The casual listener, though, wouldn’t have detected anything out of the ordinary. Nearly drowned by the rhythmic hiss of the ventilator filling and deflating Nodens’s lungs, the voices that spoke through the comatose man were so faint that it almost sounded as if the breathing tube had sprung a leak somewhere deep within his trachea. A microphone embedded in the man’s throat lining dutifully recorded the words, but even then the messages had to be amplified, filtered, and digitally finessed before meaning could be extracted. Forty hours a week in the company of Sleepers, however, had acclimated Chuck to the slightest of changes in his partners’ respiration. He could tell when the Med Techs would need to suction sputum before the airways had even begun gurgling; he knew when the water in the humidifier’s reservoir was running low or when a valve in the tubing was malfunctioning.
So when a sound that was no more than the softest of sighs passed Nodens’s vocal cords, Chuck looked up from his paperwork with a smile. His eyes twinkled as he pressed his palms together and bowed his head. Someone, somewhere, was coming through.
“All right,” he said aloud, “time to get to work.”
The assignment, of course, would be what Level I Whisks dismissively referred to as a Show ’n Go. The soul would be freed from the Crossfade with only minimal guidance and The Walk would be over far too soon. Even such mundane tasks, however, were preferable to the reports Chuck was required to file; his heart always beat a little more quickly when the voices of the dead bled into the physical realm and tingles tickled the thin hairs on the back of his neck. This was what it was all about; this was the moment he lived for.
The first warning in the handbook stated, in no uncertain terms, that there was some malevolent shit out there. Chuck Grainger knew this. But the routine nature of Level II assignments sometimes caused him to forget that occasionally things could go very, very wrong…
Chapter 1
Alone in the Dark
The darkness devoured everything. Though her palm was so close that it brushed the tip of her nose, the woman couldn’t detect even the hint of a silhouette. Deprived of sight, she relied solely on her other senses instead. She knew she was naked because the cold dimpled her flesh and her scalp tingled as shivers raced through her body; stretching her arms into the darkness, her hands encountered the gritty texture of stone. She trailed her hands over the rough contours, her fingertips numbing as they passed through icy streams of condensation. The cold and gooey strands fanning down the stone were most likely some sort of algae and as her fingers continued their exploration, the edge of the rock dipped sharply before rising up from a channel separating it from the next stone. The material filling this gap was just as coarse, but its surface was more uniform than the rocks surrounding it. It lacked the pits and crags of stone, and when she raked her fingernail across it, the material crumbled into powdery nuggets, confirming her suspicion: It was mortar.
She wasn’t standing within a cave at all, but rather a room with stone walls. Of course, she’d never really believed she was in a cavern to begin with. The woman’s imagination had only toyed with the idea, exploring it as a possibility before moving on to a more probable explanation. Her initial guess, however, had not lacked potential evidence. The air was so damp she felt the moisture on the tip of her tongue and the musty scent of age tickled her nostrils like a sneeze that refused to come; somewhere in the darkness, water plinked and echoed while all else remained perfectly still. Combined with the complete lack of light, these things had indeed suggested a subterranean underworld far from the life-giving warmth of the sun. However, when the woman grazed her bare foot over the material beneath it, her toes detected the pattern of a floor cobbled with stonework…not hard-packed earth riddled with pebbles and a veneer of dust.
Dungeon.
The word assaulted her mind like a mugger, jumping from the shadows that had previously cloaked it. Her body jolted with the vehemence of the word, almost as though she’d been physically grabbed.
A dungeon? She considered the idea as she chewed on her bottom lip. But why? And how?
There were no answers. She’d been wandering through the passages for what felt like hours, yet still had no idea of how she’d come to be in this place, regardless of exactly what it was. It was as if she’d been born fully grown into the lightless void, possessing no memories or experiences that didn’t involve dank air and walls hidden by the gloom. No one had been present to give her a name or hold her close as the first of many tears warmed her cheeks. She was received only by the darkness and left to piece the mystery together on her own.
What disturbed the woman more than her complete lack of memory, however, was the ease with which she accepted it. Part of her mind insisted that her stomach should flip-flop with panic, that she should scream for help until her throat was bloodied and raw, until someone—anyone—answered her calls. But that part was no more than a whisper, easily pushed aside by the calm and methodical detachment with which she explored her surroundings.
There was a reason she couldn’t remember, the woman thought; and if that reason were bad enough to obliterate every shred of who she’d been, perhaps she was better off not knowing. For she knew this was not simple amnesia triggered by head trauma. If that were the case, she’d have been in a hospital. Doctors and nurses would tend to her needs and psychologists would help her untangle the truth. But to have her mind wiped clean only to find herself in what, for all intents and purposes, certainly felt like a dungeon? No, that couldn’t be good at all. So she shuffled through the darkness with outstretched hands guiding the way, inching along only because it was preferable to standing still. At least movement kept blood flowing through her veins and provided a modicum of warmth. For that, if nothing else, she was grateful.
The woman counted one hundred steps before stopping. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called out in a voice that sounded alien to her own ears.
“Hello?” Her greeting echoed in the blackness, each repetition sounding as though it were spoken by a slightly different voice. The tone seemed to change as well; hopeful questioning slowly morphed to the point that the faintest echoes seemed to sneer and mock before diminishing completely. “Is anyone down here?”
As had become her habit, she waited for a reply. Holding her breath, she strained to hear even the slightest sound as she counted fifty beats of her heart. But, as always, there was no reply. Another hundred steps and she’d try again. The woman was determined to repeat this process until someone answered. Or, barring that, until she actually ended up somewhere other than these darkened tunnels.
She was about to take the first step when she thought she heard something. She froze with her foot suspended several inches off the floor and cocked her head to the side so she could better listen. Dripping condensation; slight puffs as she exhaled through her nose but nothing more.
It must have been her imagination then. Surely she couldn’t be subjected to hours of complete blindness without her mind eventually playing tricks on her. The human brain craved stimulation after all. For example, even if the passage had been completely silent, her ears would have insisted they heard a high-pitched ringing. So that had to be it then. Nothing more than an auditory hallucination.
She lowered her foot upon the cool cobbles and prepared to take another step when she froze.
There it was again.
A sound like the softest of sighs, thin and wheezy. Faint, to be certain…but definitely not imagined.
Something about the noise quickened the woman’s pulse. She felt the vein in her neck throb and heard the whoosh and swish of blood in her eardrums as her heart thudded harder. This change wasn’t brought about by the possibility that she wasn’t alone down here, however. It wasn’t excitement…it was fear.
She stood perfectly still and within minutes heard the sigh again. Was it closer this time? She couldn’t tell. But she thought so. It would have certainly had to have been louder to be heard over the sound of her own heartbeat. Wouldn’t i
t?
Despite the chill in the air, the woman suddenly felt flushed and warm. Rather than just beating hard, her heart was galloping now, squishing out surges of adrenaline that tensed her muscles. Her throat felt pinched and she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen, no matter how quickly her lungs insisted on breathing.
But why was she so afraid? It was nothing more than a noise in the darkness, after all. Not even a particularly threatening one. Most likely the source of the sound, given her environment, was a rat.
That’s no motherfuckin’ rat!
The woman felt as though a terrified child hid somewhere within the recesses of her fractured psyche. The little girl cried and blubbered, repeatedly insisting that they should go, that they should go now. Begging. Pleading. Yet the woman held her ground. Not because of courage mustered in the face of danger. Not because of heroism. No, she stood motionless in the dark simply because she was incapable of doing anything else.
She wanted to listen to her inner child.
She wanted her legs to move.
She wanted to run.
But the instructions got lost somewhere between thought and execution.
She merely stood. And listened.
A new noise reached her ears, this one coming from somewhere overhead. It was close enough that she could hear it distinctly, but far enough away that she never could have reached whatever made the sound, even if she stood on tiptoe and stretched. It was like the fluttering of a thousand delicate wings, each one beating faster than it ever had before as the swarm fled from something…monstrous.
That was the right word. She was sure of it.
Within the span of a second, the flurry had passed, leaving her to face whatever they’d retreated from. Alone. And naked. In the dark.
“Lydia…” The whispered voice caused chills to creep across the woman’s flesh. The three syllables had been drawn out slowly, each one burdened with menace. And that tone told her all she needed to know. Whoever had spoken wasn’t there to give her a welcoming hug and a fresh-baked apple pie. And it wasn’t the same entity that had made the previous noises. She was as sure of this as she was that the whispered name was her own.
Her imaginary child was throwing a full-blown tantrum now. The terrified girl pounded on the walls of her skull with balled fists, shrieking, wordlessly wailing as panic robbed her of all reason.
But still the woman’s legs wouldn’t cooperate. The muscles in her calves twitched with spasms and her knees shook as though they were too frail to support her.
“Would you like to play, Lydia? Would you like to play with my pet?”
In the darkness, something moved. Multiple feet pattered against the floor as it scrambled forward, startling the woman into a gasp. She hadn’t realized that the thing had been so close. How had it managed to sneak up on her?
The creature paused, sniffed the air in rapid succession as if trying to detect a scent, and scuttled forward again.
“Run, Lydia!” The voice boomed like the command of a dark god and gales of mocking laughter encircled her on all side. “Run!”
And suddenly she did. Her legs broke through their paralysis and she bolted blindly into the darkness. Within five steps, she slammed into a wall, the stone scraping skin from her forehead and radiating pain as she staggered backward.
The creature sniffed the air, snorted, and sniffed again before scampering a few more steps forward.
By then Lydia had recovered from the unexpected jolt and she darted back into the inky darkness, her legs scissoring as she bounced off walls she simply couldn’t see. Through sheer luck, she somehow found an opening, a ninety-degree turn that had the feeling of a doorway, and a mental image formed in her mind with such clarity that it seemed to flash in the darkness.
It wasn’t a dungeon. It was a maze.
Stretching out her right hand, Lydia ran with her fingertips in constant contact with the wall. The rough stone was like sandpaper, and her skin was rapidly rubbed raw. The exposed nerves flared with each scrape and bump, burned fiery hot as flesh curled back, lubricated by sticky blood. But when her hand met no resistance, the woman knew she could safely turn and she ground her teeth together to keep from screaming as she abraded her wounds even more deeply in a new corridor.
And still the creature closed in.
Stop. Sniff. Scurry. Repeat.
It drew a little closer each time, no matter how quickly Lydia forced her body to move. Sweat now plastered her hair to her skull and tears stung her eyes. Gasping for breath, she struggled to coax a little more speed from her legs. Adrenaline partially anesthetized fingertips that had the texture of ground meat and a stitch in her side felt as though a knife was continually plunged between her ribs. Even so, she forced herself to go on, to go a little faster, a little farther into the darkness.
But at every twist or turn, the sounds reached her once again: stop, sniff, scurry, repeat…
“Go away!” Her voice was thick and coarse and snot bubbled from clogged nostrils as the woman shouted through tears. “Leave me the fuck alone! Go away, go away, go AWAY!”
Yet still the creature pursued her, never seeming to tire.
Stop. Sniff. Scurry. Repeat.
Closer.
Closer still.
“Lydia!”
This time the whispered voice sounded as if it originated in the center of her head, and with it came traces of memory. She was young. Very young. Someone—a grandfather perhaps—had taken her into the woods on a moonless night. Tree frogs croaked and chirped while a lone bird warbled in the distance. A paper bag was clutched in her hand and she was alone, standing at the base of a pine, trying her best to be brave but wishing upon the first star she saw that she was back at the cabin, back in the safety and warmth of her bed, not out here with the bears and the wolves and whatever other predators might make themselves known with glowing eyes. Snipe hunt. That was it. Granddaddy said he’d go into the forest and clack two blocks of wood together, flushing out the snipe and making them flee in her direction. Her job was to capture them in the paper bag as they bounded into the clearing. But it had been ages since she’d heard the clack of wood against wood and every rustle of underbrush made her feel as if she were about to throw up. Something was out there, she knew it was, and it was coming to get her and it would eat her and she’d never see Mommy or Daddy again, she’d just be dragged away into the night, kicking and screaming and she just wanted to go back to the cabin, oh God, where was the cabin even at, which direction, where should she run, where would she go if Granddaddy never came back at all?
The memory burst as quickly as it had formed, leaving Lydia to wonder if it had been a true recollection or simply something conjured by her overtaxed mind. It had felt real. But at the same time, there had been a dreamlike quality to it, more like the memory of a movie she once may have watched rather than anything that had actually happened to her.
The distraction caused Lydia to stumble over her own feet and her body pitched forward in the darkness. For a fraction of a second, it felt as if she were falling through an infinite void, as if she would continue to flail in the air forever. But then the floor slammed into her, mashing her breasts against the cobbles and expelling the air from her lungs in a whoosh. She tried to gasp another breath, but it was as if something had choked off her airway. Her hands flew to her throat as she struggled to breathe, the creature stalking her momentarily forgotten in the desperate struggle for air.
Breathe, can’t breathe, oh God, oh dear God, I’m choking, dying, choking, breathe, damn it, BREATHE!
Floating just beneath her panicked thoughts, another hint of memory: This is what had happened to Granddaddy, down by the creek with the blocks of wood by his side, close enough to see the light of the cabin but unable to cry out as pain jolting through his left arm and his chest tightened. And it was her fault he was dead, all her fault. He’d mentioned the snipe hunt and she begged him to take her, bouncing from foot to foot as she tugged on his trousers and repeat
ed please in the sweetest voice she could, forcing him to relent with a laugh.
Without warning, Lydia huffed in mouthfuls of air, her stinging lungs grateful for its cool reprieve. Laying her cheek against the floor, Lydia pulled her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs as she cried. Partly for Granddaddy, partly for herself, partly because she still wasn’t even sure if it was a true memory or not. Tears of frustration, guilt, and fear pooled under her cheek and her shoulders hitched with each new sob.
What was the point of getting back up? Why even bother running? The creature would get her in the end. She’d tire or trip again, the creature would pounce, and then she’d die, never knowing who she truly was.
There was no other possible way the scenario could play out. She was certain of this. So why prolong it? There was no shame in giving up. If she were to die, then at least it would be on her own terms.
So she laid on the floor with grit sticking to snot and tears. She braced herself for the inevitable and tried to manifest an image of Granddaddy in her imagination. Was he tall? Burly? Did he have spectacles and facial hair or was he bald? A hundred different combinations flipped through her mind, features and characteristics from one bleeding into the next. Anyone could have been her grandfather. Or none of them. Her memory was as dark as the corridor surrounding her, and no matter how thoroughly she probed it, details would not emerge.
She forced the ambiguous remembrance from her mind and simply listened to the sound of impending death, hoping it would be quick and painless, but doubtful.
Stop.
Sniff.
Scurry.
Repeat.
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