To the Source and Back

Lacy

Lacy Anico's P.O.V

Nick and I were normal children. Our lives, however, went up, down, and up again like a never ending roller-coaster. We usually stayed down more than we got up. Nick was and still is my best friend. We've been together since preschool. He's basically my brother. Nick and I have... how do I say this? Well, we have abusive parents. Our parents are extreme alcohol and drug addicts. Emphasis on extreme.

One day, I was playing with Nick at his house. I wanted to get away from my parents, because they were drinking and fighting again. Nick had always told me that his life was wonderful and carefree and that his parents cared for him. It was the first time I had ever been to his house, as surprising as it might be. We were young, Nick being ten and me being nine. He was getting us cookies from the top shelf of the kitchen. He stood on the counter, and as he got down, he knocked over his mother's prized China Plates. They fell on the floor, one by one, and shattered into hundreds of pieces. They were sharp and glinting in the dim sunlight that came through the black curtains, covering the window. His mother came running down the stairs and her face changed from shock to horror to a monstrous anger in just a matter of seconds. I watched from the sidelines as she inched closer to him and he inched backward. He was scared. I had never seen him like this. He stepped on a China shard and bit in a scream. His mother finally took action and struck him. Hard. Nick thudded on the floor and the China pieces stuck into his upper body like pins on a voodoo doll. He screamed as a piece cut very deep into his face. His mother screeched at him some more and went back upstairs without a care in the world.

I had to help him up and to his room. He needed to go to the hospital, but I knew that if the doctors asked how this had happened we would have no answer. I set him on his bed and tried to take the shards out, as Nick bit in his screams again. He bit his lip so hard, that it started bleeding. Thankfully all the pieces came out, with none of them fully inside. I brought a first-aid-kit out in order to bandage up his upper body. He took off his blood-soaked shirt and I started bandaging. We didn't talk. Silence filled the air, and I finally patched up the final cut on his left cheek. The scars, both mental and physical, would never go away. We both knew that Nick would never be the same again. I promised him that I would never talk about "the incident" again and would only refer to it as "the incident" if I ever did talk about it. Shortly after the incident, we discovered that his parents started drinking.

A few years later, nothing had changed, except for the fact that Nick stopped talking a lot. He used to be a chatterbox, but after the incident, Nick barely talked anymore. Nick and I found a lot of time to hang out, but we mostly did it at the park. We didn't want to be anywhere near our parents most of the time. We even ate food with our own money and only went home to sleep. Then, my 13th birthday arrived. That was when it all started. The nightmares. Nightmares of blood, death, and gore. All of them seemed real, and what made them night terrors was the fact that Nick died in every single one. He died horrible deaths, each worse than the next: a bloody execution, his body being sliced in half, a war death, and so many more excruciating deaths haunted my everyday dreams. However, I had one peculiar dream that I remember very vividly.

A woman-no, a goddess-, appeared in a fully dark background. She was radiating warmth and light from her body. She smiled at me, but she had worry in her dark blue ocean eyes.

"Darling child, your race is in danger of extinction. Monsters from the bowels of the underworld are coming up and impersonating humans. They are reproducing quickly. You and your friend are the only ones who can help us. I leave you a sword in disguise of a key-chain and your friend, Kitabu Cha Inaelezea, which translates to The Book of Spells(in Swahili). Use them wisely." She told me this with a hint of urgency and pleading in her voice.

"I'm confused. Who are you? Why me and Nick? What is happening?!"

"I can not explain everything to you now, child. Daylight is upon us. This is all I can tell you. You must go to the heart of the Amazon Rainforest. You will find the leader of the Mwandishi (Scribe in Swahili) Tribe Leader meditating. He will be expecting you and will tell you where to go."

She started to fade. "Wait! I need to...," I never got to finish my sentence, though. The dream ended right then.

I decided to brush off the dream as simply an overactive imagination. My brain must have been really tired from all those nightmares. However, I soon realized that something was going on. I started having the same dream over and over again for the next month. So, I decided to tell Nick about it. A shocking discovery was made when we realized that we both had the same dream. Clearly, this was not only a dream. This time, we decided not to brush the dream aside. Nick and I decided that we should go where the goddess in our dream told us to go. We would leave at midnight. Our parents would not miss us. When midnight struck, Nick and I met at the park. Nick had brought with him 800 dollars(mostly stolen from his parents' wallets), some water bottles, hygiene materials, his phone and charger, some spare clothes, and his book of spells, some normal school supplies, and a few fruits. I brought the same items, except I had 300 dollars and my sword/key-chain thing. They were on our bedside tables this morning, as if the goddess knew we were leaving today. So, just like that, we embarked upon our journey to our first stop at the heart of The Amazon Rainforest.