“What happened? Why are you all bloody?”
‘I’ve asked you to stay away from asking me these things, Henry,” she warned. “Can you do that? I’d rather not have…Just don’t, all right?” Her voice had gone wobbly there, less sure of itself, something that was happening more and more as they went along on their path. He noted it, but said nothing.
He waited for her to finish in the same silence, his ears taking in the subtle sound of dripping water and creaking joints as she moved, and then the two of them set out again. Silence permeated the forest as thickly as the humidity, the weight of it falling heavily on the two travelers as they walked. Quiet and thought seemed to have become the tone of the day, but then there was so much to be considered.
The strangeness of the night stayed with Henry, drawing his mind from the dark forest on either side of him and into consideration of both the spirits and the monster he had found on Abby’s bedding. The thought of these things did little to soothe his nerves. Heavy ground fog swept over his feet, smoothing over everything; this place seemed to be cooler but the recent heat had driven up moisture as it followed them there. A chill humidity clung to his skin as morning moved forward, a choking sultry thing to walk through, live in. It was better than the direct sunlight of the day before, but Henry didn’t like the odds that things would be very complex if anything should happen to hide itself in this. It seemed nothing could really be taken for granted while he was here, not even the weather.
Abby’s secrets seemed to grow in scope and depth as he moved on. He wasn’t sure how to interpret what the evening before, and the early morning, had given him to mull over. The stark surrealism that was the genuine reality of this place was a dominating force, pulling the mind to an unstable acceptance of what it took in and a hundred different fears that kept it firing away at all times, ready to be attacked.
Henry also seemed to pull further and further from his former self as the days and miles wore on, becoming a different person entirely. The shock of this metamorphosis was sharp, the need for such rapid growth and change pulling him through a thousand different thoughts and feelings, the bulk of his physique dwindling as he became another person in body as well as mind. It seemed Abby’s world was at least equally good for him as much as it was a major source of potential harm and loss. His breaths were slow and labored in this tropic climate, the smooth movement of his arms a focus for his thoughts as his eyes took in this world. He found a rhythm, a stride that suited him as much as the environment and it occupied his mind often as he grew more used to the activity and limited interaction of this place.
Of course, it wasn’t just his body and mind that had grown more in tune with the environment, some other part of himself also clicked with what he found, a meditative focus he hadn’t held in any way before. Abby walked in front of him, hips moving in a decadent sway. His vision focused on her, making the movement more slow and languorous. Initially he assumed that this was this meditative state in action, but things were starting to fall into a less certain pattern, his mind losing focus in a way that also seemed to pull on his body. A dragging feeling came over him as he pulled himself forward, left foot then the right, a humid weight on his body; his mind slipped into a pool of nothing. Thoughts became impossible, pushed at a slow pace through him, barely perceived over the weight of movement as his mind seemed to drift into its focus on Abby.
Slow languorous sway of hip, arc of moving arms at their sides, cool sweep of moving hair and face, a graceful moment in an empty mind, choked with a lustful appreciation that was not entirely his own. He was uncertain, thrown by a perceived presence, a cloying sense of invasion with true weight. Henry shook his head and started to kneel in the road; the motion like slow molasses and it seemed as if it took eons for his body to reach the ground.
Abby turned, a complex rhythm of movement. She said his name and moved to his side, catching him as he fell. Laughter bubbled from his mind and out of his mouth, tears bled from his eyes and when they inevitably slipped onto his lips the taste was of salt and copper. Blood tears and laughter echoed in his head as his body seemed to come loose from his mind.
He heard a wail in a distant place as darkness surrounded him, pulled thickly over his eyes. Mournful sounds came from her mouth as he fell farther and farther into himself.
A dreamlike edge lingered in his vision when he awoke and soon he found that Abby lay beside him, adding still more strangeness to the sensation. It was night, a cool and distant thing full of stars and moonlight. Fire lent a yellow glow to everything, deep green-blue foliage in the woods stirring a little with the soft breeze. Abby was asleep, peace, a rare expression, on her face. He touched her arm and she stirred, her eyes slits in her face, her mouth pursed in repose.
“Are you all right?” she asked and he nodded, then shrugged, uncertain.
He remembered his fall, blood tears and laughter, but didn’t see them as real somehow. His mind still floated, distantly hazy in his own head.
She looked deep into his eyes, searching for something. “Is he gone?”
“Who?”
“The presence that you felt. The one that hurt you.” Her eyes were so clear, she knew what she was talking about but didn’t want to have to say more than she needed to even now.
“Yes, but I-” It was hard to put into words, the feeling was strange and it took his thoughts with it.
“Can’t think, feel off?” Yes, she knew what he felt, clearly it had happened to her before and in a distant way he wondered how and why.
“Yes.” He managed to get that much out.
“A side effect,” she said as she let her eyes fall from his, judging that Henry was right, that the other was gone even if the effect was not.
“What happened?”
She looked up at his eyes for a moment, meeting them, and then turned to her hands, looking through them and into her thoughts. “He’s trying you.”
“What? Who?”
“Jared, he wants to dabble with your mind, with you, to see if he can.”
“How, why, and who? You have me at a bit of a loss here.”
“He’s…he was a man. He will do whatever he likes because he can, and because he wants to. Jared isn’t like anyone else and he has few limits, even now.” Her eyes were still distant, lost in her head chasing memories and thoughts he had no access to for now.
“I don’t understand.”
She looked at him, studying his face for a moment. She’d relaxed some of her walls, but they weren’t all gone. Not by a long shot. “Neither do I, so I guess we’re even.” She smiled a little with her lips, a humorless thing colored by the past.
“How much longer will it be until I can go home?” It was a valid question, things were looking stranger and stranger as they went and he’d started to wonder if he would ever get where they were going.
She doesn’t look up, lost in thought. “A while longer yet.”
Vague, but not without hope, he supposed.
Then Henry faded into dreams again; he didn’t have time to speak, it came without warning and swept him along like a river.
He dreamed. First there was a choked vision of Abby thrusting on top of him. A theft of energy both mind and body, feral and mad as it had been that night. Thunder and agony surrounded them, a rush of madness and fog on a forest thick and blue. Dead men and women called out, demanded audience, required penance, as an animalistic shadow writhed in the distance. This was the dance of Abby to bestial monster, back and forth, in and out, and over and over again in turns.
A flurry of images joined these others, cannibalistic corpses in a mass, a small girl with long dark pigtails, Alex with his eyes intact, screams, crying, more screams, blood, agony, blood, agony and visceral growling noises. Then there was torn flesh and monsters on a shadowy field with air that reeked of strangeness. Destruction on a battleground covered in the dead and dying, their cries as thick as the air. Then the dance of transformation returned, Abby, feral one, Abby, a torn bod
y before him, devoured. The girl with her long pigtails, a blue dress, and blue fire eyes in an empty and barren skull, she was swinging, a haunted thing that carried such sadness and regret. Madness squirming in his head like snakes, a madness thick with the weight of guilt and the passing of so many events that carried new horror and loss.
Finally there was a dark thing, a revenant in a chair, a smiling man with teeth bared in feral glee, embracing him. And all after that was darkness pulsing into deeper darkness until there was nothing to define anything at all.
Abby, what are you? Who are you? What have you done?
***
A gossamer strand of spider web drifted in the field of her vision. Silence blanketed everything in a cool evening. She laid beside Henry and put a palm to his forehead, felt for the temperature of his fever, finding it warm and stable, not much changed since her last check.
Jared loomed in her thoughts. He was a darkness that lived inside her and she wanted to escape him. She wanted to be separate from all that he was and what he created inside of her, but he had power over her she’d yet to truly escape. So she traveled this place, trying to stop the flow of darkness and death in what little of the world she had saved. She considered Henry’s sleeping form, uncertain, and then she stood, walking out into the surrounding forest.
Jared wouldn’t harm him. Henry was hers in some unnamable way and she knew his need for protection instinctually. Abby had long ago become other. She scanned the woods, breathed, sensed a weighty presence in the night, but not where, and what it was.
You are mine, Abby. I chose your movements, your wills. I know your mind, your wants, and I make them happen. Obey me!
I am my own. He is mine. Leave me!
A dim sound of laughter murmured into the night, followed by a sound of indrawn breath behind her. It was Henry reacting to some shock in his fever dream. She ran to him and fell, bitter, at his side, unable to touch him but craving it just the same.
***
Henry choked on the ether of dream, drinking in the surreal imagery that flashed, crashing like waves, through his mind. Images were a tangle of meanings and portents he could neither decipher nor completely retain. He swallowed, a clicking noise deep in his throat, and let all of this roar through him, craving knowledge and willing its cessation in the same moment. He was a receiver and couldn’t control what he perceived, only capture it in brief flashes and spurts. Henry gibbered in this dream state, unaware of anything that might occur around him.
Through his mind passed all of the answers he could wish for, but he couldn’t understand them or retain the images thrown against his will into a nightmarish montage of horror. He choked on the weight, willed it from his mind as uselessly as he willed for his return to his own world, his own reality.
There was a force beyond him, a dark and somehow beseeching thing which called to him, brought these images meaning for the pleasure of taunting his curious mind by drowning it in the important information it sought. He knew, knew that it all had some connection to Abby, and felt the cool of her personality somehow affecting this being as deeply as it affected her. These two were entwined, bonded by some far-reaching thing he couldn’t comprehend.
It was a secret thing, this bond, a wholly unwanted and ceaseless thing as horrifying as the entity itself. It made Abby sick, broke her, bonding her to this world in the same way it ripped her away from it.
Knowing only these things, and these things only, he thrust through the torrent of information and through to consciousness with the sheer force of his will. Though he didn’t wake completely, he sensed the world around him, pulled it into his senses with every breath and settled into true sleep.
***
Alone at Henry’s side, Abby fell over his body, drew his heat into her cool flesh. Sensing a bond she regretted, she nevertheless allowed herself to acknowledge it as she wept softly against his chest, an act she hadn’t given herself since last she’d made love to Alex, having left him before dawn had come.
She craved solitude, but knew it had yet again eluded her, that another would likely fall prey to Jared’s revenge, to Jared’s game.
She believed that in the morning she would be able to pretend arrogance and indifference, that pulling what she could of her mask together would stop this from happening. It was a fool’s game, she knew better, but she chose to deny it before her mind could recall all that was lost in trade for what little of herself remained. Demanded she not forget it was also true she had kept those she loved, those who trusted and were trusted by her.
Abby was a sea of guilt and pain armored in the indifference of a passing wanderer, an armor that neither protects within nor without, but which, for Abby, was easy to believe in all the same.
When Henry opened his eyes, it was to see Abby gathering her things. He didn’t utter a word, instead following suit and heading out on the road after her.
Chapter Eleven:
Communication Breakdown
By afternoon the sun bore down on them through the trees, brought out heavy shadow in the deeper woods and made mirrored shimmers where it touched water or Abby’s sword. Though it was nearly as hot as all these other days of walking, Henry felt comfortable, relished the weather as they traveled; the sound of birds rose every now and then and came through the trees almost as if he were at the cabin he and Rachel had meant to visit.
His thoughts returned to his wife and he nodded to himself sadly, wished he had known more then, that he had been able to stop her pain. Regret choked him in this moment of peace and he frowned, stopping for a moment, suddenly not certain about anything that had occurred over the last weeks, knowing how wrong it all seemed. He shook his head and moved on a few moments later, having decided there was no way to change it, that he could only move forward into whatever future there was ahead of him.
All the same, there were still things that hung on in his mind, answers that he felt compelled to find, especially in the wake of that wall of imagery and emotion that had swallowed him up after the attack, whatever it was. He thought of Abby’s backpack again and found his eyes on it as he pondered the mystery he allowed to pull him this far. Do I really need to know? After the time that’s passed do I still mean to steal this woman’s secrets from her? He knew his answer without much thought, of course he did, of course it still mattered. With some regret, he nodded his head in answer to his own question. He knew the truth behind whatever attraction he held for her, that it still seemed very separate from his need to understand, to feel he could survive in this alien place. Maybe I haven’t changed all that much, after all, he sighed.
He wanted her, but it was something more than just the physical too. He wanted to reach to her core and pull away her heavily guarded treasure, her secrets, and all of her unspoken words, to own them. He swallowed and closed his eyes, took a deep breath, appreciated the damp heat of the air as it came into his lungs, the succulent smell of the fertile earth and the plants, and the secret heavy smell beneath them all, something heavy and close. He knew that he had bonded to this world, given much to become one of its denizens so that he might prise away the mysteries of this woman with whom he traveled. He asked himself if this bothered him, having become the man he now was, and knew that it didn’t. All life in this place thrived on some bare need to seek things out, to gain some unknown purpose in survival, in life itself without ever really knowing it. He at least knew what he sought, what he craved. Danger pervaded this particular urge, but he was beyond caring what landed in his way, he wanted it too badly. His lack of concern scared him, but also seemed beyond his thoughts somehow.
After this was over, once he knew what he needed to know, he would make it up to his daughter.
***
They reached another village at midday, the swelter of the day heady and drowning. Women came from the tents and gave them water, then led them to the center of the village where Henry could only assume the leader resided. Now what?
A boy no older than twenty sat by the f
ire inside his tent, his eyes heavy with liquid in a face full of pain. “She’s gone,” he said in a gasp of sorrow to those in the small space of the tent. “I’ve got no more reason to stay.”
Abby sat by the young man and gestured for Henry to join her.
“What’s happened?”
The boy looked at her and tears fell down his cheeks, the lines of previous tears cutting redness into his skin. “She never-she never wanted things to change. She wanted to keep the world the way it was. Wanted it so badly, and I…I did what I could- we fought-we helped you, you made her believe again, made all of us believe, and she…” He looked back into the fire, lost in his sorrow, pain marring his features in the dimly lit tent.
“She what? Tell me.” Abby tried to meet his eyes, but he glared at her, squeezed them shut, anger and the torture of grief made his teeth clench.
“Why did you have to come? Why did you have to take so much from us? Haven’t you done enough? What more do you want? She’s gone. After…after she went away she…all this time and she never spoke a word! I lost her that day! You let her believe! How could you let her believe? She didn’t die, but she…I never got her back, you bitch! I never got to show her…Just take what you want and leave! I can’t stand you anymore! I hate you! I want her back and I can’t have it! How could you let us believe?”
He stood, threw himself at her, and shook her, her tight ponytail falling down as he scratched her face and spit on her, crawling away before Henry stood to stop it. Abby was shocked, but knowing what he felt, gestured for Henry to leave him alone. Once again the boy had begun to stare into the fire; wept as if he were utterly lost in the world. She stood and pulled Henry from the tent, guilt bearing heavily on her features as she straightened her hair and rushed away toward another young man nearby.
“What happened to him?”
“It’s Erin,” the boy said, voice hollow and strained. “She died in the night a few days ago. She was pregnant and-”
Other Dangers: Slipped Through Page 11
