February 29

Chapter 31

Stacey bustled after a running Mark with nothing but fear and apprehension in her heart. Everything in her wanted to leave the place and forget the scenes before her. When they had walked past...past that thing that had mocked her father, they were greeted by dark haunting hospital rooms, an air of dead silence, and corridors so ebony that they seemed to branch off into another dimension, another world. Mark had swept the area once.

"Well, this is it," he'd said with contained calm. "Ethan is in here somewhere."

"Any idea where exactly?" she's asked in return.

Mark looked around once more. "I can't sense anything really. He could be anywhere at this point, but we can be sure he's at this place. Look over there."

And she did. In the corner of darkness was a plump, half-eaten peach. She looked back at Mark.

"If we follow those, we might find him," was all he said.

"What? Follow the yellow peach road? What does it mean?"

Mark shrugged. "From my experience and analysis, the Aura loves peaches. It's like a drug almost, a personal heroine."

"Why?"

"If you ask me, I think it has to do with their structure. Peaches are...they're weird. Think about it. Peaches come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors, but they always have that rock-hard pit in the middle. A soul, almost."

"A soul?"

"It's kind of like a soul. Really."

"But that doesn't make sense," Stacy mused as she thought about it. "People eat the fruit of peaches, then toss the core out. It's common knowledge."

Mark shifted his head side-to-side as if conceding that point. "Well, yes, people toss the core out. The Aura is not a 'person'. It's an entity. It doesn't toss the soul of peach out."

"What does it do then? Store it for later?"

Mark shook his head gravely. "No. It eats the peach. Whole."

Stacey shuddered. Soul-eating. She's heard that only twice in her life -- in some anime she'd watched growing up, and when her mother would share scary stories about ravenous demons that took small children and ate them up. She paused for a moment and tried to imagine her own essence leaving her, her body becoming a lifeless vessel, her flitting, floating spirit snatched up by bloody and rusty claws and shoved into the gaping mouth of some avaricious devil. Her hands shook. That's what happened to Mark's family. Torn apart by the dogs of hell. Dean too, maybe. 

Her father?

She shook her had firmly. No. It wouldn't be him. He was too strong, too....real to be destroyed by something like that. He would never let some demon take his soul. He would never be like the peaches that littered the floor, spread around like decaying feathers at her feet. 

But how long could she continue to fool herself and blind her eyes to reality?

Maybe that figure near the door wasn't so much of an illusion as it was a premonition. Maybe her father had already met his fate. Maybe Ethan had already plucked his beating heart from his chest and propelled it down his throat, devoured the flesh and pit whole. Just like a peach--

"Stacy?"

Mark's call roused her from her thoughts. She realized she'd stopped walking for quite some time and had been left behind. She rubbed her suddenly cold arms and moved to meet him. Being alone in an atmosphere like this was dangerous, very dangerous. Mark didn't seem to be as powerful as Ethan or the Aura, but he was protection enough from the bad vibes that lingered in the air. 

"Sorry," she muttered. "I got lost in my thoughts for a second."

"No worries," he reassured. "It's easy to get carried away in a place like this. Bad jujubes everywhere. Stay near me. I can't guarantee that I can defeat that demon, but there's power in numbers."

"What could I contribute? The most I could do is probably hurt its feelings."

"That may actually count for something," he said from the side of his mouth, turning at a bend in the hall. They found themselves staring down a long, darkened corridor, a labyrinthe of rooms along both walls. Most were blackened but a few had dimmed lights, flickering sporadically, flaring epileptic flashes of light along the hard linoleum floor. But something was wrong. Stacy squinted her eyes, peering down the hall at what looked like a...void of some sort. A pit-like darkness, an absolute ebony that looked more like a black hole, that swallowed the end of the hall into its clutches. She could see it; the edges of the furthest room didn't even have a definitive end - it just disappeared in that complete blackness, its light fettered to the black's singularity. 

Mark froze for a moment, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he stared at the same sight when suddenly, a powerful sensation shook them both. Mark let out a soft gasp and Stacy's arms erupted in gooseflesh, a gasp hitching in her throat. A molten ball of fear sank in her gut, blood pooling in her legs. She hadn't faintest hint of what Mark could or couldn't sense, but she could definitely feel that. 

"Well the good news," Mark muttered, his voice quivering. "I think I know where Ethan is."

Stacy had begun to shiver, rubbing her arms up and down. Another shockwave of invisible energy rippled across the edges of her vision, and Stacy's legs began to quake, an animalistic fear igniting her nerve endings. She stared at the blackness, its eternity rooting her gaze like a magnet. She got the strange sense that to walk through there would mean to walk through oblivion. "And the bad news?" she asked faintly, her teeth chattering.

Mark exhaled softly, his eyes widening with every passing second. "I think he knows where we are too."