Chapter 4: Aura of the curse

"Oliver, you need to get out of here immediately."

"It's no use...it wants me and it will keep coming for me even if it has to take you all."

"We have no idea of what we are dealing with here, stop feigning a hero and get lost," Nina scolded, dressed in black pants and olive coat, as the rest of the workers, especially Tyler, who was not only of the same height as she, but equally had a similar hair cut. A skin cut that left no hair visible in their glistening skull, just like the rest of the workers.

The people were being led out of the park amidst earthquakes, tearing the earth as well as rocks which had been some of the attractions to the park.

One, a boulder, chiseled into the vicious face of lion in its glory and terror, with furs so skillfully cut that it became known as the mountain lion, came tumbling against the miry ground, smeared beyond recognition. Oliver stood stunned at it as it lay there with his feet buried in the swamped ground, once a fairy footpath, luminous, and aflame with small lanterns like fireflies.

"Fine... let's all get going...."

Incensed against him, Tyler, one of the park workers and Nina's boyfriend, choked him by the collar, furious at his persistence.

"Although she won't offer as sacrificial lamb to whatever breathes in there, but I will, if you don't get the hell...."

"Tyler release him... I said, release him!"

"And you, I will appreciate it if you get yourself out of here."

Not long afterwards, Oliver was standing several feet away, watching as everything his father built for him crumbled in less than a day.

As the dust rose from heaps of rubbles, he picked up something sneaking inside, shielded by not only the rocks that were left standing and the ones in heaps but by the commotion itself, and to think that someone would dare to go back in there with all that quakes piqued his curiosity.

"So, this is where you hid it, you stubborn old goat?"

"I have long suspected that this was the place of its burial. Surely, you would have known so when you named this park, The temple of Athena, goddess of war...but her aegis couldn't shield it enough as you see now.

You tried taking my birthright, yet, I am here, without you in my way anymore."

"Gallaway,"Oliver thought, trying to get a closer glimpse of him to be sure, only to see him handing out money to a young man of about his own age, but he couldn't tell who.

Fogs rose in thick clouds, rising like a barricade against Oliver and his friends. 

Rushing out, with his badly scattered hair, he found Tyler outside, but there was no Nina.

"Don't tell me she's still in there,"he yelled at Tyler, and for the first time since they knew each other, he wasn't resentful towards Oliver, he felt remorseful.

"I tried to...."

"Guys, we need to leave immediately, " Nina showed up in time and dragged them away, but something was off about her, and Oliver could tell at once. She avoided meeting his eyes for days.

Time had gone so fast that, the trio found themselves leaving home a week later with their families.

However, in Oliver's case, only his mother, Rosie was left and she was ill too.

Searching through his things that evening, trying to push the much he could into a sack bag, he bumped into the gifts old Moses made for him. 

They always came in pair, and one of each belonged to him, while the other was always gifted to Billy, and at the thought of the torn between them that went back to the year of his father's death, Oliver sighed deeply, and pushed them aside, rather too rough that they fell and two broke.

" Never thought you were so fragile."

Each of those gifts were figurines, but while it appeared to be carved from wood, three were wooden and the other two, simply clay works.

The tiny papers caught his attention and scavenging, he lifted it from the remains of a dragon figurines, baffled that it had been there all those while.

"Almost thought you changed your mind,"Nina taunted.

"Not yet," he said, and took a seat beside his mother in the coach, and they rode away in the cover of night, with nothing, besides the mist and the night owls present to bid them goodbye, like bands of thieves who managed to escape death.

"A man is first a child, and before he makes the great journey to fame or shame, he is first an observer, learning the ways of men that he may one day become a better one but how they often wind up the same. If you get this, Clifford, it may just be my last gift to my young friend, and to you. I have sent everything I know I can send, but their stories I have not told you yet. I never knew my father, and I lost my mother, my peerless flower petal, Renee, before I walked into six.

With the things happening now, I fear something so old and forgotten has come back to haunt us, but it's certainly not the mother that promised to return. Search the year before now and you will see the answer in a fairy tale,"Oliver read out in his mind, taking each word with the pace of the old man, who remembered his birthday more than anyone did.

"But where did you go, Mr. Helmswort?"

Rifling through his pocket where he hid the second note, he sat up, and for like moments unending, he looked from his mother to Nina who laid, curled beside her own mother, and then at then, at the place Tyler lay.

"You know, I don't really know why I agreed to leave home. I mean, we had our life there, and I'm not sure how I would adjust to a new environment...it scares me."

"We will get over it. It will be alright,"I assured, dreading affirming those fear of his that had lurked at the back of my mind like two highway robbers.

"You say it like you know it,"he replied, and although I smiled at that comeback, I saw the opportunity to learn what he knew, if the letters were serious one bit.

"Speaking about knowledge, you know you are the historian here...."

"Mm-hmm."

"I wanted to ask if you have ever heard or read of Ani."

"What... how do you know that name?"he asked, quivering uncontrollably.