A Rock in the River

10- Guardian

Author's Notes: I'm giving a warning that this chapter may be more intense than the ones before.

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"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." – 1 John 4:18

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To live in the belly of a monster is, indeed, different once you know it is moving around you instead of you moving through it. The haunting of a home becomes more violent once the spirits know you know; there is nothing to hold back. The world is vastly, overpoweringly different when you recognize that it isn't dead, but that it is alive. Such a thing was tangible now, plucking the hairs on Francine's arms like strings of a cello- singing its horrid song in the back of her mind as its choir hid in the shadows of her peripheral, strung its finger slowly, lingeringly down the spine.

This world did not want her where she was.

That's how the three were as they ran through the darkness, filling the hollow bones of a living thing. Francine kept her hand tight around Sammy's as he guided them with his voice.

A pipe burst as he said to turn left at the scratched poster of the Butcher Gang.

The floor broke upon when they came to the crossroads, forcing them to jump over the gap.

And the lightbulb that swung over the hall exploded and left them in the dark when Sammy said they must be getting close.

Joey did not want them here.

It didn't cross any of their minds, however, why he wasn't trying harder, because if he surely was, this would have long been over; what's three souls to a god?

From experience, they should have known.

There was simply too much that begged to be controlled.

As Francine listened over the yelps in her own breath and the shouts of her shoes against rotting, chewing floors, she heard this world scream. The patchwork universe was becoming undone over and over again, stitches falling at the seams before being sewn up like skin in a surgery before her very eyes. A glance to the wall- a searcher. It was throwing it's arms up, pounding against the wall that was breaking apart between them. She screamed and the wall closed shut again, the most sickening squish as it was crushed between boards before it could reach her, only part of it to touch her being the splash of ink on her side.

Alice urged her along, despite her body's insistence to freeze. Francine didn't notice the panic in the other woman's expression; the angel was so strong, so insistent even as she was voluntarily putting herself within all that she detested and feared.

Just for her silly cherub.

At one point, the screech of Norman sounded down the hall, a man refusing to be subdued. Pound, pound, pound. Surely, he wasn't that strong. And yet the floor quaked to its foundation every time, throwing the three to the ground like turbulence throwing passengers on a plane. A pinball bouncing back and forth, hardly allowing the woman of flesh and blood to stand as the world tilted back and forth. Ink ran between her fingers as they softened her blow- ink running like a stream that grew more and more forceful as it tried to stave her back.

It didn't need to be said aloud it was just like when she first looked for Mr. Drew, king chained in the depths of his own castle. But now they sought for his beloved son, and just as she escaped death to find the father, so would they find him. They had to; there was no choice.