Chapter 9: 8.- Beware the Fear, It Can Take Any Form

 

She was sitting in a small chair. She didn't know how she got there, nor did she really care.

She looked around. She was in the center of a large, empty, dark room. The boundaries were not visible, but they were there, she could feel them by the echo of subtle sounds. There was no one in that room but her and....

At that moment she noticed a steady growl. She turned around. Next to her, a few meters away, she found a small animal in the middle of an area illuminated by a spotlight. It was furry and looked like a monkey, but with a larger head in proportion and no tail. It was shivering as it stood there, looking everywhere as if it were surrounded by ghosts. Erica looked at her surroundings, but saw nothing but half-dirty walls and the reflection of the pale light on the floor.

The girl stood up to approach it, but as she did so, the little animal turned toward her, paralyzed. Then it ran off into the darkness.

The girl put a hand to her head, puzzled. She looked up, wondering where the little animal could have gone. But she didn't need to look long for it, for suddenly its white eyes emerged from the black void and looked at her, piercing.

Erica froze for a second. She soon realized that the little animal was not stalking her, but staring at her in fear. This relieved her. She crouched down to diminish her size and held out a hand, palm up, an offer. The little animal approached, shy. Its face was hideous; its eyes were huge to see in the dark, its nose flat, its mouth large and full of yellowish fangs. The girl almost withdrew her hand, but suddenly the little animal circled around to take refuge behind her, quick as lightning.

—Hey, what's the matter with you?— she asked, puzzled by its attitude.

She reached out a hand to stroke his back, which he completely ignored, too focused on his imaginary monsters. However, when she made contact with him, Erica saw them too: they were floating around them, sheltering in the darkness. Their eyes glittered faintly, like gemstones under the moon. They were running, climbing the walls. Some laughed, others wailed and whimpered, but all wanted to harm them. The little animal could sense their hostile intentions, and Erica through him.

Angrily, she stood up and reached out to one of them to grab it, but her hand went through the space between its three eyes, which fluttered and, in a second, returned to their original position. Disgruntled, the girl tried to hit another, she sent a kick to a third, she threw herself on a fourth, but she was simply going through them, she could not touch them.

She tried to think, to find a way to get rid of them, but suddenly a shriek alerted her. One of the ghosts had come very close to the little animal, which was terrified. Then the ghost opened its mouth wide and bit one of the animal's legs, making it screech again, louder.

—No!— exclaimed Erica.

She ran towards the animal. With one hand she grabbed it and protected it in her arms, which made the ghosts angrier. The ghosts gathered around the girl and began to bite her to make her release the animal. The girl moaned in pain and hurled a thousand insults against the ghosts, but she did not let the animal go. The hostile spirits bit her on her shoulders, forearms and back, pulled her hair and scratched her face. They wanted the animal, but she wouldn't let them take it.

And from one moment to the next, the ghosts disappeared.

When the pain stopped, Erica looked in all directions, but she could no longer see them. She and the little animal were alone in the room again. Then she looked at the animal in her arms and realized it was sleeping peacefully. She didn't understand how it had managed to do it with all that commotion, but seeing it like that relieved her. She looked around the empty room again, there were no more enemies. Finally relaxed, she returned to her chair and sat down to rest. She supposed there must have been a deeper relationship than hunter and prey between the ghosts and that animal, but for the moment she didn't think much of it. Her eyes closed of their own accord and she went back to sleep.

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When she awoke, she found herself in another room, one smaller and more battered than the previous one. Of course, she had taken refuge in that abandoned house during the night. It was daytime, the sunshine was timidly entering through one of the holes in the walls. Erica sat down on the floor, yawned and rubbed her face.

—What a strange dream— she said to herself.

She leaned against the wall, thinking about which direction to take to find her father, when she noticed something on her hand; a black oil-like substance. It covered all of her skin up to her wrist.

—Eww, gross!— she commented.

She tried to shake it off, but instead of spewing black droplets, the substance stretched out from the surface of her skin, and clumped around the tip of her index finger, not letting go. She shook her hand harder, but all she managed to do was make the black mucus stretch into a long, dark strand, failing to get it to let go of her finger. When she tired of shaking her hand, the black substance came back on itself and entered her skin like a frightened animal going back to its cave.

—No, don't go inside!— shouted the girl.

To her surprise, the black substance returned to the surface and stayed there. From that moment on, the girl tried to remove it in several other ways, but none of them worked. No matter how much she wanted to, that jelly would never fully come off her, so in the end she accepted it.

It didn't take her long to associate that black liquid with the one Cromo had used against her in their fight. She understood that, somehow, by grabbing it with her hands after defeating the noni, it had entered her body.

—That's why it disappeared— the girl said to herself.

Not knowing what to think about it, she raised a hand and asked it to emerge in her palm. Immediately the liquid ran through the muscles and bones of her arm to appear on her hand and cover it up to her wrist. Then she raised her other hand and asked it to move to the other palm. In an instant the black substance crossed her body to the other side and emerged from the exact spot she wanted it to. Its response time was exceptional, and Erica barely felt anything as it moved inside her.

—You are very obedient— she emphasized —Unless I ask you to leave, why can't you get out?

But the liquid didn't respond, Erica didn't expect it to.

She would have loved for someone to explain in detail what it was and why it was so sticky. Maybe the nonis would. One more reason to look for them.

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