Chapter Text
You always believed in magic. That there was something mystical and hidden in the world just below the surface, deeper than human eyes could see. You were in near love with the legends, folk tales, and stories that had everything to do with monsters and magic. When you were a kid you remembered your Dad reading to you and your brother the raw stories of some of these. It was a yellow book, one made exceptionally large as an easy indicator that it was for children, for adults too lazy to look at the inside contents. Though it was for children, it spared you no kindness. It presented what some might consider too gory and adult for a child. But you understood and you accepted that life was not ‘sunshine and rainbows’; besides, you adored the stories. You loved the monsters, the heroes both human and not. There was only one story that you hated, and that was the last legend that everyone seemed to always know.
You remember the first time you heard it, or rather read it. You were seven still and the full complexities of the world was just beyond your grasp, but still the colors and basic ideas somewhat started in your mind. The words in it were still a little above where you could read, though you were still far above your expected level. It was in the first week you had the book, you had been looking over the pictures inside instead of attempting to read it. It was very late since you had waited till you knew your parents were asleep.
You snuck into the bathroom, clicked on the light, and sat on the toilet as a small sanctuary from the world. The pictures always made you feel as though maybe they contained some magic, that they were infused with the power of the possible events that took place in them. They weren’t real, or that was what your Dad always had said when it came to the more gory ones. But it never lost the mystery for you. Something in you wouldn’t let it go.
All the pictures seemed old, done as mosaics tiled into walls. Little clips of a past civilization’s work, places with the best skills in art they had of the time. You could never tell if the pictures were actual works of art somewhere or if they had been made for the book. Though there would be at least one picture on every page, the letters were still small, trying to cram in as much information they could. It would only be later in your life, during late nights when you couldn’t sleep, that you would flip through and wonder how it had ever gotten passed off as a children’s book.
It was that night you read the story, alone, in the quiet of your house, the tiled bathroom echoing to your own ears your gasps and the tears that eventually fell. It was the very last story, one about how the humans, out of fear, pushed back the monsters in a final fight and drove them below the ground. Seven of the humans, mages that were wielding the illusive power of a soul, sacrificed themselves to seal the monsters away and end the war between the two races. You never understand the tears that fell that night. Though, even as the years past, you wished you did. You wanted to understand why the story brought your soul so much sadness and maybe if you did understood it you might find some way to fix that deep pain.
You ended up falling asleep in the bathroom, clutching the book to yourself in the bathtub where you had moved to sleep. When your parents found you in the morning they scolded you for staying up so late, but you didn’t care. They didn’t ground you, but made sure you knew if you did it again, and they caught you, that you would be. After that you made sure you were never caught.
It was later that day though, that your belief that magic existed came to be a solid fact for you. It was Sunday, and your family always went out on Sunday for breakfast and an early movie. You were in the back seat with your younger brother, lazily gazing out the window, looking out at MT. Ebbot. You were thinking of the story, of how the monsters were locked away and trapped because of an ancient mistake and primal fear. Something deep in your soul ached, maybe it was your heart, or many you were just hungry. You don’t remember clearly, but you know you hurt as you looked at the mountain and that you could only think of how you wished it could be real; that one day the monsters could be free. It was then in your vision, flickering in and out of existence, a white semi-transparent dome encasing the mountain.
Over the next couple of days you would spend every chance you had to see the mountain, to focus on trying to see the barrier clearer. Some days it would last for a few seconds, most times it would flicker on like a faulty light bulb. Then, about a month down the road, it stopped flickering and it became a constant in your vision and life. You would dream about it. Sometimes you would dream about the monsters inside, only remembering flickers of hazed faces and drowned out voices. But you carried it with you, knowing that at least something in it all held some truth, that the barrier was real. That it didn’t matter if it was the only magical thing in the world, you knew it was a tangible thing in your life.
It didn’t matter how many times you would try to get people to see the barrier, they never did. That was, until the day the barrier came down.
It was early in the morning when it happened, the sun just coming up. You had to be up that early for your job, hating that it went against everything that was your ‘natural’ sleep cycle; up all night and asleep all day. You shared an apartment with a roommate, who was still a sleep because the lucky bitch lucked out and got a night shift job. You were slipping on your work shirt, an itchy polo that was always too loose around the bottom and too tight around the neck and arms.
You knew it was the barrier the moment you heard it. The apartment shook with an ethereal crack; it was the closest thing you could describe it as. It was as though whatever had been shattering was next to your ears, yet there was nothing around you. Your ears rang with the tearing and reverberations, your skin crawling from the noise. Something inside of you hurt and stung, feeling like it was going to tear along with the sound. You senses were overloaded to the point where you couldn’t tell where the pain was coming from.
It didn’t last long, but it left you dazed and out of breath. You glanced around, seeing that some of the trinkets about your house had indeed been knocked off the counters. You smiled as the first thing you thought was that you indeed didn’t imagine it. You ran outside and looked to the area where the barrier should be, you knew it had to be that, you just knew. But you couldn’t see it, the other apartment buildings and various trees covered your line of sight. You ran back inside, grabbed your keys and hat for work, before speeding out the door. You knew you were going to have to take the highway already just to get to work and it was the best place to see Mt. Ebbot from the car. For possibly only time in your life, you were glad you had to take the highway in rush hour traffic.
It was when you turned onto the 101 heading north that you spotted the mountain. You could see it clearly, unfazed by the normal white haze that covered it from the magic of the barrier. It was gone, evaporated into thin air. Now all you saw was what you supposed everyone saw every day, no one else would be the wiser. No one else would know that something big had happened and the city might just blow it off as a small earthquake or a jet plane. If you didn’t have work soon you would have taken the next exit and driven to the base; you still had a hard time keeping yourself from doing so anyway.
You were wrong about people not noticing; at least for the most part. It was a few hours into starting work that you found that it was definitely not ignored by the city, or to the rest of the world.
You bussed tables for a small burger joint in the more ‘rich’ side of town. It was a lunch and sports bar eatery place, a pleasant mixture of Truffle Fries and liquor to be sold to those who had a good amount of excess money. It meant good tips, especially for the more large and drunk of the parties. It was midday when your manager Allie came running to the front from the back of the store.
“What’s going on?” You asked worried for her, she looked pale and you could swear she was shaking.
“I’m not sure…”
She changed the channel of one of the TV’s, it had been playing some baseball on it which caused one of the tables to let out a few calls of displeasure. She ignored them, which caused you even more pause, she was never one to displease the customers. There had to be something wrong.
You watched her brown eyes stay stuck to the TV, lights flicking against the shine with the change of each channel. She came to CNN, and stopped. You couldn’t hear the news, the restaurant was too loud and the volume too low, but you could see a picture of Mt. Ebbot on the screen. You could feel your whole body tighten and your ears twitch.
Allie quickly turned the volume up and started to shush everyone that she could. As the TV grew in noise, you realized the plastic tub filled with dirty dishes was starting to become heavy in your arms. You placed them on the counter carefully, eyes glued to the TV, you didn’t want to let any chance of missing something happen. You would even stop blinking if you could help it.
“-advising everyone in the area close to Mt. Ebbot to change your plans of route if possible since the area has been blocked off by local police. They have assured us that nothing dangerous has happened but do say that the appearance of the creatures to be in relation to the earthquake experienced earlier today. The Police have reassured us that the creatures from inside the mountain are intelligent and being cooperative with police. However, though there is no cause for alarm, they have requested people still stay away until the situation can be fully handled.”
‘Intelligent Creatures’ echoed in your own head as you watched. Everyone in the restaurant had their eyes fixed on it, food grew cold and drinks warm as the restaurant watched the TV. Soon they talked about some ‘leaked’ footage of one of the creatures, the video that apparently had ‘started it all’ according to the news. You would bet your whole paycheck that the police had tried to keep it quiet till someone had posted it online somewhere. It was another hour into the news that they showed the video for ‘viewers just joining’. It was a short video of a walking, talking, and breathing skeleton. They were very tall, or were at least compared to the smaller child holding their hand. Their voice was a constant loud, almost yelling volume of speech, as they talked about what they were and who they were, the people in the background making noises and chattering as they anxiously asked the creature questions.
You were still stuck on the idea that a skeleton was talking, laughing, and hell, even smiling on the TV. It was probably a good thing that no one else was paying attention to anything in that moment because you couldn’t stop grinning. The world started to feel like it was falling into place, everything in you felt that this was how it was supposed to be with the world.
It was after the news had gone over everything for the second time that people started to kind of snap out of their stupor. It seems that monsters, intelligent creatures that were once trapped under Mt. Ebbot, were now free. They said they intended no harm, only wanting to have a chance to live on the surface instead of being stuck in a cave. As the day passed you weren’t able to gather much new information, but the TV was kept on, just in case something new happened.
Eventually the TV’s had to be turned off and everything had to be swept, wiped, and thrown out. You managed to get a couple of leftover burger patties from the kitchen and took them for your dinner. You started to drive home, your mind stuck on the monsters that were real. You wanted to meet them. You wanted to drive to the base of the mountain, run past the yellow caution tape, the police, the government officials, and hug the first one you saw. You were not sure why you were excited, or why you felt like you were greeting old friends back to the land of the living, but you did.
You managed to compromise with yourself and instead found a neighborhood situated on a hill. Sitting on the roof of your car, eating your bun-less patties, you watched the flickering lights scattered throughout the mountain side. You kept thinking of it all; the stories, the dreams, the desperate wishes for magic and monsters to be real. It had given you comfort before, but this? You felt free, probably not as free as the monsters right now, but everything still seemed to have a shine or glimmer it didn’t before. A spark of something different. It was as you were munching on your last burger that the last light on the mountainside went out and you figured it was probably time for you to call it a day as well.
When you returned home you spoke briefly with your roommate. You told her of all the things she missed and had slept through, as well as making sure to call her a lucky for having the day off. What you would have given to have the day off to see if there was some way you could have gotten to explore the mountain and watch things unfold. At first she didn’t believe you when you finished telling her. But, after you showed her the news a couple of times over, she finally believed you. It eventually came to be nearly one in the morning, your roommate having to nearly force you to bed despite your want to still talk about Monsters and Magic. After shushing you for probably the tenth time you allowed yourself to be put in bed and eventually you fell asleep. It was the best rest you had in what felt like years.