The door opened and Detective Winters walked slowly and quietly into the hotel room. Cory looked up at him and then nestled back down onto his pillow. Only Isidore actually slept through his quiet creeping.

"You did it, didn't you?" I whispered, my dislike of what he had done evident in my voice.

"I said I would and I meant to honor that." Detective Winters said out-loud and sighed, realizing Isidore was asleep. He sat down on his bed and glared at me in the dark. "Every time I wonder what I should do with you: I get a surprise."

"What the Hell does that mean?" I trembled. I had come to fear this man and recognize that I was his prisoner. Should I try to escape: I would find myself at his mercy. I suspected in that case: he would show me none. That was the cold fear I knew.

"Just that you are no better than Ghanat. I just have more use for you." Detective Winters promised me.

"Are you better?" I questioned him. He didn't answer that.

Instead he laid down and went to sleep. I was laying next to Isidore and didn't miss my own bed. I finally got some sleep of my own.

Then I awoke down in the parking lot and the car door was open and I was laying face down. The skull I had taken, from the Folk, was facing away from me on the ground. I looked over at a streetlight and thought I saw some Folk there, two or three of them. Then the light went out. I saw them spiraling there in the darkness. I could not breath. I was wide-eyed in terror, unable to blink. Then they left me there and they were gone.

I got to my knees and reached for the skull. I gripped it and lifted it. I looked at its empty sockets.

"That is twice that you have shown Folk the door." I glimmered my smile. I got to my feet, shivering in the night. I held the skull nestled under one arm and closed the car door. Then I went back up to the hotel room. The door was wide open.

Fear crept up the clammy sweat of my back as I found Isidore's bed empty. I whirled back and looked all around under the streetlights. Then I heard soft footfalls behind me. I turned as I heard the words:

"You are outside. Come inside. Come back to bed." Isidore said sleepily. She was standing there nine months pregnant with her hands on her belly and her hair in a nightcap. I used to tell myself I didn't like her; looking at her: I thought telling myself such would be insane. I adored her and she was right: I would never, ever leave her. I went over to her and held her, she sighed at this, quite happy for my affection. Then she noticed the skull: "What's this?"

"Someone's skull." I told her. I went and set it down on top of the empty pizza boxes. She had eaten all four pizzas, somehow. I had checked earlier to see if there was any left and there wasn't. Not even in the fridge. There was extra icecream in the freezer, though.

"Do you think the baby will come soon?" She asked with a kind of soft and distracted voice. She also had a kind of clever smile: like she was telling some kind of joke by asking me if I thought the baby would come soon. I went back to her and just held her again. Every time I did I got the same content sigh from her. It was growing on me.

We must have laid back down. I awoke at dawn, having managed to get some kind of sleep. What I saw and heard next froze my blood. I stared at the scene in the sublight with morbid bewilderment.

The skull had turned to face us somehow. Now Cory stood atop it, and I could see what he was looking at. My talking crow was speaking to a ghost!

What I saw was not just an image of a person. I could sense everything about him. I could feel his rage and his pain. I knew the horror of his last moments, flickering upon his apparition. His eyes were of the grave, hopeless and dark. Cory looked at me and decided I could see the dead, there in the light in-between day and night.

"Do not take pity on me. I did seek the Folk of the Shaded Places." Cory translated the silence of the spirit. "For their treasure. A wealth of wisdom, from a time before Man. Beneath where you found me, that is where it is written. They keep it a secret, all those words from their elders."

"Who are you?" I whispered.

"I am the one Eibon. I am of a land like yours, a time so far flung from yours, that you would think it myth." Cory had a strange tone as he said this. I was not sure what my crow thought of it. I trembled at the floating shape, seeing my breath.

"You helped me, did you not?" I asked.

"The Folk of the Shaded Places can fear a ghost." Eibon's ghost smiled malevolently.

"Who were their elders, that wrote?" I wondered.

"I should have learned that. I never returned." Eibon pointed towards the direction we had found his skull. "You have something that waits in the stars for your error."

"Is that a warning?" I sat up slowly, staring as the misty creature faded. I could not feel its presence either. My fears slowly subsided, a kind of loathing at the specter, my mind unable to fully accept its existence.

"My Lord, it was a warning." Cory advised me and flitted to my leg. I looked at the skull and noticed it was exactly as I had left it the night before, facing the corner away from Isidore. I shuddered.

"What do you think of Eibon?" I asked Cory. He clicked one time, meaning it was 'bad luck' to say more. He meant Eibon was listening, which meant he did not think too highly of him, if he didn't want to speak in front of the dead.

"Should we take him back?" I worried at the answer.

"Yes. Even if you might join him in death." Cory agreed.

"I do not want to die so that he can search for his secret. He has had a million years to find it already." I protested.

"Even if this is the error?" Cory hopped around, as if that is exactly what he thought.

"I am not dying for a ghost." I decided.

"Death will always happen." Cory stopped hopping and stretched his wings dramatically. Then he sat down and waited while I realized he was right.

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"Eibon, if you are listening, I will take you back down there." I swore.

"Eibon is listening." Cory guaranteed me. "He says 'good'."

"Cory, suppose that helping Eibon is the error?" I suddenly realized. I wanted to change my mind, already.

"It is an error. The other would be not to." Cory clicked a sound that meant that something was poisonous. I understood.

I sat grimly while Isidore and Detective Winters ate breakfast. I wasn't hungry. We took her back after that and then went to the police station.

"We have to take the skull back to the hole." I told him.

"Seriously?" He looked at it. "I am not going back down there."

"We have to." I replied. It started raining. I watched the trees of the ruined heath, twisted and sparse. Soon we arrived at the hole to the world of the Folk.

"There is something down there. I shot at it." He recalled honestly. He looked very pale.

"I am going." I told him. I got out, taking Cory with me. I opened the passenger door and took the skull. Then I walked through the mud and rain towards the hole.

"Wait, Lord." I heard his voice behind me. The car door slammed shut and I caught the glow of the cigarette he flicked into the wet bushes.

I just stood there halfway between the hole and the car in the rain. Then he was behind me. He put one hand on my shoulder. Cory turned and looked at him, cocked-head. I felt his warm breath on the back of my neck as he said: "Don't go alone. Take me with you."

"Come with me." I told him. And together we went down into the dark hole in the ground.

Our flashlights pierced the pitch black gloom. The water ran across the stones above and the sound of dripping echoed in the tunnels. Our footfalls told the Folk we had returned.

I was breathing frantically, afraid of the walls, the darkness and the ones that lived here. We found the place where the crime scene was left, police tape and the broken lanterns. The Folk of the Shaded Places had, in their fury, destroyed the light emitting equipment. I went over to the batteries and shone my light on them. The batteries were fine, their cords were cut, though. I held up the severed end of one of the cords for Detective Winters. Then I looked at what he held:

"I believe now." He said quietly. He was holding one of the lanterns and it had teethmarkings on it. In the yellow-painted steel.

"They won't attack. They are not close." Cory told us.

"Does Eibon say that?" I asked.

"Yes." Cory used his suspect tone I had caught earlier. He did not trust Eibon, clearly. My crow was also savvy enough not to alert the ghost. I was terrified of its power, I doubted it was lying, just hiding things from me.

"What are we doing down here?" Detective Winters thought he heard something, thought he saw something. He drew his gun and had it ready.

"This." I said plainly as I went over to the corridor where I had fled. I found my way along, following the left wall again. In a narrow alcove where a collapsed passageway had stood, and sealed his fate for so long, I found the rest of Eibon's remains. I lifted the decaying rags to show the bones. I was about to place the skull where I had found it in the darkness.

"Eibon says to place the skull." Cory said and then clicked an alarm.

"What will happen when I restore your skull?" I asked. "How has your body not deteriorated after hundreds of thousands of years?"

"I will still live. I have not died. Restore my vessel." Cory hopped down and drew a small circle in the dust. Then Cory looked up at me. It was my choice and I would be damned either way. If I didn't restore Eibon: we would die in the darkness. If I did: I would unleash an evil upon the world.

"What choice do I have?" I asked Cory.

"My Lord can choose not to do great evil." Cory advised me.

"We will die." I complained about his advice. I knew that Eibon somehow kept the creatures away from us. Twice they had turned from his gaze and now they ignored our intrusion.

"What is happening?" Detective Winters heard me and asked nervously.

"My Lord knows that death will always happen." Cory was not joking. Then he flitted to my shoulder and clicked that he didn't want to talk about it anymore, had nothing more to say on the matter.

I placed the skull upon the severed spine and stepped back. I was horrified at what I had done, knowing instinctively that I had committed a terrible evil by undoing my deed. Then I staggered into the arms of Detective Winters and his gun went off. My ear was ringing and Cory was flapping around crazily. Our flashlights crossed beams onto the alcove as we struggled in each others' arms. I had regained my balance and seen glimpses of it rising there.

In the alcove, with our lights crossing it, the skeleton had begun to climb upright. Like a horrible animation it had moved in jerking motions. Then it stood, the skull glaring and grinning with a rictus. It spoke without moving its jaw, its voice like it was in our minds or echoing in reverse.

"I am Eibon of Hythe, sorcerer of Lemuria and demigod of Duerekaehe." The creature made us know more than its name. It held out one hand and made us know its power and we knelt before it, unable to resist. Cory flapped around cursing in Corvin.

"Speak clearly, foul creature, as a reward for thy treachery to thy master!" Eibon cast some kind of spell on Cory. My bird stopped moving for a second and then turned and said in plain English:

"A curse within a curse, a thousand curses and worse." Cory sounded quite poetic. Baffled by his new power: he fell silent.

"I understood that." Detective Winters was not as enthralled as I was. His willpower was very strong. Eibon bid us to stand and follow and we did.

Down into the darkness we went. At one place our ghastly leader stopped and used a spell to form a bridge from the solid rock beneath the earth. It shifted and reformed, bending to the enchantment of the smooth gray pebble on a string he had produced. He turned and looked at our amazement and with hollow eyes stared at us before saying:

"This is not a secret. There were once many of these kind of stones. You have a primitive science. This is what you would call magic." Eibon lectured us.

"I've seen magic, never like that." I was able to speak as he listened. Detective Winters and Cory had no comments.

We walked across the bridge made by the fleshless sorcerer. We went ever deeper and colder into the tunnels, losing our way again and again as we followed the one who knew the way.

Then we arrived at a chamber carved by hand into the very birthstone of the planet. Carved not by human hands. We learned about them, yet as we learned, I could not remember anything I had just thought. It was like emotions, visions, music were the only parts we knew. The knowledge was ethereal and alien. Incomprehensible were the motives and ideas of these beings. They had written not only of themselves, the world's beginning, the ones that came before them, even the history of the stars.

When the colors slowed and dimmed we were walking among them dazedly. I felt free to speak and move again, no longer enthralled by Eibon's power.

"I have no mind." Eibon complained, staring at the mystical geodes. They glowed in a prism of colors. "Without a mind: I cannot learn."

"Set us free. We will take some of this with us." Cory requested. It sounded reasonable.

"You cannot go free. You must remain here, with me." Eibon looked upon us with his empty, dead eyeholes. We were helpless to escape him.

"What waits for my error?" I asked him.

"That is something you already know. You set it free, now its fate and yours is the same." Eibon was mocking me. At least I thought he was, I thought he was talking about being trapped with him.

"So you reward my honor by imprisoning me?" I challenged the creature. I was terrified of its wrath, but far more afraid of dying with it.

"You must remain here with me, because I will not leave without this knowledge, and you will die if the Folk find you lost in their world." Eibon explained.

"We will take that chance." Detective Winters turned and left without hesitating. I overcame my own cold feet and went too; Cory swooping behind me.

We began our ascent back up the way we had come. All the way I saw the small sticks with the red stripes from the jar. They formed a path for our flickering flashlights to follow. I asked Detective Winters if he had left them.

"I don't think I did." He picked up the last of them, in sight of the fading sunlight.

"Like kept stock, led to the fold from astray." Cory clicked several times, laughing.

"I understood that." Detective Winters smiled. "You mean it is that damned monkey I shot?"

"Seems our demon is jealous of our destruction." I smiled too. I was still afraid of it, but very glad we had not fallen prey to the Folk. We all got into the car and drove away as the sun set.

"Let's get some pizza for the expecting mother and go home." Detective Winters looked at me in the rearview mirror. I just nodded, glad to be rid of Eibon.

"Pizza." Cory agreed.