Myths and Gargoyles by Jamie Hawke (interesting books to read in english txt) 📕

bug-trap light when the shadows converged. They reached for me and were repelled, but suddenly changed tactics, all of them moving at once on a single point in the lines, bursting through, and entering my aunt through her chest.

She faced me with eyes that weren’t scared, but determined. Her lips moved as if to say something, but instead of words, only thick, black blood emerged.

That same substance seemed to fill her eyes from within, and then she was on her knees, toppling over. A new glow came from her hand, this time starting to float over toward me in swirling blue tendrils. My hand reached out instinctively, and the light began to swirl, moving around my finger, then starting to enter me in a way that made my whole body tense up.

Getting back to what I’d done earlier to calm my nerves… there was a bit more to it. At the moment, I was searching for a way to calm myself. Knowing this was really happening but also conflicted because it had to be a hallucination, I searched my memory for ways I had dealt with similar situations, trying to think of any time I had tripped out like this. Nothing registered in that regard, but past experiences using my supposed power, or maybe magic, did come to mind.

For example, the time when I was ten, on a camping trip and some asshole in the next site over had been playing the most annoying trance music—I mean head splitting, kill-me-now crazy beats and synthesizer, whatever you call it. My whole family had been pissed, but me? I was on the verge of walking over there and punching this grown man in the nuts. Only, it didn’t play out that way, because instead I was in the tent, hands over my ears rocking back and forth, my dad screaming at the man that he was going to murder him if he didn’t turn off the music.

I’ll go back a step, to when I was even younger, first. Hands over my ears while I rocked in the corner… had kinda been my thing. Call it whatever you want, but I don’t ascribe to medical terms for my behavior, especially when I account for this next part. The fact that the day when the music had been bothering me, it suddenly changed to classical, then again to an upbeat jazz song that my dad had always played when trying to comfort me and get me out of my fits when I was young.

Having first assumed that was what was happening, I stopped rocking, stepped out of the tent, and looked around. Everyone was confused. My dad had a fist held back, one hand grabbing the man by his long, blue beard. Others were turning to look at me, curious. My mom knew that song, knew what it meant to me. Some of my cousins did, too.

And the strangest part? I was pretty sure I’d changed the music to that song. There was no other explanation—the guy insisted we’d done something weird to his phone where he’d been playing the music from, because no matter what song he selected, it would play that same jazz tune.

That hadn’t been the only time. My dad and I had been going to grab a burger once, when I was about twelve. I remember not really wanting to go, because the wind was blowing like crazy and dark clouds were moving in. But we went, walking because the restaurant was close by. Right when we were within sight of the place, the rain came, but then it turned to hail.

We ran, and at first it was fun until my dad slipped and whacked his head on the curb. I started rocking… and then the hail was suddenly gone, warm sunshine on us. Only us. All around, the hail continued, but as my dad sat up, rubbing his head and looking at me, he knew something was off about the situation. And I knew I’d changed it all.

Call it a sort of alchemy of my surroundings. Not changing anything to gold, but changing the scenario, somehow. Always in simple ways, like the music and the sunshine.

So now, with my aunt dying there, floating lights swirling around her hands as she gasped for breath, I knew I needed to do something. To at least try. Even though my oddity had never worked like that—to heal someone, in this case—I knelt, rocking, hands to my ears. She continued to take those breaths, now sounding like sucking, grasping for life noises, and I rocked, not sure what to focus on here except for maybe the floating ribbons of light.

Only, a moment later she took a loud breath, then stopped altogether. The lights descended on her, and my panic took hold. If I lost her, I lost any semblance of sanity here. There had been magic, demonic forces at play, and without her I had no way of knowing what was going down.

The magic light was approaching, entering me. Burning. Pulling at my insides. Like a beast clawing to get out. Suddenly, I doubled over in pain and wondered how I was going to deal with this. How I could possibly escape this one.

Part of me said it was impossible, that this would be my end, as it had apparently been my aunt’s. But another side of me said to fight, like all of the characters in my favorite games. Did they give up? When faced with the threat of not finding the third piece of the Triforce, had Link given up? No! And so I couldn’t either. I had to live up to the legends of Simon Belmont, Master Chief, and the Mordor guy.

As these thoughts hit me, I realized something was happening. The light was changing, adapting to me and my thoughts. Just as the music had changed that day long ago, the light was forming a screen in front of me, words moving across the screen in a way that