The Echoed Realm

by A. J. Vrana

  Kai peeked around the corner.

  The unkindness was gone. Rusalka flailed and screeched like a banshee, but she was entirely alone. It was all a goddamn mirage.

  “No shit,” Kai muttered, then rolled off the wall and hurried down the lane. Hopping the chain-link fence, he slid past a wrecked car. The dumpster-lot was ass-up against the swamp, and it would buy him precious time.

  “We need to talk,” said Kai.

  Not here. Shit-for-brains flew on ahead and disappeared into the quagmire.

  Despite his aching leg, Kai was forced into a sprint. “Asshole,” he grimaced.

  The wet earth sloshed beneath Kai’s boots as the raven glided through knitted foliage and skirted around colossal cypress trunks. He could hardly keep up, let alone heed his surroundings. All he registered was the eerie familiarity. With every step, his spine tingled in anticipation of vines coming to life and coiling around his ankles.

  When the cypresses cleared away, Kai skidded to halt, his toes against the shores of the black lake. He saw the islet in the distance with its towering dead elm. Only then did he recognize where they were.

  “Why the hell would you bring me here?” Kai’s demand rang into empty air.

  “Because,” the boy said from behind, his words shadowed by a second voice, rough like sandpaper scraping against glass. “Here, we touch the dreamscape.”

  Kai spun, the thing before him more jarring than the scenery. Gavran was no longer a corpse-child with bloodied teeth. Now a man almost as tall as Kai, his body was woven with wiry muscles and a long, angular face. Glistening black hair peeled back against his scalp, revealing a broad forehead with harsh lines curving over thick brows. Only his eyes remained the same—dark as coal and deep as the cavern they’d been mined from.

  The raven—its edges blurred like dye in water—swooped down and clasped Gavran’s slim shoulder, greeting him with a gentle peck on his drooping ear.

  “It’s the Grey Gnarl,” the two voices coalesced into one.

  Questions stuck in Kai’s throat like a chicken bone. When had they tumbled into the dreamscape? Usually, there was a sign—a change in the air or a sudden drop through the earth. Kai felt nothing.

  Would Miya sense he was gone? How would he get back without her?

  “I can bring you in but not out,” said Gavran.

  “So, I’m the only dingus who can’t go in either direction?”

  “So it seems.” Gavran sighed, then gazed wearily into the swamp. “Ah, her eyes see again.”

  “Rusalka’s free,” Kai swallowed.

  “Speak quickly, wolf. Though I hope you aren’t here to plead for help.” His lips sliced open, carving a smile into his face. “I will not give it.”

  “Then you’re a useless pigeon,” Kai scowled.

  “I am kind enough to grant last requests.” His grin widened, inky pools bubbling with glee.

  “Damn,” Kai choked on a laugh. “Sounds like you want me dead.”

  Gavran scoffed. “The Dreamwalker only suffers because of you and your fragility. Had you been stronger, surer, you never would have been infected.”

  “Cut the shit,” Kai snapped, shame gnawing at the pit of his stomach. Rusalka was closing in, and the borders of his mind dimmed with her miasma. “I’ve only got one favour to ask. Consider it my last request.”

  Gavran pursed his lips, shoulders shuddering as though he could barely contain his contempt. “Speak.”

  Kai clenched his fists to stave off the juddering dread. Eyes hard like ice, he stared down the man Gavran wore as skin.

  “Take me to Abaddon,” he ordered. “I’ve got business with that whimpering bitch.”

  18

  MASON

  “I don’t understand!” Mason called after Ama and Miya, but he was met only by the heavy tavern doors slamming shut.

  He never understood. Not when it mattered.

  “Want another drink?” asked the bartender as she flung the dusting cloth over her shoulder. “You look like you could use one, and frankly, I’ve got a pretty intense itch for some gossip.”

  “Can’t blame you.” Mason slumped his shoulders and dropped into the stool. “Give me the strongest thing you have, Dah—”

  “Call me Crowbar.” She nodded. “And you got it.”

  “Crowbar,” Mason chuckled.

  “That’s right.” She poured something dark and earthy over ice. The bottle was tall and tinted deep brown, with a wide, rotund neck and no label.

  “What’s this?” he asked as she pushed the drink towards him. He picked it up and chanced a whiff, then wrinkled his nose and pulled back.

  “Moonshine.” She grinned proudly. “Made it myself.”

  Mason took a cautious sip before slamming down the glass. His eyes watered as he sucked on his teeth to pull back the burn. “Jesus Christ,” he coughed. “What’s in this?”

  “That,” she leaned over the bar, “is not to be divulged to medical personnel.”

  Mason groaned and plunked his head down. “Please tell me it’s legal.”

  “Probably.”

  “Probably!” He sat up and squinted at her.

  “What?” She shrugged innocently. “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”

  Begrudgingly, he took another gulp. “It’s been a long week.”

  “Yeah?” She pulled up a stool on her side of the bar. “Well, it’s my job to listen to people and give half-baked advice, so I’m all ears. What’s eating you? Something to do with Miya?”

  Mason considered her for a moment. The jet fuel in his tumbler was warming his stomach and melting his brain. Despite that professionalism demanded he practice discretion for his client’s sake, the impulsive detective had surfaced and was fast taking over. Mason had always been a lightweight, but whatever Crowbar had given him was strong enough to put a rugby player under after an extra-large pizza and a bucket of wings.

  “Ok, fine,” he almost slurred, then lifted a finger. “But you can’t tell anyone about this, all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got you, girlfriend. This isn’t high school.” She swatted his hand down. “Don’t wag your sausage claw at me.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m a doctor, you know? I’m used to telling people what to do.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You are so Ivy League, you know that?”

  Mason’s mouth dropped open, his brow creasing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Jesus, man, just tell me the fucking story!”

  “Okay, okay, yeesh,” he whined with an exaggerated huff, then stared into his glass. “Miya’s parents hired me to find her.”

  “So, you’re a doctor and a stalker?”

  “No!” He glared. “She’s been missing for three years! Legally, she’ll be dead next year. I was the last person to see her alive.”

  “What the shit?” Crowbar snapped upright.

  Mason risked another quaff of moonshine. “I knew she was alive. I kept it to myself, tried so damn hard not to think about it. Didn’t tell anyone because I knew she probably didn’t want to be found. But her father,” he shook his head and chuckled quietly, “that son of a bitch. He’s smart. Used my guilt against me, got me to agree to this wild sheep chase. My curiosity didn’t help. Always gets the best of me, so here I am.”

  “If she doesn’t want to see her dad, she shouldn’t have to,” Crowbar said sternly. “She’s a grown-ass woman. She can do what she wants.”

  “I don’t disagree.” Mason drummed his fingers on the counter. “There’s just…so much more to it. So much that’s happened.” He glanced up at her. “Have there been strange things going on here lately? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “It’s backwater Louisiana,” she snorted. “I bet everything that happens here is weird to outsiders.”

  “I’m serious,” he said more urgently. “I’m not here just to look for a missing girl. I’m investigating something bigger. Something bad.”

  Mason saw the colour drain from Crow
bar’s face as her lips ironed out. “Like a strange murder?”

  “Exactly like a strange murder.”

  She took a deep breath. “Well, you’ve come to the right place then.”

  The mark on Mason’s arm began to sizzle. “Will you tell me about it?”

  Her mouth tugged downward as she scrutinized him. “Why?”

  “Because I might be able to help. But I need information. I need to know what happened if I’m to put the pieces together,” he insisted.

  Her caution didn’t crack. She studied him like a jaded stray sniffing a too-easily proffered steak.

  “I’m not here to bother anyone,” he reassured her. “I’m just trying to understand why women are dying. Miya might be in trouble with whatever’s behind all this.”

  Mason glimpsed a chink in the armor as Crowbar’s gaze widened with intrigue. “What do murdered women have to do with Miya?”

  “They’re connected, I know it. But I won’t be able to understand how and why unless I have as much information as possible.”

  Crowbar shifted her weight, her jaw clenching and unclenching as she blinked away tears. She poured herself a shot of moonshine. “Fine,” she said. “For Miya.”

  Mason was compelled to complete silence. He listened as Crowbar explained how her sister, Sydney Baron, was inexplicably murdered by her husband, Vince—a man who was nothing but adoring, devoted, and kind until the last few weeks of Sydney’s life. A man who, upon killing the woman he loved, muttered about being coerced. As far as anyone could tell, he had no motive, but he’d claimed that something had convinced him his wife needed to die.

  “Is he pleading guilty?” Mason wondered if Vince would use the insanity defense.

  “He already did in his own way. The bastard’s dead.” Crowbar fiddled with a bottle opener. “Guards found him on his cell floor. Suicide, apparently, though they have no idea how he managed it.”

  Mason withered in his seat. He knew this pattern. “Cause of death?”

  She shook her head. “The detective who called said the autopsy report’s classified. No fucking clue why. Seems like an excuse to hide their incompetence.”

  Mason’s brain was swimming in a dangerous cocktail of alcohol and awe. Crowbar’s story was almost identical to the case from Cypress Swamp. Returning to Black Hollow and its troubling cycle, Mason was confronted with the same puzzle pieces: a large wooded area known as a spiritual repository, a young female victim mistaken for an imposter, and a perpetrator who kills the person he loves most without explanation.

  “How are you here, working after all this tragedy?” he asked, questions tearing him apart at the seams.

  “It’s all I’ve got,” Crowbar said with a shrug. “I live alone. Not many friends in a town like this. Except Bastien, the chef here. Syd was the only family I had left. Mom and Dad kind of kicked me to the curb after I wasn’t down to pray the gay away. And since my only real friend is in the kitchen, I’ve got nowhere else to go. Besides,” she smiled, “listening to other people’s shit reminds me I’m not alone.”

  Mason had stopped processing her words. His arm was on fire, the mark blistering with newfound fervor. It spread deeper and faster as if feeding off his tryst with revelation.

  Black Hollow, Cypress Swamp, and Orme’s Rest were all junctions in the same web.

  “I-I’m sorry,” Mason stammered, pulling out his wallet as he stood abruptly. “I just remembered I forgot something really—” he could barely speak, his every nerve erupting with agony, “—important.” Hands trembling, Mason fumbled for a twenty, but it slipped through his fingers, floating past the bar and onto the floor next to Crowbar.

  “Hey, doc, you all right?” She rose to follow him, ignoring the bill.

  Mason didn’t answer. He stumbled towards the door, barely squeezing through as he pushed it ajar. The scalding pain didn’t subside even as he threw himself into the light. Tearing at his arm, Mason ripped the buttons free from his cuff and yanked back the sleeve. Breaths drawing shallow, he stared down at the twin moons, the symbols etching deeper into his flesh. A burnt scarlet line cleaved slowly through one of the arcs, then halted its approach, leaving the other crescent unscathed. From somewhere deep within, the servant’s voice rumbled like an impending earthquake.

  Soon, my master, we will be as one.

  19

  Kai

  “Have the magpies snatched your tail?” Gavran’s mouth warped, pointed teeth clipping his bottom lip. “You’ve gone rabid, wolf.”

  “Says the useless pigeon wearing a corpse,” Kai replied, unshaken. “The request stands, Shit-for-brains.”

  Gavran canted his head to the left, then jerked it to the right as he spat on the ground. “You think Abaddon yet lives?”

  Kai betrayed a sliver of a smile. “The cycle was broken. That’s all. I know he’s lurking. I can feel the bastard moping, scratching at the back of my skull.”

  Gavran scrunched up his face like there was something tart on his tongue. “Fine, yes.” He sighed. “The Dreamwalker’s spirit banished him far from Black Hollow. His end was not part of their bargain, and she was not yet strong enough to make it so.” His lips slithered out. “She is far more honourable than I.”

  Before Kai could question him, an ear-piercing shriek shattered the sky and rattled the treetops.

  “You worm,” came Rusalka’s throaty growl as she shambled into the clearing, her shark-eyes ablaze with hatred. The air around her radiated with blighted heat; the grass at her feet writhed and browned, and behind her, a serrated stream of death and decay plagued the ground she’d doddered over.

  Gavran’s head wound a hundred-and-eighty unbearable degrees, his shoulders still squared to Kai. He leered at Rusalka, his bloodied grin impossibly wide. “I eat worms, little fish.”

  Kai detected hesitation in the demon who’d ensnared him in her schemes. She slowed to a stop, her eyes a storm as they darted between the wolf and the raven. Did their shaky alliance compromise her control? Kai looked hopefully to Gavran, who offered only a low, menacing chuckle.

  “Very well,” he said, twisting his head back to where it belonged. “You shall have your wish, wolf. You and the devil can devour each other for all I care.” Clasping his hands behind his back, he strolled towards the Grey Gnarl—a scarecrow against the slate-coloured sky.

  “Don’t you dare go with him,” Rusalka threatened when Kai turned to follow.

  “Ignore her,” Gavran drawled when Kai paused mid-stride.

  “Can’t you kill her now?” Kai fought to keep his back turned to Rusalka, his animal instincts berating him.

  “I cannot!” Gavran barked, then stepped into the black lake. The water didn’t hinder him as he ambled straight through, sinking inch by inch until only his head bobbed between the algae. “You know as well as I that spirits cannot be killed here or there.” He nodded towards the dead elm that separated them from the physical plane. “Only in the place between. Only by the Dreamwalker’s bidding.”

  They were powerless without Miya. Kai glanced over his shoulder to find Rusalka trailing from a safe distance.

  “I see you,” she hissed, teeth bared.

  Kai snarled back. “Good. Then you get to see what comes next.”

  Her flesh peeled from her face as her jaw unhinged, and she released a bone-shattering scream. Wincing, Kai followed Gavran into the water and waded across. The algae scrabbled at his ankles like souls trying to hew their way from the underworld. Maybe there were things in the abysmal lake—dead things that only surfaced when they found someone to grab onto.

  “I told you to ignore her,” Gavran tutted as Kai climbed up onto the island after him. Despite the humidity, the island was bone-dry. Had the elm sucked all the life from it, then withered when it had nothing left to feed on? Maybe Rusalka and the Grey Gnarl echoed one another.

  Kai glimpsed the evil siren slithering through the water. “Let’s go,” he said, and they stepped through the gateway.

  His stomach
nearly flew into his mouth as beaming light seared through his vision. Mercifully, the sensory whirlwind only lasted a moment, and he was able to keep his innards where they belonged.

  They landed on solid ground, and Kai was pleased to find himself still balancing on two legs. The air was tolerable now; the iron stink of sludge and quagmire dissipated into the crisp scent of pine, fresh river water, and old campfires. Up above, thin clouds weaved through the sinking orange dusk. Gavran wound sharply into the shrubs and guttered like an apparition. Swaying spurs hung all around like a thick curtain, obscuring Kai’s line of sight. He knew this place.

  “Where are we going?” Kai brushed aside a low-hanging branch.

  Gavran didn’t respond. His steps were effortless, like he was gliding rather than trudging through terrain paved by endless seasons.

  “S-stop,” came Rusalka’s cry, quiet and far away.

  They moved further into the trees until only an occasional flicker teased through the foliage. The crevice Gavran led them into smelled like fire, ash, and blood.

  They were close.

  The glade was so dim, Kai could barely see three feet in front of him, but he recognized it as though it were part of his own body. Up ahead, he saw the ramshackle paneling of a cabin—his cabin.

  How many nights had its walls sheltered him from the elements? Last time he saw his old home, it was burning to the ground as Black Hollow’s residents frothed like rabid dogs. Yet here it was. The smoke was still fresh, wafting from blackened splinters.

  Every breath felt like sand caught in his throat. He reached out and placed his hand against the door. “How did we get here?”

  His question was met with silence. Gavran was gone.

  “Please,” came Rusalka’s strained voice, “don’t go in. You don’t know the cost of what you seek.”

  Kai dug his fingernails into the charred wood. “If it’ll get rid of you, I don’t give a shit.”

  The door chirred open, and the cabin extended its uncanny invitation. Home beckoned him inside. Kai only hesitated a moment before he stepped over the threshold, and the shadows swallowed him up.