My Demonic Ghost #3: Hunters and Creators

by Maree, Jacinta

  “What’s going on?” Mum was by the window, peeking through the blinds, while I slid the chain into the lock.

  “I think it’s an earthquake.” The walls rattled continuously, the lights flickering chaotically, and the lamp on the mantel piece toppled over. “We’ll be safer in here.”

  There was a newspaper at the front door, uncurled from its string. On the cover was an image of a massive bushfire overtaking the entire country side. I sprawled it open across the bed, noticing all the different natural disasters that had been wreaking havoc upon our world. Page after page detailed events such as bushfires, hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The death toll was skyrocketing; nearly every single country faced some sort of disaster that wiped out towns and destroyed cities. While I had been couped up in an institution the world had been set on fire. I quickly went to the television to find every single channel was covering the disasters. People were fleeing the cities, leaving broken homes and clinging to their loved ones for dear life. They waved banners and picket signs with saying ‘The End is here’ and ‘The Apocalypse is now’. Groups were on their knees praying, crying, and begging for a saviour.

  “If God can hear us, please save us.”

  “It’s the reckoning…”

  “We’re doomed!”

  “Hell has risen to the earth!”

  “Pray with me! Pray for us all!”

  “It’s the demons!”

  “Save us! Save us!”

  I quickly turned the television off; I couldn’t stand to listen anymore. I almost wished I was back in my little white cell. Every couple of minutes, the walls trembled while screams and sirens keened outside our door. There was no way the Banished and Reapers would do this, they’re not interested in our world. Where do you think she’s getting her recruits?

  “Oh no!” My jaw went slack, “It’s Miira.”

  “Get under the table Rachael, the roof could collapse…” Mum uttered, and she pulled chairs away from the table. But, regardless where we went, we still weren’t safe. There was nowhere safe left for us, for anyone.

  “She won’t stop…” I mumbled as another tremor hit our motel, the floor heaving beneath our feet, throwing us mercilessly against the walls. Screams echoed as thick as the dusts clouds that soaked up the air. Tingles moved beneath my skin, my heart raced, and my hands trembled. What creature can possibly cause this much destruction over this much area. “There’s a Creator here.”

  I ran to the door and kicked it open and stepped outside; only to see a river of black smoke billowing from the buildings next door. Offices and houses alike buckled under wild fire, which had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Darkness engulfed the sky while flames scorched the streets; people were running and screaming while the earth cracked open beneath them. I couldn’t just sit here. I just couldn’t.

  Chapter Forty-Four:

  I had my hand to my heart. Exhaustion swept through me. Would I make it out this time? Does my life matter more than the countless number of lives already being taken? Time around me slowed. The waves of screaming softened to mere echoes and I started to question my purpose. No one can live forever; my trying to stop the inevitable is just selfish. If I could do something to save others it’ll be my privilege to help.

  I couldn’t bring myself to look back at my mother, almost like I expected her to be able to read my mind. She would plead with me not to go. She would beg, and I couldn’t bear to turn to her and say goodbye. So, I left without looking back. I didn’t stop when she called out after me. I didn’t stop when fire enveloped the parked cars, causing them to explode. I ran. Freely, blindingly into the open space littered with destruction. My heart pumped harder. Colours appeared sharper, I felt stronger and power coursed through me. I was going to save them. I was going to stop Miira, even if it meant I would die by Chō’s hands.

  “Rachael!” Evan’s voice called out. I turned my head to where he waited. He stood in the heart of the flames, eyebrows twisted in confusion, his head shaking in shock. “What are you…?” My lower lip started to tremble, amongst the chaos, Evan’s face and voice was as clear as if we stood in an empty room. Even someone as fast as Evan felt slow.

  Don’t, Rachael, His voice moved through me. Come back…

  Every heartbeat felt heavy. I felt myself slow down. I’m so sorry, but I have to go...

  Rachael-? I turned my head away and kept running. As realization kicked in, he chased after me, desperation contorting his face. He burst into ash which streaked towards. I only ran faster; and before he could snap chains to my neck, before he could pull me back, I let Chō take me. I dropped into darkness, lost from the world above. Chō was there, his calm face peering up through the thin fog that surrounded us. He walked over, tilting his head.

  “Chō, I need you to do something for me” my internal voice echoed, “Help them. Stop the Creator; you must stop them before they kill everyone.”

  Chō smiled and nodded his head, his teal eyes flashed with power, “We will stop them… together my blue spirit.”

  When there was only darkness, light pulled me upward. I was back in my body, running through the streets, arms pumping by my sides, but I wasn’t in control. Rocks were rent from the earth tossing me high in the air, the wind carried me in an upwards spiral. I rose higher and higher, until the town was just a red blaze. I could see the Reapers and Banished desperate attempts at fighting the Hunters below. There were so many of them now. The Hunters outnumbered the Reapers ten to one. I watched Raix attack the Goons that were trying to steal the peoples’ souls, how he wrestled with the creatures as they in turn ripped and tore at him. After he managed to wrench the soul from the Goon’s mouth, I watched while he returned it to its body bringing the human back to life. But the Hunters were not my concern right now. I scanned the vast plains, able to hear the screams from towns far away, all of them under attack. The Creator moved quickly, spending mere moments in each town before racing ahead. I latched onto its scent and torpedoed to its position. It had just landed on a large building where an innocuous black crow perched on an antenna. It squawked and the windows below shattered, raining glass shards from the rooftops. Upon my approach, the crow Creator stepped down from the antenna and morphed into a small child. It appeared to be a girl painted in black feathers.

  She looked at me quizzically, able to sense Chō’s presence inside my body. She had long black hair, which swung wild and free as it plunged down her back. She was uneasy about us. Then she started to purr and click, speaking to Chō. Chō replied with a more fierce bark that caused the Crow creator to stiffen. She clenched her knuckles, shaking her head in refusal.

  Chō kept barking at her, hissing at her, forcing her to stumble backwards. She looked over the edge of the building, down at the destruction she had caused and the lives she had taken. Then she hunched her back and hissed, accepting Chō’s challenge. They leapt at each other and I retreated back into my mind, darkness pinning me under the weight of Chō’s presence. My mind roiled; the world started to spin as power within my body was vacuumed out. I just remember flashes of moments. Lightning cracking through the air, splintering the skies with whips of white. Chō was stronger as he fed from my emotions, easily overtaking the Crow’s feeble advances. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. In all honesty, I was terrified, I felt every scratch and every bruise; and my heart throbbed faster, out of control. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t mind dying if it meant something great could be gained from it. I wanted to know that I helped the world become a better place. It must have been a fantastic fight, but I couldn’t see or remember much of it. All the colours of the rainbow painted the skies as rain poured down from above, washing away the lingering stench of destruction.

  Moments later, my disoriented sense of time - before the Crow fled - became clear. Chō chased it into the sky, sending it back into the realm of the spirits. Then suddenly Chō wasn’t with me anymore. I fell into death like wire unravels on a f
ishing reel. This was it. My chest was emptied of breath as Chō spat me out. My body dropped from the skies and I couldn’t think. I wasn’t scared. I only remember seeing something blue whip around my head and a chilly hand wrapped around my body.

  As I fell, I lost consciousness. My body a limp corpse plummeting downwards. A distant voice kept trying to pull me up from the darkness behind my lids. My eyes fluttered open for a brief second. It was Evan. Well, my projection of Evan. He was falling with me, mere inches from my face; his face foggy and transparent. The wind played gently with his hair and his eyes softened, a smile caressed his handsome face as he looked back at me. Come back to me… He whispered without moving his lips. I wanted to reach out, but the strength in my body was gone. I wanted to say yes or simply nod, but I could barely keep my eyes open. His face blurred until he was nothing but a pair of green eyes shining through the fog.

  My hallucination of him then vanished, and the real Evan appeared, ash falling away from his body and the wind slapping against him harshly. He kept at the same speed as my descent, his face stretched in his yelling. He wasn’t smiling while he tried to catch me, but his ghostly arms couldn’t hold onto my body for long. He disappeared again, returning with Hook, Teresa’s vulture. Sparing me the pain of hitting the ground, the Goon took me out of my body. Hollowed green pressed down on me before I burst into grains of sand.

  Life didn’t so much flash before my eyes as it did slowly unfurl from the darkness. There was a lot of noise, like a room full of people all trying to get my attention at once. Except it was my own voice that was yelling and whispering and crying and laughing. My stream of consciousness dragged me along the abyss, colours shifted into foreign shapes and sounds as I felt myself break apart. I didn’t have a body anymore, my mind reeled backwards; panicked at my inability to find my hands or feet. Perhaps a coping mechanism caused me to create imaginary limbs when really I was just a cloud of weightless fog. I didn’t remember everything about my life, just distinct key moments. Fighting with my parents over some stupid curfew, the Whitehaven carnival, and James’s cologne on our first date. Chō walking up to me in his slow motion strut. Gargoyle’s gentle smile as we sat on the roof talking about death. The Seven Sins and Mother’s continuous clicking, her warm black hair brushing against my face. Raix biting my ankle and then hugging Evan when he pulled me into his embrace, spinning us slowly in a circle. I had no time to reflect, I merely blinked my eyes and the images were gone.

  Chapter Forty-Five:

  My body continued to drop, but my consciousness rose above it, lingering in the air while Evan eased me down. I felt disconnected for a moment. Unable to comprehend thoughts and feelings, but his touch and familiar face helped ease my confusion. His hands were on my shoulders and he looked terrified that he could actually touch me. We floated through a tissue like material that brought us into a large open field. The colours were all wrong, the grass pink, the sky was silver, and the waterfall overhead seemed to crash into a bottomless cave below, but didn’t make a sound. I turned around. It was a vast land of mountains and forests, without a single house or manmade creation. It wasn’t perfect. At least not what I imagined Heaven to be like, but it was wild and pure. It made sense that land could only belong to a certain type of spirit, Creators. I could feel their stares as they blended in with nature. The other spirits that lived here appeared unfrightened by the Creators’ presence.

  “Where am I?” I whispered. My head felt light and detached, like this was merely a dream.

  “This is the Third Realm. A resting place for all spirits…” Evan explained as he stepped up to me.

  “The third realm?” I gasped, “You finally found it.” He lifted his hand to mine and took it into his grasp. Our fingers touched and pins and needles skittered through my entire body. I was a ghost now, but I wasn’t scared. I felt weightless, finally free from my problems. Birds took off into the sky, creating a triangle as they disappeared beyond the horizon. Trees as sturdy as metal pipes sprouted from the earth, bearing fruits of all colours from their thick branches. Feathers fell from the branches’ fingertips, raining on of us and becoming tangled in my hair. I was surprised to find my hair had darkened to the dark hue of a Banished spirit. I am tainted too now, but least I’m not trapped with the sins.

  “Yes, we can stay here forever.” He pulled my hand towards him so I stumbled into his body. “A place that accepts the Banished.” This was paradise. Other spirits lounged in the grass, hands outstretched to catch the leaves and play an eternal game of tag. They were lost in their own worlds, their voices gentle echoes as they ran around the fields laughing. There were two Creators lingering close by, a little duckling that floated carelessly along the water and a brown possum. The possum Creator was picking up acorns, leaping impossible lengths from tree to tree, while the duckling buried its beak into the pillow of its chest.

  “This place is beautiful…” I mumbled as Evan laughed.

  “It stretches on forever you know; there are all sorts of landscapes to enjoy. I hear you can even reach the moon from here.”

  My smile dropped, thinking back to all those we left on earth. Would their souls ever reach here; or did Miira take them and turn them into Hunters or worse…fuel?

  “Did I stop it? The Crow Creator?” I asked numbly.

  Evan’s head dropped, and he bit his lower lip. Then he stepped forward, pulled my shoulders into his chest, and said, “You did, but there were others. When they lost you…” He then shook his head, “How hard is it not to die, hmm? You are the worst at listening to orders.”

  I chuckled weakly, “I’m sorry I worried you.”

  Then he sighed, “No, I’m sorry that you didn’t get to live your life…” He brought my face to his, “But I don’t intend to give you up again.” I smiled bashfully in his hands; I didn’t understand how he was able to say that with such a straight face.

  Is this for real? Did I really get to live happily ever after here with Evan?

  A part of me felt tense, like I couldn’t accept this reality; whereas another part of me was incredibly relieved. I could still see things, smells things, feel and experience emotions. What was a ghost but a human without a body? I was exactly the same, but at the same time completely different. It made me question the reason for going through human life in the first place. Was it like a cooking stage that moulded the soul into what it is? Was that our whole purpose, to figure out who we really were, so we could be welcomed into this new spiritual existence? When souls become corrupted, were they destroyed and re-sent back into the world to live life all over again? Maybe that was the point; it was a way to give us memories. To experience excitement and happiness and loss. To develop an appreciation for ourselves, of our choices, and for those we care for? Did the spirits that remained become a part of a new society? It was human nature to conform and create a hierarchy system to maintain order and control. Was that what Heaven was like? Is that what Miira envisioned? Here in the realm of the Creators no one was considered more powerful than the other, and everyone remained until they wanted to return back to life on earth in order to re-experience their adventures.

  We could stay here forever, untouched by humanity’s faults, and enjoy serenity. I melted into his arms and pressed my forehead to his. This felt right. “Maybe that’s what I always wanted…” He pulled me in closer, his soft body trembling in disbelief.

  “I felt so guilty for so many years; all I ever yearned for is you to join me up here. It was a greedy wish and I felt so angry with myself for thinking such things. But you’re here now, even though the noble thing would be to wish you back to your family; but I don’t want to. I don’t care anymore because you’re here, and I would rather be destroyed than watch you leave me again.”

  I pulled back to look into his eyes. The Evan that had starved to death on the attic floor, I never thought I could see him smile like this. “I won’t leave you, you won’t be alone anymore.”

  His breath was unsteady with nerves a
s he kissed me. I could feel his nose pressed against my cheek, how his breath danced along my skin. His lips were cold against the warmth of his every breath. My heart accelerated, excitement tingled under my skin and spanned across my entire foggy body. For a moment, my mind went blank. That the simple act of inching forward, of closing the gap between us, had me almost squealing felt absurd. With strong arms, he cradled my head, keeping me close to him. Wind was gentle here, lifting my hair as his fringe tickled my forehead.

  For so many years he had watched me from a distance. Even knowing I had forgotten him, he could’ve left for salvation; and I would never have been the wiser, but he chose to wait. He had chosen to stay on the earth, hunted by Angels, hated by humans, and forced into hiding; all because he didn’t want to leave me behind. How could a boy who died unloved be able to give so much love to someone else? He had yearned for acceptance, to prove his worth, and he had seen his salvation in me. He had clung onto his memories of us, keeping himself lifted above tides of darkness and regret. All he ever wanted was a chance to be happy, and he truly believed I was his answer. If that meant waiting an eternity, then he would wait.

  “I forgot you...” Tears spilled from my eyes. While he lay in the attic, I promised him, right after he had fallen to his death that I would never let him feel alone again. “I promised to never forget....”

  He ran his thumb along my cheek, wiping away my tears, “And you didn’t… you remembered.”

  I nibbled on my lip before gently lowering my head. “I can’t believe that we’re here…” I pulled away to look out to the open fields.

  He reluctantly dropped his hands. I glanced back, sensing his hesitation. “I have eternity to spend with you, and I plan on spending every moment by your side. But right now I can’t stay.”

  “What?”

  He turned his face away, angry with himself. “I can’t stay here. Jordon is still down there, fighting for his survival. I have to help my brother. Reapers can’t stay in the Third Realm, not while Miira is still in control. I promise you Rachael, I promise I’ll be back and we can stay here forever.”