It stood before me, enormous, all-encompassing. The cavern around us had expanded indefinitely, the walls hazy, unable to contain the true mass of the being within. Its nearness made me sick, but It also flooded me with so much pleasure that I could hardly breathe.
Within the rapidly changing, unnamable colors that made up Its being, I could see something like a human face, as pale as mist, with numerous eyes that slowly winked open and closed as It spoke.
“A mere century ago, I spared three of your kind to go back into the world, to prepare it for me, to spread the word of awakening. Three lives spared, must one day be returned. The work is done. The oath is fulfilled. Look at me, mortal.”
The longer I looked, weeping, my chest aching as if I was drowning, the more Its misty face solidified. It could have been carved in marble, It could have been painted by Michelangelo, or created by some computer algorithm with unwavering perfection. So beautiful It was terrifying, so overwhelming that I thought I would melt away and become nothing just from having Its gaze on me.
“I’ve waited for you, Raelynn Lawson. I have called to you, even when you wandered so far from your home. But you returned to me, as you were meant to.”
I tried to shake my head, but my movements felts so slow. “No,” I whispered. “I’m not yours. I’m not.”
There was a glitch in Its perfection. Beyond the beauty, I could see gray, slimy skin. I could see a massive form, with coiling tentacles, covered in dozens of blinking pale white eyes. I could smell rotting fish. I could smell the ocean.
God smiled, with perfect white teeth. Like static cutting through a television screen, for a moment those teeth were jagged, curved and sharp, like some predator from the deepest parts of the ocean. Then it was gone, and it was as if a switch was flipped in my brain and I forgot how to be afraid.
“Do not fear your fate.” Its voice reverberated around the cavern, rumbling deep in my bones. “Always, you were meant for me. Always, you were meant to return. This place called you back, and you answered willingly.” There was another rumbling sound, deeper and darker that made the hairs on my neck stand on end. God was laughing. “You came to me. You left your family behind. You followed my voice in your dreams. Even as you wandered in the darkness of this deep place, you chose the path that would lead you to me.”
I wasn’t here willingly, I wasn’t. But as It spoke, my protests died with barely any fight. It reached for me, and I wanted so badly to cringe away, to scream and fight but I just…couldn’t. It touched my face, but Its fingers didn’t feel like flesh and blood at all. They were cold, thick, and slimy, and wherever It touched me my skin was left numb.
Then It pressed Its palm against my forehead, and it was as if my skull was being split open, cracked like an egg. Memories, as bright and vivid as if I was reliving them, flashed before my eyes. I was a child, running through the trees with bare feet, climbing over fallen logs and hauling myself up onto mossy stumps. I’d heard a voice calling me, and I thought it was my fairies. I ran and ran, like it was a game and they were hiding from me. Then I paused, knelt, and pressed my ear against the dirt. The voice was down there. I dug my tiny fingers into the earth, as if I could dig my way down to it.
Then the memory was gone, and I was in another time, another place.
The California sunset was pale pink and bloody red over the ocean. My feet dangled over the edge of the pier, swinging above the water. I stared down at the swirling foam, at the waves crashing against the pillars of the pier, and imagined sinking into those dark depths. I imagined that if I went deep enough, everything would be silent. In the back of my mind was the constant feeling that I had forgotten something, that there was something incredibly important I was meant to do and yet, no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t know what. I was restless, so restless. Maybe if I sunk beneath the waves, maybe if I went deep enough, the restlessness would stop.
My head split wider. It was unbearable, overwhelming. I knew my body was violently twitching, and I was screaming, then seizing, but I couldn’t stop.
My parents were talking about Spain again. They wanted to move, they wanted to buy a house and retire by the coast. My dad looked at me and asked, “So what’s the plan, sweet-pea?”
I knew, right then, that I wanted to go home. Home, to Abelaum. Home, to the trees and the rain, to my childhood ghosts. Home, to the place that had never stopped calling me. Maybe if I went back, the restlessness would stop. Maybe I’d remember what I was meant to do.
I’d fallen to my knees. The stones were so cold, and I was sobbing, my tears mingling with the puddles of water at God’s feet. It was agonizing but it was joyous. It was the deepest, truest terror I could imagine, so awful I wanted to die.