chapter 4
1592 Words
CHAPTER 4 THE BLOOD AND THE LIGHT
EXT. COUNTRY ROAD – NIGHT
The road twists along the side of an unbroken forest. Turns low fog skeptic comics under the moon dim beneath founders. The engine of a car hums, and briefly its headlights part the mist like blades.
ANNA drives the car in silence. Her eyes are sharp, tired. The pendant around her neck flickers with each pothole.
MICHAEL is seated beside her and turning down the pages of her mother’s journal, which had been swollen by time and rain. He looks restless.
MICHAEL
You ever think she did this on purpose?
ANNA
Every day since she died.
MICHAEL
You think she planned it? All of it — the pendant, the covenant?”
Anna’s grip on the wheel makes her knuckles white.
ANNA
If she did, she took pains to leave me in the dark.
The silence stretches. It starts raining soft at first, then harder, the windows are washed in streaks.
MICHAEL
It can smell the Keeper’s blood," Mara said of the shadows.
(pauses)
How long before they find us?
Anna looks in the rearview. mirror. The darkness that follows behind them ripples as though it were a living thing.
ANNA
Not long.
The car jerks. Something streaks across the headlights — thin, quick and almost human.
MICHAEL
What the hell was that?
Anna hits the brakes. Tires skid, gravel flies. The vehicle comes to a rest across the road. Both of them breathe hard.
The forest around them buzzes with something not seen.
ANNA
Stay in the car.
She steps into the rain, her pendant pounding like a heart. The air feels charged, metallic.
A figure stands ahead—cloaked, motionless. It’s shrouded in fog at its base.
ANNA
Who’s there?
No answer. Just a whisper of wind.
And then suddenly, in the dark, another light flares—a lantern glow. ELDER MARA steps out of the trees, cloak wet, staff in hand.
ELDER MARA
You never should have come this way. The Veil is thinner here.
MICHAEL (O.S.)
You've terrified the life out of us!
Mara ignores him, her eyes shifted to Anna.
ELDER MARA
He’s watching. The Shadow knows you are awake now.
ANNA
Then we need to move. You told me that the Chamber is under the church.
ELDER MARA
Yes. But every road there is paved with blood. There Resides the Final Keeper's Trail. He still burns beneath the sod.
Anna and Michael exchange a glance. The rain appears to pause for a beat.
MICHAEL
Well in that case, let’s not keep the devil waiting.
Mara raises her lantern and leads them into the woods.
EXT. WOODS – NIGHT
The forest is thick with it, humming with creatures we cannot see. They pick their way along a streamhaled. path. And they breathe tendrils of vapor in the cold.
MICHAEL
Feels like we’re being followed.
ELDER MARA
You are.
A rustle in the trees—The dim shape of something moving beyond the light.
ANNA
Keep walking.
Something runs across the trail, too fast to discern. Then another. Eyes shine in the dark, many pairs of them.
MICHAEL
What are those?
ELDER MARA
Echoes. What the Rift had touched was left behind. They hunger for warmth.
Anna raises her pendant. Its light brightens, burning gold. The eyes vanish. The whispering fades.
MICHAEL
Must be they hate holy accessories.
ANNA
Neither do I, lately.
Mara shoots him a glance and doesn’t say anything.
Once the trees begin to break, they hike further into the forest where a clearing opens up, surrounding a crumbled STONE ARCHWAY half buried in MOSS. There are symbols everywhere that spiral around, illuminating slightly when Anna is present.
ELDER MARA
This was the first marker. Your mother sat here when she closed the Rift that night.
Anna thinks her fingers through the carvings. The symbols flash even more brightly, then go out.
ANNA
She left a trail for me.
ELDER MARA
No, child. She left a warning.
Thunder rolls somewhere far away.
INT. ABANDONED HOUSE – LATER
They find refuge in an abandoned farmhouse on the fringe of the forest. Rain pounds on the roof. The windows creak in every wind.
Michael lights a fire in the grate. Mara lounges nearby with half-closed eyes in concentration.
Anna gazes at her mother’s journal, splayed out on the table—sheets covered in doodles of sigils and bits of prayers.
ANNA
One half of that is coded in some ancient language. I can’t read any of it.
ELDER MARA
You don’t have to. The words remember themselves when the blood speaks them.
Anna looks at her.
ANNA
So my blood is scripture now?
ELDER MARA
Your blood carries memory. The covenant is not something that was made, it is something that was inherited.
Anna snaps the book shut, annoyed.
ANNA
Inherited? Like a curse?
MICHAEL
Hey, easy. She’s trying to help.
ANNA
She’s trying to make me into my mother.
Her voice cracks. She looks away and tunnels her gaze into the fire.
ELDER MARA
Your mother sacrificed everything to give you a choice. Do not squander that gift on fear.
Anna doesn’t answer. The firelight dances on her face, hides her eyes in shadow.
LATER THAT NIGHT
There is silence in the house except for the rain. Anna is awake on the floor next to the dying fire. A faint luminescence emanates from her pendant at her chest.
There is a murmur in the room— low, familiar.
SARAH (V.O.)
Anna… my light…
Anna sits up, heart pounding.
ANNA
Mom?
The whisper becomes more distinct, coming from no place and every place.
SARAH (V.O.)
He comes not with thee, but for the seal. You are the seal.
Anna’s breath catches. The pendant flares so brightly, it can light the room. Michael wakes with a start, reaching for his knife.
MICHAEL
Anna! What’s happening?
The light bursts forth — then dims just as quickly. The whisper dies.
Anna gasps, trembling.
ANNA
She said… I am the seal.
Mara stands up slowly; eyes widened in realization.
ELDER MARA
Then the prophecy was true. The Seal of Dominion didn’t disappear; it was reborn.
MICHAEL
In her?
ELDER MARA
Yes. And that means the Shadow won't stop until he rips it out.
EXT. EDGE OF THE FOREST – DAWN
The rain has stopped. The earth is enveloped in thick fog. The woods let in the blue half-light of early morning.
They walk in silence. Anna looks pale, but determined. Michael has the log under his arm and Mara leans on her staff, slowly and purposefully taking steps.
MICHAEL
And if Anna’s the seal, what will become of him when he reaches her first?
ELDER MARA
The balance breaks. The hunger is light, the rule of darkness.
ANNA
So an apocalypse develops, basically.
Mara gives a grim nod.
ELDER MARA
And worse—end of memory. Nothing after will recall what went before.
Anna shivers. The pendant beats against her chest, once, as if a pulse.
ANNA
Then we didn’t let him close to me.
MICHAEL
You sound mighty confident about that.
ANNA
I’m done running.
EXT. OLD CHURCH – MORNING
Just over the hill in dense fog stands the old church. Its spire is split, the bell long gone. It is colder here as the air has been made more sluggish.
They're standing in front of the rotted gates. The metal creaks as Michael shoves them open.
MICHAEL
I used to come here as a kid. Up in Running : My dad said this place was older than all of us.
ELDER MARA
He was right. The first compact was made here, before stone rose to meet the sky.
ANNA
Well, let’s carry through what they began.
She enters the gate ahead of you. The pendant at her throat grows more and more brilliant with each step.
The church is in front of them, a sleeping beast.
INT. OLD CHURCH – CONTINUOUS
The ponderous doors are screeched open. There is dust and silence inside. Shattered pews are strewn across the floor. Its stained-glass windows are blown in; moonlight sifts through the broken glass.
At the other end is the altar, ancient, defaced, grooved with dim spirals of light and fire.
ELDER MARA
There. Under the alter is the path.
They move closer. Anna dusts it off, and finds a spiral sigil just like the one on her pendant.
She puts her palm against it. The stone is warm under her hand.
MICHAEL
It’s glowing.
The sigil blazes, the floor shakes. There’s a distant growling from below. The altar opens to unveil a spiral staircase that descends into inky darkness.
Anna looks at Mara.
ANNA
Is this it?
ELDER MARA
This is how it starts … again.
They exchange a look. Anna then takes the initial step down.
INT. UNDERGROUND PASSAGE – CONTINUOUS
The walls drip with condensation. Carvings adorn everything in sight scenes of battles, floodwaters, winged beings clamping the sky between jaws of fire. From the bottom a deep hum comes up.
MICHAEL
Do you hear that?
ANNA
Like whispers.
ELDER MARA
The voices of those who had sworn the first oath. They never left.
It grows warmer still the deeper they get. Light glows faintly ahead.
MICHAEL
And it appears something’s waiting for us.
ELDER MARA
It is. The Chamber of Seals never sleeps—remembers.
Anna’s hand clasps around the piece of jewelry.
ANNA
Well then it was about time it remembered me.
They emerge from the tunnel light now shining on their faces.
FADE OUT.
- Writer
