I was riding the lightning.

So far, I’d been playing a miserable game of catch-up, but now, I was out in front of the situation. Seeing Ileene return to human form had been like a shot of adrenaline in my veins. It confirmed what I’d learned from Andalon when I’d first donned my electric green hazmat suit.

My first thought was to retreat; to step aside, and hunker down in some quiet place nearby to spend the solitude putting all the pieces together, alone with Andalon and my thoughts, and probably also filling my mouth with Angel-knows-what, in order to keep my hunger at bay. And for a couple of minutes, I acted on that thought, dashing into a bathroom, taking off my hazmat headpiece, and stuffing three sheets of toilet paper into my mouth. As I put my hazmat suit back on, I was thinking about how I’d thrown myself back into my work to get away from the incessant thoughts spinning in my mind, only for the exact opposite to happen.

Life is funny that way.

There was no way I was going to be able to focus on work while my head was abuzz like this. I’d barely made it through the morning news.

That was my first thought, and all that came with it. My second thought, though, was remembering that I could split my thoughts. My consciousness was evolving. Previously, I (or my brain—not always the same thing) had to choose one tangent and forsake the rest. Now, I could pursue them all. My once one-track mind was now polyvalent and multipurpose. And so, I retreated into myself, letting a secondary self—my doppelgenneth—deal with the rigors of medical duty while my core focused on making sense out of what I’d just witnessed.

I’d seen Ileene turn into a demon. The darkness’ corruption had transformed her before my very eyes during my incision test with Dr. Tenneson. I’d feared I’d lost her to the darkness, just like I’d lost Frank.

Or so I thought.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said, “that happened because I wasn’t there.”

Yes, and without you to help keep the ghosts subdued, and with me doing nothing to keep them from being death-driven, the Darkness reached out to them and twisted them into monsters.

And now, I had concrete evidence to support that theory!

Andalon, has Ileene’s spirit turned into a demon?

“What’s a demon?”

It’s a being that lives in Hell: an evil soul who tortures other souls.

“No, Miss Leen isn’t in Hell. Not yet.”

What about the others? The ones I saw during the test? That boy with the fungal horns growing out of his eyes?

“I think he was just really stress.”

Stressed. Stress is the feeling, stressed is when you feel it.

What can I say? My sensitivity to grammar went up whenever I was on a roll.

It all made sense!

For Ileene, the sight of her parents’ deaths served as an anchor. It had reminded her spirit of who she used to be, and of the connections that had defined her existence. That had turned her away from darkness and death—away from Hell—and that’s why her soul had regained its human form.

That meant there was hope, and not just for her, but for all the spirits housed within me, except for those like Frank or Aicken whose essence had been all but extinguished.

Darn it! If I’d known more, I could have saved them!

But there was nothing I could do about that now.

The thrill of knowing there was still hope threw me a life-line, but my exultant frisson was short-lived. I had such a huge hill to climb. Yes, there was a chance Ileene and the others could be saved, but… I still had to be the one to see it through. It was going to be so much work, and I didn’t know how much time I had, if I still had any time at all. And that was assuming everything went perfectly, and in that regard, my recent track record of screw-ups was not reassuring.

“What’s re-ashuring?” Andalon asked.

I’ll tell you later.

More to the point: how in the world was I supposed to do all this!?

Fudge!

If my current sins weren’t already enough to condemn me to Hell, failing to save others from that fate certainly would be!

I would have groaned, but my body was currently occupied.

Andalon… how am I supposed to manage all of this?

“You just do it.”

But I don’t know if I can! Look at what I did to Merritt and Cassius! Look at what happened to Frank because I was too scared to try to reach out and help him! I’m lying to my colleagues and keeping secrets from my family and falsifying results on medical exams! I can’t do anything right! I’m a mess!

I was despondent again, and angry—angry at myself. I didn’t like the person I became when I was angry, so I let myself stew for a while. I needed to calm down. I melted into my body’s brand new passenger seat, letting the physical experiences from my other consciousness swamp me, lag and all, without asserting control. I became a passenger in myself.

Truth be told, I’d always kind of felt that way, but it wasn’t until now that I could make those feelings real, and live them.

Eventually, I found my tongue once more (metaphorically speaking). I put my attention onto Andalon, conjuring her from the not-here-place. It was a strange experience, to say the least. I was in two places at once: the me manning my body, and the me who had retreated within myself. I was fully aware of both, but at the same time my focus was all in the latter. It was like being able to see a fourth or fifth dimension, but choosing not to think about it.

Both my selves saw Andalon, but I knew not to interact with her with more than one consciousness at a time. She was far too easily distracted.

Why’d you pick me to be a wyrm, Andalon?, I asked. I don’t think I’m qualified.

Andalon tilted her head to the side.

“Well… you’re nice.” She pressed her finger against her throat. “And you’ve got that spotty thing on your necky. I like it.”

C’mon Andalon, please. This is serious! I’m really scared.

Andalon’s expression soured, but she didn’t snap at me or cry or yell. Instead, she quieted. She lowered her gaze.

“You found me, Mr. Genneth. You saved me. I was in the dark place, and everything was moving, and I’d… I’d been hurt,” she looked up at my eyes, “but you saved me.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

My dream. The dream I had that night, the night after the day when my life fell apart. The day Merritt came to ask me to kill her.

I’d pulled Andalon out of a dark river filled with innumerable motes of light.

I don’t want you to die—that’s what she’d said to me.

You made me a wyrm because I saved you?

Andalon nodded. “I think so.”

I guess that was the one big downside of helping people. Pretty soon they came to rely on you for everything—and, apparently, “everything” now included being the warden for the countless souls that, even now, Andalon was archiving within my mind.

If I can’t deal with these ghosts, I’m afraid I’ll end up going insane, or worse.

It was getting more and more difficult to keep my hunger at bay by frequent light noshing. The temptation to gorge myself and plunge headfirst into my transformation was getting harder to resist.

“Mr. Genneth, it’s getting harder to deal with the ghosts ‘cause you’re not changing fast enough. You need to learn how to get the ghosties to make nice.”

I know, I know…

Staving off my changes as much as I could had been my way of fighting to hold onto my humanity, but look at what it had cost me. I was walking around in a hazmat suit, endangering myself and everyone around me because of my desire to hide my condition from my colleagues. And now, there was the rising tide of ghosts I needed to deal with. If I didn’t figure out how to get my act together, they were going to overwhelm me. And if they didn’t, the Green Death would.

Concern graced Andalon’s face. “So… what’cha gonna do?”

I thought back to what I’d done in Greg’s mind.

Greg said there was a “ghost room”. If I could go into Greg’s mind, maybe…

Could I go into Ileene’s?

Even in his corrupted form, I’d been able to see memories of Frank Isafobe’s life playing out in the shards of his shattered, mirror-like face. I’d been able to conjure my own memories—my music, Mrs. Usher’s science class—just by focusing on them. And if everything that made Ileene Plotsky who she was had been uploaded into my head, maybe I could do the same for her.

“Miss Leene?” Andalon asked. “Why would you do that?”

Because I’m a neuropsychiatrist. Maybe, if I could understand Ileene, I could figure out how to deal with her. Maybe I could calm her fury; bring her peace; turn her away from Hell.

Andalon stared at me for a moment. “Andalon does not understand,” she said.

It might just be me defaulting to what I’m familiar with; as they say, to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

It was how they dealt with ghosts on TV. Well, that, or they burned them with magic salt, or beat them into nothingness with a holy iron weapon—or crowbar—or trapped them in a vacuum.

I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

More importantly, if I can find a way to deal with Ileene, I’ll stand a better chance of dealing with the other ghosts and keeping them from Hell, right?

Andalon nodded vigorously.

Fudge.

I guess I really was doing this.

Perhaps I wasn’t such a lost cause after all, wyrm-wise.

Now: how to do it?

I thought back to my encounter with Greg. He’d opened a window in the air.

Could it really be as simple as that?

For a moment, I took the helm of my body once more. Thankfully, I was walking down a hallway, so I wasn’t interrupting anything.

“I need to see Ileene,” I said, muttering under my breath.

Focus on Ileene.

I closed my eyes.

I needed to access my ghost room.

Lifting my right hand, reaching with my claw, I traced a vertical line in the air with my fingertip, imagining I was cutting open a seam in the world, just like the one the Greg-Dragon had opened.

“Wowwwwww…” Andalon said, in a hushed voice.

I opened my eyes to see a slit had formed, a leak in the fabric of space, voices and light shimmering within.

A bed rushed by, and no one noticed the glowing rip in front of me; I had to remind myself that it was just a figment of my imagination.

With body and mind, I reached for the opening. The voices grew louder. A tide of memories swept past me, and I did as I’d done to call forth my own memories, only this time, they were Ileene’s.

And then, like magic, all the voices fell silent—all but one. A presence clicked into place beneath my fingertips. A tempestuous presence, filled with fear, anger, and heartache.

Then I willed the slit wide. Light enveloped me, and I found myself elsewhere.

A new reality broke through the air and burned it and the hospital corridor away. It was an out-of-body experience from inside my own body. Before, I’d been two minds simultaneously. Now, I was two bodies simultaneously. One was weighty, filled with clotted blood and immaculate rotting flesh. The other was discarnate, but not unfamiliar; I’d worn it in my wandering dreams.

My physical body was absolutely motionless, seemingly frozen in time, or so it seemed. It was my thoughts that were moving quickly.

The sensation was unnerving, so I called out a second self to handle it while I was indisposed.

There was a brief feeling of suction, and then disconnection as the back half of my mind took over my body. I could completely reconnect with it if I focused, but otherwise it drifted to the edge of my awareness.

And so I turned my thoughts toward the light.

I floated in a swaying garden. Verdant blades trailed like shadows, tugged by the murky aquamarine. Stripes of sunlight sparkled above.

A kelp forest.

I was beneath the waves, in water without temperature or texture, in a kelp forest. Fronds and bladders bubbled up from the depths. Jeweled top snails wandered through the canopy, their ribbed shells a riot of oranges and pink.

Motion was everywhere, drifting with the tide.

And so many fish! Kelpfish and rockfish and sheepfish and bass, and a dozen-other kinds of fish whose names I shouldn’t have known swam through the maritime glade, sometimes darting in a burst of terror, sometimes lazing about as they nibbled and grazed. Schools of wrasses glinted as they swam, silvery scales dancing in the light.

And I wasn’t alone. Andalon was… overwhelmed.

“What’s that?” she asked. “What is that?” She darted about, flicking this way and that. Every movement that caught her eye won her full attention, only to lose it to the next marvel that drifted into view.

“Wha—what is that?!”

She smiled. Her shining blue eyes triple-took their double-takes. Andalon spun around, and around, unable to go anywhere because she wanted to be everywhere. But I doubted even that would have quenched her curiosity and wide-eyed wonderment.

“Mr. Genneth,” she said, turning to me. She was electric, like seeing the world for the first time. “What is this? All this wonderfulness…?”

“It’s a kelp forest,” I said. “They grow off the coast, outside of the bay. It’s one of the many habitats you can find under the sea.”

Up above, a sea otter broke through the surface. It dove through the water like an aerostat through the clouds. Bubbles streamed past it; the current flicked the otter’s thick, sheeny fur.

Andalon gasped at the sight of it. Whatever her world had been, it was gone, and all that mattered was the otter. She grabbed my hand before I could react and pulled me along, zooming down into the surreal sea. Kelp brushed me in my descent, though I didn’t feel it. As they touched me, the kelp blades twitched oddly, like computer graphics breaking down. Soon we settled near the bottom, where the kelp’s holdfasts clenched to life-encrusted rocks. Cabbage-colored coralline algae grew in frozen, dwarvish fireworks from low, stony outcrops; a plate of fingers crawled by—a sunflower fivearm, roving for succulent urchins. The otter darted around the fivearm, overturning stones with its paws.

“Ooh! It’s so cute!” Andalon squealed with delight. “So soft!” Turning to me, she pointed at the otter. “What’s it doing?”

Again, somehow I just knew the answer.

“It’s looking for food,” I said. “Sea urchins are a sea otter’s favorite food. The otters have pouches in their armpits. They carry rocks in those pouches and use them to break the urchins’ spines and open up the creatures’ calcareous skeleton to get at the flesh hidden underneath. And they do it all while floating on their backs on the water’s surface, riding the waves.”

“What’s a sea urchin?” Andalon asked.

I looked around for one, but the otter beat me to it, pulling up an urchin from a hollow between two anemone-crowned rocks. The anemones’ translucent tentacles wafted about in a gelatinous rave.

I pointed. “Look there,” I said, “what the otter has in its paw—that’s a sea urchin.”

“It’s so spiky!” Andalon said. “I love it!” She brought her hands close to her chest, trembling with excitement, balling her little hands into fists.

The otter and I looked up at the same time, spotting a leopard shark on the prowl. Just as the shark was coming around a kelpy bend, the otter dashed up and out of sight with a flick of its tail and a kick of its legs. Andalon whipped her head back, following the urchin and the otter that clutched it in its paws. We watched the otter undulate toward the shimmering waves high above. We turned as we followed, and as I looked around… that was when I saw it.

The glass.

Three glass walls rose before us in a great concavity in the shape of half a hexagon. The panes were fixed steel frames sturdy enough to hold the sea at bay. And on the other side? A crowd of people, thick and boisterous. Children in colorful clothes plastered their hands and faces on the glass, clamoring for space like bickering barnacles. Adults stood further back, pointing out the displays and information placards lining the other side of the glass.

It left no doubt as to where we were.

I’d been there, myself, long, long ago, on an elementary school field trip truly worth remembering.

The Elpeck Bay Aquarium.

As I surveyed the crowd, I fixed on a familiar bouffant flip hair-do. The figure was more slender, the skin more youthful than what I remembered. Plastic fingernail extensions extruded bright white tips as the mother’s hand clasped to another’s, that of a little girl, wide-eyed with wonder. The little girl’s eyes were nearly as blue as Andalon’s, and drank in the scene of the sea with just as much verve. They savored every sight, quivering with excitement beneath her tousled hair, and above a brimming, bubbling smile.

Ileene…

Then the scene was torn away.