Welcome Back

Erica wakes up, violently coughing up water with every breath. After a few moments the coughing stops and she is finally able to catch her breath. She sits up on the sandy white beach with the hot summer sun beating down on her.

“Where am I?” she says to herself quietly.

Erica finally gets the strength to stand up and she checks herself for any injuries. Checking every part of herself she finds a few cuts on her arms and legs but nothing too serious.

“Well, that’s good.” She reassures herself. She slowly starts to walk up and down the beach, not knowing exactly what she is looking for. After a while she sees the trees on the inside of the island open up. Until now the trees were so thick there was no way for her to get further inland. Searching for something, anything that could help her, would be better then just sitting and waiting. So she walks up to the tree line of the forest and heads in.

After walking for close to an hour and seeing nothing but trees the narrow path opens up. It’s a decent size opening with a campfire sitting in the middle. The fire is surrounded by a circle of small rocks and circling that is six boulders. Sitting on one of the boulders is an older man. He has a long white beard that goes down to the middle of his chest. She slowly walks closer and sees his aged faced is full of wrinkles, but the thing she notices most is his piercing green eyes. Erica reaches the boulders and takes a seat on one across from the old man.

“Hello, my name is Erica. Can you tell me where I am?” The man doesn’t respond and sits there quietly staring at here.

“There was an accident, my friends and I were on a boat and I think it crashed. I woke up on the beach. Have you seen my friends?” Again the man offers no response. Erica realizes she does not have time for this and stands up.

“Sit down my child” The old man finally says. “Your friends are not here.” Her stomach sinks at hearing these words.

“How do you know that?” She asks.

“Because this place is for you, not for them. They each have their own place.” The man says, poking at the fire with is walking stick.

“What do you mean this is my place? What is this place, what is going on?” Erica asks.

“You must face your fears. If you want to get back and have another chance you must overcome the things that you fear most.”

“What does that even mean?” Erica demands.

“Just follow the path and face your fears. Do this and you will get a second chance.” The old man stands up from the rock and pokes the fire with his stick again. Red embers fly up from the fire and smoke rises, covering the entire area. Erica starts to cough. The smoke clears and Erica sees the man is gone and the fire is not lit anymore. Behind where the old man was sitting she watches as the trees move. They open up to reveal a small path leading deeper into the woods.

Erica hesitates for a moment, she does not know what to think of what is happening. Is this a dream? None of this makes sense otherwise. All of these things race through her mind and after a few moments she walks towards the opening in the woods. She cannot explain it but she has this feeling inside her, this voice telling her she needs to go.

As she enters onto the path, the forest trees behind her move again, closing the path back to the campfire.

Erica reaches the end of the path and sees it fork off into two directions. Nailed to a tall tree at the end of the path is a wooden sign. Etched in the wood is two words, Nycto, with an arrow pointing to the left path. Under that is the word Thalasso, FEAR TWO, with an arrow pointing to the right path. She stares at the sign, trying to figure out what exactly it means. She decides she needs to do something since turning back is not an option and takes the left pass.

She walks down the path until she finds herself standing in front of a giant cave. Her heart sinks into her chest and she starts to panic. Ever since she was a little girl she has been afraid of the dark. Her older brother would lock her in their basement. The worst part was that the light switch for the basement was upstairs. He would lure her into the basement and then run back upstairs, lock the door and turn the light off. She was too short to reach the pull chain to turn the light on manually. She would sit in the dark, on the cold cement floor crying until their mom realized and let her out. No matter how many times her brother got punished for doing that to her it didn’t stop him from continuing to do it.

With tears running down her face Erica slowly steps foot into the dark damp cave. After a few feet the little bit of light coming in from the cave entrance is gone and now she stands in total darkness. The air is cold as she slowly places her right hand on the cave wall. Using the wall as a guide Erica slowly starts to make her way deeper into the cave. She feels the wall start to curve around to the left and off in the distant she can see a faint flicker of light. Her nerves start to fade a little as she gets closer to the light.

She sees a torch hanging from a rusted metal holder on the cave wall. Erica pulls the torch from the holder and steps into an open cavern. As she takes a few steps into the massive cavern the rocks behind her start to rumble. She turns around and watches the opening she just came through close up by the damp rocks. She turns back around to face the middle of the cavern, looking to find another way out. The cavern is massive and even with the torch she can’t the other end. She slowly starts to walk to the center of the cavern and hears a quiet hissing all around her. She can’t figure where the noise is coming from. The hissing sounds like it is bouncing off of all the walls at once. Just then she feels something fall onto her head. She shakes her head and runs her hand through her hair. She feels something on her hand as she pulls it away from her head and shines the torch down on her hand. She sees a baseball sized spider crawling along the back of her hand and up her left arm. Erica screams out in terror and knocks the spider onto to the ground. She shines the light onto the ground where the spider fell and she steps down onto it. The creature explodes under her shoe.

She raises the torch back up from the ground and she sees a giant spider standing in front her. The giant arachnid stands as big as a SUV. The black and grey fur covering its body is covered in little red dots. Two heads sit atop the body, one head is brown and the other is white. At the same time both heads let out a loud screeching hiss showing off the large sharp teeth filling their mouths. Erica lets out a loud scream and starts to run. The spider hisses again and she turns her head to see it coming right at her. Just then she slams hard into the cavern wall. Realizing the impact did not hurt much, she lifts the torch to the wall. She sees hundreds of smaller spiders crawling up and down the entire wall. She lets out another ear piercing scream and continues running along the wall trying to find a way out.

As she continues to run she realizes the giant spider is getting closer to her no matter where she runs. She stops a minute and realizes the massive cavern is slowly shrinking. The walls are closing in on the middle of the room. She realizes there is no exit and she needs to do something or else she will be either crushed by the walls or something even worse from the spider.

She stops running and turns towards the middle of the room where the giant spider is standing. She lifts up her torch and waves it front of the spiders two heads. The creature hisses again and lifts up one it’s legs and swings it at Erica. She ducks out of the way from the leg and as it passes by her she puts the torch to it. The skinny bone like leg ignites like a match. The spider writhes out in pain. Erica realizes the fire hurt the creature so she takes the torch and throws it like a spear right into the brown head of the spider. The torch falls to the ground and the spider stumbles back in pain while the brown head ignites in flames. She runs over to the torch, picks it up and takes a few more steps towards the giant spider. She lifts the torch up with both hands and shoves it into the white head. The head bursts into flames and the creature falls onto the damp floor of the cavern. Erica steps back and watches as the giant arachnid’s entire body ignites. After a few seconds the creature stops hissing and the walls around the cavern burst into flames. All at once Erica hears hundred of screeching spiders hissing in pain and then they all fall to the ground. The cavern walls rumble again and start to move back outward. The hundred of smaller spiders and the giant two headed spider vanish in a cloud of ash and the far wall of the cavern opens up.

Erica exits the dark cave and collapses on the warm dirt of the forest floor. She lays there soaking in the warmth of the sun and trying to get herself to calm down. She has no idea what that was but she knows she never wants to do anything like that again. She sits up and sees the old man again, sitting on the giant boulder around the campfire.

“Congratulations child. You conquered your fear.” The old man says in a soft tone, barely audible. Erica stands up and walks over to the boulder sitting across from the man. She sits down and places her hands over the fire, trying to warm them.

“What was that?” She asks. The man does not reply. Irritation now comes over her at the lack of answers.

“What is going on? Answer me!” She screams out. The old man raises his head and looks at Erica. Something about his piercing eyes calms her and she relaxes. “Answers will come soon my child. Continue down the path and all will become clear.” After the old man speaks these words the fire crackles and blue embers fly up. Erica stares at the floating embers, they remind her of when she was a kid, laying out in her backyard with her mom staring at the lighting bugs. The rumbling of the trees brings her back to the camp and she sees the man is gone again. The trees have opened up once again to reveal the same path. She walks down the path and again comes to a wooden sign nailed to a tree and a fork in the road. This time the path leading to the left is blocked off by the most beautiful field of flowers she has seen. Pink and red roses line the outside, with varying types of teal, purple, yellow and white pedals covering the inside. She looks up at the sign and the word NYCTO is now crossed out. Erica might not know exactly what is going on but if what happened earlier is any indication of whats to come she is not going to like it.

Erica walks the right hand path for while and the further away from the fork she gets the colder it gets. The sky starts to darken as thick grey clouds roll in. She reaches an opening in the trees that leads up a steep hill and as she crosses it the temperature drops drastically. The path closes up behind her, she takes a few deep breaths and notices she can see her breath. She reaches the top of the hill and her heart sinks. Laying in front of her is an enormous body of water.

After her brother went off to college things got little better for her at home. He is five years older than her and he always picked on her. After their dad left when she was six her brother took it hard and started acting out a lot. Their mom tried the best she could but she was always working. The rotating of baby-sitters did not make things any easier for any of them. One summer when Erica was ten her mother decided to buy the kids a small above ground pool. A pool was something that they could all enjoy together, as a family. A few weeks after getting the pool Erica’s brother thought it would be fun to pull her under the water. He would swim under the water, up to Erica and grab her legs. He would pull her under the water and hold her their for a few seconds. Erica would rise back up to the surface crying out for their mom and her brother would just float there laughing.

Even standing at the top of this hill Erica can’t see the other side. She walks down the hill and realizes the water is frozen all the way across. She looks down at the ice and notices the word PROCEED is etched into the ice and underneath is an arrow pointing straight across the lake.

Those memories race through her head as she slowly takes the first step onto the ice. The ice seems pretty solid, there are no signs of cracking as Erica walks slowly across. She gets about a third of the way across when she hears the first sign of terror. The ice underneath her feet begins to crack and rumble but she can’t see any cracks on the ice. She takes this as a good sign and continues her slow trek across the frozen lake. Two-thirds of the way across the lake she can finally see land on the other side. The cracking noise still comes and goes but the surface is not showing any signs of it.

She takes a few more soft steps forward and all of sudden hears a loud crash of thunder up high in the sky. She stops and looks up to where the noise came from and suddenly feels the ice behind her tear apart. The ice cracks, spreading out like a windshield cracking from a rock being thrown into it. Erica looks back and sees chunks of ice breaking apart and vanishing into the water. She finds her breath and begins to sprint to the other side.

She makes it a few feet away from land when she crashes hard to the ice. As she hits the ice her head bounces off the hard cold surface. She lays there a moment as her vision starts to blur. She feels the ice behind her crack and she starts crawling towards the dry land. Her hands reach the warmth of the ground as the ice underneath her legs give away. The freezing cold water hitting her legs is the boost she needs to pull herself out. As she lays on the dirt she hears the ground behind her rumble and quake. She turns her head to see the once frozen lake is now gone, the area is now covered in bright colorful flowers.

The pain in Erica’s head starts to fade as she walks through the opening in the trees and sees the campsite once again. Again the old man sits on the giant boulder holding his walking stick in his left hand. Erica walks up to the old man and sits down across from him without saying a word.

“Congratulations.” The old man says in a soft voice. “You’ve overcome your greatest fears. You should be proud of yourself. I haven’t seen many able to push themselves the way you have. You have earned your second chance.”

After speaking those last two words the old man opens up his right hand and blows the white powder he was holding in it, into the fire. The white powder turns into a blue smoke and Erica feels a sensation in her entire body as her vision goes dark.

Erica opens her eyes and is blinded by a bright light filling the room. She hears multiple voices coming from different parts of the room but she cannot make out what they are saying. A man in a white coat walks over to hear. She sees the bright blue of eyes and something about that makes her feel safe. She hears the man talk and in his soft gentle voice he says, “You had us scared for a while, we didn’t think you would make it, but you’re going to be just fine. Welcome back”