"She always looked for new adventures," Geoff said. "Always wanted to go to concerts or travel. I was the one holding her back. I was content just staying in and watching television... drinking or getting high. I know she wanted more, but she'd never tell me that. I always wondered when the day would come when I'd get home after work and find the apartment empty. She deserves better... certainly better than all this."
"If she loves you, maybe it is enough," Eric replied.
Geoff didn't reply. The poor kid was taken away from all that before he even had a chance to experience it. Geoff nodded and changed the subject; he saw in the boy's eyes a longing, a need to be part of something. He had a feeling that even in life, Eric didn't have many great days. He spoke of his friends with love, but the loss was all too real. They were all he had, and he watched them fall without having a way to save them.
It was too much for anyone to bear.
Eric scanned the neighborhood. Many of the homes and businesses still had working electricity, and although the light was comforting, it also felt like a trap. He spotted several darkened homes and pointed.
"There," he said. "We need to get off the street."
"This feels too much like Groundhog Day," Geoff said.
Eric looked at him blankly.
"Oh, sorry, I guess you missed that one. It was a movie with Bill Murray..."
"The guy from Ghostbusters," he exclaimed. "I loved that one!"
"Yeah, that's him. In this movie, he was trapped in a time loop, doing the same thing over and over again, trying to change the outcome. No matter what, every day is the same... he just repeats it over and over again. This feels like that. Like no matter what we do, we wake up and nothing has changed."
"Did he finally escape?"
"Yeah, eventually. He changed his ways and fell in love. The end."
"What a ripoff," Eric scoffed.
Geoff laughed. "Hey, I didn't write it."
Eric's face changed as he noticed Stacy staring into a line of trees behind the houses. She stood and danced silently from one foot to the other.
"What do you see, Stacy?" Eric asked.
She slowly raised her arm and pointed, but there was nothing there. Geoff feared she was further gone than he'd previously thought.
"There," she said. "Did you see it?"
"See what, babe? There's nothing there."
Eric shook his head and sighed.
"There! Look!"
This time Geoff did see it; a tiny yellow light blinked in the darkness, followed by several others. They moved between the trees, winking on and off rhythmically. Stacy giggled.
Fireflies... a dozen or more, doing what fireflies do.
The normalcy of the event brought tears to Geoff's eyes. Even Eric was smiling.
"There's still beauty out there," Stacy said. "You just have to stop and look for it."
Geoff wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair.
She has to be okay, he thought. Or this is all for nothing.
What good is beauty if no one is left to see it?
"Come on, guys. We should get off our feet."
"Yes, please," Stacy moaned.
She followed Eric across the lawn to the front porch of an empty house. Geoff lingered, watching as the fireflies flitted between the trees, flying deeper into the forest. It wasn't so long ago when he, Dink, and Romeo would wait for dusk with a Mason jar and an unlimited supply of curiosity. Those days had come and gone so quickly - catching lightning bugs and rolling around in the fragrant grass, laughing as their mothers called to them from the porches of their homes. Every day felt like it was a month long... every morning a clean slate to fill with new adventures and experiences.
Now it was only Geoff. Even if he could find a way home, there was nothing left for him there. His friends had been exterminated, siphoned, used like batteries to power the Skryel's war machine.
If he had to die - just as Eric had died before him - he would. One way or another, the Skryel's reign had to end.
***
The interior of the house was warm, quiet, and untouched. There were no strange odors or signs of struggle; no bodies piled unceremoniously in pools of their own blood. For a second, it was hard to believe that anything had happened here, but Geoff knew better. The vacant stares of the hanging corpses told the real story of this Elmview's premature demise.
Stacy sat in the recliner and began snoring immediately.
"Is she really going to die?" he asked. "Isn't there some way to save her?"
"I don't think so," Eric replied. "I'm sorry, but she wasn't cut out for this."
"Then why did you bring her here? Why did you bring either of us?"
"If I didn't, you would have turned out just like your friends. I couldn't risk the Skryel getting its hands on another doorway... especially not in your world. If the monster could have broken you, it would have been all it needed to wipe out the entire reality. All others would have followed."
"You do realize that I still don't understand a word you say, right? There's not a single thing that has happened that has made any sense at all. None of this is possible."
Eric shrugged. "You've seen enough to know you're not imagining all this. If you think it isn't real, I'd love to hear your explanation of what's happening."
Geoff walked to the window and blew a breath through his pursed lips. The street in front of the house looked just like any other; it was the lack of sound that made it real. There were no dogs barking, no kids shouting, no rumble of passing cars or whine of jet engines flying overhead. Up the street, Geoff saw the very familiar bell tower of the church they'd just left in ruins. He wondered if Pauline and the congregation were hiding in its damp cellar.
"The church..." he began.
"Don't worry. I think we're alone."
"You think? That doesn't exactly inspire confidence."
They sat in silence for several minutes, listening to Stacy's ragged snoring. Geoff created a mental list of all the things he still wanted to ask Eric, but in the end, he kept them to himself. What good would it do knowing any more of the story when there was nothing he could do to change the outcome? Eric broke the silence.
"What made you and your friends go to that house? Of all places, you walk right into the one you had no reason being in."
"Stacy saw something about it on TV. A stupid late-night show about the supernatural. She's always been fascinated by those things. Before I knew it, we were there... then we were in Elmview. That's really all there is to it."
"You've never had dreams before? Bad ones? Like my friend Danny?"
"No, nothing like that. My life up to this point has been pretty normal. Boring. All I knew about Elmview was what I heard from other people or on television. I had no idea what actually happened... no one does."
"That's probably good. The last thing anyone needs is for Elmview to be turned into some haunted attraction."
"I don't understand how you and your friends didn't know about the house. Even Stacy found history about the place; told us all about the man who lived there and how the townspeople burned it to the ground. Did he start all this? Did he open the door for that thing?"
"No. Elmview was cursed long before that. Whether that man was a doorway or not... I just don't know. I guess it doesn't matter now... the past is the past."
"You said you had a plan," Geoff stated. "If you do, I'd love to hear it."
"You're not going to like it."
"Really? That's a shame, because I've been having such a good time so far."
Eric smirked, and the mood lightened. "When the house returns, we need to go there."
"What? You're out of your fucking mind! If that thing is using the place as a personal teleporter why the hell would we want to be anywhere near it?"
"To destroy it. To close the door."
"Oh, I hate it! That's the worst idea I've ever heard."
"We don't have a choice. It's not going to stop. It's going to
keep hunting us until there's nowhere else to run."
"What about Stacey? She's tapped out, man. She's not going anywhere. She can't run anymore."
"We'll leave her here. She's safer if she's not with us."
"And if it comes for her? What then? She doesn't have any way to defend herself."
"It's us the Skryel wants, not her. If there's any chance of getting back home alive, it's by destroying that house and sending the bastard back to the abyss."
"For how long? A day? An hour?"
"Would you rather die here?" Eric shouted. "A billion miles from home and constantly running? If we keep traveling, Stacy will die. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when."
"Okay, Boy Wonder! You can snap your fingers and travel to anywhere in the universe, but you can't find a single place where that thing can't find us?"
"NO!" he roared. "I can't! If I had that kind of power, don't you think I would've done it already? Even Ben doesn't have that ability, and he was one of the first Guardians."
Stacy stirred and opened her eyes. "Play nice, kids. People are trying to sleep around here."
Seconds later she was snoring once again.
"I'm sorry," Eric sighed. "I'm sorry you were dragged into this and I'm sorry there isn't time to explain everything. I'm telling you what we have to do."
"What about what I did at the church? That light? How do I use it?"
"When the time is right, you'll just know. It was the same with Danny... it's like some hidden power that only doorways have. I can help you like I helped him."
"Last time it killed you."
"Things are a bit different now, don't you think? I'm not the same person. I'm not the same scared kid I was before."
"Well I am," Geoff said. "I'm scared to death... for myself, for Stacy."
"Then help me," Eric pleaded. "I can't sit by and watch more people die. That thing has taken everything from me. If we can buy some time, we might have a chance."
"A chance for what?"
"A chance to find Ben." He ran a hand through his hair and shivered. "A chance to find Danny and stop this once and for all."
"Do you think that's possible? Can it be defeated?"
"If we don't try, we'll never know."
***
The house sat on the edge of everything, an energy farm for the Shadowking's next attack.
The walls hummed with electricity as the beast lapped at the blood of its recent kills. Broken rooms and twisted halls came alive with the screams of the damned. Fear rained from the ceilings like Spring showers as soul energy reached out for salvation. The Skryel laughed and basked in their fury.
"There's no place like home," the monster squealed, delighted.
Human suffering was the sweetest victory.
Soon, the light of the universe would be extinguished, plunging all of existence into never-ending chaos.
A perfect series of events for the Skryel to once again rule the cosmos.
Unchallenged.
Staring out over vast oceans of nothing.
The boy - the Traveler - would sit captive at its side... an eternal source of energy from which it could feed.
A lap dog to share its triumphant accomplishment.
A witness to the Skryel's rise to godhood.
The multiverse is dead - long live the Shadowking.
Chapter 11
Geoff's preparation for what was to come stopped the second he spied the laptop computer sitting on the desk.
With Elmview's power still intact, the computer was fully charged. After a few attempts to glean the internet for information, he realized it was gone. There was no worldwide web. No social media, no cat memes, no celebrities on the red carpet.
But there was a plethora of music stored on the hard drive.
Eric watched curiously as Geoff navigated through the system. The laptop was foreign to him.
"What are you doing?" Eric asked as Geoff's fingers skated across the keyboard. "Is that like... a typewriter?"
Geoff laughed as he stared at the screen. "Not exactly."
After tweaking a few things, he clicked a button on a small speaker and music filled the room. 'More Than A Feeling' broke the silence, and it only took a few seconds for Geoff to see the absolute look of joy on Eric's face. He crept closer, staring at the computer as if it was a magical device.
"It's a stereo?"
"It's everything you could imagine it would be."
Eric wasn't listening to Geoff; he was mesmerized by the quality of sound, struck by a familiar song he hadn't heard since his days at Danny's house... so long ago.
"Where does the tape go?"
"The tape? You mean a cassette?" Geoff laughed. "You don't need one. It's all right in here," he said, tapping his finger on the screen.
"It's beautiful," Eric blurted, wiping a tear from his eye.
The boy bobbed his head to the beat and sang along under his breath. Geoff felt like he'd just given the kid the best Christmas present ever. No world was without hope when the simple act of playing a song could put a smile on a boy's face. He danced in place, strumming an invisible guitar, laughing at himself, transported back to the days when he, Danny, and Brent would listen to records for hours, dreaming of one day being rock stars.
Every boy has those dreams. Luckily, Eric's hadn't died with him.
"Is there more?" he asked excitedly. "Can you play something else?"
"What would you like to hear?"
Before he had a chance to reply, the screen went black.
"Something isn't right," Geoff mumbled. "The battery should work even if the power goes out."
He glanced outside and saw nothing. The streets were hidden behind walls of black. Not only had the lights gone out, but whatever had happened fried the laptop's power supply.
"Put it back on," Eric demanded. "I want to hear more."
"Can't do it. It's toast."
"Toast my ass! Play another song!"
"Eric, relax. I can't just make it work."
"Why not? Why did it stop?" He grabbed the laptop in his hands and slammed it on the desk. When nothing happened, he lifted it above his head and tossed it across the room where it broke into pieces against the wall.
"Chill out," Geoff scolded. "Do you want the whole town to know where we are?"
"I don't care. I just wanted one more song," he cried. "Is it too much to ask to have one fucking second of happiness? Haven't I suffered enough?"
The floor trembled beneath their feet as a thunderous crash rolled down the street and reverberated off the surrounding hills. Windows shattered from the sudden change in air pressure as a car alarm screamed a few blocks away.
"Too late," Geoff said.
"It's here," he moaned. "I don't have to see it to know it's here. I'm sorry! I didn't mean to..."
"Stop. It's not your fault."
"Yes, it is. I'm like a big baby throwing a tantrum, and now I led it right to us. I can feel it on my skin, feel it inside my head. It's searching for us."
Geoff cautiously stepped over broken glass and peered out the front window. What he saw took his breath away.
The house stood on the hill - a scar on the landscape - but it wasn't alone. The entire mountainside was dotted with identical houses, seemingly built on top of one another, fighting for space. Several had been crushed together, overlapping in jumbled piles of broken wood and plaster. Trees jutted from shattered rooftops; windows exploded in white flame. More appeared as he stared at the hill overlooking the town, winking into existence from a thousand other worlds sharing a border with this one.
Houses up and down Elmview's main street shimmered and vanished, only to be replaced by the Victorian monstrosity where it all began. In a matter of seconds, the town had become a cookie-cutter housing development from a nightmare. Telephone poles toppled to the ground and exploded into piles of gray ash; the streets buckled and cracked open, spewing noxious clouds of steam.
The Skryel's Hellscape was complete.
"Now what?" Geoff asked.
"It wants us to come looking," Eric replied. "It's a game."
"Some fucking game. I never want to see that house again."
"It's a little late for that."
"How the hell are we supposed to know where we're going? It's all the same."
Eric pointed to a particular house on top of the hill. Nestled amongst the other broken houses was one wreathed in a shimmering circle of fire. A single path snaked up to the front door, lined with torches on both sides.
"I think it's pretty clear."
"Oh, good!" Geoff said sarcastically. "Shouldn't be a problem at all. Just hike up there and ring the doorbell, huh?"
Eric sucked air through his teeth and nodded.
"What about her?" Geoff walked to Stacy's side and ran a finger along her jaw. She looked so peaceful and unafraid. He only wished he could join her... wherever she was.
"She'll be safe, but not for long. If we're going to do this, we have to do it now."
"Promise me," Geoff demanded. "Promise you'll get us out of this."
"I promise I'll do everything I can. I brought you into this and I'll get you out."
Geoff grabbed a blanket and covered Stacy, tucking the edges tightly around her body. It was something he'd done a thousand times before but never like this.
Never like it could be the last time.
"I'll be back for you," he whispered. He brushed an errant lock of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She stirred and mumbled in her sleep, drawing the blanket tighter around her neck.
He heard Eric draw a breath and hold it as he stared past them and into the darkened corner of the room. Geoff followed his gaze but saw nothing.
"What are you looking at? What's there?"
"Okay," Eric said.
"Okay? What's okay? What the hell are you talking about?"
"I will. Thank you."
"Dude, you can't pull this shit on me now."
"It's okay," Eric assured him. "I'm okay."
"You're not having a seizure or something? Right? I mean seriously, you couldn't have picked a worse time to go crazy."
"Let's go. Stacy will be okay, but we're running short on time."
Geoff peered into the corner, trying to catch the slightest hint of movement. He shook his head and turned back to Eric. "Do you know something I don't?"
The Traveler (The Great Rift Book 2) Page 17