Page 80 of Crossing Between
"Hello?" My voice didn't echo. It didn't even sound like it traveled beyond my own consciousness.
Whispers brushed against my awareness. Dozens, no, hundreds of voices speaking at once. They surrounded me, slipping through the grayness like ghosts, too faint to understand.
"Who's there?" I tried again.
The whispers intensified, overlapping each other in a cascade of sound that still somehow remained just beyond comprehension. It was like standing in a crowded room with everyone speaking in languages I didn't know, the pressure of communication without meaning.
A tendril of panic curled through whatever remained of me in this place. Was this the trial? Just floating in this eerie nowhere land while disembodied voices taunted me?
The grayness rippled, and suddenly a scenematerialized before me, not around me, but in front of me, like watching a television screen suspended in nothingness.
It was me. Little me, in a black dress that was too big, drowning my small frame. My hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail that Mom would never have approved of. Ryan stood beside me, barely five, clutching my hand with white knuckles. We were at our parents' funeral.
I watched as little Zoey stared at the caskets with dry eyes, too shocked to cry, too young to fully comprehend the permanence of death. I remembered that day. The suffocating smell of lilies, the oppressive weight of black clothes, and muted voices, the way my grandmother's hand felt clammy on my shoulder.
"I didn't understand," I whispered to the grayness. "I thought they were just sleeping."
The image shifted, rippling like water disturbed by a stone. Now I was looking at our living room, later that same night. Little Zoey sat cross-legged on the floor, next to the casket that held Mom's body. I watched myself close my eyes.
"Come back," little Zoey whispered. "Please come back."
I felt it. That tug, that connection I hadn't understood then. The raw, untrained power surging through me, reaching out across the veil between life and death. In the vision, Mom's body jerked upright in the open casket the funeral home had delivered for the wake the next day. Her eyes opened, but they were wrong, vacant, confused, lacking the warmth and intelligence that had made her Mom.
The necromantic magic had worked, but imperfectly. I hadn't known how to bind the soul properly, hadn't understood what I was doing. I'd brought back the shell without the essence. I hadn't understood anything.
"I didn't mean to," I told the grayness, my voice breaking. "I just wanted my mom back."
The scene shifted again, and this time it was yearsearlier. A picnic in the park, Mom and Dad laughing as Ryan chased after a butterfly. I was showing Dad a cartwheel, beaming with pride as he clapped. Mom's hair caught the sunlight, turning it to spun gold. Dad's deep laugh echoed across the grass.
We had been happy once. Normal. Before the accident that took them both, before I discovered what I could do in the worst possible way.
The image rippled and changed. Ryan, now grown, sprawled across my couch, empty beer bottles on the coffee table. His charming, mischievous grin as he promised, yet again, that he'd start looking for a job tomorrow. The way he'd brushed off my concerns with a laugh.
"Nothing can touch me, sis," he'd raised his bottle in a mock toast. "I'm invincible."
Another ripple, another scene. Me, dressed in my best interview outfit, walking confidently to the bus stop, and then spectacularly wiping out on concrete. I'd met Kenji right after.
Despite everything, I almost laughed at the memory. God, I'd been so mortified.
The scenes vanished, and the grayness turned thick and oppressive. The whispers that had been background noise suddenly amplified, becoming distinct voices. Hundreds of them, thousands, all shouting at once.
"Please, no!"
"Help us!"
"It burns, it burns!"
"My children, where are my children?"
"Don't let it take me!"
Screams of agony mixed with desperate pleas pierced through the formless void around me. Sobbing, wailing, begging voices pressed in from all sides, creating a chorus of suffering that threatened to drown me. The sound vibrated through my bones, making my teeth ache and my skincrawl.
I couldn't see anyone. There were no faces to match these anguished cries, but I could feel them, like cold fingers brushing against me. Souls in torment, consumed by terror and pain. Their suffering radiated outward in waves, washing over me like an icy tide, each ripple carrying fragments of their desperation.
Something about their cries felt ancient and eternal, as if they'd been trapped here forever, and would remain long after I was gone.
My chest tightened. I couldn't breathe. Were these the souls the Essencefeaster had devoured?
