A Mirror, Broken

John came through the door to find Amy washing dishes at the sink. He had missed dinner. Again. He dumped his bag on the scratched formica table and went to her. The set of her hips, the tilt of her head, the stray lock of hair - he was glad to be home. He wrapped his arms about her, and said hello.

“You missed dinner,” she said.

“I know,” John responded, burying his face in her hair.

“It was delicious, I’ll have you know.”

John kissed her cheek. “I bet it was.” He retrieved the papers from his backpack, and went to the sagging couch. As he flopped down on it, and peeled his shoes off, Amy came to the doorway.

“How did you do today?”

“All things quiet on the western front,” he said, as he loosened his tie.

“And what about all of the other fronts?”

He paused, and then pulled the tie over his head. He thought it looked a little like a noose. He tossed it onto the table, and looked at her. She was concerned, he could tell.

“Not a peep, from any quarter,” he lied.

She smiled. “That’s good.” She left the doorway, and he heard her moving about in their bedroom. After a minute, he heard her clicking down the hallway - sounded like she was in heels.

“Where are you going?” John asked, opening the first paper he had to grade.

She poked her head back into view. “Janet’s bachelorette party, remember?”

John’s face was blank enough that she wondered just who she had told that piece of information to. She shrugged - they would deal with it later. They always did.

“I might be awhile. Those ladies like to drink, you know how they get,” As she hooked an earring into her ear, she added, “probably hit the stuff all the harder now that Ted is off the market.”

John laughed, and she smiled to hear it. It had been rare enough, these past few weeks. She said goodbye, and headed for the door. He had had a good day. That was good.

John heard the door click shut, and sighed. The box in his jacket pocket felt heavy as a brick. He would have to find a better opportunity. In the meanwhile, he had forty papers to grade. He shrugged off his coat and started. It was much later in the evening, when the noise had mostly quieted, that he managed to get through most of the papers. They were almost uniformly awful, but he tried not to let it bother him too much. He got the feeling most of the kids thought him a pushover, and they were probably right.

But why should he be a pushover? A bunch of pre-teens won’t take him seriously? Fine. Fuck ‘em. He slashed a heavy D into the next paper he saw, indiscriminately.

And then he tried to calm down. He spent a few minutes carefully adding another loop to the D so it became a B - he was sure the kid had tried, and it looked pretty good, as far as these things went. He sighed and stuck his pen into his mouth, rolling it around like a cigar. The letters swam on the page – he was tired, and the stress was mounting. He buried himself in the next paper. The floorboards creaked. Strange - he hadn’t heard Amy come back in. Without turning his head from the paper, he asked, “How was it? Anybody embarass themselves?”

Silence. He twisted from his seat on the couch, to see why she was not responding. But it was not Amy, standing in the shadowed corner of the room. It was a tall man, with dark hair. His eyes burned like coals. The pen dropped from John’s mouth, and he mouthed a prayer as he watched a dark grin spread across the man’s face. And then he knew nothing.

*

Amy came back to their apartment around two in the morning. She stepped through the door, trying to be quiet. Being more than a little drunk, she failed in this effort. She kicked off her heels and padded into the bedroom; the bed was empty, the sheets smooth. She checked the TV room, and found John’s still form stretched out on the couch, a paper forgotten in his limp hand. She smiled, and went to rouse him. The couch was no good for sleeping on, and his back would not be thanking him in the morning. She laid a soft hand on his chest and shook him. He did not so much as moan.

She shook him harder, and spoke his name. Nothing. She said it again, an edge of fear creeping into her voice. “John.” She slapped him, and his head lolled sickeningly. She rose, and tried to breathe. And then she went to the phone, and called an ambulance. Then she called Mark.

After the red lights and the klaxons faded, she was left standing in the emptied apartment with Mark. The place felt like a crime scene, and she was not sure why. Mark, a tall man with sandy hair and an unmistakeable presence about him, was standing with his hands planted awkwardly on his hips. He had known John since they were in grade school. He had been John’s friend, confidant, and counselor since they had rode bikes to school together. He was shaken up, but was trying not to show it. They would drive to the hospital in his car. Amy was thinking about the way he had been so still, and the way his head had rolled when she had hit him. As if he were a corpse. She did not hear Mark, at first. He laid a hand on her elbow.

“Amy? We should go.”

He was right. She just needed to grab a few things. She grabbed John’s jacket, in case they needed something from his wallet. As she picked it up, a small dark box tumbled out of the pocket, and bounced to the floor. Mark was opening the door, ready to leave. Amy bent slowly, knowing what it was, but needing to see it anyway. She picked up the little box, felt the smooth felt beneath her fingers. She opened it. The ring glinted dully in the fluorescent lights. She gave a low moan, and sank to the floor. She hugged her knees to her chest, and tried to fight the urge to cry. Mark, concerned, rushed to her side.

“What is it? What’s - ” He stopped short when he saw the box. “Jesus,” he muttered. He took her in his arms, awkwardly. He felt her warmth shuddering in his arms. He leaned his head down to her ear. “Let go,” was all he said. And she did - the tears came hot and fast. The hospital could wait a few minutes.

*

He woke up in a hole. Nothing but wet mud on all sides of him - truncated roots and worms, blind voyagers into open space, tested the air. He looked up, saw daylight above, maybe a dozen feet up. What happened? How had he gotten here? Where was here? And who was “he”? He cast his mind back, trying to piece together the steps that lead him to this position. Nothing but blankness. Frustrated, he tried to focus. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Damn it.

“Are you there?”

It came from the mouth of his earthen prison - a girl’s voice, high and singsong. She sounded bored. He cleared his throat, and called back.

“I’m here.”

“That’s good. I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “It’s boring up here.”

He looked about himself. “It’s not so great down here. Do you think you can help me?”

Her answer came straight back. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well why not?”

“He said so.”

“Who did.”

She sighed, like all exasperated children do. “He. You know him.”

“Forget he. You said you’ve been waiting for me… do we know each other?”

“Depends,” she said.

He was quickly becoming frustrated.

“Do you know me?”

“Sure. Everybody here does.”

He could not begin to guess what that meant.

“So why does this ‘he’ not want me out of here?”

“He’s scared of you. Or maybe you’re scared of him. I forget. I forget things a lot.”

He heard a small squeak above him.

“You alright?”

No response. A figure came to stand above his hole, blotting out the sun. Watching him. It sent a chill down his spine.

“Hello?”

The figure watched him a moment longer, and then moved - the sun returned, and he was left with nothing.

“God damnit,” he shouted, and buried his fist into the earth.

Time passed, and he remained in the hole. He still could not remember who he was, or why he was down here. Was he somebody’s prisoner? Perhaps that figure had captured him, for some reason. But a hole in the earth? There was something familiar about that figure, though - the way the earth held its breath. Silence, and then it was there. Deja vu. But only the sensation of it, without the memory. Twice as maddening. The sun above him was fading. As the light died, he sat down, squelching in the mud. It was cold, and the worms made poor company.

The longest night of his life followed. He tried to sleep, but only managed to snatch a few ragged minutes. And then her voice, drifting down to him like a fever dream.

“You’re still down there?”

He looked up. “Where else would I be?”

“Elsewhere, silly.”

“So you’re saying if our positions were switched, you’d have been out long before? I don’t even know my own name - I’m not sure I feel up to escaping from a well.”

“It’s not a well, it’s a prison.”

“That, too.”

“Only way out of a prison is with a key. Names are keys, and keys are names, and if it’s a name that you need, a key is what you’ll find, and if it’s a key you’ll need, it’s a name you’ll want.”

He rolled his eyes.

“That’s not the most helpful thing you could have told me.”

She laughed. “You’re not so bright, are you?”

Obviously not, he thought, if I managed to get dropped into a hole.

“Do you know my name?”

“Sure I do.”

“And I’m guessing you won’t tell me?”

“If I tell you, it won’t help. Hearing a thing isn’t the same as knowing a thing.”

“So what’s the harm in telling me?”

“No harm, I s’pose. But I won’t.”

He tried to quell his anger. “And why’s that?”

She giggled. “I’m a little girl. I don’t need a reason.” She started singing a song, a tuneless thing, with no lyrics he had ever heard of. Then she stopped, abruptly.

She poked her head over his hole. Her face was obscured in shadow, and he could not distinguish her.

“Good night, John,” she said, and then she disappeared.

She had not lied. The name sounded flat, disconnected from himself. He was John? He did not feel like John. He just felt cold, and tired. But something stuck in his mind. The way she had said it, her voice. It was… different, somehow. He closed his eyes, and he remembered.

She was studying him, head resting on her hand, the moonlight outlining the curve of her hip. It was summer - he could smell the warm perfumes of flowers, could smell her hair, feel her closeness. He murmured something, and she laughed, bright and sad. “Good night, John,” she said. And he remembered what he said to her before he fell spiralling to sleep - “Good night, Amy.”

Amy.

His eyes snapped open, and he was still in his hole. Only it was not much of a hole, anymore. Maybe a pothole. It was perhaps two feet deep. He looked about himself, amazed. And then he stepped out of the hole, onto level ground. He was standing in the middle of a clearing ringed by great trees. They weren’t like any trees he had ever seen in his life. They were fairy tale trees, cruel, tortured constructs, clawing at the belly of the night, cloaked in black, shrivelled leaves, moaning with the wind. This was a bad place. He felt the unmistakable sensation of being watched, watched by bright, hungry eyes. He suddenly wished he was back in his hole. He called out for the little girl, tentatively. No response but for the wind. John picked a direction, and started walking.

*

The doctors told them John was in a coma. Doctor Harper, a lean white haired man with a few day’s worth of stubble, took them into John’s room. They had been waiting outside, drinking lukewarm coffee and not speaking for over two hours while they ran their tests. Seeing John in the bed nearly broke Amy. He looked terrible, small and lost there in the hospital bed. Mark put an arm around her shoulder, unconciously. She felt a little better. The doctor was explaining John’s situation - he was in a deep coma. They were not sure what had caused it, and the prognosis did not look particularly good.

“But,” the doctor added, “John is displaying an extraordinary level of brain activity.”

Amy and Mark were not surprised to hear this.

*

The woods were trackless and thick, murmuring in the night breeze. John blundered through them, feet snagging roots and face catching unseen branches. He quickly became disoriented, and leaned against a tree for a moment to catch his breath. The rough bark at his back was reassuringly solid. To his right, something rustled the brush, and he thought he could just barely hear the soft pad of footsteps, the snuffling of a nose…

He set off again, considering the fact that it was impossible to be disoriented, since he had never been oriented to begin with.

John burst out of the woods – they ended as abruptly as they had began. One moment he was bouncing between dark boles, stumbling over roots and branches, and the next he was standing in an open space. On a neatly manicured law. Before him he saw a house. It was his childhood home. The same damn house, only blown up large, a replica on a three times scale. He approached the massive edifice with quickly growing dread. Sorrow sat heavy on the house, clear as the chipped red paint on the shutters. He went to the massive front door, and managed to open it by standing on his tiptoes and twisting the brass knob like he would his car’s steering wheel. The door creaked open, and he shoved it open a few inches, and sidled in.

And he heard singing. He walked another few steps in, and a old floorboard yielded under his weight, sounding a heart-stopping squeal. The singing stopped, abruptly. The sense of dread at the pit of his stomach was magnified, and he fought the urge to run blindly out of this place. More silence from down the outsized hall. The same place the singing had come from…

“Who’s there?” John froze. The voice was familiar. It was a boy’s voice, reedy and impatient.

“Uh, it’s me. John.”

An extended pause. “John? I don’t know any Johns. How did you get in?”

“I walked in the front door. I used to live here,” John added, even though he knew it was not true. This place might have the same layout, same timbers, but this was not his home.

“Only people who live here are me, Mom, and Dad.”

“I’m sorry to barge in, but I’m lost. Would you mind if I just stayed a little while?”

The voice responded after a moment. “I guess it’s okay. Come here. Dad is going to be home. Soon.”

John understood the note of fear in the boy’s voice. And if this was indeed the house John had grown up in, the master of the house was a terror indeed. He strode down the hallway, and poked his way into the room.

It was a toddler’s room. Biplane mobiles swayed jerkily overhead on the ceiling. It seemed so high up. The room’s resident was sitting on his bright red bed, regarding him with wide eyes. John knew him, then. He looked about himself. This was not possible. None of this was possible. This house, that hole, the little girl, the shadow, it was all an illusion. A figment of his sick mind. He shook his head, hard. He thought that if he could just will this vision away, he would be in bed with Amy, and in the morning he’d go running with Mark. And things would make sense. They had to. He concentrated, tried to focus for a few moments. Then he heard the soft creak of the boy shifting on his bed.

John pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Hello, Gary.”

The boy cooed. “How did you know my name?”

“I’ve known you since you were born.” John barked a sad laugh. “I’m probably your father, in a way.”

The boy did not like to hear that.

“No. No you’re not. You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“I’m sorry, Gary.” John looked about the room. He got the distinct feeling he had walked into a circus funhouse. It was not a pleasant feeling. “What are you doing here all by yourself?”

“Dad left last night. He looked angry.”

“I see. When will he be home?”

Gary thought. “I don’t know. Sometimes he is gone for a long time.”

John nodded. “So do you have anywhere I could sleep, without your father knowing?”

Gary shook his head, firmly. “No. he sees everything.”

“Do you have any food I could take?”

Gary shrugged. “I guess.”

“Where’s your kitchen?”

Gary pointed, and John thanked him and exited the room. He was rummaging through cupboards when he heard the front door open.

Gary squealed from down the hall. “Run!”

The food was all outsized, fit for a giant. Towards the front of the house, he heard the heavy tread of boots on the floorboards. The squeal of Gary’s door opening.

A rough voice. Gary answered, cowed. The rough voice continued, and John started to tiptoe towards the door. He banged his knee against the countertop, and bit his lip in pain. The rough voice halted, and then a harsh question was asked of Gary. Gary answered softly, sullenly. John heard a solid thud, as if Gary’s father had struck him. John was torn. He could not leave the young boy to be beaten. He knew the feeling, and did not like the idea of leaving another boy to the same fate. Gary decided the issue for him.

“Run, John!” he shrieked.

The rough voice rose, and John clearly heard it snarl his name. The boots started to sound again. John took off. He shouldered his way through the screen door, and leapt down the stairs. John glanced over his shoulder as he fled the house, and saw a huge figure silohuetted in the doorway. He heard the shadow whistle, and to his left, he saw a doghouse. It was the size of a garage, and the beast that emerged from its cavernous mouth was the size of an SUV. It prowled out, a doberman, with slaver dripping from its jaws.

“Shit,” was all John could say before it spotted him.

A growl like rolling thunder issued from its throat, and it started to lope after him, eating up the ground with massive strides. John started sprinting. Maybe he could lose it in the woods…

On the open terrain, John felt the dog was gaining ground. He thought he could almost feel its hot breath on his neck. The treeline was not so far - a quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that it might be too far for him. The animal was frighteningly quick. John kept running. With each step he thought he would feel the animal’s fangs tear his flesh. But he managed to keep ahead of it, though its galloping pace was beating an audible rhythm behind him. Close behind him. The trees were just ahead. John, an athletic man, vaulted over a log in a single leap. He started to weave through trees as best he could, zig-zagging his way through the woods. Behind him, he heard the animal crash into each obstacle he threw at it. He allowed himself a brief grin, and kept on sprinting. The adrenaline was pumping to match his legs, and he felt like he could run forever. As he flung himself over a fallen log, his toe caught it, and he was sent sprawling. Something twisted in his leg, and he landed heavily, taking the brunt of the fall on his hands. They were painfully abraded as he rolled to a halt. He moaned, and tried to stand. His leg crumpled underneath his weight, and he grimaced. He dragged himself into the lee of the log, and held his breath, to better listen. He could not hear the dog. He blew out his breath, in relief. And then, at the edge of his hearing, the steady crunch of the big animal’s claws on the carpet of dead leaves.

“Damn.”

“You shouldn’t curse. It’s a nasty thing to do.”

Shocked, John glanced around him. Nothing but the black boles of the dark trees.

“Up here,” the girl from the hole giggled.

And there she was, daintily perched on a high up bough.

“What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

She smiled at him, and smoothed her baby blue skirt.

“Now’s not the time for so many questions, is it John? Does your leg hurt very much?”

John glowered at her.

“Don’t sulk. Try and climb up here. I’m sure you have plenty of motivation, don’t you?”

John heard the approaching dog.

“Damn right I do.” He heaved himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his good leg. He limped to the base of the tree, and looked for likely handholds. He found one, and tried to pull himself up. But the branch was rotted, and it tore free of the trunk, unceremoniously dumping him to the damp loam below him.

“John.” The girl’s voice was frightened. “You need to get up here, John. Now.”

John, from his vantage point on the ground, twisted his head to see the huge dog not fifty yards away. Its eyes glowed white in the reflected light. It had spotted him. It lumbered towards him with deceptive speed, blasting through branches and trampling smaller trees. John scrambled to his feet, ignoring the white blossom of pain in his right leg. With a mighty effort, he threw himself upwards, and hooked an elbow about a branch. With a few swings, he levered himself up onto the bough. Then he scurried upward, shimmying up the tree like a squirrel. It was then that the dog heaved itself at the tree. The impact nearly uprooted it. The tree rocked crazily, and groaned as it tilted to forty-five degrees. The girl shrieked, but managed to hang on. The animal noticed the second piece of prey, and lunged up, huge jaws snapping madly. The girl pulled her legs up, barely avoiding the animal’s teeth. John was amazed - they were big as butcher’s knives. But there was no time for that. He awkwardly crawled out the girl, and offered her his hand. She took it, and he hauled her away from the animal’s reach. They edged back towards the center of the tree. The dog struck it again, and the tree barely held its roots in the ground.

“We need to get out of here.”

As they attempted to scrambled to another tree, the dog bowled over their roost. The tree crashed to the ground, and tossed the girl and John. He managed to position himself so as to cushion her fall, but he landed hard. The breath knocked out of him, the girl went skidding away from him, knocking her head sharply on a tree trunk. The dog, with its prey helpless before it, growled in pleasure, and readied itself to pounce.

“Angus!”

The big dog cocked its blunt head and turned about, searching for the source of the noise. Standing their amidst the trees was little Gary, his chubby fists balled up on his hips.

“Bad dog!” he shouted at the monstrous animal. John finally recognized the animal - Mrs. Sanderson had had a doberman named Angus. John vividly recalled the stitches he had to get to sew up the wound the animal had left in his leg back in the second grade. Mrs. Sanderson had laughed whenever she saw John gimp by, as she sat there on her porch. She had not been laughing later, though. The memory made him sick.

The huge dog whined, to hear its master speak to it so. Stub-tail wagging, it crept forward, and with a tongue like red carpet, licked Gary. Gary was knocked over, but he jumped back up and whacked the dog on its nose.

“No! You go home! Bad dog!” Angus keened again, and then took off for home. As the tremors subsided with its exit, Gary stood there and regarded the dazed pair on the ground. Lifting a hand, he waved goodbye like a child, the fingers closing and extending. Feeling faint, John gave him a hazy half-salute, and tried to get to his feet. Gary watched him for another moment, and then ran back towards his house.

John’s ankle was afire, but he grimaced and tried to keep his weight off it. Moving to the girl, whose eyes fluttered open as he approached, he considered his situation. Attacked by a dog that had been dead for a dozen years.

“Are you alright?”

The girl stood up, lady-like, and patted at her head. Then she nodded.

“Good.” He looked about himself. “Now what?” he said, feeling lost.

The young girl looked at him as if it were he who had received the head trauma. “We are going to have to take you somewhere safe. You seem to get into trouble easily. Come on, John.” She started walking, and John took off after her.

“Where are we going?”

“The city. There’s a man there who can keep an eye out for you.”

“Oh. What’s his name?” He considered her, walking alongside him. The girl bore a strong resemblance to… to someone. He could not think who. “And what’s your name, come to think of it?”

“His name,” she declared, “is Jack. And my name? I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve ever had one.”

“Never had a name? How did that happen?”

She shrugged and watched the ground.

“Well, we can’t let that stand. What should we call you?”

She shrugged again, head tilted. “Which name would you pick?”

John threw his head back and considered. “I always liked Abby…”

She smiled a shyly, and nodded. John grinned. “Abby it is, then.”

Abby swayed on her feet. Perhaps the jolt to her head was bothering her more than she let on.

“Are you alright?”

She waved him off with a small hand, but John held out his. She accepted it, and his large hand enfolded hers. They walked onward, and John tried to figure out why she looked so familiar.

It was a strange countryside, thrall to no logic but the ineffable beauty of dream. They walked amongst strange stone hills, sculpted and whittled by a howling wind which precluded speech, passed under towering arches that precluded any thought but that of stone and earth and time. The two walked, amiably, cautious of where they placed feet and words, speaking of nothing. The girl, Abby, she loved birds. And it was a land of birds, for a certainty. In the stony fingers, great flocks of them roosted on the shit-stained rock, squawking to each other in their impenetrable jargon, their thousand clamoring voices rising and merging to become one raucous cacophony. In the rolling green lands that followed, they found the small birds swooping and flaring on the wing, entranced in their ancient courtships, their white underbellies and aching cries scribing a sort of poetry across a gray sky that promised rain. And high above, as they walked the flatlands, a great bird soared alone through the empty skies, voyaging with the grim temerity of necessity and hope.

“Where do you think she flies?”she asked.

John watched her fly overhead, her flight acting as vanguard for their more prosaic earthbound travel. She flew into the sun, flew past them in a heart-stopping moment, hooded eyes staring forward to a place just past the horizon, where she would let her wings fall quiet and sleep.

“Home,” he said.

And then John lost her in the towers.

The city was upon them. The city was impossible. Everything about it defied reason - spires of confectionary towers poked their way up into the soft underbellies of clouds, and great industrials districts of slaughterhouses (Abby told him the frightened brays he heard were the final calls of butchered unicorns) and factories squatted over a great expanse of land. The city stretched forever. They stood at its outskirts in abandoned streets paved with what appeared to be giant’s teeth. Ignoring this fact, they resolutely moved towards the city proper, marching over the irregular terrain of molars and incisors. They came upon a bridge, a fanciful construct that did not appear capable of supporting a mild breeze, much less a full grown man - but they crossed it anyway, and gawped down at the turgid river beneath. It was the color of turtle’s blood. Abby groaned upon seeing that. They pressed deeper into the heart of the city, and the buildings began to loom up all around him, shouldering closer and closer together and climbing higher and higher, until they were walking down a boulevard no broader than their shoulders.

“Where do we find this Jack, Abby?”

“A dark place called Rome.”

“And how do we find it?”

“All roads lead to it, John.”

He laughed and looked down the path. A moment, and then the wind sighed, sounding like a farewell. He turned. Abby was gone. Behind him was only empty roadway. He called her name, frightened. Had she been snatched by whatever strange denizen might populate such a place?

“Abby,” he shouted, running back to the mouth of the alleyway, looking both ways. The streets were filled with all manner of pedestrian, but no small girls. One creature, a hulking thing with the proportions of a gorilla and the stench of putrid flesh, shouldered passed him. Its red eyes flared and its hot breath stank as it hissed at him to watch where he was standing, in a perfect Brooklyn accent. Frightened, John turned and went back down the alley. The stonework of buildings brushed both shoulders as he moved further. Eventually, the path terminated in a white stucco wall, with a small door set in the face of it. Above the jamb, a worn sign read “Roma”. Close enough, John thought, and entered the door. He took two steps in, and found himself standing in a room unaccustomed to light. Thick, roving banks of smoke formed a choking miasma of different aromas, some entirely unidentifiable. John turned and watched as the small door swung shut with grim finality, the small square of light shrinking and then disappearing with a meek bang. John turned and waited for his eyes to adjust. The place was nearly pitch black. He stood there, feeling foolish, and tried not to cough too much. The room was filled faintly with a low din of voices, the sort that marked this place for a tavern. A strange tavern. A voice, low and gravelly and terse, hailed him from the darkness.

“Hey. Tourist. C’mere.”

John tried to locate the source of the sound, and took a tentative step towards his left.

“No.” The voice sounded mildly irritated and amused. “Other way. Right.”

John followed this instruction, and stifled an urge to shout “Marco”. Based on the timbre of the man’s voice, he was not one for children’s games. In the darkness, John’s knee rammed into something low and sharp. Gasping in pain, he stumbled back, grasping at his knee.

The low voice again. “Sorry. Table there.” And then he chuckled, gravel on slate. John, irritated, reassesed his previous thought. He located the man by his unceasing laughter.

“Place doesn’t have much in the way of ambience, does it?” John said.

“What d’you mean?”

“I don’t do much drinking in caves.”

“The sort of drinking we do here, it’s best we do it in the dark. And some of the other… patrons, are best left in shadow, if you follow me, tourist.”

“I don’t.”

“Fine. We’ll go to a more private venue. I’m going to turn on a light now, but only on one condition. You don’t look back. Some of these folk would not take kindly to being stared upon.”

John, his knee still aching, agreed. He then sensed, more than saw, the owner of the low voice stand. There was the rasp, and then a match flared to life, casting poor illumination. John caught a glimpse of his face, before the man turned and started walking away. He had blunt features, and the nose of a boxer who had lost a few too many matches. As his bootsteps clumped away down the hall, John felt heavy eyes resting upon the nape of his neck. He followed after the quickly retreating light.

They traveled down a short passage, and into a well lit room. The floor was covered in rough planks and sawdust, and a wobbly table perched unsteadily at the center of the room, with an entourage of equally shaky shairs on either side of it. The man shook out the match with a casual flick of his wrist, and sunk into a chair. He fixed dark eyes on John, and rubbed at his stubble.

“Sit down.”

John did so, feeling ill at ease. The man reached into his worn jacket, and withdrew a crumpled box of cigarettes.

“My name,” he said, knocking a cigarette loose, “is Jack. And you, John, are not supposed to be here.”

“I’ve been getting that impression,” John said, flinching slightly as Jack’s lighter rasped to life. The tip of the cigarette glowed, and Jack pocketed the lighter in one smooth motion. He leaned back and took a long draw.

“Alright. How’d you get here?”

“What does it matter to you? And why would I have any interest in telling you?”

The man leaned forward, stabbing the air with his cigarette to punctuate his points. “You care, my friend, because I am Jack. And if Jack and John are talking here, of all places, then we have some very serious fucking problems.”

“You’re half right,” John said, pushing his chair back. Abby’s mysterious disappearance, and now a growling man who looked like he was no stranger to violence. John smelled a trap. “I’ve got some problems. But they aren’t your problems, and I don’t need your help.” As he rose to leave, Jack held up a hand, and laughed his gravel on slate laugh.

“Hold on there. Maybe you weren’t hearing me. My name is Jack.” He paused, searching John’s eyes for any recognition. “Nothing? Okay, then. 5th grade, I broke Chris Thompson’s nose. Freshman year, college - I won you that fight against Mark. Do you get me?”

John realized with a start who he was. He was that seething, choking rage he felt when things went wrong. He was the clenched knuckles, the gritted teeth. That was him, trying to escape to the surface. That was Jack.

*

The door swung open and Mark stepped in. John sat at the table which was scattered with the remnants of a poker game. He idly stacked chips and then destroyed the towers with a flick of the hand, watching them fall. He looked up when Mark came in. Mark carefully made his way to the table and sat down, only jostling the chair slightly as he did so. He clutched a bottle of beer by the throat, and let John speak first.

“I tried to find you.”

“Didn’t want to be found.”

“You spend the night alone?”

“No. Not alone.” Mark rubbed the mouth of the bottle. “I saw Amy.”

“Yeah? What was she up to tonight?”

“Her usual. Being a stupid little girl who doesn’t know what she wants.”

John’s jaw tensed. “Look, you’ve had too much to drink, so we’ll just leave it at that, okay?”

“Fuck you. I know what I said, and I meant it. That girl will never know what’s good for her. How else you explain wasting her time with somebody like you?”

John eyed him, the dim lighting in their room making his expression inscrutable.

“So we’re telling the truth now, huh?”

“Thass right. For the first time.”

“Alright, then. You’re just angry because you can’t have her.”

Mark brayed laughter, and took a swig of his beer. “Isn’t that my problem? Mark doesn’t get what he wants. Mark has to make sure little John is all nice and protected. Mark’s life has to be detoured every fucking time you lose your shit over the smallest thing. Whatever happened to my life, John? Who appointed me your guardian for life?”

“If you’d come down from your cross for a second you’d realize that’d be yourself. I didn’t ask you -”

“Oh, but didn’t you!” roared Mark. “Sure, a puppy doesn’t ask you to help it, not with words. But it cringes and yelps and whimpers and you have to take pity on the thing. That’s what it always was, John. Pity.”

“You’re an asshole, Mark.”

“Am I? Good, I can join the club. You and Amy been pretty exclusive with it.” He slurred his words. “So fuck you, and g’night.”

Mark pushed himself up to standing, swaying as he turned and headed for his bed. John exploded from his seat, spearing Mark in the back and driving him to the floor.

Afterwards, in the wreckage of their living room, John clutched his jaw. Mark, nose bloodied, lifted his head.

“‘M sorry,” he mumbled.

“Me too,” whispered John.

*

“Ah. You understand, now. So you see, your problems are very much my problems, John.”

“So then what are we going to do about these problems?”

Jack sighed, and waved about the cigarette. As he prepared to speak, something changed. He sat bolt upright, eyes wide. It was the look of a fox who had just scented the hound.

Jack fixed panicked eyes on John. “When you came here, was anything following you?”

“What? I don’t…”

“Was anything following you?”

“A three-headed giraffe could have been tailing me and I wouldn’t know it.”

Jack grunted in exasperation, and jumped up, knocking the chair over as he did. He shrugged on his jacket, and with a flick of his finger, sent his cigarette pinwheeling to the floor. Then he ran to the back of the room, and yanked open a door that John had not noticed. Beckoning impatiently, Jack growled, “Come on.”

John got up, and moved to join him. “What’s the matter?”

Jack seized him by the shoulder and sent him stumbling out the door, into a back alleyway. He followed him out, took two glances left and right, and then one to the sky, and started to sprint. As John went after, Jack turned his head to the side and shouted, “You asked we’re going to do about these problems. One’s in the building. And we’re running from it.”

John, flush with adrenaline and fear of the unknown, shouted back, “Seems to be my speciality.”

Jack grunted. “Shut up and run.”

*

It ducked its head as it passed through the doorway - its wings brushed the jambs. Two steps towards the center of the room, and a deep breath. The room smelled good. It smelled of fear, dank and oppressive, and helpless anger. Inhaling deeply, it looked about. A cigarette smoldered weakly in the corner. Blinking, it turned towards the door at the other end of the room, ajar in a faint breeze. A breeze which carried that same acrid scent it so desired. It would take its time on this hunt. It would allow that fear to maturate and become total. Yes.

*

The men ran for miles, careening wildly down poorly lit streets, dashing over bridges and hurtling past fantastic pedestrian of every variety. John’s lungs were afire. Jack must have been part greyhound - the man was indefatigable. He finally pulled up, and slowed to a walk.

They had reached their destination. The building was huge, perhaps a warehouse. John’s suspicions were confirmed when they entered, but it was unlike any warehouse he had ever been in. The shelves were overflowing with an incredible mass of curios, devices, and oddments. The stacks climbed all the way up towards the ceiling, where their tops were lost in darkness. The warehouse was cold. Jack headed straight through one of the many aisles, but John stopped to look at the objects on display.

“John. I wouldn’t. He doesn’t like it when you touch things.” Jack, at the end of the aisle, was deadly serious. John sighed and withdrew his hands from the emerald eye he was about to examine. He followed Jack. It took them minutes to cross the cavernous space, but they finally reached the eye of the storm. A circle of space had been cleared of any debris, and at the center of it stood a plain table. At that table sat a small man. As they neared, John reevaluated. The creature looked more simian than human, with sloping forehead and hirsute skull; but when it lifted its head to regard them, its eyes held the intelligence of a human. It bared its teeth, displaying an impressive array of canines and incisors, and John tried to remember if this was a good sign. Jack extended his hand, and the ape-man shook it. His hands were amazing - long, bony, and delicate. They were the fingers of a pianist or a pick-pocket.

“Before we begin,” said the ape-man, “I’ll need to know who your acquaintance is. I don’t do business with strangers.”

Jack nodded, and the ape-man waved at John to approach. He did, and the ape-man vaulted onto the table. He held a gem inspector’s lens in his long hand.

“Just keep your eyes open and don’t blink,” Jack said. John opened his eyes wide and stood still as the ape-man leaned in close, the lens held over his eye. He stared for a moment in each eye, and then withdrew, shaking his hirsute head. He nimbly regained his seat and fixed a keen eye on Jack.

“So,” he grunted, removing a stub of a pencil from behind his rounded ear. “What are you in the market for, Jack?”

Jack considered for a moment, and as he did, the ape-man began to twirl the pencil about his fingers, sending it spinning and leaping about the knuckles in an incredible display of dexterity.

“I need Tickets.” This brought the pencil’s acrobatics to an abrupt halt.

“Tickets? Why do you think I’d have tickets, ’specially seeing as how things are these days?”

Jack curled his hands into fists, subtly. “Don’t play games with me, merchant. There will be time for haggling later. For now, you tell me if you have two Tickets. Yes or no?” The threat of physical violence was writ large in every aspect of Jack’s appearance. The ape-man sighed, browbeaten.

“Yes, I might have a pair left. But why, Jack? Why does a theater need to buy a ticket to opening night?”

“I’ll not risk it. The gatekeeper is not… forgiving.”

The ape-man shrugged. “As you like. But they won’t come cheap, and no amount of growling is going to change that.”

“Understood. Just get them.”

The ape-man shot out of his chair and scampered off to retrieve them. He ran using feet and knuckles, and moved quickly. As soon as he disappeared from sight, Jack turned to John.

“He wasn’t joking when he said these aren’t going to be cheap. Do you have any money on you?”

John reached into his pockets and withdrew a few crumpled twenty dollar bills.

“You might as well throw those away,” Jack said. “He only barters. Nothing here is for sale.”

“Why are you telling me this?” John asked.

“Because he negotiates one on one. This whole warehouse did not fill up because he’s a soft touch, either. And what he might ask of you may seem too dear. But carefully consider. We need these Tickets.”

“Tickets to what?”

“To Dream.”

John was beginning to lose his capacity for amazement. The ape-man reappeared, tickets tucked into one of the manifold pockets of the apron he wore. He vaulted back into his seat.

“Who’s first?”

Jack stood and clapped John on the shoulder, and then went meandering down one of the aisles. The ape-man was staring at him expectantly, his prehensile lips forming silent hoots. John shifted in his chair.

“So what exactly is a Ticket?”

The ape-man looked surprised, and then plucked it from his pocket. John examined it. In grandiloquent calligraphy, the Ticket appeared to be a writ of passage. A writ of passage guaranteeing unmolested travel through something called “The Wastes”. John was not encouraged.

“Why do I need this?” John asked.

The ape-man leaned back and scratched at his head. “I don’t know who’s more dangerous to who - you or Jack. In either case, the Wastes are not… accomodating for the casual traveler, such as yourself. The indigenous species do not take kindly to intruders. Without that Ticket, you’d quickly discover just what color your intestines are.”

John gulped.

“Plus, the Ticket gets you through the gate!” The ape-man said this with the enthused tone of all pitchmen.

“The gate.”

“Why yes, the gate. The gatekeeper requires this.”

“Or I’ll discover the color of my entrails?”

The ape-man considered this. “I doubt it. He would probably settle on reducing you to ash. He is not one for wasting time.”

“So why, exactly, are these indigenous species and the gatekeeper going to respect a piece of paper, signed by…” John stared at the gold inked signature, with the flourishes. It was his own name. He looked up, and the ape-man was staring at him with a peculiar expression.

“I signed this? When? How did you get this?”

The pencil stub reappeared as the ape-man considered.

“Too many questions. A man in your position should not be wasting his time with all these questions. Keeps him in one place for too long. Makes him an easy target.”

John choked back his next flurry of questions. “Very well.”

“To business, then,” the ape-man said. “I assume Jack has informed you that your currency is valueless now?”

“He has.”

“What then, do you have to offer in honorable trade?”

John searched his pockets. A felt-tip pen presented itself. He held it up, and the ape-man regarded it with some interest - he extended a long arm, and John handed it to him. The ape-man spun it about his fingers for a few moments, but the balance displeased him. He tossed it back onto the table, shaking his head. John continued to look. His hand seized on the felt box, and closed around it. His stomach sank as he placed it on the table and opened it.

The ape-man gave a simian shriek of excitement when he saw the ring. He seized it and held it up, examining the engagement ring with his jeweler’s lens. He was so entranced by the ring that he seemed to forget about John.

“Oh. Oh, this will do. The ring for the Ticket - do we have a deal?”

John paused. The ring had cost him a month’s salary, but that was not what gave him pause. That ring was a great deal more to him than a month’s salary. Jack made his decision for him.

“Merchant! Your alarms!”

Something was drawing near to the warehouse. Feeling the hot flush of fear beginning to spread, John nodded.

“It’s yours.”

He snatched the Ticket and crammed it into his pocket. Jack reappeared from the stacks.

“Merchant - I need you to distract our pursuer.”

The ape-man hooted a laugh. “Why would I do that? Why would I not secret myself away in one of the thousand hidey-holes this place has?”

“You’re about to get the deal of your lifetime, that’s why. John - go find the exit. Should be on the back wall, there.” He waved, generally. John hurried off in that direction, and heard Jack sigh as he wended his way through the aisles. Deal of a lifetime…

John jogged through the aisles with increasing speed, and felt sweat bead on his forehead. Those proximity alarms, with their strange klaxons, were unsettling. They whooped alert, louder and louder until John could not hear his own thoughts. He found the exit, a narrow doorway at the end of an aisle. He stepped to it, and set his hand on the doorknob.

As his damp hand wrapped around the cool steel of the knob, he heard a faint tap. As if someone, or something, was tapping at it with a fingernail.

A low hiss drifted through the doorway. “Come out, John… come out and… play.”

John stumbled back from the door, and the door jumped as whatever was outside seeked to make its way inside. Dust poured forth from the jamb as each booming strike hit it - the door was not going to hold for long. John scrambled away from the door and ran for Jack and the ape-man. As he approached, a flash of light painted the walls a lurid carmine. John came into the center area to find Jack, pallid and shaky, rising from his seat. The ape-man was secreting away a vial containing some luminescent liquid. Jack, his voice weak, said, “Remember our deal, merchant.” He then placed a hand on John’s arm.

“The exit?”

“It’s there. Whatever it is, it’s right outside. It… it spoke to me”

If Jack was alarmed, he did not show it. “We find another way out, then. Merchant?”

The ape-man was reinspecting John’s ring. “Hm? Ah, yes. Downstairs, out through the tunnel. But to get to the Wastes, you’ll need transport.”

Jack nodded. “Don’t worry about that.”

A crash and clatter from the far end of the warehouse. It had gotten inside. The ape-man slid the ring onto his finger, and hissed at the two men.

“Go. Quietly but quickly. That way.” He extended a long index finger, and the two men set off. Behind them, there was only the sound of falling shelves. And above that… horrible laughter. Horrible, perfect laughter. Jack spotted their exit first. It was a grate, set into the floor. He lifted it open and John slithered through. He landed in a heap, and Jack dropped down as he was picking himself up. Jack landed lightly as a cat.

“Come along, tourist. We don’t have much time.”

John stood up, wincing. “That monkey… thing… what’s he going to do?”

Jack grabbed him by the shoulder, and started jogging into the darkness, tugging John after him.

“He’ll be fine.”

“That thing busted down a steel door.”

“Your ring is all the protection he needs.”

John narrowed his eyes, in the pitch black of the tunnel. Jack sensed it anyway.

“It doesn’t pay to be in the dark, John. Now get moving.”

They moved through darkness. The tunnel flooded with gray light after a nameless period passed, and the two men tumbled out of the egress. Jack quickly surveyed their surroundings, trained eyes darting over flat terrain. John turned, and saw the warehouse behind them, shrouded in haze and distance. They seemed to be alone. Jack nodded curtly, reaching the same conclusion.

“We need conveyance. The Gate is some distance.”

“So what are we going to do? Go back in the direction of… whatever was in that warehouse?”

Jack shook his head. “There were ways, once. Now… I do not know.” His face was suddenly bathed in harsh white light, and he breathed a curse. John turned, and saw a blaze of light rocketing into the night sky, shooting upwards like a firework. It had emerged from the shattered roof of the distant warehouse. “The decision is out of our hands. We run.”

Jack spun and began sprinting out into the flat nothingness, and John, his legs leaden and gut tight, followed.

The two men raced across the hardpan, wordless. John felt a knife between his ribs, jiggling with each step, digging deeper with each breath. He could not go further. Over his shoulder, he saw that white blazing comet, fixed in the night sky. He went further, face set in a rictus of pain. Another few hundred agonizing strides, and he had nothing left.

“Jack,” he gasped, his voice raw.

Jack turned, eyes wide with surprise. “I can’t go any further,” John panted. Jack’s eyes narrowed with anger.

“Keep running,” he growled, his own voice steady as a man strolling through a park.

“I can’t.” John pulled up lame, his pulse a throbbing drum in his ears. He stumbled and tripped, sprawling into the dust. Jack was on him in an instant, his strong hands seizing him by the shoulders, hauling him to his feet.

“How far are you willing to go?”

“I can’t.”

“How far?” he shouted, grip tightening.

“I can’t go any,” John gasped, “further.”

“Here? In this place, you tell me you have nothing left?”

“My legs.”

“Your legs are propped up in a bed right now, collecting sores. It is not your legs. I asked you: how far?”

He turned John about, and shoved him forward, urging him to run again. John crumpled in a heap, and Jack tumbled with him. He might say his legs were in a bed, somewhere, but John felt nothing but fire below his waist.

“No further,” was all John could manage.

“No further?” The voice was deep, deeper than any human voice. John craned his neck from his supine position, to locate the speaker.

*

The first days were hard. She ate breakfast alone, and drove to work to face bewildered coworkers and colleagues, all of them unsure of how to face her except with forced smiles and brave displays of good cheer. She accepted their sympathetic hugs with bland equanimity, wondering which one of them truly knew what it was, to live with a ghost. She drove home at five, rain lashing her windshield. As the wind pushed the droplets about, they looked like tears, turning the stoplights into starbursts of color in the fast encroaching dark. Weeks slipped by in faceless gray procession, the beat of their feet in perfect time with the beep of his vitals. Nothing changed, the world was in stasis. But when she looked inside herself, she saw nothing familiar. She went to bed alone, and woke the same. She had forced herself to eat dinner one night, and was folded up in a chair, glaring at a sentence in a book she had been trying to read for a month. The knock came tentatively, but echoed in the emptied apartment. She padded to the door and opened it.

Mark stood framed in the light, hands deep in his pockets. His eyes took her in for a moment, and he flashed a smile. It was nice to see a genuine smile.

“You look like a girl who needs to eat some expensive food and drink some expensive wine.”

“I’ll get my shoes,” was all she said.

*

“What just happened?” Jack asked.

John did not know. He slowly got to his feet, and saw that the night sky behind them devoid of any comet. They might as well have been on the moon - the dust below their feet was gray, not the reddish hardpan they had been running over. Before them sat a statue, two stories high.

It cocked its head, and the grate of stone on stone was the only sound. Jack whispered to John as he stood, “You’re going to explain that to me, later.” Then he lifted his voice and addressed the golem.

“Hypnagogue. We require passage.”

The golem straightened its head with geological pace. “Impossible.”

Jack dug out his Ticket from his jacket, and brandished it. The golem lifted one arm, turned it palm up, and motioned him forward.

“This is fully official and authentic.”

John watched as the golem stooped, plucking up the paper with two fingers. It glanced at it.

“No,” was all it said. It opened its hand, and John watched as the dearly priced Ticket went skittering away on an unfelt breeze, sailing into darkness. Jack blanched.

“What do you mean, guardian? That is a notarized ticket, and you know damn well that you do not have the power to throw that away.”

“New directives.”

“Issued by?”

“He whose eyes burn.”

Jack sighed. “You know the man who stands behind me?”

The golem’s head tilted, almost imperceptibly. John felt its stone eyes running over his face, and shivered. It observed him, impassive as a mountain range.

“Yes.”

“And what do your new directives instruct you to do in his case?”

“Extermination.” The word rolled like thunder.

Jack turned to John, wild-eyed. With an earthen rumble, the golem took to its feet. It advanced a step, and the earth shivered.

“Wait!” Jack shouted, throwing his hands before him. The golem paused.

“You say you’ve been given new directives. And what of the oldest directive?”

“Extant.”

“Good.” Jack waved John forward, and leaned to his ear. “We can’t run from this one. Either we pass this gate or we die. Understood, tourist?” John nodded, dumb.

“What do we do?”

“We answer the question.”

“What’s that?”

“A fail-safe.”

“Are we going to know the answer?” John asked.

“We’d better.” He turned back towards the golem. “We request the question.”

The golem stood a long moment, as if thinking. “Granted.” Another moment. A strong wind kicked up, tugging at their clothes, swirling sand and dust into their faces. John coughed as the grit stung his eyes and coated his tongue. His limbs felt heavy, loose. His eyelids fluttered, and his thoughts scattered like birds on the wing. If he could just… close his eyes and rest for a moment.

“Wanderer.” Those stone eyes found John. Yawning, he blinked owlishly and tried to focus. Jack had said that they had to answer the question.

“What lies behind this door?”

A roiling circle of aether the color of midnight phased into existence. In its shifting surface, he saw the faces of Amy and Mark, smiling, promising him home.

*

“It just seems wrong to me, Mark.”

Mark smiled one of his half-grins, and took a pull of his drink. “Oh yeah? Explain it to me, Socrates.”

“Well if I care about these girls, that means I don’t want to put them in pain, right? I don’t want to hurt them.”

Mark nodded.

“So if you buy that, here’s the other given: it’s pretty unlikely I’m going to marry some girl I pick up in a restaurant, right?”

“This is true.”

“So that means the relationship is doomed to end as soon as it begins. And that means I’m bound to break somebody’s heart, and what kind of unfeeling bastard would I have to be to do that?” He was gesturing with his fork and knife, and satisfied that Mark had heard his theory, set into his chicken.

Mark laughed, loud and long.

“Goddamn, John. ” You are the biggest coward I have ever laid eyes on.”

John, his mouth full of chicken, stared at him. And then he laughed a rough laugh, and in a strange voice said, “Yeah, I s’pose you’re right.”

They finished their meal slowly, and Mark picked up the bill. As Mark was leafing through his regrettably slim billfold, he noticed John was scribbling something.

“Hey - what’re you doing?” Mark asked him.

John, his brow furrowed as his pen danced across the napkin, looked up.

“I’m getting ready to break some poor girl’s heart.”

“Good man. Now have you got any money for a tip?”

John waved his hand, as if it were a foolish question.

“Of course not, Mark.” He examined his handiwork for a moment, frowned, and crossed out a word. Then he added a few more, and nodded, satisfied.

“You know, back in the day, bards could sleep and eat for free, so long as they did good work.” John mused.

“Well, I hope you’re Shakespeare’s reincarnation, because I can barely cover the bill. Leave your ode and let’s get out of here, before the object of your desire realizes what bums we are.”

John nodded, and they left.

The waitress rolled her eyes when she saw the eclectic offering they tried to pass off as a tip. A stick of gum, three quarters and a nickel, a cheap pen from some motel, and then a carefully folded napkin. Picking up this last object, she read the poem. A smile spread across her pretty face, and she carefully noted down the numbers at the bottom. She wondered which of them had wrote it. She hoped it was the slight, dark-haired one.

But there was no time for poetry.

“Amy! Table four asked for refills five minutes ago.”

“Sorry,” she said, cramming the napkin into her pocket. She had to get back to work.

*

He could see it – right through that portal lay utter normalcy, banal tribulations and the same faces, the little victories and the knowledge that if things were to change, it would not happen slowly. The opposite of this mad world he had found himself in. A warm feeling spread through his gut, and he took a step towards it. It was beckoning him.

*

John ran his fingers through his hair, and replayed the message. It was the waitress. The one he had written the poem to. He had regretted writing it the moment he had left the restaurant, but there was her voice, honeyed and golden, faintly obscured by the machine’s hiss. She sounded almost unsure, almost embarrassed to have called, but it was John was nervous to hear her voice. He tried to take hold of himself - it was not as if she were talking to him right then. She called, she wanted to talk to him. He tapped the cheap ballpoint off his teeth, and regarded the digits carved into the paper before him. He retraced them another time, considering them. He blinked a few times, and his mind was made up. He jerked the phone from its cradle, and mashed in the numbers. As the rings stretched on, that meek voice in his head urged him, begged him to hang up the phone. He quashed it like he would a spent cigarette.

“Hello?”

It was her.

He spoke.

*

They watched the movie silently. Amy was more aware of John’s presence than the plot. She watched the muted blues play over his face, almost carved, inscrutable. As the credits rolled, he flicked off the TV and turned to her. She was taken aback by the intensity of his stare. His brown eyes held a bitter alloy of loneliness, longing, and hope. She held his gaze, and something hung in the air, for a few long beats. She realized she was holding her breath, unconciously. She was totally aware of each minute movement of his head, the subtle realignments of his lips as he seeked to frame those unspoken things buried inside. His mouth opened and closed, revealing nothing, as hopeless as a landed fish. The moment broke, a shattered mirror reflecting the glittering possibilities of what might have been. She sighed inwardly, and stood.

“So do you want to get something to eat?” She offered, lamely.

John did not respond, just laid a warm hand on her arm.

“Amy - the last thing I need you to be right now is my friend.”

He pulled her to him, gently. She allowed it. He wrapped his arms about her waist, and she laid her hands on the crown of his head. She felt as if she were silently administering benediction. John tilted his head upwards, to regard her. She saw all of the recondite truths, laid bare for an instant in his open countenance, roughed out of soft shadow and the light of the muted television. She bent and kissed him, and her last thought before she forgot about thinking was that not all things are irreparable. Not all…

*

John had not shown up yet. Amy sat about, feeling useless for a few minutes, and decided she would go and get him. She walked across the quad, and went to his dorm room. She hesitated at his door, looking at the chipped paint. Something felt wrong. She knocked firmly twice, and waited. Behind the door, hurried and low, she heard a man say, “Who is it?”

She announced herself.

The door opened six inches, and Mark’s face appeared in the narrow opening. He favored her with a grin, but it looked forced. Behind her, she heard a clatter and a choked sob. Concern immediately seized her.

“What’s going on, Mark? Is John okay?”

“John… he’s not well tonight. It’s no big deal, he’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Did he have too much to drink?”

Mark looked distant, and then nodded. “Yeah. Too much to drink.”

“Maybe I should see him.”

Mark frowned, and turned away from the door, hissing something at John. Amy heard footsteps, and then John’s voice alone.

“I’m fine, Amy. Look, if you’ve got nothing else going on tonight, maybe you and Mark could go out and do something. I just need a little time by myself.”

Mark reappeared at the slit in the door, with an eyebrow cocked questioningly. Amy shrugged. She was ready to go out - why not? So Mark emerged from their room, shrugging on his leather jacket.

“Ready to go?” he asked her.

“Sure.” She paused, and then said to the closed door, “I hope you feel better, John.”

A strangled “thanks” was the only answer. Mark stuck out an elbow. “If you’ll join me, milady? I was thinking we could go to the carnival. I know it sounds a little cheesy…”

Amy took his arm, and they went.

Mark had the natural grace and quiet confidence of all born atheletes. Amy stood and watched admiringly as he casually won her prize after prize at the carnival games, even the rigged ones. He handed her a gaudy stuffed bear.

“Want to go ride the ferris wheel?”

It was a huge thing, the ferris wheel. The spindly metal construct reached high into the night sky, set in front of a backdrop of brilliant stars. They clambered aboard a car, and waited for the thing to jerk to life. It did, feeling only a little rickety, and it bore them up, up, up.

Mark sighed, contented. Then he turned to Amy.

“So how are things with you and John.”

“Great - I’m having a really good time with him.”

He leaned his head back and regarded the stars. “I sense a ‘but’ you’re leaving out.”

She looked at him. He was perceptive. “…but sometimes, he can be a little…”

“Strange?” he finished for her. She nodded.

“John’s a complex guy, no two ways about it.” And as the ferris wheel rotated, he spoke of his best friend. Mark spoke of him with such respect and love, that Amy felt something stir in her heart, to see such loyalty. He finished, right as the ferris wheel neared its acme.

Amy laughed lightly.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“It’s just strange to think that had things gone a little differently, I would have ended up with the other guy from that table at the restaurant.”

Mark laughed. “I did notice we were getting more than the usual amount of refills.” Laughing again, he drummed his hands on his knees. “Ah, well. It’s all for the best - I was never much for poetry anyways.”

She smiled, and laid a hand on his elbow. His eyes found hers, and a shadow flickered across his face, the briefest expression of pain in his eyes. And then nodded at her, and an understanding was forged. The ferris wheel carried them down.

They left the carnival speaking of small things, laughing and grinning a lot. Mark was easy to talk to, and completely open. He did not have the same reservations, the same sense of mystery as John. But his mind turned to more serious matters as they slid into his old, beat up green sedan. He turned the ignition, and as the elderly car coughed and sputtered to life, he turned to her.

“Amy, I think there’s some things you need to know about John. I wasn’t sure before tonight if you needed to know them, but I can see now that you do.”

She had still been smiling at his last joke as they entered the car, and she felt it fade from her face. He was deadly earnest.

He puffed his cheeks out and sighed. Tapping his fingers on the wheel as he hit the open road, she could see him working it over in his mind.

“I’m not really sure how to say this.”

“So just say it,” she said, a little more harshly then she had intended.

He glanced at her. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “I guess that’s the only way to do this.” Clearing his throat, he launched into it.

“John has multiple personalities.”

“What?”

He only nodded. “There are at least three that I know of.”

She nodded, dumbstruck.

“There’s Gary, Jack, and… an Other. I’m not really sure what the last one is, I’ve only seen it once.” Amy could tell by the note of fear in his voice that it had not been a pleasant experience. “We had just been sitting around, waiting for you to show up, when Gary took over. Gary’s just a kid, and he cries a lot. He doesn’t really know what’s going on most of the time. So that’s why we had to leave him to his own devices for awhile.”

“Is he on medication?”

Mark shook his head.

“Shouldn’t he be in a…”

He looked at her with grim eyes.

“No. John will never be put in an asylum. He would never agree to it, and neither would I. He has his problems, but he’s not crazy.”

“So what happened to him?”

“There was… a trauma.”

“What happened?”

“That is a story that I cannot tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both. That is John’s story, and his alone.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes, and Mark spoke up again. “I hope I’ve not frightened you.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “What else could you be doing but scaring me? You tell me this guy I’m seeing has got three personalities, one of which is called the ‘other’? Sounds like a scare tactic to me.” Amy thought about it, and then said, “Do you do this to every girl? Trying to screen the chaff?”

Mark smiled. “Maybe.”

“And what do they do?”

“They run for the hills.” His smile broke into a grin.

“Fair enough. Tell me one thing, though. Is he dangerous?”

Mark hesitated a moment, and answered. “No. He would never hurt anybody he cared about.” He sounded convincing. Amy wondered what that hesitation held, all the same.

*

Beneath all that, there was a sensation of… emptiness.

He stared at the golem, confused. “Nothing is behind that.”

Jack gasped, and John tensed as the golem ponderously lifted a hand quite capable of grinding them to dust.

“Good,” it rumbled. The stone digits of the raised hand shifted slightly, and the earth roared. Both men struggled to stay on their feet as the ground beneath them shuddered. The golem, unmoved, waved its arm, and a rift split the dust between them, yawning like some hibernating beast. Its growth ground to a halt, and Hypnagogue lowered his arm.

“Enter.”

They did, and Mark and Amy’s faces faded as they descended into darkness.

*

John looked about uneasily. He saw that sentiment reflected in Jack’s face.

“Where are we?”

“Safe. For now.” Strange noises reached them, echoing through the warped hallways. “From the comet, anyway.”

They set off. It was a strange place, a cave system masquerading as a home. Wallpaper peeled off from wet rock, and a parquet floor was interrupted by stalagmites, rocky outcroppings jutting up from a wooden sea. Stranger and stranger. They came upon intersections at regular intervals, crossroads unmarked and untravelled by human feet, the empty echoing corridors radiating away from them bespeaking of ancient things beneath the earth. The sound of their footsteps fled from them like excited poltergeists, racing down the long hallways to announce their presence to whoever might be there to listen…

As they passed what seemed the thousandth featureless intersection without any variance in their path, John felt that Jack did not know the way. When he gave voice to these suspicions, Jack turned to him with a quizzical expression.

“Of course I don’t. Why would I?”

They kept walking. John realized had nothing more he planned to say, and so examined the strange ghost lights that lit their surroundings. Sourceless and without heat, floating in constellations. After another dozen intersections, John said, “I’m hungry.”

“No you’re not.”

John, a little taken aback, considered his stomach - he realized that he really was not hungry at all. Strange.

“I’m thirsty,” he offered, tentatively. Jack fixed him with a hard stare. “Fine.”

“Do you… know where we could get some?”

“No. You might, though. I want you to think very hard about water.”

“Why?”

“Shut up, tourist, and just do it.”

John did as he was told, and focused his thoughts on water. Fast-running, glinting in the sunlight, substantial and cool, welcome reprieve from the burdensome heat. The glug as he sucked down the last of the water bottle, up on the summit with Amy and Mark. The hiss as it shot from the faucet, the blunted roar as it surged up the sands, the wild tatto as it drummed the rooftops.

Jack’s voice, rough as fifty grit sandpaper, intruded into his meditations. And in the distance, he heard the roar of running water.

“Come on - you’ll get your water. More than you bargained for, sounds like.” The hallway before them burst open, and they found themselves a dozen feet from a raging cataract, the frothing waters hurling themselves into darkness hundreds of feet below. The roar was painful to the ears. Wincing, Jack tapped John’s shoulder and motioned him downward. A rough-hewn series of rock ledges spiraled around the edge of the room. The ledges were uneven, and worn smooth by eons of water. Jack leaned in close, and shouted, “Watch your step!”

John did not need to be told. With backs firmly plastered to the wall, they edged their way towards the first ledge. Jack lead, and John saw his leg shiver as he planted his heavy boot down on the first ledge. Haltingly, they wound their way down the treacherous staircase. As they descended, something emerged from the gloom, hulking and massive. As they moved further down, the shape resolved itself - a mighty rock, bifurcating the water. The further they went, the more outcroppings they discovered. The sound diminished steadily as the water did. Soon, the water was little more than a trickle, and John could hear his own breathing again. Below them, the floor of the chamber was finally in sight. A pool winked up at them like a silver dollar caught in moonlight. The edges were unnatural regular. They gratefully stepped off the last rock and examined the pool. A perfect hemisphere, neatly scooped out of the solid rock. In the water below them, small lights drifted, casting their muted light upward. The two men’s faces were bathed in red, green, yellow and blue. The spectrum spiralled upwards into the dark. John’s tongue felt swollen and dry - the water looked like ambrosia.

“Is it safe to drink?”

Jack laughed. “I should hope so… that Pounce guy… what was his name again?”

Absentmindedly, John corrected him. “Ponce de Leon.”

“Ponce, right. You always were the scholar.”

“Are you saying that this is-”

“Here, nothing is what you think it is. And sometimes it is.”

John laughed. “You sound like a girl I met.” He wondered where she was.

Jack let it pass without comment. John scooped up a handful of the water. It was cool and sweet, and as it spread its icy fingers down his throat, John felt something stir within him. A nameless force rising from the depths, tasting the water. It felt good. He felt strong. He had a few more handfuls. Jack picked at his fingernails and glanced upwards.

John, his thirst quenched, sat back on the stone. He fixed a steady eye on Jack.

“Time to explain some things.”

Jack raised his eyes, dark and intense. He lit a cigarette, and the flame danced in his eyes. In other circumstances, John would fear this man, he was sure of it.

“What happened to me?”

“The other one. You haven’t heard from him in a while, have you?”

John shook his head.

“He’s been planning this, working the angles for months, years, who knows? Time is strange down here. Point is, he found a rathole to wriggle out of, and he made his play.”

John’s eyes widened.

“You remember it, don’t you?”

“Those eyes…”

“Intense.”

“Like coals.”

“They are, aren’t they?” he laughed. “You always were the poet.”

“So what happened?”

“He overpowered you.”

“So he’s up there as me?”

“No. You gave a good account of yourself.” Jack’s flat gaze told John he was still incredulous on that point. “Far as I can tell your body is in a coma.”

“So we are…”

“Inside your skull, yes.”

“And you’ve always lived here?”

“Where else would I?”

John shrugged. “So what is this place, specifically?”

Jack sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. “I’ll explain it later. Can you hold your breath very long?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Jack cocked a single finger upward. John noticed it was growing very bright up above them.

“Our friend. It’s coming for us,” Jack said.

“We’re trapped.”

“The hell we are. Now take a deep breath, and dive in.”

“That? It’s four feet deep!”

“Enough with the fucking thinking! In the damn pool. Now.”

“But-”

“No time.”

John sucked in a lungful of air and leapt into the pool, feet first. A moment later Jack crashed in beside him, wriggling like an eel. Towards the darkness below where there once was only rock. John set aside his astonishment, placing it right next to his anger and confusion. Wasn’t much room left. Right then, his fear was asserting itself. All around him, the water was heating up. Above, a burning white light, dazzling as a supernova, cast him and Jack in sharp tableau. John’s only desire was to escape that light. He churned his arms and legs, and tried to catch up with Jack. In his peripheral vision, he saw objects shooting through the water like spears. John twisted his head to look at one. Perhaps a foot long, the thing resembled an obsidian machete… or a feather.

Something struck him at the small of his back. His arms faded to a halt, and his legs followed suit. He was vaguely concerned by this, but a choking tide of apathy had enfolded his brain. He was starting to remember…

The dog’s eyes were damp and sorrowful, and the shovel was light as red murder in his hands. He’d brought a treat, to lure it out, and it had sleepily obliged, lumbering towards the bit of food. John cooed soft things to put it at ease. He had kept the steady patter going as he raised the shovel. He brought it down with the finality of the headsman’s axe. But Angus was a big dog, and the first strike didn’t kill him.

No.

No.

Jack was tugging on his arm, eyes wild, cheeks puffed. John came back to his senses, and started to swim again, the desperate heat of the stale in his lungs making itself felt. He hoped they would surface soon.

They were swimming through an environment foreign as the moon. Fantastic coral structures, neon blue and faintly lucent, proved difficult obstaclces. The two men wriggled through the gaps, and John considered what sort of creature might reside in a bolthole the size of a man. He swam faster.

Just as his lungs felt fit to burst and black oblivion lapped at the edges of his vision, Jack was angling himself upward. They put on a last burst of effort, and lunged from the water, gasping and flopping about, ecstatic beached fish. John, legs wrung out from their exertion, collapsed facefirst on the beach they had found themselves. He came up with his face caked in the fine white sand. As he sighed a deep breath of cool dank air, John grinned. The adrenaline was ebbing away though, and Jack’s rough hand on his shoulder brought him from his happy daze.

“Let’s go.”

John’s sodden clothes slowly dried as they walked passages worming through the earth. John let the silence stretch and yawn. But he had to ask the question.

“What is that thing? And what did it do to me?”

“Doesn’t have a name, or if it does, it’s not one I know. Thing was born here.”

“And the feather?”

Jack grunted. “You saw that, did you. The wings came later. Last I saw it, thing looked more like an upright newt more than anything. Nasty little bastard.”

“How do the wings come into play?”

“Only way out of here is the cliff.”

John shook his head. “Couldn’t we just crawl back out through the gate that statue made?”

“Nope. That’s one way passage. You’ve got to fly if you want out of here. We’ve got to find a quiet place.”

“Alright - where’s that?”

There was a peculiar gleam in Jack’s eyes as he said, “You tell me.”

*

The supply of wine was dwindling quickly, and Mark’s apartment took on a softer glow with each refill. Mark was telling a story.

“And so Brewer starts getting into John’s face about it, and Johnny starts blinking real hard. So I’m standing there thinking, ‘Jack’s going to show up and then there’s a fight.’ But all of a sudden, John’s voice changes, and it’s someone I’ve never met before, some woman, and she says something to him. And Brewer’s three sheets to the wind, and he screws his face up and he says to John, ‘what’re you, a faggot now?’. And she doesn’t say another word, just slaps Brewer so hard he went down like a tree. Slapped unconcious!”

They laughed, maybe a little longer than they would normally. Tears of mirth had formed at the corners of Mark’s eyes.

“Ah, John,” he sighed. And then he took a long sip of his wine. Their eyes met, and they found no sadness there. When Mark leaned over and kissed her, Amy realized what they had been doing. They had been eulogizing John. And now they were free, free from all of the trouble and pain and love that John represented in their minds. John meant to so much to them both, and they had finally managed to say goodbye. And they had done it with laughter, and not with tears, which is how John would have preferred it. He never had liked to see them cry. It was strange, to shrug off that burden they had become so used to. But now they were free, and John was gone. Mark was not. Amy kissed him, and for the first time in months, John slipped from her mind.

*

“You found it, tourist. You can hide here.”

John looked down at the rude hole in the wall, perhaps big enough if he wriggled through it like a snake.

“I think I’d rather keep running.”

“Tourist, trust me. Get going.”

Sighing, John got on hands and knees and army-crawled his way through the hole, inching through it as he tried to ignore the claustrophobic sensations it brought, the rough stone walls grating his shoulders. The tunnel was not long, perhaps twenty yards, but his already tired body began to protest in the tight enclosure halfway through.

“Jack, I don’t want to be stuck in here.”

“Then keep going.”

Grunting, he continued. A diffuse amber light filled the tunnel, and a scent of spring with it. Intrigued and confused, he shimmied the final few yards and popped out of the hole, rolling down a gentle decline to the banks of a pond. The grass around him was long and wild, and he gazed up at a defiant blue sky. He sat up and looked about - the place was intimately familiar, and yet it had no name. To think that this place existed! John breathed an amazed sigh and craned his neck as he took in the surroundings. The pool at his feet, edged by strong oaks, their boughs and leaves casting dappled shadows against the soft earth. Birdsong echoed to him from somewhere, deeper in the glade.

There was movement in the trees. John’s eyes darted there, cursing himself for a fool. Of course there would be danger – nothing was safe. He vaulted to his feet and cast about himself for a weapon - a fallen log had drifted onto the bank of the pond. He seized it up and stood, like a batter waiting for a pitch, when the source of the noise revealed itself.

It was Abby who emerged from the underbrush, carefully picking her way over and around the dead logs, her glossy patent leather shoes amiss in this primeval place.

“Were you going to hit me with that?” She asked him sweetly.

John dropped the stick, cursing and feeling foolish. “Thought you were danger.”

She stepped right up to him, and stood, hands clasped in front of herself, head cocked inquisitively, as if waiting for John to do something. John stuck out his hand, and she demurely shook it.

“I’m, uh, glad to see you.”

“You look tired, John.”

“I am. How is it exactly that you manage to always show up without…”

“There are all sorts of ways around this place - don’t you know them?”

John shook his head. “So you’ve been here before?” The thought of her humming and skipping stones seemed right to him, even in his own sacred place.

“I come here sometimes.”

“Ah.” John went back to the hole, and shouted through. “What’re you waiting for, Jack?”

There was a pause, and then Jack’s voice, echoing strangely: “I can’t come in there.”

“Why the hell not?”

“That’s a good place for you. It’s safe. I’m not supposed to go in there. I’m not allowed.”

John looked over his shoulder at the little girl. She merely shrugged. Exasperated, John cupped his hands and shouted, “Well I’m asking you in right now, so please don’t hurt my feelings and stop standing around out there.”

Jack said nothing, but John heard the scrape of cloth on stone. Jack appeared at the tunnel mouth, blinking like a mole in the thick golden light. His eyes were wide. John gave him a hand up, and he wordlessly surveyed all that made John feel safe. He started when he saw Abby.

“You!”

“Me,” she stated, performing a smart curtsy.

“Little dangerous for a girl your age to be out here, no?”

“I’m surprised to see you here, actually.”

Jack grunted, sensing something behind the sweet smile. “Why’s that?”

“You’re usually passed out drunk in that dive bar.”

John watched as a vein leapt into visibility at Jack’s temple as he clenched his jaws, and he flexed his scarred knuckles. John laid a restraining hand on his shoulder, and Jack took a deep breath.

“None of that here, Jack.”

The girl giggled at Jack’s anger. “John takes those with better grace than you.”

Jack growled, “The reason I exist, miss, is because John takes any piece of shit someone cares to fling at him. So while John bows and scrapes, I quiet the sharp-mouthed ones. Understood?”

She giggled and turned, diverting her attention to a small frog hopping along. Jack shook his head.

“Uncanny, that one.”

John could only agree.

“I’m going to go check out the place,” Jack said, turning to leave. He paused, and said, “That is, if it’s okay with you.”

John swallowed a grin and gravely nodded. “By all means.” Jack went tramping off into the undergrowth, and John joined Abby at the pond’s edge.

“We should sit over there,” the girl said, pointing at a large stone overhanging the water’s surface. “It’s too muddy here.”

John followed, and boosted her up onto the rock, turning his hands into a stirrup. She accepted his assistence with dignity, and prissly smoothed her skirts as John vaulted up, sprawling beside her. The sun was warm on the rock, and warm on his face, and John spent a moment basking. He had to ask the question, though.

“Who are you?”

She sighed and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Do you ever get tired of all these silly questions?”

“Humor me.”

“I’ll tell you. But only if you guess.”

John groaned. “I’m glad one of us is still in the mood for games. Me, I’m a little beat after being chased across hell by some … thing who laughs like something from a nightmare.”

“Of course it laughs like something from a nightmare. Or, I should say, nightmares.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your nightmares. That’s what’s chasing you.”

John cracked open his eyes, to see if she was being entirely serious. She was.

“How do you know this?”

“I was born in this place, lived here all my life. You pick things up.”

“So what does a nightmare look like?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. Probably pretty scary.”

He sighed and leaned back, letting the sun wash over his face. “You got that right, kid.”

There was a little hitch in her breathing. He opened his eyes, and saw her watching him anxiously. That unruly lock of hair fell across her face as she stared, brow knitted. And that’s when it hit him. That unnameable resemblance. He sat up.

“Why,” he started, before the tightness in his throat stopped him, “why don’t you call me dad?”

She smiled, a heartbreaking thing to see - the mature facade dropped, and she looked like she wanted him to hold her. He did so, wrapping her in his arms. She buried her face in his chest a moment, then looked up at him, tears trickling down her cheeks.

“You don’t call Amy your wife, do you?”

“I guess not,” he said, hugging her.

“I’m glad it’s her, though. She seems nice.” Her voice was muffled as she pressed her face against him.

“She is,” he murmured. “You’ll like her.”

They sat there, father and daughter, silent in awe of those things we never knew we could have, those things that only lived there, in a world of dream and water. And there she was, listening to his heartbeat. John’s heart felt fit to burst.

She jerked away from him, mouth wide with fear. “Something… something isn’t right.”

“What is it?”

Something exploded from the pond and into the air. The spray fell and revealed a vengeful creature, lithe limbs stretched to the utmost, a horrific grin baring its teeth. Its hungry eyes took in the two upon the rock. It unfurled its wings… its horrible wings.

A flash of light, and John fell backwards. Horrible shrieks sounded in his ears, and then the light left him. He was standing in the dark.

“Hello?” he said, lip quivering.

There was a rasp of a boot on stone. Someone was here in the darkness with him. He backed away from the noise, but sound bounced strangely in this place. Where was he? Someplace, some dark hole. Where were his parents? The man’s leg was a surprise when he backed into it. John whirled, and powerful hands seized him by the front of his shirt.

“Don’t scream, boy.”

John could not help himself. He screamed, screamed until his voice gave or the man choked him, he couldn’t remember which. And even then he screamed without his voice, an echoing wail rebounding through the twisting corriders of his head. The sound of breaking glass accompanied it. The man’s breath was upon him, he was crushing him with his body. He felt his ratty jeans pulled from his skinny legs. What had the man said, to lure him down here?

“Come help me down in the cellar, son.”

A flash of white light.

*

Amy’s hand was at her mouth. The whole horrifying story had been told.

“That’s… terrible, John.”

He shrugged, eyes dead. This grief was buried deep, she could tell – it was paining him to dredge it back to the surface. “I’m so sorry,” she said, wrapping him in her arms. He was still in her arms, and then something broke in his eyes.

They gleamed with tears as he asked her to help him forget. She nodded and kissed him. A summer wind was soughing through the trees outside their window. They had just moved in a week ago, and all of their boxes remained stacked and sealed. They had made sure to put down their matress, though. Amy tilted her face to the breeze, let it cool the faint perspiration on her forehead. John’s arm was curled around her, strong and solid. She was half-asleep, thinking half-thoughts and dreaming half-dreams. At her back, she heard John mumble something. She did not make much of it - her mind was heavy with sleep, and John sometimes talked while he dreamt. The babbling continued, and then it congealed into something harder, uglier. The timber, the inflection of the voice was all wrong. Amy’s conciousness began to bubble to the fore, relegating her dreams to the background. She clearly heard the voice now. It was not John. And he was not asleep. The evil-sounding language continued unabated, and she began to squirm away from him, scared witless. But his arm, strong and solid, tightened like an iron band around her chest, and he was hissing in her ear in strange tongues.

“John,” she pleaded, attempting to writhe out of his grasp. She managed to twist herself around, and she was face to face with him. His eyes burned with frightening intensity. And the he blinked, once, twice. And the eyes were the soft brown eyes that John always had, and the dark voice had faded, replaced with John’s confused voice.

“Oh God, Amy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Badly shaken, she pushed him away when he seeked to embrace her. Recoiling from him, she got to her feet and padded out of their bedroom. She needed a glass of water. John swivelled into a sitting position at the edge of the bed, and wept.

*

A flash of white light.

John was flat on his back, and he was screaming. No. It was not him screaming. It was a girl. His daughter. He scrambled to the edge of the rock, and saw her little hand being pulled below the water, the small white fingers grasping for her absent father.

“No!” he roared, diving into the pool.

The woosh of water surrounded him as he broke the surface, thrashing madly with his limbs. The bubbles swarming around him obscured his vision, and her pale white face was being yanked into the blackness below. Her eyes were wide and unblinking as she faded. He swam, legs churning the water, but he could not move quickly enough. She continued to fade, until there was only darkness below him.

Jack’s strong hand seized his collar, yanking him upwards - upwards towards the light. Jack did for him what John could not for her. He came to the air, spluttering, bobbing in the cold water. He cast wild eyes all around him, saw the alien trees standing guard on the shore, saw the cold sunlight cutting through their branches.

He turned to see Jack treading water next to him, then saw Jack’s palm strike him across the face.

When John came to, they were slumped on a log. Jack was holding a large silver flask before him. John pushed it away, and stood up, frantic.

“Are we safe here? What if that thing comes back?”

Jack pulled him down. “It won’t. That thing had you dead to rights. Had it wanted to, it would have dragged you down instead of,” Jack, to his credit, only paused slightly, “her.

John sat down with a thump. “What do you care? You two didn’t seem friendly.”

“I’d like to think she was something like my niece.” The silver flask appeared again underneath John’s nose, and he did not push it away this time. He drank deep, and felt the fire run through him - it felt good, better than the cold deadness. Jack watched his throat work, then asked, quietly. “What happened?”

“I… I couldn’t help her. It did something to me - it showed me things.”

“What sort of things?” Jack asked, taking the flask from him.

John shook his head, unwilling to say it. “You know.”

“Ah,” Jack said. “Christ.” He took a swig and stared off into the trees. It took him a moment to realize John was crying, his shoulders shuddering. “Christ,” Jack repeated. “I’m going to go… I’m going to go somewhere. You call for me when you’re ready to go. And try to be-” John took his face from his hands and stared at him, and Jack decided it was best he not finish that sentence. “Just call for me.”

John nodded and buried his face in his hands. In the darkness, all he could see was her hand, slipping below the surface.

Jack sat on the same rock those two had sat upon, and set to draining the contents of the flask. He had considered ditching it any number of times during their repeated flights, but at that moment, he was glad to have kept it. He had not even known who she was, not until one minute before she was ripped from him. How could he not know? Jack sighed, and drank. He wondered if they could do anything for her, wondered where that thing had taken her.

“Jack.” John’s eyes were red, but dry.

“Yeah?” Jack offered the flask. John waved it away.

“What do we do now?”

“We start moving again.”

“Abby… my daughter - can we do anything for her?”

Jack shook his head. “It’s unlikely.” John’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing. “That thing… it’s playing a game with us. We’re at the mercy of forces more powerful than ourselves, I’m afraid. But that doesn’t mean we’re helpless. That thing acted out of its own prerogative - had that been Coal Eyes, we would not be having this conversation.”

“So where is Coal Eyes, then?”

“At the end of the rainbow, would be my guess.”

“But why? Why does he need me?”

“Every one of your aspects, myself included, need you. We can’t open the gate, it’s you who has to do that.”

“I can’t control when you people emerge.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Every time I’ve come, it was at your call. Maybe you don’t realize it, but a part of you wants me out there to deal with the things you can’t.”

“Shut up, Jack. I would never allow Coal Eyes out.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, tourist. He’s stronger than all the rest of us, and he’s strongest when you’re weakest.”

“Then what happened before I woke up here?”

“That’s a question I can’t answer. I’d tell you to ask him, but I’m not so sure you two will have time to chat, should a meeting occur. Here’s what I do know. If you die in this place, the floodgates will open. And he’s going to be first out.”

John nodded.

“Now let’s go,” Jack said.

They went, slithering back out the hole, two grim rats, scared and tired of running. But they would run and run until they got to the end of the maze. John wondered what would await them there. As they stood up in the cavelike labyrinth, he sighed out the dank, heavy air. The two men moved down the corridor, and walked in silence. After a span of time, they came upon a hub. It was a small, round chamber, a hemisphere whose ceiling was lost in the shadows above them. Small pieces of rubble coated the floor, skittering underfoot as the men walked through them. Radiating from this room were no less then a dozen identical corridors, dark portals carved from rock. Jack took a slow turn, staring at each.

“Well, tourist, which way do you think?”

John was not too sure that it mattered. He pointed at random, and they went. After a few minutes, the passageway abruptly terminated in a blank wall. Jack grunted, knocking on the solid stone.

“Bad guess, I s’pose.” They returned to the circular chamber, but it was not the same as they left it. This chamber had but a single entrance, their’s, and while the basic shape remained the same, the twelve spokes of the earthen wheel were gone, replaced by expanses of rough stone. At the center of the room there stood a stone table. On top of this laid a ragged pile of flesh and bone, a parody of humanity, some wretched creature dead of starvation. Not long dead, for its yellowed skin still stubbornly clung to prominent ribs. John approached, thinking the whole time that perhaps this was not a table, but rather an altar. An altar to what?

He came close enough to touch the cadaver, and glanced over it. It was bald as an egg, and the eyes were deeply sunk, and shut for all eternity. The cracked lips were turned downward in a frown - starvation cannot be an easy way to go, John thought. The shoulders were two right angles, and his clavicle leapt from the flesh like a sudden ridge line, with a narrow saddle between. His legs were thin as twigs, and the feet at the end of the undersized appendages looked almost comically oversized.

“Goddamn,” Jack said, coming to stand next to him.

“How is it, Jack, that we leave a room, to find it completely different not five minutes later?”

“Maybe they redecorated,” Jack suggested, patting his pockets. Fishing deep into one, he proudly withdrew a crumpled pack of smokes. “Want one?”

“Not really.”

“That’s fine. They might be a little damp.”

A match appeared in his hand by some bit of ledgerdemain, and he flicked the head of it across the stone table. As it rasped to life, the corpse seemed to move. John chalked it up to the flickering firelight playing over its tortured physique.

“I’m hungry.”

Both upright men started - the corpse had just spoken to them.

“Do you have anything to eat?” it whispered, its voice painful and soft.

The cigarette slipped out of Jack’s slack mouth, and he absent-mindedly plucked it from the air, immediately replacing it and taking a long drag.

They helped the emaciated man sit up. He was shaking his head faintly.

“I don’t… I don’t know where I am. Where am I?”

Both men shrugged.

“Do you have anything to eat?”

Jack cast a sidelong glance at John. “Sorry, friend. I haven’t eaten a bit of real food since that Applebee’s in ‘98.”

John remembered. “Do you have any idea how large that tip had to be to keep him from pressing charges?”

Jack grinned in the strange ambient light.

“How about a smoke, friend?”

The starved man regarded Jack, cocking his head as he did so. The series of pops and cracks emanating from his birdlike neck was audible.

“Okay,” he said.

Jack presented him a cigarette, saying, “Last one, so enjoy-”

The starved man took the ciagarette like a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth, chewing tentatively. With a gulp, he swallowed.

“‘S good,” he said. “Do you have anything more to eat?”

John and Jack exchanged concerned glances.

“Ah, I’m afraid not,” John said.

“Okay,” the starved man said, glum.

The two men turned to the business of trying to find a way out. They prowled the perimeter of walls, running their hands against the stone as if to coax a doorway into existence. They took the opportunity, while the starved man was still sitting on the table, to talk.

“What the hell was that?” John hissed. “Just chewed that thing up, filter and all!”

Jack laughed. “You think I smoke filtereds?”

“Yeah, well…” John fell quiet, and silently pointed towards the stone table. Jack turned and watched the starved man bend down and pick up one of the small rocks lining the floor. He took it and placed it in his mouth, like a child experimenting with eating dirt. And then the starved man chewed. The two men watched in horror as he fell upon the floor like a wild animal, stuffing his mouth full of debris and stone. The sounds of his mastication could be heard a dozen paces away.

“What the…?” was all John could think to say.

Jack thought of something else, however. “I’ve got a plan, tourist.”

He guided him to the center of the room, and put his hands on his shoulders.

“Remember that time that quack hypnotized you?” John nodded. “Well, nothing so bad is going to happen this time - hey, would you mind quieting down for a minute?”

The starving man sullenly stuck a final chunk of rock in his mouth, and chewed quietly.

“Thank you. Now all you have to do, John, is watch the tip of this knife.” In a flash, the blade was in his hand, a wicked looking boning knife that glinted in the low light. Jack’s voice dropped to a pleasing drone. “Just watch the blade.” Slowly, languidly, he coaxed it into movement, the barest and smoothest flick of the wrist guiding the knife in a stately dance. He drew glyphs and symbols in the air, and John watched, transfixed. Jack started to speak, told him to silence his mind, silence his doubts. John felt drowsy, and Jack watched his eyelids droop.

“Don’t fight it.”

John did not. Jack’s voice came to him next as a pure prophecy, impossible to disobey.

“Think of home. Think of her.”

For the second time over the last few hours, John saw visions. But these were pleasant visions, of summertime and drowsing as the rain fell, of Amy’s smile when she danced, of the roll of her hips. He heard the flutter of silk wings, and whispered oaths of affection. Jack’s voice, when it came again, was soft and hopeful, that of a child. “Show me where she is, John.”

In his stupor, John tried to focus. Amy was not there. She was gone, back in the real world.

“Find her, John.”

Where? Where would he find her? She was lost to him like a sweet wind, a fading memory on his face, his lips. But something at the edge of thought tugged at him, an echo of laughter, a faint imprint of a dream. He could find her.

“Show me.”

John distantly felt his arm rise, the wrist limp. And then… there! His wrist locked of its own accord, and his finger pointed with the certainty of a dowsing rod.

“Good. Wake up, now, John.”

John did so, and stared down the line of his finger. He was pointing at a blank wall.

“That’s where we need to go,” Jack said.

John walked to the wall and tapped at it. “This is solid stone, Jack.”

“Yes, I imagine it is. But our hungry friend here doesn’t mind, do you?”

The starving man blinked, then returned to cramming his face with stone. Sparks slipped from his mouth as his jaws rended and crushed the geological matter. John winced.

“Hey, friend. Come over here.”

The starving man rose from his crouch, wiping debris from his mouth with a forearm. A forearm that looked thick with muscle. John reevaluated the man - his skin was flush with color, his shoulders broad, stomach not distended with hunger, but stuffed with food. Food of a sort, at any rate.

“Is it just me, or is he… different?”

Jack shrugged. “Our baby is growing up, I guess. Now, my hungry friend. Here is what I need you to do.” He rapped on the wall John had indicated. “Eat this.”

John started to speak up, but the starved man shrugged and smashed his fist into the wall. The stone yielded to him, and he buried his hand deep with in it. Then, with little exertion, he ripped his hand free, claiming a large chunk of stone as he did so. Then, like some strange snake, the starved man’s jaw unhinged, and he gulped it all down. The starved man grunted in a approval like a gourmand being faced with a particularly satisfying dish. His left hand came around in a blur, and he repeated the process. With each impossible bite, the starved man grew bigger, stronger. Soon he was ripping great plugs of earth out with each grab, his hands large as manhole covers. There was nothing but the sounds of his feast for awhile, and the two men watched as he disappeared into a tunnel built of gluttony.

“Never seen anything like it, Jack. Does he have any connection to me?”

“We all do, down here. And that one… I think I can place him, now”

“What is he?”

“Greed.”

“My greed?” Jack nodded. “Well tell him to angle upwards a bit.”

Jack cupped his hands about his mouth and relayed this information. Greed turned about awkwardly in his tunnel, and all that they could see of him amidst the shadows were two saucer eyes and two rows of starp teeth. Gleaming, white teeth. There was a crash as it diverted its attention upwards.

John and Jack waited until the sounds of progress faded to the distance, and then followed. The tunnel was roughly hewn, and the floor uneven. As they progressed, it only grew larger as he had to accomodate his swelling frame. Ahead of them, the sounds of his labor stopped.

“Breakthrough,” Jack said, grinning.

They hurried through the tunnel, and by the time they reached daylight, a semi could drive down it. They stepped into sunlight, which was quickly eclipsed by the massive skull of the starving man. He had become a terrifying parody of a human being, the general form and figure intact, but all of the details horribly amiss. The face was dominated by a gaping maw, lined with razor teeth and dripping ropes of slaver. Two massive hands patted a tumid stomach, and it eyed them.

“Hungry. Tired of rock.”

Jack, a few steps ahead of John, spun, cursing. “We’ve got to go!” John stood stock still, taking in the size of the thing. It stood near twenty feet tall, he would guess. And those hard gimlet eyes…

“This is no time for you to freeze up, tourist! It’s time to run!”

John stood still another moment, and shook his head. “I’m not running.”

John did not hear Jack’s question as he stepped towards the creature. It regarded him with hungry eyes, swiped at him with a paw.

Some latent force within John’s brain stepped to the fore, directing him. He ducked, and the hand whistled harmlessly overhead. John struggled to identify this new entity even as he effortlessly dodged the massive creature’s hands and feet. It was powerful, filling his thoughts, charging each movement. And yet it did not overwhelm. It was anger, he realized, controlled anger, and the will to action. He looked up at the beast as it panted from its clumsy exertions, and he saw how easy it would be. If he could just focus… there. A powerful thudding, like a drum. All he had to do was stop it. He concentrated for an instant. The creature bellowed suddenly, hand clutching at its chest. Its eyes rolled as it staggered about, then pitched to the ground in a heap. John watched, and then turned to face Jack.

Jack was pale, his face wan.

“Why do you look tired, John?”

He shrugged. “Which way?”

John considered it, and did a slow revolution. Behind them, in the absolute distance, the faint silohuettes of the dream city’s spires could be seen, wrapped in clouds. To either side were rolling meadows, verdant and lush, but not important. And ahead of them loomed a mountain, jutting into the sky. As John faced it, he felt a presence, like the sun on his face. Home lay that way.

“There,” he said, pointing.

Jack gingerly walked towards it, saying, “Why couldn’t it be the meadows?” as he passed.

John followed after. The two men walked, the mountain looming ever larger, cruel and dark, the lines of it harsh against a soft blue sky. Jack collapsed when they reached the foothills. John watched it happen, as if underwater. John’s eyes widened, and his legs went boneless beneath him, depositing him to the earth. And all John could think as he rushed to him was what Jack had said before he sat across from the merchant - “Deal of a lifetime”. Deal of a life, to tell it true. Jack was smiling.

“Why’d you do it, Jack? Why’d you make that trade?”

“Only thing I had to trade. Life, breath… that’s all that matters. So long as you’re alive, you’re worth something. Guess I’m depreciating.” Jack laughed, until the laugh became a painful, racking cough.

“I’m sorry, John.”

John clenched his jaw. “You can’t leave me here, Jack. Not now.”

“Don’t lie to a dying man.” He gasped in air. “Not much time. I’ve got a question for you.”

John said nothing, just watched as the light ebbed from his eyes.

“How far?” Jack whispered.

John gritted his teeth. “As far as I have to.”

“That’s good, tourist. That’s real good.” He patted John’s arm, and then fell quiet.

*

The alpine air was fresh, and the sun was high and bright above them. John and Amy traded back and forth a water bottle as they strode up the well-packed track, Mark ten steps ahead.

“It’s beautiful,” Amy said. “I’m glad we came.”

John reveled in the warmth on the back of his neck. “Me too.”

Mark turned to them with a wicked grin. “Give it time. We’re just beginning.”

By the time they reached the summit, they were panting, their legs knotted and aching.

“John. Water.”

“What’s that about water, Amy?” he tipped the jug to his lips and drained the last of it.

“I should throw you right off this cliff. I’ll do that, too, right after I…” John and Amy took two steps on the flat ground and collapsed in a heap, their exhausted bodies unused to level ground. Mark limped to the lookout point, wrapping his hands around the fence separating their mountain from the blue sky.

“Think you can get up?” he asked his sweaty companions. “All that way, you’ll want to see this. And believe me, it’s worth it.”

Grumbling, the young lovers staggered to their feet and joined him. They said nothing, just gaped.

“You weren’t kidding.”

*

John grimly reflected on that day under the sun, years ago, as he clawed his way up the rocks. There was no trail here, no gentle incline. He was crawling with fingers and feet, clawing his way up the scree. He was alone, Jack’s sightless body left in the foothills, where there was still some green. There, on the mountain, there was nothing but black stone and a reddened sky, and his labored breath. The grade increased as he struggled up, and at one moment a rock came loose in his hand, sending him skidding downwards, jolting his exhausted frame over the sharp rocks. As he lay there panting, he thought of Jack’s last question. John got up, and climbed still higher.

*

Mark’s suit was ill-fitting; he had not worn it since his uncle’s second wedding, and that was years ago. But it was all he had, so he had worn it anyway. He would have preferred not to have come to this funeral, but John needed him there. He glanced at John, across the casket, standing next to his mother. She was clinging to her son’s elbow as if she would fall without him - her head was bent low, and the whole congregation could hear her sniffling. John, on the other hand, was impassive as a statue. The cast of his eyes, the straightness of his spine. Mark frowned, to see it. He would have to talk to John afterwards. At the moment, John needed to deliver his eulogy. Mark was as expectant and nervous as any - John did not respond well to stranger’s eyes. They made him retreat, into whatever sanctuary existed within his own mind. And then, who knew who might emerge - Kate, Jake, or Gary? Gary would not be so bad - people might just think he was too broken up to manage his own tears. But if the Other one emerged, who knew? John cleared his throat, and spoke.

“My father kept the lights on, and he put food on the table. We had water, and I had clothes, and a bed. I would guess that many other men could not even do that much. Thank you for coming.” With that, John walked away from the casket, from the crowd, from his father. All in attendance were stunned. As John marched off, all they could hear was the repetitive hiss of the sprinklers in the distance. Mark felt like laughing. He took off after his friend, and left the rest of the black-garbed mourners to their stunned silence.

“John! Slow down!” Mark called, as he chased him down a hill. John paused, and let Mark catch up.

“Come on, let’s sit down.” So the two young men sat down on a nearby gravestone, a marble molar sticking up from the ground.

Mark blew out his breath and gazed out at the cherry trees that lined the graveyard.

“So what happened.”

John turned sharp eyes on him. And he paused.

His father had come home on time, and his mother was still cooking dinner. He was hungry, and let her know it. John was working on homework in his room, and went downstairs for a glass of water. As he reached the first floor, he heard a plate fall to the floor and shatter with a tremendous crash. He hurried into the kitchen to see if everything was all right. His father stood, beer in hand, and his mother was hurriedly scooping the broken glass into a dustpan. She was apologizing for the glass. To John, it sounded like she was apologizing for existing. His father watched her efforts, his mouth set in a firm line. When she had cleaned up the last of the glass, and straightened up to keep on cooking his dinner, he back-handed her.

“Clumsy bitch,” he spat. John watched it all.

At dinner, his father started to choke. It started as a cough, and soon grew more frantic, more guttural. John’s mother rushed to help him - he shoved her away with a hand while his other grasped at his own throat. His face was turning blue. John watched, fascinated. The horrible rattling continued, and his father tumbled from his chair, and one hand tore down the tablecloth. Plates and forks and knifes clattered to the floor, and his mother shrieked. His father was on his hands and knees, face near to black, struggling for air.

“Help him, John!”

John cocked his head at her, and shook his head silently. Then he took a sip from his glass of water. His mother was horrified to see a small smile creep across his face.

John told Mark this. Most of it, anyway. Mark listened soberly, and looked down at his shoelaces.

“So who did it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who was keeping you in that chair?”

John regarded him with a stone face.

“Don’t ask me that question, Mark.”

Mark dropped it.

*

When his entire body was one mass of pain, a trail appeared from the rock. The slope lessened. He was nearing the peak. Before him a ridge jutted up, a narrow cleft before him the only visible. He edged through it and came out the other side. He was standing at the edge of a canyon. As he contemplated the long fall below him, he heard the beat of great wings. His pursuer, swooped down to stand before him. It was beautiful, the angel. Its skin was white as summer clouds, its eyes blue as sapphires, its hair woven of sunlight. But it was the wings that stunned John. They were crystal and gem, onyx and ruby and emerald and diamond and jade, a riot of iridescence and majesty, furled up at the angel’s back. It regarded him with a faint smile.

“You have come a long way, traveler. But your road ends here.”

John looked past the angel. It had not lied - the rocky path extended out into thin air for a few yards, and then it dropped away abruptly. Behind him, the path had closed. John fixed the angel with a stare.

“What did you do to Abby?”

“The young one?” it asked, tongue flicking out from perfect lips in rembrance. “Oh, she was sweet, John. Her fear…” it’s eyes widened in remembered pleasure. Rage swept over John, and his nails bit deep into his hands as they curled into fists.

It noticed his eyes on its magnificent plumage, and it grinned, a sterile, joyless thing to behold. It twitched the grea