Never open your eyes.
Stay completely still.
No matter the pain, do not cry out.
Ignore the whispers as well as the screams.
Flex ten times then rise.
John left a momentary pause between repetitions of The Rules. The monotony was easier to digest with space. He dared not leave it longer than a few heartbeats, but it was a welcome break nonetheless.
Never open your eyes.
Stay completely still.
No matter the pain, do not cry out.
Ignore the whispers as well as the screams.
Flex ten times then rise.
Something brushed John’s right leg. Years of training followed by years of experience kept him from moving a muscle. In the pause, he briefly considered the absurdity in using such a phrase to describe his current state. There were no muscles to move.
Never open your eyes.
Stay completely still.
No matter the pain, do not cry out.
Ignore the whispers as well as the screams.
Flex ten times then rise.
He had spent too much time on the thought. The thing near his leg, or rather, the projection of his leg, had sensed him. He could feel the tip of something sharp trail up his shin toward his knee.
Never open your eyes.
Stay completely still.
No matter the pain, do not cry out.
Ignore the whispers as well as the screams.
Flex ten times then rise.
The trailing stopped just below his ribcage, above his right abdominals. The thing began to push an icy claw into his not-flesh. Though not there physically, the searing pain was all too real.
Never open your eyes.
Stay completely still.
No matter the pain, do not cry out.
Ignore the whispers as well as the screams.
Flex ten times then rise.
The thing twisted its claw deep inside him, tearing through the organs and tissues that his mind expected there to be. Another unlucky night, he mused to himself. There was only so much he could take, and a sleepless night was better than whatever happened to those who never awoke.
The thing violently ripped into his side. Ice-cold claws mauled him, ripping, tearing, digging, biting. He pictured himself, lying on his back in bed, perfectly still. The pain, he knew, was not real. The attacks repeated in the same places, unnaturally ripping the same flesh, causing the same terrible pain over and over and over again. He continued to focus his true body, not this mental projection. There was no blood, no open gashes. Only the steady rise and fall of his chest.
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He willed himself be there. The mental work to do so was mind-muscle memory. In the early days, it had taken so much work to return from the darkness of the void. Now his consciousness settled back in like a hand finding the grooves of a well-worn glove.
The pain dulled. It was not gone. The thing would not stop until he fully reentered the physical world. His mind was still there in the Beyond, floating in the sea of nothingness, assaulted by a thing he would never see nor wish to understand. His mind was also back in his physical body. A contradiction he still wrestled with at times, one he would likely always find disturbing.
Soon, he could feel sensation in his body, his real body, again. Tentatively, he tried to curl his right hand into a fist. The fingers twitched, but did not respond completely to his will. He waited a moment before trying again, this time getting a stronger response.
He felt the thing hesitate, briefly stopping its onslaught, far away where his mind was and wasn’t. Had it noticed him flex his fingers? So this is how I die, he thought, and then steeled himself. Now was not the time to let go of composure and give it any more hint that he might actually be alive.
It was time to get out of there.
He waited for the attacks to resume. As the pain returned, he ventured one more time to close his fist. As the tips of his fingers hit his palm, he counted one flex. Nine to go.
The pain paused again. John didn’t dare let his mind wander back to that place. He flexed again and again. Four, five, six. The thing started crawling up his body. Cold, slimy appendages ending in horribly hooked claws scraping against his skin.
Eight. He felt it resting on his chest, claws trailing across his neck. A coldness spread through him, like the warmth being drawn from his body and pulled into the thing.
Nine. He could feel it trying to draw his consciousness back into the void, his mind lost to the Beyond forever.
He could not let it happen. He would not. He fought against that pull, staying within, staying whole.
Ten.
He snapped awake and bolted upright in bed. His eyes adjusted slowly to the dark apartment bedroom. He felt at his side. No pain, no wound. Shakily, he reached for a glass of water he had left on his night stand before attempting sleep. A slight breeze ruffled the curtains drawn across his open window. He blinked, brought the water to his lips, and drained the cup. The sensation of it traveling down his esophagus helped bring his breathing into a slow, steady rhythm.
Taking a deep breath, he slowly settled his back against the headboard. He stared up at the ceiling, tracing patterns in the paint. He continued to breathe deep and slow, allowing the tension of the night’s terror to wash away with the cool early morning air.
When he felt relaxed enough, he felt on his nightstand for the switch that activated the ceiling light. If he was not going to go to sleep, he might as well get some work done. As light filled the room, he stood up, went to his desk, and dove into the never-ending stack of paperwork that haunted his waking world.
He skimmed through the first few incident reports in the stack. Most were minor reports from parents worried about their children’s nightmares, false tips from youths with too much time and too little self control, or shadows glimpsed from the corner’s of an elderly person’s eyes. Almost none were worth his attention. Best let the detectives look into them and determine if a first-bound really was necessary. Rastmusson had suggested he not bother reading through them at all, but John needed something to do to pass the sleepless nights. Sometimes, too, the least interesting cases turned out to be hell on Earth. Literally.
One report caught his eye. Melissa Auster, daughter of the precinct’s medical examiner Dr. Vernon Michael Auster Jr., reported someone following her home the night before. That would typically never have reached the Vigil, let alone the investigative office. It was best to let the local police handle civil and criminal matters.
He pulled the report from the stack and read through it. The police had taken the report and were going to file it through their regular channels. An officer had gone to cross reference the description of the stalker with their database just in case it matched any other recent reports in the area. It had not matched any recent crimes, but the officer felt familiar with her description. A tall man, wearing a long overcoat, completely bald. She distinctly remembered turning back and seeing a long scar through the man’s right eye, beginning at the top of the cheek and ending mid-scalp.
The officer did some deeper digging, and the description was eerily similar to some case from nearly seventy-five years prior. A few serial murders had run rampant in that part of the city, ending in the arrest and subsequent execution of one Torren Easts. It was enough of a connection that the police had determined it would be wise for the Vigil to be involved.
John pondered on that for a moment. It was most definitely a coincidence. Seventy-five years was far, far too long of a gap for a Harrow or a Linger. Even among the few recorded Type-3s, the longest gap between death and subsequent undeath was a little over a year, and that body had specifically been mummified. Most other bodies were too decomposed after only a few days for a return to even be possible.
John put it back in his follow-up pile. He would look into it, if not for Dr. Auster, then for his own curiosity. Odds were it was nothing, but the idea intrigued him. Plus, he could always use a new project for whenever next he would need to bail on a night of sleep.
