The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones)

by M. H. Hawkins

  From that experience, Isaiah knew evil existed and he knew it well. When he saw his circling goats and the ground spewing out fountains of goat bones, he knew this evil. It was an evil that was all too familiar. “Armand!” he yelled, now yanking his son off the berm and pushing him down its slope. “I said that’s enough. When I tell you to do something, you do it. Do you understand me? Mali...”

  Isaiah turned around just in time to see Malick get yanked into the ground. “Arma…” But he was gone too, sucked into the ground like it was never there at all. Then Isaiah was swallowed up as well.

  CH 16: Street Lights

  Mea looked around at the wreckage they’d caused. The crumbled ball of steel that once was June Swiekert’s 1996 Ford Mustang (from her landing). The dented silver van. Freshly made potholes with their melted edges (from the lightning strikes). The charred markings on the sidewalk, from the lightning blasts as well. The ones from the dying creatures. The stripes of carved asphalt—from scraping werewolf claws. Who would ever believe what really happened here? she wondered.

  A block up, Mea saw the street lights reigniting. She watched as the electricity and lights returned lamp-by-lamp and house-by-house. Flicking porch lights followed and lit up windows followed, the numerous rows of residential windows returning from darkness.

  As the lights crept nearer, Mea panicked. “Dammit,” she said while looking around franticly.

  Again glancing at the approaching lights, Mea darted behind June’s busted-up car, leaning her back against the sedan behind it. Mea raised her leg and placed her foot against the rear bumper of June Sweikert’s Mustang. Then, with a loud grunt and maximum effort, she gave it a hard thrust.

  The heap made an agonizing moan as it bucked forward and into the car parked in front of it. When that car bucked into the one in front of it—an old Saturn Ion covered in its own set of dents and chipped paint and primer, it nudged into the silver van that was parked in front of it.

  Mea darted across the street, and by the time she had grabbed Azazel and began shuffling him off to the side, the returning lights had reached them. Even without the row of street lights she had shattered just days ago, the street still glowed with its manmade electricity, and any shroud of darkness or shadow of stealth was all but gone.

  Confused, Azazel asked, “Why’d you do that?”

  “Why? to create a cover up. A drunk driver sideswiping a bunch of cars is more believable than a bunch of gods and angels—and werewolves—fighting in the middle of the street.”

  Azazel looked over at the wreckage that Mea just caused, just added to. This hardly looks like a hit-and-run, he thought. Though June Sweikert’s Ford Mustang now made up the caboose of Mea’s impromptu pileup, it still looked like it had been hit by a meteor. On the other hand… he thought, toeing at a piece of a broken glass—from a beer bottle tossed from a passing car—he reconsidered. In this neighborhood, he thought, eh, they might believe it. It wasn’t a secret that Mea didn’t live in the best neighborhood, and brief episodes of foolish chaos weren’t uncommon. In fact, the glass from the broken streetlights, from a few days ago, still lined the gutters and were sprinkled over the curbs, and the city would most likely leave the lights unrepaired for another week or two, at least.

  Azazel saw something glimmering in the street, a shiny snake slithering out of the wreckage and over the street. Gasoline, leaking from the Ford Mustang. Another snake appeared, slower than the first, and slithered across the street in the other direction. Oil, from the smashed Saturn. “We could burn it,” Azazel suggested, now holding a fireball of dancing green flames in his hand. “That might be the easiest way. ‘least the most thorough one, anyways.”

  Mea was looking up at her mom’s apartment, seeing the window of its tiny kitchen light up with its familiar dull yellow light when she saw Azazel’s fireball out of the corner of her eye. Giving Azazel a double-take, she slapped the fireball out of his hand—making it flame out like a kerosene lamp that was suddenly starved of fuel and air. “No,” Mea said, surprised at his suggestion. “It’s fine. Now, do it. Change.

  “Do it.” Mea jabbed Azazel in the shoulder then took her own advice. Her satin cloak clung to her back like a wet blanket then absorbed into her fitted armor. Her silver armor dimmed, thinned, then withered away. The swords strapped to her thighs melted like sugar cubes in the rain and soaked into her now-jean-covered legs. Her silver chestplate stretched and sagged down to her waist and became a beat-up t-shirt. And as Mea shed her thick silver armor, she suddenly looked quite normal and considerably smaller, like the eighteen-year-old girl she was. She ran her nails through her hair, scrubbed them against her scalp, and sent the mystical glimmer scattering out of it—like shaking sparkling sand from a beach towel. Her scalp still felt tight so she shook her head and scratched at her scalp again—to loosen up her tight, matted hair. By the time she folded her loose strips of hair behind her ears, it returned to the normal, straight, golden-blond mane that she was used to.

  Azazel finally changed as well. His black armor melted into an overused black hoodie with fray edges and fatigued holes from excessive wear-and-tear. His armored legs became a set of grimy jeans with grease strains that looked like they belonged to a mechanic. While Mea seemed to shrink as she changed, Azazel remained quite large and imposing—roughly 250 lbs. of solid muscle resting atop a 6’6” frame.

  Azazel seemed to age as well. His clean-shaven face became less-perfect, and a five-o’-clock shadow appeared across his face—like he was twenty-five going on forty. His eyes grew darker, lined by hard-lines that only made him look more like a modern-day gladiator.

  “No,” huffed Mea, “smaller.” Reaching over her head, she shoved his shoulder again.

  Why’s it matter? Azazel wondered and shook his head in disbelief. Then he did as he was told. Heatwaves seemed to radiate from his shoulders and thighs as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Before Mea’s eyes, he shrank and became a smaller version of himself—a slightly less impressive 6’2”, 200 lbs. example of male perfection.

  Mea gently grabbed Azazel’s jaw and slowly his head from side-to-side. Too old, too pretty, she thought. “Less… brooding,” she ordered now. “Yeah, less brooding.” She jabbed his shoulder again. “Do it.”

  Azazel huffed then did as he was told. Changing his image and filling in the hard lines around his eyes, Azazel did his best. When he was finished, while he still looked like someone in his mid-twenties and much older than Mea, the change was a significant improvement. He shrugged at Mea. There, are you happy now?

  She smiled at him and said, “Much better.” She took a deep breath. “Well,” she said, sighing heavily as she exhaled, “are you ready?”

  Azazel was still confused and gave her a puzzled look. He had no idea what she was talking about. “Mea,” he said, sounding like he was apologizing (for any-and-everything and every past sin he ever committed). “What are you talking about?”

  She smiled at him and said, “It’s time to meet the family.” She started walking but quickly realizing that she was the only one moving. Azazel, her estranged brother from a past she could only recall through bursts of shattered and scattered memories of her past life, was standing there looking hurt, paralyzed by his regrets and the pain he had caused.

  “Azazel, what’s wrong?”

  “You-you-you…” he stuttered, his hands shaking nervously. “You want me to meet your family? Af-after everything that’s happened? After everything I’ve done. I… I don’t—”

  “Hey,” Mea said, lifting his sagging head. “You… You’re my family too, and so are they.”

  “I threatened to kill them. I’ve stabbed you. I killed Anna.” Azazel looked off to the side and into the night’s sky. He half-expected the storm dragon to reappear and unleash a flurry of lightning bolts at him. He half-hoped that his life was a nightmare and that some god (other than them) would appear and strike him down—as punishment for his sins. Neither happened. Instead he received mercy and f
orgiveness.

  “Yeah,” Mea said. “You did. You stabbed me and threatened to kill me… and I exiled you and tore out your wings. And Blackwell stabbed you and threw you into a prison cell and… We’ve spent too much time holding on to our grudges… tending to them like they’re some flower garden. We’ve spent—wasted—too much time hurting each other and trying to get revenge and… Nothing we do can undo the past, undo what we’ve done. We have to move past it—we have to.”

  Azazel nodded sadly in agreement. Her words were nearly identical to Jessica’s. As true as they might be, Azazel’s guilt still weighed heavily on him. Little did Mea know, Azazel had already met some of her family. Not more than a day ago, he had stood over Mea’s little brother Ryan as he slept… with a knife in his hand.

  Azazel forced a smile and said, “Alright.”

  “Good.” Mea smiled back and playfully grabbed his arm. “Now let’s go meet your new little brother and your… my mom—just call her Diana. We’ll figure out the family tree later.”

  Azazel’s angst remained heavy, but he sucked it up and let Mea drag his half-reluctant body towards the apartment building and eventually up the stairs.

  With Mea’s kindness, and seemingly forgiveness, Azazel did his best to set aside his guilt-ridden memories. Still, as he climbed the creaking wooden stairs that led up to the Harris’s apartment, each creaking step reminded him of his horrible past. And in the back of his head, he knew, whether it was by his hand or another, Trevor was right. The boy must die.

  CH 17: Six Feet Under

  Swallowed by the ground beneath his feet, Isaiah fell through the bottomless pit. Aside from the complete darkness that surrounded him, there was nothing but the wind slapping against his falling face and the feel of his flapping robe flailing against him.

  Momentarily believing that he was falling into the bowels of hell, Isaiah came to his senses. There are walls, he thought. Walls of a pit, the bottomless pit. He knew it was true, that there were walls, because… they were whispering to him. It was too similar to that time, so long ago, and whispers were too familiar. Still, despite the whispering darkness and his plummeting freefall—that he was sure would end in a painful splatter or eternal damnation, Isaiah’s fears were pushed aside by his love for his family.

  I have to get back, he thought, trying to drift over to something to grab on to. When his fingertips finally scraped against something, he frantically clawed at it. It didn’t work, and like hope, the wall crumbled and slipped through his weak, failing fingertips. Dirt. Pawing at it again, Isaiah’s results were the same, and he was again left with nothing more than scraped-up hands and more loose dirt. All the while, his efforts did nothing to stop or slow his descent.

  The walls of the endless, waterless well came to an end in the form of another tunnel, this one made of smooth, polished stone. Isaiah again found himself anticipating his eminent ending, his death, with him splattering on whatever lied at the bottom. His landing was softer than expected, and his fall became a less-steep, flatter sloping slide made of smooth stone. While it wasn’t gentle, it was better than splattering. Even after a hard left turn sent his head smacking against the stone, Isaiah told himself that it was better than the alternative.

  Another left turn followed the one before it, and another one after it. Isaiah now found himself corkscrewing down this strange, twisted slide, spinning like a centrifuge. Like a centrifuge, the liquids inside him began separating. His stomach churned around, but only on one side, and all the blood rushed to his head. Still fighting against the slide and gravity, Isaiah kicked at the slick stone with his tattered boots, but it didn’t help. All he found was more polished stone for his boot to get caught on and for it to send him painfully tumbling head over feet and spinning around. The tube curved against, sharper still, and began corkscrewing around in sharper curves, flushing him down… somewhere.

  The ride ended with Isaiah blasting out of the side of a stone wall and into a dimly lit cavern. Below him, he saw the lake of fire he was currently gliding over and had been dreading. Far below, it was like the Grand Canyon had been filled with gasoline and set ablaze.

  What was in front of him was worse. Flying like an eagle, Isaiah was rocketing towards his destiny, a stone wall made of large stone bricks, growing infinitely larger with each ticking microsecond—like an open hand rushing towards his face.

  Again, death did not find Isaiah. Instead something grabbed him, yanking on his shoulders like the ripcord of his parachute had gotten pulled, yanked by some invisible hand, and slowing his descent to death. After a few suspended, swinging bounces, Isaiah was left hanging by two thick straps wrapped around his shoulders, grinding against the front of them and pinching his underarms. He looked up and found that he was dangling from thick rubbery cord.

  My son. Isaiah frantically looked around for Armand, but the straps wrapped around his shoulders made it difficult to turn or even look to the sides. Where’s Armand? Isaiah kicked at the air but found his efforts all but fruitless. “Armand!” he yelled. “Son! My son! Where are you? Armand, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  “Father!” Armand yelled back. Dangling like his father was, Armand struggled against the same kind of black straps that were strangling his father’s shoulders, and he was dangling from the same sort of rubbery cord that his father was.

  The parachute cords that held them in suspended death weren’t anything close to normal. A shiny, black substance; it resembled something like rubber, but it also seemed to be alive. Isaiah grabbed at the straps on his shoulder, but they didn’t budge. Instead it squished between his grasping fingers, like black jelly, and ran over them. The substance slinked over his knuckles and returned to its viscous, dough-like cord, returning and reabsorbing back into where it had come from, and Isaiah’s hands were empty again. “Son,” he yelled. “Stay calm. I’m here.”

  Isaiah looked around again and saw Malick. He was dangling just left of Armand, stuck in the same position as he and Armand were. Strangely enough, Malick appeared peculiarly calm and was coolly examining their new subterranean surroundings.

  “Father!” Armand yelled again, now thrashing wildly about and foolishly trying to break free. Kicking at the air and thrashing around like a wild man, Armand had ramped himself into a slow, but steadily accelerating, swinging motion. But swinging or not, the boy was still at the mercy of the mysterious suspension cable and remained too far to reach anything useful or grab on to anything at all. Isaiah almost did the same, kicking at the air like he had done before, but when he saw the cable holding Armand stretch and begin to thin out, like it was being stretched too far, he knew that he needed to keep a cool head, if not for himself, for his son.

  “Son,” Isaiah said. “Armand, calm down. Your cable—mind your cable.” Armand did just that, and as he looked around, he realized that his father was right. That cable, the one made of the strange, shiny, black substance, was the only thing keeping him from falling to a fiery death.

  “Good,” Isaiah reassured him. “Good. Stay calm, son. We’ll figure out something.” He finally caught a breath of air himself and finally took in his surroundings. The cavern was cylinder shaped and perfectly round. The walls looked to be primarily made of rings of sandstone—white, tan, red, and bronze ones. The ones near the roof, the upper rings, looked more like slate while the highest ones had a clay-colored tint to them.

  The walls of the cavern were covered in small, uniformly separated caves that stretched from the burning floor below to the vaulted ceiling of blackness that hung high overhead, higher than Isaiah could see. The caves reminded him of a giant beehive, a honeycomb of evil.

  In the center of the cavern, he saw the stone wall that he had almost splattered against. A tower. Starting somewhere within the middle of the fiery pit, it stretched almost as high as the lightless ceiling. Made of stone bricks the same color as the sandstone walls of the cavern, it was an eerie totem pole in an eerie, evil place. Covered with perfectly spaced, perfectly patte
rned bricks, it also was covered with uniformly aligned caves—rows upon rows of rounded entrances. In all, the structure was unnaturally perfect in every way.

  Where am I? Isaiah wondered, hell, maybe? No, I’m still alive. I know that much. I know what death feels like, and this isn’t it. He was underground, that much he was sure of. Though how-far underground, he didn’t have a clue.

  “Father,” yelled Armand, still trying to catch his breath. “What is this place?”

  “It’s the bottomless pit,” answered Malick. “We’re in hell.” As he looked over at Armand, Malick’s eyes were as emotionless as his voice was calm. “You wanted a revolution? Well… here it is.” Though Malick was smirking again, his tone was dead serious.

  “Quiet, Malick,” shouted Isaiah. “Armand, look at me—look at me, son. Don’t listen to him. We’re going to be okay. We’re going to make it out of here.” Isaiah squirmed around and reached for his belt, for the pocketknife clipped on it. But the straps around his shoulders limited his movements and numbed his sense of touch, and when Isaiah was finally able to grab on to the pocketknife, his numbed fingers couldn’t hold on to it, and it fell into the pit of fire lurking beneath them. The failure crushed Isaiah’s optimism. Though when he looked over at Armand, he let out a sigh of relief. Good, he didn’t see me. He didn’t see me drop the knife. Stay strong, Isaiah told himself, for Armand, for your family. Just stay alive. Dammit, Isaiah. Think. Find a solution. Figure this out. Think.