Into the Void

by Amanda Frame

  She sighed and slapped the notebook shut. “Yeah, we knew all that. Okay, sweetheart, thanks for coming.” Her words were empty. I had crushed her hope.

  “Is it okay if…can I go see Brian, maybe? Is he here?”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. His room is that way.” She gestured vaguely behind her.

  “Um, thanks…” I walked away slowly, not knowing if I should say goodbye or not. I was sure this was the only time Mrs. Wilkes had ever waved a girl through to her son’s bedroom.

  I walked down a carpeted hallway. All the lights were off except in one room and the door was cracked open. I rapped gently on the door frame. When there was no answer, I peeked through the crack. I could see the end of his bed. Brian was sitting there, blocked mostly from my view by Aaron’s tall body. He was facing Brian and holding a big duffle bag. They were talking quietly. I couldn’t make out the words, so I pushed the door open the tiniest bit.

  “Hello?” I said tentatively.

  Aaron turned around and gave me a small, surprised smile. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when he stepped to the side.

  I barely recognized Brian. He was gaunt and disheveled, and there was an emptiness in his eyes. Something was missing.

  And I was pretty sure I knew what had taken it.

  “Hey Anna,” Aaron said as he ushered me in.

  “Hi Aaron,” I said as I let the door swing open, “Hi Bri…” I froze mid-word. Dark movement caught my eye from the corner of the ceiling.

  The thing. The monster. It was the shadowy form I had let out of the library that had attacked Brian in the hallway the day of his “seizure,” except it wasn’t a shadow anymore.

  Its huge jaw opened slowly and it let out a low hiss as it stared down at me with red eyes churning like molten lava. It cowered back into its corner, long limbs compressed so it looked like a grotesque giant spider waiting to strike.

  Brian looked up and seemed to see me for the first time. His dead eyes met mine and now I saw something in them. Fury.

  “Get out!” he screamed. He stood up, his bony frame towering over me. “Get out get out get out!”

  I didn’t argue. I ran. I caught Aaron’s shocked expression as I fled, slamming the door on my way out. Running past Mrs. Wilkes, I made my way to the front door, heart pounding, thoughts racing.

  I threw open the front door but paused on the threshold. A woman was standing in front of the window to the left of the door. We locked eyes. I stared at her in confusion.

  She was…transparent. I could see through her.

  She looked over her shoulder slowly, as though to check if I was actually looking at her, like when someone waves to a person right behind you and you think for a moment they’re actually waving to you.

  “What…” I began. I saw her mouth open as if shocked that I did see her. She peered behind me and faded to nothing. The last thing I saw was a terrified expression on her face.

  I turned, simultaneously hoping and dreading to see whatever it was that she had been afraid of. The Leech was there, its claws wrapped around the doorframe, its body not quite corporeal but definitely real. It gave a low, warning hiss in my direction.

  I fled and didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER 23

  JOHN

  Sleep did eventually find me but it was plagued by nightmares. I didn’t feel any better, physically or mentally, when I awoke. I sat up slowly and swung my legs over the side of the mattress, temporarily confused when I noticed I was still holding the fireplace poker. Looking out the window, the sky was dark but the trees had a crimson glow, like the ghosts of photos developing in the red light of a darkroom.

  I stood up and walked to the window, peering out through the dusky glass. I stared at the scenery below for several minutes, the skeletal branches of trees reaching for me, painted blood-red by an unknown light source. The landscape was so eerily still that I eventually felt as though I were looking at a photograph, or a still from a horror movie, and I placed my hand on the glass to ground myself.

  Movement.

  It was so unexpected and out of place that I let out a startled gasp and crouched quickly below the windowsill. I watched my foggy handprint fade and hoped whatever had moved hadn’t seen me.

  My heart pounded as I gathered the courage to look up. I felt brittle wood crack under my fingertips as I gripped the edge of the sill, ever so slowly pulling myself up just high enough to peer out the window.

  Regret knotted up in my belly immediately. There it was. The praying mantis thing. The bloody light illuminated its body enough for me to make it out. It was facing away from me and I could see spikes protruding down its back like a row of butcher knives.

  I froze. Shit shit shit! Was it looking for me? It hadn’t seemed interested in me yesterday when it was attacking Mrs. Campbell.

  Was attacking even the right word? It didn’t seem to be hurting her, more like…feeding off her, leeching something from her. It had seemed to grow stronger when it touched her.

  Maybe I was its next meal. But then again, I was actually here, in this place with it, whereas Mrs. Campbell clearly hadn’t been. So could—would—it hurt me? Attack me? Was it just curious? Whatever its plan, I didn’t want to stick around to find out if I was on the menu.

  I ducked back below the window. The mantis hadn’t seen me yet. I debated whether to stay here or try to escape, but I didn’t know where to go or if there was even a safer place to be.

  I would try to secure the house. I did an awkward crouching walk over to the bed and tucked the fireplace poker under my arm, choosing to abandon the shovel for now. I scuttled out of the room and as soon as I was confident I would be out of the line of sight of the window, I stood back up. Cringing, I crept down the stairs, feeling my way blindly in the dark. Each tiny creak sounded like a freight train.

  When I got to the front door I ran my fingers over it to find the peephole. I put my eye to it and peered out.

  Staring back at me was a giant set of hairy, drooling mandibles.

  I jumped back and almost yelled, biting my tongue at the last second. I was frozen with the poker held like a baseball bat, my eyes wide, chest pounding. I scanned the room for something to barricade the door, but it was too dark to see anything. I remembered I had seen an empty china cabinet a few yards down the hall during my initial inspection, but the mantis would no doubt hear me dragging it across the floor. I didn’t even know if it knew I was here, and I certainly didn’t want to draw its attention.

  I didn’t know what to do. I clearly couldn’t just walk out the front door, and I was pretty sure if I tried to fight it, those mandibles would snap me in half like the wishbone from a Thanksgiving turkey.

  Somehow and for some reason, it was tracking me, I decided. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be here. I could go back upstairs and just hope it didn’t choose to check inside, but I would be so screwed if I got trapped up there.

  Unless…the pink bedroom. I remembered its window faced the back yard; the creature wouldn’t see me if I snuck out that way. Could I even get to the ground from a second-story window? And if and when I did, where would I go? I decided it didn’t matter, as long as I could get a good distance away before it noticed I was no longer there.

  I took painstakingly slow steps to the staircase, feeling my way to the edge with my foot, and proceeded to climb them as quietly as humanly possible, still hefting the poker. Even though I definitely wasn’t safe, once I reached the pink bedroom, I breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily, I had scouted the house pretty thoroughly the day before and had an excellent visual memory, because the darkness was suffocating.

  Feeling around for the window, I opened it ever so carefully and poked my head into the night air. I glanced below, praying to every god I had ever heard of for there to be something I could use to climb down.

  A drain pipe. I could just make it out with the faint light. Thank God. Hopefully the mantis couldn’t hear anything from the front of the house.

  I stu
ck the handle of the poker in the waistband of the back of my shorts and slid the window open as wide as it could go. I envisioned the end of the poker stabbing me in the spine with one wrong move, but I figured that was a better way to die than become a giant insect’s next meal.

  Now how to do this? Okay, I could put my foot…

  Cruuuuunch!

  I froze, confused, then heard the sound again.

  With a gasp of horror, I recognized the sound of splintering wood. The mantis was breaking its way through the door. There was no time for thought. I swung myself over the window ledge and half fell, half slid down the drain pipe. I landed with a stumble and sprinted harder than I ever had into the palm trees behind the house.

  The unnatural crimson glow illuminated the trees just enough to prevent me from running head first into them. I tripped a few times over the uneven ground, but fueled by adrenaline and pure fear, I kept running.

  I only slowed when I heard splashing. It took me a second to realize that I was the one making the noise. I had hit a stream, which seemed very out of place, if this indeed was a reflection of the world I used to belong to. I squinted in the dim light and thought it might be ten feet wide, with a fairly steep embankment on the other side, but it was hard to tell. I leaned over with my hands on my knees to try to catch my breath and gather my wits.

  Where now? I didn’t have a plan except put as much distance between me and the creature as possible. I could probably climb up the embankment on the other side with a little difficulty, but that would definitely leave a trail. I didn’t know how the mantis had tracked me in the first place, maybe by smell or something, but doing this would make it easy.

  I would walk in the stream. It would hide my tracks. I had pulled the poker out of my waistband a while back and had somehow managed to keep a grip on it while running. I used it as a walking stick now, making sure I didn’t step in any holes or hit any large rocks in the water. It was only up to my knees so it wasn’t too difficult. I absently wondered about alligators but then decided if they ate me, I would be all right with that.

  It was slow-going and frustrating, but after only thirty minutes or so, the jaundiced sun began to rise, vanquishing the bloody glow. I could see better, but that also meant I could be seen. The embankment had shrunk, and I judged that I could probably get out of the stream just by taking a large step up, but decided to keep going a bit further, just to be safe.

  The water was stagnant and cloudy so I couldn’t tell if I was moving up- or downstream but I figured it didn’t matter anyway. As I observed the way the water swirled around my legs when I took a step forward, I realized that I still was not thirsty. Or hungry.

  I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion and was struck hard by the thought I had been avoiding. I am dead. I stifled a sob and kept trudging through the water. Once again I considered the possibility that maybe I was in hell. I had died and this was literal hell. What had I done to deserve such a fate?

  My self-pity distracted me and I lurched forward. My right foot had stepped into a deep hole and caught me off guard. The poker slipped out of my grasp as I plunged awkwardly into the water. I gasped in surprise just as my face went under, and I not only managed to swallow a ton of the murky water, but inhaled some as well. I got my footing and stood back up, spluttering and coughing.

  It took every ounce of strength inside me to not roar in frustration. I scanned the water for the poker but it was too cloudy to see the bottom. I walked around the general vicinity for a minute or two, trying to contain my anger, running my foot over the gravelly bottom, searching blindly for the poker. The toe of my sandal hit something hard and I realized two things: I had found the poker, and both my sandals were still on my feet, which was something close to a miracle.

  I fished my weapon out of the water and stepped over the embankment, soaked and miserable. There were gentle rolling hills around me, and I was confused at first. Then I realized I had been walking through a manmade water hazard. I was on what would have been a golf course in the real world.

  The real world? But this place was real too. Maybe I just hadn’t fully accepted it yet, so in my thoughts I was referring to home as the real world. This place, this Void, this warped mirror of the world I knew was too hellish and bizarre to grasp the idea that it was real.

  After walking for a while longer, I realized I felt odd. I was relaxing. In spite of these thoughts and my discomfort at being soaking wet, I just accepted my situation. But deep down I knew this feeling wasn’t right. It felt almost…drug-induced. Like the time I stole weed from my brother’s room and smoked it with my buddies behind the McDonald’s at midnight.

  I smiled, lay down in the brittle grass and closed my eyes, trying to relive some of the happier moments from the life I would never live again.

  CHAPTER 24

  ANNA

  I threw the door open without even knocking. “John! John are you here?”

  He came around the corner, looking startled. “What are you doing here? It’s Saturday.” He finally noticed the terror painting my face. “Oh God, what happened?” He took my elbow and led me over to his worn-out couch. I sat.

  “I…I went to see Brian. He…that thing was there.” I started hyperventilating at the memory of its hiss, like nails on a chalkboard making my hackles rise.

  “The Leech? Where? Take a breath, tell me what happened.”

  “I think it’s attached to Brian. He looks awful, he looks like he’s…wasting away. And he freaked out on me. I think it made him crazy or something. What do we do? What the fuck do we do?”

  John wrapped me up in his arms. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

  I pulled back. “Is it, though? Is it? Are you just saying that?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to do much damage yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “Brian is easy prey right now, and it probably doesn’t even really understand what is going on.”

  I was confused. “What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “Well, it doesn’t live here. It probably got here by accident. It was just following Brian and happened to go through the gate you had opened.”

  I thought back to how it had cowered into the corner of Brian’s room when I came in. Almost like it was scared of me.

  “I had no idea what was going on when I got trapped in the Void. It’s probably just as confused.”

  “So…we just have to figure out how to get it back in before it learns the ropes?”

  John nodded. “That’s my assumption.”

  I took a deep breath. We could figure this out. We still had time.

  “There’s one other thing…” I started slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “So when I was leaving Brian’s house—well, fleeing is a better word, I guess—I saw a woman. But she wasn’t really there. Or…I don’t know. She looked like a ghost, but it was obvious she could see me and she knew I could see her. But I could look right through her. Brian’s mom couldn’t see her, I could tell for sure.”

  “Huh.” John twisted his mouth and tilted his head.

  “Just ‘huh’?” I threw up my hands, frustrated. “This is like…a totally different thing, isn’t it?”

  “No, actually. I’ve come across these people before. They exist in both worlds simultaneously, but are aren’t completely corporeal in either place. I don’t know what one of them would be doing around Brian, but I can’t imagine it’s anything malicious.”

  This was crazy. From everything John had told me in our last five sessions together, he always implied that there weren’t any people in the Void.

  “Great,” I exclaimed, scrubbing my hands over my exhausted eyes, “it’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?” But right now I had more important things to worry about. “Okay. What about Brian?” He hadn’t addressed that yet. It seemed like he was avoiding it. “What’s happening to him? Was it my fault?” I wrung my hands, terrified of the answer.

  “Anna…” He paused and gave me
a sympathetic look. “You didn’t know what you were doing. You can’t think of this as your fault.”

  “But it is, though, right? I mean, this happened to him because of what I did in the library.”

  “You didn’t do anything. You were just the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. From what you’ve told me, it seemed like the Leech had latched onto this kid. He was probably stalking him, liked the way he tasted or something.”

  I shuddered at the thought but wasn’t going to be deterred, I had to know. “John. Just tell me. Did that thing get out because I was there? Did it attack Brian in our world and now he’s seriously messed up?” I pretty much already knew the answer.

  John sighed. “Yes.”

  I groaned and rested my elbows on the counter, head in my hands. I felt like I was going to vomit. This was all my fault, no matter how John tried to reassure me that it wasn’t.

  “But how?” I asked, mumbling into my hands. I looked up.

  “How did it get out?”

  “Yeah,” I responded, “and can it live here? Can we send it back to the Void? Brian will be better after it’s gone, right?”

  “No,” John said bluntly.

  “No?” I asked slowly. “No to which question?”

  “Brian isn’t going to get better once the Leech is gone.”

  “How long will it take for him to get better?”

  “Anna,” John sighed and ran his hands over his bald head, “Brian is probably not going to be the same for the rest of his life. The Leech fed off of his physical form. He has nowhere to draw more energy from to heal his mind and body. He might improve a little as the years go by but…”

  I jumped up. “No! No, you have to be wrong!” I started pacing, I could taste bile in my mouth and thought I was going to vomit, my body trying to physically expel the guilt that seeped into my gut. “You don’t know everything, right? You’ve said that you don’t know everything. I have to make him better. I have to! This is my fault!” I thought of Brian’s family and friends, his football career, his entire life. Ruined. Because of me.