The Traveler (The Great Rift Book 2)

by Christopher Motz

  "It's okay, buddy," Dink shouted. "We're not going to hurt you."

  "Get away from it," Beth warned, "before it kicks you in the head."

  The reality of the situation was suddenly like a slap across Dink's face.

  What the hell am I thinking?

  "Go back inside," Dink exclaimed. "Now! Go!"

  There was no going back inside. The door had vanished; the outer wall of the house was once again an unbroken, gray barrier. Dink realized too late that he'd been had.

  "You fell for that!" a voice bubbled from the frenzied animal's mouth. "It never ceases to amaze me how your race has managed to survive this long."

  "Son of a bitch," Dink screeched. "I'm so stupid! I'm such a fucking idiot!"

  "Finally, the boy shows some common sense."

  The unicorn toppled over and lie struggling on the ground, covering its underside in a stream of bloody piss. Dink covered his nose with his hand as the stench of singed hair filled his nostrils. Tendrils of gray smoke rose from the unicorn's body as its skin bubbled and tore open with a wet rip. Orange fire escaped from its mouth as its head began to burn furiously. Its dying screams pried into Beth's skull; the stink of burning flesh and hair made her eyes water.

  "What the hell is that?" Beth pointed.

  A small, cat-like monster poked its head from the unicorn's torn ribcage, mewling quietly as it pulled itself from the cooking meat. It wasn't just on fire, it was fire. Its body glowed orange as flames crackled from within, originating from a white-hot ball of energy at its core. It glowed like a dying star, falling to the leaves and instantly setting them alight. Others just like it crawled from the blackened corpse, growling and hissing, watching Beth and Dink with eyes made of green flame.

  Over the increasing roar of the fire, Dink heard Beth's cries quickly fading in the distance. When he turned, he saw her ten yards away, running frantically through the brush toward the front of the house. Already, flames had begun licking at the dry, wooden siding, turning the side of the house into a wall of hellish, blistering heat.

  Dink surprised himself by laughing. The situation was so ridiculously absurd that he had no other way to show his sudden emotion. When he felt hot tears coursing down his face, he realized his laughter was that of the damned. He ran as fast as he could through the deep blanket of dry leaves as tree branches tore bleeding cuts on his face and arms.

  "At least it's not snowing," he wailed, breaking through the last line of trees and collapsing in the clearing in front of the house. Once the laughter had consumed him, he couldn't stop. The forest on the left side of the house blazed like a furnace; flames climbed the trees, turning them into forty-foot torches. The sound was deafening.

  Beth stood hunched over, trying to catch her breath and wiping soot from her eyes. Even this far from the blaze, she could feel her skin growing tight from the heat.

  "The driveway is gone," she whined. "There's no way out."

  Dink rolled on his side, retching loudly in between fits of laughter. He'd always wondered what going insane felt like and came to the conclusion that it wasn't so bad after all. When two-dozen of the fire-cats walked through the inferno and slowly surrounded them, he laughed even harder. He turned onto his back and stared into the churning clouds; even the sky had been set ablaze.

  When Beth grabbed his arms and tried pulling him to his feet, he jerked out of her grasp and backed away.

  "It's not real," he explained. "Don't you get it? This is all a bad dream. Close your eyes and it'll be over soon." He brushed an open hand in the dirt, clearing a portion of the ground next to him. "Come on, I saved you a seat."

  "We have to go," she sobbed. "It's not a fucking dream. You can't do this to me."

  "Where will you go?" a voice boomed. "You can run a thousand miles in any direction and never escape. This world is wreathed in cleansing flame. Pedophiles and housewives, murderers and baseball players, heathens and saints... all smolder with the same glorious glow. All I have to do is stand back and watch, sucking the marrow from charred bones like ambrosia."

  "You're not a god!" Beth wailed. "You have no right!"

  "I have every right. You kill each other with impunity and call it a revolution; I kill you with impunity and call it justice. Can't a supreme being catch a break?"

  "Oh man, this is brilliant," Dink chuckled. "I don't know what we were smoking last night, but I have got to get me more of that!"

  "You stupid son of a bitch," Beth wept. "This isn't a fucking dream."

  Dink laughed himself to tears, even as the soles of his shoes began to melt.

  Beth watched as a man walked from the flames, untouched by the inferno. He stood and smiled as the fire-cats approached the clearing.

  "Time to wrap this up, kids," he laughed. "My little friends will help you find your way into the abyss."

  "You don't have to do this," Beth cried.

  "Now is not the time for bargaining. Your race has had centuries to fall in line, but like the bedbugs you are, you refused to go away. I've tried fire and plague, flood and storm, and still, you've managed to cling to the planet's surface like rats on driftwood. I've sent the wasps and wolves, burned cities with the help of my friends here, created chaos and war on a million other worlds. I'll be honest, it's becoming more difficult to be creative. If I have to separate you one at a time, I will. It will take much longer, but all good things come through patience and perseverance."

  Beth closed her eyes and began reciting every prayer she'd ever been taught. If God was still listening...

  "Save your words," the man bellowed. "I am the only god you need to worry about now."

  The house exploded and collapsed in on itself as a wall of fire washed over him. What remained was no longer human, but a blazing mass of black smoke without form. In its depths, two silver globes watched them, reflecting their final moments in its malevolent stare. Beth heard other voices screaming from within the creature's shifting form; thousands of voices calling out at once, begging for salvation.

  Dink added his cries to the chorus as his hair erupted in white fire. One of the fire demons approached and leaped on his chest, immediately setting his shirt ablaze. His skin bubbled and blistered as the fire-cat dug a hole in his abdomen and climbed inside, tossing aside smoking chunks of viscera as it nested in his stomach. Dink spit gouts of blood from between his blackened lips; it formed a dark, red pool and quickly caramelized from the heat. Other demons pounced on his still corpse, tearing at his cooking flesh, playing with scraps of his smoldering clothing.

  There was nowhere to run. No last-minute triumphant escape. No final rebellious exclamations.

  Beth screamed as she burned, smelling the pungent odor of her own baking skin. The undulating black mass swept over her and dragged her screaming into the dark. She felt everything as her body was torn apart. When only blackness remained, she shrieked into the void, her voice joining the countless others trapped in the Skryel's realm.

  There she would remain until the monster could feed.

  ***

  Roger fled down the second-floor hallway without a clear idea of where he was going. Lisa panted behind him, muttering a quiet prayer under her breath. He heard the staircase collapse and felt the house rumble beneath his feet. He feared Dink and Beth had been crushed in the collapse, but he wasn't about to try to find out. It was every man for himself, and although he called these people his friends, he wasn't about to die for them.

  "Come on, Lisa, you have to keep up."

  "I'm trying," she shouted.

  The house was large, but it wasn't endless. The hall came to a dead end, leaving only two doors on either side that opened into spacious bedrooms. Roger burst through the door on the right and fell to his knees as Lisa ran in behind him, choking and sputtering, crying tears that quickly froze in her eyelashes.

  It was snowing again.

  The temperature had plummeted as soon as they reached the second floor, but in their mad dash to safety, they hadn't noticed the ic
y sheen that had collected on the walls and floor. Tiny ice crystals hung suspended in the air and collected on their clothing like dust. The air had grown so frigid, it hurt Lisa's lungs.

  "This house is trying to kill us," she shivered.

  "I don't think it's the house we have to worry about. It's that thing that's causing this."

  Lisa went to the window and crossed her arms over her chest. Anything to stay warm.

  "Do you see anything?" Roger asked.

  "Snow... snow and ice."

  Roger stood and joined his wife at the window, looking into a world that had gone the color of an old film. The sky hung low and gray over vast fields of ice that extended to the horizon. Mile-long glaciers bumped and squealed and crackled as they collided against each other. Wind whistled through deep valleys and over the craggy surface, whipping the snow into tight, white cyclones.

  After everything they'd seen and heard, they were no longer surprised by this latest twist. They were exhausted. Their minds had turned to pudding, and the intense cold only made them more lethargic. Roger felt a strange calm come over him as he stared across the miles of ice. He wondered if this was what ill-fated ship captains felt like at the moment they realized they were trapped in shifting ice floes. Starve, die of thirst, or succumb to the elements? One hell of a trifecta.

  "We're going to die," Lisa declared. "Or we're already dead."

  "You can't think like that. There has to be a way out of this."

  "Sure there is. The same way the others found a way out, right?

  "I refuse to die out here. I don't care how crazy things seem, there's always a way. We have each other."

  "And we can watch each other freeze to death." Lisa's tears had frozen on her face and her lips were the color of fresh blueberries. "We never had a chance. We were lured here. End of the road."

  "Do you believe all that stuff Stacy said? About the house? About Elmview?"

  Lisa thought about it for a second and nodded. "As insane as it all sounds, I do. Look around. This isn't a gas leak or mass hysteria. That monster controls this place, this house. It controls us."

  Roger rubbed his hands together in an attempt to get feeling back in his numb fingers. He had a strong urge to urinate but fought against it. Losing a finger or toe was one thing, but having a frost-bitten penis was something else entirely. He looked at his shaking hands and saw that the tips of his fingers had turned blue.

  "Remember that winter at the old apartment?" Roger asked. "The power was out for days and we ate stale donuts for dinner. I felt like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, locked in a refrigerator and eating crackers to survive."

  "This is not the same," Lisa muttered. "We had blankets. We had that little kerosene heater. We weren't in any real danger."

  "The old lady in the apartment below us froze to death on her couch."

  "She was eighty-seven years old and kept the windows open to make sure her milk didn't go bad. It's not quite the same thing."

  "Christ, Lisa, I'm just trying to make small talk."

  "I slept with Billy Saunders," she blurted.

  Roger closed his eyes and shook his head as if to remove her words from his ears. "You what?"

  "You heard me. I wasn't going to tell you, but under the circumstances..."

  "Billy Saunders? Filthy Bill?"

  Lisa nodded.

  Billy was a neighborhood guy. He worked at the gas station a few blocks from their old apartment building and had acquired the nickname Filthy Bill because of the grease and grime caked on his skin and under his fingernails. Lisa often joked about him, but there was nothing funny about it now. Nothing at all.

  "He was nice to me at a particularly rough time in our relationship, and I just let it happen."

  "I don't understand? When? Why are you telling me this now?"

  "Is there going to be any other time to tell you?"

  "So this is to clear your fucking conscience? Tell me you're kidding."

  She shook her head slowly and blew a warm breath into her cupped hands. Roger couldn't quite tell, but it looked like she was smiling.

  "When did this happen?" he whined.

  "What does it matter now?" She turned on him angrily, baring her teeth and clenching her hands into fists. "You were never around, always working or hanging out with your friends. I'd see you once or twice a week, and you made me feel like it was a privilege to have your attention. The car was acting up, so I took it to the garage, and Billy stopped what he was doing to help me out. He said my hair was pretty."

  "You fucked a guy because he liked your hair?"

  "YES! Because it was more than you'd given me in years. I was tired of seeking your approval all the time when it was obvious you couldn't be bothered to pay me the slightest compliment."

  "In our bed..." he rumbled.

  "Oh, don't worry. We didn't soil your precious bed. We didn't even make it out of the gas station. I let him fuck me right there, bent over the toilet in the public bathroom."

  "I'll kill him," Roger growled. "I'll fucking kill him!"

  "Go. Go right ahead. If you start walking now, you should make it right in time for Doomsday."

  "I don't understand why you're talking to me like this."

  "I'm just making small talk," she mocked.

  "You whore..."

  Lisa wanted to wipe the smug look off Roger's face, but her arms suddenly felt lined with lead. She settled for a weak slap across his midsection. Roger stepped closer, not sure of what he was going to do when his thoughts were broken by a loud, husky voice from outside. The man stood in the snow, surrounded by a guard of giant, snaggle-toothed wolves. He smiled up at them like a friendly neighbor.

  "Can I borrow your shovel?" he called. "I'm never going to get the car out of the driveway."

  "It's him. He's the reason you're saying these things." Lisa's face had gone pale and slack.

  "I am many things, but a fornicator isn't one of them. Your slut has slutted all on her own, and she needs to be punished, don't you think?"

  "Stop, please..."

  "Oh, come on Roger, don't be like that. Send her out to me and we can take care of this little problem."

  "I won't do it! You're a liar!"

  "You need to take a long, hard look at who's lying. Your wife allowed herself to be bent over a shit-crusted toilet and fucked by the local grease-monkey. What other secrets is she keeping I wonder?"

  Lisa cried silently, too weak to cover her face. She put all her effort into remaining upright; she knew if she fell over, she'd never be able to get back on her feet.

  "Just push her out the window," the man chuckled. "My pets will take care of her."

  "No! I won't do it. If you're going to kill us, you're going to have to come and get us."

  "That won't be necessary." He snapped his fingers, and the wolves reared up and stood on their hind legs. "I can have them come in and get you, but I'd much rather you take a stand, Roger. Put your foot down. Show that ungrateful bitch she can't walk all over you."

  Roger sobbed twice and felt his bladder let go. It had become nearly impossible to control his own bodily functions. His teeth chattered in his mouth as he shivered violently.

  "Do you know what it's like to freeze to death?" the man asked. "It's not pleasant, as I'm sure you're coming to realize. A few more minutes of this and your muscles will become so weak, you won't be able to stand. Some people have a strange reaction where they begin pulling off their clothing, believing their skin is burning. That's always fun to watch. If you push her out the window, I'll make it all go away. I'll send you to a tropical island where you can warm your toes in the sand and sip Mai Tais until your heart's content. You don't have to die for her, Roger."

  "I won't do it," Roger yelled. His voice was thick and slurred. The simple act of forming words had become difficult.

  "Did she tell you the best part?" the man asked. "Billy Saunders didn't exactly have many opportunities with the ladies. One look at him and most women drove in the op
posite direction. Better to run out of gas then get close enough to catch some disease. The stuff he blew into your adoring wife was like high octane jet fuel. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

  "I'm... so... cold," he whispered. "Please... stop this."

  Lisa raised her head as her eyes rolled back in their sockets. She fell backward onto the floor like a partially frozen turkey.

  "She got pregnant, Roger. Knocked up and filled with grease-monkey babies. You thought she was putting on weight because she was a lazy slob, but in reality, she had become home to a pair of little bastards. Twins! Imagine how happy Billy would've been to know he wasn't shooting blanks."

  Roger prepared another plea, but his mouth had stopped working. Instead, he drooled over his chin as a snot bubble exploded from his nostril. The room began to spin around him.

  "She killed the babies, you know? Probably better for everyone. They would have grown up to be just like their father. I bet she never mentioned that part, huh? Sitting in the waiting room alone and ashamed... praying she didn't run into anyone she knew. Amazing how some struggle to have children all their lives while others are willing to just flush them away like excrement."

  Roger's legs buckled and dumped him to the floor, but he barely felt it as his head split open and began bleeding.

  "I guess we have to do this my way," the man mused. "Good thing, too. It's getting chilly out here."

  In one motion, the wolves bolted forward and scaled the side of the house. Their claws had become foot-long daggers; they climbed the siding with ease, tearing jagged holes in the rotten wood. They stopped at the windows and poked their giant heads inside as saliva dribbled from their over-sized canines.

  "Time to meet up with your friends in the void. Hold on to that hate. It tastes so very sweet."

  Roger watched as one of the wolves sniffed at Lisa's still body. He knew she wasn't breathing.

  "Go... get." He couldn't tell if he'd said the words or just thought them. His body no longer felt like his own.