The Vaticinator

28. The Finale

Never in my wildest dream could I have guessed that Neal is acrophobic.

Now he walks by my side, hiding the lingering spots of the panic attack that he just underwent. He is ridiculously embarrassed, I can sense it. I don’t blame him. I will crawl under the blankets too if someone witnesses me as terrified to the point of unable to walk. 

The twenty feet drop hadn’t been a hassle to me, even with my one arm in a sling. The vines creeping up and down the walls contributed greatly towards my more than easy journey towards solid ground. It should have been a cake walk for Neal. But his acrophobia decided to make itself known. Ten, almost fifteen minutes were spent with me hissing from the ground, persuading Neal to take the leap of faith while he continued to tremble at the window, his eyes turning glossy. Pushed by our unfortunate predicament, Neal gathered enough courage to climb down the vines. Only to be grasped in the clutches of a vicious panic attack when he looked up at the height he just dropped from. God knows how I managed to drag him towards the creek.

Somehow through a series of ‘calm down’s’, ‘count to ten’s’ and ‘how many fingers do I have?’s’, I manage to make Neal breathe a little steadily.  He has been silent since. Even now as after several minutes we make our way back towards the backyard where the Occultists must be awaiting us, he is as silent as the night tonight. 

The silence doesn’t last for long though. As we near the backyard, the harsh sound of people arguing reaches my ears. There are too many people talking, making it difficult for me to discern the voices. I faintly make out the steadily growing voices of my father and Ethan. By the time I start sensing their auras, more people start talking. They have also obviously sensed our auras as we walk. Once we enter the backyard there are abrasive conversations going with many faces glaring at our entry. I heave a heavy sigh and hand over the sword to Neal who grasps it silently.

“Where the hell were both of you?” Ethan, who had been deadly calm the last time I saw him, looks absolutely livid now as he stares at us past Mikhail’s shoulders.

“They’re tricksters!” Pleve shouts, his face red, from beside Ethan, “Thinking of us as idiots!”

I feel Neal rolling his eyes beside me. But very little of my attention is spared on these people. My gaze is fixed at the far end of the field, a site totally sequestered save for the eight figures standing in a row. They look so surreal, ghost like statues standing in a line. They have an eerie air about them which even at this distance I can feel. Though the distance between the Occultists and the therians is not much, still the Occultists seem to be far, far away, probably because no therian is in their immediate vicinity. They stand, their faces stoic with their tattered, worn out dresses subtly blowing in the almost nonexistent wind tonight. All possess the same outward appearance; tall, skinny, wrinkly with scarce white hair flowing down their shoulders. Some even have blistering bruises on their skin, which only seems to make them look far more deadlier being than any of those present tonight. None of the explanations of my elders or Neal’s have done justice to how the Occultists actually look.

And all of them failed to mention the irrepressible auras the Occultist exude. The funny thing is that I cannot categorize that aura. I’m not even sure if I am ‘sensing’ it. The hazy hue around the forms of the witches is enough a deadly site to make me cringe away from even coming in closure with it. It is an equally intriguing sight because that hazy hue surrounds the occultists as if they all are one single being. With that revelation I recall my early curious years where I had learned a thing or two about our Occultists. And how I had expressed awe on the information of the occultists sprouting from a single energy source. In theory, all the occultists are a single entity. No wonder it took no significant time for the whole clan to know about the death of one of their sisters. A body is bound to howl in pain if the leg is ripped over.