Hunting Midnight • Ep 3 • Part 5: Shoots 🌱

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(Edited)

This is Episode 3-5 of a serial urban fantasy & paranormal story.

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Part 3-5: Shoots

Persi and I moved down the street and the wash of the wifi faded behind us. In Clockworld, she didn’t glow gold. Only her physical body did that, back in the car. I used my legs to walk, but she was hopping and flitting forward like a little bug across a lake.

“What are you thinking of when you do that?” I asked.

“Hum, it’s sort of like I want to jump forward, but I try not to anticipate the end of it,” she said, popping into another shaky burst.

In a feeble attempt, I jumped forward. My brain forced me to brace, so I stopped where I landed. Persi watched and waited for me to get to where she was. We tried again, her with moderate success and me looking like a foolish kid who was discovering how hopscotch was played. Thankfully, there wasn’t anyone else around. Well, unless you count the clock tower.

It was at our 9 o’clock, looming huge over the tree line, stabbing up into the sunless, grey sky. The clock face pointed towards town and we were in the northeast outskirts, so we mostly saw its left hand side. That was a small comfort.

“Deluxe is going to start pulsing her portable in five minutes,” we heard Dack say, from right in front of us.

“Okay,” I heard car-Persi’s voice answer.

Yeah, it gets a little disorienting.

We reached a dirt road and followed it. We could have walked through the trees (literally, right through them) to our destination, but the area was unfamiliar enough that using the normal-world path was simpler. At least until the signals.

Over the tops of the trees, we saw a tiny white nova blink into existence, then disappear. Deluxe had rigged up a battery powered router that could pick up and transmit cell tower signals. She could pulse it, which sort of acted like a lighthouse for us. Or, she could crank it full blast… which would hopefully destroy any nasties that we encountered. It had worked in the park.

We turned towards the periodic flash like good little moths, cutting into the woods now that we had our beacon. After about ten minutes, we stepped into a clearing and stood before Fergus and Deluxe. They both spewed up healthy blue clouds.

“We’re there,” I said to Dack.

Deluxe’s phone buzzed, and she switched off her device.

“Welcome, invisible ladies,” she said, looking the wrong way. “Let the sleuthing begin.”

“Can you do any wack stuff, like toss a rock around?” said Fergus.

I shrugged at Persi. She shook her head. “Not like in the clock. It doesn’t feel the same.”

“Tell Fergus: sorry,” I said to Dack.

Fergus’ phone buzzed, he read the text and mimed a pout.

“We should invest in headsets or walkies,” said Deluxe. “This comms setup has significant optimization potential. I should have thought of it.”

“Like real spies, I dig,” said Fergus. “Let’s roll, it’s getting plenty dark.” He brandished a machete and had a bat strapped to his back.

“Lead on, treeslayer,” said Deluxe.

We walked. The two corporeal humans put on headlamps as the light began to fade, but the idea was to avoid turning them on for as long as possible. We needed the best opportunity to try and spot any odd lights, and also wanted to avoid upsetting the Walkerbys any further.

As for Persi and I, we couldn’t tell that it was getting darker. There was no sun or sunset in Clockworld. I was aware that I was equipped with near perfect night vision, but I wasn’t able to reference anything or switch it on and off, so it seemed less fascinating than it probably should have been.

Deluxe was the first to notice the baby vines. We wound a pathless trail through the woods when she did a double take, walked backwards for a few paces, and stopped.

“Say, what’s this pokey protuberance? You all see it?” She pointed to a tree trunk with her walking stick.

“What, that wee planto?” said Fergus. He moved in for a closer look, squinting.

It was a little cluster of green spikes, each about the size of a pinkie finger. They were a few feet out of reach, near the crook of one of the tree’s first big branches.

“Looks almost fungal to me,” Deluxe said. “Odd to see such a robust, isolated structure on a pine trunk in this condition. Ghost girls, what’s your read?”

The plants didn’t seem untoward to me. I came close to the tree and passed my hand through it, making sure to get the ring in there. There was a distant, fuzzy feeling as it went into the trunk and came out. Inside, the tree was chilly.

“Not sure,” I relayed, as Persi tried it too. “I feel something, but nothing crazy.”

So, we moved on, deeper into the woods, until Fergus and Deluxe were unable to move without turning on their lights. We stopped, opting to wait and see if we saw any mysterious glows. Along the way, Persi and I noted many more of the little vine clusters. We moved through their trees, always getting the same fuzz and chill. Trees without the growths felt a little different, but I couldn’t tell if it was my imagination or not. Persi was also unable to make any real distinction.

While the others waited, I tried to figure it out. About a third of the trees in the area had a cluster. Some had two or more. I went to one with a healthy spattering of them and wished I knew how to get up higher. I visualized being eye to eye with the things and jumped in place, and failed entirely to fly. Up was no option, so I decided to try down. I knelt at the base of the tree and poked around the roots. The ring on my finger trailed a smoky blue trail, dusting the ground as I felt around.

“What’re you looking for?” Persi had come over.

“Anything that might help,” I said.

I watched her from my crouch, and debated bringing up the colour of her smoke, now that I was telling people. But before I could say anything, her eyes widened and she pointed at my hand.

The ring had left a pool of smoke in the crook of some roots. And from those roots, a pearly white substance oozed out, almost like sap. I stood up and backed away. Up on the tree, the little clusters started to wiggle. All around, along the bases of trees with the growths, I could see more pearls welling up. We were surrounded.

“Dack, Dack, tell Deluxe and Fergus that we should go. We should go now,” I said.

“Look, down that way,” Persi said.

She had spotted a bigger one, pulsing its way out of a massive oak tree some hundred paces away. It shuddered, and lances of blue light crackled out of it and up the tree, like upside down lightning.

“Whoah,” said Fergus, turning in the same direction. He must’ve seen the light.

“We’re getting a bug out order from ghost central,” said Deluxe. “Lights, lights, flood ‘em up, we’re hustling. Ladies! Broadband signals at two point four billion hertz in point two four minutes!”

“She’s going to hit the wifi,” I translated. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Is this what you saw before, Alena?” Persi stared out at the sea of trees, and the formless white demons. The big one writhed again, sending up two more shoots of blue electricity. There was a slapping noise near us—the vines on the tree nearest to us had grown to an arm’s length. They flapped against the bark.

Fergus and Deluxe jogged away, headlamps on. Vines stretched towards them as they passed.

“Yes, something like this,” I said. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

I grabbed her wrist and felt for a wash of heat under my foot, inhaled and imagined the greasy scent of the food we’d ordered. There was a tugging sensation, and my body was one again. I was in the backseat of Dack’s car. He was already driving, now turning down the dirt road. The seat rattled and fries bounced all around as we sped forward.

“Back, back fully,” I said.

“Me too,” said Persi.

“Are they okay? What happened?” Dack shouted back at us.

“It was those blobs again. They’re in the trees. I might have woken them,” I said, blinking back a curtain of fatigue. It had been a long trip in Clockworld.

“Who’s in the trees? They had to climb?”

“Fergus and Deluxe are on foot,” said Persi. “They have their wifi, they should be fine.”

Dack hit the brakes and we skidded to a rough stop. He killed the engine and the lights. The car ticked and snapped as it cooled, while we watched out the right side windows.

“C’mon,” whispered Dack.

It was all black. I couldn’t even see the trees. I undid my seatbelt and scooted close to Persi, peering. After a long, terrible stretch of silence, we saw a bobbing glow. It spoked through the trees, back-lighting a hundred knobbly slats. It grew, and we sighed in collective relief as it resolved into two headlamp beams.

Dack keyed the ignition and bopped the horn. The passenger door opened and Fergus hopped in, and Deluxe came and sat where I had been, leaving me on the hump.

“Forest running sucks,” said Fergus.

Deluxe grabbed Dack’s ears from behind and scratched at him. “Were you worried, sir? Sounded like you were gunning through well over recommended side road speed limits.”

He turned around so he could back us up down the road, using the opportunity to flash a giant smile at my roommate.

“So what in the righteous hell of Hades did you lady-spooks see back there?” said Fergus, also turning.

“Eden’s at work,” I said, finding fries and stuffing them into my mouth. I had worked up an appetite.

Persi nodded, watching me chew. “Its garden grows.”

 

 

Continued in Part 3-6

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10 comments
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It's garden grows...

See Persi being philosophical 😂😂😂✨

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This forest run is damn scary, blobs again, good think they came out of it safely.

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What is going to happen in the next chapter. I'm psyched to find out.

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Since when did clocks get interested in growing vines 😂 Let's hope that wifi hurts ghost plants!!!

!PIZZA !ALIVE !LOL !PIMP

This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project

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