Home

I groaned as my eyes cracked open. I sat up and realized I was resting on a patch of grass by the shore of some island. Above me, the blue sky had grown quite cloudy, and was becoming even more so by the second. I stood up; noticing that everyone who had been in the shack was standing around me, the same look of mild bewilderment across their faces. Further inland along the coast an enormous black spire, ten times the size of a New York City skyscraper, towered above the landscape. Tiny windows spiraled up the sides of it and the clouds concealed the very top.

“What the "” I started to say, but then I saw the strange grouping of Keres. They were down the coast from us, only a few yards or so. Among them, three of the dog-faced monsters loomed, and in the center " Chiron stood, gripping the freckle faced boy by the scruff of the neck. The image was so surreal, so startling, that I had no idea what emotion to feel other than absolute panic. We were so close, what if Chiron spotted us?

“Relax,” said a voice next to me. I turned sharply and saw Hypnos standing just behind me. His wings were noticeably larger, and his entire body seemed to be distorted. “What you see here has already transpired. This is merely a memory.”

Still, I thought. Seeing him here and being so close made me uncomfortable "even if it was only an image. Chiron began to speak, but I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. Moving closer, I could start making out his words.

“Beneath my towering citadel, we begin the ritual,” Chiron said. He paused for a moment. “We don’t really need to do this now, do we?” The creatures standing at the shore ruffled the feathers on their wings in some sort of shrug. “Well then, I’ve changed my mind. Cancel the speech.” Chiron swiftly led the freckle faced boy into the water until he was about chest-deep. Water lapped forcefully against his body, but Chiron wasn’t swaying a bit.

I stood there, watching, not ten feet away from the scene. What was he doing?

Chiron gripped the freckle faced boy tighter around the neck then threw him under the water. I gasped as Chiron held the boy’s head under the murky water for about ten minutes. Surely no one could survive that, I thought, aghast.

“This is the ritual,” said Thánatos, appearing next to me. “The ritual that turns those who have bested the trials of the games into immortals.”

“Why does Chiron want an immortal so bad?” I whispered back. I was still uneasy about the group of demons a few feet away. Sure, they couldn’t hear me, but they still creeped me out. Thánatos shook his head. He didn’t know.

“Chiron never told us anything, and even If he had, it would not have done us much good,” he said.

Chiron finally ripped the freckle faced boy from the water, dragged him ashore and tossed him on the ground. The boy’s eyes were closed, but he stirred. The creatures and shadows kept their distance, as if the boy had suddenly become radioactive. Then again, maybe he was. His skin began to give off an eerie green light that grew stronger and swirled over his body like a mist.

“Did it work?” one of the creatures asked in a shrill voice.

 Chiron rolled his eyes as if it were the most idiotic question in the world. He grabbed the freckle faced boy and lifted him to his feet. His cane shot into his hand from within the folds of his jacket, then morphed into what looked like a club with enormous silver spikes protruding out the top end. He raised the enormous club over his head then brought it down on the freckle faced boy’s shoulder. I took in a sharp breath as Chiron’s club glanced off the boy’s shoulder, fruitlessly.

 “There, you see?” said Chiron. The creatures shrieked in triumph then spread their hideous wings and shot off into the darkness towards the black spire. The Keres simply vanished into clouds of black smoke that drifted off into oblivion. Chiron was left standing on the shore. I watched him turn and look off towards the sea.

“I’ll make sure that kid gets what’s coming to him, even if I have to send an entire army of immortals.” He turned and made to leave, but then turned back once more. “Looks like the sun is about to rise.” He said softly. Then the world peeled away around him like someone had taken a knife to the canvas, and then Chiron was simply gone.

“What was that?” Grayson asked.

“It appears to have been a void,” answered Hypnos. He looked around at everyone’s faces and decided to go on. “Though this world exists, it does not exist by the same logic and laws as the world of the living. The particles that make up the existence of this world are, instead, much looser.” Hypnos began to pace around the grassy shore. “This allows for one to create separations between the particles. I realize this probably is not the time to be describing particle physics, but it helps to understand how these things work. Doorways are the result of the separation of particles.” Hypnos went on to explain how splitting particles led to a collapse in space between where you are and the place you’re going, but my mind was beginning to wander. I glanced at Avra who was picking at a few split ends in her hair and Grayson had sat down on a rock by the water and was drawing shapes in the sand. Hypnos went on further until even the burned people were starting to walk around, curiously. “And so a void is created when the entire underworld collapses for a split second, allowing one to travel anywhere, including the world of the living.”

I pretended not to be interested, but I was listening intently now. I had seen it before " the void or whatever. I remembered how I had fallen, and suddenly I had been in my house.

My house . . .  

When Hypnos was finished speaking, he clapped his hands together and raised them. I jumped back to attention but immediately found my eyelids closing. Then I was lying on the stone floor with a few bits of straw tickling my cheek. Jack was leaning over me and making that low cooing noise. I reached up and rubbed his beak.

“So that’s about it, huh?” said Grayson, standing up from the floor and brushing a stray blade of straw from his tunic.

“Don’t be an idiot, this is serious,” growled Avra as she sat up on the crate, rubbing a red spot on her forehead where it had been resting against the wood. The burned people" I was just going to call them the dead" shuffled uncomfortably in their spots.

“What do we do now?” I asked. Everyone looked around at each other, expecting an answer. However, no one spoke up. I sat there in silence, formulating my own plan.

I wasn’t sure if anyone else had heard it"when Chiron had threatened to raise an army of immortal beings. I knew he wasn’t beyond doing something that drastic, and it honestly frightened me.

When I looked back up, I realized that all eyes were on me.

“What?” I asked.

“Well,” said Thánatos, “you do seem to be the leader of this little group.”

I frowned. “I wasn’t aware we had a vote,” I said sarcastically.

“You do have an idea, thought, right?” Avra asked, stepping off the crate and putting her hands to her hips.

“Give me a moment,” I told her. I rested my chin on my fist, feeling like that sculpture made of stone, and zoned out for about twenty minutes. The dead had not moved an inch when I finally snapped my fingers in sudden inspiration. Avra had been lying, lazily, upon the crates and stumbled upright when I snapped. Grayson was sitting, cross-legged on the floor picking at the tip of his spear with a look of absolute boredom.  

“Alright, this’ll probably sound stupid, but at least it’s something,” I announced. I told them my plan and watched as their faces were first intrigued, then skeptical, then amazed. I felt rather pleased with myself when they made the latter transition. Thánatos and Hypnos however remained skeptical.

“I do not know if that is the correct path to take,” said Hypnos.

“Indeed, it seems flawed,” added Thánatos.

“Look,” I told them, “It’ll work. You have to trust me on this one . . . please.”

The twins looked at each other, twitched their wings in some form of communication then turned back to me and nodded. “We will follow you and do our part.”

Thank the gods, I thought. We couldn’t do this without them. I looked around at the others in the room. They were ready. The dead were hard to judge because the blankness of their expressions, so I guessed at that one. But everyone else had determined looks.

“Alright,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Let’s go.”

I waved my hands and opened two identical white doors against the far wall. I checked both of them to make sure they led to their correct destinations then turned back to face everyone. “We need to do this right. Everyone knows what they have to do right?”

Everyone nodded.

“Good . . .” I sighed to myself. I opened the door on the left as Grayson and Avra entered the room on the right. Jack, who had been happily sleeping until then, followed me in. The brown walls were still covered with some sort of oozing mass and the griffins still stirred and squawked.

I ventured further into the corridor spotted with the square holes where the griffins slept. They were all different sizes, but most of them were the same shiny black. I was looking for the largest and healthiest ones of the lot. However, there was one in particular that I didn’t need to waste time looking for.

“Idiot!” I called out to the room. Immediately, one of the larger griffins left his perch high above and landed with a strong thud on the ground before me. He clicked his beak expectantly.

“Don’t worry, buddy. They’re going to get food soon,” I told the creature, not sure if it had understood me or not. It cooed happily, so I guess it did. A few others apparently understood as well. They flew down beside Idiot and Jack and snapped their beaks hungrily, their tales beat against the walls and their wings flapped, creating great gusts of wind that whipped up my hair.

“Easy, easy,” I told them. It took them a moment to settle down, but eventually they were calm enough to let through the door back into the shack.

Avra and Grayson were there now as well. On the floor was a large platter of food that had been stolen from Chiron’s kitchen. I flinched as something heavy and leather hit my shoulder and hung there. I looked over at Avra who gave a quick half smile.

“What is this?” I asked, unfolding whatever it was.

“Just so we don’t have a constant reminder of how cold it is,” said Grayson as I realized it was a suit of padded leather. I blushed, noticing for the first time in a while that I wasn’t wearing a shirt. I threw the leather suit on quickly. It was snug, but warm and comfortable.

The griffins had attacked the plate of food like it was live prey and were now viciously devouring their meal.

I noticed a few of the dead chefs standing around the room.

“They wanted to come too,” shrugged Avra. Whatever, the more the merrier, I thought. We were running out of room here though. I had to skirt around the ravenous griffins just to get to the other side of the room. Hypnos and Thánatos were nowhere to be seen. Good, I thought. If things were going as planned then they should be near the Asphodel Fields by now.

Avra leaned over and began conversing with Grayson. After a short argument, Grayson nodded and headed to the far side of the room to talk to the chefs. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to them, but the dead people carried grim looks.

“Hey,” said Avra. I looked at her, trying to keep focused. However, something was bothering me. My headache had returned. “We’re gonna go look for some weapons. We need a lot of them, after all.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged.

Avra gave me a concerned look and said, “Hey, you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, just a little headache, that’s all,” I answered.

“Well lay down for a bit,” she advised. “We’ll go for the weapons. Grayson’s asking the chefs now if they know where we can get a few spears and such. Right now, that one Grayson stole from Hades castle is the only one we’ve got. It won’t do us much good against immortals.”

I sighed and said in a low voice, “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“I thought that was the whole reason we were doing this " because Chiron’s going to try to kill you no matter what it takes. And if he has immortals, then he’s gonna use them,” She said, moving in front of me and putting her hands on her hips.

I looked her in the eyes. “I can’t pretend to know what’s going to happen,” I explained. “I just don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

Avra’s eyes softened and she took hold of my arm. “We’re already dead. What’s the worst that can happen?” I couldn’t help but give her a smile. The simple contact between her hand and my arm was enough to lift my spirits, though that obnoxious headache persisted. “Lay down on some crates. We’ll be right back.”

“Alright, let’s go!” Grayson called over. Apparently, the dead chefs had agreed to escort him and Avra, but they didn’t look overly happy to be headed back to Chiron’s citadel. They moved with the same enthusiasm as a man being escorted into a jail cell. I half expected them to turn around and call, It wasn’t me officer, honest!

The white door cracked into existence and opened as Grayson and the rest pushed through. The random dead who had been wandering around seemed to not know what to do, so they just followed in. Then, they disappeared one by one and then the door faded back into blank wall. The griffins had finally finished fighting for food and were now spreading out, curling into feathery masses around the room and cooing softly as they fell asleep. The room had become eerily silent, aside from the small noises the griffins made. Jack had settled closest to me. I sat down on the floor next to him and stroked his silky wings.

“I’m afraid, Jack,” I said to the animal. Jack gave a small hiss in response, as if to say What are you afraid of? I had no way of knowing whether or not that was what he meant, but I was going to assume it was. Truth was I didn’t know. A part of me had like a brick had just dropped into my stomach, and I could hardly do more than lean forward and stare icily at the ground. The other part of me was desperate for a chance to punch Chiron right in that smug, pale face of his. However, before I listened to either portion, there was something I had to do.

I stood up and stretched out. Jack looked up at me with lazy eyes then snorted and put his head back down. I threw my hand out in front of me, concentrating on a single memory " a memory that felt rather new. A door began to appear along the far wall. Yes, I thought.

Once I had carefully avoided bodies and outstretched limbs of the griffins scattered around the room, I pushed open and peered into the void beyond.

At first, I couldn’t make out much. The sunlight that suddenly hit my face was blinding and unfamiliar. I hadn’t felt warmth like it on my face in the longest time. I stepped further into the room and listened as the door shut and faded away. Blinking my eyes rapidly a few times, I was finally able to make out where I was.

The bedroom was small and square, and as I moved further inwards, I nearly tripped over the bed. The covers were thick and flannel. For a moment, I wanted nothing more than to hide away in those covers forever, but something tugged at my heart every time the thought crossed my mind. The window to my left was the source of the sunlight. Golden rays cascaded through the window, illuminating thousands of floating dust particles. It also showed the empty hamper, the bare drawers, and the shelf unit littered with trophies. I looked closer at them, realizing that they were all for rugby.

I smiled to myself and sighed. This place was just as I remembered it; beautiful, though the reminiscing was dulled somewhat by the subtle pounding in my head. I patted my fingers to my temple thinking, what is that?

I exited the room, down the hall and the stairs to the living room. The rug felt soft between my toesas I walked across it. I hadn’t felt anything like this in what felt like an eternity. It was so insanely gratifying; the feeling of standing on something comfortable. I could only imagine how callous my feet were. I decided not to look.

I checked out the mantle over the brick fireplace. A few birthday cards, a few mother’s day cards, but what interested me most of all was the photograph in the center. Four figures stood on a beach"two were a man and woman. The man had a thick, walrus mustache and a rather impressive crock of black hair for someone his age. He was also wearing a jazzy-looking Hawaiian shirt with the flower print and a pair of khaki shorts. The woman was taller than the man, with brown hair that was cut to her shoulders. She was slender and wore a denim blouse with green shorts. There was a little girl standing beneath them, looking up. She wore a pink bathing suit and her brown hair rushed past her shoulders and down her back. She looked no older than ten or eleven. And then there was the taller boy. He had black hair and a strong build. His blue swim trunks were pulled low over his waist. His face was contorted into a foolish grin, and they all looked so happy together.

I realized with a pang in my chest that the boy in the photograph was me. I looked so much like my mother, and yet I recognized features from my father. I wanted to sit down with the photograph, go through the entire house and find every memory that I had left behind. However, at that moment, I heard the familiar sound of a lock clicking and a door handle turning.

Someone was home.

Author's Note

again, keep your eye out for random " scattered throughout. They were supposed to be dashes.

Reviews

[Daniel Gardner]

Nice work so far. Its coming along really well.

[WriterSki7]

"=-
@=*&;)))}*+56%=wull

lol. I am easily amused. So far, so good. I am waiting to se how uit turns out before commenting. Just remember the end's supposed to be better than the beginning*

[Star Wolf]

Great story tell all the way around. It continues to be very fascinating for me. I think you're doing a great job in keeping your story interesting.

[HorrorMaster]

Sweet work and the story is amazing.

[James Watts]

Nice work and the story is turning into a real page turner.The dialogue, the pacing and the imagery are on point. Nice work.

[The Analog Kid]

I hate the way WC changes Word's dashes, as I use them fairly often. Anyway, nice ending. I liked the sarcasm when Chiron rolled his eyes at "Did it work." This made the story actually more realistic, at least to me. This chapter also has very good decription overall. Kudos!

[Dutch Jr.]

Yeah, the dash thing does that to me too, I just do two small dashes now, though. But your writing is exceptional, though. You have a lot of talent for writing.