Doorways

This chapter will probably be the most edited when I begin the final draft. Its more for the purpose of tying some of the story elements together..

 

 

 

 

                “The games haven’t been the same since you left.” Grayson began to say with a grim look on his face. “Chiron is getting more and more desperate to find a suitable host, but I think he picked that red-headed kid. That’s the kind he likes, you know; small and weak minded. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if he planned it that way from the start.”

            I looked at him, dumbfounded. “What . . . the hell are you talking about?”

            Grayson looked at me with his cool green eyes, suddenly struck with the same look of confusion that no doubt adorned my own face.

            “What are you saying?” he asked me.

            “What do you mean what am I saying? What are you saying?” I asked him back.

            “I thought you would know more about this than anybody . . . You are Nic, aren’t you?”

            “Well yeah, I am . . . but I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.” I said, shrugging an apology. Grayson clasped his hands over the back of his neck, took in a deep breath, stood up, and began to pace the room. He motioned to me a few times as if preparing to say something, then thought better of it and continued to pace. I sighed as well and shifted in my seat in anticipation of the coming speech.

            Finally Grayson stopped pacing, looked at me in the eye and asked me, “what do you know?”

            “Nothing.” I said simply. “I just remember waking up here before the first challenge, thinking it was all a dream---”

            “If only it was a dream.” Grayson scoffed.

            “Yeah . . .  Avra saved my a*s in the first round, then Chiron said that if I won I---I would be immortal.” I said, looking down at my feet.

            “So, you lost your memory then . . ? Well . . . that would be the only explanation I guess.” Grayson muttered to himself. “So you don’t remember anything, anything at all about what happened before that?”

            “No.” I whispered. “I’ve tried to remember before, but my mind goes blank every time.”

            “You don’t remember Avra then? I mean, I know you wouldn’t remember me, but if you forgot her . . . man, that must have been one hell of a crack to the head.”

            “I-I didn’t know there was something to remember . . . what were we before?” I asked him, suddenly regretting the question as soon as it left my mouth.

            Grayson’s emerald eyes squinted at me quizzically. “How should I know?” he mumbled.

            I stood up off the chair in the hospital room, sighed at what I was about to ask, preparing myself for it.

            “You seem to know a lot about me . . . can I ask you something then?”

            “Sure.”

            “Who . . . who was I before?” I asked, spilling it out and feeling like I had just tossed my entire hand into the pot.

            Grayson sighed as well. “I don’t really know much about it . . . you were way before my time. Avra would probably know more about it, but from the stories I heard, you were about to be champion.”

            “Wait,” I said. “You mean I competed . . . before this?”

            “Well yeah, of course you did.” He answered. “You were one of the best, but you lost in the final round . . . bit coincidental if you think about it.”

            “I was . . . actually good at fighting?” I laughed at the thought.

            “Well, not fighting on general . . . but I heard you were worth your salt with a bow, but again, that’s just what I’ve heard.” He added.

            “Sounds about right.” I said, pausing for a moment. “Hey, do you know anything about what Chiron’s up to?” I asked him. Grayson, who had been fiddling with the straw hair attached to the minotaur mask looked up at me with a strange gleam in his eye.

            “I can’t pretend to know, but it’s definitely not good. He used to be just the ferry guy, you know, of that boat.”

            “You mean the one that takes us to challenges?”

            “That’s the one . . . he made some sort of deal with Hades, I don’t know what, but whatever it was, Chiron doesn’t ferry people across the river anymore.”

            “Who does then?”

            “Dunno . . . but somebody is, and I can’t imagine them being all too happy to be floating around on that piece of driftwood.”

            I looked at Grayson hesitantly, “So Chiron does all the hosting and they just went and filled his spot with a temp?”

            “Yep,” he said. “What’s worse is that with how busy the ferry is lately, shipping around challengers left and right, half the people don’t even go through judgment and they all end up in the fields.” Grayson looked down for a moment in reminiscence of something. “There were some really good people who ended up in the fields.” He said slowly.

            “What fields?” I asked him softly.

            “The Asphodel Fields . . . it used to be a place filled with flowers, and the souls of those who lived balanced lives could rest in peace. But now it’s just a desert. All the flowers died long ago.”

            Something about a barren desert in the back of my mind came barreling back into my thoughts.“That’s sad . . . Hey wait, I thought you said you didn’t know about much?” I said, changing the subject.

            Grayson shook his head. “I said I didn’t know much about what was going on at this very moment, with you, or Chiron, or the games. The rest of this stuff is just basic mythology.” He said simply.

            “Where’d you learn all this stuff?” I asked him.

            “In a library in New York City. I figured I’d be down here for a while, so I decided to brush up on the basics. It’s come in handy more than once, that’s for sure.”

            Just then, something clicked in my head, I stood up and turned away from Grayson for a moment, gathering my thoughts.

            “Can you leave this place?” I asked him. “The underworld, I mean.”

            Grayson looked at me strangely. “Well of course you can leave, I mean, you’re the one who first did it. You practically pioneered the technique.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Oh, right, forgot about the whole . . . memory thing. Look, you escaped this place, don’t ask me, I don’t know how, but you did. You figured out how to create doors which probably had something to do with it.” Grayson waved his hand through the air for a moment, allowing another shimmering white door to appear in the wall next to him.

            “It’s not easy to do. Well for me it isn’t, but I’m sure it’s a piece of cake for you.”

            “Not really,” I shrugged. “The last time I did it was on accident.”

            “Oh, well. Anyways, doors can take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in the underworld, but up in the world of the living it’s a different story. You can only come out of a room with walls, floors and a roof . . . the basic definition of a room. Also, you can only come out of a room that you’ve seen before. You can’t just pop in and out of wherever you want.” He said, rubbing his sharp chin, deep in thought. “Oh, and you can’t interact with anything around you. You’re pretty much a ghost up there, meaning people won’t see you, feel you, and you can’t pick up objects. You can only walk on the floor in front of you.” He finished.

            “Wait, how’d you get a book on mythology if you couldn’t pick it up?” I asked, immediately realizing it was a stupid question.

            Grayson rolled his eyes at me. “It wasn’t easy. After I found the book I wanted, I had to wait there for an hour, waiting for someone else to come and grab it. Then I looked over their shoulder as the read it.” He said. “I swear that guy must’ve been an English teacher.” he mumbled. “Do you know how hard it is to read at the same pace a newspaper printer shoots out copies?”

            “No, I can’t say I have.” I said sheepishly.

            “Well . . . it’s hard.” He said, crossing his arms and turning away.

            In her bed, Avra stirred. She gave a muffled grunt, then began to scratch irritably against the tubes that wound through the flesh in her arms. I moved quickly over to her and gripped her hands softly, keeping them away from the tubes.

            “I also studied up on some medical stuff . . . figured it would come in handy too.”Grayson stated from across the room.

            I looked down at Avra; the single drop of sweat that clung to her pale forehead, the tangles of wild dark hair that fell in a mop upon her pillow and the way her breathing was slow, then quickened, then slowed again.

            I turned to Grayson, “she’ll be alright, won’t she?”

            He nodded to himself, “Yeah. She lost a lot of blood, but I managed to get to her in time. Fin almost went back to the fields as well. Once you’re in there, there’s no coming back . . . except for you of course. In the underworld, souls are just as vulnerable as humans.”

            I nodded in agreement, then my heart skipped a beat as a thought occurred in my head. I grabbed his shoulders, spun him around on the white tiled floor and asked him, “You mean Fin is . . . alive? Where is he?”

            “Dunno.” Grayson said sadly. “I managed to fix him up, a few broken ribs, concussion, and his right femur was snapped in half like a twig. I fixed him up as best I could . . . put half a smithy worth of iron on his leg and put everything else in a cast.”

            “But Kale said he was dead?” I said, remembering the way the tall blonde haired boy had curled into a ball, sobbing his eyes out after the twisted cathedral.

            “Well first of all, you can’t die here because, well, you’re already dead. Secondly . . . actually, you know what? We’ll just say, for all intents and purposes, that going to the fields is ‘dead’. Anyways, as soon as he could walk . . . or rather limp . . . he up and left. On a second recollection, he grabbed me by the neck and said if I didn’t make a door for him, he was going to let me have it. I could’ve laughed if my throat wasn’t being strangled. But I made him his door to someplace in Colorado. He went through it and poof! Gone, just like that.”

            “Just like that?” I asked.

            “Just . . . like that.” Grayson replied, tossing his arms up in the air for emphasis.

            I turned away from him with a downcast gaze. Grayson mumbled things to himself and started to pace the room again.

            Suddenly, a knock came from somewhere in the room. I turned and looked at the wall to the left of Grayson and I, and to my horror, a door was appearing. Not a beautiful white or a sinister black, but the sort of large, blocky door you would see in a hospital.

            “Damnit!” Grayson yelled. “Quick, pull the lever next to Avra’s bed so you can wheel it around.”

            I did as Grayson asked, pulling the metal lever and heard a click as the wheels unfolded. Grayson opened a white doorway opposite the hospital door. There was more, heavier knocking followed by a deep voice, “Hello? Is someone in there?”

            Grayson opened the door, revealing the same rundown shack I was first taken to. “I forgot to mention,” he said anxiously, “remember when I said it had to be a place you’ve already seen?”

            “Yeah, why?” I asked, pushing the bed into the room, while trying to keep the assortment of medical equipment close to it.

            “This hospital was still open, I just sort of took over the room.”

            “And now were stealing all of this stuff.” I noted, shoving the rest of the equipment hastily into the room along with the wires. I wondered how the wires would be able to cross between worlds, but decided it wasn’t worth the time to ponder. Grayson pushed me the rest of the way in, grabbing his minotaur mask off the floor and shutting the door behind him.

            Back inside the shack, Grayson showed me where to move the bed. Under the white covers, Avra slept peacefully. I turned to Grayson, first noticing how the wires disappeared mysteriously into the wall where the doorway had been, then sighed and asked the question I think was on both our minds.

            “So . . . what’s next?” I asked him.

            Grayson stood stock still for a moment, looking down at the dirty floor. Then he sighed in exhaustion, placed his haunting mask back over his head and whispering determinedly to me, “Retaliation.”

Author's Note

Like I said, this chapter will probably be the most edited when I begin the final draft. Its more for the purpose of tying some of the story elements together..

Reviews

[TL Boehm]

great shift here in this chapter -bringing some elements into focus.

[Drifter]

Well this added some unexpected twists to the story, but I like it. I think that, once you have a fully polished version, I will be buying this on bookshelves (or whatever) one day.

[James Watts]

With the rest of the book, it flows well. I didn't see a lot in the way of errors. This is an impressive rough draft and another intriguing installment to the story. Nice work.

[WriterSki7]

Okay, NOW it's getting good. I particularly like how the main character was originally this bigshot champion and whatnot. Makes me laugh.

Keep up the good work. Looking forward to the next chapter.

[HorrorMaster]

Good story

[Mary Katherine]

Fantastic! I am a little lost because I jumped in without realizing it was a chapter not a story, but it is written really well and I couldn't pull my eyes away (not that i ever wanted to). I am def goingto go read the previous chaps now. great job!

[The Analog Kid]

What can I say. I am hooked on the story. You have a great imagination.

[Star Wolf]

Awesome!I think your doing an excellent job on this story. It's sure holding my interest.