• Chapter 1 of The Carrier,

    1720, St. Thomas More Catholic church, London, England.


    Light shone through the staind glass windows into the sanctuary. Rows of sturdy wooden benches flanked a long scarlet carpet leading up to the pulpit. I sat on the front pew. I examined the statue of the Virgin Mary. Her beautiful face was glowing in the light of the thousands of candles that lit the sides and back of her. My mother named me after the Virgin Mary because she thought that if I was to be born with red hair, she would give me a Godly name and I wouldn't be one of the Devils children.
    "Mary?" I heard my mothers call from the back of the sanctuary.
    I turned my head and my bright red curls floated around my face angelicly.
    "Yes, mother?" I asked, and smiled at her.
    Her expression stayed rock solid.
    "I'm finished. Come here."
    I stood up, flatened out my dress and walked towards her. Careful not to walk too fast, so I don't trip. Careful not to walk too slow, so I don't make my mother wait longer than she has to.
    As my mother opened the massive wooden doors of the Catholic church, the sting of cold bit my face.
    Automatically my hands found my face to protect myself from the icy weather.
    My mother grabbed my right wrist and squeezed, making me yelp in pain. She dug her fingernails into my flesh, making my skin around her fingers turn white.
    "Put your hands down. It's unattractive." She spit the words at me.
    My arms fell to my sides. Limp.
    We approached a carriage, pulled by horses. A man jumped down from it and opened the door. My mother ducked in first, holding his hand. He held his hand out to me. I waved him off, "I don't need your help. But thankyou."
    He nodded and shut the door once I was safely inside.
    The carriage bumped and shook with the coarse road.
    Once he pulled up in front of our estate we got out and walked towards the entrance of our home.
    The walls were decorated with priceless paintings and pictures of the Pope.
    Two staircases led up to a landing with a hallway where the bedrooms are. In between the staircases a large wooden door was slightly open, you could see it led to the kitchen. To the left an opening led to the parlor, and the door on the other end of the foyer led to the dining room.
    The house was decorated with colors like gold and white and brown. My mother hates the color red, because she says it's the color of Satan.
    "Go to your room and wait for dinner to be served." My mother didn't even look at me, she walked towards the parlor while she talked.
    I walked up one of the staircases and walked down the hallway to the end and opened the door. My room was quite plain. White bedsheets and pillowcases. The only color in the room was the pale blue of a small rug by my bed, so in the morning, instead of my feet touching the numbing cold of the wood floor, they hit the softness and warmth of a rug.
    I sat on my bed and looked out the window that was at the head of my bed. In the quiet I could hear birds churping and the rustle of leaves in the trees.
    I was about to settle down on the bed to read a book when I saw a movement on the edge of the woods.
    I inspected more carefully, definatly not an animal. Too lean and upright.
    It has to be a person!
    I climbed off of my bed and slowly opened my door. I peeked out and all I saw was dust particals floating in the beam of light from the window at the end of the hall.
    I jumped when the sound of the piano in the parlor suddenly began. Good, mother is playing her piano. I can get out and see who is on our property.
    I tiptoed down the hallway to the banister and peeked down. Yvonna is not here yet. Yvonna is our housekeeper. She goes out and buys necessities. Like food and cloth to make more drapes for the windows.
    I gingerly climbed down the stair case, careful to not step on the spots that I knew would make a noise.
    I got to the door and, not watching, stepped on a spot in the floor and a moan came from under my feet.
    I sucked in air as the piano stopped.
    I opened the door as quietly as I could and ran out.
    Running as fast and hard as I could, I ran to the back of the house and to where I saw the person.
    I stopped at the spot I saw him.
    I frowned and turned to go back to the house when a person appeared out of thin air infront of me.
    "Ah!" I yelped. "Who are you?" I asked, my heart pounding.
    He pulled his hood down and I saw his face was very badly scarred. A angry pink slash lined his left jaw. His skin was pale and looked white against the shocking black of his hair. His irises looked black. A dark void I thought I would fall into if he didn't speak.
    "You are the one..." His voice was deep, and the words slid out of his mouth as a whispered hiss.
    "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I asked, not threatening but almost dreamy.
    Without answering he took my left hand and turned it palm up. He pointed a gloved hand at the birthmark.
    It was a series of crazy lines that didn't actually form anything, but if you looked closely it somewhat resembled a pentagram. It looked like someone used their own blood to roughly draw such a thing. You had to really look to see the star, but it was there.
    "What about my birthmark?"
    A moan came from the back of his throat, a noise someone would make if someone had cut their tongue out.
    "You are a..." His words drifted off after a moan of pain.
    "I'm a what? Who are you?"
    "You're a carrier." He said the words quickly as if someone held his throat in a tight grasp.
    "A carrier? Of what?"
    He shook his head and his hands formed tight balls.
    I watched as he started sweating and his lips twiched.
    Out of nowhere he let out a scream that made my head hurt. Birds flew from the trees in a hurry, trying to escape the noise.
    He took my left hand again, and raised it to his lips and softly kissed the center of the pentagram. All of a sudden everything around me went black and the dark lines of my birthmark glowed so bright it looked like the sun was inside my hand. I raised my other hand to block the light when I saw something.
    A shadow, on my arm. No, in my arm. It looked like some sort of creature floated in my veins instead of blood. A face turned towards me from my arm, it's smile reminded me of a shark. Jagged teeth framed a face with glowing red eyes and lips that twisted in a demonic smirk.
    I didn't make a noise when it smiled at me. I just stared.
    A sharp pain erupted in my heart. Then the pain spread through my body and stopped once my body was in so much pain it felt like someone was cutting a hole clear through my chest every time I took a breath.
    "AHH!" I screamed. "It hurts!"
    I couldn't fall in a heap on the floor, or I would have, because there was no floor. My feet dangled in the black air. The only light I could see was from my whole body that glowed the bright light. The only darkness on my body was the things inside of me. Swirling in my skin like fog. A searing pain came from my hand. Far worse pain then the rest of my body. I heard the sizzling of flesh.
    "AHHH!" I screamed again as the pentagram in my hand burned until my skin was curled back from it, like someone took a hot poker and pressed their whole body weight on it so it literally was in my skin. Not just a coarse pattern anymore.
    I couldn't see anything anymore. But the pain was gone. I tried to open my eyes but my body wouldn't respond to my commands.
    What's happening?
    I felt like my body was being stretched. Or possibly what it felt like to have extreme growth sperts in a series of seconds.
    I tried not to think about it. I drifted off into a sleep.

    1720, St. Marcus Manor, London England.



    My eyelids felt heavy as I was finally able to open them. My blurry vision confused me but after a moment I was able to identify my bedroom. After my vision became somewhat more clear I painfully turned my head towards my arm. Nothing. Just skin.
    I groaned and tried to reach for the glass of water that was on my bedside table. Pain shot through my arm like my bones were attempting to poke their way through my skin. I hadn't even twisted my hand to be able to grasp the glass before it hurt too much to be worth it. Even though my throat felt like sandpaper.
    My bedroom door opened a crack, then Yvonna came in. "Oh, dear. You're up. Thank God."
    She pantomimed a cross in front of herself. I moaned.
    "I'd ask you what happened outside but I don't want you to have to work to remember."
    Now that she mentioned it, I could only really remember the creatures in my body vaguely.
    Then my memory formed a face. A man. Who is it?
    Why did I even go out?
    "Now dear, drink." Yvonna held up the glass of water I so yearned for. Once the glass touched my lips, I drank greedily from it. The cool water slithered down my throat and somewhat soothed the sandpaper feeling.
    It felt like the water flooded my body. The little bit of water reached my fingers and toes.
    "How long was I asleep?" I asked once the water was drained from the glass.
    "About a week."
    I gasped, "Really? How did you feed me?"
    She looked confused herself as if she didn't even know, "Well. We tried. I cut things into small pieces and tried to feed you but your mouth would spit it out."
    I didn't have anything to say to that.
    "It scared your mother. She thought you'd been possessed by Satan." She then quickly added, "Can you sit up?"
    I tried to move my body but I couldn't. That all too familiar pain enveloped my body.
    "Ohhh..." I moaned in pain.
    "Shh...Shh." Yvonna murmured.
    My eyes slid shut as I started drifting off into another dream. The faint sound of my bedroom door closing was the only way I was able to remember that reality was just around the corner.

    ...

    "Wake up." I heard a man say. More agitated this time, "Wake up, Mary!"
    "Huh!?" My eyelids flew open and I stared into the black eyes of a pale man.
    "Who are you?" I asked the stranger who for some reason seemed familiar.
    "My name is, Micah." He said in a voice that was a strange mix between deep and husky, and slightly angry and seductive.
    I swollowed. It didn't hurt.
    "I have come to you in your dreams, to explain."
    "Explain what?" I asked.
    "Explain what I was trying to tell you a week ago. Before you ask questions what I'll tell you may answer any questions you have." He paused then continued, "You are what we call a Carrier."
    "Whose we? What are you."
    "I'm a Substitute. I hold the Spirits while you were too young. There are many Substitutes. Though none have had the unfortunate experience as to hold your Spirits. I was lucky enough to get it." His voice didn't sound sarcastic at all.
    "Lucky? What kind of Spirits? It sounds like it isn't a good thing to carry Spirits."
    "It isn't. For anybody else it would be. But I was picked by your Spirits to hold them, though they didn't like it. They never like any of the Substitutes. Any other Substitute that tried to hold your Spirits, they were torn apart from the inside."
    I cringed, "What are the Spirits?" It wasn't really a question though I formed it as one.
    "Thousands of years ago, in the beginning, when Satan was cast down from heaven and all those other angels fell with him, they were cast to Hell. The other fallen angels would make their way onto earth, from Hell. At this point there were many people on earth. The fallen angels would rape human women and they would give birth to beings that looked human, and were. To a degree. Those babies are called Nephilim. A demonic offspring of fallen angels who conceived through nonconsensual means. Once these beings were at large, people would slay them. Unknowing that by killing them, they were helping them. They would only kill their bodies. Their spirits still thrived. Killing at no mercy. After that when Magic arose people found ways to trap the Nephilim Spirits in a temporary place. They soon found out that they were a certain select people who could contain these Spirits without the Nephilim killing them. Each Nephilim picks who they would most rather be carried by. The Nephilim can sense if the perticular Substitute has a tie to a Carrier. Known between the Substitute and the Carrier or not. The Nephilim choose Substitutes who have a tie with a Carrier because, then they are going to have an easier time finding a Carrier." He stopped speaking so I snagged the opportunity to speak myself.
    "What's different between my Spirits and other peoples?"
    "I don't know. Yours are unusual." He shook his head, "I don't understand why your so special. I think you got the first Nephilim." He said.
    "But I saw more than one! In my arm..." My words drifted off as my gaze fell to my arm, which was still just skin.
    "It was an illusion."
    "Oh."
    My eyes filled with water, and I started to silently cry.
    Micah pulled me closer to him, his head rested on top my head.
    His arms held me tightly to his body as I cried. His slow but steady breaths soothed me.
    A whole new chapter in my life was unfolding around me.
    But Micahs strong arms made me feel that much better.
    I felt a soft kiss on the top of my head.
    You'll be okay... a voice whispered in my mind.
    I'm here, I'll always be with you, my love...