Headlights(116)

In the deep, never-ending night.

Snow falls here, in slow motion. Orange, yellow light from the motel glowing, pulsing.

Cubbyholes of existence, small pockets of warmth behind each window and open door.

I watch Tillman, running, chasing, the rooms stretching in ways they’re not meant to. Doors opening to floors. Falling to the ground. Stairs leading back into rooms. Everything stretched and warped and backward and upside down because this is a place out of time. Because the Happy Inn exists between worlds. Because …

Because I did it.

What does that mean? I grasp at the thought, know I should know the answer. It’s there, just at the edge of my— Room 6 is dark. It’s the only room I can’t see.

HANNAH! I scream into the night. I want to run to her, but I can’t run. I can’t move.

Snow blows. Blood fills my mouth, drips down over my lip and chin. Blood pours down my leg. I can’t move my arm. The pain is terrible.

There is silence, on the other end. There is silence here.

I don’t hear Hannah. I don’t see her.

VOOM.

But I am not alone.

VOOM.

A shape moves in the snow, between the motel and me.

I can’t make it out yet. But it’s massive.

It comes closer, and I start to see more. Fourteen feet tall. Maybe thirty, it’s hard to understand space here, everything stretched, warped in the black. I can’t see where the ground begins and the sky ends. A motel, suspended in nothing. A creature floating in the dark.

I crane my neck, look up to try and see its face in the falling snow as it approaches.

VOOM.

I can’t see it clearly. It’s dark as the night I’m in, black and iridescent, like gasoline on asphalt. Almost camouflaged. Ancient. Long, spindly. As if made of metal or black bones, or …

VOOM.

My eyes catch on its spine. Sharp black bones jut out all up and down its back, the longest ones near the back of its shoulders. Forming a brittle spiked wave up and down its body. It stands like a quadruped momentarily on its hind legs. I get the sense that it’s fastest on all fours. I can’t see its head, too high up in the black above. But I know it watches me.

That black oily ink, swirling around it. Like watching someone through infrared and seeing their heat signature fluctuate, the black tendrils somehow a part of this thing’s … I don’t know what. Energy. Existence.

It’s terrifying.

It waits.

Where is she? I ask. Please, is she okay?

It stands before me. Close, it could reach out and touch me if it wanted to, could kill me without a thought.

Am I dead already?

HANNAH! I call out again, in the only way I can.

Okay.

It doesn’t come as a word, more a feeling. A certainty. A thought in my own head.

It’s like the voice that came through Father Sky. This thing, here, communicating. I sway, dizzy, dazed.

You’re the Witchwalker, I say, think.

VOOM.

It doesn’t say anything.

“Where is she?” I ask out loud. It sounds wrong. My tongue, the blood.

Okay.

VOOM.

“Where?”

Snow flurries down in slow motion around the giant creature, the motel glowing behind it, farther now. Blood in my mouth. Hannah, still alive. The dizziness, nausea, time stretching, warping. Too hard to speak.

I ask, without words, What are you? What do you want from me?

It takes a step toward me.

VOOM.

I stumble back, a little. I can do that much. It comes closer.

VOOM.

I—

Stay.

I try to step back again, but I trip over my feet, just barely keep from collapsing. Pain, ripping through all of me.

It approaches, bends down. The movements are slow. It is so big. That crackling, popping static. Like we’re underwater. My heart pounds in my chest. Being near it …

Life and death and power and fear. I feel sick. I feel like my head is going to explode.

It bends down further, and I think I will see its face soon.

I struggle to breathe. Struggle to hold myself up, as it bends toward me. Arches its spine to bring its head near mine.

And I just see the beginning of its head, I just—

VOOM.

I am ripped from my body.



* * *



There sits a black, swirling infinity. An endless night of beauty and rest and creation and destruction and existence. An open plane of possibility. Of matter. Of being.

Of life. And death. And dark.

Burrowed in its depths, suspended among the galaxies, among countless stars and nebulas, a creature sleeps. Curled in on itself. A being of consciousness. As it rests, its physical form shifts, changing all the time. Fluctuating.

It had another home once. On a planet. In a dimension. It does not remember why it is here now, it only rests. Its mind is quiet, at peace. Eternity stretches around it, expanse, sweeping, swirling. Infinite.

It is at home. It is at rest. It is at peace.

It is—

SCREAM.

The sound, so loud. Too loud. The light it emits so bright.

SCREAM.

The creature opens its eyes.

It wakes.

SCREAM, SCREAM. Full of pain.

The creature remembers itself, remembers it is a being, remembers what it is to be, to relate to other beings. To want. To need.