Carly's Test (Not the first chapter)

Through the stone doors was a chamber of marble. Long as a football field, its foreboding dome ceiling towered over the group and contained no windows or cracks to be seen. The purity of the void only marred by thin silver lines which covered the rooms entire black surface; meandering and tangling like cob webs caught in a breeze and giving the chambers walls the appearance of a poorly drawn road map. The floor was flat, a calm wave less sea reaching out to the horizon in front of them.

No breeze ran through the space. So why then, Carly wondered, was there a chill running down her spine?

“Remember to breathe” She thought to herself. “This is not the place to lose it.

The lonely sound of the groups footsteps echoed eerily as they walked farther into the room

“Is this...The end?” Johnathan asked.  Spinning around in a circle to take in every corner.

Rebecca shrugged, confused. “Of the Lair? I don’t think so. The old man said that there would be a powerful challenge waiting for us at the end. It doesn’t look like anythings here.”

The chamber went silent as our five heroes came to a stop in its center. For a moment, no one said a word. Each silently looking for a correct assessment of the situation. Timothy began to pace around his still friends, tapping his fingers on his blue jeans as his jaw clenched and his mind raced. Chris to was absorbed in thought. Staring thoughtfully into space as he absentmindedly snapped his right thumb and middle finger together rhythmically. Each time his fingers separated from each other, a small flash of flame materialized about an inch from the tip. The fire disappeared as fast as it arrived, leaving only a wisp of smoke which suspended in the air for a brief moment before drifting away into nothingness.

Carly stood motionless with her arms crossed. Hugging herself so tightly that her knuckles turned white from the force of her grip as her hands clenched the collar of her blue blouse. Strains of stray blonde hair had escaped her normally well kept bangs and now hung wildly in front of sparkless green eyes. The normal gleam of excitement was, for the moment, gone. Replaced with a glazed lethargy.  

A vague feeling began to creep into her. Unidentifiable and all consuming. As if an invisible finger was pressing into her temples and another into the base of her skull.  She did not speak, for she knew not what to say. Finally, timothy broke the silence.

“So what the hell do we do now?” He asked, continuing to pace. “Its a dead end! Don’t tell me we came all this way for an empty room!” Jonathan rubbed his chin, nodding. Chris quieted his hand, bored of snapping.

“Patience, we need to think. It would be a waste to allow  our judgment to be clouded now.”   Timothy's nose wrinkled as his lips turned into a thin rigged line.

“Patience ?” He spat, distraught. “We don’t have all the time in the world, guys.” His face suddenly turned dark as his gaze wandered to his own boots. “And if we fail…”

'

Jonathan took a step towards Timothy and placed a hand on his friends shoulder. Looking up at the taller man, his face stern with determination. “We will not fail.” His hand dropped away as he looked around the chamber one more time. “There must be something we are missing”

Rebecca smiled, “Yeah!” She said happily, “Maybe this room is more than it looks like! We should split up and see if we can find anything suspicious!” Rebecca's eyes scanned across the group and came to a rest on Carly, who had not moved or said a word. With a little jolt of worry, she saw that much of the color had drained from her team mates usually rosy cheeks. “Carly?” She asked, concerned. “Are You feeling Okay?”

Carly stood inside of an oak doorway. As she reached out and ran her hand down the smooth varnish, a thought nagged at her. Hadn’t she just been doing something? Yes, she was sure of that.  But what? She had been with some people, friends, she thought. But who?

However, she was pretty sure she recognized the room she found herself in. The first floor of a small two story townhouse, A staircase stood directly in front of her. The lights on the second were unlit so Carly could only see about halfway up the incline before she lost her vision to the shadows. Looking to her left she saw a kitchen.

Ugly green wallpaper covered the wall, torn here and there and worn by the passage of time. Chipped ceramic plates still half covered with recently eaten food were piled up in a small sink with a rusty faucet. The refrigerator was pretty bare. Pinned to it were a single elementary school test, and a picture of a mother and daughter.

The mother was a beautiful woman with a kind smile, In the picture the two posed in front of a tree in a public park on a sunny summer day. The woman knelt with her arm around her daughter, her eyes beaming with pride. The child that looked back at Carly appeared to be a bit skinny for her age. Maybe 9 or 10, she clung to her mother's dress. She did not share her mothers dark hair or complexion, but instead sported a neat blonde ponytail. She beamed at the camera with Green eyes. an panic began to grip Carly as memories flooded back to her. Frantically she swung her head to the right.

To her relief, the living room chair was empty. A worn leather recliner sat in front of an undersized TV. A pennant paying homage to her father's favorite baseball team was nailed lopsidedly to the wall above it. A familiar vapory smell hit Carly's nose and she saw that the living room end table and carpet were covered with crumpled beer cans.

“No.” whimpered the poor girl. “Why am i here again?” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

A cold feminine chuckle boomed through the house. The voice it belonged to was menacing, mocking, and cut through Carly like a knife. “Because this is where you belong.” The voice taunted.

Frantically, Carly reached to her back and unsheathed her staff. Making a circle, she tried desperately to find the source of the voice. But it was no use. It seemed like the degradation was coming from the walls themselves. “Where are you? Fight me you coward!” She screamed, her hands shaking as she struggled to keep her weapon steady.

“Me?” The voice chided. “I’m where I have always been, close to your heart. And the hearts of all the little s**t with daddy issues.”

“Shut up!” Carly’s rage began to bubble. Taking the place of the sorrow and panic she had felt just moments before.

The voice boomed through the teenagers mind. “Why do you run, Carly? You can get as far away from home as you want. You can chase whatever bull s**t little fantasy you want. Go ahead try to find a good guy who cares about you. But you know deep down that if a man does exist that will treat you better than he did, that will make you feel special, care about you for more than what’s between your legs, men like that don’t settle for used up w****s.”

Carly trembled, her hands clenching her staff so hard that her wrists began to shake from the effort, “I’m going to kill you!” She spat through tears and a shaking voice.

“Oh child” Shot back the demon, “You can’t kill me...I’m you.” The wretched voice chuckled and dropped down to a whisper as it added, “And there’s nowhere left to run”  Suddenly the house began to shake. It started so violently that the plates began to rock out of the sink, breaking as they crashed against the tile floor. Carly could hear the boards in the walls and ceilings creaking under the stress. The house was coming apart at the seams.

The roaring got louder as Carly grabbed onto the door handle. Sweat poured down her face as she tried to twist it. It would not turn. Cursing to herself, She then began to ram her shoulder against the hard wood preventing her escape. A gasp escaped her as the force of her body weight being flung against the un-moving surface drove the air from her lungs. After three or four attempts, Carly backed away from the door, throwing one tired lunging kick, half out of frustration, half out of desperation. The door stood, unmarked.

The tremor continued and Carly sunk to her knees. She was out of options, and out of time. The hopelessness of the situation took a hold of her. She was going to die here. “Funny,” she thought as the ceiling above her began to visibly crack. “I thought I left this house. I really did.”

An ear splitting crack crack overwhelmed Carly's sentence as the ceiling above her finally imploded. All at once an avalanche of rubble came down on top of her, rushing towards her quicker than her brain could detect. In a feeble attempt to defend herself, she threw her arms over her face and closed her eyes tight, waiting for the impact.

“Carly? Are you okay?”  Carly let out a sharp breath and came back to herself with a jolt. Looking around quickly, she tried her best to make sense of what she saw. At first her vision was blurry. But as the fuzziness faded, the black marble and silver etchings on the floor at her feet came into clear contrast. Finding her depth, she looked up towards the voice she had heard.

All four of her friends were staring at her. Concern etched across their faces. Johnathan in particular seemed to be bothered by something he saw in her facial expression. As the group gathered around her he stepped forward first. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look pale.”

Carly struggled to find her words. Unsure how to adequately describe what had just happened, she opted for the quickest warning she could get out. “Something's coming... and it’s powerful.”    As she spoke, a brilliant blue light filled the chamber as the group looked up. The source of the light was a ball of energy materializing at the highest point of the dome ceiling. It floated peacefully in mid air. Upon seeing it a knot twisted inside Carly's stomach.

“What the hell is that?” Thomas said, shielding his eyes and squinting at the orb.

“That, is our enemy. The demon we are looking for, and her human partner. They are one now. In tandem.”      

“How do you know that?” Johnathan asked, baffled. Suddenly, the orb dropped out of mid air, speeding like a bullet towards the floor.

“Run!” Carly screamed. The group scattered as the orb plummeted in a flash, hitting the ground with unfathomable speed. When it made contact, a wall of energy expanded from the crash site, lifting the group off of their feet and sending them careening through the air.

Carly felt time slow down as she turned her head mid flight. It was with a start that she saw a fast approaching mass of blackness. She was sailing head first towards a wall of rock. Thinking quickly, she raised both her arms as the wall approached and unleashed a massive shot of magic from her hands. The spell hit the wall and ballooned outward, causing a miniature explosion which carly felt hit her, first in the arms and then the chest, The kick back slowed her momentum immediately,forming a cushion between her body and the wall. After a few feet, she came to a complete stop, her nose just inches from the smooth granite. Sighing with relief,  she tumbled softly to the floor.

The rest of the group seemed to have held up a little better. Timothy, who had landed about ten yards to Carly's left, grunted as he peeled himself off the floor. Getting to his feet, he made circular motions with his right shoulder, which he had apparently landed on. “Whoa!” He said, eyes wide. “That was intense! You still in one piece?”

“I think so.” Carly said, breathing heavily. She turned away from Chris to see how the others had faired. Her jaw dropped as the surreal scene hit her all at once. The other three were okay. Jonathan, Rebecca, and Chris had all hobbled to their feet and stood in a group about eighty yards away. But none of them seemed very interested in their own crash landings.  Everyone was trying to make sense of what was happening in the center of chamber.

A large dome of translucent red energy surrounded the area of impact. The structure was twenty feet tall at its highest point and about thirty yards in circumference. It gave off a faint electric hum that grew louder in Carly's ear as she walked nearer. Inside the dome existed two figures. They peered back at her smugly through the red glow.

The first was human. A woman standing about five and a half feet tall and appearing to be in her mid sixties. Carly noticed with disdain that it also appeared the woman had done everything she could to avoid the admission of  her age. Her bright blue eyes and shoulder length permed blonde hair suggested that in her youth she may have cut quite a figure. But now her skin had taken on the appearance of leather with a plastic covering. Stretched tautly over her face and giving her cheeks the appearance of being pulled towards the back of her head. A wrinkle here or their had escaped her vain attempts to defy time and gravity. Draped over her was a pageant dress. White with diamond frills and strapless. Carly noted with anticipation the curved sword the woman held loosely in her right hand.

Above the woman floated a demon. At first glance, the creature gave off the guise of humanity. But close observation removed that charade. The demon was a temptress, long pale legs and wide hips were hidden just poorly enough under a short cut black dress to remove any need for imagination. Her cleavage seemed a tough job for the low cut fabric, threatening to escape at any moment. A sharp jaw and high beautiful cheek bones rested under a head of glistening amber hair. The demons lips were bright red, as tempting and dangerous as hell fire itself. It was in the eyes, though, that her disguise was flawed. They were empty, under her eyelids laid only darkness. A swirling mass of hate that leaked out through the socket and occasionally danced around her eyes and face.

The demon held no weapon, which only lead Carly to believe she didn’t need one.

“Everyone! Group up over here!” Jonathan yelled over the humming. Carly began to walk around the energy field, towards him. She and Timothy arrived at their destination near simultaneously. Timothy sprinting as he started from farther away. Reunited, the group huddled together, shoulder to shoulder.

“Well, I suppose we should have been a bit more careful what we wished for.” said Chris, his usually calm voice displaying a hint of anxiety. “If this thing can put that much power into its entrance, we need to be careful. We’ve never fought an enemy like this.”

“Exactly.” Said Jonathan, nodding “No one lose their heads, we need to figure out what this thing is and what it can do. From their we can make a plan of attack.”

“We outnumber them two to one.” Timothy pointed out “ Shouldn’t the plan be, space out, distract, and then swarm? Sure this things got a lot of pop, but the numbers game catches up to everyone eventually.”

“That thing is a mass accumulation of human evil. Probably centuries old.” Rebecca shot back. “There's confidence, Tim, and then There’s arrogance. We don’t even know if our weapons can hurt this thing, yet.”  Timothy looked down, frustrated, but resigned.

“Maybe her human partner can give us a clue, “ Said Carly, “The old man said that powerful demons attract and make pacts with the power hungry, does anyone recognize the old hag?”

“I don’t” Said Chris, frowning. “Is she wearing a beauty contestants dress? What is she a pageant queen?”

Jonathan shook his head, “A bit old for that, isn't she?”

“Yes!” Said Rebecca, excitedly, “But she’s not too old to run the show! I know her! She’s Macy Green!  The lady who runs the Miss Star Beauty Pageants!” The rest of the group looked at her, bewildered. “You know? The ones that have been all over the news lately?”

Carly knew. It made her want to vomit, but she remembered. “The ones that have been accused of selling their models out like escorts to rich sponsors. Threatening to drop them from the contest if they don’t go along with it.” Her blood boiled at the thought. Young women looking for a better life, instead forced into trading their innocence for someone else's gain. Carly began to fantasize about her staves blade finding finding Macy Greens throat. She hoped the woman would not die quickly. She wanted to make her feel the powerlessness. The loneliness.

“And if she’s here…” Jonathan began, not wanting to go where his sentence would lead.

“Then the accusations are true.” Said Timothy, face white at the thought, “All of them....Those poor girls.”

“Jonathan.” Carly said tightly and shortly,  in a voice so severe that the other four all instantly locked their attention on her. Surprised to hear such venom come out of their lighthearted friend. “I know that you're concerned and you want to be patient, But I’m going to kill this woman.”

Her words surprised him, and her voice wavered, but the look in her eyes told Johnathan she meant every syllable. It was not rage he saw, not in its purest form, instead he saw pain. Old pain. The kind that comes from wounds that will never see daylight. “Okay,” Jonathan said softly,  “Lets Go”

The rest of the group nodded, seemingly finding strength of their own in Carly's conviction. Together they approached the dome. “Everyone go in at the same time. Remember our training” Said Johnathan, “One. Two...Three!”

Carly reached her hand out towards the field of energy, pausing for a moment right before the tip of her finger made contact with the surface. After a deep breath, she pushed her hand into the wall of red. It slid right through. Her hand and wrist wrist felt wet and cold where the substance made contact with her skin. Still, her arm met no resistance. It felt as if she were swimming through jello. She had almost gotten her entire arm to the other side when she heard Rebecca scream.

Pulling her arm back quickly and whirling to her left, she saw Rebecca. Her hand seemed stuck to the surface of the field. She was writhing and contorting her body as if being hit by an electric shock. Carly lunged out towards her to pull her away from the pain, but by the time she had covered the distance, Rebecca had already pulled her own hand free.

“Jesus!” Timothy exclaimed, all three of the boys were also holding their hands and wrists in agony, as if they had just been burned. A cool laugh cut through the chamber. A laugh Carly recognized instantly.

“Only one may enter.” The demon said, her lips warping into a sadistic smile. Carly shuddered as those monstrous hollow eyes locked with hers. “But be comforted, children, for that means only one of you need die.” Carly's mind went cold, faced with a somber revelation

“What does she mean? We can’t let someone go in their alone!” Chris exclaimed.

“Only one may enter?” Rebecca repeated. “But it wouldn’t let any of us through in the first place!”

“It let me in.”  The group fell silent when Carly spoke. “My hand passed right by. I didn’t get shocked, or burned.”

“No.” Rebecca whimpered, “Carly…”

“I’m going. This is my fight.” Carly said sternly. “I’ve ran long enough.”

“I can’t let you do that. There has to be a better way.” Jonathan said, reaching out and putting a hand on Carly's shoulder. Carly whipped around, planting the palm of her right hand firmly into Jonathan's chest, driving him backwards a step.

“It’s not your decision!” She yelled, tears forming in her eyes, “Damn you John, can’t you see that from the second we walked in here, everything that has happened has been specifically aimed at me? I can’t hide from this! I don’t get to hide from this! Besides, whats our other option? We all go home and say that we gave it a good shot while the world ends?”

Jonathan looked for a rebuttal, but none came to him. “You’re right.” He looked at the others. Chris nodded solemnly in agreement. “We won’t stop you.”

“Like we could if we wanted to.” Smirked Timothy sadly.

Carly returned his smirk gratefully, nodding at her friend. She turned from the group, walked up to the dome and stopped. Collecting her thoughts, she remembered the beer cans lying on the floor of an old town house. She remembered her mother's smile beaming at her from an old photograph. The wails of her baby sister. The desperation she had felt hearing them, not knowing how to comfort a child when she was young enough to need comforting herself. Holding on to that emotion, she stepped forward.

The cold washed over her body all at once. Sending a shock of adrenaline through her system. When she opened her eyes again, the two women were looking at her sinisterly. With a butterfly or two appearing in her stomach, Carly noted that the pair looked much more imposing without a wall in between her and them. She reached behind her head and unholstered her staff, bringing it to ready position in front of her with a graceful twirl.

“Carly, darling.” The demons voice called out, “I think its high time we came to an understanding.”

Author's Note

Not a full chapter yet. But the first significant chunk of writing I have done for this novel concept. I picked a scene mid way through the story that i felt like exemplifies the stories themes. Not fully edited yet, so grammar mistakes are surely present. This is just a scene that i felt would be a good one to write first to show first time readers what my vision for the novel as a whole is like.