CHAPTER 6

 

            “Let’s see, 755 Oakwood Blvd…” Blossom said aloud as she scanned the streets below, looking for the street signs to orient herself.  “Does Townsville even have an Oakwood Blvd.?”

            Next to her, the other girls were carefully looking as well, and Buttercup shrugged, “Beats me.  There’s gotta be like a million streets in this city, how am I supposed to memorize all of ‘em?”

            “Okay, okay,” Blossom nodded.  “Still, keep an eye out.  It has to be here somewhere, and…” She cut herself off as she suddenly shivered…a wave of cold rushed over her, but she wasn’t sure where it was from.  It chilled her to the bone, but a moment later, it was gone.  When she recovered, she glanced over at the other girls, and judging from their reactions, they had felt it too.

            Bubbles spoke up first, “What was that…?”

            “I dunno,” Buttercup said, blinking.  “You all felt it too?”

            Nodding, Blossom said, “Yeah…it felt sort of like…like it came from…”

            “That way,” Bubbles interrupted, pointing down at the city.  “It felt like it came from that way.”  Looking off in the distance, they saw where she was pointing…a small stretch of back road, leading around to a single structure.  It looked like an old church, one that was all run-down and no longer in use.  But they saw two things…one was the street marker, ‘Oakwood’…and the other was a small car parked around back that looked like…

            “…our car!” Buttercup exclaimed.  “That’s it!  That’s the professor’s car!  He must be there!”

            “All right, girls…let’s go!” Blossom ordered, and the three of them quickly descended from the sky.  They landed outside the front doors of the church and, approaching it, slowly swung the doors open.  The doors creaked from lack of use, and the lights of the city dimly illuminated the interior.  Drifting inside, the girls stayed silent, observing the surroundings as they moved on.

            The rows of pews in the church were covered with dust; it was obvious that it had been shut down for some time.  Anything expensive had already been moved out; particularly, there was a lack of crosses or tapestries.  There were the occasional sounds of bats flying around the high rafters of the building, but otherwise, it looked abandoned, and for a moment, the girls began to doubt that anyone had recently been there.  But that doesn’t make sense, Blossom thought.  The professor’s car was right out front…

            “What do we do now?” Bubbles said, breaking the relative silence.

            “Spread out and search,” Blossom said.  “We’re going to turn this place inside out, and if he’s not here, then they must have already left.”  Nodding, the girls set out to check out different parts of the church.  Bubbles set out for the back rooms, and Blossom started examining around the sides.

            Buttercup flew up the center aisle to the altar in the front.  She glanced up at the large stained glass windows high on the walls, which were dirty, but still recognizable.  This must have been a beautiful place, she thought, back before it fell apart.  So much dust covering everything now… As her thoughts wandered, she suddenly had an idea, and looked down at the ground closely…sure enough, there were light footprint markings in the dust on the ground.

            “Hey, girls!  Over here!” Buttercup called out.  The other girls flew over in an instant to take a look as she pointed out the footprints she found.  “Someone was definitely here.”

            “Do you think it was the professor?” Bubbles asked.

            Nodding, Blossom said, “Could be.  Follow them…which way do they go?”

            Buttercup flew along slowly, following the footprints, until she got up to the front of the altar.  Mysteriously, though, the footprints came to a stop.  She blinked a few times in surprise, “Wait…they stop here.  But…”

            Blossom, perplexed, looked up at the altar, and noticed an area on the lower side where the dust had been cleared off.  She ran her hand over it carefully, and brightened when she felt a small switch, hidden underneath the edge out of sight.  She triggered it, and with a rough sliding noise, the entire area of the altar started to slowly lower into the ground.  The other girls were startled, but flew down with it as it sank into the ground.

            Once it had gone down about a whole story, it came to a stop with a *thunk*.  Revealed there was a doorway, with a staircase that lead down.  Blossom grinned, “So they’re under the church.  Pretty clever, but not clever enough.  All right, we have no idea what’s beyond here, so everyone be careful, all right?”

            Bubbles nodded, “Got it.”  Buttercup smirked, but nodded also.

            The three of them slowly descended the stairs.  In contrast to the darkness of the church, small torches lit the way down for them.  More proof that we’re heading in the right direction, Blossom thought.  Torches don’t light themselves, after all.  It illuminated the walls, consisting of featureless blue-gray stone.  What was most striking about it was that the stone didn’t look worn or aged at all…it looked almost like it had been carved recently, except for the mysterious layer of dust on top of it.

            Buttercup noticed it too, and asked, “So…is this place new, or old, or what?”

            “It looks kinda old,” Bubbles remarked.  She glanced further down the stairway and pointed, “There’s a door at the end…”

            Sure enough, a large stone door blocked the rest of the way down, the same blue-gray color as the rest of the staircase.  There was an odd assortment of inscriptions on the door that didn’t make any sense to them.  Blossom ignored this and approached the door, trying to open it.  After a few attempts, it wouldn’t budge.  “It’s stuck…look around for a switch or…”

            “Stand back,” Buttercup said, pushing her out of the way and flying up to the door.  Pulling her fist back, she swung at it hard, a blow that could demolish a small building.  When her fist struck, though, it stopped against the door, sending a loud reverberating *THUD*.  The door remained completely undamaged; she instead pulled her fist back, grasping it in pain, “OWWW!! Ow ow ow ow ow…”

            “Are you okay?” Bubbles asked.

            Shaking her had a bit, waiting for the pain to subside, Buttercup gritted her teeth and said, “I’m fine…I’m fine…but, what the heck?”

            Bubbles turned to face the door and fired her eyebeams.  The beams struck the stone harmlessly.  Confused, she kept firing the beams, hoping that they’d cut through, but eventually, she couldn’t keep them up anymore and stopped.  The stone cooled down where she had fired, and didn’t show so much as a scratch.

            “I don’t know what this is,” Blossom said, examining the door closely, “but it’s not stone.  No stone is that strong.”

            “So now what?” Buttercup said, rubbing her hand slightly.

            “Well, maybe if all three of us…” Blossom mused, then tried gripping the door to open it again.  The other girls each found a part of the door to grab onto as well, and tugged as hard as they could…as they continued to strain, the stone very slowly began to slide.

            Buttercup grunted, “It’s…working…”

            They kept it up, and eventually, they got the door open far enough.  All three of them collapsed, panting…Blossom leaned up against the wall to catch her breath and said, “Great…great job…girls…”

            “Thanks,” Bubbles managed to say through heavy breaths.  “Now…what do…we do…?”

            The three of them stayed put until their strength was recovered, and Blossom motioned for the others to follow her through.  The corridor lead for a long ways, on a slight decline…it was starting to smell a little dank, with moisture built up on the walls and the occasional drips of water from the ceiling.  Along the sides of the corridor the entire way, however, was an intricately carved series of runes; they looked merely decorative instead of being something to read.  It struck Blossom as odd that anything could carve this stone, if they couldn’t even chip away at it.

            Eventually, they came to a fork.  The path split in a Y-junction, heading off in two separate directions.  They listened carefully, but couldn’t hear anything coming from either direction, even with their ultrasonic hearing.  “Which way now?” Buttercup asked.

            “I can’t tell,” Blossom said, examining the ground, which was now damp in this area.  “No footprints or tracks…he could have gone either way.  Let’s split up and search, okay?”

            “But,” Bubbles said hesitantly.  “But…shouldn’t we stay together?”

            Blossom shook her head, “We’ll cover more ground this way, and we’re probably running out of time as it is.  You two take the right path; I’ll take the left.  First one to find the Professor, get him to safety at once, you got that?”

            “Right,” Buttercup nodded.  She grabbed hold of Bubbles’ arm and flew off down the right path, pulling Bubbles with her.  Blossom smiled slightly and headed off down the other path.  Once all of them had disappeared from view, everything fell silent at the junction, save for the crackling of fire from torches on the wall.  As the flame light danced across the damp wall, it was joined a moment later by a shadow, which hesitated briefly before slinking off down the left path…

 

*          *            *

 

            “Do you think Blossom’s okay?” Bubbles asked as she and Buttercup made their way down the tunnel.

            “For crying out loud, stop asking that already!” Buttercup replied, upset.  “It’s only been like two minutes!”

            Bubbles glanced back behind her and said, “I’m just worried, that’s all…I hope she’ll be okay…”

            Buttercup shook her head and sighed.  Why’d I have to get stuck watching Bubbles? she thought.  I can handle things on my own.  I don’t need…

            Her thoughts trailed off as the two of them rounded a bend, emerging into a large, round room.  Carved out from the same stone as the rest of the place, there were three statues on separate parts of the walls, each depicting a different figure.  One was a warrior, holding a sword with the blade pointing down.  Another was a statue of a wise man, reading a scroll.  The last was a statue of a robed sorcerer, leaning on a long staff and stretching out its hand.  There were three cobweb-covered doorways leading out of the room at midpoints on the wall between the statues, one of which was the one they were entering from.  The statues were facing a raised pedestal in the center of the room, decorated like an altar, and atop which lay…

            Bubbles covered her mouth in alarm to stifle a cry.  Buttercup drifted closer, even though she bit her lip at the sight.  It was a corpse, lying splayed on the surface of the pedestal, like some sort of sacrificial victim.  It was difficult to tell if it had been burned or if the skin had been flayed, because it was too rotted to see.  A stench rose from it, and there was no doubt that whoever it was had been dead for some time.

            “I-is that…the pr…prof…” Bubbles stammered.

            “No, can’t be,” Buttercup said, speaking clearly despite the gruesome sight.  “It’s been dead for too long, I think.”  She turned away from it and said, “All right, we’ve got two other ways to go…which way should we take?  Or do you want to split up?”  Bubbles shook her head, her mouth clamped shut, so Buttercup added, “Fine.  So what do we do, then?  Flip a coin?”

            “I th-think maybe we…we should g…” Bubbles started to say, but then cut herself off, her mouth dropping open and her eyes widening in fear.  Buttercup blinked a few times at her sudden reaction, and turned around to see what she was looking at.  The corpse was starting to sit up, impossibly, climbing slowly back to its feet.

            Zombie, Buttercup thought…even though it was surprising, she clenched her teeth and flew towards it, punching it square in the chest before it could stand all the way up again.  The zombie was knocked off the pedestal and landed on its back on the ground, but even so, started to sit up again.  Buttercup glanced over at Bubbles and noticed that she was still hovering there, watching.  “What are you waiting for?” Buttercup exclaimed.  “Help me out here!”

            Snapping out of her trance, Bubbles flew over and fired her eyebeams at the zombie’s head.  The blast, which she had intended to just stun it, instead caused the head to explode, splattering the section of the wall it was near.  The thing collapsed to the ground again.

            “Haha!  Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Buttercup said, grinning.  “Nice shot, Bubbles!”

            Bubbles smiled a little and said, “Thanks…so, I guess we pick a direction, then?”

            Nodding, Buttercup said, “Well, we can’t just go back the way we c…”  She broke off as she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and spun to face the zombie again…it was climbing back to its feet once more, despite the lack of a head.  Bubbles was frozen in terror, and Buttercup stammered, “Wh-wha?  But…but you…th-that’s impossible…”

            It got all the way back to its feet, and a small lump of flesh on its neck started to bubble out, growing larger and larger, until it finally formed into the shape of its head again.  The eyes opened, and it gazed directly at them, the eyes burning with a greenish light.  When the girls stared back, it filled them with horror…their imaginations seemed to take over, images of this unstoppable dead thing cornering them and devouring them slowly and painfully…

            With a cry that was a mixture of rage and fear, Buttercup launched herself at the zombie and unleashed a flurry of punches, each one impacting and causing rotted bits of flesh to come free.  By the time she stopped, there wasn’t much of the thing left; it was in pieces around that portion of the room.  Yet even as she caught her breath from the onslaught, she could see the pieces still twitching, still moving as if there was life in them, even after all that.  But it wasn’t reforming this time.

            “Yeah…yeah, and stay dead this time…” Buttercup panted.  She laughed a little to herself, and turned to ask Bubbles if she was all right, but Bubbles wasn’t there.  Glancing around, she noticed that the cobwebs covering the other two doorways out of the room had been disturbed, and that she must have flown off one of the directions.  Why they were both disturbed, she didn’t know.  She called out, “Bubbles?”

            There was no answer.  She must have been out of earshot now…taking a deep breath, Buttercup chose one of the corridors at random and flew for it, hoping that it was the correct one.  This is insane, she thought.  She’s in trouble…we’re all in trouble, if we don’t get to the bottom of this, fast!  The professor was right…maybe we shouldn’t have come…maybe we shouldn’t have come…

 

TO BE CONTINUED…