Several more days later, Nathan was at the doorstep of Thomas’ house, ringing the doorbell. What with him happening to have free time on his hands over the weekend, he’d wanted to check up on his friend and see how his recovery was going. Of course, Nathan could’ve also simply called Thomas on the phone for this. But as his friend, and considering the magnitude of what Thomas must be going through, he’d figured it was best if he paid a face-to-face visit instead.

However, the moment Thomas answered the door and let his friend in, Nathan was thunderstruck at what he was greeted with. Thomas had an undecipherable look on his face which greatly took Nathan aback upon first glance, due to how much it almost didn’t feel like the person he knew. It wasn’t that Thomas looked like he wasn’t taking care of himself – far from it, actually – it was just that even for someone supposedly in deep grief, there was something extremely off about him.

Then there was Thomas’ responses to the questions Nathan asked him out of concern, such as how he was doing, whether there was anything he needed or if the scheduled therapy sessions were of any help; “Things have been worse, but they’re definitely looking up now.”, “Thanks but it’s fine, I’ve gone out of my way to find more than everything I could ever need.”, “I found someone way better, mind if I tell you about it?”

Last but not least, there was what Nathan noticed when Thomas invited him to sit down in the living room. Apparently before Nathan’s arrival, Thomas had been browsing something on his still open laptop on the coffee table in front of the couch, which Nathan saw was a website regarding some sort of spiritual medium.

Between Thomas acting like half of his screws had gotten loose and what was on that laptop screen, it didn’t take long for Nathan to put two and two together and confront Thomas about it, “Thomas… what on earth have you been doing?”

Exactly as Nathan had feared, Thomas went on to explain how he’d been researching mediums in the hopes that one of them would be able to help him reach out to Claire. Pointing to the laptop, he said, “That one you see right there, that’s the last medium I visited – after I told him everything about Claire he said he needed to know, and you’re not gonna believe this, he actually channeled Claire before my eyes!”

Oblivious to how baffled Nathan looked at the sheer absurdity he was listening to right now, Thomas continued his story, “Better late than never, they say… I finally got to ask Claire if she would’ve said yes to my proposal, and she did! Whole thing cost way more money than I expected in the end, especially with all the other ones I’ve visited beforehand, but it was more than worth it. I’m expecting myself to pay that one another visit sometime soon if it means getting to hear Claire again…”

Nathan took a brief moment to comprehend all this, then proceeded to break some much-needed truth to Thomas, “Mate, I know you miss Claire really badly, but this is not the way to go with things! She’s long gone, that’s it! I’m terribly sorry to put it that way, but it’s just the truth. You can’t afford to waste your life – or money, for that matter – on what you can’t do anything about anymore.”

Even as Thomas responded to this with a nearly offended tone of, “What?” Nathan kept going, “On top of that, how desperate could you be to think these folks can do the impossible task of actually channeling the dead? Don’t you know most if not all these so-called ‘mediums’ are pretty much phonies who get paid to tell people only what they want to hear as a surrogate for satisfaction?”

Thomas tried to argue weakly, as if what his friend was telling him was slowly sinking in but some part of his mind kept refusing to believe it, “You don’t know that for sure-“ however Nathan wasn’t done yet, “This guy you went to, when he was supposedly channeling Claire, do you recall anything he said? Did he ever mention anything outside of the limited information you gave him about her?”

This was the brick wall that stopped whatever argument Thomas had dead in its tracks. Nathan was absolutely right in regards to that little detail. Aside from direct answers to the questions he had desperately asked, he didn’t recall the medium channeling Claire say anything else that Claire would’ve normally said to him.

On the other hand, though, the part of his mind still refusing to accept Nathan’s words as the truth kept insisting against this particular thought in a violently confusing tug-of-war within his head – insisting Nathan wasn’t there with him to see it happen, so he had no way of knowing what he was talking about. That, and how easy it was for Nathan to say these empty words masquerading as concerned advice, since he couldn’t possibly understand how he felt about any of this.

No… what was he thinking? How did his state of mind become this ungrateful towards his friend? No less one who genuinely cared for him and only wanted to help for his own good?

Such an intense thought process formed over such a short time – while he was in such a fragile mental state too – was too much for Thomas’ emotions to handle, and they all ended up breaking down at once. As did Thomas himself, who buried his face in both his hands and burst into tears.

Immediately Thomas felt Nathan’s arms around him and heard his voice gently speak, “I’m sorry if I upset you, I really am. I more than understand you got so much on your mind that you can’t get off. But that’s why I’m here – as your friend, please let me help you. You can’t do this alone, and you don’t have to either.”

After he’d cried his eyes dry over more of Nathan’s soothing words offering help, Thomas was able to eventually calm down. Between a few sniffles, he said, “You don’t have to apologize, Nathan. I wasn’t upset at you or what you told me…”

Despite this, Nathan deeply heaved a guilty sigh and spoke in an equally guilty tone, “All I wanted to do was just break the truth to you…”

“It’s like you said a moment ago, you only wanted to help.” Thomas mumbled reassuringly.

Nathan could only bring himself to nod at that. Then after a brief silence between them, spoke up again, “Speaking of which, I actually have plans for going on a light hike tomorrow – how would you feel about tagging along?”

“Huh?” Thomas asked in confusion towards this seemingly out-of-the-blue subject, to which Nathan explained, “I just thought, well, a little bit of recreational activity with other people might do at least some sort of good… you know, refresh the mind and other things.”

Truth be told, even after Nathan had helped him gain his composure, Thomas’ mind was still in way too big of a mess. A mess he doubted a bit of walking and fresh air could do anything about. And also, like when he’d first returned home, he was still unable to escape the notion that whatever his family or friends did for him, it didn’t change the fact that Claire was never coming back into his life. But Thomas also didn’t want to refuse Nathan’s sincere offer to help him further, especially after the scene he’d caused with his crying, as well as the guilt he’d seen it inflict on Nathan.

So Thomas nodded in agreement, though it was actually an empty gesture more than anything, and replied flatly, “Sure, let’s go.”

Nathan sighed again, this time one of relief. “Alright,” He said, before asking, “I’ll pick you up at noon tomorrow, does that sound good?” to which Thomas nodded a second time.

After that conversation, between the heavy atmosphere courtesy of Nathan inadvertently causing Thomas to break down, and neither of them feeling like doing much at the moment, it seemed like the visit was to be cut short. So Nathan simply bid Thomas a good day and headed home. This left Thomas to do nothing else except look forward to the following day. At least it was better than allowing himself to get lost in the sea of his own melancholy like before.

***

As promised, Nathan showed up in his car before Thomas’ house at around midday. Once Thomas hopped into the passenger seat, off they went on an approximately hour-long drive, during which Nathan tried to spark a few conversations with his friend to pass the time.

Knowing very well what kind of things were on Thomas’ mind even now, Nathan did his best to bring up topics as far apart from those things as possible. Such topics included what had been up at work in Thomas’ absence, or the particular part of the local woods they were going to for their hike.

Likewise, Thomas did his best to engage in these conversations as casually as Nathan was bringing them up. But in his current state of mind – which had remained unchanged in spite of his friend’s visit yesterday – most of his words kept ended up sounding more like empty, automated responses.

Needless to say, this didn’t take long to bring the mood down again like yesterday. Eventually the last thirty minutes or so of the ride were instead spent on the two of them just listening to music on the car radio in awkward silence. Which was why they were all the more relieved when the car’s navigation system finally announced their arrival to the destination and Nathan quickly spotted an empty space in the parking lot near the woods.

What was more, the atmosphere from when they were in the car seemed to somewhat lift again once they first began to enter the forest, alongside several other hikers going in the same direction. Sure, they still didn’t talk much if at all, but there was no real need for them to either, what with all the surrounding sights and sounds of nature providing their minds further, and much-needed, relief.

Or at least, they did for Nathan in the same way they did for everyone else. For Thomas, they acted as more of a distraction keeping his brain from conjuring up any more thoughts about what was bringing him down. Having all his attention drawn to the environment he and Nathan were walking through was doing a surprisingly good job at giving his mind no time to ponder over anything else – from listening to the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, to looking at how nicely the trees and flowers complimented the scenery around them. He even took a second or two to curiously gawk in the distance at a dark, jagged cave opening in an equally jagged cliff of gray rock.

Sometime later, Thomas and Nathan stopped for a bit to rest. Extracting a water bottle from the side of his backpack, Nathan asked, “You tired yet?”

Thomas shook his head. “I think I’ll be good for another half hour.” He replied, and Nathan was glad to see that for once, Thomas’ tone of voice didn’t sound as hollow as it had on the way here. Maybe this really was being of some good to Thomas, a notion which brought Nathan a different kind of relief – that this could be the start of his friend finally finding the right path for himself after being lost so badly in grief all this time.

Nathan also would’ve liked for this notion to last throughout the rest of the day, but unfortunately it didn’t. Because only after a few minutes, they reached a particular spot that immediately caught their – as well as all the other hikers’ – attention and made them stop. It was here they also unexpectedly came across a sight that not only made the negative emotions Thomas had successfully distracted himself from return, but with a vengeance as well.

The spot they'd stopped at was the fenced top of a cliff overlooking a beautiful river view. And with any natural views this good-looking, there came people taking pictures in front of them, which was what everyone else had also stopped for. This wouldn’t have been a problem for Thomas at all, let alone anyone, in and of itself… had the people standing before the scenery not included a few joyous couples taking selfies full of their side-by-side, bright happy smiles.

The same kind of smiles Thomas used to exchange with Claire so many times before. The same kind of smiles Thomas would’ve been exchanging with Claire if she was still here.

Thomas heart didn’t just break again at this, he thought he could feel the shattered fragments of it pierce every inch of his insides like glass shards. Just when it seemed as if he’d escaped his torment even for just a moment, it had to be rubbed into his face in a cruel twist of fate.

While this was going on in Thomas’ head, in reality Nathan had also been mesmerized just as much by the view as the other hikers (he’d also completely missed the sight of the couples), prompting him to also take a few pictures. It wasn’t until he turned to Thomas to ask if he’d like his picture taken too when Nathan saw his friend was suddenly looking similar to how he’d been yesterday. Except now he also had streams of silent tears pouring down his cheeks from his nearly unfocused eyes.

His fascination quickly turning to fearful worry at this abrupt shift for the worse, Nathan’s face fell as he asked, “Thomas, are you- what happened?” before running over to him. Thomas, however, just turned his back on Nathan and hurriedly stumbled back down the way they came. He’d already caused enough distress for Nathan’s mind when he acted all unhinged and broke down before him yesterday, he wasn’t about to cause an even bigger scene than that by doing the same out in public.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Intending to find a place where he could cry his emotions out without disturbing anyone and then return to Nathan with an explanation, Thomas neither stopped nor slowed down his descent along the hiking path. But with his vision half-blurred with tears and his emotions in utter disarray, he could only go so far before his feet buckled from stepping on an uneven spot of the ground he was unable to see coming. The next thing Thomas knew, he heard a few gasps and startled shouts from passersby as he fell off the path and down a slope. His body couldn’t stop tumbling over dirt, twigs, and small rocks in a painful series of rolling over and over, until his backside slamming into a large tree truck finally did the trick.

By the time he had halted – though the distance he’d fallen hadn’t been a long one – Thomas was aching from head to toe. While nowhere near as bad as what he’d felt in his car crash, the throbbing pain still kept him lying on the spot groaning and with his eyes clenched shut for a minute or so.

However, all of this was instantly driven out of Thomas’ mind the moment he could bring himself to open his eyes after the pain had subsided. Because what Thomas saw through all the branches and leaves above him wasn’t the bright blue early afternoon sky, but a night-like darkness.

This perplexed Thomas beyond words. If he’d been knocked out from rolling and smashing into a tree, he was certain he would have at the very least felt himself waking up or something. Yet he distinctly remembered being fully conscious throughout his falling, so how was it possible for him to see day one second and then night in the blink of an eye? And now that his senses were coming back properly, Thomas was able to notice another weird thing about the darkness – the pitch-black sky hanging over the trees neither looked nor felt like any night sky he had ever seen in his life. If anything, it gave off more the sensation that he was a tiny humanoid figurine placed in the middle of a miniature model forest which somebody had draped a thick black cloth over. Somehow, this awareness of just how strangely unnatural the sky came across – coupled with the almost suffocating darkness itself – sent icy-cold shivers up Thomas’ spine.

But this was just the beginning. When Thomas staggered back up to his feet, he’d expected to hear the typical rustle of twigs and dead leaves beneath him. Instead, his ears picked up an almost muted version of those sounds, like he was wearing a pair of the best noise-cancelling Airpods in the world. What was stranger was that Thomas could hear his own voice perfectly fine as he muttered out loud, “What the hell…?” and then tried calling out to Nathan, or just about anyone else who had been around when he’d fallen.

And that was when yet another anomaly was noticed; aside from his own voice and muted footsteps, Thomas couldn’t hear anything else. Not so much as a single bird could be heard chirping in any of the surrounding trees, whereas the sound had been pretty much everywhere before Thomas fell. Above all, even if Thomas had fallen much further from the path than he thought he did, surely he would still be able to hear the voices of the other hikers in the distance – especially after they just saw someone roll down a slope.

“What is going on…” Thomas muttered again. He stared up in the direction he’d rolled down from and proceeded to make his way back up to the hiking path. He couldn't even be bothered to get all the dirt and tiny stray twigs off his clothes in his unsettled state of mind. Fortunately, the slope wasn’t steep enough to make the task impossible.

But even before he’d reached the path and got fully back onto it, Thomas’s confusion and dread intensified. The path was completely empty of people. No matter where Thomas looked or how many times he shouted out to his friend, there was no denying it.

Thomas was alone in the dark.

“Where has everyone gone?” Thomas spoke out loud in a scared voice. It was the only thing he could think of doing to stop his ever-rising terror from making him go crazy. He couldn’t even bring himself to move in any direction out of fear of what sights he might be greeted with. Had the world been covered in darkness and for some reason evaporated everyone off its surface except him? Or was this like a The Langoliers situation where he was the one who’d somehow found himself in an unsettlingly barren and static dimension? Either way, this was all infinitely more than he could handle.

However, the last straw that finally collapsed the camel’s back – or in this case, Thomas’ legs – came when Thomas suddenly heard a disembodied voice croak weakly from somewhere in front of him, “Thomas…? Sweetie, is that you…?”

With his knees on the floor, his chest rapidly rising and falling from scared hyperventilation, and his heart having leapt into his throat, Thomas froze still where he kneeled as his shocked face could do nothing but stare blankly into wherever the source of the voice was.

Claire’s voice.

So many questions as to how any of this was possible flooded Thomas’ mind so rapidly, he thought it might burst. While he might’ve heard Claire supposedly talk to him through that medium he had visited, this was not the same as that – not even close, obviously what with all the abnormalities of his current surroundings. On top of that, the voice he heard was undisputably Claire’s, not someone else saying what she would say. Thomas could recognize a voice like Claire’s even from a mile away… even after he thought he’d never hear it again in his life.

”Oh my, it is you…!” Claire’s voice exclaimed, this time with a bit more strength. “What are you doing out here, and why are your clothes such a mess?”

Thomas would’ve said something, anything, in response to whatever the hell was going on, but his voice went still along with the rest of his body. His eyes then turned glassy and unfocused in the same manner as a student listening to a boring lecture.

Maybe it was his insanely grief-filled regret and desire built up over all this time – not helped by the visit to the medium who channeled Claire – making him crave for another chance to speak with his love. Or maybe it was some unexplainable thing about the voice, Thomas had no idea at the time. But the moment that voice spoke to him again, it was like something within his head had been triggered. Something that made Thomas slowly stand up and respond to the voice, “I… fell off the trail by accident… but I’m alright…”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Said Claire’s voice, and Thomas noticed it seemed to be slowly getting further away from him for some reason.

As if his legs were on autopilot, Thomas immediately followed it in the direction he could hear it moving, after which the voice seemed to grow closer again, “…Because that’s quite a slope beside the trail over there, if that’s where you fell…”

Still following the voice, Thomas remained silent for a couple of seconds. Then he felt his eyes stream with tears again as he said in an even more trembling voice than before, “I’m more than alright now that I can hear you for myself again… after all this time thinking I’d never be able to…”

At this, the voice’s tone changed to a much more sorrowful one, replying, “Aw, you must’ve missed me so badly for so long… I’m so sorry honey…”

Now sobbing like mad as he kept walking, Thomas sniffled, “No, Claire… I’m the one who’s sorry for everything that’s happened… maybe if I’d proposed to you before we left the theater we could’ve bought us some time to avoid that drunk driver… maybe if I’d noticed you weren’t wearing your seatbelt much earlier, then you wouldn’t have… left me…”

He couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence properly. But Claire’s voice seemed to understand, speaking now in a soothing tone of comfort, “Thomas please, you’ve been through so much already, don’t bring yourself down like this over something that’s not your fault…”

While Thomas continued crying, Claire’s voice added, “There’s nothing you could’ve done about the drunk driver, it was something completely out of your control, let alone anyone else’s.”

This got Thomas’ to eventually stifle his sobs even for just a bit as Claire’s voice kept talking, “If anything, I should be sorry for everything… I’m the one who forgot to wear my seatbelt in the first place. I should have known better…”

This time it was the voice that was crying slightly, whereas Thomas was calmed down enough. “I know I don’t deserve to say this Thomas, but please forgive me and my carelessness for causing you all this misery…”

It was already more than enough for Thomas’ broken heart to hear Claire’s voice this loud and clear once again, he didn’t want to hear her cry on top of that. Doing his best to conjure up a reassuring voice amidst the occasional sniffles that still remained, Thomas said, “Claire, it’s like I said before… getting to hear and talk with you again for myself is more than alright for me right now… I don’t care about anything else, this moment here is all I need… all the things I wanted to tell you but couldn’t, I can finally do it…”

Claire’s voice let out a somber but happy sob at that, paused for a second to sniff, and replied, “Let it all out sweetie, I’m here for anything.”

By the time the conversation had reached this point, Thomas had gone down the hiking path far enough to come across a particular sight he recalled passing by with Nathan; the cave opening in a massive rock wall.

Right now Claire’s voice appeared to be trailing gradually towards the cave opening, which looked even darker in the shadowiness engulfing the world. If a black hole could exist on the surface of the earth, this would’ve been it.

But Thomas didn’t seem to care about that either at the moment. All that he still paid his utmost attention to was the voice to whom he was now asking, “I should have asked this earlier when I first mentioned it, but… that night after our movie date… would you have accepted my proposal…?”

The voice uttered a soft chuckle of joy – another thing Thomas could recognize from a mile away, and missed just as dearly as Claire herself – and replied, “I can’t say enough in words how happy I am to know you’d wanted to pop the question to me after our date… because my answer to that is a thousand times yes…!”

Thomas let out an unintelligible noise of half-regret, half-happiness. To think that for the longest time he’d uselessly been so insecure over whether Claire would accept his proposal, when he had nothing to worry about at all, as proved by what he just heard.

Taking a couple more steps closer to the voice – and the cave – Thomas said, “I love you, Claire…” like never before, now that he’d managed to get this crushing weight off his chest.

The voice replied with the most heartfelt, “I love you too, sweetie… so, so much…” to which Thomas smiled the biggest smile he’d ever worn in a long time… before his face instantly fell a second later, and he stopped dead in his tracks in front of the cave.

He had expected a “Ditto” in response, like Claire always said with words such as this.

What followed confused Thomas further, as when he addressed this to the voice, it said, “What are you talking about?”

Thomas blinked a few times on the spot. His eyes came into focus again, and the moment they did, he appeared to just now become aware of his current surroundings. He looked around himself in pure shock, and tried to comprehend what he’d been doing this whole time.

Every bit of fear he’d felt when he first realized his sudden abnormal circumstances came rushing back into every cell in his body. And surprisingly, despite being filled with utmost terror in less than a second, this also cleared his mind and helped him return to his senses. What had he been doing following a disembodied voice happening to sound like his dead love in the middle of a forest that was clearly not in a normal condition? Nothing about any of this screamed ‘normal’! What the hell had gotten into his head?

Following this clarity, a memory was brought up into Thomas’ mind as well – the things Nathan had told him yesterday; “Don’t you know most if not all these so-called ‘mediums’ are pretty much phonies who get paid to tell people only what they want to hear as a surrogate for satisfaction?”, “This guy you went to, when he was supposedly channeling Claire, do you recall anything he said? Did he ever mention anything outside of the limited information you gave him about her?”, and most of all, “She’s long gone, that’s it! I’m terribly sorry to put it that way, but it’s just the truth. You can’t afford to waste your life on what you can’t do anything about anymore.”

Thomas slowly began backing away from the cave in terrified steps. Whatever he’d been following and speaking to so far, no matter how much it sounded like Claire, and no matter how much he wanted it to be Claire, couldn’t possibly be her.

Realizing this, the cave that the voice appeared to be coming from by now suddenly no longer seemed like just a hole in a rocky cliff, but some sort of deformed mouth of a predator, ready to swallow its prey whole now that it had half-succeeded at luring it in… which fueled Thomas’ fears even more.

“Honey, what is it?” The voice imitating Claire asked, and Thomas jumped just as much as his heart did into his throat again. That was when his instincts told him to do one thing, and one thing only.

Run.

Thomas wasted no time in turning his back on the cave and bolting as fast as he could back to and further down the hiking path, even as the voice kept calling out to him, “Thomas, wait! Where are you going? Come back!”

But Thomas ignored the voice the best he could and continued running. Much to his horror though, his ears couldn’t stop hearing the voice no matter how far he ran – if anything, the voice only got louder the further he got away from the cave, not to mention more desperate, “Don’t leave me, I’m begging you! Please come back! COME BACK TO ME!”

After running what felt like a full marathon course, Thomas eventually had to clasp his hands over both ears in an attempt to block out the voice, which was now sounding as if it was screaming from barely an inch behind his back, “DON’T LEAVE ME ALL ALONE LIKE THIS!!! DON’T DO THIS TO ME!!! DON’T NEGLECT ME LIKE YOU NEGLECTED MY SEATBELT!!! JUST TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT ME PLEASE!!!!!”

The voice sounded completely insane, and Thomas thought he might go insane himself if this didn’t stop soon. It was so intense, he was even tempted at one point to turn around like the voice begged him to if it meant putting an end to this madness already. But both his instincts and freshly returned common sense kept pushing him to run forth and, most of all, never look back.

Just then, just when the voice sounded like it would make Thomas go deaf with how ear-splittingly loud it had become, just when Thomas thought this was the end, his persistence prevailed. For a brief moment his eyes were met with a blinding flash of white, and his feet tripped over what felt like a tree root, sending him crashing to the ground a second time.

When Thomas came to, his ears were no longer ringing with the disembodied voice bellowing at him to turn around and come back to it. Instead, it was filled with the sounds of birds chirping, leaves rustling, and a whole crowd of people standing around him either calling, “Mister, are you alright? Can you hear us?” or muttering, “Where did he even come from? I didn’t see him anywhere around here, did you see him coming this way?”

Thomas could tell there was a crowd around him, because he saw it for himself as his vision gradually came into focus from where he lay. What was more, the sky he could see above him and everyone else was the same bright blue color of early afternoon.

Almost immediately after taking all of this in, Thomas couldn’t hold back a fit of quivering laughter. He didn't give a damn about the others staring at him weirdly for it or calling for help on their phones.

On one hand, he had to laugh out of relief at the fact that he’d somehow made it out alive. Words couldn’t describe how grateful and relieved he was to be lying down on the ground under a normal sky, surrounded by normal sounds, in a normal world, where he could look forward to living again.

On the other hand, he couldn’t help but quiver out of terror at whatever he’d escaped with his life from. He hoped he’d never have to run into this unexplainable, harrowing phenomenon again for as long as he lived. Especially considering the implications of what would have become of him if he hadn’t made it out of whatever nightmarish dimension he’d been in… as further suggested by the last thing he’d heard the voice say – still in an exact imitation of Claire – right before he returned to reality…

“Damn… I almost had him.”