Realm Wraith

by T. R. Briar

  She smiled, a strange, flushed smile. “You really do look out for me. Thank you, Rayne. Thank you for everything.”

  She wobbled her way to the bathroom. Rayne felt he shouldn’t leave just yet, with her in such a state. Maybe wait until she sobered up, or fell asleep. Sleep would not ease her mind, he knew. He wished there was a way he could soften her pain without sending her plummeting further into despair. It felt like every time he tried to talk with her, he only made things worse.

  A buzzing from within his jacked made him twitch in his seat. He had forgotten his cell phone was there, and pulled it free, wondering who could be calling him so late.

  “David?” he asked as he opened it up and hit ‘Talk.’

  “Hey, Rayne, just checking in on you. Wanted to know how much longer I needed to wait.”

  “Oh, geez, I’m sorry. Miranda invited me in for a drink, guess I forgot you were still downstairs.”

  “Well, how much longer are you going to stay? Or is it that kind of visit?”

  “No. It’s not. I don’t know how long I’m going to stay. I just want to be sure she’s all right.”

  “Is something wrong? She seemed fine when I saw her at work yesterday.”

  “Was she on call today?”

  “Yeah, I think she was scheduled to get off before noon. I assumed she just went straight home, but what do I know? Why?”

  “Well, she was just getting home when I showed up. I thought she’d come here straight from work.”

  “I guess she went somewhere else first, then.”

  A pub, Rayne rationalized. It explained her mental state.

  “Listen, David, I’ll be down in a bit. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. I’ll call you back if I need anything.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  He hit “End” and thrust the phone back in his pocket. He looked at the beer bottle next to him, empty now, and his mind buzzed from faint intoxication. Dropping by just to check in on Miranda was starting to seem like a worse and worse idea the more he dwelled on it. Maybe he should just go, let her sleep off her alcoholic stupor.

  Another ten or fifteen minutes passed as Rayne debated his options, glancing through Miranda’s living room while he thought. He felt bad for being nosy, but it was his first time here. She didn’t have much for decoration besides the tables and chairs. No photographs, no books, no music albums. If it weren’t for the furniture, there wouldn’t be much evidence that anybody lived here at all.

  After twenty minutes, Miranda still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. He slipped over to the door and knocked on it.

  “Miranda?” he called. “Is everything all right in there?”

  Nobody answered, but the slight rapping of his knuckles against the door was enough to push it open, as it had not been completely shut. It swung inwards, just a tiny amount, so that Rayne could see a limp, feminine hand hanging against the side of a bathtub.

  “Oh God!” he exclaimed, shoving the door the rest of the way open. She lay collapsed in her tub, some of her hair tangled in the faucet. Her wide open eyes stared at unseen visions above her, and a slight trickle of blood poured from her mouth.

  “Miranda!” He wheeled to her side and looked around. A bottle of pills lay on the ground, empty. “What have you done?!”

  He groped for his phone again, opening it with shaking hands and punching the numbers 9-9-9.

  “Hello? Help me, please, I’ve got a woman here, she’s taken a lot of these pills, she’s collapsed! Oh God, I don’t think she’s breathing!” he babbled into the receiver as soon as the other side picked up. His world turned upside down, nothing made sense right then, only the cold realization that Miranda had done this intentionally. A soothing voice on the other line told him to calm down, but he barely heard her. He blurted out Miranda’s address and flat number, and they told him to wait while they sent an ambulance.

  “Miranda, please hang on! Don’t do this, you don’t have to die! Please!” he begged, hoping she could still hear him. He felt a hand brushing against him, and he picked it up and clasped it between his own. Her mouth moved, her voice a scratched whisper, the last words she could still speak.

  “Remember—you promised—”

  Chapter 14

  The waiting area inside the emergency room was filled with people holding their injuries, waiting to be seen. Rayne sat off to one side away from the throngs of light and noise, oblivious to all of them. He buried his head in his hands, stunned, his own feelings a mystery to him. He didn’t know how to feel right now. Should he cry? Should he be angry? Scared? Should he dare to hope it wasn’t too late? Or should he grieve now?

  An inebriated man holding a bleeding hand, his thumb absent, stumbled into his chair as he lurched past him. He glared down at Rayne, growling out a threat for him to watch it. Rayne glared up at him with full fury, and the other man started and backed away.

  “The Devil’s in those eyes,” he muttered as he disappeared into the crowd of injured.

  “Rayne, there you are.” He looked up to see David weaving through the crowd. “The doctors took her back to pump her stomach. Don’t know anything further. What the hell happened?”

  “She wanted out.” Rayne’s voice choked. “She wanted to end it. I thought she was just drunk, but—”

  “I know it’s been rough for her, losing her son in that accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “What?”

  “She told me about it. How she couldn’t take care of him. There was no ice; she drove off that bridge on purpose. She just wanted it to end.”

  “Oh.” David sat down on the chair, stunned. “She told you that?”

  “If the truth got out, she’d get in trouble. Assuming she didn’t go to jail, she’d still lose her job, and she’d be marked as a mental case. So she hid it and let everyone assume it was an accident. But she was suicidal, and nobody knew. And now it’s too late.”

  “You don’t know that.” David did not look him in the eye.

  A doctor walked out from behind the doors leading further into the hospital. “Mr. Mercer?” he called, looking around.

  Rayne wheeled his chair over. “Yes, that’s me.”

  “You’re the one that came in with Ms. Tomille, correct?”

  “Yes. Is she—”

  “I’m sorry.” The doctor hung his head. “She took an overdose of sedatives with a severely elevated blood alcohol level. She was already unconscious by the time we brought her in, and we lost her shortly after.”

  “No,” Rayne breathed.

  “Ms. Tomille was one of our best nurses, a bright shining star to the patients here. I don’t really know what to say myself, how something like this could have happened.”

  “It’s my fault,” he whispered. “I knew she’d had too much to drink. She wasn’t thinking clearly. I—I should have checked in on her sooner, I should have stopped her from leaving my sight, I should have—I should have—”

  “It’s not your fault, Rayne.” He felt David’s arm on his shoulder, and whipped around in fury to fling it off of him.

  “Don’t you tell me that!” The volume in Rayne’s voice superseded all other sound in the waiting room. A complete hush went over the crowd as they began to stare. Rayne tried to shrink himself down, to hide himself from all those eyes.

  “We’ll have to notify her next of kin,” said the doctor. “For now, the two of you should just go home, there’s nothing more you can do here.”

  “Come on, Rayne.” David pulled at his sleeve. “The car’s waiting outside. I can take care of the arrangements; you just go home and rest. I’ll be here if you need to talk. For now, you should get some sleep.”

  “No!” Rayne screamed, stricken with horror. “I won’t! You can’t make me sleep! I won’t ever again!”

  “Rayne—”

  Rayne’s chilling glare stared right through David. He turned and pushed past waiting patients, looking through them as he rolled to the door.

 
“You’re going to Hell,” he said, pointing at one man with a laceration on his leg. “You too. You’re damned. You’re fine, you’re OK, You? Oh, you are so bloody damned.” His finger moved from person to person as he looked deep within their souls, the dancing colors, the broken melodies, the strange forms that spoke to him of sin. He didn’t care how crazy he looked, as his own soul grieved, mad with despair, cursing his own failure to act before it was too late. Rayne felt his chair tilt as David yanked him out of the emergency room and shoved him into the passenger side of his car. After storing Rayne’s chair in the back seat, he got behind the wheel and drove.

  “What the fucking hell was that?” he demanded. “Have you completely lost your mind? I know you’re upset, but that was uncalled for!”

  “What does it matter, anymore?” Rayne growled. “It’s all over for her. I tried so hard to help her and now she’s gone! And I know. I already know, she is not in a better place!”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because I know. I’ve been there. I go there, every night. I’ve seen the very backside of Hell itself, and so has she! That’s why she killed herself! She couldn’t take the madness anymore, and now she’s trapped there for all eternity!”

  “Rayne, calm down.”

  “Listen to me!” Rayne snatched up David’s collar. “Hell is real! We call it the Abyss! When people are wicked and evil they are sent there to suffer! Ever since the accident I’ve been going there, and I’m not the only one! I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I’ve experienced its walking nightmares! That’s why Miranda lost hope! That’s why she killed herself! She’s the same as me!”

  “All right, clearly you’ve been drinking.” David glared. “You’re not anything like Miranda.”

  “It was one beer.”

  “Look, we’ll talk about it when you’re sober. I know you’re upset, Miranda meant a lot to me, too! I don’t really know what to think right now; I’m still trying to take it all in. It’s hard, I understand that. Please, just settle down.”

  “Fine.” Rayne’s voice choked, and he released David’s shirt. He curled up in his seat to lean against the side of the car.

  They pulled up in front of their building, and David helped Rayne drag himself from the car to his chair. He returned to the car to park it, and caught up with his despondent friend in the hallway outside the elevator.

  “Try to stay calm, you’ll wake Levi,” David hissed. “We can talk about this in the morning, after you’ve gotten some sleep.”

  “Please, please, no, I can’t—”

  “Remember what you said before? You skip a night, you sleep twice as long later. You can’t put it off. And you need to rest; you’re clearly inebriated, and you need time to calm down.”

  “For the last time: one beer. I’m completely sober.”

  “Well, you’re not acting like it.”

  David was right; Rayne already knew that, he just didn’t want to face reality right now. He wove his chair into the flat, and threw off his jacket, leaving it tossed over the back of the couch. He rolled to his bedroom, glaring daggers at his bed. Rain fell outside once again, and he could hear the distant pattering drops outside the window, between the rumbling thunderclaps.

  Without bothering to take off his clothes, he fell down onto the covers, lying there, telling himself he wouldn’t actually fall asleep. He’d just rest, then maybe he wouldn’t be too tired the next day, and he wouldn’t have to return to the Abyss, not in the wake of Miranda’s death. But his soul had other plans, and no sooner had he laid down than the oppressive haze and prickling sensation of his world slipping away took over, and he was helpless to fight it.

  * * *

  Black air surrounded Rayne where he now stood. The ground, the sky, everything had no color at all. The slick, slippery ground sucked his feet in with every step. He could hear the buzzing of insects swarming around him, but he paid them no heed. He stopped in his tracks after a few steps forward, frozen in indecision, unsure of what to do now that he was here in the Abyss. He felt Apolleta’s presence behind him, but did not bother to turn.

  “So, you’re all right,” he heard her say.

  “Of course I’m all right, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, there was that monster. I thought I was done for but I got out of there in time. But, then I realized I’d just left you alone with that thing to die. I thought—”

  “After you vanished, it got bored, and left. It didn’t attack me.” Rayne’s voice lacked feeling.

  “Are you all right? You sound different.”

  Rayne still didn’t turn to face her. “Miranda’s dead.”

  “Miranda? You mean that—wait, what? How do you know that?”

  “Because I was there when she died. She couldn’t take it anymore, so she ended her life.”

  Apolleta moved around him, so they were standing face to face. “You mean, you knew her? I see. No wonder you were always so concerned.”

  He grabbed her by the arms, glaring at her with sudden fury. “Don’t you get it? She’s here now! Forever! She’s damned because she couldn’t find redemption, and she gave up on living!”

  He let go, seeing Apolleta wincing in pain as his icy grip brushed against her blisters.

  “Why am I just sitting here?” he muttered, not to her. “I should find her.”

  “I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’ll help you look for her.”

  “I don’t need help. But, thank you. I appreciate the company.”

  As he reached out with his mind, seeking her soul, he felt another familiar presence here in the Abyss. He understood a choice before him and he hesitated.

  “Wait,” he told Apolleta. “There’s something I need to do first.”

  “A’ight. It’s not like she’s going anywhere.”

  He took her hand and pulled her forward, taking them before a dark castle carved into a mountain with ornate stone, decorated with gargoyle-like beasts who moved with a life of their own, glaring down at the two sudden intruders. Before the gate of this monumental fortress stood a man.

  “Gabriel!” Rayne yelled, dragging Apolleta with him. The addressee turned to look at him. He’d degraded further now, his rotten skin peeling off in places here and there, and very little hair still clung to his head, only scattered patches remained, worming in a stiff breeze. His yellowed eyes were sunken within dark pits, focusing on the two of them with dull, muddy-brown irises. Orange gunk dripped from his tear ducts, running down his face in patterns. Rayne could hear Apolleta gasp beside him, clinging to his arm in sudden horror.

  “You look well,” Gabriel said, glaring. “Lemme guess, you want to be sure I haven’t been blabbing your secrets? You don’t have to worry, I haven’t said a damn thing. It should have been obvious, since your demon friend hasn’t eaten you.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “I’m just doing things my own way. If what I know can help me, then, so be it. What else do you expect me to do? Join your dumb club? You think if we all huddle together as a safe little group, we’ll be just fine and dandy?” He looked between Rayne and Apolleta. “Where’s the other one? That thing. The one that can’t talk?”

  An outraged snarl escaped Rayne’s lips. Gabriel’s smile turned into a frown as a wave of intense hatred radiated past him.

  “What? You really care about that creature?”

  “Gabriel, stop!” Apolleta spoke, as Rayne was far too angry to form words. “Miranda’s dead.”

  “Oh. Is that why you came here? So desperate to replace her already?”

  A frozen fist smashed into Gabriel’s jaw, throwing him backwards.

  “I just wanted to be sure you weren’t up to anything,” Rayne hissed as Gabriel pulled himself up off the ground. “We’ll be going now. I’m going to find her.”

  “It’s a fool’s errand,” he laughed. “You know that.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, hang on. I’ll come with you.”

  “Why?�
��

  Gabriel dusted the dirt off his arms. “Curiosity.”

  Rayne clenched his arm. At least if Gabriel stayed with them, he could watch him. “Fine. Come on.”

  He reached out. Miranda’s aura was faint, distant, and broken. But he could still feel her out there, and he pulled the three of them towards her. They landed high up within a skeletal forest, surrounded on all sides by white trees that scattered the blinding light in a diffused pattern.

  “Kaledris’s forest,” he gasped. Dizziness overtook him, the sense of another being invading his mind, and he clutched at his head with a cry.

  I thought you might come, the feminine voice drifted through his skull. Rayne winced. He glanced around at the waving roots, the rustling branches, the moaning, clattering skeletal forms, sensing her presence everywhere in this world.

  Why so uncomfortable? It’s not really so bad, talking like this, is it?

  He looked over at Apolleta and Gabriel, but neither of them seemed to be aware of Rayne’s current condition. They glanced around the forest, trying to get their bearings.

  Do not worry. I know their thoughts, but they don’t hear me. Only you do. I did tell you though, did I not? That I would not tolerate you bringing others here?

  Rayne focused his thoughts, responding to the goddess with words his two companions could not hear.

  I already know why you’re here, and why you brought them. You will face only disappointment if you continue forward, for she is already a part of my forest. You have my word I will not harm you or your companions this one time, but neither will I protect you from any monsters hiding deep within. You may see your lost one, but then you must go, lest I be tempted to feast on such curious minds.

  The being laughed. Rayne shuddered, sensing her hunger, and malicious desires. They overwhelmed his thoughts, and it became more and more difficult to discern his own emotions from hers. He tried to separate his mind by pushing her thoughts and feelings to the back of his head so he could focus.

  “Come on,” he said to the others. She was near, he could feel her. Many souls walked this forest in wretched misery, similar to her in form, with lengthy limbs and faces devoid of human features. Some were whole, but some were stripped of flesh by unseen beings, revealing white bone beneath.