Encountering Darkness: The Great Pursuit (Book One)

Chapter Thirteen

Pethaford begins, like when he first began to walk in this world, by moving carefully with both hands in front of him. He still cannot see anything, but continues on. After what seems like hours of doing this, he is now about to give up from sheer exhaustion. Then he hears a voice over on his right shoulder.

"Hey..."

Pethaford, in pure excitement, yells out, "Yes! What is it?"

"You seem to be lost, and I can help you. Come over here, follow my voice. I will show you the way out."

Pete is glad to have someone else with him. He cries out with excitement, "Thanks so much! You

cannot imagine what this means to me. I have been looking for a way out of this mess for hours."

"Oh yeah, well I know my way, just continue to follow me. You will be just fine. I promise."

So, Pethaford follows the voice and the voice continues to cry out to him.

"Yes, this way. Just a little closer. Just keep on coming. Just try to be careful. Come on now. Come. Come."

After a few minutes of this, Pethaford notices something. The voice talking to him is not the same voice as before. This is not the voice he heard sitting at the tree. In fact, there is something about this voice that worries him.

He stops and yells out to the voice, "Are you sure I should be going this way? Maybe this is the wrong way?"

Pethaford hears no response and tries to turn around. Try, because he is, in fact, unable to move his legs.

He now hears the voice say in a whisper, "Oh no! You must have done something wrong! You didn't go the right way! This is your fault not mine!"

"Wait, don't leave me! Help me out! Please!" yells Pethaford at the top of his lungs.

There is no response. Pethaford realizes that he made the wrong decision. He went the wrong way, the voice tried to help him out, but he messed up. At this point, his knees were in something and it brought him further down into the ground. I am going to die here, determines Pethaford. This is the end.

He tries with all his might to move, but it is useless. There is no way to move.

Now something must be explained right here. Pethaford never cries, but Pethaford cries here, and does so as a little baby.

"Oh please, someone help me! I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry! Please just help me out of this."

He ponders and his life flashes before his eyes. After a few moments of thinking, Pete Pethaford realizes that the whisperer is once again talking back to him. Whether he speaks out loud, or thinks in his head, the whisperer knows exactly what to say.

"Please help me! I'm sorry I didn't listen to you and got angry. Please..."

The whisperer gives him a suggestion to lean over to the left and reach out as far as he can. He does so and low and behold, there is something to grab onto. Pethaford works with all of his arm muscle strength and gets close enough to the thing to grab onto it with his arms and legs. Working his way up the thing, he can get out of whatever he walked into.

"Now what?" asks Pethaford.

He is getting the sense that straight is the best option and does that. Once again, he moves at a slow pace along the ground, and tries to go as far as he can.

He continues on this path and when everything seems in despair, and he is so exhausted, he sees something new in this place.

"Yes! Of course! A light!" sings Pete.

He laughs at himself because he hasn't sung in forever.

Pete drifts, but with hope now. He continues along the way, towards this light, and the light becomes nearer and nearer. When he is a few feet from the light, he notices it is but one candle in front of him. Pete, shakes and drops his head, looks at the candle for a while, and then picks it up. He uses the candle to look at the ground and everything around him. Then, he recognizes that the ground is a gray ashy color, and not at all pleasing to look at. He moves to the spot where the candle was placed and notices writing on it.

One candle by itself is useless. The same can be said of two or even three candles, but when you have a bunch of candles all together, it can light up anything, even a world as cruel as this.

Wow, that is totally lame, and not at all helpful, thinks Pete.

And he was right, It's great, and sure it might be true, but how does that help? Pete wonders.

Just as Pete has this same thing on his mind, he stands there wondering what the inscription might mean. As he tries to figure this out, he hears the whisperer speak and he, once again, listens. At one point the whisper almost puts out the light from the candle.

Moving around to the other side of the lampstand, Pethaford is told from the same whisperer he should look over there too. When he looks at the new inscription it reads: Lame is right, and lame is true, sit on me and you won't be a fool.

Pete laughs, "It's like it knew exactly what I was thinking."

He sits on the stand, with the candle in his left hand, and waits. He thought for sure that the stand would go down or activate something, but nothing seems to happen.

For what seems like forever, Pete sits and sits, and tries not to fall asleep.

Bored out of his mind, he turns his whole body to the left, and soon after back to the right, and the stand spins from the momentum his body creates from the shifting of his weight. The spinning does not stop or slow down, and it surprises Pete it takes no effort to hold onto the stand.

As Pete spins on the stand, he notices something odd. He takes his candle in his right hand and puts it close to his face. The light from the candle is spreading. The glow moves beyond the candle and staying in the air floating around the area. It begins to make a clear picture of what he is walking through. Every second the whole area around him becomes clearer, but what is Pete suppose to do?

He keeps on looking around the world and tries to see what the stand is attempting to show him. He even gets up on the stand, so he can get a better view. At that point, it hits him. There is nothing in this world: no grass, no animals, no leaves, no trees, (except if you count the tree that Pete already found, but he couldn't see the tree at this point.) There was nothing! Pethaford thought this is the most awful trick ever!

"What am I going to do?"

In desperation, he hangs his head down, and notices that right in front of him, on the ground, there is a reflection.

"What is that?"Pete jumps off of the stand, and everything around him goes dark; he lands on whatever the reflecting thing was, twisting his ankle. He cries out in pain. His right foot kills him, but there is no way to check what condition his foot is in or what he lands on. Instead, he drifts off to sleep.