Fire and Rain

6

"He's in there. Coming for me."

She had accused Martin of drawing the doorway, the way in which this thing could travel through to our dimension but no one else could see anything except the tar stain on the wall. It had grown since I'd seen it last.

Rebecca was still narrating, "He's coming closer. Let him come. If I can get in... if I could get in I bet I could. We could."

"Who is he, Rebecca? Tell me who he is."

Her brown eyes turned hard, glinting with something . . . anger, perhaps?

"I've known him my whole life. We used to play games and tell stories through the wall of my bedroom when I was five or so. He was my only friend. He told me he was a great king and that someday I would be his queen. And as I got older so did the games. He wanted me to do," she hesitated, her skin flushing with embarrassment mixed with pleasure, "things to myself. Said he enjoyed watching. Then one day my mother caught me, sent me to a therapist and I got branded as crazy. And I am. He made me that way," she laughed. "I've wanted nothing to do with him since then but he won't leave me alone. And now he has a way to get to me. But it's also my chance to change. I could do so much on the other side."

For the first time I truly felt sorry for one of them. Usually Rebecca was a pain in the ass that screamed all day and ended up drugged almost every night. But now I saw that she wasn't completely crazy – she was haunted, being stalked by a demonic force not of this world. I believed her, from the depths of my soul I believed her but I still could not see her tormentor. Martin was on my other side chewing on a fresh stick of coal with a hard, puzzled look glued to his face.

"Martin?" I waited for Martin to nod in acknowledgement. "You drew this door. Now how do you open it?"

He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then backed away pulling Rebecca and me with him. Whistling to Gregory, he took one last large step away just to be sure. From some other dark and sweaty hiding place Gregory had pulled another book of matches. He crossed to the gate as I yelled, "No! You'll burn the building down!"

Gregory ignored me and tossed the flaming stick at the wall.

The tar caught flame and melted away revealing an opening to a black and burning world instead of a bare wall.

Now I could see – we all could. Fires burned everywhere in urns bigger than men. The sky was a gray opalescent and round fiery orbs clung to it like lightning bugs on flypaper. The floor was black as midnight and polished heavily to mirror the orbs giving the effect that there was no solid place to set your feet but another endless sky. There were trees in the distance but they shone like diamonds and looked just as cold and sharp and lifeless. Gigantic columns stood erect sporadically in place only to keep the sky from crashing down. It was terrifying and magnificent. And then I saw him.

He sat atop a bronze pyramid in a throne of onyx with fire cascading from behind. Not human. I couldn't decipher what I was seeing. There was no body, per say, but a tangled mass of snakes and tentacles wildly undulating against one another creating the effect of a body. Its skin was shades of crimson and black, and glistening with a mucous that dangled from its limbs like spider webs. Atop the disgusting mass was a small flat head full of dozens of beady eyes, intently focused on Rebecca.

Below it, carrying the heavy burden of the king, were more of the oozing tar creatures trudging slowly along leaving behind them a sullied marble floor. Within yards of the passageway between their worlds they stopped their weary dance and the beast slithered from its throne of hell.