A Summertime Journey

is the portal between Adamah and Sheol, my world and a parallel world, good and evil. If the door is breached and the gateway opened, there will be no separation, and Adamah and Sheol will be intertwined. Erebus will dominate both worlds. She explains that a Council of Demonic Elders called Erebus is trapped in Sheol, and they have conscripted an evil and vile soul to open a rift between the two worlds.
Like praetorians protecting their principal, the two phoenixes melt back into their sentry post so quietly that I don’t notice.
I find myself gazing into the woman’s eyes, and for the first time, I notice how beautiful she is. I always thought my mom was the most beautiful woman in the world, but this woman sitting across from me is striking. My nine-year-old frame squirms on my stool, and I look down, embarrassed. She places her hand on top of mine, and I feel how soft and warm it is. “My name’s Emma, Lance, and you don’t need to be embarrassed,” she says, still holding my hand. “Yes, I know what you are thinking. I can hear your thoughts.” I feel my cheeks heating up and turning red at the thought of her reading my mind.
“Lance, I’m going to tell you a story, a true story. When you are back at home, all of this will seem like a dream; you won’t remember any of it,” she says as she releases my hand and stands.
Vividly she describes the history of my ancestors and how they were a war-mongering monarchy with a taste for flesh. They were responsible for the death of tens of thousands of men, women, and children out of greed and power. Each stolen soul fueled their war machine forward. It all finally came to an end when a prince from the north who commanded a loyal army launched a preemptive attack against them. They crushed my ancestors during the great last battle. My ancestral soldiers’ only motivation to fight for them was fear. Once the battle turned and the outcome was going to favor the prince, the soldiers laid their weapons down and opened the gates allowing their capture and imprisonment. My bloodline was able to survive by their duplicitous shrewdness, avoiding the rope and sword.
It has taken hundreds of years to breed the evil out of my bloodline, and she says I am the result: a male with inherited darkness imprinted into my soul that my mind rejected and evicted. That’s why she’s with me and has been my whole life; she’s charged with guiding and protecting me for something big, and that something has already started. The story she weaved could have been any horror movie so unbelievable and wicked that only the warped imagination of Hollywood could conjure it up. There’s good and evil, and evil wants to dominate our world, enslave all of us as my ancestors did, but on a grand scale. She tells me there will be a conflict between Erebus’s acolyte and us, and it will seem like I’m alone and that all hope is lost, but she assures me, standing in this dark, strange room, that she will be with me. The last thing she says to me: “Remember, Lance, no matter what, I’m always with you, and I will let no harm come to you.”

CHAPTER FIVE
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I’M JOLTED BACK BY my cheek rubbing back and forth on my bedroom carpet. I think it was more the old pee smell from when Bear was a puppy than the friction that woke me. I must have passed out and rolled off my bed onto the floor. Fear instantly consumes me as I remember Darren and my mom in her room. I hold my breath for about ten seconds so I can hear without any interference—nothing. I pet Bear on top of his head. He is no longer barking and scratching at my door; I wonder if I dreamt the whole thing. I stand and toss my Star Wars pillow onto my small twin bed and open my bedroom door.
I quietly creep down the hall toward my mom’s room, still listening intently for any sign of an argument. Scary scenarios run through my head until I finally reach her door. I softly knock and listen—silence. I turn the knob and push the door open just far enough for me to peek inside, my heart beating so loud that each “lub-thump” reverberates in my ears. My mom is not in her unkempt bed. I rush into the room, wide-eyed, scanning every inch, and on the far side of the room, between the bed and a closet, lies my mom. Again, my worst fear rushes into my head, and I begin to cry as I launch myself springboarding onto the floor next to her. She’s curled up in the fetal position, like I was earlier, with her arms covering her head and face. “Mom, are you okay?” I yell, my face inches from hers, fearing she is dead. I grab her bare shoulders and begin to shake her. My mom slowly looks up at me, tears rolling down her bruised cheeks, and nods. Her right eye closed from the swelling, and her upper lip is split and bleeding. She looks so frail curled up on the floor in her floral nightgown. Now I realize I wasn’t dreaming about the fight, but all of the details are fuzzy, and I can’t separate reality from my dream. Confused and scared, I lie down so my mom can wrap her arms around me and we both lie on her floor, crying until we fall asleep.
When I wake the next morning, I’m alone on the floor. I groggily get up, rubbing my red, puffy eyes and make my way to the living room. My mom is in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee for herself, the aroma of Folgers filling our little apartment. She turns, and her face is still bruised and bloody.