AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sarah Beth?
“I’m here, Isaiah.”
He saw her outlined by shadow. She held out her hand here, too. He reached for it, concentrating for all he was worth. Suddenly, they were in a forest of barren, broken trees, and it was night but there were no stars, only fat birds with many eyes watching them from sickly branches.
“Isaiah? Where are you? I can’t see you! Come find me.”
Isaiah wound his way through the dark wood until he came to a desolate clearing and a golden, spiderlike machine rising up to a sky churning with electricity. He still couldn’t find Sarah Beth. The machine gave Isaiah a funny feeling, though, like a slumbering giant in a fairy tale who might wake and bring his foot down to crush Isaiah. Like Jack and the Beanstalk, he thought.
I think that’s the Eye, the machine that’s causing all the trouble.
“Ohh. Do you see him anywhere?”
Isaiah pushed deeper into this vision. It felt as if he were flying across fields of death, until at last he spied the King of Crows sitting upon a high throne made from skulls and bones. Rats poked their twitching noses from eyeholes before scampering back inside with a flick of their long pink tails. The dead surrounded the throne, staring up at him with worshipful eyes.
“Where are you? I-I can’t find you. I’m scared, Isaiah!” Sarah Beth said.
“I hunger,” the King of Crows said.
“We hunger,” the dead responded.
“I would have more.”
“More.”
“They are keeping it from us.”
“They are keeping it from us.”
“Let us take back what is rightfully ours. The time is now.”
“The time is now.”
Isaiah’s mother was there in the crowd, but she was not looking up at the King of Crows. She was looking at him, and her eyes were wide. Isaiah started to call to her, and she put a finger to her lips and shook her head desperately. Around her, a ripple passed through the dead. They sniffed and growled.
“Who goes there?” the King of Crows demanded.
Isaiah was frightened. He wanted out of there. Sarah Beth? Sarah Beth!
He didn’t know enough about how their moon glow worked. What if he ran and she was left behind? The dead were moving, sniffing for him.
“Isaiah? Isaiah! Where are you?” Sarah Beth called.
Sarah Beth, we gotta go now!
The starless night was alive with birdlike shrieks and growls. He felt the touch of Sarah Beth’s fingers inside his vision. And then he was being pulled from the land of the dead into a different vision. What Isaiah saw now was the river at the edge of the Olsons’ farm. Swollen to twice its size, it moved with terrifying swiftness. Sarah Beth’s socks and shoes lay in the grass beside a rock covered in blood. He did not see her. Where was she?
The vision expelled Isaiah. He came out of it, gasping and trying to get his bearings. He was back by the thinning stripe of river, which gurgled tamely, and there was no blood on the rocks that he could see.
“Isaiah?” Sarah Beth was breathing heavily, too. “Did you see him?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s planning something, isn’t he?”
“Sure seems like it,” Isaiah said, but as with all his visions, he couldn’t say when this would take place.
“I hope your friend heals up quick. We need to get to work before it’s too late,” Sarah Beth said. She frowned. “What is it? Your face has gone all funny.”
