The room smelled of the cloying sweetness of herbs. With a pale, gloomy look, Mariah took a breath that rattled in her chest like dice in a cup. She closed her eyes. It was a brief, futile attempt to shut out the dread. When she opened them again, the change was stark. Veins, normally hidden beneath the surface of her skin, pulsed with a sickly blue light. They were a network of corrupted rivers flowing beneath her flesh. The glow was strongest in her hands and neck.

  The whites of her eyes were gone, replaced by a blood-red spiderweb. They were a horrifying bloom of crimson that made her like something dragged up from the depths of a fever dream. A low hum, barely audible, vibrated from her. There was a subtle dissonance that set teeth on edge. The air itself seemed to ripple around her, bending the light from the kerosene lamp and twisting it as if caught in an unseen current.

  With movements that were both precise and hesitant, Mariah placed her hands on Olt's bandaged chest. The initial warmth was a lie, a fleeting deception. The lamp on the bedside table chose that moment to stage its own little rebellion. It blinked, threatening to plunge the room into absolute darkness. It sputtered, coughed, and then, with a defiant surge, roared back to life.

  Beneath Mariah's touch, Olt's skin began to betray him. The already bruised flesh around the bandages darkened, blossoming into a grotesque tapestry of black and blue. A coldness, sharp and unnatural, seeped into him. This chill had nothing to do with the room's temperature and everything to do with the violation occurring within his cells. Olt shivered, a violent tremor racking his body.

  His eyes widened with dilated pupils in a desperate attempt to make sense of the icy fire consuming him. Numbness spread from his chest, reaching for his limbs and his mind. The faces of his family dissolved into a hazy watercolor. Then, his eyes rolled back, and he slipped away, falling into a darkness deeper than any sleep.

  Silence descended. Cristina and Hannah exchanged a look of shared terror. Jeffrey and Rebecca, their faces grim, moved closer to the bed. Their bodies were tense. Mariah remained frozen, her hands hovering over Olt's still chest. Her bloodshot eyes remained fixed on his face.

  Then, the world shifted.

  …

  Olt awoke, but not to relief, and not to the familiar comfort of his body. He was trapped. He was now a prisoner in his own skin. Paralysis held him fast. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even blink away the unsettling clarity of his vision. It was as if he were viewing the world through a warped lens. The familiar room was distorted, and the edges blurred. Strangely, the pain was absent. This lack of sensation was more terrifying than any agony.

  Through his limited field of vision, he saw his family gathered around the bed like mourners at a premature wake. He could hear their voices. The sounds were a muffled, indistinct murmur that heightened his isolation.

  Despair intensified.

  From the shadows near the doorway, a figure emerged, tall and gaunt against the dim light. It moved with a slow, deliberate grace. The figure was draped in a long, dark trench coat. The collar was turned up, obscuring the lower half of its face. A top hat, perched at a rakish angle, cast a shadow over its eyes, hiding them from view. It was a caricature of menace, and yet, it was more terrifying than any monster.

  There was no clown makeup, no garish colors, no overt sign of the bizarre. But the impression was there. An unsettling wrongness clung to the figure like a shroud. It was in the unnatural stillness, the way it seemed to glide rather than walk. Perhaps it was the hint of a smile. It was too wide and too sharp. Olt spotted the smile for a fleeting moment beneath the brim of the hat.

  The figure approached, its movements inexorable. It focused solely on Olt. His vision blocked out the worried faces of his family. This creature became the sole object of Olt’s paralyzed terror.

  The lamp flickered. The humming from Mariah had faded, leaving behind a silence that was more profound, more unsettling, than any noise. And in that silence, Olt could only stare, as the figure loomed over him. Nightmarish flesh stood before the bed. The smile was a mere upturning of the corners of the mouth. Yet, in the shimmering lamplight, it was malicious. As if all this was not enough, Olt was then surprised once more.

  The world went black.

  The light was simply gone, extinguished as if by an unseen hand. One moment there was light, the next, absolute, suffocating darkness. The kind of darkness that presses against the eyeballs, unseen and unseeable. Olt's breath hitched with a strangled gasp trapped in his paralyzed throat. His childhood fear, long buried beneath layers of forced maturity, clawed its way to the surface.

  The void.

  Silence was filled with the frantic thudding of Olt's own heart. There was a subtle shift in weight. A slight depression of the mattress near the foot of the bed came next. It was as if something had sat down.

  Something heavy.

  A voice seemed to slither directly into his mind, yet somehow also vibrating in the blackness of the room. It was a voice devoid of humanity.

  "Octavius…"

  The name, Olt’s name, spoken with a chilling formality.

  "...I’m sitting on the bed."

  The words were simple, factual, yet they spoke thousands of threats. The darkness amplified the effect, terror increasing the thud of Olt’s heartbeat.

  Silence returned.

  Olt strained his eyes, trying to pierce the blackness, but it was useless. He was blind, helpless, and a prisoner. Tears, hot and unwelcome, welled in his eyes. He was drowning in fear, in utter, absolute helplessness. A breath against his ear vibrated within his very skull.

  "Octavius… I’m closer now."

  The words were a violation. They were a deliberate escalation of the torment. They painted a picture in his mind, a picture of the unseen figure moving closer, inching its way up the bed. Olt could almost feel it.

  Pregnant with dread, the silence returned. It stretched on and on, an eternity of fear compressed into a few agonizing seconds.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Unfortunately, what happened next set Olt over the edge.

  A weight on his chest set in. It was not heavy, not crushing, but present. And with it, the voice, no longer a whisper, but a mocking shriek shattered the silence and ripped through the last vestiges of Olt’s sanity.

  "I'M HERE!"

  The sound was a physical blow. Already rigid with paralysis, Olt stiffened further. His breath stopped. His heart seemed to stutter, to falter, and then, it stopped. A moment of oblivion set in.

  Then, light.

  The kerosene lamp flared back to life with a sudden, almost violent intensity, banishing the absolute darkness. The familiar guest bedroom sprang back into existence. The worn furniture, the faded wallpaper, the rain-streaked window – it all looked shockingly normal.

  But it wasn't normal.

  His family’s faces were masks of exaggerated horror. They were frozen in unnatural parodies of shock. Mouths agape, eyes wide and unblinking. They were statues of terror with quiet screams.

  Tall, gaunt, and draped in the long dark coat, the creature remained standing before the bed. It hadn't moved, hadn't vanished with the return of the light. It stood there, at the foot of the bed, silent and menacing.

  Olt gasped, air rushing back into his lungs, his heart resuming its frantic rhythm. He was still paralyzed, but the darkness was gone. And yet, the terror remained. He could only stare. His eyes were wide, locked on the figure.

  This time the smile wasn't subtle. It was a grotesque, predatory rictus, stretching the figure's mouth impossibly wide. Teeth were revealed that were too square, too blocky, to be human. They were like the chipped, yellowed keys of a derelict piano. He sounded like a predator toying with its prey.

  "If you are going to be a Champion, Octavius…the dark… is the least of your worries."

  It sounded like a poisoned promise. Olt's mind, already reeling, tried to latch onto something, anything, to pull him back from the abyss. It had to be a nightmare.

  The pain, the shock, Mariah's healing. It was all a hallucination.

  Focusing on his family, he saw as they remained frozen like grotesque mannequins around the bed. Their faces were still locked in those exaggerated expressions of horror. They were silent, unmoving and unreal.

  But the figure, damn it, the figure knew.

  "Nightmare? Real?" The voice slithered like a serpent. "Octavius… this is real. You’re just in my world now."

  A pause followed. The suspense was terrifying.

  "We are in the Aether now, Octavius."

  Olt felt a cold dread seep into his bones. This was a certainty that he had crossed a threshold. He had stumbled into a realm where the rules of logic and reason no longer applied.

  "I have waited patiently, Octavius…" The creature's tone shifted, becoming almost formal, as if reciting a long-rehearsed script. "...for the day I could speak to one of my patrons. And that day… has come."

  Patron?

  The word echoed in Olt's mind.

  Patron of what? Of whom? Was this about the Aether? But how? There’s been no potion.

  The creature, as if plucking the thoughts directly from Olt’s brain, answered before he could even form the question.

  "The potion, Octavius. Yes… the potion will tell you more."

  The creature held a seductive edge.

  Then, the pretense of civility shattered.

  The creature elongated, stretching upwards like a horrid parody of a human being. Its form became impossibly thin, its shadow looming over Olt like a veil. It bent down, its face inches from Olt's, displaying distorted features. The eyes, dark and hollow, seemed to bore into Olt’s soul. The skin, pale and stretched taut, had a sickly, almost translucent quality. And the teeth, those awful, block-like teeth, were now a gaping maw of menace.

  The voice, no longer even remotely human, became a frantic, deranged mantra.

  "Take it, Octavius… take it… take it… take it… take it…"

  The words hammered into Olt's mind. He was drowning in the pressure.

  …A gasp. A jolt.

  Olt's eyes snapped open, his body convulsing slightly as he broke free from the paralysis. The nightmare, the creature, and the voice were gone. He was back in the guest bedroom, the lamp burning steadily. His family was moving again, their frozen horror replaced by expressions of concern and of relief.

  Mariah leaned over him, her face, worried. She addressed him softly, cutting through the lingering nightmare.

  "Olt! Olt, slow down! You're breathing too fast. What happened?"

  He tried to speak, to explain, to describe the horror he had just experienced, but the words caught in his throat. Tears, hot and shameful, streamed down his face. He was back, but the terror lingered.

  Was it a dream? A hallucination? Or was it something more?

  Light stabbed at Olt's eyes. He blinked, as the world was still a blurry watercolor of shapes and colors. Sounds rushed in, but they were jumbled. His head throbbed. A dull ache pulsed in his chest. His limbs felt heavy, leaden, but the paralysis was fading, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. He could move, slowly.

  "Olt? Can you hear me? How do you feel?"

  The voice was close, soft, laced with a worry he couldn't quite place. It was Mariah. Her face swam into focus above him, her features blurred at the edges, but her concern was clear.

  "Mariah…?" He croaked. "What… What did you do to me?"

  "You were out for a minute, maybe less. I… I tried to heal you." Her hand, still hovering near his chest, trembled slightly. "Does it hurt less?"

  Olt tried to take a deep breath, expecting the searing pain to return, but it didn't. There was soreness, a deep ache, but the sharp, agonizing fire was gone. He could breathe.

  "Better… I think. It’s sore… but… different…"

  High-pitched and trembling, Hannah cut through the fog in his mind.

  "But he was, he was so still! And cold! Are you sure you didn't hurt him more? He looks… different."

  Olt felt Hannah’s presence nearby, a frantic energy that made his head spin. He tried to focus on her, but his vision was still blurry, his thoughts scattered.

  "Olt,” Hannah said “are you… are you really okay? Do you feel strange? Different?"

  "Mom, look at him,” Cristina interrupted. “He's awake, he's talking. He's clearly better. Mariah helped him."

  Olt tried to smile, to reassure them, but his facial muscles felt stiff, unresponsive.

  Jeffrey cut through the others.

  "Can you breathe easier? Don't push yourself, but… how do you feel, really?"

  Olt wanted to answer, to tell them he was fine, but the words wouldn't come. The nightmare was still there, swirling in his mind. He couldn't explain it, couldn't even begin to describe what he'd experienced.

  "…Better…" Olt repeated.

  He shook his head slightly, trying to clear the fog in his brain.

  "…Don't… remember… much… Just… I’m so tired…"

  Closing his eyes, Olt shut out the worried faces and the blurry room. He wanted to sleep, to escape, but the darkness behind his eyelids was no longer a refuge. It was a void, a reminder of the abyss he'd glimpsed.

  A hand landed on his shoulder. Jeffrey's grounding presence eased the chaos of Olt’s thoughts.

  A tremor ran through his entire body. He was better, physically. Mariah had done something, he knew that. But something else had happened, something he couldn't understand.

  Opening his eyes again, Olt’s view remained distant. The room was still blurry, the faces still concerned, but he felt detached, disconnected. He was here, but he wasn't. A part of him was still trapped in that darkness, with that… thing.

  He looked down at his left hand, resting limply on the blanket. It looked normal, felt normal, but he knew it wasn't. He could still feel the faint coolness, the subtle, almost imperceptible shimmer beneath the skin.