Guardian: Darkness Rising (2 page)

But Mari didn’t keep that promise. She never
came back.

Luke, however, didn’t care. He waited for Mari
to come back for four years, and even tried to go after her
multiple times. But he always came back home, because after all, he
was only a boy with nowhere to go, and didn’t know where to look to
find his friend.

Where had Mari gone? Was she still in town,
hiding somewhere, or had she left? Weeks became months, and months
became years. And it took those years for Luke to finally accept
that Mari was not coming home.

He’d tried to assist the police and Mari’s
parents in their searches, but how do you find someone who doesn’t
want to be found? Despite being young, Mari was clever. She knew
how to blend in with a crowd without drawing too much attention to
herself. It was possible that she’d skipped town completely,
even.

New York was a big city, one you could easily
get lost in.

She never returned to school, or any other
public place where it was possible for people to recognize her. It
was almost as if she’d vanished from the Earth’s
surface.

But what neither Luke nor anyone
else – not even Mari herself – could’ve possibly known or guessed,
was that Mari would return in the fall, four years
later.

Four Years
Later

It was the beginning of autumn break, four
years after Mari had left.

Now, four years later, Luke was in his senior
year of high school, but he didn’t care much about school or his
grades. It isn’t uncommon for seniors to stop caring about their
grades – at least until the final exams come around the corner –,
but Luke had stopped caring four years ago.

He hadn’t heard from Mari ever
since she’d left, and part of him couldn’t help but blame her for
it. All of his messages and calls had been left unanswered, and
she’d never even made any kind of attempt to contact him
herself.

Luke figured that maybe Mari truly had found
what she’d been looking for, and forgot about him. He didn’t really
care anymore, anyway. Luke just hoped Mari had found happiness,
whatever that meant to her.

Her parents had been fighting more
often since she’d disappeared, trying to find out what had caused
her to run away. Their discussions regarding what had been the
cause had always ended in fights; eventually, they decided to
divorce, and Mari’s father left the neighbourhood to search for his
daughter.

Mari really hadn’t considered how she’d be
affecting everyone’s lives – but at least she was happy, or at
least so everyone hoped.

Luke had decided to check on the attic to see
if there was anything from his childhood related to Mari. He’d done
so plenty times before, but his father always caught him just when
he was about to find something. For some reason, James didn’t like
his son snooping around on the attic.

And the reason for that, of course, was the
book that lay hidden there. And James wanted to prevent his
children from finding it at all costs.

Luke climbed up the attic stairs, holding a
flashlight in his right hand. The attic did have a regular light;
Luke just needed the flashlight in order to be able to find it. He
flipped the switch, and the light went on.

Over the years, a lot of stuff had been packed
away on the attic. Mostly old toys or other things that belonged to
young children. Luke had three siblings; he was the first-born of
triplets, and his sister Emma was five years younger than him and
his brothers.

Lucas was very close with his siblings.
Through the years, they’d always been together in everything –
except for high school, as they sister was in junior high by the
time her brothers left high school.

There were plenty of things from
their childhood that instantly recalled old memories of his
siblings, but Luke hadn’t come for those. He didn’t even know if he
had anything left that had belonged to Mari, but there
had
to be something,
considering Luke and Mari had always been best friends.

Luke remembered the old vest Mari had once
given him; it’d been her favourite, but she’d grown out of it over
the years and simply refused to throw it away, so she and Luke had
hidden it on the attic.

They had hidden it inside the old wardrobe –
inside the sock drawer, so no one would find it. They truly
believed that their parents would find it and throw it away back at
the time.

Lucas knelt down, opening the wardrobe’s sock
drawer, and quickly found the vest. It was a deep purple colour;
Mari’s favourite colour.

But it wasn’t just a vest Luke pulled from the
wardrobe; as he tugged on one of the vest’s sleeves, something
rolled over the floor as the vest that had been wrapped around it
came loose.

It was a book; it’d fallen open on
the last page, catching Luke’s eyes instantly. “What do we have
here?” he mumbled.

“
Believe
?” Luke said, reading the
word on the last page. “What’s this?”

He closed the book and turned it
around to look at its title. “Guardians of Light. I’ve never heard
of it...”

Intrigued by both its title and the cryptic
placing of the word ‘Believe’ on the last page, Luke wrapped the
book inside the vest and took it downstairs...

...Only to run right into his father, who was
just coming up the steps. And he didn’t look happy.

“
What were you doing on the attic,
Luke?” James said. “I believe your mother and I have told you many
times before that-”

Luke, irritated, cut his father
off. “
If we want something from the attic,
we ask for it,
blah blah blah,” he
grunted. “I
know
,
Dad. I’m seven
teen
.” A crooked grin crept onto his lips. “I just went up to get
this old vest of Mari’s. Nothing else.”

James raised his eyebrows as Lucas showed him
the vest. Had he recognized it?

“
Can I see that?” he said, not
revealing anything about his awareness of the obvious, poorly
hidden object inside the vest. Luke reacted slightly surprised, but
tried to play it cool by agreeing to show his Dad the vest – by
folding it out in front of his chest, carefully hiding the book
behind the purple fabric.

Luke instantly knew that his
hiding tactics weren’t working, but he remained hopeful.

But James had known Luke for longer than
today; he knew his son was hiding something, and gently tapped his
son on the chest, right on the book.

“
Can I
see
that,
too?”
he said, grinning crookedly. “I know you’re using that vest to hide
something, Lucas.”

Luke grunted loudly at the fact that he’d been
caught. “Fine,” he said, sounding very unwilling. He reluctantly
took the book from underneath the vest and handed it to his father,
whose eyes widened.

“
Where’d you
find this?” he said; he tried to conceal the surprise and fear in
his voice, but didn’t manage to do so all too well. “Luke, I need
you to put this back where you found it.
Now.
”

Luke wanted to get the book back from his
father, but he pulled it close to his chest. “Promise you’ll put it
back, Luke. Just do it.”

“
Why, Dad?” Luke said, slightly
flailing his arms. “I mean – it’s just a book. What’s the matter
with it?”

“
I’d love to explain everything
about it to you, Lucas,” James said, while looking at the book with
worried eyes. “But I’m afraid I can’t. I swore an oath that I’d
keep this book a secret twenty-five years ago, and I’m not planning
on breaking it.”

“
Dad,” Luke said, “you’re talking
nonsense. As usual.”

James looked at his son, his
navy-blue eyes spouting fire. “I might be unreasonable sometimes,”
he said, “but at least I’m doing everything I can to protect you.
I
can’t
tell you
anything, Lucas. If I could’ve, I would’ve
done
so already.”

Luke leaned against the wall, grinning
mockingly at his father. “Oh, really?” he said. He knew he was on
the verge of pissing off his father – he was being an ungrateful
little brat, and he knew it, but sometimes his father just needed
to be put on the spot. Luke never understood what the fuss was all
about regarding the attic.

When he was little, his father used to tell
Luke and his brothers Theodore and Ian ghost stories to keep them
away from the attic. As innocent and gullible as they were, the
three boys truly believed it was haunted for the first twelve years
of their lives.

Their father was a
very
convincing
storyteller; no wonder he wrote children’s books for a living. His
father had a great love for books, which had started somewhere in
his childhood.

His study, where he’d often spend
the entire day working on a new book if inspiration struck him, was
filled with bookcases. And
all
bookcases were nearly full. So this book, being
left abandoned on the attic wrapped inside an old vest, surprised
Luke greatly. Why wasn’t it somewhere on the shelves in his
father’s study? What was so bad about it, that it had to be
hidden?

James’s eyes continued to spout fire. “Yes,”
he said. “Really.”

He looked at the book again. While his head
was down, his eyes shifted towards Luke. “You know what?” James
said. “I might just keep this in my study, to make sure you won’t
go back upstairs to get it.”

Luke let out a loud, irritated
sigh. “
Really,
Dad? The Lock-away punishment?” His father nodded.

“
Exactly. The Lock-away
punishment.”

The Lock-away punishment was a
particular punishment Luke’s parents had created for the times when
Luke or his siblings would develop a new ‘obsession’. This would
involve games that would be played until they’d start affecting
grades, bedtimes or behaviour and pretty much anything that would
do the same.

James would put the object necessary for the
‘obsession’ to ‘persist and evolve’ (in James’s words – whether it
was the TV remote or a video game disk) in a locked drawer in his
study and allow limited access, until the problem that’d been
caused by the particular subject had been solved.

It was an effective method, but sometimes
seemed to come off to the children as exaggerated. But it did stop
the kids from developing a certain attitude toward their parents –
well, at least until they’d reached a certain age. Luke had
developed a slightly rebellious and smart-ass-ish attitude,
especially toward his father. What Lucas didn’t know and James
didn’t want to admit, was that that James saw a touch of his own
attitude from when he was twenty in his son.

But, James had matured, which meant that there
was still hope for Luke to do so, too. Lucas was an intelligent
boy, and it’d be a waste of potential if he proceeded to be a
little brat through adulthood.

For now, it didn’t look like Luke would change
his ways any time soon, however.

“
Come
on
, Dad! This isn’t
necessary!” Luke yelled, flailing his arms into the air. “I’m
pretty sure there’s nothing about that dumb old book that’s too
much for me to handle.”

“
That’s not up to you to decide,
Lucas,” James decided, and walked off with the book, leaving Luke
behind with Mari’s vest in his hands.

“
Ugh,” Luke
grunted. “Dad’s always
got
to be the one to spoil the fun, now doesn’t
he?”

“
Yes, he does,” someone across the
hall said. “If he doesn’t do it, then who else would?”

“
Theo!” Luke grinned; his brothers
were coming out of their bedroom, and they’d probably heard every
bit of the conversation Luke had had with James. “I guess you’re
right.”

Luke’s brothers looked fairly similar to him,
although Theo’s hair and skin were the darkest, and only Ian wore
glasses; all three boys shared their father’s navy-blue eyes and
freckles.

“
What’s the problem, anyway?” Ian,
the ‘youngest’ of the three, said, as he ruffled his dark red,
curly hair. “I heard something about the Lock-away
punishment.”

Luke chuckled. “I found an old
book on the attic, and Dad won’t allow me to read it,” he said. “He
thinks it’s dangerous or something – he said he
swore an oath
not to tell anyone
about it.”

Theodore snorted.
“
What
!? You’re
being serious right now?”

Luke nodded, while wearing a smug grin on his
face. “It’s a true story,” he said. “Dad’s scared of a dusty old
book.”

“
So, he locked it up, huh?”
Theodore said, rubbing his chin. “It’s a good thing Dad doesn’t
know we’ve found ways to get around the Lock-away punishment over
the years.”

Luke and Ian burst out in
laughter. “What? We’ve
never
broken the punishment! I swear; we’re
innocent
!” Ian laughed;
he was shaking his head so heavily, that his circular glasses
nearly slid off his nose.