Chapter 2

Oskar stood now in a dated motel room, just as old and smokey as the lobby, but definitely not the same place. His eyes took in the room in front of him just long enough to make sure it was empty of threats before he spun around and pulled on the door to get the hell out of this place.

It didn’t budge. No matter how hard he pulled on the doorknob, the door didn’t so much as rattle in the frame. It felt like a dummy door- a part of the wall in a room that didn’t seem to have a reasonable way out. So, Oskar started looking for unreasonable ways. He pulled open the aluminum blinds roughly, and his own wide, hollow eyes stared back at him from a mirrored surface where the window should have been. Oskar stared at a thin face he hardly recognized. Sunken, tired hazel eyes watched him from a face too pale from the past months of hiding from the world. Oskar looked away and pulled the yellowed blinds back down over the mirror.

He caught a glint of metal by his boot and leaned over to pick up the key. He hesitated a moment, not sure what would happen when he touched the key again, but he couldn’t imagine it being much worse than being trapped in a room with no way out, and picked up the key without incident.

The door may not have been a door at all, but it did have a keyhole, so he tried it on the off chance it would undo whatever had trapped him here. It entered the lock with a crunch like it was crushing insect husks and he jerked his hand back in disgust for a second before finally spending a few pointless seconds trying to engage the lock. As he expected, though, it wouldn’t turn. Fear was quickly turning into hopelessness, and he stepped back and turned around, abandoning the door altogether for now.

The dingy room was lit by a single smoke-stained lamp that sat crookedly beside the faded wall between the two full-sized beds. The room was uncomfortably warm, despite the chilly wind he could still hear outside. He leaned over to look and saw the old mechanical thermostat in the room read 81 degrees. He took off his backpack and dropped it on a burgundy patterned chair by the door with a small puff of what he hoped was dust.

Turning back to the door, he heard the wind outside pick up and the temperature in the room noticeably dropped. The “No Smoking” sign by the door was almost too much. The slightest look back at the closed aluminum blinds beside the door showed they were positively greasy with nicotine residue.

He choked down a laugh that would have certainly turned to hysterics had he given it the slightest leeway. Staring at nothing momentarily, he realized he was holding his breath, so he exhaled slowly. The external fear had made him realize how weary he was. Not just tired, but spiritually, mentally, and physically empty.

What’s it going to take to end this Godforsaken day?

He used the back of his hand to flip the light on in the bathroom and froze as dozens of grossly oversized cockroaches scattered into cracks along the baseboards and disappeared under the edge of the sink. He glanced around the windowless room and the smell of wet musk filled his nostrils. Oskar closed his mouth on instinct.

The shower curtain was so covered in black mold that he refused to even open it, and he ended up spot-washing in the sink and brushing his teeth with the thermos of water he’d brought with him. Looking down at the splattered dried stains in the sink gave the impression someone had brushed their gums bloody a decade ago and walked out without even rinsing it. Oskar froze when he noticed a blackened tooth caught in the drain and immediately left the bathroom. The light flickered behind him, because of course it would.

What is happening to me?

You couldn’t be considered crazy for answering yourself as long as you kept it rhetorical.

He pulled the dusty comforter off the bed closest to the door and threw it onto the floor and then sat down on the edge of the mattress. It protested with a creak but held. Leaning over, his hands felt weak as he struggled to press the air release valve from the airtight socket that held on his prosthetic.

Oskar slid what remained of his calf out of the socket and then leaned the prosthetic against the side of the bed. He stretched his knee a little before pulling the liner off the stump off his right leg. A quick search of his travel bag produced wet wipes, and he used them to clean the liner and his residual limb. He let the liner dry and then sat it inside the socket atop the prosthetic and left the whole thing leaning against the side of the bed before scooting back onto the bed with tired, sore muscles.

I’m scared out of my mind, but I’m so exhausted that I can’t even keep my eyes open.

He glanced over at the door, and then reluctantly stood on his left foot. Leaning forward, he caught himself on the dusty chair that held his helmet, and awkwardly slid it a few inches in front of the dummy door. He slid the helmet to the very edge of the chair cushion so if the door hit the chair, the helmet falling might be loud enough to wake him.

I'm too tired to trust anything at face value right now, even myself.

Looking over at the only other entry point for the room, he stared a moment at the mirrored window, still hidden behind the aluminum blinds. Blinds that served as a better alarm system than he could come up with in his current state, and so hopped back to sit on the bed and then lay back with a groan, stretching. A chill ran over him, so he scooted back and gave the bed a cursory glance before settling.

The room felt much cooler, and by the time he pulled the sheet over his body, the untouched thermostat said 68 degrees.

But there is still no way I’m using that comforter.

The sheet, at least, looked reasonably clean, and he used his backpack for a pillow. That wasn’t uncommon for him. He plugged in his phone, but noticed it wasn’t charging as he reached to turn off the lamp. He couldn’t bring himself to care much, though, as exhausted as he was.

The lamp shocked his shaking hand as he turned the knob off, leaving the room lit by the dull bathroom light peeking through the cracked door. Thankfully, the bathroom light was no longer flickering.

Lying awake, his heart rate was still too high to relax, so he lay there breathing deep breaths of slightly stale air. Afraid to sleep, afraid to be awake.

The constant pull north was gone. For better or worse, he’d arrived… wherever this is, and Oskar felt alone in his thoughts for the first time since all this began. The fear he now felt was all his own. Regardless, after the past few months of Hell, fear was no longer the monster that snuck into his room to keep him awake at night.

Fear was, tonight, the hand he felt around his throat as he slowly lost consciousness. Oskar had nothing left. Tonight, there were no dreams.

***

Hours later, the door to his motel room- the door he was convinced wasn’t even real- creaked open behind him, and he heard the door thump against the chair he'd slid in front of it, but the helmet never fell. The metal blinds rustled in the rough wind like a set of the Devil’s wind chimes. Oskar’s heart rate rocketed, and his eyes shot wide as the door shut slowly behind him, cutting off a cold gust of wind that he’d felt on his back through the sheet. He heard purring, strong and comforting. After a moment, his fear dissipated. That primal fear that had been slowly sinking into his bones since the moment he stepped foot into the motel reception.

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It was like a long exhale of breath as all the fear and wildness he’d lived in the past half year went with it. He stilled his breath and listened when he realized the bathroom light was no longer on, but as the low rumbling purr drew closer behind him, he could feel his heart rate slow in resonance.

The wall he was facing was now reflecting a soft golden glow that was bouncing gently across the room. He felt something large jump up onto the foot of the bed and, after walking in a few tight circles, settle over his foot, purring softly. He didn’t look. It wasn’t meant for him to look. He knew if he looked, there would be nothing, and the new warmth he was feeling would go away, so he closed his eyes instead. With closed eyes, he could imagine this place as more than a seedy motel room, and even the musky smoke smell seemed to disappear.

I must be completely losing it.Or I've lost it. I think I've lost it. Does this mean I'm a cat guy now?

The purring was quieter but steady, and gently rumbled the bed and the single foot the cat had settled across. Oskar felt an unnatural sleep come over him. The cat was warm, and heavier than expected. He was safe for the moment, and Oskar had his first decent night’s sleep in half a year.

***

The next morning, Oskar woke to the sound of his door creaking in its frame from the force of the wind. He knew it was close, whatever it was… the place or thing that had been calling him. Oskar could feel the cold seeping back into the room from the drafts of wind coming under the door, and could feel the freezing wind on his left foot as he sat up on the edge of the bed.

The strange cat was gone.

If it had been real to begin with.

It had been, though. He wasn’t sure what was real anymore, but that was one of the few things he was sure of. His door was closed, and looked again like a part of the wall. The chair was back in its original position, his helmet sitting still on the cushion. And yet, the peace he’d felt the night before hadn’t completely disappeared. No fear, either. He felt stupid even thinking it, but between the cat and a decent night’s sleep, he almost felt normal. Normalish. Only normal-ish because, unfortunately, the pull had returned. He could feel it again, urging him to get moving. Likely North.

However, with the cat gone, the temperature was dropping fast, though Oskar was sure the presence of the cat had at least something to do with the unnatural cold to begin with.

It was colder than the night before. In fact, it wasn’t just cold; it was unnatural. The room thermostat read 42 degrees, but it was fitting, he supposed. Weird crap was his life now. He wondered if he’d be this unnaturally cold for the rest of his life. Nothing had felt natural since the dreams began, so why start now?

He steeled himself and slid the freezing cold liner over the stump of his right calf. He rubbed the liner on the outside with both hands to warm it up, but his hands weren’t much warmer. Pulling on his prosthetic foot, he felt it click into place via the bolt on the end of the liner and stood to settle into the socket.

His stump was almost numb from the liner, but Oskar hoped it would warm up once he got moving. He stood, letting the clean, freezing cold wash over him for a moment before he started putting on layers.

He was wearing almost everything he’d brought in his backpack when the door slammed against the wall of the motel room, wide open. Oskar forced himself to breath after the shock of clean, freezing air hit him, and he pulled up his checkered pattern shemagh up to cover his face as he looked out at a flat expanse of nothingness, his adrenaline spiked. His stomach dropped as he carefully poked his head out of the door and looked around, the wind whipping his scarf around his head.

No buildings, no lobby, no road. My brother’s bike. It’s all… gone.

His eyes widened as he saw that, from the outside, the frame of the door was free standing. No building, nothing.

He pulled his head back into the room and gathered himself, and tossed the useless bike helmet back onto the chair. Out of habit, he turned around and gave the room a glance-over to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, but turned back around when he realized the only thing he really cared about anymore was to the north. North, but close.

The wind was strong enough that he had to hold on to the frame of the door as he made his way out of the room and into the flat emptiness that seemed to go on forever in all directions. He hunkered into his jacket, gloved hands tucked under the straps of his backpack as he squinted into the wind, turning to look in every direction.

The motel door was gone now, too. Oskar looked straight ahead toward the… thinness? The weakness in reality… or whatever it was he was feeling. It was just ahead of him, shimmering and warping reality in a way that made him feel nervous excitement, like pre-battle jitters. There was nothing physical to mark the spot, but he knew it was there, and could have pointed it out even without the warped mirage that distorted everything behind it. What little light was in the sky hid inside the thick clouds to his right, just over the horizon.

Oskar needed to decide, right here and now, whether he was going to follow this insane quest of his to its conclusion. Almost all the decisions he’d made had been self-preservation. His mental and physical health had bottomed out, and he’d not even realized how crazy all this was until he’d woken up from the first full night’s sleep he’d had in recent memory.

He fished the motorcycle key out of a pocket in his jacket and ran his gloved fingers along its cold metal surface, considering for a moment. Vault-boy threw in his vote with his ever-present thumbs up from its place on his brother’s keychain. “Good enough for me.”

As Erik always said, “If you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.”

A weight lifted from him as he made the decision to keep going, and he let out a long, slow breath. He jerked his eyes open as a boom of thunder-like sound hit him. He smelled the distinct tang of ozone, and his ears rang as he forced his jaw open and swallowed to try and pop his ears, and his whole body buzzed with static. Ahead of him was now a door. Well, Oskar couldn’t see an actual door, only a shimmering white portal, surrounded by tan stone bricks that looked to be almost seamless. Oskar walked closer and realized he could see tiny dots, or maybe grains of cobalt blue mixed into the flat stones that contained the portal within. He watched it cautiously for a moment, because it seemed dumb to not at least get a good look before he walked into it, but he already knew what he was going to do.

I just said I was gonna do this. It’s grizzly time.

Oskar took a step forward. The portal didn’t react as his boot and prosthetic disappeared into the portal, but the moment the stump inside the socket touched the portal, he felt himself go weightless for a brief moment, and everything went white.

He was no longer walking, but floated forward as if the inertia from his first step was permanent. He was in a haze as he glided just above the strange terrain, pushed or carried by something too far from his understanding of reality to grasp. The frigid wind behind him was biting, he grew faster, and quickly, Oskar knew he was eating up ground faster than should be possible. Every moment took him further than the last as he increased in speed.

Things were moving on the edges of his vision, but when he tried to see what they were, he felt sick. A pressure in his head rose sharply, and the feeling forced him to look straight ahead. Thankfully, it began to snow, and the things were quickly hidden behind a growing white haze. He knew they were still there, but hoped the storm hid him as well.

It quickly became a frozen hellscape: flat, endless, and sterile. The smell of it burned his nose. The surrounding snow had no regard for the steady direction of the wind behind him, and it now fell haphazardly. Every attempt at reason slipped through his fingers, and pressure built until he retreated back into numb nothingness, ignoring whatever broken things he’d felt staring at him from a place that both felt impossibly distant and at the same time close enough to breath down the back of his neck.

They were waiting for him to look. Just see.

As time passed and his head cleared, he again tried to take hold of his situation, yet the more he tried to make sense of it, the slower, sicker, and colder he felt. The overwhelming feeling of vertigo he’d felt earlier returned, and had nothing to do with movement and everything to do with the things at the edge of his vision. He was not meant to acknowledge them as they shuttered across the sky, their thousands of mile-long spidery limbs moving so, so horribly wrong.

The world felt thin. Weak. Thinking of it made him feel like he was thinning, too, so he stared straight ahead, his ever-present chills now only partially due to the temperature.

In less than twenty seconds of trying to grasp reality, the cold had gripped him in its deadly hold and his pace had slowed to a crawl and he felt himself sink to the ground. He knew he would freeze to death in a matter of minutes. So, he pushed off the ground and again let the wind carry him into this impossible landscape at what felt like breakneck speed, ignoring the flittering, flickering movements on the peripherals of his perception.

There was the tiniest change in the wind and then it became perfectly constant. As he barreled forward, a brief undercurrent of heat appeared from somewhere and he noticed a pinprick of color in the white distance ahead. Before he could even begin to distinguish it, he rocketed through it at an incomprehensible speed, and his world went black.