Mr. Gray departed into the brush with Landon, leaving Josie and Lewis to find their own way out of Yost Park. They’d walked for several minutes through the woods, off trail, to get to the location of the time pocket. The hike back up the hilly terrain seemed steeper to Josie than when they first came down. It wasn’t until Lewis started looking confused that Josie began to worry. They hadn’t come across the path yet, or perhaps they had passed it already without realizing.

“The trail should be near,” said Lewis. “It was just over the ridge.”

The ground leveled out. They kept walking until they were both certain they must have overshot the path. Lewis paused and turned slowly in a full circle.

“I don’t know how we got turned around…” he said. “I think the road is over that way.” He pointed off to the left, into thicker brush.

They had to fight nature to cut their own path, pushing past branches with their bodies and stepping high to clear their feet over a layer of ivy. It was both slow and loud to trudge across the hillside. They walked back down the slope and up to another ridge, eventually coming across a narrow path that looked to have been formed by animals rather than humans.

“Do you think this will intersect with the main path?” asked Lewis.

Josie shrugged.

Lewis looked back and forth down the tiny winding animal trail. “I wonder what made this path…” he mused. “Which way should we go?”

Josie shook her head.

“Come on, you must have some idea of which way to go. Weren’t you paying attention on the way in?”

Josie scowled at Lewis. “I know we met in a forest and all, but I grew up in the suburbs. You led me here! Weren’t you paying attention?”

“I’m sorry,” said Lewis, looking down at his feet. “I just feel stupid for getting turned around. I don’t know how we missed the path….”

Josie huffed. “You know, I assumed you or Mr. Gray would be leading us back out.”

Lewis wrung his hands together. “Yeah… Mr. Gray isn’t always as helpful as it seems like he should be. He definitely knew we were going to get lost and didn’t say anything.” He pursed his lips in contemplation. “I’m just going to choose to believe everything is how it’s supposed to be right now, otherwise he would have said something….”

“Everything in its own time,” said Josie sarcastically.

“Exactly,” said Lewis, missing her tone. “I’m sure we’ll get back to the others precisely when we’re meant to.”

“We should go left,” said Josie, making a decision simply to end the conversation.

Lewis craned his neck to look back down the trail for a moment. “Are you sure?”

Josie threw her hands up in exasperation. She started moving without Lewis. He hurried to catch up to her.

The landscape was deceptive. Little dips and rises hid the greater trend of the slope. Josie knew they’d walked downhill to get to the time pocket, but their current position was in a depression. Every direction was uphill. Her chosen heading was, in fact, random, but it was better than continuing to stand there just scratching their heads.

The trail meandered between the trees. Josie and Lewis continued along it, walking in a single-file line. It was easier to move through the bare patch in the ivy, but, unfortunately, after another twenty-five yards or so, the trail was abruptly consumed by the ivy again. They were left with nothing but their whims to carry them forward through the undergrowth.

Josie didn’t notice anything was wrong when she heard the first distant knocks against the trees. She mistook the sounds as ordinary—perhaps just a couple of pine cones falling to the forest floor. It wasn’t until the rest of the normal nature sounds receded away entirely that she knew she should have been paying more attention.

The breeze died down but the air felt charged, as if the woods had just inhaled and was now holding its breath. Josie paused, not wanting to disturb the silence.

Lewis nearly walked into the back of her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Josie shushed him. They both stayed rooted in place within the crunchy ivy. Josie’s pulse quickened.

Knock.

—A sudden loud click. The sound rang out from a nearby tree ahead, focusing her attention.

Lewis heard it as well. The dumb expression that appeared across his face did not instill any confidence.

“Josie!” came a distant cry. It sounded from the same direction as the knock, but from much farther out—maybe thirty or forty yards beyond where she could see.

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“Did you hear…?” Lewis whispered behind her.

Josie silenced him with a glare.

“Josie!” yelled the distant voice again. “Where are you? Help! Help!”

The cries were desperate. They tugged at Josie. She wanted to rush forward… she recognized the voice but her mind couldn’t place it. Only her fear stayed her heart. Something didn’t feel right.

She sensed they were being watched….

A screech of tires on asphalt in the distance started a chain reaction of cascading sounds: A terrible crash—metal grinding against metal; glass shattering, worse than cracking bones to Josie’s ears. It sounded like a thousand shovels being dragged across concrete at the same time, setting her senses abuzz. When the crunching and groaning of the auditory carnage abated, all that remained was the sound of shards of raining glass tinkling to the ground like fairy dust. A bluster of wind followed, howling through the trees, carrying with it a chilly blast of mountain air.

And then the screaming began.

Terrible shrieks pierced the forest air; deep, pain-filled wails.

Josie knew it in an instant: It was the screams of her parents, mangled on the side of the mountain pass where they died. It didn’t just sound similar to her parents dying screams, it sounded exactly like her parents dying screams.

Josie immediately began to question her perception of reality.

It can’t be real….

She turned towards Lewis. “Do you hear—?”

“The screaming?” he finished, nodding sharply, fear clear in his eyes.

The cries grew higher in pitch, becoming more shrill, like a teapot whistling in the woods.

“We should help them!” said Lewis. He wasn’t thinking straight.

Josie realized they were already far too close to the voices. The cries of her parents couldn’t possibly be authentic. Her parents were long dead. Five years gone and buried. Something was using the sounds to trigger her, and admittedly, it was working. Lewis could hear them too, though he had no idea of their terrible significance. Josie was being forced to mentally relive the moment of her parents’ demise.

She nearly succumbed to the panic as her veins filled with ice, but her instincts forced her to stay alert. Something was trying to lure her, she realized.

The Dreadnaught…?

She scanned her eyes back and forth around where she remembered hearing the knock. At first she saw nothing, but then she spotted something amongst the lower foliage—elongated fingers gripping a branch.

It was an ambush.

They were dealing with a most unfortunate kind of evil—if she’d not taken pause and continued to follow the voices, it would already have been too late.

“We should go back now,” whispered Josie. She kept her eyes locked on the hand as she took a slow, crunching step backwards into the ivy. Her shifting perspective took the menacing creature out of sight, but before it disappeared the fingers wiggled ever so slightly—whether as a sign of annoyance or simply the creature’s way of saying hello, Josie didn’t wish to find out.

“Shouldn’t we be going towards the road?” Lewis asked, perplexed.

“That’s exactly what it wants,” Josie said harshly in a rushed whisper. She took another cautious step backwards. “Nothing we heard was real, but there is something out there. I saw it.”

Lewis furrowed his brow, but followed Josie’s lead.

Josie kept checking over her shoulder as they hastily made their way back towards the animal path. She kept her eyes peeled wide, praying not to see anything in pursuit. As soon as they reconnected with the animal path, Josie picked up the pace. Now that their feet were clear of the ivy, they could maintain a hopping jog within the clear patches of ground.

“Jooosssiee!” cried a high pitched voice, calling out from somewhere behind them. “Come back here, Josie! Come back!” A heckling screech pierced the stillness. “And Lewis!”

Lewis’s jaw fell open as he looked back. “It knows my name….”

Josie flashed Lewis a disgruntled look. It’s been calling my name the whole time, but now he’s concerned?

Crunching ivy in the distance put additional fear in both of their steps. Something large was moving towards them, unconcerned about how loud it was being.

“Go, go, go!” cried Josie.

Lewis grabbed Josie’s hand as they dashed through the trees. They ran as even-footed as they could along the animal trail, listening through their own heavy breaths to the footfalls steadily catching up behind them.

Suddenly, they burst through a fern and out onto the main path.

“Which way?!” cried Josie.

Lewis hesitated only momentarily before turning left, uphill. Behind them the crunching footsteps ceased at the edge of the trail. Their pursuer held back, remaining hidden in the brush, just out of sight.

They scampered up the hill, barely keeping their feet beneath them. The heckling voice continued its pursuit, calling out more to Lewis this time: “You won’t escape your destiny, scrawny boy! You will die and rot, trapped in the cellar of that abandoned house!” It laughed out a taunting squeal of glee. “Your Parca smells of burnt hair when he’s Erased. Nothing will save you from the worms!”

Lewis and Josie’s legs didn’t stop pumping until long after they reached the paved drive that led from the city street to the community pool. The creature did not call out again, but they were too afraid to stop and breathe until they were entirely out of the park and partially down the road.

When they finally stopped running they were overlooking the bowl of Edmonds. The Taste of Edmonds festival was setting up for the day down below, about half a mile closer to the water. They could see the rooftops of half the downtown region from their vantage point at the top of the bowl-shaped drop-off to the coast.

Their eyes were immediately drawn upward in horror to a massive tear in the sky above the city. The aurora borealis swirled, forming an enormous conduit of spiraling energy. A huge flock of vampiric ghasts carrying all sorts of other creatures on their backs were emerging from the rift and diving down like darts to the rooftops below.

A middle aged woman walking her dog on the opposite side of the street paused to see what they were looking at. She took one glance before hastily continuing on her way.

“We should hurry back…” said Lewis.

The sparkling blue waterways of the Puget Sound reflected the yellow and green flashes of the ripped open sky.

“People are going to notice this…” said Josie.

Lewis frowned. “One would think,” he said. “But I don’t remember anything like this happening.”

Josie squeezed onto Lewis’s hand. Whatever it all meant for the timeline or their chances of success in the battle to come was beyond either of their abilities to assess.

The Agares horde descends. One never plans to be Erased, but I do hope more than a lingering scent of burnt hair is my ultimate legacy to the multi-verse. Bust out the marshmallows and chocolate for the fires to come if you have a high metabolism like me, otherwise, I hope you have good home insurance, because those ghasts will be taking off more than shingles! Fun fact: Not one person reported the hole in the sky that day to the police, not that they would have been able to do anything about it anyway.

Keep vigilant,

-Mr. Gray