by T. R. Briar
“H-hello?” It was a woman’s voice, low, but feminine. “Is someone there?”
Rayne didn’t lower his guard just yet, but he crept closer to the figure. He realized the flames around him on the ground weren’t stable or regular, rather, they burned, and went out, only for new flames to spring up elsewhere. He could feel heat gathering beneath his feet, threatening to roast him alive if he stood still. Forgetting the heavy air, he jumped out of the way. The intense pressure returned and he tumbled into the person kneeling before him. The world around him whirled as he rolled around on the ground, and he heard the angry grunts of a woman falling to the ground with him.
“Asshole!” The voice screamed at him. Groaning, he looked up. A furious face greeted his eyes, and a hand struck him on the cheek.
Rayne sat up and looked at his new companion, a human woman with dark skin and black hair that framed her face. She looked to be in her forties, fit and well-groomed despite the ashes in her hair. She wore a tight fitting shirt and a pair of stone washed jeans, both covered in soot with slight rips in them. Her vibrant face lacked the signs of exhaustion he’d seen in Gabriel, and her brown eyes blazed with anger.
“Who the hell do you think you are, knocking me over like that?!” she yelled.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Rayne stammered. “I was just trying to dodge the fire. I didn’t mean to knock into you like that.”
Her anger subsided a bit, but she still glowered. “Awfully polite for a hooligan.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Never mind.” The woman pulled herself up to her feet with surprising ease. She reached out a hand to Rayne to help him up. He started to rise, only to have the weight of the air force him down again. The woman glared at him.
“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you even know how to stand?”
Rayne gasped, “It’s the air. It’s so heavy.”
“Heavy air? What have you been smoking?” The woman looked around her, ignoring Rayne for an instant. “Maybe I’ve been smoking something. Never seen anything like this place.”
Rayne abandoned trying to stand for the moment, pulling himself into a sitting position as he hoped the flames wouldn’t spring up where he sat. “Never? Is this your first time here, then?”
“What kind of question is that? Is this my first time here? What is this, some kind of psychotic club? I don’t even know where here is! It’s like I fell in some cave or something, only there’s fire and—” She paused as she glanced off in the distance, over the side of the land mass where they both stood, noticing the sea of magma for the first time. “Where are we?” She looked back at Rayne and he could see terror filling her eyes.
“You were crying earlier,” Rayne said. “You must’ve felt something was wrong when you came here.”
“It was so bright, I couldn’t see. I don’t know what came over me—” She stopped and glared at Rayne again. “Crying? I wasn’t crying! Do I look like some two-year-old to you? You must’ve been hallucinating. I don’t cry, ever!”
“My mistake.”
“So what, you live here or something? This your cave?”
“Me? Live here? I came here by accident, same as you.” A thought crossed Rayne’s mind. “Did something happen to you? Before you came here, were you in some kind of trouble? A car accident, or a heart attack, perhaps?”
“What?”
“I’ve only met one other person since I started coming here. He told me he had a near death experience, and I recently had one myself. Ever since then we’ve both been coming here so I thought perhaps—”
“You thought perhaps what? Car accident? My car’s in the shop! And a heart attack? I am way too young to be having heart attacks! I take good care of myself!”
“All right, no need to get upset. I was just wondering.” Rayne tried to compose himself, but this woman was starting to try his patience. “What was the last thing you remember, before coming here? Let’s just say for a moment there was some cave-in or something and we’re really in an underground cavern as you say. What was the last thing that happened before then?”
The woman paused and thought, scrunching her face a bit as she glanced around once more. “I was on my way to the store. My sister was out of diapers and needed me to pick some up. I bought those, and a bottle of tequila. Figured the two of us could party once she put the kids to bed. I was walking home, the streets were all empty, nothing but parked cars and then—”
Her eyes glazed over, then went wide, seeing what Rayne could not. Then her mouth dropped open, and she shrieked. The piercing sound could have shattered glass, and she started waving her arms, trying to shield herself from an invisible enemy.
“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” Rayne asked, afraid to do anything that might make things worse.
The woman snapped back to reality and stared at him, her features stressed with worry. “Tyler—he shot me. He really shot me I remember! But that means—”
“No—we’re not dead. We’re just—” It was becoming harder and harder for Rayne to deny where they might be. The never ceasing flames around them didn’t help matters. “There’s a distinction. The dead walk around like zombies. But you and I seem to be aware. We know what happened to us, and Baines and I certainly aren’t dead. It was more like near-death, and then we found ourselves here. And now you’re here too.”
“Who’s Baines?”
“Another chap. I haven’t seen him in some time though. He’s a Yank, like yourself.”
“And you are—?”
Rayne stretched his hand out to her. “Rayne Mercer. From Langfirth. England.”
The woman grasped his hand. “Apolleta Sanders. Los Angeles. United States.”
She flopped down onto the ground next to Rayne. “So this is Hell, huh? Fire and demons everywhere?”
“Do you believe in this sort of thing?”
“Me? Naw. I’ve never been the religious type. But it’s kinda hard to deny once you’re actually here.”
“I’m still not convinced this isn’t some sort of mad dream. I’ve never really believed in things like life after death, or souls.”
“Hey, who the hell are you calling a dream? I know I’m real. If this is a dream, then you’re just some crazy figment of my imagination.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m the real one. I come here every night when I go to sleep and wake up every day in my flat. Then it’s just like a normal day, only when I fall asleep, I find myself back here. Every single night.”
“So what you’re saying is this just keeps going. It doesn’t ever end? The same nightmare every time you sleep?”
“Seems that way. Baines told me he’s been here going on four months. And that was weeks ago.”
“How do you know he’s real?”
Rayne looked down. “I don’t, actually. A little while back I looked him up in the real world, and called his office. He said he’d never heard of me. Convinced me that this was all in my head after all. I suppose the car accident made me go completely mental.”
“Oh.” Apolleta turned thoughtful. “Maybe you should try calling me.”
“Well that seems rather rude. You’ve just been shot; they’re probably trying to save you as we speak. What am I supposed to do, call your hospital, tell them ‘Oh hello, I want to speak to Apolleta. How do I know her? Oh nothing crazy, we just met in Hell, that’s all.’ They’d think me demented.”
He got a chuckle out of Apolleta with that.
“Besides, if you are real, what then? I’m not sure if I want to know that I’m actually here. It’s just too much to think about. I want my life back. All this madness every night, I don’t know how much more I can take.”
“But if I am real, then you’d know you’re not crazy,” she said. “And if I’m not real, then you’ll know for sure, right?”
“I suppose. My doctor thinks I should see a therapist, and my flatmate’s been bothering me about discussing my problems. If all this is real, then there’d be no point in s
eeing a psychiatrist about it. I’d have to find a vicar, I imagine.”
“So then, it’s just you and this Baines guy? There’s nobody else here?”
“There’s certainly plenty of ‘else’ here. Just look down, I’m sure those were all people at some point.”
Apolleta looked horrified. “When we do die, does that mean—?”
“I don’t know.”
An uncomfortable silence followed, neither of them really knowing what to say. Rayne felt very on edge as they sat there, and he wondered if the two of them were truly alone. Being there with another human at least gave him some uneasy solace. The sensation of his skin being burned away had faded, as the conversation refocused his mind. The heaviness of the air and its unbearable heat still kept him from rising, but he still preferred it to the horrible delusions. He wondered if this particular realm invaded people’s minds to make them suffer such emotions and feelings. Apolleta didn’t seem quite so bothered by any of it, nor did she seem to notice any heaviness in the air, so he wondered if it was just him.
A sudden gasp shattered his thoughts.
“What the hell is that?” Apolleta raised a shaking finger. Rayne turned his head, and he heard a raspy growl. His eyes fell upon a strange creature that walked low to the ground, its many legs carrying it in a spider-like fashion. Its body resembled some kind of lizard, but its pudgy face looked almost human, only it was upside-down and a bright pinkish in color. Brassy mechanical rods and copper joints intermingled with the monster’s scale-covered flesh as if it were a broken-down clockwork contraption. It stared at the two of them with glowing red eyes and screamed in a glass shattering pitch.
Rayne pushed aside the pain of the heat pressing down on him and forced himself to his feet. There was nowhere to hide here, and no mindless targets to distract the monster’s attention. He brandished the bone in his hand, not even thinking about what he was doing, and stared down at the creature, which barely came up to his knees as he stood at full height.
“Be careful!” Apolleta screamed, but her words were faded and lost to him. The mechanical creature opened its upside-down mouth wider than a frog’s, and a bright flaming stream jetted out, nearly burning his hair off. Rayne hit the ground rolling, and pushed himself up again, clubbing the freakish creature, which howled and snapped at him. From its back, he saw that a second head took the place of its tail, and it resembled some bizarre fusion of a dog and a reptile. The face lunged forward in an effort to bite him. He swung with the bone again, smashing its metallic snout.
Apolleta watched this, backing away from the fray, trying to find somewhere to run, but she found no sanctum here on the floating platform.
Rayne was oblivious to her now. The pudgy human face screamed and breathed fire again, singing him. He raised his arm and drove it downward, shoving the bone right into the monster’s open mouth, as far down its throat as he cold force it. It screamed a shattered gurgling noise and thrashed its head, and the bone jutting from its lips smashed right into Rayne’s legs with incredible force, knocking him to the ground. The oppressive heat bore down on him again and he struggled to stand, but found he couldn’t, as once more the horrific delusions of being burned alive began to overwhelm him, and he screamed. The monster lunged forward, its second head reaching out to devour him.
With a loud crunch, the monster crumpled to the ground, as a large rock smashed onto its upside-down head. Apolleta stood above it, her hands still held outwards in the air with fingers bent in a gripping position. She trembled, staring down at both Rayne and the fallen monster with complete disbelief.
“I don’t know who’s crazier, you or that thing,” she stammered.
“Th-thanks. Thought I was done for.” Rayne pressed his hand against his forehead, wiping away nervous perspiration. He pulled himself upwards and glared down at the creature, which still twitched, its second head twitched up and down. He rolled the rock off from on top of the squashed head, and pushed the remains over the edge of the platform without hesitation, where it fell shrieking into the flowing magma below them.
“Please tell me I’m dreaming? That didn’t really just happen did it?” Apolleta asked him.
“I’m afraid so.” Rayne sighed, lamenting the loss of his weapon as he gazed into the sea of flames. A cry of surprise from his companion forced him to focus again.
“Rayne! You’re fading!”
Rayne stared down and saw his legs had become almost invisible, a semi-transparency washing over his body. He reacted with general disinterest, as this was nothing new to him.
“I must be waking up,” he said. “Timing could have been better, but—I’m afraid it’s beyond my control. It’s how every night ends.”
She went pale, her lower lip trembling, and her voice became a panicked squeak. “You can’t leave me like this! What if more of those things show up!?”
“If you see more monsters, just run. Or do what you did just now. I think you handled yourself pretty well.”
She tried to grab his arm, to make him stay, but her hands passed right through him.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he assured her, though his voice was flat, empty. “If you’re still here, then I’ll try to find you. It’s a big world, though, so I can’t promise anything. But seek me out, and I’ll seek you out, and maybe we’ll find each other.”
He could see tears in her eyes before the heat evaporated them. Her form faded from his sight, replaced by darkness, and a dim awareness of his return to the waking world. Voices and thoughts spun around him, and he thought he heard David’s voice calling his name.
“Oi! Rayne! Wake up already!”
Rayne groaned and forced his eyes open, blinking at the bright sunlight streaming unwelcome into his bedroom. David stood over his bed, looking impatient.
“What the bloody hell do you want?” Rayne growled.
“I know you’re supposed to be getting your rest and all but it’s almost noon, and you’ve got a visitor. Figured it’d be rude to make him wait, so come on, let’s get you dressed.”
“A visitor? Who would come visit me?”
“Not sure, never met him before. He said his name was—” A puzzled look crossed David’s face. “Oh bollocks, I’ve forgotten. Just get up, he’s waiting in the living room. I’ve put the tea on so you two can catch up or discuss whatever it is he wanted to discuss. I’ve got to run, though, have to work.”
He helped pull Rayne out of bed and into his wheelchair, handing him a shirt to wrap around his chest.
“You going to be all right on your own?” he asked in momentary concern as Rayne got dressed.
“No idea. I can’t think of anybody who’d want to visit me. It’s not like any of my coworkers would pay a visit. And if it’s a relative, I—” Rayne stopped. “Well, I wouldn’t know them anyways, would I?”
“This might be good for you. If it’s someone who knew you when you were younger, they might help restore your memory. Come on now, let’s go.”
Rayne rejected David’s attempt to wheel him outside, preferring to push himself. David went on ahead of him, and he could hear him out in the kitchen.
“Terribly sorry about that, he won’t be a moment. In the meantime, would you like some tea Mr., ah—”
“Baines,” a very familiar voice cut through Rayne’s senses, and he wheeled out of the hall to see a recognizable figure standing there in his flat, with his trim black hair and hardened hazel eyes, dressed in a casual suit.
“It’s you,” he gasped.
“Hey there, Mr. Mercer,” said Gabriel. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
Chapter 5
Rayne sat there, dumbfounded. He had to be seeing things; there was just no way that Gabriel could be there. There had to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe this was all a coincidence. Maybe he’d seen this man on the street somewhere and he appeared in his dreams, and now he’d come here. No, that made no sense, why would some stranger come to see him? And he knew his name at that. Could it be
because of the phone call?
“Rayne? Are you all right?” David’s evident concern yanked Rayne back to reality. He handed Gabriel a cup of tea. “So, how exactly do you two know each other? I didn’t think Rayne knew anyone from the States.”
“We never met in person. I found Mr. Mercer in a chat room, right after his accident. I had some experience with near death myself, and it gave us something in common. And, well, since I had to come to England on business, I thought I’d come say hello, see how he’s doing. That’s not a problem, is it?”
“Oh, not at all. I didn’t realize Rayne had been talking to anybody on the Internet, but he is here alone all day,” A glimmer of recognition went off in David’s eyes. “Oh, you’re that Gabriel Baines. I remember now. Rayne was browsing articles about you after he got out of the hospital. It all makes sense now!”
Rayne still said nothing; all of this was just getting too strange for him. David noticed his silence.
“Well, I’d best be off, if you think you’ll be all right, Rayne.” After a short pause, he added, “Of course, if you’d rather I stayed, I could make some calls.”
“It’s all right, David. You can leave us alone. The two of us have a lot to catch up on.”
“Oh, well, all right.” David picked up his coat and headed to the door. “You take care now. I’ll be back later this evening.”
The door shut behind him with a soft click. The moment it did, Rayne’s face changed from emotionless detachment to passionate accusation. He glared at Gabriel.
“You lied.”
Gabriel sat himself down on the sofa. “What the hell was I supposed to do? You called my office! Was I supposed to just explain to people how I knew you? They’d think I was crazy!”
“You certainly made me think I’d lost my mind.”
“You have less to lose anyway. I gotta say, hearing from you was quite a shock. I’d convinced myself it was all a dream, and you were just a part of that. When you called, and I heard your name, it was like my insides all turned to ice. It was terrible! I just couldn’t face it. I haven’t been able to focus on work at all; my health’s been suffering. I—I can’t deal with it. I took some vacation time and came to England. So now we can talk about this man to man.”
