With a slight frown, he stood up and walked over to them. He crouched down on the balls of his feet to get a better look at the relics of his early childhood.
It shocked him to see them scorched and burned almost as if someone had taken a blowtorch and melted them beyond recognition. Who would do this? he thought to himself, sifting through the wreckage of Hot Wheels and Tonka trucks. Why crisp a bunch of old toys? He shook his head in disbelief not understanding the intent behind such a heartless act.
He stood in one swift motion and pushed the remains of the toys into a pile with his feet. He peered around when he had finished, searching for any extra evidence of the bad guy who had mangled his toys. He saw nothing in the immediate vicinity, nothing was out of the ordinary.
So, he decided to walk down to the lowest level of the yard to inspect the back fence. He wanted to see if there were any clues down below. Maybe someone had climbed over the barrier and left evidence of their passing. You know, snapped twigs and tattered leaves… always evidence of an intruder.
He spent the next few minutes walking amongst the ivy, careful not to trample too much of the pant. He peered around bushes and ferns, gazing at the fence-line. He found nothing, which was puzzling. Everything appeared normal like it had for the years he’d been coming back there to play. Weird, he thought as he searched his memory, trying to remember the last time he had brought the toys out to the rear of his parent’s property.
He could not recall.
But, he did remember he had kept them encased in an old suitcase - a powder blue one with a great big brass buckle down the front. If the toys were out there, then the suitcase had to be around there somewhere, right?
He trotted up a few of the more level surfaces of the yard, using the higher vantage to see more of the yard. He shielded his eyes with his hand from the glare of the sun, scanning the vista. He turned as he did so, making sure he got a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree look around.
From the corner of his eye, a flicker of blue caught his attention. He continued turning to his right hand side.
He saw it then. There, parallel from where he stood in the back yard, was the suitcase. Only it was resting in the last place he would ever suspect to find it. It was stuck in a thick bough, up in a pine tree, some twenty feet off the ground. It was lying across a couple of the tree’s branches - plain as day, as pretty as you please.
He huffed in indignation. Who the hell would toss the suitcase way the hell up there?
Even as he spoke to himself in his mind, he felt his ire rise. These were his private things. It was beside the point he had not paid them much attention in the past few years,. They were his. No one had any right to destroy them with such wanton disregard for his feelings.
He stood there staring up at the suitcase wondering if any of his brothers or sisters was playing a cruel joke on him. The thought made him even angrier.
Why would they do this?
But as time passed, he cooled. The more he pondered the situation, the more he could not see any of them doing such a thing. They were all too much older, too busy to trifle in petty pranks. His oldest brother was almost twenty-five years old and about to graduate from college. It did not make any sense. Why would they waste the time or the effort?
But, who then? Who would squander the time to search through my messy ass closet. Who would lug the suitcase to the backyard, empty it and then go and get Dad’s blowtorch - or whatever - and burn the hell out of everything? AND then be stupid enough to hurl the freakin’ suitcase into the trees.
It made no sense…
He scratched his head, trying to figure out who would do this.
Could it have been Sonny?
His head jerked up at the thought. He was, after all, the only person that Derek could call an enemy. He was the one guy who had been bullying him just because he had asked Kimberly for directions one afternoon in what seemed like ages ago. He was a low life with a lot of time on his hands, or so he surmised… but then the thought lead to another.
It was true that Sonny was a dead beat - a proverbial idiot. But he was definitely not some super-ninja. He did not have the ability to sneak through people’s homes, do all this damage and then skulk away undetected. He would have left a trail of beer cans and syringes everywhere he went.
This made even less sense than one of his brothers or sisters playing a joke on him. He shook his head. Dude, I’m giving that asshole way too much credit.
Derek walked toward the pine tree, gazing up at the suitcase perched far above his head still at a loss. How did it get up there? He frowned, determining right then. He’d climb the tree and get it down. He was confident in the notion his parents would not take to well to the idea of a piece of luggage chillin’ out in one of their backyard trees.
He reached the base of the pine, grabbing ahold of the lowest hanging branch, chest high off the ground. He hauled himself up so he was straddling it in one swift motion. His gymnastics training making the move look easy, though it was not.
Grasping above, he caught the next branch. With its’ support, he was able to stand on the first branch. From there it was just like climbing a ladder. The limbs of the pine tree were many and placed at traversable intervals, which made the going even easier. Within half a minute, he was eye-level with the suitcase and was able to shimmy up the last bit. He placed his butt on the same set of branches that supported the aged piece of luggage.
He was just about to slide horizontal-like, reach out for the bag when the tree shook of a sudden. It was as if someone with a great deal of strength was shaking the trunk from below.
Derek peered down through the many branches and pine boughs to see if he could see anyone or anything. There was nothing down there. He stopped and listened for a bit longer, but nothing else happened. He slid over a ways and reached out again for the case, his fingers brushing against one of its’ edges. He did not gain enough of a grip to hold onto it. His fingers slipped off it. He signed with a tinge of frustration and slid over some more. He was confident the branches beneath him were broad enough to support his weight.
Again, he leaned over to try and grasp the suitcase. This time he was able to haul it an inch or two in his direction.
Yet, the tree shook again, only this time more violent than before and for a longer duration. In fact, all around him, he realized, he was hearing what he had to be car alarms going off. There was a smattering of shouts of concern from his neighbors as well.
The movement continued.
This was not some isolated event he alone was experiencing. Maybe it was an earthquake. Maybe he should forget the suitcase and climb back down the tree. The ground is safer, right? He could not recollect what the specifics of his parents’ safety tips had been regarding tremors. Because they had been for the most part absent his entire lif,e he had not thought the lecture important. He admonished himself for not paying better attention, because every few decades they did in fact ravage southern California.
He stayed motionless instead, holding onto the limb beneath his thighs with his hands. The suitcase was all but forgotten. He glanced about, eyes wider with each passing second. He felt his gut wrench at the sight of a multitude of leaves and pine needles cascading toward the ground from every tree he could see.
The shaking stopped.
The silence that followed was profound for a few moments.
Then, he could hear the birds hooting and screeching. He sat there in awe as hundreds of them lift from their lofty perches to take to the air. It was obvious to his untrained eye the ground shaking had disturbed them.
He listened to his heart pound in his chest, still contemplating if he should or should not get down. Maybe he could wait a little longer and get the suitcase of out the tree.
Derek peered around once again, his eyes shifty now, before placing his hand upon the luggage. He gave it a forceful push and sent it tumbling out of the tree. It careened off the lower branches, spinning and twirling before it hit the gro
und with a thud and toppled over on its’ side. He scurried back toward the center of the tree, hoisting a leg downward looking for support from the limbs below.
A tremendous rending sound exploded in his ears, so loud he almost lost his grip and fell. But, he caught himself in the last instant and hugged the branch before him for dear life.
The sound turned from a tearing, tortured resonance to a rumbling so deep, he could hear it and then feel it at the same time. About him, the boughs of the tree shuddered with such force, the pine needles were falling off in great showering sheets. They poked his scalp and face as he struggled to hold on. Across the land, he could see a great cloud of dust begin to rise. He could hear terrified screams and wails of the injured and dying as hey reached his ears. The import of those cries registered in his brain.
Still the rumbling continued. The massive vibrations went on.
All he could do was hold on.
He chanced a quick glance out toward what he could see of Eagle Rock, to the hill that Occidental College occupied at the edge of his vision. Even at a distance of a mile or so, he could see the ageless buildings begin to crumble. The trees began to slide down the face of the hill as if rooted in some sort of liquid surface and not solid earth.
As he clung to the pine tree stupefied, unable to move or think with any degree of clarity. He was seeing the impossible.
Crosswise the shallow valley, the entire hillside appeared to cascade downward. First, it flowed down its’ own slope, then into itself. It was a miraculous sight. The entire ridge became a gorge. It was a hill no more. Right before his eyes, within seconds, he could see the hill was now inverted, turned inside out. It was unbelievable. He could see the entire neighborhood begin to tilt. With agonizing slowness, it flowed toward the bottom of this new-made trench. It continued to fall, edging more and more until the balanced tipped. The entire landscape before him - the college and the hundreds of houses slide out of sight and into a gigantic crack in the earth that spread outward. It bisected the hills beyond and the one where his parents’ house stood.
Derek screamed as loud as he could. He could not hear his own voice over the unimaginable cacophony of sound emanating as a cubic mile of earth fell into the center of the planet.
That was when he noticed the crack was changing. It was no longer a gigantic rent in the ground.
It was a hole!
Horror made his jaw go slack when he saw it was widening at an alarming pace. Everything – roads, sidewalks, homes, restaurants, businesses, banks, gas stations, a Starbucks, and more – was falling within it. He watched, petrified. He could only watch as retaining walls, telephone poles, mail boxes, lawns, trees, bushes, cars, men, women, children, pets - ALL - fell into what was no longer a deepening valley. It was more of a gargantuan maw of molten lava. Down, down it all went into the fiery depths of what he assumed was the earth’s mantle.
He stared in stark disbelief as the edge of the hole came nearer and nearer to his family’s property. Street-by-street. Block-by-block. The land fell away, faster and faster. Huge mountains of earth were there one instant and then plunging downward the next. Quicker and quicker all of Eagle Rock descended into hell itself.
All the while, the edge of it approached the tree upon which he stood; toward the house he had lived his entire life.
Quicker, louder and louder, closer and closer, the earthen jaws chewed everything in its path.
Derek could do nothing, but scream and scream and scream…
The edge came nearer. More and more of the world he had known fell into it.
His eyes widened as far as they could go. He looked down. He saw the seething mass of roiling and churning magma burn away everything falling into it, burning it to oblivion.
He was seeing thousands die before his eyes. A million souls winked out like mosquitos caught in the electric current of a humongous Bug Buster – their existence burnt out in a flash.
Then… the edge passed beneath him. He could feel the entire tree lean and begin to fall. His beloved back yard preceded him into the very pit of the underworld…
…You should remember when the time comes…
Where did that come from? When had he heard it? Who had said it?
…You should remember when the time comes…
Remember what? He could feel the tree topple completely over. With naught to do, he fell with such velocity he almost threw up. The huge lake of magma swirled below him. Its’ incredible heat was already burning away his eyebrows and hair, crisping his skin. Huge blisters rose and popped and seeped from every exposed surface of his arms and legs.
...You should remember that when the time comes…
His clothes caught fire.
Remember what, that I can jump high? What are you talking about?
…Remember…
His lungs began to boil.
WHAT!?!
…Remember…
He went blind as his eyes melted in their sockets.
Derek knew he was about to die. He knew he was about to be burnt in the furnace of the earth.
And yet, another sense filled him. It was new. It was a different state altogether. He could only wonder at the sense of total weightlessness he was now experiencing. Though he could not see, he reveled in it.
It felt like flying.
Then he hit the surface of the super-heated rock and he too winked out of existence.
*****
Falling?
Flying!
He was flying?
No, falling… down, down, to burn…
…Flying…?
Derek woke with a start, the remaining part of the sleeping bag covering his legs, fell away as his body jerked from his slumber. He knew he had not slept long. He was still tired. It was sometime in the middle of the night, but not that deep into it.
He brought his hand up to knuckle at some of the grit that had formed in the corner of his left eye. He wanted to go back asleep more than anything else.
Without knowing it, he shivered.
They had placed space heaters at various intervals about the air mattresses. But it still did not take long before he could feel the cold creeping into his body. He felt around for his sleeping bag, but could not feel it in his immediate area. He opened his eyes, looking up at the ceiling through the dark, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom of the store.
Sitting up, he rubbed at his other eye. He groped about further away from where he sat half-blind in the dark, hoping to grab hold of the damned covering. Did it fall off the mattress? he thought, his mind foggy from sleep. He lay back down, exasperated when he did not feel it. He decided to wait for his eyes to adjust, sighing, getting all the more cold as time progressed.
Ever so slow, his eyesight improved. Within half a minute, he was able to see well enough to discern some detail.
He glanced around the store, though he did not see much. It struck him as odd. Something was wrong with the ceiling. He whipped his head forward to look at it and realized it was too close. It was almost as though the building had shrunk or the walls had lost a degree of height. More wild than before, he peered about him, looking for his companions and did not see any of them. It occurred to him, he could not even see the surface of the air mattress itself. He turned completely around and was so outraged by the site below him, he him yelped with shock.
He lost control of his Gift and…
…Fell.
Derek tumbled from five feet in the air. He landed on the air mattress hard as the small corner of his mind controlling what had been artfully buried within him, lost its’ grip. He hit the air-filled mattress with such force, those companions sleeping the closest to him were tossed into the air a foot or more. Their bodies came back down a second later, hitting their own air mattresses with wallops, it woke them all.
Frightened, unsure, more than a bit angry, they yelled too.
While, on the far side of the air bed he had shared with Louis, came a soft thump and a small cry. The boy went
up into the air and off the surface of the mattress. He thudded onto the carpeted floor like a sack of wet rags
“Hey!” he said, irritated. Didn't anyone know it was rude to jar someone from their sleep? “Who the heck farted and knocked me off the bed?!?”
Many of them were still groggy and slow. There came no immediate reply to Louis’s inquiry. In a fog, they stared at one another, trying to figure out what happened.
From afar came the sounds of the Fist approaching - fast!
“Hey, who farted?”
Derek began to laugh, all the dread that moments ago had soaked through his body and left him sweaty, was gone. He sat up. “No one farted, you retard,” he began through bubbles of laughter.
Louis was frowning at him from the carpet in obvious confusion.
“I think I just found my Gift!”
Louis gazed back at him like he’d somehow put on a tutu and was dancing around like a ballerina.
“Don’t you get it, man?” Derek was all smiles and grins. “I’m the Fly-guy. I have the Gift of Flight.”
“You are the Skëi-Van, Derek, the Lord on the Wind,” explained Joaquin. The large teen rubbed at his face, and then shook his head from side to side, trying to wiggle free from his fatigue.
“Yeah, yeah right,” said Derek nodding, beaming at those around him.
His companions were smiling back upon small, tired lips.
Kodiak and the others of the Fist, realizing there was nothing dangerous amiss, did a swift about face. They returned to their former spots, muttering over the dead of night being a time for sleep, not noise.
“That’s awesome, Derek,” commented Anthony. “I’m glad you found your Gift. I truly am. But I gotta get some sleep.”
There were grunts and groans in agreement all around and many of the Twelve laid back down.
Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves Page 52