Hide And Seek For Souls

Chapter 6

 

            Actually he wasn’t looking directly at me. He was just looking at all of us in general. His grin was so wide, but his grin didn’t corporate happiness. I saw evil in his face. Pure hatred. I looked around for our principle, and what I saw shocked me. He had a pole protruding through his chest. Well, actually I don’t really think it was a pole. It was black and I saw faces that kept shifting on it. Our principle was dead.

            Under any other circumstances I would have gasped out loud but I didn’t want to get the demons attention. I looked around and I saw a few other dead kids. I felt bad for them even though most of them despised me. They must have not known what even hit em’.

            I looked around the entire MPR. I was scared out of my pants on what I might find. And my pants told me I should have not looked. I saw a knight with a blazing sword. He was slicing up a kid. There was two more knights in the room. But then as I paid more attention to the knights, there wasn’t any humans inside the armor though. Instead what I saw shocked me. There was a skeleton inside in all the heavy armor! I had seen something like this before. In my first dream where I was attacked by the two worm creatures. Everything began to slowly connect.

            The war that the two vision men wanted me to be in wasn’t just a war in Iraq. They wanted me to fight against the supernatural! As I got my head around what was happening, the demon at the front began to talk. His voice was sickening. It sounded like he was talking through a bunch of mucus in his throat. Or blood…

            “Hello damned souls. Now that I struck fear into your very pure hearts, I want you all to pay close attention.” The demon said. No one made a noise. “I personally think it would be easier to just kill all of you, but that would take too long. Anyways, my name is Shax. Not pronounced as ‘shakes’ but ‘sha-x’. I know all of you are confused and scared, but you can forget all about me after I get what I want in this learning institute.” He paused. “I am looking for a child. I want to take him with me. His name is-” The demon was about to say the name of the child when our assistant principle, Ms. Jazzy, screamed out,

            “You will never get hold of a child here! Get away devil!” She screamed in fear.

            There was a long scary silence. Then Shax said in no effort,

            “Dispose of her.” He said bluntly. The knights advanced on her. They grabbed ahold of her arm. I thought she would beat the crap out of them because she’s a pretty strong woman but the skeletons in armor seemed stronger. I heard a loud crack as they held her arm. They must have broken her arms so she couldn’t fight against them

            “Help! Oh God! HELP!” She screamed and began to cry. I wanted to help but I was too afraid. Jason you coward! I watched in horror as the skeletons breathed on her. Their breath slowly began to disintegrate her. Not only was she dying, but she was dying slowly. I held back tears; Ms. Jazzy was my favorite teacher.

             Although it was too late, a child stepped forward to help her. It was the kid that I least expected to help out anyone. It was the kid that bullied me all my life, Joevan. I heard someone gasp as Joevan ran towards Ms. Jazzy. It was Jessica. Joevan ran to the skeleton knight and punched the skeleton in the armor. Joevan just noticed his mistake a second later and punched the skeleton in the face… To no effect. The skeleton grabbed ahold of Joevan’s head. It twisted it harshly to the left. I heard a quick but unmistakable snap. Joevan fell to the floor. He was dead.

            I didn’t know whether to feel sad or glad. I never liked Joevan, but he showed his true colors by selflessly trying to help Ms. Jazzy. I am confused and scared. And I don’t know what to do.

            “Now that we got those two nuisances out of the way, let’s get to business, shall we?" Shax said.

            “You B*****D!” I heard a child scream. Shax looked at him, rolled his eyes and sighed in exasperation.

            “When are we going to have some real time to talk?” He yawned. He looked at the child who screamed. I gasped when I saw who it was. It was Drew Jazzy. Ms. Jazzy’s son. I felt bad for Drew. He was never mean to me, he just didn’t talk to me. Better then being bullied, I guess. He just saw his mother being killed in cold blood. Now I think he was next. But instead Shax didn’t tell his familiars to kill him. Instead he squinted his eyes. As if studying Drew.

            “You are one of the children I am looking for.” He said.

            Everyone in the MPR gasped. They all looked in Drew’s direction. He looked as if he was about to pee in his pants.

            “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t even know you! I never met you! Why me?” He cried.

            “I will explain later. First I want to name out all the other students I need.” Shax said.

            “I need Natalia Kurdian, Chad Howsley, Jessica Jewels and-” He smiled. “Oh I definitely want this one.” He said. I couldn’t believe it, he was looking for Jessica! I couldn’t let her die. I needed to make a distraction. Before Shax got to finish what he said, I got up and screamed to everyone.

            “RUN!” Some kids hesitated; some immediately got up and ran towards the exit. Shax was surprised, he did not expect this. We all ran over the knights. A dozen or so fell behind and got slaughtered. But the rest of us escaped. I hoped Jessica got out in all that confusion.

            I wondered where to hide first. I was always hiding from bullies, so I knew this place well. I knew hundreds of good hiding spots. But then I decided to just run away from the school instead. But then a horrible thought just hit me in the head- The school was in lockdown. We couldn’t get out. There was guards around the exit, if you got close to them, they would use a Taser on you.

            Maybe I can still escape. Or maybe a demon would kill them and I can escape. See how my mind is working now that I have seen enough of this s**t these past few days?

            Instead I decided to hide. I ran around wasting precious time, thinking where I should hide. I thought of the perfect place. The trapdoor in Ms. Jazzy’s room! I ran as fast as I could. I saw Jessica catching up behind me. Thank the lord!

            “Jason! What the hell is going on?” She screamed.

            “I have no idea! Not one bit!” I screamed back. That was a lie, I knew a little bit of what was going on but I didn’t feel like explaining the whole thing, because we might get sidetracked for running for our lives.

            “Follow me!” I yelled. I ran to Ms. Jazzy’s room. I prayed that it wasn’t locked. I pulled down the handle. It wasn’t locked. I breathed a quick sigh of relief then pushed Jessica in and I came in after. I slowly closed the door and turned on the light. Then I felt a knife slowly press against my neck.

            “Move another step forward and I cut open your- Wait! Jason! Sorry I thought you were a demon!” I turned around to see Drew putting his pocket knife back in his bag. I saw Natalia and Chad right behind him.

            “Come on man, we need to hide somewhere else. We can’t stay in this room forever. We can’t even lock it!” Drew moaned.

            “Wait! Maybe back in the MPR room, Ms. Jazzy has it!” Chad said. “Then we can lock the door. I vote for Jason to go.” He said bluntly.

            “There’s no need for that!” I said quickly.

            “Any other ideas?” Chad asked.

            “Yeah! There’s a trapdoor in this room, which leads to a basement.” I said.

            “A basement?” Natalia said skeptically.

           “Yes, there is! Ms. Jazzy asked for it so when there’s a earthquake, they can use it for an emergency.” I said.

            “Well lead us to it nerd t**d!” Chad said.

            I didn’t have time to reply to that mocking comment so I just led them to the trapdoor. It was well hidden in the rug so it looked like just a big outlining in the rug. I opened it easily and stepped in. The rest just stared at me.

            “Come on!” I yelled. They snapped back into their senses and went down with me.

            “Whoa.” Jessica murmured.

            I agreed with her. This place was WHOA. It was a huge basement with food supply and everything. There was even beds. I locked the trapdoor and looked at everyone else in the room. No one said anything. No one KNEW what to say. I walked down the steps and sat on a bed. I expected it to be all dusty, but it was dusted and smoothed. I looked at everyone who just stood doing nothing. It was creepy, they seriously looked like ghosts. So I broke the silence.

            “That was weird huh?” I said. Everyone broke up in laughter.

            “Tell me about it!” Jessica laughed.

            “But seriously, we are going to eventually run out of food and water.” Drew said becoming serious again. “For all we know they might keep a demon guard in every room forever.”

            “I doubt that.” Chad said looking at the floor. But he looked as if he didn’t believe his own words.

            “I’m tired.” Natalia said. But then she quickly said “But I’m not going to sleep!”

           

            We did eventually go to sleep. We stayed in the basement for hours. We went on sentry. I stayed awake and kept watch first. Then Chad, Drew, Jessica, and Natalia. We all kept sentry for two hours. On my part I almost fell asleep. But I forced myself awake by poking my eye. It hurt, but it worked. When I went to sleep I had the realistic nightmares again.

 

            “Hey, Jason. Get up. We haven’t finished talking.” One of the Vision Men said.

            I got up groggily and moaned. I was back with the bearded men and their insane idea for me to sneak into a palace full of the supernatural.

            “Do you guys have names?” I asked. “I’m tired of addressing you as ‘the bearded men’ or ‘the vision men’.”

            “We used to have names, but we forgot them long ago.” One bearded men said.

            “Why would you forget your names? That’s not something you can really forget.” I said. “Unless you have amnesia.”

            “When one being is forced into vision men, the rules are for them to forget their names and everything else about their personal life until they achieve their mission. Then they can get back to their regular life, and they remember their names then.” One bearded man said. “All they can remember is their sin and why they were forced into vision men. And their mission of course.”

            “Well, if that’s true… Maybe I can just make up a name for you two guys.” I said.

            “Well, what would you like to name us?”

            “Hmmm, I’ll name you… Justin.” I said slowly. I looked at the other vision men who looked at me like an excited puppy.

            “I’ll name you Craig.” I said.

            “Hmmm… Justin. Sounds a bit modern for my century.” Justin laughed.

            “I don’t know, I like our new names.” Craig replied.  

            “L.O.L” I laughed.

            “L.O.L?” Craig asked with uncertainty.

            “It means laugh out loud!” I laughed even harder. Justin and Craig obviously doesn’t know what ‘slang’ is, so I looked like a total fool on the floor laughing. Or a total fool on the floor that’s R.O.F.L.-ing.

            “Hmm, yes that’s nice. Now let’s get back to business.” Craig said. As I looked at Craig, I noticed that he actually looked young. Unlike Justin, Craig looks like he is in mid 20’s but he has a long beard. Strange. Maybe that was part of the punishment. Forcing them to have wizard beards. Maybe they did that so they can forget their age too.

            “As we were saying before you spasm’d and killed yourself with a knife,  we think that Jake Colt sent you the visions power so you can carry on the mission. He most likely chose you because after you left, umm, Craig and I thought about this and there is no other reason why Jake sent it to you. Think logically Jason.” Justin said.

            “After all the crap that has happened so far,” I paused, choosing my words “I’m ready to believe everything.”

            “Good, because we will need you to believe everything we tell you.” Craig said. “Well first of all, I’m not sure if you found out by now but the Zugrufs are-” Craig began to continue.

            “Yes, I know. The Supernatural. Demons, monsters, skeletons, ghosts, yeah, I think I’ve seen it all.” I reply.

            “Well, then there’s not much to tell you now anymore.” Justin said.

            “Yeah, I don’t think I want to go into a palace full of crazies and meet the same sufferable fate that my (uncle? Great grandfather?) Met. So in other words, I’m not carrying out my relative’s mission.” I reply.

            “Oh. I see.” Justin looked down disappointed but he didn’t want to show it. I felt bad, he wanted to get back to his regular life. But hey! It’s not my fault! I can’t just be suddenly ripped apart from my natural life and into the world of the damned! Seriously!

            “I can hear your thoughts.” Justin said. “We are some figments of your mind. So we can hear everything you think of when you are with us.” Justin said.    

            I jumped up. I hope I didn’t think about Jessica while I was with these guys. The last thing I needed was for them to harass me about it.

            “I just heard that too. Who is Jessica?” Craig asked with a mock smile.

            Ugh! Jason you moron! Dang this is trippy.

            “You will get used to it.” Justin said. He paused then continued talking. “If you will not go on with the mission we will not be at your service. We will transfer our powers to someone more deserving.” Justin said.

            “Whoa! You can do that! You can just totally abandon me and make someone else do your guys dirty work?!” I doubted that they can but for some weird reason I have grown oddly attached to these two men although I have only known them for about 3 hours. I didn’t want them to go.

            “If you don’t want us to go then go on with the mission.” Craig said simply.

            I thought long and hard. “Guys. Give me some time to think about it.” I said.

            “Fair enough.” Justin said.

            “You can go now.” Craig said. “I hear someone calling you.” I tried to listen up and I did, in fact, hear a far away, distant voice calling for me. And it sounded like… Natalia!

            “Gotta go!” I said. I ran towards the table of the hut and picked up the knife.

            “Wait, before I go, I have a question. What happened on the day of the first dream? I still don’t exactly understand what happened. And, my bigger question is… Why were you guys forced into vision men? What did you do?” But before I could get answers to any of those two questions, Craig picked up a knife and sliced it at my throat. I always expect to feel pain, but naturally… I don’t.

            I woke up. I look around. Natalia woke up everyone else. I have no idea why. Maybe her shift was over? I doubt it though. She didn’t stay sentry very long. I looked at her face expression. She looked… Afraid. Something was up. I immediately got up from my bed and said,

            “What’s going on?”

            Natalia quickly woke up everyone else then she pointed off towards the stairs that lead to the trapdoor. Standing in the shadows was someone… Tall.

            “Chad? Drew?” I asked warily.

            “I am not Chad. Or Drew. Nor am I Jessica.” The sickening voice said. The voice sounded familiar. It sounded as if it was coming through forced breathing like there was mucus in its throat. Mucus or…

            The person, I mean the demon was Shax. He found us. And he was blocking the only exit. We were trapped.

Author's Note

Chapter 6 is in! Sorry, took me a while to publish this one. Mainly because I accidentally deleted the original script and I had to rewrite it. I didn't want to write the same thing again so I started on another idea for this chapter. Thankfully this new Chapter 6 does not effect the future chapters in any way at all.