Chapter 1
How can he be gone? Dylan asked himself for the millionth time, the familiar knot twisting in his gut. He kept dry under an umbrella with his great grandmother, Nan, raindrops pounding the black lacquer coffin like the roll of a thousand drummers. His face tightened uncontrollably, defiant tears, prisoners behind swollen, bloodshot eyes. Dylan had fought crying for so many days the corners of his eyelids stung like an open sore. He needed to explode.
The sky is crying, Dylan thought, scanning the crowd who gathered to say goodbye to his grandfather, Max. Dylan knew most of them by name, but when he reached the people on the outskirts whose names he’d forgotten or didn’t know, he noticed a bunch of cats huddled beneath a bush. While he didn’t know the cats either, he wondered if they were old friends of Max, given his grandfather’s affection for animals. Squinting through the drops, Dylan noticed the gray tabby up front staring at him, lasers beaming through the rain. They locked eyes; the tabby blinked and nodded. One by one, the other cats followed the tabby’s gesture, blinking and nodding to Dylan.
Did that just happen? Dylan glanced around, hoping someone noticed, but no one had. He looked back to the bush, but the cats were already gone, or were never there. For a second, he wondered if they were real before turning his attention back to reality and the funeral, the cats already a forgettable detail.
“There is not a single person in this town who will soon forget Max.” Father Elvin elevated his voice to match the weather’s intensity. “He had no enemies, only friends. He even rescued Fred, the church’s cat few times.” The crowd laughed together, recalling their fond memories of Max, all except Dylan, lost in his own private black hole, spiraling out of control.
This can’t be happening. He stared at the funeral pamphlet; Max’s face smiling in the clouds, above the years 1947-2008. His thoughts flooded with images of his grandfather. “Tell me it’s going to be ok, Max.” Dylan whispered to himself, clenching his eyelids tight, trying to block out the world. In his private darkness, the surrounding sounds muffled and faded. He’d almost succeeded in blocking the world out when he noticed a twinkling light in the farthest point in the gloom and-
“Arise.” A distant echo called.
“Max?” Dylan’s eyes snapped open, his gaze fixed on the glistening coffin, lost in the din of the storm. He dropped the pamphlet and stepped into the downpour, hypnotized by his desire to see his grandfather when he saw something else. A light seeping through the coffin's seam. “Max?” He asked, loud enough for others to hear, inching closer to the coffin.
“Dylan!” Nan corralled him under her umbrella.
“Don’t worry, Nan.” Dylan’s voice hollow. “It’s Max.”
“Dylan, stop please, for heaven’s sake,” she tilted the umbrella over him. “He’s gone.”
“He’s right here.” He motioned to the casket, light emanating from every crack.
“Dylan, please. We have to say goodbye,” Nan pleaded, reaching for her great grandson as others began to notice his erratic behavior.
“Don’t you see it? He’s here!” Dylan’s voice elevated. “He needs my help!” The radiant glow consumed the coffin.
“Please, don’t.” Nan took his hand.
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“Max needs me!” Dylan snapped it back viciously. “Now, get the hell away from me!” the crowd gasped. Father Elvin stopped speaking. The rain intensified in the vacuum of mourning silence. Dylan backed away from Nan until he bumped the edge of the coffin, and the light sucked back into the seams. He scanned the crowd. Eyes everywhere, staring. Then Dylan realized what he had done.
Nan, despite losing her only son, hadn’t cried once this week, until now. Her tiny black clad body trembled and heaved.
What did I do? The thought of Nan crying sent another grim chill rolling through his gut. Dylan clenched his teeth, balled his fists, unable to hold back any longer- exploded. His scream was one of loss, pain, and confusion. Unhinged, Dylan bolted past Father Elvin and disappeared into the sheets of rain.
Dylan made for the woods surrounding the cemetery, the pelting droplets tearing at his cheeks. Like a desperate rabbit, he sloshed past the headstones and through the muddy earth at the edge of the tree line onto a path he’d taken a thousand times before. He sprinted with an unknown sense of urgency and cut down a smaller side trail. The space between the trees narrowed, harder to follow. Still, Dylan held his speed, careening off the trunks of the wood sentinels, his clothes, a weighted net around his body, shoes sucking into the swampy muck with each step. Pushing himself until-
“Ow!” A hot jolt shot through his leg. He crashed hard, clutching his shin through his torn dress pants; warm blood pulsed against his pruned fingers. A crudely constructed, knee-high stone wall rose out of the ground behind him. “Son of a- What moron put a wall here?” Consumed by rage, he kicked the immovable rock, his leg throbbing with his own heartbeat. Curled on his side, the rain soaking him, Dylan cradled his injured limb and glanced up. The wall marked a clearing for a solitary, gnarled, unearthly black tree. Void of color, the behemoth seemed out of place, yet somehow more alive than the other trees. The base was abnormally thick, with branches like powerful arms that bore no leaves. The droplets beaded off its obsidian bark, glistening through its own shade.
Dylan hobbled up to the mysterious monolith. “Where the heck did you come from?” He noted the mass of enormous roots plunging into the wet earth like giant pulsing veins. Fat, onyx vines knotted protectively around the base of the tree, teeming with energy. Dylan stepped closer. A tingle buzzed inside him, electric and warm. Beckoning him. He welcomed the vibrations and reached toward the source. His reflection danced in its glossy depths, fluxing, swirling in and out of focus. White-blue sparks crackled between his hand and the tree, the storm intensifying as if turned up by an unseen dial.
“Dylan? Where are you?” Voices called from the cemetery, breaking the spell. He turned back to the reflection, but it had vanished. Gazing into the infinite gloss, he focused until a faint shadowy wisp appeared in its depths. The image twined like a ghost in a dream, never taking form, teasing, beckoning Dylan to come closer. He reached, his fingertips buzzing, the face clearer, only this time the features were different. It was not his at all. It was, “Max!” Dylan touched the tree. His hand ignited with the white-blue light. He tried to pull back, only to find an unrelenting magnetism to the goliath. The rain sizzled against his skin. His body coursed with the awareness of every atom. The tingling sensation consumed his center, rushing outward, pushing at the boundaries of Dylan’s fragile body, the power threatening to tear the flesh from his bones. His eyes rolled back, muscle tremors as if he was being electrocuted. Jaw locked; his body arching upward. The cerulean glow tightened into a cocoon, through every cell, until he was unable to feel his body.
In the deepest recesses of his mind, he heard Max. “Dylan, arise.” He focused on his grandfather’s voice, an echo in time.
“Arise.” Muddled whispers joined with Max and amplified into a dizzying spiral of sound until their voices reached a symphonic crescendo. “Arise, Scion, arise. Arise, Scion, arise!”
Dylan’s eyes snapped open, surrounded from head to toe in the light. The roots had found their way through his torn pant leg and into his flesh, surging. The radiance grew brighter and brighter, exploding in one magnificent flash. For a moment, Dylan was one with all, entirely aware of everything around him. The branches, in full prismatic bloom, stretched to the ends of the Earth and beyond. Above, the sun hovered between white puffs like an all-seeing eye. Beyond the light, a murky haze swirled on the horizon, growing faster, darker, rolling over itself, until it consumed the tree. In less than a breath, the shadow-tsunami exploded, devouring everything, including Dylan, into an infinite void.