Finally, another chapter! I'm really sorry about the delays, but I've been buried under homework and Fall Break was just this past weekend. I'm going to try and post a chapter a day now, though, until the end. Sorry if you have to go and re-read the last couple chapters...but it's not that painful, is it? Haha. Anyway, here's the next installment.
Chapter Ten
Max froze. The thing’s bloodshot eyes were staring at him hungrily as it slowly began to stagger forward. Landon stumbled in to the room and gasped, hands over his head. It was like something had exploded inside his mind—white-hot pain seared throughout his entire body so fiercely that he fell to the ground.
Jonas didn’t know what to do. Once again, he felt as though his stupid power was useless…
He looked around the room for a weapon—anything that he could throw at the creature. It had moved away from the door and was advancing slowly on Max, who stood rooted to the ground. He looked from the door to Max…
“Ness!” he yelled out, dashing toward the sliding glass door. He unlocked it and yanked it wide open, praying that Ness would catch on to his idea.
She narrowed her eyes in concentration, and the thing stopped moving. Suddenly, it was hurled backwards by an invisible force so powerful that Jonas swore he could feel a new tension in the air. The thing hit into the wooden railing on the deck and lay motionless. Landon made a noise as if he, too, had been affected by the strength of the telekinetic energy.
Ness ran out the back patio door and immediately got pelted by hard rain. Again, she narrowed her eyes and the man went flying over the railing and twenty feet down to Max’s back yard. She put her hands on the wood and peered over.
“I think he’s gone, guys!” she called inside. The three boys came out onto the deck, but Landon was leaning heavily on Jonas. He slowly put his weight back on his own two feet and wiped the rain off his forehead.
“Okay. This officially sucks,” he said. His hands were shaking badly.
“Do you think he’s dead?” Ness asked.
“Well, that’s hard to say,” Landon replied. “He looked pretty dead to me when he was walking around.”
Ness laughed and looked down into the yard again. “I can’t see him—”
Two bony hands reached up over the railing and slipped themselves around Ness’s wrists.
“Ness, look out—!”
She yelped as she was pulled face-first over the railing. Jonas and Landon dove forward and grabbed her by the ankles. “Don’t let go!” she pleaded, face-to-face with the bloody man. His rotten breath smelled of decaying flesh and his lips were twisted into an evil smile. Ness tried to concentrate on her power, but she was terrified. It wasn’t going to work under this sort of pressure.
“Max, what are you doing?” Jonas yelled, looking back at the blonde boy. His eyes were wide and full of horror. He wasn’t moving. “Help us, Max!”
Landon’s head was still on fire, but he wouldn’t let go of Ness. The rain wasn’t helping much—Ness’s clothes were soaked; his hands were wet; he couldn’t see…and the pain didn’t help either…
“Max, get over here!” Jonas was shouting, but Max did nothing. He looked like he was hyperventilating; his eyes got wider and rounder as the seconds ticked by.
A light erupted in Jonas’s head, and all of a sudden, he knew what to do. Camael’s words were resonating through his mind: and who says that you’ve developed all of your gifts? He had another gift—a lot more. But one was revealing itself to him right at that moment.
“Hold on to her, Landon!”
“I am,” Landon said and he took Ness’s other ankle. Jonas raised an arm, not sure of how he was going to do this…
He closed his eyes and thought of fire—of volcanoes, of campfires, of smoke and embers. He pictured it pouring out of his hand and streaming toward that thing.
As he thought it, a stream of fire burst out of his fingertips like a flamethrower and hit the bloody man directly. The thing screamed out in pain as it caught on fire—what was left of its hair singed off and his robes burned like a torch. Ness was struggling to break free and still remain out of the fire’s path.
The flames kept pouring out of Jonas’s hand until the bloody man let go with a final scream of agony. Landon nearly fell backwards while still holding on to Ness, but he somehow managed to pull her back onto the deck. Ness was gasping and clutching wildly at Landon’s arms, scared nearly to death. Her red hair was plastered to her face by the rain.
Jonas looked at his hand in amazement. It wasn’t charred, nor had the skin melted away. In fact, he hadn’t felt the heat of the flame at all—he just felt the raw power flooding out of his body in the form of fire. He looked skyward, and not only did he get a face full of water, but an odd feeling that there was someone up there looking at him—and smiling.
“Are you all right?” he asked Ness, who had calmed down at bit. She was still holding tightly on to Landon’s arm—her knuckles were white—but she nodded. Max, however, was in a different state. He was still staring straight forward, his eyes fixed on the space where the thing had tried to pull Ness to the ground.
“What is wrong with you, Max?” Jonas asked, anger in his golden eyes like fire. “How could you just…just stand there?”
Max’s eyes focused on Jonas, and he slowly backed up until he was flat against the sliding door. “That thing has attacked me before,” he said quietly.
“The bloody guy?” Jonas asked.
“No, the Easter Bunny, dumbass. Yeah, the bloody guy!” Max yelled, breathing hard. When his breath stopped coming so quickly, he said, “I see him all the time. He follows me to school…I wake up at night, and he’s standing over my bed…he can walk through walls and anything solid, and if I go invisible, he can see me.”
Landon, Ness, and Jonas stared at Max.
“My God, Max, why didn’t you tell us—”
“I see him everywhere! You don’t understand…he attacked me on the first day of school and has been there ever since…I don’t know what it is, but it’s after me.”
Max sighed and leaned harder against the door, his strange blue eyes shut tight. Ness, Landon, and Jonas didn’t take their eyes off him—and that was a good thing, because when his whole body passed right through the solid door, they might not have believed what happened.
It was as if the glass had become water—and Max was doing the Dead Man’s float and sinking. He lay inside on the kitchen floor, stunned for a moment. The other three quickly glanced at each other and simultaneously tried to enter the kitchen through the open door.
“What did I just do?” Max asked stupidly.
“You fell through the glass,” Ness answered.
“Is it broken?”
Landon’s hands were pressed firmly against the glass, but they didn’t go through. “Nope…it’s in one piece.”
Max stood up and put a finger to the glass. It stopped, just as any normal person’s hand would when meeting with a solid surface. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and pushed, and then his whole arm went right though.
“Great,” Max mumbled, looking at his arm. “This is just wonderful…just what I need. Another power.”
Down below, lying sprawled and charred on the damp ground, the bloody man slowly got up and staggered away. He disappeared just as he reached the edge of the woods.
* * * * *
Later that night, Landon lay in bed trying to put sense to everything that had happened. The fact that his head was pounding didn’t make the task any easier—he could hear so many thoughts that he hardly knew which ones were his.
It had never happened like this before—he could always control what he wanted to hear and what he didn’t want to hear. Even worse, when Ness sent out her telekinetic power, it felt like his mind was being ripped apart. It seemed as though Camael’s visit had magnified his power by ten or more, and now he had to learn how to harness it all over again.
He laughed softly to himself, but stopped abruptly because it hurt to do so. However, it was almost impossible not to laugh when he thought about having to control his power long ago.
Landon was six years old when he first discovered he could read other peoples’ thoughts. He’d come home from kindergarten one day and went to the little fish bowl in the kitchen only to find it wasn’t there anymore.
“Mom!” he called, panicking. “Mom! The fish’s gone!”
His mom walked into the kitchen to see Landon’s gray eyes wide with confusion. “He’s just taking a vacation, honey,” she told him.
That’s what she told him—but that’s not what she thought. Landon’s mind opened itself right then. He not only heard her verbal words, but her thoughts, too: hopefully he won’t realize it died…maybe he’ll forget about it…
“Mom, did he go on vacation or die?” Landon asked, and his mom raised an eyebrow at him.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, but she thought, oh no.
“You said he died and I’ll forget about it and he went on vacation. But he can’t die and go on vacation at the same time.”
Mrs. Jameson stared at her son, amazed at what he was telling her. “Uh, well…” she began, not knowing what to say. Her mind was buzzing with every story she could think of. “He died, Landon…but he went on vacation in heaven.”
“Do fishes go to heaven?” he asked, and a whole new conversation began where Landon heard two different explanations at once.
His poor mother…what did she think about his sudden intuition? After that day, Landon never gave any sort of hint that he could hear what people thought. It seemed like it scared his mother the first time it happened, and he never wanted to scare his mom again. Soon, he learned how to block everything out but his own thoughts. His mind was like a brick wall.
But not anymore…
It couldn’t go on like this. He would have to tell the others that they’d have to say, Well, sorry God, but you need to find some new angels.
Why them, anyway? What had they done to have this sudden responsibility thrown at them like this?
God never gives you more than you can handle.
Well, this was more than he could handle—a lot more than he could handle. The first time something happened, and already one of them almost got killed. How many more times would they have to go through it before God’s plan was fulfilled?
God works in mysterious ways.
This was a bit too mysterious. They were singled out from normal people, putting their lives on the line for the whole world…and that was all they knew. Camael hadn’t told them everything—he hadn’t even told them what their other powers were. He just…poof, left. What if it was all a nasty trick?
You must have, beyond all things, faith.
Faith! Faith that he wouldn’t die, faith that no one would ever find out the truth about him…it was hard enough to accept it himself! How were other people going to react? Look at how they reacted two thousand years earlier, when Jesus Christ himself walked on earth! He got crucified! And Landon was, by no means, Jesus.
Where a door closes, a window opens.
Landon saw no open windows in this situation. Sure, he had a funny feeling that God really did exist now, but with this responsibility thrown at him like this…yeah, all the windows were slammed shut. He hated to be pessimistic—right now, he felt more like Max than himself—but this was impossible. How could four teenagers stop the end of the world?
With God, anything is possible.
With those thoughts, Landon’s insomnia slowly faded and he drifted off to sleep.
I don't know if this makes sense, but I think you should let that be unique to the charecters.
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