Chapter 30

Carrow and Beth starred at Zach with slack jawed expressions. The younger teenager just sat there, not sure what else to say. He’d just gotten done telling them about Aoi and how Blue had been acting the last week.

Of course, after that Beth had quickly asked if he’d taken Blue to the side to reassure her about where she stood. When he’d told them about his plan to not poke at the wound and let it heal over the time, they’d just fallen silent, a state the room had been stuck in for the past few minutes.

“Is there something you two want to say?” he finally asked as both of the older exorcists started screaming at him at the same time. He grimaced before putting both hands up. “Okay one at a time.”

The other two looked at each other and Carrow motioned for Beth to start.

“You’ve known the fool longer.” Zach huffed at the use of the term but was quickly cut off as Beth marched across the room to him.

“Yeah fool, that’s the perfect term,” Zach gulped as Beth got right up to his face. “What were you thinking? When someone is freaking out about their whole world collapsing all around them, you don’t leave them alone. You reassure them that things are going to be okay.”

“So you’re saying that leaving Blue alone to heal was a bad call?”

“The worst possible call!” Zach was thankful the older girl backed up a little before screaming. “From the sound of it, she hasn’t been healing. She’s probably been death spiraling like crazy.”

“Death… what? Is that a ghost thing?” Zach felt as shiver down his spine from the look of sheer disbelief that Beth was giving him. She just made a variety of exasperated noises before walking away from him and starting to pace around the room.

“Death spiraling is when an individual is left alone with their negative thoughts about themselves and can’t stop thinking about them.” Carrow decided this was his moment to step in. “Thinking these thoughts leads to the individual in question lowering their opinion of themselves, which causes even more and usually worse negative thoughts.”

He reached his hand up to above his head, clicking his tongue when he realized there was still nothing there.

“As you can imagine, this leads to a vicious cycle that one is usually unable to leave on their own. Some call this cycle a death spiral.”

“And you left that girl to face it all by herself!” Despite the apparently well deserved yelling in his face, Zach was thankful he wasn’t going to have another round of the ‘Blue is a person argument’ again.

Then again maybe wanting to shy away from having it was what lead to all this. He just never expected to need to have a round of it with Blue herself.

“Oh who knows what that girl has crawling around her mind right now?” Beth fretted while still pacing around the room. She forced herself to come to a stop before pointing a finger at Zach. “Okay, Zach, go up there and find Blue right now. The two of you are clearing up this air between you and then we’re going to pull Blue out of whatever dark hole her brain’s put itself in.”

“Yes ma’am.” He got up without another word and started heading to the door when he felt it. There was a sudden pull on his gut as he saw a chain shake in his head. One he knew far too well. He froze in place and looked up at the ceiling. He let out a faint whisper he knew was true.

“Something’s happened to Blue.” The other two exorcists’ eyes winded at the statement.

Which was made even worse when all three of them were suddenly hit with an immense sensation of dread. The three exorcists all ran out of the room and spread out over the parking lot. Three sets of eyes scanned around for Blue, but only one of them bothered to look up in their search for her.

And therefore it was only one which saw her flaying through the air.

“There she is, up there!” Zach pointed upwards, not caring if other people saw him pointing up at nothing. “Blue where are you going!”

The other two exorcists followed his finger and spotted the ghost flying away from them. She made no effort to act like she’d heard him at all.

“Where the devil is she going?” Carrow frowned as he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small metal object. He stretched it out to reveal a small telescope.

He took a single peak and the telescope fell to the ground.

“Carrow, are you alright?” Beth called out as the other two exorcists ran to his side. “Did you see something?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“It’s here…” he breathed out, his shoulders shaking as his knees gave out. “It’s here early. That thing… I thought I had another day before fighting it.”

Beth and Zach didn’t need to hear another word to know what he was talking about. Not only was there not much else he could be talking about… they could both feel it. The immense pressure and dread coming in.

Zach ran out of the parking lot and out onto the sidewalk, Beth following after him helping Carrow to his feet. He came to a stop and looked out towards the beach. With no other building in the way, he had a perfect sight out over the ocean.

There it was, rolling over the waves. It was easy enough to spot. Not only was it a massive blue and green storm cloud, it was the only such cloud in the sky. They were lucky, there was no matching hurricane this time around.

The Nightmare made manifest crackled with blue lightning, the thunder just barely reaching them. It was slowly nearing them, and gong by its speed, it would be overland by the time night fell.

“That’s not a cloud…” Zach notice the other two exorcists now standing behind him. Carrow had a distant look in his eyes, refusing to move them off the Nightmare made Manifest.

“Not a cloud?” Beth leaned forward and put her hands over her eyes. “What are you talking… oh.”

Zach focused, trying to figure out what the other two were talking about. How could a cloud not be a cloud? After a few seconds on intense concretion, he saw it.

Zach had been expecting massive cloud filled with the dead. Spirits flying in and around dark clouds as lightning crackled all around them.

The nightmare made manifest was not that. No the nightmare made manifest was made entirely of nothing but ghosts, churning and wailing against each other as they went along in a massive wave.

“And it’s supposed to be smaller than it’s ever been before?” Beth demanded as her phone rung. She picked up without even looking at the I.D. she knew who it was.

“We can see it from here,” she said before the other person on the line could say a word. “Carrow and Zach are both with me.”

There was a slight pause as Zach heard someone on the other end of the line, probably Lady Gray.

“No, Blue… we think the Nightmare made Manifest is pulling her in.” Zach gulped, as Beth explained the situation. “I’m going to grab my stuff and try to take Zach and Andrew to intercept her before she gets incorporated.” There was another short pause as Beth started running back to the motel room, Zach and Carrow right behind her. “Blue’s strong, stronger than most of the ghosts making up the Nightmare made manifest. The last thing we need is her adding to its strength.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Carrow’s hands were shaking, almost as much as his voice.

“Are you going to be alright?” he asked as Beth grabbed the Camera Obscura and made whatever final checks she needed before putting it away in her bags and slinging it over her shoulders.

“Come on, we can take Lady Gray’s car.” She announced with the key already in hand. “She left it behind just in case something like this happened.”

Zach and Carrow nodded as they all left the motel room again and headed for the car, the latter making sure to grab his hat on the way out of the building this time.

“This… this isn’t my first time seeing the Nightmare made manifest.” He finally explained as they all piled into the car. Beth took the wheel and Zach slid across the top of the car to reach shotgun. Carrow just got in the backseat without a word.

“Wait I thought your mentor said this was your first time fighting it?” Beth demanded, the car sputtering to life as Zach scanned the horizon for Blue.

“It is.” Zach noticed him clutching his seat before going back to searching for Blue. “My first time laying eyes on that… thing… was not a fight. It was several hours of a young boy who never knew ghosts were real before running and hiding in terror.”

“That was how you awakened your ghost sight?” Beth winced, “that’s pretty rough. Why are you even here? If the Nightmare made manifest was the first ghost I ever saw I’d give up on…”

“There she is!” Zach franticly pointed upwards and to the right. Looked like Blue was drifting southwards.

“Okay I see her. Hang on, I’ll make sure we get to her before she does something stupid.” Beth declared before hitting the gas. Zach and Carrow held on as she weaved her way through traffic, coming close to breaking traffic law, but never actually going over the line.

Under normal circumstances, it would have left Zach gripping his seat to hold on. But today, he was still as a stone, keeping track of Blue as they got ever closer.

They reached a parking lot near the bridge to sunny shore and loaded out of the car, Zach hitting the ground running. His legs burned as he raced across the bridge. He grit his teeth and remembered a technique for pouring psychic energy into muscles he read about in one of the books. He’d seen it, filled it away for future reference and that’d been the end of that.

Well too late to worry about that now. He’d have to work with what he had.

He made it to the edge of the bridge when Blue reached out her fingers to touch the very edge of the Nightmare made manifest. He braced himself for something horrible, for Blue to get sucked in and absorbed, her screams adding to its.

Instead, what happened might have been ever worse. The Nightmare made Manifest split itself apart, allowing Blue a clear path to move forward.

“That should not be happening…” Zach heard Beth right behind him, but kept his gaze locked onto Blue as both exorcist and ghost kept moving forward. Now that she was far enough in, the ghosts behind her had come back together, closing the entrance behind her. “I’ve never heard of the Nightmare made Manifest absorbing a ghost like that.”

And almost as though it had been triggered by her words alone, they started rushing past them. From the exorcist’s position at the top of the bridge, they could see an entire city’s worth of ghost slowly rise from wherever they were chained to and towards the Nightmare made Manifest. Their fresh wails added to the chorus.

By the time the three exorcists were to the middle of the bridge, there were no more ghosts in the whole Palm city area anymore. The Nightmare made Manifest had also stopped moving.

“What’s going on?” Zach asked as the ghost churned over their heads. The three came to a stop as Zach tried to look around the storm for Blue. It took him a second to spot her barest outline at the dead center.

“Oh no… it’s time.” Carrow shuddered as the Zach turned to him. The older teenager had an almost empty look in his eyes and his knees were shaking. “Nightfall.”

He gulped as the storm started to descend. Buildings and streets were plunged into darkness as ghosts poured over them. Palm trees vanished, replaced by a wall of screaming sectors.

From the top of the bridge, Zach could see the whole thing at once. He could tell Blue was at the dead center, right where the beach should have been. He ran, already on his way.