The Monolith

by Stephen Roark

  What? What is she talking about?

  “Rey, calm down,” my mom scolded her. “This isn’t what Rand needs right now.”

  “But, how are you okay?” I asked her as a pressure built behind my eyes and the bridge of my nose. “Why aren’t you...off like me?”

  “Don’t worry about me right now, Rand,” Rey said soothingly. Her voice was like a warm flame in the coldness of my soul—leftovers from the time I’d spent trapped in Blood Seekers. But really, three weeks? It seemed impossible, and why hadn’t I woken up in the hospital?

  “Rey, sweetie,” my mom said. “Why don’t you and Rand go lie down in his room for a while until he feels better.”

  “What?!” My eyes fought to bulge from their sockets as I whipped my head to my mother, my vision blurring and doubling as my head moved.

  Ugh, shit…

  “I think you need time to recover,” my mom explained. “I’ll get some soup ready and Rey can let me know when you want to eat. Can you do that, Rey?”

  “Of course,” Rey replied happily, slipping a strong arm under mine and helping me to my feet. The world was doing more than spinning, it was morphing into something that wasn’t even a world. I closed my eyes and let Rey guide me back to my room. It all felt really weird, but if what my mom had said was right, and I’d been gone for three weeks, stuck in that damn game, what else was I supposed to expect?

  The door closed behind us and I swung my legs awkwardly, one in front of the other, as Rey helped me back to bed. I almost collapsed before reaching it, but Rey’s arms held me firmly and she lay me down carefully. As my head found my pillow, the swimming sensations began to fall away and I started to feel a little more like myself again.

  “Breathe easy, Rand,” she told me, patting me on the chest. “Slow and deep.”

  Yes, slow and deep, I thought as I focused on my chest, rising and falling as I took in air—real air, not like the chilled air of…of…

  Where had I been again?

  My memories of the world I’d escaped seemed far away, hidden behind doors within doors, stacked in those Russian doll things, one within another and another, as though never meant for me to reach again. And to be honest, I wasn’t too upset by that.

  “Me either,” Rey chuckled. I looked up at her smiling eyes framed by strands of hair that fell across her cheeks.

  “You either what?”

  “I’m not upset by it either.”

  “Upset by…”

  “Not remembering,” she giggled. “What else would I mean, Rand?”

  “But, I didn’t say anything…”

  Rey laughed as though what I’d said was completely ridiculous. “You did, Rand. You just don’t realize it. You’re just out of it still. Don’t worry, it will come back.”

  My eyes bulged again. The pressure behind my nose swelled.

  “Gah, I’m about to burst,” I groaned, smacking my forehead with a clenched fist.

  “Rand! Don’t do that!” Rey cried out, taking my hand in hers and spreading it open, threading her fingers between mine. I tried to reach up again, but she stopped me. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  A groan escaped my lips as I looked up at her, feeling both joy and helplessness fighting for dominance within me. It was absolutely phenomenal to see her again, but I was beyond embarrassed by my weakness. Why was she fine while I was so inflicted?

  I could never have prepared myself for what happened next. Rey’s lips, which were curled into a smile, flattened, pursed and moved toward me. My heart leapt as she moved closer, the warmth of her body growing as she pressed her body against mine. I felt it all, places on a girl I’d never come into contact with before—

  Hey, I was only sixteen!

  And felt my body react predictably. She was impossibly soft, soothing, hot and perfect in every way. When her lips touched mine, it was like years and years of expectation and crescendo colliding all at once in a monumental explosion that would rival the big bang.

  “Wh—what are you doing?” I asked her, my whisper barely able to escape my lips.

  “Shhh,” she replied as her lips moved again toward mine. “Your mom will hear.”

  48

  Recovery

  “Just…let me rest, Mom. I don’t need to be taken to the hospital every time this happens. They don’t do anything anyway—just charge you money while I lie in bed. I can do that here!”

  —Clay to his mother after another seizure

  Rey’s body pressed against mine as she kissed me. To say I was shocked would have been an understatement. It wasn’t even something I’d ever thought about or imagined, not beyond fleeting fantasy that I never really took seriously. I mean, guys always have those kind of thoughts about their girl friends, right? Even if they’re not something you’d actually act on or want.

  She’d always been my friend, and I never got a vibe from her that she’d be interested in me—not like that. Had what happened in Blood Seekers changed our relationship? Had the distance? Or had she always felt this way about me but been an expert at hiding it?

  Her tongue pressed against my lips, pushing them open. I felt my heart rocket, beating like the pistons of some heavy internal machinery. Every inch of my body was tingling, like that feeling you get when you blush. But I was just lying there, doing nothing, and Rey noticed.

  “Kiss me back,” she urged me, running a hand up my leg.

  “Just hang on a sec,” I protested. “I just—I need a second.”

  “You’re thinking too much,” she cooed. “You’re not in Blood Seekers anymore, Rand! You’re here with me, and I’m back. You don’t have to worry about that world now. Everything’s fine. Don’t let your mind go back there. Keep it here with me!”

  Her words were hypnotic. I didn’t know whether it was because of my mental state having escaped the lock of the Fount, or whether it was because Rey was simply having an effect on me, her absence amplified by my concern when she turned Bloodless…into one of those things.

  “But my friends. Jacob, Fujiko, Altarus—”

  “They’re fine, Rand,” she assured me.

  “But how do you know?”

  “Everyone’s been released!” she laughed. “Including them!”

  I guess…I thought. She could be right, but how can she be so sure?

  “Kiss me, Rand.”

  “Why—why are you calling me that?” I asked, pulling back from her.

  “Calling you what?” she asked, confused.

  “Rand!” I replied. “Why are you calling me Rand?”

  She smiled like a mother smiles at their child as they’re trying to learn how to talk. “Because that’s your name, silly!”

  Rey leaned in again, but a wash of ice-cold chill ran through my mind again, and a shot of adrenaline poured through me, beating the tingling blush from my body and cheeks. My hands clutched Rey’s waist and pushed her off of me, but she fought against me, slapping at my wrist and giggling.

  “Stop it, silly!”

  “No, just wait a minute—” I stammered, trying to get some distance between us. The heat from her body was overwhelming.

  “Why do you want me to wait?” she asked.

  “STOP!” I finally shouted. She finally did. She froze, her body stretched out over mine like a predatory cat covering its prized kill. A look of confusion and anger twisted across her face, a look I’d never seen before. The expression wasn’t one of concern or interest, it was one of defeat.

  “What is wrong with you?” she asked me.

  I squinted—blinked my eyes as the pressure returned behind them. Nausea threatened to overwhelm me, but just continued to grow and grow and grow beyond any normal level. I should have thrown up already, but I didn’t. My head was swimming like an eel through an ocean storm. I tried not to think of Alastor’s wine bath.

  “I just—I just need a minute.”

  “Why?” Rey asked, moving toward me again. My heart was in my throat. I coughed and rolled away from her, tum
bling off the bed onto the floor with a heavy thud. My mother should have called out to me, as she did any time there was a loud noise from my room, but she didn’t. And I knew why.

  “Because,” I said firmly, fighting the overwhelming urge to give in and accept things. “Because you are not Rey.”

  Several emotions fought for dominance on Rey’s face. Expressions twisted and warred but finally settled on one. Anger. Pure anger. The eyes wanted to kill me. Her hands twisted and curled. Her fingers spread impossibly wide, extended. The nails grew to sharp knives and her face began to change.

  “WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU, LITTLE BOY?!” Her voice was filled with fuzz, analog distortion. Something in my mind drew a tangent line to the monolith.

  “What?” I gasped as Rey’s face continued to morph, lengthen, her features expanding into impossible proportions. Cheekbones like razors, exaggerated by hollowed cheeks and a gaping mouth that could swallow the world. Bright teeth.

  Her hair drooped, extended and greyed as she became a hag. I felt my sanity begin to rupture.

  “WHY WOULD YOU REJECT ME?” she screeched, her face changing again. The hideous visage was replaced by one of indescribable beauty. Helen of Troy, a goddess of love, stared down at me with kind eyes filled with lust and primal desire. Anything left of Rey peeled away. Flecks of black formed in the corners of my vision. Black squares, two dimensional, tearing away at the third dimension, replacing block after block of my room with puzzle pieces of another landscape.

  Piano keys slammed. Strings snapped. A powerful wind tore at life itself.

  My room tore away from me, pulled and snapped like a Slinky, and I found myself staring up at a bloom of white light. It softened, retreated and took the shape of a light panel. I was looking at a ceiling of pale blue. Somehow, I forced my stubborn eyes to look down, and realized I was lying on my back in a hospital on a gurney while bodies moved around me.

  I felt the Crown on my head and something jabbing my inner elbow. An IV.

  “So, he’s not in any pain?” My mother’s voice.

  “None at all.” Obviously a doctor.

  “How can you know that, though?”

  The doctor moved, pointed to something beside me. His face was a blur, like when they censor things on streams. “That’s his EEG. We’d see pain readouts if he was in any discomfort.”

  Mom sighed with relief. “But why was he making those noises? He sounded like something was hurting him.”

  “It’s impossible for us to know what’s going on in there,” the doctor replied, his voice tired. “Anything could be upsetting him. We just don’t know.”

  What is happening now?

  Scrambled eggs with chives. That was my brain, uncooked yolk dripping from my ears.

  “It’s good you brought him here,” the doctor told my mom, his blurry-faced body pressing a comforting hand against her shoulder. I could see her better, but barely. The light flared like my eyes were filled with water. “He could have died.”

  “Don’t tell me that…”

  “I just want you to know that you did the right thing.”

  “Well, thank you,” Mom replied, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “What can I do now?”

  “Be there for him,” he replied. “When he wakes up, he’s going to need you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a very busy day ahead of me.”

  “Of course, doctor.” My mom nodded. “Thank you for your help.”

  The censored-faced man exited the room as I fought to beat my thoughts back into some kind of rational organization.

  I was in game, going to…somewhere. A mountain? There’d been a ski lift or something, but then I woke up at home, obviously hallucinating. But in reality, I was in the hospital, like everybody else who’d been trapped by Mizaguchi’s game. But even something about that wasn’t ringing true.

  Of course you’re in the hospital! I shouted at myself. Stop doubting things!

  Who knew what kind of meds I was on just to keep me alive. And for some reason, the Crown was still on my head. My brain was probably exhausted.

  But I’m awake now!

  I opened my mouth, or at least I tried to, but I couldn’t be sure if anything had happened. My body felt foreign, like a shell of a boy named Clay that had once existed and I was now inhabiting like a parasitic invader.

  I must have moved, as my mom spun around and locked her eyes on me.

  “Did you just—”

  I wanted to cry out, but the Crown had a grip on my body like a pair of mental handcuffs. Nothing listened.

  “Honey? Are you—are you in there?” My mom came in closer, fixed her eyes on mine. “DOCTOR! DOCTOR, HIS EYES ARE OPEN!”

  She shouted again as tears began to pour from her eyes. She reached out and smiled, brushing the backs of her fingers against my cheek so gently it almost tickled.

  “God, let me take this thing off you!”

  Mom tore the Crown from my head and I felt an instant sensation of freedom, like the old Clay and the new Clay had finally meshed, folded back together into one. Something in me breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Hey, Mom,” I managed to say. My mother’s joy was almost too much for me, and I felt my own eyes begin to well up.

  “Honey, you’re back!” she gasped. “Thank God!”

  Thank God is right, I thought as the haunting vision I’d had of Rey began to fade from my mind. Of course that didn’t happen! Rey would never behave like that.

  Whatever Mizaguchi had done to the Fount had caused my brain to go haywire, and more than likely, others like me too. As I lay there in my hospital bed, feeling the cracks in my mind beginning to heal, I wondered what in the world could have come over Mizaguchi to make him do what he had done.

  Who cares right now? You’re home.

  There were gnats in the back of my mind, buzzing away, fighting for my attention, and I wondered for a moment if I was about to seize. I closed my eyes and tried to focus.

  “DOCTOR!” my mom shouted again. “Come quickly! Rand’s awake!”

  My eyes snapped open as my heartbeat stopped. Not just once, for good. Icicles formed and clung to my grey matter. I shuddered.

  “Honey, what is it?” my mom asked. But I already saw her face falling apart as the hallucination began to die.

  “She wouldn’t call me that,” I told whoever it was that was behind my mother’s eyes. “Mom” looked at me quizzically.

  “Who wouldn’t call you that?”

  I shook my head and spoke to the room. “Just give it up, already. I’m not buying it.”

  My mom opened her mouth, but reality froze. The whirr of the hospital machinery was silenced. The light above me froze like a splash of water halted in midair.

  If I get up, will this charade continue?

  I lay there waiting, remembering everything. The double bluff had not worked. The thing was thinking, formulating another plan of temptation. I could almost feel the thing’s thought process. But finally, the black flecks appeared again, rectangles of the void eating away at the false reality where I’d been taken. Dark green tundra appeared. Explosions of pale rock. A dull orange glow above me as I was pulled back to reality—no, not reality, but my reality. I heard the true voice of the Fortune Teller speak.

  “Well done, young man. Well done.”

  49

  Rainbow Eyes That Warm and Chill

  “I was wrong! I was so, so, so wrong! The old woman is a marvel! She has taken me places I could never have imagined! My secret visits up the mountain have become so frequent my friends are starting to wonder what I’m up to. Let them worry, for I will not share her with anyone!”

  —Young Carl of Ebonmire

  My axe and Blunderbuss were back in my hands almost faster than I could think, as if drawing them was a matter of involuntary reflex. A tortured wind cried out, whipping up the chill around me as I stared at the Fortune Teller.

  Her teenage body hung in the air as though she were suspended in liquid, the drapes
of translucent pale cloth twisting and floating around her like gentle waves. Even her hair swayed like a sheet, obscuring and revealing her face as she stared out at me through old, approving eyes. Her beauty was paradoxical, as a dangerous intent lurked behind her eyes. She was the one responsible for whatever it was I’d just experienced. But now, standing on the base of the mountain and staring at her, I understood what it had been: a test. Temptation.

  But why?

  “Moral fiber,” the Fortune Teller hissed, her voice like a seductive snake. She swam toward me without effort, like she was thinking her way through the very fabric of the world. I was on my knees where I had fallen earlier, and rose as she advanced on me. “And not a bad brain on you either, boy.”

  “Boy?” I replied indignantly as I fought to calm myself down from the insanity I’d just experienced at her hands.

  “I may look young,” the Fortune Teller whispered in an imitation of a young girl. “But as they say, and as you know, Rand—looks can be deceiving.”

  “What was all that about?” My hands tightened around my weapons as the siren swirled up beside me. I realized the chill of the mountain was emanating from her.

  “Those will do you no good, boy,” she scoffed, indicating my weapons. I eyed her long enough to get an inspection.

  Cliemene, the Fortune Teller—Level 50

  She’s right, I thought, relaxing my grip and letting my weapons hang at my sides. Somewhere in his tiny clearing, was Rathborne thinking about me? Wondering what had become of the young Seeker who’d come knocking at his door? He wasn’t a part of the Fortune Teller’s scheme. I knew that as well as I’d known her fantasies weren’t real either.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked as her robes swirled in the air before me. She was the goddess of the mountain, and I understood now why Rathborne had held his tongue when I asked him for advice on our encounter. Nothing he could have said would have prepared me for the witch’s tricks. She’d hijacked my mind in a way that didn’t seem possible, but then again, what was really possible anymore?