Post by StoryGirl83 on Jun 21, 2010 9:28:49 GMT -5
Chapter Eight – For Future Generations
Chris and Hope reappeared in the middle of the sitting room. He let go of Hope and walked over to his brother. “Wy, Hope thinks this guy has Ladybug and Cilly.”
Wy looked up with a groan. “I did not want to hear that.”
“I know,” Chris acknowledged. “Hope was there when Cilly vanished and she said it was too quick to be any form of teleportation. She also thinks Cilly might have dropped this paper.” Chris held it out to him.
Wyatt reached over Halli and took the paper. He frowned as he looked at it. “It’s just a name.”
“What if that’s our demon’s name?”
“That’s not a demon’s name,” Hope protested.
“Maybe, but it might have been at one point,” Chris informed her. “The elders think this demon used to be human.”
“We’re listening to elders?” Hope asked, surprised.
Chris nodded. “When they are offering information about a demon, yes. We don’t know how much time we have, but it’s not a lot.”
“Well, how would Cilly have gotten a name off of a demon?” Hope wanted to know.
“If this is the demon’s name,” Chris decided, “then we will asked her when we find her.”
“James Thom,” Wyatt mumbled.
“That’s Thomas,” Halli told him looking at the paper in his hand.
“What?” Wyatt looked at her surprised.
“Thomas,” Halli repeated. “There’s a boy in my class at school named Thomas and he sometimes shortens it to Tom. It looks like Thomas. Don’t you think?”
Wyatt eyed it and sighed. “Yeah, probably. You didn’t happen to see that name in the Book did you?”
Halli shook her head.
“Remember that this guy might be able to turn invisible,” Chris commented, looking over his shoulder.
“Yeah, right,” Wyatt mumbled as he started looking through the Book, again.
“Why is Hope here?” Piper asked as she entered the room.
“That phone call you asked me to get,” Chris began, “that was Hope. Ladybug and Cilly have gone missing and I felt it best to bring her here.”
Piper groaned.
“Considering her parents are all ready missing, she was understandably distressed,” Chris added.
“You think this is because of the demon?” Piper asked, appearing to be hoping for a negative.
“Listen to Hope’s story,” Chris suggested, “and you’ll believe it, too.”
“Story later,” Wyatt declared. “I think I found our demon.”
Across the room, Tyler quit rocking Miranda and looked at them attentively.
“A week past Rachel’s young Katherine came to me. She had seen a man who caused her fear. As empathy is Fiona’s talent and not Katherine’s, I dismissed her words as something of the natural world and I now think I was too quick to do so. I knowest not whom this James Thomas is, but in the last few days our children have been disappearing. I am only thankful that my own have not vanished, but dear sweet Katherine is gone and I fear I have failed her. If, as it appears, the children taken are only that of witches, then I have learned some startling news about one of my neighbors as his son was amongst those lost. James Thomas has himself vanished and the people of village have comest to believe as I do that he was somehow responsible. Blessed Be, Prudence. 14 April 1727.”
Wyatt looked up as he finished reading. “Based off that, it appears that she’s Melinda Warren’s daughter.”
“Okay, so our demon’s name is James Thomas,” Chris commented. “There is nothing there to help us.’ He scowled.
“Not in what Prudence writes,” Wyatt agreed. “But there is more in a different hand.”
Chris waved his hand at the Book. “Then, keep reading.”
“Over the last days this demon has appeared, again,” Wyatt read. “At first we did not connect the two, for there is very little to go by. But there is enough. We managed to track him down, but while we confronted him, the battle came as a draw, both he and Phoebe being badly injured. Somehow between the time I injured him and the time that he escaped the battle children started to reappear. It is nearly impossible to determine how many children reappeared, for some may not have even been missed yet, but we believe that a few hundred children were safely returned to their parents. Many children were safely returned, but a call to Iona revealed that Brian was not amongst them. It rips at my heart that my friend will never see her son, again.”
Wyatt stopped reading and looked up. “That’s it. It’s not signed.”
“That still tells us nothing,” Chris moaned.
“It tells us that this demon can be injured and when he is children can escape from wherever he has them,” Wyatt announced. “It also tells us that if he’s not vanquished, he can regain the ability to stop them from escaping him pretty fast. And most likely at that point he’ll go into hiding and we won’t see him for another hundred years. The question is, how do we vanquish him?”