Dark Forest, Volume 1, Part 1

The Rules Change As Night Begins to Fall...

Those who sat in the

darkness and in the

shadow of death, bound

in affliction and irons -

because they rebelled

against the words of

God, and despised the

counsel of the Most

High.

~Pslams 107:10-11

THE water reflecteed a glossy mirror image of the sky and bare trees behind her. The water was peaceful, glassy, undisturbed, shallow-looking. deep.

His hand, cold and strong, gripped her shoulder as he shoved her down to her knees. Tiny, sharp rocks inthe dirt scraped the skin on her palms as she threw out her hands to save herself from falling forward into the lake. "Do it," he growled, his voice dark, low, and clear.

She leaned over the water. Not even the gentle breeze stirred it. She swallowed, reached out, dipped her fingers into the freezing cold water. Shivers crawled up her spine.

The sunset behind her was turning the water orange-red. She knew it wasn't just a mirror image that turned the water that color.

She scooped up a handful of water, lifted it to her lips, and drank it. She almost gagged, and his hand on her shoulder gripped harder. She squeezed her eyes shut, forced it down.

It left a taste in the back of her mouth that she identified by smell. Her eyes watered as she fought for control over her stomach.

"You aren't done."

She heard a clink as she dropped a glinting silver knife on the ground next to her.

Saliva refused to pool back into her mouth to wash away the after-taste. She didn't have enough time left to waste. Her hand was shaking. She reached for the knife, almost dropped it. She put the sharp end up against her palm. Closed her eyes.

"Say it."

She fought tears as she cut across her palm - deep. She squeezed blood out of her skin utnil she had about a handful, then let it drip down into the water. "With this personal sacrifice..." Her voice wavered. She fought a whimper. "With this personal sacrifice, I repay you for what I took."

His burdening hand on her shoulder lifted and she slumped forward and breathed with some relief at the break of his touch.

"Get up."

She clenched her bleeding hand shut, pushed herself up off the ground, turned around. He handed her a pure white cloth, and bent down to pick up the knife as she wrapped the cloth around her hand. The pain just got worse every time, beecause she was never given the chance to heal.

He tucked the knife back into hsi jeans pocket under his long, black cloak. "Lets's go." He turned and disappeared into the trees. she stumbled to keep up with him. She'd been this way tens of times, but she was not ready to be left in this forest alone. Not in a million years.

Light was fading fast. It was illuminating the trees, the bare branches. She squeezed pressuer on her hand as she ran after him, twisting and turning among the trees, keeping a conscious eye on the disappearing sun behind the tree line.

THE boom of thunder awoke him, and Elijah couldn't say he regretted it. It jerked him away from the other world, the other life, the other him.

He sat up. He was sweating. He pelled back the covers, threw his legs over the edge of the bed. Ran his hands over his face. Lord, why? Why do you keep bringing my old life back to my mind again? It had been years ago. he was just beginning to re-build after the tragic accident, and now this all over again?

Elijah felt his way throught eh dark house to the kitchen. he fixed himself some coffee and was standing at the sink, looking out the window at the pouring rain, and drinking from the mug slowly when that little voice hit his heart.

"Daddy?"

He set his mug down and turned around, opened his arms. The eight year old ran into them, and clung to him. "I don't like thunderstorms," she whimpered.

"I know," he he whispered, carrying her into the living room. They sat down in his big chair and he rocked her for about an hour or so before she fell asleep. Elijah tucked her back into bed, and kissed her cheek. He stood over her for a minute - You look just like your mother...Then he left.

THEY were soaked by the time they arrived over an hour later. She was shivering from the cold. It wasn't any warmer in the building. Her stringy hair hung down in her face, and raindrops dripped down her face, smearing her make-up - or at least what was left of it.

Someone came into the foyer from the main room and handed them towels. Shyanne tried to stop her teeth from chattering as she accepted it, and ran it through her hair, down her bare arms. He did the same.

The guy who brought the towels took them back. "They are expecting you, Kalida."

He nodded, wrapped his fingers aroudnd Shyanne's arm in a vice-hard grip. "Alright, we'll be right there."

The other guy walked into a side room and closed the door. Kalkida led her through the two large, double oak doors.

The room was stuffy, filled with bodies generating heat. there were at least two hundred people in the room, all with long, black cloaks on, and their faces masked. It was dark, with only the light of a few candles to cast shadows. Kalida guided her through the large crowd towards the front of the room.

There was a woman there, a tall blonde, with strikingly beautiful features, but her eyes were harsh, and her lips were drawn up tightly in a firm line. Following Kalida's lead, they bowed and touched their foreheads to the floor, scraped up some dirt off the floor and smeared it across their cheeks in an upside down cross formation. Then they stepped back into the crowd foring around the woman.

A low chant started in the back and moved towards the front, picking up speed and volume as it went. Shyanne closed her eyes and forced her lips to form the words, but she didnt' say anything. She felt eyes burning into her and looked up at the woman standing up at the front. She was looking straight at her - no, glarng at her. Shyanne snapped her head and eyes down again and started voicing the words.

They chanted for over an hour, competing with the pounding rain on the roof above them for preeminence. Shyanne's throat became very sore, to the point where she had to croak out each chant, tears of pain filling her eyes.

But she didn't dare stop.

Anything to keep that woman's eyes off her.

Her arm brushed up against Kalida's. His skin was cold, clammy, and his eyes when they met

hers were like ice. She wanted to look away, but she couldn't. She couldn't tear her eyes off his, couldn't break the stare. She felt her knees shake in fear.

How in the world had she allowed herself to be dragged this far?

The chanting started dying off, just as it had started, starin in the back, and ending n the front. Her hoarse throat was screaming for rest by the time of the last chant.

The woman turned around and walked upt he steps to the stage at the front of the room. Kalida and ten other people weaved their way throught he crowd and joined her at her side, five on her left, and five on her right. When they turned back around, they were holding strikingly beautiful gold goblets, embedded with dark red rubies, and carved with meticulous, articulate designs.

Shyanne gulped. She looked straight at Kalida, hoping that he could give her some sort of hope in his eyes that she would not be forced to perform this ritual along with the others. but he made no eye contact with her. He was staring straight ahead, and his eyes were clouded over. She knew he was gone, just as he was supposed to be. Just as all the others were.

She felt the crowd moving behind her, pressing her to move. She did it subconsciously, stepping into the queau forming in front of Kalida. The eleven leaders holding the goblets all raised them up into the air above their heads, and started a new chant, this one with verses instead of the same repeated words over and over.

Then they lowered the cups again and offered them to the first person in each line. Every person took a drink from the goblet and passed it back. The person in front of Shyanne was possessed as he dramatically raised the rim of the goblet to his lips and he panted and prayed as he took a swallow. He handed it back to Kalida, and gout out of line.

Shyanne stepped up, looked into Kalida's face. Shadows danced across his forehead, and flame from the candlelight sparkled in his eyes.

They acted like this was a privilege. Meanwhile she was fighting to keep her dinner in her stomach. Kalida handed her the goblet. Her hands were shaking again. It almost slipped through her fingers and shattered onto the floor. If it had, that would have been sure death.

He was staring at her with the eyes of another. Any shred of hope of getting out of this disappeared and was to be seen no more. It had vanished along with the chance of ever living a normal life again.

She raised the goblet to her lips. it clinked against her teeth and she tipped it up, let the contents slip into her mouth.

It was warm, sticky, and beginning to clump. The second it made contact with her mouth her stomach revolted, but she swallowed it back down again. She thrust the goblet back into hsi hands and stumbled away, hand in her mouth, other arm wrapped around her stomach, and tears flowing down onto her cheeks.

The ceremony continued on as normal, but Shyanne curled up in a ball in the middle of the floor, shaking uncontrollably, crying, praying to whatever power was out there that was in control of all of this. Please! I never asked for all of this! Get me out of here!

Hallucinations took over, until she no longer knew where she was, what she was doing, or what was really real around her. By the time they slipped away, taking their control over her mind with them, it was all over. She woke up to find herself alone in the room, with only the smells and the memories and the never-ending chanting in her ears to keep her company.

YOU'VE been drinking again," she said with disgust.

"Got a problem with that?"

She towered over him, and he hated it. "It is unholy," she said. "It ruins your purity."

He had too many things on his mind to even listen to what she had to say to him. He turned away from her, fishing his car keys out of his pocket. "Great. See ya around, Rebecca."

She grabbed him and swung him around ont a table in the middle of the room, scattering glasses, bottles, money, and playing cards. The men sitting around the table backed away, furious. They weren't her concern.

She grabbed his shirt and got in his face. "You're walking dangerously close to the edge, Kalida," she growled. "And you've got a lot to lose. This drinking problem is going to get you in trouble, and so is that girl."

He shoved her off of him and stood onto his own two - shaky - feet. "You said I could bring her in. Take it to the counsel if you have a problem with it."

She shook her head. "You repulse me, Kalida."

He shook himself off, looked around the bar, and smiled. She was too wise to do anything to him here. He was safe. "Haven't I always?"

She put her finger in his face. "I want to see improvement in that girl by the end of this quarter.

Is that clear?"

He was getting angry now. He shoved her finger out of his face. "Don't worry about her," he said hotly. "She will be just fine. She'll do anything I tell her to do."

"I would be sure of that, Kalida. Because if you can't handle her, then she has to go. And you know exactly what that means."

She walked otu of the bar. Kalida could feel the eyes of every single human being on him. He didn't care. He got out of there.

He had to find Shyanne.

SHE'D already brushed her teeth so much and so hard her gums started bleeding. The taste of blood brought back more than she desired. And now she was brushing again. When she spit into the sink, it was more red from her bleeding gums than it was bluish green from the toothpaste.

She'd used a whole bottle of mouthwash, and she still tasted it. She'd showered three times in the past five hours, and she still reeked. Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her, but it still felt so sharp and clear in her senses; if she focused to hard on it, it would drive her to the toilet.

Shyanne grabbed her brush from out of the bathroom and walked into her bedroom. She glanced at her digital clock as she yanked the brush through her tangled hair. It wasn't too late to try to get to work on time, but there was no way she was going anywhere today. It might cost her job, but she wasn't thinking very clearly right now, and right now, she didn't care.

She tossed her brush onto her bed. If she wasn't going to work, why bother?

She rubbed her hands over her face, ran her fingers through her damp hair. Was the rest of her

life going to be like this? This empty, disgusted feeling constricting around her chest, squeezing out all the air? This feeling of guilt, of revulsion? The knowledge that the people that saw her during the day would never know - would never want to know - the person she was during the night?

The fear that one day she would become just like all the other people in that room?

Her throat tightened, and her stomach bubbled. She bolted for the bathroom. When she was through, she conked out on her bed and went out.

When Shyanne woke up almost three hours later, she felt groggy, and just as bad as she did before she fell asleep. She felt the need to get out of the house, take a walk. Get some fresh air, clear her mind.

The rain from last night had let up a little bit to a drizzle, but hadn't stopped entirely. She didn't bother with a coat, just threw on a light sweater over her short-sleeved shirt, and put on tennis shoes before walking out the door.

The drizzle misted in her hair and rested gently on her cheeks. She wished she could pretend it was snow, but she'd never been good at imagining things to be other than what they were. She missed snow. It was so pretty, so elegant, so clean and pure. It covered very ugly thing, coating it in its brilliant whitenesss, softening all harsh sounds, rounding every sharp corner. It gave everything a new and fresh look. It was early November, and she was definitely ready for new.

New everything.

She pushed her hands in her pockets and kept her head down as she walked. She didn't want to make eye contact with anyone for a long, long time. They might be able to see it all in her eyes.

They might be able to look right through her.

She wasn't about to take the risk.

Shyanne walked around her neighborhood for quite a while, breathing deeply, trying to push last night to the very back of her mind. Later she would have to think through it, but not now.

Now, she really just wanted to walk and enjoy being able to be alone, do her own thing, think her own thoughts, and experience at least a little, tiny smidgen of once again being normal.

Maybe if she could get herself to believe it for a few nanoseconds, others would too.

ELIJAH Peters loved being an African American. But the looks he sometimes got could make him more furious than anything else ever could. He wouldn't trade his skin for anyone else's in this world, but he wasn't sure how to transfer that pride onto his little daughter Trish when she was teased at school, or sometimes asked weird questions.

Scrap that. He would trade his skin sometimes.

Elijah raised his right hand and let his eyes settle on his palm. Trish had asked him once where the scar had come from. She was sitting on his lap during church one Sunday, and she was playing with his hands as all little kids liked to do with their parents. He was savoring it while it still lasted, before she grew up and flew away, when he looked down and caught her staring at the palm of his right hand.

He didn't say anything, he just sat and watched it pan out.

She ran her delicate little fingers across the gruesome scar that ran across his palm diagonally. Then she looked up at him, and he saw all his old pains mirrored in her eyes.

She was feeling for him!

"Where'd it come from, Daddy?" she asked him.

He'd gently put his finger on her little lips and shushed her. It was church; she shouldn't be talking. She nodded and put her head on his chest, cuddling closer. He held her throughout the rest of the sermon, through the closing hymn, and and the invitational prayer. He never let her go.

And she never asked again.

But back to the subject at hand.

The white guy - Elijah checked his mental notes to remember his name: Mr. Carson - was shaking his hand, and the look was gone from his eyes. He now looked quite civil. He looked very business like. He was young, handsome, his blue eyes sharp and clear.

Why did it always have to target these kinds of people?

"Dr. Peters I presume."

He almost smiled. Instead Elijah nodded. "Yes indeed." He gestured to a chair. "Would you please have a seat?"

Carson set his briefcase down on the floor and sat down. "Yes, thank you, Dr. Peters." He put his elbows on the armrests of the chair and folded his hands. "So you are the one I have been in contact with?"

Implying of course that it hsard for you to believe that because I'm black? "Yes, Mr. Carson, that would be me."

"And you really think you can do this?"

He held back his anger, tried not to jump to conclusions. The guy's medical history said he'd already had two surgeries. He probably wasn't chomping at the bit to go through another unsuccessful one. He would probably be questioning the surgeon - no matter who he was.

"I cannot promise you anything, Mr. Carson. But I will tell you that I have done thsi surgery several times before, and I have never failed. I have a very high recovery rate for all of my patients, and I ahve very high hopes."

"Yeah, you sound just like everyone else. Let's face it, Dr. Peters. I'm rich. I can pay for hundreds of surgeries every day from this day forward until the day I die. But what is that to me if it doesn't prolong that death date a single day? I need to know what the chances are that I will live to see another day after this surgery."

Elijah thought for a minute, deciding how much doctor lingo to use and how much t drop. He picked up a pen off his desk and fiddled with it a little bit.

The clock on the wall ticked quietly for a few minutes, filling in the awkward silence. Carsn sat in his chair across the desk from Elijah, sitting quietly. He didn't seem at all tense, at all desperate. It was a kind of personality Elijah had seen a couple of times before, but did not completely understand. It was a completely confident personality, belonging to someone who was okay with who they were and what they had done for all of their life. It belonged to someone who knew that it was all going to turn out alright in the end, just like everything else ever had.

Elijah set the pen back down on the desk. Leaned back in his chair. "You've been real with me, Mr. Carson. I appreciate that. In turn I will be real with you. You've had this surgery on this brain tumor twice now, and it has always come back. This new type that you've asked me to do has only been successfully done in a few hospitals around the world, this being one of them, and myself being one of the doctors to carry it out. But one out of every two of these surgeries fails."

He looked Carson in the eye. "In other words, the odds are against you. I said once, I'll say it again. I cannot promise you anything. I am no miracle worker. But I promise to do everything in my power to ensure that you survive this one and that it is successful." He raised an eyebrow. "Have I been clear enough?"

Carson stood up and held out his hand. "Yes, Dr. Peters, you have been very clear. I appreciate your honesty."

Elijah stood up as well, heartily shook his hand, and smiled. "Good. I will see you tomorrow then, first thing in the morning. I believe your first appointment is at eight."

"Yes, it is." Carson picked up his briefcase, prepared to walk out the door. He stopped, turned around. "I have to admit, Dr. Peters, that when I first saw you, I didn't think you were worth it. You were young looking, and I wasn't sure you had the experience or expertise to make you capable enough to do this. I wasn't sure I wanted to place my life in your hands. But I think you'll do just fine."

Elijah smiled at him, nodded ihs head. "Thank you, Carson. I needed that today."

Carson smiled back, and left.

Elijah sat back in his chair, feeling rather dazed. How many people these days would have been brave enough to say something like that?

Not many.

Elijah opened his top desk drawer and pulled out a photo frame. It was the most recent picture he had, and it would be the last. He raised his right hand stared at the scars, allowing hot tears to roll down onto his cheek and splash down into his palm.

"I miss you, Sweetheart," he whispered. "It's all my fault that you're gone, but I made a promise to spend the rest of my life saving the lives of others instead of taking them. And every day I have kept that promise. God help me I will continue to keep that promise."