to her, only that the heat seemed to coming from the inside…
Blossom heard Buttercup’s breath escape in a whistle, and she asked, “You OK, Buttercup?”
“I’m fine,” Buttercup replied, sounding a bit weary. “I just…feel a little hot, that’s all.”
“Hot?” Blossom said in disbelief. “It’s barely 50 degrees out here!”
“I know,” Buttercup said, “Maybe I’m just a warmer person than you are.” She blinked a couple of times as the heat intensified further. Her forehead felt cool as the cold, nocturnal air cooled the perspiration on it, but it did nothing to change her temperature. It was brief alleviation, and then it was gone. She whistled again.
Blossom turned and saw the sweat on her sister’s face glitter in the moonlight, seeming to naturally fluoresce. “Are you sure you’re OK?” she inquired warily. “You’re sweating – ”
“I know!” Buttercup replied irritably, and felt herself get steadily hotter. It was like being in a sauna, and she felt the sweat begin to cascade down her face. Her arms felt damp as sweat started to collect on them. What’s happening to me?, she thought, Why am I the only one that’s getting hot?…
“I think we’re done, girls,” Blossom announced. “Let’s get back to the Professor.” As they flew down, Buttercup sighed as she felt the sweltering heat increase. She struggled to keep her eyes open as her senses began to dull. It was lucky that they had finished so quickly – she probably wouldn’t have been able to concentrate for much longer.
The Professor got out of the car to greet them as they landed near the park. Seems to work, he thought, I haven’t seen anything attack them yet – He stopped when he watched Buttercup land and bend over, her hands resting on her knees, breathing deeper than usual. “Buttercup?” he asked cautiously, “Honey? Are you all right?”
Buttercup turned her head upwards to look at his concerned face, and she replied, “I’m feeling really hot, Professor…I’m sweating like crazy, and my body feels really warm.”
He noticed in surprise that she was right. Her forehead glistened as light reflected off the fluid, and some of her hair was beginning to straggle in it. Pushing her hair back, he said, “I don’t know, Buttercup. Maybe you’ve got a fever or something.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Buttercup accepted, her speech getting quieter. “It’s just a fever…” But it can’t be, she thought, fevers don’t get as severe as this. Oh, man, is it still getting hotter? It was only now that she started to feel uncomfortable as the engulfing warmth radiated through her body, as if it were being emitted from a core. She ran another hand through her hair, and felt the stickiness as she ploughed it through. “I’m so hot,” she uttered, almost esoterically.
“Don’t worry, Buttercup,” the Professor said. “I’ll check you over when we get home. Can you manage five more minutes, honey?” She nodded weakly, and he walked back over to the car.
Buttercup’s head flopped forward and she stared down at the pavement, grey slabs of concrete staring inanimately back at her. But her internal thermometer began to creep up another couple of degrees, and her breathing became more frequent and deep again…
The Professor opened the back door of the car and ushered them in. Bubbles and Blossom got in and sat down on the back row, but Buttercup wasn’t with them. He looked back up at her and saw her standing motionless in the middle of the pavement, gazing at it. Some of the sweat had fallen onto the floor, where it had made little, dark splashes. “Come on, Buttercup,” he said, “let’s go home.”
She didn’t have the energy to walk over to the car, but she looked up at him, her eyes narrowing slightly as if in disgust. He felt very anxious looking at her agonised, worried face, sweat trickling down in a number of snaking paths. Buttercup tottered for a couple of seconds, but then, without warning, she fell back in a faint, groaning as her back smashed into the concrete. She bounced slightly off it, and then came to rest.
“Oh, my God,” the Professor said as he saw her topple to the floor, “Are you OK? Buttercup?” As he ran over to her side, he heard Blossom ask him, “Professor? What’s – ” before gasping when she saw her sister lying on the ground. He knelt down by Buttercup’s side, as if at her deathbed, looking her pale, sweat-drenched face over in fright. Her eyes were half-closed, staring up vapidly at the deep indigo blanket of space, and he noticed that there were faint, pink patches beginning to form on her cheeks, those that would appear after a vigorous exercise routine. “Buttercup?” he asked again, feeling the terror inside him clench long, invisible fingers around his throat, “Are you all right? Honey?”
Buttercup breathed in and out a few times, drawing in breath in deep, desperate gasps. “I’m…so hot…” she whispered, “…feel like I’m…burning up…” It no longer felt like a sauna, but like an oven. She groaned as the smouldering heat sent a screaming wave of pain through her arm, and she swore she could feel her blood begin to boil.
“Oh, my God,” Bubbles whimpered, visibly shaking, “Professor, what’s going on?”
The Professor felt Buttercup’s forehead and yelped, jerking his hand away as a searing jolt of pain diffused through it. It was like touching a radiator, an incredibly hot one at that. This is uncanny, he thought, this isn’t a fever. Fevers don’t burn your hand –
Buttercup suddenly cried out in agony when a fresh dose began to slice across her stomach, and she clutched it with both hands, eyes and teeth strongly clenched together. Tears began flowing down her face, but they evaporated with a hiss.
As a minute puff of steam rose from each one, Blossom said, “Buttercup, what’s wrong?”
“My stomach!” Buttercup shrieked. “It’s being…torn apart from the inside!” She lay back on the pavement and howled again, her cries seeming to echo infinitely into the night. The torment was unbearable – it felt like someone was making a surgical incision in her stomach, except that they were simply cutting through it with a white-hot hacksaw. It seemed to her to last forever, the fiery pits of Hell, with scorching fire, brimstone and desert winds, and devils inflicting upon her a pain that she never thought imaginable…
But it stopped. Slowly, the pain began to subside and withdraw, although the acrid heat was still there, eating away at her like a thousand pairs of savage, jagged teeth. Sobbing with misery, she stared back up at the stars, each one of them a giant orb of fiery anger and rage. Her last little bit of energy diminishing rapidly, her arms smacked against the pavement with a dull thud and she simply lay there, cringing in the sweltering heat.
Bubbles carefully approached her sister and knelt down next to her. Her breathing was tearful and quivering as she reviewed Buttercup, left with barely enough energy to even talk. One of her tears fell onto her sister’s arm, and it sizzled and evaporated into the air.
“Buttercup?” the Professor asked. “Are you still feeling hot?” Buttercup looked at him, an expression of intense weariness and anguish lodged firmly on her face. Her eyes shimmered with tears that were relishing their chance to escape, unaware of the lethal dangers that awaited them beyond. He didn’t need an answer – he could tell that it was still torturing her. But with what?, he asked himself. Buttercup’s not afraid of fire, so far as I know, and she’s not afraid of heat, either… What’s going on here?
Looking down at her sister’s arm, with cascades of sweat running off the end and being replaced by fresh ones, Bubbles felt the fear expand inside her like a tumour. What was going to happen to Buttercup? Was something else going to happen, or was she simply going to writhe in uncontrollable agony for the rest of her life?… Was it right to put her sister out of her misery, to take away the pain forever? No!, she thought suddenly, snapping back into rational thought, How could you think of something like that? She shuddered as she thought about it, silently praying to God that He do something to help her sister. Buttercup’s eyes were nearly shut, making her look horrifically like she was dead, but she could see her sister’s chest heaving up and down with each rattling breath.
Buttercup’s hand twitched, ever so slightly, clinging onto life. Bubbles felt her throat close up with emotion, and it threatened to make her break down and start bawling tragically for her sister’s loss…
But it never got the chance. Bubbles screamed softly as a small, dancing ball of flame began to materialise in Buttercup’s outstretched hand, prancing like a demon. The others saw this as well, and Blossom murmured, “Oh, my God,” as she saw the flickering light. Did Buttercup just produce that out of nothing?, she thought. She and the Professor walked over to her, almost mesmerised by the flame, and watched it waver in the wind.
Feeling a distinct, hot sensation in her hand, Buttercup turned her head slowly to the side, and was horrified to discover that it was on fire. She would have screamed, but she was completely drained of energy, and simply viewed it in fear and awe as it swayed gently in the breeze. It seemed so majestic and beautiful to her, to all of them…the colours it was composed of…orange, red, yellow, blue…
…purple.
All of a sudden, her right arm went up in a huge wall of flame as the fire in her hand raced across her body as though she were doused in petrol. With the others looking on in horror, Buttercup summoned enough energy to release a jaded groan as she became a terrifying human torch. Her limbs were on fire, her clothes were on fire…she was on fire.
As the nerve receptors in her skin screamed through wires at her brain, she clenched her eyes shut with the pain, but this was to be a mistake. Immediately after her eyes closed, a series of images and sounds began flooding into her head. The first thing she saw was an old black-and-white photograph, showing an apartment that showed signs of a fire, yet most of it remained untouched. Then she saw a large clump of ashes in the centre of the room, over which forensic experts were poring thoroughly. This surreal image was then replaced by a moving picture, one of a man, engulfed in flame, tearing around frenziedly, his body looking black in the midst of the orange and red that surrounded him. Her bones chilled when she heard the man’s terrible shrieks of pain as he staggered drunkenly around the scenario… Then another scene change, to another movie. It was an old archive film, one that she’d seen once on TV, and it showed a bald-headed monk, sitting cross-legged on the grass as if in meditation, with flames licking him from all sides. But the man did not deviate from his demonstration, and simply stayed sitting while the blaze tore at his flesh. It was then that the most terrifying of them all appeared in front of her. It was another black-and-white photo. In it was a view of a room that had visible scorch marks on the walls…and in the middle was a pile of ashes and fused bone, much larger. Amongst the ashes were an abandoned Zimmer frame…and the gruesome, charred remains of a human leg.
Her eyes snapped open to reveal the fiery inferno around her. The blaze created a bright illumination in the otherwise dark night, and she seemed to radiate colours of red and orange. Her teeth gritted as the scalding pain continued to spread through her body, and she shuddered when she remembered the dreams…
“Buttercup!” Blossom cried as flames roared up her sister’s arm, setting her alight. Prevented from moving by her own fear, she could do nothing but look on as Buttercup lay before her like a funeral pyre, the blaze flickering on her body.
The Professor could only utter a harsh cry when he witnessed his daughter ignite in an adrenaline rush of blistering heat. Buttercup’s body appeared as a pile of timber for the fire as it swallowed her up ruthlessly. But why?, he thought, desperately trying to figure it out, Why is this happening?
I’m not afraid of fire!, Buttercup told herself, I’m not…so why is this happening to me?…
That’s when it hit them both. Spontaneous combustion – she was definitely afraid of that. Buttercup was much more of a believer in the supernatural than the others, and this had led to her discovery of spontaneous human combustion. That very night, she hadn’t slept at all, terrified lest her body suddenly burst into flames, almost like a dying phoenix…except that she wouldn’t regenerate afterwards. She didn’t know that a large majority of victims had survived with burns. All she knew was that it left you as nothing but a clotted heap of ash on the floor.
Oh, my God!, Buttercup realised, Oh, my God, I’m gonna burn up…until there’s nothing left… Her brain kept screeching at her frantically to do something, but she had been incapacitated by her fear and the vehement force of the heat as it sucked her dry of energy. Her skin began to burn and she felt the heat open up small fissures in it. It was as though she was lying on a burning altar, like a sacrificial victim, and thousands of flaming swords were being thrust in and wrenched across her body. The torture was excruciating, but she was powerless to stop it, and simply groaned in agony as the flames devoured her hungrily.
Bubbles cried with terror as Buttercup continued to burn. The Professor watched on, horrified and appalled by what was going on. Blossom said despairingly, “There has to be something we can do!”
Hope dawned inside Bubbles again as she spotted a puddle near the gutter. “There’s a puddle over there!” she said, “Maybe that’ll cool the flames – ”
“I’m sorry, honey,” the Professor said, still looking over at the incinerator Buttercup had become. “I don’t think it will work. This isn’t a normal fire – it’s back.” He heard Bubbles gasp, but Blossom said nothing. Evidently, she’d already figured this thing out. “We’ll just have to let the fire go out by itself.” His hands began to shake uncontrollably as his body succumbed to jittering spasms of fear. If this didn’t end soon, Buttercup wasn’t just going to burn to death – she was going to be cremated. Kneeling down beside her, he felt the comforting, warming glow he would feel in front of a log fire. Buttercup tilted her head weakly to the side and saw the flames appear to dance on the surface of his eyes. “Don’t worry, Buttercup,” he said, sweating slightly with the heat. “It’ll all be over in a minute. I promise.” She didn’t move, but just blinked again. He smiled faintly at her, furtively hoping that he was right. The others felt the same way as he did, both of them feeling the dread close its fist on their stomachs. Meanwhile, the Professor watched the fire closely, still checking too see if Buttercup was all right. Looking at her arms with a sombre expression on his face, he saw them gradually snake down and down, appearing to withdraw back into her skin –
Buttercup felt the searing pain in her arms gradually subside, just like it had done before. Opening her eyes with a great deal of difficulty, she saw the wall of fire begin to shrink back into her skin, flickering wildly as they did so. Despite having practically no energy whatsoever remaining, she slurred, “They’re going down…Professor, the fire’s going out…”
He surveyed the rest of her body and saw that she was right – the flames no longer seemed to leap to such an intimidating height. As he watched the fire extinguish itself, he heard the girls walk carefully over to join him as the blaze began to die. Leisurely, with Buttercup still gritting her teeth with the pain, the inferno sank back beneath her skin, the flames rapidly diminishing in size, shrinking to inconsequential beads of orange light…and then they were gone.
The Professor breathed a huge sigh of relief as the last one disappeared under her skin, but the fear hadn’t let go of him yet. Buttercup had, somehow, survived, but she was still in agony. The fire had left its terrible mark on her in the form of hideous burn marks, raw rings of red which stood out from the mild, pink tone of her skin. Yet her clothing and her hair, he noticed, were untouched, not even singed. What the hell’s going on?, he thought. Why is only her skin burned? It seemed that it was a force too powerful for the girls to even reckon with, let alone deal with –
“Buttercup!” Bubbles shouted ecstatically, rushing over to hug her, but the Professor held her back.
“Don’t touch her,” he said. “She’s sustained a lot of burns from that blaze, and touching a large number of them might trigger an overwhelming shock to her system. This thing is powerful. Look what it’s done to each of you.”
Blossom remembered the scabs that had crystallised over the bites that the leeches gave her, and then the stings that Bubbles had received. A succinct groan rose from in front of her, and she averted her gaze from the floor to look at her sister, lying on the ground covered in scalds and burns. “My God,” she uttered, “you’re right.”
“Come on,” he said, the desire to drive home all too apparent in his voice, “let’s get back inside.”
“What about Buttercup?” Bubbles said, “We can’t just leave her here!”
In response to her question, he tentatively walked over and picked Buttercup up, and she sharply drew in breath through her teeth. “Professor, it hurts…” she whimpered, “my arms…”
“I know, I know, honey,” he said reassuringly, “Just be brave. We’ll only be a few minutes.” But as he sat her on the back seat, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. Rotating his head to look, he bit his lip when he saw a black shadow on the pavement, its shape similar to Buttercup’s. It was a scorch mark, lying on the concrete like the chalked outline of a murder victim, except that it was filled in with charcoal black. We’re getting out of here, he thought and after the other two had got in beside her, he got in himself and started the engine. As the car drove off into the night, his mind was working a mile a minute, trying to figure out what was happening. He felt scared, not necessarily for himself, but for the girls, as any good parent would have done. This thing was evil – it seemed willing to attack the girls wherever they went, regardless of whom they went with. Then he remembered the scorch mark, emblazoned in the pavement. Was it really that hot?, he wondered anxiously. She could’ve been boiled, inside her own skin… She could easily have been, but it seemed that it didn’t want to give her a way out. It wanted to let her linger and suffer intolerably, but never actually get away from it all. As the traffic light before them turned red, he slowed and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “God,” he whispered, unaware that he was talking out loud, “what can I do?…”
“What did you say, Professor?” Blossom asked courteously from the back seat.
Realising his mistake, he replied, “Sorry, Blossom. Just…talking to myself.” But as the car pulled up in front of their house, he could still sense that it was still there, watching, waiting…laughing.
*
The next day passed indolently, the Sun travelling leisurely across the sky in an arch. But now the Sun had gone, and the Moon had taken its place, keeping a celestial watch over what was happening down below.
The Professor pushed down on the brake and got out before the girls, to check for himself. He heard the car door open and then slam shut again as the girls got out, and he knelt down to talk to them. “All right, girls,” he said, and he looked them over. Buttercup’s skin was blemished by the remaining burn marks, blood-red pools that opened up like ominous, hellish craters. “The second you finish your check, come straight back here. If anything starts to feel weird, come straight back here. Understand?” The girls nodded back. “OK. Meet you back here.”
With that, the girls darted off in three separate directions, eager to finish up and go home as quickly as possible. Blossom headed towards the central hub of Townsville, swooping over the tops of the buildings. She checked periodically to see if someone was behind her, but every time, there was no-one there. Trying to affirm herself of that fact, she wheeled around and scoured the labyrinthine network of alleyways, a metropolis in itself, seeking out any criminals that might be hiding within it, but her search yielded no results. However, as she turned around to head back towards the Professor, she noticed someone down below. The murky shadows made the figure appear dark and mysterious, but as it crossed under a street-lamp, she saw that it was wearing a light-brown trenchcoat, and its pockets appeared to be bulging.
“Hey, you!” she called. The figure looked over its shoulder at her, although she still couldn’t see its face, and suddenly scarpered, running off into an alley that lay on the other side of the street. As it was concealed by the black, she closed in. Ha ha, she thought, got him now. It’s a dead end –
But when she reached the dead end, she found nothing. “He couldn’t have got away,” Blossom said to herself, “couldn’t have done…” The wall in front of her was that of a high block of flats, and he couldn’t have climbed up it. There was no place to hide in the alley, the only thing there being a decrepit wooden crate. He’s vanished, she thought, into thin air… Her rising fear made the alley appear to close in and entrap her, and she backed out of it quickly into the main road. She felt tired. None of them had slept more than a couple of hours last night, each keeping a frightened eye out for the predator that was stalking them. Well, nothing’s happened so far, she thought, maybe it’s gone. Ready to hurry back and rejoin the others, she made to leap off into the air when she heard something. It didn’t seem to come from very far away, but she had a hard time making it out. It sounded to her like the stamping of feet, as if an army was marching through Townsville. They were also shouting something, and she heard a chant sibilate between the buildings, regular and sonorous. It was approaching, and she heard the din get louder as it did so.
Suddenly, she spotted something near the end of the street. A man had raced around the corner and was running frantically towards her. He had black skin, he was barefoot and dressed in a ragged, white, cotton shirt and a pair of frayed, white shorts. His bare feet made a slapping sound as they hit the asphalt. Noticing her, a flicker of hope appeared in his terrified, brown eyes, and he ran faster until she was right in front of her, then he stopped abruptly.
As he bent over panting, Blossom asked worriedly, “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
Tilting his head to look at her, she felt slightly afraid as she viewed his face, which was contorted in a fearful grimace. “Please…” he gasped, holding out his hands in desperation, “please…help me. They’re after me – ”
“Who?” Blossom persisted, “Who’s after you?”
“Them,” the man panted, sweat glistening on his dark-skinned face. “The White Knights.”
“The White Knights?” Blossom asked, “Who are they?” The thunderous chant approached further, reverberating through the night sky, as the parade neared them. The glint of pure fear in the man’s eyes continued to grow in size and he grabbed her shoulders.
“That don’t matter right now,” the man replied. “You gotta help me hide. Please, for the love of God, kid, you gotta help me – ”
“Don’t worry,” Blossom said, freeing herself from his desperate grasp, “I’ll help you.” But as she took his hand, ready to whisk him off into an adjacent alley, the chant became clearer again, now so coherent that it sounded as though it was being directed at them. The marching sound too became more distinct as something else came around the corner. A voice came from the front and shouted, “There he is!”
The man screamed, “Too late!” as the group approached them, and she gasped as they came into clearer view. A huge posse was striding towards them, their footsteps creating resonating booms that made the ground shake. Some of them were holding flaming torches aloft, others hangmen’s nooses. About a quarter of them were dressed in terrifying white cloaks and hoods, vicious pairs of eyes staring at the two of them from within. By now, the chant had become so obvious that it had mutated into deafening vocal thunderclaps, and she realised with horror and disgust that it consisted of just two words : Kill ‘im.
“No, please, God, no!” the man wailed wretchedly as the crowd advanced on them. Blossom took a cautious step back. Just like in Frankenstein, she thought as she laid her eyes on the burning, wooden torches that cast a flickering, orange glow on some members of the mob. The nooses were hoisted like ominous, dark tapeworms against the sky. And still the chant rose above everyone of, “Kill ‘im! Kill ‘im! Kill ‘im!” Standing her ground, Blossom spread her arms out to protect the cowering man behind her.
The ringleader stepped forward. He looked to her about forty years old, had a shock of black hair, neatly combed back and parted in the middle, and a thin moustache. He reached out to grab the man by his shirt collar, but Blossom raised her arm to impede him. “What the hell are you doin’?” he asked indignantly of her, and she noticed that he had a Southern accent.
“Why do you want this guy?” she asked back, still protecting the man with her outstretched arms. “What’s he done wrong?”
The mob began to laugh behind the leader, and he replied, “What’s he done wrong? Just look at him!” She did so, looking him over with a sense of deep bemusement. The man’s clothes weren’t bloodstained, so far as she could see, and he didn’t appear to be carrying any weapons.
She turned back to face the crowd, and shook her head. “I can’t see anything wrong,” she said.
“Oh, my God,” the leader sighed, cupping his forehead in his hand. “You spend all this time teaching a kid and they still don’t know jack about nothing…” His voice gradually faded to an inaudible mutter, and Blossom turned back to look at the black-skinned man again.
“What’s up with them?” she asked him, getting slightly worried herself.
The man tilted his head upwards to look her in the eye, and he said, “They want me, because…because…” Taking a deep breath, he formulated the rest of his sentence, an act which filled her with apprehension. “They want me…because I’m not one of them, kid. Do you see? I’m not one of them.” As she pivoted back round to face the mob once more and viewed them carefully.
The leader approached them again. “Get out of our way, kid!” he shouted at her. “There’s only one thing we hate more than Afros, and that’s people who protect Afros!” It was only then, as the man’s bloodthirsty yells echoed around her mind, that she noticed that the entirety of the crowd was white, and only then that she made the connection. Nooses, white hoods, ‘I’m not one of them’ – a lynch mob. Not only that, but a lynch mob formed entirely of white people that adhered to their ancestors’ racist views. She hated them – God, how she hated them – but she was scared of them as well. Lynch mobs acted on impulse, which created an irrational mania inside them. Once they caught up with you, you were dead, for it was often hundreds or thousands against one. Oh, God, she thought, what’s going to happen to me –
They’re racists!, she realised. They’re gonna kill this man just because of his skin colour! Are you gonna allow that to happen? Her eyes narrowed in disgust as she looked back up at the leader again. “You wanna hang this man just because he’s black?” she spat with fury at them.
“You goddamn right!” one of the other men in the front shouted. “He’s not one of us! He doesn’t belong here!”
“I can’t believe you wanna do this!” she said, revolted that they would want to commit such an atrocity. “This man is a human being, he has rights! What kind of despicable people are you?”
“That’s it, I’ve heard enough,” the second-in-command said, and with that he grabbed Blossom by the shoulder, aiming to shove her out of his way. However, she stood her ground, and blocked him again. As he tried to force her to budge again, he hissed, “You’re just a kid, little girl. What good are you gonna do? You can’t stop us! We were sent by God to do this!” At that moment, an irrepressible rage began to rise up inside her, and she clenched her fists as the man’s grip tightened on her arm. “So just get the hell out of our way!” He pulled his arm back, and Blossom felt the ground begin to slip underneath her feet.
She was still seething with anger. Messengers of God?, she thought irefully, you’re nothing but a bunch of heartless psychopaths! She looked up at the man who was trying to drag her away, a look of cold determination on his pale-skinned face. Gritting her teeth, Blossom swung her fist forward and landed a clean punch in his stomach, feeling it smash into a wall of soft flesh.
The man suddenly felt the air knocked out of him by a sharp blow, and he shouted in exclamation, buckling backwards onto the street. A couple of deep breaths could be heard travelling in and out of his lungs and he clutched his stomach tightly. He looked at the spiteful little rat that had done this to him, and he screamed at her, “You rotten, little punk!”
Blossom saw the crowd edge closer towards her, spurred on by their leader’s assault. A dark throng was slowly oozing in her direction, and a bead of sweat formed on her forehead when she heard the black-skinned man utter in prayer, “Please, God, don’t let them hurt the little girl. Let them take me, Lord, but not the little girl. Please, Lord, not the kid…”
“You little punk!” the fallen man shouted again.
“That does it, kid!” the leader shouted, pointing at the black-skinned man, whose hands were pushed together against his forehead as he muttered his plea. “If you wanna protect Johnny over there, you can damn well die with him!” Gesturing to the mob with a cyclical wave of his arm, he yelled, “String ‘er up, boys!”
Fuelled by a murderous passion, the crowd surged forward in a terrifying wave, crashing down upon their two victims. Blossom gasped as she felt muscular hands grab her by her arms and legs like an octopus, and winced as their overpowering vice tightened on her arms. As she was wrenched around to face the other way, she saw them do the same thing to the black-skinned man, except that he wasn’t putting up much of a struggle. The heaving mob behind her pushed her forward forcefully, marching her towards a tree planted on the sidewalk, where others were hanging two nooses from the branches. She tried to fight against the potent current that drove her forward towards the gallows, but there were too many of them, and she felt almost paralysed in the midst of everything. Torches flailed in the air, making fiery rainbows in the night sky, and minute sparks escaped from the flames, slowly dying as they fluttered towards the ground. The men in the white hoods were seen by her as prophets of death, their intimidating headdress resembling the black one of an executioner. Another deafening, anthemic chant began to rise above the pandemonium, one of, “String ‘em up! String ‘em up! String ‘em up!”
Blossom felt herself begin to ascend into the air as a rippling platform of hands hoisted her up towards the heavens. Oh, God, she thought, what’s going on?… A tear rolled from her eye as the mob jeered them mockingly and the ominous noose, a menacing portal to another world, opened up before her. She tried breaking free from their clutches one last time, but to no avail. Some of the throng were sitting in the trees as front-row spectators, or so she thought. With a tremendous heave, she was flung up to them, standing shakily upon a sea of white palms. Then she felt her blood freeze in her veins as she felt the coarse rope being lowered over her head and placed around her neck. Hope fading fast, she looked up into the night sky, stars twinkling, blissfully unaware of what was happening below them, and she breathed in and out tearfully as the loop around her neck constricted itself.
As the man felt the noose tighten around his neck, he looked over sorrowfully at the beautiful little girl that had tried to save his life. She was…a martyr, in a way, for Christ’s righteousness. But it didn’t have to be this way, he thought solemnly. She’s just a kid…doesn’t look like she’s ten yet… His throat turning dry, he spoke to her, just before the trap door of hands gave way, and said, “I’m sorry, kid. You tried.” Then he made a horrific gargling sound as he plunged downwards and the noose began to choke him.
Blossom cried out in pain as the same thing happened to her, and she felt her neck jerked upwards painfully. The splitting agony added to that in her throat as her windpipe started to implode. She could feel it tightening inside, and she gasped for breath, still writhing frantically while her head hung in the noose. A harsh, suffocated cry escaped from her as she prayed that the others could hear her. Oh, God, she begged tacitly, please, help me! Hurry! Her vision began to fade slightly, a solid, black curtain being drawn up from the bottom, and she felt a sickening feeling creep over her, adding to the burning pain as the chafing rope cut further into her throat.
Anxiously looking at his watch, the Professor muttered, “Where is she?” as he paced back and forth along the sidewalk. Bubbles and Buttercup stood nearby, equally worried as to Blossom’s whereabouts. None of them knew where she had got to, if she was all right –
Buttercup stared uncertainly at the ground. It had been maybe five? ten minutes since she had returned from her inspection of the city, and she had found nothing. Having been the second of them to return, she had waited patiently with the others for Blossom to come back. But she hadn’t. As the long, metal arrows on the clock tower slowly ticked away the minutes, the overwhelming angst made it seem like epochs. The dread was slowly eating them up from the inside like acid, and she felt her heartbeat quicken slightly.
Taking a deep breath and then letting it escape in a long sigh, Buttercup looked at her arms, each one dotted with a few large, red lesions in the skin. She had taken a bath that morning before they went to school, and she remembered vividly the stinging pain that the water brought with it. God, she thought, where could she be? Maybe it’s got her! Maybe –
She was cut off abruptly by a deep, booming noise coming from over the towers. The others noticed it too, and listened intently, trying to make out what it was. It was hard, because it was composed of so many different sounds. One sounded like a regular chant, another like derisive laughter, another like a short, detached yell. The Professor broke into a sweat as the thunderous din echoed through the city, for, unless a riotous mob had suddenly decided to form itself, there was only one reasonable explanation.
“What is that?” Bubbles asked, craning her neck to try and hear. “I can’t tell what it is.”
“Neither can I,” the Professor replied, “but I don’t like the sound of it.”
“Should we go check it out?” Buttercup inquired.
“That might be a good idea,” he answered. “Be quick, now.” But as they lifted off into the air, his mind screeched at him, What are you doing? They’re more vulnerable now! It will attack them where you can’t help them! Call them back! – “Wait!” he called to them, but they didn’t hear him. “Girls!” he yelled again, “Come back!” Too late, they had already sailed over beyond earshot. “Oh, God,” he said to himself, wringing his hands in frustration, then he darted towards an alley on the other side of the road, without even bothering to look first. Steam rose mysteriously in white clouds from the drains in the alleyway, obscuring it in a thin, smoky fog. Regardless, he made his way through, occasionally cursing as he scraped his knuckles on the bricks.
Bubbles looked around inquisitively, trying to find the noise’s source. It got steadily louder as they flew in between buildings, keeping an eye open for anything suspicious down below. Buttercup scoured the surrounding area thoroughly, looking for any sign at all of Blossom in the ghost town that stood beneath them, the once vibrant streets now paler with the sliver-blue glow from the Moon. For a brief second, she perceived that she saw it, skulking away into the shadows like a black lizard, but then she saw that it wasn’t moving. Indicating its direction with her hand, she gestured to Bubbles to follow her as she closed in on it. Upon closer inspection, she realised that it was simply a large crowd of people. But why are they out here so late?, they asked herself, What are they doing here?… While they moved closer, both of them could see that some of them were waving flaming torches aloft in the sky, and the noise had now become deafening.
They were about 100 yards, give or take, away from them when Bubbles asked, “What is that?”
A metal trash can made a sonorous clang as it tipped over onto the floor. As a tramp shouted profanities at him from behind, the Professor continued running through the snaking maze of alleys. He made a sharp turn to the right and winced as a stitch began to form in his stomach, radiating a dull ache throughout his abdomen. Pressing down upon it with his thumb, he thought desperately of the girls. There could be criminals down here, even armed with knives, but he didn’t care. All he cared about right now was finding the girls alive. He skidded slightly as he hared around another corner, hoping that the labyrinth would end soon.
“I think it’s a crowd, or something,” Buttercup replied. “A huge group of people just standing there.” As she peered closer, she noticed that all these people were centred around a large tree on the sidewalk, some of them even squatting in the branches. The incantation was bellowed by all, and she couldn’t hear herself think as they approached the back row. “Hey, hey!” she yelled, trying to make herself heard over the din, “What’s going on here?”
Hurdling a sleeping tramp who was propped up against the wall, he thought he could see a light, an exit from the tunnels he was rushing through. He crossed a T-junction, but noticed an opening that led back to the main streets. Putting on an extra burst of energy, he hurried forward and burst forth from the gloom. A yellow street lamp shone refreshingly from the opposite side of the road, and he bent over wheezing, trying to get his breath back. But as he tilted his head to the side, his eyes widened uncontrollably as what he saw filled him with horror.
A woman in the back row turned to face her, a solitary tear in her eye, and she replied, “It’s so sad. It’s so tragic that that poor little girl had to get embroiled in all of this…”
“Poor little girl?” Bubbles repeated innocently, and looked up at the tree. She saw two people dangling from the branches, writhing horribly like worms impaled on a fishing hook. One was distinctly smaller than the other, and the crowd was jeering them ostentatiously, shaking fists at them. She screamed.
“Bubbles?” Buttercup asked, “What’s wrong – ” But as she saw what her sister had witnessed, she gasped in terror.
“Blossom!” Bubbles screeched again, clutching her head. “Oh, my God, oh, my God, what’s gonna happen? Oh, God…”
“Come on!” Buttercup shouted and took off towards the front. Blossom was trying to pull herself up as if on a chin-up bar, but she failed, and Buttercup could hear her shrill, rattling gasps as they neared her, even over all the taunts and shouts.
Bubbles’ breathing increased rapidly as she gazed at the two people in the tree, hanging by their necks from sinister coils of rope. There was a man with her, on the opposite side of the trunk, kicking and flailing horribly while he was suspended in the air. Oh, my God, she thought, Blossom can’t die! Please, God, don’t let them die…
An invisible force had a strangling hold on the Professor’s chest as he viewed the macabre scene in front of him. Two people were hanging grotesquely from the tree, one on each bough, and he could see them thrash around in the air, desperately trying to breathe. One of the struggling forms was unmistakable. Even in the dim light, he could tell who it was. Then, he noticed the crowd of spectators watching the two of them perish as though it were a public spectacle. “Blossom!” he cried, and he started to run again, despite not having recovered from his earlier sprint.
A tear rolled down Blossom’s face as the pain in her throat intensified, and felt like a deep gash was forming across it. She opened her eyes again, and although her vision was blurred by a hazy, black mist, she could see two people flying towards her. “Girls!” she croaked loudly, the rope hindering her cries, “Help me! Hurry!”
“Hang on, Blossom!” Bubbles shouted back, her voice quivering, “We’re coming!”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Buttercup yelled at the people at the front, as much through fear as rage. “Why are you doing this?”
“Stop!” the Professor screamed at the crowd, “What are you doing? That’s my daughter!” He ran towards a man he saw as the leader, adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream, and made to punch him in the face. Even as the man looked away from him, with the consequences of his actions firmly out of his mind, he roared and swung.
“Get her down!” Buttercup shouted. “Get her down right now!” As the leader turned around casually to face her, his cold stare unnerving her fractionally, she prepared to land a sharp kick in his mouth, for it was his that decreed the atrocity. But as she swung her leg at his head like a baseball bat, he suddenly vanished into thin air. Bubbles watched in fright as the other members of the crowd evaporated into the air, disappearing in small, white wisps of dust.
He’s gonna pay, the Professor thought maniacally, he’s gonna pay for whatever he’s done to my daughter… But as his fist was about to connect with the man’s head, the man disappeared…and his presence was replaced by that of someone’s leg, swinging dangerously at his face.
He ducked instinctively, then turned upward to see Buttercup, who was looking shocked, and she said, “God, sorry, Professor, I didn’t see you – ”
“It’s OK,” he replied quickly, and pointed to the tree. “Quick, we have to get them down!” Swivelling around on his heel, he made hurriedly for the tree, viewing Blossom’s torment with a feeling of cold terror. Buttercup and Bubbles followed him, but as they did so, they noticed the nooses vanish from around the black-skinned man’s and Blossom’s necks in minute puffs of smoke, and they both crashed limply to the floor. Blossom moaned when she landed on her side, and the man yelled succinctly as he landed on his back and winded himself.
The Professor scooped her up and hugged her tightly. “Oh, God, I’m so glad you’re all right,” he whispered, stroking her hair gently. “Do you feel all right?”
Blossom stirred lethargically, feeling the throbbing pain in her throat dissipate away and a warm wave of relief flood over her. Her vision began to clear as she looked over the Professor’s shoulder and saw her sisters floating anxiously before her. “I’m OK, Professor,” she replied, her voicebox shot by the garrotte that had been slung around her neck, “I’m fine…” Then she noticed the man the mob had tried to hang, sprawled on his back and gasping for breath. “I think we’d better help him,” she gasped, her throat burning with every syllable.
The others looked over at him warily as he gazed up at the stars, some appearing to twinkle in his eyes. With a weary groan, he sat himself up. His throat was on fire, but at least he was alive. It’s a miracle, he thought, a divine intervention… Instantly remembering the little girl, he saw her father embracing her lovingly, clutching her close to his heart, but at the same time considering him very closely. Two other girls, who he perceived to be her sisters, were doing the same thing, and they all began to approach him. Jesus, he thought nervously, do they think I’ve done something to her? I’d never, not to such a sweet little kid… Letting out a soft, quivering whine, he shielded his face with his arm, but they didn’t do anything.
The Professor asked him, “Are you all right, pal?”
He coughed a couple of times, feeling the sharp, stinging pain radiate around his neck, and replied, “I’m fine, thank you. I’ll survive.”
“Did you know who those people were?” Bubbles asked, her voice still displaying the slightest hint of fear. “Why were they here?”
“White Knights,” the man croaked. “They wanted to kill me, ‘cos of the colour of my skin.” He spluttered involuntarily a couple more times, and continued. “Then, I found your little girl, and she tried to protect me. But the mob didn’t want the hassle, so they…tried to hang her, too.” The little girl with the pigtails gasped upon hearing his response, and he got shakily to his feet.
“It couldn’t have been…” the Professor said, struggling to comprehend his story. “There hasn’t been anything like this in Townsville before – ”
“It was it,” Blossom said, interrupting him.
“Huh?” the Professor inquired.
“It,” Blossom went on. “I’m afraid of things like that, because…because they do such horrible things to you. I never wanted to meet up with one, never ever…” She broke off, and a tear trickled down her cheek.
Wiping it off, the Professor said soothingly, “It’ll be all right, Blossom. It’s over for now.” He kissed her, and then turned back to the black-skinned man, intending to ask him whether he needed anything else, but he stopped when he saw him begin to fade away. His body gradually became transparent, and his outline glowed in an angelic, white corona.
“What’s going on?” Buttercup asked quickly. “What’s happening to him?”
“Don’t worry yourself, kid,” the man replied, and they heard his voice reverberate down an invisible tunnel, an echo through the ages. “I’ll be all right.”
Blossom looked up at him fondly, and he saw her eyes develop a watery sheen again. He smiled affectionately back at her, still slipping further and further away from them, and said, “You know, you’re all right, kid. I wish there were more people like you around.”
But before Blossom could respond, he melded backwards into the air, and he vanished, and there was no proof that he had ever been there at all.
Having been momentarily stunned by what he had witnessed, the Professor forced his legs to move again and he began to walk back towards the car, parked maybe four, five streets away, still cradling Blossom in his arms. He felt glad to have Buttercup and Bubbles as back-up – the streets of Townsville were unnaturally spooky at night. So many dark crevices, so many places for a criminal to hide – Or a monster, he thought suddenly, and unwelcomely. That reminder only resulted in his fear heightening uncontrollably, and he felt his heart pound softly inside his rib cage. As they finally reached the car, after what had seemed like hours of traipsing through the pale, deserted streets, he felt relieved, but only slightly. He was still apprehensive of what it might do next, but he felt helpless because it was so hard to trace. You didn’t know it was coming for you until it was too late, and he had no way of figuring out in which order the girls would be attacked. Sighing resignedly, he allowed the girls inside, then got in and started up the engine.
*
When they got home, every one of them felt weary, but the Professor was determined. He was going to find out whoever was doing this to his daughters and he would stay up all night, if necessary.
The girls decided that they wanted to go to bed, and he let them. As he kissed them goodnight, he said to them, “You poor, little girls. I’m going to get to the bottom of this, I swear I will.” Bubbles smiled belatedly at him, happy that she had such a supportive person as her father. Tucking them in, he said, “Goodnight, girls,” and turned off the light. He walked down the stairs, eager to start work as soon as possible. He was doing it for the girls. They needed him, and it was the least he could do for them. Entering his laboratory, he shut the door and turned the light on. Test tubes and beakers gleamed as the light shone down upon them, and he made his way down the stairs.
Having
obtained a book from one of the many shelves in his lab, he opened it out on
his desk and began to read it. When it yielded no results, he selected another
one and read through that, and then another, and another. For hours, he sat
solitarily at his desk, pen and paper ready to take down any notes, poring over
book after book, file after file. But nothing. He
leant back in his chair in frustration and disappointment,
letting his head flop over the headrest. Feeling the fatigue set in, he
glanced at the clock. It read
He stopped dead as a soft hissing noise made his muscles ossify, encasing him in paralysing dread. Staying absolutely still, he looked around, trying to locate the source of the noise, but he couldn’t see anything. Just my imagination, he thought, and walked in the direction of the stairs again, but it was as though he were on a treadmill, for he wasn’t making any kind of advance on it. And then the hissing started again, so blatant and terrifying that he broke into a sweat. His nonsensical optimism kept whispering soothingly to him, ‘It’s all in your head, it’s all in your head’, but it wasn’t. It was real, he was perfectly sure it was real. Breathing in rapidly, he whirled around on the spot, frantically trying to see what was there, but finding nothing. Still, the sibilance reverberated maddeningly around his mind, and he could both feel and hear the blood pumping in his ears. The noise became intoxicating as he felt his legs begin to give way.
“Who’s there?” he demanded, “Come out where I can see you!” The invisible entity, however, did not comply with his request, and refused to reveal itself. By now, he felt trapped, isolated and alone as the hissing closed in on him, setting him adrift in a lagoon of soft noise.
Just then, something caught his eye, and he uttered a strangled cry when he saw black pillars of smoke seep through the bottom of the walls and ascend like vines towards the top. It diffused outwards into the room, carried on the air, and it made a ‘psssh’ sound as it did so, like in a gas chamber. I’ve got to get out of here, the Professor affirmed himself, got to get out right now… The jet-black waves swarmed ominously towards him, endeavouring to engulf him as he whirled around frantically, and he swore he could see a pair of evil, beady eyes, staring frighteningly at him like embers on a fire. All the while, the hissing never stopped, sounding now more mechanical as the gas was pumped into the room. The sight of those little orbs of red malevolence made his heart stop, as if he were looking into the eyes of a demon, and then snapped him out of his horrified trance. Practically sobbing in terror, he bolted for the door as the gas began to creep up the stairs.
But when he grabbed the doorknob and tried desperately to turn it, he found the door locked. This can’t be!, he thought, I didn’t even bring the key with me, I left it…oh, God. Turning to look over his shoulder, his eyes widened unstoppably as he watched the plumes of smoke rise up over the final step and crawl through the air towards him. He banged on the door and shouted through it, “Girls! Can you hear me? Help! Please help me – ” He froze solid as he felt someone breathing icily down his neck, sending fear shivering through his body. It was there, right behind him. “Girls!” he screamed frenziedly, pounding the door furiously with one fist, “Help me! Please, get me out of here! Help me!”
“You might as well, save your breath, Professor,” a sinister, ghostly voice said from behind. “They can’t hear you.”
The Professor looked over his shoulder, but he could see no-one. “Who’s there?” he asked. “Who are you?” The claustrophobia heightened as the smoke closed in on him.
“You don’t know?” the voice said. “I’m it. Guess who I am.”
The sound of its voice was unnervingly familiar, and he felt cold sweat run down his forehead. “You…” he struggled pointing at it as he backed up against the door. He knew who it was, the only person who had enough power to commit this. Gotta find the girls, he thought, gotta tell them who’s doing this… “You’re – ” But he was cut off as the smoke came down upon him, cascading down his throat and choking him in acrid, black clouds. Getting down on his knees, he gripped his throat with both hands as it began to strangle him from the inside. His throat closed up and he lay gasping for breath on the floor.
“Yes,” the voice responded, not losing its pleasant demeanour. “But now that you’ve figured it out, I’m afraid you won’t be able to tell them.” The Professor yelled in pain as the invisible hand strengthened its grip on his neck, and he felt the evil inside the smoke begin to infest every available orifice in his skin. “They won’t know,” the voice continued, “they won’t find out until it’s too late.” At this point, it laughed. It laughed long and hard, revelling in all their suffering as it guffawed loudly and mockingly.
He tried to fight whatever was throttling him, but he couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see. Feeling his windpipe buckle under the strain, he lay on his back and gargled as his air ran out. All he could see above him was black, as dark as the evil that was relentlessly pursuing them, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he felt himself lapse into unconsciousness…
His outstretched hand, clawing in vain at the air, began to fall limply down towards the ground, sinking through the ebony-coloured waves, not waving, but drowning…
The Professor felt his senses return, dull though they were, and he felt the cold metal gauze underneath his hand. While stroking it, he slowly opened his eyes and found himself lying slumped on the floor at the top of the stairs. “What the hell am I doing on the floor?” he asked himself as he got to his feet. At that point, vague memories of what he had experienced came rushing back to him with open arms. He could remember himself banging frantically on the door, even though he knew it was unlocked, and screaming to the girls for help, for rescue from something that he had just dreamed up… God, he thought, what was I thinking? Why was I banging on the door, I might have woken up the other girls –
“Professor?” a soft, innocent voice asked him from down in the lab, “Are you OK?”
As he massaged his temple with his finger, he looked over to see Bubbles, still sitting obediently on the stool he had asked her to sit on, gazing up at him with a look of faint anxiety. “I…I’m fine, honey,” he replied. “Don’t know what came over me…maybe it was a, a fit or something. But I’m OK now.” He walked down the stairs again, and smiled reassuringly at Bubbles. She smiled back, and her arms crossed over in her lap. Maybe it’s just tiredness, he considered. I mean, I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, with this study and everything. He walked over to his work area and took a syringe filled with a clear liquid from off of it.
“What are you gonna do, Professor?” Bubbles asked him, uneasily. She had every right to feel unsure. A single light bulb shone on her and although it wasn’t blindingly luminous, she felt like she was being interrogated. She hadn’t been too keen when he’d asked her about this earlier, either, but she had agreed.
“It’s OK, Bubbles,” he said. “All I’m going to do is inject this serum into your arm. That way, I can monitor how your system responds to it. It’ll help me understand how you girls…” He gesticulated in the air as he searched for a word. “…function. All right?”
“Will it hurt?” she asked, a minute pang of fear creeping over her as the needle came closer, some of the light reflecting in a droplet on the very tip. Reluctantly, she held out her arm.
“Just a bit,” he replied, and prepared to administer the contents of the syringe. “There’ll just be a little pinprick, and that’s all. I promise.”
*
While this was happening, the real Bubbles slumbered upstairs, but by no means peacefully. She was dreaming, and her closed eyes twitched subconsciously.
She was in their room, except that it was empty. There was no bed, no dresser – no door, no windows. She could see nothing. Trying to find a way out in the pitch black, she crawled across the floor, feeling her way around. Even as she examined the walls with her hands, trying to discover a crevice, she couldn’t find anything to aid her in any way, and she felt her chest tighten with fear. After a long and futile examination of the walls, she gave up and, with a resigned sigh, sat against one of them. The fact that she couldn’t see anything, not even her own hand in front of her face, made her feel isolated and afraid. She was trapped inside a cage, except that a cage allowed more light to come in. It was like she was in a dark tunnel, with no sign of light at either end. Oh, my God, she thought miserably, anything could be hiding here –
That very second, it started. Someone whispered to her, Bubbles…Bubbles…
Gasping shrilly with fear, she stood up abruptly and looked around. “Who’s there?” she whimpered.
Come play with us, Bubbles…we won’t hurt you…
An invisible force made Bubbles’ legs weaken and buckle, and she knelt down on the floor again. “Who are you?” she asked.
The voice didn’t answer her question, and simply responded by saying, Don’t worry, Bubbles…it’s all right…
Something skittered along the floor in front of her and she followed the sound it made fearfully. Her throat closed up as her heart leapt into it, and her breathing became deep and dry. She leant forward on her hands, a tear threatening to trickle down from her eye.
Come play with us…
A soft, howling wind, the kind of billowing drafts that one would hear screeching over a battlefield strewn with dead bodies, began to fill the room, yet the temperature did not change. What am I gonna do?, she thought desperately, what am I –
Come play with us, the voice repeated, maintaining its childish innocence. Come on…we’ll have fun…
By now, she was hyperventilating. Her breath entered and escaped from her lungs in terrified, harsh gasps, and she lay down on the floor, feeling warm tears rolling down her face. Just then, she shivered compulsively as a cold wind swept over her. As she opened her eyes, she gazed in dread and amazement at two small, white apparitions that had just appeared at the edge of the room. The perspective was such that they looked as though they were standing on the edge of a long pier, stretching out into a swirling ocean of darkness. They shone faintly like ghosts, and stayed side by side, not moving at all.
She was about to ask them who they were, but then the dream ended.
Bubbles’ eyes shot open as she regarded her surroundings. Back to the same old room, with the bed and dresser, and more importantly, the doors and windows. Strange dream, she thought, as she rolled over to face the window. What was that all about –
Come play with us… The voice from the dream appeared again, but it was much fainter, a soft, secretive whisper. She tried to convince herself that it was all in her head, but despite the low volume, it was as clear as day. Its haunting, melodic tone acted like hypnotism on her, and she got out of bed. It spoke again : Come play with us… I gotta find that sound, she affirmed herself. It was spooky, no doubt about that, but it had the captivating beauty of a whale’s song, echoing away through the water. She flew over to the dresser to snatch her fleece from off the top, and put it on hurriedly. Like a moth drawn to the flame, she floated back towards the window, opened it and clambered out, shivering slightly as a chilly, nocturnal breeze flew past her, before closing it again. Having looked through the window one more time, to make sure her sisters were still asleep, she set off, flying warily through the sky and trying to find the source of that voice…
The buildings below stood like obelisks as she passed them by unconcernedly. As she left the central hub and began to travel towards the outskirts, she could sense that she was getting closer. But part of her felt unsure about the endeavour. You don’t even know who they are, it told her. Doesn’t it seem strange that you’re the only one that heard them speak? You don’t know what it is! It could even be it, trying to lure you in –
Despite half of her wanting to turn back, the other persevered, and she continued flying through the air.
Come play with us…
It definitely sounded clearer to her now. The fact that it seemed to come from within the confines of the dense forest that was on the outskirts of Townsville didn’t seem to bother her at all. As she approached it, she watched the rest of the city speed away as she left it behind, and she began to close in on a decline when she was over it. She broke through the layer of conifer trees that were plentiful in this wood, and landed on the ground, foliage crackling as she pressed down upon it. Little light penetrated the tree tops, and much of the forest floor was shadowed in darkness.
Oh, God, she said to herself, why am I here? I’m scared, I wanna go back –
But she couldn’t. The voice was like a siren’s song, drawing her closer and closer in, lulling her into a sense of euphoric equanimity. It calmed her, made her fears fly away like a dying dream. Even so, part of her fear could not escape her, and a grim but faint sense of foreboding began to instil itself in her. Carefully, she put a foot forward and heard the leaves under it crunch. With that, she slowly waded through the foliage, kicking some softly into the air, and they were carried off into the breeze behind her. She stopped for a moment, and looked up at the Moon, a grey, cratered celestial body staring unblinkingly back at her from the heavens.
All of a sudden, her body went rigid when she heard something move through the leaves behind, creating a deathly, rustling sound that made her heart stand still. With her hands beginning to tremble, she looked over her shoulder, and gasped at what she saw.
The ghostly figure of a little girl was walking slowly towards her, as if attempting to walk on water, her cold, dead gaze boring into her mind. Snowy-white hair straggled in her face, and her skin had the same paleness as a blank sheet of paper. Turning around to face her, Bubbles tried to scream, but she was so paralysed by the horror of what she was witnessing that she couldn’t do anything apart from watch. “Come and play with us,” the girl said, her voice filling her with dread. Us?, she thought, Oh, God, there’s more of them…
A bush shook formidably to the right-hand side of the girl, and Bubbles felt a strong choking sensation in her throat as the rustling sound it made resounded through the trees. She waited to see what would come out, shaking violently as the girl closed in on her. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked wretchedly, “What am I doing here?” At that moment, the bush parted in the middle and someone stepped through. It was a boy, a little bit taller than the girl, but their supernatural, white auras were of the same luminosity, and both glowed warmly like a soft fire. With her terror obtaining a strangling hold on her, she recognised who it was – the boy from before…before all this happened. “You…” she whispered, pointing at him.
“Yeah,” he said in reply. “Nice to see you again.”
“Is this the girl you told me about?” the girl asked him.
“Yeah,” he said to her. “That’s the one.”
Bubbles felt distinctly afraid and suspicious. What are they gonna do to me?, she moaned silently. I don’t know what’s going on – She wanted to run away, to just get back to the safety of her home, but her body was frozen with dread and she couldn’t move.
“The one that went away?” the girl said.
The boy chuckled, and replied, “She never left.”
“What do you mean ‘never left’?” Bubbles asked, but she was cut off by the sound of someone approaching her from behind…the sound of feet treading delicately on the leaves. With her heart pounding in her chest, she turned around to face another entity, most of its figure obscured by the shadows. What she could see, though, was moonlight. It was reflecting off something metallic…
A blade. She heard a terrifying swish as it was brought down through the air, straight towards her. “No! No!” she shrieked, and raised her arms to protect herself when everything suddenly went black.
As she took her hands away from her face, she saw the forest floor once more, a thick carpet of dead leaves, coloured dark brown in the absence of daylight, covering it. She looked up, but the two apparitions were still there. The girl was jumping up and down ecstatically, yelling, “A friend! We’ve made a new friend!”
“What the – ” Bubbles began, but then stopped. Through her peripheral vision, she saw that her hands had become pallid and transparent, just like a ghost’s…just like theirs. Gasping in fright, she looked at herself, only to make the macabre discovery that the rest of her body had the same wavery, translucent quality. Her breathing became rapid again as she whimpered, “No…no…”
She looked up again at the pair of spectres before her when she spied movement out of the corner of her eye. As she tilted her head to look at it, she saw someone seemingly laying sacks down at the base of a tree. But as the moonlight shone through a gap in the canopies, it lit them up, and her eyes widened uncontrollably. They weren’t sacks, but corpses, laid side by side on the ground like in a morgue. One was the boy’s, a vapid stare pointed towards the sky. Another was the girl’s, her arms stiff by her side. But the last one was hers, her mouth open in a final, silent scream, and with rivers of blood snaking their way down her neck towards the floor. An insubstantial tear rolled down an insubstantial cheek as she laid her eyes upon her own body, but then she saw the figure bend down and remove a knife from her back, sliding it out with a revolting cutting noise. With the recovered implement in its hand, it turned to face her and stepped out from under the boughs of the tree. She shuddered uncontrollably, sinking to her knees as she tried to contain the torment.
It was Buttercup, clutching the knife strongly in her hand, her breath hissing through clenched teeth. Her body was the same white hue as that of the other two, and she was grinning sadistically. She looked up at her, not seeming to care that she had just slaughtered her own sister, and Bubbles sobbed quietly as she watched the murderous spark in her eyes flicker with malice.
She felt two hands take a hold of her shoulders, and she looked from side to side at the boy and the girl, each of them beaming with rapture.
“Come and play with us, Bubbles,” the girl said hauntingly.
“Yeah, come on,” the boy added. “We’ll have so much fun…so much time…” With that, they helped her to her feet and led her off into the further, much darker realms of the wood.
No, no!, Bubbles thought. This can’t be happening! What can I do?… As she was escorted through the forest, her uncontrollable terror made it impossible for her to escape. She did the only thing she could do. She screamed, praying that the girls would hear her, and she felt her throat and lungs burn with the sheer intensity of her cry. But the other two took no heed of her protest, and took her away from the living world, deeper and deeper into the black as it opened up before her.
Her scream rose shrilly above the treetops, darting towards the atmosphere, waiting to be heard by someone…anyone.