Chapter 5 – The Crypt

Myrnin's POV

I felt my eyes slip open, though I had not intended to open my eyes. Then I felt myself stand up, although I certainly was not in the mood for standing. And then I turned to face Amelie – who I did not know was there before turning to face her. And even after all of the strange things that seemed to be happening in my body, this was much more puzzling.

"Sam? Am I really here?" It was my voice, but quite a bit lower – and I was pretty certain I had not authorized this action.

"Yes, Morley, you are here. I told you it would work and so it has." Morley? That certainly was not my name, and if it had been, I would have changed it so very long ago (the only Morley I had ever known I would be lying if I said I liked).

"How did they take your little... announcement?" I asked, but I had decided to call myself Morley – since Amelie was calling me it. And it didn't feel like I was me.

"Not very well; they are currently locked in the crypt."

Wait! That wasn't Amelie – that was someone else. Because Amelie was gone, and the last time I had been conscious I had been stroking my giant spider – a giant spider which Claire had warned me not to touch. Of course something as silly as that would lead to this, and it of course it would be me that fell for it.

"Don't speak of that place," Morley exclaimed. "I still have nightmares of the endless nights we spent there."

Sam, I remembered saying. That was Amelie's name. Sam replied, "But now, we are getting our revenge. They will have nightmares for as long as we did once we are finished with them."

Claire's POV

My eyes were sealed shut, like the gates of someone's mind that had many secrets to keep; someone like Amelie, perhaps. I had figured this out sometime in the last half an hour or so, while she had been lying on the cold ground pretending to be unconscious.

I was in some sort of cave with my friends and Oliver. They were all awake, and they were all talking about what had happened to them – about how they could escape. But I had awoken first, and I had looked around. It was like a cave, but I could tell it was far under the ground. No sounds had filled the place apart from the people that inhabited it, the groans and breaths of the unconscious guests and the sounds of my shoes patting the ground. It had been a tricky journey, the tiredness that I inhabited me, but I'd had to find the way out.

However, there wasn't any. Unless we were rescued; which, let's be honest, wasn't going to happen anytime soon. So after searching the crypt-like thing, I had dropped to the floor very ungracefully and slammed my head off of the rocky wall at the side and slammed it again on the stone floor. It had made me want to take a nice, long, peaceful nap – but unfortunately, the others had woken up just ten minutes later – and they hadn't seemed as worn-out as I was, but I didn't have the power to ask them how they felt. They had all pretty much woken each other up, and they had tried to wake me up too, but I now realised that they thought that I was still unconscious (which I didn't mind; my brain was a mess of information and gaps that I didn't have the patience to deal with). I could feel Shane's presence beside me, though. He seemed to be worried that I wouldn't wake up at all.

I felt bad for allowing him to think that, but the energy had just drained out of me, the way that the energy had just flooded them.

Most of the time that I had been laying still, the others had been talking. I hadn't really been paying attention to what they were saying, but I suddenly heard something that drew my attention.

"So, we've decided that Amelie is definitely possessed, and that there is a chance that Myrnin is also possessed," Michael stated.

"I think Claire is possessed also," Oliver's voice piped up.

"No," Shane, Michael and Eve snapped altogether. I could have smiled at their outburst, but I hadn't even had enough energy to find it funny.

"Look," Shane began, "Claire is not possessed; she's just taking a little longer to wake up."

"Actually..." Michael said. "What if Oliver's right? What if Claire's..."

He was interrupted by me very quietly whispering, "I'm not possessed guys; just drained." The amount of effort it took for me to say those six words was enervating, and somewhat terrifying.

"Claire!" Eve and Shane bellowed simultaneously.

"Now look who spends too much time together," Oliver said matter-of-factly, and the other three burst out laughing. They were happy again; I didn't know if I was happy about that or not. I couldn't feel anything, like the emotion had been drained out of me alongside my energy (and I hadn't realised it until only now).

"Claire, how are you feeling?" Michael asked, as Shane hugged me and Eve did a small drum rhythm on my back.

"Exhausted," I said simply. I had decided that one word answers would be the best choice for my current situation.

"Can you move?" Oliver questioned. And I answered by moving my head slightly to the right, towards Shane.

"Oh, Claire!" Eve chanted, and shuffled over to lie beside me on the opposite side from Shane. "Now we're all awake and..." Eve stopped, and then gasped, and finally screamed.

"What's wrong?" Michael asked with concern, dashing towards his wife.

"It's, it's..."

"Blood," Oliver stated, loud and clear. "I had wondered why the smell had been so accentuated, but I had just assumed that as I was stuck in an underground vault-like place with four human beings with beating hearts and fresh blood floating through their veins that it was normal." He stood up from the spot on the floor a few feet away and walked in my direction.

Meanwhile, Shane was shouting, "What do you mean, blood?! Why would she be bleeding? She only said she was tired."

"Actually, boy, I think you'll find she said she was exhausted. And the reason behind that is the blood loss she has been suffering from," Oliver said, "Where does it hurt, Claire?"

"Everywhere," I whimpered.

"Do you know what could have happened to have made this occur?" he asked.

"I fell," I croaked, "I hit my head off of the wall and fell to the floor. I was looking for an escape." The last word was barely a whisper.

"You have been awake for a while," Oliver noted, but his voice raised slightly at the end, waiting for reassurance.

"Yes, I..." I started. "I... I..." All of the breath seemed to flood out of me in a second and I felt the carbon dioxide fill my lungs. I began to cough lightly, and I could feel the others crowd around me in a hurry, saying words that I couldn't understand.

And then the coughing became deeper, more deadly, until I could feel a liquid fall into my hands as I was rolled onto my side. And even though my eyes were closed, I knew it was blood.

Something was happening to me and the only person other than me that could solve the equation was currently possessed.