You ready? I'm gonna go ahead and post the next two chapters. Oh, and I want to give you the link to this instrumental I did, in order to get in my writing zone. To get that mysterious and eerie mood when Laura shares a secret with Jake. You can listen to it online if you have Windows Media Player. Otherwise you'd have to register to AcidPlanet in order to download the MP3 version. You can listen to this while reading chapter 5. I'd like to know your compliments about it in your next review!

Check my profile for the link!

Chapter 5

We soon went our separate ways afterward. I was heading home. Rachel glared at Laura once more, then left the barn. Cassie went back to bandaging up a young doe with a wounded leg. Tobias and Ax returned to the woods. Marco and I remained with Laura. "Okay," I said to Laura, "So, where do you live? Do you even have a phone number to reach you by?" "I don't live anywhere near here, but I can give you the number," Laura kindly obliged. She handed Marco and me a couple of cards with a seven digit number. They just appeared. We placed them in our pockets.

After that moment, everything stopped. Everything. Marco stood in place, not moving a single inch. His frozen in time face told me he was looking towards Laura and was about to say something funny. His hand was still in his shorts pocket. A small sparrow hung in the air in mid flight. A car on the road was parked in place. Only…I could move. And Laura could too. Everything else was just frozen in time. Like, you know how someone pushes the pause button to a movie? It was just like that, and it's happened before some time ago. It's an Ellimist trick.

I looked at Laura suspiciously. She had that look I saw before, back at Cassie's barn. A look of worry. I could feel cold dread inside of me already. Something was going on. Laura took the time to speak, while I stared at her. "So, you've…seen him too, in your dreams," she started to say. There was an edge of fear to her voice. "Seen who?" I asked, fearing, dreading.

FLASH! A half machine, half organism sat on its strange throne. The head was a single red eye. It was looking, looking… No, no…please don't look at me. Don't look at me, please! The eye rotated and saw me. SAW me. It was like reliving one of my occasional nightmares all over again. Each time I saw the eye, it would say a single word. "Soon," it would say. "Soon…"

FLASH! I was back with Laura. Everything around us was still frozen in time. "I see him too," Laura said. "Crayak." "…Crayak," I repeated. "The eye has a name?" Laura nodded. "He is the Ellimist's worst adversary." She looked down and paced to the left of me a little as she talked about it. "For millions of years, he's told me, him and Crayak had a war. A really big one." Images started going through my head. Laura was showing me all kinds of alien races. Some of them were very colorful, some of them looked ridiculous, and some looked like living creatures from Hell. Then I saw Laura again, telling me, "They created species after species and had fought. Ellimist told me it ended up disastrous. They both agreed to never fight that way again." She paused, and then spoke again. "I know. I feel the question you have for me: Why do I see Crayak? Like you, I see him in my dreams from time to time. He says more than 'soon' though. Much more." She shuddered. "He's persuading me to join him. I don't know why, being so powerful that he is. He's just as powerful as Ellimist, but he doesn't see with him eye to eye, exactly. …He wants to destroy. Like everything. I feel massive amounts of destructive emotion from him."

"Have you told him about this, you know, for him caring about you and all," I had to ask. Laura nodded slowly and silently. "Once, and he offered to bail me out. He offered to take away the enormous gift he endowed upon me. I never talked to him about Crayak again after that." She took in a breath. "Jake, one of the reasons I felt I had to join the Animorphs was meeting you. Because…" "You know that I have seen Crayak," I said, finishing. She nodded. "In a way, it's good to know I'm not alone in that." I raised an eyebrow. She seemed as scared of the eye as I was. "I can't do anything to make him leave me alone, other than let the Ellimist take away my own means of survival in this crazy, mixed up universe of ours." Laura crossed her thin arms as if the very air around us had dropped a few degrees in the temperature. "They go at it, like some kind of chess game now. They can't ever make war again. Instead, they deal and gamble on who will survive and who won't. If anything to protect Earth, I'd protect it from that…filth." Laura's lips were pressed together, angry. She talked about Crayak as if she feared and hated him. It was indeed the way it seemed.

For a short period of time, we said nothing. I didn't know what to feel. I either could be frightened, to know more about the red eye I've seen after I've been tied up and having to be a Controller, or relieved to know I wasn't the only one Crayak was watching. I was stuck in between the two. I took one long look at Laura, as she wiped away lingering tears that fell down her face. "Hey," she said, getting my attention by just a hair, her voice cracking as she broke the silence. "I… stopped time because I know it's been something you've been keeping a secret. Well, it's a secret I keep too. …It's up to you. You're the one in charge of the group. Let it be up to you to tell them about Crayak. Not me." She may have been able to easily…read through me like an open book, but she had respect for humanity and secrecy. "I…just wanted to let you in on all of that." Soon, her voice came back to normal, and she was calmer.

As she said that, everything started moving again. The car on the road sped away. The bird flew. And Marco said his joke. "So, I could call Ellimist anytime I wanted? Harass him on how much he's interfering? Prank call?" Laura slowly smiled, and barked out a gentle laugh. "No, I don't exactly live with him. That's just the number to where I live." Me? I didn't say anything at the time. "Hey, Jake. You okay?" Surely, Marco had noticed me being quiet. I forced a smile and said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing in the world's wrong with me." Of course, that was a lie. I glanced at Laura to see she faked a smile too. There was still a faint tear line, but Laura quickly covered that up by laughing a little more.

Marco eventually rode his bike back down the block, mentioning that he had to help his father to do a little garage cleaning. Now it was just Laura and me, getting closer to my house. She did a quick morph into an osprey and rose to the sky as I resumed to pedaling on my bike. I looked up and she lazily floated on the thermals near the street that I lived on. We hadn't spoken a word since Marco left. There were also people around, and I couldn't just talk to her. Maybe… I had this crazy thought. She saw right through me just a couple of minutes ago, which really hadn't passed. I tried to think something toward her, something like, Are you okay? To my surprise, she answered back in thought speak, the usual language whenever my friends and I are in morph. -(Yeah, I'll be alright.)- She descended to land in a tree by the front yard to my house. -(…Sorry about the time freezing moment, but I had to let you know, without anything else causing a problem, you know?)- I nodded as I started to head back into the house, but then stopped. I couldn't just leave her like the way she was, so I directed my thoughts to her again.

Morph back, and come inside. I looked to make sure nobody saw us, and by the time I looked back up the tree, Laura was back as a human girl again, but she was sitting in the branches. She looked puzzled and unsure. "You…don't mind my company? I was thinking of letting you be, since it must have been a mind rattling experience for you in what I did." She jumped down from the tree and landed in the grass on her feet. She took a leaf out of her long hair.

We walked inside the house. Tom was in the kitchen, passing us by. "Hey midget…" Then all of a sudden, he recognized Laura, and the Yeerk in my older brother's head decided to put on an over friendly act. Of course, because Laura's been with the Chee at The Sharing, unnoticed. So she'd have to end up meeting with Tom sometime. "Hey, Laura," he said, slapping a hand on her shoulder. "What brings you here? Didn't see you at the last get together. What's up with that?" Laura didn't seem to be bothered by this. She was just as friendly toward Tom. "Hey! Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I'm going to have to think about taking the offer to being a full member. I like to keep my options open, ya know? Oh, and I moved into this neighborhood with my folks. A few blocks down."

Tom seemed surprised, and continued to smile. "Oh, at the old Robinson residence?" Laura nodded, smiling back. "Jake's been kind of showing me around. I wish I had a cool brother like you." Laura wrapped an arm around my neck. I played along and laughed. I checked the clock too. It was almost then thirty. Time for chores. "Well, good thing you came back. Mom was starting to wonder if you remembered that it was your turn to rake up the backyard," Tom said, his Yeerk playing the role. "Yeah right. You're just saying that because you don't want to do it," I said, pretending that everything was normal. That there were no psychic and supernatural human girls following me home.

Tom play punched me and we said bye. "Hey, good to see you again Laura. I understand how you feel and that's cool. Give it some thought and let us know," my brother said to Laura, who smiled in return. "Will do," she said and waved goodbye. As soon as he went upstairs, I shrugged. -(It must be really difficult, living with the enemy,)- Laura said. It was weird, seeing a human who could do thought speak. "You have no idea," I said in a low voice. -(Maybe I do…but then again, I've been living alone.)- "Well, I've got nothing better to do with my time, so I could pitch in," Laura offered, in normal speech this time. I said sure. Why not? "I think there's an extra rake in the garage," I started to say, but one appeared in Laura's hand by the time I blinked. "Nevermind," I said brightly as we went out the back door.

"So, how often do you see the Ellimist," I asked after making sure the coast was clear again. Besides, due to the noises we were making, gathering the leaves, I doubt that anyone would be able to overhear our conversation. "Not much," Laura said. "I only visit him when I need to. He's a very busy creature… Keeping watch over an entire universe is a huge responsibility, it looks like." "I guess so," I said, sort of understanding. I walked a bit to the right to gather up a few fallen leaves. "Whenever I get lonely though, I go see Erek or a friend in Spain. His name's Raul." She gave me a small grin. "Free sodas." "Huh, that's cool," I said in response. And it kind of was. "But…he doesn't know about…" "No," Laura said, confirming on what I was going to say. She hasn't told him about her powers. "Only once in a while I visit Raul, and make up some phony story that my fake family and I like to visit Spain sometimes for vacationing," she told me while she focused on her raking.

For the rest of the time, we just talked. I asked about how she came to know Erek. It was an interesting story. "Well, one afternoon, I saw this guy in the middle of the road, and a car was coming. I saved him, but his human form flickered," Laura told me. "Then I was like, 'whoa, what…are you?' and Erek began to explain himself, and that he read off from my special ability energy or whatever. And it turns out he's against the Yeerks, and we've been both infiltrating meetings of The Sharing…so we started helping each other out." "How long ago was this?" "Um…about a year and a half ago. I visit him from time to time." She smiled. "It's cool, befriending the Chee, isn't it?" To tell the truth, I never really thought about it like that. Usually, when the others and I see Erek, it's always the fact that the android has bad news. "Well, they're as good as allies as they can be," I said. "Erek provides us with information on the Yeerks." Then, I stopped. Something really odd was going on. "Hey, if you knew Erek for that long, wouldn't he have told you about us Animorphs by now?" Laura smiled. "The Ellimist didn't know I already knew. He doesn't know everything, exactly." Her smile shrunk some. "I was actually wanting to join you before, but I was nervous. I wondered if I would be interfering until he told me about you, asking every once in a while if I still saw you-know-who."

The raking didn't take long at all with the two of us. Together we made a big pile of leaves to one corner of the fence surrounding my backyard. "Is there anything else you're not telling us?" Us, being Rachel, Tobias, Ax, Marco, Cassie, and me. She raised an eyebrow and thought for a moment. "Nothing of big significance," Laura replied. "Nothing concerning to the Yeerks or anything like that. You know as much about the Yeerks as I do." She then picked up the rake as I watched in amazement as she used whatever ability it was to make it shrink in between her palms to be as small as a toy, and then vanish. "How do you do all that, anyway," I asked, curious. "You just think about it?" "Yeah, but I'm not totally invincible," Laura said. "If I can't focus right or not get enough sleep, I'd have difficulties doing what I'd wish to do."