What Lies Beneath

Chapter 4

It started with the voices.

Slowly, they crept into my brain, whispering like a snake trying to draw out its prey. A feeling of mounting terror leapt to my throat like bile. Then they grew louder; jeering like petty bullies, attempting to goad and probe me into submission. Suddenly all at once, like a whip whistling through the air to finally crack against the ground, they were shrieking with maniacal laughter, now positively roaring. Their voices hit me like a mallet against my temples; echoing through my ears and rocking my head, making the world spin and tip violently. I tried to scream, but any stimuli just enhanced the noise. I felt like a was tied to a stone in the stormy ocean, forced to endure the merciless waves crashing against me. Waiting for it to end, but knowing it wouldn't.

Suddenly, as it happens so often in dreams, another scene exploded into existence, even more vile than the last. Min, Tommy, Werner, Jessica, Kyle, and Lily were staggering through the gloom, all pale and haggard as the darkness chased them like hungry serpents.

It coursed through the air, ensnaring them all in a cocoon black as night. They were suffocating, screaming, and clutching their throats, as tears tinged red with blood rolled down their faces in thick streams. They begged me to save them with desperate voices that gripped my heart and threatened to break it in two. But my hands were bound, I couldn't help them, no matter how hard I tried. I cried out in horror as they all suddenly dropped to the ground, stiff and still as wood, with dead white eyes.

Then as the ground in front of me fell away, carrying their lifeless bodies with it, the beast in all it's red eyed, black, billowing glory appeared in front of me. But this time it had Ariel in its mangled talons, and a dagger at her throat.

She looked awful. Her clothes were torn and ragged. Her skin was battered and cut, and her arms and legs were bound. So the beast was supporting her by the neck.

I realized I was tied to a stake surrounded by red and blue flames that lapped around the sides of my legs, growing higher and more menacing by the second. I called Ariel's name in vain, but the smoke snaked its way into my throat, staunching the air in my lungs and silencing my voice. Ariel fixed her bloodshot eyes on me, gulping tears streaking through the rust-colored blood on her face. Fear and hopelessness was etched in every crease on her face. Her eyes, once full of life, seemed to gaze upon me with desperation and a touch of disgust. Almost as if she was trying to say, how could you? All I could do is choke out rasping sobs as I watched the beast cry its shrill bellow of victory, right before the dagger plunged downward.... and she fell limp.

The scream had barely left my lips when the scene shifted.

I was now staring at the world's most powerful black hole. But instead of bright stars dotting the sky around it, the air was filled with the smell of smoke, as dust and debris flew towards its ever-present pull. Inside of it, growls and torturous wails emitted from it, like something was killing it slowly. But it was too powerful to succumb to such a small thing like death.

It seemed to be the embodiment of pure evil and chaos, feasting on whatever life that came within range. The voices seemed to worship it as they grew impossibly louder than before. I felt my soul being swept away, crumbling into the void of chaos. I was nothing but ash from the cold, barren hearth that may once have known life. But the mass of evil and contempt made it impossible to recall what breath in my lungs once felt like. Or the sheen of wetness that once sat on my now dry, cracked lips. Or the feeling of happiness that my heart pumped into my blood. Everything just shriveled up under the presence of the entity in front of me.