Paradise Lost

“Oh! I know!” interjected Alma, hand raised in inquisitive excitement as if she had interrupted a lecture. “It was a djinn, right? Maybe an ifrit?”

“Alm, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I told you I didn’t see any weird spirits that day. Although, hang on. Maybe you are onto something. Things did end up getting really weird.”

“A marid maybe?” Alma’s encyclopedic knowledge of monsters knew no bounds.

“You read too much mythology wank online, mate.”

“Yeah. What? Is that not something to be proud of?”

"Maybe if you surround yourself with weirdos."

Alma stared silently at Hwalín. Then turned to Qu'l-Nia. Before finally looking back at the doorway facing Heloise's room. "You don't say…" As she turned back to Hwalín, she let out a sudden yelp.

“What was that?! Why’d you scream?”

The sniper brought a finger to her lips, slightly embarrassed. “Look over there. At that corner. What do you see?”

“What? Not much. A bookcase filled with old books. A table?”

“You don’t see it…”

Alma,” called the eldritch woman. “Are you referring to the disembodied face protruding from the wall?”

On the wall behind the group, bulging invasively from the corner, was the grossly shaped figure of an apparition’s face. A lipless mouth stretched into a ghastly rictus all the way around its head, the jaw seemingly connected by strands of flesh. Atop its head were thin antennae connected to a pair of granule-sized eyes.

Alma turned to Qu’l-Nia swiftly. “You see it? You see it, right?!” Her voice shrunk to a whisper. “What the fuck do we do? Hwal! Quick! Your swords!”

Hwalín unsheathed her other blade and readied them in front of her.

“There is no need to disturb our intrusive visitor. What you are seeing is a spatial projection of a being from a separate dimensional wavelength than our own. I did not see it initially until you brought it to our attention. Once I knew what to look for, I saw its form begin to manifest before me. It poses no tangible threat to our reality; it is simply a ghost."

Alma looked at the horrifying face once more. Its antennae squirmed grotesquely, some unknown purpose crawling around the gulfs of its mindscape.

“I don’t want to see that!” she screamed. “Wait. If Hwalín can’t see it, then—No. Don’t tell me. My eyes have gotten worse. I was fine with just seeing the small ones but, these are getting a little harder to ignore!"

"It appears your metalateral perception has begun developing at a rapidly increasing rate. I am not sure what to make of this."

"That's some shit luck, mate. I don't think I'd be able to suffer seeing those ugly mugs that you do."

"It's not easy. It was never easy. And now…" Alma sighed, then groaned. "Metalateral perception? Is that what we're calling it?"

"It is a close approximation of what you describe this ability as."

"And this thing isn't going to hurt us?"

"It exists on a completely separate plane from ours. It does not even realize this space exists."

Alma buried her face in her hands. "It's so creepy looking. It doesn't even look remotely natural. I thought the chthonae were bad." Alma got up from her seat and moved to the other end of the room. The girl kept her face covered and spoke from behind her hands. "I'm sorry. I just can't. Why is my life such a major shitfest? Hwal. Please, continue with your story."

"You sure? You didn't seem this scared when we fought that monster earlier."

"It's not the same," she said flatly. "The nuckelavee isn't just sitting in the middle of my living room wall staring at me flat in the face. Or whatever the fuck it's looking at me with! You don't just relax around these things. Especially when they're this close! They are not the same."

"Nia," said Hwalín. "Can't you… do something about it?"

“It is not within my purview or ability to exorcise this poor creature. It is a denizen of your planet, in a neighboring dimension, minding its own business. Perhaps, Alma, you would benefit from extricating yourself of your long-held prejudices.”

Alma took a deep breath and slowly raised her head. “Okay. It’s fine. I’m good. It’s not like it can hurt me anyway, right? It’s the same as it’s always been. Just an unexpected development. My sight has gotten a wee bit stronger is all. I’m not gonna gouge my eyes out or anything… yet.”

“Should I continue my story another time then?” asked Hwalín.

“No! No. Keep going,” said Alma nervously, eyes darting back and forth between the corner of the room. “I really want to know what happens.”

“Okay… So, that day, right?” she began again. “I was hearing a buzzing. Least that’s how it started. I’d like to mention that before this I never had anything weird going on with my ears. The other felt the pain, but they didn’t hear anything like I did. And we’d come this far, I didn’t want to like the coward all of a sudden so I did the stupidest thing I could’ve ever done. I kept going. And the further into the valley we went, the more intense this noise got. Until eventually it wasn’t a buzzing at all. It turned into this strange thumping sound. Thump, thump, thump every second. Almost like a drumbeat. I figured if it was getting louder, it just meant we were headed the right way, yeah? Eventually the sound stopped when the valley got deep enough to form a canyon. The cliffs were so high one couldn’t even see the horizon anymore—only the shadows of dark, voiceless birds. It felt like quite some time had passed, but I noticed we hadn’t lost any sunlight since the whole headaches started. I still can’t quite make sense of it. It was as if time had frozen. I thought maybe the heat had just been playing tricks on me. Well, at this point I hadn’t even been thinking of the flowers. It was the noise I was curious about. Were there people down there performing some kind of ritual involving drums? I had to see for myself.”

“You wanted to prove to yourself you were brave?” asked Alma. “Or just not crazy?”

“I wanna say the former, but thinking on it now, I think the latter.”

“And what about your partners? They weren’t the least bit scared of traveling this far into no man’s land?”

“Guess we were all trying to prove something to ourselves at that point. Or maybe they just chocked the headaches up to withdrawals and had convinced themselves that we were still gonna find something. At that point, I wasn’t sure what we were going to find. Some ancient herbs, or maybe a long, forgotten temple to bloodthirsty gods. Something intangible was pushing me to keep going. We could've vanished down there and no one would have ever found us. Once again, I started seeing evidence of ancestral activity in the form of crude effigies and markings all over the walls. Growing from the cracks and crevices of the walls of the canyon were the flowers we so desperately wanted. The crunching of sand beneath our feet was so loud as we scrambled all over ourselves to pick what we could. Seemed like a mission accomplished, right? Nah. I just couldn't leave it at that. ‘A quick peek,’ I told them. We’d come all this way. Would be a waste not to investigate. Might even find us some antique treasures. So they all followed my lead to the end of the canyon. Didn’t take long before the canyon opened up into a closed off oasis. An incredible looking spring surrounded by hundreds of the most vibrant followers we’d ever fucking seen. It was a blasted paradise. Everything’s kinda a blur from then on. I vaguely recall seeing some sorta entrance to the inside of the rock on the other side of the oasis. Never did get a chance to check that out since that was the moment when everything took an insane turn. I’m still not sure how things turned out the way they did.”

“A marvelous sunset paradise beset by an inscrutable feeling of dread,” observed Qu’l-Nia. “It is heartening to know you overcame whatever enigmatic obstacle was presented to you to make it here, to this moment.”

“You caaare,” teased Alma, smiling. “We’re really growing on you, Q, you cosmic weirdo.”

“I admit, you two childlings have made this journey considerably more amusing and entirely more possible than if I had remained alone.”

“I suppose being a God’s pet is better’n being on their bad side,” said Hwalín.

The eldritch woman frowned. “You are not my pets. You are the ones I have entrusted with a tenable future. I have watched you all for a very long time. You are creatures that carry an indomitable semblance of spirit. You struggle. You fight. You survive. Hwalín, you have guided and protected me. You have shown me how to connect and relate to you childlings and made me feel like one of your own. Alma, you stopped and helped us to fight a battle that was not yours without even a second thought. You had your reservations but you stepped up in the end, and that matters more than you know. I thank you for that. We will contest this planet’s doomed fate. We will correct the course of things. Now, Hwalín, I believe you were about to reach the climax of your tale.”