by T. R. Briar
“That was uncalled for. Since when was this about me?”
“I thought that’s where the conversation had turned.”
“Fine, you’re right. I was king of the fools back then. I made a prize arse of myself, and it turned everything upside-down. Happy?”
“Rayne, I’m not saying you did something wrong.”
“But it’s the point you’re making, isn’t it? You think I haven’t done everything I can to make up for my mistakes? I’m trying to make a better life for me and Levi. And look where that got me—it almost bloody killed me!” He dropped his head on the table, his good arm flopping down beside it. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Get better. You’re no good to anybody ill. When you’ve recovered, then you can fret about the future. Maybe you can go out more, and enjoy yourself instead of obsessing over work.”
“I suppose I could date more. No—what woman would have a man in a chair? And a single father to boot. It’d be hard enough to find somebody that Levi might warm up to.”
“What about that nurse, Miranda? She’s single. I saw you making eyes at her while you were in the hospital.”
“Miranda’s nice. A little crass though.”
“Just the way you like ‘em, right?”
Rayne lifted his head enough to give David a dirty look. “Are you taking the piss?”
“Relax, it’s all in good fun.”
“I haven’t got time to fool around anymore. I have Levi to worry about, I have a career to focus on, and I’m going to have to do it while stuck in this bleeding chair. Stop undermining that.”
David exhaled, a hint of frustration in his sigh.
“What?” Rayne asked.
“It’s nothing. Just—you weren’t always this bad. I know life can bring everybody down, but you shouldn’t be afraid to let loose now and then.”
“Sorry.” Rayne’s gaze became unfocused, staring past his friend at the wall behind him. “It’s hard sometimes. I want to ease up and all, but then I start thinking of my future, and I tell myself I have to be serious. The time for fun and games is over, you know?”
“I know, but that’s not really you. Just tell me you’ll try to have a laugh now and then.”
“All right. I’ll try.”
* * *
That night, David dressed himself up in nicer clothing and left for his date, assuring Rayne not to bother waiting up.
“You need to rest; I expect you to be asleep when I get back,” he’d said. “You have my cell, and I left numbers for the neighbors, so if anything happens, you can contact somebody.”
Levi had long since gone to bed, his chores and schoolwork finished. He and his father had spent a little time together. Rayne read him a story to keep him quiet, and his son seemed happy just to be with him.
Now Rayne was alone in the flat, wheeling from room to room. His control of the chair had improved, but he couldn’t turn very gracefully. He could move quite fast in a straight line, however. At one point he’d even backed up at the end of the hall, and pushed himself down the long stretch, enjoying the slight, childish thrill of rolling at high speed down the corridor. He’d caught himself at the end though, ashamed for indulging himself like this. Even though he was all alone, the mere idea he’d done such a thing embarrassed him. He almost envied David and his son at times. They knew how to enjoy themselves far more than he did, and he couldn’t understand why.
Out of bored curiosity, and in order to keep his promise not to work, he went back online, and this time wrote down an office number for Gabriel. It wouldn’t take much effort for him to call. At eight in the evening, it would still be afternoon in New York. His hand reached for the phone on his desk, but he stopped himself. What would he even say if he got through?
As the hours marched on, Rayne knew he couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer. He headed into his bedroom. At first unsure of how to transfer himself into the bed, he wheeled up right next to it and allowed himself to spill out onto the covers, cradling his bandaged arm. He straightened himself out, and reached up to shut off the lamp on the nightstand beside him. The room went dark, and he laid there silently.
David had told him to remember something happy. So he tried very hard to dredge up those early memories of his beloved dog. He remembered playing with it out in the yard, he remembered the atmosphere around him, his home behind him as he enjoyed those carefree days. It was just him and his pet in these memories, nobody else. It occurred to Rayne how strange that was. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember his parents and he began to wonder, what parents? Did he ever have them?
He became aware that the darkness around him no longer resembled the pale shadows of his bedroom. He was back in that place again, he could tell without even turning his head, as he lay flat on his back against solid ground.
This was someplace new, but Rayne still felt it was that same maddening world. This time he stood on a barren field of tall, dying grass. There was no sky above him, just black emptiness, like the inside of a cave. White mist swirled at his feet, coming up no farther than his ankles. Not a soul stirred on this abandoned plain. Rayne felt slightly disappointed; he’d hoped he would at least see Gabriel out here. But then, what comfort was there spending time with a figment of his imagination? He might as well be alone.
A dilapidated house stood a short ways away, a possible source of shelter. It looked abandoned; nobody had lived here for a very long time. The crumbled walls and collapsed roof attested to that. The windows were bare, no glass or bars of which to speak. Rotted shutters hung off the wall at an angle, covered in chipped red paint. A screen door, full of holes and attached to only one hinge, served as a front door. A rogue gust of wind rattled the loose parts, causing them to groan and shriek with an almost human sound, sending a chill down Rayne’s spine. Steeling himself, he pushed aside the door, and it toppled forward onto the broken down porch.
Beyond the door stood an empty room, a wooden floor with boards supporting a broken down table. Peeling paint covered bare walls with a few scattered door frames leading to other rooms, and a wooden staircase at the far end reached to the upper floor, the wall behind it covered in torn wallpaper. A cold, muted light beamed down through scattered holes in the ceiling, illuminating the table with an unpleasant sheen.
The only thing on the table itself was a wooden bowl painted with cornflower blue and white patterns, broken and falling apart like everything else here. Inside the bowl, several apples rested at the bottom. This surprised Rayne for a moment, as he’d never seen anything resembling food in this world. He reached over and picked up an apple, holding it over in his hand to examine it. A rot spread from his hand, and the fruit blackened into a shriveled husk. Its last dying juices dripped out in a sticky mass on the floor, and what remained became ash that slipped through his fingers. What remained were wriggling black shapes, and Rayne quickly brushed them off his hands.
“Wasn’t hungry anyways.”
A creaking groan from the ceiling made Rayne look up. The light streaming from above vanished, drenching him in darkness. Water dripped through the holes, slow and steady at first, but it picked up speed. As drops fell onto his hand, he suddenly flinched. A strange electrical feeling danced across his fingers, like every droplet was charged with a fiery energy that burned his skin. He was backing towards the door when a rushing noise filled his senses, and a wall of water roared down the stairs. Rayne fled out the door before it could reach him, dashing out out into the field, in time to watch the house topple as the water destroyed it from within. The walls collapsed in on themselves, and the second floor crashed down into the first floor, creating great waves that cascaded through the bare windows before they crumbled away with the walls. In a matter of seconds, the house was nothing but wrecked lumber.
Rayne waited for a few minutes, wondering where on earth that wave even came from. He could still hear running water, but it didn’t feel threatening anymore. He walked back to the wreckage. Though broken pl
anks and shattered stone scattered everywhere else, the front room had no debris. The table still stood there, but the apples inside had been burned to cinders. Now a small pool of water lapped against the table legs, not draining out despite the holes in the floor. He reached down and touched the water, but now it felt cool against his hand, and didn’t burn like before.
“I will never understand this place,” he muttered.
A sensation rippled down his neck, and he had the eerie sensation that somebody was watching him. He turned and noticed a large, black animal observing him from the tall grass. It made no sound, and turned what looked like a head in Rayne’s direction. Mist and dead vegetation hid most of its face and body.
“Are you—was this your home?” Rayne called out to it. He thought for a moment. “What am I doing? As if something like this could answer me.”
The animal, of course, did not answer. It appeared to be a large dog. As it stared straight ahead, it drew back its lips, baring gleaming fangs. It crept towards Rayne, who made no motion to run, walking on deadly, clawed feet. As it drew near, it looked up, its eyes shadowed beneath black fur. A horrid uneasiness swept over Rayne, a smothering madness as he stared at a creature beyond his ken. He backed away a little, but it continued to walk towards him. It raised itself up above the mists, no longer walking low to the ground, and now Rayne could see the beast had three massive heads. Though he could not see its eyes, he felt its hidden gaze passing right through him.
“What the hell are you?!”
Rayne backed away, unable to turn around, for he feared looking away from the beast more than holding its gaze. The creature appeared startled. It also backed up several steps, and continued to size Rayne up and down. Then it turned and bounded off into the black abyss, leaving only silence.
Rayne fell to his knees, overtaken by dizziness. Though this monster had been fairly small, the beast’s three heads reminded him he was no longer in his own world. There was something about the atmosphere around the creature that he found utterly maddening.
“What do you want with me?” he screamed up at the skies. “Why have you brought me here?! Am I to be your plaything for eternity? I’ve done nothing to deserve this! Answer me, you bastards!”
His words were lost in the howling winds that swept all around him, intensifying the fog. Soon he couldn’t see anything in front of him, and the mists even swallowed the ruined house right beside him. Rayne was past the point of being mystified now. Like a floodgate had been opened, his breathing became more rapid, and wrathful feelings consumed him. He felt as if he’d been greatly wronged. He was being dragged against his will from nightmare to nightmare, and it had frayed his last nerves. He began to lose himself in this new emotion that washed away his desperate fear. The more he tried to repress it, the deeper it grew within him. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, waiting for the feeling to pass and hoping that maybe, just maybe, when he opened them, it would all be over again and he would be back in his bed.
A long, slow hiss drifted past his ear, and without moving any other muscle, Rayne’s eyes snapped open, and glanced to his right. Right there beside his face, close enough to touch his cheek, hovered a serpent. Its scales were a deep indigo, almost black in color, and an ebony forked tongue darted in and out from between long silver fangs. It was huge; the head of this snake was almost as large as Rayne’s own. Its thick neck, larger than Rayne’s arm, retreated back into the mist, making it difficult to see just how long the creature was. And its eye, that was the most disturbing thing of all. Empty sockets like bottomless pits somehow stared through Rayne. Far from sightless, they seemed to suck his soul into their void like a black hole, eating his breath as he tried to steady himself. Gazing at that eye terrified Rayne to his very depths.
He rushed to his feet. The serpent rose up, its twisted face hanging just opposite his own. It hissed at him. Rayne darted in the opposite direction, only to find himself facing another serpent, identical to the first one. And as he turned yet again, a third snake blocked his path. He couldn’t see what direction they all came, surrounded by a maze of necks that stretched so far he couldn’t tell where they ended inside the thick mist. Terrified, he pushed one head aside and rushed through the opening. His body felt so heavy, but he paid it no mind, too desperate to escape the fog, to get someplace where he could see his enemy. Endless mist blocked him everywhere he turned, laced with more hissing serpents. It seemed no matter where he ran, the creatures were always there first.
A root sticking out of the ground caught him by the foot and forced him downward. The snakes lunged at him shrieking, their dead, empty eyes maddened. Once more Rayne felt venomous bile choking away the fear in his throat.
“Leave me alone!” he shrieked, muting all other sound for that one instant. The snakes reared back and gazed at him before they vanished in a cloud of vapor, just as quick as they had appeared. As if caught in a vacuum, the fog around Rayne swirled and evaporated with a great rushing noise, as if it had never been.
He still stood in the same field as before. The ruined house was gone, and endless grass surrounded him. He looked down at whatever had tripped him. Though it felt like a root, he realized when he pulled it up that it was actually a bone, either from an arm or a leg. There were other bones strewn about the grass, still covered in rotting flesh and bits of torn clothing. Some wore armor, long since rusted and broken apart. There were weapons strewn about, blood-caked axes and swords, rusted spears and broken bows and arrows.
“A battlefield?” Rayne wondered if there had been civilization here once, or if more craziness existed just to taunt him.
“Not the only one, either,” Gabriel said. He stood beside Rayne, seemingly from nowhere. “I’ve seen dozens of these things, just landfills full of corpses.”
“You again?!”
“Well, hi there yourself. Thought you’d be a little happier to see me.”
“Sorry. I just didn’t expect you to be here.”
“I didn’t think I was gonna find you, ‘specially with all that fog, but man, you can really scream loud. I think every damn thing in this whole place could hear that yell.” Gabriel gave him a friendly smile. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Of course, you are on the other side of the world. We’d probably never have met if I weren’t taking naps now and then. Only way I can avoid coming here for too long.”
“This is actually my first night back. Honestly, I don’t usually scream. This place just has that effect on me.”
Gabriel looked at him. “Funny. I come here every time I close my eyes, and it’s been days since we met. How did you avoid coming here?”
Rayne stood and brushed the dirt off his shirt. “Maybe it was the painkillers. Tonight’s my first night out of the hospital. It’s possible I came here and forgot.”
“I remember every visit. Night or day, I’m here, fighting to survive, trying to keep my goddamn sanity.” Gabriel picked up a sword clutched at by a pile of bones, and poked the ground with it. “What’s this hospital you mentioned? You sick or something?”
“I was in a car accident. If it weren’t for the doctors, I would have died.”
Gabriel smirked. “Oh yeah? Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Sorry?”
“Oh come on, you can’t be this dumb. You say you almost died? Did you actually die? Even if it was only for a split second, did you die?”
“What? Well, yes I suppose I—” Rayne tried to compose himself, but he realized there wasn’t much point in being formal here “I died. For just a minute, but I died. I remember I was out of my body. Nobody could see me even when I struck the paramedic. Then there was this light, and I was here. And then I woke up in a hospital bed.”
“I see.” Gabriel put a reassuring hand on Rayne’s shoulder. “Then we have something in common. About four months ago, I started having chest pains and well, next thing I know, they’re telling me I had a heart attack. Damn near died but the doctors worked a miracle and brought me back. And ever
since that night, I come here every time I fall asleep.”
“Then, you don’t mean that—” Rayne’s mind started fitting the pieces together. “We were both supposed to die, and we came here. Then that means that this place—this is where people go when they die, isn’t it? No, worse than that—” He glanced around at the bloody skeletal bodies strewn about the field. Then he glanced up, staring at shrieking figures flying through the black air above them. “Are we in Hell?”
“You said it, not me. It’s not like I really believe in that stuff. Besides, I’m not some horrible sinner, I’m a God-fearing man! If this is Hell, then somebody messed up!”
Rayne remembered the articles he’d found online. “But I read about you. You’re in some company’s pocket! You assaulted a reporter who tried to expose you!”
Gabriel’s brow furrowed. “What was that?”
Rayne realized he shouldn’t have been so forward. “I’m sorry. I looked you up after I got home. I just—I wanted to be sure you weren’t a figment of my imagination, and I saw you were a real person. I thought maybe I’d try to call you, and find out if all of this,” Rayne gestured to the bloody field around him, “was real, or just in my head.”
“So you know about me, and I don’t know anything about you? Well, that’s just wonderful. I still don’t know if you’re real. And I sure don’t like the idea I’ve been sent to Hell when I’m not even dead yet.”
“You’ve been having the same nightmare for four solid months; doesn’t that mean something might be wrong?”
“Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean my soul just gets cast into the nether every time I fall asleep. What about you? Assuming you are real, what terrifying secrets are you sitting on, Mr. Lawyer? You help a murderer walk? Maybe do some mob work or something?”
“My firm doesn’t handle criminal cases; I’ve never done anything like what you’re describing. I really—I can’t think of anything I’ve done that would send me here. I’ve tried to be a good man, and a good father to my son. I’ve done nothing to deserve this!”
