Chapter II

The Forbidden Echo

[Part III]

[L I M B O]

  “What?” 

   “Well, I mean, like,” said the ghost-girl, shifting a little as though she were suddenly uncomfortable, “look at yourself. What you’re wearing? You don’t look like you’re from around here. You look more like you’re from there.” She punctuated this by gesturing over her shoulder with a thumb, towards the door at the far end of the room. The pale void. The pale void was beyond that door. She knew he came from the pale void…

   “So you are from there…” It was barely a whisper.

  The phantom cocked her faceless head at him. “You don’t know…I thought you would— Well…yeah, I am. I think so, anyway. Doesn’t everything here come from there?” 

  What? Oddball’s head was starting to spin; questions and confusion quelled fear and coherence. Everything in this place? From the void? Impossible. That was impossible. This place was nothing like the void. This place was meant to keep him safe. This place was meant to keep him safe from the void. Safe. Safe. Safe. A new feeling emerged from the maelstrom of thought; a singular dictation, given to him long ago. 

   Protect this place. 

   She was from the void. She had come through a door. She was a threat.

   Protect this place.

   Oddball’s muscles found strength again, and a life of their own with it. His feet planted themselves beneath him, and his legs lifted him from the ground. His heart became a war drum: beating slowly and methodically to drive the killing intent. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife and the blade scraped free of the sheath to aim its deadly tip towards the phantom’s head. If it could destroy the doors, surely it would destroy her. Protect this place. The black blade pierced the air in silence as he flew forward. 

  The knife stopped just shy of the phantom’s featureless face. One swift movement was all it would take. One swift movement. One swift movement… 

   Strange, he thought. The phantom didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by the blade held to her face. She turned her head up to him briefly, then back to the blade. She was thinking…something. What, exactly? Oddball took her in. Despite being monochrome and largely featureless, up close, he could see more than he had before. He could see the rumples and folds in her coat; see the tiny movements she made: nervous fidgets and the subtle, rhythmic motions of breathing; see the thin lines in her hair indicative of individual strands; watch as the thin, white-ish fog fountained off her figure to mix and swirl with the red fog that swallowed his feet; hear her breathing, strained with fright and yet…somehow so calm. His hands began to tremble. He willed his arms to move, but they wouldn’t. This wasn’t a door. This wasn’t even a human. Yet, at the same time, she was too human. She looked at him again. The war drum in his chest made it hard to hear her next words. 

   “Are you sure you want to do that?” 

   His grip on the blade began to loosen. He forced his hand to tighten until the handle pressed into his bones and the joints of his fingers ached with strain and pressure. He gnashed his teeth so hard that he felt something pop in his jaw. 

   Protect this place. Protect this place. Protect this place. Hot tears began to burden his eyes. You don’t belong here. Stay out. Stay out. Stay out. Every muscle in his arms burned with furious struggle. Why can’t I do it? You’re not human. You’re not human. You’re from that place. You don’t belong here. She kept looking at him, and though she didn’t have eyes, he could still feel them bearing down upon him and saddling him with the guilt of a crime he hadn’t even committed yet. 

   Are you sure you want to do that? It wasn’t an accusation. It was too solemn, too somber to be that. Are you sure you want to do that? It was just a question. Plain and simple, yet somehow so complicated and burdensome. Are you sure you want to do that? It wasn’t a question to save her life. There was no threat in that question, no desperate plea. It was a question meant only for him. Are you sure you want to do that? It was a question laced with the feelings of a human; a living, breathing person, not a phantom of the void. It was a question laced with care; laced with compassion; laced with concern. Are you sure you want to do that? It was a question laced with the acceptance of fate. He clamped his jaw tighter to pin down the verbal white flag that his tongue was stitching together. Was he sure he wanted to do this? As his body motionlessly feigned the movements of the fatal blow, his mind returned to wandering the empty tunnels alone; stifling the human warmth of the doors. Was he sure he wanted to do this? Images flared before his eyes. Piles of dust and mush that were once doors. Rot, rust, and cracking glass. There was the sound of the laughter, the crying, the talking; all of them turned to screams of agony as the doors disintegrated. Was he sure he wanted to do this? One swift movement was all it would take. One swift movement was all it would take. Then he could go back to wandering the tunnels and slaying the doors. He could protect this place.

   One swift movement was all it would take. 

   Something broke. The flag slipped free. 

   “I…I don’t…” He tried to hold it back, but it was fighting to be free of him. He should destroy her…it. She wasn’t even huma—it wasn’t even human. Why couldn’t he do it? What was wrong with him? “I don’t know!” The words of surrender were loose, and on cue the knife grew heavy in his palm and plummeted to clatter against the ground, dragging him along with it. At that moment, he realized he’d been holding his breath and he gasped. “I…should,” he said, breathlessly, “but…I can’t…” There was a pause. 

   “That was rather dramatic.” She wasn’t fazed at all. Oddball began to burn inside.

   Oh, shut up, he thought, you’re lucky I couldn’t kill you. Perhaps he’d read too deep into her question. He gritted his teeth together and tried to swallow the sting of humiliation. Maybe this was her plan after all, to take advantage of him somehow, to manipulate him. She'd won.

   Her voice softened suddenly. “Hey,” she prodded, “hey!!” She sounded like a child, cautiously trying to wake their parents or siblings in the early hours of the morning. 

   “What?” Oddball snapped. 

   “Do you wanna leave this place?” The words landed like a powerful blow. Oddball’s heart skipped and his thoughts scattered with the faintest sound of a shattering window or a derailing freight-train. He flew upright, knife-in-hand and knuckles white with the adrenaline-fueled grip. All of this happened before his brain could even gather up the fragments of what were once thoughts and questions to suture them together into one feeble, frightened phrase. 

   “What did you just say?” He’d heard her, of course, but he would have much rather thought he’d misheard her. He hoped her answer would be different. He lifted the blade once more, aimed for her chest. She was still unflinching, and posed her question in the exact same cadence and tone; as a child would propose an adventure into fairy-land. 

   “Do you wanna leave this place? With me?” She was looking right at him, and didn’t need a facial expression to exude the confidence her question already had. 

   Oddball’s eyes narrowed to slits, and he could swear he felt his mask growing cold against his face. “Why the hell would I do a thing like that? This place is safe.” The phantom-girl tilted her head a little. 

   “Is that what you’re trapped here for? Safety?” Everything inside of Oddball came to a screeching halt. The girl looked around. “Doesn’t seem very safe to me.” Trapped?

   Oddball was stumbling over his words now. “I’m not trapped here. What gave you the idea that I’m—”

   “I already told you, you clearly aren’t from around here. You’re the only one here,” she said, once more gesturing to the door behind her with her thumb, “who looks like he’s from there—” Lies. It was all lies.

   “Cut the shit,” Oddball said, thrusting the blade closer to her face. “There’s nothing out there! Just eyes and voices! Just torment! There’s nothing out there but hell! It’s all hell!!” That’s right, there was nothing for him out there. He shuddered, trying to block out the memories of all the laughter, all the mocking, all the staring… 

  For the first time, the ghost-girl recoiled a little. 

   “You really don’t know, do you…?” There was a sad, maternal affection to her voice suddenly. She reached out one hand. Oddball saw it stretching to touch his wrist and leapt back, slashing wildly at the air. 

   “Stay the hell away from me!” Between her sudden advance and the struggle to block out unpleasant memories, he was losing control again. His heart and mind leapt from his body to run circles around him and make him dizzy. His vision blurred with the blindness of panic. “Stay away! You don’t belong here!” The girl disappeared, like mist blowing away on a breeze. 

   A soft, glowing hand closed around his wrist. She was beside him now. When did she get there? How did she get there? The knife fell from his hand, but he didn’t hear it strike the ground. 

   “I want to show you something,” she whispered. There came a roar of a thousand waterfalls. Oddball felt cold. The world went white. His senses reeled. He screamed, or at least he tried to scream.

   He jolted upright suddenly, as if waking up from a sleep he’d never fallen into. He was sitting on wet pavement. Pavement. He was sitting on concrete; real, paved concrete. A sidewalk. Gone was the darkness and red mist, replaced by pale, gray light and fluffy, steel-colored clouds. Gone were the cavern walls, replaced by open air. The air was chill and moving, compared to the stagnant air of the place he called home. The roar didn’t fade, so he looked for the source. He was sitting next to a metal railing, just shy of a notable drop-off. From here, it was all ocean. Dark waves tipped with white froth slammed against black, jagged peaks of rock in nature’s feud against itself. He became aware of another sound, amidst the roaring. The sound of muffled voices as if through a door. He looked to his right. There were two colored smears in the rough shape of humans: one pitch black and the other bright red. The black smear fell over. The red smear started laughing. He wasn’t sure why, but Oddball wanted to start laughing with it. But something unseen muzzled him. There were no eyes here. No voices either. Just the two colored smudges and the ocean. What was this place…?

   “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” 

  Oddball turned to see the ghostly girl. Her pale-cream figure seemed to bear more radiance about it than before. She wasn’t regarding him; her nonexistent eyes were trained on the ocean. She was perched on the railing, lazily swinging her dangling feet over the drop-off as if to dare the raging sea below to try and grab them and pull her down. 

  “Where are we…?” He wasn’t even sure if he’d actually said it, or just thought it. 

   At last, she regarded him. Even without a face, he could see her smile. He could feel its warmth. The warmth of a thousand doors. The warmth of a thousand muffled, laughing voices. The warmth of unabated joy that leaked into her next, carefully chosen words.

   “Right where we belong.”