They stood there on silent watch together for a long time, Emmit freezing despite his new clothes but still thinking he preferred the outside over the cabin. The Reverend swapped his vigilant watch back and forth from the smudged shapes of the dark forest to the heavens above, and seemed to find a sense of peace there. Just as Emmit began to think their conversation was finished, he spoke again.
"There's one other thing too. Something no one else has seen but me since I'm on watch all the time. And maybe Roy, because he gets defensive if I mention it."
Emmit was intrigued, but there was another feeling developing in his chest, a warm but unfamiliar feeling he hadn't expected to ever experience here with these men. He felt trusted, relevant. Like he mattered, if only to one survivor.
"I think I know the way out of here," The Reverend said secretively. "But no one who tries ever comes back."
Chapter 5: Deacon
A few hours before dawn broke over the endless snowy wilderness, the Reverend had told Emmit that it might be wise to head back inside and try to get some sleep before Roy woke up and caught them talking. The heat felt incredible on his skin, but as Emmit tiptoed back to his sleeping spot, he was still certain that no sleep would come to him. Especially not after the last bit of information the Reverend had entrusted to him.
No one ever comes back but that doesn't mean the Links got them. Maybe they don't come back because they got out. They got back to their own reality, or back through the time rip, or whatever the hell this is.
He folded his shivering hands behind his head and stared at the fog on his lenses, not bothering to wipe it away. Not being able to see anything but the opaque smudges helped him concentrate, almost if they somehow shielded him from the mess he had gotten himself into. For the first time in his life, he thought, he'd be sad to see them go.
The Reverend had told him that sometimes, just sometimes, a brilliant white light would appear far out into the woods, stabbing through the frigid darkness like a lighthouse beacon. They had hoped to see it earlier that night, but as was usual for Emmit Mills— no luck. The Reverend had said to him in hushed tones, "It kind of... throbs. Pulsates. It reminds me of a door when you try to prop it open on a windy day, always trying to close." He had been staring longingly into the black trees, looking like a lonely man at an airport waiting for his love to return home to him. "That means you could try for it just to have it slam shut before you make it, I can't lie about that. But it's beautiful, New Guy. It looks like a star fell from Heaven and made a bed out there in the dark."
Emmit tried to picture a star, a giant ball of fire and blinding light, nestling between all those dead trees and roaming dead people. He pictured himself running toward it, feeling the heat baking his flesh as he hurtled himself toward the cryptic glow. The walking dead would be there, of course; probably drawn to the light, staggering and stumbling over each other with their stupid grins and stiff, grinding tendons. Reaching out to grab at it with their poisonous hands. Reaching for him as well, but he would be inside it, basking in the cleansing light, rocketing through space and time like a god of lightning. Maybe he would wake up on the other side of that light, sweating and panting in bed, trying to clear the sleep fog from his mind as he recovered from the worst and most vivid nightmare he had ever had. Christ wouldn't that be amazing; for all of this to be nothing more than a bad dream brought on by too much cheap liquor.
Sleep caught him off guard as it always seemed to, and before he even realized he was drowsing, he had joined the chorus of snores. The real dream came soon after, slamming into his brain like a towering, malignant tidal wave that carried shipwrecks loaded with bad memories and unquiet spirits.
Emmit dreamed that he was sitting in a massive arena somewhere, a giant bowl lined with thousands of seats and vibrant with multicolored light beams that spun and rocked back and forth. There was heavy metal music thundering over the gargantuan speaker system, almost loud enough to make him want to cover his ears. He could feel the bass drum like a second heartbeat in his chest. The air was thick with the smell of smoke and black powder.
Am I at a concert?
No. In the center of the arena was a wrestling ring, the mat clean and white and the ropes coated with blood red plastic. As he stared, jets of bright blue and yellow flame erupted from each of the posts in the corners of the ring. The flames and lights were synced to the pounding music, and gooseflesh prickled his thin arms.
Wrestling. I remember now, I love wrestling. I used to go to these all the time.
"When is..." came the ghostly voice of a child, echoing and fading out as if it had come from the bottom of a deep cavern in the floor beside him. He looked down to see where the voice had come from, his head moving slowly, sluggish with dream speed. The seat beside him was empty except for an action figure of one of the wrestlers, tossed carelessly onto the cushion with its muscular plastic arms upright as if demanding to be held.
Emmit tried to reach out and touch it, and his fingers passed through it as if he were a ghost.
"When
