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“Ranvert, of course,” they mocked. “What do you mean, of course? It’s so easy to climb inside of here, to take control, anyone could have done it.” There was a sound, clothe against clothe. Casteval couldn’t guess at what it was until Ranvert’s eyes shined through from between Erimot’s lids, red worms that gave off such an eerie glow that Ranvert could have been a bogeyman. “Come on now, you have to admit I had you going for a while.”
Casteval crossed his arms. “Get out.”
They’re hands were on Casteval’s arms, fingers drumming against his damaged skin, tracing the rips in his jacket. “Or what? I don’t think you know how to get me out of Erimot, do you?”
It was true that he didn’t but there was no way that he was going to try what Carmilla had tried. He wasn’t going hurt xim like that. He didn’t want them to hurt at all.
“What do you want?” he asked instead, “There must be something.”
“Oh,” Ranvert cooed in Erimot’s voice, stepping forward, hot breath against Casteval’s cheek, to close for comfort, too close for anything aside from a disgusting mockery of intimacy. “I just want to have fun. You do know what fun is.”
“I’m not interested in your idea of fun.” Casteval took a step back, breaking the contact.
“Fine,” they raised their hands in surrender, no longer following Casteval in the dark. “fine. Here’s what I want. I want to be Casteval.”
“What?”
He could feel Ranvert roll his eyes. “Oh come on, read a book, why don’t you? Casteval is the biggest hero in the history of heroes! Ranvert is just a cheap thrill in a paperback that had a golden best seller sticker on it that doesn’t mean a thing! The world needs a Casteval right now and you’re working on waking him up. Even from within here that’s going to leave repercussions! All I’m saying is, when you find that dumb idiot’s corpse, you put me in there instead. Let me take that body for a test run. Let me be the hero.”
That didn’t make any sense. Casteval took another step back. “What are you talking about? That’s not how any of this works.”
“Like you would know,” there was no care in his words now, Erimot sounded like something strange, foreign, inhuman, with the amount of toxins in xir mouth. “You don’t know a thing about how this world works. You don’t know the first thing about yourself. You’re a moron, through and through. I found you, told you I was a bounty hunter and you were my mark, and you never questioned why I didn’t take you in? Why I didn’t collect that delicious reward? I’ve been playing you since the very start!”
“If the world needs Casteval, it needs Casteval. You can’t replace him.”
“I’d do a much better job than you ever would and you know it. You’ve got the sword and the armor and look at you, you barely even look like him. You have no concept of how to fight, how to win, how to play the part. I’m everything that Casteval is that you aren’t.” They went quiet for a moment and Casteval could feel the steam in his thoughts start to whistle, ready to boil over into his fists, into his blade. “If I just borrowed a tiny bit of your compassion, I would be a better Casteval than the original.”
He wanted to run him through. His hand was on the hilt. There was smoke billowing between his fingers, anchoring him to it. It was seeping into his veins. The blood in his wounds was shoved out, the skin made flush once more, healing faster than it should have. His scalp itched.
“You were never a real person, you’ll never be Casteval!” he pushed through his grit teeth. “You’re nothing but a shitty writer who can’t get over the fact that his book got more popular than he was. You wanted the fame and the glory, but you went into the wrong field for that. You’re utterly pathetic.”
He couldn’t fight Ranvert. As much as he wanted to see him bleed, there was nothing that he could do. He wouldn’t hurt Erimot. He let go of the sword. The tendrils prodded at him, trying to find their way, trying to get him to act. He didn’t want to be Casteval but if it meant that Ranvert couldn’t, he was willing to at least entertain the concept.
He started to walk.
“So what, you’re not even going to stop me?” Ranvert prodded.
Casteval put his hand on the wall, following the path to the left. He hoped it was the correct one. “I’m not going to hurt Erimot, if that’s what you’re asking. You talk about wanting to be a hero, yet you’re willing to get someone hurt for your benefit. That just makes you a coward.”
There was a bit of light ahead, he could see it. It was just a pin prick, but it was light. He didn’t listen as Ranvert called out after him. He wasn’t going to hurt xim.
He couldn’t be bothered with how much of a hypocrite that made him feel.
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Casteval stared in the direction of Erimot’s faint glow. The bottle was the only light source they had. It was the thing that had kept Casteval alive in the Darkness so far. He had used it so many times. He didn’t want to break it, not for this. It wouldn’t even work, that oily thing was still wrapped around his hands. It would shield whatever light came from it.
More of them were climbing on him. He was an easy target, squirming on the ground. He could feel them pinning him with their hands. There were so many of them. His struggling didn’t seem to matter at all. He wasn’t shaking any of them off. They were safe in their shells.
He couldn’t think of any other options.
He clenched his hands, using all of his strength to clap. He felt the glass start to give, heard a shrill peeping from the oil slick on his hands, and pushed harder. His muscles ached, every tooth mark in his arms sparking, and then there was a crunch as the bottle collapsed under the pressure.
The lavender light filtered poorly and then spread, brighter than before, burning through the parasites predator, burning through the screaming snail things, burning through the darkness. There was more light than the temple had ever carried, had reflected, and he was certain those within could see the flare of it as it traveled through the tunnel.
And then he wasn’t thinking anymore.
He didn’t need to think. He didn’t need to do anything. There was no pain, there was no stress. There were children laughing and birds cawing. He opened his eyes.
The light did not hurt him, it was sunlight, coming from the two twin suns in the sky, one gold and the other violet, spinning round each other in a way that would be mesmerizing if it wasn’t blinding. He could smell salt and seaweed. There was sea foam. There were people, some with long horns and vibrant hair, others normal people, like him, lounging and playing and swimming. People were making sandcastles. Even though the sand was a slightly too red color and there were people that didn’t look human, everything was alright.
There was a sigh beside him and he turned. One of the horned people was sitting beside him, skin pale in places and red in others. They wore a swimsuit that clung to their body but there was a long red shawl on top of that, hiding most of them. Underneath the ridge of horns were some well-wrapped bandages.
Erimot lay xir head on Casteval’s shoulder. “You ever see anything like this?”
“You look different,” Casteval admitted, “Is this what you really look like?”
“Of all the things you’re experiencing right now, you chose to comment on that?” Erimot nuzzled in closer. “Do you have any idea where we are right now?”
“I was told earlier that the world I thought of as home is actually Hell,” Casteval admitted. He wasn’t much of a cuddler. People expected things from cuddling. This was nice though. “so I guess this must be Heaven.”
“No,” Erimot’s hand fell fingers intertwining with his own. “This isn’t Heaven. This is home. This is a memory, one that was dropped into a well, so that someone could move on, get one with their death, and try to live again. This is what the world was like, the real world, and I don’t know how long ago it was.”
“I was expecting it to smell like lavender,” Casteval chuckled. He wanted to rest his head on top of Erimot’s. Even though something was wrong with xim, something that Casteval was sure he knew, he still wanted to touch xim, be close to xim. He wasn’t a romantic person, he’d never had feeling of that nature for someone, but he wanted to do nice things for Erimot, make xim smile more. Here, there was already a smile, small and content. It was a good look on xim.
“Lavender isn’t the color of the memory, nor the smell, or even anything. It’s just a color to hint at the feeling within the memory. This one, it’s almost universal. This one, it’s beautiful. It’s not one that was easily given away.”
There was wetness on Casteval’s shoulder. He turned as much as he could without disturbing Erimot, raising a hand to xir face, feeling the dampness of the gauze. “Are you alright?”
“I’m the best I’ve been in centuries,” xi admitted, pulling away, just a little bit. When Casteval turned more to see where xi was going, xi changed course, pressing their lips together.
No. No, this wasn’t what Casteval wanted and he knew Erimot well enough to know that it wasn’t what xi wanted either, not right now. Xi was still in a relationship, sort of, or at least still had feelings for Carmilla. Casteval didn’t feel romantic attraction to anyone. He shoved xim off.
The bandage was coming loose around Erimot’s eyes. There was something red underneath all that gauze. “What’s gotten into you?” he wiped at his mouth. There had been a sharpness to Erimot’s teeth.
“Well, if we were lucky, we would have said you,” Erimot chuckled and that voice wasn’t Erimot’s at all.
The light faded like closing your eyes and the pain rushed back in like a wave in a storm. Casteval groaned, still lying on his back. There were wisps of something curling around him and when he moved they fell off of him like dried leaves. He got to his feet and every bite screamed at him. He bit his lip. Pain was nothing, it was fine. He couldn’t do anything about it right now anyway.
He searched the darkness for any light and when he saw it he grabbed it, snatching Erimot into the air. “What are you? What are you doing in my friend?” he growled.
Erimot chuckled. Then they let their head drop back as they laughed. Their hands came up to Casteval’s shoulders, making the pain spike, as they cackled. “Oh this is rich, this is so so rich. You mean to tell me, darling, that you can’t even tell? I knew I was a good actor, but I never expected you to fall for it so easily!”
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Casteval woke with a deep inhale, as if he’d been under water for far too long. There was no one around him though, no one trying to resuscitate him. He was in a back alley, not in a lake, and the only liquid around was the long stream of goo coming from one of the dumpsters. He was behind a restaurant, by the smell of it.
He breathed, trying to catch up, and winced, fire in his belly. He reached down, feeling the sticky heat there, making his shirt cling to his skin. He opened his eyes fully then, looking down himself. Blood. His blood. He could still feel the stab wounds, the four of them, deep, terribly deep, deeper than he though someone could survive.
He pulled himself up into a sitting position, undoing the buttons of his shirt, trying to look at what was happening. He’d never been stabbed before, he didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like. The pain was expected , the four half moon shapes dribbling blood were only a surprise because this was real, this wasn’t some weird fake hallucination world. He’d carried this wound from that made up place into the real world. He didn’t think that a stab wound, especially not one in the stomach, would ever feel so cold.
He pulled himself to his feet. Even that was a feat. His muscles ached from climbing a well that didn’t exist and the movement stretched his wounds, making the gush more. He encircled the wounds with his hands, groaning. He had to put pressure on them, had to get to a hospital, but he knew that touching them would be agonizing.
He didn’t even know how he was conscious.
The cold was spreading, like numbness was trying to take him over. As much as he didn’t want to feel the pain of it, the idea of it subsiding was terrifying. If it was all gone, that would mean that something really bad was happening, that it was killing him and his body couldn’t handle it.
He leaned against the wall, breathing, trying to talk himself into taking a step forward. The wound wasn’t bleeding as much now.
He pulled at his sleeve, bunching it in one hand, and wiped at the wounds. He wasn’t imagining it. The wound really wasn’t bleeding as much. The cuts looked smaller, were less inflamed, even though there were angry red veins feeding into it, trying to build up puss and blood to protect him from infection. He was healing, insanely fast, as if his body was just now realizing that it was real.
It was a hallucination, like the rest of that place, and he had carried it with him. He wasn’t actually bleeding. His mind was just trying to fill in the gaps. That was all. He sighed again and buttoned up his shirt. If he wasn’t hurt, he wasn’t hurt. Focusing on it would only make him hold onto the illusion for longer.
Walking was still hard, both because of the residual pain and because the world didn’t feel quite right. He’d felt so much in that other world, both the Falling Plane and that gray place that this world, the real world, felt dulled in comparison.
People were staring at him, everyone he passed took a look at his face and then at his shirt, where he knew there wasn’t a terrible blood stain. He was fine. He breathed through his clenched teeth. There was nothing to stare at him for. They all stared. A few people asked him if he was alright but he just waved them off. More talked after they’d left his eyesight.
Even when he reached his favorite route home, the one that was more back alley than road, the one that left him alone, with no other pedestrians for him to deal with, he could feel people staring at him.
There were eyes in the shadows and he shook his head. They weren’t really there. Nothing was really there. Even though the shadows were darker and longer than they should have been, there weren’t eyes in them. Nothing was watching him, aside from the CCTV and the passerby from the main roads. He was just imagining it.
He hated that he couldn’t trust his own imagination anymore. That his mind lied to him with every side eyed glance.
The world felt heavier too, like he was walking slower than he was used to, that everything was draining him. A side effect of the drugs, he assumed, not that he even knew that they were. He was definitely calling out tomorrow. He’d probably be fired, but he’d been expecting that for months now. It wouldn’t be too big of a deal.
He was almost home. He could see the street that would take him to his apartment complex, just over the next hill. The hill looked like it was not traversable though, his feet too slow and heavy, the pain in his stomach barely present but the numbness having spread to most of his abdomen.
Setting his jaw, he took a step forward, ready for the trial. It was hard sometimes, after work, when all he wanted to do was sleep. This was just so much more than that though, every step feeling like it would topple him over.
“Hey, where you think you’re going?” someone asked and he waved them off. He didn’t have the energy right now for some panhandler.
“Casteval, you’re going to fall,” the someone kept up with him, a hand on his elbow. He was. He was going to fall. He didn’t mind the stranger pulling him into a side street, one that he’d been in a million times before, and pressing him up against a gray brick wall. The stone was cold against his back and he closed his eyes, breathing, allowing himself to relax.
He wasn’t in danger. This other person knew him. His voice was warm and welcome, even if it was a bit predatory. He was helping.
“Now, what am I supposed to do with you?” he asked, and Casteval could feel his callused fingers against his jaw, turning his head one way and the other. “You start feeling things? Seeing things? You’re not part of this world anymore, are you?”
Casteval cracked an eye open, noting his friends face. It was heavily lined, as if he was exceptionally old, but his bone structure was still strong and his hair still vibrant and healthy. He didn’t look old, just textured. He wore a turtleneck and thick black sunglasses, hiding his eyes completely, even though the sun was setting. His hair was a curly mess, hiding his ears poorly. There was something wrong about the way that they were shaped.
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“A self insert?”
“Yes, my author wanted to read a book about himself so he made me and then, he didn’t want the book to be boring, so he made me into an interesting person.”
“A pervert is more like it.”
At that Ranvert started laughing, head thrown back. It was a sharp noise, something like a cackle, and it revealed the bottom of his chin, where a large patch of skin looked as if it had been peeled off. “Oh, I like you, sassy.”
“What am I supposed to be doing?” Casteval sighed. He wanted to get on with his life, he didn’t want to deal with this that and the other. He didn’t want to awaken or be Casteval. The madness was following him though, had made it back into his home. If Ranvert was right, he was just going to be bothered with other people, other things, that wanted to take him and form him into Casteval if not worse.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Ranvert explained, “I’m just here to hunt you. And I’m supposed to take away what makes you special, what makes you the real Casteval.”
Casteval gulped. He’d barely ate any of his food. He just couldn’t do it. He was glad of it now though. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have his mouth full during.
“I think that means I’m supposed to kill you, drink all of your blood, all that good stuff. I don’t think I want to though, not yet. If I knew what made you special I could take it, but I don’t see anything yet.”
“Because I’m normal,” Casteval’s insides felt cold and empty, and not just because he was hungry. He was really starting to feel like something important over there, in those other worlds. As dangerous as it was, as much as he hated people trying to make him Casteval, he didn’t want to be nothing anymore. He wanted to make a name for himself, really try to be something more.
“Yeah, you’re normal. But there’s more to you than that. You just don’t know what it is, so I can’t take it.”
“You’ve been helping me instead.”
“I have!” Ranvert took off his sunglasses, setting them on the table. His eyes were closed but Casteval’s weren’t. He was staring, waiting for him to open them. There had to be some reason for the sunglasses. But this was the real world and, as much weirdness there was happening, Casteval was certain that Ranvert was human. He had to be.
He opened his eyes, affixing Casteval with a cold glare. His eyes were a mass of worms, all red and glowing, poking out from between his eyelids, wriggling and writhing around a larger red iris, a slit pupil. “I feel I deserve something for that.”
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“How long was I out?” Casteval asked, rubbing at his eyes. He was still dressed from the day before, but all of his buttons had been undone, so he could sleep at least a bit more comfortably. It didn’t help much, he still felt horribly exposed, especially since there was a stranger, Rampart or something, sitting at his desk, in his bedroom, eating something that looked a lot like a Tupperware full of human flesh, soaking in far too much blood.
“Over thirty six hours,” he replied, teasing at his teeth with a toothpick. He was still wearing a turtleneck and sunglasses, even though he was indoors. Something about him made Casteval’s skin crawl. “Don’t worry, I called your work. They didn’t seem to be too dreadfully surprised you couldn’t make it.”
“Do I still have a job?” Casteval shifted to his closet, where the hangers were stuck in beautiful care while all of the clothing that should have been on them was tossed half-hazardly onto the floor underneath. Thirty-six hours was a long time, a dreadfully long time. He didn’t want to think about what all he’d missed, what all had happened. It was the weekend, at least, he could get on with his plans.
“Yeah, oddly enough, though there was a lot of sighing on the other side.” He stood up, stretching, letting a little it of his stomach show. There were deep dark veins protruding from his waistband, almost as if the blood within them was dead. “I made food.”
As hungry as Casteval was, glancing over at what he was eating made his appetite shrivel. “I’m good.”
“You’re not, but don’t worry, I made something else for you, just pasta. It didn’t look like you had much else.”
“Have you been here the entire time?” Casteval asked, pulling off his dress shirt. Cold hands immediately found his sides, waking him up the rest of the way. Whatever grogginess he had was shoved aside as he turned on the man, searching him, impossible to read through the sunglasses. “What are you doing?”
He took a step back, hands raised, though his amused expression didn’t change, “Sorry, it’s just in me… nature?”
“Well it’s creepy. I’m trying to change.”
Another step back.
“Could you leave the room or something?”
The man pushed his sunglasses up his nose and smiled, revealing those teeth that were just a bit too sharp on top. “Yes, sorry about that, I’ll heat your food up.”
Casteval shivered as the door closed behind him. He didn’t want to think of what all the man had been up to while he’d been asleep. He was certain that he hadn’t left though.
His shirt was so blood stained it was irreparable and he tossed it to the floor. The wound underneath was little more than a series of scars, barely noticeable against his skin. That wasn’t right, people didn’t heal that fast, he didn’t heal that fast. He was glad of it though, he didn’t want to spend too much time under that creep’s care.
He changed into some sweat pants and a soft t-shirt before padding out into the rest of the apartment. The man was, as promised, heating up some pasta, leaning against the counter and reading one of the spam magazines that Casteval always got in the mail.
“You’re into golf?” he asked.
Casteval shook his head, squeezing past him to get a glass. His mouth tasted terrible. “Why are you here?”
“I’m looking after you,” the man smiled, “thought you might need it, seeing as how you collapsed in the street like that, all bloody.”
Casteval poured himself some water from the sink. The kitchen wasn’t big enough for two people and he didn’t want to be stuck too close to this guy anyway. “But that could have been a call for an ambulance or just dropping me off. You didn’t have to stay here.”
“Look at yourself, at your wound,” he put one of those freezing hands of his on Casteval’s stomach, the cold finding its way through the material. Casteval shivered against him again. He didn’t like it, his touch felt like it came from a morgue. “its healing so fast, just a bit of sleep and you got through the worst of it. What would the doctors have said about that?”
Casteval’s mouth was dry. He drained the glass. “It’s more than that. You said some stuff before, about the Falling Plane. You know about this stuff.”
Either he didn’t recognize Casteval’s discomfort or he didn’t care, because he stepped closer, slotted himself against Casteval’s side. It wasn’t just his hand, but all of him that felt so cold, so much like death. “I have been looking for you a long time, Casteval, even though you say you aren’t the Casteval I’m looking for. I’ve confirmed it, watching you sleep. No one else tastes like you, smells like you. “He nuzzled against Casteval’s neck, breathing deeply. Casteval couldn’t move, as frozen as the skin touching him. “I was worried that someone else might come for you if I wasn’t here.”
“What are you?” it barely came out as a whisper.
He pulled away, blessedly, Casteval’s skin feeling so warm in the instant he left. “I am Ranvert, the bounty hunter. Have you read my book? It’s really quite excellent.”
Casteval shook his head. He wasn’t much of a reader. “No. Why do I have a bounty on my head? Why do you keep smelling me?”
The microwave beeped and Ranvert perked up, running a hand along Casteval’s lower back as he moved to it. “Ah! It’s hot, I hate microwaves, I can never guess the temperature things will be.” He pulled it out and moved over to the table. It was a small thing, hardly more than a card table, but the chairs were good. “You don’t entertain much, do you?”
“No,” Casteval shrugged sitting in the chair Ranvert pulled out for him. There were only two chairs in this room, one in the bedroom. “I don’t have the space.”
“I’d say, this place is downright depressing. Still, considering where we are, it could be a lot worse.”
“What do you mean?”
Ranvert sat down across from him, looking him over carefully, as if gaging how much Casteval could handle. He didn’t think it would be very much. He kept his head down, his eyes on his food, and stirred it with his fork, trying to get the heat even.
“So, you’ve been running around in other places, different stages of death, yeah?”
Casteval nodded.
“This is just another stage. I’d say it’s the worse one, since no one here seems to even know that they’re dead.”
Casteval wanted to argue, say he wasn’t dead, that Ranvert was crazy and he should get out before he called the police. He definitely thought that the police should have been called. He just knew that that would prove Ranvert right, even if he wasn’t.
“How far did you get? To being alive again?”
Casteval shrugged, “I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I’ve been hallucinating everything, that nothing I’ve seen is real.”
Ranvert sighed, pulling down his sunglasses to rub at his eyes. There were deep set lines around them, scars or veins or something, Casteval didn’t know. They didn’t look healthy in any case. The sunglasses were back in place before Casteval could see his eyes.
“It’s because they’re all book characters, yeah? None of them are real, not Casteval, surely, so none of them could really be dead, since they were never alive in the first place.” He leaned forward, taking one of Casteval’s hands in his own. His nails were black underneath, full of grime. “But what if the legends were true, just that they happened so long ago that no one remembers it that way. It’s too unbelievable, especially here, so the legends are just stories. Couldn’t have happened.”
“They don’t look like people.”
Ranvert swallowed, straightening up in his seat, “Remember that time when you were a kid and you fell down, scraping your knee real bad? And your mom came out all worried and everything was okay until she saw it? Then it hurt?”
Casteval stared at him, mouth falling open. But no, that happened to everyone, it was one of those shared memories. Ranvert wasn’t reading his mind or anything. “When you remember that, doesn’t your mom look the way she did the last time you saw her? Or do you see her at all? The point is, everyone remembers things differently, everyone pictures things differently. You can read the same book that everyone else on the planet reads, and no one would picture the characters the same way.”
“So that’s what they actually look like? Not in the books but in real life?” Casteval finally dug into his food, finding it a bit overcooked.
“No. They’ve been altered, changed by the way everyone has pictured them. Different versions of the story, different translations, different readers, all have changed them.”
“You still look pretty human.”
Ranvert smiled again, though there was no joy in it. “That’s because I’m not from your story. I’m from mine. I’m a self insert.”
