Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

his hand reaching out to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing away the tears falling from Sydney’s eyes, even as she his own fell unattended. “Daughter, aye.” He smiled in such a way that the dimples on either side of his cheeks might fight off whatever remainder of darkness and doubt that Sydney kept within her. “You are mine, Sydney. I have waited all my life to see and know you for such. For you to know me better too. Whatever awaits us in the times to come, I shall never leave you again.”

Sydney threw herself into his embrace then, seeding all the grief for Yvla and those lost, all the joy she felt at his strong and welcoming arms around her, all the tormented fear she knew would linger within her forever. “Where is Mom?” she asked, sobbing as her father held her close.

“Far outside the city by now, I hope,” said Quill, pulling away that she might see the resolve in his eyes matched that of the words he spoke. “And us soon to follow, once you are ready to run again.”

“I’m ready now,” said Sydney, already rallying.

“Then, let us escape this wretched place,” said Quill, standing and helping her to rise beside him. “For I gather the Salt storm is soon to unleash upon this city, both from forces within and without . . . and I would have us leave them all behind to see your mother again. Now, come, daughter of mine.” He extended his hand that Sydney might accept. When she did, Quill smiled at her again, cheering her all the more. “Let us go and find her together that we might all finally be rejoined and live some happier days than all these we have suffered through to reach one another.”

“Okay,” said Sydney, squeezing his hand and the return of it showed to her also.

Quill nodded in silent reply, then led her running down the tunnels again, delving ever deeper into the haunted halls and tunnels of the ancient Nautilus.

35

KELLEN

Is this hell? Kellen wondered when he heard his mother’s screams in the darkness. For a moment, he dared not open his eyes to see, recalling all the times he had awakened to hear such things as a child and beyond. All until the night she fled and abandoned him. Then, as now, he forced himself to face his fears.

Kellen found himself in the bedroom he had known all his life back in Lavere, Indiana. Cocooned in a patch-worked blanket, crafted of his old, Tiber High athletic t-shirts, the comforts of his blanket and pillows smelt of the same freshly laundered detergent his mother used.

For half a heartbeat, he almost convinced himself that all he had endured and remembered of his Selkie and Sancul lives beneath the waves had been the nightmares. That he was merely awakening from them to find himself in a different, if far better known, reality.

As they had done in life, his parent’s argued voices echoed through the floorboards and the closed door of his room, his father’s booming threats overpowering his mother’s shrill replies. Then came that which Kellen knew was sure to follow when his mother argued further against her husband. Any words she had tried to speak out in continued rebuttal were suddenly swallowed by a smack and a sharp thud, then the thump of her crashing into the wall as his father bellowed and cursed at his wife all the louder.

Kellen had thrown off his blankets before his father’s voice returned with still more shouted threats and his mother’s pleas for the long-suffering violence to end. Unlike the Sancul tentacles of his Salt body, Kellen gasped at the sight of his legs, both returned and healed as they had been in that former life ashore.

So, I am dreaming, then . . .

His mother’s yelp called him from his momentary halt at the sight of his lower limbs returned. Kellen leapt from the bed to bound toward the closed door of his room.

When his bare feet landed, he felt no carpet beneath him. No rug, or even dirtied laundry he often left littered there. In place of all, Kellen found himself knee deep in frigid, black water.

His pulse raced as he retreated back to the bed, glancing toward the window. Outside, he saw the same view of cornfields outside that he had known all his life when peering out the second-story room. For all the seeming memory of his room and beyond its window panes, the reality of pooled water inside bid him to consider his situation. It’s not possible. He knew, again reverting to the surrounding water he waded through. Where did this all come from?

His mother’s scream and his father’s shouting again bid Kellen to forget his questions and rush to her aid instead, as he had done so many times in life. For no matter the beatings given him, Kellen had always preferred the pain of his father’s fists and the lashings of his belt, rather than witness, or listen to, either being struck against his mother. Her screams for help ringing in his ears, Kellen reached for the doorknob and found it locked.

Again, his mother cried from downstairs, her voice muffled as the echoed thuds and smacks of further beating occurred. “Please, Martin!” she cried. “Stop! Don’t!”

Kellen looked for the lock upon his doorknob, but found it no longer there; the door had been locked from the outside. He pulled at the doorknob with one hand and pounded against the wood with his other, both to no effect. “Hey!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, his adrenaline surging, the murderous, fighter’s spirit he had adopted in the depths of Orphan Knoll rising anew with the hopeful challenge that his father might hear and come for him instead. “Leave her alone, you bastard!”

The door splintered against the onslaught of Kellen ramming it with his shoulder.

“Come for me!” Kellen again pounded at the door to further the self-created opening, the skin