Jesus, I’m sorry, Rach. I’m sorry for everything. I should have realized…and your body-I should have destroyed it…released you. I owe you that much, for all the love you gave and never got back. Sighing, he put his grief as far from his thoughts as he could.
He looked behind him, at Abby on her makeshift stretcher, looking at the cuts on her now clothed body and the nearly motionless breaths she took in, unconsciousness. As he looked he felt warmth on his body, the sort of feeling that comes from being watched very closely by someone else.
When he turned to see who it was, he was not surprised to see Pereneaux’s blank sockets settled on him. He moved his attention back to the gathered women in front of him. Most of them were reasonably strong despite their torture in the camp, clothed in tattered shirts or other rags they’d found, though some were bare or very near it. His feelings about that were complex. It didn’t make him uncomfortable in a sexual way, as it might have in other circumstances, and yet pity didn’t seem to fit with this sight either. If anything they seemed to wear what clothes that remained to them like a badge of honor, what nudity showed through received little notice. In a very real way these women were a subdued band of Amazons returning home after a raid, marked by their battle, changed in some ways, but never broken.
If indeed Abby had intended to go to Benjamin’s encampment, and her estimations had been right, they should be arriving at the healer’s village late this evening or early the next morning. Hoping to reach it sooner rather than later, Henry increased his pace, concentrating on the road ahead and little else. He felt his mind fade into a waking doze as he moved and welcomed the numbness.
***
What seemed like a moment later, he felt a hand on his shoulder; it was Pereneaux. Distantly, he felt his own hand rub at his neck, and then the pain pushed all numbness from his thoughts as he collapsed to the ground in a tangled heap of agony. After minutes that felt like hours, his hearing returned, and with it, control of his body, the convulsions caused by several muscle groups slipping into simultaneous cramps and spasms having had their way with him. His muscles relaxed slowly, allowing him to carefully stretch out of the ball of pain he had been.
“Did you hear me before?” Pereneaux asked.
“No.” Henry gasped. “The cramps, they took my concentration.” He looked around, his attention snapping to the dark color of the sky and the cooler temperature of the air. It was deep into the night and they had reached the Healer’s village.
“I said that you could stop. We’ve reached the village, and it’s time that you rested. You’ve set an exhausting pace, Henry. She’s been seen to and she will recover. I’m only sorry that your wife couldn’t get the same help.” Letting the words fall into his ears and into his mind, his eyes drifted closed, exhaustion overtaking him before he could get up from the ground where he’d fallen.
Chapter Four:
Freedom Deep
When he awoke, he found himself looking into another set of eyes. The considerably sized man that stood over him calmly moved back and let him sit up.
“I hope you’re feeling better. I wouldn’t suggest you do such strenuous walking, most especially at your weight. After all,” he said patting his own large belly. “We can hardly expect to handle such exercise without having trained for it a bit first.” His smile was genial and his voice was pleasing enough, throaty and vibrating in his large body as he spoke. He must be Benjamin, the healer Pereneaux spoke about.
“Abby was injured, we didn’t know what would happen to her, and I just wanted to be somewhere other than the road. I owe her anyway; she tried to save Rachel and me from this place…to get us back to where we were from. Are you the ah-?”
The man gave him a wry smile, the shine in his eyes seeming to wink back and forth between them as he looked at Henry. “Do you mean to ask if I’m the Healer they told you about?”
Henry nodded, a bit mystified by the situation, feeling more than a little awkward.
“Yes, I am, and I’m not ashamed to go by that title, though most people call me Benjamin.” He smiled again, amused by it all. “Alex had a word or two with me about you, you know. Explained how you came to be here, and about Abby too. Not to be too brash, but for a man that’s just lost his wife you seem fairly stable. As a result, I think I should ask: was it shock or was it already a foregone conclusion?” The quirk of his brows seemed to hint at the same sort of discussion he’d already had with Pereneaux.
“What are you saying? Are you implying something?” Henry didn’t appreciate there being any untoward allegations and he felt a little bit of the indignation that he’d felt when all of this had started coming back.
The Healer, Benjamin, kept his wry look, his eyes drifting back and forth over Henry’s face for a moment. “I imagine that you’re a little infatuated by now, she’s the kind of woman that does that very quickly. Personally, I think it’s the sense of danger, the feeling that being with her might be much like being with a feral tiger.” The smile never left his face; even the brows lingered in amusement, though the eyes themselves were a bit clouded by memory and a soft sort of warning that matched what Pereneaux had said. Benjamin was a quick study; he could pick up on a lot about a person without much information. He just knew what he was looking at and wasn’t afraid to confront it.
“I don’t-” Henry stammered, not sure what he could say to any of it.
“Yes, you do, it’s obvious now, Henry. Did you ever really love your wife? Even in the beginning, when you were lovers and youth tangled thoughts of the future with the illusory dreams of childhood?” He was not being deliberately cruel, his words were flavored with that same humor he’d begun the conversation with; a sort of fatherly curiosity perhaps.
Henry’s thoughts spun through his mind as he considered the Healer’s words, not terribly certain why it was that he was being called to task. “I, ah-I-”
“Yes, or no, Henry, it’s as simple as yes or no.” His voice was patient, even if the words weren’t.
Henry paused, thinking about everything that had happened these last few days, trying to decode for himself if the man could be right. The truth was that there really wasn’t an answer to the question right now. Rachel’s death was very close in many ways, and the shock had yet to wear off. It couldn’t be that he was that callous, could it? Did the Healer really have a right to ask him this? He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, considering the way he’d thought about things when they’d first gotten together, especially considering these last few months before the accident.
“No, not in the way I would like to have. I wanted her back then. She was gorgeous, all golden curves and coppery brown hair. She was a junior and I was a freshman at college, so the chase was hard and well worth it once I’d gotten to know her. Really it was a matter of-well, she…we got pregnant toward the end of the semester.”
“So you married her for the baby?” The healer’s voice was equal parts admonishing and satisfied. He knew the story well enough, even if he felt it was a foolish reason for such things.
“It was what you did. I didn’t want to leave her with a baby and be like most of those guys in college, but I resented it a little too. I didn’t want to be married before I’d had time to really get myself together. I was a freshman, I hadn’t really had time to figure out what I wanted out of life, much less if I even wanted children. It was a mess, and things were bad for a long time. I was always there for Karen, though, I never shirked my duties as her Dad.”
The humor was still in the lines of Benjamin’s eyes, but a certain sense of pity and sardonic witticism colored the edges now. “A pity then, that your wife thought more of the situation and invested so very much.” He held out a hand as Henry attempted to stand, insulted by the statement. “No, no, I’m not being a bastard, I assure you.”
“At any rate, Henry, she, our Abby, won’t be able to reciprocate, not in the way you might hope. She’s tried, but it’s always fallen through with her, you could ask A
lex about that. I don’t really believe that you could understand what we went through, let alone the darker place she’s taken these events to since. She bears a great weight and there are none who can help her carry it, she wouldn‘t allow it, even if you could.”
Henry looked away from Benjamin’s eyes; they watched him with a clear knowledge of things to come and things that had passed. He didn’t want to be judged by them, and so he found himself looking at Abby, still unconscious on another cot across the room. She’d obviously been through a lot, and for who knew how long. He didn’t feel love or affection when he looked on that face. No, it was something else, a certain investment, certainly, but not something so weighty. Awe, confusion, restlessness? Yes, these things, and still that oppressive need to know, to have some idea of what it was all for. Was it worth it? Did he have some purpose in this place?
Chapter Five:
Every Breath You Take
Henry sat in a chair at the edge of another tent. He’d left the Healer’s tent an hour ago, but he was still able to see what went on there, a flap of the tent pulled back just enough for him to watch.
Abby lay on a makeshift table as Benjamin looked her over, muttering under his breath as he worked, taking great care to handle her gently as he lifted her limbs, looked under her lids, and prodded at various areas looking for signs of infection. As Henry watched, the healer held his chin, thinking over what he had found with his examination before walking over to his shelves against one wall of the tent. There, Benjamin drew down some bottles with faded labels like the one that had contained Abby’s salve; traces of the time that had come before bearing new unguents and potions for this new age. Inside them he could see varicolored poultices and herbs, oils, and creams. Each of these things was spread evenly over her skin, drawing hisses of pain from her as they seeped into her wounds and Benjamin closed his eyes, muttering under his breath as he worked. Here and there brief glimmers of light seemed to appear and disappear over her wounds, green and dustings of yellow.
The healer’s concentration remained on the wounds as he waited for reactions before adding other herbs or creams on top of the others. The gleam of her skin caught Henry’s eyes as Benjamin’s movements drew him in. There was no beauty to them, only something there that…drew his attention. He was transfixed, taking it all in, a vague fog drifting over his mind and currents of something moving his hair to stand on end. Something…something that left him feeling sleepy and soothed.
“Henry?”
“What?” he said sleepily.
“We have a bed for you now, you can sleep there.” It was Pereneaux, speaking softly just to the side of him, making his head shift to listen though his eyes stayed closed.
“What time is it?” He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he heard it in his own voice, his mind barely coming to consciousness as he addressed Pereneaux.
“Time?” The leader laughed. “We don’t follow it as you do, I must confess, but, well, I believe you’ve been here for four hours or so now. Abby’s resting again, Benjamin says that she should be healed in a few days.”
His eyes fluttered open, startled by the assessment. “But how? Nobody heals that fast.”
Pereneaux smiled that private smile of his, the one that made it clear how little Henry understood about this world of theirs. “You’re wrong. You forget that things are different here; that Abby is not quite the same being that you are. We know medicines and healing spells that have likely never been in your world.”
“Spells? Like magic? Is that what he was doing?” He resisted the urge to argue with the man; the old Henry would have had plenty to say about such things but this Henry had seen a lot more than that other version of himself had. Things really were very different now, this place was full of surprises, he had learned that quickly.
“Yes. We’ve come to depend on his skills. He can heal more than the rest of us could on our own and that has been a very large boon for all of us, even those of us who have our own innate strengths.”
“But-”
He watched as Pereneaux’s face seemed to close, become flat and emotionless outside of a certain seriousness. “You don’t need to know or understand it; it simply is. This isn’t your world and you’ll be leaving soon. Come and rest now, we’ve prepared a bed.”
Henry followed him away from the Healer’s tent and off to the other side of the camp, where he was led into another tent there. Inside were two thickly padded blankets spread on the earthen floor and a burning candle.
“This is your bed. Good night.” With a brief nod and a turn, Pereneaux was gone, leaving him to go about whatever it was he had been doing before he came to fetch Henry.
Exhausted now, Henry walked inside and lay down, blowing out the candle before his eyes drifted closed and he dreamed.
***
He was walking down the highway again, Rachel slung over his back and Abby beside him as they walked. The sky was darker and the forest denser than it had been before, the atmosphere made more ominous by the difference. It was clear that something was very wrong; he didn’t know what it was, but something was clearly there among the trees and shadows. Oily and dark, it was something that wanted him, which made the hairs on his body rise up and tickle his flesh.
His wife was muttering against his back, but he couldn’t tell just what she said, her voice was urgent and the words were clearly a warning. Something was wrong, something was very wrong and he had no hope of understanding what she was trying to tell him as he felt it flaring his body into a deeper awareness, tension alive in the muscles and bones.
There were footsteps, heavy and present yet somehow soft and barely there all the same, as if he sensed them but couldn’t really hear them. There was something pounding in his head, the high piercing pain the Zombie Lord had given him returned and building into a terrible pressure. He fought to control it, to shove it down so that he could think, to gain some idea of what the threat was outside of him as the one within made him quake with pain. When he managed to open his eyes, to struggle his wife’s weight into a manageable place and looked beside him, Abby was kneeling and naked again, strange marks carved themselves into her skin through some strange alchemy that seemed to emanate from within. Her screams were high and shrill as they worked to pull open her flesh.
“I never wanted this! I’m not the one to blame. I was tricked!” She screamed. “The book was never mine, my heart was never this dark!”
“Liar!” Something hissed from the dark. “You’re as dark as I, Abby. You knew what it would cost and still you acted, still you made your choice! You deny me, you deny your own dark need and still the cost remains for all your protests.”
“I never wanted this!” She wept, huddling her body into a writhing tangle of limbs.
“You were always mine to control!” Whatever it was, this thing held some sway over her, commanded her to take the pain and the regret. He saw that clearly in her eyes, the weight of whatever she’d done making her sick, tearing her apart for all her apparent strength in the real world.
“I will never be anyone’s possession!” She gritted her teeth, the gums and her lips bloody with effort, will helping her to make the effort.
“You know nothing! I am everywhere; you can never hide from me.” There was anger beneath the gloating sneer of that voice, terrible and dark.
“You’re dead! We left your corpse behind long ago and your power no longer affects me. I made my stand, I stopped you!”
Laughter boomed as the pounding footsteps grew near. Rachel, now frantic on his back, hit at his pack, and when he struggled to hold her there, she threw herself to the ground beneath him with a howl of outrage.
“You left me alone. You never cared!” Rachel swore, looking up at him with burning eyes. “I’m coming for you, Henry, and I’m bringing you something special, something you’ll never forget.” Her body moved toward him, a bloody and broken thing, and she grabbed his leg, wrenching it out from him. He fell and fell as the pounding
footsteps grew nearer in the emptiness, falling and falling into nothing.
***
When he awoke it was to the sound of birds and the subtle sound of a soft breeze through the trees. Slowly, his heart started to slow to its normal pace and his breathing evened out with it. At first, he didn’t know where he was. He’d forgotten about the things that had happened here as he slept, but soon the memories flooded back in and he remembered. Shaking off the remains of the dream, he got out of the bed and stood, leaving the tent with slow steps. His joints still screamed at him from the long walk to this village and he didn’t dare to move faster than they allowed. Moving helped them to start relaxing but it was clear that a great deal of effort would be needed to get him back into shape even with the activity level he’d already been at with all the walking. His life in that other world, his home, had not involved battle or marathons and it showed now; even his lungs burned as he walked.
He made his way back to the Healer’s tent, where he presumed Abby still rested. He needed to see her; maybe if she was conscious she could tell him what the dream meant, if any of the things that had been said were true. The images and words still roiled in his mind and he wanted to understand it, it had been too real to be meaningless.
Benjamin left the tent as he approached, caught up in his thoughts. It was apparent that he was on some errand. After the healer left, Henry opened the flap and began to enter, stopping himself and drawing back when he realized that Pereneaux was there with her.
“I want him to know nothing, Alex. There’s too much darkness here to take back to a place as peaceful as his.” Abby already sounded better, though her voice was scratchy and tired as she spoke. For all the frustration and even anger she’d inspired since he’d come here he was relieved to hear her now, a part of him calming as he listened. Another part of him listened closely, hungry to know more.
Other Dangers: Slipped Through Page 5