The human mind is a labyrinthine, unique place, possessing the strangest makeup. It is a boundless, chaotic engine that generates our reality, yet operating by its own subtle, internal laws. When someone is searching for an idea or a memory that they have, the process is startlingly simple, like navigating a forgotten highway. Sometimes you know the way better than anything. Sometimes you think you know the way, but when you see places and signs, you remember exactly where to go. Other times you have a faint idea or think you remember, and you get lost somewhere on the other side of your mind.
Sometimes you get distracted along the way, and remember something else you wanted to know last week that you were unable to retrieve. The one phenomenon I find the funniest is when you know something, or when you have an idea that you desperately want to suppress. You focus your will, fighting to cage the thought, but the greater your effort, the more stubbornly it pounds at the door of your consciousness. You become forced to think about the very thing that you are trying not to think about. That is the subconscious resistance I want to access now.
In the mind of our 'houseguest,' Nevaeh, she has information on the coven of witches that wants me and my family dead. I really have no idea what the aggression was about to begin with, but they showed their hand clearly when they decided to blow up my car with Chad and myself in it, also killing the daughter of the witch that ordered the bomb in my car.
Inside the mind, it looks like a living, crystalline architecture, millions of thoughts playing out like a complex game of telephone with light and shadow. All the little connections between ideas are visible. Strong, pulsating nodes anchor the consciousness, and from them, thousands of narrow, golden strings extend, crisscrossing in a web of frantic, fragile thought. Little flickers of light run up and down those strings that break out of each node. This vibrant energy is the very fire that keeps our reality from collapsing into a poorly written science fiction movie.
The specific information that I am after is not easily granted. I needed to know if the totem we are pursuing is ever taken off her neck and stored, or at the very least, I needed the simple location of this specific witch. I searched through the surface memories—the obvious routes of travel and residence—finding nothing but static and obfuscation.
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks! A violent, external surge of realization ripped me from her mind.
Kyle! I snap out of her mind and I get on the phone to Kara. "Hey baby, I need your help. I need you to grab Kyle from his house. Meet us one block south of the Elf forest. We can make our way to Sera's mother and we may be able to catch her off guard."
I force myself back into the witch's mind before she surfaces again and head to the giant white magnesite node with a bright golden light I see. That is what is at the very top of her consciousness—the information she is fiercely guarding, shining like a lighthouse in the mental storm. It does not seem too far away.
A giant gust of wind picks up. This is the first layer of her will, a howling, mental gale fighting to keep me at bay. I use a trick I learned when I was a young vampire and make my mind rigid, a sharpened wedge of pure focus, to overpower her attempts at keeping me outside of her head. Only a few minutes, and I should have what I came here to get.
The second stage of her will, kicks up. Golden chains, thick as ship anchor links, fire from the darkness and whip toward me as if her mind had a Cenobite sending them to rip at my flesh. Pinhead will not be able to keep me from that golden node. I double my efforts and the chains dissolve into vapor.
I find myself seconds from the golden shower now. As I reach for it, I am pulled back, and the final wave of her strength attempts to fight me off. Weird little soldiers that look like Rambos crossed with living stem cells materialize instantly. I strain my mind with as much effort as I can muster, and the weird little men melt away. With a final, agonizing surge of power, I seize the glowing magnesite node.
All the information she has on the coven and the totem comes flooding into my mind like a dam that has violently broken open, washing through my head with cold, brilliant clarity.
Just like that, Kara and Sonya arrived, their car skidding to a sharp stop directly behind us. I quickly gave Chad his orders for the new target. I had him head over to where I first met Sera—the house of Priya the witch.
When we got to her house, the air was still. It was as if someone had pulled all the air out of the trees and put all the nighttime sounds to bed early. We got out of the cars and walked up to the house. We slipped silently through the tall, wrought-iron fence, maintaining our two-by-two formation.
I could see one of the rooms glowing green. Not a normal green like you see in the trees. This was a weird, sickly neon green—the kind of ominous, unnatural hue straight out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, or something you would see growing on a corpse in a zombie movie.
As I got closer to the green light, I began to see movement around the house. My eyes were so focused on the green, I did not account for pupil dilation. It took a second for my eyes to correct, and that is when I saw it. A legion of zombies awoke the moment we passed the iron fence.
It took a second for my eyes to correct, and that is when I saw it. A legion of zombies awoke the moment we passed the iron fence, but had moved so quiet and slow, the fact I was distracted by the green glow did little to help. I look back, and I could see at least 35 to 40 of the soldiers I had with me fighting for their lives. Rotten teeth sank into the dark flesh and ripped it away like chicken skin off of meat. Crimson geysers randomly shot out of the crowd. "Head! Take off the head!" I tried to warn them. They seemed to come right up out of the ground.
Wait, maybe that is why this is the only house that has an iron fence. Graveyards had iron fences long ago. This house is built on top of a graveyard. This crazy bitch rebooted Poltergeist, not the movie, the actual story the movie was based on. I used quickness to move among lemures, taking heads and spinal columns as trophies, making my way to the narrow iron prison rods that my friends and family are now in. The five of us saved as many soldiers as we could.
Just as we were about to retreat back to the cars, someone broke through a window from the house. It was the witch floating through the air like the Green Lantern. Laughing, she buzzed over her own fence and made her way to the cars. She ripped open the top of one of the cars and pulled Nevaeh and Kyle out using the totem. She and our 'guests' rose up and floated away north to Elmcrest, no doubt.
Getting back to the Lair, I realized that I could not have planned that any worse if I had put effort into actually failing at it intentionally. I acted with emotion and not linear thought. My focus was everywhere except where it should have been. Obviously, it started with the death of Sera and began to spiral down from there. Kara even asked me not to go. I called her, and that was also a huge mistake. I will not make the same mistake again. We ended up losing 15 soldiers in the conflict, with another 15 injured with varying degrees. I got my head back on straight.
I call Chad over to the front of the car as the family filed into the Lair. "Hey pal, the aquamation chamber is set to arrive today. I want you to take a truck and get whatever you need at Home Depot. I want you to increase the amount of water it takes in by at least a factor of five. I also want you to get a heavy-duty ventilation system and run it into the rain gutters. I want the outside of the building at the club look as normal as every other day. Got it?"
Chad nods his head and goes to check on Jade, who is pacing a frantic, silent track in the wide guest area, the empty bar gleaming coldly behind her, mirroring her anxiety.
"Jade baby, I want you to double the lookout, especially during the day." She nods just like Chad had and runs to action.
Kara is next; she will be in the library, no doubt. When I walk in she runs into my chest as she was running out. She says, "I got it! This should be the spell we need against the witches! I am about 85% on this."
I shift my gaze to one eye. "Trust me, babe, I am sure this will work!" she says.
I reply, "Okay, this has been your baby from the start. I will leave it in your hands. If you say this is what we need, I trust you."
She runs out. I say, "Where are you going?"
"To tell Chad to run to the store."
I say, "I just sent him out. If you head to the garage, you may be able to catch him."
Next is Sonya. My special Amazon. I find her in the gym tumbling with powerful, fluid grace, a sheen of sweat covering her focused form. "Hello, doll."
She jumps up and says, "Look at my sports bra, I am wet everywhere."
I laugh at the joke she does not realize she had made. "Hey baby doll, can you do me a favor?" She walks up to me and drops to her knees. "You are one in a million girl. I actually need something else right now. I need you to find whatever rags and old clothes you can find, rip them up and start making Molotov cocktails in the supply room. Use everything we have." Sonya nods and runs out.
Johnny is the only one left. He will be head of the day crew, as he has not yet become one of us fully. Not until this mess with the witches is over.
After the girls finish helping each other, I meet with them at the empty bar at the club. "Ladies, I think the rest of the night should be ours. We have no idea what tomorrow has in store for us. I think we should remind ourselves how the darkness truly feels."