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

upon his knuckles laid open and bleeding for his efforts. “I’ll kill you, if you touch her again! You hear me! I’ll kill you!”

When the door still refused to budge, Kellen backed away, preparing to run as best as he could, slogging through the water to ram the door with all the might that he could muster.

He halted at the realization that his mother had stopped screaming . . . and his father was no longer yelling either.

Instead, their voices had been replaced by a gap of momentary silence from beyond the threshold of his room. Kellen swallowed the lump in his throat, the deathly quiet beyond more disconcerting than the violence formerly plaguing his ears and memory.

Then came the sound of heavy footsteps, lumbering up the stairs.

Kellen found both his voice and his anger stolen then, all thoughts of rescuing his mother taken from him too when came the sound of panted, labored breathing from outside his room.

The door knob jiggled.

The hinges tested, even as the lock held.

Then, like a gleaming, onyx stone, a single, marbled eye appeared in the splintered gap that Kellen had created with his previous, shouldered attempts to break free.

Beneath the stare of the monster beyond, Kellen backed to the furthest reaches of his room, his soul warning that no movement or direction would suffice. That it would not matter to where he tried to escape. The eye peering back at him through the door saw.

Kellen’s soul warned that the monster outside would never relent its gaze of him, even as the whispered, taunting voice of the Sancul, Moros, whispered in his mind.

Why dost thou flee, child? Dost thou still fear us?

No, said Kellen when the walls cracked around the door framing like half a dozen hammers attacking it at once. Shadowed tentacles emerged from the holes, widening the gaps as they came. Still more slipped ascended from the water line in front of the door, each slinking beneath the gap separating the door and floor. Rising, each of the shadowy tentacles hastened toward their target.

You’re not real . . . Kellen claimed of Moros as he abandoned the corner of the room, splashing back to stand on his bed rather than be taken in the knee-deep water. This is just another of Hypnos’s dreams!

The voice of Moros echoed throughout the room, resounding off the walls as if he were on a loudspeaker at one of Kellen’s athletic events. No, favored one, said he, his tentacles slicing toward the bed and climbing the posts like fast-growing, trained ivy. My brother’s dreams have ended. I would welcome you home now.

Kellen kicked at the first of the tentacles, but his foot went through as if the seeming tentacle were smoke.

Another was reaching for his wrist, then twining up his arm, encircling and tightening for every continued second upon his flesh. Kellen slapped it away, another cloud of smoke that held no true substance. Despite his combative attempts, the other tentacles warned that it would not be long before their owner overpowered Kellen in full.

Come unto me, child, Moros urged Kellen in continued pursuit. Align thy burden and thy hatred with mine. Join with the darkness and the deep that we both might be renewed and strengthened.

The door burst open on its hinge then, shattering with the force of movement and strength when it crashed into the wall and broke the drywall too.

Kellen dared to face the creature that came for him.

Darkness lay beyond the threshold, but an army of wisp-like tentacles slithered free from the shadows in search of Kellen. The tentacles latched onto the door framing and other objects throughout the room, leveraging their combined holds to pull a larger, shaded mass from beyond. The monster emerged like an ominous storm cloud of moving shadows, all threatening to thunder. Like a fouled, dark batter forming inside a mold, the shadows aligned themselves and strengthened their combined image as they entered further into the room. Upon materializing, however, the shadowed creature there was not the scarred and withered Sancul that Kellen remembered having met before in the dream-like world of Hypnos’s mind. Instead, Kellen’s mouth opened in silent horror at witnessing the Sancul version of himself; a shaded, pretender version, liken to one he might see in a mirror. When the pretender smiled at him, Kellen knew the name of the true master to wear his mirrored face and form.

Aye, spoke the pretender version of Kellen’s own self, raising his left hand in open invitation for Kellen to grasp hold of. Come to us now and rest, child. Aye, join with the darkness and the deep. Align thyself of your own choosing, rather than we take you for my own.

With the pretender blocking the door, Kellen saw only one alternative to his escape. With the pretender’s tentacles continuing their attempts to latch hold of him, Kellen batted them away once more, then lunged for the window above his bed. He crashed through the glass, the shards embedding in the palms of his hands and forearms. Falling, Kellen tucked his chin to his chest as the shards rained around him in twin descent with his body. Vertigo overpowered him as he fell, the voice of the pretender howling in his ears. Kellen shut his eyes then, bracing for the impact of landing.

He struck the ground on his left side, wincing at the dislocation of his shoulder from the fall. Where he knew the firmness of the ground should feel of the shapely and cold, concrete patio outside his home, instead his skin met cobbled stone instead. His cheek was sticky and warm, despite the slick coating of the stony floor around him. Touching the stickiness with his good right hand, recognizing it for fresh blood, Kellen reopened his eyes and discovered he was no longer outside, nor even at his childhood home.

His face paled as he scurried to his bare feet, trapped in the dungeons of Orphan Knoll. The water he had helped to flood and drown the