The wind outside the cathedral didn't just blow, it screamed. It whipped against my face like loose wire as I hurled myself through the shattered stained-glass frame, my coat snapping behind me like a broken sail.
I didn't land on grass. I didn't land on concrete.
My boots slammed onto a narrow, slick ledge of blackened slate that jutted out over an absolute, bottomless abyss. Above us, the cathedral wasn't a building anymore. It was a rotting carcass suspended in a violent, red-tinged fog, its wooden beams snapping and plunging into the dark below like falling teeth.
"Keep moving! Don't look down!" I yelled, though my own advice was useless against the primal panic clawing at my chest.
Behind us, the broken window burst outward.
They didn't just crawl out, they spilled. Dozens of the Echoes, those jagged, mutated souls, poured through the opening like a wave of liquid bone and multi-eyed spite. The sound they made was a terrifying chorus of wet, clicking mandibles and screeching metal, a noise that vibrated directly inside my teeth.
"Oh, look at that," Kori shouted over the roar of the abyss, floating serenely three inches off the ledge beside me, his arms crossed casually behind his head. "A fan club! I knew my hair looked good today."
"Kori, they're going to tear off my limbs and wear my skin!" I shrieked, my boots skittering on the icy slate as I sprinted along the cliffside path. The air here tasted of old copper and dead roses, so thick it coated the back of my throat in slime.
"First of all, dramatic," Kori scoffed, casually drifting around a jagged outcropping of rock that I had to clumsily leap over. "Second of all, if they wear your skin, do they inherit the ten dollars? Because I'm not doing business with a giant spider-thing, Garfield. I have standards."
"Focus, Lad," Steve's voice sounded right beside my ear, though his towering, skeletal frame was floating gracefully backward, keeping his hollow sockets locked on the horde gaining on us. "The path ahead bends into the Bleed. The spatial architecture is collapsing. If you fall, your physical body will unravel into raw concepts."
"Raw concepts?!" I choked out, my lungs burning, the blister on my thumb throbbing with every frantic beat of my heart. "I don't even know what that means!"
"It means you turn into bad vibes and math, bro," Kori chimed in, suddenly reappearing right in front of me, forcing me to duck under his hovering boots so I wouldn't plummet into the void. "Nobody wants to be math. Speed it up!"
Up ahead, the ledge tapered off into nothingness. The narrow stone path simply ended, opening up to a massive chasm. Floating in the middle of the empty, fog-choked air was a single, rusted iron door, hanging vertically in mid-space with no frame, no wall, and no floor beneath it.
"There!" I pointed wildly, my voice cracking. "Is that an exit?!"
"It's a localized anomaly," Steve said, his bony hands moving in precise, hypnotic circles through the frost laden air. Blue-white frost erupted from his fingertips, forming a fragile, shimmering bridge of ice that spanned the gap between our ledge and the floating door. "It leads out. But the ice will not hold under the weight of the swarm."
SKREEEEEEE!
The lead Echo leaped. It was massive, a towering mess of translucent, rib-like limbs and a pulsing, pale bulb that sprouted five twitching, human-like eyes. It landed heavy on the slate behind us, its sharp claws carving deep grooves into the rock just feet from my heels. The stench of its decay washed over me, cold and suffocating, making my stomach churn violently.
"I've got this," Kori said, pulling a pull-string on his chainsaw like he was starting a lawnmower on a quiet Sunday morning.
VROOOOM—KR-CHUNK!
The engine roared to life, coughing out a thick cloud of blue-grey gasoline fumes that briefly smothered the smell of rotting souls. Kori did a ridiculous, theatrical spin in mid-air, bringing the buzzing teeth of the saw down in a blinding arc.
"Concert over, you ugly bastard!" Kori yelled.
The saw bit into the lead creature's thorax with a terrifying CRUNCH-SLICCCCK. Black, tar-like ichor sprayed across the sky, sizzling as it rained down into the abyss. The creature let out a deafening, warbling shriek before collapsing into a heap of twitching limbs.
"Steve!" Kori shouted, wiping a spot of black blood off his dark shades with his thumb. "Ice the bridge! Garfield, move your non-floating ass!"
I didn't hesitate. I sprinted onto the bridge of ice.
The cold beneath my boots was so intense it burned straight through my leather soles, numbing my feet instantly. The ice groaned under my weight, hairline fractures spider-webbing out from every step I took. Below me, through the translucent ice, I could see endless black clouds swirling with distant, agonizing faces, the true Deep.
"Don't look down, don't look down," I chanted to myself, squeezing my vintage lighter so hard in my pocket that the metal bit into my palm.
Behind me, the rest of the horde surged onto the narrow slate. Steve raised his arms, his skeletal ribs glowing with a faint, ominous violet light. "Grave-bound frost, obey," he rasped flatly.
A massive wave of pure, crystalline ice burst from the stone, freezing the front line of the horde solid in mid-stride. But there were too many. The weight of the creatures behind them crushed the frozen ones into red-tinted snow, their clicking limbs clambering over the dead to reach us.
"Garfield! The handle!" Kori yelled as he hovered backward over the ice bridge, using his chainsaw like a bat to swat away smaller, leaping parasites that looked like fleshy, multi-legged teeth. "Grab the handle!"
I reached the end of the ice bridge, stumbling onto the tiny, trembling lip of stone just beneath the floating door. The iron was freezing to the touch, covered in a thick layer of red rust that smelled of dried blood.
I grabbed the brass door handle and yanked.
Nothing. It was locked solid.
"It won't open!" I panicked, slamming my shoulder against the heavy wood. "It's locked!"
"Of course it's locked, it's a cosmic threshold!" Kori landed heavily beside me, the ice bridge cracking ominously under the sudden shift. He slung his chainsaw over his back and reached into his coat pocket. "Hold on, I got a skeleton key."
He didn't pull out a key. He pulled out a slightly crushed, half-eaten crowbar.
"Where did you even—"
"Don't ask questions you aren't ready to pay for!" Kori jammed the crowbar into the doorframe and leaned all his weight onto it. "Steve! A little help here! The nerd is sweating through his jacket!"
Steve glided over, his massive, boney hand slamming onto the top of the door frame. The air turned so cold my breath froze into tiny ice crystals before it could even leave my mouth. The wood around the lock splintered under the sheer pressure of Steve's magic.
CRACK!
The door swung inward, revealing not another nightmare void, but a blinding, beautiful beam of terrible warm light, accompanied by the loud, glorious sound of a microwave beeping.
"Home sweet home!" Kori cheered, grabbing the back of my coat collar and throwing me headfirst through the threshold.
I tumbled through the doorway, crashing hard onto wooden floor of the apartment. I rolled over, gasping for air, the taste of ozone and decay slowly fading from my tongue, replaced by the smell of cheap stale coffee and microwave popcorn.
I was back in the apartment kitchen. My half eaten meal was still there, along with my window still begin open.
Behind me, Steve stepped calmly through the threshold, dragging Kori by the back of his shirt just as the ice bridge outside shattered into a million sparkling fragments. Steve casually kicked the iron door shut behind them.
SLAM.
The door disappeared, leaving only the plain, beige drywall of the kitchen.
Silence descended on the room, heavy and absolute, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and my own violent, desperate gasps for air. I lay there on the cold floorboards, staring up at the water-stained ceiling tiles, my heart beating a erratic rhythm against my chest.
Kori dusted off his jacket, casually stepping over my prone body as he walked toward the microwave.
"Man, running from cosmic horrors really works up an appetite," Kori said, popping the microwave door open and grabbing a steaming bag of popcorn. He turned to look down at me, a wide, obnoxious grin spreading across his face behind his dark shades. "So. Garfield. Ten bucks. Cash or hard labour?"
I pulled my coat over my face and groaned into the dark. "I'm haunting you, Kori. I swear to God, the second I die, I'm haunting the microwave."