The Orbs of Aktamur

Chapter 1: The Freakish Storm

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. That was the last line I read out of my book before the life I knew would change forever. It seems like a lifetime ago when my sister Michelle and I survived the scariest night of our lives, the same night our best friend disappeared. It was about three years ago, but the memory is still as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday, even if no one believes us.

The night was like any other except for a freak rainstorm. We hardly ever got rain this time of year, but we didn’t think much about it. My sister and I were working on our homework and our cat Mummy was playing with a ball of string next to the bed. It was about a year prior to this night when he showed up meowing at our front door. He was limping and had obviously been in some kind of fight. He was covered in blood and what looked like silvery green slime. My father said cats love to lick antifreeze and that the cat was probably rolling in it. I didn’t think it looked like antifreeze, whatever that was, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Dad didn’t want us to touch him at first but when my sister and I begged our parents to keep him they let us. We patched him up, nursed him back to health and he seemed to love every moment of it. He had so many bandages on him we decided to name him Mummy. From that day on we became inseparable. He became our best friend. Wherever we were or wherever we went, Mummy followed. He would even follow us to school and wait at the end of the parking lot so we could walk home together. Mummy always did the most amazing things and was the smartest cat you could ever meet. He would open the fridge and stare into it as if he was waiting for the cheese to talk to him. Or he would turn the TV on and start pushing the buttons on the remote changing the station until he got to the weather channel, which for whatever reason was his favorite. The weirdest of them all was when we would find Mummy in the basement even though the door was shut and locked. We never understood how he got into the basement, but he always did. My sister and I were never allowed in the basement unless one of our parents was with us. It was still unfinished and had a lot of loose wires that hung from the ceiling. It also had all of my mom’s pottery stuff including her kiln which was very big and could get very hot. It was always the same story, we would usually hear something falling to the ground and whenever we would check, there he would be, sitting over the same spot in the center of the basement, every single time, with a strange look on his face as if he wanted to say, “What took you so long?”

Michelle and I were nearly done with all our homework. As the night wore on, I could see that Michelle was getting sick and tired of writing. I on the other hand I loved to read and write. It made me feel smart that I was good at it. Michelle was good at science and math, subjects that were defiantly not my favorite.

The rain was beating ferociously against our window and the thunder cracked louder than I had ever remembered. The lights flickered here and there but my dad had a nice generator which always kicked on when the lights went out. We weren’t too worried about it. The storm seemed more ominous than normal, but I thought the book we were reading made both my sister’s and my imagination run wild. There was a large crack of thunder and lightning which made us both jump as the wind howled like an angry wolf hunting for its prey. We looked at each other and giggled at the silliness of our reactions and got back to finishing our homework.

My sister and I worked quietly on our book report for several more minutes when suddenly there was a loud thud outside of our window. The sound made us both jump and let out tiny shrieks from fright. We looked at each other and neither one of us moved. “It must be the wind,” I remarked. Then again, THUD! Even louder and closer to the house, this time making pictures and lamps in our room fell off walls and desks. We both jumped out of our seats and ran downstairs screaming for our parents. Was it an earthquake… a tornado? We didn’t know. All we knew was it was something not good. We ran around the house frantically but neither one of them was there. We screamed out to them, but no one answered. Michelle and I looked at each other in confusion and were just about to scream out again when all the lights suddenly switched off in the house and nothing could be seen or heard except for the wind and rain ravaging the house outside. Michelle grabbed my arm and tore into my skin with her nails. She got really close to my face. Her eyes were as big as I had ever seen them, and she whispered, “What's going on, why hasn’t the power kicked back on?”

I replied, “I don’t know!” with my voice shaking from fear. We heard another large thud outside making my sister and I scream as we ran back upstairs into our room and locked the door. Michelle was trembling uncontrollably and said, “What the heck is going on?” “I don’t know” I replied, as the tears began pouring down my face. I grabbed a small pen light I had in my desk which gave very little light but enough to make our way around. Michelle looked frightened and I could feel her trembling uncontrollably. She whispered to me as if the storm could hear her, “Jennifer, maybe it’s a tornado; we should hide in the bathroom. That will be the safest place for us?” She began pulling me towards our bathroom when we remembered that Mummy was in the room. We frantically looked for him in the dark while quietly calling out for him. We heard a strange noise coming from the back of the room. When we shined the light, we saw that it was Mummy and he was under the bed shaking with a look of pain and fear on his face that I had never seen before. We wanted to go to him, but we were scared. Something wasn’t right. My sister and I hugged each other afraid of what was coming next. We called out to him again to come to us, but he didn’t move. We prayed that our parents would come barging through the door to comfort us as they had done a dozen times before when we were scared of something, but no one came. The thunder and lightning seemed to intensify with every second that passed. We just stood in the middle of our room paralyzed by fear trying to figure out what was going on. Then, out of nowhere, we heard footsteps coming up the stairs. We were both excited at first but then we noticed there was something wrong. The footsteps were heavy and slow, and it seemed as if the person was dragging one of their legs. We could both hear deep and belabored breathing accompanied with a strange gargling sound as if whoever was outside was choking as they were trying to breathe. I had no idea who was outside, but it wasn't one of our parents. My sister wanted to open the door hoping it was mom or dad, but I stopped her. I knew that whoever or whatever was out there was not them!