[EternalPen]

Synopsis: Trey is diagnosed with a deadly virus that is believed to have wiped out the Roanoak colony back in the 1500's. The virus was dubbed "The Croatoan" and there is but one cure. The cure only has a small chance of success but, as Trey is about to find out, the Indian roots of the cure go farther back than even the doctors knew. He must face his fears in his own mind to survive, and ultimately cure, the virus.

NOTE: This chapter is a bit long, but I felt it wasn't *quite* long enough to be split into two parts. Please forgive me if this is a bit much for one chapter.

***Trey And His Nightmares***

When Trey awoke the door in front of him was open. It looked like it had been blown open by a strong gust of wind. The picture on the front was no longer clear, but covered in blood. The name tag on the front was broken and ruined, hanging by one string. It was no longer decipherable, and it hung vertically, swinging an inch to each side. This had happened recently.

Trey walked through the door, quickly, before it closed. He knew it might, and was scared to think of the consequences. He turned to shut the door, and the ship inside was gone. It was replaced with a purple and blackened blob-like object. It was almost spherical in shape, but it was twisting and convulsing in slow-motion. It kept no single shape, but formed many abstract ones. It continued to grow and pulsate.

The first thing Trey thought of was Tracy. What would that thing do to her if it continued to grow? He thought he should move her body, but he had no time.

The globule object froze, and many dark pink specks flitted their way across its surface. It began to grow at an alarming rate, and it consumed everything around it. It nearly touched the door, but Trey slammed it shut as hard as he could.

He planned to catch his breath for a moment but, once again, had no time. A long, appendage-like tentacle snaked its way through the hole Trey had put in the door.

Spasms rocked the length of its physical form and it jerked and shook like flipping from one awfully timed picture to another. First it was forming a shape not far from an “S”, and before Trey could blink, it formed a sharp-edged zigzagging pattern as far towards the left as it could go.

As it shook more fluidly, and the spastic movements began to subside, it dripped. Spots of the arm hit the floor and did not splatter, but writhed in their own miniature, personal hell. Trey could have sworn he heard it screaming, but whether it was in pain or joy he did not know.

The spots on the ground began to enlarge, and they grew about the size of a soccer ball, each one. Then Trey realized they were heads.

Each one formed a mouth and indents on the top like deformed and misplaced eyes. The eye-holes fell back into the blob all the way to the carpet, where they seemed to go even farther into a black, empty nothingness. Audible screams escaped their crudely formed lips and the dark pink spots on the main core began to appear on these, too. Yet, this time they were streaming down the eyes of these contorted, twisting, and screaming mistakes.

Trey knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they were screaming in pleasure. They howled in victory, they shrieked in delight, moaned in pleasure, and smiled, baring their chipped and gelatin-based fangs. Then, all at once, they focused their attention on Trey.

Sweat beaded across his temple; sweat beaded across the temples of the beasts’ heads.

Trey swallowed hard and the beasts’ swallowed, also.

Trey took a step towards the third door; they slid across the floor to the first. They left pulsating slime in their trails.

Trey lunged for the third door, desperate to get through. The heads, all four, leaped through the air and splattered on the first door, desperate to corrupt. The heads did not stick the door in the form they were in, but in the form of blood. The string on the nameplate rotted and snapped, and the name began to smudge and run down the plate like liquid rust.

Trey opened the third door, and froze. There, inside the door, was a void. It was not black, but made of the stuff that he had narrowly escaped in the second door.

The void was dark purple, nearly black, and a swaying neon pink color floated through it all, making Trey’s head spin. He unconsciously took a step forward, and placed a foot on solid air. He leaned forward, about to fall on his face, and took three quick steps, all in succession, to keep from falling.

The door behind him slammed shut. Trey knew without trying that it would not open.

He looked down, and saw spikes lined along the air below the nothingness he stood on now. He took a small step forward to get a better view, and fell.

He closed his eyes and threw his hands in front of his face to keep from seeing himself be impaled on the spikes, but nothing happened for a straight five seconds. The wind rushed into his face, and forced itself into his lungs. HE stomach lurched into his throat, and its contents, if any, would have surely freed themselves. For the third time, Trey was a little a little satisfied at the lack of food in this place.

He moved his hands out of his face and opened his eyes. He was still falling towards the spikes, but they were growing larger as he neared them. Larger and larger and larger still they grew until he realized what they were.

These were no spike, but spires. They were towers- no! They were citadels.

The tip of the closest one rushed passed him and he could see that the top of the structure laid a flat arena, the size of a football field, at least. It had buildings that jutted out like deformities that had their own little platforms and arenas. Windows were more blasted into the structure than carved, and the entire citadel was abandoned.

This was the same for everyone he could see, they were all empty. The creatures or humans that dwelled here were destroyed or farmed, or even eaten and their haven had been corrupted. Either that or they had all died during the night as a cause of a disease, and the structures rotted after years and years of abandonment. This way or that, no matter what explanation occurred to Trey, he knew they were abandoned, each and every one. No one was hiding, they were all dead.

This thought was confirmed when he passed a near balcony, missing it in his fall by a narrow twenty feet, and spotted corpse-like objects littering the floor. As if his eyes had been opened by this one spotting, he noticed them all.

Bodies lay strewn across every floor of every platform. They were all in praying positions, still on their knees, and completely void of skin, muscle, or organs. They seemed to have been vaporized as they pleaded for mercy.

Trey looked down again and noticed he was not longer falling. He didn’t know when it had happened, but he was on still ground. He pushed himself to his knees and then his feet. From where he stood, he could see he was now on a visible path from the ground to the nearest citadel. He looked up to the top of the structure the path lead to, and could not quite see the tip. He realized then that he had fallen at least twenty miles.

He shook his head as the thought dazzled him and the speed of the fall amazed him. He focused on his journey, and stepped forward. He trudged through miles of loose pebbles and a mud-like substance. It stuck to his shoes and acted like glue to the pebbles. He stopped every mile or so and tried to clean his shoes. After about six miles, he was at the base of the first tower.

He looked up and the Tower of Babel crossed his mind. He could no longer see the top at all. He looked to the left and right and could not see the curving point of either direction on the spire. It went on like an endless wall, as far as the eye could see.

The path led directly through the center of the first building, and the path was completely dark. Trey knew if he entered there, he would be completely blind. Not having any other choice, he entered.

About three miles into the tunnel, having lost his vision within the first few minuets of travel, he was totally blind and continued with his eyes shut. He knew not what lay ahead, but he couldn’t know with his eyes open, so he didn’t bother.

Another two miles of aching feet passed, before Trey decided it would be in his best interest to sit down and rest for a while. He did so.

As he rested, he thought about turning back. The tunnel seemed endless, and his fear was beginning to get the best of him. He could hear things, and see things, though his eyes were shut tight.

Then, as clear as a bell, he heard a voice. It was completely human, and soft.

“Hungry?” It asked Trey.

Trey might have screamed and ran until his lungs exploded, but the breath of the speaker touched him and blew across his cheeks and down his neck into his shirt. It was warm like a blanket, and smelled of flowers. Trey didn’t know what kind, only that they were flowers he had never smelled before, and they relaxed his muscles and comforted his fears.

“Here, have some soup.” The voice said as its warm fingers brushed his. He opened his hands, and she placed a solid bowl into them.

“Drink up.” She commanded softly as she rubbed his hands with her right one, and caressed his cheek with her left.

“It will make you stronger.” It spoke again, and this time familiarity rang out like a car alarm. Trey knew this woman. Her soft, silken lips touched his forehead and she kissed it. Her lips dragged across his temple, down his eyebrow at an angle, and straight across his cheek to his ear, where she whispered, “I love you.”

This was the voice of his mother, Marie. She left them to live by herself long ago, and now she was back. She was back for him. Trey thought hard to remember why she left in the first place.

His mind became foggy and his surroundings exploded into light. There were trees everywhere, and he was sitting, comfortably, in one of them. He was younger and did not control his actions, but watched them unravel like a movie.

Or a memory…


***


“Trey,” Maria whispered, “Are you awake?”

“Of course!” he shot out to her in a harsh whisper, “I’m looking for a deer.”

“Buck.” Maria corrected him.

They were in a deer stand, where they waited semi-patiently for their prey to come prancing along.

Birds sang out and their voices echoed in the cloudless, empty sky. It was chilly, and frost covered most everything in sight. Trey’s breath puffed like smoke from a cigarette each time he exhaled. He searched for this very sign as he used his mother’s binoculars to spot what he would proudly claim as his first kill. He would then laugh at his mother when she would spot a deer, and break down into tears as she refused to shoot it, scaring it away and out of her grasp towards victory.

Goose-flesh ran like a steady wave down his back where it stopped as if it had crashed into a wall of rocks just a few inches from his buttocks. They had already run the length of his arms and legs, and he shuddered, trying to make them disappear.

When he shuddered, a doe jumped out from behind a bush and disappeared into the forest beyond, leaving only three sets of hoof prints as it bounded away like a large rabbit.

Trey muttered a curse low enough to keep to himself, but loud enough so that he could hear it. He seemed satisfied at himself for the use of such foul language. His young, naïve mind thought this made him seem like a tough guy. He wished he would have said it out loud to impress his mother, who would likely ground him from something fun for such a dirty word.

He dismissed the thought, thinking wimpy and free is as good as it gets.

They stayed in the tree for another hour before Trey spotted his first buck. It had large antlers that jutted out, as if they were just simple weeds, frozen in track by the cold weather. It had plenty of meat on its bones and it was a large animal. The most significant thing about the creature, though, was its child.

A small, single fawn pranced about her father’s footsteps. It reminded Trey of Bambi, and he had always wanted to shoot that damn deer.

He knew his kill would be the buck, though. Making only slow movements, as if the future of America lay on this one shot, he set down the binoculars and picked up the scoped rifle.

He didn’t know what kind it was (There were too many numbers involved) when his mother borrowed it from his uncle, Joe, but he knew that it was a good gun and that was all that really mattered to him. He readied himself.

Just like his mother had shown him while they practiced in wooden posts, he placed the butt of the gun against his shoulder, and held the tip up. It was, surprisingly, heavier than Trey had ever realized guns were. He wondered how he would keep it steady when he spotted a buck, but had no trouble with that now.

Adrenaline rushed through his body and he felt as if the gun were hardly there. It was just an aiming tool; he was going to kill that deer by staring at it.

The vertical line hit the buck’s head, and the bottom line rose to meet it. They crossed right over its head, and Trey slowly began to pull the trigger. He held his breath, braced himself for the hammer-like recoil, and whispered to himself.

“’X’ marks the spot…”

He knew it was a “T” in this case, but didn’t care. He felt the need for a one-liner before he fired.

He felt the kick, he saw the bullet, and he tasted the salty blood as it sprayed in his face from his first kill, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. He felt it all, in his head, but couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that the buck was an animal, he didn’t care about that. He cared about the fawn. It pranced about and Trey though that it would seem more appropriate if someone could hold it down and tie a bow in its hair.

He let out his breath, blue in the face and tears in his eyes.

“I can’t do it.” He whispered, ashamed of himself.

Marie smiled, and said, “Watch and learn, kiddo.”

She slowly and silently slid the gun from Trey’s arms and placed them on her own. She aimed down the sight and straight at the buck’s head. A small dove gliding through the air carelessly dropped a small sack of its bodily fluids onto the earth below.

It soared like a missile and exploded into a white, liquid mess onto the ladder of the deer stand. The slight “plop!” made from this action cause Marie to flinch, the smallest bit.

The gun kicked back and a bullet rocketed through the buck’s perked up ear, then buried itself deep into the ground beyond.

Marie whispered the same curse Trey had used under her breath before shoving another bullet into the gun and firing wildly into the woods, kneeling now. She placed another bullet in the gun, cocked it, and sighed. Her chance was gone.

Both the fawn and its father dashed away into the forest as a cause of the explosion produced from the gun, and it mockingly echoed in the stiff, December air. The two animals disappeared.

Marie stood, annoyed, and looked at Trey.

“Well,” She said, “This is kind of boring. We know who could kill if they had to, and who couldn’t. Wanna go home?”

Trey smiled. This was almost as bad as fishing.

“Sure thing!” he said, his enthusiasm genuine.

Marie began her decent on the ladder, holding the gun, and Trey spoke a concerned, “Watch out.”

“Don’t worry,” She said, smiling. “We sprinkled sand on it, remember? I won’t slip-”

The toe of her tennis shoes touched the bird slime. Tennis shoes weren’t quite hunting material, but she told Trey she didn’t need them.

Her shoe slipped, and she began to fall. She caught herself, and the gun slipped from her grasp.

“Oh, no!” she yelled, frantically, as it made its way down. The butt end connected with the hard-packed dirt, and the gun went off. The bullet in the chamber wasn’t made for long-range shots, and was only slightly larger than a BB. Still, the pain was no less when it pierced Marie’s lower back and exited her upper ribcage, missing her heart by two inches.

She fell from the ladder and hit the ground with a heavy WHUMP, and Trey screamed. He jumped off of the stand, not caring to climb, and hit the ground. His feet stung like fire, and he wondered if he had bruised them badly, or even broke a bone.

The wonder existed for barely half a second before he crawled to his mother’s side. Without first checking on her, he immediately took her cellular phone and dialed nine-one-one.

After giving them necessary information, repeating himself a few times because of his continuous sobs, he hung up, dropped the phone, and grasped Marie’s face with both hands. Her face was beginning to change to a shade that more matched her frosted surroundings.

“Momma!” Trey screamed, “Momma! MOMMA!”

She reached up with a wavering hand, and touched his nose with a frozen finger.

“Good Boy.” She exhaled in a gust of breath. She paused between every shaking inhalation. “Be a… good boy. Do… school. Have… my grand…kids. Dad… have fun… re-marry… get you… a brother you… can take care of.”

“No, Mom!” Trey said, rebelliously. It was barely discernable through the other forest noises because his voice was so weak. “YOU have fun! YOU get me a brother! You LIVE!”

“Not me… Hun.” She struggled to say as her hand fell away. “You.” And her smile faded.

He grasped her hand and pulled it back up to his face. He pulled her finger away and placed it on his nose.

Then she died.

He let go of her hand and it fell. It picked it back up and made her touch his nose again, and when he let go it fell once more. He repeated this over and over, whispering through sobs “My nose, Mom. Keep it warm! Mom?”

He heard faint sirens off in the distance.

He leaned his head back towards the sky. Tears flew down his face, unmatched in speed and number.

He screamed long and hard.


***


Everything in Trey’s world darkened until he could no longer see his hand in front of his face. He held a bowl in his hands, and a warm, thick liquid caked the inside.

His mother’s voice faded away as her touch and kiss went chilly and was forgotten. She whispered to him once more as she vanished.

“Drink up, honey. I love you.”

She did leave, he remembered, but not voluntarily. He stood up and nearly dropped the bowl. The contents spilled over the edge and puddle on the ground. He was aware of this, but didn’t care about eating. It could wait a bit longer, after all, he had waited nearly four days now with no side-affects.

He held the bowl in his hands, a memory of her, and chased her down the tunnel, screaming her name.

He stepped on something that cracked in two. He didn’t know what it was, so he picked one up. They were long and thin, and he recognized the thing he held as a ladle. He picked up another object and recognized is as a bowl.

He dropped them both, holding only the bowl he was given. He dashed forward again, stepping on the sea of ladles and bowls. They were hollow and ceramic, and they clattered together noisily. Wood against wood clattered like the bones of an animal and snapped and crunched beneath his running feet.

He finally reached the exit of the tunnel and burst forth into a slightly brighter darkness than the one he was just in. The citadel was behind him now, and he looked at the spoons.

The objects he thought were bowls were carved skulls, and the objects he thought were ladles were arm and leg bones. The cracked, easily, underneath his weight. The gasped, and was glad he didn’t eat the food Marie had given him. He could have thrown it up. He looked at the bowl Marie gave him, and his stomach knotted up again.

The bowl was also a carved skull, and the inside was caked with dried and gooey blood. It smelled of the same flowers that hypnotically imbued Trey with his fatigue, and he was glad he did not take the time to eat. There was no telling what would have happened if he had eaten, or drank in this case, the blood that stuck inside the skull. He would have probably ended up a part of the collection of bones underneath his feet.

Trey knew Marie would do no such thing to him, and stopped his pursuit. Whoever it was, it wasn’t her.

He looked around and noticed that there were small buildings, each no taller than a single-story house, littered around everywhere he looked. The tunnel he was in must have been an entrance to this large city.

Something scurried over the bones. Trey’s heart skipped a beat and his head snapped to where the movement came from.

A small, dark purple rat launched itself across the bones its eyes were bright pink, and its naked tail was the dark pink that corroded the thing that had destroyed the ship from the second door.

It froze in its tracks, and it turned its head, slowly, towards Trey. Their eyes met, and the rat smiled before dashing into a nearby house. Trey heard something fall and shatter, like glass, and he ran towards the empty house the rat had disappeared into.

He peered into the dark dwelling, and saw a broken vase on the floor. It was dark and purple like everything else. The rat he had seen was gone, but not completely.

It’s naked, segmented tail twitched and convulsed on the floor, bleeding. There was not enough blood to last long, but what had dripped out of the body it was attached to trailed into the next room. Trey followed the trail, slowly.

He peeked around the wall into the room the trail entered, and saw nothing. There was a cord hanging into the building from a hole in the roof, and Trey wondered if they had electricity. He walked towards it.

The trail of bright red blood stopped right under the cord, and Trey figured whatever severed its tail had frightened it to scurry up the cord and out of the building. He ran his finger down the cord. It was touch and leathery, and the texture-

The cord jerked, and shot up the hole. Trey shouted in surprise, and someone on the roof began to rake knives across it. He looked up and followed the noise to the window, where a dark, blurred, and bear-sized shape hit the ground and dashed away, the cord in its wake.

Trey realized then that the cord was a tail, and the knives were claws. At this realization, a fear like none he had ever experienced seeped into every pore on his body and controlled him. It told him he needed light, and he needed it fast.

He dashed outside the house, and could now see the entire town again. Off in the distance, now just a speck, the dark shape bounded across the landscape with furious agility. It was gone in an instant.

Tears welled up inside Trey’s eyes. Nothing had hurt him, and he had even forgotten about the bullet wound in his shoulder and leg, but he wanted to cry. Not because he was alone, not because it was dark, not even because he just wanted to go home and die in peace, but because he was afraid.

Oh, yes. You are afraid, I see you’re very, VERY scared.

Trey did not recognize the voice that spoke in his mind, but it seemed to be something that he thought rather than heard. He thought that- you are afraid, yesss.

He shook his head roughly, and heard his neck pop twice. He was having trouble discerning his thoughts from the ones that emanated from- ME. Yes, they come from me, Trey boy. Little boy. Good boy.

Trey looked all around and spoke out loud.

“What do you want?”

Who are you talking to, boy?

“What do you want?!”

Are you talking to air?

Trey grasped his head in both of his hands and growled, ferociously. He was annoyed, very annoyed. You’re annoyed at me, aren’t you Trey?

He sat on the ground, and tried not to think. Yes, you try not to think and listen to me.

The voice in his mind spoke clearly and at an audible volume, but seemed to whisper the letters. It was a deep, mocking voice. Yes, I can mock you Trey. Trey closed his eyes and thought to himself.

Talk, voice. What is it you want?

I want your soul, boy. I want that goodness you have, boy. I want the good. The good. Isn’t that right, good boy?

And with that, the voice was gone. Trey had felt it’s presence as he waited for it to talk, but now it just wasn’t there. He knew it was gone and wouldn’t be back for a while. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

He stood and realized now that the voice had not been him or a persona of his that was locked away, but an emotion. People often say your emotions talk to you, but Trey guessed that here, wherever here was, it was true.

A quiet melody floated through the desolate landscape, causing Trey to whimper. It was a melancholy tune that was played by a sole guitar. No electric sounds, no drums, no notes from a piano, just a sole guitar played on.

There were no words, but a chorus void of verses floated idly through his mind. It didn’t really rhyme, and the words were not sung. They were simply spoken, but seemed never to be out of a key or tune that matched the melody.

The line that stuck out the most to Trey said, “And take the good from his heart, my dear, take the good from the boy. Take it away, good boy, good boy, take it away, good boy.”

It was a song praising the emotion that spoke to him a moment before, and he knew this emotion well. He often made mistakes because of it, and had many times let it control normal bodily function. It had released his tears many times before, promising a comfort that never came, and now it had relaxed his bladder. His pants were soaked.

This was fear.


***


Trey walked awkwardly for a few steps because of his dampened jeans, but decided he couldn’t avoid it. He walked normally, and the acidic urine in the inside of his jeans brushed his wound on his leg. It stung for a moment, but not quite as bad as alcohol or Hydrogen Peroxide. His pants dried in no time, and he began to walk normally again. There was no wind to whisk away the acrid smell of his urine, but his pants were dry now and that was all that he asked for.

The guitar stopped playing almost an hour ago. He had been walking, with no destination in mind. He kept going on and on, and always made it to nowhere. He had passed somewhere back when he stepped into the third door. This was nowhere, nothing, empty.

If it were to be anything at all, it would be fear.

Trey passed by a building that was covered by a large board. On the board were inscriptions that resembled letters, but Trey knew not what they said. He knew it was a food parlor, though, because of the pictures that were inscribed. It showed a fork and a knife lying on top of each other forming an “X”.

He walked toward it to see what their food looked like, but quickly changed his mind when he saw how dark it was inside. It didn’t smell that good, either. He guessed that the food that was in there had no way of being refrigerated and had rotted a long, LONG time ago.

He walked past it, quickly.

All the buildings he passed by were abandoned, ruined, and crumbling. Many different times he heard noises and mice scurrying about, and each time he jumped and his heart beat faster. It took him a full ten minutes to calm down, each time.

Trey walked until he thought that the path would simply never end, though no turns or bends had appeared. It was a straight shot to nowhere.

That is, until he came across another tunnel. He was afraid to enter this one, remembering the thing that dashed across the landscape after he exited the first tunnel. He was afraid that thing was dwelling here. If it didn’t, then something worse did.

He stood, staring, for ten minutes until he moved again. He took a single, solitary step towards the tunnel. Two bright, yellow eyes exploded from underneath eyelids at the entrance, and drilled inside of Trey’s mind.

He blinked, and they were gone. Had he imagined them, or did they close?

He looked around, but saw nothing he could throw. He was now twice as scared to enter as he was a moment ago.

As he did at the entrance of the third door, he took a step forward without knowing why. Something just beyond the tunnel drew him forward. Something just beyond the tunnel called to him.

And Trey knew, without a single doubt in his mind, that the something beyond the tunnel…

It would kill him.