A Daughter of Light(A Light onto the World)

Chapter 22

Marimar  

Chapter 22

Time stands still.  Was I fully dreaming or just partially?  I swallow down the puke in the back of my throat forming from the realization that I may have just made out with a little boy; a dead one.  I want to break away from George but he has me pinned by invisible arms much stronger than any living six-year-old.

Stay calm, I remind myself, Trevor is still going nuts and I didn’t answer Sage, so he should be coming over to check on me any second now.

George’s form materializes over me.  He’d be adorable if he wasn’t so menacing.  He has blonde curly hair and blue eyes, with heavy purple bags underneath them; chubby cheeks, a button nose, and full lips.  He’s smiling down at me.  I try to scream, but my screams are muffled by his hand.  The more I look at him the more his face starts to change, no, burn.  Blisters cover his little frame and his skin seems to be melting off of his face, in some places his skin is charred.  George stretches his mouth wide open.  It grows and distorts until it’s large enough to swallow my head whole.  He is getting ready for the kill shot.  Any second now Sage!

I close my eyes.  I’d rather not see this.  I brace myself for the searing pain I have yet to bear, but it doesn’t come.  What is taking Sage so long?

Get up you idiot! 

I open my eyes to see what’s delaying his attack.  I wish I hadn’t.  I see that George’s attention is preoccupied by something over by Sage’s corner.  Sage.  He whips his grotesquely enlarged head around. “Shh,” he whispers at Trevor who is growling.  Now Trevor starts going berserk, barking and gnashing his teeth.  I snap my eyes close before he turns his attention back to me.

“OH MY GOD!” Sage yells.  In a split second, the fully formed apparition dismounts me.  I open my eyes again.  He’s now at my feet standing over me.  He begins to laugh as he lowers through the carpet and under the floorboards.  Everybody except Marisol is awake at this point, freaking out but too terror-stricken to move.

“Where’d he go?”  I’m afraid to hear the answer.  I pull myself up on my elbows and I feel inside my sheets for my flashlight that was lying beside me.  My hands grasp the cylindrical case.  I flip it on and frantically search around the room; everyone else is doing the same.

“I think it left?” Sage assumes.

Guess again.  My mattress begins to move underneath me as if it’s breathing.  It lifts me up with each inhale and on each exhale it puts me back onto the ground.  My flashlight suddenly dies as the light fixtures begin to flicker on and off.  As I look into the faces surrounding me, I notice all their eyes fall to their flashlights that are suddenly drained of power.

“Papa!” I yell as I jump off the moving mattress.  The second my feet hit the floor I’m dragged backwards by my ankles.  I scream as I try to grab for anything, but everything’s out of reach.

Sage recovers from his initial shock and sprints towards me at the speed of light before anybody else has had the chance to slip out of their sheets.  Trevor is right beside him.  George pulls me fast, in a split second I am dragged screaming through the entrance to the hall.  I grab onto the doorway in an attempt to give Sage more time to reach me.

“HEELLP ME!!!” I shriek before he yanks me hard, forcing me to let go.  I dig my nails into the wooden floor, desperate to get away.  I ignore the blood and searing pain in my fingertips as my nails are bent backwards, some of them are torn away as they get caught between the floor board panels.  My endorphins are set into overdrive as I enter the debris zone.  Shards of glass scrape and dig into my body as I am swept across the floor, my body becomes numb.