Chapter 5 - Nocturnal Plunge

Chapter 5

Nocturnal Plunge

Hours later, Amelia was discharged from the hospital and was brought back to her uncle's place. The family decided to not do any more stimulating trips since the incident at the beach – also not leave Amelia out on anything.

Lynae and Amelia were still talking about what happened and the recent "visions" Amelia had at the hospital in Lynae's room.

"Wait, you are not thinking about going to where that voice in your head told you to go are you?"

"Lyn, if you would have seen the stuff I had seen through these visions, you would want answers too on why you were having them."

"Okay, I'm sorry I took you to that cave, but seriously, you can't be thinking this all means something?!"

"Whether you help or not, I'm going. If I don't go, then the visions will go worse from there. It may help explain why I'm getting these seizures. This might link to something about myself."

"Amelia, listen, I promised I wouldn't tell the doctors, my parents, Uncle Bill, or Aunt Ash about what you told me, but you are really pushing it. You're talking about going to who knows where in the middle of the night. This is making you crazy!

Amelia gave a cold, disapproving stare at Lynae hinting that she was offended at what she just said. Then she spoke up again in a firm tone of voice.

"I know what I am doing and that is final."

"And what am I supposed to tell them when you are not in bed?"

"You don't have to worry about that."

"Like hell I don't."

Then Meredith peaked her head from the hallway after hearing Lynae swearing.

"That's a dollar for the swear jar."

"Can it, pipsqueak!" Lynae snapped back at her sister.

The next couple of days were quiet after everyone agreed not to do anything overly stimulating or exciting for Amelia's sake. Meredith went on with the boys to go to the beach on their own, but Lynae stuck to Amelia's side despite everything. She still felt responsible to Amelia's incident and was concerned about what she said the last couple of nights before.

Finally, the night of the rendezvous had arrived. Amelia had been up each night studying the sleep patterns of her extended family making sure she can find an opening to sneak out. She also made sure that Lynae was asleep so she wouldn't have anymore conflict with her. From reading her body language, Lynae objected to the idea of her going where this voice was telling her to go. Plus, she wanted answers so she can finally sleep peacefully for the first time since being here in Hawaii.

Once everyone was asleep, she snuck out into the hallway making sure to make less noise going down the wooden floor and stairs. Then she creaked the door open and quietly closed the front door. She made it to the driveway and past the mailbox. Once she past the mailbox, a hand grabbed her and covered her mouth to prevent her from screaming.

"You're going to be the death of me one of these times."

The person who was in the bushes was Lynae. She was waiting for Amelia to sneak out of the house.

"Lyn, what the heck? Get off!" Amelia was whispering but trying to get out of her grasp.

"Let's make something clear here. You'll go to this meetup with this so called figure and I just tag along. Otherwise, you'll be spending the night on this shrub right here if you don't agree to these terms. Got it?" Lyn hushed her again by putting her hand on her mouth.

She nodded silently.

"Alright, let's go before someone sees us." Lynae directed Amelia to lead the way.

A mile or so later, they finally reached to the docks, then Lynae spoke up.

"I have a friend who has a motor boat docked here, it's not much, but it'll get where we need to go."

Then Amelia turned swiftly behind her feeling that someone was behind her.

"Someone's following us." Amelia said whispering to Lynae.

Lynae placed her finger on her lips to give Amelia a hint to stay quiet while she was going to backtrack to catch the stalker. The stalker peeked out to see what Amelia was doing once more. That was when Lynae tackled them to the ground, and she found out who it was after removing the hood.

"What. Are you. Doing here?!" Lynae said with anger.

"You really thought I didn't overhear your conversation, did you? I didn't want you guys to get hurt."

"Mere, go home. This has nothing to do with you." Lynae got off of her sister.

"Same to you. Besides, I'm sure mom and dad would love to know why you are taking a joy ride on this boat nearly two in the morning."

"You little..." Lynae started to get agitated over Meredith.

"Just get in okay?! We'll sort all of this out later; I don't want to be late!" Amelia interrupted them rushing to get the boat operating.

"Aye, aye, captain..." Lynae responded in a sarcastic tone.

Once the girls were in the boat, Amelia grabbed her compass and her note she wrote at the hospital listing the coordinates of where the voice told her to meet at. Since Lynae knew how to drive the boat, she drove while Amelia told her the directions to the place. The boat jumped from one wave to another coming at its direction. The mist of the waves sprayed onto the girls as they rode out the rough waves.

After a nearly an hour of riding on the choppy waves with a small motor boat, they made it to their destination. However, when they arrived, all that they saw was nothing but calmer waves and a clear, starry night sky.

"I don't get it, who was supposed to meet me here?"

"Well we got here, you happy now?" Lynae started to rev up the motor.

Then, the motor on the boat stopped working.

"Come on, you stupid piece of crap!" Lynae started pounding on the motor and tried choking the motor.

"Guys... do you hear that?" Meredith started to worry.

"Will you shut up?!" Lyn snapped while trying to get the boat running.

"No, wait, I hear it too, Lyn, listen..." Amelia grew worried too as she heard a peculiar sound.

Lynae stopped choking the motor to get it to work to listen the wailing sounds. As Lynae came closer to the edge of the boat with the girls to hear the sound closer, the boat capsized plummeting the girls underwater. They were fully submerged kicking and flailing their arms trying to reach to the surface, but something was holding them from getting air.

"Don't struggle, we're going to take you somewhere we can talk where no one can interrupt us. . ." a voice came out of nowhere explaining what was about to happen and what they intended to do with them.

The voice was clear and distinct which alarmed the girls because the voice sounded so human but can be heard clearly without any mumbling or bubbling sounds as what occurs usually when one who would open their mouth trying to speak underwater. Lynae looked at Amelia with a discerning look about what was transpiring. She finally realized that Amelia was not going crazy after hearing that voice in the water.

One by one fish figures were grabbing a hold of each of the girls' arms. Then they dragged them into a secluded underwater cave different from the one the girls were in where there was air for the girls to breathe again. Once they reached the surface in the cave, the girls were gasping for air. After a while of coughing and taking some deep breaths, they found themselves surrounded to what looked to be people with patches of scales on each part of their upper form and different shaped tattoos.

"What the hell is this?! For someone who wants to meet my cousin so bad, you could've not resulted to nearly drowning us." Lynae spoke up in a harsh tone.

"You're not going to kill us, are you? We're just worried about our cousin going alone." Meredith chimed in with uneasiness in her voice.

"And I would appreciate it if your little friends would stop touching our legs!" Lynae gave a stern look at the people that were surrounding her and felt the sensation of touch on her legs.

"Derelinquas nos" The woman spoke and the others started to go underwater again.

"What was that she said?" Meredith asked.

"Latin is it not?" Amelia guessed.

"So, you know our native tongue then?" The woman spoke once more.

"Wait what? No way, the Romans established that language and other languages were built upon it. There's no way you guys created it." Amelia started debating on her statement.

"You are correct – we didn't. We adopted it as our own. It has been used for centuries and has been ever since."

"Latin? Isn't the language dead?" Lynae asked once more.

"Indeed it is, after we discovered that the language died out many centuries later, we used it to our advantage in strategic battles and such."

"Battles?" Meredith spoke up asking about what she meant about the word.

"Oh yes, we've fought many battles against land dwellers that wanted to exterminate our intriguing yet intimidating race."

"This sounds comforting knowing you guys battled with our ancestors." Meredith said with sarcasm while feeling awkward at the same time.

"Who said you were land dwellers?"

"The two legs and the ability to only breathe in air should give it away." Meredith smart mouthed the woman once more.

"Surely you must know a little about your family history?"

The girls' eyes opened wide at her statement.

"That's impossible, I've never seen either my parents or grandparents having a tail." Amelia jumped in stating the obvious.

"That's because they don't, but your mother and your father carry that gene -and so do you three." She hinted at Amelia's mother, then Lyn and Mere's father in her statement.

"This doesn't make any sense." Amelia was shocked at what she just heard.

"The merpopulation over the course of time started out being fully fledged merfolk. However, since the Terra/Aqueous battle, the merpeople decided to intermingle with the human population to make sure their offspring would carry the human dominant gene to save not only themselves, but their descendants as well. Unfortunately, many were not so lucky with concealment, and the mixed offspring did not inherit that desired dominant gene. And you were the one to catch a glimpse of what had transpired, didn't you, child?"

"You... you planted these visions on purpose!" Amelia grew angry after realizing it was her who gave her those visions.

"I had to; how else would I be able to explain why you've been suffering from these so called 'seizures' and headaches?"

"You were responsible for my incidents?!" Amelia became irate after she remembered all the suffering she endured as long as she remembered.

"That I can say I am not. Your genetic makeup and your body fused together have a reaction to a certain element I cannot guarantee what it could be. But what I can guess is that... you have a gift."

"Well if the gift is making me miserable with the frequent hospital trips, then I want to return it!"

"Oh, child, such little grasp you show, and you have so much to learn about yourself."

"Enough with the riddles! Tell us what is wrong with Amelia!" Meredith began demanding her.

"You will find out soon enough, and you will find out more about yourselves shortly."

"Squamis revelare!" She spoke in Latin tongue once more while raising her hands above her head.

After she spoke those words aloud, the water in the cave started to boil with it bubbling like a jacuzzi. Then the water became increasingly hot.

"Hey, hey, what did you do?! HEY!" Lynae tried getting the woman's attention.

"Guys, is this water getting really hot?" Meredith started to worry by noticing the increase in the temperature of the water.

Then the girls started having some chest pains and what it felt to be excruciating pain even down to their bones.

"I...can't... breathe..." Lynae started to lose consciousness.

"L-lyn... Mere..." Amelia attempted to call her cousins.

Then, the girls slowly blacked out and began drifting underwater once more. The last thing that Amelia remembered seeing was that woman's contentive smile. What she also had occupying her mind was whether or not this woman was a friend or an adversary.