by Adam Dark
“Ian?” he said. His voice disappeared into the vastness of the space around him, which was disturbingly empty.
Nothing. Not a hint of a response from Ian at all, and that made this even worse. Ian was always there in Ben’s head; the guy didn’t sleep, for obvious reasons, so whenever Ben had dreamt before, his friend could enter those spaces in his subconsciousness at will. And Ben realized he had to be dreaming now, because when he was awake, he always saw Ian beside him in the spirit realm. There was literally no one else here.
When he stood, he found himself slipping a little on the green-tinted sand dune, a cascade of it rushing out from beneath his feet and spilling down the side of the dune. A grotesque, green-black sludge oozed out from beneath the moving sand; it looked exactly like the nasty black lines of whatever fungal thing usually covered every surface of the spirit realm when Ian took him there for real. Ben stepped backward up the dune to avoid touching the stuff and watched it quickly fade again beneath the green sand—like water disappearing into a dry dirt hole.
So now he was dreaming about the spirit realm, then, without demons or dead people’s spirits, making up his own version of what that place might be if Ben ever actually found himself in a desert. Weird.
Beyond the awful green light and the sludge, this dream had conjured a remarkably real-looking desert, seeing as how Ben had actually never stood in one before. He looked up and found himself staring at the weirdest reverse of the night sky. It stretched over him entirely—open, unending, everywhere—with that light-green glow of the spirit realm instead of the normal blue. Or, in this case, instead of the normal black of night. But there were stars. Maybe. Instead of burning brighter than the rest of this place, every speck studding the sky above him was a black dot of … un-light.
That was the only way he could put it, even in his own mind. Maybe the way black holes were described as being black when they were actually just a void of nothingness. But every star in this spirit-realm sky couldn’t actually be a black hole, right?
The more he stared at the strangeness above him, the more Ben started to feel like he really shouldn’t be here at all—like his own mind had betrayed some immense and all-powerful law by dropping him here in his subconscious and leaving him to figure it out. Gazing at the sky as a kid when his parents had taken him to the lake during the summer—whether it was daytime or night—had always made him feel so small, like the world was a huge place and he was just an inconsequential part of it. This, though … this made him feel like the sky and the sea of sand beneath him were pressing closer and closer together, slowly bearing down on him until Ben was crushed by the heavy wrongness from every direction. Okay, yeah, he’d suffered his own bouts of minor claustrophobia from time to time, but that wasn’t supposed to happen in wide-open spaces, was it?
Or maybe that just didn’t apply to wide-open spaces in the spirit realm. It wasn’t like anybody’s psyche was supposed to withstand being in this green-hued reality in the first place. But he’d always managed to handle it before, moving forward the best he could and focusing on how he and Ian could actually work together to keep anybody else from getting lost in the same deadly storm of shame, terror, doubt, and uselessness Ben knew so well. He’d lived in that storm for years, flailing for a way to get out of it, and he’d only just found that way out before he, Peter, and April had found Ian again.
He had to quit thinking about that. But it did bring back up all the crap he’d been force-fed when he was a kid—about dreams and how they processed whatever was happening in his waking life. Dr. Whiteside’s voice came back to him like a reoccurring infection. ‘It’s all just symbolism, Ben. Pictures our minds recognize that present a more easily digestible connection to what we don’t allow ourselves to consider in a waking state. Even these nightmares symbolize your subconscious experiences. So what do you think they’re trying to tell you?’
Yeah, they were trying to tell Ben that he was the only portal between worlds that actually existed in a person’s body. The spirits were trying to talk to him—maybe the demons were trying to screw with him, who knew?—but it hadn’t been symbolism, that was for damn sure. All his nightmares had been one-hundred-percent the truth of what his life had become without his even knowing.
Sure, he could take that psychobabble and flip this weird green-desert dream around. Dr. Whiteside—any doctor—would just tell him he felt isolated, alone, and lost after all his secrets had been ripped out of him like the world’s largest splinter, right there in Richard Monday’s basement lab. That the barrenness of this desert in his dreams represented his feelings of abandonment and betrayal.
Bull.
He didn’t need a dream to tell him that crap. And he couldn’t even be sure this even was a dream. If it was, it was the most boring thing he’d ever dreamed about, and who the heck actually stood in their dreams contemplating whether or not it was a dream and remembering what a jerkwad therapist had said eight years ago? “Explain that one, Whiteside,” he muttered, barely hearing himself in the emptiness of so much space. It was starting to freak him out just a little. Especially that black ooze.
Ben looked down again and took a step back, farther up the dune. The green sand sifted away from his bare feet, and yep, there was that sludge again. And then he felt a shift that didn’t feel like any dream he’d ever had in his life.
The same cold that had woken him up—or brought him here—seeped into everything. It overwhelmed him, coming from the sky and the desert, blasting into Ben’s face as an icy wind that didn’t even stir his hair or scatter a few grains of sand across the open dunes around him. His hair felt cold, of all things, which he shouldn’t have been able to feel.
Maybe that was what made him panic.
“Ian?” he said again, calling out into the green nothingness with a feeling like something was coming. No, something was already there with him. “Hey, man. This isn’t funny anymore. I’m done guessing.” But he didn’t get a reply at all from either Ian’s always-there voice in his head or from his friend’s spirit—always seen, always there beside him in the spirit realm. The Fell. That was what Richard Monday and his associates had called it. Only this couldn’t be for real. “Okay, so if I scream it loud enough, you gonna come out?” Ben shouted, his teeth chattering now as the wind picked up against his body and still nothing else moved. That same wind even howled now, which couldn’t have been real because there wasn’t anything for it to howl against.
Or maybe Ben was howling. He couldn’t tell anymore—couldn’t feel his lips or his own throat, whether or not any sound came out of it. All he knew was that cold. Until it faded just enough for him to think he saw somebody else walking across the dunes.
Not Ian. This person was tall, dressed in rags that whipped about in the impossible wind, green-hued now but probably tan under normal light. Whoever it was, they were so far away, Ben couldn’t see much more than that.
He blinked, and the figure had now covered half the distance toward him, like he’d just clicked a new frame halfway through a video without waiting to watch the first part. The surprise of it made him step back again in the sand, his bare feet slipping on so many shifting parts beneath him. The figure’s rags fluttered in every direction as it slowly walked forward, still heading toward him.
And then it was there, a foot in front of Ben’s face. “What the—” He stumbled backwards and fell in the sand this time, the person-creature-thing now looming over him with absolutely nothing showing between all those floating, waving, wind-blown rags. Where was the face? The body?
The weird creature raised what could have been arms out to its sides and let out a long, low hiss. Either that, or it was taking in a deep breath somehow. Ben was too busy staring at the gaping hole of black in the center of all those rags—right where the thing’s face should have been. He couldn’t feel his hands in the sand beside him, or his feet, or his head. But he felt the terror of seeing that same green-black sludge morphing and gyrating inside the thing’s f
aceless head.
“Ian!” he shouted, but he could barely hear himself. The wind that wasn’t a wind took the word from him and carried it somewhere else, far away. He felt the pressure of his teeth chattering again, but he couldn’t hear them.
“He cannot join us here, Robin son.” The voice came from the desert sand, from the green sky and black-hole stars, from the thing standing in front of Ben and the rags and the wind and from nowhere. “We have made sure of it.”
Holy crap. Had he just stepped into some totally uncharted demon territory without Ian? Without anybody else here to help him? Without any idea of what this was or what this demon thing wanted or how the hell he was going to get out of it? Ben’s mind churned with a hundred other desperate, panicked questions, and the rag-covered demon just stood there over him, its face dripping and not dripping that noxious black film.
“You should not have managed to be here, either,” it said through a mouth it obviously didn’t have.
Ben either stuttered where he lay sprawled atop the sand dune or just couldn’t completely feel his teeth still chattering in this cold. None of this felt like a dream at all. All of it felt very, very real.
“Yes, Robin son,” the rag-thing hissed. “We know what you have become and how. We did not think to anticipate such a fissure in our grand design, and yet you stumbled into it with all the tact and grace of a squalling babe.” Then the flapping demon bent toward him—whether at the knees or the waist, Ben couldn’t tell; he could hardly see anything now but that roiling, oozing mass of green-black slop spilling out of the demon’s head. “Now we know how to prevent such a blasphemous intrusion. And you cannot stop us.” That low, rattling breath came again, making Ben feel a lot like a steaming plate of food just pulled out of the oven. “This world has been ours for too long to let you expose our presence in it now. When the Gorafrim come again, we will—”
The thing stopped, straightened abruptly, and turned away from Ben. He had no idea how he’d ever mistaken this demon for a person walking across the green-tinged desert. It had absolutely no form now, all those rags flapping around and slithering through the air without anything holding them together—without anything inside. But even with its focus pulled from him to something else, Ben still saw the disgusting black slime moving between those rags, staining it and seeping through it before moving somewhere else.
A high-pitched, grating shriek filled the desert. It filled Ben’s head to bursting, and he thought he was screaming under the overwhelming agony of that sound but couldn’t actually hear anything else. Then a bright, perfectly white light grew in the sky above him and this demon thing. It blazed like the sun finally peeking through the clouds, brighter and brighter, searing Ben’s eyes. He couldn’t even shut them to keep the light out, no matter how many times in the next three seconds he willed himself to look away.
Within that piercing white light—which was the only thing he’d ever seen in the spirit realm that wasn’t either gray like spirits or green like everything else—he thought he saw a hand. A claw, maybe, or two, or something that looked vaguely like a body part of some kind; his mind struggled furiously to comprehend or explain any aspect of this experience at all. It couldn’t.
Then the light raced toward him, flashing and churning, like a flaming meteor falling from the sky. “Not this one.” The voice didn’t belong to the rag-wrapped demon. Maybe it wasn’t a voice at all, just words, pounding against Ben’s head and making him feel like he was going to be sick. And just before that streaking light barreled into its target, the demon made of black ooze and twisting rags froze, all the fluttering ends shooting out in every direction like the spines on a blowfish, like the thing was throwing out its dozens of arms and welcoming the light—or challenging it. Ben never saw what happened when they collided.
11
“Shit!” Ben heaved himself forward without any control and found himself sitting in his bed—back in his room, back in his apartment, with a bluish hue creeping across the walls, which only meant the sun was about to come up. He was sweating like he’d just run a marathon in a-hundred-percent humidity.
Cursing again, he kicked furiously at his comforter, whipping it away from his chest and throwing it somewhere else that wasn’t completely on top of him. He was breathing like he’d just run a marathon too, and the burning in his throat made him cough for a minute until he finally managed to just chill out.
‘Woah,’ Ian said. ‘You okay?’
Well that was a relief. Ian wasn’t gone, or stripped away, or whatever that creepy thing in his dream had implied. Because it was definitely a dream.
Ben took a shaky breath and let out a long sigh. “No, I’m not okay,” he said. “Dude, that was the worst—” He slapped a hand down on his bed and stopped, because he felt maybe the one thing that really shouldn’t have been there on the sheets with him. It couldn’t have been there. He had to force himself to move his head, to look down and really make sure. His hand and his eyes told him exactly the same thing when he saw the sand scattered around him on the bed.
“Jesus!” He couldn’t scramble backwards fast enough. Ben went over the side of the bed and hit the floor with a thump, his legs tangled in the comforter while he kicked at it again just to feel like he wasn’t a panicked rabbit caught in a snare.
‘What’s your deal?’
“What’s my—look!”
‘Dude, you eat in bed all the time,’ Ian said flatly.
“I didn’t… that’s not…” Ben ran a hand through his hair and forced himself to breathe again. “That’s sand.”
‘Okay…’
“I haven’t been anywhere with sand!” Apparently, all Ben could do was keep screaming. “It was a dream! I was… it can’t… what the hell?”
‘That is exactly what I was gonna ask you next, man.’
“No. Dude. Ian.” With a groan, Ben clutched his head in both hands. “I was dreaming, in the desert. The spirit realm. With this thing…”
‘I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed you dreaming.’
Right, because Ian was in his head. Ian didn’t sleep. Ian didn’t go anywhere but through Ben’s thoughts and dreams and memories; he’d done it before.
“It was a dream.”
‘Ben, I’m tellin’ you, your head was as empty as a—’
“Shut up!” Ben’s chest heaved again, and he closed his eyes as tight as he could, trying just to fit the pieces together maybe a little on his own. He couldn’t think. Scrambling onto his hands and knees, he crawled back to his bed and slapped his hand down on the sheets again. Rubbing it around on his bed didn’t change a damn thing; there was still a bunch of sand, and he was just spreading it around. He stared at it, only a little relieved that it was normal brown sand, without a single green spec or a drop of black goo or anything. But it was sand. In his bed. At the end of February in Boston. And he hadn’t been on a beach since last summer.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered, pressing his fist to his forehead. “If you… if you couldn’t see my dream, you can still see my memories of it, right?”
‘I mean, if you weren’t dreaming, how could you—’
“Ian,” Ben growled, “cut the crap and go find what I’m talking about. Desert in the spirit realm. Rag-demon… thing. Just…” He huffed out another breath and closed his eyes. “Look.”
Ian didn’t say anything at all, but Ben felt an odd pinch in the back of his mind that actually felt sour, despite how much sense that didn’t make. Then a flash of green overwhelmed him, and he saw the desert again—the sand, the black sludge, the many coiled rags whipping around in the wind, the bright light speaking to him.
He gritted his teeth and tried to keep himself together, then Ian finally fell back. Ben’s memories went right back where they belonged—buried somewhere in his mind again—and he realized he’d fallen back on his ass under the onslaught of Ian having dug his dream right back up to the surface again.
‘Dude.’
“Yeah,” Ben mu
ttered. “Still think I’m lying?”
‘Nope.’ There was a long pause from Ian, which Ben chose to write off as his friend taking a minute to think and not completely going silent because he didn’t like what he’d seen in the memory of Ben’s dream. ‘Obviously a dream,’ Ian finally said. ‘And whatever that thing was kept me from seeing it.’
“That thing?” Ben rolled his eyes and clamored to his feet. “You mean you don’t know what it is?”
‘Never seen it before.’
Oh, great. Thirty-thousand years trapped in the spirit realm, learning all kinds of terrible, powerful things from the Guardian, and Ian didn’t know a rag-demon when he saw one.
‘I never said I knew everything,’ Ian said. ‘Just a lot.’
“What about that name?” Ben tried to bring the word back up, and he figured it was this hard to remember just because he didn’t actually want to remember any of it.
‘Gorafrim.’
“So you know what that is?”
‘Nope. Sorry, man.’
Ben threw his head back and let out a long sigh toward the ceiling. Normally, he wouldn’t give a crap about a dream. He’d had plenty of nightmares. None of them left frickin’ sand in his bed afterward—or any kind of evidence that the awful things he’d dreamed about weren’t just in his head. He knew for a fact that his bed had been clean—or as clean as it ever was—when he’d gotten into it the night before. Okay, no, he didn’t wash his sheets once a week like Peter, maybe even more, but he definitely didn’t dump sand on top of them, either.
He stopped to rifle through his jeans from yesterday and pulled out his phone. Then he went into the living room of his apartment, closed the door behind him, and flopped down on the couch. No way could he handle sitting on his bed again right now, and trying to clean out all that sand first was out of the question. If he’d thought it would have helped, Ben might have liked a hazmat suit right about now, too. But it wasn’t like those were particularly demon-proof.