Chapter Thirty-Two
Worlds Collide
The Innermost Gate
I hear the clang of metal on metal as the gate slams shut behind me. The sound echoes softly, fading out and suggesting nearby—my only clue to this space. I pause, expecting the darkness to reveal itself in some way. It does not.
I cannot make out anything in the surrounding area. The solid ground beneath my feet extends … to where, I have no idea. I feel blindfolded with my eyes wide open.
I remember swimming in a lake once when I was a boy.
When I was deep enough to have to tread water to remain afloat, I remember feeling a surge of anxiety.
Not from fear of drowning, but from not knowing what lay underneath me.
My imagination conjured creatures far more gruesome than anything reality could produce.
It’s that uncertainty that allows the mind to wander to the most terrifying places.
In the water, my fear extended to the unknown beings that might be writhing below me. Here, in The Innermost, my fear of what surrounds me is total and complete.
But the first step to overcoming an obstacle is to acknowledge its existence.
The truth is simple—there is nothing in this world that I wouldn’t willingly face for the chance to see my Maddy again.
There is nothing more dangerous than the thought of never seeing her again.
There is nothing I won’t do—so bring on the darkness.
As that thought whispers in my mind, my vision fractures and takes me back to the moment when I realized I would never see Maddy again.
That cold, unforgiving prison cell that had been my home for three seasons.
Each day, I woke with the hope that Maddy would come for me or that I would be freed.
And by each evening, that hope was snuffed out.
The next day, a diminished version of that hope would arrive, followed by another day of solitude that slowly suffocated it.
I have not moved an inch since the gate door slammed shut behind me, but my mind races back to a lifetime of confinement. Regret surfaces. Longing. Despair so complete that it threatens to swallow me whole.
“Special delivery.” Alister’s syrupy voice taints the darkness.
Bile rises in my throat, and the desire to attack and destroy that man returns to me. My life ended the moment he had me arrested. I spent months inside that cage, but those days were just a sad prelude to this inevitable conclusion.
“I come bearing a message, one meant only for you.” His voice is everywhere and nowhere, heard in my ears and yet whispered into my soul simultaneously. “The first is from Madeleine; the last is from me. Both forged in fire.”
Alister’s voice punishes me from beyond the grave, but I can’t attack a memory. It strikes without warning and is impossible to defend against. All I can do is sit in the crushing sadness of my own futility.
The smell of fuel mixing with fire and the acrid stink of his cigar floods my senses. I haven’t been sick since crossing over to this world, but now I feel like I could throw up.
“You just had to keep meddling in my affairs and playing with my possession,” Alister’s voice continues.
I want to rip him to pieces for what he did to me. I want to tear his cowardly body apart. I want to savor the sound of his screams as his blood pools at my feet.
“She is mine!” I yell into the darkness.
But that’s not what I said in that prison. That’s not a memory. That is me, in this moment, trying to reshape the darkest chapter of my life and rewrite history etched in stone.
My anger reaches a fevered pitch, but without Alister here to serve as an outlet for my rage, I turn my aggression inward.
I punch my own face.
The impact shocks me. I stagger at the contact. The pain is sharp, immediate, and real. It’s so much better than the nothing I’ve felt for so long.
So, I continue.
I punch again, harder. My knuckles split against my teeth. I aim for my ribs next, driving my fists down with all the force I can muster from my kneeling position. The pain shoots through me like lightning, and it feels like redemption.
I’m destroying the only thing I have left to destroy.
My own body becomes the enemy. Each blow sends spikes of adrenaline and agony shooting through me. My vision swims. I keep hitting—my face, my sides, my legs pounding against the hard ground. The stone scrapes skin from my knees. My hands feel like they’re breaking. I don’t care.
With each punch, I take away a little of the hurt I feel from failing her, from not finding a way out of that cell, from being powerless to save the only person I ever loved.
Eventually, I collapse to my knees, gasping for breath. My whole body throbs with pain. Blood drips from my hands onto the ground I can’t see.
I stay there for a long time, just breathing.
Slowly, my breathing steadies. The adrenaline fades. I’m aware now of the cold stone beneath me, the ache in my body. I’m still here. Still conscious. Still existing.
I wipe my hands on my shirt, not that it matters. Nothing is clean in this place.
“She is mine,” I whisper hoarsely into the darkness.
The hollow echo is the only answer I get.
“She was supposed to be mine,” I correct myself, my voice breaking.
“You’re a monster. Fuck you.” I remember saying those words to Alister in that cell before he handed me Maddy’s letter, along with my death sentence.
I voice those same words now, trapped somewhere between memory and present moment.
But now I’m not sure who I’m speaking to, or if anyone is even listening.
In the silence that follows, I grip my hands tightly and wince at the welcome pain.
Then I remember Alister’s response, but the words come from my own mouth in this cavern—not a voice outside, but my own voice within.
“If I’m a monster, Thomas, it is only because you made me this way.”
All the hatred and disgust I’ve carried for Alister Sullivan comes roaring back. But now all that anger has found its truest source. Not Alister, not the world around me, not Fate or Time or even Chance. No.
It’s me.
Self-loathing drowns me, an ocean of regret with no bottom, no escape. I am complicit in my own destruction. I made the choices that led here. I didn’t fight hard enough. I didn’t run fast enough. I didn’t love her deeply enough.
I sit on the one piece of ground that I know exists and feel for the bars of the gate.
I grip them to ground myself in some sense of physical reality.
My mind remembers the crackling fire, the snapping sound the flames made as they licked against the wooden beams. I remember the suffocating smell as the smoke grew thicker.
I hear the sound of Alister’s retreating steps as he walked calmly out of the prison.
And then I remember something else.
Her letter.
For the first time since crossing over into the OtherWorld, I remember the exact moment he handed it to me.
The parchment in my hands. Her handwriting.
The words she had written while sitting in that garden, waiting for a rescue that never came.
I remember Maddy’s words, penned from her heart, meant for me, and destined to destroy us both.
I recall them, and sit with them in this moment that feels like two times converging into one.
Alone in this cave, as I was alone in that cell, I sit with the memory of Maddy.
Her words burn with me.