Realm Wraith

by T. R. Briar

  “Impressive. Most Realm Wraiths stay in one place when they visit. They don’t really try to visit other worlds.”

  “It’s not like there’s anywhere to go. When you’re already in one nightmare there’s no point in visiting another. I just wanted to find Apolleta, and see if she was all right.”

  “Why so much concern?”

  “I don’t know. She was so terrified. I thought seeing another human might help.”

  “Oh come now, tell the truth.”

  “That was the truth. What are you talking about?”

  “You wanted to get away from that other idiot, didn’t you?”

  Rayne had to work not to smile. “Well, all right, I’ll admit, he gets on my nerves. I mean it’s not like I planned to abandon him forever. I thought I’d just find her first. Maybe get us all together as a group. Strength in numbers, you know?”

  “He’s not very fun company. I was stuck alone with him after you vanished.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Next time warn me if you’re going to do something like that. Or take him with you. That was far too awkward; he was too frightened and angry to say anything coherent. I finally just left him there.”

  “Alone? How cold.” Rayne looked off into the city. “I should probably call him. He’s here in town, you know.”

  Darrigan glided back a distance from Rayne, whirling around with his smoky cloak billowing out below him. “Well, maybe we should go pay him a visit.”

  “Are you joking? I can’t go anywhere like this.” Rayne gestured to his chair.

  “That’s not a problem.” Darrigan reached out his arm, and for the first time Rayne saw the blade from his wrist vanish, leaving behind an ordinary, yet sickly clawed hand. He offered it towards Rayne, gesturing for him to take it. Rayne stared at the hand, then up at Darrigan’s face.

  “Go on,” the reaper whispered in that dry, creaking voice of his. Rayne glanced at David, then reached out and firmly grabbed the hand.

  Dizziness followed a sense of separation. It was very similar to what Rayne felt when he fell asleep at night, only now the world didn’t fall away from him. His body felt much lighter, and he found himself able to stand on his own legs. He looked down at his physical form still sitting in the wheelchair, slumped over with his eyes closed, as if asleep. He glanced down at himself, almost a mirror of the body in the chair, only far paler in flesh, with a chilled touch.

  “Let’s go,” Darrigan said, still holding his hand. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of me. It could get ugly.”

  He lifted up, pulling Rayne behind him, and his form became nothing more than smoke. Only that one hand remained solid, its fingers in a death grip on Rayne’s wrist. They hovered far above the grasses and trees, and Rayne could see for miles in every direction, the people below him like tiny insects. It was exhilarating floating there above them. They glimmered like shimmering specks of light, strange auras of existence visible only to him. The world whipped around them as they soared over the streets of Langfirth. Without words Rayne could sense his companion needed directions, so he pointed towards the hotel where he knew Gabriel was staying, and they sped towards it with an unreal speed.

  It was an older building, well maintained with stylish ledges and decorative trim. They hung there midway up the height of the hotel, a fair distance above the ground, but low enough for the structure to still tower over them. Rayne peered beyond the walls, seeing more strange lights—people, he realized. Some were shades of tinted gold, others pale tones of white. There were greens and blues, and one stood out to him, having almost no light at all. A dying hint of red, like a burned out sun.

  He pointed, and Darrigan pulled him through the walls, where they passed through rooms filled with people sleeping, watching television, lounging about. The two of them stopped right before Gabriel, pacing inside a comfortably sized room, with an un-tucked shirt over a pair of boxer shorts. There were several suitcases strewn on the floor, their contents slung over the chairs and the bed. The light Rayne had seen was definitely him, and he could see what he noticed before, two faces of the man before him. One, the clean, healthy physical form with neatly combed hair and a healthy pallor, and then beneath, the disheveled shade, scarred and decaying. The dim red light surrounded him, the smell of death followed him.

  Gabriel turned to face his two visitors. Darrigan patted Rayne on the shoulder as the latter tensed up.

  “He’s not aware of us,” the reaper whispered. “As long as he’s awake, it’s like we’re not here.”

  Curious, Rayne reached up his free hand and pushed it against Gabriel’s chest, expecting it to pass through. To his surprise, he made contact, and pushed him back. Gabriel stumbled over, and his eyes darted around in confusion.

  “What are you doing?” Darrigan hissed.

  “I thought it’d just go through him! Aren’t I some sort of ghost or something?”

  Darrigan just shook his head. “Don’t act so reckless.”

  After he recovered from his initial shock, Gabriel picked up his jacket and pulled a phone out of the pocket. He flipped it open and dialed a number, holding it to his ear.

  “It’s me,” he said, speaking in a very low voice. “Yeah. Yeah. No, not right now. I have to stay here. Yes. It’s not safe right now.”

  He paced back and forth, continuing to speak into the phone. Rayne only wished he could hear the other half of the conversation.

  “I’m not telling you where I am. Because you’ll just blabber it to everyone else, that’s why! In a few weeks. No, they don’t know where I went. Listen, I can’t really talk long. I just need to know how bad it is. Where did you hide the—all right, great. Did the police come? I see. Uh huh. What did you tell them? Are you sure?”

  Rayne and Darrigan glanced at each other.

  “Don’t say anything else. I’ll call you in a few weeks, all right? Don’t try to find me. Yeah huh. Love you too. Take care.”

  Gabriel disconnected the call, but left the phone open, staring as he held it in his hand. He glanced down at an open briefcase on his bed, and pulled out a sheet of paper. Rayne edged forward, his curiosity getting the better of him, and he pulled Darrigan with him. Gabriel looked over the paper and picked up the phone again, leaving the page on the bed. Rayne leaned forward to read it. It was a computer printout, with an address and a phone number on it.

  “That’s my address,” he whispered. “And my phone number.”

  It dawned on him who Gabriel was trying to call. He wondered where he’d even gotten this information about him, but realized that as long as Gabriel knew his full name and what town he lived in, it wouldn’t be that hard to look up an address.

  “Even if I wasn’t here spying on him like this, I wouldn’t be home anyways,” he told Darrigan.

  “Then should we—”

  Rayne waved him away, unconcerned. “Hush.”

  They both watched as Gabriel, after some slight hesitation, started hitting buttons on the phone. He held it back up to his ear, the faint sound of the connection on the other side ringing.

  “Hello!” he exclaimed, suddenly cheerful. Rayne’s heart froze. “I’m a friend of Mr. Mercer’s. You must be his son. What’s your name, little guy? Levi? Cute name. Listen, is your dad home? I really need to talk to him. Uh huh? Oh, I see. Do you know where I could find him? Oh? Tell you what, kid, you think you could tell me how to get there? Yes, I’m near King Street. Uh huh. Three blocks. Take a right. Just keep going? Thank you very much, you’re a very helpful young man. I’m sure your father’s very proud of you. All right, then. Goodbye.”

  He flipped the phone closed, and began searching for his pants. He dug them out from under a pile of discarded shirts and sat on the bed, pulling them over his legs. Once they were on, Gabriel tucked in his shirt, then moved to the thermostat and glanced at it, shivering.

  “Ten degrees? That can’t be right. Even if it is Celsius.” He reached out and adjusted the dial.

  “Bring me back to
my body,” Rayne whispered to Darrigan.

  “Good idea,” the smoky specter replied.

  He tugged at Rayne’s hand and the two of them flew into the air and with increasing velocity, passed backwards through the same array of hotel rooms until they were outside the building. They drifted higher and higher into the skies, far above the clouds. Darrigan spread out around them as billowing smoke and torpedoed downward. Rayne was dragged along, and yet he felt no fear, only a sense of thrill. They burst through the cloud layer and he could see the ground spinning towards them at incredible speed. They stopped right above the pond. Rayne could see his wheelchair, with him still in it. There was no sign of David, though.

  Darrigan touched down over the pond’s surface, the pillar of smoke resuming his normal shape. He walked across the surface, and Rayne, to his surprise, found himself imitating this feat, feeling the water beneath his toes, yet not sinking. Darrigan let go of his hand.

  “We’re close enough now, you should be able to return to your body. If we were too far away, the Abyss would claim you instead.”

  Rayne looked at him, and down at the pond below him. He had no reflection; there was nothing below his feet but murky water mirroring the clouds. He bent down and touched the liquid surface with his hand, watching it ripple for a bit. He looked back to himself in the wheelchair, and a bit to the left, he saw David chatting up a young blonde woman who was taking her dog for a walk.

  “I fall asleep and he starts flirting? Some caretaker,” Rayne scoffed. “So how do I wake up, exactly?”

  “I see. The connection must be very weak. A normal person would have been drawn back to their body right away. But Realm Wraiths are different. You’ve already died. Your body’s just a shell now. Makes it easier for the Abyss to take you.”

  “Are you saying I’m stuck like this?”

  “No, no. It just means you have to do it yourself.” Darrigan gestured to the wheelchair. “The closer you are, the stronger the pull.”

  Rayne approached himself, running a hand against his own face. He felt nothing, no ‘pull’ as Darrigan had implied. Pushing only moved his head to the side.

  “So you’re really not going to make this easy,” he muttered at himself. Several minutes passed as he attempted various times to return, both physically and mentally, but nothing seemed to work. Slumping over in abject defeat, he raised his eyes, aware of somebody walking down the sidewalk towards them.

  “It’s Baines,” he groaned. “How did he get here so fast?”

  Irritated, he gripped his own face by the chin. “Now see here! You let me back inside this instant or so help me I’ll—I’ll—” He wasn’t quite sure how to finish that sentence. He felt something clutching at his arm, and looking down, saw his body’s own hand grabbing his arm viciously tight. He looked up at his own face, in time to see his own eyes snap open, a strange, malicious grin plastered across his own face. Fear gripped him, and he found himself yanked against his will by an unseen force, overwhelmed by a terrible feeling that his own body had become the enemy. He tried to scream but no sound came out, and he felt his body pulling him in, devouring him.

  He jerked upright with a gasp. He was back in the chair, in his body. The numbness in his legs brought a shocking rush back to reality.

  “What—what the hell was that? A hallucination?”

  “Oh, hello!” he heard Gabriel’s voice nearby. “From back there you looked like you were sleeping, but I guess I was wrong.”

  Rayne wheeled around. “I see you found me,” he remarked.

  “Yeah, your son told me where you were. Sounds like a nice kid.”

  “Yes, he is.” Rayne paused. “What brings you here?” He still remembered everything he’d seen in Gabriel’s hotel room. The whole experience felt like a surreal dream, but there was no doubt it had really happened. “This is about me disappearing last night, isn’t it?” Shifting his eyes to the side, he could still see Darrigan standing there over the pond, watching. Gabriel on the other hand, didn’t notice the reaper’s presence.

  “You just vanished! Left me all alone with that—that—” Gabriel remembered they were in a public place and lowered his voice. “That thing is pure evil. I don’t trust it.”

  “You should be careful what you say,” Rayne warned.

  “I know, don’t worry. I won’t make any outbursts in public.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “That creature’s a monster. It collects souls. How do we know it’s not lulling us into some false sense of security? How do we even know it was telling us the truth?”

  “He’s harmless, really.”

  “Harmless? You saw him rip apart that fleshy monster! How can you call that harmless?”

  “I mean he’s harmless to us.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel it when I look at him. Like we’re not worth killing.”

  “Oh, you feel it? Well, I feel that everything he’s told us is bullshit. We’re going to find someone else to help us.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. We have to keep looking.”

  Darrigan brushed past them, leaning over to Rayne. “See, this is why I don’t like him.”

  “Is everything all right?” David, having finished his casual chat, walked over. “Oh! You’re that chap from yesterday! How has your stay in Langfirth been so far? Enjoying yourself?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s a really nice city, I’m so glad I came.” Gabriel shook David’s hand. “Tell me, are there any places you’d recommend? Any restaurants, a good bar or something?”

  “Certainly, I know a couple good pubs you might be interested in. I’ve got a piece of paper; let me write them down for you.” David started fumbling in his pockets.

  “It’s like he changes his face for every person he talks to,” Darrigan’s dry voice whispered in Rayne’s ear. “And he thinks I’m untrustworthy.”

  “A lot of people do that,” Rayne whispered back. “It’s how most human beings deal with life.”

  “Do you trust me, Rayne?”

  Rayne had to think about that. “I’m not certain. I don’t fear you, I know that much.”

  Darrigan laughed. “That is why you see me.” He stood before Rayne, smoke surrounding a face of stretched flesh over skull, eyes brimming with white flame.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Most people can’t see me. Those that do can’t understand what it is they see. So they perceive me as something else. A shadow. A figure they can’t quite make out. A stranger merely standing there, harmless, unknown, but a being their mind can rationalize. But you, not only can you see me, you perceive me as you should. It’s because you have no fear of something like myself.”

  “Well, I have met you elsewhere. Of course I’d recognize you, even in this world.”

  “But even before we met, you saw me. That’s what’s so interesting.” He glanced up, as if witness to an unseen beacon. “Damn, it seems I’m needed elsewhere. My work calls to me.” His form drifted up into the sky. “Maybe I’ll see you again tonight.”

  Rayne looked over at Gabriel and David, and realized that while the latter was scribbling down information on a scrap of paper, the former was staring at him.

  “Were you talking to someone?” he asked.

  “Don’t be silly.” Rayne forced a laugh. “Who would I be talking to? There’s nobody else here.”

  “But I thought I heard you—” He stopped, puzzled. “Never mind.” He took a piece of paper as David offered it to him. “Well, I suppose asking you to meet me for a drink would be difficult right now. Maybe if I’m still in town after you’ve recovered a little. How is that going, by the way?”

  “He’s getting his cast off soon,” David said. “And his ribs are healing nicely.”

  “Yes, what David said,” Rayne added.

  “Well, that’s great. Maybe we can get together for that drink after all.” Gabriel looked over the list again. “I shouldn’t have too muc
h trouble finding these places.”

  “If you want, I’d be more than happy to have a drink with you tonight. I can show you the pub down the block.” David smiled, always trying to be friendly.

  “I don’t want to break up your plans or anything.”

  “It’s no trouble at all. I’d like to get to know my flatmate’s new friend a little better.”

  “David,” Rayne started to object, not entirely sure if he should protest or not.

  “Relax, Rayne, it’ll be fine. I’ll take you home, you can spend some time with Levi, and get some rest.”

  “Well, if you all insist.” Gabriel grinned. “I’d be more than happy to come.”

  * * *

  Night fell, and Rayne found himself sprawled out on the living room sofa, his legs elevated on a pillow. David had brought him home, then gone out to meet Gabriel for that drink. Rayne tried to imagine what Gabriel could want with him. He had plenty of reason to talk to Rayne, but why David? Was Gabriel trying to finagle information out of him? Something personal he could use should the occasion arise? There was nothing Rayne could think of that David could tell him that would be of any use to even the most shrewd manipulator. At least, as far as he knew.

  He spent a little time with Levi, putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Levi had been much more open this evening, talking about school, about his friends, and a film he’d wanted to see.

  “Daddy?” he asked at one point, as he tried to fit together two edge pieces.

  “Hmm?”

  “Who was that man that called today?”

  “Oh, you mean Mr. Baines? He’s an acquaintance, just in town for a little bit.”

  “He talks like those people in films.”

  “Yes, he’s American.”

  “Wow, really? So he’s from another country? I didn’t know you knew people like that!”

  “We only met recently.”

  “Is he a nice man? He talked nicely to me.”

  “He—” Rayne paused. “Well, he’s friendly. David took him out for a drink to get to know him better.”