Redemption (4 page)

The dark figure
strode along the wooded path, tilting its hood this way and that as if taking
in the scenery, its long hands tucked out of sight within the voluminous
sleeves of its robe.  Darkness was beginning to fall, and Rebecca wished
fervently that the sun would come back and drown her chills.

 “Dangerous
things, lies,” he commented airily.  “You tell one little lie, then another,
and another… and soon you’re surround by them.  One lie breeds more.  Just like
the heads of the hydra.”

Rebecca crossed
her arms and tapped her toe impatiently.  Was he lecturing her?  “Look, how am
I supposed to find this key, or whatever, when I have no clue where to look?”

The hooded man
came to face her and her skin prickled in warning.  Deep in the recesses of his
hood, she thought she glimpsed a wooden mask.  “Follow your heart?” he
suggested in a hiss.

Then he turned
and faded away into the trees.  His raspy voice drifted back, echoing
strangely.  “Oh, and Rebecca, remember; the most dangerous lies are the ones we
tell ourselves.”

A twig snapped a
few feet from where the hooded man had disappeared, but it was just Isaac,
returning with an armload of dead branches.  He took one look at her face and
stopped in his tracks, dropping the wood.  “What happened?”  His eyes darted
around the little clearing, as if he expected another monster. 

“While you were
gone, the hooded creepo showed up and spouted nonsense at me.”  Rebecca watched
as he flicked something away from his hair.  A little yellow butterfly danced
away, up into the trees.  Her eyes stayed on the spot where it had disappeared.

Isaac stooped
and picked up his branches again.  “Well, did he tell you anything useful?”

She snorted and
went to help him.  “Hardly.  ‘Follow your heart,’” she intoned in a raspy
wheeze.  “‘Lies are dangerous.’  What a load of crap.  I still have no idea
what I’m supposed to be looking for.”  She dropped the pile of branches with a
huff.

Isaac knelt and
pulled a lighter from his pocket.  Rebecca snapped out of her reverie at once. 
“Where did you get that?”

He glanced up at
her, then down at his hand in surprise.  “Oh!  I don’t know.  I always carry a
lighter.  I just assumed it would be there.” 

He fussed with
the little pile of kindling he had stacked under the larger logs, finally
getting it to catch.  He sat back looking pleased in the flickering flames. 

“Go camping a
lot?” Rebecca asked curiously.

He just shook
his head.  “No.  I’ve just been to a lot of bonfires.”

“Oh.” 
Partying.  “So… you said… back there…”

He sighed, still
squatting by his infant fire, staring into the flames.  “Yeah.  I did.”  And it
sounded like the subject was closed to discussion.  It wasn’t every day you
admitted your darkest secrets to a complete stranger. 

Rebecca was
silent, hoping he would return the favor by not asking about her scars.  When
he finally spoke, his voice was soft.  “He’s right, you know,” he said softly. 
“Lies…it’s so easy.  You tell one little lie and it leads to another, and
another, and before you know it you start believing your own story; it gets so
it’s harder to tell the truth than just keep up with the lies.”

Rebecca shivered
and squatted next to the growing fire.  “Are you sure we should be wasting time
here?”  She gestured at the dancing flames.  “I mean, he said five days, and if
I didn’t find the key by then someone out in the real world is going to die.”

Isaac looked
around the shadowed woods.  “Do you really want to go wandering around in the
dark?”

Rebecca sighed. 
“No, you’re right.”  She thought of the hydra on the beach.  “I just want to
get out of here as soon as possible.”

The fire
crackled softly in the otherwise silent forest.  They had built it right there
in the middle of the path, not wanting to venture away and possibly get lost. 
Rebecca’s voice was almost a whisper when she spoke, not wanting to disturb the
heavy silence that was falling around them.  It was unnatural for a woods to be
this quiet, even at night. 

“Thank you,” she
whispered.  “For helping me, especially after what happened.  I wouldn’t be
surprised if you told me to get lost after that.”  The emotional pain the Hydra
had dredged up was unbelievable.  She was lucky to have found such a steady
companion.

Isaac sat down
across from her and the flames cast strange, dancing shadows on his face,
making his features look angular and harsh.  “You’re welcome,” he said
uncomfortably.  Then, after a pause, “but I was thinking… tomorrow, once the
sun’s up, maybe we should split up.”

Rebecca squinted
at him across the fire, surprised.  “What?”

He shrugged,
still staring into the flames, then gave an exasperated sigh.  “Look, I’m
not…I’m not the kind of guy you should trust so easily.  I mean… well, I’m
not…good.”

She hugged her
knees to her chest, panic forming a hard lump in her throat as she thought of
facing another monster like the one on the beach, all by herself.  And though
she was sure of nothing else in this place, she was certain there would be more
challenges like the one they had already faced.  “You’re wrong.  You’re great…
we make a good team.”

He laughed
bitterly.  “You don’t know anything about me,” he insisted.  “I’m not a good
guy.  I’m not the guy you want me to be.  You didn’t dream me up.”  He gestured
impatiently.  “I’m a washed up loser.  And I use people.”  His deep voice was
harsh, self-degrading. 

“I’ve done it my
whole life.  Used whatever means I could to get what I wanted.  I’ll betray
you, or let you down at a crucial moment.  You should just go your own way if
you really want to succeed, no matter what that hooded weirdo said.”

Rebecca looked
at him through the flames.  “You’re too hard on yourself.  You’re not a bad
person.”  He couldn’t be.  She needed him.

But her words
weren’t penetrating.  “You can’t trust me.  No one ever trusts me.  They all
know better.  All that’s important to me is turning a profit and getting
stoned.”

He turned his
head and Rebecca thought his features looked even more distorted, elongated and
exaggerated.  He coughed suddenly, startling her.  “Are you okay?”

Isaac shook his
head.  “I don’t feel so great.  I think I’m going to be sick.”

Rebecca stood
and made to join him on his side of the fire, but he let out a little gasp,
clutching one arm to his stomach.  “Don’t come over here.”
The fire flared for a moment and Rebecca froze, only now realizing that it
wasn’t the firelight that had distorted Isaac’s features.  His face was
deformed, beastly.  His dark hair had grown shaggy, falling forward over his glowing
eyes.  He lifted his head and looked at her, brushing his hair back and
revealing the curved horns growing from his head.  

He moved into a
crouch, as if he was about to spring at her.  “I warned you,” he growled, “not
to come over here.”

Rebecca took a step
back reflexively and he followed, still in that crouch.  Her eyes darted to the
fire and, moving on impulse, she grasped the unburned end of a branch,
brandishing the burning end like a weapon.  Isaac made a motion to leap at her,
but stopped when she waved the fire at him.  “Stay back!”

He watched her
with a sneer.  “Now you see?  I warned you.  You can’t trust me.  I’ll devour
you the moment your back is turned.”  He leered at her with a mouth full of
sharp teeth.  “I’m a monster.”

Rebecca
brandished her burning stick, thinking furiously.  Isaac was right; he was a
complete stranger to her.  She knew nothing about him.  But she did know one
thing.  He was a good man.  He’d agreed to come with her, even though this was
her quest.  He’d risked himself for her on the beach. 

She remembered
what the hooded man had told her.  The most dangerous lies were the ones you
told yourself.  Isaac growled and paced before her, getting closer and closer,
as if working up the courage to face the fire.

“You’re wrong,”
she said softly, but her voice quavered.  Squaring her shoulders, she met the
beast’s eyes.  “I trust you,” she said loudly.  Then she turned and tossed the
flaming branch back into the fire.  “You just need to trust yourself.”  It
sounded idiotic, even to her own ears.

He charged her,
his clawed hands outstretched.  And she let him come, opening her arms to him. 
He hit her with a force that knocked her down, and her breath left her in a
painful whoosh.  But she wasn’t hurt.  He had wrapped his arms around her
midriff in a desperate grip and his face was buried in her chest, but no sharp
teeth pierced her skin. 

She lay on her
back and looked down her nose, trying to see his face where it was hidden just
below her breasts.  She had wrapped her arms around him instinctively, and she
stroked his perfectly normal, silky black hair.  “See,” she said breathlessly. 
“It’s fine.”

Isaac was
shaking against her, and she was scared that he had cracked.  But he soon
pushed himself away and sat up, and she realized that he was wracked with
silent laughter.  “Trust myself?  You sound like an after school special.”

Rebecca snorted
as she sat up and edged closer to the warmth of the fire.  “I think it was
another test, or challenge or…whatever.”

He seemed to get
a grip on himself, regarding her seriously for a moment.  “So… we can’t lie to
each other.  And we can’t lie to ourselves.”

She nodded
mutely, thinking there was more to it.  She had somehow tossed that branch away
without even thinking to be scared.  It wasn’t just because she knew this was
all a dream.  Dream or not, that monster on the beach had caused more pain than
she had ever felt in her life.  It was something more.  On some level, she felt
a deep sense of connection to this complete stranger.  And it was unsettling. 
She remembered the sensation of his long arms wrapped around her, clutching her
as if she was the only thing anchoring him to reality.  Just for that brief
moment something had stirred inside her- something she’d thought was long gone.

“We should get
some sleep,” she said shortly.  It sounded dumb to talk about sleeping when
they were already dreaming, but if she sat here staring at the fire, she knew
her mind would wander back to that traitorous bit of feeling, and she was
having none of it. 

Isaac’s sharp
blue gaze turned on her in surprise.  “After what I just did, you want to go to
sleep?  What happens when I turn into a monster again?”

She just shook
her head.  “You won’t,” she said confidently.  “We’ve gotten past that.”

She curled
herself into the fetal position, as close to the fire as she could get without
singeing something, and closed her eyes.  She thought she heard Isaac whisper
something to the fire right before she drifted off, but it was probably just
another dream.

“He was right. 
You’re absolutely amazing.”

W
hen morning
came, they snuffed the last embers of their little fire and left it smoking
behind them.  The path stretched along in front of them, and Rebecca followed
it.  Clearly, her subconscious was guiding them through this world, and she saw
no reason to resist it.  It was just a dream after all.

They crested a
hill and looked down onto the path ahead.  The dead man stood on the path in
front of them.  It shuffled toward Rebecca with its arms outstretched, moaning
something unintelligible.

Rebecca’s throat
constricted and she drew closer to Isaac.  He took her hand, his eyes still on
the approaching figure.  “What is that thing?”

She flinched as
it shuffled toward them at a snail’s pace.  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice
cracking.  Then she thought better of lying.  “It’s the man I saw at the
beginning of the dream, the one who tried to take Cloe.”  Not the whole truth,
but as close as she would get.

Isaac drew her
closer.  “What do you think we should do?”

Rebecca stared
at the decaying man and shuddered with hatred and disgust.  Terror tired to
claw its way out of her throat, but she choked it back down.  “We can outrun
it.  That’s what I did before.  It’s really slow and clumsy.”

Isaac frowned. 
“Are you sure?  I mean, this should be another challenge, right?”

She shrugged,
silently cursing him for asking so many questions.  Her mind was shouting at
her to run…
run!
  “Who knows how this place works.  It’s probably just
here to scare us off the path.”

Isaac didn’t
look convinced, but he drew a deep breath and went along with her.  “I guess
so.”  He gave her hand a squeeze.  “Ready?”

She nodded and
they leapt into motion.  The thing moved faster than it had up until now.  It
made a clumsy snatch at Rebecca as she sprinted by, but she danced away,
horrified at the thought of touching it.

They dashed past
the zombie and left it standing in the path, a bemused expression on its stupid
face.  Rebecca kept jogging until they were well out of sight of the disgusting
thing, and Isaac followed. 

“That was
weird,” he said when they finally stopped.  “I wonder what the point of that
was.”