Levi Rem in: A Sculptors Nightmare

Chapter 2: Doomsday

A sharp pain shot through Levi's head, spreading out like a web in his skull. He reeled over, it hurt, bad. His head was in his hands, his eyes held tightly shut. Flashes. Flashes of events, of ideas, of the past or the future. It was hard to tell. He saw himself. Sculpting, chanting. A cave. Trees with no canopies. A forest. It was dark and dry. There was a light ahead. He was and wasn't himself. The sound of a hammer rang out. A raven. The visions came and went, the pain dulled into an ache and then a memory. Levi stood up, tried to shake it off but it stuck to him like cigarette smoke. A chill ran through him. It was quiet, quieter then he remembered. 

Around the garden was a sea of faces. A crowd had gathered, or appeared. Grayed out and smiling. All shapes and sizes. Men, women and everything in between. The whole town it seemed. The horror set in him immediately, deep down in the pit of his stomach. An angry mob, but instead of flared nostrils and mean looks they shared soulless eyes and smiles. Pitchforks and torches replaced with machetes and boards with rusty nails sticking out of the end. Anything that could inflict harm. A happy mob.

Levi was frozen, but the mob wasn't. They crept towards him, humming, their feet shuffling. Levi hunched back against the two headed wolf statue. His mind in overdrive. Thoughts racing. Images of a daring escape, images of a gruesome death. The latter was more likely, there's a fine line between pessimism and reality. But reality was strange lately, he couldn't get a grasp of the rules. They inched forward.

They sped up, stepping foot in the garden. Trampling flowers, their footprints behind them in the plush grass. Closer. Stepping over the little fences, onto the pathway. The circle of safety grew tighter, Levi's chest followed suit. The silence was loud, the grins a sinister mark of unholiness. Unnatural. The mob just a few feet away. Levi could smell the sweat on their bodies, the dirt on their clothes. He didn't see any of them blink once.

A massive cloud rolled in, planting a shadow onto the mob, blocking out the sun and enveloping the town center and everything around it in a dusk. The happy mob froze in place. The eyes searching for their victim, now vanished. Levi could see the breaking sun rays following behind the cloud, like a curtain call to the end of his life, but in this moment he was sheltered. The racing thoughts crossed the finish line, dots connecting into a picture of the gravity of the situation and to the solution. Levi took advantage of the opportunity, bolting through the closest gap in the group. Bumping into some of the townsmen turned monsters, they turned their heads when he did. Some even taking a swing. Both half heartedly. Levi ran low until emerging from the crowd. The godsent cloud was quickly drifting away, though, and the light was coming back. The green light for the smileys.

Behind, he heard a louder hum. A roar of wind and despair. Levi turned around, kept walking backwards away from the mob. The off white aura that hung in the air came up. Tendrils of grey, from the group. Spiraling up into a funnel, piercing the cloud above. Unearthing the trapped light, a circle being cut out. A spotlight shone through, directly above the wolf statue. And it was expanding fast. This entity, this fog-like presence, seemed sentient. It radiated from the monsters, now separating to attack the cloud, it blocked it from what it draws its power from, the light.

Walking backwards in awe, Levi saw everything laid out in front of him. The tornado of grey glow swarling, the sunlight touching the smiley monsters, giving them a jolt back to life. In this place, light wasn't really light. It wasn't safety from the darkness, it was merely inverted darkness. And Levi was stuck in a shrinking shadow ring. Turning back around, he ran at full force. Putting as much distance between him and the mob.

Sprinting and stumbling, Levi tried to keep his balance and footing. Hopping fences, darting between buildings and back alleys, through open porches and well manicured lawns. He couldn't fully wrap his head around what he'd seen. What he'd been through. Twisting and turning, weaving a tale of terror with his footprints. Keeping in mind to stay in what shadows there were. He didn't know where he was going, he didn't really care. His heart beat through his chest. Any second, he thought, inverted dark possessed people would cut him to shreds. He ran and he ran. In the middle of a pharmacy parking lot his eyelids began to flutter, his lungs overworked, his legs gave out completely and then, blackness.