Indutiae Chapter 2

Everything is black, black, black. I can’t see anything. With a wheezing cough I jolt back to life. Pain shoots through my body and I can’t sit up. Helpless, I just lay where I am; gritting my teeth as the feeling of hundreds of rods of searing hot iron dig into my skin. My shirt isn’t helping, every time I breathe in, it rubs against my skin. What is my shirt even doing on me? From the looks of the sleeve on the arm in front of my face, it is perfectly clean, and something inside of me tells me it shouldn’t be. On top of that it’s not even my normal sleep shirt, but my day one. Another surge of pain overwhelms me before I can wonder too much about how I am in my normal clothes.

                I try to lift my head, but as I do, my vision blurs dramatically out of focus, and I am forced to put my head back down. Where am I? What happened? Who am I? The thoughts echo through my subconscious. I look at my surroundings without lifting my head. Everything is grey. The sky is grey; the ground is full of broken things that are covered in something grey and fluffy. In the air around me is grey snow, falling and floating gently. Somehow, the air even smells grey!

                Something is tickling the back of my mind. Something urgent. I can’t figure out what though. Everything is starting to come back, but I can’t wrap my mind around the chaos swirling in my head. A few words stick out. Fire… I need… running… falling…Lilly and Sara… The last three words solidify and everything snaps back into place.

                My surroundings suddenly make sense, I am laying in the ashes and rubble of my burned home. Who did this? I ask myself.

                Willing myself to push through the pain, I lift myself up from the ground into a sitting position. Lilly and Sara! My conscience shouts at me. “No…” I whisper in an incredibly hoarse voice for no one to hear. “NO, Lilly, SARA!!” I shout, voice cracking. I force myself up and cast an eyeball around the wasteland. I must find Lilly and Sara. Slightly disoriented I start to tread toward where I think their room used to be, ankle deep in ash.

                Two steps later I make a jarring discovery. I have no idea what part of the house I’m in. Everything is so unrecognizable. It’s unlikely Lilly and Sara are still in the area. They probably escaped and are somewhere else on the property. They have to be.

I stumble away from the ruble. With each step my pain is renewed and I stop every couple of seconds, and double over waiting for the pain to subside enough for me to continue. As I get closer to the barn I start to hear faint voices coming from inside of it. I stop, and lean against the wall of the barn trying to get my breathing under control so I can hear what is being said inside.

“…no good.” The voice sounds upset.

“Calm down, we can fix this,” said a second less concerned voice. I start to shuffle to the door. Maybe it’s Lilly and Sara. It has to be. With my badly burned hand I reach out and lift the lever to open the door, and lean against it, swinging it open.

In front of me isn’t Lilly and Sara, but two different girls, much older than my sisters. They both snap their heads around and stare at me. “He is awake,” a girl with dark brown hair tied back into a braid says.

The other one, with short lighter brown hair raises an eyebrow, “We thought you’d just die. Would’ve been easier that way.”

“What?” I croak.

“Maybe we can take him back to camp? I mean he is not that badly burned,” she takes a step toward me.

“Are you kidding me?! Lexi you need your eye’s checked! He was burned enough to kill him as a human and then almost kill him as a demon!”

“What are you talking about?” These girls must be crazy; I need to get back to looking for my sisters.

“Jane’s not going to be happy; she was counting on us bringing a new demon back to camp,” The girl, Lexi had a worried expression on her face as she looked Claude up and down.

“We can go try again on someone else, it won’t be too hard. That way Jane gets her demon and we get to have more fun,” the companion said. This is ridiculous. I start to walk past them to get to the barn door so I can get out and continue looking for my sisters. I don’t have time to listen to them talk about things that make no sense. Before I get to the door the one that’s not Lexi cuts me off. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To find my sisters,” I reply irritably.

The girl laughs, “Your sisters? No point, they’re dead.”

“What?” I feel my body go completely numb. I hope she’s lying. I hope she’s just messing with my head. They aren’t dead, they are somewhere close by.

“You heard me. Mors doesn’t need children around to get in the way, we had to kill them too.”

“Alice, did you really have to say that to him?” Lexi sighed. There’s a fire burning inside me that is equally intense to the one that burned my skin earlier. I look around the barn; I need to find something to whack this girl on the head with.

“Why do you care? He’s going to be dead shortly anyway!” Alice smirks. There’s an axe leaning against the barn wall. As Alice turns her head to look at me, the smirk falls off her face and she shrieks and ducks as the axe flies toward her head. She manages to dodge it narrowly and it impales itself into the wood of the barn door.

Lexi looks like a doe caught in the head lights, “Wha- how did he…”

Alice straightens out and glares at me, “You’ve got some nerve boy. You’ll regret doing that.” She lunges at me.

“Wait!” Lexi shouts and grabs Alice by the collar of her worn out shirt. “He might not be useless like we expected.”

Alice continues to glare at me for another second before the expression slowly melts away to blankness, “I guess you’re right…”

Lilly and Sara are dead…dead… it can’t be true, “Did you kill my sisters?” I ask moving for the axe.

“Of cou-” Alice begins but Lexi covers her mouth.

“It is not important right now. You need to come with us and we will explain everything. I promise,” she talks in a soothing voice.

I squint at her, how does she think I’ll go with them? I am becoming more and more certain that they started the fire. There’s no way I’m going to go with them. “No,” I say it simply and bluntly, I don’t want to waste any more time.

“Listen, you really do not have a choice, you are dead and the only place you can go is camp.”

Alice mumbles something through Lexi’s hand that is still clamped around her mouth. Lexi glances at her and relinquishes her grip. “We’re going to have to take him with force.”

I’m dead? Is that really possible? I’m standing here talking, to some very alive looking girls inside my barn. I always have thought that after death there would be something more than...than…this. Isn’t death supposed to be a little more obvious than this? And what is this camp they keep bringing up. Before I can say or do anything, both the girls lunge at me and grab my arms. They drag me a few feet and I feel a strange pulling sensation, and suddenly my surroundings are completely different.

I am now in what I immediately assume is the camp Lexi and Alice mentioned multiple times. There are tents everywhere and around the perimeter is a thick wall of trees. In the camp there are a few stray trees, but for the most part it is clear of them and filled with tents ranging in size.

I forget that I am being forced into this place and let the girls drag me along in-between them, curious to find out what this place is. People are coming out of tents and staring at me and I stare back at each one until they look away from me. Suddenly I am dropped and on the ground. Pain shoots through me briefly, but doesn’t linger as long as it did before. I look up to see a tall, broad shouldered girl standing over me. I get to my feet.

“Why did you bother bringing this one back? He’s too damaged to be of any use!” The girl growls.

“He only looks like he is inept, he is actually quite quick, he threw an axe at Alice and she barely dodged it in time,” Lexi responds quickly.

The broad shouldered one looks back at me, this time with more interest in her eyes, “Oh? The burns don’t bother you?”

I decide to lie, something tells me not to show weakness to this girl, “Not at all.”

“Interesting. Well then all I can say is welcome to camp; I can’t wait to see you’re potential. I’m your new leader Jane,” she smiles at me.

“I’m not staying here, I need to find my sisters,” I back away from Jane, only to bump into someone. I turn to see a wall of people has formed, they are all watching me. I move away from them searching frantically for a way out.

“I already told you your sisters are dead, I killed them myself. Watched them burn,” Alice said rolling her eyes.

She doesn’t seem like she’s lying. I can’t believe her though, not until I see for myself.

“They screamed their little lungs out for you. It’s too bad you couldn’t get to them in time. They died convinced you abandoned them.”

I want to kill her. I’m going to kill her, “Shut up,” I take a step towards her.

“Enough Alice. You can’t leave here, you are a demon now, you have no other place to go,” Jane got in my path to Alice.

I glare at her, I want to just go around her and strangle Alice until she’s cold. But I need to know. I need answers! “How can I be a demon? I didn’t commit any sins.”

“Doesn’t matter. Alice and Lexi killed your guardian angel, leaving you vulnerable, and then killed you. Because you’re angel wasn’t there to protect you with its light, you were exposed to our darkness and have become one of us. There is no way around it,” Jane explained.

I got an answer, it still doesn’t make much sense, but it’s an answer none-the-less, “I’m leaving,” I turn and start walking to the wall of people demons.

“Do not let him pass you!” I hear Lexi shout sounding panicked.

“No, let him though. He’ll be back,” Jane said quickly.

The wall separate’s easily as I pass through it. Near the back my eyes meet someone else’s and as I pass her I realize that it’s Hazel. My gaze lingers on hers as I stride by. I recognize the expression on her face. It’s the look she always got when she was revolted by something. I must look pretty bad to get such an intense look from her.

Soon I’m away from the camp and in the forest. Hazel’s expression is still circulating in my head. I’ve never been bothered by that look before, but for some reason this time it does. The look she gave me was more concentrated than any before it. I touch my face, the pain is dull, but still there. The skin underneath my fingertips is rough, and somewhat sticky. I pull my hand away and look at it. It’s the one I burned opening my door last night. If my face looks anything like my hand does, then I don’t blame Hazel for looking at me the way she did.

I look up from my hand and realize that I recognize the area I’m in. Madeline and I have been to this part of the forest before. With a few more paces I’m in a familiar clearing. In the center is a small pond with a large rock sitting on the edge of it. I go to the pond and look down at my reflection. My face is badly burned; most of the skin is completely gon or black. The burn continues down my neck, I unbutton my shirt to get a look at my chest; it is in the same condition as my face. Horror takes hold of me. How am I even alive!? I remind myself that according to Jane, I’m not.

I fall to my knees and look at my reflection more closely. I can see the edges of the burns are starting to turn into white scar tissue all ready. I can’t look at it any longer, I stand back up and button my shirt quickly, I need to cover my face. No one should have to see it.

I run the rest of the way out of the forest and soon find myself back at my house. I never noticed just how close the forest was to my house. Before I go into the barn to find something to cover my face, I stop and look at what was once my house. I need to see for myself if Lilly and Sara are in there. My legs move themselves to the ruble and I start to search the wide area for my sisters. Now that my head is clearer, I know which section of the house their room used to be.

As I am looking over a toppled wall, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. I turn to get a better look at it and a rock sinks to the pit of my stomach. It’s a little arm. I slowly make my way towards it, the rock getting heavier and heavier. I don’t want to see it. I know what it is, I don’t need to see it. As I get closer more and more of the arm comes into view, and then a shoulder, and a torso, and a head. It’s one of my sisters. She is so badly burned that I can’t tell which one it is, a few feet away is the other one. “Oh no…” I sink to my knees and feel my body shake.

They are dead. There is no doubt about it. The burning sensation in my skin returns and I scream out in agony. This can’t have happened. I curl up into a ball and stare blankly at the evidence of my ruined life.