The Median
Copyright© 2011 Nicholas House
Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.




For my mother who always believed in me and helped my dreams become reality 
Prologue –The City of Light

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence and there was no place for them”
-Revelations 21:11

Mankind’s affliction with the physical and the spiritual has surpassed what anyone could have expected. Nations wage wars for the supposed 'Glory of God' in vein attempts to obtain their deities grace. No-one ever supposes that they are fighting for the wrong side, plunging themselves ever deeper into the satanic flames.
Evil has always existed, not in the form of a devil or land of flaming brimstone but in people. People’s greed and lust for power fuels deeds that shouldn’t even be thought of let alone carried out. An evil such as this can spread beyond life and if the will is strong enough, grow beyond control. Accepted is the fact that no-one should speculate about the next world. Is there an afterlife? Heaven? Hell? The true question is “What lies between?” A ghost world? Some kind of never plane, where the restless dead await their passage to the gleaming city of light. Or await their trial and judgement. None the less, no matter where, the evil of man will rule out and tyranny of the worlds hate will consume.

There are those who know things. Things about the Earth and beyond that should never be known. Most of these few people don’t believe it to be real and even fewer who acknowledge it to be true. Those few who do accept it are oppressed and dismissed by the masses and their ‘righteous’ religions as kooks and members of the occult. These people, though, are strong. Their abilities can place them in situations where reality can seem like a dream and dreams like nightmares. Still, the naive are at risk, the weak and the inexperienced. They can be seen as portals, unguarded gates by those longing to return from the other side, and are readily open to possession by powerful spirits with a long history in the median world. However, instances of possession are rare and are dealt with as much due care as they deserve, hidden as cases of extreme schizophrenia.
Like they can travel to our world, we too are able to cross the silent borders that divide our planes. But only the most skilled of Medians may do this at will with little fear of a lack of success or worse. These instances, though, are even rarer than possessions and are not only thought about by the masses with speculation but with a great air of impossibility. It is unlikely that Medians can physically control the dearly departed, to do this would require a power far greater than anyone has ever possessed, but they can merely commune with them, ease their concerns. Medians exist solely to guide the lonely dead to their spiritual destiny with as little disturbance to the world at large as possible. Maintaining the illusion to the mass populous that the unknown beyond remains exactly that. But on occasions restless souls will make themselves known and the medians purpose is called upon for much more than its original intentions.



I-I – A Long Night

“Absent in body, but present in spirit”
-Corinthians 5:3

As a child I was never a large believer in anything other than what I knew to be true and as far as I was concerned that was simply the world around me. There were dreams, though. Every child has nightmares but these were different; terrible visions of what I was sure couldn’t be real. My parents always told me that I had an overactive imagination. How could they understand when they never even wanted to try, what’s worse I believed them. At least up until that night. I was only twelve; the driving rain had never been a good condition to drive in. Our car was run off the road by a jack-knifing lorry and…No one should have to see that sort of thing, let alone a child when his parents are involved. There was only one possible thing worse than it and that was having to live thought it twice. In my dreams I had already seen it, every harrowing detail yet the very essence of what I had been taught told me not to accept it. For the next few months I lived with my aunt and every day wrestled to come to terms with everything that I had lived though and all the time experiencing more and more vivid visions, amazing places constructed of what was almost pure light, shadowy figures and an ever present feeling that I was not like the others. Eventually I accepted that I could no longer go on denying that what was so obvious. I had something, a gift, and to deny it would bring something that wasn’t even worth thinking about.
Sure, I’d been christened…Haven’t we all? It’s not as though I liked the religion or anything. Bunch of hypocrites really, to say the least. It all basically adds up to me trying to keep as much of a distance as possible between me and any sort of church. It must be that it’s some sort of cruel irony of fate that happens to be the first place they always tend to think of heading.

A dark, cold, October night. A flickering streetlamp casts an intermittent yellow shadow onto the wet street. A dark figure sits in a car parked adjacent to an old stone chapel, watching shimmering silhouettes against the strained glass.
After a minute or two he abruptly opened the car door and swung a leg out into the drizzling rain. He paused and looked to the gloomy sky, then back down and shook his head. The man continued to exit the car and slammed the door, forcing numerous beads of water to run forward from the sunroof onto the windscreen. He pulled forward his leather jacket and adjusted the collar in a vain attempt to gain protection from the rain, then began to stride towards the chapels double panelled opening.
He grabbed the Iron handle and listened though the door to what sounded like a scuffle, or at least a one sided struggle. Eventually the doors were pushed open and he entered briskly, leaving a drizzly mist in his wake.
Two youths were attempting to pull a poor box from the clenched arms of a clergyman.
“Hey!”
The youths quickly turned around and gritted their teeth, with one stepping forward and flicking his own collar up aggressively. “Wha’ du ya want!?” this was barked as though it were a command, even though the individual had absolutely no authority to command it with.
“I would like you to leave…” the man looked them both up and down in turn, “right now,” he began to walk forward, slowly sliding his hand inside his jacket.
“And ‘ow ya gunna make us!?” the second youth snapped, squeezing the tip of his Burberry cap together and spitting on the ground.
“I said now,” he smoothly drew a long barrelled six round revolver from a holster concealed under the glistening wet leather and pointed it casually yet very accurately at the nearest youth. “I suggest you comply,” he finished after a few seconds.
The youths shuffled uneasily and then started towards the door. The barrel of the gun tracked them out of the chapel and then began to fall as the door creaked to a close.
The priest stood, unsure whether to be pleased by the actions of this mysterious individual or appalled. Before he had a chance to speak the chamber of the gun was quickly flicked open, its sharp click making the cleric jump and a voice came across from behind the still dripping leather as the revolver was brought into open view.
“Don’t worry…It’s not loaded,” the chamber was flicked back into place and the weapon was replaced into its holster.
“Thank you, my child,” the priest spoke at last and loosened his grip on the poor box as the stranger slowly turned around. “What is your name?”
“As if it matters…” he once again straightened his jacket and then looked directly at the priest “Weignright…My name is Richard Weignright,” his voice discerned itself as soft yet with an oddly distant texture followed by a quality described only by that of an echo. His general appearance seemed to perfectly match his voice. He was clean shaven and his thick black hair fell loosely into whatever style it appeared to see fit with flecks of his fringe tumbling about his brow.
“Thank you, Richard,” the priest reached a free hand forward in order to distribute a blessing but it was quickly pushed away.
“Don’t think you can thank me yet,” he looked around the chapel alter carefully. Two large candles burnt steadily, their light partially reflected by the polished brass cross at the centre of the arrangement. Suddenly the candles flicked violently in quick succession, right to left. Richard looked back to the clergyman. “You’d better leave me to it. It may get…” he sought for the correct word and eventually settled on something that was reasonably acceptable, “interesting.”
He seemed largely taken aback by the proposal. “Leave you to what?” he didn’t expect an answer but briefly waited for one none the less. “This is my chapel and if I didn’t have those youngsters telling me what to do, I certainly will not have you doing so!” he breathed and seemed pleased with his sermon.
Richard quickly glanced to the heavens. “Fine. Suit yourself,” he slowly began to walk towards the alter with the candles continuing to flick back and forth as he stepped up. The flickering abruptly ceased to move and became isolated to the left candle. He leant towards the flame, as the flickering grew more aggressive, and felt an odd chill that took it upon itself to completely ignore the concept of flesh and affected the bone directly.
The priest craned his neck in an attempt to gain a concept of what kind of ritual was taking place. “What are you doing?” he finally inquired cautiously but was completely ignored.
Richard looked deeper into the fire, then abruptly closed his eyes and whispered some inaudible verse before sharply blowing at the candle, extinguishing the dancing flame. He opened his eyes again and shallowly swivelled them around. Gradually a breeze began to pick up and he nodded to himself as though he were acknowledging the fact as though it had been told to him. As he stepped down from the alter and took up a position in front of it the breeze began to pick up.
The clergyman began to panic with a gust of wind sweeping in and extinguishing the candles dotted around the building. The only light that was left was that emanating from the misty moon and street lights outside poorly filtering through the stained glass, leaving the church tinted an eerie twilight blue. The gust finally died down and the church was again silent for several moments. The priest stepped slowly towards Richard who remained concrete still. Just as he reached the corner of the alter an empty, tubular tone echoed around the rafters. It vibrated cobwebs from their century old hollows, startled dozens of bats and shook the very soul of the building. Still, Richard stayed motionless.
The lonely sound did not fade. It merely changed. It merged in and out of the audible spectrum but, at last, seemed to settle into a slow moving mist that bellowed out above the alter, with wisps circled around both Richard and the priest. They explored and felt there presences before they withdrew in a slick motion followed by a sequence of low tones. They echoed among the relics and became apparent as distinct voices, moaning and groaning a fate for the eternally damned. 
Suddenly a single voice became apparent among the drone. “Leave this place…” the voice was forceful but without authority or malice, “leave us.”
All his life the priest had followed his faith with blind diligence and loyalty, but now, with all that he was witnessing he began to question whether he had ever believed everything he had been preaching. Pushing the doubts to the back of his mind, trying to silence them with the story he had always been taught. As the voice spoke he stumbled back and made a short spurt for his chamber fumbling the poor box to the ground and slamming the door behind himself, locking it tight.
Richard eyes flicked open onto the alter and upon a much different world. The walls glowed as if the sun its self bore presence unto them. The air above the ground shimmered with a dark essence that now seemed to encompass the other worldly chapel. The candles that had shone so bright previously now burnt a quiet, almost black flame yet somehow still seemed to outline the solitary brass idols around them. A shivering atmosphere at Richards feet morphed from a slight shimmering to a gradually increasing motion that mimicked that of ocean mist rolling onto a dawn shore. It rose and encompassed the objects on the alter and eventually up to the pulpit as if it was attempting to prove everything was insignificant compared to its mere presence.
Suddenly the waves fell to the ground and broke on the stone slabs with no apparent reason or prompting. Still un-phased, Richard began to move, casually reaching into an inner pocket and taking a firm hold of a glass apothecary bottle. As he did, the darkness pressed up against his back forcing him to pause his actions.
“Why are you here?” the voice of the darkness was whispered in an almost surreal way. “Why do you not listen?”
Richard let go of the bottle and let it slip neatly back into his pocket, withdrawing his had down to his side. Turning around he found the shadows had manifested themselves into a figure. A young boy, no older than fourteen, his complexion pale and virtually translucent.
“How are you here?” it added, mystified by the mortal before him.
Richard took a breath, at a loss of what to say. Before he had a chance to even think, a second presence drifted across his path. Slowly, from the back of the chapel it began to fade through air, taller than the first, it started to take steps through the wavering air. It reached out and gently placed a hand on the boys shoulder and looked dead at Richard, just as its features became discernable. Both looked as though they had once, long ago, worked on the fields; sowing and ploughing. He dared not think about how the farmer had come to be here. “You know why I’m here?” he asked the taller spirit.
The farmer moved in front of his son and without any kind of concern gazed straight at Richard. “Are you a god fearing man, sir?” he continued to silently stare ahead for a few more seconds. “How could you live with yourself? You don’t know how long we’ve looked for a way back. You have no idea how desolate, how empty it is there. What reason have you got to send us back?”
“I do know…” Richard replied simply, pausing in thought for a second, “…and I’m sorry…I truly am.”
The farmer only now broke his gaze and stepped back in line with his son. “So am I.”

The priest, shaking with disbelief, opened his eyes and unclasped his praying hands. He inched around and found the door handle, grasping it loosely at first, tightening his grip as confidence returned to him. He re-opened the door onto an empty church hall, lacking any trace that anything had happened. He stepped from the doorway and lightly trod towards the alter. He looked up towards the dark shrine with the candles now extinguished and up at the brass cross that, even now, still shone in the gloom. He looked around and realised the absence of the discarded poor box. Without even looking for it he knew that the mysterious stranger had taken it and for all that he had seen that night, he could keep it.

The house was, at most 35, maybe 40, years old yet it had a strange presence about it. A presence that was much older than anything to do with the house. It encompassed the rooms and flowed through their occupants, drawing attention away from the ornately decorated skirting boards, antique figurines and bookcases brimming with texts on spirituality and other worldly planes.
Richard placed the poor box, much more gently than it had become accustomed to over the course of the night, on a small shelf next to the door along with his keys while he slipped off his dripping jacket and dropped it over a cloak stand. No sooner as he had done that, from down the hall came the sound of the kitchen door swinging open and firm footsteps making their way up the polished wooden floor.
“Again?” came the young but raspy male voice of the footsteps.
“It just seems such a waste,” replied Richard, again placing a firm grasp on the poor box, this time only to toss it to his counterpart walking towards him. “Take that round to Oxfam tomorrow, will you?”
“These charities…” he adjusted his grip on the box and held it to his side, “ninety percent of the money goes in the pocket of some fat cat.”
“Mike, you see,” he stepped forward and leant towards Michael, making him seem much shorter than he actually was, “it's better that at least some of the money, even if it is just ten percent, goes to who needs it rather than it all going in some cardinals wallet,” he stood straight again, where it became apparent that, contrary to all available evidence, both of the men had much the same build.
Michael breathed out heavily as Richard turned into the lounge but suddenly seemed to remember something as he moved to sit down. “Oh, yeah, you got a call while you were out. It was Chris Cheve. He sounded pretty messed up.”
“Tell me, when isn’t he messed up?” he bent forward and leant on his knees. “Did he say why he phoned or was it just his general brand of assorted doomsday messages?”
“He said he wanted to meet you. Tonight, in the alley next to queens square take away at 12 O’clock,” Michael moved to the other side of the room and leant on the hearth while Richard was seemingly in deep thought. “You’ve not had a proper break in days now. Is it something to do with Halloween being in a few days?”
Richard jolted his head up and looked Michael straight in the eye. “How long now? Three years? How many times do I have to tell you? Halloween has no special bearing on anything, only that a few dumb shits the other side think they have a better chance of getting through. Believe me; they don’t so it’s not my problem.”
“I just thought-”
“Nothing! Alright?” he sunk back into the seat and breathed deeply. “Now. Queens Square was it?”
“Yeah,” Michael said cautiously, “the take away. I don’t know what he wants.”
There was silence for a few seconds as Richard contemplated the rest of the night. “I’d better check it out…You never know,” he glanced at an ornate mahogany clock on the mantle piece. “Half nine, now,” there was silence for another few seconds before he smoothly pushed up out of the chair and headed for the hallway.
“Rich, where you going?”
Richard grabbed his still dripping coat from the stand and slipped it on. “I need to stop off somewhere first,” he opened the front door and rushed out into the night.
“Hey!” Michael grabbed Richard’s car keys from the shelf, “you forgot your keys!”
“I’ll walk,” came a voice from Richard’s rapidly disappearing silhouette.
“But it’s still raining!”

There are not many people in this world who fully know what is going on, the purpose of life and other such related subjects. I never claimed to be one of them. I do take some pride in having a better idea than the majority of the populous; even if the idea is brought about by something I quiet often wished I didn’t have. I know there’s more than one plane of existence, far more. The living world, that of the dead and a lonely, desolate plane known only as the median world. Fringing on each side of the median world with the planes of the living and the dead are border worlds. Places where lost souls manifest themselves and can occasionally break through to appear as ghosts and poltergeists. Where most can only catch glimpses of these or witness their paranormal activities, I can see them as clear as day, as though they were actually there, even when they were not supposed to be. It’s considered by some that my duty, the duty of all Medians is to move them on to the next world, even if they do not desire to so. I’m just trying to keep a little sanity in the world.

By the time Richard had reached Gateshead Cemetery the rain had finally eased, but still lingered with a cold ominous presence. He stood at the chest high iron fence of the graveyard and gazed in, scanning the grounds as though he were expecting to find something. Eventually his eyes focused onto a point just off an old chestnut that’s branches swayed lethargically in the gentle breeze. As misty night air began to clear it became apparent that there was a figure of a man. He seemed to be casually raking leaves, without a shudder or care for the bitterly cold air.
Richard turned away from the fence and made his way to the rusty gate. As he gently pressed it open it moaned with the effort and finally screeched to a contented silence.  As he approached the figure it did not turn and didn’t even seem to realise his presence. “Albert.”
The figure continued to rake the apparently leafless soil for a few more seconds before it began to speak in a deep, empty tone that was almost lost to the open air. “Have you finally come to do it then, son?” his rake occasionally caught a drifting leaf which crackled loudly against the soothing breeze. “I suppose my time is somewhat…” he stood up straight and leaned on his rake. His face was old and as empty as his words dark and faded to an empty mist almost as if he belonged to the night, “overdue.”
“You know I’m not here for that,” he paused and tried to gain some idea of Albert’s expression, or whether he, indeed, even had one. “I’ve had quite a busy week. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, now?”
He stood up straight and clasped the rake firmly in his hand. “One sees only what they wish to see…” casually he began to move towards Richard, in the process walking through an age old wheelbarrow that he had apparently been using at some point in time. “I wish only to see what it is my business to.”
“I don’t want to but I’ll do it if I have to.”
“Of course, what I wish and what I see are not always one in the same,” he turned away and headed back towards the large tree he was working under, this time having the forethought to walk around the wheelbarrow. “Souls are restless, they always are, especially now, you know why. But this is different...They’re scared, and not just of moving on. There’s something out there, something you don’t want coming here,” he placed the rake gently against the tree and turned back to Richard. “I’ve learnt a lot in my time here, most I didn’t think was possible. But I am too old to worry about such things, now. That is the job of the young, your job,” he took a step away from the rake and looked Richard straight in the eye. “Good luck Richard…And take care.” As his words drifted through the air his body began to fade into the night until all that was left was the eerie mist hovering above the graves.
Richard took a breath and looked down at the grave at his feet:

HERE LIES:
ALBERT WEIGNRIGHT
BELOVED HUSBAND AND FARTHER

1945-1988
WILL BE SORELY MISSED

“You too, dad,” he turned and began to walk away from the grave as the rain began to fall again. He stopped at the rusted Iron Gate and looked back towards the large tree, quickly becoming obscured by the night mist. Turning quickly and once again flicking up his collar he set off along the wet street.
For days the voices had haunted him, whispered omens in the back of his head, rumours of a dark shadowing clouding everything just and good. Tonight was no different. With the quiet street it seemed as though the voices were screaming, and then sudden realisation that they were. Richard was not the only one to hear them though. Christopher Cheve wasn’t someone many people liked, or had anything to do with for that matter. He was diagnosed clinically schizophrenic after several bouts of severe depression and from then onwards he roamed homeless shelters with nowhere to go. Apparently just another nameless face in the endless stream of human waste. As it would seem appearances never tell the full story. He was a median, just like Richard. After the death of his wife he all but gave up on life and did something no median should ever do. He left himself open to the spirits wanting to cross back to the living world. A vessel for as many souls as it could bear.

The square was deadly quiet, the neon light of the takeaway flickered but cast virtually no light upon the puddle ridden concrete. Richard looked at his watch quickly, avoiding getting it wet in the driving rain. Bang on twelve.
“Rick? Is that you?” came a voice tentatively from the dark alleyway.
“Don’t trust him!”
“I have to, he’s our friend.”
“You have to tell him what we’ve seen.”
“Yes, only he can help.”
“Be careful, Chris.”
“I still say don’t trust him!”
Richard strained to look into the dark from whence the babbled confusion of statements had come. “Chris? Don’t be afraid. It’s Richard.”
“What do you take us for? We are not afraid,” Chris strode out into the dull light of the square and looked Richard up and down. He was filthy, unshaven and wore a trench coat that looked as though it belonged in a museum.
“Yes we are!” he recoiled back into the half darkness, his greasy and sodden blonde hair flicking over his face, “we are very afraid.”
“Can I talk to Chris?” Richard asked as softly as he could, trying not to sound patronising.
Chris’s head slowly emerged from the semi-darkness into the flickering neon light. “The world is changing, Rick, no-ones content on the other side-”
“As if they were in the first place,” interrupted Chris to himself.
-“They can’t do it, Rick, they can’t…” he shook his head violently and began repeating his last two words over and over until he suddenly stopped and looked back up into the rain, “but if one could…”
Richard nodded shallowly. “Could what? Make it through to this side?” he breathed a sign of frustration with the knowledge that he wasn’t getting anywhere with him. “What are you talking about, Chris?”
“The spirit can pass un-noticed but the physical can tip the balance,” he stood up straight and looked Richard straight in the eye. “If he could…They all could…” Chris seemed to become transfixed by something and began watching the sky blankly regardless of the driving rain.
“He?” asked Richard irately. “Who? Who is He?!” his words flowed into the night and echoed in the ether. The whispered voices returned and scratched at the back of Richards head, it was garbled and chaotic but they whispered a word over and over again. A name.
Chris looked back to Richard and spoke a single word more clearly and coherently than he ever had before. “Millaian.”
As he spoke the word, the chaotic whispers ceased, apparently content that what they had been stating had finally been heard. Richard nodded shallowly and repeated the name with a dark sense of knowing. “Millaian.”



I-II – A Dark Past

“For now we see through a glass, darkly”
-Corinthians 13:12

He used to be my friend. The only one I could tell about everything I saw, everything I knew, and then it happened. He became the shell of his former self. I hid the true nature of things from Michael for his own good…He shows great interest and, dare I say promise, but not yet the appreciation that the craft deserves. To know the truth would mean a risk beyond any that I am prepared to expose him to. One day he will want to know, one day he will need to know, and on that day I will be there to give him the guidance he will surely need for what will be ahead. For now, ignorance is bliss compared to the fate of which may await him.

Richard harshly pulled his finger along assorted volumes of spiritual encyclopaedia, through The Summoning texts and to a large, age old book which he tapped violently with his index finger before ripping it from the bookcase and effectively slamming it onto the coffee table. The decade old hardback was at least three inches thick and had embossed in gold leaf down its spine ‘The History of Old London’. Richard wiped his still dripping fringe from his face and descended upon the book, pulling it open at an already marked page. His gaze flowed down the yellowing page and eventually settled upon a small sepia picture of a stately looking family. The caption simply read ‘The Millaians.’
“You,” whispered Richard to himself as he settled his finger over a specific figure in the centre of the photo. The figure stood tall and stern over the rest of the family almost as though he had some sort of menace about him. The finger slid from the picture to a name just to the side and a short paragraph below it.

Joseph Millaian
Respected among his peers and feared by the workers in his factories, Joseph was of the third generation of industry owning Millaians to come to London. He owned lucrative properties in Manchester and Liverpool, topping off his enterprise with his purchase in 1884 of a textile facility in the centre of Birmingham. Reaching London in 1886, Joseph failed in an attempted bid to take over Thomas & Co. in the countries capital. Later that year he was reported missing and later declared dead by suicide, presumably from the immense stress of business, yet to this day his body has not been recovered and it is unknown what truly happened to him.

Richard slowly stood back up, continuing to stare at the text, gritting his teeth with deep thought.
“Rich?” came a voice from the doorway.
He swung round and slammed closed the book as his did so before turning towards Michael. “It’s a little late for you isn’t it?”
“I could say the same for you,” he looked him up and down, “you’re dripping wet.” 
“I realise that,” he leant flat palmed on the book as Michael began to move into the room. “Chris was…His usual self.”
“He always is,” he craned his head around Richard at the book. “What’re you reading?”
“Nothing!” Richard snapped quickly, “…Just…Some family history.”
“Alright, well-” he stood straight again and began to move back towards the door, “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
Richard nodded and waited until Michael was completely gone before releasing his grip on the book. He gazed at it again and sighed heavily. “What’s the connection?” he said to himself before sighing again and replacing the text to its appointed position.
As he retracted his hand he glanced at the clock placed firmly in the middle of the mantle before slumping down into his armchair; 1:37am. It wasn’t like things in the night were anything new to Richard, far from it. But still, every second closer it came the more his concern grew. He’d never liked to sleep at this time of year, that was a matter of fact, but no ones impervious to the will of their body and as he sat, with the whispers scratching at the back of his mind and repeating that same name over and over he began to sink into the dark sleep which forever left him vulnerable and consumed with fear.
“The night shall come…”

And so it did. His dreams filled with the shadows of untold figures. A deafening silence pierced through to the soul, the brightest light in the darkest of nights and then they were there, all wanting a vessel as much as the next, so close yet just out of reach. Behind the figures stood a man, seemingly possessing no desire for a vessel or to return to the mortal plane. Richard stepped forward, towards the man with the gathered shadows around him parting like water. He reached forward for the mans shoulder but before he could gain a grasp the figure turned and looked up sombrely.
“Chris?”
Sunlight washed in all about him and dissolved the darkness as quickly as it had manifested its self. He flinched and cringed his eyes as it became apparent that he was back in his own world.
“What happened last night?” came Michael’s voice from the dazzling black.
Richard partially opened his eyes and gained a baring on him. “Last night?” he squinted over to the clock that he felt he’d looked at not five minutes previously and groaned. “Nine thirty?” he sighed and shook his head whilst becoming ever more accustomed to the light.
“With Chris…” Michael took a deep breath, “I heard on the radio this morning…He’s-”
“-Dead,” he leant forward and cradled his head in his hands. “Don’t ask me how I know.”
He looked cautiously to Richard and began again. “He was found just outside Queens Square…They didn’t say how he died,” his mind swelled with possibilities and finally one slipped out. “You didn’t-?” his almost comment was met with quite possibly the sharpest gaze he’d ever experienced “No, no…Of course you didn’t,” he averted his eyes and spoke in tones of which he didn’t intend to be heard. “It’s just what with his condition…It would have been a release-”
“Listen!” he pushed himself from the chair to a tall upright position, without even wavering. “Christopher was always my friend…He still is-” he breathed sombrely, “wherever he is,” he relaxed slightly and brisked past Michael towards the staircase with no particular urgency but with a step that was not to be stopped.
Michael watched Richard move slowly up the stairs before turning away and whispering to himself. “These things happen.”

But they don’t. Not like this. Something was wrong.
I could have stopped it. I was the last to see him. I am his last true friend. A lot of good that did him, in the end I abandoned him just like everyone else, for all the good I did I might as well have killed him myself…It couldn’t have just been a coincidence, he knew something he wasn’t supposed to and now so did I. The more I thought about it the more I knew it was better to keep Michael in the dark. I still wasn’t sure how safe that would keep him though. Kids like that…They draw attention…

Richard casually opened his bedroom door and let it drift gently shut as he passed through. The room was much like the rest of the house; rustic beyond its time and bookcases with assorted volumes on the afterlife. Across from the foot of his bed, though, was an oak desk with various scribbled scraps of paper dotted about and a single large, half burnt candle centred at the back of the desk in amongst small statuettes and precious looking rocks.
He took a silver flick lighter from his inside pocket and lit the large candle before laying heavily down on the bed and flicking the lighter closed with a snap. Slowly his eyes drifted shut, compelled to close by the dark room, the only thing allowing him to cling onto the waking world being a small beam of dusty light which managed to find a gap between the still drawn curtains. In the murky darkness the air changed.
“Hello Rich,” a voice sounded soothingly.
Richard lifted his eyelids gently and looked towards the desk and the lit candle. It still burned but now darkly, giving off no light, only an electrical blue aurora backed by an eerie black, absent of movement and warmth. He fully opened his eyes and looked carefully around the, now grey and lifeless feeling, room. His eyes settled on a figure standing against that lone beam of sunlight and without even adjusting to the unusual brightness identified who he was looking at.
“You called…How could I refuse?” came the voice again, the figure stepping closer to Richards’s bed and into a better light. He was now neat and tidy, with a sense of self unlike he’d had in such a long time. “I’m free now.”
“So it was you…” he sat up and turned to sit on the side of the bed. “Chris, I can save you…Bring you back-”
“No! I thought we had an agreement,” Chris looked Richard in the eye, “I’m too close to her now…I can’t leave.”
“It could take years to find her.”
“So be it. She’s more than worth it,” his voice filled with love and joy at the thought of becoming reunited with his wife. “It’s better for him as well. For the future…How is the boy, anyway? I take it you haven’t told him yet?”
Richard shook his head with conviction. “No, he’s just not ready for it yet. Maybe when he’s like his old man,” he raised an eyebrow towards Chris, “Ay? Who else could pull me into the border world but you?”
“Listen, Rich, I wouldn’t have done it if I had a choice but things are not precisely wonderful on this side. That name…It’s not even the half of it,” he breathed deeply. “I’ve brought you here to warn you. It’s far worse than I thought,” he suddenly became agitated and looked around as if someone was searching for him. “The night is coming, Rich, everlasting night, like nothing we’ve ever seen before-”
He placed a hand firmly on Chris’s shoulder to steady him and spoke harshly. “Chris! Who was it? Who killed you?”
“Not who-” he again looked deeply into Richards eyes, “what…I don’t know much but believe nothing. All I know is he is the tide…He brings the wave…”
“Who? Who!?” Richard shook him as he began to look around, terror filling his eyes, “Millaian?”
“How do you know that name?” he gazed amazed at Richard for a second before something snatched away his attention. “He is here,” Chris stood up and began to back into a corner, cowering from something he seemed to be seeing to come through the opposite wall. Suddenly the blue candle began dancing and the curtains twitched violently. 
Richard stood up and looked around the room. The papers on his desk blew up and started flying around the room as a deafening hiss filled his ears forcing him to cover them and fall to his knees. He looked up at Chris, backed up against the wall who was continually mouthing a single word; finally his words overpowered the din enough for Richard to briefly hear. “Lancer!” he knew this word; it was a name, one he knew well. Before his mind could comprehend what was taking place a burst of dust shot from the wall Chris was intently staring at. From it materialised a tall man who reached down towards Richards friend with a thin, almost bone like hand.
“I am your master now!” it stated in a raspy, commanding voice. It was about to grasp Chris’s face when it suddenly turned towards Richard, a cloak of black dust sweeping behind it, who backed up against the bed as it began to approach. Its whole body was as thin as its hand, its face longer than any he had ever seen, eye sockets inset far into its skull, wrinkled, grey features set, seemingly, onto the bone it’s self. It began to speak again as it now reached for Richard. “I am the master of all!”
As the hand fell towards him, he backed as far into the bed sheets as he could and, closing his eyes, screamed at the top of his lungs. Suddenly, all was again silent. He gradually opened his eyes, breathing shallow and quick, still in sheer terror from what had just occurred. Slowly calming, he heard heavy footsteps beating up the stairs and finally the door burst open with a clatter.
“Rich! What happened?” asked Michael, moving around the room towards Richard. He was given a quick nod between the rapid breathing for his concern. “I just heard a thud and then you scream,” he helped Richard up onto the bed and sat down next to him. “Are you alright?”
He breathed out slowly; regaining control of his respiration. His breathing finally slowed and he looked to the corner where Chris had been cowering. “I don’t know.”
“It’s alright now, you’re safe,” Michael questioned the statement to himself knowing full well for Richard to be this disturbed that whatever awful thing had done this wouldn’t just go away. It occurred to him that it might not be just Richard that was in danger. “I’ll go and put the kettle on,” he stood up and began to walk towards the door but we stopped just short.
“Michael…” he pushed himself to a standing position and wavered slightly before facing the door, “there are some things you should know,” he thought about telling him about everything, all the things he had tried to protect him from for so long, the truth about his past and the truth that would bring the darkness. After what he’d just been through he came close to doing so. He needs to know what’s going on at least, Richard thought; in the long run it might be safer for him. “I’m not even completely sure what though…I think we should find out together.”
Michael had become accustomed to how cryptic Richard could be and had learnt that it would all become apparent in time so with that notion in mind he simply nodded firmly, saying nothing.
“Get the car keys; we’re going to the library.”

For all but the drone of the engine the car was silent. Richard was moved by his recent ordeals and it increasingly preyed on his mind that, with all that had been going on, Michael should know the truth about his farther. He didn’t know why, all he knew was that something told him the time was close. He slid his hands around the wheel and gripped it tight, deep in thought and barely concentrating on the road.
“What happened?” Michael had suddenly turned and was gazing at Richard timidly. “When you called out?”
Richard blinked and gripped the wheel hard again. That face had been embossed on his mind. The skeletal, horrifying malice in flesh. The truth was that Michael knew what Richard was, he knew all about his work but he was never told the details. Kept safe for all these years from the true nature of what a Median was. What he was. Richard thought of telling him but with the memory of that spectre he closed his mind and quickly replied. “Nothing…I just had an uncooperative client, that’s all.”
Michael was about to question but his tongue was held by some form of common sense he was otherwise unaware of.
“We’re here,” Richard stated flatly, pulling into the car park of a large, three story building. As he got out he looked over the roof of the car and stared at Michael as if he were a brick wall. “Don’t concern yourself with this or it’ll concern its self with you.”
Michael nodded slowly but with conviction and made his way into the library, unsure whether he had said something wrong or whether Richard’s forcefulness was for his own good.
“Ahh, Richard!” an attendant called, waving him over. “Haven’t seen you here for quite the long while,” he took Richards hand, shaking it hard, promptly moving on to Michael, “and is this the lad you’ve told me so much about?”
Richard croaked and swallowed awkwardly. “Yes…”
“I have no idea why you’ve never brought him in before. He reminds me of my lad,” the elderly attendant seemed to reminisce from seeing Michael, momentarily drifting off. “Got kids of his own now, he has.”
Richard smiled half heartedly. “Well, we’re here to do some nineteenth century research. On a particular individual, in fact,” he breathed heavily, “Joseph Millaian.”
The attendant squinted and scratched his balding head. “Millaian, you say? Name sounds familiar but for the life of me I don’t know where from,” he thought some more before cheerfully looking up again and turning to his computer. “Oh well, it’ll come back to me. For now though we’ll look him up, shall we?” he briefly glanced at Richard again with a large grin across his face. “Wonderful things these computers, all I do is type in the name here, see?” he pressed each button firmly with a single finger and waited for a second. “Ahh, there we go. It gives you a list of all the books he would’ve been in,” he printed a copy of the reading list and handed it to Richard who nodded and smiled again.
The list had four primary titles, all local history books, with a number of censuses and other miscellaneous documents listed beneath. At the very bottom, marked in red as checked out, was a single title; ‘Vessel’ by Christophe Guillaume. It had a much later date of publication than its counterparts and was not a local history book but was simply categorized under non-fiction. Richard folded the slip of paper and slid it neatly into a side pocket before turning to Michael reasonably cheerfully. “Well, we’d better get looking then.”
Richard was never happier then when he was around books; it was partly why almost every wall of his house was lined with volume after volume of them. Of course it was the only thing that had ever comforted him as a child. Retreating into a world of words and dreams kept the voices away and the world from driving him to them.
Hours passed. As they did, each of the four texts found themselves open on a narrow plywood table with Richard gazing over them intently, Michael idly flicking through the pages as each was tossed aside, and for all his effort there was nothing. Nothing more than the life and achievements of a Victorian entrepreneur. There was barely even anything on his disappearance, which intrigued Richard more than any of his life's work. He pushed back from the table and arched his back, realising how long he had been lent over the book. “This is useless.”
“What are we actually looking for?” asked Michael, looking up from a page, “we’ve been at this for hours and you’ve still got me in the dark.”
“Anything…” he rubbed his face and run his hands through his hair with a sigh, “anything at all,” as he spoke the attendant emerged from behind a pillar, grasping a small, scruffy looking notebook. He shuffled over to the table, prompting Michael to check his watch.
“I remembered,” he exclaimed happily, waving a free finger loosely, “I was sure I had heard that name before so I went searching in the achieves and found this,” he produced the notebook and handed it to Richard. “I’m not sure what it is, it’s been down there for decades, I think. I can’t read French but that name just stuck in my head you know.”
Richard picked through the pages gently flicking past paragraphs of hand written text and strange diagrams before slamming it shut in one hand and staring at the cover which had a single word scrawled across it ‘Navire.’ “French…” he reached into his pocket and pulled the slip of paper. Unfolding it he looked at the single absent book and then pointed it out to the attendant. “Do you remember who took this out?”
“I think so…” he thought for a second, “yes…Now I remember. He didn’t have a membership, just took it on short loan. Small man he was, about the same age as you,” he waved his finger at Richard once again. “Untidy looking sort, though, very unsure of himself…Oh and that trench coat-”
Richard looked up quickly. “It wasn’t him,” he mumbled after a few seconds, “he didn’t know I already knew that name,” he turned to Michael abruptly, his eyes widening. “Navire…”
“Vessel,” finished Michael, pleased he might have finally found a use for that French A-Level.
The attendant looked between the two of them and stepped back slightly. “I think you should take that…” he glanced cautiously at the notebook, “you’ll probably understand it a lot better than me.”
Richard looked back to the notebook and gripped the leather cover tightly as Michael thanked the attendant. He loosened his grip and run a hand softly across it. “It was him,” he spoke quietly and acted as if he’d much rather be somewhere else, “in my trance. It was this…Millaian. He’s not what these books say he was,” he tapped the closest open book firmly with the notebook before withdrawing it close to him, “not anymore. He’s changed, corrupted somehow. But it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard of.”
“You said it wasn’t him,” Michael ventured, “who wasn’t?”
Richard exhaled heavily, finally conceding that there were some things he couldn’t keep to himself. “Chris, the night I went to see him he told me about Millaian but that wasn’t him. I saw him again in my trance…Right before that bastard took him,” he clenched his free fist. “It was Millaian. Chris, though, he was like I remember him, you see he’s never always been like you knew him. Once upon a time he was my best friend,” his fist was unclenched and a small smile creped onto his lips but was quickly done away with as he realised he was straying off topic, “that’s another story, though. It was like he’d been in the border world for days and I think has been. He warned me about him again and was surprised when I knew that name.”
“How is that-?” he paused for a second, “possession? Maybe he wasn’t in there at all. He was a schizophrenic after all; maybe he could have been dead for days and it was spirits inhabiting his body all along,” he glanced at the book. “A vessel.”
The smile returned to Richards’s lips as he began to wonder why he had never let him in on anything before. “You’re smart kid, I’ll give you that,” he slipped the notebook into one of his many concealed pockets and was about to lead to the door but turned back to Michael instead. “What’s the next move then?”
He thought and cautiously twitched his mouth, debating whether what he was about to say was the correct answer. “Try and get to see the body? That could tell us a lot I guess?”
Richard smiled once more. “Very smart.”



I-III – VI of I

“Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him”
-Ecclesiasticus 9:10

His lifeless body wasn’t something I particularly took pleasure in seeing, although, unbeknown to me I already had. Why I hadn’t seen it already I don’t know but his body was empty already when I had met him that night. Without the original soul the host will die within a matter of days, no matter how many parasites were trying to maintain it. There was something more, Chris was a bigger part of all of this than I thought and seeing him one more time may be the only way to know how. Getting to see him, on the other hand, could prove to be more than a little testing.

The day was getting on; dusk was already beginning to haze over the horizon and the sun becoming orange in the low sky.
Richard walked slowly to the hospital entrance and looked up at the building, shaking his head and then looked to Michael who was following at a distance. “People die here…” he took a step back away from the hospital, “not good for me.”
“You can feel them, can’t you? Everyone who’s crossing over in there?” said Michael raising his voice with Richard moving ever further away.
He placed a hand firmly on a glass pane of a swing door and pushed it open harshly. “Oh yes,” he followed the wide swing with a wide stride into a place where nothing was real to him. The recently dead roamed the place, waiting for their time to move on, filling the silence of life with the chorus of death. Subtle but near unbearable to those who could hear it. “Getting to see him won’t be a piece of cake you do realise?” he stopped in the almost completely empty waiting room, where the receptionist sat slowly punching at her keyboard hidden under the desk and a lone man waited quietly, presumably for an appointment.
Michael hurried through the doors; trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible. “Can’t you just go into your trance thing and go in without anyone seeing you?” he whispered loudly.
“No,” Richard snapped, “my body still has a physical presence in this world. It’s not like it makes me invisible or anything,” he attempted not to sound patronising but achieved little success. “Anyway, I’d not do that in here even if it did. They’d tear me apart,” he began to walk towards a set of doors leading into the main hospital, as he did, giving Michael a deliberate dark look and smiling to himself with the amount of fear he had been able to strike into his heart with that little effort. He had just about reached the doors when the receptionist jumped up from her chair and leaned over the desk.
“Sir, I’m afraid visiting hours end at 5 O’Clock and we request that last entries are at four thirty,” she hung over the desk for several more seconds until Richard backed away from the door. She returned to her seat and resumed typing.
“Well that didn’t work,” Richard stated casually as he approached Michael again.
“Really?” he replied sarcastically, “and there’s me thinking they’d let you just waltz in.”
Richard manoeuvred behind the rows of seats, making sure he was out of sight of the receptionist and set about inspecting a wall mounted fire alarm.
“What are you doing?” Michael loudly whispered again, this time briefly drawing the attention of the single waiting patient.
“Just looking,” he pulled the sleeve of his jacket across a clenched hand, “with my fist,” he quickly hit the alarm, breaking the glass and almost immediately a loud buzzer began to sound. The receptionist looked up abruptly and scanned across the room, including the now innocent looking Richard, and then hurried through the door behind the desk.
“Problem solved, no-one will bother us now.”
Michael looked around as Richard set off towards the doors again. “I can’t believe you just did that! Do you know how much trouble you’ve just caused them?”
“Relax,” Richard said turning back for a moment, “they’ll realise it’s a false alarm in a few minutes and everything will be fine,” he questioned briefly whether it would actually be that simple but came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth thinking about. “Now come on, it’s given us just enough time to get into the morgue.”
“This isn’t even a good plan,” Michael mumbled, looking around in a panic one last time before rushing into the main hospital after Richard.
With the alarm blazing, assorted personages hurried around trying to find out what was happening and doctors concerning over their patients and their own safety. In the confusion the two interlopers were as good as invisible, slipping through the bustling corridors without so much as a second glace. They arrived at the Morgue and slipped in just as the alarm ceased. Richard looked up and around. “Damnit, thought it’d keep them busy longer than that,” he swung round, taking in the room as he did, “we need to hurry.”
There were a number of stainless steal tables, bodies led neatly on each, with thin linen blankets draped across them. To the side of the room positioned under a large hanging light was another table, this one with rolling tables scattered around it, filled with assorted medical tools. Michael took a step forward to inspect closer only to find that the table had another individual led on it, this one already having been victim to the mercy of the pathologist making him shudder.
“It’s not Chris is it?” asked Richard, making Michael start backwards in fright.
He took a shallow breath, realising how foul the air was as he did. “No…No, I don’t think so,” he moved away from the autopsy and took up a position next to the door as Richard started towards the covered bodies. “How come we found this place so fast, it’s almost as though you knew where you were going.”
Richard took hold of the top of the sheet on the first table tentatively and then threw it back, only to sigh when he found it was not Chris and move on to the next one. “Let’s just say this isn’t my first visit here,” he grabbed hold of the second cover more confidently this time and again threw it back but was forced back by an invisible force, gasping loudly. After composing himself his gaze followed something across the room for a few seconds and then through the back wall. He shook his head and gritted his teeth. “Inconsiderate bastard,” he quickly moved on to the next corpse, this time pulling the sheet off while keeping a distance. He peered at the body and smirked slightly, “bingo!”
“You’ve found him?” he stepped in and examined the body. It was Chris’ alright, unwashed, unshaven and still damp from the previous night. What colour that had been in his already pale complexion had now seemed to be sapped from his body to leave an almost grey husk.
“They’ve taken his coat,” Richard suddenly stated, somewhat concerned at the fact, “check in the draws,” he threw his arm back and pointed at a steel wall cabinet with several roller draws contained in its lower section. “He might’ve left something in the pockets,” as he spoke he inspected and searched the body, finding nothing but dirt and linen.
Michael opened the top draw and pulled out a long, stained trench coat which unfurled to full length as he held it and hung heavily to the ground. “Is this it?” he padded the pockets tentatively and removed a folded note from one of the side pockets.
“What did you find?” Richard took the piece of paper and flicked it open. The note was damp and the writing scrawled, barely legible with the paper damp and the ink smeared. He read it and sighed deeply, gazing at the words sorely. “I’m sorry my friend,” he laid a hand on the corpses arm for a moment and then took the note with both hands. “The end is coming,” he dictated, “they are all gone, bar one. A powerful spirit who promises me release, promises me her. I don’t believe him. But I can’t resist, I’m too weak. I hear him, though, hear his schemes. ‘Seven of one and I shall be born again’ he tells me and I am the one.”
“What does it mean?” asked Michael, “seven of one and I shall be born again?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” he folded the note again and reached into his pocket pulling out the strange book, “but it’s got to have something to do with this,” he waved the book loosely and leant against the table, placing it down.
“Richard,” Michael suddenly said slowly, stepping backwards as his eyes widened. “It’s moving,” he pointed to Chris’ corpse whose arm was rising, the fist clenching as it went.
Richard bolted upright and drew his gun, swinging around. The grey body sat up and looked around, examining the room and settled on the book Richard had left at the end of the table. “This has never happened before,” he told himself, unsure whether to think what was happening before him was real.
“The text has awoken me,” the corpse said in an unsettlingly deep, grating voice, reaching for the book, “it has been too long.”
Richard shuddered at his best friend’s body and voice being used like some puppet. “Freeze right there!” he shouted, pushing the gun forward as the zombie gripped the book with dead hands that seemed to move independently from the rest of its being. “Just what the hell are you?”
“Richard Weignright. I should thank you for awaking me and returning my text,” it held up the book, grinning on half of its face. “Although, you have done so somewhat earlier than I had hoped.”
“I said who are you?” he thought for a second and grimaced, “and how do you know who I am?”
“I know you, Rich…” it readjusted its wrist with a sharp snap, “I know everything this host knew,” it peered back at Michael and saw fear wash across Richards face and began grinning yet more. “Does that concern you, my friend? And, oh yes, you know me. I had you within my grasp, someone of your…talents, could be very useful to me, but you slipped away.”
“No, it can’t be,” he backed away slightly putting up a free arm to try and protect Michael, “you were who he was talking about in the note. That’s why you were after him in the border world.”
“Yes. Control the mind, control the body. And as for that note, I tried to stop him but his will was a great deal stronger than I had anticipated. As a result I had to dispose of him.”
“You son of a bitch! You killed my best friend!” Richard growled.
“Indeed,” the embodiment of Millaian turned on the table and slid from it, grasping the notebook tightly, “I must thank you again, but I no longer have a need for you.” With slow deliberate movements he removed a scalpel from a nearby tray.
“I said don’t move!” he pushed the gun as far forward as he could while trying to back away from the psychopathic corpse. “I’m warning you!”
“Come now, we both know that it is empty,” his words were calm and gentle as he started to move forward, knife in hand.
“Good point,” Richard breathed quickly, lowering the weapon. “But this isn’t!” with his free hand he spun around reaching into his coat and pulling the vial from his inside pocket, popping the cork and throwing the liquid at Millaian. The substance impacted his face, burning deeply into the tissue, with a loud hiss making him drop to his knees, screaming in agony. Richard hustled Michael out of the door, running through corridors and crowds of bewildered medics until they arrived outside. The sun was as good as down and twilight had firmly set in.
“That’s it!” coughed Richard, gasping for breath. “We’re getting to the bottom of this!” hr storming towards the car.
“What was that stuff you threw at him?” asked Michael, still cringing from what he had just seen.
“A mixture of extracts and oils. I normally use it to send spirits back to their rightful plane if they don’t cooperate. Perfectly harmless to mortals. I’m just glad I didn’t use it last night, that was my last bottle,” he gave a slight chuckle amidst his anger as he moved towards the drivers door of the car.
“How did you know it would work on him, then?” Michael was rather concerned at the fact he felt he was about to receive an ‘I didn’t’ reply.
“Best guess,” he replied, shrugging slightly, “I figured he wasn’t mortal so something had to happen.”
Michael rolled his eyes and leant on the roof of the car. “So where now then?”
“Chris’s apartment. It’s the only option, I did some-” he took a deep breath in, “-things for him there.”
Michael looked suspiciously at him and eventually nodded, still trying to get his breath back. “Ok then, lets go,” he rubbed his face and pushed his hair from his eyes “I’m too freaked out to question anything more at the moment.”

Millaian, still on his knees, cradled his hosts face. As he pulled the hands away, seared and melted flesh covered them, with a thick blood that began to drip between the fingers and pool on the ground. He shook with pain and rage and clenched his fists, each bone in them cracking in succession.
Two doctors burst through the door and were abruptly stopped in their tracks. “What on earth happened here?” one asked, looking around the room while the second stared at the knelt body.
“I live,” came Millaians voice from the ground. As it did, he began to straighten up and unclench his hands, reaching to either side of him to recover the notebook and the scalpel.
“Get security,” the second doctor whispered to the first, making him rush off again. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be alright.”
“No, it won’t…” he turned his head and in the light the doctor saw his true appearance. Nearly all of the skin on his face was missing, what was left was disfigured and burnt beyond recognition. His eyes bulged from their sockets and swivelled precariously on the bone. Holes in his face, covered only by surviving tendons, seeped a brown puss and congealed, post mortem blood. He smiled a lipless grin and got to his feet. “At least, not for you,” striking, he lunged and forced the razor sharp blade forwards towards the doctor.
 
I must have been crazy. Michael may have been ‘freaked out’ but on the way to Chris’s place he still started to ask questions that I daren’t answer but which I couldn’t just leave. He wanted to know how I knew where Chris lived and how I knew so much about it, that alone I may have gotten away with but the truth was that I was the one who paid the rent on his flat, I had done so for all these long years and that wasn’t something I could just explain away. I just avoided his questions and said barely enough to make sure he didn’t think I was ignoring him. What had happened tonight was almost incomprehensible. If it had that effect on me then it must have blown his mind. Michael wasn’t safe anymore, Millaian had made that clear. I needed answers though, but by the time we got there I realised we were in for much more than we had ever bargained for.

Across Chris’s door were various scores and marks, each tinted with a different colour, as though the wood had been treated in some way. “Protection,” Richard stated abruptly, reaching in a pocket for his bundle of keys. “The things I said I did for him,” he waved his hand over the markings, “simple incantations and oils in the wood. Trickery basically, but they made him feel better. Something slightly more powerful inside, though,” he spoke with particular self satisfaction about his work. He found the key and slid it into the lock, opening the door with the ease of a person who did it regularly. “And don’t ask me why I have a key.”
Michael put his hands up in defence and just let Richard talk, knowing that even if he did understand any of the answers to his questions he probably wouldn’t like them. He stepped in line with Richard as he passed over the threshold, noticing a trail of salt along the carpet just inside the doorway. “So this more powerful thing?”
Richard moved into the living area and pointed to a table in the corner with a large section of amethyst perched centrally on it.
“Amethyst?” Michael said, clearly unimpressed, “is that it? A nice table decoration?”
“Table decoration? Do you realise how much those things cost?” he snapped, turning harshly.
Michael placed his hands on his hips and stared at Richard. “A bloody lot I should think, they’re rip offs, its probably not even real quartz!”
“Look, it is real and if the people selling it knew just what it could do then it’d cost a whole lot more,” he calmed down and breathed slowly. “It’s a prison, of sorts. You could say it’s naturally tuned to the wavelength of bad spirits, those who would want to inflict hurt on someone, especially someone in Chris’s state, and it captures them,” he looked back at Michael whose eyes had now glazed over and were gazing into a world of his own. He watched him for a few seconds and then shook his head disapprovingly before walking off into Chris’s bedroom. “Never mind.”
For a moment more Michael looked at the half geode in front of him and thought about what he’d been told before taking it upon himself to try and sound like he actually understood it “Yeah, well, I know what you mean. It’s just that you can’t be too carful these days. Everyone’s trying to rip everyone else off,” he began to move towards the bedroom when suddenly Richards’s voice sounded along the hall harshly.
“Don’t come in here, boy!” the door was slammed shut and a thud followed, almost like someone had fallen heavily against it.
Michael moved slowly along the hall, looking at the door with deep suspicion. “What’s wrong? You’re scaring me,” he reached the door and moved a hand towards the knob before hurriedly withdrawing it and instead tilting his head and placing an ear against it. As far as he could tell, the room was deathly silent, that silence broken only by the throbbing of his uneasy heart. “Rich?” he finally breathed, pulling his head away from the door and looking around the hall. He cocked his head and peered at the slightly ajar door of the bathroom at the end of the hall. Beginning to move forward again he continued to gaze round at the portal and it became apparent that something wasn’t right. Through the crack he could see that there were dark red flecks showing up brightly on the tiled floor. Tentatively he reached a shaking hand forward and gently pressed against the door, leaning in as it slowly swung open to reveal several more flecks leading towards a large pool of drying blood staining the tiles. He held his breath and looked up and around the room at whitewashed walls covered, layer upon layer, of blood, sprayed around, in an almost incomprehensible manner. As he was forced to breath, the putrid stench hit his nostrils, making him gag and cover his mouth with his sleeve. Panning around the horrific scene he laid eyes on the worst of it all. In the bath lay the contorted body of a young man, his throat slit deep and his limbs bent in ways that were not naturally possible. He was wearing what looked like a suit, now stained beyond recognition with his own life fluids.
“He tried to escape,” came a voice from behind Michael, startling him and making him swing around. “The others didn’t even get that far,” Richard spoke in low tones, his voice quivering and his eyes becoming redder with sorrow every moment. He’d never seen anything like this, he never thought he would and hoped beyond hope that he never would so it was little wonder when a tear finally broke from the corner of his eye and ran, slowly down his cheek.
“Others?” Michael breathed, horrified at the idea that there may be more in this state and shaking as Richard began to slowly nod.
“5 more, all like him,” he flicked his eye vaguely to the bathtub. “I can’t let you stay here-”
“I don’t want to,” Michael cut Richard off abruptly, barging past him and rushing outside.
“Alright,” Richard whispered to himself as he heard the front door slam shut before turning back to the bedroom and cautiously approaching it again, preparing himself for the presence of at least one of the departed. He had been in the house for a while now and he should have felt something, a remaining spirit, even the after-presence of one but there was nothing but that horrific stench, filling every breath with the decay of life. He pressed against the door, which dragged against the thick bedroom carpet as it opened. Inside was humid and dark with the curtains completely drawn, forcing Richards eyes to take several seconds to adjust to the gloom. As they did several shapes on the ground came into focus. The shapes slowly gained structure and soon faces. Five more bodies were strewn about the floor, the carpet around them saturated with their blood still seeping in. Richard closed his eyes for a moment taking as deep a breath as he could without vomiting, before stepping back into the wretched room. Stepping over the bodies and treading lightly on the stained carpet he made his way to a dresser in front of the darkened window that had scribbled notes and assortments of books covering it. They were spiritual texts, similar to those lining the walls of Richards’s house; only these were bloodied and battered. Similarly the dressers mirror had been subjected to much the same fate with large cracks running its entire length and parts of it shattered entirely. It also had blood spurts and spatter covering it making an even near clear reflection impossible. Around it, he noticed, were seven small pictures of people; the victims now sprawled around the room lifelessly, each with a thick black marker line across it, bar one on the right hand side of the mirror of a woman. She looked near thirties and had shoulder length chestnut hair falling evenly around her face. He was caught for a second by her eyes, a strange dark blue that sparkled in a way he recognised. She wasn’t like the others, he knew this much.
Looking around at the bodies he confirmed that she had not suffered the same fate as the others, at least not yet and stared again at the picture. Beneath it, scrawled on the mirror in marker under the blood, was a name ‘Hollie’. Richard mouthed the name and abruptly began rooting through the assortment of notes on the dresser, no longer caring about the blood that was being smeared across his hands. Finally he stopped and slowly lifted a small local newspaper cutting to what light there was. It mentioned a Hollie Michelle Reade, twenty seven years of age, who had been rushed into hospital with a suspected drug overdose nearly a week ago and who had died two days later. He sighed and hung his head, tossing the slip of paper back onto the pile of scraps. His hand, as it began to fall back to his side, was diverted and grasped a thin text half emerging from the bottom of the heap of paper. He grasped hold of it, pulling the majority of the scraps onto the floor, and squinted at the cover. It had an old looking portrait depiction of the devil tempting Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and above it in large, red, gothic letters the title ‘VESSEL – Adapted by Christophe Guillaume’. Richard swallowed heavily as a chill shot down his spine and began to flick through the book. Much of it contained the same drawings as Millaians notebook, only much neater and in English. Flicking a few more pages he found one that had been marked and a sentence highlighted. As he read it another chill shot down his spine and he began to shake.

‘VI or I and I shall live : VII of I and I shall be born again’

Everything suddenly fell into place. Chris had been controlled somehow to kill those people and draw their life forces in order to take full control of a host. Richard had never known anything like it, there had been myths of such things but never for it to really happen. He knew, now, what VI of I was and he knew that Millaian still needed this Hollie for something and he dreaded knowing what this would be. Still, though, she was dead now, had been for at least four days, more than enough time to cross over…Unless…And then it hit him. That sparkle in her eyes, she wasn’t anyone normal, she had the power that none of the others had, that Millaian needed, and someone with that amount of power never goes quietly to the other side. He knew exactly where she was and part of him cursed the fact that she was. She was in the Desert of Desolation its self. The Median World.
He slammed shut the book sliding it clumsily into a side pocket in his jacket and, ripping the picture of Hollie from the mirror, rushed out the room and out into the fresh night air. He took a deep breath to clear his lungs of the putrid stench and glanced sideways to Michael.
“I know that look, Rich, we have to call the police about this,” Michael stated soberly, “this isn’t exactly an everyday circumstance we don’t get involved in.”
“Nothings ever an everyday circumstance for me, you should know that,” he looked carefully at the small picture of Hollie and then at the mysterious book before thinking for a second.
“I think you might want to wash your hands whatever you do,” Michael casually said as he noticed the smears of blood on Richards’s hands, “you should have really left things alone. You do know that’s evidence tampering?”
Richard looked up abruptly. “Evidence? Evidence for what? The police wouldn’t know what’s going on here, especially when they find out the guy who did it died but is now wandering the streets with half a face! I don’t even know fully what’s happening,” he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Chris didn’t do this…I don’t want them thinking that”
“There’s no way around it but I’m sure he would have seen his sacrifice just to protect what you do. The police will deal with it in their own way, anyway. Besides, the people who matter know he’s innocent and that’s all that matters in the end now.”
Richard raised his head and looked to Michael remorsefully. “Do it,” he closed the door and looked at the picture of Hollie again as Michael began to dial. “They need to do what they need to and so do I.”



I-IV – Desert of Desolation

“The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness...” 
-Ecclesiastes 2:14

The border world was one thing, when falling asleep most people slip in and out of it and never even realise. Those moments just before you loose consciousness, when the world slows down and nothing feels as it should. The only difference is that Medians can go at will. The desert was something else, though. Few had ever willingly gone there; even fewer had come back. It’s a stopping place for spirits with unfinished business, those who want to try and get back to our world. None of them spend any more than a few minutes there, they either find a way back to the border world or are sent to the other side. The only exceptions are us. Medians never go easily to the other side; this was no different if I was right about Hollie. But there was only one way I was about to find out, I would have to do something every fibre of my being told me not to. I would have to die.

The moon rose high in the night sky, casting a thin veil of light across the quiet side street. On the corner opposite to Chris’s apartment two dark outlines lingered in the shade, seemingly waiting.
“What time is it?” Richard asked faintly, breaking the distant droning of the bypass. “They should have been here by now.”
Michael pulled back his sleeve and quickly looked at his watch. “Twenty past ten,” he dropped his arm and sighed. “Maybe we shouldn’t wait around like this. You must know how suspicious this looks.”
“Twenty past ten…Just under twenty six hours,” Michael squinted slightly at him and opened his mouth to say something but quickly closed it again and turned away. “I just feel I should be here for this,” he paused again and looked out across the street only to find still nothing. “Times have changed, Mike. You need to know some things,” he rubbed his face and tried to think of the best way to proceed. “You remember me telling you that Halloween was nothing? I lied. It’s a time when all the portals open and the lines between worlds blur meaning spirits can more easily cross over than usual. What I do as well-”
“I know,” stated Michael abruptly, “I know everything, how deep everything you do runs, I even know why you tried to hide it from me. It’s because I’m like you, isn’t it? I’m a Median…Or will eventually be one, at least,” he looked into Richards stunned eyes through the haze of night and felt somehow vindicated that there was no response.
“We’ll see,” Richard finally said as a police car pulled up on the other side of the street. “There are things they understand,” he tilted his head in the direction of the Police exiting their squad car, “and there are things we understand. But some things no body understands. Just remember that,” he craned his head into the street and watched the authorities enter Chris’s apartment block while Michael sank down to the ground, his back against the wall, becoming convinced that nothing he could do would please Richard. “Come on, we’re leaving,” he quickly said, helping Michael up from the ground. “Just remember something else as well though. I am proud of you; never think I’m not,” he hurried off down the street, making certain to keep to the shadows as Michael smiled gently before following.

Twenty six hours. Something told me that if Millaian was going to do something, he was going to do it on All Hallows and if he managed to get his hands on his last victim by then, there would be no stopping him. Twenty six hours was the longest amount of ‘safe’ time I had left, even so, that scarcely made me feel any better, especially with what I was about to do. I hadn’t seen Lancer in years and although I knew Chris wanted me to see him; something had been stopping me, pushing it to the back of my mind to forget. But I had no choice now.

They hadn’t walked for long before Richard abruptly stopped and looked across the street at a boarded up and decaying church. He gestured his hand towards it forcing Michael to turn sharply, rushing back towards Richard, only just realising that he had stopped. Apart from the boarded windows the building was half covered with scaffolding, the only parts of the sandstone walls not covered with thick moss and ivy were crumbling away, if not missing at all, replaced by shoddy bricking.
“This place?” Michael abruptly stated, grimacing at the building, “but…It’s-”
“I appreciate the irony. Apparently, though, so does Lancer,” he looked up at the precarious steeple which missed the majority of its tiles and threatened to collapse at any time. “At least, that’s what he used to say.”
Michael looked sharply at Richard. “Lancer? That’s who we’re going to see?” Richard nodded quickly. “I didn’t think he really existed”
Richard snapped his head away from the chapel, his face was awash with absence and his mouth hung half open as words developed in the back of his throat. “You know about Lancer?”
“Only rumours. They’re more myths really. About him being a Seer and all,” he began to stammer under the scrutinising gaze before coughing awkwardly. “Just stories though.”
Richard was quietly impressed yet disturbed at the fact that Michael had found all this out no matter how much he was prevented from doing so, making him wonder just how much else he knew. “You could call him a Seer,” he answered finally, “to the extent he can see beyond this world into the Median plane, yes. Apart from that he’s just another guy,” he paused for a few seconds before sighing and shaking his head slightly, “though he does dabble in fields I wouldn’t dream of. He’s rather the eccentric, you see, so keep your wits about you,” he looked back up at the old chapel. “This is it, though,” added Richard flatly, “not much to look at, I realise, but that’s how he likes it. Always did,” he finished quietly before striding towards a doorway covered by a loose graffiti strewn board. He prised open the board, sheering loose sand grains from the wall which drifted down through the dust filled air. Stopping, he leant against the board, looking back at Michael. “So, are you coming?” he turned back to the chapel again and disappeared into the dark opening.
Michael grinned gently and raced towards the doorway as Richard pushed open a secondary, much more stable, iron gate into a reasonably well lit chapel hall. The hall was gutted of everything that would have once defined it as any type of church. The pews, organ, pulpit; they had all been ripped out leaving a much larger space than the building should have presented. The walls were lined with lamps and bright spotlights stood over piles of crates making the chapel resemble more a warehouse than a house of worship. At the far end atop the alter step was a high backed wooden seat, a lone silhouette seated silently.
Michael stepped forward quickly, peering at the figure but was harshly pushed back. “Why is he just sat there?”
“He doesn’t sleep, just spends the whole night wandering,” replied Richard quietly.
“But he’s just sat there,” he stepped back realising that even here he may be in danger.
Richard slowly began to approach Lancer, his arms slightly outstretched as thought he were feeling for something ahead of him. “Just because he isn’t moving doesn’t mean he’s not off somewhere else,” he turned back to Michael for a second and smirked, knowing full well that he had thoroughly confused him, “problem is that he doesn’t muck like being disturbed,” he edged closer to the alter step, waving his arms all the way until his fingers suddenly sparked and ghostly waves drifted away from them. “Watch yourself,” he waved his arm back towards Michael with his other still pointing towards the chair, “he’s not the most agreeable person in the world.” In the chair Lancers eyes flicked towards Richard and two of the ghostly forms drifted down to his sides.
“Your back,” the thick, dark, German accent quickly drew Richards attention back to the alter step, his eyes wide open, “I didn’t think you’d ever return.”
“Well you know me,” said Richard as Michael approached cautiously, “not even you could ever predict me.”
Lancer looked to Richards’s side at the scared lad coming up behind him and squinted at him before looking back. “This much I know to be true,” the ghosts drifted forwards and seemed to examine the interlopers briefly forcing Michael to become rigidly still before drifting away silently. “Come, Richard…And the prodigy,” he looked down to Richards side again, “after all, what else could he possibly be for you to bring him here, of all places,” Lancer flicked his eyes around the building and then down at the still figures. “Don’t be afraid, Rich, I suspect that anything I could do to you can’t possibly be as bad as whatever it is you actually want from me.”
Richard reached forward and through where the barrier had previously been and took a tentative step up. He breathed a quiet sigh and took several, more confident, steps towards Lancer. “Maybe I had you wrong, maybe you can predict me.”
“What is it you want, Richard?” he opened out his hands welcomingly, “such a long time, it must be something important for you to finally come back.”
“I need to go there, Lancer. I need to go to the desert,” Richard stated quickly however much he wanted not to.
Lancer grinned and pushed himself from the chair, starting to walk slowly forwards. “I never thought I would here those words from you, not again. You do realise what it entails, do you not?” he carried on knowing full well what the answer would be.
“Yes, I remember. This is something that needs to be done, though,” he stared straight at Lancer who gazed back casually but suddenly stopped,  flicking his eyes towards Michael.
“The boy doesn’t know,” he began to walk to Richards’ side and tried to reach out but his arm was grabbed and pulled away sharply.
“He knows enough,” he threw the seized arm aside and took a step in front of Michael.
“Indeed he does but he neither understands why nor how,” Lancer rubbed his aged hands together turned back to Richard.
“Do you?”
“I know the only thing you could possibly find there was absence, an emptiness of loneliness beyond compare…Unless…” he turned around and started to walk back towards his chair, “…It is not? Are you hoping to find something there, my friend? Someone?” he chuckled faintly as Richard stepped forward and opened his mouth to speak but was silenced by Lancers arm being thrown up. “I know of this individual…In such desolation I feel any slightest disturbance,” he breathed in hard and seemed to savour the thought of the ‘disturbance.’ “And this was…” he closed his eyes and breathed deeply again, “so powerful.”
Michael slowly placed a hand on Richards’ shoulder prompting him to turn quickly. “What does he mean he can feel the disturbance?”
Richard spoke as quietly as he dared, not knowing exactly why but possessing a deep fear of Lancer. “He’s a Seer. They are the guardians of the Median World and they can see all who pass through it.”
“Indeed we can!” stated Lancer loudly swinging around, “A whole world at our fingertips, such a wonderful thing you may think. It’s truly not,” he rushed back down towards the pair again, right up to stare Michael in the eye. “A world so full of emptiness, scratching at your senses every hour of every day-” he quickly turned to Richard, grasping his arms tightly. “You Medians have it easy! For me every second is a lifetime’s insanity, the endless void pouring through the consciousness of my sleepless nights!” he seemed to regain control of himself and pulled back, letting go of Richards arms, removing them as though he didn’t know how they got there, “then again you already know this…You’ve been there.”
“And I need to go again,” Richard replied tentatively, “you said yourself she’s there. I need to bring her back.”
Lancer shook his head and rubbed his face. “She is something else, you know I can’t even be sure on bringing you back let alone two of you,” he looked to the ground and shook his head again, “and even if I could, I don’t know if I should. It’s different, Rich…She is different.”
Richard suddenly saw something glint in Lancers eyes and stepped towards him, looking closer. “You’ve felt it haven’t you? The presence in the border world.”
“That is your jurisdiction, my friend; it has nothing to do with me,” he replied firmly, gritting his yellowed teeth.
“Still, you know, you’ve felt him. He crossed the desert, didn’t he?” he thought for a second, “and you knew I’d come…For her…” he pointed an accusing finger sharply forwards. “Come on! You’re not stupid. Far from it! You know she’s in danger and it doesn’t matter whether she be here or the Other Side, the worse possible place she could be is the desert!”
Lancer hung his head, wiping his face. “This presence you speak of. It is nothing like I’ve ever felt; such pure power and raw hatred, there’s not a Seer that couldn’t have felt it,” he raised his head and flicked his eyes between the two, “I heard it, Richard. I heard his thoughts as though they were my own…Such darkness…” tears began to drip from his face as he spoke, “The void filled with hatred and a haze of malice. He spoke of Christopher and the poles of balance; cause and effect, ying and yang, good and evil. Because of Chris, you’re his opposite.”
Richard looked deep into Lancers eyes and saw something in them he had never seen from a Seer. He saw fear, unmitigated, unrelenting fear and he understood how deep it ran. If Millaian could do this to a Seer then he dared not think about what else he could do. “It’s alright. It’s alright to be scared, even for you,” he quickly looked back to a near terrified Michael with bloodshot eyes, holding back his own fear and nodded reassuringly before looking back to Lancer, “but you have to help me bring her back. He’s out there, Lancer, with Chris’ body and she might be our only hope to stop him before he becomes powerful enough to do god only knows what to this reality.”
Lancer stood up straight again, wiping the tears from his face and breathing in deeply. “Of course,” he stated flatly, casually raising an eyebrow and laughing shortly to himself, “I would be only too glad to oblige,” he began to walk off to a shadowed door at the side of the chapel hall.
Richard put his hand on Michaels shoulder lightly and patted gently. “I have every faith in you. I know you’ll be able to do whatever you have to,” he patted Michaels shoulder again and started following Lancer but was rapidly stopped again.
“Wait, do what? You’re not making any sense!”
“It will do, don’t worry. For now, though, I think it would be better for you to stay out here. Don’t be afraid Lancer’s got this place pretty well protected. I think they should know you’re trust worthy enough by now,” he smiled and looked to the rafters before continuing to proceed to the side door.
Michael slowly gazed upwards to the roof and couldn’t believe his eyes. The entire roof space was glowing a perfectly brilliant white with ghostly spectres drifting around the supporting beams and ceiling structure. He remembered reading about these things; the protectors of the precious living. “Guardians?” laughed Michael in awe of the wonderful sight, “I’d say they were more like angels.”
Lancer forcibly pulled aside a rusted bolt on the old wooden door and pushed it open making its thick iron supports clang on the stone wall.
“I can’t say I’ve missed this thing,” said Richard sombrely stepping into the room ahead of Lancer. Before him was a half blackened steel table with leather straps and harnesses in optimum positions for the restraint of a persons limbs. Beside it stood a movable medical table sitting a strange looking device with several thick cables and wires looping around it. Within it was housed a number of old car batteries, dirtied from years of use and dried battery acid encrusting their seals “Could have at least cleaned it up a bit” He looked further around the room at low shelves full of strange looking vials and implements he cared not to know the purpose of.
“I think you should just lie down,” Lancer answered flatly taking a jaw ended wire from the knotted jumble and clamping it firmly to a pylon on the underside of the table, “you just want to relax during the process. Sudden separation can be a little-” he clamped another wire onto a second pylon and moved to Richards’s side.
“I get the idea,” Richard finished, “It’s not like you forget these things,” he took a deep breath and clenched his fists agitatedly as Lancer now reached for the restraints. “Are those really necessary, though?”
“I’m afraid so,” he strapped an arm tightly into the leather bond and moved on to his feet, securing them as harshly as he had his arm. “Trust me, it’s for your own safety.”
“Safe? I don’t think there could be a less operative word for what you’re about to do then ‘safe,’” Lancer briefly acknowledged this as he fastened the last restraint in place and moved back to the machine. “Sure they’re tight enough?” Richard added sarcastically pulling at the straps, “don’t want me getting loose do we?”
“Just relax,” Lancer stated again, flipping several switches on the contraption which now started to emanate a low pitched buzz, “this might hurt a little.”
“Says the master of the understatement,” Richard breathed in deeply and clenched his teeth as Lancer took hold of two rubber handled steel paddles from amongst the jumble of wires and quickly touched them together creating a bright spark before placing them just short of Richards temples.
“Any last words?” Lancer asked finally, chuckling lightly before quickly pressing the cold metal against Richards’s skin making him convulse against the restraints and writhe under the force of the electricity now surging through his body. He continued to thrash against the leather bounds for what seemed to be an eternity but eventually threw his head back harshly against the metal slab with a sickly crack. After a split second of blissful calm his body was suddenly thrown, contorted, into the air by a final pulse of static and he let loose a harrowing scream to rival that of a rabid wolverine.
Outside, the haunting pitch pierced Michael to his very core forcing his body to abruptly turn and rush towards its origin, barely allowing his mind enough chance to process the terrible sensation. He threw open the door just as the screaming stopped to see Richards’s body fall limp and Lancer slowly withdraw the paddles.
“What the hell have you done?!” Michael yelled, grabbing Lancer by the shoulder and throwing him harshly against the movable table with a clatter, “you’ve killed him!”
“I would prefer not to hurt you, boy,” he replied calmly, trying to hold the still buzzing conductors away from them both, “so if you would allow me to-”
Michael snatched one of Lancers hands and pushed the paddle close to his face while still holding the other away. “Why did you do it?” he growled, resisting his urge to complete the electrical circuit utilising Lancers face, “tell me!” he shouted finally.
“The current will do nothing to me,” he casually pushed away Michaels grip with the least amount of effort and forced him to the ground. “Trust me, I’ve tried,” he quickly turned and flicked the machines switches back to their ‘Off’ positions and sighed gently as he placed the paddles down. “This is distressing, I realise, and for this I forgive you your abrupt actions. But you have to understand you have been entrusted with a great responsibility, the protection of the body.”
“You what? After what you just did, you talk about ‘protection?’” Michael stated in disgust.
“Not his body. There is another whom you must retrieve.”
“This is some kind of nightmare, it has to be,” Michael said quickly, grabbing his head wildly
“It is not,” replied Lancer flatly, “be aware this was of Richards choosing. In order to pass into the desert the body must not anchor the spirit to this world.”
Michael stumbled to his feet again thinking for a second and suddenly came to a realisation. “You mean the Median world? I never believed it was possible to actually go there.”
“Oh, it is very possible to go there. It is in returning that difficulties arise,” he walked to the large steel slab and began to undo the restraints that had held Richard.
“‘And for the ones who live astride the worlds; the sore silence prevails before peace,’” Quoted Michael, “I read that once. It means Medians can stay there longer than most doesn’t it?”
“Smart boy. I see why he let you come here,” Lancer smiled shallowly and unhooked the last leather bond. “It is a great power when seeking that which is hidden…Or lost”
“So that’s who he’s looking for? He thinks she’s like us?…A Median.”
“Like you, my boy, like you,” Lancer placed a hand firmly on Michaels shoulder. “I wouldn’t have let him do this if she wasn’t there. You see, Richard isn't the only one who can step between the worlds. Lets just say that if some adversity were to gets to her first then…” he shook his head, trying to repress the feeling, “such evil was never meant to exist.”
“That zombie…thing, that Chris turned into?”
“Millaian…He has found his host but will not remain there, he cannot. Soon, if we can not stop him, his plan will come to pass. I do not wish to experience what will happen if it does.”
Michael paused fearfully for a second. “So where is Richard now?” he asked tentatively, changing the topic.
“Right next to you,” Lancer looked just to the side of Michael and grinned making him look around hurriedly. “You won’t be able to see him. Only I have that pleasure. It’s the-” he thought for a second if to use the word ‘Gift’ or ‘Curse’ but came to the conclusion that neither was suitable, “-Bequest of the Seers, to see the unseen, for those lost in torment. To forever witness the desert.”
Michael sighed heavily, growing tired of Lancers exposition. “Yeah, that’s all very well and good but was electrocution really the best way? Wouldn’t, say, Nitrous Oxide have been much more appropriate? You know a painless method?”
“The spirit must be driven from the body quickly if we are to stop this evil in time. A shock of great intensity is the only way to do so without physically harming his body,” he looked to Michael’s side again and seemed to listen for a minute or two. “We must hurry; Richard has tasked you with a vital objective,” he began to rush around the room, picking up seemingly random bottles until he came to a small vial containing an off yellow serum, he quickly turned back to Michael, grabbing a sealed syringe as he went and rushed forward forcing the items into Michaels hands.
“Wait!” he barked abruptly, stopping Lancer in his tracks, “what does all this mean?”
Lancer looked to Michael’s side again and sighed solemnly, nodding slightly. “You have to bring her back, this serum-” he pointed firmly to the vial now poised clumsily in Michaels hands, “-will reanimate her body, reverse any rigor mortis and prepare her for the merging. Richard will find her spirit, if he is right and to go to the desert he must be pretty damn sure, he’ll be able to sense her and bring her here…I’m afraid so must you. I can then re-merge her body and spirit and, for lack of a better way to describe it…” he thought for a second whether he really wanted to say it but finally did, “bring her back to life.”
Michael stared, wide eyed at him, not fully sure he wanted to participate any longer. “So just find the body, inject her with this stuff and bring her back?” he reiterated simply.
“Basically, yes,” replied Lancer, now thinking the simple approach would have probably been better in the first place. He watched Michael out of the small room; fumbling with the items he had been given. “Do you think he can handle all of this?” he asked, turning back to where Michael had been stood.
Across the border world and through the astral boundaries Richard stood, to Lancer, only as a shadowy aura against a dark and desolate reality inhabited now by fear and a deep, empty loneliness. “He can take it,” came Richards faded echo of a voice, “it might just take him a while to get used to it,” he looked around the place, a washed out world with the air tinted a depressed shade of brown from an eternity of neglect and no real purpose in the cosmos. “I could never get used to this place, you know,” he sighed quietly, “I guess no-one could, though, that’s the point.”
“You won’t be there for long,” replied Lancer firmly, “either way about it.”
Richard adjusted his jacket casually and took a deep breath of the void full air. “I had better be off then,” he finished, giving Lancer a meaningful nod and exited hurriedly.
Lancer lowered his head slightly; possibly the only one who was fully aware of how pressing the situation really was and let two near silent words drift from his lips. “Good Luck.”
In the desert, nothing felt real and nothing existed as it should have in the real world. The gutted chapel had a harrowing absence of any sound, such a deathly silence that chilled to the bone. The guardians no longer drifted about the rafters giving that warm sense of safety that was only now appreciated that much more. Richard strode with conviction towards the door, trying to block out the overwhelming desolation calling out from every fraction of this place. It was to no avail, though, even his thoughts were empty now, with the encroaching voices of a thousand lost souls that constantly tormented him falling silent, unable or unwilling to peruse him back across the void, closer to whence they had came. He carefully pressed his fingers against the iron portal to the outside; it was ice cold to the touch and made him shiver, withdrawing the hand. Finally he heaved open the doorway and stepped out into a gloomy daylight. Richard hated how, in this place, it was never truly night. He looked to the sky but there was no sun, and no night to come. If there was it would be here already, there was only a thick sprawl of dusky clouds emitting their dull, sickly glare. Trying to put this all out of his mind, Richard closed his eyes and in the emptiness searched for her. As he did he couldn’t help but think that on some level this place was where he, and all Medians alike, were strongest. They were free from the endless threat of spirits from the Other Side, free to think clearly, and sense things through the eternity of silence that they never could have in the din of the real world. He slowly opened his eyes and realised what he had been thinking, cursing himself for it. Neither he nor any Median ever wanted to be in that place but it was an undeniable fact that it had a power over them, one so strong it could change even their deepest thoughts. It was their celestial home, the true place of the Medians, the root of what they were and all that they knew. It allowed for Richard not only to know that Hollie was there but exactly where and indeed what she was.
He looked up and down the dull, deserted street hoping beyond hope that she was, indeed, as important as they thought her to be. Eventually he set off down the street as fast as he could walk, knowing what this place could do to him as well as her and knowing how much danger they could both be in.



I-V – The Wretched

“For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living”
-Job 30:20

For every being of true goodness and light in the universe, there must be something of equal evil and darkness. This was apparent in everyday life; for every old woman helped across the road there would be one whose bag was stolen. This was more than true in the shadowy worlds which separate reality, rumoured beings in the dark regions of the emptiest desert of them all. Few had seen these things, even fewer had returned to tell of them; corrupted spirits of the long past trapped between the walls of this world and the next, driven insane by their plights. Many despised them, most feared them, but I pitied them, the Wretched condemned and damned. 

A dark cloud dragged slowly across the bright not quite full moon, and trailed off into the night sky obscuring some of the brighter stars able to shine through the city's light pollution. Michael looked down from the sky and sat back heavily in the car seat, thinking about what he was about to do. Looking across at the hospital again he could only consider what would happen if he was caught. Bodysnatching was a high crime, not to mention an utterly despicable and horrid thing to boot. He tried to remind himself that it was for the greater good and lives could be saved by carrying out the act. Although it didn’t precisely make him feel any better about the fact that he had already seen enough dead bodies get up and start walking around for one lifetime and didn’t really need to see another. He just preyed that Millaian was far away by now, better still that he was back in the land of the dead but that being thought though; he guessed that resurrected zombies weren’t the easiest beings to put back down.
Eventually swallowing his fear he opened the car door and stepped out cautiously into a yellow pool of light from one of the roads street lamps and looked over at the hospital again, sighing. He closed the door and, with a deep sense of concern for not only himself but for all those who would suffer from Millaian if he managed to succeed in his plan, he began to walk towards the building. Thoughts raced through his mind of how he was going to go about getting into the place. He doubted very much that Richard’s fire alarm trick would work again and he simply did not have the mindset needed to break into anywhere, especially anywhere such as a hospital. As he neared the A&E entrance it started to become apparent that a distraction may not even be required. Panicked people were rushing around, some with large, clotted gashes across their arms or their clothes smeared with blood. Getting closer he could see a body sprawled limply over a gurney, his throat was slit and he seemed to have several deep stab marks through his chest. Michael turned away, covering his mouth, and was nearly walked into by one of the nurses rushing round.
“You alright?” she said hurriedly, “he didn’t get you, did he?”
Michael looked at her sideways, slowly removing his hand from his mouth, shaking uncontrollably. “What? ...Uh, no,” he thought for a second and looked at her properly remembering that there were more important questions to be asked. “Who? What happened here?”
“A guy went psycho with a scalpel in there, don’t know how many people he killed in the end but he managed to mess up the chem. lab before he escaped. Whole ward’s a biohazard now!” she looked about suspiciously and came to an otherwise obvious conclusion, “wait, You’re not a patient!”
“I have family in there,” spurted Michael quickly, “I came as soon as I heard something had happened,” he paused for a second to assess if the nurse had believed him and to his surprise she apparently had. “Where did he go? This psycho guy?”
“I don’t know. The police reckon they have a trace on him. Not that you could miss him, he’s supposedly got half his face missing, although I didn’t see him myself,” she looked around again but this time rushed off to help with a patient.
Michael was left with a chill up his spine; part of him had hoped this was all a bad dream or a figment of his imagination but now that hope was gone. This was Millaians wrath and it was going to continue until he was stopped once and for all. He worked his way as silently as he could between the crowd of distressed patients and doctors alike and slipped into the deserted main reception area. The swing doors to the ward were now crisscrossed with biohazard marked yellow tape and shimmering figures of men in hazard suits lay just beyond the tinted glass. He looked carefully behind the reception desk; there was an un-taped and most likely overlooked plywood door back there. Michael didn’t like the idea as he knew very well the door was probably locked tight but on recalling the gravity of the situation he concluded that a level of civil disobedience was acceptable, after all it was nothing compared to the intended act of body snatching. He swiftly clambered over the reception desk and tried the door which was, indeed, locked firmly. Now without a second thought Michael looked around for something to force the door with. He scrambled through draws and filing cabinets but found nothing but clipboards and flimsy folders. Eventually he stopped and looked carefully at the door and then down at his feet. Abruptly he braced himself against the side wall and threw a foot as hard as he could towards the lock side of the door. Upon impact the lock splintered and flew off, leaving the door to swing open wildly into the opposite plaster wall and dig a considerable hole in the weak partition. Realising this wasn’t the quietest plan of action and that someone would be there to investigate any second, Michael started off along the staff corridor as fast as he dared. Not being able to remember where the Morgue was, partly due to never wanting to return to the place again, he decided the way of entry had turned out to be ultimately better due to signs in this area indicating places that the public weren’t generally supposed to go, one being; The Morgue.
As he hurried along the corridors, following the signs the best he could, muffled voices could be heard of the suited inspectors getting closer. Instead of attempting to flee their approach, Michael decided to duck behind a nearby partition. Concerned partly over being discovered but mostly about being contaminated by the spilt toxins, he wanted to try and find out just how dangerous the materials really were.
Footsteps came closer and closer and soon the voices were discernable “…Over the place. We were lucky this time; sectors 3 through 7 are clean. Looks like the toxic stuff was contained to the lab” There was a short burst of static and a blip indicating that he was speaking into a radio receiver, probably to the Police or Hazard Control Agency operatives stationed outside.
“Rodger. Continue with recon and keep us appraised. Cleanup crew are inbound,” came the almost garbled response across the radio before another blast of static and a bleep.
“Oh well, looks like we’re all but done here,” sounded a different voice.
“I should bloody well hope so too, supposed to be at home with the wife and kids to…” the voice faded away as they continued down the corridor, out of earshot again.
Michael slumped against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief before carrying on towards the morgue. As he went it became apparent that the lights were getting duller and eventually ceased to work altogether, the corridor lit only by the glows from offices and adjacent rooms. Although his better sense was screaming for him to turn back he pushed forward until he finally rounded a corner to his destination but was immediately forced back by a figure of a person stood halfway down the next hall. Michael stood for a few seconds, his back flat against the wall, hoping that he hadn’t been seen. He stood in silence for several more seconds, his heart pounding so hard against his chest that he felt it may give him away. More seconds ticked by, slow enough to be self contained eternities until a word drifted gently around the corner to Michaels blood pulsing ears.
“Hello?” the voice seemed scared and lost but with a relief that came only with the breaking of solitude, “I know you’re there…Please come out,” the voice began to tremor with fear. “There’s something dark here…And it’s coming back to get me…To get all of us.”
“I’m here,” stated Michael softly, without thinking. He didn’t know why but he stepped from the shadows and began walking towards the figure which still stood motionless against the brightness of the still working lights at the end of the hall.
“Help me! Please god, help me!” the man stated in terror as Michael still approached. “He will complete himself and then return for us all!” he finished quickly.
“Who?” the question was still asked even though the answer was known. Still, as what light there was drew across the mans face, there came no response. He was a young doctor but his face had become long and drained of all colour. His white coat was now dulled a dirty brown and had streaks of blood down it coming from 3 deep stab wounds through his chest. This had been Millaians work, the first doctor who had found him, but now he was dead and to Michael’s realisation this soon became sickeningly apparent. He composed himself and turned slowly to the door to the Morgue, taking hold of the handle firmly and, breathing a deep fear-fraught breath, opened it. Just inside laid the body of the young doctor, his coat dyed red with his own blood and his face twisted into a vision of horror.
“Is that me?” asked the young doctor quietly, unsure what was transpiring.
Michael faced him head on and knew what he had to do; there was no doubt, he had taken the final steps towards being a Median. “It’s time to let go,” he finally replied calmly, not afraid anymore shadowy dreams or apparitions in the night for he knew there were much worse things to be afraid of now, “once you do, you’ll be safe,” he went to place a reassuring hand on the mans shoulder but thought better of it once he remembered he wasn’t entirely real. “Trust me, there’s nothing to worry about on the other side.”
The doctor nodded shallowly and closed his eyes as his shape rippled and began to drift away. His being scattered, taken like dust in the wind leaving a faint echoed voice on the air which came back to Michael and whispered. “Thank you,” smiling slightly he abruptly entered the morgue, carefully stepping over the body and headed for a specific door in the freezer cabinet. He stopped for a second before pulling open the small door, unsure of how he knew which one Hollie was in with such certainty. He stepped back and looked carefully at the whole wall of metal doors but still came to that same one. He could sense it was her; some residual trace of her past life left a dull imprint on his newly horizoned mind. He quickly pulled at the handle, forcing the door open and the cold, metal body-plate inside to slip quickly out. On it laid a black body bag, apparently unaffected by the low temperatures but still freezing to the touch. He grabbed a zip which lay on the top and pulled it some way down revealing the body concealed inside. It was, indeed a woman, her skin frosty and turned a faint shade of blue by the sub-zero temperatures. Michael scrambled in his coat to find the picture Richard had taken from Chris’s apartment and held it up to her face. Apart from the corpse’s distinct colour change and lack of any identifiable expression it was her. He again began to search his coat for the syringe and vial of serum with which he would attempt to resurrect her. Once found he clumsily managed to draw the liquid into the syringe and, after pausing slightly to assess the best way he should go about doing it, pinched the sterile needle into her frozen arm and began injecting the substance.

Richard came to a halt at the crossroads of what, in the real world, would have been a busy area, even in the middle of the night. He grinned briefly at the idea that he was stood in the middle of the areas busiest intersection and wasn’t causing all out chaos or even better that he hadn’t been killed. To this effect his thoughts were quickly thrown back to the matter at hand. In a way, he hadn’t been killed because he was already dead and if he didn’t speed up his efforts he was about to stay that way. He looked about the empty street with the cold, air of absence weighing increasingly upon him. Buildings stood as a testament to mans echoed legacy that had no place here, the only reminder of its continued existence being the occasional shimmer of a car, static in place for several days, imprinting itself upon the fabric of this reality. Richard had never fully understood how this could happen, how long standing fixtures of the living world could, over time, press through to here. None the less they did, buildings, roads; even furniture providing it had been there long enough. He continued to gaze about the street; she was here somewhere but now too close to know exactly where. Ahead of him a figure appeared in the middle of the street but before it could know where it was faded away again. Just another soul passing through on its way to the other side, not able to know or even acknowledge where it was before it was sped on again across the existent plains. Richard continued to stare at the buildings, not knowing where to start but aware that he didn’t have time to systematically search them all. Closing his eyes, his thoughts drifted out into the void of emotion, he knew there was a good chance that it wouldn't work but a long time ago he had been taught that in the absence of anything, something can be very loud to a well trained ear. Having no idea what this meant until his first trip to the Median World he came to realise that Medians are natural Empaths. Empathy being the root of the ability to commune with the other side, understanding those who had come from there and was just another one of the abilities this place enhanced without question. His mind drifted around the street, probing into the story high buildings finding nothing as it went, only an increasing sense of harrowing emptiness now he had opened himself this place. The tormenting feeling grew within him, attacking his primal fears and was about to force him to stop when suddenly something hit him. An overwhelming sense of sorrow traced through his body and convulsed him into weeping. Composing himself he turned sharply to the street he had just walked down and ran towards the second building along from the intersection. He forced his way through the door, shattering its imprinted image on this world and rushed up a set of stairs, knowing exactly which apartment to head to. He stopped abruptly at a door on the third floor, breathing heavily from the run. The feeling was stronger than ever here, but even though it was one of the deepest miseries he had ever felt it was still relieving simply because it did not belong to him. He went to take the handle and remembered something Chris had once told him ‘The worst feeling is better than no feeling at all’. He nodded to himself, slowly opened the door and stepped into the apartment. From the far end of the entrance hall came the sound of sobbing, to which Richard quickly followed into the living room to find Hollie huddled in the far corner of the room, holding her knees so tight that her hands had gone white and mumbling incoherently amongst the sniffled crying. She did, indeed, look like her picture, only now looking as though she had been through hell and back, which to some extent, was actually true. 
Richard stepped closer to her and reached out a hand carefully. “It’s alright, Hollie, you’re not alone anymore.”
“No!” she snapped abruptly, “you’re not real! Just another one of them!” she began to rock back and forth repeating the words ‘Not real’ over and over.
He thought about who ‘they’ may be but decided that getting her away was the top-most priority. “I assure you I am as real as I possibly can,” he stopped for a second and considered what he had just said, “in this place at least,” he added quietly. “I’m here to help you, take you back.”
“They say they want to help me too…They lie!” she raised her head towards Richard and tilted it slightly, wiping a tear from her face. “But, you don’t look like them…You look normal.”
Richard stepped closer to her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re in danger here, I’m going to take you back,” his curiosity about what she continued to speak of grew but he managed to sway his attention back to the greater importance.
“No!” She squirmed back from him along the wall “That’s where they were, I thought I could escape them but they followed me, I don’t know how” She calmed and looked at Richard carefully “You’re not one of them, though, are you?”
“Who are ‘They?’” he finally asked, “what are they?”
She turned her head and gazed into the open room. “They are the starless night…They plague of the void…” she spoke slowly, transfixed upon something in the room and raised a shaking arm; finger outstretched. “They are his dark minions.”
Richard spun round and backed into the corner as he laid eyes on something he never truly believed, a myth of the underworld and what he had hoped never to become faced with. “Reavers!”
Reavers were a mythical demon of the border worlds, twisted amalgamations of outcast spirits, formed into horrific visions of the void between life and death. Stories told of them prowling silently through the borders seeking lost souls to corrupt and make theirs.
Three stood hooded and silent, near motionless, simply swaying slightly in a haunting, simultaneous fashion. Each looked different; their spirits merged in different ways but all were a sickening charred red colour, as though their flesh had been stripped and burnt. One stood with a single twin jointed leg aside a normal one with sharpened elongate bones protruding from its elbows and a third limb reaching out from inside its half exposed rib cage. The other two had normal limbs, only with their finger tips sharpened to needle points with one seeming to have faces pressing up against the inside of its chest. None of the creatures faces were distinguishable, only dull yellow glows from their eyes emanated from beneath their hoods.
Hollie gradually opened her hand out and waved across each one in turn, leaning forward slightly as Richard tried to pull her away. “Seeker…” she stated across the most human of them, “Carrier…” she waved across the second most human and gazed at the faces in its chest sorely before moving on to the last one. She grimaced at this abomination of a creature and darkened her voice, “…Hunter.”
Richard stared at her for a second; hardly able to believe she knew so much about their hierarchy but pulled her back and managed to manoeuvre himself in front of her, unsure if this would make any kind of difference if they attacked. “From what I know of these things they can only take willing souls. Don’t give into them!” warned Richard harshly.
A hissed breath drew from the Seeker and it took a step forward with its near skeletal feet clicking hideously on the wood panelled floor. “You will…Come…With us,” it’s chilling hissed voice was abrupt and disjointed, intended to invoke fear into everything it met. “You have…No choice.”
“I think we do,” Richard replied aggressively, “if you want us you’ll have to take us by force…But you can’t do that, can you?”
The Seeker glanced back and forth between them. “We do not…Desire you…” it turned to Hollie sharply, “he does,” it replied in low, malignant tones. “You will…Be taken…” The Hunter stepped in line with The Seeker and turned slowly back towards Richard, stretching its long, sharp fingers. “You will…Perish.”
Hollie stood up abruptly and moved in front of Richard. “Maybe it is time,” she took a step forward. “I will go with you, but he must go free,” she pointed backwards toward Richard.
“No!” he stood up shouting and tried to pull Hollie back again but was shrugged off.
“You have no need for him; he’s just a guy,” without turning she pressed Richard back, keeping him silent, “do we have an agreement?”
“You can’t do this,” Richard snapped finally, “I’m here to help you! You don’t realise what’s at stake, you can’t go with them!”
“I know who you are,” she whispered to him, “they will kill you and take me anyway…” she turned around and looked at Richard meaningfully. Her solitude induced madness was fading and her true sight was beginning to re-establish its self. “I don’t know what’s happening to me but I know you’re going to have to save me…And, I don’t know how but I know you can,” Richard didn’t know what to think but slowly took a step back concluding there wasn’t any other choice. “So, do we?” Hollie asked the Reavers sternly, completely terrified of what she was doing.
The Reavers were completely silent and still for a few more seconds until The Seeker reached up with jerked, deliberate movements about to pull the hood from its head but stopped short and lowered the clawed hand. “Your...Proposal has been…Accepted.”
The Carrier looked at Hollie expectantly forcing her to begrudgingly step slowly towards it. As she did The Hunter quickly struck out towards Richard, gripping him tightly around the neck and carrying him to the nearest window.
“No!” Hollie screamed, squirming against The Carrier that was now holding her, “you said he’d be spared!”
“He will not…be harmed…” The Seeker stated in not the most re-assuring way.
The Hunter raised Richard up, tightening its grip as its eyes glowed a brighter yellow. “…Much,” it added to its counterparts statement before throwing Richard as hard as it could, shattering the windows image on the world, letting him fall helplessly to the concrete street two floors below.
The Seeker looked to Hollie, its pinpoint eyes standing out against the harrowing darkness in its cowl. Eventually low hissed words slithered from the tattered hood and struck a cold, primal fear into even single part of her being. It simply said, “you are his.”



I-VI – The Other Side

“For many are called, but few are chosen”
-Matthew 22:14

Pushing the gurney hurriedly down the corridor it suddenly dawned on Michael that, when compared to getting both himself and Hollies body out of the hospital completely unnoticed, everything he had been so terrified going through already that night was by any stretch of the imagination the easy part. He abruptly stopped and looked at the black body bag that contained Hollie, still cool to the touch, and breathed heavily unsure of whether he was really able to get her out. He then flicked up his arm, pushing back his sleeve in one fell motion to reveal his watch. It was closing in on two in the morning so it should have been easy enough to go unnoticed once out of the hospital, he tried to reassure himself. He nodded to himself slightly and started pushing the gurney again. Knowing that he would never get out the way he had come in, already he had begun to follow signs directing to the service exit, presumably where undertakers picked up bodies. He hoped that there would be room for the gurney for wheeling a body from a hospital was one thing but carrying one was something entirely, and much more suspiciously, different. The gurneys wheels squeaked faintly down the polished corridor as distant sounds could be heard of personal re-entering the building forcing Michael to try and pick up his pace. Eventually, having managed to keep ahead of the sprawl of staff and patients approaching, Michael came out onto a much wider corridor lined with a number more gurneys, some with body bags still containing bodies awaiting transport.  He continued on, cautiously, towards a pair of wide double doors leading to a dark car park beyond, with a deep sense that being caught by the authorities for body snatching may be the least of his worries. Suddenly, this came all too apparent as he stopped abruptly, staring at the floor ahead. Drops of still fresh blood trailed down the corridor, becoming more prevalent as his eyes followed it towards the night. Spatter was smeared across the smooth surface and eventually small pools led silently and still to a single leg protruding out from behind one of the stationary beds. Fearing the worst, all Michael could do was press on but as he took a tentative step forward the fluorescent lights overhead began to flicker before failing altogether with a distant buzz. The sudden loss of light left him in a complete, uneasing blackness, with his eyes taking several seconds to attribute themselves to the low street light feeding in through the far doors. As they did a silhouette was outlined against the outside, its slumped and stiff appearance giving little hope of this being anyone of kind intensions. 
Michael watched the lone figure for longer than was comfortable until it abruptly spoke in a piercing, gravelly tone. “How does it feel, my boy?”
“I know that voice,” Michael stated suddenly, shaking steadily with fear, “it’s you.”
Millaian walked forward slowly, withdrawing his scalpel from a pocket of his bloodied trousers. “Yes, of course you do…But in more ways than you care to accept.”
“I’ll never let you have her!” he snapped, stepping in front of the gurney, “not so long as I draw breath!”
Millaian laughed quietly and stopped his slow advance. “Although I would relish the opportunity to take you up on your offer, I do not need her shell. It is of no importance to me.” In the darkness a half faced grin cut across what was left of his lips and he started to stagger towards Michael again. “I have her essence and that is all I require…No, it is not her I desire…It is you.”
Michael was startled back into the gurney, making it clatter loudly. “Why?” he managed, shaking uncontrollably.
“Of course you do not know, he would have it kept from you…To keep you weak…And now his weakness has lead to his death,” he pointed the scalpel accusingly at Michael, grimacing and gritting his now decaying teeth. “This host felt much for you. You see, there was a bond between you, my boy…Or should I say,” he took a long, wheezed breath in, truly enjoying toying with him, “my son,” he finished slowly, pleased with the effect his words would bring.
Michael ran the statement through his head, searching for any other than its true meaning whilst Millaians haunting grin beamed darkly through the night. “But wait…” Michael whispered, about to give into the intimidation but realised some part of him had known all along. “It’s true, isn’t it?” he breathed quietly, moving towards the faceless being, “he is my father; Richard always knew it…And so did I…”
“No!” screamed Millaian, backing off, “you are weak! You will join me or you will die!”
Michael stepped up to Millaian and smiled. “No, I won’t,” he cocked his head and grimaced. “That’s what you’ve wanted; A lackey…Minion…” he looked straight back at him as it became clear, “apprentice...You wanted someone to corrupt, like you…But why?”
“I need not explain myself to the likes of you!” he struck out a blood smeared arm and grabbed Michael around the throat, raising him from the ground slightly. “You have chosen death…” he tightened his grip briefly and threw him harshly to the wall, so hard the plaster was cracked, “and for this I pity you and what lie on the other side,” he once again took Michael by the throat, pressing him against the ground and raising his scalpel high, the bloodied blade glinting in what light there was. He hesitated for a second and leaned in close to Michael. Congealed plasma oozed from his face and tendons could be seen to tense in his exposed jaw as he gritted his teeth.
“Why wait,” Michael asked, unafraid of the monster looming over him. Seeing something in Millaian, some strength that he did not control making him raise his head towards the blade. “Do it!” Knowing he would not.

The dull light of the other world barely impacted Richards’s eyes as he opened them onto the glowing sky of the desert. The window high above shimmered indecisively, unsure whether it was still in phase with the living or not. He sat; bolt upright in the empty street as he recalled the Reavers and what they had wanted. There was little chance that she was still there; he couldn’t even feel her anymore but still he jumped to his feet and rushed back into the building and up the flights of stairs, bursting into the apartment to find that it was, indeed, completely deserted. He hung his head mournfully and wiped his face, not knowing how next to proceed. Suddenly, he looked up again only now realising he was still in the Median World. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious; it may even have been too late already. Still, he had to try, knowing that he was of no use to anyone if he was truly dead at long last. Turning sharply, Richard rushed from the building and ran along the street towards Lancers chapel. As he did he could feel himself become weaker as the sands of his life rapidly fell away into the abyss. He could feel the Other Side clutching at him, trying to pull him away, through to the land of the eternal dead but on he continued, fighting the strengthening wind and cold of the darkening world around him until he fell upon the great door to Lancers sanctuary.  Upon managing to heave open the massive door, having become covered with a thick layer of frost, chillingly ice cold, he collapsed in front of the dull distant silhouette of Lancer, fading quickly away into the depths of reality as the land of death continued to pull and gain an ever tighter grip on Richards very being. He managed to look up through gusts of the snow saturated gales tearing at his flesh blistering it to burning rawness. The dull glow approached slowly through the ice storm and stood over Richard motionlessly until three words drifted gently through the turmoil to his ears. They stated calmly ‘Not your time’ before his grip on the world was lost and he slipped into darkness.
There was an absence of everything, light, sound; even the unbearable sense of nothing was gone. It was a place of absolute absence, the incarnation of nothing; it was the void of souls, supposedly the true afterlife where time and space do not exist to the beholder for one does not, in fact, exist to behold. There was something else, though. Richard could feel something; he could feel himself, his own existence. Some thread of his being still clung to the reality of the living and refused to let go. Suddenly streaks of scattered light washed across his vision, they moved so slowly that he could see the particles merge and divide, some swooping majestically as their very structure changed and twisted whilst others swarmed, breaking through and shattering the fragile waves of their counterparts. Suddenly, just as the particles tried to drift into a veil of impenetrable light, they were pulled away. Drawn into an everlasting abyss and, once again, there was nothing.
Richard’s eyes flickered open and burned with the buzzing fluorescent light overhead bearing down on him. He writhed uncomfortably, clenching his eyelids from the bright glow. Soon a brightly outlined shadow leant over him, to an extent, blocking the light.
“Thought I lost you for a minute there,” came Lancers Germanic accent relatively softly, “but that’s the last time you’re going there for sure.”
Richard sat up uneasily and cradled his spinning head delicately. “I know what you’re going to say,” he croaked, bodily functions still re-establishing themselves after several hours of being out of use, “I knew the risks after being there so long last time.”
“A Median can exist there much longer than anyone else, yes. But the time of every visit is added to the last; parts of your spirit fall to the other side every time-”
“I know!” snapped Richard, sliding himself off the table unevenly, “eventually we all run out of time…” he rubbed his face and steadied himself. “Thank you, though. If you hadn’t-”
Lancer turned and put his hand up. “Forget it, you’re the one who made it back…What the hell happened out there, though?”
Richard paused for a moment and shook his head, barely even believing what he had seen with his own eyes. “Reavers,” he managed to say weakly. “They took her and left me for dead. I don’t know how long I was out but obviously not as long as they’d hoped.”
“No, they don’t just leave people. They either take them or kill them outright if they refuse,” he said firmly. “But that’s not the important thing now. We don’t know where they have taken her or how to stop Millaian…Or even where to find him for that matter.”
Richard reached into his seemingly bottomless pocket and slowly withdrew a half tattered book, streaks of dried blood across its cover with the title ‘Vessel.’ “This is an adaptation of a notebook in his possession which seems to be of great importance to him. I don’t know how it came to exist but I think its content is virtually identical and I’m sure that somehow it contains the answer.”
“I believed this text to be a myth,” Lancer reached for the book and held it carefully, caressing its pages, “and for there to be a copy? I know not how this could have slipped us by,” he shook his head and then came to a much more startling enlightenment. “It could not be true that he is the one…The Great Perceiver?”
“You mean the only person to purposely see the other side? And come back from it?” Richard asked uneasily, aware of the level of Seer legend they were dealing with. “The one true greatest Seer of all time?”
Lancer nodded shallowly. “This is of whom I speak. We are told that the unnamed one, known only as the Great Perceiver accomplished many things thought to be impossible for Seer or Median utilising a supposedly magical text named ‘Navire.’”
“Vessel,” whispered Richard deeply disturbed by the revelations, “it’s possible it wasn’t. That Millaian is using the Perceivers work for his own ends…” he stepped out side into the open chapel and looked up to the Guardians as if for an answer.
Lancer followed him and pressed his temple, again shaking his head in disbelief. “Matter still stands, if he wasn’t then how did he manage to cross over in the first place?” he sighed a breath of begrudging acceptance. “It is him. But no matter what we think of this myth. No matter what other worldly forces or incantations he may have, Millaian is still just the embodiment of a human based evil, nothing more. The ideal of The Great Perceiver, though, remains an inspiration to us all, that we can respect the other side and learn to truly coexist with its spiritual nature,” he grinned, knowing that he had convinced himself of this ideal, even if he was the only one.
“The Other Side…” stated Richard bluntly, still staring at the swirling spectacle of Guardians above. “That’s it! That’s the answer!” he turned and looked directly at Lancer; his eyes wide open, “you see, we don’t even need to confront him. If Millaian is, indeed, who we think he is and he came back from the Other Side using a ritual in this book then there has to be one he used to get there in the first place!” he looked away for a few seconds and thought “They might just be able to draw him back there.”
“No!” Lancer shouted harshly, grabbing Richard by the arm, “there’s no way you’re going to try this! You have no idea whether there’s any help there, or if ‘there’ even exists for that matter! You’ve spent too much time in the desert as it is, this could be a one way trip for anyone, let alone you!”
Richard smiled and eased Lancers arm away. “Just as well I’ve got you here to bring me back then, isn’t it?” he smiled again as Lancer lowered his arm hung his head slightly.
“There was never any stopping you, was there?” he conceded reluctantly met only with another brief smile from Richard. “There is a way…A rite which all Seers know of but do not know how to conduct. We know so that if this very text was ever found to be real it could be destroyed. Such a dangerous power is not meant for anyone, especially anybody of mortal blood lest they fall to the same fate as the Perceiver,” he sighed heavily, unsure that this was the right course of action but knowing that, at that moment, it could be the only way to stop Millaian before he unleashed whatever hell he had planned for the world. “It’s called The Rite of à L'autre…It translates roughly as ‘To the Other,’” he handed the book back to Richard carefully who immediately began scrawling through the pages, searching for the incantation. “I have done a terrible thing this day…I have broken the oath of all Seers, what ones that are left anyway. For over a century I have followed my path diligently only for it to come to this.”
Richard stopped searching and looked up at Lancer in concern. “I don’t believe that…This could have been your path all along…And, if you’ll excuse the cliché, you could have just saved all our eternal souls,” he went back to searching the book until arriving on one of the last pages. “I think this is it…” he flicked quickly through the book again and returned to the same page, “The Rite of à L'autre et Reconstituer…Looks like it was one of the last he ever used.”
Lancer carefully took the book back and gazed at the ritual instructions. “I am not familiar with Reconstituer. I believe it stands to reason, though, that it is a natural part of the ritual that allows the traveller to return to the living world. A part, I feel, that Millaian was unable to use, hence his assumed incarceration in the other world,” he rubbed his head briefly in thought, “but how was he able to return at all without this knowledge-?”
“I don’t really care,” snapped Richard, snatching the book from Lancers hands and quickly read through the incantation, “we have a chance to stop him without any more bloodshed and that’ll do just fine for me,” he held up the book harshly to him and pointed to it firmly. “Do it, send me to the Other Side.”
Lancer opened his mouth loosely, about to reiterate how dangerous the idea was, especially for Richard but eventually came to the conclusion that it would be pointless and reluctantly took back the text. “For all it’s worth, if you don’t come back then I hope you find peace out there somewhere,” he said softly only to receive a simple acknowledging nod from Richard. There was an extended pause before Lancer could bring himself to begin the rite but at last lowered his head and read the process he had to follow. “Fire is the key…A doorway, like any element to the many planes of existence,” he squinted with effort for a second and waved his hand around a single point in the air, moving his fingers into the centre of it and twisting them quickly to spark a small flame that burnt motionless just above his fingers. “Like the transition between this world and the border the element must be engaged with, allowed to encompass you and the very essence of what you are, only then will you have understanding to proceed…Now, focus on the flame, let it take you away…”
As Richard stared deeper into the flame he could begin to see the very being of what it was and slowly his eyes closed with whispered words flowing from Lancers breath, becoming evermore distant until they were all but gone. His eyes suddenly started open again to see a darkened outline of Lancer before him, still with the flame burning but now it was an empty shade of blue with its heart darker than the deepest pit. He was back in the border world he knew so well.
“It was so simple…” stated Lancer flatly, “in front of us all the time…The flame born by the earth, sustained by the air and doused by water. It holds all elementals within its grasp; Birth, life and death,” he gazed into the dark flame and smiled. “It’s a portal within a portal. The Other Side has always been here, within the flame, the gateway is only our own capacity to believe it so. Concentrate again, my friend, and you will see the truth…” Lancer spread his fingers, allowing the flame to move across his palm and waved it before Richard. “Fire is the gateway, the endless portal to the unseen world…” he pressed his palm forward and allowed the dark core to embrace Richard. The world began to fade; eternal night drew close and just before the starless eternity took him he heard Lancers final whispered words, “l'eau pour renvoyer la vie…Water to return the life…”

“Can you feel that…? It’s the sense of death.”
All around there was nothing but darkness and a terrible, chilling cold that pierced to the bone. Slowly a soft texture took hold, still as cold as before but with a comforting edge that didn’t give time to feel alone. It swelled and grew all around, with it came a harsh, abrasive wind. Richard gradually opened his eyes to find himself led in deep snow with drifts continuing on as far as the eye could see. However, a strong gale gusting up a blizzard made sure that the eye wasn’t able to see so far in the first place. Strangely enough though, as he turned his head skywards, it was brilliantly clear with single stars glittering prominently along the edge of the bright galactic arc against the dazzling night. Richard waveringly got to his feet, struggling to gain a footing in the soft snow against the force of the wind. He turned around a few times, trying to see some kind of life or purpose in the windswept tundra but found nothing but the faint outlines of twisted icy forms in the distance, shaped by centuries of the non stop conditions. All of this, endless stretches of nothing but ice, a cold that could freeze you solid if you let it and yet Richard still did not feel the deathly stab of solitude and desperation like that of the Median World. That voice was with him, even now, the itch of it still in the back of his mind.
“Your time grows short in this place…” it whispered again, “you don’t belong here.”
Richard suddenly turned and squinted into the snow filled air. “Where are you!?” he shouted at the top of his lungs, “somehow I don’t think this is the Other Side,” he said, more quietly to himself.
“This is true,” the whisper seemed to move close and then away as the words were spoken.
“Show yourself,” Richard said more calmly, looking up to the celestial horizon again, “I know you’re here.”
“Our form is beyond your comprehension,” it stated one more time, “but we will accommodate you.” There were several seconds of complete silence, even the wind seemed to fall quiet still gusting as strong as it ever had. Soon another outline became apparent in the blizzard, striding closer from the land of ice and appeared to elevate higher and higher until its shape was far above Richard and standing on an icy overhang. Richard looked around again and now found himself to be surrounded on one side by a sheer glacier wall with nothing behind him but the storm that raged on.
“What is this?” shouted Richard to the figure with no reply, “where is this place?”
“You could not be allowed to continue!” a deep, gravelly mans voice eventually came from the overhang, “you would condemn both our worlds.”
“This is the Far Side, isn’t it? The border world to the Afterlife?” he asked, not quite believing that the place was real.
“You are intelligent yet far from wise; your incursion on us has damaged the membrane between our worlds. None must travel between worlds unless it is their time!”
“That’s why I’m here-” Richard tried unsuccessfully.
“We know why you are here. The one you call Millaian has already breached the membrane. You only weaken it further!” the figure seemed to point accusingly at Richard and then withdraw his arm carefully. “But your intentions are true. You wish to return him to us; I only wish to do the same for you as you both are now one in the same,” he raised an arm as though he was about to swing it aggressively.
“Wait!” Richard screamed, raising his hands, submitting, “I only want you to bring him back, stop him from harming my world.”
The arm was again lowered, this time more reluctantly. “It is not our place to deal with the matters of your plane, and he is now exactly that,” he fell silent for a few seconds before crouching and leaning closer, still obscured by the snowy air, “though we have watched and seen…His ties are of your world, the ones he controls. Separate them and he shall return,” he stood back up again bolt straight and looked down the cliff, “and so now, must you,” quickly he raised and swept his arm harshly in front of Richard sending up a huge whirlwind which threw him into the night. He managed to look up to the brilliant sky one last time and see the stars streak back into obscurity followed by distant colours that streaked before his eyes, barely visible against a vast darkness and a disorientating spinning, falling sensation which finally came to its end with an abrupt jerk.
Slowly Richard opened his eyes and found himself gazing up towards the swirling mass of Guardians around the rafters of Lancers chapel. He gave a gentle sigh of relief and looked about the place. Lancer had placed him on an old mattress in the corner of the main hall. Around him, he realised, were lit candles and burning incense making the air thick with flavoured smoke hanging like a fine veil refracting a dull orange light that was now creeping through the stained glass windows. He sat up, shaking his head at the arrangement for he knew what it was. It was a ritual Seers carried out for those who had passed on, to ease their spirit on its journey to peace. He got to his feet quickly, slightly uneasy after his experience, and strode towards one of the side rooms where distant voices seemed to be coming from. As he got closer he found it to be Lancer and Michael apparently arguing.
“…It is too dangerous! We cannot-!”
“I don’t care it’s the only option now!” shouted Michael abruptly cutting off Lancer.
“Do you want all we have accomplished to be for nothing!?” Lancer growled back sternly, “because without a way to send him back that’s exactly what everything would be for.”
There was a harsh bang as Michael slammed his hand on a table in frustration. “And if we do nothing then all is lost! We have to confront Millaian and at least try!”
Suddenly the door swung open to reveal Richard standing in the opening against the misty orange atmosphere quickly spilling into the room. “He’s right…We have to confront him now,” he smiled at Michael then turned to Lancer seriously, “and I know how to do it,” he smiled lightly to himself and stepped further into the room. “We have to exorcise him.”
Lancer stared at Richard for quite some time, with him becoming more and more suspicious as the seconds passed by. “You’re awfully chatty for a dead man.”
“Dead?” Richard asked cautiously, “what makes you think that? I must have only been away an hour, maximum, I mean it’s only just dawn now,” he waved a hand back at the glow coming through the windows.
Michael and Lancer looked at each other, concerned of how they should proceed. “Rich…I don’t know how to tell you this but it’s dusk…You’ve been gone for over 17 hours…” Michael said tentatively.
 “You see…” Lancer carried on, “after half an hour you still hadn’t awoken so I tried the return ritual…It…didn’t work,” he breathed heavily and shook his head slightly. “I tried it over and over for hours until Michael returned-”
 “Which, by the way, is another story entirely” Michael stated, butting in.
“-With his information we had a chance but not without you…We tried everything we could Richard, I promise you…But with time running out until All Hallows we finally had to commit ourselves to the idea that you were, indeed, dead.”
Richard said nothing, trying to comprehend how so much time had passed in this world. The only explanation, he thought, was that considering the Median Worlds time frame never seemed fully sure of its self it must mean that of the Other Side, as well as its border world, was somehow faster. He considered venturing into why this was, what was the significance of this eventuality but soon decided there happened to be more pressing matters. “That doesn’t matter now, only that we now have a real chance at stopping him,” he looked between the two who still seemed a little shocked that he was alive. “Now, Michael, what’s this about information you have?”
“Erm…” he started unsurely, “he found me, Millaian…But I- I managed to get away and found out where he’s going,” Michael stuttered, thinking it was better he didn’t go in to what had really happened.
“He’s at the Ansen Memorial…The dome at the centre of the cemetery in town-”
“I know the one,” assured Richard quickly, “we should get going now, before it’s too late.”
“We should take the body; I don’t know how much longer she will survive, I need to remerge them as soon as possible,” he was responded to with a casual nod before turning to Michael and giving a second nod prompting him to quickly get up and head outside. “What do you mean exorcism?” he asked finally after Michael was out of earshot, “not only is it impossible, it’s been decreed that it would be forbidden even if it was possible…This whole thing about permanently severing a person from their eternal soul,” he clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. “It was never supposed to be done.”
“Listen,” said Richard firmly, “I never got to the Other Side. I think it was the Far Side border world, point is while I was there I encountered what I think was their version of a Median. He told me that the only way to defeat Millaian was to separate him from his power…The spirits he controls. The only way to do that is an exorcism; we have to separate them from him by force. I don’t see there to be any other way.”
“There’s always another way. Exorcism is wrong-” Lancer tried.
“No!” shouted Richard harshly, “the body he controls is not his! He has violated seven people, one of them who I consider family, and he intends to do it to another before doing god knows what to this world!” he turned away angrily for a few seconds before turning back and pointing a finger accusingly at Lancer. “Your kind! If you had never had pushed the boundaries we would never be in this goddamn situation!” he breathed heavily, trying to control his temper and eventually lowered his finger. “All you’re ‘rules’. They don’t apply anymore, this is different! Now do something right, help me save these people and give them peace.”
Lancer stared distraught at Richard before conceding with a sigh. “The process is considered impossible, I suppose you have a way to overturn this assumption, though?”
“If it’s considered so bad, scares Seers so much and has such a strong rule against it, even if it is in theory, then someone must have succeeded in doing it at some point…And I guarantee there’s something about it in Millaians book,” he looked meaningfully at Lancer, placing a hand on his shoulder, “nothing’s ever black and white. Sometimes some evil must be done to maintain the greater good.”
“That’s what I told you, many years ago…It’s strange what the student has become, and how proud of him I am,” he nodded gently once more and took a deep breath. “Alright, let’s do it.”



I-VII – Necrosis

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” 
-Corinthians 15:26

I can’t deny I was scared. More so than I had been in a very long time. If Millaian managed to take Hollie before Midnight then when the worlds aligned and the portals opened for All Hallows his true form would return with all the power of the Other Side. I had seen this form; decades of his attempts to return to this world had changed him into a near skeletal apparition of twisted humanity, driven only by a hunger for power and the thirst to do anything to achieve it. Yes, I was scared; we all were, but even if I just did this to try and finally to give Chris peace then it would have been completely worth it.

As the veil of the chilled night fell, as did the boundaries between worlds. The planes of the living and dead moving so close that they were capable of imprinting upon each other, going so far as to open fragile portals between them so that long lost relatives could return to their families for a single night. A joyous time for both spirits and the living where reconciliation across the vast void was possible but tonight all was silent for a dark mist hung over both worlds as they knew something was coming; one who would defile the sacred time and use it for his own gains.
A car pulled to an abrupt halt outside of the cemetery gates, mounting the kerb as it did and the doors were thrown open with Richard, Michael and Lancer carefully sliding Hollies now robed body from the back seat, colour having returned to her skin.
“What time is it?” snapped Richard harshly, “we can’t wait any longer.”
“Half nine,” replied Michael promptly.
“Michael, take her,” he passed Hollie into his arms quickly but carefully and gave Richard a slanted glance. “I’m going to need my hands free if we’re going to do this.”
Richard glanced back and then at Michael before taking a deep breath and starting towards the large domed building at the centre of the yard. There was a relatively small opening to the crypt covered with a slightly ajar wood panelled door. Richard looked back at the others and slowly pressed it open into the damp gloom of the age old tomb. All around were shadowed alcoves with skeletons lying therein, each with an engraved plaque above. They lined the walls row upon row atop each other and in the centre stood a raised platform where Millaian crouched, closed eyed, chanting quietly to himself. The repeated incoherent words were enough to strike a chill through Richards’s spine; even so he slowly stepped towards the platform looking closer at his seemingly unaware foe. “Can’t be that easy,” he whispered to himself, gazing at Millaians hunched figure in the hazing darkness. He turned back and waved Lancer towards him, speaking in low tones as to try and avoid drawing attention to themselves. “I guess now’s as good a time as any.”
“I’m sure it is,” Lancer said back sarcastically, walking carefully up the shallow steps of the circular platform. Coming within a few feet of Millaian he drew a deep breath and took his final step forward, rigidly reaching out an open and shaking hand. Lowering his head and closing his eyes he slowly placed his hand within half an inch of the decomposing skull and started to mumble repeated words in Latin. His words slowly began to overpower Millaians continued chant and a dull ultraviolet glow began to emanate from beneath his hand. Starting to smile with success Lancer stated the words over and over with more confidence and the glow filtering down creating a pool of almost unseen light on the ground around them. Suddenly the light vanished, along with Lancers sense of nearing victory as Millaians eyes flicked open and his teeth began to grit against his moulding exposed jaw. Lancer removed his hand, clenching it tightly as Millaian rose before him. “Oh no,” he whispered gently just as he was thrown back down the steps with Millaian raising his arms harshly releasing a shimmering wave through the air which knocked everyone before him to the ground and lighting the crypt with a blinding light.
Slowly the light began to fade and Richard looked about, blinking, eyes stinging as his sight started to return to him. At first he thought it to be his eyes adjusting but eventually as he was sure they had returned to normal it became apparent that the entire crypt was illuminated. Not just as though a light were now shining but with every wall, every surface now glowing a pale but off tint approximation of their initial colour. He looked around again to see Michael and Lancer but they were gone, all there stood was Millaians true, twisted form atop the platform, seemingly glowing brighter than anywhere else.
There was silence for several seconds with Millaian stood motionless in an atmosphere which, its self appeared to be drifting like an early morning mist. “Such ignorance,” stated Millaian in a hollow, dark, terror inducing tone, “you’re failure shows your weakness…” he leaned forward, every part of his tall, tattered cloak baring body moving distinctly independently to the next giving his movement a serpent like quality. “It is futile to use my own incantations against me…For I am immune,” he straightened back up again and grinned a terrible toothy grin against his washed out, withered face, “and you have not the intelligence to devise something original, for this you have already proven.”
“I demand you give her back to this world and return to your own!” shouted Richard, getting to his feet, “I know what you are and you cannot belong here anymore!”
Millaian grimaced slightly, almost grinning at Richards’s statement. “That’s exactly what he said…Just as he let me slip away into that hell. You know nothing about me!” he stepped off of the platform and slowly began to move towards Richard, “but I know much about you and for that reason I have already triumphed,” he grinned again turning around and heading back to the platform.
Richard watched the hollow being for a while and then decided to take a bold step. “Christophe Guillaume…” he stated flatly making Millaian stop abruptly and swing around, “he was the one, wasn’t he? The one who couldn’t let you do those things anymore. He knew this would happen so after you were gone he took your notebook and published it so that there was at least a chance to stop you.”
“That book is nothing…Just words. Mine has imbedded power, merged to my very being. It awoke me finally and I could be rid of that peony text,” he stared sternly but something in his face gave away some deep part of humanity still residing within him and it was pain. Merely hearing Christophe’s name invoked this thread of feeling and Richard imagined that having to use the published work, the very thing intended to betray him, to conduct his deeds hurt more than anything. “You remind me of him,” Millaian said subtly at last, “that is why I brought you here…I wished you to be the first I destroy when I regain my majesty.”
“Regain your majesty?” repeated Richard disapprovingly, “you never had any in the first place! By all accounts you died. Committed suicide because life got too much for you.”
“Exactly what I intended the weak minded to think,” he straightened up to his full height in the centre of the platform and began to laugh hauntingly. “I could not go on living a normal life, constantly seeing these things! After my supposed death I travelled to France and spent years working with the best Median I could find trying to discover the truth of life and existence its self…”
“Christophe,” Richard said gently.
“Yes. But I eventually came to realise there is nothing! Nothing at all…Only power. Power the strong should take and the weak should obey! My old friend…He disagreed and, lying to me every day we worked from that point, he eventually betrayed and tricked me!” Millaian threw his arm down in disgust and growled darkly. “Never again. This time my victory will be complete,” there was a shimmer in the air beside him and a shape began to form. It wavered and rippled until it was all but discernable.
“Hollie!” Richard tried to rush forward but was stopped as more figures started to appear all around him. But these were Reavers. “This is A Merge, isn’t it? A point between the worlds where, on this night, they become one in the same?”
Millaian nodded and opened a bony hand towards Hollie. “Blood is thicker than water, as they say. Her blood is very thick and it shall be my conduit to this world…” he turned his head towards her with a crack and gazed down on her with deep set eyes. “My lineage is strong in you.”
“No,” said Hollie softly, “I can’t be,” a tear slowly ran down her face as she shook with morbid terror.
“Millaian!” shouted Richard again, past the Reavers, “I’m giving you one last chance! Stop this and return to the Other Side!”
He laughed again with the Reavers looking back, apparently surprised at what he was doing. “You have no way to command me…I do as I please.”
“As you wish,” Richard said quietly, “Lancer was only beginning the process. I had to wait until now, when the worlds were merged…” he looked up at Hollie, “because I’m not leaving without her,” Millaian looked down, bewildered at what he thought to be an inferior specimen as he bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Licentia est vestry, meus amicitia,” the words echoed around the building and fell gently upon all who heard it like the fresh spring rain until it faltered and finally drifted away to nothing.
“That’s it?” said Millaian harshly, “some Latin?”
Richard raised his head again, opening his eyes. “I command you…” he raised his hand to the sprawling crowd of Reavers before him. “Leave this place,” the words moved forward with no force or malice, only the pure presence of true thought to direct the spirits that walked his world. As each comprehended the meaning of the words they turned and vanished into the ether. “You choose to bring it to my plane, I use the power I have on this night alone to command all who would infringe on the living and this night I decree…” he started walking towards Millaian as the last remnants of the Reavers vanished into nothing but mist, “freedom is yours, my friends.”
There was silence for a few seconds and Millaian was about to belittle Richards’s attempts at grandeur but suddenly Hollie gasped and she herself vanished into to a mist, drifting towards the door where the body had been dropped stating as she did simply. “Life.”
Milliaian went to open his dried lips to speak but instead slowly looked around to six pale, translucent figures standing behind him who each, one by one, dissolved away leaving nothing but a fading embossed imprint in the air.
“Your power has gone; you have no choice anymore,” Richard continued softly, “leave this place.” 
As Richard spoke, Millaian fell to his knees, gritting his teeth, trying to hold on to the world but with every passing second another part of his being slipping away. “I cannot be destroyed,” he managed to say, his voice gravelly nearly covered by his heavy breathing, “I will have my triumph!” he growled finally before clutching his chest and exploding outwards into a dark powder that drifted to the ground, fizzling as it did. Richard took a deep sigh and rubbed his face, hardly able to believe that it may be over.
“Thank you,” came a gentle feminine voice from the platform making Richard look up again. It was one of the spirits who Millaian had enslaved still standing in place where the rest had left, “from us all and for everything we give you this,” she smiled brightly before lowering her head and vanishing like the others leaving the distorted but solid shape of Chris behind her.
“It can’t be…” Richard walked, unfaltering towards him, “are you-”
“Real?” finished Chris, his shape becoming truer as the spirits imprint faded, “as real as I can be,” he looked around at the building as its walls started to fade back to their normal colour. “I don’t have long, the worlds here are already beginning to move apart and we are on either side of a vast divide,” he nodded towards the doorway where very faint figures of Michael and Lancer were tending to Hollie who was sat up, staring at Chris’s body lying on the ground just in front of Richards spiritual self.
“So much to say…” tried Richard, “come with me.”
“I can’t,” he looked down at his feet and the mutilated body of his real self, “but you can. Your time in the mortal realm has been true and just but now it is time to leave,” he reached forward a hand. “Come.”
Richard looked down; thinking for a second but slowly raised his arm and stretched it out to take Chris’s hand. Behind him the ever more solid figure of Hollie pushed Michael and Lancer away, getting up and rushing towards Richard. Distraught, she tried to reach for him but eventually took a deep breath, realising why everything had happened to her and embraced what she truly was. As she did she stepped across the divide, becoming solid again. “Richard,” she spoke with caring force and reached for Richards shoulder making him withdraw his hand from Chris and turn around, “you can’t do this. I know now the world still needs you…They need you,” she waved her hand back towards the other two and looked around coyly, “I need you…Please, don’t leave us.”
Something told Richard that he should listen to her that now after all these years of being alone he had people, people who cared and could understand everything he went through. He turned back to the fading figure of Chris and shook his head gently. “I’m sorry, I have to stay,” he was responded to with a shallow nod and a light smile. “I hope you find her…”
Chris more quickly now faded away to nothing but just before he vanished three words drifted across the divide; they simply said. “Look after him.”
With the living world returning to normal around them Richard looked to Hollie and smiled happily at her, with her doing the same back and reaching for his hand as Michael and Lancer rushed to them.

As the sun slowly rose over a world oblivious to how close it had come to anarchy, Richard, Michael and Hollie walked along a damp street as the lights over head quickly flicked off from another night of illuminating the shadows.
Hollie looked down at the robe she was still wearing. “I should really get some clothes if I’m going to be alive again you know,” she stopped and thought for a second, “come to think of it what’s going to happen to me? I’m considered dead.”
“Don’t worry,” said Richard reassuringly, “I have some contacts. They can make it look like a clerical error in hospital paperwork, everyone else will just dismiss it. People have short memories. Now the Reavers are gone everything will be back to normal for you in no time.”
“Oh I don’t think things will ever be normal again after this,” she smiled at Richard brightly and moved closer to him, “and, honestly, I wouldn’t have them any other way.”
“Question is…” started Richard suspiciously, “how did Michael get away from Millaian?”
Michael stopped, sighing and turned to Richard. “My father,” he said startling Richard somewhat, “and, yes I know Chris was. He told me and somehow he stopped Millaian from killing me, instead he just knocked me out and gave me a hell of a headache,” he clutched his head and shook it briefly. “Don’t ask me how though, I woke up and just knew where he was going to be, like I just knew that I was a Median…”

I wasn’t about to question what he had said. I had always known just to respect the old ways and this latest incident had driven that home all too well. I’m glad he knew about Chris, though, he was a good man who sadly succumb to the pressure of too many worlds on his shoulders; the fate of all too many good Medians. I think Lancer learnt a thing or two about his kin as well, although it surprises me to think that a century old Seer such as him could still be so deeply shaken by new revelations to this day. It just goes to prove that no matter what we think we know there is always more to this universe than meets the eye and the meaning of being a Median ran deeper than anyone could possibly understand. One thing was sure, though; Hollie was right when she said that nothing will be normal anymore because something tells me that after all this nothing, for any of us, will be the same again.




Continue reading in The Median Chronicles
Titles by Nicholas House

The Median (Novella)
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The Dark (Novella) 
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Illumination (Novella)
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Chronicles of The Median
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Abridged: A Short Collection of Sort Stories (Coming Soon)
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