Strangers (Fighting the Darkness series)

The Devil's Chamber

I awoke to find myself in a dark room, with only the dim light from above illuminating a few dark spaces around us. McNair and Louise were out cold lying next to me on top of the broken floor which used to be the ceiling to this room, whilst I was lying in a small hollow crater with my dislocated shoulder at an odd angle. I strained myself to get up, grabbing onto the side of the hole with my good arm and hoisting myself out. It looked like we had landed in an old abandoned church underneath the previous level, the walls looking to be made of rock and earth rather than cement.

I crawled over and checked that McNair and Louise were still alive and didn’t have any serious injuries, and from what I could tell, they were fine. Then I decided to look around. Everything was covered in dust. Of what I could make out, we were in some old church or hidden place of worship. There were five entrances in this area, four of which were bricked up with the fifth only covered by a third of the rubble which had fallen from the roof. By the looks of it, the stones covering the doorway could easily be moved if everyone was up to it. But I don’t think my shoulder could handle the pressure of either moving anything or even climbing over the rocks.

I tried to get higher up and see if I could peer over the rocks but they were too steep. I heard a groan behind me. I turned around and saw Louise moving to get up.

“What the hell happened? How long have we been out for?” she asked as she looked around groggily. I took out my phone, but the screen and keypad were broken.

“Well, judging by the amount of daylight, I’d say no more than an hour at least.” I said. The light was getting weaker and weaker and I knew it would be night soon. I checked her for any wounds but she seemed unharmed. She said she wasn’t in any pain, so I grabbed her hand and picked her up. Then I decided to try and get information out of her to see if the demon had any weaknesses she would have noticed when she had been taken.

“So what happened back there? You just diss-”

“Wait a minute, I have some questions,” Which quite surprised me because Louise never has any questions about anything. “Number one, what the hell was that very creepy thing that tried to kill us earlier? I only caught a glimpse, but it was very ugly and it dragged me through a god-damned mirror.”

“Well, you see Lou, um, there’s no way of being sure, but I think he’s some kind of evil demon that’s trying to kill us and eat all mankind, but don’t ask me why he was talking about weird stuff” I wasn’t telling her that he’s after me at this very moment so that he could eat me and then all mankind so he would have ultimate power.

“And my second question is about something Mayor nitwit said.” She pointed a thumb at the unconscious figure next to us. Oh crap, she knows about me and Red. I knew this would happen sooner or later; I just hoped it would be later. I took in a deep breath and looked at the floor.

“Reed,” Here it comes. I bet she’ll say what a freak I am and how she won’t want to speak to me ever again or she might wind up dead the next morning. This is just like my previous school all over again, but without the bloodshed. I’ll have to make up some kind of lie…

“Are you a superhero?”

When the words left her mouth I couldn’t hold in the whooping laughter that followed. By the end of five minutes, I was crying and gasping for breath, kneeling on the floor with Louise staring at me, stunned that she couldn’t understand the hidden punch line to my reaction.

If Red was awake inside me, I wondered if she was dying of laughter as well, to be thought of as a superhero of everything else she’s claimed to be. To be honest, I felt a lot better at her innocent remark and so I decided to tell her about what I was and everything that had happened so far. Not that I was any kind of superhero, but that I was blessed with a gift, and everyone who knew this would be in danger. I felt comfortable talking about it though as if she was meant to find out.

Her reaction was unexpected. She just stared at me. Then, her eyes lit up and she embraced me. I mean, embraced me. She didn’t laugh, wasn’t disgusted or scared. She just hugged me, careful of my arm as she did.

I felt myself starting to cry. I hugged her back with my good arm and sobbed. Who’d have thought that she would accept me and the dangers that came with knowing? I thought. I didn’t know that someone would be able to trust another person that much, no matter how dense they can be at times. I didn’t know she was so kind. After a few minutes of crying and hugging, she eventually pulled back.

“So, does this mean I get to be your sidekick?” she asked. Really, she has absolutely no concept of a tender moment.

-------------------------

After McNair woke up, we assessed his wounds. Well, I did. I had the proper medical training for it. My dad insisted that I know how to properly treat and fix a wound with what I had and even took me to first aid and outdoor survival classes as a kid, so I remembered most of what I had learned.

He had a shallow gash across his forehead and the index and middle finger on his left hand were broken. But there wasn’t anything serious, so I took off my jacket and ripped it into strips to splint his hand and wipe his head. Then I checked for a concussion, which I assumed he had because he stared at something behind me but not with the usual glow that shone from his eyes.

Afterward, I told Jordan and Louise about the extra room I found while they were unconscious and that we had to clear the rocks away if there was any chance of us escaping. We cleared most of the rocks out of the way, but we were only able to uncover a three by four foot wide gap into the next room. Just enough space to squeeze through.

As I looked through the gap, I noticed a light coming from somewhere inside. In fact, there were nine points of light in the room. One was coming in from the ceiling and the other eight were in a ring in front of us. As we shuffled closer we could see that they weren’t separate entries of light, but reflections of the light in the ceiling; reflections in twenty-foot high mirrors, circling in a ring around the room. Surprisingly, the mirrors were just shy of touching the low roof, meaning we could escape through the hole in the roof if we built some kind of pile underneath it.

There were two breaks in the ring’s link; the one we came through, and one at the other end, directly parallel to the one behind us. There was a door in the other gap, which hopefully wasn’t locked or rusted shut. On the floor, there were strange pictograms. They were radiating in a ring from the centre, which I presumed corresponded with the mirrors. What these items were doing in a church I didn’t know or care to find out.

We started to cross the room with McNair in the lead. The chamber itself was quite wide, which most likely compensated for the lack of height. As we neared the centre, there was a sudden uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, like someone was watching us. Louise must have felt it to, because she moved closer to me and clung onto my arm.

It was eerily quiet. Not even the sound of our footsteps permeated the silence. Maybe that was this room’s function, to make you feel exposed; vulnerable.

We made it passed the centre and at closer inspection, there seemed to be black markings on the floor. They didn’t match the pictures and symbols we’d passed. They seemed to look more like scorch marks and deep gashes in the stone. Yet the mirrors looked untouched. I doubt that if I threw a large rock at any of them, they would scratch the surface.

We quickened our pace as we got closer to the door. McNair’s long legs made it easier for him to fasten his pace, even though they were just longer than mine, as I expected he felt the same feeling that me and Louise could feel.

We made it to the other side and as luck would have it the door was unlocked. But the staircase leading from the door were blocked by large boulders and bits of rubble, cutting us off. We were trapped.

“Okay, so what do we do now?” McNair asked, presumably taking charge of the situation.

“Well we have two options. Firstly, we can stay here until ugly comes and eats us, or…” I looked at Louise, knowing she had the same idea I had. I had to transform into Red and fly our way out of here. Only trouble was, I hadn’t heard from her since I lost consciousness the first time.

“Well, you two, unless you have some hidden abilities that are going to help, I suggest we start thinking of a plan because we may be here for some time.” McNair just stared into space, contemplating something whilst Louise and I talked about how we were going to get out of here. After several different suggestions, we decided to look around both of the rooms to look for another way out.