Rosa and the Graven Kings - A Spiritual Warfare Novella

Chapter 5

Dead bushes ahead couldn't mean anything good. Well, it meant she was on the correct trail, but this was the death street Rosa had heard so much about. Now, she was seeing it for herself.

And it was awful.

Rosa stopped, looked around, and grabbed the scroll from the backpack. The instructions were simple: Go along the death road until you reach . . . she gulped . . . the gulch. Okay, the last part wasn't so simple, but Rosa was thankful that this would be a one-day trip, provided everything went to plan. Then, keep going through the desert until you see a rock shaped like a giant spear.

Rosa put the map away and started down the dusty trail again. It looked like a desert. Without the cactus. Blue mountains were far in the distance. The heat seemed to intensify, growing much hotter than the Rahu area. Prairie dogs were running away. Wind smacked her face and whipped a heatwave under her long-sleeved shirt. "Should have worn a tank." But she didn't want to scrape her body on anything sharp. So wearing long sleeves and trousers seemed best.

Suddenly, a furry thing hit her face. Rosa swerved the bike until she noticed: "It's just a tumbleweed." For a second, she thought it was . . .

Rosa skidded the bike to a stop. Her gaze fixed on a shadowy man-like figure walking over the trail. Then it morphed into a tumbleweed. Finally, it morphed into a figure until the tumbleweed blew far away. She remembered something funny she had read about this place. 'People who go there never come back.' But that was meant to be a joke.

Or was it?

Rosa grabbed her map again and figured she could cut across the sandy landscape and later get back on the path when she needed to turn. So she rode off the trail.

"Come on!" she complained as the bike went slower. "I'm not using that path. No way, no play."

Not with demons walking over it.

Fifteen minutes passed, she could tell by her phone. A giant oak tree lay amid dead bushes. The tree was likewise dead, looking more like ugly driftwood. Rosa stopped the bike, grabbed a water bottle from her pack, and gulped it down. Then she looked into the bag. There are my little pears, she smiled and thought, eyeing three fruits lying around just as hot as her. But Rosa frowned for a long second. "What?" Then she elevated one pear and noticed someone had bitten into it. "Do I bite things and don't remember?" she whispered, rotating the fruit in her hand.

At least she had two good pears, so she threw the bad one on the ground to die like everything else in this desert.

"What . . . is . . . this?" she slowly said while pulling her Doritos bag up and trying to crunch the chips inside. No crunching. Rosa opened the bag but let it fall to the ground in terror. "Did I eat them and forgot when? EW! Something is creepy!"

The bag was sealed, but someone had eaten everything inside. To the last crumb. Or they evaporated. Anyway, that was enough for Rosa to turn her bike around and head home to Rahu. But she stopped to question what she was doing. "No. I shall try this." Rosa turned back around to brave the desert.

But something was torturing her thoughts: Hebrews chapter 10, which said, 'But we are not like those (sinners) who forsake God to their own destruction. We Believe (in Jesus) to the saving of our souls.'

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Stubborn Rosa didn't want to think about God right now.

Excuse me, she yelled at herself inside. I am not stubborn.

* * *

A long ride later

Rosa skidded to a stop again when she heard the noise. A rattler. It was probably in one of the nearby bushes, waiting to strike when she passed by. But Rosa wasn't going to let it stop her.