Deep Into That Darkness Peering- Part Eleven by: Enemyoffun Ryan Roth is a college freshman with a good life. He has a great girlfriend, a good best friend and seems to be starting his college career off on the right start. But something dark and dangerous comes into his life and things go from bad to worse.

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Author's Note: Here's Ch. 11, things are progressing at a nice pace. I have an end for this story in mind, hopefully about 4 more chapters or so. I'd like to thank djkauf for the edit, FaerieFyre for the Beta Read and DC Comics for the characters.

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Chapter Eleven:

I was floating; I was actually floating off the ground. Ok, so it was only like a foot or so but it was still something I couldn’t do a few days ago. I still couldn’t help but be impressed by such a feat though. It was wicked cool. After agreeing to train me---and his important phone call---, Richard and I went to work. Richard was his real honest to goodness name. I’m not sure what his last name really was but he told me to call him “Dr. Occult” for now. After a few hours, I ended up shortening it to Dr. O. I remember thinking how weird it was that his house was so sparsely populated but it turns out that was a good thing. The first thing the two of us did after he got off the phone was push his furniture against the wall. Then he started in with the training. It wasn’t much actually.

First, it was meditation and then we’d go from there.

We meditated that whole first day until midnight. I only managed to get into the dorm before they shut the building down. Luckily, I managed to not wake up Miss Perky. Dr. O and I set a schedule after that. Anytime I wasn’t in school, I was to be at his place “training”. Officially, I was getting some after school tutoring, or at least that’s what he told me to tell others. I’m not sure what he told people but whatever it was, it seemed to work. He was cool like that. I still didn’t fully trust him but so far what choice did I have. Besides, he did help me out big time with Dakota and Matthews. I’m not sure what he said to them but Dakota approached me the next morning before class and told me they were pulling out. She looked kinda upset about it so we hugged as we said our good-byes.

The only other problem I had was ditching my friends. Lori and the girls wanted to hang out, but of course, I couldn’t. Dr. O said he could take “care” of them as well but I didn’t like the tone of his voice. So I just gave them the official cover story and they bought it. Bart was indifferent though I think he kinda enjoyed hanging with me, being my own personal bodyguard and all that. I offered to let him follow me to Dr. O’s, too but he didn’t like the idea of school after school so he declined. Just as well, I’m not really sure how I would explain this all to him. Hell I didn’t even know what to make of it either. Here I was two days after finding out I was a super super freak and I was now currently levitating.

I say currently because I lost my concentration. The floor came at me fast and hard. My butt did little to cushion the fall. Some girls had those big butts without a lot of whatever in the back, me I wasn’t so lucky. So I pushed myself to my feet and rubbed my sore behind. I walked in place for a few seconds, trying to walk off the soreness. Then I sat back on the ground Indian style and tried again. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing my eyes as I did so. Meditation was all about clearing your mind and focusing. So that’s what I did or at least tried to. I think I got the basic principle down but for some reason I could never truly free my mind of all thoughts. Like right now, I couldn’t help but think of everything else in my life.

First and foremost, it was Katie. I’d been beating myself up over her death and my involvement in it. I thought it was fully my fault and even though it still was, I had The Rapture to think about too. It was partially responsible as well. I’m still not one hundred percent certain what it does yet, but whatever it did, it seemed to make Katie think her life wasn’t worth living. I suppose my little mental nudge didn’t help either. Then there’s what I did to Brody. I tried going to see him at the hospital yesterday afternoon---in-between one of my classes---but I couldn’t get up the nerve to step foot into his room. According to the nurse at the desk, Brody was brain dead. They were baffled by the cause, too. It was as if his entire mind shut itself down. His body was still functioning but there was nothing there. She mumbled something about his pallid gray coloring too, which apparently “freaked her out.” Dr. O was pretty specific on the cause of Brody’s ailment: it was The Rapture.

The Rapture, that evil fucking necklace from Hell. Or least it should be from Hell or cast into it or something.

If it wasn’t Katie or Brody, my mind was definitely on the necklace. I no longer pined for it like I used to before. Dr. O helped me with that. Or rather, the chakra stone on my forehead did. He said that it was helping control my emotions and keep things in check. One of those things was my power and the other was my dependency on the necklace. I was no longer stroking my neck and I didn’t have the urge to stop in front of every reflective surface and peer at my back too. The chakra stone was fantastic but all that fantastic stuff relied on its user, too. That’s why I was doing this meditation; it was to help me build up my concentration and focus.

That was the plan anyway.

I sighed heavily, opening my eyes. I looked down at my legs. I was wearing a pair of stretchy black Lycra gym shorts. They weren’t exactly something I would have picked out for myself but Dr. O insisted. He also insisted on the sports bra. He said that the less constriction on my body, the easy it would be to focus. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was a perv who just wanted to see me naked. However, he never looked, not even once. I’m not sure I agreed with him about the bra and shorts though, they were by far one of the most constricting things I ever wore. The shorts were too tight and the bra was squishing my boobs into my chest, making it a bit hard to move. I guess it doesn’t help that the bra actually belonged to Lori---who was a cup size smaller than me.

I sighed again. This time it must have been loud enough for Richard to hear from the other room. “You’re not concentrating.”

I uncrossed my legs and jumped to my feet. “It’s hard to concentrate when I’ve got so much on my mind.”

I walked into the kitchen. Dr. O was sitting at the table reading the paper, a cup of tea in front of him. I dropped into my usual chair.
“You’re not going to learn anything if you slack off, you know.”

I huffed. “I’m taking a five minute break.”

I looked at the headlines but nothing seemed to interest me. The other day there was a story about the new nut bouncing around the nights in Chicago. The press was calling him the Roving Ravager because of the red RR’s he left spray painted at the scene of each of his “encounters”. He apparently was the newest thug to take to the streets. The city did have their fair share of heroes from Giganta to Booster Gold to The Bat. Though it looks like the Bat was on holiday and this RR guy was picking up the slack. If you asked me, I think Phoenix was better off with just The Flash.

I reached to the center of the table where a plate of muffins was sitting. Dr. O didn’t look like a baker so I’m guessing they were bakery bought or something. They weren’t fresh anymore but I broke off a piece and shoved it delicately into my mouth. Whoever made them they were a fantastic baker?

“I think your five minutes are up.”

I frowned. “How am I suppose to focus with all the crazy shit going on?”

He lowered the paper. The look on his face told me that he knew what I was talking about. If it wasn’t the Rapture, it was the bald guys. Though I hadn’t seen any since training with Richard, apparently they were around. Bart said he saw a pair lingering outside my dorm yesterday morning. He managed to follow them for a bit but then lost them in the crowd. Dr. O seemed a bit worried about them. When I first told him about them, he didn’t seem too fazed. But that was before I mentioned the tattoo and the necklace. Now he was just as worried as Bart, though he was better at hiding it. Though he didn’t say it, I think he was worried they were after the Rapture.

“Have you seen more of them?”

I shook my head. “Bart did though.”

He nodded. He didn’t say anything more. So I decided to press the subject a bit. “What does your friend think?”

His friend was the woman he called that first night---Jennifer. She was some big magical muckity muck in Texas. Apparently, she knew a lot about the Artifacts, the two of them had been working together on tracking them down. Though she wasn’t a member of his Order, she was still a great ally. But after he got off the phone with her the other day, I could tell something was wrong.

He sighed. “I’m not sure she’s going to even try helping us. Jennifer has always been a bit temperamental but there’s something different about her, something off….”

So no help of the magical kind for us.

“What about the rest of this Order of yours? What did you call them, Sentinels?”

The Order was actually the Order of the Magus, supposedly established by Merlin back in the days of King Arthur. Dr. O compared it to the Knight’s of the Round Table except for Magic users. They called themselves “Sentinels” and sorta guarded the magical secrets of the world. At one time, they had a huge organization but time wasn’t their greatest ally. A lot of their members were killed off and their home base was destroyed. Anything they might have had locked up was long gone, either destroyed or stolen. Some of it fell into the wrong hands. There was one item in particular that Dr. O was trying to find. It was the reason he was in Phoenix actually. According to him, he’d been tracking it for years. He thought he had a lead here and there---the last one was a few months ago in California. Then he picked up a strong magical presence here and thought it was the Blood Gem---the item he was looking for. But when he got here, he lost the signal. The best we can figure, he was actually picking up the trace signature from the Rapture.

“The Order is scattered,” he said to answer my question. “The closer member is in California but he appears to have gone missing.”

The way he said, “missing”, he made it sound like his friend was gone and not coming back.

We sat and stared at one another in silence for a few more minutes. Neither of us said a word. But about another minute or two later, he seemed to remember that I wasn’t doing what he told me too. He frowned, probably thinking I roped him into this little side track on purpose.

“Get back to meditation.”

I groaned, took my muffin and went back into the living room.

“You need words of focus.”

Dr. O’s words kept ringing in my head even after a day. Yesterday’s meditation session didn’t go so well. Even though I was able to levitate myself three more times, it was only a foot and never for more than a minute. But he was a patient teacher and kept telling me to try again. So I did, over and over again. But my mind kept wandering, thinking about all the horrible stuff. It was my wanderings that seemed to be holding me back. That’s when Dr. O suggested that I needed words of focus. He said he could give me words but they wouldn’t have as much power. In order for the words to work like they were intended to do, I needed to find words of my own. In my case at least three. So I spent the rest of my time with him yesterday looking through old molding books but after a few hours, I came up with nothing.

Unfortunately, that was the least of my worries right now.

“Rach, girl, you’re daydreaming again” said Lori as she snapped her black fingernails in my face.

I blinked a few times then batted her hand away. The two of us were in the mall, costume shopping. It wasn’t exactly on the top of my To Do list on a Saturday but at least Dr. O was giving me the day off. When I say day off what I really mean is that he gave me a stack of books and told me to try to find those words. So Day Off with Homework is more like it. When Lori showed up pounding on my dorm room door at eight am, I almost slammed it in her face. But she was quick, not Barbara quick but still pretty fast. She grabbed the door, forced her way inside and told me there was no way in hell I was spending the day loafing. She used guilt too. I was spending too much time with the professor and not enough with my friends. Her guilt worked. But it had a backlash too, at least for me.

Angelina overheard us talking…

“You have been kinda staying out late a lot,” said my bubbly roommate as she popped her head into our conversation.

So now, it was the three of us. For the last two hours, it was us browsing the mall for killer costumes. Halloween was nine days away but Lori wanted to get our costumes squared away before hand. She got this great idea after seeing a copy of Macbeth by my bedside. Hey just because I wasn’t in the play anymore it didn’t mean I didn’t like it. Anyway, Lori got this crazy idea for her and I to do the three witches but overly sexed up versions of them. It worked out even better that we had Angelina now too. Lori was dying to Goth up the former cheerleader. Angelina was surprisingly compliant to her wishes too---but only because it was Halloween.

“I’m sorry guys,” I finally admitted with a sigh. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

Angelina hugged me. I normally would have freaked but it actually helped. Lori squeezed my arm and then the rest of the great costume search began. We tore the store apart but didn’t find what we were looking for. It was the third store and so far, there was nothing that seemed to impress my fashion forward friends. We even went so far as to peek in Hot Topic. When Angelina stepped over the threshold, I thought the girl behind the counter and the one browsing were going to die. It’s not every day the cheerleader shops in the Goth store. Our search of Hot Topic even came up empty. In the end, we finally abandoned the mall.

We ended up going back to the store where Lori first took me to shop. They didn’t have any costumes on sale but there was enough stuff there to pass. When we got inside, Lori decided to start with me. She took things from racks, stuffing them into my arms. When I overloaded, she pushed me toward the changing room. She and Angelina following close behind.

“I thought the point of Halloween is to dress up as something that you’re not,” said Angelina as I closed the curtain.

“It is” said Lori’s voice from the other side.

Angelina: “But you guys always dress like this.”

Lori: “True but you don’t.”

I couldn’t help but smile just imagining the look on Angelina’s face. The two of them talked a bit more but I kinda shut it out as I tried on one outfit after another. They were ok but a bit on the tight side. Though she didn’t claim to do so, Lori liked to torture me with tightness. Most of the dresses were black and each one was tighter than the last. I was squeezing myself into the fourth one, when Lori pulled open the curtain. I squealed and threw my hands up to cover myself; thankfully, the dress was fully on. I hated it when she barged in like that. It wasn’t the first time and it wasn’t going to be the last. But all of that was forgotten when I saw the smile on her face. I looked down and all I saw was my boobs pushed up farther than they were. I frowned until Lori turned me to face the mirror. What I saw surprised me. The dress was black but it had this thing to it if I turned ever so slightly it caught the light and looked purplish blue too. It was too tight in the chest area and made me look bigger up top. I liked the long sleeves though but one thing made me hate it the most. There was this slit up the side, running from the ankle all the way to my waist. I could turn and actually stick my whole damn leg out of the dress.

I opened my mouth to say I hated it but Lori beat me to the punch. “I think this is the one.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding” I said, shaking my head. “Half my body is exposed.”

She laughed. “Stop being such a prude.”

“I’m not wearing this.”

Lori got a pensive look. “I think you need a cape.”

Before I could say yes, no or otherwise she left. About a minute or two later, she came back into the little booth with a large black cape. Before I could complain, she threw it over my shoulders. It was long and surprisingly light weight. It had a large hood and these cool metal fasteners. I pulled the hood over my head and got a good look in the mirror. Walking around like this---even on Halloween---people were going to think I was a freak. Even though I didn’t care for the dress, the cape made all the difference. Staring at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t help but smile a bit. I liked that the hood was so huge and that I could hide myself almost completely in it. The best part of it though was the fact that I could pull the cape around my body, completely hiding the embarrassing slit.

Lori caught onto my smile, nudging me in the ribs. “So you do like it?”

I sighed. “I guess I can deal with it.”

Lori wrapped me in a hug. Then she pulled open the curtain. Angelina was standing there with a smile. I looked from her to Lori and back again. I think I was just played. They both realized their plan was discovered and burst into laughter. Our good time was interrupted by the ringing of Angelina’s cell. She stopped laughing to answer. Lori and I were laughing until we saw the puzzled look on Angelina’s face.

“No she’s not with us,” said the concerned looking ex-cheerleader.

“Jaslyn, I don’t think she’s cheating on you.” Angelina sighed.

Shay and Jaslyn were madly in love with each other. But they got like this. Shay liked her independence sometimes and Jaslyn liked to worry.

Angelina talked to her for a few more minutes. She kept reassuring her that Shay was fine; probably off on one her usual jaunts. She told Jaslyn to check those places and asked her to call back when she was done. Then Angelina clicked off the phone and shook her head. “Those two need to sort out their priorities” She saw the confused looks on our faces. “Shay didn’t come home last night. Jas thinks she’s off with another girl but Shay probably had too much to drink. Chances are she’s passed out on a couch somewhere.”

Lori laughed and nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

We shared a laugh. Then I went back into the booth and changed back into my clothes. Lori took my bank card and the “costume” to the counter to pay for it. I helped Angelina find her costume. Overall, it took about another hour. By the end of it, Angelina had a nice black floor length dress but without the slit. She even got a cape too. It turns out we didn’t have to shop for Lori because she already had a dress and cape back home---big surprise there.

We went to lunch after leaving the shop then we drove Angelina back to the dorm. She took her bag and mine to our room. Lori and I were going to hang out for a bit longer but Ang had some homework. We left her with a frown as we went to Lori’s dorm. It’s funny how things turn out. Angelina still annoyed the hell out of me but she wasn’t as bad as I thought. I’m not saying that I was going to become best buds with her but these last few weeks of hanging with her and the others, it made me real welcome. None of them knew who I really was or rather who I once was. I’m not sure if they would care. I’m sure there might be a bit of awkwardness but they were cool like that. Shay and Jaslyn would crack jokes, Lori would probably shrug and Angelina would probably be confused
But that’s what I liked about them.

When we got to Lori’s dorm room, my whole body felt like it weighed two hundred pounds. I dragged my feet over the threshold. Lori wasn’t faring much better. She dragged herself over to the bed and collapsed on it. I actually found myself doing the same. We lay next to each other and she wrapped her arms around me. There was nothing sexual about the embrace though. We were two friends who weren’t attracted to one another and even if we were, we would never go any further than that. Friendship was too important to us.

I smiled at the thought and then sleep took me.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was the fog. It was thick and low to the ground. The second thing I noticed was the fact that I was inside. I turned around and blinked, wondering where the hell I was. It only took a moment to figure it out. I recognized the cold gray walls around me and the slopping ceiling. I cursed. It was the hallway, the hallway that led to the door with that Thing on the other side. I suppose it was only a matter of time before I ended up back here. I thought I was in the clear for a while. After all, it’d been a couple of weeks at least since my last encounter with “her”. I was beginning to think that maybe I’d imagined the whole thing and that it really was a dream. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. Here I was---back in the hall, staring down its endless length. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs but instead I found myself walking.

We kept walking until the door was out of sight. No tentacles came for us. Lori kept constant vigil as we slowly walked backwards, away from the danger. I had so many questions and so many answers. But I couldn’t speak, instead I buried my face in Lori’s back as the darkness of the hallway faded and the light surrounded us, hopefully taking us back to the waking world.

Author’s note: As I’m sure all of you know, comments are life blood to an author. I’m not begging or demanding, but I certainly would appreciate anything you have to say (or ask). It doesn’t have to be long and involved, just give me your reaction to the story. Thanks in advance...EOF