The mark on my cheek where Green Eyes had kissed me stung too.
My wounds, from the stab wound on my left hand to the scrapes and blisters on my fingers and the place where my arm had been grabbed too hard throbbed.
I had little doubt I could simply shrug off all the pain. Push it somewhere deep inside me, where it wouldn’t touch me.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay whatever price this place would exact from me.
How had the other Bogeymen gotten by? Had they found their way to these same Drains, or had they discovered other places like them? A ghost town shrouded in mist for the Tallowman to claim a building and resume his practice? Had Midge found a place in the wilderness to set up a shack and live much as she’d lived in life, only becoming harder and meaner as she spent more time there? Was she there now, so rooted in this Limbo that she would simply find her way here if her material body was killed a hundred more times?
The blank skittered right, but it didn’t touch wall. The interruption cut off my thoughts.
A bend?
I prodded, and found a drop. The plank’s end rose of its own accord. A quicker movement made a splash.
Water.
Feeling around more, I was able to figure out the general layout.
Pitch darkness, a bridge of hard earth. Water under and on either side.
I made my way across, the plank scratching across the ground, reminding me of where the bridge was.
Water splashed to my right.
I froze.
A rotten fish smell flooded the area.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Another splash, then another.
The smell grew stronger.
I felt cold. Not personally, but from some nearby source.
Cold radiated from this as heat did from a hot poker.
I felt it draw nearer, and in the darkness and near-silence of this chamber, my other senses were painfully acute. I felt the cold increase by steep degrees, reaching from my left shoulder toward my chin and collarbone.
I raised my chin by mere fractions.
It was a matter of an inch or two away from me. Some reaching hand.
I felt the cold envelop my neck, and held my breath and my voice both.
Reaching around my neck, but not touching.
I felt it reach down along my spine.
Too many turns. It wasn’t an arm.
I leaned back as I felt it draw closer to my neck, a natural consequence of this tendril or tail or whatever it was snaking around over my shoulder and behind me.
When I couldn’t lean over any more without risking falling into the water, I turned my upper body, not moving my feet out of concern that they might scrape. I bent over, resting my free hand on one knee for balance, and ducked under.
I stayed like that, bent over, one hand on my knee, the other holding the plank.
One remained behind my leg.
Another was well over my head, only close enough for me to feel the brush of cold.
A droplet fell on my extended arm. I suppressed a hiss of pain. It might as well have been acid.
Every muscle in my body was tense, some of that tension from a searing pain that bordered on agony.
“Alexis?” Tiff’s voice.
A sniffling. “I’m okay. I don’t even know why I’m crying.”
“You really need to sleep. Things are getting ugly out there.”
“I know. I’ll try.”
It was like a slap in the face, the knowledge that I hadn’t left the world a better place than it had been when I’d come into it. Not for Alexis.
Something nudged the plank I held in the moment I was distracted.
A tenth of a second later, before I could even get my bearings or comprehend what had just happened, it had the plank, gripping it with a strength I couldn’t have resisted if I was on my bike, a chain stretched between bike and plank, wheels spinning full-bore.
It crushed the plank, and only windmilling arms kept me from plunging into the water.
I was left with only a square of plank.
More splashing, more violent, coming closer.
I turned to run and fell instead. I spread my arms wide, reaching out for and hugging the bridge to keep from rolling off. My empty, sock-bandaged hand touched water and went instantly numb.
A splash of water hit me, and more numbness spread from where water touched skin. It was right here, whatever it was.
I felt a hot breath and nearly gagged from the rotten fish smell. The heat of it was a stark contrast to the coldness of the limbs.
The sheer amount of breath, enveloping me, forming steam where it touched water, was another indicator of what I was up against.
I managed to find my feet. There was no testing my step, only memory.
Another breath, more diffuse, only half as strong, in combination with cold as intense as I’d felt yet…
It was just in front of me, mouth open.
I acted on instinct alone. I held the remaining bit of plank in both hands, and I struck out.
I hit something solid, and, using my two-handed grip, I raked the ragged edge of the plank across flesh.
There was no cry of pain, no response.
Only the limbs lashing out. They hit water before they hit me, just as I was turning to run. The water caught me mid-stride.
My shoulder met solid wall, hard enough that I didn’t even realize I’d dropped the plank in the shock. One leg went off the bridge and into water so cold it should have been frozen over.
With one good leg and one good arm, I managed to heave myself past the corner of wall, past the area with the bridge, to the corridor that followed.
I heard something wet slap against stone, a faint crack.
There was no relief on the other side. No remedy from the sharp pain that jolted from my shoulder to the fingertips of my good hand, nor the blistering cold that made me feel like my leg had fallen off.
No light, even, to convince me that whatever I’d left behind me wasn’t waiting a short distance in front of me.
I crawled ahead enough that I could be reasonably sure it wasn’t about to find a way to reach into the corridor and grab me, then collapsed.
I had no way to judge the amount of time that was passing. My thoughts were borderline feverish.
I had to get out of here.
Had to.
Had to help Evan and repay debts and keep this fucking pattern from continuing with the Thorburn line. I wanted to see Alexis and Tiff and Ty but especially Alexis.
I wanted to ride my freaking bike and my complete and total inability to tell what had happened with my leg and the freezing water was making me think that maybe that wasn’t necessarily possible.
I wanted to kill that freaking motherfuck of a demon who had put me here.
My fingertips scraped against the hard, damp floor beneath me.
Hours might have passed before the cold in my leg receded enough for me to feel confident about moving it. My arm still felt stabs of pain from my shoulder, but they were only about ten times as bad as the worst whack I’d ever given my funny bone.
The pain in my frozen leg was a much different sort of pain from what I was experiencing in my shoulder. If I were carved of stone, my shoulder might have a general crack running through it. My leg, if I had to put an idea to it, felt like it was all cracks.
I thought about how the injuries of the people on the bridge had healed, and felt a twinge of panic.
But above all, I hobbled forward, wincing with every step.
The pain didn’t subside before I reached light, and it took me a long, long time to reach light.
The lack of ability to judge time was getting to me, joining the pain and general disorientation. It was very much what I expected it felt like to be in solitary confinement, only this was a big, big place, and there were others present.
But the idea fit.