Chapter 2: A storm brews

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Jericho

Population: 93

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The drive had been short, less than five minutes from the motel. Sarah stepped out of the car onto the deserted road, camera in hand. All that remained of Jericho – a few broken buildings and a decrepit windmill – waiting to be rediscovered ahead of her.

Off to the west, she could see the clouds bubbling up, orange and pink in the fading light, the tallest having crashed into an invisible ceiling, its insides spreading across the sky, oozing along the barrier. Sarah thought of Katie's warning as she left the diner. She couldn't tell how far off they were – the view stretching out for miles – but she figured she had time enough before the rain fell. If the rain fell – the sky more like a watercolor painting, beautifully serene, than a potential threat. Brandishing her camera, Sarah took a few shots, hoping to capture the scene, even as it morphed brush stroke by brush stroke, before turning back to the forgotten little ghost of a town.

Setting off across the field, the weeds peeked playfully under her skirt, tickling her knees. A passing thought of snakes slowed her pace as she picked out the clearest path to what looked to have once been a motor court at the far edge of the ruins. The windows and doors had been lost to time and the weathered boards that made up the skeletal structure were weak and soft, trembling in the breeze, and looking as if a particularly violent ill-placed sneeze would send the whole building crashing to the ground. Sarah stepped carefully onto the threshold, placing her hand on the door frame as she peeked inside.

Debris littered the floor of the one-room building, the light slanting through a window on the back wall falling softly on a broken chair, a tattered doll lying at its feet. Its dress was caked with mud and its porcelain face broken, one eye staring soullessly up toward the rafters, yearning for the hidden sun, a substitute for a warm gaze lost. Curiosity about the child it had belonged to and who she might have become gave way to an eerie nostalgia for a world she had never known as she contemplated the silent monologue before her.

Drawn out of her internal musing by a play of light in the shadows, her gaze slid from the doll to a rusted mirror leaning against the far wall, kitty-corner to the door way. The image was odd, shifting in a way it shouldn't be. Sarah stepped back to scan the landscape, the absence of trees reaffirming her doubts, before peeking back in again. No, it definitely should not be doing that.

Light danced across the mercurial surface, splashes of color glimmering in its depths. The image reflected was as it should be, but not. She could just make out the chair and the dust swirling in the shaft of light, but the doll at its feet was missing – and something was moving. Snatches of white twirled in and out of focus, to and fro from the recesses of its inner world. It was like the looking glass room, but where not only books were read backwards, but perhaps time as well? In the briefest of flashes, she could swear she just saw the doll moving through space in tiny, delicate hands…was that a girl?

"What the heck…" Sarah stepped abruptly inside, determined to get a closer look and prove to herself she wasn't losing it, only to withdraw quickly as the board sagged beneath her foot with a loud groan. Eyeing the floor dubiously, she caught a glint of light out of the corner of her eye. Looking up to identify the source, her eyes found a small object lying not far from the doll she hadn't noticed before – a needle-tipped syringe. Images of crystal meth labs and other more unsavory elements of modern times came into focus, the past blurring in the background. Glancing down at her feet with a small sigh, she wiggled her toes, deciding that flip-flops were probably not the best footwear for exploring.

"Perhaps not…" she relented, shrugging the strap of her camera off her shoulder. Determined to get something out of the scene, she snapped a few photos, angling to catch the syringe with the doll, toying with ideas of innocence lost, or changing morals and customs over time as she framed the shot. The mix of light and shadow provided an interesting aura and she struggled with how to adjust the settings to capture it on film.

Satisfied with her effort, she shot one last glance at the mirror – the images had gone still, only darkness reflected back at her. It must have been a trick of the light – or, more likely, early symptoms of heat exhaustion, she decided, disgusted that her clothes and hair were already damp with sweat, and her skin flushed. The rain couldn't come soon enough, as far as she was concerned, pictures or not.

Shaking it off, Sarah backed away from the once-upon-a-time motor court, venturing out to explore the other ruins. Snapping a few photos of the pile of rubbish that had once been a windmill, she suddenly paused, letting her camera drop to her side as she surveyed the town. "Damn it!"

Goblins.

She had caught a glimpse of one with the last click of the shutter. She had been hoping they'd make themselves scarce, just once. They ruined more pictures than she'd like to admit.

She could never figure it out, the physics of the thing – light, mechanics, chemicals – how they managed to show up in pictures when she had never met anybody else who could actually see them. Well, she had her suspicions about Toby, but so far nothing concrete.

She had shown one of these impossible photos to an ex-boyfriend once, a poorly thought out experiment when she was still determined that there had to be an explanation. Naturally, he freaked out a bit, going on and on about UFOs and little green men. She had given a flimsy excuse and they were broken up within the week. That hadn't been one of her brightest ideas; he still gave her strange looks whenever she ran into him.

Sarah hadn't shown anybody since, keeping all the goblin photos in a shoebox at the back of her closet. She had a suspicion that they liked having their photos taken, like little kids before self-consciousness makes them camera shy. She often found the photos scattered about in the back of her closet along with telltale signs of goblin rifling – dirt, smudges, and traces of glitter. She wasn't sure exactly why she kept them, but she figured she could always sell them to the National Enquirer if she was ever hard up for cash.

She didn't actually interact with the goblins, outside of the occasional plate of cookies left on the dining room table. They were just kind of there - background music to the warped fantasy-laced existence her life had become. She supposed it was a side-effect of running the Labyrinth. Everything in her life seemed to stream from that moment in time, her life split chronologically into B.L. and A.L – Before Labyrinth and After Labyrinth. It was like the birth of Christ, but creepy and annoying.

It wasn't all bad. At least some life's small, yet perplexing, mysteries had been solved.

'Goblins.' Sarah could always be counted on to chime in with this offhand excuse when her stepmother complained about missing socks or her dad ranted about not being able to find his keys in his rush to get to work in the morning. She had certainly not been the first to lay this blame, but she wondered if she was the only one who knew it was actually true. Sure, there were other incarnations of the story – fairies, brownies, gnomes – she had heard them all her life. The stories had to come from somewhere – there had to be others out there who had seen them, who could see them.

Irritated with the intrusion of goblins yet again, Sarah tattooed something vaguely resembling a funeral dirge with her finger against the camera lens as she idly pondered the merits of starting a support group - Labyrinth Runners Anonymous. Hell, at this point she'd even settle for a therapy session for the mildly schizophrenic. At least she'd have a sympathetic ear. If only she could find others. It was kind of fun to have a secret, but lonely. She didn't want to be the only one.

Sighing, she lifted her camera back to ready position, the shutter clicking away as she used up the last of the roll, hoping to get a few goblin-free photos out of the day. The camera whirred, rewinding the film, as she took in the rapidly changing weather. In the hour that she had been there, the sky had changed from a rosy peach to an ominous grey, the clouds coming in fast.

Spurred to the present by the advancing storm, Sarah made her way quickly back to Martha. Tossing her camera into the passenger seat as she climbed in, she struggled in a tug-of war with the wind, her ultimate victory punctuated by the slam of the door. Keeping a careful watch on the sky, she headed back along the deserted roads to the motel. By the time she pulled up in front of her room, the world had taken on a sickly green cast, nauseated from the rolling motion of the clouds and relentless buffeting of the wind.

Stepping out of her car, Sarah fought to breathe, the wind a steady suffocating stream. Her hair thrashed wildly, small damp whips lashing against her face and neck. She reached back in to snatch her camera and backpack in a hurry to get inside before the downpour, but paused as she caught an anomaly in her peripheral vision. Ducking her head back out underneath the door frame, Sarah turned to take it all in – a funnel drifting lazily from the base of cloud less than a mile behind the hotel. It meandered slowly across the sky, bending and straightening as if deciding where to touch down and changing its mind over and over again. Who knew tornadoes could be so fickle?

Excited, and maybe just a little scared, Sarah snapped into action, turning back to grab her camera and a new roll of film from her backpack. In a half-walk, half-jog, Sarah clumsily loaded the film as she made her way to the barren field behind the main building of the motel. Having made up its mind, the funnel had touched down, looking much larger circled by a cloud of debris as it headed toward the motel, toward her. Deciding to press her luck with the idea that even the goblins would keep their big heads out her photos given the twisting wrath of nature barreling closer, Sarah's camera clicked away the seconds to safety.

"Ouch! Shit." The knock of common sense finally came in the form of small, but painful, hailstones falling heavily out of the sky. Hugging her camera close under her shirt, Sarah scanned her surroundings for the nearest shelter, debating if her room, the diner, or the office was the safest bet. She spotted a raised door in the ground behind the main building underneath a makeshift sign, little more than a spare plank of wood with large white lettering: UNDERGROUND SHELTER. Decision made.

Running awkwardly across the field, she reached the entrance in a flash, yanked open the door, and took a few tentative steps inside. She didn't notice the pint-sized creature that scrambled in after her, its little fist pumping in the air, the door slamming just as it slipped inside. The vibration sent a tremor up through side of the building, aggravating the crack running up the middle of the sign, followed by a gust of wind that sent the word "SHELTER" tumbling to the ground with a soft thud.

Sarah paused on the stairs, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, the only light provided by dim shafts breaking though the wood in the door above. She could just make out the faint outlines of boxes stacked against the wall. Moving the rest of the way down, she set her camera on top of a nearby crate.

Using her fingertips to guide her, she made her way further into the room. It seemed much deeper than she originally thought. Spotting a faint glow ahead, she wondered if the shelter somehow connected to a basement under the diner. Thinking of the rag-tag crew she had met earlier, she hoped that they were all safely underground. She headed towards it.

The light grew incrementally brighter as she made her way down the tunnel, the sound of the storm raging above fading with every step. The temperature dropped steadily, the sweat coating her skin evaporating, leaving her chilled. She ran her hand along the wall, impressed by the effort put into building the passageway – neat stone bricks forming solid walls, damp and glistening.

The warning boomed out suddenly in the still air. "Beware, for the path you take will lead to certain destruction!"

Sarah's chest tightened, a telltale sign of the surge of adrenaline as her instincts clamored - fight or flight.

"No."

Whirling around, she peered into the narrow tunnel leading off to the left. In the dim glow she could just make them out – faces. Large, stone faces looking back at her with dead eyes.

"No – there is absolutely no way…" That's when she heard them – boots clicking on the stone floor in the passageway behind her. She froze, listening. They paused for only a moment before continuing their advance in a slower, somehow smug, manner. They stopped and Sarah held her breath.

A voice full of promises of sinful things, a voice all too familiar, lazily edged its way past her denial. "My, my, what have we here?"

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Author's Note:

Wow, this chapter took me a few weeks to write. I didn't intend for that to be the case, but the well had run dry there for a couple weeks. So, sorry to anyone who was waiting! Also, many thanks to my beta Breathofnocte!

Just as an FYI - Jericho is actually a ghost town, but it's in the Texas Panhandle, rather than Oklahoma. It looks much like it's described, but there's not a sign, other than the one for the cemetery. Please forgive the geographic liberties.

Thanks for reading! Please, leave a contribution in the little box. :) Constructive criticism is always appreciated.