by Travis Smith
The Stranger rolled onto his side and hoisted himself up onto his elbows. He turned back and looked into the corner of the cell. The small, sunken pool that Ian had dug out with his tireless drawings had disappeared. There was naught but an empty hole, through which a young boy was peering. The boy’s face was bruised and caked with dried sores and blood. His hair hung in matted clumps around his grotesque face. His cheeks were sunken, and his neck—which was all The Stranger could see—was gaunt and thinning. He squinted his eyes against the light.
The Stranger rose cautiously to his feet, glancing from the boy through the cell’s bars behind him. More guards rushed by in a malicious fervor to get a favorable spot among the crowd. None had taken notice of the events unfolding within The Stranger’s cell.
The boy descended back into darkness without a word. The Stranger approached the hole while his cellmates sat in silence. Ian’s mouth hung agape as he struggled to process the boy’s sudden appearance, while Gregoire held his usual untroubled grin.
The Stranger looked between the darkness beneath their cell and the two men seated in the dirt.
“May you both fare well,” he said before dropping into the aperture.
12
“Not that way,” a haggard voice croaked as The Stranger glanced sightlessly along the tunnel below. The voice must have come from a throat long-dead that hadn’t passed sound for generations, but when The Stranger turned, he saw only the boy. His battered face was illuminated by a cone of light shining from the hole above.
He turned and disappeared in the opposite direction. The Stranger followed on his hands and knees. Before long, the pathway narrowed, and he was shimmying along on his elbows, arms tucked painfully to his chest. Soon all sense of light had dwindled, and The Stranger was travelling by touch alone. He could hear the boy scuttling through the darkness ahead of him, but his movements were much more deft and hushed.
“Are your friends coming?” the boy rasped from the darkness ahead. He stopped moving, and The Stranger’s face bumped into the bottom of his feet.
“They are not my friends,” he replied with indifference.
He heard the boy pull himself forward again and continued in pursuit. He felt the narrow tunnel open up into a larger space, and he jolted when the boy’s hand fell upon his shoulder. He pulled himself onto his knees in the small cavern.
“Are you villains?” the boy asked.
“That judgment would vary among deciders,” The Stranger replied after a pause.
“Wait here,” he whispered; then he disappeared back the way they had come.
The Stranger knelt in the low cavern and felt his heart pound harder with each passing moment. His arms probed before him, touching nothing at first. He stumbled forward with no sense of how small or large this chamber truly was. He took a few steps forward on his hands and knees before his head hit another rocky wall. He flung his arms out before him and began to feel along the chamber walls. Rocks jutted out in all directions. He traced the wall up above his head and ran his palms across the low ceiling, just overhead while seated on his knees. A sense of unreality washed over him in the profound silence and darkness, likes of which he’d never before experienced.
“Hello?” he offered to no one, now completely disoriented and unsure in which direction the boy had even disappeared moments before.
He continued to examine the perimeter of his confinement in all directions, and his hands could feel no opening or passageway. He turned around and turned back around, crawling from wall to wall and sliding his palms in a frenzy. The chamber was large enough for him to lie flat in either direction or to sit upright on his knees. It took hardly any time at all for his bewildered mind to become convinced that the boy was a spirit who’d led him in here and closed the walls off altogether.
“Hello!” he called again. This time his voice echoed loudly around him.
In response, the world quaked all around The Stranger with a shattering explosion. Rocks and debris fell down around him and bounced off his head and arms. The world around him continued to quiver, and he felt certain he would be buried alive in this black tomb, but then the boy’s voice spoke again out of the darkness.
“We’re back,” he croaked. “This way.”
The Stranger felt the boy slip past him, followed by two more. Ian Meng was uncharacteristically quiet, and Gregoire, too, had lost his usual air of carefree ease.
“Ian? Where are you? I can’t see nothin’,” he called out in a voice that sounded close to tears. Ian made no reply, but the pair continued moving forward.
“What was that explosion?” The Stranger asked as the trio wriggled past.
But the boy offered only one response: “Hurry.”
13
Patrick continued through the tunnels ahead of the three freed men. He could sense that they were less adept at maneuvering through the small passageways, and he kept his pace unhurried for their sakes.
The route took a long, slow curve to the east. Patrick chose paths that led back around northward, glossing past branches and divisions the other men undoubtedly never noticed.
The group travelled for quite a time before the caged men behind began to grow restless and distressed.
“Where are you taking us?” one of them asked, out of breath.
“I am taking you nowhere,” Patrick replied. “You chose to follow me.”
“Well, then where are we going?” another of the men said.
Patrick made no reply. He surely yearned for a clear destination more strongly than this lot.
The sounds of heavy breathing began to overcome the scuffling of elbows and knees through the dirt. Patrick allowed his pace to dwindle to a crawl. He began to regret freeing these men at all—not that he’d known what he was doing anyway—for they seemed to be naught but dead weight.
After a long, grueling crawl with continued winded bickering from behind him, Patrick thought he could make out the faintest sensation of light again. The quality was different from the last time, but something in the darkness was certainly changing.
“I see something,” Patrick choked. Speaking was still painful after going so long without doing so. He dry-swallowed hard as the group behind him murmured collective sounds of relief.
14
For generations, the city of Krake and the nation of Reprise existed in balanced harmony with the neighboring nations. Insidious darkness from within is what brought the city to its knees.
Kingdoms crumble and societies fall when the power of benevolence fails to overcome the evil lurking in the shadows. This shrouded darkness exists ubiquitously among the light, noted only by the most watchful of eyes. Perhaps, too, there exists beauty hidden within the dark.
15
Patrick followed the source of light around a few more bends before the tunnel opened back up. When it did, he came to a halt so suddenly that the man following bumped into his behind and thrust him forward.
He pulled himself back up and allowed himself to slowly sit upright in the new cavern. He blinked his eyes against the mirage before him. Surely no splendor such as this could exist within this desolate sub-terrain.
The cavern stood the height of ten grown men. The expansive rocky floor turned to large, smooth stones that led down to the base of the cavern. Here, the stone became a sea of fine, sand-like, granular pebbles that lined a massive underground pool. Overhead, the chamber ceiling had a large hole, through which a beam of brilliant moonlight shone, illuminating the surreal underground beach.
“What’s the cause for delay?” a man spoke up behind him, breaking Patrick from his trance minutely.
“Oh—” he stammered and pulled himself out of the way of the tunnel opening. The three men trundled through beside him, but Patrick’s eyes never left the overhead skylight. He saw dark, heavy clouds rushing by, flashing glimpses of stars behind, like tiny, distant reassurances that the light still existed somewhere.
As Patrick watched, a lump rose in his dry throat, and tear
s welled in his eyes. A long, rolling crash of thunder made its way overhead shortly after the sky flashed with distant lightning. Slowly at first, heavy drops of monsoon-season rain fell through the skylight and splashed in the placid pool below. This grew in intensity until another bolt of lightning flashed—closer this time—accompanied by a crashing thunderclap that seemed to rip the bottom out of the clouds themselves. A thunderous deluge showered through the hole and filled the cavern with echoing sounds of rainfall that was deafening to Patrick’s hypersensitive ears.
He stumbled forward, no longer confident standing upright, and made his way down the smooth rock surfaces toward the pool. He took no note of the three men standing behind him, mouths agape. The rainfall was heavy, cool, and fresh. Patrick dipped his hand in and laughed out loud—the sound of which was drowned by the thunderous rain. He stuck out his tongue like a lad on the season’s first snowfall and let the water pour all over his face and open mouth. He drank it greedily and smiled even though it stung his cracked and wounded face.
Before long the others had made their way down to the pool. They took pause to undress without a word to one another and spread their toes in the fine sand at the pool’s edge before stepping in. Patrick watched as the elder grinned a toothless, clueless grin and looked between the other two men as if waiting for instruction on how to proceed. The younger men withdrew their clothes completely and waded into the pool nude. Its rocky bottom gave way toward the middle, and its depth allowed the four to dive under and submerge themselves completely in the cool waters.
Patrick smiled for the first time since his former small group was disbanded. The four strangers laughed at each other as they splashed in a manner so carefree it pained Patrick’s heart. He’d allowed himself to be buried in the darkness for so long he’d forgotten such simple pleasures could exist. How could they splash in this underground pool while the world outside them still crumbled into chaos? How could they laugh together while Patrick’s family still lay dead without retribution? How could they wash their bodies of dirt and decay while those very features still spread throughout the lands and overturned all that was once pure?
How, indeed …
Patrick could feel his young mind aging as it accepted these dichotomies within his new existence.
Chapter 9:
Out of Darkness
1
A s the night wore on, the clouds overhead were blown toward the shore. When the torrential rain ceased, The Stranger allowed himself to nestle down in the soft sand at the shore of the pool. It was the most comfortable pallet he’d enjoyed since leaving Reprise so very long ago.
He watched the boy who’d eventually introduced himself as Patrick with an uneasy interest. Though himself and the boy were more likely to have been distantly aged brothers than father-and-son, his mind could not help drifting to William, who, at best, was aging alone and fatherless, teaching himself to wriggle through crevices and survive in the dark.
“Where is your family?” he asked at last as Patrick set up in a nearby spot to rest. Ian and Gregoire were still enjoying the calm pool. There was no imagining how long they’d been locked up in Fanxel with no clean water or a proper bath before The Stranger himself had arrived.
The boy sat down and fixed his gaze at nothing in particular in the sand. After a long pause, he replied, “They’re gone.”
“I am sorry for your loss, however distant it may be,” The Stranger said in a gentle tone.
“It’s been a while now,” Patrick said. “I’ve travelled far and long lost track of the days.” There was a hint of guilty regret in his voice.
The Stranger nodded. He embraced the sentiment with ease but did not state aloud how closely it matched his own circumstance.
“You must be quite intrepid to have made it so long on your own,” The Stranger said at last. “How came you to these tunnels?”
The boy’s face contorted as he fought against tears. The Stranger approached and sat next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder in a fruitless gesture of comfort. He expected the child to sputter and sob, but his voice shook only slightly as he spoke. Mature tears spilled nearly unnoticed down his cheeks.
Patrick thought he was done with the crying, but he’d spoken about his family and their fate only to Brandon, Olivia, Jake, and Philip. He hadn’t yet let it all out, despite all this time thinking he had.
“Someone did this to them,” he said. “Turned everyone in my village to monsters—everyone save for me.” His chest hitched, but he maintained his composure for the most part. “I had to kill them all to survive … Thought I was the only one left alive in the whole world until my new friends found me there and saved me … I owe them so much.” He wiped away his welling eyes and reached instinctively to the stone in his pocket. “I still have so much work to do.”
The Stranger nodded as he spoke. The boy spared him details, but he opened his heart to the child as he recounted the horrors he’d faced since leaving his home and losing his own family.
Ian and Gregoire were walking out of the pool now and looked on with somber interest.
“I lost my family, too,” The Stranger said.
“I imagine many of us have,” Patrick replied. His tone was not accusatory, but it took The Stranger aback nonetheless. Such a simple truth, yet one that he himself had taken pains to ignore throughout his quest.
“My wife and my son,” he said after a brief pause. “That’s where I’m going now—to my wife and my son.”
“Father?” Gregoire spoke at last.
The Stranger looked up to see the elderly man frozen mid-step in the sand. His eyes looked over their heads into the darkness as if he was seeing a spirit and recalling some vital importance he’d forgotten long ago.
“Where is father?” he asked, a bit more frantically now.
Ian stepped in front of the man and placed his hands on both shoulders. “Greggy,” he said softly, “Greggy, look at me.
“Who’s ’at?” he asked, his voice exuding piteous desperation now, rather than the usual blithe curiosity. “It’s father?” Now he, too, had tears spilling down his wrinkled cheeks.
“No, Greggy,” Ian cooed, rubbing the man’s cheeks and pulling him over to a soft spot to sit. “Rest here, it is very homely. Much softer than that nasty mud where you’ve been sleeping.”
“Father …” Greggy said again. He stumbled to his knees and bent his head to the sand, now sobbing like a distressed babe.
“Father is coming,” Ian promised. “Rest your eyes. He will be here when you wake.”
2
“He forgets,” Ian explained to Patrick after Gregoire had finished wailing enough to fall asleep. “Forgets that father is gone. When he wakes, he won’t recall he’d remembered it at all. It is his blessing and his burden.”
“His father must have been gone for quite some time,” Patrick said in a child-like observation of the man’s apparent age.
Ian smiled. It was a kind, thin, and tired smile, but it softened his sharp face and took the lunacy out of his eyes for the first time since The Stranger had met the man. “Indeed he has. Quite a time indeed.” The smile faded, and his features darkened as black memories crowded into his mind. “I was there when our father was … when he disappeared.”
“Your father?” The Stranger asked. “You mean you two are related?”
Ian smiled again. This time it failed to mask a wealth of sadness behind it. “Greggy is my little brother.”
“Brother?” The Stranger asked again, incredulous.
“You wouldn’t think it to look at us,” Ian said, “I know.” His voice was slow, soft, and measured now, quite unlike the stammering, frenetic speech The Stranger had heard day after day in their cell. His hand traced circles that refused to appear in the fine sand. “I have devoted my life to finding father … and in the end Greggy made a terrible sacrifice in our pursuit—I made a terrible sacrifice,” he corrected. “His mind and soul have ventured further and further each day since … but
he’s the lucky one. You’ll see when he wakes. He’s the lucky one. He feels only love. Most days, he does. I’m the one cursed with fear … with fear and regret and shame and knowledge and memory.”
While he spoke, he watched with an expression of dissatisfaction as the sand shifted and rolled around his twirling hand without giving back the symbol. He stood and made his way toward the water’s edge, where the sand was wetter and would hold his hieroglyphics for long enough to ease his mind. He continued to speak as he walked, but soon neither The Stranger nor Patrick could hear what he was saying.
They sat in somber silence for a moment before a sound cut through the chamber and sent a painful tremor down The Stranger’s spine.
“Groolach!”
Both Patrick and The Stranger turned toward the sound in the surrounding darkness. Innumerable unseen tunnels and passageways branched out of their large chamber in every direction.
The Stranger swallowed painfully as his heart pounded in his chest. The well-healed wounds on his midriff and thigh ached at the nightmarish memory.
Moments dragged by in the ensuing silence, broken only by Ian’s muffled babbling by the shore.
Finally the boy spoke one word: “Far.”
3
The Stranger sat upright and listened intently for quite a while before lying down again in the sand, satisfied he would hear the maladroit creatures again if they were headed in this direction.
“So where are we?” he asked the boy. “How do we get out of these holes?”
Patrick sighed. “I wish I could answer you, but I’ve been lost down here for longer than I could venture a guess.”
The Stranger sat up again, his mouth agape. “You pulled us from our cell, only to trap us in this lightless grave?” he demanded.
“I pulled none of you any place,” Patrick snapped back. “I happened upon you by accident or by fate, and you all descended into this realm eagerly enough!”
