by R. R. Virdi
That was good news and bad. I wasn’t keen on tackling every single one of them—them being shadow beings—in one place all at once. My priority, well, preference, was to rescue Lizzie’s sister. After that, I could deal with the shadowed monstrosities running around the place. Then came the freak show that had killed Charles. I sighed on the inside at how much I had to deal with.
“Lizzie, erm...” I paused for a moment realizing the stupidity of what I had been doing. The ghosts could hear me fine, yet I’d been addressing all my questions to her. I thought it polite to change that a bit. I circled in place as I spoke to the unseen beings around me. I waved. “Um, hi.”
It wasn’t the best of starts.
Ortiz scratched at the side of her temple, giving me a look. I scowled in return.
“Ortiz and I”—I gestured between the pair of us—“are here to help. I was wondering if you could tell us, well, Lizzie, how to find her sister?” I cast a look over my shoulder towards Lizzie.
“Hmm?” she mused.
“What?” Ortiz and I asked in unison.
“They said that…they’re here?” Lizzie’s tone was uncertain.
“Here?” Ortiz and I said in stereo. Ortiz moved from her position near the wall, springing toward me. I followed suit, moving toward her. Both of us tensed for a fight. Or to run. It’s always a viable option when the supernatural are concerned. It’s definitely saved my ass a few times.
“No…” Lizzie trailed off as her face contorted in confusion. “Here, but not here?” Blinking, her puzzled expression grew as she tried muddling through whatever it was they were telling her. “Somewhere like here?” Her face scrunched further. “Here but not here. More like—next to here?” Lizzie still struggled to understand. Ortiz mirrored Lizzie’s confusion.
I didn’t.
A Formula One event broke out inside my skull. Thoughts too fast to count raced by with deafening roars. I couldn’t make anything out. Lizzie’s explanation left me with a cold feeling of dread.
The Neravene.
Going through the portion I did with Lyshae was no fun. It was dangerous enough on my own. Bringing Ortiz and Lizzie along—damn, I didn’t know what to think. She was just a kid. And Ortiz had already been through so much. I couldn’t take her into a place like that now. Worse, I didn’t have a clue what waited on the other side.
You can’t think of the Neravene as one big place. I went through one part of it with Lyshae. But if we went through from here, it would be something else entirely. It’s not connected like roads across a country. It’s disjointed, separate realms and domains for whatever inhabits them. There was no way to know with any certainty what we would cross into.
An asylum haunted by ghosts. Ones traumatized by the monster that killed them. Then there were shadows hunting then. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about. The side of the Neravene that overlapped with the asylum would be something from a Stephen King novel.
And I’d be dragging Ortiz and Lizzie into it. Enamel ground away as my teeth clenched and slid. Ortiz noticed.
“Something wrong?”
“Yes.” I clenched a fist. “No. I don’t know.”
“I’m freezing, surrounded by ghosts, shadow monsters and more,” Ortiz growled. “If you’ve got something on your mind, I would prefer you spill it before I make you.”
“I know where they’ve taken Lizzie’s sister.” My voice was flat.
Lizzie’s face shifted. Something akin to hope flickered through her eyes.
A smile passed over Ortiz’s mouth. “Great.”
I shook my head. “No, not great.”
The hopeful mask on Lizzie’s face slipped and part of me ached for robbing her of the moment. Ortiz’s eyebrows arched expectantly.
“Ortiz, the place they’ve taken her—it’s dangerous.”
She snorted. “And this place isn’t?”
“Ortiz,” I breathed in exasperation. All the pent up weariness flooded through me. “Just listen for one second and stop getting uppity with me.”
She glared daggers. I was too tired and concerned to care. If they came along and a single slip up happened, someone would die. I’d rather the both of them be alive and pissed at me for an eternity. It beat the alternative.
“Where they are makes this place look like an amusement park.” My brief explanation garnered shudders out of Lizzie and Ortiz. I couldn’t imagine what was going through their heads. As bad as this place was, they had to start taking seriously the possibility that somewhere worse existed. Their imaginations must’ve been running wild.
“You want to go alone.” Ortiz’s face hardened as she realized what I was doing.
I nodded. A look of hurt came across Lizzie. It banded my chest with iron. She looked like I had broken my promise to her. Ortiz’s look wasn’t any better. Her eyes narrowed to slits. I felt like heat vision beams would burn through me at any moment.
“She’s my sister!” Lizzie protested.
“You don’t get to make that call for us—for me!” Ortiz bristled.
“You’re right.” I fought to keep my voice from rising to a shout. “I don’t get to make that call for either of you, but I sure as hell wish I did. Believe me, this place is.…” I trailed off, not knowing how to impress upon them all that the Neravene was.
“This place is what?” Ortiz’s leaned closer. For Camilla Ortiz, not knowing something was an irritation and even more so when it came to the paranormal world. “Lizzie has more right than anyone to know. We’re going to rescue her sister.” Ortiz made it clear that they were in fact coming along. Her mind was already set. “There’s no way you’re leaving me behind unless you want to have your—” she paused for a moment glancing back to Lizzie, “—butt, kicked in front of a little girl.” She forced the word out instead of the easier one that would’ve come to mind.
I shook my head and smiled. The woman was nothing if not tenacious. “Fine,” I relented. “The place is called the Neravene.”
It didn’t register with Ortiz or Lizzie. Why would it? It was up to me to explain the unexplainable. I took a deep breath. “The Neravene is The World Beside Ours. It’s a place that sits beside our world, but it’s not something that adheres to time, size, space or anything else. Like billions of worlds inside an even bigger world. A world that’s as large as it needs to be to encompass the ever-growing smaller worlds. Most of our rules hold very little sway there. It’s a place where every fairytale, folklore and mythology you’ve heard of—and some you haven’t—reside. They have a home there. Ghosts carve out their own little niche. A single ghost gets an entire world of their own there, twisted and broken, shaped to their mangled mind.”
Ortiz’s steely gaze wavered for a moment. Her jaw tightened as she worked through the information. Lizzie, on the other hand, was a statue—silent, unmoving and listening. I could see the focus in her eyes. She was taking every ounce of info in. Anything to save her sister.
People never cease to amaze me. Moments ago Lizzie was a quiet girl with a calm demeanor, talking to ghosts. Now I could see the ice water running through her veins and deep-set resolution in her eyes. That little girl was going to save her sister’s ghost, Neravene and danger be damned.
It bowled me over. If the kid was ready to handle anything for the sake of her sister, then maybe she did deserve to come along. But, even with that fire in both of them, they needed to know how bad it could get.
“It’s a heckuva lot worse than that though.”
“How could it be worse?” Ortiz’s color had paled from the long exposure to the cold.
“Because, I have no idea what we’ll face on the other side. We’re going in blind.” I let the truth hang in the air. It had a sobering effect on us all.
In any world, supernatural or not, knowledge is power. Fact. I knew it. Ortiz knew it too. And I didn’t know what we were in for. That was something to chill the blood. Walking blind into anything was a recipe for disaster. Walking into the Neravene blind was a death sentence.
“Ortiz.” I paused, turning to address Lizzie as well. “Lizzie.” I cleared my throat. “I need you to promise me something.” Before they could agree, question or disagree, I laid out my terms. “If you wanna tag along, you play by my rules. I make it a habit not to cross into this place unless I absolutely have to. That says something right there. You want me to get your sister away from those freaks, then we do it my way. I want us all coming out of there in one piece. End.” My voice made stone seem soft.
Ortiz and Lizzie stood in silence, letting my words register. They nodded in agreement a second later.
Good. So long as we were on the same page we had a decent shot.
“So… where is this place? How are we getting there?”
I smiled at Ortiz and gestured around the room. “They’re taking us there.”
“Oh.” Lizzie bobbed her head in understanding.
Nothing happened for a short time. Then the asylum’s ghosts opened a Way.
Chapter Fourteen
No two creatures or people, however much alike, will ever open Ways similar to one another. An opening to the Ways is as singular and unique as the one, or ones, creating it. Nothing made that more evident than the Way before me. It was a dead ringer for the one Lyshae had made earlier, except for in every possible way. There was no perfect ribbon of glimmering silver.
Lyshae was grace given form. Her Way reflected that and the ghosts’ Way reflected them. It wasn’t an opening. It was a tear. My mind conjured images of sharks chomping into surfboards. An eight-foot jagged bite suspended in mid-air. It was a broken and violent-looking thing, which spoke volumes about the ghosts that made it. Part of me twinged to think what they must’ve been going through. The other part of me was glad my bladder was empty.
Ortiz was transfixed by the sight, eyes locked but quivering in their sockets. She gazed upon the mirrored finish of the Way with a mixture of awe and horror. Gazing back at her, at all of us in fact, was something out of a fun house. Distorted images of the three of us stared back in reflection.
“Charles…wha…what the hell is that?” Ortiz took a cautious step back.
“That...is a Way to the Neravene. Their Way to be exact.” I rolled a hand at the invisible ghosts surrounding us.
“And…we have to go through that?”
“You could always stay here.” I worked to keep my tone neutral.
She whipped to face me with a heated glare.
I fought the urge to smile. She wasn’t staying back because of a moment of confusion and terror. People always freak at the unknown. It’s part of what makes us...us. That being said, another part of being a person is seeing, acknowledging and dealing with the unknown. No one I knew could do that better than Camilla Ortiz. She could look danger in the eye, tremble, and then shove her foot up its ass.
Movement caught my eye and I surged forward, grabbing Lizzie by the shoulders. “Whoa there. We go together.” It was a brave thing to do, marching off into the Way, but brave often goes hand in hand with stupid. Not that I was going to tell Lizzie that. If anyone was to step through first, it was going to be me. That wasn’t chivalry talking; it was common sense. I had the most experience.
Grip slipping from her shoulders, my hand made its way down to hers, enfolding it. I gave Lizzie’s hand a reassuring squeeze and craned my neck toward Ortiz. I flashed her a grin. “You comin’? We could use your fists of fury.”
She gave me a wolfish smile. Ortiz took my hand and the three of us stepped through.
This part of the Neravene was a perfect mirror of Lizzie’s room—if that mirror was broken. What was once pristine, inviting and white, was now the opposite. Everything—from the walls, floors, sheeting and even the frickin’ air—was warped. All of it seemed to be covered in a dense lacquer of melancholy blues and blacks. The floorboards had aged to the point of rot, broken and crumbling like sodden cardboard.
The only things to retain any color that wasn’t a chilling blue were the three of us. We looked out of place. Perfect prey for whatever nasties lingered nearby.
Pressure enveloped my hands. I looked at Lizzie and Ortiz. Their faces were masks of carved ice. I let them squeeze their anxiety away. It’s not the worse pain I’ve dealt with. There’s nothing wrong with letting someone crush your hand if it brings them a little comfort. Sometimes people just want to have something, or someone, to hold onto while their mind goes on a leave of absence.
“This…this is the Neravene?” Ortiz’s breathing picked up.
“A reflection of the asylum.” I gestured to the familiar walls.
Ortiz gave me a look that said it sure as hell didn’t look anything like the asylum.
“A twisted version,” I amended. “A small part of it. Remember what I said about ghosts getting their own niche here? This little nook belongs to the asylum’s ghosts.”
Ortiz and Lizzie swallowed.
“Every one of them calls this place home. It’s going to be as dark, broken, disoriented and violent as they are. This part of the Neravene is going to resemble their minds as a collective. Think about that.”
Their grips tightened on mine.
I peeped at my forearm. The number twenty-eight was gone. Twenty-seven hours left. I frowned. My timeline didn’t update in the Neravene. It must have changed back on the other side. I noticed it too late. With no accurate way of telling time here, I couldn’t gauge my deadline. Every second in the Neravene could translate to minutes or hours back in the real world.
Ortiz caught my stare and followed it. “We’ve still got some time.”
I shook my head and told her about the policy the Neravene kept regarding timepieces. Even my oh-so-fashionable tattoo wasn’t exempt. She scowled.
“We have to move, and fast. Lizzie, can you wrangle up the Casper posse and see if they can get a bead on your sister?”
Ortiz leaned in and kept her voice to a whisper. “Why can’t we see the ghosts still?”
It was a good question. We were on their turf now. They didn’t have to hide unless they wanted to. “Same reason as before. They don’t want us to see them.”
She didn’t respond to that. Who could blame her?
“Lizzie, got anything on the ghost radar?”
“She’s somewhere in the building.” Her voice was tinged with hope.
I kept my grim thoughts to myself. I wasn’t going to rain on Lizzie’s parade. The asylum was a big place. There was bound to be trouble lurking somewhere. Not to mention there were still the shadows to contend with.
Lizzie smiled. “But I think I know where to go.”
“Good enough for me. Point the way.” I slipped out of Lizzie’s and Ortiz’s grasps as I moved to take the lead. Motioning for Lizzie to fall into step behind me, I gave a nod to Ortiz. She understood. Ortiz moved back and put Lizzie between the two of us. It would be the safest place for her.
Peering through the doorway on both sides, I led them from the room once I was satisfied nothing creepy was about. Well, nothing creepy asides from the group of hidden ghosts that were trailing us. At least the ghosts’ icebox treatment had subsided.
Something else took the place of that worry. There was no sound apart from our voices. Every footstep happened in silence. My fist lashed out toward a section of the wall. It fell apart like it was comprised of LEGO bricks. Ortiz and I traded glances. I shrugged. It was a blessing of sorts. If we could move in silence, all the better. It did mean that whatever else was in here would also be muted. I didn’t share that thought with the other two. There was no need to put them further on edge.
Flicker. Something darted past. It was hard to tell given the dark blue tinge that hung around us. But I know what I saw.
“Charles,” Ortiz hissed.
“I know. I saw it.” The shadows had come out to play.
We kept walking. I refused to slow our pace. If the shadowed assholes wanted to jump us, they’d have to follow behind. We weren’t going to chase after them. Lizzie’s sister was first priority. Stop
ping the monsters was secondary.
A dark blur blasted past us. Ortiz and I tried to follow its path. A muffled cry filled the otherwise crypt-like halls. Lizzie screamed in anguish and moved toward something. My gut somersaulted when I saw what.
I outpaced her, sinking to the ground and wrapping my arms around her. “No!”
One of the shadows had swum below, crossing the floor and coming to stop behind us. I connected the bodiless cry and Lizzie’s scream of protest. One of our unseen guides had been taken out. Lizzie’s reaction made sense. She didn’t have anyone physical to hold onto. These ghosts were her caretakers. Heck, for a young girl like her, they were probably her friends.
And one of them had died.
I didn’t know what happened to ghosts when they “died.” All I knew was that they could. They were fragmented memories clinging to life, trying to grasp a second chance. They never could though. They weren’t the real deal. They weren’t souls. But for many, they were close enough. Lizzie certainly thought of them as more.
She thrashed and screamed in my grip. I held her tight. Ortiz shouted something but I tuned her out.
“Get it!” Lizzie kicked and flailed.
What I saw next caused my entire body to fail me. The shadow launched itself from the floor, taking on its full form and height.
And bolted.
It didn’t get very far. It came to an abrupt halt several yards from us. The shadow man impacted an invisible wall. Then it was thrown to the marbled floor with a jarring impact. Tiles shattered in mute protest at the creature’s sudden weight.
Lizzie’s frantic motions didn’t cease. It was a struggle holding her back without crushing the girl. “Get it!” Her feet pedaled in the air as she howled.
Shadowed limbs stretched like strands of glue when pulled too far. They thinned as they elongated. The shadow being’s mouth widened to an unnatural size, a cavernous maw as the ghosts tore it apart. The center of its mass sported incisions that looked like a rake had been dragged over its torso. More strands were peeled from its body. The black threads flew into the air and faded to blackened dust.