Young Writers Society

Chapter Seventeen

The timing was perfect. Ness somehow knew that it would be, or else she wouldn’t have suggested this plan of action to Landon in the first place.

The Bloody Guy had been slowly materializing behind Max the whole time—the more they made fun of Max, the clearer his Mensa Corpus became. He had been staggering towards Max the entire time, raising his jagged, blood-streaked dagger higher and higher with every step.

As soon as Max’s shout of “I am not worthless!” rang out in the nurse’s office, the Bloody Guy stumbled backwards. Max’s words hit him like a physical thing.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not any of those things that you said,” Max was yelling at Landon, Ness, and Jonas. He stepped toward them, blue eyes flashing.

Ness smiled to herself as Max’s anger rose up against them. Every word from his mouth made the Bloody Guy cry out in pain.

“I don’t suck,” he yelled, taking another step forward. Bloody Guy’s rotting hands clutched at his head and he moaned in pain. Max seemed oblivious to the fact that his Mensa Corpus was dying right behind him.

He didn’t even seem to notice that he was overcoming his weakness.

“I’m not horrible and I don’t mess everything up!” he yelled. The Bloody Guy fell to his knees.

“Nope,” Ness said quietly, not watching Max. Her eyes were locked on what was happening behind him.

“I am one of the best people to get stuck with when you have to try and save the world,” he went on. Landon was trying not to laugh; the whole thing seemed completely melodramatic. Then again, what was happening to the Bloody Guy seemed to be part of the special effects taken right out of a science-fiction movie.

“Yeah, you are,” Landon told him.

“God wouldn’t have picked us all to work together if I wasn’t!” Max continued. “I would never let you die, and I would never mess things up that bad!” He was breathing harder as his anger rose.

Behind him, tendrils of blue light were winding their way around the Mensa Corpus like ropes. They wrapped around his wrists and ankles, pulling his grasping hands away from his rotting head. The blue ropes seemed solid even if they were made out of light—they were binding Bloody Guy to the spot.

The dagger he was holding—sharp and silver, its blade jagged like a bolt of lightening—had dropped to the ground. Bloody Guy was struggling against the ropes, trying with all his being to get to the dagger. The light tightened itself around him.

“I thought you were my friends,” Max was yelling, quieter now. “Friends aren’t supposed to treat each other like this.”

“You’re right, they aren’t,” Jonas said, his lips turned up into a smile.

“Oh, so you’re saying we’re not friends?” Max asked. He seemed so much taller than normal. The light in his eyes was terrifying. “Fine then! I don’t need you!”

“Look behind you, Max,” Ness told him.

The blonde boy turned around to see Bloody Guy practically hog-tied to the floor with mysterious lights the same color as Max’s eyes. The dagger was lying at his feet, flashing in the sapphire light.

Max looked back at his three friends, his eyes wide in surprise. He bent over and picked up the dagger. Bloody Guy wriggled, trying to break free of the strange binds holding his body in place.

“Remember what Camael said,” Landon whispered. “Either he kills you, or you kill him.”

Max considered this, his eyes narrowing in to slits as he looked from the blade to Bloody Guy. “Actually,” he said softly, turning the dagger over in his hands, “I don’t need you.”

He shoved the blade through the heart of his Mensa Corpus and twisted it. The creature on the floor screamed as the dagger burned the same color blue as the ropes binding him in place.

Max pulled it out of the Bloody Guy’s chest and stood over his writhing body. Ness tried to take in the spectacle of it all, not able to fully believe what was happening before her eyes.

The Bloody Guy was fully enveloped in blue light, the brightest point of it being where the dagger was thrust into his heart. He was shaking uncontrollably; despite that, he was still trying to escape his binds. His skin began to bubble and melt away from his muscle and bone, turning into water and leaving a large, thin pool on the floor.

Soon, he was completely gone. All that was left of him was a puddle of dirty water. Max waved a hand over the liquid; the other three watched in amazement as it seemed to be sucked into the linoleum like a sponge. Even the dagger in Max’s hand melted into water, but it absorbed into his pale skin; as his elemental power was activated, his eyes glowed the same phosphorescent blue as the ropes that had bound Bloody Guy.

“Hey, I think I killed him,” he said with a smile, his eyes fading back to their normal color. It was the first real smile they’d seen him give in weeks. The other three smiled back.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Max,” Ness said, stepping toward him. “Kind of had to do it, you know?”

“Yeah, we really didn’t mean what we said,” Landon told him. “But he started to appear behind you and Ness had the idea, and…”

“It’s okay. No more attack-of-the-Bloody-Guy. It’s fine,” Max assured them.

“At least time is still frozen,” Jonas said, looking back at the nurse. “Could you imagine what would have happened if she would have unfroze while all that was going on?”

The four laughed together. “Good-bye memory, that’s what,” Landon said. “We’d better get back to the cafeteria and put things right again.”

They grabbed on to Max and phased through the wall, ending up in the hallways of Saint Catherine’s High School once again. There were a few people walking there, all of them frozen in an awkward, mid-walk position. A boy down the hall had one of his hands grabbing at his crotch, and Ness burst out laughing.

“This is incredible,” she said, going up to a girl coming out of the bathroom and poking her unmoving arms.

“It’s almost like the school is ours,” Landon mentioned, jumping over a freshman that was leaning over to pick up the books he dropped.

“Who says school? Let’s make it the world!” Jonas yelled.

If the halls were strange, the cafeteria was even better. There was a paper airplane stopped in midair; Jonas snatched it and threw it. It floated for a little bit before stopping again, suspended by nothing.

“This is great,” Max laughed, sticking his arm through the head of one of the football players.

“Yeah, but I don’t know how much longer it can last,” Jonas said, heading back toward their usual table.

“Maybe forever,” Ness said while making the paper airplane fly around the cafeteria with her mind.

“He’s right though.” Landon sat down on his side of the table. “C’mon.”

“Aw, you’re no fun,” Max mumbled as he took his seat, closely followed by Ness.

Jonas blinked, and time started to move again. The sudden roar that filled the cafeteria was almost deafening; the four of them jumped but started to laugh. However, the roar stopped as suddenly as it started.

Worry struck Ness as she looked around, hoping that the kids there didn’t somehow realize what happened.

“Jonas, why did you freeze things again?” Landon asked, eyes traveling across the room.

“It’s not me,” Jonas said. “If it was me, you’d all be frozen too because you’re not touching me.”

“Then what’s up? If it’s not you, then what is it?”

“So I hear you killed the Mensa Corpus?”

Camael stepped out of the lunch line holding a tray piled with French fries and chocolate milk. Ness raised an eyebrow. “Do you have any idea how much saturated fat is in all that?” she asked.

“Sure I do,” he replied, stuffing five French fries into his mouth. “Tastes good.”

“Ignore her, she’s from California,” Jonas told him.

“What about the Mensa Corpus?” Camael asked, taking a seat in midair and putting the tray on an invisible table. “Did you really kill him?” The angel looked like a three-year-old engrossed in cartoons with his carton of milk.

“I killed him,” Max told Camael, beaming.

The slightest twitch ran through Camael’s eye, but it turned into a smile. “That’s great. Like I said, kill or be killed…good thing it wasn’t the other way around.” He swallowed his mouthful of fries and said, “But that’s not why I came down here again.”

“Of course not,” Ness muttered. “Now what?”

“These things need ketchup,” Camael said, making a face. “Be a doll and go get me some, will you?”

Ness glared. Instead of getting up, she narrowed her eyes and a bunch of ketchup packets flung themselves over to Camael, flying off the condiments table and landing in his lap.

“You are one lazy son-of-a—”

“Anyway,” Landon cut in, shooting Ness a grin, “What did you come here for?”

Camael struggled to open a ketchup packet. “Well, it seems that Evil is this close—” he held up his thumb and forefinger so that they were almost touching “—to figuring out how to shift the balance of power.”

“So let me guess. We have to get back in that house and find the Candle as soon as possible?” Ness asked.

“You get smarter and smarter every time I have to talk to you,” the angel said, fake shock flashing across his face.

“Yeah, well, you get—”

“Ness,” Landon interrupted again, catching her thought before she could form the words.

“God is getting impatient with you four,” Camael said, finally getting the ketchup open. A jet of red shot out from the packet and went all over the front of his white robe. “Damn it,” he muttered, using a fry to scoop off the excess of condiment. Ness shoved a fist in her mouth to stop her laughter.

“Anyway,” Camael continued, annoyance clear in his features, “He’s about to lash out with His wrath and fury, or whatever it is He does every couple thousand years.”

“What are you talking about?” Jonas asked.

“Oh, you know, the Great Flood, the fall of Rome, the Goat Curse…that sort of thing,” Camael replied absently.

“The Goat Curse…?” Max looked confused.

“You haven’t seen the Chicago Cubs win the World Series in awhile, have you?”

Ness snickered. This guy couldn’t be serious. “God wouldn’t curse the Chicago Cubs. I don’t think he’d curse anyone, actually.”

“He wants you to be God-fearing people, so why not?” Camael told her. “Honestly, someone needs to muzzle that girl. Landon, could you just…make her forget how to talk, or something?”

Landon chose to ignore the angel’s comment; Ness opened her mouth to say something, but Landon spoke before she could. “We have a plan to get into the house…”

“Do you mean the one with Max distracting the girl?”

“Well, yeah—”

“It’s not going to work. Don’t try it, you hear me? You have to get in by stealth. They don’t let just anyone walk into that house.”

“Don’t they have any sort of protection up against us, or anything?” Max asked.

“This is Evil we’re talking about here. They have big egos…they think you won’t try to get in again, and if you do, they’ll stop you. Well, they think they can stop you. What they don’t understand is that Good always conquers all.”

“That’s reassuring,” Ness said.

“I think I might have found out where the Candle is,” Camael said. He waved his hand in the air and a smoky picture appeared there. It was the same dark, cavernous room that filled Ness’s nightmare.

“I’ve seen that before,” Ness told him. “We can’t go there. In my dream, they found us and killed us.”

“Don’t you understand? Not everything you dream is exact,” Camael yelled. Ness shrank back at his tone. “Your prophetic dreams get mixed up with normal dreams. Your fears and anxieties are hidden in there, too. You have to learn how to control them to make the completely prophetic.”

“But Ness is right. If that thing is so important, it has to be guarded somehow. And probably heavily, too,” Landon said.

“It isn’t guarded by people. It has its own magic buried in it, and it’s activated when it needs to protect itself,” Camael explained.

“That doesn’t make sense, then,” Max said, confused. “If Evil is trying to do something bad to it, then why doesn’t the Candle protect itself?”

Camael narrowed his eyes at Max. “There are reasons unbeknownst to me and you. The world has its own ways of working things out.” He shook his head. “That’s what you mortals don’t understand. The Candle is a very mysterious thing—no one could possibly know how to use it…except God, of course, and he doesn’t even reveal his secrets to his closest angels.”

“What if it decides to protect itself when we try to get it out of the house?” Jonas asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” Camael replied quickly. “God works in mysterious ways. So anyway…so you four have any idea of what you’re going to decide on Friday?”

“Hm, that’s Friday already, is it?” Ness asked, looking at her fingernails and rolling her eyes.

“Why are you changing the subject?” Landon asked.

“I’m not,” Camael snapped. “Who says there’s not relevancy?”

“With you, nothing is relevant,” Max muttered.

“The thing is, if you don’t get the Candle by Friday, the world could fall into a spiral…you know, the whole untimely end thing I told you about.”

“Which is why we’re going to get it out before Friday, and before we decide not to risk our lives for the rest of humanity,” Jonas said.

“Alright, then. I’ll get up there and tell God that you’re getting it out for him,” Camael said. “Do I have your word on that?”

“Yeah,” Landon said, gray eyes unmoving. “We’ll get it.”