Unreal City

by A. R. Meyering

  In a dreamy, murmuring voice often broken by tremors of grief, I found myself relaying memories of my sister to Joy. How we’d grown up, the games we used to play at the seaside, the trips we went on together, and the silly things we fought about. I told her about how Lea was always looking out for people that needed a friend, and how much of a love-struck teenage girl she’d been. I told her how the summer before she died, she spent almost every day going out to have adventures with Stephen.

  Joy seemed interested and shared stories with me, too. She told me about her elementary school days. She’d liked a type of crunchy sugar-crystal candy dyed with bright colors called Konpeito that her aunt and uncle would give her every day after she finished her homework. Joy liked antique stores, old things and preserved things. She was captivated by anything retro, nostalgic, forgotten, or obscure. She told me how as a child she’d loved to listen to the Enka and Jazz vinyl records her aunt collected, and how she’d try to draw pictures of the singers’ faces the way she imagined them. Listening to her was soothing, and I soon dozed off, caught up musing about her inner world of dusty, precious things.

  At some point during my shallow slumber, I felt her climb into the bed beside me and with her warmth there, I was able to sleep the way I used to—deeply and without interruption from the capricious force of dreams. We woke up when light streamed in through the window, and feeling much better I agreed to go get breakfast. After a huge meal and shower, my mood had greatly improved. Joy and I parted ways, agreeing that on Saturday we would go together to the city and get Halloween costumes. She and Kyle had plans to drive down to another university in central California. The town outside that college always threw a raucous Halloween celebration and the rowdy youth came from everywhere to join in the revelry. This didn’t seem like my kind of party, or Joy’s even, but she was so insistent that I join her I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t feel like facing Halloween night alone in my room with Felix, anyway.

  As soon as Joy left me, the bleed-throughs came back. Back in my dorm, looking at the corner that Felix often stared at, I could feel a force stuck there. There was something trapped in the wall that wanted to leave, but couldn’t. I slumped downward with my face in my hands.

  “What have I done to myself?” I shuddered. This was going to be my life now. It would never stop, unless…unless I bid Felix leave me forever. I got up, my knees feeling like they might buckle at any moment, and opened the wardrobe doors wide. A weary Felix was sitting on his haunches. “You can come out now.”

  He silently padded down from his prison, bringing a few curls of wood with him. I knew what he wanted before he even had to ask. I lifted my fingers to my mouth and bit off the tip of one of my nails. Reluctantly I offered it to him, and he licked it right off my fingertip with his sandpaper tongue. Felix looked so bedraggled and abused that I methodically did the same with each finger until he seemed a bit more alive. I had intended to tell him to go away, but seeing him so meek and grateful for what I’d given him, I didn’t think I had it in me just yet.

  “Felix, come here,” I said, patting my legs. He leapt onto my lap and curled his tail around himself.

  “The other night, when that force came here. That—thing—” I began, stroking his spine, “it told me to come back to Unreal City. What is it, Felix? What does it want?”

  “It felt like another familiar, but I couldn’t tell who. Its energy had been warped—twisted. It’s like something I’ve known forever, but it’s been altered. It might have been diseased with insanity,” Felix told me. “That happened often before, many years ago. Back when mankind was much cruder.”

  “Why did it want me to come back? If it is a familiar, could it be the one that killed that boy…and Lea? Could it have killed Lea?” I said it for the first time, though I’d been thinking it for a while. I had no idea how Lea or the other boy could have been involved with Unreal City, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility. Lea had been so wrapped up with her social life in the months before she died, I’d never had time to notice whether or not strange things had been happening around her.

  “It’s possible. If one of the Cunning Folk had ordered their familiar to do it, it might’ve happened…or if they ordered it to find you in this world, it could also happen. The best you can do is talk to the person whom you suspect to be at fault,” Felix told me.

  The person whom I suspected was obvious. Angus and Arthur had both mentioned him: the man they called Poe. Perhaps if I could only gather the willpower to go and confront him, this all might be solved. But for now I was tired—I was weak. I’d have to hold off from trying to walk unscathed through the kingdom of a madman until I felt I could safely set foot in my own garden.

  “Don’t go, Felix. Don’t go just yet.”

  “I’m yours, Sarah,” he purred, shutting his lamp-like eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  THE STREETS OF Santa Cruz were fervid with that special feeling of excitement that only comes the week before Halloween. Grinning skulls leered from every shop front, fake purple bats twisted and swung in the wind, and cottony spider webs adorned the walls of every boutique. The air was crisp and the damp, smoky scent of autumn floated into our noses with every blast of wind.

  Joy and I meandered through the chattering crowd, our hair thoroughly fluffed by the October gales. Things didn’t seem so dismal in the daytime, especially when I was with her. We passed a shop and I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the window. Large bags had formed under my eyes and I’d lost at least ten pounds since I got to college. It startled me. I looked too much like the artificial Lea that had wasted away before she was reduced to mere bones.

  “Here we are!” Joy pulled open the door to one of the Halloween stores that sprung up like weeds before the holiday and were swept away express in order to prepare for Christmas two months early. Blinking lights embedded in the heads of plastic ghouls greeted us as we entered, as did the electronic cackle of some unseen toy. “I’m still not sure which form of ‘sexy such-and-such’ I’d like to be this year. Let’s see what they’ve got left,” Joy said.

  She led me through aisles stuffed with decorations, party supplies, and faux weapons. When we reached the row of ladies’ costumes, we set ourselves to digging through the disorganized heaps.

  “Skanky cop, slutty kitty, risqué pirate wench…” Joy said with an air of boredom as she moved each costume aside. “Oh boy, here’s a new one: sexy Big Bird. There’s something I didn’t need to see. What are you thinking, Sarah?”

  “Hmmm…” I ran my fingers over the options, not really wanting to walk around in any of them. At the end of the aisle, I saw a fallen hat with a pointy tip.

  Of course, I thought as I pulled it off the floor, gave it a quick swat, and placed it atop my head. I feel almost obligated at this point. I turned to face Joy.

  “I think I’ll go with the ol’ failsafe this time around,” I said. At that moment I began to own the circumstances that had come into my life with a bit of wry humor.

  “Somehow that looks really good on you,” Joy agreed.

  Please don’t say that, I thought as I went to pick out a costume to match the hat. Joy settled on a nurse’s outfit and we left the store, abuzz with plans for our Halloween night. Back in Joy’s dorm we tried on the costumes, and modeling our new personas, I found I liked the way the cheap witch’s garb looked on me. It gave me a weird feeling of warranted pride.

  While Joy sketched figures at her desk, I lay on the floor, catching up on Sociology. If I did well enough on the midterm I might still pass the class, in spite of my zero on the project. As I tried to focus on the textbooks, I felt a wave of guilt hit me again.

  “Joy,” I began quietly, setting down my pencil down. “I never really got to apologize for the project. I didn’t mean to hang you out to dry like that.”

  “Please stop beating yourself up over that,” she said without looking up from her sketch. “My grade wasn’t affected, anyway, so don’t get all gloomy over it.
” She smiled, squinting at the paper.

  “I know, but I hate the idea of you just standing up there alone,” I admitted. “It’s been bugging me.”

  “You’re fine, Sarah. It’s not like you blew me off. You were—having a really bad day,” Joy said delicately. Her indomitable kindness made me furious on her behalf. I wanted her to value her time, effort, and love more. I wanted her to see how rare it was in this world full of uncaring, selfish people.

  “I don’t deserve to have you giving me so many chances and so much of your time,” I grumbled to myself, still ashamed of my poor contribution to our friendship.

  “Please. Enough with the pity party. I like hanging out with you. You’re interesting. You sort of inspire me, too, with your strength. You’re not afraid to show what’s really inside of you, even if the world won’t like it. I want to be that—I want to capture that feeling. It’s like when I have a picture in my head, and I think how great it’ll look on the paper, but when I actually draw it it’s nothing like what I imagined. It lacks that sort of raw energy. You do that effortlessly,” Joy said, still focusing on her drawings, but I felt now it was more to avoid my gaze.

  “Well, I’m glad to have you around,” I responded.

  “Young people often forget, too, that our number of opportunities is limited. True friends come few and far between, and I see so often how people just abandon one another—throw others who love them away so easily because there’s something about them that they don’t like. What they don’t understand is that if you keep cutting out every imperfection, you’re not just going to be alone, you’re going to be out of chances. Our time isn’t as infinite as our age makes it seem, so that’s why I want to treasure every person that comes my way, thorns and all,” Joy finished with complete candidness.

  The rest of the evening passed without even a hint of a bleed-through. I was starting to realize that when my mental state worsened, it was more likely for them to occur. Being near Joy’s indestructible good mood was like a panacea.

  When it came time to leave, I felt a bit nervous about crossing the campus by myself in the dark, but the costume bouncing in the bag at my side kept my spirits lifted. I found myself thinking that I might be able to get this thing under control, that if I learned to understand and ignore the bleed-throughs, I might be able to stay safe within my own garden. I could make that section of Unreal City mine for the rest of my life. I could even face Charles Poe and demand the answers that I needed to hear, then return all that much stronger. I could do anything I set my mind to.

  As I crossed the dizzyingly high bridge over the chasms bursting with their forest overgrowth, I was filled with this new confidence. With my eyes fixed on the pale light of the stars and the crescent moon, I allowed this courage to course through me. Being one of the Cunning Folk was an enormous gift, albeit a ponderous one. So what if I had to give Felix my blood, and let him leech off me for the rest of my time? He’d be my terrifyingly adorable pet vampire. So what if things got weird sometimes? It would never be as bad as it already had been, because I’d grow accustomed to it. And if I lived through getting swallowed by the ground, I could live through anything. If I lived through losing Lea, maybe the worst really had already passed, and—

  Something was standing under the trees at the end of the bridge. Something tall, emaciated, and dappled by the shadows of the pines. I stumbled back, stopping halfway across the bridge to wait and see if I could get a better glimpse. Night gave it the advantage of staying obscured if it wanted to be.

  “Hello?” I called, clutching my satchel’s strap until my knuckles were white. I could just make out something slipping into the trees. I held my place halfway across the bridge. I didn’t want to cross if it was waiting for me, but I didn’t think I knew the way home if I went backward. After all was quiet for almost five minutes, I decided to creep forward and see if the way was clear. I kept my eyes fixed on the point in the trees where it had disappeared.

  What if it’s Antler-Man? What if he decides to kill me? Is he the one who drowns people? I don’t want to see what he looks like anymore. Please just let me get home. I wish Felix were here.

  Thoughts fired off like the bangs of fireworks in my head. My footsteps made the wood creak. I knew he could hear me coming, if it was him. However, the closer I got to the thicket that he’d slipped into, the more it seemed that perhaps my eyes had been playing tricks on me. It could have been just another bleed-through, a lonely specter, a loose piece of some memory that had been misplaced here in the woods. My shoulders started to relax after I’d made it across the bridge. Just to be safe, I stepped closer to the patch of trees, checking to see if they looked disturbed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so I decided I was in the clear for now. Just as I resumed my walk, a shape as tall and thin as a tree blocked the view of the crescent moon.

  I stood trembling in his shadow, resisting the urge to drop to my knees. If I got away, I would never sleep again knowing such a thing existed in this world.

  It was a familiar; that much I knew at once. His body was made out of that same solid, ghost-material that Felix’s was, but this Spirit’s energy seemed corrupted. It was the only way I could describe the energy field humming off him. He was at least nine feet tall and his spindly, bony arms ended in hands that looked like tree branches. One arm curled around a vat that he lugged under his skeletal shoulder. Yet it wasn’t even the disproportionate body or limbs, or the twisted bones under the wet skin that sent me into a state of such sublime terror. It was his face, his jawless face with its gaping hole of a mouth that dripped gelatinous, watery saliva down his front. It was the image of those chasm-like eyes with their pinholes of light—that same unearthly light that was in all the spirits, the light that burned, made one’s head ache, and one’s stomach seize up—and that loose, rolling skin under his damp, long hair. That was the image that was seared into my eyes. It haunts me even now. He moved his head, shaggy hair and antlers swinging as a flow of water spewed from his mouth. He lurched toward me as I tried to suck in enough breath to scream.

  Unreal City…come back to Unreal City, the spirit’s voice boomed. It was coming out of that vat. I need you. Come find me in Unreal City.

  “G-get away!” I shrieked, trying to keep my head. I knew that if I fell, even for a second, it would be over. If I bolted back, however, I’d be in danger of tripping over the edge into the ravine. So I proceeded slowly, one trembling step at a time as I snuck glances back and prepared to bolt when I had a clear path. The familiar moaned, a low, tortured sound as he shuddered. It was like he had no clear direction of what to do, but was acting under some powerful, emotional influence. More water spewed forth from his mouth-hole, and he lifted the vat upward.

  I was just getting ready to make a break for it when I saw the inside of that vat. His voice was in there—and others’ too, but they were whispering too quietly to be understood. The reflection of water swirled against the curved sides of the vat, and the longer I looked, the more hypnotized I became. The ripples mesmerized me and the urge to escape waned. Suddenly I realized water was rushing out of my mouth, choking me, originating at the back of my throat.

  I spat into the dirt and gasped. Just as I felt my throat clear, another gush followed and I was choking all over again, trying my best not fall over.

  This is how Lea died. This is how she felt, I realized. With great effort I tore my eyes from the vat, turned, and ran in any direction I could, my feet slipping on the loose dirt. The Antler-Man was howling behind me as I escaped, begging me not to go. More water burst from the back of my throat and tried to rush downward, and I tried swallowing it this time. Most of it went to my stomach, but I was still spluttering and trying to get even one breath of air as I forced my legs to keep going.

  I wasn’t far from Merrill now. I could make it if I kept going. A smaller rush of water came, and this time I easily spat it out and kept running. I thanked myself for all those extra days I spent at the tennis court back in high
school. Skinny as I had become, my legs could still run. By the time I burst through the doors into my dorm, I realized my entire front was covered with water and spittle. What I wanted more than anything was to leap into the shower, but I was too afraid. I needed Felix beside me.

  I found my familiar in my room, causally walking around on the ceiling. Catching sight of me, he swooped downward and came to a graceful landing at my feet.

  “Sarah, what happened to you?”

  “I found him—I found what killed my sister,” I gasped, wiping my face on the comforter and pulling my hair back from my forehead. “It was a familiar. Though he didn’t feel like how you or the others feel when I get near them. It was like he wasn’t in control of himself—just confused. Angry and…and deeply sad.”

  “What did he do when he saw you?” Felix asked, growing solemn.

  “He tried to kill me. Drown me, like he drowned Lea, that boy from my high school, and the kid from here. He’s looking for me, I think. He wants me to come back to Unreal City.” I was shaking now, and chilled to the bone. I climbed the ladder on shaky legs and crawled into bed. It somehow felt safer there, like the blankets could somehow protect me from even an unearthly being. “What am I going to do, Felix? I can’t get help from the police. They’ll think I’m insane. I can’t tell Joy. I can’t even tell my parents how their daughter died. I’m stuck.”

  “I know what you can do. You can do just what he says.”

  “Go back!?” I was scandalized by the thought. “But that’s just playing into his hands! It’s obviously some kind of trap, though I don’t know what he wants from me.”

  “Exactly,” Felix continued. “But if you don’t go and uproot the cause of this problem, it will only continue to grow. Nothing gets solved by simply ignoring it and hoping that it will just disappear. And no one can fix it for you.”

  “But it’s dangerous. I could lose my mind or lose control again,” I mumbled in a pointless argument.