The musty scent of aged wood filled Beck’s nostrils as he opened the door. The neverending maze of tenements here in the Reverie was shabby and left to decay overall, but the room he just uncovered was noticeably old. The door leading in had the same almost-numbers adorning it as all of the other ones, but inside was like peeking into a time capsule. The furnishings looked like they had been transplanted from the Georgian era, and the room was only lit by candlesticks sitting on various surfaces.

“Patch, is it safe to enter?” he asked, the sudden change in style putting him on edge.

“There are no pitfalls or other dangers I can sense,” the bear said.

The velour’s reassurance didn’t dispel his unease at how out of place it felt. “Is this a gateway to a new world of the in-between?”

Patch made a non-committal grunt. “Could be. Or this room falls into what is considered normal for this one.”

He stepped inside. His feet left trails in the thick layer of dust on the floor. The state of disuse made Beck question how and why the candles were even burning, but chalked it up to another bizarre quirk of the Reverie. The lack of melted wax at least made it seem that some unnatural force was at play. It was as if observation alone kept the licks of flame alive, time and chemistry foreign concepts to this space.

An antique couch was the main furnishing, its upholstery faded and ravaged by time. Its high back drew Beck’s eyes to the portrait on the wall. Although half hidden in shadow, what he could see by the candlelight made a shiver run down his spine.

“What in God’s name is this,” he muttered, mortified.

It was an oil painting done in the baroque style, depicting a figure in a dark tailcoat facing the viewer. At a glance that’s all that it was, but lingering on the portrait started to reveal abnormalities. The face was absent, instead replaced with a smooth surface cut with perfectly round holes. The circles burrowed into the head, forming orifices of varying sizes. When looking at the hands, what Beck first took for gloves were in fact part of the anatomy. Instead of fingers, only a thumb and one fleshy appendage like a flipper emerged from the palms.

“This is not something I’ve seen before,” Patch stated, their beady eyes staring up at the portrait warily.

He looked over his shoulder at the velour. “You haven’t come across anyone else who looks like an octopus?”

“None that I recall.”

The offputting figure continued to stare back at them. “Let’s search the room quickly and get out.”

With the far reaches of the room wreathed in darkness, Beck carefully grabbed one of the candlesticks. Nothing of interest appeared out of the gloom until he reached the very back. A narrow door was nestled in the corner, what he assumed was a closet or pantry. He pulled at it and the door opened with a sharp tug.

There wasn’t a closet inside. He was looking out from an intersection in the tenements, a long hallway branching out directly in front of him. A hallway that was occupied. Three men wearing long, dark coats were walking down it away from him, but turned in surprise when they heard the door open.

For a moment both parties were frozen. Disbelief spread out between them, like two groups chancing upon each other in the middle of the wilderness. The trio clearly resembled the people from Midwich his instructors warned him about, but a part of him thought that perhaps they could be reasoned with and then they could be on their way. That hope was dashed when the moment broke and they drew pistols from their belts.

Many things happened quickly. Beck had enough wits about him to back away from the opening just as sharp cracks sounded from beyond and holes ripped through the flimsy door. A rush of air brushed past his leg and when he looked down he noticed a tear in his pants, as well as a red fluid dripping into his shoe. A detached part of him considered it odd that he didn’t feel the searing pain, the adrenaline instead causing his limbs to shake. The candle seemed to slip through his fingers of its own accord.

After the initial shots he heard the thump of footsteps rapidly approaching. The sound of tearing fabric added to the noise, and Beck realized Patch had dropped from his back at some point.

“They have a velour, get through quickly!” someone shouted from the opening.

Turning, he saw that the bear had transformed into the hulking beast he had witnessed before, taking up nearly half of the room. Patch charged at the doorway and swung their massive claws into the hallway, blocking their assailants from entering.

Hazy smoke started drifting upward from where the candle had fallen and spilled its flames onto the carpet.

The crack of more gunshots rang out, perforating the bear’s hide. They did nothing to slow the velour down.

“Run, Master Beckham!” Patch bellowed.

That snapped him back to his senses. He scrambled back towards the entrance of the room. Ducking out into the tenement hallway, Beck couldn’t help but glance back inside. Fire was starting to crawl up the far wall and smoke gathered near the ceiling. Patch writhed in the doorway, snarling like a feral beast to scare the group off.

Unbelievably, past the smoke and monstrous bear he saw the men running directly towards Patch’s outstretched limbs without a hint of concern. Ignoring any sense of self-preservation, the one at the front dove to the side as though he could squeeze past the bear’s frame.

They didn’t stand a chance. The bear swatted the man aside like he weighed nothing, and Beck heard a sickening thud as they hit a wall.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Once again paralyzed by the violence, Beck could only watch as another continued to pepper Patch with bullets. The bear roared at the one wielding the gun, distracted just long enough for the third man to slip under its limbs. The flames were starting to lick at the bear’s feet and attacked the man’s coat.

The pursuer had a single-minded purpose. Beck realized he had stayed too long when with the thrashing beast directly above them and the inferno all around, the man whipped out their pistol and aimed directly at him.

A back leg lunged down on the gun, crushing both it and the arm holding it. The man let out a grunt, a sound disproportionate to his injury. Before Patch could stomp down again, the man rolled out from under them and into the room. They stumbled to their feet and charged Beck, their mangled arm hanging limply behind them and aflame.

Beck’s legs started working again, and he sprinted away from his crazed pursuer. Wallpaper and doorways whipped past, yet despite his breakneck run he heard the one chasing him not far behind. More staircases, more hallways. When he’d been running so long that he should have felt exhaustion he still had energy in him to keep going. Whether from the adrenaline of fleeing a malevolently determined man, or from the Reverie not allowing him to grow tired, he wasn’t sure.

With fear coursing through him it took Beck returning to the familiar room that separated the tenements from the pond to realize that Patch hadn’t been there to guide him back to the entrance. He’d retraced his steps through the labyrinth subconsciously. With no time to give that any thought, Beck pushed that to the back of his mind and dove under the crumbling wall of the room. The dirt tunnel leading to the surface was what separated him from danger.

Forced to a crawl, the attacker finally caught up. A hand grabbed Beck’s ankle, who cried out as a shock of pain traveled up his leg. He finally remembered that in the thick of things he’d been shot. The man’s grasp seemed to trigger the pain that he’d been ignoring, leaving Beck incapacitated as he was dragged back into the tenement.

He instinctively curled his arms around his head to guard it. A blow struck his forearms, sending more pain shooting up his frame. Tears blinded him. Beck flailed his arms to find any kind of purchase on his enemy. His fingers brushed past something, and he quickly thrust his hands toward it.

The man’s fist became held in his grip. Muscles tensed as the attacker tried to wrench free, but Beck’s fingers became a vice as panic locked his joints in place. Even still Beck could see small pockets of light where the man’s coat burned. His vision began to clear and he finally got a look at the man’s face. It was almost unnerving how plain his attacker looked, but that wasn’t what surprised him. The man had the same intense look of panic that Beck wore.

A rumbling in the ground started, quickly picking up in intensity. The attacker only stopped trying to pull his fist away when the thundering became unignorable. He turned his head as Patch tore through the wall like it was paper.

The bear’s mouth clamped down on the man’s shoulder and yanked him off Beck. Patch whipped his head around, slamming them against the wall. Before the man could recover from his dazed state, Patch brought both of their front legs down on him. The resulting sound was like an insect being crushed, magnified.

Beck watched, firmly rattled, as his velour stepped off the attacker and shrank back down to its normal size. What was left of the man was a singed and tangled mass of limbs. A pressure was building inside of his head, forcing him to look away.

“Master Beckham, you’re injured,” Patch stated, padding up to him.

Numbly, Beck brought his fingers down to his leg and prodded at where the bullet hit him. It stung fiercely, but not enough for it to be lodged in his flesh. “I think it’s just a graze.” He tried swallowing. It was difficult with how dry his mouth was. “What the devil happened?” he croaked out.

Before the velour could answer, a wheezing sound emerged next to him. Beck’s gaze snapped back to the broken body, and to his horror saw that they were still alive. Their bloodied lips were twitching and their bulging eyes were locked on him, pleading.

“Patch,” he uttered just over a whisper. The man’s expression bore into him. It was so heavy. “Can you put him out of his misery?” He could scarcely believe the words coming out of his mouth, but with how the figure struggled to draw breath —

“That — I can’t do that, Master Beckham.” It was the first time the velour seemed to have a hard time finding the words to say.

“What do you mean? The man is suffering!”

“It’s not a matter of personal guidelines, it simply cannot be done,” the bear attempted to explain. When they saw Beck’s panicked, confused look, Patch continued, “Attempting to end this person’s pain will only increase it.”

With how alight his mind was with the events that had just transpired, it took several seconds to realize his body was in motion, crawling up through the dirt tunnel and then sprinting down the forest path, away from that grisly scene. At first he wasn’t sure why he was running, but as his thoughts caught up with him it dawned that his body had simply reacted on primal instinct, trying to carry him away from the terrible revelation that had come to him.

Beck understood what the velour was getting at. For reasons beyond his understanding, it was impossible to end the man’s life. Sleep didn’t exist in the Reverie, neither did hunger, and it seemed that death, too, did not tread this realm. Suffering, though —

He collapsed at the side of the path, retching. His bile soaked into the forest floor. Thoughts of inescapable fates and agony without reprieve wouldn’t leave his head.

Tilting his head, Beck scanned for the pond and found he was across from the pier he saw the first time he entered this forest. He scrambled over to it and leaned over the side. With shaking hands he cupped some of the water and brought it to his mouth, washing the sourness out.

Soft footsteps approached. Looking over, Patch was ambling over to him, still in their smaller size. “I apologize you saw that, I realize for humans that type of brutality can be distressing,” they said.

Beck stared ahead at nothing, waiting for his rapid breathing to settle before attempting to talk. “Is he just going to be like that forever now?” he gasped out.

After a moment of hesitation the bear shook its head. “If they make it back out of the Reverie, they will be returned to normal.”

He couldn’t help but laugh derisively. “Pray tell how they will get back to their world in that condition?”

“One of his fellows might find them and help them back. It would be best to leave the body, so that the other party can do with it what they will.”

At that Beck remained quiet. The possibility of recovery and the weird sense of honor that Patch suggested made him feel slightly better, but his emotions and heart still raced. At the very least he knew that not even his worst enemies deserved a fate like that, so he nodded.

Several minutes passed before he felt like he could move without shaking. Turning to Patch he blanched at their appearance. “Dear lord, are you okay Patch?”

The bear had holes through its fabric hide, threads and stuffing trailing out from within. “Velours and humans are not alike, and my phylactery is safe,” they said, indicating the diamond-shaped container on its chest. “It’s my duty to protect my ward, and sustaining damage on their behalf is part of that duty. Although I’m afraid Mistress Nora will be upset at my current condition.”

Beck rubbed a hand across his face. He really needed time to sort out everything that had happened beyond just his immediate reaction. Slowly he picked himself up from the pier, before stopping when something caught his eye between the boards. The darker water beneath the pier showed small reflections of the wood above it, but he thought he could see something else down there. In the thin space between planks he could have sworn that hints of bricks and mortar lurked below.

“Patch, look at this,” Beck said, indicating the gap in the pier.

The bear glanced down, twisting their head around at different angles. “I see nothing, Master Beckham.”

Looking down again, Beck couldn’t be sure if what he was seeing was the Reverie dangling something in front of him or a trick of his strained mind. “Nevermind, I’m a bit skittish right now.” Even if there was something there, his primary concern was to get out of the Reverie as soon as he could.