Realm Wraith by T. R. Briar Read Free Book Online Page B

those guys over there see you, they try to keep you in line, and they start whipping. When they forget you, they go back to whipping everything else. They like to push people into those pits, like they’re mouths or something.”
    Rayne peeked around the base of their hiding place through a wall of waving limbs, and as he watched, the hulking monsters stopped moving, and just stood there looking around in confusion. Then they turned and walked back the way they came, until their silhouettes diminished over the horizon. Rayne wondered just how far he’d run.
    The man continued. “You’re the first guy I’ve ever seen who was like me. Everything else here is like some kinda nightmare. I keep coming here and coming here and every time I’m somewhere different. I get all these monsters chasing me and only a few things that look like people, but they’re like zombies or something! They don’t see me, they don’t respond, they just moan and shuffle. They’re disgusting, and none of them will help me!”
    “So, you don’t know where this place is either.” Rayne crossed his arms over his chest and looked down into the mud. “What is wrong with me? You’re probably just a hallucination. Maybe I made you up so I’d have someone to talk to. Not sure why I’d make you a Yank, though.”
    “What? No, no. You’re a figment of my imagination, because this is my nightmare. The same goddamn nightmare I’ve been having over and over again every night for the last four months! You’re the one that’s not real! God knows why I’d imagine some English guy. I guess I thought this place wasn’t classy enough.”
    Rayne snorted. The man’s attitude touched at his nerves, but still, he was the most normal thing about this place. He reached his hand out.
    “Rayne Mercer. Pleased to make your acquaintance, even if you’re not real.”
    “You Englishmen, always being so proper about nothing,” the man scoffed. He grabbed and shook Rayne’s hand. “Gabriel Baines, New York State Senate. And I’m damn sure I’m real.”
    Rayne slumped back against the column behind him, forgetting for a moment just what it was made of.
    “So you’re a politician?” he asked. “I’m a solicitor, from Langfirth, Essex.”
    “Really?” Gabriel remarked. “Do you sell vacuum cleaners? Or appliances or something?”
    “No! My firm provides legal counsel to company interests. I’m not a bloody tout!”
    “Oh, you’re a lawyer?”
    “Yes. Probably should have said that to start with.”
    Gabriel ran a shaking hand through his mussed hair, dispelling flakes of dried mud. “Are you sure you can’t tell me where we are? I’ve seen lots of seedy crap back at home, but nothing like this.”
    “You’d know better than me. Didn’t you say you’ve been coming round here for months?”
    “Like hell I’d know. Every night when I go to sleep, I end up in this crazy place, and I stay here until I wake up and it’s like none of this happened. I’m back in my bed and it’s all just a bad dream. You?”
    Rayne brushed aside a groping arm that kept pushing up against him. “This is my second time here. The first time, I met this gargantuan black beast with a flaming purple eye, and it had these massive black tentacles. It grabbed me, but then, well, I suppose I woke up.”
    “Well, isn’t that something? A black beast? I’ve seen all kinds of things but nothing like that. But I try to keep away from anything that doesn’t look human.”
    “Well, if you do see it, I’d suggest you run. Not because it’s dangerous, which, it probably is, but because—”
    “Because?”
    “I don’t know. It’s like that eye gets inside your head. It stares straight through your soul, and you start going mad. And that voice. It’s a massive voice for a massive creature. I can’t even describe it. All I know is that thing was truly beyond comprehension. Maybe it’s the lord of this place. Maybe this is that creature’s kingdom.”
    Gabriel