The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 2 🔻 Hollow

"Whoa there!" Webb said before steering me from the middle of the street toward an old shanty where Vale waited for us. "Gotta watch your step around here, Skye." He sounded so lackadaisical while I trembled between my two comrades beneath a wooden sign spray-painted to look like a bright red sword with the words FORGE MASTER written across the sword's blade.

"Why were those people—?" I stammered.

"Oh, don't worry about them," Webb said. And that was the only answer I got as the blond guided me inside the shop. I pretended I hadn't seen how vacant those corpses' staring eyes had been—pretended it didn't bother me that the ghosts of After didn't even give them second glances like it was a normal thing.

Inside, a heavyset man behind the counter greeted the two ghosts like old friends. "Good scavengin' tonight?" he asked, a Southern drawl curling his words. He flashed a friendly grin behind the bushiest of beards.

Vale let her supply of scrap metal and lux spill from her arms onto the counter. "Pretty decent haul. What do you have for all this, old man?"

The man's face lit up. He practically salivated as he held up one of the crystals. Then his eyes swiveled to me and searched me up and down.

"Oh, yeah. We also found her," Vale said, nodding at me and crossing her arms beneath her cloak.

"Nice to meet yew, small-fry!" the hairy man said to me, beaming. "I'm Orville Dover! Lemme tell yew that ya couldn't've been found by two better scavengers. Hopefully, they'll git some use outta yew, and yew can find me some more lux!"

An array of swords and other bladed weapons lining the wall behind him shuddered as he laughed, all of them glowing like Vale's katana. I pondered the absurdity that people would need weapons in the so-called afterlife. Were ghosts just as mortal as the living? Shadows—whatever they were—certainly seemed capable of ending a ghost's afterlife.

Orville caught me staring and glanced back at his wares. "Ah. Yew've got good taste, I see! Coated these blades in lux muhself. Summa these pieces are genuine antiques. Been with me since 'fore that cannonball took me out, and I sprouted from the sand here!"

Webb leaned to whisper in my ear, "Dude died in the American Civil War. We like to rub it in his face that the South lost."

My vision blurred again while Orville's braying laughter drowned out the street noise outside. This man had just told me about his gruesome death by cannonball in a war that happened centuries ago...and he was laughing about it. My brain still desperately clung to the hope that this was all a dream, or perhaps a cruel joke that everyone in this rotting place was in on. Ha ha. So funny...

I wobbled on my heels. "I need air," I said.

"No, you don't!" Webb called in a sing-song voice as I left his and Vale's sides.

I ignored him and escaped Orville's shop and fought my way back into the street. I bent over, gripping my knees, and hyperventilated even though, just as Webb said, my body no longer craved oxygen. That old guy was dead, too. And he had his memories. Where were mine? My eyes stung, despite tears never coming. I clamped them shut not wanting to see After and its ghostly inhabitants for a second longer.

Someone touched my back, gentle and caressing. I expected to find Webb beside me again. "You're gonna be okay, new blood," I heard Vale whisper, which caught me by surprise. Her tone was soft. It contrasted with her rugged appearance and perpetually scowling face. "We've all been through this. Dying isn't easy."

"No..." I said in return. "I'm not going to be okay, Vale. I have...I had nothing." I racked my brain while Vale continued to lean into me. I clawed my way through the emptiness in my head. There had to be something in there—some small hint at who I was and what I'd lost.