I had been dreaming.
Dreaming of Riley once again.
Dreaming of being in his impossibly strong arms as he carried me to a safe, dark place. The dream had already begun to fade, but I clung to it with all my inconsiderable might. I did not want to let that beauty go…
I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but as I came back to consciousness, I turned my head—left and right, up and down. My breath caught in alarm. I could not see! All was darkness, even though I could swear my eyes were open. I raised my trembling fingers to my face and discovered that it was covered with a delicately soft, silken blindfold. It reminded me of an expensive necktie.
As my fingers ghosted over the strange fabric, I discovered a second unnerving circumstance: my wrists were bound. I explored the binding awkwardly with my nose and mouth; it felt like a rope woven from the same silky material. Despite the bewildering context, the texture of it wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
I took a moment to digest my discoveries. Obviously, I was in the process of being (or had already completed the process of being) kidnapped. How long had I been unconscious? I felt like I’d been out for hours, though my head was still spinning somewhat from the four wine coolers I’d had, and the hideous chain of events that transpired afterward.
Oh god, I thought, have I been kidnapped by those creeps from the alley?
The beauty of the dream had made me forget, mercifully yet far too briefly, everything that preceded my fall into blissful oblivion. But how much of it had only been a dream? I couldn’t remember exactly what had happened in the alley, the memory was already so hazy and filled with gaps… Why had I gone off by myself? Something about Bree? Had she been there? Someone named… Kigawe? That couldn’t be a real name, could it?
One thing though was blazing crystal clear in the eye of my mind—the horrible memory of those frat brats, reeking of their body spray and tanning lotion. The thought of them, the hideous knowledge of their very existence, made me shudder. I must have made a sound, because at that moment, he spoke.
“You’re awake.”
It was Riley, his voice like a thousand cellos made of gold. The sound made me shiver in a very different and unfamiliar way.
“Riley? Is that you? What’s…” I nearly finished the sentence… going on? But I didn’t want to sound like a hysterical girl, to look a fool before him. “What’s… up?”
He made a strange sound, somewhere between a chuckle and choke. “What is up, young one, is this: you disgraced yourself last night.” The words, though spoken softly, percussed me like a backhanded slap. He continued, “You imbibed the spirits of the grape in quantities far too great for your slight flesh. You wandered from the protection of your group, like an idiot wolf cub who misplaces her pack, and you allowed that…”
He made the strange sound again, and when next he spoke, his voice was harsh as diamond on steel. “You allowed that… filth, that vile scum, that muck that I would sooner scrape from the heel of my boot—”
There was a great sound, like a large piece of wood splintering, as though he had lashed out at something in violent anger with the need to wreak destruction however inconsequential. His motion set me to rocking, and I realized we were on a water vessel of some kind. The fading echoes of the sound implied a great, cavernous space around us.
Riley was silent for a long time. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but it seemed that his being and mine were in some kind of synchronicity, set off by the rocking of the boat. I could feel the tension in his body, so very close to mine. I could sense him trying to seize control of some great and overpowering emotion. I could feel the clenching of his muscles, the grinding of his teeth, the burning in his heart. And I experienced, just as I imagine he did, the slow slackening of his rage, the careful and deliberate cooling of the fire, the return of normal pace of breath.
Finally he spoke again, his voice having taken on its previous deep and calm timbre. “You allowed yourself to be in the position… you placed yourself in the position of prey to hungry and salivating predators. And… worst of all, young one…”
Did his voice crack, or did I imagine it?
“I was not invited to the party.”
I was devastated. I, by my selfish and thoughtless actions, had caused pain for this beautiful boy. This dear boy who had now saved me twice. In that moment I was the filth, I was the vile scum, I was the muck to be scraped from the boot of some Roman-statue-made-flesh. “Oh… oh, Riley, I’m so sorry that I hurt your feelings!”
“Don’t… concern yourself with that right now.” I felt him turn away from me. “Be quiet, now… this is the difficult part.”
Difficult part? I couldn’t pretend to understand what he meant, but I obeyed. I leaned back and tried to make myself comfortable in spite of my restricted movement and obscured vision. I was playing out an unfamiliar… but also, somehow strangely familiar… scenario. But with Riley as my pilot, I did not fear coming to any harm. I attempted to open up my senses to my surroundings, to take in as much as possible. I could hear the water lapping at the boat, the rhythmic sound of what I assumed was rowing and faint echoes of what might be some squamous cave-dwelling creature going about its business in the distance. The gentle rocking of the boat felt like a mother’s loving embrace of a fragile newborn.
Then, impressing with great urgency upon my senses, came the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. A wavering, delicate, yet somehow mighty and thunderous melody. It was like birdsong one moment, whalesong the next. It was Riley. Rileysong. The sound of it was simultaneously heartbreaking, energizing, forlorn, joyous. It was the song from my dream. I was bathed in it, my body pulsing with a thousand subtle emotions…
…When suddenly the air was alive with static electricity, and the bottom fell out of my stomach. I distinctly heard the sound b’chhk’tch, as though the universe were expelling something rotten and sinister from the depths of its gullet. Riley had ceased his singing and the boat had ceased its rocking.
“We have arrived,” he said.
“Oh god,” I gulped as my stomach continued to flip. “I might be sick. Please don’t look if I get sick. Where have we arrived, Riley?”
“R’lyeh,” was his unfathomable reply.
“What… Riley. That’s what I said.”
“No, it is not my name, it is the name of this place. My home. R’lyeh.”
A thrill shot through me, helping somewhat with the roller-coaster feeling still coursing around my body. Riley had brought me back to his place?
“Your house is named after you?”
“…If that helps you. Now please, be quiet. I am… drained.”
He didn’t feel drained though, as his incredibly strong hands grasped my shoulders. My skin danced at the touch of his fingers, but there was something else as well. It was a sensation like being brushed lightly by a cat’s tail made of smoke. He lifted me and placed me in what felt like an ancient stone chair hewn from the rage of a millennium of violent waves. I felt a rope, woven from inexplicably soft and silky material, being looped about my chest and arms, binding me to the chair. And again, that strange feeling, like wisps of steam evaporating from my skin.
“Is this really necessary?” I queried, my voice as even as I could make it and my face pointed in what I assumed was Riley’s general direction. I wriggled my shoulders against the rope. “I hardly intend to run away.”
He finished tying the last knot with a sharp and precise motion, binding me fast. “I restrict your freedom for your own protection,” he said.
That seemed reasonable. I was in an unfamiliar place, after all, a place where Riley was apparently at ease. I relaxed. The chair was not terribly uncomfortable, and I felt in my heart of hearts that Riley knew best in this matter. He grasped the back of the chair and I was tilted back forty, perhaps forty-five degrees. He began to drag me. Once again, I was dumbfounded by his strength, the ease with which he moved over any uneven terrain. And we were moving over uneven terrain, that much was certain, the chair bumping, thumping, scraping and catching on various topographical features we crossed. I became aware that we seemed to be going uphill. Riley was utterly silent. Even his footfalls were apparently swallowed up by the vast space we inhabited. The only sound for many, many minutes was the dull metallic cacophony of the chair moving over the ground.
Then the noise stopped, and the front feet of the chair slammed down. I was unprepared, and I made a rather unflattering sound as the rope across my chest squeezed the wind from my lungs. For a long time, all was silent. But I could feel Riley there, watching me.
At last, he spoke. “Twice now, young one, have I prevented you from coming to the harm which you seem to seek out, like the imbecile moth seeks the scorching flame. Why do you think that that is?”
“Well…” I was flustered. I was alone with the most unusual and indescribably unordinary boy I’d ever met. My feelings were all jumbled up, all new. For the first time in my entire life, a boy had gotten under my skin. And though I felt an incredible connection with him, a synchronicity, I did not know at all what he felt.
I did not know how to answer his question.
What hidden motivations were the engine of his actions? Yesterday I’d been convinced that he hated me. That he considered me but an insignificant ant. But now, as the remaining dregs of last night’s drunkenness finally dispersed, I remembered with crystal clarity the words he had spoken as he took me from the alley.
I cannot leave you alone. You will only hurt yourself…
He could not leave me alone. Did that mean… that he couldn’t bear to be away from me? And, whatever it was he’d done to those creeps in the alley, he’d saved me. That much was clear. Could it be that he… no. No, it could not be. Could it? No. But maybe…?
“Well,” I started again, but I suppose I’d spent too long in contemplation, because his voice cut mine off sharply.
“I shall tell you. I shall shine a bright light upon you, and I shall share with you great truths which you shall understand by only half. And I shall lay myself bare before you. Because I have been left with no choice!”
With that, my blindfold was torn harshly away. He stood before me. His eyes pierced me. They were luminescently green, deep, fearsome and… unnatural.
Beautiful.
Indescribable.
“Look about you,” he said.
I obeyed. We were in a great space, a vast cave of size beyond size, filled with darkness and inky shadow. It was also utterly, unspeakably impossible. We were atop a massive formation of pocked and puckered stone, like volcanic rock. I could easily trace the path we had taken from the boat, which I could now see was a jet-black gondola. But the gondola, the dock it was tied to and the black water in which it floated were somehow above me, even though I was looking down at them.
Around us, I could discern objects which might have been a table, a couch, a doorway, a bed, a bookshelf. But the angles were all wrong, the perspective skewed, everything stretched and compressed in hideous and abominable ways.
The darkness that filled the space seemed to pulse, to contract, to flow, to breathe. I began to feel ill again, but worse, like my insides were trying to claw their way out of me, my veins in a frenzy, twisting and tangling themselves.
I started to moan, to hyperventilate. I hated that I was allowing myself to be so weak in front of Riley, but I had lost all physical control. I strained against my bonds, pitched my gaze all about in an attempt to find something, anything to latch on to, anything I understood that could anchor me. Even Riley seemed twisted and distorted to me… he was fading, receding into the black seas of infinity, leaving me. Oh god!
“Andromeda.” My name on his lips brought me back from the brink, and in the melodious timbre of his resonant voice, for the first time in my life, it sounded… beautiful.
“Station your gaze upon this.” He placed something in my hands.
It was a statuette, heavy, about eight inches tall. It was hewn from some greenish-black stone with a texture that reminded me simultaneously of marble and bar-soap. It depicted a girl, sitting atop a cubic base covered in arcane runes. It was unmistakably me, skinny limbs and all. Andromeda Slate, carved in stone.
I looked up at Riley curiously, my sensory overload immediately forgotten. He knelt before me, so that our eyes were level, our knees not quite touching. Again, I experienced that sensation of too-solid smoke against my skin, but I could see nothing there. He held up a hand, inches from the tip of my nose.
“These hands created that figure. Almost two weeks ago.” He moved his hand to tap his temple. “But this mind did not. I awoke from a dream to find that,” he pointed at the statuette, “upon my bedside table, the tools of its creation still scattered about this place. I do not remember carving it. But upon gracing it with my eyes, I remembered you.”
“Me? But we only just met…” But I knew what he was going to tell me, because I had had the same experience. My drawing in Mrs. Phillips’s class the morning after my dream. My heart fluttered. We really were synchronized in some impossible way. Linked in a way that no one had ever been.
“I remembered you…” he said, “from my dream.”
We talked for a long time after that, him cross-legged on the ground, me in my chair, the bonds forgotten. He told me of his dream, which I recognized as the mirror image of my own. We truly had met outside of time, outside of space, in a shared universe belonging only to us! I could tell that he had a hard time opening up, so I filled the empty space with stories of my life. Bree, Vik, my parents. I told him about how frustrating Mom and Dad could be when they got so involved in their jobs and each other and my private life. Riley just sort of half-smiled as he listened, somewhere between laughter and sadness, as though he well understood the difficulties that came part and parcel with family.
After what felt like mere minutes but was probably more like hours, I kind of ran out of things to tell him about myself. Not surprising, what with my existence being so terribly ordinary up until last week.
“Ordinary?” he said with that same sad half-grin. “You, young one, are anything but ordinary.” His gaze swept over me and I felt a shiver of delight coil inside of me. So different from the way he’d always looked at me before.
He seemed to hesitate, as if it took great will for him to speak his next words, but when he did, they were firm. “I believe that I have waited as long as possible. The time has come to bathe you in the light of unutterable truth.”
He stood with a single movement, the embodiment of lithe grace, his clothing rippling across his body as if trying to get even closer to his skin. My breath caught in my throat as he seemed to grow taller, his already muscular frame seeming to swell almost to the point of bursting the seams of his clothes. His face took on a searing hardness—an expression I was more familiar with. His eyes narrowed upon me, and I felt they saw through to my very core.
“Sgn’wahl!” he said with great force. “Sha’shogg! Throd! Cthulhu’ai!” Each of the alien words rang like a gunshot. I knew them all. “These are the words which called out to me, rousing me from slumber,” he said. “Uln Cthulhu! Wgah’n ya! Ch’ftaghu shugg Cthulhu! Thr’throd! Ch’ftaghu shugg Cthulhu! Thr’ngli! Ch’ftaghu shugg Cthulhu! Thr’ghlfnaw! These are the words that rang out to me, in your voice!”
His viridian eyes blazed like a rainbow in the dark. From the back pocket of his jeans, he produced a long, thin, vicious-looking knife that glistened like ebony. He took a step toward me. For the first time since I woke, I felt something resembling the thrill of fear. He placed the flat of the blade against my upturned forehead.
“Words have power. Words cut.” With a blindingly fast motion, the blade swooped down and neatly divided the rope that bound me to the chair. “All reality, the planet within which we stand and the universe within which it spins, all are shaped by words. Some believe the very universe itself was created with a word. Well, Andromeda,” the sound of my name upon his lips made me tingle, “open your mind’s eye to this hideous truth: the universe shall end with but a word.”
He turned his back to me and began to walk into the darkness. “Come,” he said, without breaking stride.
I rushed after him, still clutching the statuette in my bound hands, my legs somewhat wobbly after sitting for so long. I caught up, and we walked side by side into the foreboding black. After a while, I couldn’t even see the ground before me, but trusted in Riley’s steady footfalls that I should not stumble. Eventually we seemed to reach our destination, because Riley’s voice boomed:
“Stop.”
I stopped.
“Look about you.”
I looked about me.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“Um… I don’t see anything.”
“Precisely. You do not see anything. You perceive only the lack of thing. But I… I see the overpowering presence of nothing, beautiful in its infinite and absolute negation. We now stand in a pocket of primordial chaos, where everything is but a swirling pool of nothing. What you now see creeps rapidly to envelope your world, young one. Such was prophesied aeons ago. And all this is the very purpose of my existence.” I felt him turn toward me in the dark. His body was very close to mine, and again I perceived that indescribable sensation of almost-touch, like a ghost’s whisper passing through my hair. “My greatest purpose. At least… it was. Until there was you.”
He took a deep breath. “Tell me, little thing. Are you familiar with the legends… of the Great Old Ones?”
My heart skipped a beat. “Yes! I mean… no, not really. Ms. Epistola is always going off about them in class. But she’s a nutzoid, and she dresses like a cage dancer. Oh, and Vik—”
“Ms… Epistola.” Riley enunciated the name with great care. I didn’t like the sound of it upon his lips. “That is of interest, but to be placed aside in pursuit of more pressing concerns.” I didn’t think that Ms. Epistola was of any interest whatsoever, but I kept that thought to myself as Riley continued, “For now, know only this: the Great Old Ones are not legends, they are terrible reality. Once, they walked among the stars as giants. Now, many of them slumber beneath the stones, in the dark places, in the spaces between spaces. Many, but not all.”
He paused for a moment, and I thought I could sense a hint of hesitation about him. Riley, hesitant? What awful, deeply personal secret could he be about to share with ordinary me?
“We stand now beneath the stones, little one. I once walked among the stars, a giant. I once slumbered here, in a space between spaces. I… am the Priest All-High of the Great Old Ones.”
The words hit me with the force of a blow. I gaped in the dark. I was shattered, the awful weight of implication crushing me to a fine powder. Riley… a priest? “Does that mean… that you can’t… you know, be with someone…?”
He sighed, a tired sound. I supposed that opening up to me like he was must have been taking a lot out of him. “No, that is not what it means. I am not that weak breed of priest, though there is a parallel. I am a true conduit. Between your world above… and a much greater power below. The prophecy proclaims that when the stars are de-aligned in peak celestial chaos, I am he who is to call, to rouse the Sleeping Beast and plunge your world into mine. To negate, gloriously. Absolutely. It is my ontological imperative.”
“Wow…” I didn’t know what else to say. “So are you… going to?”
He was silent for a long moment. I felt that he was examining me carefully in the impenetrable gloom. His intensity passed over me in palpable waves.
“Peak celestial chaos approaches, little one. The autumnal equinox has heralded a glorious harvest: the doom of all. My time to act draws nigh, and yet… no. I shall not.” For a moment it seemed as though he would continue. But he was silent, and I felt like I had to know more.
“But… why?”
For a split second, I thought I could see his eyes, glittering green amid the black. But he did not speak. It was clear that he was unwilling to continue the thread of conversation, so I decided to pursue a more roundabout track.
“Okay, never mind. How about… if all of this stuff you’re saying is true, why are you here?” In my life. “I mean, in Portsmouth? In high school, even? If you’re really as old as you say you are, shouldn’t you be in college at least by now?”
“It is… difficult to explain in such a way that your pitiful mind will comprehend. But I will try.” He took a weary breath. “Each being in this vast multiverse is endowed with a destiny, irrefutable and inescapable. Mine, as foreseen by some long forgotten prophet, is to call. To rouse and unleash the Sleeping Beast that would destroy your world. My call can only be sounded, can only pierce the veil of the multiverse, during the time of celestial de-alignment. There have been such Alignments in aeons past when I have not sounded my call, for the signs were not in place and the time was not right. For then, I too slumbered. But truly, I believe that this approaching peak of chaos is now, at last, the time foreseen. For you see, young thing, there is more to the prophecy than just the doom of all… there is more. And never before have the proper signs and portents arisen. But now… I see signs. I see portents. I see… you.”
“…Oh?” I was very glad that Riley could not see the look of complete bewilderment that must have been painted all over my face.
“Oh, yes. The prophecy alludes to a being who is not of the Great Old Ones, not of the Elder Gods, but one who shall arise possessing the power to prevent me from sounding my call. This… Young One, if you will… is to be a mortal.”
He paused as if expecting something of me, but when there was nothing I could offer, he continued:
“When you appeared in my dream, I understood that you were—are—the mortal of prophecy.”
I gasped. “Me!?”
“I came to Innsmouth in this human disguise—”
“You mean Portsmouth.”
He shook his head. “You call it that now, but its true name is Innsmouth. Remember, young one, that words have power. None more so than names. Innsmouth is a center of great power and purpose more ancient than one as simple as you could imagine. Truly, it is fitting that I should meet my foil in Innsmouth.”
“…Oh.”
“If I may continue? I came to Innsmouth in order to hunt you, to watch you. I stalked you as the p’cp’ynt’ri stalks the m’gn’thp, to learn your secrets and discover your powers and likewise your points of weakness. Thereby I could but hope to be equipped to defeat you when the time came that you would stand before me as my nemesis.”
I really did not like the sound of that. Me, Riley’s nemesis? No, a thousand times no!
“But I don’t have any powers!” I disputed. “I’m just a girl, you know? How could I possibly prevent you from doing anything you wished? By asking pretty please?”
There came that strange chuckle-choke sound again. I imagined that if I could see him, he’d be wearing his half-smile.
“It is no matter. Regardless of whatever powers you possess, lurking untapped within your body or spirit… I feel that my destiny—irrefutable, inescapable—has been refuted. Escaped. How can I explain to your tiny mind the sudden change within me? With the sum of my being, I yearn to call, to bring ultimate undoing to this mortal plane. With all of my being… except my heart. Because you belong to this mortal plane, little one. And now, for that reason alone, I shall instead protect it.”
“…Riley, I don’t understand any of this.”
“Yes… I know. Let us depart this place and seek further illumination in the light of day.” With that, his footfalls began to move in the direction we’d come from. I did my best to follow blindly. Soon the dank, dim light of Riley’s home began to creep back into my awareness, the strange shapes and twisted angles reiterating themselves. Yet somehow it was all no longer vile and horrifying, but instead imbued with subtle, abstract beauty. We arrived back at my stone chair, still encircled in the loops of rope. Which reminded me…
“Um, Riley?” I said, holding up my still-bound hands even as they continued to clutch the statuette. “Do you think you could undo this?”
Again, that indecipherable half-smile. “Oh, yes. Of course.” The ebony blade reappeared. “But first you must do something for me. Please get on your knees.”
“Um… okay, I guess.” I carefully lowered myself, the strange rock harsh as gravel against the bare skin of my unbearably boney knees. He stepped close before me and again placed the flat of the blade against my upturned forehead.
“You and I are now of singular purpose,” he said with great solemnity. “When we met in the realm of dreams, our destinies became entwined irrevocably. Thus do I hereby anoint you as my sacred charge and accept you as my burden, my albatross. I shall protect you always, for you are small and weak. And I am greater than you.”
In that moment, I could not disagree. With another blindingly fast and careless motion, the rope around my wrists was severed—but I was bound more firmly than ever. As I gazed up into the otherworldly emeralds that were Riley’s eyes, I recognized that I had been sleepwalking for sixteen years. Now, truly, I was awoken. I was in love.
“You will change your clothes,” he said. He turned to walk, sharply as a shark swims, to one of the impossible pieces of furniture. “Those scraps you wear are unsuitable for roaming in the sun.” And he was right—I was still wearing nothing but my purple bikini from the beach party.
Riley opened—or rather, contorted—something that must have been a drawer, or maybe a trunk, and produced several articles of clothing which I immediately recognized.
I gasped. “Hey! I left those in my locker on Friday! How did you get them?”
I expected that he would look embarrassed, or at the very least a bit flustered, but his expression didn’t budge. He stated matter-of-factly, “I anticipated this eventuality.”
“Well!” I gushed, immediately chastising myself for the childish display of girlish emotion. “That was sweet of you. But… do you mind?” I asked, not sure if I wanted him to mind or not. He just stared at me for a moment, and then turned his back. I was about to pull the clothes on over my bikini when I noticed that clean underwear was still stuffed in the leg of my jeans where I’d stashed it. At first I was elated to be able to get out of the cursed bathing suit until I realized they were the pink ‘FLIRT’ panties. Oh god, please say he hadn’t noticed them! I changed as quickly as possible.
“Those guys on the boardwalk,” I asked hesitantly as I finished hitching up the crisp pair of W.G. Ilman sequined jeans with the butterflies on the back pockets, fearful of rousing his protective impulses by reminding him of my self-disgrace. “What… happened to them?”
He was silent for a moment, as though searching for just the right words.
“The most merciful thing in your world, young one, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents.” His voice was low and filled with a quality of subdued menace. “I unburdened them of that inability.”
I didn’t understand what that meant, and he did not elaborate.
“Okay, all done!” I said, knotting the last shoelace. Part of me wished that there were something identifiable as a mirror on the strange walls, but the rest of me was horrified at the thought of what I’d look like in it.
Riley turned to appraise me, his eyes moving up and down my body. I blushed at being examined so openly by the boy I loved. “Better?” I asked.
“Adequate. Now,” he said, holding his hand out to me, “there is someone you must meet.”
Surprised at my own boldness, I stepped forward and took his hand. His touch was electric. My heart was beating with such force that I was certain he must have been able to hear it. But he gave no indication, he simply turned and lead me around a corner-which-was-not-a-corner to go up a set of winding stairs that were surprising in their identifiably stair-shapedness.
“My purpose has changed,” he said as if I might have forgotten that fact in the past two minutes. In truth, I kind of had. The feel of his hand around mine was far too distracting to focus on much else… But I made an effort, responding with what I hoped was a cognizant nod.
It seemed to work, because he continued, “But the Alignment continues to approach. The threat of chaos is still nigh.” His grip on my hand clenched painfully as he glanced back over his shoulder at me. The look in his eyes made my heart flutter. “I will do anything—anything—to protect you, little one. Your world must not be destroyed. And to this end, we will now seek the advice of one whose knowledge and wisdom is further reaching than even my own.”
What could that mean? I wondered, but was too distracted by how lithely he moved up the stairs to ask.
We climbed for what felt like many minutes, one of my hands in his the whole way as the other clutched the dream-statuette. But I didn’t feel like I was climbing. I was light as air. I was in love, and I would follow Riley to the very ends of the universe, if only he would let me.
After the boat on the underground lake with this mysterious, impossibly alluring boy, I now knew what it must have been like to be Christine, spirited away by her Phantom to the dungeon of his black despair. I pressed the statuette to my heart. Very few girls ever got the chance to live out fantasies from their favorite books. And it had all happened without Riley even realizing. I was truly luckier than I ever dreamed I could possibly be.
As we ascended, our surroundings became decreasingly tenebrous. Almost without my noticing, the otherworldly stones of mostly stair-shape gave way to actual wooden stairs. Nebulous boundaries at the edge of sight became brick walls shedding ancient coats of no-color paint in long strips. By the last ten steps, I could almost believe we were coming up from a normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill basement.
At the top of the stairs was a fairly regular four-paneled wooden door. It was illuminated by a bare light bulb which hung from a very standard seven-foot ceiling.
“Prepare yourself,” said Riley sternly as he turned the handle and drew me out into…
…the street across from a junk shop?