Arrows of Acid

Chapter 31

Emil looked fearsome, even to Tomtinker, dressed in regalia in preparation for this ritual. He very much looked the part of a powerful brujo, and Tomtinker felt a moment's relief knowing that he was on Emil's side instead of the other guy's. 

Before they descended, Emil had painted his face and bare chest, and draped a necklace made out of bones, wood, and rattlesnake rattles around his neck. He also wore a shoulder holster that held in its scabbard the hugest hunting knife Tomtinker had ever seen. Emil also wore jeans and snake hunting boots that came up to his knees. Tomtinker wasn't gay by any means, but he was comfortable enough in his sexuality to admit that Emil was an extremely attractive man and given enough alcohol.... anyway, he brushed the thought aside to focus.

"It only gets darker from here," Emil warned as he tied his hair into a bun like a samurai.

They sat around a small campfire (where?)(backyard?). There were bowls and cups set out in front of them. He began chanting and rocking back in forth. Tomtinker watched politely. (world is ripping apart at the seams. Flashes here and there of "other-ness"). He shook around one of the cups containing more rattlesnake rattles, touched the bones on his chest, waved around a feather, Tomtinker sees shapes, shadows materialize from behind Emil. Emil seems not to notice, he is really into his ritual. The humanoid shadows creep forward, their eyes fixated on Tomtinker.

"Um, er, Rojas..." Tomtinker points at them, but Emil shakes his head for him to be quiet and then ignores him. He drinks from a steaming cup of potion, spits it onto the fire. He has thrown himself into the chant, eyes rolled back in his head, the chanting becoming more intense as the shadows move closer. Tomtinker sits frozen in place, the human shadow shapes growing giant right in front of his eyes. Emil told him not to interrupt no matter what, and he was trying his best to obey.

As he continues to sit there nervously, the shadows move around and past Emil, headed straight toward Tomtinker. They float over the fire, not at all bothered by it. Tomtinker put one arm behind him, about to scoot backwards and away, when something took hold of that arm. He whipped his head back and cried out in surprise to see another shadow-creature latched onto that arm, staring wide-eyed at him. It had been crawling toward him this whole time. The fire blazed and sputtered as if a great gust of wind had just blown through. Emil remained oblivious as the

shadows advanced on Tomtinker. The shadows in front of him grabbed him by the face and forced him to look at them.

Emil's chanting was feverish now, joined now by thousands of voices whispering all at once.

It was chaos in Tomtinker's brain. He felt himself losing consciousness. He saw flashes of Elders standing behind the shadows glaring down at him hard as stone. They crowded him out from seeing Emil, whose skin was red-hot to the touch with a fine sheen of sweat coating his exposed flesh. He slightly smoked in places as if burning from the inside. As the darkness enveloped Tomtinker, he heard a scream as if from far off, finally realizing that he himself was the one screaming. All the voices and noises of the universe being ripped apart made a great crescendo before falling deathly silent as Tomtinker dropped into oblivion.

Tomtinker awoke flat on his back to a bleak gray sky, silence is the only sound he heard, as if he were in a vacuum. He exhaled and was amazed to see his breath fog exit his mouth and curl up away into the atmosphere. He hadn't been able to see his breath ever since he died. He wondered at it a moment until it disappeared, then he sat up. It wasn't just the sky that was bleak; the whole world took on a bleakness that depressed Tomtinker. He stood up to get a better look at his surroundings. He was out in the middle of nowhere, scrub brush and red earth dotted here and there with big rocks as far as the eye could see, ringed by rocky mountains farther away. Big, white soft flakes floated down on him from above. He noticed some movement in the distance, so he squinted for a better look. He saw Noah and Ashalee run into a humongous mountain and disappear. Soon after that, blood began to trickle down from the top of the mountain, following the paths that millions of rains had carved into the rock faces. Dark storm clouds rapidly and unnaturally moved in over the top of the mountain, faster than they had any right to move, and the same hideous monster that killed Wicky landed heavily atop the mountain, its grotesque wings flapping unnervingly. Lightning flashed, and thunder crashed, and a horrible rumbling vibrated him where he stood. He looked to the right and saw a hole in the earth open right before his eyes. It was about 10 by 10. What he thought was deafening thunder was really a warhead hurtling in reverse toward the hole. It split the clouds above him and plummeted to earth, where it slid neatly into the hole and disappeared from view. And what he thought were the snowflakes had actually been ashes falling from nuclear fallout. He does not dare move closer to the hole to see what is inside. He glances back to the mountain where his friends went in, and now sees the monster perched on top of it laughing at him.