The Manor Within, Part 2
Memories and nightmares.
Continuing the first episode of the new Terrific …
If you missed it, read the first part here.
Part 2
The clouds darkened beneath the ceiling. Thunder rumbled across the expansive living room of the Gothic manor. But it wasn’t actually a manor. It was Skyler.
“I’m in a … coma?” Skyler blinked rapidly, snuffing out any and all alarm. The clouds settled. “No, I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.” Alyssa tugged at his arm, but he remained rooted to the high-back lounge chair. “I came into your head to pull you out, and I am not leaving without you.”
“Came in how?”
“That’s not important. We just need to go.” She tugged again, to no avail.
“If someone enters my head, I kind of want to understand their port of entry.”
Alyssa dropped his arm and sighed. “Fine, I’m a mind-reader now. Okay? It’s a very long story, and I’ll happily tell you all about it out in the real world.”
Skyler leaned back and crossed his legs. “I’ve got time now.”
“No! You do not have time. I am not letting you die.”
Alyssa tugged and yanked until, through sheer stubbornness, she pulled him onto his feet. Skyler wobbled, then suddenly steadied, an icy calm overtaking him as he looked her in the eye.
“Why is this your decision?”
“Ask me again when we’re out.”
A large paw tapped her shoulder. Teddy loomed over her and snarled, his claws lengthening. Alyssa reminded herself she had nothing to fear here.
“I’ve faced worse than you, bear,” she said.
“Oh, that a threat, Missy?” the bear responded.
Alyssa rolled her eyes. Talking animals were the worst.
“Sky, tell your teddy bear to get out of my way.”
“Stand down, Teddy.” Skyler patted the bear’s fur. “There’s a better way to do this.”
Staring at the room, Skyler massaged his chin, rubbing his fingers over the faint, emerging stubble. He often did that while puzzling something out. The exterior body language reflected within. For a moment, at least.
A majestic wave of his hand swept away all the furniture. Like a mighty sorcerer, he smote the floor, and out sprang an endless array of partying youths, deafening music, and obnoxious strobe lights.
Alyssa lost him within the crowd. She maneuvered around the dancers, several of whom attempted to pull her into their exuberant revels. The scene resembled parties Alyssa had attended in college, but it was more like a caricature of the actual thing, full of shouting and boasting and chugging and dancing, endless dancing.
Skyler shimmied up beside her, dancing like the inexperienced adolescent he once was. “This is better, right?” he shouted over the cacophony.
Alyssa stood firm and shook her head. “No. Cut it out.”
He thrust a plastic cup into her hand. It reeked of cheap booze.
“Have a beer or two or five and drink all your troubles away,” Skyler yelled in her ear. “We had some of our best times this way, didn’t we?”
Alyssa splayed her fingers, releasing the cup. It disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Skyler tensed and furrowed his brow. “What is your problem? Where’s the Alyssa I used to know?”
“Where are you? Think—right now—where are you really?”
The party froze. The music cut off. Skyler wrinkled in confusion. A hint of fear accented his eyes.
Alyssa offered her hand. “Come with me.”
His fingers reached toward hers, then at the last second squeezed into a fist.
“No.”
Skyler spun around, dove into the crowd, and immediately returned with a vaguely familiar, handsome young man, who stood there dumbly.
“Remember this guy? Can’t think of his name, but you thought he was so hot. And look. Here he is. I thought him up just for you.”
The handsome man sauntered toward Alyssa, who ignored him and addressed Skyler.
“I’m seeing someone,” Alyssa said.
The party vanished and the room reverted to the surreal Gothic manor. All the furniture flipped back into place.
“Oh,” Skyler said.
“It’s still pretty new, but it’s real.”
His voice softened, becoming almost pathetic. “This can be real.”
“I’m sorry. It can’t.”
The whole room turned red as Skyler sucked in a sharp breath. Flames spilled out of the fireplace.
“It’s all I need!”
Skyler reddened further—Alyssa feared he might actually explode—but then he deflated as a long sigh passed his lips.
The room settled down and cooled off. Avoiding Alyssa’s concerned gaze, Skyler turned toward Teddy and nearly disappeared within a furry embrace.
“Sky?” Alyssa said, taking a tentative step forward.
Skyler gave Teddy one more tight squeeze. The bear nodded and resumed his post by the ominous door.
“So sorry about that.” Skyler forced a smile. “Don’t know what came over me there.”
“It’s okay.” Alyssa attempted to guide him toward the lounge chair. “Maybe just have a seat.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Skyler snapped back. “I meant it when I said I’m fine.”
Alyssa relented, for now. “Okay. Message received.”
A wistful smile crept across Skyler’s face. “Remember last day of classes junior year? We got so drunk. What happened was inevitable, really.”
“You want to talk about old times?” Alyssa interrupted quickly. “Let’s do that. Let’s go all the way back. Orientation. The mixer.”
His eyes glinted at that. “Ah, yes, I remember.”
The scenery rearranged itself until they were standing on a long field at their college as a bunch of freshmen awkwardly mingled with each other. Among the group of strangers, Alyssa and Skyler faced each other.
“Uh, hey,” Skyler said, in the same unsteady manner he had greeted her back then.
The lines came to Alyssa. She doubted her memory was totally correct, but she remembered the spirit of the encounter.
“Hi. I’m Alyssa.”
“Sky.”
“Sky?”
“My name. It’s Sky.”
“Oh! Right. Sky. Like Skyler.”
“Right. Skyler. That would be my actual name. I just have this thing with ‘ler.’ So I tend to ignore it.”
“I see. You discriminate against ‘lers.’ ”
“Yeah, I’m a bastard like that.”
They paused, awkwardly.
“So, uh, where you from?” Skyler asked.
“Meadowville. Not too far from here.”
“Ah.” Sky let the beat drag a second too long. “A lot of meadows there?”
Alyssa grimaced. “You did not just make that joke.”
“Sorry,” Skyler said, wincing.
“Eh, it’s okay. You delivered it much better than the last five guys.”
Another pause descended, this one semi-comfortable.
“So,” Skyler said, glancing at all the surrounding small talk, “is it just me or does this feel like some great huge mating experiment?”
“Yeah, kind of does.”
“But what percentage is actually going to hook up here and now? And for that matter, what percentage of ‘couples’ here is ever going to see each other after orientation is over?”
“I’m thinking not much.”
“And I’m thinking you might be right. But you know, I’ve never really been one to go with the crowd.”
“Meadowville jokes notwithstanding.”
He gave a modest shrug. “We all have our weak spots. Help me redeem myself. Maybe we could eat lunch together tomorrow.”
Alyssa eyed the artificial smiles of other conversing pairs, and a sly smile of her own developed. “We’d be quite the rebels then, wouldn’t we?”
“We would. But I think we can handle it.”
The grass erupted, folded around itself, and reformed into a cafeteria. Alyssa and Skyler were seated at a table, eating blurry, unidentifiable food. The cafeteria’s offerings never did leave much of an impression on either of them.
“You hate Halloween?” Alyssa said, in utter disbelief.
“Correct.”
“Blasphemy.”
“Sorry,” he said in a way that suggested he wasn’t. “Like you’re one to talk, Miss I Don’t Like Ice Cream.”
“Ice cream is a snack with no nutritional value. Halloween—how—I mean—it’s Halloween.” The statement was itself the argument.
“Yes. It is.”
“But it’s fun! We dress up in ridiculous clothing and have scandalous parties. It’s like a great escape for one night. What’s not to love?”
“Ridiculous clothing and scandalous parties.”
“Wait, you don’t like parties either?”
Skyler considered the matter. “Maybe once in a while.”
Alyssa narrowed her gaze, studying him. “We’ll have to work on that.”
The cafeteria shimmered, and they were seated in the lounge chairs in the manor. The fire crackled behind them.
“And we did,” Skyler said. “You were a bad influence on me.”
“We were good influences on each other,” Alyssa said, punching each word to make sure he got it. “Right up through the last time we hung out.”
The manor turned into a city street, right outside a bar. Alyssa and Skyler had gone out with a few other friends, and the two of them stepped outside for fresh air. They leaned against a brick wall, the serenity of the late-night sky contrasting with the commotion inside. It was disorienting for Alyssa’s ears.
“Something’s wrong,” Skyler said.
A question, not a statement. Alyssa knew he’d get it out of her eventually.
“Not exactly wrong,” she said. “It was good. My friend Miranda—you’ve met Miranda, right?”
“High school Miranda,” Skyler said, nodding. “The honorary sister.”
“That’s the one. She stopped by the store tonight right before closing. Completely unexpected visit.”
“That’s not the wrong part.”
“No, not at all. It was so great to see her. But it reminded me that we’re on such different paths now.” Alyssa absently kicked a pebble on the sidewalk. “It was … I don’t know … bittersweet.”
“Remind me—she’s the actress, right? Out in LA?”
“Yeah. Well, Olympus City, but close enough.”
“Ohh.” His face lit up. “Fantastic Man’s city.”
Alyssa groaned. “Not you too.”
He gave her a serious, accusatory glare. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t like Fantastic Man? You don’t like the real-life superhero who has magically entered all our lives—something we spent the entirety of those lives thinking was impossible—you don’t like that?”
“I generally prefer the impossible to stay impossible. Keeps things nice and neat.”
“But you love Halloween. Isn’t a world with superheroes like a year-round Halloween?”
Alyssa looked at him like it should have been obvious.
“Halloween is a once-a-year vacation from reality,” she said, wagging her pointer finger. “A superhero is a permanent breach.”
“You don’t like Fantastic Man,” Skyler muttered to himself, like an accountant checking his math. “Next you’ll be telling me you don’t like ice cream.”
Alyssa smacked his arm.
“But I see what’s bothering you,” Skyler said. “Miranda’s out there chasing her dreams, going all in, and here you are, being responsible.”
“Damn straight I’m being responsible.”
Her gaze drifted toward the stars. Skyler noticed.
“You are,” he said. “Succeeding as an astronaut is even less likely than succeeding as an actor.”
“I know,” she said, forehead wrinkling, “but maybe there was something else I could have done, something … adjacent.”
“That could be worse. You’d be so close, yet so far. Let Miranda take her shot. She’ll run out of money in a few years and then come back here to settle down. You’ll already have a head start. Because you’re right. Halloween can’t be every day.”
They fell into a comfortable silence, which Skyler just had to break.
“But I still say even the one Halloween is too much.”
Alyssa sighed, until her laugh cut through it. “I failed you.”
A gentle wave passed over the street, and they were back in the fake manor.
“I’m glad you stopped by,” Skyler said with a lazy smile. “It’s been lonely around here since the accident.”
Alyssa leaned forward and spoke as kindly as possible. “You don’t have to be lonely. I can take you out of here. You just have to let me—”
Skyler leapt off the chair and paced around, shaking his head and hands. “Ohhhh, no. Not going where you want to take me. You know what I’ve had to do since graduation? Know how I’ve been using that business degree I worked so hard for? Here. Look.”
Fluorescent lights replaced the Gothic ambience, and they were suddenly in a big-box department store. Skyler positioned himself behind a customer service desk.
“My job as a human bull’s-eye. Now, you would assume that working the refund counter would be much more luxurious than mere cashiering. After all, I now have this ostentatious desk to stand behind as opposed to a simple tiny register. But then there are the customers—I’m sorry. Patrons. We’re supposed to call them patrons, because people who come into a retail store with the intent of purchasing things may take offense at being called customers. So they’re patrons.”
A heavyset middle-aged woman marched to the counter, her face screwed up and ready for battle. She plopped a large box before Skyler.
“I want to return this.” It was less a statement and more a demand.
“Okay,” Skyler said. “Do you have a receipt?”
The woman seemed not to comprehend the question. “No.”
Skyler threw his arms up and turned to Alyssa. “So how the hell does she expect me to do a refund?” Affixing a courteous smile, he addressed the customer—the patron. “Well, ma’am, a receipt is required for all returns and exchanges—”
The woman scowled something fierce at that.
“—but,” Skyler continued quickly, “what I can do is give you store credit at the lowest selling price, which for this item would be …” He scanned the merchandise. “… eighty-five dollars and—”
“I paid ninety-nine dollars for that.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but since you don’t have the receipt—”
“Show me in writing where it says I have to get the lowest selling price.”
“The sign behind me says that a receipt is required for all returns and exchanges.”
The woman shook her head. “It doesn’t say nothing about no lowest selling price.”
Skyler reread the sign to himself, then turned back to the woman. “All returns and exchanges.”
“Says nothing about lowest selling price.” Her head sprouted a pair of horns, and a scythe appeared in her hand.
“You don’t have a receipt. The required receipt.”
“Sign says nothing about lowest selling price.”
“The sign says—”
“I want my ninety-nine dollars.”
“I can’t—”
“You haven’t tried.”
“I can’t!”
Skyler leapt over the counter, impaled the woman with her own scythe, and impaled her again. Even after she lay motionless on the floor, he kept plunging the scythe into her chest, elaborate curses falling from his lips.
The woman disintegrated. The store vanished. Skyler abruptly calmed down.
“That didn’t happen quite like that.”
“I figured,” Alyssa said.
Skyler took his seat by the fire. “I can lead a perfectly good life in here.”
“All by yourself? What’s the point?”
“What’s the point out there?”
An examination chair appeared before them, and a Frankenstein monster lay on it, mouth wide open and rotting. Skyler hopped off the lounge chair, acquiring manic energy as he paced around the monster.
“Is this the point? Go on and clean his disgusting, filthy teeth. Scrape that plaque off. Enjoy scraping it off. Thrill to the wonders of the electric toothbrush. Laugh at the inane small talk. Work for the man, Alyssa. Yay, teeth!”
Alyssa looked away and shrugged. “It’s really not that bad.”
His eyes flashed darkly. “But it’s not being an astronaut, is it?”
Thunder rumbled overhead.
“I get it,” Alyssa said. “You’re trying to make me mad as hell so I’ll give up and leave your mind to rot. But I’m not giving up on you, Sky.”
He seemed almost hurt. “You misunderstand. I don’t want to run you out.”
A massive spiderweb materialized behind Alyssa while puffs of dark, rancid smoke birthed shadowy demons. They shoved her against the sticky threads and stretched her arms and legs across it.
“I want you to stay forever,” Skyler said, his voice tranquil, almost hypnotic. “We can keep each other company.”
None of this was real. Alyssa kept reminding herself that this was all a manifestation of Skyler’s subconscious. This wasn’t her real body, just a psionic representation. The representation, however, included impressive facsimiles of all the senses. She swallowed her discomfort.
“Getting a little creepy here,” Alyssa said.
Skyler scratched his chin, considering the feedback. “Seems that way, doesn’t it? Hmm … have to fix that …” In a haze, he drifted toward the massive, looming door. “Excuse me …”
The demons pulled harder on Alyssa’s limbs, eliciting a pained cry.
“Sky! What the hell? I go through all this trouble to help you out, and you do this?” She raised her voice further. “Doesn’t really make me want to stay!”
One hand resting on the heavy wooden bar, Skyler stared at nothing in particular, evidently in a trance.
“Hm?” he finally said in response to the noise emanating from Alyssa’s general direction. “Sorry. Didn’t hear you. Mind wandered. Anyway …”
With a single sweep of his arm, Skyler flung the bar out of its latch. It thumped against the wall and clattered on the floor.
He opened the door, and a menagerie of grotesque demons stampeded into the room and swarmed the spiderweb.
“Alyssa, meet my nightmares. Nightmares, Alyssa. Hopefully you’ll all get along just fine. Excuse me. Need to rest a bit.”
Skyler disappeared through the door, which slammed shut behind him.
Half-melted limbs, rubbery tentacles, and slimy snouts slithered over Alyssa, threatening to bury her alive.
“Sky!”
Demons hissed, snarled, and poked at her. She closed her eyes. They were not real. Skyler’s imagination couldn’t hurt her.
She couldn’t breathe.
In a panic, Alyssa yanked her arms down, ripping herself free of the web, more or less. Long strands of cable-like webbing clung to arms. The demons grabbed the threads and pulled from opposite directions. Her arms felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. The fact that they weren’t her real arms did little to dull the agony.
The demons pulled harder. Alyssa screamed.
The door opened, and the demons stopped, all showing deference to the new arrival. Most of them bowed and scraped as a man wearing a rotund jack-o’-lantern mask sauntered across the room.
“Well, well, well … looks like I get someone to play with.” The sing-song voice echoed through the pumpkin head.
“Sky?”
A clump of webbing gagged her.
“No,” the jack-o’-lantern man said. “Not exactly.”
He pulled out a long butcher’s knife and admired its gleam.
“I’m the worst dream Skyler ever had. He was five at the time, which means: A) he doesn’t remember me, and B) he had a hell of an imagination, capable of developing all sorts of horrors devoid of any rational ‘adult’ constraints. He’s never told you this, but as a child, he was the ultimate coward. Everything scared him. In every little bit of shadow, he assumed the worst. And thus, each new night brought forth a new nightmare. Some of them were rather bizarre, like the elephants he could’ve sworn were in the closet, but others, like me …” He gave the knife a little wave, the merest hint of its potential. “The things I did to him and his family. Such an imagination on that kid.” Flames crackled within the jack-o’-lantern eyes, which stared directly at Alyssa. “And all those things I did, now I get to do them … to you.”
The demons tightened their grip anew, immobilizing Alyssa. She mumbled through the gag.
“Quiet, Alyssa,” the jack-o’-lantern man said. “I’m working.”