Realm Wraith (11 page)

“Therapy? Well, that does make sense. Thank you, doctor.”

“It’s no trouble. You two have a safe trip back home.”

David wheeled the chair back out to the waiting room, where Rayne started sulking.

“That was a waste of time,” he muttered.

“Now why would you say that?”

“There’s nothing seriously wrong with me. It’s not like my past matters much.”

David stopped short. “Your past doesn’t matter? Rayne, that’s not a proper outlook.”

“It’s not like I need to remember any time soon.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing! It just doesn’t seem so important right now. Confusing, yes, but with everything else going on, it isn’t something to get so dramatic about.”

They exited the hospital back into the parking lot.

“Let’s have that list,” David murmured, not looking at his friend.

“Look, I don’t want to see a psychiatrist!”

“I know, I just want to look at it.”

Reluctant, Rayne handed him the paper. David paused to scrutinize the names, and after a length, he crumpled the note up.

“I respect Dr. Orban’s position, but he doesn’t know you like I know you. I don’t think therapy is the best idea for you. But you do need to open up. I have to know if anything is wrong, all right? Better me than a complete stranger.”

Rayne didn’t answer. David had a point, but he still didn’t like the idea of opening up about his nighttime excursions. He didn’t want to deal with his friend’s pity once David learned he’d completely lost his mind.

* * *

Rayne’s foot pressed down into the purple colored mud, mixed in with falling rain from an unseen sky. Black water ran down in rivulets, filling the new indentation as he lifted his foot back up to take another step forward.
It annoyed him that here, in this world, he could walk. No numbness, no wheelchair rolling him from place to place. In the real world he was restricted, trapped. Here, there was freedom.

He had been walking for hours, this time in a narrow canyon, with only two directions to go. The dusky colored walls of rock extended far up to the sky, riddled with bones, and he’d wondered if was even possible to reach the tops of those walls, or if they actually did go up forever.

He had lost track of how many different places he’d been now. Weeks had passed since his release from the hospital. Without fail, every single night he came to this place. He had told no one about it. For all it mattered, it was just a permanent mental state he could only escape from for a few hours at a time, a conjuration of a mind gone mad.

David had continued to press the memory issue, but Rayne was still reluctant. The pain from his broken ribs, and the clumsiness of using a wheelchair made it awkward to move around, and he used this as an excuse to stave off any discussion. As long as he still needed healing, he was best off just focusing on getting better. It was awkward enough going back to the hospital for more scans, where the doctors found nothing out of the ordinary. As far as they cared, Rayne had a healthy brain. It certainly didn’t feel healthy.

He still hadn’t seen any sign of Gabriel, not since that last night with the ruined house. There were many other things in this place. Creatures Rayne had trouble believing were right there before his eyes. Beings that went far beyond anything he could imagine. Twisted forms, lacking all but the barest awareness, many of them human at one point in their appearance and mannerisms, now shades of their former selves, mindless damned. If this was a dream, Rayne could not understand why his mind would envision such tormented souls. And if it was real, that disturbed him even more. Would he become like them some day? The thought crossed his mind every time he encountered them.

But tonight it was just him and the bones. Past travelers, perhaps? Or just another part of the landscape? Some of the bones didn’t even seem human. Human-like, maybe. The skulls were elongated, with unusual shaped jaws, and some even had sharpened teeth. There were even bones that came from wings, tails, other strange body parts that people normally didn’t have. He pulled at one bone sticking a ways out from the wall. To his surprise, it came free in his hand, and he hefted it up and down. It was light, but solid. He smashed it against the wall, where it hit the side with a resounding
thunk
, but stayed intact.

“Perhaps I can use this as a weapon,” he murmured. He hated the thought of being so savage. It went against everything he believed; the way he lived his life was one of proper decorum, not primal brutality. But out here, what choice did he have? He could at least defend himself against an onslaught if he had a tool to work with.

There was nothing living in this place, or even un-living. It was barren, and quite boring, Rayne realized. But boring couldn’t be all bad. At least nothing here was trying to kill him. Still, Rayne wondered if there was someplace more interesting he could be. He thought about all the strange places he’d seen in his nightly travels. None of them seemed like a pleasant alternative. He paused to lean back against the wall, then glanced upwards at the falling black rain. There was no sky, no clouds, and he wondered where it fell from. Feeling there wasn’t much danger in it, he closed his eyes for the briefest moment, enjoying the cold water hitting his face. It almost felt normal, like ordinary rainwater, cold and wet, just splashing against his skin. He welcomed the sensation, almost forgetting where he was for the faintest moment.

A brief sense of numbness washed over him, but feeling returned. Alarmed, Rayne’s eyes snapped open, and his body toppled over. The first thought he had as he hit the ground wasn’t one of pain, but of surprise, as the ground felt solid, not wet and muddy. On top of that it was warm. Very warm. He felt the dry, grainy dirt beneath his hands as he started to stand up, like candle flames licking against his fingertips. Dread washed over him then, and he clenched his teeth as rage stirred inside his gut, but the reason for these feelings evaded him.

He raised his head and looked around. There was no canyon. Rain no longer fell from the sky. This was a bright place, with red and orange earth, and a pale yellow air seemed to hang over this place like a fog. He could feel what surrounded him even before he saw it: fire, blazing with an unreal intensity. He heard crackling flames, and felt a heat that melted the air around him. His eyes adjusted, and he witnessed the very ground burning in a dancing inferno.

The heavy heat in the air choked him, and Rayne had to struggle to compose himself. He couldn’t even stand up, so instead he inched forward, crawling through the burning dirt. Though the rippling air made seeing difficult, he could make out where the ground dipped into the haze, and wondered if he was up on a ledge somewhere. Curious, he crawled towards it, and peered past it down into the depths.

Below him stretched a vast ocean of molten magma, swirling and churning in an infinite whirlpool that stretched on into infinity. There were dark shapes, millions of them, writhing and screaming in the lava as it swirled them around and around. The sea of fire swirled far below him, the height of two mountains at least, yet the screams were as clear to him as bells, ringing in his ears as he gazed. Edging out over the ledge a little further, the sea seemed to go underneath the ground, as if he wasn’t so much on a cliff, but rather a rocky platform suspended in the air. He scrambled back away from the ledge.

“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here!” he rambled over and over.

He wasn’t sure if his mind was clouded by heat, or if something else, some madness in the air affected him, but the longer he stayed here, the more he felt a rising sense of pure wrath, the very notion of fire and flames like a poison that needed to be eradicated. He clenched at the dirt beside him, crushing it in his fingers. Terrible thoughts entered his head unwanted, the sensation of being buried alive in boiling magma, tormented forever as fire flayed his skin while unbearable heat and pressure crushed his body. He felt himself dying over and over only to be revived to experience the pain anew. He heard an agonizing tortured scream, only to find the sound came from his own mouth, with such force it threatened to tear his throat apart. He clutched at himself, but felt no burns. It was just a delusion. The heat here was painful, but he wasn’t being burned alive or crushed to death. All of that was in his head. And yet as he lay there, hallucinations plagued him, no matter how many times he reminded himself he was all right.

Rayne clenched his eyes shut, trying to recreate whatever circumstances had brought him here. The intense burning killed his concentration, and when he opened his eyes, nothing had changed, and he was still trapped in a world of fire. He closed his eyes again, trying to imagine some other landscape he could escape to, attempting to imitate the feeling of numbness from before. But nothing happened.

He heard another sound, different from the screams. It sounded like sobbing, and very close by. Rayne peered through the fiery haze. At first he saw nothing, but then the slightest movement caught his attention, movement that was not dancing flames. He crawled away, unsure if this was a person, or just another monster, and backed up close to a small rock. He couldn’t see very well, but he kept his gaze on the distant form amidst the flames. It seemed short, and its motion bounced up and down. The sound of weeping came from that direction.

Nearby, Rayne found the bone from the canyon still lying on the ground. Not content to cower behind a rock, he scooped it up in his left hand, and used his right to force himself upright, though the heavy air made that a painful task. The pressure on his back drove him back down, and his legs felt like they would snap at any moment. He wedged the bone against the ground, using it like a cane to stand on his feet. He couldn’t stand up straight no matter how hard he tried, forced to stay hunched over. But at least he was upright, not crawling on his belly like a worm. He lifted the bone and shifted it to his other hand, and staggered towards the sobbing.

Once he got close, he could make out a bent-over figure. The slight up and down movements kept in rhythm with its weeping, the motions of a crying person. Rayne brandished his weapon in one hand, narrowing his eyes to see through the haze. The kneeling figure suddenly froze.

“H-hello?” It was a woman’s voice, low, but feminine. “Is someone there?”

Rayne didn’t lower his guard just yet, but he crept closer to the figure. He realized the flames around him on the ground weren’t stable or regular, rather, they burned, and went out, only for new flames to spring up elsewhere. He could feel heat gathering beneath his feet, threatening to roast him alive if he stood still. Forgetting the heavy air, he jumped out of the way. The intense pressure returned and he tumbled into the person kneeling before him. The world around him whirled as he rolled around on the ground, and he heard the angry grunts of a woman falling to the ground with him.

“Asshole!” The voice screamed at him. Groaning, he looked up. A furious face greeted his eyes, and a hand struck him on the cheek.

Rayne sat up and looked at his new companion, a human woman with dark skin and black hair that framed her face. She looked to be in her forties, fit and well-groomed despite the ashes in her hair. She wore a tight fitting shirt and a pair of stone washed jeans, both covered in soot with slight rips in them. Her vibrant face lacked the signs of exhaustion he’d seen in Gabriel, and her brown eyes blazed with anger.

“Who the hell do you think you are, knocking me over like that?!” she yelled.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Rayne stammered. “I was just trying to dodge the fire. I didn’t mean to knock into you like that.”

Her anger subsided a bit, but she still glowered. “Awfully polite for a hooligan.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Never mind.” The woman pulled herself up to her feet with surprising ease. She reached out a hand to Rayne to help him up. He started to rise, only to have the weight of the air force him down again. The woman glared at him.

“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you even know how to stand?”

Rayne gasped, “It’s the air. It’s so heavy.”

“Heavy air? What have you been smoking?” The woman looked around her, ignoring Rayne for an instant. “Maybe I’ve been smoking something. Never seen anything like this place.”

Rayne abandoned trying to stand for the moment, pulling himself into a sitting position as he hoped the flames wouldn’t spring up where he sat. “Never? Is this your first time here, then?”

“What kind of question is that? Is this my first time here? What is this, some kind of psychotic club? I don’t even know where here is! It’s like I fell in some cave or something, only there’s fire and—” She paused as she glanced off in the distance, over the side of the land mass where they both stood, noticing the sea of magma for the first time. “Where are we?” She looked back at Rayne and he could see terror filling her eyes.

“You were crying earlier,” Rayne said. “You must’ve felt something was wrong when you came here.”

“It was so bright, I couldn’t see. I don’t know what came over me—” She stopped and glared at Rayne again. “Crying? I wasn’t crying! Do I look like some two-year-old to you? You must’ve been hallucinating. I don’t cry, ever!”

“My mistake.”

“So what, you live here or something? This your cave?”

“Me? Live here? I came here by accident, same as you.” A thought crossed Rayne’s mind. “Did something happen to you? Before you came here, were you in some kind of trouble? A car accident, or a heart attack, perhaps?”