Don't Open That Door - GoM 1

21

Alex controlled her urge to move and try to break free from the hardening vines. The wood around her grew thicker and stronger, but she kept repeating the spell. Even when her limbs and chest started to hurt and it got hard to breathe.

She needed to stay focused and keep going. She needed to keep repeating the spell. She didn't know how many times she'd said it already. Obviously not enough times yet.

Soon her head felt lighter, as if she were drunk. She knew it meant blood was having it hard to reach her brain. Then came the colored sparks behind her closed eyelids. Her breathing grew hollow. She was about to pass out. And if that happened, she and all the people Lila had infected were as good as dead. So she kept uttering word after word, again, and again, and again. Until she was unable to tell what she'd just said and what came next.

"C'mon! You can't give up now!"

She heard the voice in her head clearly and started over, thinking it was funny that her muddled mind picked Old Bootter's voice to demand this effort from herself.

But she stuttered again and paused. She just couldn't go on. She didn't know how anymore. Then the sparkling darkness behind her closed eyes shaped a figure and a face she knew so well. It was all in her imagination, of course. Because the mother tree was choking her slowly. But she couldn't fight the temptation to talk to that figure.

It felt like what happened when she saved George from The Guardian. Only this time, in this dark nothingness surrounding her, she was able to see every line of Old Bootter's face, his bright smart eyes, his hair as white as fresh snow, his beard shivering when he spoke.

"Grandpa..."

"Go on, child. Else you're gonna die."

"I think I already did. Or I'm just about to."

"Sure. That's why that dickhead of yours is still working."

It was as if she'd last seen him a few days ago. She would've liked to laugh. She would've liked to hug him.

"Jeez, I miss you, oldtimer."

"Can we leave the Kodak moment for a Ouija session and focus on what really matters?"

"But I can't remember the words, Grandpa. I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

"That's because you can't speak Latin. Bet you didn't bother to look up for a translation before using the spell, did you."

"Not like I had time to. But this is because of the lack of oxygen to my brain."

"Nice, little Lorrigan. D'you have the slightest idea what you were saying?"

"Something about an abomination and the moon... I think..."

"Exactly. You're commanding the mother tree to die. So think: what does it need to live?"

It was surreal, even for the things Alex had been through over the last months. But there was no way she'd try to escape this vision.

"I... I don't know..."

"C'mon, child! Think!" She tried to come up with an answer and failed. Bootter clicked his tongue, impatient. "C'mon! This ain't no TV show!"

"If you ain't gonna help, you should shut your hole, oldtimer," she replied, like she did when she was a teenager.

"What is it that all trees need to live, hunter's child?" asked another voice, that she recognized right away too.

A second figure appeared in the dark, joining Old Bootter. The Guardian? What the hell was he doing there?

Tom noticed Claire's silent tears. "What is it?" he asked.

The girl could only shrug.

"What! What's wrong with Alex?"

"She... She's..." Claire trailed off, unable to finish.

Tom tried to step up again and the girl grabbed his arm.

"It's too late, Tom," she muttered with a shaky voice. "And if you go in there, you'll... too..."

Tom shook Claire's hand off, but Ollie stood before him.

"If Al would've wanted any of us in with her, she would've taken us, Tom."

"Wait!" Claire said. "I think I'm sensing her again."

Trapped in the wooden cocoon, in her mind Alex held The Guardian's deep dark eyes.

"It is a tree, hunter. What does it feed on?" he asked with his solemn calm.

"Soil?" she ventured. "The land...?"

"And you just won a trip to Disneyland! Would you hurry? You're dying, in case you didn't notice!"

"Shut up, Grandpa!"

"The land, that's correct," said The Guardian, catching her attention again. "What else?"

"What else?" Alex repeated, puzzled.

"C'mon, child! The land and what else?"

"Hmm... light?"

The Guardian nodded. "Yes. But this is no ordinary tree, so it does not need ordinary light."

"Moonlight!"

Bootter leaned closer and looked straight into her eyes with a fierce smile. "Right. So you know what it needs. No deny it to it!"

Axel felt the pain in her chest again, and in every of her bones. She still was at the brink of death, prisoner inside the cocoon of hard wood. But now she knew she could wither the mother three down to its last shoot. The figures behind her eyelids started to vanish. She got to smile at Bootter before he disappeared. Somehow her lungs got the air her voice needed to utter the words clearly:

"Die, abomination. For this moon doesn't shine for you and this land will never nurture you."

She repeated it. It was so easy it was hilarious.