The Vendeleer Brothers Book 4: The Plagued Forest
Chapter 8: Waking Up in a Strange Strange World

Ian…

Ian…

Someone was calling his name… Someone familiar… Who was it?

“Ian!”

Ian could feel himself waking up, even though he didn’t want to. His whole body ached. He felt like he had a car on top of him, and his throat was extremely sore. And something was in his mouth… What was it?

The room was starting to come into focus. Were his eyes already open? With great difficulty, he closed and opened them again, his hands twitching.

“Ian!”’Ian raised his head a little, blinking a bit more, and then realized there was a vine coming out of his mouth. In fact, there were vines all over him. Shakily, he started to pull the vine out of his mouth, vaguely aware that someone was helping him. Once it was out, he coughed, spitting out a few mucousy plant things. He turned to see who had helped him.

“Brian?” he said in surprise.

Brian was standing over him, looking relieved. He was extremely filthy, and he still had pieces of plant on him. That’s right, Ian remembered Brian getting sick, and then he got sick, and then…

Ian looked around. The place they were in was unrecognizable. Was this the hospital? It looked more like an indoor swamp or jungle. Trees burst through the ceiling and moss floated in clumps in murky pools of water.

“How long have we been out?!” Ian asked, horrified.

“I have no idea.” Brian replied, looking around. “You don’t think… this is the future do you? Do you think pizza is still a thing? I’m starving.”

Ian groaned and pulled himself up and out of the vines.

“Did you replace anybody else?” he asked, stretching his limbs.

“There were some other coma patients who decided to all meet in the lobby.”

At the sound of that, Ian started to feel a little sick.

“Have you found anyone yet… who wasn’t a coma patient?” he asked.

By the looks of Brian’s face, Ian already knew the answer.

“No… And I have no idea where Roderick, Joey, or Jordyn are…”

Ian sighed.

“Well, let’s go into the lobby with the others I guess…”

Brian nodded, and the two of them began climbing over the monstrous vines and passed the ferns growing through the walls.

“Do you think the water is still...bad?” Brian asked. Ian looked over at a pool of water, which still had that thick mucus consistency seeping around it.

“I don’t know… More importantly, what in the world happened here? Where is everyone? And how did we wake up?”

In response, Brian simply shrugged. Ian rolled his eyes.

And why did I get stuck with Brian of all people for the swampy apocalypse?? He thought to himself miserably.

As they ventured towards the lobby, Ian’s mind was hard at work. He knew that they had all made plans to go to the library before he had gotten sick and passed out. Maybe they would be able to replace some clues there? They also needed to replace out how much time had passed and if they city was blocked off or quarantined. How far had this madness spread? And how had they-.

“Holy crap! I hope my playstation is ok!” Brian suddenly said, interrupting Ian’s thoughts.

“I don’t really think that’s our first priority Brian.” he said, feeling annoyed. Brian muttered something unintelligible, which Ian ignored as they stepped into the lobby. Immediately, Ian recognized Lori Evan’s husband standing there, a black man with a bald head and goatee. He looked up when they came over.

“Ah. So you got your friend up. We’ve decided that we are going to venture out and see who we are going to replace, and then we’ll all meet up back here by nightfall. Does that sound good to you?”

Brian and Ian both nodded, feeling a bit nervous about what they would replace outside.

“Do you guys know anything about the water situation yet?” Ian asked. The other coma patients shook their heads.

“So I guess we’ll just be careful until we replace out then…” he murmured, making his way to the front door. “Come on Brian, I have an idea of where we might get some answers.”

Brian scurried after him, and as they stepped outside, they were able to get their first look of what the town now looked like.

It looked like they could have been asleep for years by the looks of things, and Ian hoped that wasn’t true. Tall trees stood in the middle of the road, and vines climbed up the now moss covered buildings. And there was water everywhere. It really looked like a swamp now.

“So… where are we going?” Brian asked, following behind Ian as they climbed onto a large vine and carefully balanced across it.

“The library. We were going to head there before I… uh… you know… got sick.”

“So how did you come in contact with the water? Did you cave and uh… take a shower?” Brian laughed a little awkwardly. Ian rolled his eyes.

“No. It was because I helped you out of the stupid swamp. It got on my arm remember?”

“Oh yeah…”

The two walked in silence for a few minutes. Ian had never really spent time with Brian without Roderick there. Usually the two of them would talk about some stupid game or other nerdy thing. Not that Ian wasn’t into certain nerdy things; he was just into… different nerdy things. As they started to approach the library, they also came up to a spot where the vine they were walking on went over a large body of water, and the two of them stopped.

“How good are you at keeping your balance?” Ian asked hesitantly, looking down into the murky water covered in floating plants.

“Hopefully good enough?” Brian replied nervously. Ian swallowed, and started making his way across, step by step. He found himself doing pretty good, but then almost lost his balance when he heard a splash behind him. Wobbling from on top of the vine, he looked behind him to see Brian sitting in the water below them. He spit out a piece of spanish moss.

“I wasn’t good enough. I guess we’ll see if it’s still coma inducing… heh… heh…”

Ian wanted to facepalm, but knew that he would probably lose balance if he did so. So instead, he continued along the vine.

“Well, I’m not helping you out this time. It won’t do us any good if both of us get sick.”

“I know… I know…”

Brian waded in the water beside him, and Ian made sure to keep his distance as they entered into the vine infested library. It was painful to see all of the destroyed books covered in mildew and moss, but then he and Brian’s eyes widened as a vine weaved along beside them into the large room ahead.

“It’s… not trying to attack us…” Brian said slowly.

“Yeah… maybe it’s because you smell like plant crap now.” Ian jabbed.

“Probably.”

The two of them followed the vine into the large room, looking at all the ruined books laying in the shallow water at their feet.

“You know, I saw a vine like that the other day.” Brian said, pointing at it as it moved towards a table. “It was kind of reaching for me, but then it died before it was able to get me.”

“Brian. Look around you. There’s vines everywhere.”

“But there’s only one picking up a book…”

Ian looked over in surprise to see that the only vine that was moving, was indeed picking up a book and placing it on the table. In fact, it was picking up a few books, rifling through the pages, and stopping when it seemed to replace what it was looking for. After doing this with several books, the vine turned black, shriveled up, and died. Brian and Ian exchanged glances, and then ventured towards the table.

“This… is all information about the thing in the woods…” Ian murmured. “And… is this Joey’s handwriting?”

The two of them sat down at the table and started to read from the pages.

“There’re a lot of weird creepy poems about this thing.” Brian mentioned. “It even goes back to the town’s founding in the 1800’s. And look at this-this is Roderick’s handwriting on this page-they were looking at this same stuff!!”

Roderick had been looking at the photocopies of an old journal. Something about a Prthviko Atma. He had written something simple next to the drawings of this creature.

‘Is this a clue?’

Joey had written some notes on the papers in the books that said, ‘How do we kill it? Weaknesses?’

“Why do I have a feeling that they tried to go after this thing?” Ian asked.

“Knowing them? They probably did. You don’t think that…?”

Ian didn’t want to think about that. Roderick could be so impulsive at times. And by the way the town looked, some time had passed. He wondered again how long it had been. Did Roderick think the two of them were dead? Was… Roderick dead? Feeling weighed down with these thoughts, Ian poured over the books the vine had brought out of them, and then stopped.

“Ok. So all of these books that the… vine brought out have something to do with the thing in the swamp…”

“Yeah?”

“Except for this one.”

Ian held up a book of the history of the town for the past two centuries.

“In fact, it didn’t even open this one. It just… placed it here with the others. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“Well is there anything about it at all in there?”

Ian began to flip through the book, which mostly seemed to be newspaper articles and important things in the town’s history. It actually seemed pretty boring.

“I’m pretty sure something about a monster would be in the Table of Contents…” he said, closing the book and feeling puzzled. “But… it’s not. It just seems so random to be placed with all of this other stuff. And-why are we even reading these things from a plant anyway?”

“A plant that led us to the same stuff that the others were looking at.” Brian reminded him. “Let’s just keep reading, and we’ll see what else we can replace.”

Ian nodded, and the two of them continued to read. Ian just couldn’t help but be puzzled over the fact that this vine had opened all of these books for them. If the vine was part of the monster, didn’t it want to remain shrouded in mystery? And why had it given them a history of the town? It made no sense!

“Ian? Does that history say anything about… any mysterious murders? Or weird plant happenings?” Brian asked suddenly. Ian started to flip through it again.

“Not that I can see…”

“Well… if there’s all this information about there being this thing in the woods since the eighteen hundreds, then why hadn’t something happened since then? Why has it started to attack now?”

Ian hated to admit it, but Brian brought up a good point. With a sigh, he grabbed the book on the history of the town and the book that Roderick had written in and stood up.

“Let’s get back the others. We’ve got more investigating to do.”