My Demonic Ghost: Banished Spirits (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two:

My eyes opened on their own at the glow of light squeezing through. A thick smell of mud and rotting trees overpowered my nose. This creek bed had me feeling claustrophobic and weak. The trees could barely hold their limbs above the mud and weeds, their trunks distorted into twisted stalks, broken and pale within the overshadowing gloom of the low charcoal sky. The life inside everything here had been sucked dry as though a plague of locusts had descended from the air. Anything beautiful or healthy or good was strangled by the hands of death, stripping them of any worthy qualities they may have had only to dump their ugly, hollow bodies back into the mud. Nothing changed, no matter how far my eyes could see I was looking into reflecting mirrors of the same beaten corpses. I noticed Betrayal glancing worriedly over at Lock.

“You know what this is, where we are, don’t you?” she said. I glanced over the swamplands once more and shivered at the musty smell it carried.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Lock whispered back just as Betrayal teleported to his side, her fingers twitching with longing to shield him. I didn’t have any clue to what was going on, and felt like I had missed something, something very important.

“Is something wrong?” I moved a little closer and felt my weight sink into the soft bed of the ground. I yanked my foot back.
I have to be more careful.

“Not yet.”

“Its fine, Betrayal,” Lock insisted weakly. He really didn’t look too well, the colour in his body fading. He looked sick, even for a corpse.

“It’s not fine, this is-”

“There’s really no need to worry Rachael like this, it isn’t important. Let’s just get this over and done with already and get out of here”.

The green gleam of his eyes had dilated to nearly pitch black. His neck strained to hold his swaying head straight, the weight on his shoulders seeming to increase at an alarming rate just as fast as strength slipped from his grip.

A dark blur pounced suddenly, shooting up like a bullet from the murky green creek water only metres in front. I instinctively jumped back to avoid the airborne water droplets.

We all held our breaths, in sync. Lock had the weapon in his pocket, but couldn’t find the strength to pull it out. The Sin looked to be compiled completely of bones; her arms were long and cracked with each movement she made, her legs buckled underneath as she moved, and her ribs poked outward. Her concave abdomen outlined every inch of her, as if all of her muscles and organs had been removed. She was a skeleton wrapped in scales; a stiff, rigid, sickly thin skeleton that could snap in two at the slightest breeze. But her height made her threatening.

She looked like a Barbie doll whose head had been dunked in a bath of toxic waste, her skull too big for her carcass of a body, which was painted with murky green and golden grey scales.

She had snake eyes, an awful shade of green, with black slits cut down the middle. I knew I shouldn’t look at the eyes for fear of getting captured in their deadly spells, so I jerked my face down. She was completely expressionless with absent eyebrows and a nose that was either crushed back into her face or not present at all. Her head was large and well rounded. There were empty follicles across her skull where hair used to grow; now nothing more than a patchy collection of 50 oily black hair bundles sprouting out of her skull like a motionless fountain. All movement was driven through her spine, even with the tiniest twitch of her head did the ripple commence from the base of her back. She stood still and erect in front of us, her eyes wide and disoriented as they corkscrewed around in her sockets like loose gumballs.

I didn’t move, I couldn’t even breathe as fear lodged in my chest. Her eyes, though... they were so profoundly embedded with the most dazzling green jewels anyone could ever lay eyes on, glazed over with a milky screen. Her head jerked, bird-like, at every subtle movement and fast, as if she were a snake zoning in on a distant prey. But the reason why I knew that I was doomed, even if I had stayed just as perfectly still as the other two, was because I was still by far the loudest. Even to my human ears, the reverberations of my own heartbeat banged like drums against the silence. It was only a matter of time before I was picked off…

Everything moved within one of my heartbeats, the Sin dove down just as Betrayal knocked me aside and off my feet. The ground vibrated as the Sin buried her head underneath the dirt, the stillness quickly covering her tracks seconds later. The quiet continued as if it had never been disturbed.

“Lock!?” Betrayal’s voice rang like sirens across the swamp. Lock was slumped over; hands resting on his knees, his entire body trembling in what I could only presume was an effort to remain upright.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“It’s this Realm. It’s draining him. We’re at our weakest in the world of our greatest Sin.”

I should’ve known; the same green imbued both Lock’s eyes and this creature’s. He was the vulnerable one now and I needed to protect him. I owed him that much and heaps, heaps more. Her hideous nature had disoriented me, it was hard to comprehend that, of all of us, and Lock was closest to such a foul specimen. That Lock and this beast shared the same beauty.

“This sin, what is she?”

Betrayal checked around herself and out towards the eerie swamp.  With a stiffened chin, she answered, “Envy.”

BANG!

Just as her words dripped free was her body thrown mercilessly across the breeze. I felt my voice scream out after her but she was long gone.

The silence continued. Lock was panting, barely able to keep himself up. I moved quickly, stepping as quietly as I could as I approached him; reaching down into his pockets to retrieve the weapon. Noises chirped from all around me; chuckling from the back, twigs snapping on my left, the leaves rustling to my right, and the water ahead of me softly whooshing as it rippled out to land. And continuously, over and over and over, building speed, was the
thump, thump, thump
of my own heart drowning out everything else.

I pulled the blade out and held it out at arm’s length, circling Lock as a bee would protect the last droplet of honey. The sounds moved around me in invisible waves, like wind moving through a tree. Envy appeared in a barrage of dirt that sprayed out across my face, hitting my eyes and landing into my parted mouth. I turned to shield myself at the same time as her elongated legs, held tightly together to form a tail, whipped out, slashing across my chest. I was swooped up and dropped back down only moments later, it all happening so fast I didn’t even have time to see the ground disappear before crashing back down. The fungi sank underneath me as I rocked onto my back, picking myself up only to be pushed and pinned down by her arms.

The strikes were fast, planned and direct; I didn’t have a chance against her speed and accuracy.  But then she stopped and buried herself back underneath the earth. I was left lying helplessly on my back, panting, in pain and scared, but thankful to still be alive. The thick stillness felt like velvet wrapping itself into a tight circle around me, the air becoming so condensed that it was uncomfortable to inhale, like breathing through a pillow. Dirt piles were stretched out in front of me, overlapping willows and layers of fungi swinging off their branches, yet there was no sign of Lock or Betrayal. She wanted to split us up.

I walked forward in slow and delicate steps as the boggy water moved underneath me. Panic was building and churning my insides, I had just stripped Lock of his only defence and now he was left weapon less and weakened. I moved to lean against a tree, my breath was harsh, panicked, quick and whistling with each inhalation I took. My sweaty palms would be a problem, especially if the blade happened to slip from my grip at the most crucial of moments. I swapped hands, rubbed vigorously against my shirt to dry them, then swapped them back again.

Envy’s movements were quiet. So quiet, I couldn’t even bring myself to mouth Lock’s name. My clothes weighed on me, slowing me down, scrunching up at every little twitch I made, moving back the way I think I’d been thrown from. It may have just been my overly paranoid mind, but with every step it felt as if my feet were sinking that much more into the ground, however, I didn’t have time to worry about me.

I finally stopped after reaching a tree that looked like an old man tipping over. I scanned the horizon; still nothing but the misty spread of marshland. I moved on, a little faster this time. I reached another tree just a few steps further and leaned against the trunk once more. I stopped, panting, to check my surroundings again. It was then that I spotted him off to my right, collapsed between the gaps of two overlapping branches.

My feet moved instinctively, breaking everything underneath me in two. The trees around me cracked and snapped their branches together, their bodies wailing for release from their tombs in the ground. I called for Lock and my voice resounded into the cavernous sky.

Lock’s breathing; it looked so shallow from here. I held up my hand, palm out to him, and just as I came within inches of his body, I was scooped back up. A tight, rough band looped itself around my torso and climbed upwards, sealing me in. It would’ve been easy to snap me in half. Envy’s bones were as strong and thick as metal pipes.

Her blind eyes rolled over me and scrolled up to the right side of her sockets. I couldn’t squirm; her grip was tight enough that I couldn’t even twitch my toes. And then she released me, throwing me away as though the touch of my skin disgusted her.

I held up my arm with the blade pointed down, ready to thrust my attack into her chest when her arm extended itself and smacked the knife free from my fingers. The blade shot out, bounding down the dirt and skidding until it smacked into a rock far to my left.

I moved towards it in awkward jerks, chasing it down but she was much faster than I was. Envy forced herself forward, straight into my chest and I felt the full force of her bones collide with my insides. She pinned me to the ground; the dirt was like rough sandpaper clawing under my clothes. My body rocked sideways but all I could see was her. Her body, her limbs, skin and face, her laughter; it was just everywhere. No matter where I turned my head, how quickly I moved, she was in front of me again. How many times can one’s life flash before their eyes? In a spilt second, even with an attacker not giving you a moment to collect a single thought? She just wasn’t one snake demon anymore, instead it was as if Envy had cloned herself, splitting her body into twos and threes, swooping down on me like a flock of birds.

I kicked up powerfully, but she didn’t move. My arms were rubble against her steel. I cried out in terror, my weakness scaring me more than her touches. The sound of my own scream felt distant, so stretched and torn that it didn’t sound like me anymore; like this was somebody else screaming, and I was sitting above her listening, and thinking to myself, ‘this girl is going to die.’

In the madness of my fight, I nearly forgot my purpose here. I needed to pierce her with the blade; to collect the blood of Envy. The Sin bounded off me, whipping herself backward and shooting her rigid body through the air. I didn’t watch her land or listen to hear if she hit her target. My only focus was to reach the knife, and I used my fingernails to drag myself over to it on my stomach.

I moved faster than I’d expected and when the blade was mine I bounced back to my feet, stopping as I watched her tear and thrash. Lock’s body was thrown, limp once more, dead and broken against a tree trunk. I couldn’t hear the contact but watched as she chomped and snapped her jaws together, a bear trap where her mouth should be. She coiled herself up over Lock, but then, there was only silence as she leaned into him.

“HEY!” I called as she jerked her neck, tossing her shoulders back. Using the weight of my whole body, I flung my arm forward. The dance of colours in front of me didn’t make sense. In the spilt second of swinging my arm, Envy pounced at my voice, piercing herself through the point of my blade. The warmth of impact dribbled down my fingertips and the blood soaked blade fell from my hands like acid. She crashed awkwardly onto the floor with her back arched, clutching at the wound in her neck that wept with black water before she spiralled around herself and into the earth.

Lock was still.  Betrayal had reached him first.

“Rachael, get the knife!” I did as she commanded. She called for Mother and the moment I scooped up the knife, we were dumped back at the gym.

As we placed Lock on the ground, everyone gasped; the sound of steam escaping from the mouths of boiling kettles. It was Sabotage who made the first noise.

“Lock! What did you do to him?” her scream sounded off like gunfire. Lock; I had failed him. His unmoving form, the absence of each breath made me not want to breathe either.  The muscles in my face had never felt so tight and constricted, as if rubber bands had been pulled over my lips and bound them together. As cliché as it sounds, my knees started to wobble and buckle underneath themselves like I was being pushed to the floorboards.

Nails instantly jumped to work on him, running her hands an inch above his body, sprinkling smoke across his clothes. A quivering choke erupted out from his chest and altogether we let our bottled breath rush from our chests.

“He’s been bitten…” Nails motioned to the punctured marks on Lock’s shoulder, angled so the fangs left a perfect imprint of a triangle on him.

Despite my every nerve and thought barking at me to stay away, I knelt down beside him, knowing I would only bring him more pain and harm. I suppose that was Sabotage ripping into me with her telepathy, but I was selfish and couldn’t stop myself.