Dear Reader,

This chapter will seem like an enormous departure from the story line in some ways (unless, of course, you read the prologue). Please, even if you feel confused, don't give up. Push through the chapter. It'll all make sense when Chapter 20 comes out in another day or so. Though, I'm sure many of you will catch on or will have a pretty good inkling of what's happening as you read on.

~CC

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Bones rattled.

"Awake," whispered a distantly familiar voice.

Meadow stirred at the strange sounds and found herself in complete darkness. She blinked several times, but could not make out even a hint of light anywhere. The strain of looking without seeing tired her, and she closed her eyes. While laying perfectly still she tried to listen for something recognizable to help place herself somewhere - in her apartment, a hotel, a friends house after a night of drinking perhaps. But the room was quieter than an empty sepulchre.

Where on earth was she? And why couldn't she remember anything? With nothing to go on, Meadow decided to get up and find out what was going on. It wasn't like her to sleep in a strange place. And she'd never once woken up without any memories of the night before.

However, to her great dismay, she discovered that her hands and feet were bound with a coil of thick coarse rope. The ropes were so heavy that they weighed her limbs down. And, despite not being able to see what was tied so tightly around her wrists and ankles, she could feel the rough edges of it with her finger tips. There was no doubt in her mind. Someone had tied her up and put her in this dark place.

Her stomach dropped and her heart began to race. Where was she exactly? Who had taken her? Why was she bound? Too terrified to call out into the calignosity, in case her abductors were handy, she struggled vehemently with the rough braided cables around her wrists in an effort to free herself before anyone realized she was conscious. If she could get her hands free, she'd be able to untie her legs and make a run for it. This thought kept her going even as she wept while she worked in the pitch black.

Bones gently clanked together somewhere near by and Meadow stopped moving altogether. She even ceased to breath. The sound was as startling as it was eerie. The worse part was, it struck a peculiar chord with her. For a brief moment, she thought the sound, like the voice that woke her, was oddly familiar.

Her heart stopped beating though when a ghostly voice called out quietly saying, "Come, the child is awake."

It was like hearing a voice from her past. A terrifying past that Meadow could not recall but troubled her deeply nonetheless.

Quite suddenly her mind was flooded with strange and incoherent images that shook her too her core. She saw a bear, and a man, and then an overlapping image of a bear and man fused together. The man-bear was dragging her deep into the woods. She also saw a spinning silver coin that became a moon, and then a bloody ball the size of a plum. The ball was in her hand and kept slipping through her fingers because it was soaked in blood - in her blood.

Along with these images her mind was bombarded with pictures of an impossibly beautiful woman dressed head to toe in black. However,  when Meadow looked more closely at her, she saw the women's eye sockets were empty and her mouth was full of beetles that kept crawling out and flying away every time she smiled or opened her mouth to speak.

Meadow's skin crawled. What were these images? They couldn't possibly be her memories could they? It was more likely they were the fragments of nightmares she'd had in the past. But, why was she remembering them now when her life was in danger?

Confused and feeling increasingly terrified of the visions she saw and the voice in the darkness, Meadow doubled her efforts to get free of her bonds. Instinct told her she had to be out of there before the voice could call a second time.

The tenebrosity of the room was suddenly shattered by an intensely bright pulsating red light that appeared quite miraculously, as if out of thin air. With the introduction of this unsteady light that flicked on and off much like a strobe light, her mind was no longer bombarded with senseless snippets of dreams or memories that confused and frightened her. She'd even forgotten the rattling bones and the peculiar voice for the moment.

Meadow was only interested in what the light could tell her about her predicament. But what it exposed frightened her more than even the ropes that bound her. The oscillating light revealed she was lying on a hard-packed dirt floor in an antiquated cabin. Looking around, Meadow could not escape the feeling that she'd been there before.  Had she been abducted as a child and had somehow forgotten? Could that explain the overwhelming feeling of déjà vu she was presently suffering with?

Whether she had dreamed up this place before or by some fluke had actually been there in the flesh, she wasn't sure. But, regardless, her body and mind were reacting as if they were acquainted with the room, ropes, the darkness, and most of all that eerie voice that kept whispering to someone near by. And all Meadow's body and mind could tell her was to run.

The only good thing about seeing the familiar room was the added knowledge that it was empty. She was alone. Her abductor was elsewhere at the moment, which meant she still had time to get out, to run, if she could just untie herself. Determined to leave the suffocating little cabin whether she was bound or not, Meadow decided to head for the door that was lit up by the mysterious red light. The only way to get there in her condition, was to slink across the floor on her elbows and knees, much like an inch worm. It worked better than she hoped and in no time she reached the door. 

Dry bones jangled together like the sound of numerous keys on a chain.

"Take her to the altar," some disembodied voice cried out sharply.

Meadow jumped at the suddenness of the cry and swung herself around to see who else was in the one room cabin with her. To her horror, a great beast-like creature stood in the middle of the room staring straight at her. It was well over 8 feet tall, had the head, arms and legs of an enormous bear, and the torso of a disfigured and hulking man. He was the sort of thing nightmares were made of. Even a fully transformed lycanthrope was not as gruesome and frightening as this thing.

Before Meadow had time to even think, the grotesque figure lunged for her. She threw up her bound arms, turned her head to one side, and shut her eyes tight against such a ghastly vision. When his claws dug into her flesh she screamed at the top of her lungs sure she was going to die right then and there.

However, like in a dream, she suddenly found herself unbound, alone, and standing in a moonlit pasture surrounded by woods. She was stunned and quickly checked her arms to see what kind of damage the beast had done. There wasn't a trace of blood or broken flesh to be found. She was perfectly whole. Meadow immediately began to sob with relief as her legs gave out and she crumpled to the ground.

What on earth was happening? What was she suppose to do? How was she suppose to escape this mysterious place? Was any of this even real, she asked her self as she touched her arms again to ensure the flesh had not been severed from the bone by the beast-man's claws. It had been so real. Meadow frowned. She was so confused.

While she sat in a daze, the earth under her began to rumble and she could hear the sound of something big and powerful plowing its way through the forest. Was it coming for her? The creature? She rose to her feet right away and looked all around. Where could she run? Where could she hide?

While she begged herself to come up with some kind of escape strategy, the large full moon overhead suddenly turned blood red. Meadow's mouth fell open. It was terrifying to see the moon, something so familiar and comforting, turn into something strange and sinister when you were having a life crisis.  She did not need this, whatever this was.

The sky overhead filled with black crows that had been disturbed from their nests as Meadow gazed up at the darkened moon. She turned her attention back to the forest. That thing, that half-bear-half-man, was coming for her. Meadow could hear trees snapping and splintering as he drove through them in search of her. How on earth was she going to escape him?

Quickly looking all around, Meadow realized a bit late that she was totally exposed. There wasn't a single place to hide in the field she found herself in. And, to make matters worse, the forest on the opposite side of the field as the raging creature, was too far away to run to for cover. Meadow could see it plain as day. That beast was going to get her whether she stood still or ran.

Not ready to give up, she looked all around for something to defend herself with - a stone, a stick, anything. Half-way between herself and whatever was running straight for her through the woods, she spotted a large dagger protruding straight out of the ground. Its bejewelled hilt kept catching the red light of the crimson moon making it impossible to miss.

Completely out of ideas, Meadow made a mad dash for the dagger. She reached it just as the creature broke through the trees and into the field. Pulling the dagger from the ground, she meant to defend herself with it, but, it was embedded in something underground. It was not going to come out willingly either.

As she jerked on the dagger's handle, trying to free it, a small stone altar rose up out of the thin field grass. Then, it suddenly burst out of the ground at lighting speed, growing taller and wider as it broke up the earth, and sent clumps of sod and grass shooting into the air. Meadow was forced to let go of the dagger and fell back onto the disturbed terrain around the little altar turned stone monolith. 

Meadow heard the sound of dry bones knocking together and she jumped to her feet.

"Take it now! Take the heart now," a feminine voice screeched desperately.

Meadow didn't even get the chance to run. In the blink of an eye, the bear-man had her. She wasn't even sure what direction he came from when he snatched her. But, when she opened her eyes, she found herself at the end of his long disfigured arm, suspended by her neck above the monolithic altar that's height rivalled even the tallest of the Sarsen at Stonehenge. Her feet dangled 30 or more feet from the earth below. A fall from that height would break her back and paralyze her for life if it didn't out right kill her. Terrified he would cast her to her death, Meadow clung to the thick, coarse hair on his arms with both her hands.

But the grossly wild thing did not cast her off. No, instead he did something much worse, much more agonizing. At the command of the spectral voice, he plunged his claws into Meadow's breast bone. The sharp-edged three inch retractiles cut through her clothes and sliced her flesh as if they were cutting into Play Doh. Meadow screamed and cried at the top of her lungs. But, she didn't dare let go of the mad creature's arm for fear of falling to her death.

The more she struggled the harder he squeezed her neck and soon she couldn't scream at all. But, her whole body was on fire as his claws reached around her heart and began to pull it from her chest cavity. Horrified, Meadow watched as he snapped the blood pumping muscle from her body and held it aloft. She could see it pulsating in his thick, coarse bear-like fingers. She felt like gagging, but his choke hold made that impossible.

How was she alive? How was this possible? Yet, she didn't doubt for a minute it was real. Her whole body was in excruciating pain. It had to be real. But, how long could she live like this? How long could anyone live without their heart? Meadow began to sob. She knew she didn't have long.

While she was in the throws of the deepest anguish she had ever felt, a woman appeared to the monster's left. She was all smoke and inky black vapours. Red streams of crimson moonlight shone straight through her illuminating the empty spaces in her ghostly appearance. The grotesque beast handed her Meadow's still beating heart, which she plucked by some force, though not her hands, from his claws and swallowed whole.

Meadow screamed at the woman. How could she? How could she devour her heart?

The instant it disappeared into her mouth, the moon above turned black as tar and the night sky turned red as ripe cherries. Meadow looked about at the drastic changes and shivered. Something was terribly wrong. The world was turning upside down and inside out.

But Meadow didn't have time to worry about the skies. She turned her attention back to the apparition that ate her heart. Under the eerie light of a black moon and a red sky, the shadowy female's figure transformed into solid flesh and bone. Meadow was stunned and some instinct told her that she could never recover her heart now that the woman had become solid in form.

At that moment, the half-bear-half-man cast Meadow down form the altar. She clutched her open chest and closed her eyes tight fully expecting to smash her brains out when she hit the ground. But, in the next instant, she was standing my the retched woman who had eaten her heart.

The woman pulled a glowing stone from a pocket somewhere in her dress. Then, she walked all around the stone altar looking for something. Meadow followed her totally unobstructed by anyone or thing. When the woman found a small indentation along the column of the imposing altar, she pressed the plum-sized stone into that small depression.

The little glowing orb disappeared immediately and seconds later the altar cracked in two.  In another moment, the crack became a fissure and then the fissure was filled with a deep electric perse light that split the altar in half and turned the stone to dust. The dust swirled and swirled around enveloped in a deep purple light. Eventually, when the dust settled, a gateway to somewhere ominous was revealed in the form of a churning pool of dust, lightening, and dark blue-violet light. 

An invisible force was drawing Meadow ever closer to the surging pool. By the time she noticed, it was too late. All she could do was let out an ear-splitting scream as she and the woman who swallowed her heart were both sucked into the treacherous pool of rolling dust, lightening and caliginous light.