It’s a combination of decaying flesh and burnt sulfur. Rancid enough to leave a residual taste in my mouth that I don’t think will ever fully diminish. Tattered gray robes hang loosely over its tall, slightly bent form. A large hood obscures the face that lies beneath.
A face I’ve read about in countless history books.
A face that I’ve heard my mother describe to me with a haunted expression.
I drop Finnley’s hand and reach for my dagger. The minute our palms no longer have the connection, the wraith disappears completely.
Abruptly, I grab his hand again. The wraith reappears directly behind him. A slimy hand raises to push back the hood concealing its face, the other still firmly holding onto Finnley’s cheek. As the hood falls, an audible gasp leaves my mouth. Even being prepared for what I knew I was going to see, I wasn’t ready.
The abomination that stares back at me can only be described as pulsating evil.
Where there were once eyes now sit empty caverns filled with decayed muscle. The nose is completely decomposed, and its mouth is lined with razor-sharp teeth, dripping a black-tarlike substance from their points. Slowly, as if it has all the time in the world, it tilts Finnley’s face back and starts to lower its mouth toward his.
It’s preparing to consume.
These atrocities devour every inch of a person’s essence before moving on to flesh and bone. The more powerful their meal is, the stronger the wraith becomes. Unfortunately for this asshole, neither of us holds much power.
And even more unlucky is the fact that it’s my friend’s face he’s holding on to.
Sharp nails dig into Finnley’s cheeks, but his eyes remain on mine. It’s as if my face is the last thing he wants to see before drawing his final breath. He’s accepted his fate.
That’s not going to work for me.
Carefully, without releasing his hand, I pull up my cloth pant leg and remove the dagger strapped to my thigh. The prick doesn’t even pay me any mind, quickly deeming me a nonconsequential threat.
Their mouths are almost touching as I yank my dagger free and plunge it directly into the side of the monster’s skull. An obnoxious scream rips from its mouth. Black blood oozes out over the hilt, dripping down my sleeve.
The only way to completely defeat a wraith is to fully remove the head from the body, but any kind of damage to the brain canal will severely slow them down until they can rejuvenate.
All I need is a few seconds.
The cloaked figure collapses, and without thinking twice, I yank my dagger out of the rotting flesh and pull Finnley up with all my strength.
And we run.
I don’t wait for him to fully catch his breath. His color is returning, and honestly, even if it wasn’t, we would still run because I have no idea how long a wraith stays down when its head is still attached. We don’t even stop to contemplate which archway to go through at the next set. We just run through the nearest.
The moment we cross the threshold, our feet sink into obsidian sand. There’s no longer stone surrounding us, but instead a thick hedge. Stems cut into my hand as I push into the branches, testing out how thick they are. Thick enough we can’t climb through easily, but not sturdy enough to try to climb up.
“You had a dagger,” he rasps in an incredulous tone, causing me to wince.
Here we go.
“Well, I was in the process of telling you that before you interrupted me.”
“You thought I was crazy,” he accuses, his voice slowly returning to normal and his hands resting on his hips like a pissed-off girlfriend.
“It might have crossed my mind.”
He scoffs and rubs his eyes with the base of his palms. “This place is fucking with us.”
Yes, it certainly is.
My chest rises and falls in uneven, shallow breaths. “I couldn’t see anything you were seeing until our hands connected. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Maybe it was some kind of hallucination, and we had to be connected for me to see.” I throw my hands in the air. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter at this point. I don’t want to stick around and test out my theory.”
I dig my heel into the sand. The feeling of it beneath my feet hits me with a crushing familiarity, reminding me of home. But this is far from home. In fact, it feels like hell.
“So we’re basically going insane, and the only way someone can join our deranged party is by physical touch…” he whispers. “In other words, dark magic.”
