Episode Ten
The sky was a slate gray, crackling with thunder. Clouds swallowed the sun, casting the world beneath in widespread shadow. I stood at the border of Os Onta, the same place I’d been when last I’d left this place. Yet as I looked around, something had changed. It wasn’t something I could put my finger on, but it was there nonetheless, a ghost lingering at my periphery. It stayed there, that difference, hanging at the edges of my vision, disappearing the moment I turned to see what it was.
I forced myself onto the beaten dirt path that would lead back toward home, casting a wary eye at the sky ahead. The clouds were swollen and dark, threatening rain at any moment. I wondered if there was someplace I might take shelter when it finally came. Briefly, I considered turning around, thought of going back to Os Onta. But the truth was, of all the places I’d visited in Alta California, it was the most unnerving. There was a chill that lived there, a desperation and hunger that had invaded stone and sinew alike. The city begged for reprieve, and the people begged along with it. But there was no reprieve coming, even I could see that. Os Onta was a forgotten place, a destitute town left to wither and rot. It was a place that would settle, and slowly die, turning to dust as the world around it learned to prosper.
The thought of returning sent a shiver down my spine, so I resolved to walk in the rain. I hadn’t made it far before icy pellets began to fall. They bit into the exposed skin of my arms and neck, sharp slivers of glass that sliced everything they touched. In a panic, I lifted my arm over my head and ran ahead unseeing, feet tripping over themselves. I’d gone no more than a few steps before something caught at the corner of my eye. It was a long shed, one made of graying, splintered wood and rickety rivets. Still, it was better than the alternative, and so I made my way toward it at a sprint.
The doorhandle was rusted and flaking, a sure sign of disuse, but the door gave way easily at my touch. I’d expected the hinges to creak and groan as they worked, but I was met with only silence as I stumbled inside. Great gaps between the boards let in enough light to see by, and I was surprised to find the floor littered with straw. At one end of the shed was a table, a sagging, cockeyed thing that watched me wring the water from my clothes. At the other end was a pile of old wooden boards. Many had nails jutting out from one side, and I thought that maybe they had been used during construction, though why they’d been abandoned here I couldn’t say.
As lightning struck the sky, a great streak of white that sizzled and hissed, I glanced through a gap between the boards. The wind had picked up, forcing the rain sideways. Bits of it slipped through the gap to pepper my face, and I wiped it away, realizing I had no choice but to settle in. A damp chill had already found a grip on the small shed, and before long my teeth were chattering. Still soaking from the rain, I stripped off as much as I could and laid the clothes on the table to dry.
Determined to wait out the storm in as comfortable a fashion as possible, I set myself to starting a fire. There were more than enough supplies, not the least of which was the lighter I’d snagged from Os Ovo on a second turn through the city. I’d taken to stealing the things I needed here, since I had no money and no idea how to get it, and, after all—it was only a dream. I made a small pyre of the discarded wood and stuffed it with straw, and as the little flame flickered to life in my hand I’d never been more grateful for the discovery of fire.
The straw was damp, and struggled to light, but after several minutes of fevered efforts, the thing caught fire. Flames guttered and sparked to life, hissing and popping every now and again. I grabbed the table and pulled it close to the fire, hoping it would help to dry my clothes, and I settled in beside the flames, piling straw high beneath me so that it would hold onto the heat.
How long I sat there, with my knees pulled up to my chest, and my gaze fixed on the fire. All I know is by the time he arrived, my clothes had long been dried, and my skin had taken on a rosy glow.
He appeared from within the depths of the shadows, materializing from the nothing that filled the corners of the small room. One moment, there was nothing but the empty darkness staring back at me. The next, his eyes loomed over the flames. He stepped forward, dark cloak slithering along the ground, straw hissing against stone as it was swept away. For a moment we faced each other in silence—him, stony faced and statuesque; me, heart scraping my ribs in a bid for sudden freedom.
“You did not heed my warning.” His words were glass, sharp and biting, inflexible and full of scorn.
His scowl darkened as he stepped closer, and the flames before him grew dim. Darkness spilled out of the corners of the room to pool along the floor, shadows writhing just beyond the frail scrap of light left behind by the smouldering embers.
I opened my mouth to speak, but it was useless and dry, as if it had been packed with sawdust. My tongue felt too thick, too swollen to form a coherent word, and for a moment I stared back at him dumbly, unsure of what to say. Questions chased each other inside the chasm of my mind, circling round and round one another until I lost sight of where one began and the other ended. Still, I had to say something. The man in black stood watching me, his eyes relentless, two luminous spots of white like stars inside the gloam.
“What is your name?” I asked then, a question I had never once before considered. Strange though it seemed, he didn’t matter at all to me. Rather, who he was as a person didn’t matter. The only thing I cared about was knowing what he knew, learning the truth of my circumstances and how to change them. And yet, as I stood there unsure of what else to say, the habit of courtesy and manner took hold.
The man in black’s lips twitched, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. He took another step forward, now standing just beyond the ring of burnt straw and wood that had kept me warm and dry before his arrival.
“You should not be here,” he said, an echo of a terrible memory.
“I know that,” I spat, shocked at the bitterness in my voice. “I wouldn’t be here if I had any other choice.”
“You have a choice,” the man insisted, bristling with anger. “You must leave. You do not belong here.”
“Then why am I here?” I shouted, growing frustrated. “I do not want to be here. Being here is killing me. But I can’t get out. Every time I fall asleep, I end up here. It’s an endless cycle. If you want me gone so badly, then get me out!”
The moment I said the words, I regretted it. I’d lost myself in the heat of my anger, in my desperation for reprieve. I couldn’t take living in two worlds and being part of neither, couldn’t handle feeling like the answers were here, just beyond my reach. But as the man in black reached for me, I held out my hands, as if I could stop him.
“Wait,” I whispered, throat throbbing as I tried to speak. “I need your help.”
The man in black stared at me, his expression never wavering. If he was curious about me, or filled with distain, his face remained impassive, his body taut like a wire pulled too tight, one ready to snap.
“You need my help to leave,” he said, his voice quiet but unassuming.
“Not just to leave,” I amended. “I need answers. My family are trapped—”
For the briefest of moments, I thought I saw something there in his eyes. Was it curiosity? Sadness? Questioning? His mouth tugged downward at the corners, the barest hint of a frown, but then he took a step forward, feet scattering the embers of my makeshift firepit, reaching a hand out. His fingers lingered over my brow, though they did not touch my skin.
“Mathias,” he said, his voice as deep and still as the ocean. “My name was Mathias.”
Then he brought the palm of his hand down onto my brow, and the world vanished around me.
—
I knew before I opened my eyes that I was back in my own home, in my own bed. I groaned, rolling over and burying my face in the softness of my comforter. I lay there like that for a time, trying to find the courage to rise, to face Maeve with the truth of what I’d done. The idea that I might have ruined any chance we had at finding a way to save Val and Maeve haunted me. It left me feeling sick, a tight knot of worry and dread lodging itself beneath my ribs to fester. I lay back, trying desperately to fall back asleep, to see if what I’d done was irreversible. But sleep would not come no matter how hard I tried, and when I heard a knock at my door, I resigned myself to failure.
“Come in,” I said, my voice as flat and void as I felt.
The door popped open and Maeve stood in the doorway, an eyebrow cocked in my direction. “Well, don’t you sound great. Good night, I take it?”
I ran a hand over my eyes, trying to figure out what to say. “I fucked up, Maeve,” I admitted quietly, throwing the blankets aside. “I saw the man in black. Mathias.”
“His name is Mathias? That’s interesting.”
I shook my head. “You’re missing the point. I asked him to help me leave. To set me free, to send me away. I was so desperate that I never asked about Val or Meadow…”
The words trailed away into silence as my voice broke. I swallowed back the bitterness and bile, the anger and the frustration that I’d grown so used to. I’d expected her to lash out, to yell or cry or anything. But she didn’t. Instead, she sat next to me on the bed, placing her hand over mine. Her face was solemn, understanding, though it reflected none of the brokenness I saw in her eyes.
“Have you tried to go back?” she asked, her voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear her.
I nodded. “I tried, but I couldn’t sleep.”
“Are you still tired, like before?” There was a glimmer of hope in her eyes, and something else that I couldn’t decipher.
The weariness was still there, deep inside of me. It lay nestled beneath my bones, perfectly at home, and I was sure that if it was gone, I would notice. I nodded again, rubbing at my eyes.
“It’s still there,” I said, “not that it matters anymore.”
Maeve scoffed, an undignified sort of sound. “Of course, it matters,” she said, her tone suddenly light. “If you don’t feel rested, that means you didn’t sleep at all after he banished you. Which means that maybe, he didn’t really banish you at all.”
“What?”
“Think about it, Rhett. You haven’t gotten any real rest since this whole thing started. Don’t you think that if your body had the chance to get that rest, it would take it? Hell, if I’m awake for more than 24 hours, no amount of wishing could keep me up. And no offense, but you’re no spring chicken, so not having any rest for so long must be killing you by now. I think that if Mathias really did banish you, you’d be sleeping right now.”
I hated the way her words gave me hope. I hated the way I wanted to believe them more than anything. And as much as I tried to stop myself, as much as I tried to remain pragmatic and objective, I couldn’t help leaning into the idea. It eased the sting of my failure enough for me to see that maybe there was still a chance to save them after all.
With a sigh, I rose from the bed and began to dress. “Come on. Go get dressed. We’re going to the hospital.”
Maeve stood, fighting a smile. “It’s good to see the old Rhett’s still in there,” she murmured, “even if it’s only a glimpse every now and then.”
—
I’d learned, throughout my time in the hospital, how to anticipate the twists and turns of the hallways, how to find my bearings in a world where every room and every floor and every hall looked the same. There were insignificant details—the picture of a nurse’s grandson on the reception desk, an out of order sign hanging on the women’s bathroom door, a chipped and splintered pane of glass set in a doorway’s outer frame—but they marked the path from entrance to destination as readily as arrows. I’d stalked these halls so often they strangely felt like home. For the weeks that I’d been stuck here, forced into a routine of pills and sleep and a litany of tests, I’d become something of a ghost. I learned to move through the halls, unseen and untethered, nothing more than another inconsequential piece of décor meant to adorn. I learned the shifts each nurse worked, learned their names and their backgrounds. I learned who had a soft heart and kind eyes, and who was rigid as steel. I learned who would grant me access to my wife and daughter after hours, and who would invariably chain me to my bed.
It was a game, then, back when I had nothing more to do than to lay awake in my bed and stare at the ceiling, or to drift away into an impossible world that only left me feeling more confused. It was something to pass the time, and to make what time I had more comfortable. But now, as I made my way through the halls, I found myself leaning on that information more and more. I did not want to be seen, did not want to fall prey to the nurses that wanted to discuss the unchanging status of my wife’s condition, or to ask if my daughter was making any progress. I didn’t want to face the nurses that had cared for me, to risk the consternation I knew I’d find when they saw the ashy look to my skin and the hollows beneath my eyes. So, I crept through the halls, exploiting everything I’d learned during my long stay, and when I finally slipped into Meadow’s room, I breathed a sigh of relief.
I closed the door behind me, blocking out the noise from the hall. The sound of her monitors grew louder, the incessant beeping and scrape of her oxygen tank boring a hole into my skull. But for all that, I didn’t care. The only thing I cared for was Meadow.
Pulling a chair beside her bed, I sat next to her. Her face was pale, the warm freckles of her skin standing in stark relief. Her face was thinner, her cheekbones sharper, the divots beneath more gaunt. She’d always been slim, almost impossibly so, but now she was hardly more than scraps of skin pulled too tight across a skeleton. I grabbed her hand in mine, the cool touch of her fingers a reminder of the truth—that she was trapped in a far off place, and that after all this time, I still didn’t know if I could save her.
The fingers of my free hand brushed her cheek, a pang of guilt needling its way into my heart at the absence of her familiar blush.
“I’m so sorry, Meadow,” I breathed, wrapping my hand tighter around hers. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Tears prickled behind my eyes, and I let them fall. They were hot against my cheeks, dribbling in a smooth line down into the stubble at my jaw, but I didn’t bother wiping them away. I let them come, over and over, let them ease a measure of the hurt that sat in the hollow of my chest.
“I never wanted this to happen,” I confessed, wondering if she could hear me. I decided that if she could, I would tell her something to give her hope, something to hold on to.
“Your Aunt Maeve and I have been working hard to figure this out, to find a way to get you and your mom back. I know you must be scared, wondering where you are and how to get out. I don’t know exactly how to find you, not yet, at least, but I’m going to figure it out. I have a friend named Mathias—”
My voice broke at his name, a sob clogging my throat. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. If she could hear me, if she was listening to my every word, then she deserved to hear something good, something that I hoped might be true.
“Mathias knows all about this other world thing. He lives there, at least I think he does. But he seems to watch over the place, judging by how often he’s asked me to leave.” A soft chuckle escaped my lips. “Your dad’s certainly not making any friends over there, but I’m sure you already knew that. Anyways, Mathias is going to help me find a way to free you and bring you home.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, Meadow, but I want you to know how much I love you. I love you more than life itself, and I promise I will never stop trying to save you. Never. You and me and mom…we’ll all be together again. Adaline and Hannah, too. You’ll see, sweetheart. You’ll be back home before you know it.”
Leaning forward to kiss her brow, I wiped the already drying tears from my face. She looked so small, laying there in the hospital bed, so frail and fragile and weak. I wasn’t sure if she could hear me, wasn’t sure if I wanted her to, but I had to believe that she knew I loved her, and that she knew I’d come for her no matter what obstacles stood in my way.
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