Terran Oblivion

Chapter 12

Courtney Bernard

May 25, 2203

Lake Peligre - Central Haiti

2:11 AM

And the King of the Romans will take his wreathe and place it on the cross and spread out his hands to heaven and deliver the Kingdom of Christians to God, even the Father...

And as soon as the cross is lifted up to heaven, the King of the Romans will surrender His spirit...

-Apocalypse of Psuedo-Methoditus

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Courtney felt it the moment that she began to walk. At first, she hoped it wasn't what it seemed, perhaps just a bug bite or something, maybe a bit of nasty rusty water that got into a cut or something, and her body was giving her a signal to wipe it down, but the further she walked down the path she knew that it couldn't be anything but what she felt twice already, once in that house on the edge of the power plant and once more in the mansion in Montage Noire. The same incomprehensible feeling to be somewhere and do something. In this case, the frantic itch seemed to be directing her toward the lake, towards something at the bottom.

She tried to fight against it, to not listen to it, but the sensation became all-encompassing. It felt like a thousand pricks against her skin, like something so deep inside her mind that she just wanted to tear off her scalp just to be able to massage her brain and get rid of the pain. That would kill her, to be sure, but she didn't want to deal with it! It was pure and utter agony.

"What did you say?" Robert said.

"The fucking itch is here."

The next voice that came over the line was unexpected. "What do you feel? Tell me exactly," said General Perez.

Courtney stopped. "It's an itch. I wrote that in my report. A feeling that I need to do something."

"Directed where?"

"At the lake. It wants me to head into the lake."

"And do what?"

"I have no idea. That's what it wants me to do. The last time I found that small item in the house and the other time I saw that thing in the mansion. I'm not losing my mind..."

Perez's voice was harsh, to the point, a bit hard. "I know you're not losing your mind. There is a pattern. Get to the overlook at once. Now."

"What about the..."

"Now!" Perez barked.

"I can get the bad guy," said Simon.

General Perez groaned. "Fuck the bad guy. Just get to the overlook."

Courtney rarely heard such venom in a General's voice, but her mind was getting progressively more and more frantic to head to the lake. "I need to get to the lake," she said.

"Get to the overlook now, or I'll have you court-martialed."

Courtney groaned. "Fucking shit. I can't move!"

"Need me to grab you?" Asked Robert, placing a hand on her.

"No," she said. "I'll...handle it."

The itch was so unbelievably harsh. She could think of nothing else. Why did it want her to go inside of the lake? It hadn't been wrong yet, but at the same time did the itch know that she couldn't breathe underwater and would die should she even take a few steps underwater without air? The lake was deep, dark, grimy, full of the detritus of many years of collapse, rises, falls, and civil wars. Surely one of the objects, the strange objects, wouldn't be there? There were far better places to hide, like in the mud, in a tree, in a bush, in the ground, quite literally anywhere. And yet it wanted it to go inside of a lake. Each step that she took away from the lake only intensified the agony to the point where she almost wanted to collapse on the ground and curl up into a ball just to get the feeling of fire outside of her head. Her whole body was practically trembling with feverish pain.