Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Once home, Lia slumped against the inside of the front door, chest heaving.
Every rattle of a windowpane made her jump.
Her chest began to tighten, the familiar feeling of a screw being torqued down inside her, each gasp constricting her lungs further.
Her fingernails dug into the rug. Lia tried to focus, to suck in deep breaths while she squeezed her eyes shut to block out the world around her.
More of those wretched things could lurk outside. If she wasn’t totally crazy.
Her mind spun, overloaded. Meanwhile, Lia’s heart raced so fast the blood rushed to form yet another headache that pulsed behind her eyes.
She was losing it. There was no other way to describe it.
Her head slammed against the door, her eyes flew open, wide and wild with fear. She finally lost her mind. She was seeing things—creatures that didn’t even exist.
She’d been stretched to the ripping point even before Papa’s accident.
And now?
Lia’s laugh escaped in a fit of hysteria, severely misplaced in the empty house.
Clamping a hand over her mouth, she banged her head against the bolted door once more.
If that gremlin was real and the city was crawling with them, maybe it would be better if they ate her up.
At least then her problems would go away.
No! It was a cat, it had to have been. A hairless cat with rabies, like the news had said.
Anxiety, bereavement, and now hallucinations. Perhaps that was why she was going crazy and thought she saw a gremlin. The human mind could only take so much. Maybe she needed to check into a mental hospital. Was that where she belonged?
Why wouldn’t you be losing your mind? What do you think happens when you try to be perpetually perfect and noninvasive?
No. She had to dam it all up.
Just breathe, tread water.
Even though she was on the cusp of adulthood, Lia wanted nothing more than to crawl into the embrace of her papa, the one place where she felt safe outside of her pages. Found comfort in the scent of old leather and…something spicy? Woody? It was harder to recall, her memory of him already fading—
And that did it.
The dam broke. Water swelled. Leaked from her eyes and didn’t stop until it was a torrent. Lia allowed herself to drown. She didn’t even care if anyone heard. Her shoulders shuddered with the sobs, hot tears gushed down her cheeks. She was unable to curl tight enough, cries convulsing in her chest.
The waves washed over her, suffocating. Consuming. Drowning.
Everything ached as she let it all out. Snot and tears ran freely down her face. Her body shook with the grief, the pressure, the expectations. The sobs crescendoed. Kept coming. They wouldn’t stop even if she tried to force them. Her breath hitched, leaving her gasping for air.
The waves crashed over her, drowning her.
She was tossed around in their turbulent grip.
Darkness crept in on her. Unable to stop the waves now threatening to carry her into the depths of her despair.
She was that little girl again, watching her father leave and wanting nothing to do with her.
Who would? She couldn’t even hold it together without seeing things. No one wanted a broken person.
Kayce would.
The thought came unbidden, but promised a tether. A lifeline to hold on to.
Her eyes ached as the tears finally slowed. Maybe she’d run dry. Numbness pulsed in her chest, her knees cracking as she straightened them.
Duty nagged her until she stood up, joints popping, and checked the time. Her family would be home soon. They couldn’t exactly find her huddled against the door, in sneakers coated with blood. Even if the gremlin guts were gone, she was a disturbing sight.
She had to suck the waters into herself. Seal up the holes. Keep the floodwaters in. She couldn’t drown in front of her family.
Her second shower of the day was so hot it burned.
Every part of her body ached as she finally dragged herself out of the bathroom and into clean clothes.
Her mind was a fog thicker than the mist rolling across Highguard.
Perhaps she was truly losing it, she wondered as she stared at the scar on her palm.
It would explain why she thought of her imaginary world as real as her present one.
But it was an anchor in the storm.
She padded on unsteady feet to the box she’d filled after the funeral. Flipping through it, Lia paused. Halfway deep was a page she had never seen before. But the script haunted her. Frowning, she pulled it free.
Wait—she had seen it before. Over a week ago, on Papa’s back patio.
His new project. Bit of a family tale, he’d called it.
How had it gotten in the stuff she’d grabbed from the attic? Lia didn’t know he still wrote up there. But it would seem, according to the bingo league, that she didn’t know a few things about him. Bile burned in her throat as she rose to get into bed and read.
It has been said the stories we treasure most live within us. Truthfully, those stories have lived far longer than that, and will live beyond the last mind to recall them. However, there once was a time where no stories existed.
No stories? Lia frowned, reading on.
Darkness flooded all there was, until all that is came to be.
Nothing existed apart from the breath that began the story of us.
Alone in the darkness, words and life were breathed into the very essence of everything, until the universe as we know it was born.
Stars spun around planets, and those planets whirled around stars so bright they burned for eons.
There was potential on these planets, vibrant life flowing in an array of patterns.
Lia pressed a hand to her chest. Marcus would have loved this one, and it stung that he would never hear their papa tell it.
On one planet, Man was crafted from earth. Both men and women sought to fulfill the creative call on their souls to its fullest potential, cultivating the world before them. But unlike the mere animals that thrived in the soil, air, and waters, they had a yearning for more: someone to dream with.
And so, between the molecules of the world that could not be touched as one could hold a stone within their palm, from that breath was fabricated a place—a dreamscape of realms wrought of the wonder and joy threaded through the ever-evolving universe.
The humans of Earth, as it became to be known, were given access to this place through their imagination, namely in sleep.
It sounded like a creation story for the imagination. Papa had written this? He was sword fights and heists. Not…fairy dust. But these words—his last words—she needed to understand.
But when dreams came, so did nightmares.
Darkness drew humans from sleep, plaguing their waking hours with conflict, jealousy, and hatred.
Even fears of the unknown in the world around them.
The predatory noises that rose in the dark, made more sinister under the cloak of ambiguity.
Therefore, another realm was formed to work through those insecurities.
But humans needed aid, those spheres in the realms needed observation once the human imagination breathed life into them.
And so the guardians, guides of a sort, birthed from stars and the darkness between them, assisted humans to face their woes and to preserve their tales.
Was this the research Papa had seemed so concerned about? She knew various mythologies, but this was entirely original. Questions rose the waters inside Lia, but she couldn’t stop herself from flipping the page.
Imagination took on a life of its own. Humans crafted stories, wove dreams, and fought nightmares—each one birthing a world as real as Earth, but separate.
Until there was one guardian who no longer wished to be an observer, but instead desired to birth a world of his own.
However, guardians were not designed to create, and it was all wrong.
Something was missing. In this sphere, a filmy haze ruled over the days and a piercing blackness won at night.
Warmth hovered on a cusp, a bitterness of winter promised in the air.
And in the eyes of its denizens, a hollowness looked back like the windows of a home standing vacant for far too long—the glass fogged and shattered.
His world was a farce; his intentions useless.
Bitter with rage and pain, he became the Devourer: the ending to all stories.
He consumed that which he could only covet: a dreamer’s world.
It was so violent a rendering, it not only broke the dreamer’s mind—it tore a rift between Earth and the realms. Imagination bled into reality.
Ink smudged over the last word, like a droplet of water had ruined it. There was nothing left. Julian Corvine’s last story, unfinished.
Lia sat frozen. Creatures that did not belong in the physical realm.
This realm where imagination existed like it was living, breathing—real?
A family tale. There was no way this was real. And yet, how else would it explain her vivid dreams? That monster—no, that nightmare she’d barely escaped? Her mind raced, thumb absently tracing the scar on her palm. She already thought she was borderline insane. Why not try to prove it?
Looking up at the ceiling, Lia spoke to nothing but herself. “If this is real, bring him here.” Her voice tremored, but she pushed harder. “Give me Kayce.”
She didn’t expect an answer. It was likely just another fantasy.
A story from an old man past his prime. Disappointment pricked in Lia’s eyes, several tears slipping down her temples as she laid down.
Her damp curls soaked the pillow as Fiore hopped to join her.
Lia had nothing left to give, her body—and mind—worn out.
Her eyelids grew heavier, drifting shut.
At least no gremlins existed in Norenth. At least there she wasn’t losing her mind.