The Obdurate Avidity

Chapter 26

 

By TurtleBoy

 

 

            We ran to James house with his mom.  We sat her down and made her some tea while we searched over the house once more.  After a whole lot of convincing we finally had Mrs. McDowell willing to stay at home and keep an eye out from here.  Realistically, she couldn’t be any help, we needn’t people with a clear mind setting.  People who can act sane; instead of causing a panicked hysteria while wandering the town.  So with that finally done and a good half hour of time wasted, James and I set out to join the search.

 
            I was certain that no one was going to find Austin any where near town.  If this town has taught me anything, was that if something happened.  The answer could be found in the trees.  It was the fear that clouded everyone’s judgment and was often overlooked.  There’s only one place we were going to find Austin and with a bit of persuasion that I knew what I was doing, James followed me inside.

 
            His fear was obvious, but his commitment to finding his brother was stronger.  He seemed fine for the first fifty feet or so.  However, as the light decreased and the trees grew closer together, James began to tense up and keep a close distance from me.  The deeper we travelled the less the light was able to breach the leaves and branches.  Everything was dim and eerie, it seemed even the birds didn’t nest this far inside the forest.  We were approaching the hundred foot barrier that the town enforced that no one cross, which was about the time when James took hold of my hand.  A partial smile and an awkward groan caused me to giggle at his subtlety.  I could hear the pounding of James anxious heart, I could feel the pulse in his hand.  With every beat it grew louder and clearer to my senses.  Smells and sounds filled my head and as it progressed I was able to distinguish them from everything else.  The sounds seemed to vibrate and ricochet off of the trees and ground.

 
            With every step I could feel my vision start to change and sharpen.  It began with a few occasional twitches and harsh fluctuations in color.  Eventually the red glare overtook the world around me, which was followed by the wiry etches that I knew to be life.  With every pulse the objects would let off a form of electricity, which would shoot across their transparent bodies outlining its outer self and flowing across the ground and up the trees.  I assumed this was the sound escaping them.  As the breeze hit the leaves and rustled the branches, forms of tree trunks and shrubs appeared in front of me allowing me a vision I could work with.

 
            We continued forward, with my eyes guiding us through the darkness.  James grip remained firmly attached to my hand.  With every step a new scent would fill my lungs encouraging me to speed up.  I could feel James struggling to keep up but paid no concern.  The pull was just too much for me to resist.  Every now and than he would say something; I wasn’t sure if I just wasn’t paying attention on purpose or if he intentionally mumbling, but couldn’t bring my self to stop and question him.

 
            Eventually he grabbed my hand firmly and tugged me towards him with an unexpected force.  Staring me deep in the eyes I could see pools of tears stream across his cheeks.  “I’m not going to loose you too!”  He said almost begging.

 
“What?  What’s wrong?”  I asked in concern, had I been pulling him too hard?  Could I have hurt his arm?

 
“Your eyes…  they’re red, REALLY red.”  I could hear a fear tremble in his voice.

 
“Don’t worry.  It’s helping us find your brother.”

 
“How?  Cause so far all its done is hurt my arm.”

 
“It let’s me see things differently.  Living things.”  I attempted to explain.

 
“And you can’t see them normally?”  His tone deepened into an near sarcasm, but backed up with anger.

 
“Yea, but I can see further.  Or.. if something’s behind a tree or rock I wont miss it.. or..”  I tried to stop myself there, but it had to be too late; I could even see the question forming on James lips.

 
“Or what?”  …and there we have it.

 
“There are some things that you can’t see normally.  Bad things.  I don’t know how to explain them properly.”

 
“What are you talking about?  Like what?”

 
“I don’t know what it was, but it was invisible.  Or… like invisible.  But it wasn’t a ghost cause it fought me.  It kinda looked like a lizard, but with no tail.”  I attempted to explain the best way I knew how.

 
“Fought you?  Why don’t you tell me this stuff?  Shouldn’t I have heard if you had gotten in a fight with some invisible monster?”  Normally that would just be funny…

 
“James, if I told you everything that happened to me while I was, that thing…. Than you would never want to see me.  I don’t want to loose you and the things I do when I’m that monster you would never be ale to look at me again.”  This wasn’t looking good.

 
“You know what Adrian, we’re in this together.  I though we were a team!  I mean, you’re not the only one with some fucked up curse!  Or have you forgot?”  His words may just as well have been made from fire.  I felt my heart burn and the tear begin to flow down off my cheeks.


“It’s not like that.  I really thought it would be better for you not to hear about what happens to me while I’m changed. I wake up in weird places, next to dead animals.  I’ve killed a person!  And I don’t even know if that was the only one.  But it’s okay cause I went back and saved the rest of them from another creature.  I also didn’t tell you how much it hurts when I change into that thing.  It feels like my insides are going to explode and I often wish I would just die.  Until it changes… It’s worse than the pain, I begin to like it and I want more.  It makes you feel that if you don’t get more, you’ll attack anything in your way in hopes that it can inflict a similar pain on you.  Or the time I almost got slaughtered against some guy that controls fire.  I thought I was protecting you.”  I couldn’t go on.  I was hurt, it felt as if I had betrayed the most important person in my life. 

 
           My heart dropped as tears streamed down my cheeks.  I fell to my knees when it registered I had just yelled at my beautiful James.  The tears only grew stronger when I noticed James flushed face and reddened eyes simmer through my blurred vision.

 
           James dropped next to me and wrapped his arms around me.  The feeling of forgiveness and understanding streamed from his tears and allowed me to lift the burden permanently.  His warm tight hold, comforted me; only allowing more room for my tears to stream to the surface of his shirt.  The release was too strong and I was becoming overwhelmed.  I had no idea how harshly all of this had affected me.  Or why I decided to keep all of this from him.  For some reason though I never told him… Well, not everything.  Perhaps I wasn’t protecting him, but protecting myself from the reality of this curse.

 
           We exchanged tears for quite some time, maybe a bit too long.  It was only when we remembered that Austin was still missing that we pulled ourselves back together.  Wiping our blood shot eyes and resuming our search, we forgot about what had just happened.  Or at least put it behind us.  James took hold of my hand once more and prepared himself to continue our journey.  It felt good to have finally given myself that release.  I had packed it in and pushed it all aside for too long.  But now, everything was as it should be.

 
           We had been searching for hours and the sun was setting quickly.  Our surrounding grew to an almost pitch black which completely impaired James, who had no choice but to trust himself to my curse.  We had gotten so deep into the trees that we were no longer sure which way we had come from.  The fear that held itself deep in the back of our thoughts was slowly becoming evident in our words.  We were lost.  This is gonna blow over super well, not only have we not found Austin, but we had also managed to get ourselves lost in the process; Genius.  Stuck in the middle of a forbidden forest, the suns gone down which meant it’s at least ten now.  And the worst thing is we don’t even know if they have found Austin or not.  I mean, what if he is at home?  How would we know?  We’ve been lost in the forest for hours, we could have been searching for nothing.

“Adrian, it’s getting dark.  We should turn back and see if he turned up.”
 

“That would be a great idea…  If I knew which way back was.”  I admitted.

 
“You mean… we’re lost?”

 
“Uhm.. yea.  We made so many stupid turns to get here that I can’t remember which way to go in order to get back.”

 
“Oh great.  So we’re lost?”  I could hear the panic escape his voice.

 
“Well.. Kinda.  Don’t worry, we’ll find a road soon and follow it back to town.”

 
“How do you know?  I can’t see any light anywhere.”


“Well, the forest can’t just go on forever.  Eventually we’re bound to find a road somewhere.”  I tried to assure him, but his heartbeat told me it wasn’t as soothing as I had planned.


“My Mom’s gonna freak when she finds out we got ourselves lost too… Especially when they find out we went into the trees.”

 
“Haha! Don’t worry so much.  I’ve gotten lost in here before.  If anything I know how to find a road that will get us back to town.  Once we find a road we’ll be back home in no time.”  His worry was starting to sound cute, I couldn’t help but to giggle.

 
“Next time we bring a radio or something.”

 
“Errrr…. Well, let’s just hope there isn’t a next time.”

 
            The sun had long since set.  James couldn’t see a thing and relied on me for everything.  He held my hand as I guided us through the black trees, only hoping that I was going in the right direction.  James was hobbling his way over a fallen tree trunk when a slight sound of rustling leaves alarmed me.

 
“Wait..”  I whispered, “Did you hear that?”

 
“Huh?  Hear what?”  I felt a breeze pass my face as James hand was torn from my grip on him.

 
“James!?”  the feeling of panic took me over, “James! Are you alright?”  I screamed as I spotted him in the corner of my eye.  He was sprawled out on the ground under the branches of a dead pine tree.

 
“Yea, I’m fine… What was that?”  He answered while brushing dried pine needles from his arms.

 
“I don’t know.  It moved too fast for me to see it.”  As I fumbled about to search the area, I noticed James’s attention become distracted with fear.

 
“ADRIAN!” I whipped around and grabbed a dark unnatural looking creature by the throat.  It stared me in the eyes as its long black tongue slid along my arm.  I squeezed my fingers, causing the creature to gasp and gag as a result to the air unable to exit its lungs.

 
            Studying the thing closely I firmed my grip; it had no hair and barely any ears.  Its eyes were red with a partial spear like pupil in the center.  Its skin was covered in a fine hair almost unnoticeable unless you’re up close, which gave the creature a darkened appearance.  It was thin and judging by its limp body not very strong, though it’s clawed fingers and jagged teeth could probably hurt.  It wrapped its hands around my forearm as its eyes began to bulge and throat began to croak.  Normal circumstances I would have taken pity on this creature.  But it had attacked James…  Not only that, but it seemed I had to send a message; he did not come alone.

 
            Looking into the trees a dim glow of red dots glimmered through the branches.  They released a hissing sound similar to crickets.  I could feel their breath polluting my surroundings, I could smell their filth nauseating my stomach.  With nothing more than a flick of my wrist the creature’s body grew heavy and fell to the ground.  An uproar of screams protruded from above and continued all around us.  Through all the noise I could still hear James’s heart as it increased at an alarming speed.

 
“James.  Stay right there.”  I said calmly and walked several yards away.

 
            The moment I stopped and looked to the trees the waves of eyes swarmed towards me.  My heart began to pound and my veins began to bulge.  I could feel my muscles preparing themselves.  I shiver swept across my body as I unintentionally dipped forward in what would have looked to be a bow.  Bending my knees I felt something slide against my back, pushing up I heard a scream as multiple pains coursed through my back while I forced the object to the ground.  The sting surged through my body only pushing my motivation.  My eyes began to burn and twitch while the world became obscure; making it impossible for me to make sense of my surroundings.  Tears began to well up in my eyes as a strange film seemed to melt off of my pupils causing me to fall to my knees.  My eyes felt as if some one had just poured salt in them, the tears washed away the gunk like puss.  Wiping it away from my face, I noticed my vision coming back.  Only it was different; the red tinge was less invading, I didn’t seem to need to rely on noise to see things clearly.  Everything was vivid to a clarity I have never known before.  Light and dark didn’t seem to exist as it once did, the wiry veins which flowed through James were still present; yet these creatures showed no sign of circulation.  Either they were immune to my vision, or they weren’t alive.


            I climbed to my feet and took a deep calming breath, closing my eyes for a moment I could hear an approach.  It was as if the beasts waited for me to regain my bearings; which I wasn’t going to make sense of right now.  Raising my knee up to my chest and thrusting my heel outward while extending my leg as heavily as I could only to crash into the sharp jaw of one of the monstrosities.  Backing up a couple of feet as two more dropped in front of me; I rolled on the ground and jumped high into the air and landing on the shoulders of one of these feeble creatures, while forcing my fist into its skull.  As its body was drained of life I extended my legs wrapping them around the neck of the second one.  With a quick squeeze of my legs it fell to the ground with a light thud.  The trees hissed and rattled with the movement of these creatures as the flooded off the branches to make their decent against me.  The numbers were almost over whelming, but with every smashed skull and broken limb I inflicted I only wanted more.  The beasts were rampaging at me from all angles causing me to loose my balance.

 
            As they piled over me I grabbed a stick in one hand while arching my back.  Pushing my knees away from the ground and sending the demons rolling off of me; I chucked the long stick as hard as I could into the trees and soon watched as it fell back down attached to a limp body over top another now limp body.  This was apparently their chance as they all pummeled onto me once more driving their teeth and claws as deep into my flesh as they could.  Yelling out in pain only made me angry; almost like being defeated, I grew enraged with this insult.  Forcing my fingers deep into the soil and holding tight I felt my flesh start to burn at an excelled rate.  The world grew blurry and my bones felt as if they were grinding.  The change began to take over as I knew it would.  While my muscles swelled and shifted and my bones realigned I felt compelled to laugh.  The creatures paid no attention as the laugh shifted to a growl due to my face no longer being in a shape capable of smiling.

 
“Adrian?”  I heard a familiar voice call to me, but too distracted to look, “What’s going on!”  Cried the frightened voice.

 
“AUSTIN!”  I heard James yell in fear and excitement, “Quick! Get over here!”  He screamed.  With out a word, Austin ran over to his brother in an attempt to hide.

 
            Out of the corner of my eye I saw a few of the creatures approaching James and his brother.  I could no longer wait for the change to finish; Ripping from my confines I threw back anything in my way.  Jumping into the air and crushing several opponents on my way; I tore my half mutated claws into the back of the closest creature, hearing Austin and James scream for their life.  It seemed they were more afraid of me than these disgusting things that were after them.  As the screams of the creature below my grip subsided the attention from the others was brought to me once more.  The surroundings grew scarcely quiet…

 
“LYCAN!”  Hissed one of the creatures that was nearing on Austin.  The trees rustled and the sounds of breaking branches echoed all around us.  The hissing turned to a high pitched scream almost like a bat guiding its way through the nights uncertainty.

 
            Trudging towards one of them; its hissing increased, the smell of fear soared through the air.  This only gave me a greater advantage, slashing my claw out I scooped it towards me hearing it scream in agony. “LYCAN!”  It screamed once more, only to be ended by my pressing jaw on its skull.

 
“LYCAN!”   Hissed another, and another and anther.  It soared through the trees faster than the creatures could escape.  Chasing after them in order to avoid a second attack I finished off as many as I could before there presence was no more.

 
            Stopping in my tracks, I turned to make my way back to make sure James and Austin were alright.  Which is when I felt the change begin to end; in a panic and a sudden idea I ran off into the trees, in hopes that I could find a road while I still had the speed. 

 
“Adrian! Stop!” Cried James begging me not to leave them.

 
“What happened to Adrian, James?”  Austin asked with great concern.

 
“He’ll be alright, come on follow me.  We better get home Mom’s gonna be freaking.”

 
           The further I got away the less sense this plan made.  If those creatures were to come back, James and Austin wouldn’t stand a chance!  ‘Fuck! I’m so stupid!’  Crashing to a halt I whipped back around towards where I left James.  My skin began to burn and it harshly spread across my body.   Smoke started to raise off my limbs and I could see the ash start to vacate its hold against me.  I could no longer continue; it was too much for me to handle.  Crashing to the ground with a true but failed attempt to raise to my feet, I continuously fell back to the soil below me.  Ahead of me I could see Austin’s face peeking out from behind James, who was holding him back.  What this must look like to them must be horrible.  I was positive the dissolving of a huge monstrous wolf into the tiny excuse for a boy that I am, could not look very appealing.  I could feel the access muscle and mass seemingly melt off of my body, some parts even made it to the ground before turning to ash.  The bones reshaping back to their original places and dropping length and mass in the process.  I tried to say I was alright but it came out as more of a heavy groan.

 
          Giving in and just letting it happen I dropped to the ground and gripped my rib cage to suppress the pain.  The smoke increased while the ashes thickened into the air and escaped through the leaves above.  It was only moments after that when I noticed the pain subside.  I could feel the cool breeze on my skin which soothed and calmed the lingering burning.  My heart rate was slowing back to a normal beat; giving me the comfort that it was all over.  Finding the strength to open my eyes and make a final attempt to climb to my feet, I turned to look up at James and Austin who both had tears streaming off their cheeks onto the ground in front of me.

 
“Are you sure Adrian’s gonna be alright?”  Austin muttered.

 
“Yea, he looks like he’s gonna be fine squirt.”  James replied faking a smile.

 
“Adrian… Where are your clothes?”  Asked Austin with a smile.

 
“Uhm.. Oh shoot,”  I cringed, while taking note of James huge smile which followed Austin’s words, “Um, I gave them to those things back there so that they would leave us alone…”

 
“Oh!  Wow!  Thanks Adrian.”  Austin exclaimed in appreciation.

 
“Yea, thanks Adrian.”  James smiled while taking off his shirt, “Here wear this, just ummm don’t loose it, I like that one.”  He giggled.

 
“Heh, thanks James.  So, where were you Austin?  We’ve been looking for you for hours.”  I asked the inevitable question…

 
“Yea, why did you leave!?  Mom’s been worried sick, you should have seen here freaking!”  James snapped, making an obvious attempt to stay unthreatening.

 
 “I didn’t leave!”  He retorted.

 
“You know you can’t just wonder off on your own like that, especially into the tree’s you know that’s not aloud.”

 
“I didn’t James!  I just woke up here I swear!  I got up and you were calling me under that tree.  That’s it.”  His face began to redden and tears began to form in his eyes.

 
“Adrian?”  James questioned me in hopes that I would have some kind of magical answer for him.

 
“Weirder things have happened James.”  I snickered.  Only hoping that none of this had anything to do with when me and James go missing.

 
“Let’s just get you back home.”  James settled.

 
“So…  Which way should we go?”  I giggled.

 
“Awe shit that’s right…”  James sighed in frustration.

 
“I know!  It’s this way!  Let’s go!” Shouted Austin, while running ahead of us.

 
“Austin!  Wait up, we don’t want to loose you twice in one day!”  James giggled while running after his brother.  With me close in behind them.

 
            We had been walking maybe ten minutes when we noticed lights up ahead of us.  Our excitement took us over and we ran at top speed to towards its invitation.  Austin giggled and circled us as if nothing had gone wrong at all.  Completely oblivious and carefree; I wish.  As we closed in to our apparent exit we froze deep in our tracks.  Feeling both relief and disbelief we looked at each other then back at Austin.  We were home.  Feeling confusion and lack of comprehension we remained baffled.  This was impossible, we were a good four hours into those trees… it just doesn’t work that way.

 
“Adrian…”  James whispered in hopes that what we were seeing was real.

 
“What the fuck…”  I fumbled out, just as clueless as James.

 
            Austin paid no attention to our dilemma and continued a plane impression while circling up and down the darkened ditch which separated our yards.  Deciding it was pointless to sit and question this any further I got up and climbed out over the final shrub that separated me from my backyard.  James followed close in behind and we ventured over to James’s home.  The excitement to presenting Austin to his mother with James was almost too much.  The feeling was so powerful I couldn’t contain myself and noticed my pace speed up.  Which seemed to be moments after James had already given into the feeling; he was a good ten feet ahead of me.  Austin however had found a ball and was kicking it around the yard.

 
            James threw open the door and darted towards his mom, “Hey Ma! We…”  James stopped in his tracks, causing me to crash into him from behind.  His eyes were locked into the living room, as his jaw was dropped as far as humanly possible.

 
“What is it James?”  I asked while following his eyes in the direction he was looking.  My heart sped up as I felt a sudden sheen of cool sweat plague my body.  The door slammed shut behind us, but our eyes were glued to Austin; who was fast asleep on the couch.  

 



Chapter 27