The Nexus

This is the first draft for "The Portals."

On a yellow moon night, at the end of a crooked trail, the old barn seemed to be no more than an abandoned and crumbling monument of a forgotten era.

Tonight, it was not empty.

"Papa?" Asha called from within, hoping she heard her father's footsteps outside.

"No, not Papa," she whispered, disappointed. She wanted to tell him, Jaeson was dead. She paced near splintered wood walls.

The yellow moon was at its zenith now. The core of the barn began to glow. The nexus portal would soon be ready to open with the right sacrifice and charms.

The portal was a nexus for six worlds. Two enjoyed peace. Three knew the horrors of war: demons, humans, and angels protecting humans were slaughtering each other. The sixth world, this one, witnessed the joys of peace and the slaughters of war.

A quarter of a mile away, an unusually tall, thin man limped swiftly toward the barn: Uncle Jack. His cane was a third leg, and at six-foot-seven, he limped faster than most men could walk.

His aging skin was the color of the pale map he carried in his left hand, but his long hair was a vibrant red. The map showed where a body was buried.

Jack knew every twist of the crooked country trail and every bush or tree crowding it. He knew that the monstrous snakes of the region ate more than small rodents as the predators slithered around on land and in trees.

But the greatest danger in the woods tonight had nothing to do with nature. It was something that was back from the dead, evil, and hungry to consume human flesh.

It was closing in on Asha, and it wasn't the only danger she faced tonight.

Asha continued to mourn the fresh slaughter of her best friend since childhood, Jaeson. His body was still warm in a forest clearing where their arsenal of guns and charms failed to ward off a demon and save her friend's life. The demon disappeared after the kill.

Tears pooled in her hazel eyes, then overflowed and wet her high cheeks, the color of cocoa.

Stopping beneath the barn's paneless window near the ceiling, that let in moonlight, she slipped an oversized burlap bag from her right shoulder. She loosened the drawstring, pulled out supplies and got to work.

First came the large hexagon she drew on the dirt floor. She made it big enough to hold three people, but expected it to protect just two tonight. Inside the hexagon, she shaped a circle. Then, the girl stood tall, trying to feel like a grown woman–after all, she was almost nineteen–and she waited for her papa.

He wasn't coming.

Papa should've been there, she thought. He is so strong and wise. He would've succeeded where Jaeson and I failed.

Asha tried to dry her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt. She would need to start the ceremony to open the nexus portal, soon. Reinforcements on the side of all things good would gather here from other dimensions. Her dreams of messages from The Oracle had shown her: Multidimensional forces for peace would arrive on this night and with her help. The problem was that when you opened the portal for allies of peace, you opened it for allies of war, too.

The girl heard rustling noises outside the barn.

"Papa?" she called again.

Asha had no idea that her father had fought in another battle that night. Her face lit with new hope, expecting him to walk through the barn door any second now.

He wasn't coming.

Uncle Jack was not alone in the woods.

"Move fast, boy." Jack tossed the repeated command behind him to the teen who had no idea that his older sister was ahead of them in an old barn the color of blood.

Jack had seen Asha in a vision that almost blinded him. His grey eyes still throbbed, but his sight was fully restored. Even his third-eye, hidden, saw clearly in the normal and paranormal planes. The girl would be in a battle for her life, again.

"Look, old man," sniped the boy, "I told you, stop giving me orders, out here in this damn backwoods country. I hate the place. Why Grandma had me drive way out here and give you that map, I'll never understand."

"Keep up!" Jack ignored the boy's resistance.

In a self-imposed exile, the old man had lived alone in the backcountry of the Texas Trinity Woods for a decade. Company seemed foreign to him as he rushed to the site of the nexus.

Jack's sinewy body etched lines in his old world summer suit. He was a startling contrast to the squat, muscle-bound boy in denim jeans and a T-shirt.

They had a couple of hundred yards to go before they would reach the barn. Jack tried to distract himself from worrying about the girl, his dead wife's niece. He hadn't seen the child since she was eight and wearing a smile that always touched his heart. Her brother, the boy behind him, was six then.

Now, the man-child sped through treacherous woods with the old man as his guide. The boy struggled to understand what was happening. He had arrived on Jack's cabin doorstep just before sunset. He delivered the map per his maternal grandmother's orders, and put it in the old man's hands.

It was obvious that Jack was filled with horror the moment he recognized the map and read the letter sent with it.

Jack's sense of dread was not abating. Instead, it was building in the pit of his stomach. He tried distraction a second time.

“So, boy, you said no one other than family calls you Monty anymore. What do they call you?” Jack’s voice was gravelly.

“They, who?” The teen was doing a bad job of acting tough.

“Don’t be dense, boy. Your friends, if you got any. What do they call you?”

“Crip.”

“Why 'Crip'?”

“I used to run track in school. Spring before last, I took a hard fall. Busted my right knee. Had to have surgery. I limped for a while. Kids started calling me Crip for cripple.”

The old man muttered something as he swatted a fat mosquito on his thin neck. Other than the cussing, Crip understood very little that he said.

“What was that, old man?”

“You can call me Uncle Jack, instead of old man.”

“But you’re not really my uncle.”

“I was married to your mother’s sister when my beloved Trina died. She's been gone eleven years now."

My fault, Jack thought.

The boy recalled snatches of conversations he'd overheard about Jack's name.

When the family whispers about you behind closed doors, old man, they call you the Devil.

Crip tried to size up the lanky, old dude who wore an old-timey linen suit that smelled like mothballs, and the man limp-walked faster than the boy walked. The kid would never admit it, but the old dude gave him the creeps.

Crip cleared his throat. “May I ask you something?”

“You may ask. I don’t have to answer.”

“Why do people call you the Devil?”

The boy couldn't see Jack's lopsided smile.

“Hey, nosy-ass boy. Oh, excu-u-se me, Crip. As I told you, you can ask me questions, but I don’t have to answer.”

The blood-curdling scream stopped the old man and young one in their tracks.

"That sounded like Asha!" Crip yelled in disbelief. They took off running in the direction of a battle. In minutes, they reached the old barn.

Crip stifled the unmanly scream that started low in his throat. Beneath that yellow moon, Asha was under attack. A monster–ten feet tall?–had buried a menacing claw in one of his sister's sides.

Asha was writhing in pain, but she stretched her left hand to the moon. His sister appeared to be … to be levitating.

Rising higher and higher, Asha felt as if she were in a trance. She was flying and pushing the winged demon toward the moon. Her right hand dug into its throat, choking the beast.

The demon tried to retrieve the bloody claw stuck in the girl's left side, but Asha's grip was weakening it.

Asha felt her ascent slowing. She was so tired. The girl and beast started plummeting back down to earth.

Jack wasted no time. In one swift sequence of moves, he shed the jacket and shirt, then unfolded glorious wings, the color of his long, red hair. His wings were magnificent.

The forgotten map was caught by a gust of wind, then tossed to the ground. It landed inches from huge rocks that Crip grabbed to hurl at the beast.

"I'm here, Asha!" Uncle Jack called. The warrior angel streaked into the battle in the sky. "Baby girl, I'm here. And this time, I fight for peace!"