The trio had spent a little over 20 minutes walking through the endless hallway of the Halloween House before an aged door appeared before them.
Hazel was silent. She didn't like to believe in the supernatural, but she couldn't explain what she was seeing or what she saw. The most rational thing she could do was accept it for now. However, a feeling welled up at the recesses of her mind. She couldn't help but question. 'Why is he not afraid?'
Hazel looked on in silence, deep in thought.
Gasper followed a similar line of thought, although he was surprisingly more resistant to the thought than Hazel. 'Why does he seem happy? and what does this all mean? Are ghosts real? Is everything I know a lie?'
James' expression was calm, but there was a sharp glint behind his eyes. 'Could this be? Transmigration? What is beyond that door?'
Subconsciously his fingers reached out as if longing for something in the distance.
James examined the doorframe more closely.
The space around the door was almost naked. The wood was twisted, pockmarked, and striated with disease. Insect-gnawed tunnels formed script-like lines that allowed gaps to appear between the cellulose structures; peering through these gaps provided no visual cue, it was as if there was a thin veil obscuring what lay beyond.
An almost subtle gesture that in order to witness what lies beyond, one must cross the border of real and fake.
If they had paid attention, the trio would have noticed small, irregular shapes that blinked with a certain wetness peering at them through the cracks in the hall.
The scent of life near the door was a lot more intense; if this were an animated film, a thick smelly haze would have wafted beneath the door frame, but the only sign in reality was the scent that assaulted their nostrils, clawing into their sinuses like moldy gauze.
James sniffed sharply, trying to clear the mucus that flooded his head. 'Ugh, It stinks...'
Braap... Braap… His sinuses finally gave way. James blinked out the tears and stepped forward. His sneakers left soft impressions in the floor.
Gasper and Hazel followed, but this time a bit distant. They both had an apprehension about what their friend was doing. This felt wrong. The decision felt like a mistake, but he seemed enthralled by the prospect. His fingers were no longer gliding out, grasping at eternity, but holding onto something tangible, something he could believe in. A simple doorknob. A door. One that he could open now. One that wouldn't pass him by.
Gasper and Hazel themselves felt a deep longing wash over them. In that moment, they could see a light in James' eyes that reminded them of the light they sometimes saw in their own on their best days. The feeling of purpose, but even then they could not understand... Why this? What about this sickly, stinky place enthralled him so much?
Gasper stared at James. 'Why is he not afraid? He looks so excited.'
Similar thoughts seemed to make rounds in Hazel's mind. 'What's up with this guy? This place reeks of something demonic, but he's rushing headfirst into it with desire.
James' eyes twinkled as he reached out to touch the door. His hand grasped the knob; it seemed to hold so much power in his hands, but before he could twist it, a hand fell on his shoulder.
"Hey—" Gasper's brows were furrowed. "I- Are you sure this door leads to the outside?"
Gasper asked with a genuine tremble in his voice. Before James could reply, Gasper responded to his own question, rephrasing it. "Scratch that, are you sure this door leads to where you want us to be?"
James stared at his best friend, whom he had known for years. A man who had taught him how to stand for himself. A friend who was there for him when he was in need and a person who thought better of him than he did himself. He could not come up with a response. His lashes flickered with thought.
Once again trying to peer through eternity. He then turned to the doorway. Surprisingly, through the cracks, veiled in darkness and shadows, his mind flashed to those strange images.
A pumpkin patch filled with jack-o'-lanterns under a black sky.
A field of wheat bobbing their seed heads as if listening to a jolly tune.
A pale girl in a bunny mask holding a paper lantern with no flame.
A spoked star hung on a string, turning slowly in the sky.
To that place foreign from what he knew, a place that he felt calling to him. A place where he could stop being him. A place where he could be someone else. A place where he could change?
Hazel stared at James. Her intuition told her that there was something wrong in this moment, but she couldn't figure out what. She began to analyze James from his perspective, placing his life in her shoes. 'Hmm...I haven't known him as long as Gasper, but there is one thing I do know about him:he hates the world he lives in now... He's always living in a fantasy. Always looking for an escape. Drinking... Going out... It's like he's running from something...'
Silence blanketed everyone. James' lips parted, seemingly finding the words that were tipped on his tongue, but before he could speak, Jasper caught a glimpse of something beyond the veil.
An image pasted itself into Gasper's mind.
A hooded figure was crouching near a bonfire. The flame crackled and flickered as the image turned into a motion picture. It revealed her face. Her features were soft, and her eyes were a light brown. They seemed to hold deep resolve, maybe hope, as her hands were clasped.
On her index finger was a ring. It was embedded with a green gemstone. She seemed to be praying. Her soft prayer entered his mind, covering the distance of space and possibly time.
~ Oh god of fortune, take my flesh to your cornucopia. Burn of me what you must so that I find him. Burn of me what you must. Oh Burn of me, Oh burn of me, grant me my wish beyond what my eyes can see. ~
He watched as she tossed her upper body into the flames like tossing a sack of rice into the dirt. She squirmed in the flames. Her fingers writhed and convulsed as the fire blazed, and within, the flame seemed to gyrate and dance as she slowly twitched on the flame.
His vision was soon blanketed in the bulging of the flames, but beyond that, he beheld an 8-spoked spindle ticking forth, and for a brief moment, he saw the body move.
And then it was gone. Like a hazy memory. Something to once again be forgotten in time.
Gasper stared at the door. The door stared back. The shadows that once looked scattered and disorderly now bounced off its frame like a crooked smile, as if beckoning him.
'Mom? ' Gasper felt his internal world shake. He knew that his mother abandoned him as a child, but was that really her? He never saw pictures, but something about her voice. It felt warm to him, like catching a familiar scent from your childhood on the wind but being unable to tell where or what it's coming from. Just something to bother you for the rest of the day.
James did not see what Gasper saw. He watched as his friend's pupils dilated and his expression grew more unsightly.
Before James could ask what happened. All he felt was the gentle twisting of the knob.
Hazel watched on in horror.
Gasper's gaze turned firm; a familiar determination James once saw as a kid appeared on his likeness as he smiled...
He smiled.
He smiled.
He smiled, but this time there was something more there. Something James couldn't quite understand. Pain? Pleasure? No, something... but what?
"Gasper?"
Click.
The door was opened. The veil between worlds was broken. A force beyond nature overcame them.
Their realities warped and stretched as their forms ragdolled into the void as they were dragged into a world of mysticism and madness.
A world as vast as their own, filled with impossible landscapes and landmarks.
Creatures that tower over skies and scrape the heavens like it's a cage.
A world where farms and outposts lie beneath the gaze of forgotten pagan gods.
A place that gives and takes, and where deeper evils fester and monsters creep and wait.
A place where no man has ever escaped.
The Hollow Wilds.