by Robert Essig
For a moment, Dagana was there with Austin in the In Between. She said, “Good luck, fool. I will see you at the crossroads. You will beg for me to alleviate your suffering.”
Dagana grinned as she dissolved back to Earth leaving Austin to his own devices. He had nothing to say to her regarding her certainty that he was going to end up compromised by the In Betweeners and sentinels. He was a survivor, Earth or otherwise.
30
“Why’d you do that?” asked Zack. He and Jenny sat in the car with Baz’s remains wrapped in a blanket in the back seat. “I’m hungry,” he whined.
“He’s going to become a part of our cabal. After the In Between is finished with him he’ll be groveling at my feet and licking my heels. That’s the kind of loyalty I need if I am going to reign.”
Zack sat there, lips pursed. He liked the power they possessed and wanted more. He was loyal. Why didn’t she see that? In his mind, Dagana was a goddess. He wanted nothing more than to be there by her side when the paradigm changed, and he would fight the other sentinels to get there.
“Chops proved himself, don’t you think?” said Jenny.
Zack eyed her curiously wondering if she was testing his response. The look in her eyes and the playful way she pursed her lips caused him to wonder what her intentions were.
“What are you saying?” asked Zack.
“Getting jealous are we?”
“Cut the shit.” Zack was startled at his frankness. “You know I’m loyal. You know I will remain by your side. Chops . . . ” he shook his head. “He’s a beast.”
“Yes. And that’s what we need. He destroyed Baz in a way I never could have done myself. We need more like him.”
Zack liked that she said “we.” He felt that she was seeing him on the same level he saw himself. In fact, it sounded as if she regarded him as a general or commander, some kind of position that was above petty soldiers such as Chops.
“How do we get more like him?”
“We really don’t have time. I think he turned out the way he did because he had been a murderer. His mind was already tormented and foul. The result was his becoming turning him into something exceptionally monstrous. We have to find more people on Earth with similar afflictions.”
“Prisons? Bars? Where will we find them?”
“Not sure. We don’t have time, but every city has plenty to choose from.
“First we need to go to the Black Pit and perform the ritual to send this bag of muck to the next realm. It’s something that you’re going to have to get used to, because we’re going to have to perform this ritual with each of the sentinels before we can claim the In Between as our own.”
31
Austin took to the trail (what appeared to be a trail) in the direction he thought would bring him to the crossroads where Audrey was.
His first interpretation of the land was that though there were so many similarities to that of Earth, it was its own kingdom. The flora was like nothing he’d ever seen before, however there were little similarities that reminded him of pine trees gone mad, or oak trees turned inside out.
As Austin walked, he feared what would be over each hill or around a blind corner. As much as he wanted to get to Audrey, he had a sinking feeling that she would be in terrible shape, and after what he’d seen, anything was possible. Baz had told him that she would suffer for eternity in this land, and Austin was inclined to believe that. In this land, anything could happen.
Another thing he was curious about was time. The weather, as well as the light and darkness of the land, was curious. There was no sun in the sky that he could see, yet there was a heat that seemed to radiate from the ground. The skies resembled a flipside visions of an endless series of volcanoes running with lava. It was hard for him not to stare upward as he walked, and he knew looking anywhere but where he was going was a terrible idea. If the flora was so odd in this land, he could only imagine what the fauna looked like.
Soon enough he began to see insects flying and crawling about. For the most part they left him alone, but there were a particularly stubborn batch of flying bugs that insisted on trying to make his hair their new home. They had transparent red wings, long and slender like a dragonfly, however their bodies were like that of a spider decorated with eerie red swirls that reminded him of black widows, which caused him to fear that the red spirals were signals indicating that it was a poisonous insect. They didn’t bite, not yet at least, but, like gnats, they were obsessed with Austin’s hair and it was maddening.
As Austin walked the scorched sand, his mind began to wander. There seemed to be things all around him in hiding, and as he began not to focus on seeing everything, he realized that they were watching him. Eyes seemed to stare from behind queer looking plants with leaves like peacock feathers and flowers of shimmering gold and silver sprouting from lengthy stalks that resembled rat tales. Eyes followed Austin and he only glimpsed them when he let his mind go. If he thought too hard about what was watching him, he saw nothing.
He walked and his mind wandered, and soon enough he realized that it was wandering so much that it seemed to be slipping out of his head. He could see it floating through the air like a child’s image of a ghost, and somehow he knew without a doubt that the thing slipping from his head like a puff of visible gas was indeed his consciousness.
Within the seeping gaseous thought, he could see his fears and worries, and though they were slipping away, he felt empty. It was a hell of a frightening thing to consider, and as much as he tried, he couldn’t seem to consider much of anything. His head was empty, a mere husk, or perhaps a broken egg with the thought-yolk leaking out.
The eyes within the foliage grew wider, and then something impish emerged with a grin on its trollish face that would have shamed a clown. The two-foot short beast jumped and jumped as Austin walked, but he couldn’t reach the thought-spill that lingered around Austin’s head like an ethereal floating oil slick.
Now, Austin would have been threatened by this little thought-hungry shit, but he was out of his mind and not thinking properly.
A moment later another being emerged, this one decidedly female. She was sleek and demonic with two sets of horns on her head and a series of rings hanging from her ears, nose, eyes lids, cheeks, and even her brow, all of which had metallic blue chains dangling and crisscrossing one another. She came from behind, slinking beside the aloof Austin and walking in unison with him. Her head was within the wafting essence of his mind. She breathed his thoughts in and out like smoke, and then she opened her mouth and sucked in his mind until every bit was out of his head and into her body.
Austin’s body stopped. It felt as if his head was imploding, and then nothing.
The demon-woman’s face became bloated and then she swallowed hard, and that’s when Austin’s mind awoke in another state of being that both shocked and frightened him.
As his mind’s eye opened, he was immersed in blackness punctuated with deep tones of magenta-colored glistening surfaces like wet desert mountains. It was like being surrounded by rotten organs, smokers’ lungs and disease. Everything sounded muffled and liquid as if he was emerged beneath water. In this state, he could remember the things that were of importance in his life, just like he had when his mind was in his own head, but something was seriously wrong.
A feeling of dread and doom encapsulated Austin’s mind, sinking in from all sides and crushing his will like a hydraulic press. Panic assaulted him and he tried to scream, but he was no longer in his own body, therefore his attempt at screaming was futile. His mind was like a trapped gas, building pressure as a sort of internal sense of claustrophobia set in, and before he knew it there was a tremendous sound as an explosion of red blew outward.
The female demon was obliterated and Austin’s mind was freed from her rotten body. He could not see from the creeping gas that was his mind, but he could sense his lifeless body lying on the ground, and so he drifted toward himself and reentered his head through his ears, eyes and m
outh.
When Austin came to, he was lying on the powder soft red sand-trail he’d been walking in search of Audrey. His head hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and the dim light of the In Between felt like hot pokers in his retinas when he opened his eyes. On top of that, there were several painful points on his body. As he sat up, he could feel something chewing on those spots.
They were about the size of large wharf rats, but they looked more like chubby snakes with absurd spindly centipede legs. They nibbled on his body, ripping into his flesh with tiny sets of sharp teeth.
Austin got to his feet and shook the vile beasts off his body. They hung to him with tight-clenched jaws, in some cases only dropping to the ground when the piece of flesh they were latched onto ripped from Austin’s body. He grabbed the final hangers-on and ripped them off. Once on the ground they scurried away like vermin.
It was curious that Austin didn’t feel the wounds, but he chalked it up to the general feel of the In Between. Things were beyond odd and the rules that were applied to Earth were obviously skewed here. Inside was out and upside was down.
He continued his walk. Wandering fingers pressed against the wounds the savage rat-things left on him, probing as if searching for answers. Still no pain, just a tingle that caused him to scratch at the torn flesh unconsciously as he trekked through a mysterious land of a million terrors.
He’d lost his mind just a moment ago, and that was something that wasn’t to be understood by mortals. Madness is an affliction that takes over in part or entirely, often times without warning, and those who are unfortunate enough to be struck with said mental illness do not necessarily know of their state. To have witnessed and experienced the madness of losing his mind was something he would take with him if he made it out of this hell alive. It was something that changed him, but as Austin would learn that there was a lot more about the In Between that was to alter him.
32
Jenny, Zack and Chops drove down the highway for a while before slipping into the In Between where they shed their human facades in favor of the barbarous warriors that they were. They took the car through the realms and Zack was thrilled to see the mystic mangled mass of galloping animal flesh the car had become. They weren’t in the forbidden zone that Dagana tried so much to relegate herself to. The road to the Black Pit was on the main land. They would have to be careful.
“What you must understand, Acronos, is that the In Between is smaller than Earth, yet it spans the entire length of the realm humans live in. You must remember this. Time is not what it is on Earth. Each step walks the span of several Earthly miles. And then again, time is only relative here. In fact, I don’t even think it exists, so don’t rely on it. Here is forever, and there are only a few ways out, one of which is through a ritual that only the sentinels know. I will teach you the ritual.”
Acronos scratched the flesh around several of the small horns on his head then asked, “Like the ritual that was my becoming?”
“Sort of. That ritual ensures you don’t come through the realms like Chops. I intended to create you as close to my image as possible—sentinel-like.”
Acronos nodded.
Ahead, the bumpy road their bizarre mass of fused animals galloped them through, opened up to a large field teaming with patches of what looked like shredded kelp. At the center of the pasture was a stagnant pool of water as black as well-used motor oil. The pool was the size of an Olympic sized swimming pool yet it had a tide all its own that washed the vile liquid over fine sand made of disintegrated bone fragments.
“That’s the place. As I said about time and space here, it is unreliable and absurd. You could be on the other side of Earth and this place is always right around the corner. Until now, I’ve rarely had use for it. You must never forget where this place is. It’s very important.”
The monstrous mobile turned from the well-worn road and galloped toward the black frothing pit of waste where it came to an abrupt stop. The trio slid off the wretched horse-thing and approached the edge of the strange pool. The froth that was collecting with the slight tide looked like bubbles blown in squid ink tinted with blood.
“This is the pool to the Etherworld. No one really knows where it goes, but when someone is deposited here, they never come back.”
Acronos grabbed the bag of Baz’s remains, which slid off the grim horse and fell to the ground with a squishing thump.
“What about the ritual?” asked Acronos.
“Just coming here is ritual. This place is feared by anyone of these lands who isn’t completely twisted and mad. One misstep or loss of footing and you’re off to the Etherworld, and . . . Well, I for one don’t want to know what lies beyond the In Between. I can live here forever just so long as I keep the Etherworld from my fellow sentinels. They would like noting more than to throw me in there.”
Hefting the bloody bag over his shoulder, Acronos strode toward the strange pit, apprehensive of its magnificence and mystery. He feared the pit if only because Dagana herself feared it, and she was the most dangerous and fearless creature of the Earths he’d ever met.
“Hand the remains to me,” said Dagana. “I have to be the one to throw them in.”
Swinging the bag from his shoulder, Acronos extended it to Dagana who took it from him with something close to tenderness, as if she was paying due respect to someone dearly departed. She and Baz had a past, a series of flings fueled by the throes of human emotion, somehow felt between them even in their inhuman forms. It was rare that love existed in the In Between. There was lust, a hell of a lot of lust, most of which resulted in savage rape, particularly at the crossroads where traveling demons bind the females who have wronged them for the purpose of using them as a sort of living whipping post. But Dagana and Baz shared something special and forbidden that they were forced to hide from the others of their tribe for fear of retribution.
Standing at the edge of the black fountain where the miniature breakers crashed over her toes with a numbing effect that hinted at what lay beyond, Dagana hesitated, clutching the body of the only being of the In Between that had ever elicited true loving feelings within her. At that moment, she felt equal parts revulsion and regret. They could have had it all, but Baz wasn’t willing to slaughter their tribe and haul them off to this very site of damnation. He’d been defiant and angered at her confidence and her plans for them to rule the In Between. He’d gone behind her back and turned the tribe against her, and it was only due to her wiles and stealth that she escaped the tribe and fled through the realms to Earth, a place her tribe dare not tread, to recreate her life and begin the planning for their destruction.
She hadn’t intended on beginning her trail of sentinel murder with her former lover, but he had been on her tail and knew better how to find her than any of the others. It made sense that he would be the first. It was better this way. To have Baz out of the picture would only make killing the rest of them that much easier.
Behind Dagana, Acronos waited with a great deal of agitation, but he was smart enough not to complain. Chops had opened his wings and flapped his way upward to perch in one of the queer trees, completely uninterested in the ceremonious disposal of Baz’s body. In many respects Chops was much like a loyal animal, and thus he clenched the slimy branches of the tree and kept a watch out for any pursuing invaders.
Tough, brutal, and unforgiving, Dagana dropped the soiled bag into the depths of the dark pool. It splashed several drops of numbing liquid upon her body sending visions in to her head, perhaps of those who have succumbed to this strange pit of the unknown.
Behind her, Acronos grinned. Dagana remained where she stood, head bowed, and then something extraordinary happened. Neither Dagana nor Acronos expected it when a hand tipped with claws emerged from the black, stagnant water. In the instant before the hand grabbed Dagana’s leg, she recognized it as Baz’s.
He grabbed her and she fell to the ground, caught off guard in the maelstrom of emotion the ritual passing of her ex-lover had put her in. But
he wasn’t finished, and he wasn’t going to be driven away from the In Between so easily.
In a fit, Dagana swung the leg Baz gripped and dug her claws into the ground at the edge of the black pit as he attempted to drag her with him. His head emerged, battered and torn, dripping with the numbing filthy waters.
Acronos leapt for Dagana, grabbing her arms, but Baz was strong and furious and would do whatever it took to pull her in with him. He would pull anyone into the pit of doom as well just to get to her. Acronos began to lose his grip on the soft sand at the edge of the pool, his feet numbing as the moisture absorbed into his flesh like anesthesia.
The tides of the black pool churned angrily and began to swirl like the effect of several children walking a circle in a swimming pool to create a mild whirlpool. One of Baz’s bloodied arms reached for Dagana’s head, but missed and hooked his claws into her chest, digging in and grabbing onto her breast plate with enough force to rip her from Acronos’ grip and pull her into the abyss.
***
Until that moment when Dagana was yanked from his grasp, Acronos had forgotten about fear. He’d been under the misguided impression that he didn’t have any need for fear now that he was god-like and near immortal.
In those fleeting seconds as her body was pulled under, the momentum of his bulk flung toward the pool as she was yanked from his grip, Acronos was afraid. He feared what was beyond the black water; he feared the mysteries even Dagana had no knowledge of; for the first time in his becoming he feared for his life.
