I lay there in the woods. Willing the visions to come. I propped myself up against a tree trunk and tucked my knees up at my chin. I started to feel a slight heat ware the necklace hung on my skin. I felt a sudden pain and pressure all around me. It felt like my insides and bone were growing, yet my skin refused to expand. it felt like it was stretched over me like canvas on a drum, pulling at all the knobs and valleys in my muscles. I felt prickled with pin pricks of intense heat and intense cold, fire and ice specks on my skin like an acrid snow. My eyes rolled back, slowly dipping into darkness like a cautious swimmer. The black was flung into brilliance of fuzzed out colors and shapes merging and swirling erratically. They settled slowly into an image. King Henry stood in a courtyard... a single raindrop fell despite the cloudless sky. He was fantastically robed in creamy velvets and jewels. His eyes were giant and fixated on the ground. From the inside of his lids gushed blood that dripped down his face. As he cried blood he clenched within his fist a severed woman's hand. It was pale with slender graceful fingers, each had piles of tarnished rings. Suddenly Henry's form seemed to flicker like a hologram. He shimmered and melted into the form of a boy. The boy looked my age, dressed in modern clothes. He had eerily white-blond hair almost iridescent in the sunlight. She had the same green eyes and pale milky skin as Anne. He held a sword and coat of arms. From his hands he bled onto the shield, leaving red glossy hand prints all over it. Suddenly, out of the cloudless sky fell a single raindrop. It moved almost in slow motion, and splattered on the boy. At the touch of the water the boy's skin started to peel back and erode, slinking of him like a snake shedding skin. Meaty blood splattered muscles bulged and slowly fell apart. They separated themselves into strands and unwound, gathering in fibrous heaps on the ground. His bones snapped and cracked of like splintering wood, leaving matchstick sized shards on the ground. The only thing now remaining was his pair of cool green eyes suspended in the air, staring placidly back at me. After a few moments the pair of eyes shut and fell like a pair of marbles, bouncing as they hit the earth. I looked down on my hands. Both were smeared with blood, in one rested a gun that was cool and dark like tubes of mercury in my palm.
When I woke I had a fever, and was sweating, Cora sat next to me running her fingers through her hair with a worried mother hen expression. "Cora, I know what Anne want me to do..." I whispered. "She wants me to kill the boy." Cora looked at me quizzically. "What boy...describe him". She had a sense of urgency in her voice. "He had fair hair and green eyes, holding a coat of arms. And a single raindrop fell on him even though there was not a cloud."Cora's eyes grew huge. "Was the coat of arms yellow and blue?" I strained my mind. "Yes... it was... I'm almost sure... no wait I am positive."Cora was silent for a moment. "Ethel, that coat of arms is the coat of arms of King Henry. The boy who brandishes his coat of arms must be his last living descendant, the last living harbored of his blood. As for the raindrop, a single raindrop is an omen of death. In order to break the curse you must murder this boy, it is Anne's will. And that's not all. The code says that I may only guide you as long as I am the sole strong supernatural force. Anne has spoken, she will guide you with the visions. just remember that she can twist your mind any way she wishes, do not fall into her traps. Do not treat the visions as a gift. They are a curse. Be wary of her. I love you Ethel,and I wish you luck." Cora disintegrated into smoke and was lost to the night. I was left alone at night on the side of the freeway with nothing but voices in my mind to guide me towards a horrific task.
I must have sat crouched in the woodlands for hours. It was only once the lazy yawn of mid-day unfurled itself along the highway that I found the strength in my shaky legs to take a step. The sky was a placid, cool shade of blue, stripped of its clouds. I closed my eyes, praying for something to guide me. It was then that I heard the tearing of the air as a sharp, swollen droplet tore through the space around me like an angry insect looking to sting, landing in my palm. It was at that point that heavy rain began to fall from the cloudless sky.
Soon the roads spilled over with water, it was the heaviest rain I had ever seen. It looked like I was peering through the thin-lipped spray of a waterfall as I searched for something to steady myself with, fearing the water would wash me away. Cars spat spray from their wheels, raindropsspeckled the windows, the puzzled faces of the drivers distorted into bending, curvaceous shapes by their windows veiled in run-off. In front of my eyes a small trickling path began to form. It was a tiny delicate stream less then a centimeter wide. The water began to expand, shooting outwards. I sprinted of after the shoot of water. My bare feet skidded through the damp mud. The gasoline and garbage stench of the highway dirt was only enhanced by it's dampness. The soil's brown juices dribbled down my legs, gluey topsoil flecked all over me. The water of my guiding stream seemed to hasten, spilling and spraying and it grew larger and larger. After a few moments it was the length of a full stream. I found myself running along it through the wooded area as it widened. Suddenly the water spilled out, forming a glass top lake. I stopped to catch my breath. Heaving and trying to force air down into my lungs. I glanced up after a few moments. that's when I realized that the lake was on fire.
It was a raging frightening fire. not warm or inviting like the one i followed Cora into. It seemed devilish and dark. The tendrils were pointed fiercely like daggers. The fire was almost all white, only a border of red and yellow pulsating from it's molten core. The water had turned to glass, reflecting the flame on both sides creating one brilliant brushstroke of fire. From the fire I saw emerge a figure. At first it was simply a silhouette, but it came closer and closer. Suddenly it was all too much. The hissing and roaring sizzle of the rain as it fire. The slowly cracking glass a sit was pounded by flame. The heat that seared my body only to be quenched by sharp and freezing rain. As the figure grew closer the fire grew hotter and the air around me grew colder. My air was so frigid I could almost feel it shatter and crack around me. The cold burned my skin and shriveled my lungs, leaving my gasping for air, although everything around me seemed more ice then atmosphere. The fire blistered my skin with it's heat. As the person advanced I realized who it was. Anne. Her flame blackened dress curling up at the edges. her skin a blackened, scorched heap slumping of her charred bone. "touch it" she whispered in her smoke harrowed voice. "touch it." Shaking, I extended my hand over the fire. Cora's words rang in my head. Should I not trust her? I closed my eyes and thrust my hand into the fire. I screamed in pain as the world swirled around me, water mixing with fire and enveloping me in a hellish, acrid steam. Then it was all black. That place of darkness in my mind I have lately been spending entirely too much time in.