“Oh my gosh! Tell me I didn’t just lose service.” I tried to call Gavin back several times but my phone was completely unable to operate.

“Actually works out perfectly,” said Nehemiah. “We need to be as quiet as possible now. We’re close to the crossing point.”

He was right. That strange feeling I felt before when I walked into the mist following the Banshee came over me again. If I was irritated and frustrated at the dropped phone call and not knowing what was happening to Gavin, the feelings were lost.

As we rode through the mist I lost sense of time and direction. When had we gotten into the mist?

It seemed we had always been in the mist and we would always be rowing on the waters forever. Out of the water came the oars dripping, only to plunge back in again. Nehemiah kept a steady pace and all of us were silent, even Rob. We all must have all felt the same way, because none of us said anything to each other. And suddenly the boat was scraping along the mud bed of a wetland shore of what was Skaggs Island.

Nehemiah was the first to get out of the boat and step into the dark water. “Come on,” he said in a hushed voice. His command broke my stupor and I got out of the boat to help him.

Which was a mistake.

As soon as the water seeped through my shoes socks and jeans and the cold sent a shock through my system, which in turn shocked my core. Water, so much water everywhere. If I fell right then I’d fall forever beneath its murky depths.

I stood there for who knew how long before Nehemiah slapped me upside the head. “Get it together Sean,” I heard him say.

I wasn’t even standing in the water anymore, I was laying down on a muddy shore with uncomfortably sharp rocks poking me in the back. Nehemiah gave me no time to reflect on what happened. Instead he handed me my shotgun and my katana which I strapped to myself.

“Here’s the game plan,” said Nehemiah as we all huddled together. “We let the dog lead the way followed by Sean then me. The leprechaun takes up last. We should reach the threshold soon.”

“I’m not a leprechaun!” yelled Rob.

Nehemiah held up his staff point to Rob’s throat. “You best keep quiet shortstop otherwise they’ll get us all. Now, we don’t have a lot of time. I’m suspecting that Sean’s Keening will alert them to our presence. I’ll do what I can with my Chaos magic to mask it, but I can’t make any promises.”

“But wait,” I said, “Didn’t you say that Tain shouldn’t be able to see the Sluagh?”

“Generally anyone that’s crossed over to the other side should be able to see through Glamour,” said Rob.

I thought of the Sluagh fight at the abandoned mill and how Tain had acted on the boat. “But Tain already sees through the Glamour,” I said.

Nehemiah shrugged. “I don’t know how it works man. He’s a dog. Perhaps the rules aren’t the same for animals. Either way, once we get through he’ll be able to see them for sure.”

I pulled out Charice’s phone and held it out for Tain to smell.

“You smell that boy? We need to find the girl that smells like that.”

“Are we sure we can trust a dog to help us find her?” asked Rob. Tain moved from my hand into the mud, trying to find a trail. He moved back and forth almost randomly, but I knew that he was probably confused with the unearthly smells that were invading his nostrils. There were so many interesting things for him to smell here.

“He’s just wandering aimlessly. He’s a stupid beast,” said Rob.

“Stop complaining,” said Nehemiah.

Right then Tain picked up on the trail then took off.

“Let’s go,” said Nehemiah. “Don’t lose him.”

And we were off.

The ground underfoot was rocky in some places and soft muck in others. One could lose their footing if they weren’t careful. The smell of the marsh still clung to my nostrils, but a foreign smell crept in now. Before long we came to a large stone structure. Four flat slabs of stone were fixed upright in the ground like massive tombstones, but they held a fifth slab on top of them like a stone table.

“That shouldn’t be here,” I said. I was pretty sure we were still in California.

“It’s neither here nor there,” said Rob.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “What is this, Stonehenge?”

“It’s in between places,” said Rob. “It’s a dolmen.”

When I gave Rob and Nehemiah a blank stare Nehemiah said, “Historians would tell you that a dolmen is an ancient European burial marker. But it’s actually—”

“—A gateway,” said Rob.

As we got closer I could make out stone skulls of bas relief. While the upright slabs were only two feet thick, the open space between was very wide, and very dark like a massive maw open to the living. Goosebumps ran up my spine as I experienced familiarity where there should have been none.

My depth perception went haywire as I clearly saw that there was nothing but more wetlands behind the slabs on the outsides, but in the space between a dark hall stretched on for some distance.

Nehemiah stepped around the gateway and Tain finished sniffing it and began to growl.

“It’s wide enough for the Sluagh to get through,” said the wizard holding up a feather for us to see.

I couldn’t place where I had seen this dolmen before. How could I have seen it before?

Then it hit me. Anna. My dream.

It wasn’t exactly like my dream, but the similarities were too close for comfort. My mouth dried up like jerky. If not for Charice, I would have turned back right then and there. “What? No guards? No sentries to keep us out?”

“Traps don’t need hindrances,” said Nehemiah. “I’ll light the way.” Again the wizard produced his staff seemingly from nowhere and the tip of it began to glow a strong shade of amethyst.

As the four of us walked through the archway and took several steps into the black, my spatial awareness was off. To our left and our right there should have been walls that our steps echoed off of, but the sounds of our footsteps barely returned to us as if the black went on forever in every direction. Even though the marshes behind us were under a starlit night, none of the star or moonlight penetrated past the archway. Even Nehemiah’s magical illumination did barely anything to lead us forward. Instinctively we huddled closer together.

We walked for a time and distance immeasurable.

There was no Time here, because Here was nothing, relative, irrelevant. We were specks of nothing ourselves, drowning in sea of blacker darkness.

At some point an opening formed ahead and we found ourselves exiting The Between and stepping through another dolmen into a different place entirely.

I was more than relieved to be out of the Nothing space.

It was dark and overcast but neither night nor day.

The sound of steady waves crashing again and again against a seashore behind us was all that I heard besides our own breathing and the rocks crunching underneath our feet. We moved at a steady pace up a rocky path that Tain managed to find. There was no plant life anywhere, only rocks and boulders and huge cliff faces on either side of us. The trail passed through a massive rock that had been cut by thousands of years of waves crashing into it, moment after moment. Because of the mist in the air the rocks were slick with condensation and even Tain had to make sure to take cautious steps. And that’s when we heard the squawking.

Up overhead in the alien night sky I could see hundreds of wings flapping, too many to count. They were circling around our location. My Keening began to burn.

“They’re honing in on me,” I said to Nehemiah.

“Keep moving,” he said.

We kept on the steep uphill path. It was wide enough for three grown men to walk side by side. On the left side there was now a sheer drop to jagged rocks far below and beyond that waves crashing. Mist shrouded the rest of the view.

The Sluagh kept circling closer and closer however.

“Guys,” said Rob, “The enemy is approaching.”

“No duh,” I said.

“Not the birds. A headless horseman,” he said.

“Not funny,” said Nehemiah.

Hoof beats thundered in the distance from the path up ahead. We began looking around frantically for a place to hide but there was none. We were exposed.

“Quick,” said Nehemiah, beckoning us into a huddle. “Not a sound,” he said to us. We all knelt down and pressed against the rocks. He held up his staff and a purple orb formed around the group. The hoof beats grew louder. I could feel the ground shaking. Nehemiah’s eyes were wide but glazed over as he focused. Sweat formed on his forehead. I kept Tain under my arm and buried my fingers in his fur. Rob turned into a little cat and hid in Nehemiah’s trench coat.

The horse exhaled and I felt it’s breath on my neck. The rider was right on top of us.

“Shhhhhhhh,” whispered Nehemiah.

Turning my head ever so slowly I stole a glance at the rider. He sat atop a massive black horse. I almost let out a yelp for as I turned I found myself staring into the eyeless sockets of a skull. The teeth grinned at me. The rider cradled the skull close to his body and when I looked up to see his face, I realized Rob was right. He was indeed headless and I was already looking right at him.

The rider’s horse became impatient, stepping in a circle. It almost clipped me and I stumbled out of the way. Nehemiah had his staff in a death grip. I heard the wood crackle and pop slightly, like a log on a fire. Purple sparks shot out of the staff. I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and hugged my dog. Please don’t notice, please don’t notice.

The horses ears twitched trying to discern where we were and the rider turned his head in his palm, sweeping side to side.

Eventually the rider spun his horse around back towards the way we had come and left us there. Only after we could no longer hear the hoof beats did Nehemiah relinquish his magic shroud.

I gasped for air. I’d been holding my breath. “How’d you do that?” I asked, laying on back.

“I distorted our appearance with the surroundings,” he said, gasping as well.

Rob came out of the trench coat and returned to his normal hobby self. “Let’s go before he comes back.”

“What was that thing?” I asked.

“The Dullahan,” whispered Rob.

“Morgan Freeman!” cursed Nehemiah, running his hand over his staff.

“What?” I asked.

Nehemiah shook his head and handed me his staff.

I ran my hand over the smooth wood. “It’s cracked.”

“Yeah… happened recently. It’s getting worse. Not good,” he said.