Disclaimer: We own not the Sweep series. I think that's pretty obvious. BTW, just as a general statement, we promise that the Mike in this story won't be as weird as the one in the parodies. While both characters are based on our same person (sends virtual hug to Mike), this one is a little less ... um, dark? The song belongs to Azure Ray. Don't steal it. Also, to make up for the obscene length of some of the previous chapters, I made this one a little shorter ... that's not to say that it's short. It's just ... shorter than our others. (cough) I command thee, readers, to review! Plus, if the length is really a problem, mention that in the reviews. I could always make them shorter (like, by 2000 words) so that the story goes on longer ... which wouldn't be a bad thing, I guess :P
Summary: A journey to the astral realms is the only way to discover the truth when Morgan sees something at the Ballynigel cemetery that doesn't look quite natural.
Part XVII: Revelations
It's just a simple line
I can still hear it all of the time
If I can just hold on tonight
I know that nothing
Nothing survives
Nothing survives
The wind stung and bit my bare shoulders as I stumbled down the rocky path leading towards Ballynigel away from Portrush. My feet ached; all that I had covering them were flimsy slippers. I was wearing a thin cotton tank top over a pair of old gym shorts, having stormed out of the lodge in my pajamas. I shivered violently and pulled my hair back into a ponytail against the storming winds to keep it out of my face. Why was the weather so harsh tonight?
It was cold, but I was too angry to notice the chill. Scorching, fierce anger still pounded through me, blinding and enraging, keeping me warm. I was thankful to at least have that. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I staggered down the road, my feet slipping over the rocks. My left foot slid over an especially large and jagged chunk of stone, and I looked down at it to see a thin cut spilling blood onto my slipper.
I didn't even feel it.
By the time that I was within view of the Ballynigel cemetery, I had similar cuts all along my ankles and feet. My slippers were bloodstained and ripped, but I wasn't paying attention to them. My mind was still on Hunter. Hunter, who I loved more than anything. Hunter, who had just betrayed me worse than practically any other possible way he could. Hunter, who had turned me into this.
A glowing light was visible in the horizon. At first, I thought it was just a figment of my imagination. My brain was dead with a lack of sleep; it took every ounce of energy that I possessed to lift my bleeding feet and take steps forward. I saw the light first as an illusion, shimmering in and out of sight, bobbing up and down. I followed its progress lazily with unseeing eyes, mechanically lifting my feet down the path.
It took some time for me to realize that I wasn't imagining the light, that it was really there in front of me. My magesight, inhibited by drowsiness and rampant emotions, wasn't adjusting as it usually would have, but I could see the faint outline of someone in the graveyard as I drew nearer.
The form's appearance grew stronger as I stepped onto the cool grass of the cemetery, sensing a strangely foreboding atmosphere in the whipping air. I stared at the figure, which was hunched over a grave, until I realized which grave it was.
It was my grandmother's.
He was digging it up.
I saw red. Instantly, the figure was on its back, clawing under my binding spell as I rushed forward, seething with rage. Was my mind processing thoughts? I didn't know and didn't care as I saw that whoever it was had made some good progress in his morbid work.
"Who are you? What are you doing?" I screamed at the figure, who was still trying to escape from the binding spell. I felt its own magick tugging at my mind, trying to make me lose concentration. It was strong.
As a patch of moonlight, tossed and turned by the roaring winds, illuminated the face of the gravedigger, though, I gasped and almost released it myself.
Deep brown, cracked, wrinkled, scaly skin. Misshapen, jagged teeth protruding from a grotesquely shaped mouth. Bloodshot eyes that I had seen not twenty-four hours ago in a vision while I slept.
It wasn't human.
I stared down at the monster from my dreams in horror, in shock. What was it? What was it doing here? And, once again ... what was it?
"What are you?" I demanded.
The creature, monster, whatever it was, pulled and twisted under the power of my binding spell, trying to break itself free. I mentally strengthened it and sent a jolt of red, fiery energy through the spell. The creature groaned in pain as its muscles seized up.
"What are you?" I demanded, more angrily this time, sending it back to the ground with magick as it tried to stand. "What are you doing?"
"You don't know anything," the creature snarled. Its voice, deep and scratching, stunned me, and I stared at it in shock. "You don't know anything!"
With that last bellowed cry, it ripped free of the binding spell with such a force that I stumbled backwards. Within seconds, my spell was gone ... along with its captive ...
I stared in shock after its form, which disappeared into the shadows beyond the wall at the back of the cemetery with such speed that I knew now for certain that it couldn't possibly be human. Not even Marion Jones could run that fast. Then the truth of the situation truly hit me. My feet were bleeding copiously and I was starting to get a little dizzy. My head ached.
What had I just seen?
I think I'm turned around
I'm looking up
Not looking down
And when I'm standing still
Watching you run
Watching you fall
Fall into me
Sky
"No, its nose was a lot flatter against its face. And its nostrils were wider. ... Not that wide! ... Yeah, that looks about right ... the nose, I mean. The rest of it needs a lot of work. The eyes are more bloodshot and the ears kind of curve at the top, plus the hair was a lot stringier and darker and its cheeks were sort of sunken and –"
Raven threw down her drawing pad with a sigh of frustration. "I'm doing the best I can, okay?" She looked disdainfully at the sketchpad, on which was drawn the supposed 'monster' that Morgan claimed to have seen on her visit to the Ballynigel cemetery. Morgan had ordered her to erase and redraw multiple times with an eraser not very well adapted for its job.
"Sorry," Morgan said apologetically from her spot next to Raven at the kitchen table. "It's just so ... hard to describe. It was so ..."
"Weird?" Bree suggested unhelpfully, wrapping a roll of gauze around Morgan's leg where she had cut herself on a jagged rock in the road.
"What happened here?" I asked quietly, looking at her intensely. "Hunter says you just stormed out."
Morgan snorted. "Well, that would be his explanation."
"And ... yours would be?"
She looked uncomfortable and stared down at her hands. "We had a fight about ... something. It's personal."
I nodded slowly, seeing how she might be uneasy about having to share why what had just happened had happened in the first place in front of everyone in the room. Bree, Raven, Morgan, and I sat around the table and Robbie leaned against the counter, looking at us with a worried expression. Hunter was conveniently absent; after Morgan had rushed out in a fury, he had disappeared upstairs and locked his door. I had tried to get him to come out, but he hadn't even responded to my inquiries.
"Morgan, are you sure that you actually saw something?" Robbie asked, his eyebrows slightly raised. "I mean, this is real life we're talking about. Things like this happen on TV. Demons running loose through the cemeteries, sure, that's commonplace on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But this is the real world."
"I'm certain," she whispered, looking at him and then back at me. "I know I saw something, Sky. It talked to me. I know that makes me sound crazy, but I wasn't imagining it."
I bit my lip. "If I could get a good picture in my mind of what this thing looked like ..."
Raven scowled, and I held up a hand before she could retort. "I'm not questioning your artistic finesse. Promise."
Morgan sighed. "I just ... I don't know how to describe it. It was so eerie, its voice was ... terrifying. It was terrifying. Like something ..." Her eyes lit up suddenly and she looked at me excitedly. "Like something in a nightmare! I forgot to mention that! I saw it in my dream! I had a nightmare yesterday and I saw it staring at me!" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Do you think the dreams predict the future? I mean, I thought it before but I never really believed it ..."
"Well, dreams often can predict the future, but that's not to say –"
"Sky, we finally have a lead here. Don't destroy it."
I glared at her. "Fine. But unless I know what the thing you saw looks like ..." I raised my eyebrows as an idea occurred to me. "Morgan, you know, sometimes things that look real are really just glamours cast by experienced witches. I mean, you saw what Killian did that night at the bar in New York. He fooled the bartender into thinking he was in his thirties, didn't he? It's not impossible for someone to have –"
"It wasn't a glamour," Morgan said testily. "I may not be that good at casting them, but I know that I could sense one. If it was just an illusion, I would have seen through it." She looked at me curiously. "Wait, didn't you do something to Hunter at the hospital in Antrim? Something that let him see into your mind so that he believed what Alexis showed you?"
I stared at her. "You mean a tath meanma treise lámh?"
"Whatever it was. Teach me how to do it so that I could show you the demon."
"I hope you realize that the word 'demon' in the witch world means a resident of one of the astral planes. Chances are, that's not what you saw."
"Fine. Monster. Non-human ... weird thing. Whatever! Just teach me how to do the tath meanma tree lamb thing so you can see it, too."
"No," I said flatly. "I have a better idea."
"What?"
"We could check the Akashic Records."
Alexis looked shocked. "What? Are you crazy?"
"I very well could be," I said seriously. "But I'm not joking. Chances are that if this thing was strong enough to break through Morgan's binding spell, we won't find it by scrying. I mean, hello, Woodbane prodigy here. Strong magick, remember? The Akashic Records seem like the perfect place to check for something powerful enough to escape that."
"What are the Akashic Records?" Bree asked curiously.
"They're ... just what they sound like," Alexis explained. "Records. Of everything. Every being to ever live, every being that will ever live. Every thought, feeling, emotion of every living creature has been documented."
"It's like the ultimate library," I added. "Past, present, future ... if you ever need to know the answer to a question, it'll be there."
"How can something like that exist?" Morgan asked, enthralled. "I mean, wouldn't people know about it? Wouldn't they use it for their personal gain?"
"Most people think it's just a myth," Alexis said. "And about the personal gain thing ... if you abuse the privilege of learning what it has to teach you, you won't be able to access your own records, which are the most important ones to everyone. Plus, it's just bad karma."
"And let me guess," Robbie said bitterly, "It's on another plane of existence. Some astral level inaccessible to those of us who aren't witches?"
"Actually, no," I said truthfully. "Both witches and non-witches have been accessing it for centuries, millennia, even. It's really hard to get to, but ..."
"What does getting there require?" Morgan asked, leaning forward on the table. "If we could do it, then we could find out what these monster guys are and what they're up to digging up my grandmother's grave."
I bit my lip slightly. "Well, to get there requires a deep trance. Generally ... the only way to get in deep enough without literally spending hours meditating is to ... take an herb drink that will help you get there."
If crickets actually chirped in real life during extended moments of silence, they would have been going crazy.
"Are you for real?" Bree said, her eyes wide. "The only way to get there is through drugs?"
"Not drugs," I said irritably. "If you mix certain herbs together into a tea or brew and drink it, they'll knock you out immediately. Then you're free to explore the higher astral realm."
"How do you know about this?" Robbie asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
"One of the things they tell you not to do when you're beginning magick training is access the Akashic Records," I said with a bitter smile. "It's too dangerous, it's too risky ..." I grinned slightly. "Of course, all of us tried it, but we weren't experienced enough." I shook my head. "But but I'd say that this qualifies as necessary."
"So this tea brew thing ..." Raven said, looking concerned. "There's no chance that it'll, you know ... kill you?"
"The plants will lose their affects after about an hour," I said evasively, "which should give us plenty of time to find the Records and get what we need." I sighed. "It's not completely risk-free, though. If the tea isn't prepared almost perfectly with the right amounts of everything ... even half an extra teaspoon of oleander could put someone in a coma."
"So ... who's going?" Bree asked. "All of us?" She must have noticed the uncomfortable look that I was positive was on my face because she grimaced. "Oh. This is the witch thing, right?"
"Not really," I said slowly. "It's just ... the chances of the brew negatively affecting the three of you is greater than it is for Morgan, Alexis, and I."
"Why?" Robbie asked.
"It's in our blood," Alexis explained. "Not physically, but our ... genetic make-up. Our blood is more able to handle potions and weird herb teas and stuff that normally isn't in it because our families for generations back have taken less-than-normal teas and brews for all sorts of things. Rituals, spells, you name it."
"There is a possibility for something to go wrong with this," I said quietly. "I wouldn't be willing to risk the three of you if it could be avoided with us."
After a long pause which seemed to take minutes to pass, Bree looked sideways at Robbie for confirmation, and Raven nodded slowly.
"Okay," Bree said after a moment. "But I'm monitoring everything you put in that tea. Make sure you follow the recipe exactly." She furrowed her eyebrows. "Wait, where is the recipe? Do you even have one?"
"It's in one of my old Books of Shadows," I said calmly. "One would think that herb teas would be Brightendale specialties, but this one is Wyndenkell. Remember how I told you once that my parents' coven is really old? Like, hundreds of years? It didn't start out in England; it started out in Germany in the 1400's. The height of the European witch hunts. After the coven lost a few members to the police investigators, they came up with the recipe to put them in a trance. It made whoever was under suspicion appear to be a corpse, and with glamour spells cast, the police believed they actually were and left them for dead. The recipe has been passed down through generations just ... as a safety precaution, I suppose. In case a need for it should ever arise."
"What a fascinating tidbit of history," Morgan said sarcastically. "Turns them into corpses. Just what I needed to hear."
Am I making something worthwhile
Out of this place?
Am I making something worthwhile
Out of this chase?
I am displaced
I am displaced
Even though Bree conceded that I was an adept tea-brewer because of my English heritage, she refused to allow me to prepare the herb brew without her immediate presence. We sent Robbie and Morgan into town to the general store to pick up a couple generic household herbs that the kitchen was missing, and I broke into my personal stash of dried herbs to be used for spells and such that I had brought with me from New York. I found myself out of bloodwort and borrowed some from Hunter, who was still sulking in his room, after making up an excuse that Bree had gut-wrenching stomach cramps and required immediate attention.
I set the finished product, a teapot full of the near-deadly brew, down on the coffee table in the lobby. Morgan and Alexis sat in armchairs around the fireplace, and I could sense nervousness emanating from both of them in waves.
"You're sure she got it right?" Raven asked Bree worriedly.
"Positive. Although she had messy handwriting as a child, so that three might have been an eight ..."
"Sky still has messy handwriting."
"I do not," I said impatiently. "Can we please do this? Oh, and remember, if Hunter comes down, tell him what we're doing but don't let him wake us up. He probably knows a spell to do that, and we might not have finished."
Bree poured the tea into three cups of equal servings, and Morgan looked at it distastefully.
"It looks just like normal tea. Funny how it's going to knock us out."
"Don't think like that," Alexis said, primly taking a cup and running her fingers over it to cool it down to a comfortable temperature. She looked anxiously at me. "Ready?"
"As I'll ever be," I whispered, holding the teacup apprehensively.
"Okay, then. On three," Morgan said quietly. "One ... two ..."
Alexis and I both swallowed our cups down on two. I nearly gagged at the bitter taste; I had never been a big fan of herb teas. Morgan glared at us.
"Three." She gulped hers down.
Bree, Raven, and Robbie looked at us expectantly. I raised my eyebrows.
"I don't feel any different. Do you?"
Alexis shook her head in confusion. "No, I thought that the effects would be instantaneous." Suddenly, though, she leaned back on her chair with a gasp. "Okay, now they're instantaneous ..."
I was feeling it, too. Lightheaded. Suddenly nauseous. I heard Morgan give a groan of pain.
The last things that any of us saw before blacking out were Raven, Robbie, and Bree's uneasy faces.
And she's my friend of all friends
She's still here when everyone's gone
She doesn't have to say a thing
We'll just keep laughing
All night long
All night long
Morgan
I snapped my eyes shut, more reflexively than deliberately, as a harsh glare of light burst out of nowhere and washed over me. I squinted, and I realized that I was sitting in the middle of a road. Yeah. A road. The weird thing was that the road was the only thing visible in a 360 degree spin. There was nothing below it, nothing above it, nothing to the left or right. It was a road out of time in the middle of an empty space leading somewhere that I couldn't see.
I looked around me but didn't see anyone. Where were Alexis and Sky? I definitely wasn't alone, though. All around me I could feel and hear things, whisperings and soft winds blowing past me. Other travelers through the planes?
"Most likely," Sky's voice came from behind me. I whirled around to see her and Alexis standing behind me on the road. I must have said that last thought out loud. "The things that are whizzing past us even as we speak ... we'll never know what they are."
I looked down over the edge of the road, the earthly asphalt it was made of not leaving imprints in my hands. "What's down there?" all I could see was what looked like a cloud. Above and below us. We were in our own little part of the astral realm.
"Who knows?" Alexis said rhetorically. "Probably a few things worth knowing. A few things that we're better off leaving alone."
I stood up and brushed myself off. My clothes felt lighter somehow, like they were made from clouds themselves.
"So ... where to now?" I asked. "Left or right?"
Sky smiled good-naturedly. "What feels right to you?"
I thought for a moment. "Right."
"Then right it is."
I couldn't say how long we walked down that empty road in the middle of a plane that wasn't, up until a year ago, supposed to exist. We didn't talk. There wasn't a need to.
"Is that a book?" Alexis asked suddenly, squinting at something in the distance.
What followed was one of the strangest experiences of my life. That's really saying something, considering that since Mabon last year, I'd experienced some pretty strange things on my journeys through witchcraft.
Suddenly we weren't standing about a hundred feet away from what appeared to be a book resting on a pedestal. We were standing right in front of it. I had barely blinked, not even closing my eyes all the way before we were there.
"Weird ..." Alexis whispered.
I wrinkled my nose. "So, is this it? Is this what we came here for?"
The book sitting on the wooden pedestal in the middle of the empty road was adorned with small drawings of Ken, the rune for knowledge, over its front cover, and a giant replica of the rune was embedded into the cover.
"Somehow I expected more," Alexis said. "A library, maybe. One with about forty dozen file cabinets."
Sky just reached out and opened the book to the first page. We all gasped simultaneously.
Our names were written in bold Celtic lettering on what should have been the title page of the book. SKY EVENTIDE. MORGAN ROWLANDS. ALEXIS RODY.
"Freaky," Alexis commented, flipping to the next page. "But where's what we're looking for?"
The next page, similar to the first one, had only one thing written on it in simple script.
Diobhail.
That was all it said.
"What does that mean?" I whispered. "It sounds like Gaelic."
"It is Gaelic," Sky agreed, looking a little apprehensive now. "It means 'destruction.'"
As we read the next page, I felt my own eyes widening and saw Sky and Alexis's doing the same. All of the whispers surrounding us, the remnants of magick left behind by astral travelers, seemed to quiet down and disappear. It was calm. Too eerily calm to be natural.
"Goddess ..."
Am I making something worthwhile
Out of this place?
Am I making something worthwhile
Out of this chase?
I am displaced
I am displaced
Sky
I didn't have time to say anything or even breathe when, less than a second after I opened my eyes, Raven flung herself at me and effectively knocked all of the air out of my lungs.
"Okay ... can't breathe ..."
"Thank God you're okay, we were so worried, you were out for an hour and you said it wouldn't be that long –"
"An hour, huh?" Morgan said, and I saw that she was sitting up gingerly in her seat. "It definitely didn't feel that long."
"No," Alexis agreed. "Maybe time passes differently through the astral plane. Or not at all."
"But what we saw ..." Morgan was looking at me with a terrified expression on her face.
"What? What did you see?" Bree demanded.
I swallowed heavily. "Um ..." Alexis looked at me fearfully. "Well ... you know how it's said that the astral planes are home to more than just ... souls exploring it?"
"Yeah ..." Robbie said slowly.
"That ... thing that Morgan saw is one of those other inhabitants."
"What?" Raven looked stunned. "How is that possible?"
"I don't know, but ..." I shivered. "The Diobhail. That's their name. It means 'destruction' in Gaelic. They're not one of the infamous warring clans of the lower plane, but they're fiercely territorial."
"And occasionally prone to violence," Alexis added, hugging her knees to her chest.
"Try constantly," I whispered. "I suppose ... one would call them demons." I gave a half-hearted smile. "You were right, Robbie."
"Demons?" Bree's voice was barely above a whisper. "Like, Buffy demons? Like, Charmed demons?"
"Not television ones. The real ones. The ones that aren't supposed to exist in this dimension, in this plane of reality. They are real, though ... many a traveler through the astral plane has heard their screaming, their yelling ... seen proof of their existence. They shouldn't be here.
"But ... for some reason ... they are."
"That means that something is wrong. Very wrong."
It's just a simple line
I can still hear it all of the time
If I can just hold on tonight
I know that no one
No one survives
No one survives