The Mystery of the Mask: Part 4

The solidified foot of the Monehemoth shook the earth as it swept through the forest; Karmen and Lionel galloped into the bright green haze that surrounded Crater Town. Lionel took the lead and wove between the trees, hoping over the mossy log. The sky darkened above them as they approached the dip that lead into the crater.

Lionel’s horse suddenly stopped, nearly throwing him off the saddle. Lionel recovered his balance and looked in the crater. A swirling vortex of orange and green light was engulfing the town. Karmen stopped her horse and hopped off.

She looked up at Lionel. “What do we do?”

Lionel looked back and saw the Monehemoth walking closer with each step towards the crater. “I don’t know. But we have to try and stop it.”

Lionel cracked the reins but the horse refused to enter the crater. He jumped off and sprinted inside; Karmen ran alongside him.

They entered into the warm, sticky atmosphere of Crater Town, watching the orange and green lights envelope the air around them. As they got closer they saw two figures suspended above the church bell tower. Lionel knew the outline of Adam, but know he could now see the silhouette of Jynx, casting the green light from his mask.

Lionel and Karmen ran up to the bell tower and watched Adam and Jynx turn the sky dark and drawing the Monehemoth closer.

“Adam!” Lionel shouted with all his might. “Adam listen!”

Jynx slowly turned his round head and looked down at Lionel and Karmen. He floated away from the bell tower and levitated above them. His mask was similar to Onyx’s but the stripes were red and the eyes were green.

“Do you refuse to bow before me as well?” Jynx cackled. His voice was naturally high-pitched but the mask seemed to have distorted it lower. “I know your people did once. But since you have stopped, this is your final night on Earth. Bend your knee and you will be spared. The rest of you will perish.”

“You aren’t a god, Jynx!” Karmen shouted.

“Look around you!” Jynx erupted. The green lights that drifted from him grew stronger with his anger. “Does this not look like the power of a god? Perhaps your expectations of a deity are too high.”

“You have to stop, Jynx!” Lionel stepped forward. “You can’t kill our people for refusing to do what you want.”

“What I wanted was to not be second to my brother! Everything and everyone put him first because he wasn’t the screw up. He wasn’t the ‘odd child’ as they called me. So here, little people like you, would have known me as something great. Except you all still refused to see my worth! And so for that, yes! You all will be killed!”

Lionel looked at the top of the bell tower and saw Adam, who seemed frozen in his position suspended above the church, as if he was a puppet in this scheme. The Monehemoth reached the edge of the forest and leaned back, crying out in its reversed speech. Jynx flew higher in the sky to meet the beast.

The Monehemoth turned west and bent over, clenching each of its seven fingered fists, and slowly turned up, shaking as it did. The beast roared in reversed speech. Lionel and Karmen couldn’t see what it was doing, but Lionel didn’t want to wait to find out. While Jynx was controlling the Monehemoth, Lionel ran towards the church and burst through the door. He ran up the stairs and emerged at the top of the bell tower, where he saw Adam uncontrollably casting orange light towards the Monehemoth.

“Adam! I know you’re there!” Lionel tried to stand as clearly in front of the boy as best he could. “You have to stop, he can’t control the Monehemoth without you. You can save us. You can save your parents.”

Adam tried to acknowledge Lionel but the overwhelming power of the mask locked him in place. Lionel could see Adam was trying to fight it.

“Adam, come down.” Adam crept an inch downward, hardly anywhere, but he was beginning to turn his head. He finally looked at Lionel through the wooden mask.

“I... can’t,” Adam’s voice echoed through the distorted power of the mask. “I can’t... stop... it.”

“Yes, you can. You just have to resist.”

“No... I can’t. I can’t... take it... off. The... mask is... stuck.”

“Lionel!” Karmen called out from beneath the bell tower. “Whatever you’re doing you have to hurry!” She pointed west and Lionel saw a black wall rising into the sky. It began to fold above the crater. A raindrop hit Lionel in the eye. He wiped the water away. Dread filled him as he realized it wasn’t a black wall. It was an ocean coming to crash over them.

Lionel whipped his head around and saw Adam trying to pull back his power. Lionel remembered the pale man’s story of how he got Adam to wear the mask, as he attempted for years. He thought that perhaps Adam accepted to wear the mask, agreeing to put it on just as the pale man did with Jynx, he could take it from the boy.

“Adam…” he started, unsure if he was making a terrible decision. “Give me the mask.”

The orange light around Adam began to dim as he began to feel the control of his own self again. He floated down and looked at Lionel. “Say it again,” Adam’s voice was deep and spoken out of his own will. The mask had called to Lionel.

“I will wear the mask.”

The orange colored power surrounded Lionel in a tornado-like vortex. Lionel was trapped, unable to move even his limbs. His vision was blinded with the rapid winds of the orange light, losing all sense of direction. A small hand reached through the orange light, into the tornado, holding the mask towards Lionel. Adam’s small hands pressed against Lionel’s face with the mask as it took hold of Lionel.

He felt the inexplicable power control his body, numbing his senses and living in a darkness. He fell to his knees, trying to fight and gain some type of control that would balance the power, but the weight of its force was bending him. He shoved his fist on the roof, and fought with all his might.

Karmen watched orange light explode from the top of the bell tower and shoot up into the sky. She saw Lionel float from the roof and levitate above the bell tower. He slowly turned in the sky and cast orange light back into the Monehemoth, who had paused momentarily between the mask exchange. It trembled its long arms and continued to summon the ocean above Crater Town.

Karmen felt hopeless; they would be destroyed. She wished she could have helped; all she did, she thought, was simply follow Lionel back to his town to watch them die. She felt she had done nothing. She felt worthless.

Suddenly, the Monehemoth wound its hand back and then swiped it across the sky. The Monehemoth’s hand smacked Jynx and shot him across the town, crashing into a building. Karmen looked up and saw Lionel floating closer to the beast, taking control of it. Karmen knew it wasn’t over just yet. Lionel was going to control the Monehemoth to stop Jynx.