[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: Despite the name of this chapter, this is NOT the end of the story. There is still a few more parts to go. Don't worry, though, you're near the end.

***A Journey And Its End***

Trey entered the tunnel, wide awake. He knew this was no joke or dream, it was as real as real gets.

Like the tunnel before, he could see nothing. He knew he was reaching his final destination though. Something inside him boiled like an unwatched pot. It spilled over and hissed noisily on the stove below. The spiraling iron bands burned red with heat and the water from the pot vaporized instantly as they both touched.

He knew with absolute certainty that there was no way to avoid this thing, whatever it was.

His vision was gone now but he still marched forward.

He listened intently for any noises that would catch his attention, but only one filled his ears. The bones on the floor clattered together with an empty, wooden noise. He stumbled and caught himself many different times, and his heavy steps when he nearly did fall crushed many of the dilapidated arms and legs. When he crushed them, they would snap and crumble under the pressure of his boots, and the noise seemed to echo endlessly.

First a stumble, then “CRACK! Crack! Crack…”

He continued forward, and sniffed a few times. He tried to get a feel for the kind of area he was in. The tunnel smelled musty and the air was thick with mildew and moss. It was dusty, and Trey could still smell the urine on his pants and the sweat on his back. All the smells mixed and reminded him of the food building that he passed on his way there.

He stuck his hand out and it bumped into a wall. He fingers lingered as he continued to walk and they drug along the surface. It was a hard and rough wall and his hand slid over a sprouting chunk of moss every now-and-then. He let his hand fall.

He yawned once as he continued to drudge his way through to sea of bones and skulls and when his mouth closed, he could taste the air. He spat once, trying to rid himself of what he had just experienced. His mouth had been breeding grounds for germs and bacteria since he hadn’t had the luxury of brushing his teeth when he needed, and that taste alone would have made him spit. What he tasted with that though, was a cloud of death, dirt and stale bread.

He continued on for a while, spitting every five minutes. His feet got tired and he began to drag himself through the tunnel more than anything. When he needed to expel the taste from his mouth, he simply let the globule of saliva seep through his closed lips and dribble down his chin, where it would eventually make it to the ground.

Absolutely tired, he reached for the wall to his right. He felt it, and fell against it. He hit it with a quiet thud but that was enough. He could not see, but feel through his unwounded shoulder that cracks were snaking along the bricks and up from the ground. He heard small chips of cement or earth or whatever it was that this wall was composed of fly out of their safe-havens, but Trey was too tired to care.

The section of the wall he was leaning on exploded inward and Trey fell inside. He only fell for a few feet, but he thought one of his ribs cracked when he hit… or broke.

He yelled out as white-hot pain flared through his wounded leg, the one that he had landed on, and a worse pain shot through his ribs.

He gasped and yelled out again as he tried to turn over. His yell echoed three times and disappeared. He pulled himself into a kneeling position, grimacing the whole way. He pushed on his ribs, checking for damage. He pushed, and was fine. He pushed again, and nothing was wrong there. He pushed a third time-

“GRYAAAAA!” he screamed.

Pain flared through his body again, but he couldn’t pay attention for long.

His voice echoed four times. It wasn’t unusual for a louder scream to produce more echoes, but the last time it echoed was a little off-sync and hadn’t sounded the same as the rest.

He knew he had broken two ribs now. He thought this was bad, of course, but needed to get out of the place before-

His echo returned. It was the same voice of pain, but this time it echoed louder and louder until it reached Trey.

“RAAAOOO!” the echo voiced.

It wasn’t his. He had screamed in pain, but he realized this was no pained scream. This was a yell, a signal, a call... a hunting call.

Trey stood, still blind, and ignored the pain that flared through his body. He turned this way and that, desperately searching for the place he had fallen through. He couldn’t find anything and he reached a bit higher.

There it was! The lip of the platform was just low enough to brush with his finger when he reached up. He knew then that this wouldn’t work.

With his ribs broken he couldn’t jump to pull himself up. He would have to find a better way out. Finding anything in this tunnel was hard enough since he couldn’t see a damn thing, finding an exit would be harder.

He limped forward, looking for a place to go. His hand slid along the wall to his left, probing it for a hole. He found one and entered.

He was totally blind, needed to find a place to sit and rest and really needed to find a place to hide.

As if hearing his thoughts and replying to them, another howl echoed through the tunnels. The hunt was on, and Trey didn’t have to think long or hard to understand they were after him. He swallowed hard.

He limped along the tunnel as his ribs and leg ached. He almost wished that whole leg were gone so he didn’t have to worry about putting pressure on it and dealing with the flare that shot through every time.

And he nearly got his wish.

Two bright, yellow eyes rounded the corner. They hovered about six feet off the ground and bobbed up and down, flashing as they blinked. Trey noticed that they didn’t seem to just exist in the air, but glow. The light from the eyes were bright and so much so that the walls around Trey were slightly illuminated by the bewildering and uncanny glow. The eyes bulged about an inch out of the head they were in and Trey could see that they were pointed towards the wall.

He froze and could do nothing to move himself as they turned towards him.

Their eyes met.

Trey saw fear, bereavement, pain and sorrow in this beast’s eyes. What caught him most was a sense of belonging. This creature belonged here and allowed no intruders. It was the keeper of this tunnel.

Trey quickly scrambled for a place to hide as a deafening roar shook the tunnel. The eyes had become furious and insufferable as they glowed with fierce and unruly fury.

Ignoring the pain from his ribs as much as he could, Trey ran. He could limp for comfort no more and he ran as fast he possibly could. Not being able to see anything at all he ran into a wall, breaking his nose. Warm blood ran down his nose and over his lips. He could taste the salty, metallic flavor.

His ribs throbbed again and his struggled to stand and make his way down the wall. He didn’t know if the beast behind him was laughing, pursuing, or was just imagined, but he knew it was there, imagination or not.

His hand found a corner and he ran down this new corridor, hands extended. He ran into another wall and roughly slid down it to the right. He thought better of himself and started to slide towards the left. He needed to stay as close to the tunnel wall as possible and he knew it was to his left. He found another corridor and dashed down it. His hands were extended and they felt nothing. Yet, he crashed into something.

It was rough, like a brick wall, but it moved backwards when he hit it. It was covered with beetles or something, for Trey felt like he had run into a small mound of flesh. His hands must have gone to the left and right of it while he hit the center.

He shook his head and looked up from his spot on the ground. Two more glowing, bright eyes stared at him.

Trey had run into, what he realized now was not the keeper, but the first of many.

Two more, then four, and now a total of six eyes floated in front of where he was running to. They all had the anger of finding an intruder in their eyes. That intruder was Trey.

He had stumbled onto a nest.

He scrambled backwards and pulled himself to his feet. He turned, not knowing how much because of the darkness, and prepared to run until he saw three more pairs of eyes behind him.

He was trapped. Nowhere to run. There was nothing he could do…

Except run.

He turned back towards the nest he had just run into and dashed through. He shoved and pushed at every glowing eye he could see. The eyes illuminated some of the other beasts, and Trey could only see the color. They were dark purple, almost like everything else.

Trey ran. He ran for his life. Yet, he did not run fast enough.

Something long and rope-like encircled Trey’s right ankle. It yanked strong and hard and sent him crashing to the ground, on top of his broken rib. The rib bent backwards and deep into his stomach. Trey screamed and wailed as he felt his stomach bleed, and the beasts pulled him back to their den.

That’s when Trey saw it. A small shaft of light shot from above at an angle only twenty or thirty feet ahead of him. Unless he made it to that shaft, he would die. He knew he would die anyway but he had to try. There was no giving up.

Still blind save the shaft of light he was aiming for, he clawed the ground for something to grip on. There was a small hole in the floor and he dug his fingers into it. The beast let go of his ankle and he pulled himself forward, still lying on his chest.

The beasts behind him seemed to chuckle at his feeble attempt of escape. Trey stopped to breathe. He was having trouble doing so because of the great pain in his stomach. One of the tunnel Keepers put a large, tri-fingered talon over his ankle and yanked him back. Trey’s face scraped along the ground and left a small trail of blood. The Keeper let go and made the laughing noise again as Trey continued forward once again.

This time he made it all the way to the shaft. He tried to pull himself up to his knees and just barely made it before one of the Keepers slid up beside him. He could not see its body, only blackness and its glowing eyes. Multiple shapes dashed back and forth in his mind.

He saw multiple legs and a spider-like jaw with two implausibly large fangs rubbing themselves together in a sticky liquid as it salivated over its meal. It was separated into two large, spherical and hairy halves, and the farthest one back prepared a web-like substance to wrap his remains in.

His mind switched to something worse, a snake-like animal with limbs protruding from his back. Then he thought of a bear-shaped animal that held a large pair of horns on its head.

His mind flipped from one ghastly image to another. For a moment he was thankful he couldn’t see. No matter what he thought of, his mind could only comprehend so much. He was glad he could not see the true form of the Keeper.

The Keeper bashed Trey on the top of his head and Trey felt dizzy. The glow from the beast’s eyes began to dim and he fell forward on his hands. Now on his hands and knees, the beast delivered a blow to Trey’s ribs from under his stomach.

Trey flew through the air, towards the shaft of light. He hit the wall, back first, and it shattered inward. His back flared with pain and the back of his head felt soggy. He landed on his back and rolled twice before stopping. He could now see out of the other end of the tunnel but his hope was quickly diminishing.

Either the source of light for the dark world was going out, or Trey was. The other end of the tunnel began to dim. With a surge of adrenaline, he pulled himself forward with his hands. He couldn’t feel his arms moving forward, he couldn’t feel the cool stones beneath his chest, and he could no longer breathe.

All he could feel was pain. His brain did not tell him to move on, for his brain no longer worked properly. Instinct drove him towards the light, and Trey was just along for the ride. The bullet wounds in his shoulder and calf burned ferociously, his rib and stomach throbbed violently and his back went numb. The back of his head was soaking wet and he could feel a warm substance running down his neck in a lightning bolt pattern as it threw him into absolute pure agony.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Keepers were back. Trey knew not if they could travel out of the tunnel, or if they could live in any amount of light at all, but he hoped and prayed with everything he had that they could not.

It didn’t matter, because they landed beside him as he was just inches away from the exit.

One of the Keepers, as punishment for trying to escape, plunged something small and sharp into his back. He would have screamed aloud if he had breath to spare, but he was out.

All the Keepers joined in now, each one taking their turn to thrust a talon or knife into his back and legs and arms. Trey’s right hand flew forward and made it into the dim light. He grasped the ground beneath the hand, and pulled himself forward. Still in the dark where he could not see, a foot came down and stomped his arm. He felt the bone snap in two.

Tears flowed from his eyes with no warning. He did not grunt, nor did he whimper; he simply cried. That was the only thing he could do as everything else had stopped working.

He saw a form, as fuzzy as it was, and recognized it. It was his mother. She was staring at him, beckoning him to come with her. He cried silently as he told her, “No, mom. Not this time. This time I go, like you.”

Next to her, Tracy walked up. Then Wallace, and then Kyle with his entire crew. They were all fully clad in fastidious black clothes, as if for a celebration.

Or a funeral.

With his last bit of hope, Trey threw his left arm forward. They needed something to bury. He pulled as hard as he could and his head made it out of the darkness. The Keepers screeched and howled with vehemence and Trey knew then that they could not venture out of the tunnel. It was their home, their prison, and their grave.

He pulled his right leg and left arm forward, then he pushed and pulled with everything he had left. He was out.

He realized then that his left leg was still in the tunnel. He pulled it forward, but not fast enough. The Keepers grabbed it and Trey knew he would be pulled back into the tunnel. They did not pull him though. He had escaped and they didn’t want him back, they just wanted him in pain. He felt the bone in his leg snap in two under tremendous pressure, and a strong hand crushed his heel into small bits inside his foot. He felt them twist his ankle until it broke and, for a final blow, they bit it.

Trey wouldn’t have minded the bite compared to what else they just did, but the bite was so hard it crushed his kneecap, and he felt the pain in his leg slowly disappear. They were gnawing his leg OFF.

With one final, sickening crunch, the pain in his lower leg was gone, completely. The rest of his body flared in so much pain that unable to breathe or not, Trey let out what last of the air he had.

It was a small squeak that escaped his throat, for that was all he had left to give. He felt as if he was underwater; he could not reach the surface. His senses disappeared instantly, instead of fading, and he was floating in nothingness. No sounds, smells, tastes, or sights to see, only pain flooding through his body, and the desperation of his need for oxygen.

Then all the pain stopped. The nothingness he was in also began to fade. It did not fade black, for that was what it already was, but this time it was simply his awareness.

Trey did not think he was dying. Trey did not wish he was dead. Trey knew he was dead.

…And he was.

[Peppy]

Trey is going through so much crap. Scratch that. Cough.

Trey is going through so much turmoil. This is like The Tunnel of Toture or something. This chapter was pretty intense. Monsters, pain, darkness, was pretty well-blended (and the symbolism in them was easy to grasp). This is possible the second best chapter, in my opion anyway.

Good job there.

(PS, I thought the characters' return from the previous chapters was hopeful and sad at the same time. It was emotional.)

He stumbled and caught himself many different times, and his heavy steps when he nearly did fall crushed many of the dilapidated arms and legs.

All the smells mixed and reminded him of the food building that he passed on his way there.

here

He fingers lingered as he continued to walk and they drug along the surface.

He only fell for a few feet, but he thought one of his ribs cracked when he hit… or broke.

the floor.
"cracked" is basically broken, almost but more descriptive.So, you don't really need broke in the sentence.

His echo returned. It was the same voice of pain, but this time it echoed louder and louder until it reached Trey.

“RAAAOOO!” the echo voiced.

I don't get it?

He almost wished that whole leg were gone so he didn’t have...

Use "was"; "whole leg" is not a plural.

The rest of his body flared in so much pain that (he) unable to breathe or not, Trey let out what last of the air he had.