Chapter 43
"Dismissed!" Darkness said impatiently, as if expecting Caleb to dare leave on his own.
With that Caleb was thrown into a room, with Elliot and I clinging for dear life onto him.
I saw floaters as my head got bashed into the floor. When I awoke, Elliot was looking worriedly over me. Caleb smiled in relief at me but was too preoccupied with his mother, and telling her what was going to happen whether she liked it or not, to blow his cover by coming to an "supposed inexistent person."
I heard her saying, "But I don't want to do that, Caleb." and Caleb saying, "I know, Mother. I don't either. But we have to."
"And is it true? Did you... Elizabeth?" she choked when she tried to say kill.
He looked at me, and I nodded, saying it was all right. He gently lifted his mother's cheek and looked straight into her eyes.
"No Mother I didn't. We just staged it to look like that."
"Wha. Well then where is she? I want to see her! And where is your brother?" their mother started making a commotion, desperately trying to get up and look around. She said "your brother" instead of "my son" to show Caleb he had full responsibility of Elliot. And well basically if anything happened to him she wasn't going to be happy. Caleb talked calmly. He must have been quite used to his mother's worrisome demands.
"Safe. With her. Now please don't say anything about it, Ma."
Once she calmed down, my eyes drifted to Elliot.
Elliot looked longingly at his mother's arms, desperately wanting to hug her. I bent down and tapped his shoulder, and he quickly shifted his glance towards me.
I smiled and hugged him, saying, "I know that no one and definitely not me will ever be able to replace your mum, and I certainly do not want to especially since she has such a high bar set and will be with you soon, but for right now, will I do?" I pulled him away to look and see his response. He smiled and nodded confidently.
"Good. I like your hugs." I smiled, as the small little boy put his arms around my neck and hugged me again.
Mrs. Dawnfield, as I had discovered what Caleb's real last name was, soon fell asleep, and Elliot crawled under her arms and cuddled sleepily with his mother.
"She's gonna be mad you know. When she finds out Elliot and I were here all along." I looked at Caleb. "Pretty darn close to the complete opposite of safe as you can get, without, of course, actually getting caught."
"Yeah I know." he looked down.
"But only way to be safe is to get everyone to safety and wreck his plan."He sighed and slumped downwards. "I wish I knew where the others were... It would make getting out a lot easier. Don't suppose you gave Jack a phone?" he asked sheepishly.
I chuckled. "No. Though that would have been smart. But I might be able to send plants to look for them."
I sent vines crawling up the walls and slithering through the cracks to search.
Eventually the vines had found them. But Darkness found the vines first. He opened the big doors and threw a sillhouette of something down. With that he said, "This room is filled with traitors!" he stormed out. I swallowed, and crawled shakily to the silhouette. I let out a gasp.
"It's Mother Nature!" she had dried blood smudged all over her face. They had tortured her.
"They must have wanted information. Or a punishment for not having caught you and Elliot." Caleb reasoned.
"Or they saw the vines, and thought she was to blame." I could feel his sympathizing eyes looking at me, but I avoided looking at them. I didn't feel like I should shake the guilt off, and I definitely didn't want to be comforted.
Elliot made some rain and I washed the blood off.
Mother Nature hadn't woken up, so I tried to preoccupy myself with other things. Like sleep.
It was definitely dark enough for that purpose, I reasoned. Pitch Black, actually. But, I still couldn't get much sleep, for whenever I had just fallen asleep, I would get quickly yanked out of it by someone's footsteps and my nervous brain would always wake me up.
I had just fallen back asleep again, like before, when the big doors slowly creaked open, and loud footsteps echoed through the room. The henchman stepped on my hair before I could groggily manage to get up. I whimpered, but because I was invisible and couldn't be heard, the guard paid no heed. Which is probably a good thing anyway. Considering the reasons why Caleb and I faked my death anyways.
He roughly picked up Help, who instantly woke up and was now whimpering, and threw her to the other henchman, who was a few feet away. She looked terrified. She had bags under her eyes, and wasn't glowing. She hadn't been glowing for a while of course, but it seemed to be more noticeable now.
After the other henchman caught Help, and had her held tightly, so even she couldn't worm out of his grasp, the first henchman picked up Mrs. Dawnfield and together, with the scared just woken up females held tight on their shoulders, the two henchmen walked out, shutting the doors and barring it from the outside again after them. When the guard holding Mrs. Dawnfield started walking out the door, he spat on Mother Nature's face. I clenched my fists, forcing them to not give the man a piece of my mind. I picked myself up, and walked over to Mother Nature, wiping the gross substance off, as the dim candlelight from the hallway shrank, as the door was forced shut.