Eden's Gate

Chapter 30: Mrs. LaBeaux

'Kaitlyn! She's caught me, but the LaBeauxs are protecting you. Keep running!'' Taylor informed.

Kaitlyn felt empty. The premise that she would the lone survivor of all of this was such a vast and terrible emotion, she couldn't wrap her mind around it. She just did as she was told - did the only thing she could - she ran.

It took her a good fifteen, twenty minutes of that to finally get to the LaBeaux's house. As she suspected, it was right off the creek they had found earlier. It was a two story log cabin that looked like it had been made by hand. It was quant, warm and inviting. The image of it as she emerged from the path looked like it would be at home on a Christmas Card if you added in some red and green lights or some garland.

She stumbled to the door, knocked on it, and politely waited for a response just long enough to realize she should probably be making more of a mess about this. It took a moment, but the door opened. Mrs. LaBeaux stood there, eyebrow raised.

"Good heavens, Kaitlyn. What happened to you? Why are you here?"

Kaitlyn, unsure of how to respond, said, "can I come in?"

"Yes, yes of course. Come in, come in. I'll make you some hot cocoa."

Mrs. LaBeaux ushered her into the room. The main room was large and wide, leading into a separate kitchen and with a stair that went up and down. There was a fireplace in the corner, with a mantle piece sparsely decorated with pictures of the happy couple. There was no TVs or computer, but the house felt warm and evenly heated as a modern building might, and had electrical lighting too.

The floor was a continuation of the wood that made the house, but the walls seemed to be made of plaster and painted a cool mint green. The couch was a long thing, framed in wood and with blue cushions and a red blanket around it. Kaitlyn sat down on the couch cross legged, pulled the blanket over her shoulders, and stared into the fire. Between the fire and the couch was a coffee table.

In spite of all of this, she still felt cold.

Mrs. LaBeaux came back a minute later with a plain white mug full of cocoa, which Kaitlyn took a sip from. "Thank you."

"You're very welcome. Kaitlyn, what is going on?"

The thought that Mrs. LaBeaux might have been in on it never occurred to her.

"Something terrible is happening at school. Eliza has taken all my friends and killed them for some ritual to summon horrible monsters."

The idea that Mrs. LaBeaux might not believe this never crossed her mind.

Mrs. LaBeaux's eyes went wide in shock as she took a sip of her tea as she sat in a tall wooden chair padded in green that had always been there. "Oh my...I find that hard to believe."

"We...we came here because you and your husband were the only people we thought might be able to help," she said. "Where is Atticus anyway?"

Mrs. LaBeaux's expression went flat for a second before it went back to concerned. "He went out. He'll be back soon."

Something about that rang off to Kaitlyn. It took her a minute to process that fact, even, but she knew something was wrong.

"Hold up," she said. "Out? Where is there to go out to?" Kaitlyn asked.

Mrs. LaBeaux's eyes narrowed and her brows furrowed. She set down her coaster and tea cup on the table, her gaze piercing. "Whatever could you mean by that, Kaitlyn?"

"You're lying to me," Kaitlyn realized as she got up. "Why are you lying?"

The thought snapped back into her head. How Mrs. LaBeaux had been there, calling them a crop of 'potentials,' and how she was kept discreet from the rest. Why hadn't that occurred to her before? She knew there may be the possibility, and that alone had been enough to make her realize all of this.

Mrs. LaBeaux shook her head and frowned. "Yes, I was. I'm sorry."

She stood up from her chair and walked over to the mantle piece, taking one of the photos in her hand. She looked it over gently.

"I've known about Eliza's plan since you were born," she explained. "I never wanted to work at the school because I don't feel a capable person to take care of children, so I kept myself out of the school affairs. Until one day, he didn't come home."

Her eyes were glistening a bit with tears.

"He usually stopped home frequently, to work on it, to see me. So when two weeks passed, then three, then a month with no sign of my husband, I began to worry. I went to the school to surprise him, and...well," she looked up from the picture, a smirk peeking through her sorrow, "let's just say I caught her off guard."

"But not enough off guard," Kaitlyn suspected aloud.

Mrs. LaBeaux gave a proud smile, "Yes, child. You're very smart. I had discovered she had killed my husband in cold blood, and had played it off as his retirement. When I threatened to expose her, she revealed herself to me as a mage, and cast a curse on me. Should she will it, she can kill me. I'll admit to cowardice - the fear of that death, when our grandson had just been born, was enough to browbeat me into compliance. And I cannot deny some morbid curiosity."

She turned to Kaitlyn, regret in her eyes, "For 8 years, she has been raising and grooming psychics from all over the world. She was focused on your grade because it had been the first one she had complete control over, but children all over the world who showed psychic promise were taken to her, in preparation for her ritual."

None of this pricked anything in Kaitlyn, despite Mrs. LaBeaux's admission of her involvement.

"What are they, exactly?" Kaitlyn asked. "The Elder Things, I mean?"

"Aliens," Mrs. LaBeaux answered simply. "They came from a planet far beyond ours, and their empire spread throughout the galaxy. They were curious things, wanting to learn much, but they were also very..." she paused, trying to find the word she was looking for, "egocentric. They believed everything else was sort of beneath them. If they come from that portal, humanity will indeed survive, but we will become another resource they harvest."

"...and there's nothing we can do to stop that?"

Mrs. LaBeaux waved her hand, and an image shot itself into Kaitlyn's mind, rising into her perception like a set being lifted from below onto a stage.

She watched as thousands of people were going about their business in a city, and they suddenly started to cough. It was one at first, but then two, and then four, and then eight, and soon enough everyone in her line of sight was hacking coughing. Disturbing as it was, it only got worse when some of them started coughing blood. One of them began to scream as he scratched his face and peeled off a chunk of flesh, which turned supple and fragile like glass in his hands. As he screamed, his chest began to bleed - it was shattering too. Pieces of him began to fall off, and as they did they turned pale green and turgid before rotting away in an instant. This started happening to other people too. Kaitlyn watched in horror as the writhing, shrieking mass of human flesh churned into a literal mass of putrefying matter, which the carrion birds were already coming down to examine.

Kaitlyn snapped back, shivering as her eyes dripped from the horror she had seen.

"Nothing," Mrs. LaBeaux assured. "Nothing us humans can do could ever get close to stopping them."

Mrs. LaBeaux sat down on her chair again, picking up her tea and sipping it.

"I don't know what happened specifically, but I do know one thing. Something changed Eliza when she went on her trip to the Antarctic those 9 years ago. She found something down there that warped her soul - that's the only way her glow could have changed. This goal of hers is something she will die trying to achieve."

Kaitlyn nodded, finally getting a grip over the horror she had seen. "...why me?" she asked. "Why am I so important?"

Mrs. LaBeaux shrugged, "I don't know entirely. But it's no longer worth deliberating. You should go get rest. We can talk about this more in the morning."

The idea of sleeping in a warm, blanketed bed after a week of sleeping on the cold hard ground sounded like heaven. "That sounds lovely."

"There's a spare bedroom in the basement," Mrs. LaBeaux said. "I'll take you there."