Unreal City

by A. R. Meyering

  “I…I don’t understand.” Joy was stunned, watching Felix and I shout back and forth at her.

  “Joy, you don’t understand, he’s evil—”

  “If you don’t help it, you could be targeted as the next victim—”

  “Everyone stay quiet!” she shouted over us, visibly shaken. She took a shuddering breath as she studied both our faces. The gears in her mind were obviously turning. She took a deep breath and looked at Felix again. “Tell me everything.”

  My familiar did tell her, but not everything. He stuck to the facts of everything that had happened since I met him down in the caves. I knew that if she heard everything, there was no way she would agree to the pact. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did.

  “Just give me a second. Let me think about this.” Joy put her face into her hands for what seemed like eons, occasionally lifting her head to check if Felix was still there.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. “Joy, just let it go. Think of yourself for once. You’re not responsible for the lives of strangers—” I started, but she turned irate eyes on me.

  “Sarah, how can you say that? You would let all those people get hurt? You would let Lea’s death go? What kind of person would I be if I let that happen?”

  I continued to shake my head vehemently. “Felix, please stop her.”

  “No, I—I have to help. I can’t let this happen,” Joy said, sounding numb as she rose from the bed and approached Felix on wobbly legs.

  “You don’t have to be a martyr. There’s got to be another way!” I screamed, but the more I protested, the more Joy became resolved.

  “I’ll do it,” she proclaimed, looking toward Felix with narrowed eyes.

  “I will call him, then,” Felix agreed. He flattened back his ears, lifted his head, and opened his mouth. An eerie howl escaped between his jagged teeth like a siren. The noise rattled both of us and we shuddered. The sound stopped, and fear hit me. I cowered, clutching myself.

  It’s coming, oh God, it’s coming…no.

  “Felix, what have you done?” I whispered.

  His shoulders sank and he looked at me, obviously remorseful yet affirmed in his decision. Joy stood by the window, looking to me with apprehension. I wondered in that moment if she was frightened or regretting what she’d agreed to.

  “He’s coming. Now, Joy, blood,” Felix told her, and hopped onto my desk, taking up the scissors I’d used to cut my hair in his teeth.

  “No!” I cried, reaching out to rip the scissors from his mouth.

  Felix flashed me a dangerous look that said if I tried to interfere, he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt me. He was going to get his way, and I could do nothing to impede him. He leapt off the desk and padded over to Joy, laying the scissors at her feet. She took them up, a soft cry catching in her throat.

  I caught her eye and pleaded one last time, “Don’t do this.” It was my last shot, and I felt a hot tear roll down my cheek.

  Our eyes remained connected for a moment longer, and then Joy looked away, pushing her long, dark hair out of her face. She extended her hand and with quivering fingers opened the scissors. She placed either edge of the blades over the plump part of skin on the tip of her pointer finger and took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, unable to watch. I heard the snip, heard her gasp in pain.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw his silhouette at the window. The Antler-Man had come. He waited patiently, waiting for me to invite him in. Felix and Joy’s eyes were on me now—expectant, wide, requiring me to make the first move. On the tip of Joy’s quivering finger a little droplet of liquid had sprouted, red and bright even in the dimness of the room. With their eyes willing me to move, I knew I’d let him in now or Joy would go out alone to meet him. I couldn’t stop her. Even if I prevented her now, she’d do it later. I decided I preferred to be there when it happened, rather than leave her to become lost on her own.

  I crossed the room and pulled back the curtain with a violent yank. That face still startled me. He’d been waiting, letting that repulsive drip of water ooze out of his mouth in a steady stream while he drew rattling breaths and scraped his tree-branch hands against the window. Those hollow sunken eyes with their beady pinholes of light beamed at me. The creature’s very being exuded an unsoundness of mind that ran even deeper than Poe’s had, and it hurt my head to look at him. I looked back to Joy, who’d turned white at the sight of the familiar she was to make a pact with.

  “Are you sure about this, Joy? It can never be undone. You’ve still got time to think it over, we can still—”

  “Yes,” she said, pushing me aside and wrenching open the window with her uncut hand.

  A rush of cold air blustered in, and I hugged myself, trying to restrain my body from rushing forward to tackle Joy out of the way and save her from this fate. I will admit, however, that among my lurches of sickness, a quieter, darker part of myself wanted it. I hated the presence of this feeling in myself, and being aware of it only made the possibility of me becoming ill a more real possibility, but I felt it all the same. I wouldn’t be alone anymore. No matter what, Joy would be there. We’d share our sections of the City for the remainder of our days.

  Joy extended her quivering hand to the monstrous creature, holding it just beneath its jawless mouth and waited. We watched in suspended terror as the Antler-Man leaned forward and from out of his drain-like mouth slithered a long tongue. I saw Joy’s body suffer a tremor, as if she’d almost bolted, but she held firm. That long, fetid, gray thing oozed downward as it bowed its head to drink of Joy’s blood. It licked it right off her finger, then drew its tongue back.

  Everything seemed to stop in those moments while we all waited for something—anything—to happen. The familiar stared back at us, and at last in a motion that made all three of us jump, he turned and retreated into the woods. We watched him go away from the window, each too stunned to speak until he was long gone and all had become quiet, save the whispering of the wind in the pines.

  Joy was the first to move. She fell to her knees, staring at her finger in devastation. I crouched near her, putting a hand cautiously on her back. She looked up at me with those eyes like bright ink and I recognized fear in them. For the second time that night, I cradled her as she cried.

  As she clung to me, my eyes went to Felix. He hadn’t budged an inch since the spirit had left us. He just kept staring at the open window.

  JOY AND I didn’t sleep that night. After her tears dried, she fell into a state of brief but inconsolable anxiety. I wrapped her up in a blanket from Lea’s bed and sat nearby, waiting for her to calm down. The same shock that had ravaged my previous perception of this world was now rattling through her.

  Late into the night we talked, and I told her all about my side of the experience since I’d found Felix. The more information about the world I provided for her, the calmer she became. Things are never as scary once they have a name and a set of rules you can play by. I purposefully left out some of the darker details, like when I’d gotten swallowed by the earth and my dismemberment by Poe, in order to keep her grounded. There was no point overwhelming her now when there was still so much to process. And I would protect her from those parts of the City. I had to.

  Around dawn, when her questions about my visits to the other world ended, her thoughts turned to her own future.

  “So what will happen to me now? Will he come back for me? Will he bring me something that will…take me to that place?” she wondered aloud, staring at the bed sheets. I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t know the answer. I looked to Felix.

  “Why did he leave, Felix?” I asked him, and he stayed quiet for a long while.

  “I’m not sure. Something was still strange with him. I’ve never been around another spirit while they recovered from a madness that ran so deeply. I’m not sure how long it will take for her blood to fix him, but if he returns and it worked, he won’t look the same. He’ll reflect Joy’s soul, now. We’ve got to keep an eye out,” he respond
ed.

  “Can’t you just call him back? Wouldn’t that confirm it?”

  “I would if I could feel where he is, but he’s disappeared. He’s gone to Unreal City, I think. He won’t be able to hear me from there. I’ll let you know when he’s returned.”

  When Joy left the next morning, I felt as if a weight had been shifted inside me, as though the pressure of my enormous secret had been validated as something more than a series of vivid bouts of madness. But it also brought a sense of overbearing guilt. Though I was grateful that I could share Unreal City with someone whom I had come to care for, I couldn’t help but feel that I’d stood by and allowed Joy’s life to be stolen from her. She, too, would become addicted to the poison of Unreal City, that intoxicating, infinite power that would efface what we had been told life was all about.

  Everything was quiet at last, and I soon fell asleep. Things were safe now. The demon was gone. The sun had risen.

  I don’t know how long I fell in and out of sleep. I woke to make myself some meager food—often instant noodles. Time lost some of its importance to me. The moon and sun flitted by, and I stayed holed up in my room with Felix. I was too anxious to leave. Midterms came and went. I couldn’t bear to face them.

  I fed my familiar every time I ate, yet I found it hard to speak to him. I wanted to be furious for what he’d done to Joy, but somehow the furnace inside me that often exploded with an overabundance of anger had gone cold.

  The day before Halloween came at last. Joy had to remind me through a series of text messages that we were going on our little adventure southward to Santa Barbara, where the great, salacious festival of drinking and debauchery awaited us. The very idea sickened me. I had no desire to be among that crowd this year, but Joy’s boyfriend Kyle was set on going, and she would be accompanying him. I could tell she was still feeling fragile, and because of the mysterious stretch of silence that had followed her pact, I couldn’t find it in myself to let her go alone. So I packed my witch’s getup and met them at Porter, where we left the mists and redwoods for the central shores.

  Joy and I sat in the back during the five-hour drive, and Kyle and his friend David occupied the front of the vehicle. We were going to get into Isla Vista late that night and crash on the floor of his friend’s apartment. I didn’t mind David so much. He was quiet and absorbed most of Kyle’s pedantic rambling so that I was left comfortably to my thoughts. Only a few mild bleed-throughs bothered me on the drive—a feeling of swirling in my chest and a sensation that the walls were closing in on me at one of the rest places we stopped at—but nothing I couldn’t handle.

  Joy, too, had lost much of her usual talkative nature, and stared out the window for the greater portion of the drive. I remember watching the smooth side of her face and her thick black hair reflecting the pale, reddish light of the sunset while we were driving down the windy highway along the coast. As I watched her, I got the strong urge to start crying again. There was so much I wanted to say to her, but I couldn’t—not in the present company. Instead I took hold of her hand for a brief moment. She kept staring out the window, but smiled and squeezed back.

  IT WAS WELL after midnight when we arrived in Isla Vista. All I wanted to do was sleep when we pulled up to the apartment, but I was surprised to find Felix waiting at the top of the stairs. I stopped short, looking back at Joy to see if she could see him too. If she could, she gave no sign of it, so I sent him a cross look.

  “I thought you might miss me, so I came along,” Felix sang as he trotted carefully along the railing. Ignoring him, I followed the rest of our troupe into the apartment.

  Inside there were already four or five people gathered around a hookah. The air was thick with incense that seemed to have been burned in an attempt to cover up the odor of garbage that wanted to be taken out. We smoked and drank and talked and stayed up much too late for our own good. Somewhere near dawn, everyone crawled off to their respective corners to try and get some sleep and I wrapped my sleeping bag around me like a protective cocoon and faced the wall. I knew Felix couldn’t enter the building until I’d invited him, but I preferred that he keep his distance this night.

  We all rose after midday, and went down for a breakfast of the quesadillas the town was famous for. The boys seemed to want to get up to more drinking, but Joy and I decided that we’d rather take a walk than, as one of their friends put it, “pre-game for our pre-gaming”. Booming beats were already shaking the ocean village, and Joy complained of a headache, so I suggested we walk down to the beach to clear our heads.

  College kids everywhere were already in costume, drinking brazenly in broad daylight. We passed a house where a group of boys had somehow moved a grill and speakers onto the roof and were dancing and cheering at any girls that passed by while they barbequed hot dogs. In the street nearest the beach, a group of young men wearing creepy masks were spiritedly pushing a dumpster they must have commandeered from some alley. Joy and I smirked, but were relieved to reach the sand. It was quieter down there and we at last had a chance to speak candidly.

  “Shouldn’t something have happened by now, Sarah? Shouldn’t it have come back?” she asked me without needing to specify what she meant.

  I scratched at the back of my ever-messy hair and sighed. “I don’t know. I thought so, too, but I suppose anything could be happening. I guess that’s why Felix followed us here, to make sure that—”

  “Felix came with us?” she asked, looking at me as worry creased her brows. I matched her frown.

  “Yeah, I left him at the apartment. You didn’t see him last night?” I asked, dread creeping up on me. She shook her head, and we stared at one another in silence, lost.

  “Look, maybe we’re just worrying over nothing. We’re probably just being paranoid,” Joy said in a pinched voice, a ghost of her old smile trying to shine through her worry. “We should just try to have a good time tonight. It’ll do us some good.”

  I gave her an uncertain nod and we sat down together on a large, fallen log between the campus’s lagoon and the beach, watching the filthy water flow into the sea through a graffiti-spotted drain. I couldn’t help but think of the writing on the wall that led into Poe’s garden. My eyes flitted down to the log and I saw a question carved into its worn surface that stirred a feeling of melancholy in my chest.

  Will I ever see you again?

  Night fell and we returned to the apartment to suit up for our wild night. I shed everything of my usual attire for my witch’s robes, but kept my necklace on. Though I’d tried not to dwell on her since my last visit to Unreal City, I still thought of Lea. I wondered if she would’ve been here with me right now, perhaps wearing a matching costume, perhaps supporting both Joy and I through this. As I put the silly hat onto my head, I wondered if she’d known what was killing her at the moment of her death. Had she been able to see the familiar, or was it invisible to her as Felix had been to Joy last night? Or had she looked into its jar and felt her throat fill with water, choking her last breath as she was terrorized by its twisted appearance? The old furnace inside me lit up as I did my makeup. Who had done it? Whose familiar had it been? Who had wanted to kill Lea, or Poe, or me for that matter? I would never get to know now that Joy had claimed the familiar as her own. This tore at my mind until a thought occurred to me.

  Do they keep their memories from when they were with their previous masters?

  With this question nagging at me, I excused myself and went out onto the balcony where Felix waited. Now that night had fallen, the town was rumbling with the sounds of raucous partying and hooting cries of merrymaking in the streets. Felix blinked at me as I walked up to him.

  “Can familiars remember the times from when they belonged to another master?” I asked bluntly.

  “Yes.”

  “So when Joy’s familiar finally appears to her she would be able to ask it why it killed Lea. Right? It would know everything, right?” I chewed my lip, and he paused for a long while before nodding. I exhaled and looke
d out at the horizon to where the ocean was. I was so close to knowing.

  And what would it be like when I did? Would I be able to let her go, as I had been instructed to do? Would I be freed or would I be crushed? Would I have the courage to tell my mother and father why they would never see their daughter again? Would they want to know? Of course Mom would want to know; she was the one who still waited every day to see if Lea’s boyfriend would wake from his coma and explain the details about the night she was murdered—and what he would tell them would sound like the ravings of a lunatic. Of course, I too would appear unsound of mind if I ever tried to explain the truth.

  These manic musings were interrupted as Joy came out in her nurse costume and motioned me back inside. We were all going to take our first shots of the night, then try to lose ourselves in the frenzy of the wicked holiday. Whiskey passed my lips; I felt it burn in my stomach. The mood didn’t lighten, but intensified. My laugh sounded like the bark of an agitated dog in my ears, but I laughed nonetheless. We took to the streets, determined to fight our way through the teeming crowd in order to find our way to the street nearest the beach, where many of the parties we’d promised to visit were being held.

  My head was spinning in a world of brilliant color and grotesque faces. Masks grinned, bloodied faces loomed, eyes crinkled and mouths widened, warped in the middle of screeching laughter. The howls of drunken ghouls echoed through the streets and chilled me more than any of the displays of gore adorning people’s bodies. Green lights, orange lights, purple lights. Naked torsos and bare thighs caught my eyes. Smooth, plump thighs. Sex and violence filled every corner of this town. We fought our way through the dancing, pushing bodies that packed the streets. Every so often I glanced down to see that Felix still followed me and felt comforted by his eyes. They seemed to anchor me to everything. I could hear roaring now, and I wasn’t sure if it was a bleed-through or some effect of the night.