Chapter 2: Raging Storm
"What were you thinking?" Patrice demanded as she shoved the rest of her clothes into her suitcase and slammed it shut.
Sara sighed, "I was thinking, Aunt Patrice, that I was not needed at the time! In fact, I wasn't needed for this trip at all!"
Patrice's mouth dropped. "Sara! I brought you on this trip to get you away from the city! It was supposed to be a—"
"Vacation?" Sara finished. "Aunt Patrice, vacations are supposed to be fun! Now, granted, a trip to London would usually classify as a vacation, but it doesn't if we're stuck in a building talking to a bunch of rich…" Sara searched for the right word. "Snobs!"
Patrice sighed heavily and put a hand loosely on her forehead. "Sara, you really embarrassed me back there!" She stated. Sara sighed. "I'm sorry that you had to make up some excuse for my disappearance and such, but I'm not sorry that I left. I couldn't take my hand being kissed one more time by some rich guy's son."
Patrice smiled warmly. "Okay, point taken. Next time… next time, no business." Sara smiled back and finished putting her clothes neatly into her own suitcase. "Deal."
"They were kind of snobbish, weren't they?" Patrice added with a smirk. Sara laughed loudly before throwing a pillow at her aunt. "I'm the one that bore the brunt of it." She stated as-a-matter-of-factly.
Patrice looked at her watch. "Come on now, we don't want to miss our plane." Sara laughed once more. "It's a charter! He won't be leaving without us!" She stated before following Patrice from the hotel room.
Turbulence rocked the plane once more and Sara fought the urge to throw up. Patrice put a hand on her shoulder. "It'll all be over soon. Once we're through this accursed storm, it'll be clear sailing." Sara rolled her eyes. "Flying, Aunt Patrice."
Her aunt merely laughed. "Flying. Sailing. What's the difference?" Sara was about to reply when a masculine voice interrupted.
"Flying is in the sky." Patrice and Sara turned to face the co-pilot of the luxurious jet. Patrice waved him off before turning back to the book in her lap.
Sara looked at the co-pilot. "How much longer will we be flying in this storm?" The man sighed. "That's… actually why I came back here. Come to find out, we're just on the outskirts of the storm." Sara sighed in relief, but that all changed when he continued.
"We're actually heading right into the core of the storm." Sara froze and Patrice looked up from her book. "What do you mean?" She demanded. The co-pilot sighed once more. "It means we have two choices. We can try to brave the storm or we can try to touch down on an island near the core and stay there until the storm's passed."
Patrice frowned. "Well, we're pretty close to the city. Can we go straight through and make it safely, or could we even go around the storm?" The man shook his head. "We don't have enough fuel to go around. This storm is actually pretty large. And we can't go through it either."
"But I thought you said—" Patrice started, but the co-pilot cut her off. "We do have two choices. We're just taking the safer one." Before Patrice could say anything else, the man turned around and started walking back to the cockpit.
Before leaving the room, he turned once more and said, "You'd better get buckled up. It's going to be a bumpy ride. We arrive at Flowerbud Island in one hour."
Patrice's breath got short and quick. "F—Flowerbud?" The man nodded once before walking into the cockpit.
Meanwhile, Patrice could hardly breathe. Sara noticed this and looked quizzically at her aunt. "Aunt Patrice? Are you okay? You heard him; we're taking the safer choice! We'll be fine!" Patrice looked at her niece and sighed. If only you knew why I was so worried about… Flowerbud. She said to herself but aloud she said. "Yes, yes… you're right. We'll all be… fine."
"You should have told them about the fact that the island has no landing strip." Said the pilot of the plane. The co-pilot shrugged, "I figured they didn't need to be worried about such a thing. I told them to buckle up, so they should be fine."
The pilot snorted. "They're paying us, you know. They deserve the right to know." The co-pilot shrugged once more and said, "Let's just do this and get it over with."
Forty-five minutes, the island of Flowerbud was in sight. The pilots scoured the island for a strip of some sort to land. After seeing none, they began looking for a clearing of some sort. No such luck.
"Well, the island's a farming island. They have to have a farm somewhere. We'll just land…" The pilot said before pointing to a section of the island where what looked like corn covered. "Right there. It'll be a rough landing, but if we play this right, we should be able to make it out without a scratch. The plane on the other hand…" He sighed. "I'm glad I got that pricey insurance. I'm going to need it after this."
Jack groaned as he watched from his window as the rain came down in torrents. "If this doesn't let up soon, my fields are going to flood!" His dog, Taco the Chihuahua whined. "Just like two years ago, huh, bud?" The young farmer said with a wince.
Two years ago, there had been a terrible flood. The flood washed away a lot of his crops and had done serious damage to some of the town's buildings. In that year, Jack had to take in a few of the villagers for a few weeks while their respective houses were being repaired.
Jack groaned once more when he remembered the incident with Popuri when he had walked in on her when she was toweling herself off in his bathroom. Thankfully, he hadn't seen anything that she would want seen, but the embarrassment was enough for him to avoid her for the next week.
Jack's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of metal bending and breaking. His gaze turned towards the outside and his eyes widened. Not too far away, a white object jutted up from the cornfield.
Upon closer inspection, Jack saw that it was actually the wing of the plane that was rising above his corn.
At the low angle the wing was positioned, he guessed that the plane was not on its side, but was just leaning on its other wing.
That's when realization set in. There's a plane in my field! Jack screamed to himself.
Within seconds he was outside in the rain and pounding away at the small numbers on the cellular phone he had received for his birthday just that year.
He put the phone to his ear and listened as it rang. Finally, there was a click and Cliff's voice was heard through the earpiece. "Hello?"
Jack wasted no time with formalities. "Cliff, get yourself, Gray, and Doug over here now! A plane just crashed in my field!" There was another click and Jack guessed that Cliff had just hung up to round up the men who lived at Green Ranch.
Jack reached the plane minutes later and he winced at the damage.
The nose of the plane was horribly disfigured and bent upward. One of the wings, the one that the plane leaned upon, had been nearly snapped in half. The tail to the plane was in similar condition of the wing: nearly gone. The landing gear was just gone, in its place were the metal stumps where the steel had snapped and the wheels had used to be.
Jack quickly decided to go in through the huge gaping hole in the back of the plane, where the tail had been half-ripped away and was hanging to the side.
Lightning flashed outside and illuminated the plane for a second. It wasn't much but it was enough for Jack to see where he was and that he was heading straight for a chair.
He quickly corrected his direction and just barely brushed against the said seat and continued down the aisle.
Another bolt of lightning, this time it seemed closer, flashed and Jack was momentarily blinded, but not before he could catch a glimpse of two figures who were slumped over the seats in front of him.
Jack walked a little bit closer and kneeled down the first. She was an older lady, not so old to be considered frail, but maybe in her higher forties or maybe low fifties.
Jack pressed his thumb to her neck and felt for a pulse. There was one and it was going strong. He could also hear her heavy breathing when the thunder let up for a moment.
He rose to his feet and walked over to the other person, also a girl. In the darkness, he couldn't make out her features very well. He guessed though that she was very beautiful.
Another bolt of lightning flashed and her features were burned into Jack's mind, but before he could contemplate them, a voice cried out from farther into the plane.
Jack looked towards the cockpit. "I'll be there in just a second!" He called out before kneeling beside this girl.
He felt her neck for a pulse and nearly sighed in relief. It too, just like the other passenger was strong.
He rose once more and began walking towards the cockpit, all the while remembering the girl's features in his mind. So familiar… He thought to himself.
He walked into the cockpit and was confronted with the sight of sparks rising from the damaged instruments. It was obvious that this plane would never fly again.
A moan escaped from the pilot of the plane and Jack rushed to his side. "Are you okay?" He asked. The pilot groaned once more. "Sorry about the… corn." He said with a harsh laugh. Jack smirked. "Don't worry about it. We have to worry about getting you out of here first. Are you hurt in any way?"
The man groaned. "I'm hurt everywhere. But… I think my right leg's broken." Jack nodded slowly, "Okay. I have a few friends coming by. They should have a stretcher to carry you out of here."
Jack turned to the second man in the cockpit, the co-pilot. He did not move and Jack feared the worse. He pressed his thumb against the man's neck and grimaced. The co-pilot was dead.
"Jack!" Jack spun around at the sound of his name and he was greeted with the sight of Cliff and Gray walking up the aisle, a stretcher in their hands. Doug was right behind them.
"Hey, I need a stretcher up here! Watch out for the—" There was a low thump as the large stretcher hit the younger girl in the back of the head. Jack winced and was surprised to hear a low curse follow. It took him a few seconds to realize it, but the curse originated from the girl herself!
"Hey! What was that?" The girl demanded. That voice, it sounds like… Jack's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Cliff apologizing to the girl and turning the stretcher sideways to accommodate the thin aisle better.
Jack resisted the urge to come up with some witty comment about hitting on girls and the four got to work lifting the pilot from his seat and onto the stretcher. "Take him back to the house, I'll get the others out of here."
Gray and Cliff put a small tarp over the pilot to protect him from the rain and left the plane, careful not to hit the girl again. Doug stayed behind just in case Jack needed any help.
Jack hurried over to the now awake girl and helped her up out of her seat. She stood on wobbly feet and nearly toppled over. Jack caught her in time and swung her arm over his shoulder.
"Easy. You're still weak from the crash." There was a silence for a few seconds before the girl asked. "Crash?" Jack was once again overcome by how familiar the voice was.
He was about to reply but the girl suddenly gasped. "My aunt." She tried to run to where her aunt was slumped over her chair, but Jack grabbed her shoulder and stopped her from falling flat on her face. "She's fine. Just knocked out. Come on, we have to get you out of here."
He pulled the jacket off of himself and wrapped it around the girl, pulling the hood over her face to protect her from the rain.
"Doug! Can you get her?" Jack asked indicating the unconscious lady. Doug began unbuckling the woman's seatbelt. When he was done, he lifted her into his arms with a soft grunt and began walking back out of the plane, Jack, with the girl, on his heals.
The storm had let up some so the four were able to get back to the house a little bit less wet than they had thought they would. They were still drenched, but they wouldn't be catching pneumonia.
Doug kicked the door some, prompting Gray to open the front door, letting him and the woman inside. Jack and the girl followed.
Jack quickly sat the girl down on a chair and rushed over to the pilot, not bothering to look closely at her face, which was partially hidden by the hood of his jacket.
He heard her pull the hood back, but paid no attention as he began recalling all his past first-aid training he had received two years earlier after the flood.
He was about to start helping Cliff and Gray but noticed they weren't doing anything at all but just staring at something behind him.
"Hey, guys? What are you—" Jack turned around to see what they were looking at.
They were looking at the girl that Jack had brought in. The girl that was so familiar. The girl that Jack knew he had seen before.
The face. The voice. The hair. The body. It all fits. He thought to himself before his eyes widened and he promptly blacked out.
Sara wracked her mind for where she knew the now unconscious boy. He's so familiar! She screamed in her mind, but every time she tried to remember who he was, her mind just came up blank! I know I know him…
Sara noticed the other people in the room at that moment. Every single one who was conscious at the moment, not including the pilot, stared at her as if they had just seen a ghost.
"What?" She demanded. One of the men, the one with brown hair with a blonde ponytail spoke up in a shaky voice. "K—Karen?"
That name… it sound so… right… Sara thought to herself before promptly blacking out also, but just from exhaustion.
While she slept, she dreamt. She dreamt of life back in New York City. She dreamt of her aunt and how she and her would seem to complete each other. Each of them had their own strengths and weaknesses and they would balance each other out.
But most of all, she dreamt of a strange building. A building with benches, no, pews creating an aisle down the middle. The aisle reached all the way to a raised platform, a pulpit. Upon the pulpit was a simple statue.
It was a statue of a woman in a flowing dress. It was easy to see that if she were real, she would be very beautiful.
Her hair was tied into two buns, each at the side of her head. Her face, nose, and figure were all perfect. Simply perfect.
But her eyes sent shivers down Sara's back. They glowed a deep red color. They looked… evil.
An eerie voice pierced the silent room and Sara jumped. "Come back to me, my daughter. Come back to your roots and you shall know who you are…"
The room seemed to darken and Sara shivered from the cold that she had not felt before. Why did this dream seem so real?
Suddenly, they coolness of the room left as quickly as it had come and the room seemed to brighten with an unearthly glow. Sara found out why seconds later.
Beside her stood a shining figure. The light seemed to come straight from his very skin and Sara could just barely look at the person.
Slowly but surely, the light coming from the figure dimmed but the room's light stayed bright.
When the light was dim enough that she could see whom the person was, she found that she was looking at the man who had blacked out back at his house.
"She's lying, you know." He said calmly. Regardless of the calm in his voice though, Sara jumped again.
"What do you mean?" She asked. The boy looked at her, straight into her eyes, and Sara nearly stumbled backwards. She knew those eyes.
FLASH! Sara was suddenly at a small beach. She was standing on a dock, the boy stood next to her. In his eyes was unimaginable pain. She had hurt him in some way. After looking in his eyes for a few more seconds, she spun around and looked back towards a rock wall.
"For a moment there, I actually thought you might be the one, Jack." She said, although Sara didn't know why. She didn't even mean to say anything!
FLASH! Sara was back in the strange building and she was once again staring into the boy's eyes.
"She's a liar. Don't trust her at all. She says she's the Goddess of this world, but, in reality, she's the Prince of Darkness' minion. She's a follower of Satan." The boy said. "Satan? Goddess? Prince of Darkness? What does it all mean?" He smiled. "Why don't you just ask me?"
"But I just—" Then everything went black.