Page 79 of Synodic

“It’s raining, ” he said again in that dreadful lifeless pitch.

“It…It’s not raining. Why don’t we get you out of here.”

It seemed he didn’t hear me or couldn’t register what I was saying because his body began to sway and convulse. Rocking back and forth he muttered the only words he seemed to remember. “It’s raining. It’s raining. It’s rain—”

“Come with me,” I interrupted, hoping to break his cyclical rainstorm. I wanted out of here, badly. And even though I didn’t particularly want to get any closer to him, I took another tentative step towards the suffering man. “I can help you out of here.”

“It’s pouring,” he said, which was progress considering it was a different word, albeit still along the same vein. Who was this man, and where was he from? How did he come to be here, and why was I the only one who could sense him?

He slowly began turning his face, so stiffly and incrementally it reminded me of a broken animatronic moving on rusted cogs, his eyes just as lifeless. “He bumped his head and couldn’t get up in the morning.”

My heart stopped. He was reciting a nursery rhyme from Earth. He was from Earth! Could this crevice be some sort of rift between our worlds? Was he an astral traveler like me?

Excitement quickly turned to dread as his neck twisted to face me, and I flinched back in horror, unable to stifle the sickened gasp that escaped my throat.

The top right side of his head was covered in blood with bits of raw flesh peeling and dangling from his skull. The wound looked as if his head had hit asphalt and then was shredded to ribbons as it skidded against the gravel. Even though his face was hollow and sunken in, there was no mistaking him. I had seen this man before.

It was Maddock Mosa. The comatose patient who had lain a wall away from me in the hospital. His once handsome features and modern clothes were now glaringly obvious.

Somehow, after his head trauma, his consciousness had become stranded here in Luneth, separated from his body. His mind so far gone he could only recall embedded phrases from an old children’s rhyme. One that was disturbingly similar to his own tragic story.

“Maddock, do you remember who you are? Did you feel me in the hospital?” I asked, feeling a sliver of hope. Was that what connected us? Was that what drew me to him?

“I feel nothing,” he agonized, his wails bouncing off the cave walls. If only his family knew the horrors he was living through.

Suddenly, I wanted very badly to leave this cave, but I couldn’t go without Maddock. His situation felt too close to home. It could have just as easily been me in his shoes, lost and stranded from myself.

But I had found my way back, and maybe I could help him find his way back too. Even though his mind might never recover, it had to be better than this. “I want to help you, Maddock, but first let’s get you out of here.”

He wasn’t looking at me anymore, and I was thankful I couldn’t see the chunks of loose skin around his temple. “I’ve felt nothing for so long,” he said as he rocked back and forth.

I reached out to touch his shoulder, but my grip never truly found purchase and went straight through his bony frame as if he were made of spun webbing.

His head snapped to mine, the dangling flesh whipping around with the turn of his stare. His eyes widened and locked onto me, and for a hopeful second, I thought he remembered who he was.

Maddock slowly stood, shoulders slumped with his head drawn down, gazing at me through the tops of his faded eyes. “But I feelyou,” he said, tilting his head to the side, his lip curling with starved desire. “I’d very much like to feel morethroughyou if that’s alright. Just one little touch. I’ll give you your body back in one piece. I promise.”

The blood drained from my face. His astral self, soul, or whatever it was, long deprived of human flesh, sensed my body could give him what he long desired—a host through which to touch, taste, and feel.

I fled, but before I reached the first bend, he was on me.

I dropped the orb to the ground, my body stiffening and bowing back as Maddock crashed through me like a phantom ship.

“Ohhh,” he moaned, his wraith-like being absorbing into me. “You feel so good. Just a little more.”

My blood turned to ice.

When I tried launching him off me, he dove into my mind with ferocious ghostly lashings. Mentally, I pushed back, but Maddock thrust himself against me violently, ripping and twisting at my mind as he forced his way through, shredding my consciousness to bits as he burrowed deeper.

The dark cave vanished, and a foreign memory flashed before my eyes.

Cate, my perfect-bodied girlfriend, blonde and beautiful with her left hand extended out, and me, slipping an exorbitant band of diamonds around her finger. She smiled. It wasn’t love, but it looked good.

The memory faded, and I reeled at the intrusion. I blinked back to my body, grasping at who I was. It took me a moment to gather my bearings and understand the severity of the situation. Maddock was invading my body memory by memory. Soon this vessel would be his.

What would happen to me if he succeeded? Would I be forced to live a cohabitated existence in one body, always fighting for control, or would he push me down so deep I faded into nothing but a faint echo?

Another memory sieged my brain.

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