He stared at the path ahead and saw that it was littered with silvery bits of pain, all protruding from the floor and walls of the passageway. He couldn’t go forward without getting sliced to ribbons.
Another crash of rock. Mark looked behind and saw that the orange bed of coals now extended right up to the entrance of this passage.
Can’t go forward, and now can’t go back.
Mark lay his head down on the stone for a moment and cried. This was not what was supposed to happen. He was supposed to visit the crazy sex club, remind his wife that she was his wife, and go home. They would have some long conversations and again find the thing that had made them get together in the first place. Bad episode in their marriage over.
This was not supposed to have been a trip through hell. A flash of the priest at their wedding crossed his mind and a memory of himself saying,
“I did not sign on for this,” Mark grimaced and then pushed forward. “This is beyond worse.”
There was no help for it, love hurt.
He looked at the blades jutting out from all surfaces of the walls and floor of this ever-narrowing tunnel. There was a faint light ahead, and behind him, the rocks continued to fall away into the fire.
Love hurt real bad.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
After Kharon left her, Rae lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She’d never really looked at it before, but now that she did…she saw that it wasn’t just a flat black ceiling. The room had appeared to be painted black to her when she’d first come here, but now…she realized that there was more there.
She had felt from her first time in the room that someone was watching her. Now she knew why. Someone was. Many someones.
The ceiling was covered in pictures of faces. They were incredibly faint. Ghosts. At a glance the ceiling was dark as the night sky but the longer she stared at it, the more the faces became recognizable. Old men and women, children, girls in their twenties and middle-aged men. All of them appeared pensive. Or angry. None of them smiled.
And all of them seemed to be looking right at her.
Rae’s bladder turned cold. Who would put something like that on a ceiling? How could you go to sleep knowing that the ceiling was watching you? She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it the night before.
She rolled off the bed, not taking her eyes off the faces. But as she did…the eyes followed her. The movement was faint, but it was there.
Her fear was realized. The faces were not paintings at all.
They were alive.
Or more likely, they were dead.
“I can’t stay in this room,” she said. Rae pulled a black robe from the closet and quickly tied the sash.
She stepped out of the room and into the hall.
There was nothing there.
Rae could not see anything in front, above or to the sides of her. No light, no walls, no ceiling. She stood in utter blackness, with only the faintest light from the doorway behind her making it possible to see herself.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. Where was everything? She stepped away from the door, holding a hand out in front of her to find the wall she knew had to be there just a few feet away. She stepped carefully, incredibly slowly.
Inches grew to feet and then to yards. She knew that she should have reached the other side of the hallway by now. She looked over her shoulder, and the outline of the door to her room was already beginning to look small. Far away.
“Kharon?!” she called out. Her voice seemed to disappear in the void. No echo. She hardly could hear it herself. The air in this black no-place chilled her skin; she could feel the goose bumps rising all across her thighs and arms. It slipped up the gaps in her robe to the bare skin beneath. The temperature seemed colder somehow than it had just minutes ago when she’d stepped out from her room.
Rae called again and again. And still her voice sounded tiny and faint in the endless black. There was no answer.
The idea that she could become lost here, separated forever from the comfort (if creepiness) of her room, occurred to her, and that made the cold feel even worse. Rae began to retrace her steps. She’d rather be stared at by ghosts than stand out here blind. Lost in nowhere.
Her heart beat faster and she quickened her steps towards the door. What if her doorway disappeared into the black just before she reached it?
What if she never saw anyone or anything again? What if the last light snapped shut and she was trapped here in the total black, with nothing in every direction?
Rae reached out to grab the doorframe as soon as she was close enough. She imagined that it would disappear just as her fingers touched it.
Instead, they slapped against the hard surface and she clutched the doorframe for dear life, at the same time forcing herself to breathe slower. She had begun to hyperventilate.
“Why are you out here?” a voice asked.
Rae jumped. She turned to see the faint outline of a man a few feet away. His eyes seemed to glow in the faint light that escaped her room.
“Kharon,” Rae said. Her voice was filled with relief. “I was looking for you; I was afraid…”
“It’s daytime outside,” he said. “When the sun comes up, the carpets of NightWhere all roll up too. This place only exists at night.”
He took her by the arm and pushed her ahead of him, back into her small apartment. “You’re one of us now,” he said. “You need to sleep now, so that you’re ready for the night. You need to heal all of your hurts and be new again for the dark to flay.”
“My head is killing me,” Rae admitted. “And I’m not sure a few hours’ sleep are going to totally cure it. If I could sleep at all.”
Kharon shook his head. “You’ll wake renewed. We all do. It’s what NightWhere does.”
He led her into the bedroom and untied the sash of her robe. But Rae held his hand from releasing it.
“Wait,” she begged. Then she pointed at the ceiling. “What about them? I can’t sleep with them staring.”
Kharon looked at the faces that were faintly visible across the black of the ceiling. They all clearly were staring at Rae.
“They’re harmless,” Kharon said. “They’re from the Field of Flesh. The faces of those who have gone before.”
“Where did they come from?” Rae asked. “I woke up and they were there…they creeped me out.”
He smiled. “They’ve always been here, you just couldn’t see them before. Now that you’re sleeping in NightWhere, and you’ve been blooded…you’re becoming one of us. Your eyes are opening. You’ll see more and more in the coming days. Your inner eyes are awakening. They won’t hurt you. They’re voyeurs. They only live to see. And there’s just one thing they want to see.”
He pulled her hand from his and drew the robe down past her shoulders, exposing her skin.
“Lie down on your back,” he commanded.
Rae licked her lips. The idea of lying naked below a sea of ghostly faces…
“Lie down,” he said again. His voice left no room for argument.
Rae did as he commanded.
“Pinch the nipples of your breasts,” he said.
