Black Fire

"The darkness had texture and Rose was calling from inside it, and I couldn't tell anymore where the nightmare ended and Clivilius began."

Darkness. Thick and absolute. It pressed down on me, into me, through me. My eyes were open — I thought my eyes were open — but there was nothing. No shape, no shadow, no whisper of light. Just black. Black so complete it had weight, had texture, had hunger.

I was falling. Or sitting. Or lying down. I didn't know anymore. The sweat on my chest felt like fingers, small fingers, tracing patterns on my skin. Cold. So cold. Where was I? Why couldn't I see? Why couldn't I—

Rose was at the edge of something. I could see her now, standing with her back to me, her hair catching light that didn't exist. She was looking down into darkness deeper than the darkness around me, and she was so small, so fragile, so close to falling.

"Rose!"

The name tore from my throat. She turned. Her face was wrong — no, her face was perfect, it was her face, my Rose, but her eyes didn't know me. She opened her mouth to speak and—

The walls were shaking. Canvas snapping and cracking, the whole world convulsing around me. A sound like a million tiny bullets, a hiss that drilled into my skull, into the soft places behind my eyes. Rose. Where was Rose? She had been just here. She had been right here.

I curled into myself, stomach against legs, making myself small because small things survive, small things hide, small things don't get taken. My hands pressed against my ears but the sound was inside now, vibrating through my bones.

"Make it stop!"

The plea erupted from somewhere deeper than thought. The darkness pressed closer. The walls were going to collapse. The dust was going to fill my lungs. Rose was out there somewhere in the black and I couldn't see her, couldn't find her, couldn't—

"It's going… to kill… us."

The words scraped out of me. Each breath was a fight. My hands clutched at my throat because the air wouldn't come, wouldn't come, wouldn't—

"Paul? What's wrong?"

A voice. Not Rose's voice. Someone else. Someone who didn't understand that we were dying, that this place was…

"Clivilius is going to kill us."

I whispered it like a prayer, like a confession, like a truth I had always known but never spoken aloud.

Daddy!

Rose. Rose's voice, cutting through everything else, cutting through the wind and the fear and the darkness. She was here. She was here and she needed me.

"Rose. Is that you?"

I was crying. When had I started crying? The tears were hot on my face, the only warmth in this frozen black void.

"What the hell, Paul?"

That other voice again, tinged with something — alarm, irritation — but it didn't matter, nothing mattered except Rose, except finding her, except—

A hand grabbed my arm. Rough. Firm. Wrong.

I screamed. The sound didn't belong to me, didn't come from me, erupted from some animal place that knew only survive, only escape, only get away from whatever had me in its grip. I yanked free and scrambled across the floor — was it a floor? — hands searching for a way out, any way out, while the darkness pressed in from every direction.

"Paul! Come back!"

But Rose was calling. Rose needed me. My daughter was somewhere in this black hell and every cell of my body, every beat of my heart, every instinct I possessed screamed one thing: find her.

"I'm coming, Rose."

My fingers found a zipper. The metal teeth bit at my skin as I wrestled with it. Something slashed my cheek — the tent flap, alive and angry in the wind — but the pain was distant, unimportant. I pushed through the opening and the darkness didn't change, didn't lift, stayed absolute and hungry.

"Paul! Stop!"

The dust hit me like a living thing. Every inch of exposed skin burned, needles piercing flesh, the very air trying to strip me down to bone. I closed my eyes — what difference did it make? — and raised my hands to protect my face.

Daddy!

Closer now. She was closer. I peered between my fingers and saw nothing but black, nothing but void, nothing but—

There. A glimmer. A faint light in the darkness.

Rose.

"Paul, where are you? Talk to me."

The other voice was somewhere behind me, or beside me, or nowhere at all. Sound didn't work right here. Nothing worked right here.

"Jamie."

Was that his name? Jamie. Yes. Luke's partner. But he didn't matter now. Nothing mattered now except the light, except Rose, except reaching her before the darkness took her too.

"Where are you?"

Daddy!

I pushed forward. The wind fought me. The dust tore at me. My legs didn't want to work, kept trying to buckle, but I forced them to move because Rose was waiting, Rose was calling, Rose was—

"I see you. I'm coming, Rose."

Each word a promise. Each step a battle. The light grew brighter, closer, and my heart swelled because I was almost there, almost—

"For fuck's sake, Paul! Stop!"

I spun around — or tried to — but direction had no meaning anymore. Where was the voice coming from? Where was I? The light was in front of me now, bright enough to see, bright enough to—

"Ouch!"

Pain. Sharp and searing, lancing through my foot. The ground was burning. The light — not Rose, not Rose, the campfire, the embers we had left — and I was falling, falling toward the coals, toward the heat, toward—

I screamed. Not words. Just sound. Pure terror compressed into a single note as I tipped forward into what could only be agony, what could only be—

An arm around my waist. Fingers digging into flesh. The fall stopped. We hit the ground together, hard, limbs tangling, and I was gasping, sobbing, trying to understand what had happened, where Rose had gone, why I could still hear her calling even though the light had been just coals, just fire, just—

"Keep your eyes shut."

I flinched from the touch, from the hand reaching for mine. Everything was threat. Everything was danger. Everything was—

"Give me your fucking hand!"

I gave it. I had nothing left to give but I gave it anyway, let myself be dragged across the ground, across the dust that invaded every crack and crevice of my body. My underwear was gone — when had that happened? — and the earth scraped against bare skin, adding new pain to the catalogue of sensation I could no longer process.

My foot hit something. A pole. The tent. And then the sound of tearing, of giving way, of everything falling apart.

"Shit."

I curled into myself. Knees to chest. Arms wrapped tight. I started to rock, forward and back, forward and back, because this motion was the only thing that made sense, the only rhythm I could find in a world that had none.

Tears streamed down my face. I didn't try to stop them. I didn't try anything anymore.

I had failed. Rose had been calling and I couldn't reach her. Rose had needed me and I wasn't enough. The darkness had taken her, or she had never been here, or she was still out there waiting for a father who would never find his way through the black.

Warmth against my back. Arms encircling me, pulling me close. A heartbeat that wasn't mine, steady against my spine. The rocking slowed. Stopped. I let myself be held because there was nothing else left, nothing but this — another human being in the darkness, proof that I hadn't disappeared entirely.

"I'm sorry, Rose."

The whisper escaped into the void. An apology to a daughter I couldn't save, couldn't reach, couldn't protect from the darkness that swallowed everything.

She was still calling. Somewhere in the depths of my shattered mind, she was still calling.

Daddy.

And I couldn't answer. I could only lie there, broken and naked and held by someone whose name I had already forgotten, waiting for a morning I wasn't sure would ever come.