Awakening

5: Faint

He sat on the couch and stared at the carpet. Some light shone in through the living room windows, but within the hour that light faded. Blake tapped his fingers on his legs over and over while his jaw shifted back and forth. Confused thoughts swirled about in his mind the entire time.

She has to know. Right? I mean, it was in her room......

He'd checked three separate times within the last few hours, but still he could not find the scythe in her room. It was as if it just vanished of its own will. Well, if an inanimate object could have a will at all. He'd even considered the possibility that maybe it somehow returned to the chest, but that had disappeared without a trace as well.

Blake stood up with a start; he wanted to check once more. He made his way down the hall, and peeked into Alisha's room yet again. Still a dim light remained in there, and besides the furniture the floors were bare. He stepped inside and checked the closet again, pushing aside some things and squinting his eyes. No. Still not there.

With a dissatisfied grunt Blake left his mother's room and set his hands on the back of his neck. When he returned to the living room he did not sit down again. He instead paced, and shook his head a few times while doing so.

The scene from earlier replayed in his mind, over and over again. The scythe, the clear image of the shadowy creature, what he did.......one of his hands ended up on his forehead as he realized what he'd done. He'd just....sliced it in two. Killed it most likely. Sure, he'd initially struggled to fight back, but something had suddenly pushed him forward to sever that creature in half without the slightest hesitation. He just didn't know why.

Come on, pull yourself together, he scolded inwardly. Freaking out like this is not going to help.

A sudden chill ran up his spine. A warm chill that stayed with him for many seconds. Blake slowly turned around, blinked and then frowned.

"Oh, you must be joking...."

Whatever it was came from the backyard. Much as he didn't want to, Blake headed for the back door and unlocked it. He breathed in before he opened the door and leaned out.

He did not immediately notice anything strange. But his senses told him to look right. And once he did he could not believe his eyes. A spectre stood near the side of his house. But this was different. He could....he actually felt like he could physically see the ghostly figure before him. Not only that, but the image was a much clearer one than anything he'd ever seen. It was a young man, maybe in his late teens or early twenties, with dark but clean hair. However the rest of his body did not appear so immaculate. It seemed dirty. And, there looked to be some blood as well.

Blake only required a second to look this spectre over. "What happened to yo-?"

Before he could even finish, a sudden force slammed into his chest carrying nothing but a horrific pain, and he thought his lungs would pop right then and there. A second later, he felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Blake had felt this before and knew that it meant. Though, he'd never experienced that sensation to this extreme, and it took all his composure to remain standing.

"That really hurt, you know," he told the spectre, in as calm a voice as he could manage. "Was it close to here?"

He actually watched the spirit nod its head, something he'd never seen so clearly before. Blake shook his head and kept his focus, looking around.

"Where did you come from....?"

Blake faced the spirit with a sudden jolt, realizing it spoke to him. Or more like, words popped into his head, rather than images or emotions. It was such a jarring and unfamiliar experience, so much so that could only make out a few of the words that washed over him.