Till human voices wake us
He moved down the dim dripping tunnel at a pace just below a run, knowing that if he ran, that was it. It would all become real and he would be running for his life, and then this place would take him.
He tried to pull the memories of his other trips, Luke’s lambo ride and EP’s river, out of the swirling panic in his head, but other, more tangible memory got in the way, slicing them into hazy fragments of dreams.
Just wake up!
He froze, but the sensation of moving continued, as if the tunnels were flying through space. He reached out and grabbed a pipe to steady himself.
“You need something to hold on to.”
Philip’s warning in the Vault returned to him, feeling more like a taunt than salvation. Still, it reminded him.
That feeling, now so far away, chosen as his anchor so long ago. He needed it now.
He saw them walking across the lot, felt the longing in Michael’s voice as he told the story of the Hardworlds war. He felt the energy in his chest as he dropped out of the ceiling, Five Seven screaming, as he showed EP his kill, as he stepped into Hardworld after Hardworld ready to face whatever Philip had to throw at him, and he felt that nameless, indescribable feeling on the edge of each vision, that hybrid realization-remembrance, that Anamnesis, his light in the dark.
No. I’m not asleep. I'm not you. I'm something more. I’m a Spirit. A Hardworlder. And I have a job to do.
As if aware that he had found a weapon, the Dreamworld around him lashed out in desperation, striking him with a mocking doubt.
How can you believe that? Are you going to run from your problems with fantasy and delusion forever? Pushing 30 and playing pretend hitman? Have yourself committed. It’s not too late to salvage some semblance of a normal life!
The voice followed him as he moved, his own voice, dragging him away from the light. He tried to beat it back.
Yes, I’m delusional, insane. A failure, unfit for normal life. Yeah, I’m chasing shadows just to feel alive.
No, I won't go back. I’m going to find a door to take me deeper into my delusions. I'm going to find that energy, that feeling of something beyond all this, and sink into it. So fuck off.
He searched the walls desperately for a door, holding the memory of the hallways, and the Allcity just beyond, in his head, but all he found was more bare wall, exposed pipes, disused fuse boxes…
Sounds echoed from unseen endless tunnels, slithered through the walls, vibrated in his teeth. The world grabbed at him, tackled him, threw him down, closed in on him. There was nothing but this dark forgotten left-behind place, and he—
“There you are!”
She stepped out of a door in an angled shaft of light that broke the dark tunnel in half. The cold melted away and a moist coconut-scented summer air moved in with her. For a moment, she stood there lit up, an explosion in human form, then the door slammed closed and the light vanished, but its sibling remained.
The tunnel lost its edge. No more “moon/street-light snaking in from some unseen cluttered grate”. The light came from hazy, dim fluorescent tubes flickering in the ceiling. The phantom water sounds were replaced by the distinctive noise of “a boiler or pumproom or something” behind the walls. Even the chill was gone, cut off suddenly by her voice.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Celeste stood there beaming, in a floral sundress and flip-flops. The actual last person Gradie had ever expected to see.
“Klara sent me to get you. She saw you were having trouble.”
“Uh yeah, a little bit.” He was still reeling from the contrast of it all.
“Normally, it's best to just let you struggle through your first time, but we’re on a deadline, so let's go.” She motioned to the door she had come in through. Gradie was too caught up in her cocoa butter and tequila scent and tan-lined soft hourglass-ness to wonder what was behind it, and when he pulled it opened and stepped through, realized the trick.
He knew, instantly, what this new hallway was. Where the dark ice tunnels before had screamed their identity like a battle cry, this one revealed itself to him instantly and gently like an expression of affection, communicated with that same dream knowledge.
It was an underground access tunnel, connected to a massive sprawling dream mall, ready to take him anywhere. He knew of trap-doors and stairwells, hallways hidden behind maintenance closets and bathrooms, new-deal-era tile giving way to concrete steps and freedom. This was his dreamworlds, which meant the place before must have been some kind of personal nightmare realm, conjured by the Self.
And Celeste had tricked him into finding it by letting him open a door without remembering to be afraid he wouldn’t find it on the other side.
“Thanks,” he said. She smiled knowingly as she passed him.
“It was all you, don’t forget it.”
He tried to believe it as he followed her down the hallway, trying not to stare at her ass. It seemed wrong after such a deep personal experience.
“It was too much me,” he said, his mind returning to thoughts of the nightmare tunnels once he stuck his eyes on the ceiling.
“Yeah, that other you can get really clingy. You kinda gotta make peace with your self before you go. Let her, uh, him know that it's okay for you to leave. If that makes sense. Or you can just brute force it like Philip I guess.”
She made it sound so simple, and he guessed for her it might be, but for him ignoring the self completely, as difficult as it had proved, seemed the only way he would get anywhere.
“Ok, where’s the exit?” She had stopped dead in the hallway, facing him. He stared at her fluttering black eyes.
“Uh,”
“So you got away from yourself, which is half the hassle, but now you need to imagine a path to the Otherworld, or else you’ll just wander around in circles in the Dreamworlds.”
“I thought the Spirit wanted to get back to the Otherworld? Why would it keep me,” He struggled to finish his thought. His grasp on how it all worked was hazy even before his descent to self hell, now it was like combining Escher-shapes in his head.
“It does, but you’re not totally separate from your self until you get out of the Dreamworlds. Bits of him are still stuck in you, if that makes sense. This is the part where you have to convince the Spirit that it’s moved away. Get it?”
He looked around the hallway with what little focus he could collect while the rest of him thought about Celeste’s purring voice and the way her dress lay against her body in all the right places, and opened another door. Inside was another stairwell, but this one lit by silver morning sunlight bursting through thin frosted windows above. They climbed to the next landing and their steps echoed musically. The next door opened with a playful squeak.
It looked like another hallway at first, but when the rest of his focus caught up with him, he realized it was a stretching arm of a dead mall.
“So now you want to focus on the fact that you are getting closer to the Other,” Celeste said to him, softly, like she was sharing a secret. It did not help his focus.
“Keep your destination in mind, keep moving, and never doubt,” she said, counting the three rules on three slim neon-capped fingers.
He nodded and looked around, caught between the panic of the ice tunnels, the promise of the Otherworld, and Celeste’s unfair hotness.
She must have sensed his struggle.
“Ok, don’t stress it. This time we’ll take my way and you can just focus on how it feels to make the jump.”
It felt like being babied.
“Nah, just give me a second. I think I can—”
“Don’t stress it, dude. It took me going with someone like twenty times before I got it.” She lay a hand on his shoulder and laughed in an “I’m sharing a really embarrassing secret with you” way that disintegrated all his mental progress.
“I’m sure you’ll get it, but the meetings starting and Philip’s giving me shit,” she sighed and bounced towards the door of a closed down shopfront that stuck out suddenly from all the others. The sign above the grated windows said “Seaquest” in darkened bubble letters with a seahorse for an ‘S’.
She unlocked the door with a deep ‘chunk’ sound that echoed through the dead mall, changing it in a way he couldn’t explain. Another sound, rushing water behind glass, poured out the door and echoed on the tile.
“Everybody I’ve taken says my path is really fun, anyway. Even EP came out smiling.” She grinned at him and a smile exploded on his face as he followed her inside.