CHAPTER 36 - THROUGH THE CAVE OF BATS

"Come on Jacob, let's head back." Samara said as she walked hurriedly towards me, grasping my hand; she then lead the way out of the cabin and into the thick early morning forest air.

Darting my eyes around I couldn't help but blink uncomfortably; my eyes felt as though a thin plastic sheet had been wrapped around them, filtering out all color. It was definitely nighttime, but I could see everything as if it was day, but only in a monochrome sort of way. Vigorously I began rubbing my eyes in a failed attempt to make the color come back.

"What, what the hell's wrong with my eyes!" I said in a semi-panic.

Samara grabbed my hands and pinned them beside my hips.

"Shhh...just close your eyes," she said reassuringly. "Close your eyes, relax your eye lids, then open them slowly."

A tense moment later I slowly opened my eyes and took a lazy look around where we stood; the cabin, which stood next to us on an elevated clearing, out-looked above the forest canopy. My eyes started to feel uncomfortable again as I tried to gaze out beyond the forest that seemed to stretch out vast distances in all directions like a thick blanket. The horizon appeared a reddish, devilish color and I figured sunrise couldn't be far away.

"This place really is in the middle of nowhere." I mentioned as I focused my sight back to Samara and this seemed to help make the aching sensation disappear from my irides.

"It's my little getaway..." Samara said appreciatively as she once again grabbed my hand and proceeded to pull me down the hill and into the darkness of the canopy. "Keep hold of my hand, it's easy to get lost in here."

Samara pulled my hand with an immense strength and we picked up a rapid pace along a path she clearly had taken numerous times before; weaving in and out between the trees I could feel my hair, all the way to the follicles, gently shifting position every time we rounded a trunk and it felt as though a billion tiny fingers were massaging my head in unison. My brain struggled to keep up with the ever-changing direction that Samara was doing to avoid hitting tree trunks and branches and by the time we had made it to the sandy shoreline of a beach, I felt utterly exhausted.

"Shit Samara! - Could you - not have - run any faster?" I said indignantly as I bent over myself, resting my hands on my knees and trying to catch my breath.

"There's no need for that Jacob," Samara fired back.

"Well - you - could - have - at least - warned - me that you were..." I began hotly between gasping breaths.

"Not that Jacob!" Samara interrupted. "You don't need oxygen, so stop trying to catch your breath... You can be funny you know."

"What - are - you saying?" I gasped.

"Literally just stop! Stop breathing," Samara bellowed out in a winsome laughter, "then you'll see what I'm saying to you."

Gasping once more, I then stood up, held my breath in for a moment then as I exhaled, Samara held my palm up to my face, an inch from my mouth.

"Did you feel your breath on your hand?" she asked cheekily.

"Um, no," I replied perplexed.

"And do you still feel out of breath?" Samara questioned as she let go of my wrist.

"Err, no," I replied, blowing on my palm again and feeling nothing.

"See now?" Samara said coolly.

"Yeah, but it's such a strange feeling, I mean my body still feels like it needs to breath," I said as I blew to no avail on my hand once more before shaking it away from my face.

"It's not your body Jacob, it's your brain... It's having to unlearn reflexes that have kept you alive all these years," Samara explained before turning her back to me and digging her toes into the damp sand. "We should continue our way back, the sun it's..." Samara trailed off, her glance fixated towards the reddening horizon for moment before glancing back at me with a widened smile. "I wanted to show you something else. You'll love it!"

"Alright, I'm going to guess it's another one of your parlor tricks?" I joked lightly still marveling at my lack of need to breathe. My chest no longer puffed up when I took in a breath, it remained rigid and hard, inanimate.

"Ready? Try to keep up, but look down at the sand, at me feet," Samara said wiggling her foot further into the sand as if she was looking for a solid footing. She then crouched slightly and with her free foot placed in front, sprung forward rapidly, kicking up a trail of sand behind her. As she started to disappear down the shoreline at a blistering pace, the kicked up cloud of sand headed quickly towards my face, but then it appeared to slow down enough for me to sidestep it. Sprinting off after Samara, who was now trailing ahead, I struggled to keep up with her pace as the sand under my feet felt as though it was draining the power from my steps. I then remembered what Samara had said and I glanced down at the path Samara had just taken and saw nothing; there were no foot tracks and the sand appeared completely unsettled. Peering back up at Samara, who was now further ahead then before, I focused on her feet and realized that she was actually levitating above the ground by an inch - her running feet were just for effect.

A long second later, I had caught up to Samara who now stood upon a rock under a cliff face, sporting a large grin.

"You - you were - flying!" I gasped short of breath once more.

"Jacob, your breathing!" she replied curtly.

"Oh right, sorry," I said quickly as I flashed Samara a smile and ceased my unnecessary breathing. "So you can fly? That's incredible!"

"Well, no not really..." Samara said scrapping her feet on the rocks in an effort to wipe the sand from between her toes. "I can levitate, but it takes concentration and energy..."

"Can you show me how?" I asked as I gazed up the cliff face beyond Samara's elevated position on the rock.

"Jacob, in time, but it consumes energy, energy you don't have, you would have to feed more..." she trailed off sending another worried glance towards the horizon. "Small steps first, then we'll see," Samara continued glancing back down at her feet. "But here, look." Samara, still peering down at her feet, closed her eyes and momentarily paused. Her feet started to separate slowly from the surface of the rock and her body floated upwards by an inch. She then opened her eyes, stared at me and smiled as her body returned back down onto the rock. "By the way, do you recognize where we are?" she asked benevolently.

After surveying the monochromatic landscape around me, I recognized the cliff's protruding edge and how the top of it peeled backwards towards a large structure that was stationed on the top.

"We're...we're home!" I said gleefully with a sense of relief and as I started eagerly towards the path at the base of the cliff that lead up to the manor, Samara placed her hand on my shoulder and whipped me around so that we stood face to face.

"Not that way. This way..." she said darting her eyes further down the cliff face before releasing her grip on my shoulder and walking off between the rocks. "Remember the cave?"

"Yeah, the glow worm cave?"

"Yes...that's it."

A moment later we entered the glow worm cave and although we were quiet, the worms appeared to be glowing faintly in a darkened grey color against an almost white cave ceiling - it was as though we stood under an inverted starry night sky.

"This is amazing!" I hushed into Samara's ear.

"Boo!" Samara chirped loudly and the entire cave lit up vibrantly with the most beautiful blue I'd ever seen; the cave walls contrasted against the rock floor which appeared to be covered in a shiny emerald green; lights from the worms pulsated energetically giving the effect that we were in some sort of natural psychedelic tunnel. Samara glanced back at me and smiled widely, a startling wave of contentment tingled through my body.

"So where are we going exactly?" I asked eagerly.

"I found a hidden cavity in the basement of the manor some years ago...well, like decades ago...and it lead to a large room that looked like it had been carved out by water. I was bored one day so I dove into the water and swam until I came out through this cave...and that's where we are heading! And there is someone I'd like you to meet, but before you say anything, I have to ask you something else..."

"Go on..." I said cautiously.

"Do you mind getting a bit wet?" Samara asked stopping abruptly which caused me to casually bump into the back of her.

"Well...because..." she began slowly before hotly saying, "Because of this!"

Samara had grabbed my hand again (of course I didn't mind) and hauled me over to a small chamber-opening in the cave where it's ground had given way to a perceptively deep pool of water.

"Wha, what are you doing?" I stammered nervously at Samara who remained holding my hand firmly.

"This...!" she replied quickly and tugged my hand vigorously leading my objecting legs to the water's edge. "You can swim right?"

"Yeah but...!" I protested staring into the water's reflected edge. "The water...it looks like blood! Why does it look like blood Samara...?"

"Look up Jacob..."

Suspicious that Samara was going to pull me into the water, I hesitantly gazed up, and it wasn't until I realized that the chamber's ceiling, which was no longer brightly lit but was instead lined with thousands of bats (all of who had tiny red pulsating orbs within them), that the red in the water was just the reflection of the hanging creatures above.

"Those orbs..." I started but then felt Samara's strong grip pull me into the water. "Arghhh..."

Samara then proceeded to hold me under the water and at first I thrashed violently as I shot stares of desperation at her through the gathering bubbles around us; struggling to fight against my natural instincts to surface for air, I gave up and relaxed under Samara's superior strength. She then let go of me, gave me the thumbs up, waved her hand as if to say "follow me" and swam off. Rushing to ensure I didn't lose sight of her, I swam in her bubbly wake, through winding tunnels and narrowing cavities until after a minute or so later, we surfaced under rows of sodden wooden planks. The lines of light that shone through the gaps in the wood a meter above our heads, illuminated the rippling water around us. The water didn't feel cold like I had expected it to, and then I realized that I couldn't feel the water at all yet I was surrounded by it.

"You okay?" Samara asked as she glanced back at me before wading over a few meters towards a rock wall.

"Yeah...thanks for drowning me," I grumbled. "Where are we?"

Samara didn't reply, instead she rose out of the water and knocked on the under side of the planks. Observing the unfamiliar damp surroundings around me, the faint tapping of a nervous heartbeat along with hurried scuffling feet alerted me that someone was beyond the wooden barrier above our heads.

"Hurry up Tom! Let us in!" Samara yelled uncharitably.

"Is - is - he safe?" a nervous voice quivered from beyond the wood.

"Yes!" Samara perked again, but this time she turned to me and winked playfully. "He's safe... now let us in please before I break..."

"Oh - yes, okay just a minute..." the man replied unconvincingly and I could swear I recognized his voice from somewhere.

A square segment of the wood lifted, revealing itself to be a trap door which then folded up and back on itself letting in a thick beam of dusty light. The person who had just lifted the trap door scurried off. Samara dove under the water, then as though she was a penguin, she shot out of the water and up through the trap door.

"Jacob, here grab my hand," she said a second later and her arm stretched out through the trap door.

After wading the few meters to the door I grasped Samara's hand and she heaved me up easily through the opening as though I weighed no more than a feather.

"Thanks," I said as I peskily wiped the wet hair from out of my eyes. "Whoa! What is this place?" I exclaimed glancing around the crypt-like chamber which was completely window and door-less.

"This, my dear friend, is our lair, our hidden hideaway, our haunt if you like," Samara said confidently as she strode across the stone floor in her dripping-wet cloak which left a slick trail behind her. "I believe it used to be an old prison to keep slaves in...but we've turned it into our sanctuary."

My hair annoyingly fell in front of my eyes again and Samara seemed to notice; as if taking another opportunity to show off Samara said excitedly, "Sorry Jacob for getting you wet, but I'll show you how to get rid of it, it's a good skill that will come in handy." She then turned slowly on the spot once, twice, then sped up to an extraordinary speed expelling the water from her clothes and hair. "There, that's how you dry yourself!" she said after she'd abruptly stopped, now completely spun-dry. "You try!"

"Okay, here goes..." I replied twisted my body around and around until the room blurred. I kept turning and turning but the room barely appeared to move.

"That should be enough," Samara said and after I'd stopped my spin, I touched my hair to find, to my content and slight disbelief, that it was dry. But I didn't understand; I'd seen Samara spin so fast, yet I felt as though I couldn't spin very quickly at all. I shook the confusing thought from my mind.

A nervous rapid breathing sounded from behind a very large blackboard that Samara was heading towards; a high pitched varying buzz emitted from a large black clad booth that stood to the left of the chalked scribbled blackboard. Apart from the old scattered chair, the carved-out room was otherwise bare.

"Ready for your surprise Jacob...?" Samara cheekily asked before addressing the person behind the board. "Tom, come out already! Jacob is not going to harm you!"

"I - I guess so..." The voice quivered weakly. A man, roughly six feet tall and dressed in a retro brown blazer cautiously stepped out from behind the blackboard and his square glasses were unmistakably recognizable.

"Mr, err, Mr Henry?" I exclaimed completely shocked. "Wha-what are you doing here?" Mr Henry appeared feeble and frightened at the sight of me as he walked quickly around the board and stood closely, almost behind Samara as though he was using her as a shield.

"I am a, um, a kind of, err researcher..." he started shakily. "...I, um, research certain history, you may call it um, paranormal history, folklore, legends and myths. I search for their hidden truths..."

"But you were my science teacher!" I said narrowing my eyes on him. "So what exactly were you researching at the school?"

My question seemed to have flustered Tom into hiding further behind Samara.

"Well, I, um...was researching a disturbance in the town...mainly." Tom appeared to have remembered something as he ducked past behind Samara and into the black booth to return a second later with an over-sized book in his hands.

"The book! You remember this book Jacob?" Tom, who had now seemed to have gained a bit of courage, held the book against his chest with the front cover facing outwards, it's cover was instantly recognizable; the red emblem on the front appeared to swirl within itself. "You see, it's ancient words tell us that it is able to detect when one of your kind are nearby...and it started reacting around you, or Jill...but it was acting intermittent and strangely and I did not know why...it normally is very easy to read when it detects..."

"My god Tom, what's all this on the board?" Samara injected dryly.

"Oh, I um, thought it would be best if we, err, went through what we know thus far with Jacob, I mean this is a first for us."

"Oh," Samara began thoughtfully. "I suppose...and where is our newest addition?"

"Yes, well as it's only five in the morning, I'd say that she is sleeping upstairs," Tom replied weakly, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Mr Henry as he was clearly intimidated by Samara.

"Please Jacob, have a seat," Tom said less monotonously and the way he spoke immediately reminded me of the day when I questioned him in class about the book and was dismissed with..."please have a seat."

Old habits I guess.

"I would but..." I started peering around the room for a nearby chair, although I didn't feel a particular need to sit.

"Here!" Samara yelled from shadowy corner on the other side of the room before flinging an old wooden chair towards me at speed. Doubting my ability to catch the chair, just as I'd always struggled to catch a ball during Baseball or Dodge Ball, I held out my arms and cast my head to the side (readying myself to be hit in the face), but somehow I caught the chair seamlessly as though my arms knew instinctively what to do. I then sat down noticing how lightweight and effortless my posture was. I'd always hunched under the weight of gravity, but now it felt as though gravity had little effect. This reminds me of high school I thought humorously as Samara hurried over to me and sat close by.

"Come on Tom!" Samara began with a whine. "You know he's already read what you've written on the board!"

But Samara was wrong, I hadn't read the words written in caulk, and as I glanced up at the board, it suddenly dawned on me that in that very short gaze up, I had near-instantaneously read the words.

"Yes, well true... Well then, let me explain each point..." Tom's voice suddenly sounded as though he was a record slowing to a near stop and in that moment, I glanced at Samara who rolled her eyes at me as though to say, "I know, he's so slow!"

"Your perception of the world will appear to slow down and in the beginning you won't be able to control it," Samara whispered softly. "But you will eventually climatize with this as you get more accustomed to your new, err, self."

Closing my eyelids and completely blacking out the room, I was able to take a moment to myself, to relax and recoup, after all, my life had just been thrown completely upside down, again. Tom's voice sped up to normal speed again and I opened my eyes thinking that he'd probably just seen me blink even though I'd had them shut for what seemed to me like a minute.

"Yes, okay, hmm, a quick background then to give you some context..." Tom fidgeted with his glasses. "So in the time of well, the first testament, there was a nocturnal tribe that were known by the name of Valac. This tribe was only a myth of course and folklore at the time stipulated that they lived in the desert caves somewhere between Sudan and Egypt, or the Kingdom of Kush and Persia, as they were known back then. Once a year, on a seemingly random date, a mass of people would disappear, mainly children, from the settlements that bordered the desert. It was a popular story to scare children so that they would come home before dark." Tom lowered his glasses to the tip of his nose, tilted his head down and stared at me as if he was trying to read my thoughts. "However, some years later there was a Kush army that had camped outside a Persian military settlement behind a ridge in preparation for an early morning raid. But the next day the platoon was found dead - their bodies were dead in their tents, completely drained of blood. It was rumored that an animal had silently attacked them all while they slept. One of the Persian's realized a few of their enemies bed's were missing their corpses...anyway," Tom sighed, walked into the black clad booth, wheeled out an office chair and sat down next to the blackboard. "The Valac spread the next night to the Persian military camp and wiped them out; luckily a handful of people who had left the day their dead enemies were discovered were able to warn the nearby villages."

"Okay, so what does this all mean? What does it have to do with me?" I queried as patiently as possible.

"Sorry Jacob, I'll try to speed up...I just feel like I don't want to err, okay so the nearby towns inevitably were abandoned or killed and by the time the word got to the Pharaoh in the capital it was too late. His people were paranoid and the murder rate increased substantially as suspicions rapidly got out of control about this mythical Valac tribe and who they were and what they looked like. Then the Pharaoh himself stopped coming out to greet his Kingdom as he did weekly and it was assumed he'd locked himself away, for protection. But one night, he called upon his kingdom to meet in hope to resolve the turmoil that was besetting his people and once he was satisfied that he had a large crowd before him, he and his henchman then proceeded to feed on the crowd in a unprovoked frenzy - only the onlookers from afar escaped."

"Sorry, Mr err, Tom, I still don't..."

"Yes, well after that mass murder the situation only spread and got worse with loved ones disappearing and reappearing but as deranged murderers, that was until the great biblical flood."

"As in the flood in the Bible?" I asked rather intrigued.

"Yes that's correct, although to be fair, almost all the religious books mention this flood," Tom paused briefly, wiped his forehead and held the old book against his chest. "According to this book the flood was referred to as 'The Black Mass'. Only those 'free of sin' saw this black substance as water, but the sinful saw it as a kind of black death for as soon as the blackness touched them, they were bound and consumed, returned to the earth as dust. But of course even this god-sent cleansing wasn't perfect and a few managed to escape. They remained hidden and learnt to control their thirst for blood and death."

"And...?"

"That's your origin Jacob, you're a Valac.

"A Valac?" I repeated softly. "I'm a deranged murderer?"

"Welcome to the family!" Samara piped cheerfully. "See Tom! You got through the History and Jacob didn't kill you!"

"Yes, well if you could also be patient enough for me to go through the list on the board?" Tom said as he stood up, placed the book on the chair and pointed up at the lines on the board with his index finger. "This is just a quick list so that you won't kill yourself Jacob..."

Number one of the things that will kill you: The Sun
"The Sun will burn your skin, but as soon as it gets through that protective layer, you will self-combust.

Number two: Decapitation
"Self explanatory"

Number three: Fire
"Again, if the fire pierces through, you die."

Number four: Draining someone dry
"Often someone turned without knowledge will, one, not be able to control their thirst, and two, they will drink a corpse dry, killing themselves. Which by the way, somehow you managed not to do on your killing spree...impressive.

"But what about the pig that Samara killed?" I questioned.

"Ah, yes, well animal blood appears to be a little different. It seems the closer the DNA is to that of human, the more likely you would be to die."

"If you can stand the taste of animal blood..." Samara injected sharply.

"And finally, Holy Water, Crosses, garlic and wooded stakes have no effect on your kind. They were all methods made up in the middle ages during another brief surge of hysteria that didn't actually eventuate."

A series of short sharp beeps sounded from within the black-clad room.

"Shit!" Tom said abruptly. "Another one!"

"So where's it this time?" Samara asked concernedly standing up and walking over to Tom.

"Atlanta," Tom replied.

"Atlanta, Georgia?" I asked interrupting.

"Yes," Tom said shortly and he then reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out two pairs of sunglasses.

"Here put these on," he said tossing a pair of glasses to me and a pair to Samara. I put the dark sunglasses on, which only seemed to cut a little color out from my vision, and walked behind Mr Henry and entered the large booth.

A large computer desk which held two laptops and other electronic equipment took up most of the room. The laptop screens' and flashing lights appeared harsh and overly bright; I could imagine that without the shades on it would be too much to bear.

"So what's all this?" I asked.

"Jacob, there's not much time to explain..." Tom said worryingly. "There's been another murder in Atlanta, and I fear the mass murderer is not, err, human..."

"Are you quite sure Tom?" Samara asked discerningly.

"Positive, here look at the numbers, look at the locations..."

"Oh...shit! Jackson Valley was hit..."

"Um, what's going on?" I asked again.

"Jacob, our kind... as you probably have figured out, there are bad ones..." Samara replied slightly angst. "Jacob, after what happened to my family...I swore I would track them down and well, err, convert them. But this one seems to kill differently; he doesn't seem to feed on his victims... We have to go back to America Jacob, back to your home town."