8. The Fall
The wind whistled past Sam's ears. He probably should have been terrified that he was falling through the open sky at terminal velocity, but he only felt annoyed. Here he was trying to 'rescue' his girlfriend, who probably didn't even need saving in the first place. He didn't want to come on this trip, and now he was going to die for being forced to go. He had so many unfinished projects and inventions too. He felt like his death would inconvenience people more than it would upset them.
He distantly heard the sound of yelling. He twisted himself around in the air and saw Joe and Fred arguing with each other. The sight of his best friends arguing while falling through the air was almost funny enough to make Sam laugh out loud, if it weren't for their imminent death of course.
"You said you could do it!" Fred shouted, his voice barely heard over the roar of the wind.
"No, I told you I wasn't good at warping yet! You're the one who said you had faith in me!" Joe yelled back.
Sam rolled his eyes as the boys continued to argue. If they wanted to spend their final moments yelling at each other, then so be it. Sam didn't care. Though it was their fault he was here in the first place.
He wondered what poor city would be stuck with cleaning up their splattered bodies. He wiggled himself around some more to get a better look at the ground below.
They crashed through a charcoal coloured cloud and that's when the terror finally hit him.
"Uh, Fred? Joe?" Sam squeaked out.
He was ignored as the boys continued their bickering. "This is all your fault!"
"How is it my fault? We wouldn't even be here if it weren't for you!"
"Guys?" Sam tried and failed again. He couldn't help but stare at the frightening sight that was getting closer and closer by the second.
No matter how hard Sam tried, he could not get Fred and Joe's attention. Luckily, the abrupt torrid weather did it for him.
A streak of lighting exploded next to them, finally capturing their attention.
"Where are we? And where did this storm come from?" Joe and Fred looked around to try to get a sense of where there were.
"The storm's the least of our worries." Sam pointed down. He spread his body out in an attempt to slow his descent, refusing to accept their fate.
Joe and Fred wriggled their bodies around in a highly ungraceful fashion. Sam hoped he hadn't looked that stupid when he did it earlier. Not that he should have cared given their present situation.
"That's a big a hole." That seemed to be all they could get out, the shock of seeing the monster sized hole limiting their vocabulary.
"That has to be the entrance to the Land of the Dead!" Fred yelled excitedly, coming to his senses. "You actually did it, Joe! I mean, look at this place! It practically screams death!"
"Which is exactly why I'd like to leave!" Sam closed his eyes, as if that would make all this go away. "Joe, get us out of here!"
"Why? We're right where we want to be." Joe grinned, glad that his warp had worked. "We'll be in the Land of the Dead in no time. Then we can track down the girls!"
"This is where we want to be? We are plunging through the sky!" Sam continued to panic. "Do you really think this is going to be a good landing?"
"We'll be fine. Even if we die, we'll still end up in the Land of the Dead right?" Fred smiled, enjoying the free-fall.
"Newsflash! I don't want to die!"
"Well you don't really have a choice now, do you?"
Sam knew his friends were right. Whether he wanted it to or not, and he definitely did not, this was happening and there wasn't anything we could do about it except enjoy the flight. Easier said than done.
They were closer to the hole than Sam realized. He tried to tell himself that it wasn't as close as it seemed, but he was too smart to trick himself by that fantasy.
Their expeditious descent soon carried them into the hole. Sam squeezed his eyes shut and wrapped his arms around himself as tightly as he could. He expected it to be cold. There was no light, he couldn't even see Fred and Joe, who had been inches away from him two seconds prior. The air inside the hole was surprisingly, and somewhat pleasantly, warm. If this truly was the entrance to the Land of the Dead, shouldn't the air be chilly? Unless they were actually descending into hell.
Sam fought the urge to groan. That would be their luck. Attempt to enter the Land of the Dead, and fly right through and end up in hell instead. He let his body go limp, belatedly accepting his current situation.
They tumbled deeper into the hole. All traces of the storming sky above vanished. The atmosphere around the boys unexpectedly shifted. The air that was warm just moments ago turned frigid and the sound of wind rushing by ceased. In fact, the very sensation of falling through the air was no longer present.
Sam's body suddenly felt as if it were made of water. He tried to move his fingers or kick his feet, but he didn't know where they had floated off to. His chest poured into his head, and his knees melded together. He had the abrupt fear that his body wouldn't never return to normal, that when they landed, if they landed, his right leg would be coming out of his back and one hand would have seven fingers. He strived to scream, to make any noise come out of his mouth, but nothing happened. His liquid body continued to plunge into darkness.
Sam's last thought, before he blacked out, was that he hoped Cade would forgive him for dying at the start of their rescue mission.
"So ghosts are real? Like all those crazy paranormal hunters aren't actually crazy?" Cade wished more than anything that she had brought a notepad with her. Kairi and Sydney had been enlightening her about the other half of the world she knew nothing about. A world that was much more exciting than the one she had known.
Kairi nodded her head in response to Cade's questions. "I can't say that all the paranormal encounters people have experienced are actually true, but I can say that ghosts do exist. They're just souls reapers failed to collect or ones that escaped, but they're never in the world for long. They get recaptured fairly quickly."
"Fascinating," Cade said breathlessly. She had learned more in the past few hours than she had in all of her college experience. She loved the thrill that came with learning new things and the excitement of a new discovery. It made her want to change schools, careers even. "Where do people go to learn all this?"
"Well, the Warp Academy at Draylon is where you would enroll to study time travel, alternate universes, theory of relativity, and things like that. It's basically the space-time continuum's best school for quantum physics," Sydney explained. "I'm not sure how you would learn about the Land of the Dead and things like that though."
Kairi shrugged. "You kind of just pick it up as you go. I'm sure even I don't know everything, and I lived here for almost seven hundred years." Kairi sighed. "I never once missed this place, but the moment we got here I immediately started to miss New York. I hope Fred and Jesse are okay."
"They'll be fine," Sydney comforted her. "A lot better than they'd be if they were here at least." She paused with a long exhale. "But I know how you feel. I didn't think I would miss just holding my babies so much. I feel a little bad leaving Joe alone with all the kids for so long. At least I don't have to worry about Jade trying to send Riley back to the stork anymore. He finally got too big to fit in the mailbox."
Kairi snickered. "I think Fred will be fine looking after Jesse, but I've never left him alone with her this long. She's teething and we can't get her to stop biting all of our pillows."
"Lexi used to do that too. It got to the point where we had to hide all our pillows from her, but then she just started biting Riley instead." Sydney shook her head with the hint of a smile on her lips.
"We buy them all these teething rings, but instead they choose to eat all our furniture." Kairi laughed. "No one ever tells you how much having a kid destroys your furniture and décor."
"And of course the dads never know what to do. They just look at you helplessly as if, as the mother, you should have all the answers." Sydney joined in on Kairi's laughter. "I'll never forget the first time Joe had to change a diaper. Every two seconds he asked me if he was doing it right, as if he screwed it up, the baby would die."
"Fred was the same way! I had to take over. I thought he was going to have a heart attack from all that worrying."
"Or the first time Jade sneezed. Joe freaked and acted like she had a terminal disease."
The two moms continued their laughter, reminiscing on memories of their family. Cade walked silently along next to them, her head hung low.
"Yeah, must be terrible having a husband and children to care for and come home to everyday," Cade mumbled under her breath.
Kairi and Sydney ceased their laughter, immediately turning to give her sympathetic looks.
"Don't worry," Kairi offered. "I'm sure Sam will propose soon, and before you know it your house will be filled with the pitter-patter of little feet on the floor."
"And if he doesn't, there are plenty of other men out there who will," Sydney said.
"Sydney!" Kairi chided and stared at her in shock.
"What? It's true," Sydney defended herself with a shrug. "If Sam doesn't wise up soon and give Cade what she wants, she has every right to leave him. If she's not happy in the relationship, she shouldn't be stuck in it forever."
"She's got a point, Kairi." Cade wrapped her arms loosely around herself. "Maybe it's time I leave Sam and find someone else."
"No!" Kairi vigorously shook her head. "You guys have been together for years! You can't just throw it all away!"
"But it's clearly not going anywhere."
"You don't know that!" Kairi pouted. "I helped get you two together in the first place because I knew that you were meant for each other. If I have to help you get married as well, then so be it."
Cade offered her a soft smile, one that didn't quite reach her eyes. "That's sweet, Kairi, but I don't think-" Cade froze in place. Her eyes squinted at something she saw up ahead. "Did either of you see that?"
The other two girls glanced in the same direction as Cade and shook their heads. "What did you see?"
"I could have sworn I saw a person. They were walking, but disappeared in the fog before I could get a better look."
Kairi tilted her head. "It could have been a Reaper. There are a lot more people travelling through here than you think." She suddenly perked up. "But if we find them maybe they can help us find the entrance to purgatory!"
Kairi started to run ahead, but was quickly stopped by Sydney as she grabbed the back of her shirt collar. "Easy there. If you run into that fog, we'll lose you in five seconds and then we'll have a whole new set of problems on our hands."
"Right." Kairi sighed, her shoulders slumping down. "It's almost the end of day two, and we have no idea where the purgatory entrance is."
"We also don't know how to pay off your debt yet. We need to figure that out before we go jumping into purgatory."
"I know. I just wish we had some clue as to where we were headed. It'd be much better than wandering around." Kairi looked at the surrounding skulls, as if they would start talking and help them on their journey.
"We don't have much of a choice." Sydney crossed her arms. "The Land of the Dead doesn't greet you with a tour guide."
"Perhaps I can be of assistance," a new baritone voice spoke up from behind them.
The trio of girls jumped and spun around to identify the newcomer. A tall figure leaned against a rocky wall composed of skulls and bones. They were standing in the shadows, hiding their face from view.
"Who are you?" Sydney leaned back and clenched her fists, ready to strike if need be.
The mysterious man stepped out of the shadows, revealing himself in the eerie glow of their surroundings. "The name's Liam, and I'm your tour guide to the Underworld."
A/N - I meant to get this up sooner, but I had my wisdom teeth removed and I've been recovering from surgery. The pain killers they had me on made me pretty loopy and tired so I basically unplugged myself for a bit. So excuse my absence from the internet for the past week.
Anyway, don't forget to review! Reviews can be anonymous and it only takes two seconds and really helps me out (and makes me feel better ;)).
