Nillium Neems

ancient. These ones don’t."

  "And?" he asked, getting to his feet and picking up his hammer once more.

  "I think it’s because these bones and veins and stuff are stronger. This is the center of the Director’s power. I bet the bones aren’t this, um, fresh anywhere else in the building."

  That got him to listen to me. He looked thoughtfully at the walls around us, while keeping one eye on the Director, who was slowly stalking towards us.

  "If that is the case..." he said slowly, "then would simply destroying the supporting beams of this office and collapsing the roof be enough?"

  "I hope so," I answered, hefting my hammer and grinning.

  And so we both went at it, hammering at the supporting beams that were nearest us. The very first blow revealed them not to be beams at all, but very large bones. They broke all the same under our joint attack.

  The Director didn’t charge us like I thought he would as soon as he saw what we were up to. He simply raised a hand and made a sweeping motion, like a forceful beckons to come towards him. The door to his office burst open and all eighteen remaining Tormentors came to his aid.

  I guess that was a positive sign that we were doing something right, though at the same time a bad one because it meant we were pretty well screwed. The Tormentors hesitated for but a moment, before splitting up into two groups to go after me and Mousy, while the Director directed them from a distance (as Directors do, ha ha).

  Before they could fan out and corner me, I dropped my weapon and ran. It would only slow me down. If I dared to try and face them all I would die. Simple as that. I skirted around the Director and headed towards the window.

  Hey, you might judge me now, but it wasn’t like I had any options. I didn’t hesitate or even stop to think, just dived through the glass and soared into the air. I guess I was hoping the grass below would cushion my fall.

  I closed my eyes so that I wouldn’t have to see the ground approaching, wouldn’t have to see death rocketing towards me. I let out an oomph as I struck, my breath knocked from me. I lay still for a while, wondering how many bones, if any, weren’t broken. At least I was alive. I made an attempt to get to my feet and my toe caught on something, sending me plummeting forwards once more, once again hitting the ground.

  As I lay there, slightly dazed and looking upwards at the leaves overhead, it occurred to foolish little me that it wasn’t the ground I had hit, but a tree branch. Right above me was the twisty little branch nub that I had caught my toe on, looking down mockingly at me.

  I twisted my head to look beneath me and saw the grassy earth of the Yard still a good two stories down. I was lying on a thick, hooked branch that easily supported my weight. Carefully getting to my feet, I started to climb, the grainy wood under my fingers somehow comforting.

  It was an easy enough climb, the branches closely spaced with each other and providing ample handholds to pull myself up. I looked at the stars above me as I climbed, twinkling like little diamonds in the uppermost branches. They were so beautiful that my breath caught at the sight.

  I swore to myself in that moment, that no matter what, I would hold one of those glowing gems in my hand. Poor Mousy, AKA Paul Souris, was almost certainly dead, Siegfried had been eaten alive, the Mushrooms were squished, and there was no way I could fight the Director. Standing up to even one Tormentor was hard enough, but eighteen of them? Impossible.

  So, I just kept climbing. Nothing else in life mattered anymore. Up and up I went, slipping once or twice, but catching myself on any of the numerous branches that offered handholds. Maybe I’d even live up there, safe in the sky where no one could harm me.

  A noise of some sort, possibly a shout of rage, echoed up from far below. I ignored it. It wasn’t like any of my enemies could fly. My legs started to ache from my fall, and bark scraped at my hands. It didn’t bug me one bit, for in my single-minded pursuit of the stars, I was as determined as I’d ever been about anything.

  The first star came within reach, hanging from the branch like fruit. There were several of them within my grasp, each one no larger than a golf ball, but still the most magnificent treasure I had ever laid eyes on.

  Smiling like a little girl plucking flowers, I pulled the first one loose, holding it between my fingertips as I brought it up for inspection. My brow furrowed in confusion the deeper I looked at it. It was oval in shape, made from glass or crystal, with some darker shape within. Being in no immediate danger, I brought the star or whatever it was right up to my eye, straining my gaze as I peered into it. I felt like a little kid with her first kaleidoscope.

  The first sense of foreboding shivered through me, at about the same time the star came up to my eye, and thus I was only half-surprised to see a tiny human silhouette within. Arms crossed over its chest like a mummy, it also had a shriveled yet horribly alive look to it. If it was only bigger, I had the terrible feeling that I would have seen its eyes, wide open and staring helplessly at me, begging for release.

  Holding the one star within my hand, I reached out with my other and plucked another one from where it hung. Putting my eye to this one as well to compare the two, I saw it looked not at all shriveled like the other, though it still held the mummy-like pose.

  I glanced at the ground far beneath my feet, then at the two little crystal prisons that I held. Winding back my arm, I threw them both downwards, watching them plummet to the earth far below. There was a small puff of light as they hit the ground and two pale, translucent figures rose slowly skywards, saluting me as they passed by. They disappeared into the Heavens above, winking out of sight.

  Plucking a few more from their branches, I compared them with one another and made an important discovery. Some of them were like the second I had picked, whole and mostly normal looking, while others were like the first starry crystal that I had taken. Shriveled, mummified, sucked of life.

  I looked around at the hundreds if not thousands of other crystals and pieced my thoughts together like so. If each crystal contained a patient’s imprisoned spirit, then they were there because the Director had put them there. If some seemed just recently dead, while others were in various stages of decay, then that meant they had been imprisoned longer. So it was a logical assumption that the Tree was slowly draining them overtime, somehow feeding the spirits strength to the Director. Meaning in all likelihood, that I was sitting in the very heart of the Director’s power.

  With these newfound thoughts, the once beautiful Tree suddenly looked a lot less so than before. Branches swollen not with good health, but with gluttony from those it had eaten, an all-consuming monster. An image popped into my head, of a monstrous void, roots sucking the life from everything around it as it grew fat on the souls of the dead. Who knew how deep the Tree’s roots went. A hundred feet, a thousand? Perhaps all the way down into Hell for all I knew.

  I could see them in my mind, curling and twisting, snaking their way into the very walls of Atrium. I remembered the sickening display from the Director’s office, when he had punched a hole in the wall, and it came back to me that I might have seen just a hint of wood in there, the searching fingers of this demon’s roots.

  No doubt remained in my mind that this Tree was the source of the Director’s power. All I had to do now was find a way to kill it. I smiled as the dear thought of fire came to me, and just how destructive that force was to anything even vaguely plant-like. I’d used flames a time or two in my various escape attempts from the Ward.

  Even if all of those memories had been nothing but false, they were real enough for me to know how easy it is to start a fire. A spark from a piece of metal, sunlight through a magnifying glass, or if nothing else, just rubbing some sticks together in the right way. And though I lacked glass or metal, there were sticks all around me in abundance.

  I broke a few branches and tried rubbing them together, building up a fine layer of sweat on my brow and getting nowhere. I took my Snoopy Cap off and mopped my
forehead, putting the Cap on the branch beside me. It was only then that I noticed the paper, the Black List, still taped to the inside. All the names of the dead I was fighting for. And taped right next to it, the lighter I had taken from Higgins office...

  Peeling off the tape, I grabbed the lighter and clicked it. A cheery little flame winked into sight at the end. Stripping leaves from the Tree around me and breaking off some of the smallest branches, it was only a short while before I had a small flame going. It was far too weak to catch the Tree itself on fire, the thick bark offering ample protection to all but the hottest fires, but it was just perfect to spread from leave to leave.

  I smirked as I watched flames spread, a contagion from leaf to leaf, branch to branch, traveling outwards like the emissary of death. A thunking sound from below startled me and I glanced down to see the Skeleton, formerly known as Dr. Sirius, clawing his way slowly up to my level.

  He punched his bony hands into the Tree, sharp claws easily sticking through the iron hard back, and then dragged himself upwards another few feet, before repeating the process. And he wasn’t the only Tormentor after me, not by far. For the others knew what threat I posed and followed behind him, all making their way up in one way or another.

  I looked from