The Realms of the Dead (4 page)

The creature was close. Lydia could hear its breath, the same thing wheeze that had initially alerted her to its presence. Only so much louder this time. Each intake sounded as though the air was drawn through an incredibly tight passageway, as if its trachea was so constricted that the simple act of respiration became a battle to be fought and won; exhalations gurgled through what she imagined to be thick, sticky liquid with only the repeated sniffs being clear and concise.

With proximity also came the beast's smell. It was a sour stench containing hints of decay, pungent and pervasive. The stink forced itself into the woman's sinuses, and her mouth flooded with saliva as she coughed and gagged. Infused with the fetid odor, her mouth increased its flow of saliva as if to wash itself clean. Instead, the water absorbed the stench as it trickled down her throat and the tainted liquid triggered spasms in her stomach, forcing Lydia to retch. Bile shot into her throat, the bitter acid stinging the soft lining, and one hand clamped over her mouth, instinctively ensuring that none spewed from her lips.

When she'd first fallen to the floor, the woman had squeezed her eyes shut. Even though she couldn't actually see anything with them open, it had somehow seemed more appropriate to await death with her lids lowered. As if it wouldn't be painful. As if it would be no more than slipping into a sleep from which she'd never awaken. Now, however, doubt gnawed at her resolve. The sounds and smells assured her that it would not be over quickly. Something so repulsive would surely take its time, rending flesh from bone with psychotic exactitude as her screams fed its appetite for anguish.

As if confirming her suspicions, new sounds emerged. Hidden among the flat smack of footfalls and the alternating wheeze and gurgle: a metallic clink followed by a rasp, like two honed blades scraped across each other. Receding in the distance, sounding faint and hollow, was the giggle of the madman who'd referred to the creature as his pet.

Was it really better to go out this way? Didn't she owe it to herself to fight until the last drop of blood drained from her veins?

Opening her eyes, Lydia wiped the tears with the back of her hand and stood. Her knee throbbed from where it had banged off the floor and her chest felt as though she'd been whacked in the sternum with a hammer. But she was standing, damn it, and that—at least—was something.

Turning her head, the woman caught sight of a faint glow. It was so far away that it was nothing more than a hazy blob in a sea of absolute darkness…but it was enough. There was light. And it was oh so good.

If she were destined to die, it wouldn't be while entombed in a lightless vault. She would look upon the face of her attacker, would claw and bite and scratch up until the very end.

Without another thought, Lydia bolted. The fact that she was able to see the glow told her that she must be at the far end of an extremely long corridor with no walls to block the view. Without anything standing between her and the promise of light.

Keeping the illumination centered assured that the woman didn't stray from the middle of the corridor, and her knee flared with agony each time it bent. But still she ran. Pushing through the pain and drawing upon every ounce of tenacity she could muster, she ran.

The creature was so close that it no longer bothered to stop and sniff. It, too, was embroiled in an all-out dash, its feet pummeling the cobbles amid snorts of air and throaty growls.

Perhaps it couldn't leave the darkness. Perhaps it realized the time for bringing down the kill was rapidly dwindling. Perhaps there was hope after all. But, of course, Lydia had to make it to the light before the creature made it to her; and that was the true trick.

Something clammy and hairless brushed the woman's calf, and she leapt into the air without thinking, turning her mad dash into a series of leaps and bounds. That brief second of contact had been enough to nearly overwhelm her with revulsion. Her stomach churned and roiled as shudders wracked her body. She felt dirty and tainted, as if the creature's touch had contaminated her cells with a vile slime that could never be washed away, and she once again choked back the bile that shot through her esophagus. Yet she never broke stride, even when her body felt as though it were about to double over in a fit of heaving.

The contact had an effect on her pursuer as well. A roar bellowed behind the woman and the beast's rancid breath gusted against her back amid a spray of fevered spittle. There was something almost human in the raspy snarl, traces of emotion that hinted that the creature was driven by more than just a primal instinct to hunt and kill. It was as if the thing knew how close it had been to snaring its prey. As if frustration and rage had erupted from whatever passed for its soul. Whipped into a frenzy by the near miss, the clink of metal on metal was frantic now and its footfalls were like one continual sound as it charged.

Fear pushed the woman's body beyond what she thought to be her limits. Her legs felt as though they were quivering masses of jelly and her taxed lungs ached for reprieve. Every breath was like inhaling fire, every step almost certain to be her last…and yet she found herself running even faster.

The burst of speed came just as something swished through the air behind her. The tip of the blade snagged a tangle of sweat-drenched hair and there was a slight tug on her scalp just before severed locks spilled over Lydia's shoulders.

What had once been nothing more than a vague glow now appeared as a distinct rectangle of dirty-looking light that continually grew larger as she ran. The woman had been in darkness for so long that even the murky quality of the light pierced her eyes. As she squinted through tears of discomfort, the doorway shimmered like a mirage, threatening to dissipate back into the darkness from which it came.

There were no more thoughts in Lydia's head. No emotions or feelings. There was only the grim determination to survive as her feet pounded against unforgiving cobbles.

The doorway was so large as to be blinding now, but it didn't matter. Its location had been seared into Lydia's mind, and even though her eyes were more closed than open, her course remained true.

Blades hissed at her back, passing so closely that displaced air cooled her sweat-slick flesh with soft puffs.

A few more seconds. Only a matter of yards until she rushed into the dimly lit room.

The creature screamed, its shrill wail chopped into staccato bursts as it screeched through a flurry of whirring blades.

Close. So close to the door. Too close to die, still within the darkness.

A slash of white-hot agony burned across the woman's right shoulder, accompanied by a short-lived sound that was something between a squish and a rip. Blood oozed from the throbbing wound and streamed down her back, triggering waves of vertigo as she toppled forward with a shriek.

Instinct took over as the woman turned her fall into a dive. Tucking her chin against her chest, her shoulder hit the floor and she rolled, springing into a crouch with more grace than her conscious mind could have ever invoked. A new flash of memory burst into her mind: a little girl with her hair pulled into a bun, tumbling across thick mats in a leotard while an older woman with glasses and a silver whistle berated her for bad form. The memory flashed out of existence and she found herself entirely within the room and facing the entrance. Lydia curled her fingers into claws, ready to rake and scratch her way through one final stand.

But there was nothing there. The doorway through which she'd dove was a slab of darkness so complete that it was as if reality no longer existed across its threshold. With her heart hammering in her chest, she watched for the slightest sign of movement, prepared to pounce if so much as a shadow passed into the room.

By the time sweat had dried cool against her skin, Lydia accepted that the
creature—whatever
it had been—was truly gone. There were no more sniffs in the darkness. No scuttling. No blades jangling cruelly off one another. Even the stink had dispersed, replaced by the musty scent of mildew. Rising to her full height, Lydia retreated slowly, still not entirely comfortable with turning her back to the darkened doorway.

My back…

Reaching over her shoulder, the woman touched her injury tentatively, wincing in anticipation of pain. Yet there was none. In fact, there wasn't even any blood. There was only a slight tingling, as if the patch of skin had been partially numbed with anesthetic.

Twisting and contorting, Lydia's hands patted every inch of flesh they could reach, certain that the cut had to be there. She'd
felt
it. She knew she had…but there was only unbroken skin beneath her probing fingers.

What the fuck?

Was she dreaming? It wasn't the first time the possibility had crossed her mind. A world of utter darkness, an unseen creature that ran on multiple legs, yet somehow managed to use bladed weapons; all the surreal hallmarks of a bad dream were there. But if she were going to jolt awake with a gasp, wouldn't it have happened by now? Surely her subconscious would have wrenched her from danger long ago. And besides, as bizarre as this world was, it still felt like reality. She couldn't prove it, of course, but Lydia's gut told her this was no nightmare. At least not one from which she could awaken.

Instead of driving herself insane with unanswerable questions, the woman looked around. The room she'd fled into was an old bathroom. The floor tiles were cracked and chipped with mold darkening the grout bordering them. This mold bled onto the ceramic squares, discoloring them with coffee-colored smudges that crept up the base of a toilet. Though the commode's lid was closed, dark stains cascaded over the rim, implying that filth had once streamed down its sides like a polluted waterfall. Across from the toilet were the remains of a sink. Rusted pipes poked out of the rubble of chunks of porcelain, and a brown roach skittered up the faded toile wallpaper behind the mound. The wallpaper was blemished with water stains that spread to an embedded medicine cabinet whose door dangled from a single hinge. There was no trace of the mirror that once fit into the door, but above the cabinet was a single lightbulb, coated so thickly in dust that the light filtering through it was tinted brown, explaining why the glow had looked so dingy as Lydia had ran toward it.

But what really drew her attention was the claw-foot bathtub lurking in the far corner. Corroded spigots protruded from the walls and drops of rust-colored water grew pregnant on the spouts' lips, swelling until they could no longer resist gravity. They plopped into the tub with a steady rhythm:
drip…drip…drip…

The bathwater was so murky as to almost be opaque and strands of hair fanned across its surface, wavering like seaweed in a poisoned ocean. Forcing herself to take a step forward, Lydia glanced into the depths. Something bloated and pale floated beneath the surface, swollen so much that it was wedged within the confines of the tub. The muddy looking water hid most of the body from view, but Lydia knew that was precisely what the thing was: a corpse.

Even so, for a moment Lydia was transfixed by her own reflection; it floated ghost-like in the dark water, its features pulled and distorted by ripples from the dripping faucet. She knew she should have been repulsed by the submerged corpse. Like the creature that had chased her through the corridors, it was something that seemed to have been birthed in a madman's nightmares. People simply didn't stumble into decrepit restrooms where dead bodies festered in a tub. Though she had no memories to back this up, Lydia was certain it was a fact. After what she'd just been through, she should have, at the very least, felt twinges of fear.

Instead, she chewed on her bottom lip and craned her neck as she watched her reflection shimmer. Were her eyes green or brown? Did she have freckles? At times, she thought her nostrils appeared impossibly wide, only to have them shrink to mere pinpricks with the next undulation of water. How big were they really? With no recollection of life beyond these walls, any concept of self-image was limited to the parts of her body that she could actually see. The woman knew her legs were long and sinewy, that her pubic hair shined like freshly stripped copper wire, and that one breast was slightly larger than the other. Her face, however, had been a mystery that even exploratory fingers couldn't entirely crack.

“
Lydia
.” Her voice was barely a whisper, softer even than the water dripping into the tub. “Do I really look like a Lydia?”

It was hard to tell. The water was choppier now, so much so that she couldn't even tell her face
was
a face. Frowning, Lydia leaned even farther over the tub, certain she could combine the disjointed features into cohesion if she squinted enough. But the concentric ripples were more like waves now, lapping against the sides of the tub and creating the illusion of movement below; the body's left hand looked as though it were bobbing up and down, rising rapidly toward the top of the tub only to sink again seconds later.

It had to be an illusion, though, because there was nothing that could have set that hand in motion. The only true movement in the bathtub was the drips from the leaking faucet, and those wouldn't have been enough to create such a disturbance on their own.

Lydia's stomach felt queasy, and she turned around, half-expecting the door to have magically disappeared. But it was still there after all, as dark and foreboding as ever.

If she stepped over the threshold, how long would it take for the creature to return? Was it still out there, skulking in the shadows and waiting for another chance to cleave her bones? Lurking in complete silence. Luring her into a false sense of security.

But why was she even thinking about leaving? She was safe here, after all. The creature obviously couldn't—or wouldn't—come into the light or it would have finished her off when it had the chance. However, the woman knew she couldn't stay inside the bathroom indefinitely; sooner or later she'd have to find the courage to go out and search for another room. One with food and drinkable water. But for now she had
sanctuary…didn't
she?