books 1 - 3

by Ella J. Smyth

  She had no idea what to do next. The last two times here, she’d been killed, eaten alive, and then she’d woken up in her bed. But those had been dreams. This time she wasn’t dreaming—she had died in real life. The rules had changed, and since she didn't know them, how could she play?

  A rustling behind her startled her and made up her mind for her. No way was she going to stick around and wait for whatever was coming for her this time. The noise behind her grew louder and drew nearer. No matter where she went, anywhere was better than here. Slowly she jogged down the hill in the direction of the forest in the distance. This was the only thing in the spirit world that was different compared to her dreams, so she might as well head there.

  Eventually she had to slow to a walk. She wasn’t fit and hated jogging. Soon she was bent over, trying to get her breath. Although the noise behind her had stopped, she really didn’t want to wait around, no matter how pleasant the breeze was or how warm the sun felt. The difference from the dreams was startling.

  Before, there’d been a floating quality to the landscape, a shimmery haze that suggested it wasn’t real. But now, walking through the tall grass, it felt as real as if she were back at college. There was nothing particularly otherworldly about the place. The stalks flattened under her sandals, their sharpness pushing through her pants, and the seeds shaken loose as she pushed the grass out of her way tickled her nose.

  Just as she began to wonder if this world had night-and day-cycles, the light dimmed a little. Adi looked up and frowned at dark gray clouds pushing in front of the blinding white ball in the sky. She shivered as the temperature plummeted with every step she took and picked up speed in case the weather broke.

  Rustling and movement in the tall grass came from three directions, herding her towards the black forest. She didn’t have much choice unless she wanted to face the unknown creatures. No way. Not after the way this world enjoyed ripping her body apart. Adi shuddered. She might forget the images for a while, but they were there, always under the surface. It didn’t take much for them to float back up. She really had no choice but to move in whatever direction she was driven towards.

  A trail led straight towards her destination, while behind and to the sides, the tall grasses reminded her of Children of the Corn, a book she’d read a long time ago. It had scared her so much that she’d refused to watch the movie with a boyfriend years later. She hated horror flicks, and the fact that she found herself in the middle of one made her chuckle darkly.

  Lost in thought, she walked as fast as she could while trying to ignore the alarming noises coming closer. She so wasn’t keen on seeing what might be coming for her this time. Somehow she knew she would be safer away from the grass. Question was if she could make it.

  When she looked up again, she was shocked how close she had drawn to the first trees, sentinels of the larger forest. She had covered a distance that should have taken hours in a fraction of the time. So laws of physics didn’t necessarily apply here after all. Good to know. There was something about this place, something that transcended the laws of nature she took for granted in the human world.

  Just as she entered the forest, with its dark, dank smell of rotten leaves and mushrooms, she turned around at a particularly sharp crack of a branch behind her. And for the first time, she got a good look at her pursuers. They weren’t like any animals she’d ever seen. These were true spirit animals, a mix between cats and dogs with intelligent yellow eyes and thin razor-sharp teeth that wouldn’t find it difficult to tear her limb from limb. They weren’t very large, more the size of sheep, but there was nothing harmless about them. And there were so many of them, twenty or more.

  They seemed to hesitate to enter the forest after her, but soon the bravest of the creatures took the first tentative steps into the shadows. When nothing happened to him, he pushed forward, followed by his pack. Adi frantically looked around for shelter, somewhere she could hide, but there was nothing.

  A couple of the trees had branches at chest height. She would probably be able to scale them. With one last glance over her shoulder, she sprinted, surprising the predators and gaining precious split seconds on them. They stood there but quickly got over the surprise of their prey suddenly bolting.

  With piercing howls and threatening growls, the pack threw themselves after Adi, and she knew that she only had a few seconds to make it up a tree or be mauled. She had seen documentaries of wildebeest being torn apart by wild dogs, and she knew what was waiting for her if the creatures got hold of her.

  And this time she wasn't sure if she’d wake up. With eyes widened with panic and her breath whistling, she darted to the next tree, jumped as high as she could and managed to lever herself onto a branch. The first of the doglike beasts had already reached the tree, and the largest of them jumped up, slobber flying off its fangs.

  Adi tried to pull herself higher, but the thing caught her foot just as she was pulling it out of reach. She felt the pain of teeth cutting into her ankle and bouncing off the bone before the creature fell off again. That answered that question. She could obviously be hurt, and when she pulled her injured leg up onto the branch, she was bleeding profusely. So injuries in this world stuck, check.

  She watched with a strange sense of detachment as the pack below licked at the blood dripping down the bark. It made them even more determined to reach her and finish the job. Holding on tightly to the trunk of the tree, she managed to stand up on the supporting branch and climb a few feet higher. Then she stopped and looked down. Inhaling sharply, she closed her eyes as her head swam. For a second she’d forgotten that she suffered from vertigo. But then, it wasn’t like she had a choice here. Either vertigo or death, she thought bitterly.

  More snarling from below made her look again. The animals were jumping onto each other’s backs, trying to claw their way up to her. They didn’t get very far and soon settled down, waiting. She was so screwed. Her foot hurt like crazy, and she avoided moving it. She touched the bite wound with her fingertips and hissed. That burned like crap. It was still bleeding and the incisions looked dirty. God knew what germs those frigging things carried in their mouths. Adi had read somewhere that human bites were the most dangerous because of bacterial infections, closely followed by cats and dogs. If she didn’t get out of this tree, she wouldn’t have to worry about that.

  Adi made herself as comfortable as she could, her back pressed against the rough bark. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the snarling and chattering of the creatures below the tree. Once in a while, one of the animals got up and circled the tree, as if trying to look for a way up. Every time she moved, yellow eyes were trained on her, just waiting for her to slip and fall.

  Adi looked outside the forest, at the sunshine hitting the tall grass in bright swathes. The clouds had moved on, and she longingly imagined herself lying in the grass, soaking up the heat through her skin. In amongst the trees, the light was dim like twilight, and she knew that she couldn't wait here forever. The shoe on her injured foot was ruined, the fabric soaked with blood. She doubted whether she could put her weight on the foot. The injury was quite severe, and now her ankle was swelling.

  After what seemed like hours, Adi’s skin rose in tiny goose bumps, and she rubbed her arms vigorously in an effort to stay warm. The temperature in the woods had dropped markedly. There was a shift in atmosphere as well. Despite the dangers outside the forest, it had seemed the most perfect summer’s day, with rolling hills, tall grasses and warm breezes. Now the air smelled like snow.

  As she watched, shadows of trees grew ominously and stretched out onto the rolling hills outside. The colors changed from pleasant summer greens to stark blacks and winter grays. At this rate, Adi wasn't going to survive the night. She would either freeze to death or fall and be eaten alive.

  Dammit, every bone in her body hurt! The branch was hard, her butt ached from sitting motionless for so long, her back twinged, and her foot had not stopped burning. Now that she had gotten over her shock
, and the adrenaline levels had come down, she had entered states of helplessness and desperation, and come out the other end pissed.

  She was cold, in constant danger of slipping off, and her mood dropped even lower. With a snarl, she pulled branches off the tree and threw them at the disgusting creatures below her. It gave her great satisfaction when she hit one of the boldest ones on the nose and earned a yip.

  To top it all, she was exhausted. Apparently first dying, then sprinting up a tree took it out of her. She pulled her cardigan as tightly around her as she possibly could. It was cold, and she was sick of taunting the animals. It wasn’t like she could drive them off. So she decided to close her eyes and rest a little bit. Surely it couldn’t get worse than it already was.

  Honi barely paid attention to his surroundings as he walked home. His eyes straight ahead, staring into nothing, he walked as fast as he could without actually running. He had to get to the spirit world and stay there for as long as it took. There was really only one way of doing this. He had to somehow get his hands on sleeping tablets that would knock him out for a longer than a few hours. Well, this was a college campus—it shouldn’t be too hard to get his hand on some prescription drugs.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and wrinkled his nose at the smears of blood on the display. He spat on it and wiped the phone on his pants. There were still bits of red stuck in the little gaps around the screen, but he didn’t have the means to clean it properly until he got back to his room. As long as the phone still worked okay, it could wait.

  Honi dialed Jerry’s number. Jerry knew everybody and had come close to being expelled a few times. He was like Teflon. Nothing ever stuck. He was a fixer—if he couldn’t get something, he knew who could. The call was answered within two rings.

  “Hey man, how’s it hanging?” Honi rolled his eyes. Jerry always sounded like he was still stuck in high school rather than only weeks away from his graduation.

  “Hey Jer, got a favor to ask you. I’m really stressed out with exam prep. Can you get me something to make me sleep better?”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Sure. I could get you some Ambien. But you know that any doctor would prescribe it for you, right?”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m so busy though. I just can’t fit in an appointment. How much could you get me?”

  “As much as you need. Just to warn you—it won’t be cheap.”

  When Jerry knocked on the door, Honi was ready. The young man in front of him smiled like they were the best of pals and pushed his way into the room. Once the door was closed, he spun around and pulled a plastic bag full of pills out of his pocket.

  “Okay, here they are. Each tablet contains ten milligrams, and three are enough to knock you out for the night. If you wanna party, just add some alcohol into the mix. A friend of mine got so high off it, we were laughing our asses off.” He grinned at the memory. “There are twenty tablets in here,” he said, waving the bag. “How many do you need? They’re five dollars each.”

  Honi gulped. Holy crap, that was a lot of money, and he had no idea how many pills he needed. When he looked at Jerry, the young man rolled his eyes and thought for a moment. Then he said, “Look man, I’ll make you a special deal. This is my last batch and I’ve had it for a while. It’s not exactly a party drug, if you know what I mean. If you take the lot, I’ll charge you half.”

  Honi had no idea if he’d need the tablets in the future, but if so, it’d be nice to have them available. Might as well get them while they were on offer. He quickly calculated the total and handed over the money.

  After Jerry had left the room, Honi sat on his bed and stared at the plastic bag. This was it. Once he took the pills, there was no going back. Honi had never taken drugs before, and the thought made his stomach curdle. What would happen? Would he simply fall asleep? Or would he have weird hallucinations like Jerry had hinted at?

  His thoughts jumped to Adi. She had been so pale in his arms, it had broken him to think she had died right there. Like his soul had been ripped out of his body. He tried to imagine a world without Adi in it and it made him physically sick.

  He didn’t know what to expect in the spirit world. Now he felt nauseous for a different reason. Every time he had visited in his dreams or during meditation, it had been a pleasant experience. He had always felt calm and protected, his wolf by his side. When he’d met Adi, she had drawn him into her nightmares. It hadn’t been her fault, but he now knew that he wouldn’t only find nice things in the other world. He could easily be pulled into a torrent of blood and terror.

  He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. Come on, come on, he wasn’t a teenager, he was a grown man. The unknown was always scary, and he wasn’t doing it for himself, he was doing it for Adi. Another few breaths and he was okay again. His mind made up, he went to his bookshelf and retrieved a bottle of scotch that his father had given him when he turned twenty-one. There was still three quarters of the bottle left.

  Wasn’t he a Boy Scout, he thought dryly. He didn’t drink, he didn’t take drugs—all he did was keep his head down and study. Maybe it was time to do something different. Maybe some Dutch courage would carry over into the spirit world. He got a tall water glass and poured two fingers of the amber liquid into it. When he downed the alcohol in one gulp, he grimaced and pounded his chest. He could feel the heat go down his throat and hit his stomach.

  He sat down again with his bottle and glass, and waited for the burn to dissipate. The taste wasn’t great, but he liked the feeling of heat following the burning slide down his throat. What the hell, he thought and poured himself another shot. By the third glass, he knew he was doing the right thing. All doubts had left his mind, and if anything, he was raring to go.

  He had read somewhere that sleeping tablets tasted gross, and he probably wouldn’t be able to swallow them all in one go. He rolled a pill between his fingers and thought hard. How about grinding them up and mixing the powder with whiskey? He could down the lot quickly, rinse his mouth and wait for the drug to take effect.

  There was something in the back of his mind about how many tablets to take, but he couldn’t remember exactly what Jerry had told him. But then Ambien wasn’t like one of those really heavy-duty sleeping tablets that people overdosed on, right? And Jerry had said to take it with alcohol because it would be more fun, or something like that.

  Honi grabbed the bag of pills and poured them into a cereal bowl. He mashed them up with a knife and ground them into powder with the top of the closed whiskey bottle. He loved the way the liquid sloshed around, and he giggled a little. He felt great, all warm and happy. Honi filled his glass for a fourth time, this time more than half. There was a lot of the white powder, and when he had dipped a wet index finger into it to taste, his mouth had puckered up at the bitterness. This stuff was gross, so he’d need a lot of liquid.

  Honi thought for a moment, then got up to get a second glass. He filled that one up as well and was overcome by his cleverness. This way he wouldn’t waste any time while refilling the old glass because he had a second one ready to chase down the disgusting powder. Now all he needed to do was go to the bathroom and get comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt under his covers. Wouldn’t want to get cold while lying immobile for who knew how many hours. He felt the occasional giggle rise up, and finding his way to the bathroom was hilarious. His shoulder hit off the hallway wall, and with some detachment, he knew he was well on his way to getting sloshed.

  Safely back in his room, he carefully poured the chalky substance into his glass and stirred vigorously. Some of the liquid spilled over the top, and he frowned at the waste of alcohol. Then he shrugged, brought the glass to his lips and gulped down the whole mess.

  What the hell! He sat up and bent over with a pained grimace. That. Was. Disgusting. And there was still some of the goo in the glass and stuck to the back of his teeth. Congratulating himself for his forethought, he grabbed the second glass and rinsed his mouth. The combination of the gross taste and h
is head swimming made him feel nauseous. With a groan, he fell back onto his pillow and begged the room to stop spinning. When he called for his wolf, there was no reply.

  It didn’t take very long for the grogginess to set in. The colors around him were dimming, his eyelids blinking slower and slower. This was it. When the phone rang, Honi blindly fumbled for it and found it next to his pillow. “Hello?” he croaked.

  “Honi? Did I wake you? Are you asleep in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “John?” The phone slipped a little in his weak hand, and he had to concentrate to hold on to it.

  “Honi? Can you hear me? You sound weird, are you okay?” Honi was struggling hard to make sense of his words. What did John want? Didn’t he know that Honi was on his way to help Adi?

  He slurred, “‘M savin’ Adi, sl’pn’ pills,” and felt the phone glide out of his hand and drop onto the floor next to his bed.

  The last thing he heard was John’s calls of “Honi? Honi?” before the world disappeared.

  Adi woke up when something hit her face. She flailed for a moment and barely managed to catch herself before she fell off her perch. The pack of predators below her had moved on. She had no idea how long she’d slept, but the sun had set completely and it was dark in the woods. The moon threw the trees into long reliefs, and its silvery light made the place look magical.

  Something had woken her, and her eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness around her. She opened them wide and looked around to make out what had woken her up. Before she could see what it was, something hit her in the face again. This time she saw movement, a small shape heading her way at great speed.