The Traveler (The Great Rift Book 2)

by Christopher Motz

  When the front door banged open, Stacy screamed and fell to the floor. Geoff jumped to his feet, brandishing the empty bottle in his hand, prepared to use it against the shadowy figure that stood on the front porch.

  "Come with me," Eric said. "It's not safe here anymore."

  Geoff reached down and pulled Stacy to her feet.

  He was finally ready to listen.

  ***

  Roger sat up and instinctively covered his face with his arms. He heard the others behind him, screaming themselves awake from fevered nightmares. Lisa ran to his side and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.

  "Are you okay? Please tell me you're okay?"

  "I'm fine. My head is killing me, but I'll live."

  "You saw that shit, right?" Dink yelled. "Tell me you saw that fucking thing."

  "You were dreaming," Beth soothed. "It's okay. Calm down."

  "No, Beth, he's right," Roger explained. "There was something here. I talked to it."

  "I saw it, too," Lisa said. "What was that?"

  Beth stood and joined them. "Come on guys, we were dreaming. Look. There's nothing here."

  "All dreaming the same thing?" Dink asked. "I don't think so. I fucking saw it. You all saw it."

  The fire had gone out. The pile of gray ash was cold, as if it hadn't just been burning minutes before, but rather a hundred years earlier. The room was bathed in shades of gray light and a thin white mist hovered above the floor. Fractured light spilled into the dining room through the windows' broken glass.

  "It's light out," Roger exclaimed, "and the snow is gone."

  The others ran to the windows to check for themselves. They'd gotten so used to the idea that it was okay for it to be snowing in July, that once things had gone back to normal, it felt like a trick.

  Beth was the first to question if normal was the right word for what she was seeing.

  "The trees are all dead."

  Lisa groaned and nodded. The thick, lush forest surrounding the house had become a barren, gray wasteland covered in a layer of desiccated, brown leaves. Not a breath of wind stirred.

  Dink ran into the foyer, pulled aside the frayed curtains, and looked for signs of the unnatural, saber-toothed wolves from the night before. They had disappeared, just as the campsite and Geoff's Toyota had disappeared. There was nothing out there. Even the air felt dead.

  "The bad news is we're still here," Dink yelled over his shoulder. "The good news is that I can see the driveway from here. We might have a chance to get back to the road."

  Roger joined him and peeked through the curtain, but his face didn't betray any emotion. He sighed and stepped back, shaking his head.

  "Something is very wrong here. Nothing explains what is going on; Romeo and the others are still missing, the car is missing, tents are missing. It might be light out, but it still feels like we're on the dark side of the moon."

  Lisa grabbed the doorknob and pulled, but the door didn't even rattle in its frame. "Add a locked door to the list."

  "Come on," Dink groaned. He pushed Lisa aside and tried the knob himself, but it wouldn't even turn. "I've had just about enough of this shit hole!" He kicked the solid oak door until his foot throbbed, but it remained closed. When he turned, Roger was entering the foyer, this time carrying the wooden chair from the dining room.

  "Get out of the way," he demanded. He raised the chair above his head, and in one fluid motion brought it down on the window with a shout. The chair broke apart like brittle paper, but the glass was untouched. He began attacking the window frame with his bare hands; sweat popped out on his forehead as he punched and pried at the dry wood. He tried one last time to break through but jumped back with a hiss as his finger tore open and immediately began bleeding profusely. Fat drops of blood pattered to the dusty floor and smeared the front of his shirt as he hugged the injured finger to his chest.

  Lisa went to him to check on the severity of the cut, but Roger pulled away.

  Dink and Beth weren't concerned about his cut, instead they watched raptly as the drops of blood were absorbed into the wooden floor, leaving nothing behind but faint, pink stains. They didn't have time to bring this to Roger's attention; no sooner had they witnessed this bizarre, new revelation when the house began shaking violently around them. Doors slammed on the floor above and giant chunks of plaster broke free and fell to the surrounding floor.

  As soon as it began, it was over. The house was once again silent except for Beth's ragged cries and their heavy breathing.

  Lisa shrieked as she saw a man standing at the top of the staircase, watching them with a crooked smile, eyes reflecting their surroundings like polished mirrors.

  "You," Roger bellowed, following Lisa's gaze. "You were here last night, outside in the snow. What have you done?"

  The man laughed and rubbed his hands together like a mad scientist. "Humans are so easy to terrify, so delightfully weak, so catastrophically flawed."

  "Let us out of here," Dink shouted. "We're not afraid of you."

  "Of course you are. It's the only thing you're good at... being scared. You scamper from one place to another, wailing like newborn babies every time someone turns out the lights. If your minds could truly conceive of what waits in the dark, you'd drag razors across your wrists as soon as you were able to comprehend how pointless your lives really are. In the void, there are no night lights, no chubby, lazy mothers to jam pacifiers in your drooling mouths. Your screams are all I need. Your fear leaves blackened stains on my lips, but still, I feed on it willingly."

  "What did you do to our friends?" Beth whimpered.

  "Your friends," the man cooed. "What a useless term. A friend is only a name given to those who suffer similar faults. You surround yourselves with people who are as broken as you, using your shared flaws to give the impression of oneness. The only thing you share is death, and the fear of the same."

  No one spoke. Evil pulsed from the man in noxious waves. Lisa sat heavily on the floor and vomited, but even Roger was past the point of action. His body trembled; the pain in his finger had become something that happened in another life to someone else. He was completely disconnected from reality. Nothing in a sane world could describe what had happened to them since arriving at this cursed house. The creature at the top of the steps further drove that point home.

  It simply wasn't possible.

  "I'm going to show you amazing things," it said. Its voice had grown hollow and boomy, like someone shouting down a long tunnel. "I'll show you other worlds and I'll teach you that your concept of pain doesn't even scratch the surface, and when I allow you to die, you'll thank me for showing mercy. You will die. Of that, there should be no misconception."

  "We didn't do anything to you," Beth cried. She seemed the only one capable of stringing words together to form coherent sentences.

  "On the contrary. Humans precipitated this necessary culling just by existing. It's my task to send you all back to the primordial ooze from whence you came and claim what is mine. Don't fret, my little insects. Everyone will be on the other side waiting for you. It won't be a pleasant reunion, but at least you'll finally serve a purpose. Your soul energy will keep the gears turning."

  "You killed them, didn't you?" Dink asked. "Geoff, Stacy, Romeo... you fucking killed them, you monster!"

  "If only you could see what they have seen. Geoff is another matter entirely. He and I have business of another kind. The rest of you are secondary characters, fodder. Your stories will end and no one will care."

  "We'll kill you!" Roger shrieked. "We'll send you back to whatever Hell you came from."

  The man's laughter filled their ears as his body disintegrated in a hot, bloody mist. Its empty clothing fell to the floor as a black, smoky mass floated to the ceiling and vanished.

  "You will try, and you will fail. This house exists in all worlds, and in all worlds this house is death."

  A strong, foul-smelling wind tore down the hallway, blowing dust and dirt into their eyes. Two
loud thuds boomed beneath the floor, followed by two more, then two more.

  Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

  They felt it pounding in their stomachs, like the amplified bass drum at a rock concert. Behind the cracking plaster came the muffled whoosh of a swiftly flowing stream. They could only look and listen as the house came to life around them: its heart beat out a steady rhythm, blood flowed in its hidden veins, its breath gusted up and down the twisting hall, smelling of the corruption of maggot-blown corpses left to rot in hot, humid, trash-clogged gutters.

  Dink grabbed Beth by the arm and pulled her away from the foyer as large chunks of plaster and lath crashed down around them. She screamed like an animal caught in a trap, blindly lashing out and tearing at the flesh on Dink's hand.

  "Beth, please stop! I'm trying to help you for Christ's sake!"

  They stumbled toward the dining room, tripping over parts of the wooden slats that had buckled beneath their feet. They fell to the dining room floor as the doorway collapsed and trapped them inside with no way of escape. Just before the exit became clogged with debris, Dink saw Roger and Lisa running up the stairs to the second floor. The entire staircase broke free and crashed down in a jumbled pile of shattered wood, filling the foyer with a deadly heap of splintered oak and jagged, rusty nails.

  "RUN, RATS, RUN!" a voice roared over the din.

  Then only darkness.

  Chapter 7

  As Geoff and Stacy walked to meet the boy on the front porch, he moaned and held his head in his hands. When he looked up at them, he was visibly shaken.

  "What's wrong?" Stacy asked, concerned. "What just happened?"

  "The Skryel," he replied. "It has your friends. They're all part of The Gray now."

  "What?" Geoff slid in the fresh snow and fell to his knees, awakening the pain in his injured leg. "How do you know that? How could you possibly know what's going on miles from here?"

  "Haven't I convinced you of anything?" Eric asked. "I'm not going to explain it to you. Just know I'm telling the truth. That monster has been hiding in that old house for decades, ever since we sent it away. It has trapped your friends, isolated them, and it will use their energy to find a way back into this world in its true form. It feeds on death, but it plays with its dinner first."

  "It, it, it," Geoff mocked. "Can't you refer to this thing as anything else but it?"

  "I know it simply as a Skryel. It's the only name we can pronounce. Call it he, call it the other, call it Shadowking. The name isn't important, and that's the least of your worries. Your friends are gone, do you get that?"

  "I don't understand," Stacy said. "What do you mean it plays with its dinner?"

  "The ones you came with are as good as dead. The Skryel takes pride in what it has accomplished, killing other worlds, turning them into lifeless rocks floating in space. People are dragged into those dead realities as a display of its power, where they are tortured and killed in the most brutal ways you could ever imagine. There's no coming back from that. Once their energy has been siphoned to feed the beast, they blink out of existence. Not even memories remain."

  Eric shivered from the cold and gazed into the snowy sky.

  "This is... insane," Geoff said.

  "Completely," Eric agreed, "but knowing isn't going to change anything." The boy held his hand out to Stacy and motioned for her to take it. "Grab her hand and don't let go. We have to leave."

  "Leave? Where the hell..."

  Geoff's words were interrupted by a bright flash of light and the nauseating feeling of sudden vertigo.

  "...are we supposed to go?" he finished.

  His view from the porch didn't simply change, it just was, as if it had always been that way.

  The houses on the other side of the street were well maintained and clearly visible beneath a warm, sunny sky. The snow had evaporated and had given way to a bright summer afternoon; cars passed in the street, blaring music, full of teenagers on their way to local swimming holes and air-conditioned shopping malls. The air was lightly scented with honeysuckle, freshly cut grass, and the tang of French fries drowned in pools of ketchup.

  "Okay... where... what... um, now you have my attention," Geoff stammered.

  "Where are we?" Stacy found it difficult controlling her mouth. Her body felt numb from the sudden shock of the changing environment.

  "Elmview," Eric informed them. "One of them, anyway."

  "You have got to be kidding me." Geoff stepped off the porch and looked around like a kid on Christmas day. He'd temporarily forgotten about the snow, cold, and creature that had apparently kidnapped his friends and took them on a trip through the multiverse.

  "Don't let it fool you," Eric warned. "It might look nice, but this place has already been marked for death, just like the hundreds of other Elmviews that have come before it. We're not here to sightsee, we're here to hide."

  "From your monster?"

  "Everyone's monster," Eric corrected. "Just because these people don't see what's coming, doesn't mean it'll stop it from happening."

  "You can't do anything?" Stacy slurred. Geoff looked at her, concerned, but quickly brushed it off. After the amount of vodka they'd both consumed, he was surprised she was capable of any coherent speech.

  "I can stay out of the way. Last time I came face to face to with the Shadowking, it didn't turn out so well."

  "You died," Geoff said matter-of-factly.

  "I died."

  "What's our part in this? I'm still having a hard time believing I didn't fall and hit my head."

  "Get used to it. I spent an entire summer feeling that way until things had gone too far to ignore."

  "My friends are really dead?"

  "Some are. The others will be soon. You can't dwell on that, there's no way you can stop it."

  "Then why am I here? What the hell is the point if all I can do is sit back and watch?"

  "You're a doorway, Geoff." Eric walked down the street, looking at the rows of houses and the children playing in their front yards. Twenty feet away, he looked over his shoulder and threw his arms in the air. "Are you coming or what?"

  Geoff grabbed Stacy by the hand and followed the boy into the sun of a different world.

  ***

  Dink looked around the shabby dining room and spit a gob of dusty saliva from his mouth.

  "If the monsters don't kill us, the asbestos will."

  "Would you please stop making jokes?" Beth cried.

  "I don't know what else to do! I've never exactly been hunted by a... by a demon."

  "We never should have come here. Didn't I tell you this was a bad idea?"

  "Like I had any way of knowing how it would have turned out. Seriously."

  "We have to get out of here. I don't care what's waiting outside, I just need to get away from this fucking house."

  "We're not going to get very far if there are packs of mutated wolves stalking the woods. There has to be a better plan than that."

  "Sure! Let's sit here and wait for that elderly fuck to drop the rest of the house on us."

  "Maybe if you bitch a little more, a magical door will open and we can ride unicorns to safety."

  "Oh, fuck you."

  Dink threw his hands in the air and walked over to the window. The forest was still; if there was anything out there watching them, it had found a great hiding place.

  The house trembled. Beth ran over to Dink and wrapped her arms around his waist as he protectively put his arms over his head. If they didn't find a way out of here soon, the house would become their grave. The room filled with a bright, blue light as energy crackled around them. Dink felt the hair on his arms stand on end and smelled the acrid odor of ozone. When he opened his eyes, the air poured from his open mouth; he had to concentrate on taking his next breath.

  "Are you kidding me?" he blurted.

  In the center of the wall stood a magical door.

  In the dry leaves outside, a unicorn crunched toward them and stood between two dead
pine trees.

  Dink walked to the doorway and watched the creature as it nibbled dried flowers from a nearby rose bush.

  "I guess wishes do come true," he laughed nervously.

  Beth grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "Don't go out there. It's a trap."

  "But... Beth! It's a unicorn! An honest-to-God unicorn!"

  "Are you crazy?" she screamed.

  The unicorn watched them, a single drop of water hanging suspended from the tip of its horn. Pure white, it stood like a ghost against the gray and brown backdrop of the forest. Dink stood transfixed with a silly grin plastered on his lips. Beth tore at his clothes in an attempt to pull him back, but he no longer heard her protests. He walked through the door and jumped down into the dry brush, inching toward the majestic animal as white steam billowed from its nostrils.

  "Hey there, big guy," he said. "I'm not going to hurt you."

  "Get a grip," Beth called after him. "It's not real. Goddammit, listen to me!"

  Dink reached out and ran his hand along the unicorn's smooth, warm neck, taking in its musky, wild scent. Beth ran up behind and smacked him in the head with a loud clap.

  "Ow, hey! What the fuck was that for?"

  "You're petting a unicorn, that's what it was for! You can't be that stupid!"

  "You just said it yourself. I'm petting a unicorn! When will I ever have a chance to do that again?"

  "It isn't real, baby. Please, let's just get out of here."

  "Is it any less real than the wolves? Is it any less real than what's been going on here since last night? Can't we just... enjoy it while it lasts?"

  "How has any of that gone for us so far?"

  The unicorn snorted and backed away as its eyes rolled wildly in its skull. It reared up on its hind legs and shook its giant head, breathing loudly.

  "See!" Dink shouted. "You scared him."

  The unicorn wasn't just scared, it was terrified. Its whinnies turned to piercing screams as it danced in a circle, bumping off trees hard enough to shake loose limbs to the ground. Steaming piles of excrement tumbled to the leaves and were trampled by the animal's pounding hooves.