Chapter 2

Deland, Massachusetts

June 8, 2003

Emily

She was fucking pissed.

Emily had been busy messaging her current boy toy Ken Stanley, the starting varsity running back, when her mother had burst into her room ranting about Ben not being home yet and that they needed to go find him.

“The perv is probably wandering around peeping through the neighbors windows,” she had told her mother irritably.

“Emily Lorraine Booker! Your brother would do no such thing!” Her mother had shouted, a hysterical edge to her admonishment. “Your father is working late across town so I’m going to drive over to the high school to see if Ben is still there and I need you to check the path through the woods”

“But moooom, its going to be dark in like an hour!” Emily whined petulantly

After a few more minutes of whining, her mother won the argument by threatening to take away her car keys and Emily had grabbed a flashlight and stomped out the back door to help look for her weirdo brother.

As she speed walked down the forest path she silently cursed Ben and hoped he might have fallen down an old mine shaft or something. Emily could do without her embarrassingly strange older brother bringing down her reputation at school.

Most of the time she simply told people they weren’t related and even her closest friends who knew they shared a home, believed Ben was adopted or something.

That would make the way he eye fucks me all the time a little less creepy, Emily thought to herself angrily.

Since she had turned 14 and started growing tits, she had gotten a lot of attention from guys. Unfortunately that had included her nerdy brother.

Emily could always feel his eyes on her when she was wearing one of her comfy shirts without a bra around the house. It made her skin crawl a little but it was her house too and she was going to dress however the fuck she wanted. Its not like the bookworm would ever try anything more than look so what was the harm in giving the creeper a little thrill every now and then.

She wasn’t feeling quite so charitable as she practically jogged down the path with a mouth full of bile, ready to spit it at her brother if she found him fucking around in the woods.

In her pissed off state and at the speed she was moving, she only just managed to avoid tripping over Ben’s backpack lying in the middle of the path.

“What the fuck!” she grunted as she skidded to a stop and wheeled around to face the backpack.

It was definitely his. But as she peered around the path, her brother was nowhere to be found.

“Ben! If you are out here jacking off in the woods you need to cut it out and get home, mom is worried you got kidnapped or something!” She yelled into the darkening woods a little shakily.

Emily was liking this situation less and less by the second.

Clicking on the flashlight she had grabbed, she swung the beam of light around the woods on either side of the path. Nothing but trees. Until at last she thought she saw the light reflect off something about 20 feet off the path.

She hesitantly began picking her way to the spot she saw the reflection, careful of her footing around the snarls of tree roots and small bushes. Even in her frightened state she was still worried about breaking an ankle or something.

I swear to god, if I hurt myself and miss out on cheering camps this summer, I am going to murder my asshole brother, she grumbled in her mind.

As she carefully made it another 10 feet through the trees, Emily shined the flashlight over the bizarre sight of her brother lying sprawled on his back in the leaves, his right hand balled into a tight fist and pressed to his chest. A look of agony was etched on his still face.

“Jesus Christ, Ben!” she yelled as she darted the last five feet and dropped to her knees at his side. “Holy shit, are you dead?!” Emily loudly asked his unmoving body, already pretty sure he was.

Not knowing what else to do, Emily let out a piercing scream and slugged Ben hard in arm.

As the echo of her scream slowly faded through the trees, Ben began to stir.

Ben

Everything was darkness.

Ben was enveloped in an endless sea of black.

He guessed he must be dreaming, but it didn’t feel like any dream he had ever experienced.

He was aware and clearly remembered being in the woods a short time ago.

Although he wasn’t quite sure how long ago that was.

Minutes?

Hours?

Time seemed to work differently in this dream void.

He sensed a presence here with him, perhaps just behind him.

He tried to turn, or call out to the presence but he didn’t seem to have a body to command here.

In any case, Ben did not feel threatened by the presence. If anything he thought he could feel amused relief emanating from it.

This is very strange, Ben thought to himself.

It only gets stranger from here my boy, an oddly accented voice echoed directly into his mind.

Ben had just enough time to think, Holy shit, it spoke! before the silence of the void was broken by what sounded like muffled yelling.

He instinctively knew it was external to this place and thought it sounded a little like his sister, though he wasn’t sure why she would be in the woods.

All at once a shrill cry cut through the darkness and he felt a sharp pain in his arm.

Ben watched the obsidian dissolve into the normal blackness of his closed eyes and felt his body return to his control along with the fresh pain in his arm. It wasn’t that bad, he thought he had felt far worse recently, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint when or what had caused it.

“What happened?” he croaked, feeling as if he hadn’t spoken in years.

His eyes still closed, Ben felt someone whack him in the arm again.

“You tell me, dipshit!” his sisters voice shrieked from the direction of the whack.

Ben’s eyes burst open, “Ahh! Em, what the fuck?!”

“What were you doing? Just taking a nap in the woods or something?” she accused loudly. “Mom thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere!”

“Huh? What ... I ... was ... uh, just heading home” Ben mumbled as he looked around and noticed it was nearly dark out. “Em ... um, what time is it?”

“It’s like 8 o’clock at night, dumbass!” his sister shouted with exasperation. “Why the hell were you sleeping in the woods?!”

Ben thought about the question and decided he wasn’t sure what had happened. He remembered walking home from school, he remembered the void and he remembered the voice he heard there...

“Well?!” Emily shouted, emphasizing her question with a sharp poke to his chest.

“Hey! I don’t know what happened, alright? I was walking home then I woke up here six hours later with you yelling and hitting me, ok?”

She growled her frustration at him before yelling, “you are so weeeeird!” while scrambling to her feet and storming back to the path.

Ben slowly sat up on the ground and took stock of his body. He felt totally fine. Actually he felt better than usual, despite the recent abuse from Emily.

“That is weird” he muttered as he effortlessly got to his feet.

As he began walking back to the path he became aware that he wasn’t even watching where he stepped, he was just dodging bushes and tree roots without thinking about it and in the dark no less.

“Very weird, indeed” he said to himself, picking up his backpack and following after his sisters bouncing flashlight beam in the distance.