Ghosts of Darkness

"I carried my son to the lagoon and it gave him back to me. I carried Duke to the river believing the same miracle would happen twice. Clivilius taught me something about faith that night."

"Duke, stop it."

The words came out as barely more than a hiss, my voice threading through the darkness of the tent like smoke. Duke's head had been resting on my forearm—that familiar, comforting weight I'd felt a thousand nights before—but now it lifted with sudden alertness. His ears swivelled forward like satellite dishes searching for a signal, and from somewhere deep in his chest, a growl emerged. Low. Guttural. Wrong.

The sound scraped against my nerve endings like a blade drawn slowly across glass. I'd lived with this dog for years. I knew every sound he made, every variation of bark and whine and contented sigh. This growl belonged to a different animal entirely—something primal and afraid, something that sensed danger my human senses couldn't detect.

My hand found his head in the darkness, fingers working through the familiar silk of his fur. The touch was meant to soothe us both, to bridge the gap between whatever he was perceiving and my desperate need for the world to remain comprehensible.

At my feet, Henri had begun his nightly performance. The ritual was so predictable I could have timed it with a stopwatch—the turning in circles, the pawing at his blanket with obsessive attention, the gradual settling into a compact curl that somehow always ended up occupying exactly the same position on exactly the same part of the fabric. His snorts of contentment punctuated the darkness, small sounds of satisfaction from a creature whose needs were simple and whose world remained blissfully free of the complications that plagued the rest of us.

"At least you're settled tonight, Henri."

The words carried a thread of envy I hadn't entirely intended. Henri had mastered something I never would—the ability to shut out everything beyond his immediate comfort, to exist entirely in the present moment without the weight of fear or anticipation or the thousand anxieties that kept humans awake in the dark.

My fingers continued their journey across Duke's skull, tracing the familiar topography of bone and fur. The touch seemed to calm him momentarily; I felt the tension drain from his muscles as he settled back against me with a sigh that vibrated through his ribcage and into my arm.

But I couldn't settle. Not now.

Duke's uncharacteristic behaviour had planted something in my chest—a seed of unease that was already sending out roots, wrapping around my ribs, making each breath feel slightly constricted. This was a dog whose default state was relaxation, who erupted into action only when a possum had the audacity to traverse our fence line back home. His sudden restlessness now, in this alien darkness, felt like a warning written in a language I couldn't quite read.

I lay there listening, my ears straining against the silence, searching for whatever had disturbed him. The tent fabric rustled slightly in some barely-perceptible breeze. The distant sounds of the camp—someone shifting in their sleep, the occasional pop from the dying campfire—filtered through the canvas walls. Nothing that should trigger this response. Nothing that explained the tension still coiled beneath Duke's seemingly relaxed posture.

What do you know that I don't, boy? What's out there?

The questions circled through my mind, finding no answers, refusing to leave.

Lois's bark split the night like an axe through dry wood.

The sound was sharp, urgent—not the playful yapping she'd displayed earlier but something edged with genuine alarm. Duke's response was instantaneous. His body transformed from relaxed weight to coiled spring in the space between heartbeats, every muscle tensing with the intent to launch himself toward the source of that sound.

My hands shot out before conscious thought could form, years of living with an impulsive dog having trained my reflexes beyond the speed of deliberation. I caught him, felt the surge of his desperate energy pressing against my grip, his body straining toward some imperative only he understood.

"What's going on?"

Glenda's voice penetrated the tent's fabric, concern evident even through the muffling layers of canvas.

"We don't know."

Paul's response drifted from somewhere outside, and something in his tone made my stomach clench. Paul always sounded sure, always projected the confidence of someone who believed he had answers even when he didn't. The uncertainty threading through those three words was more alarming than Lois's bark.

"What's happening?"

Joel's voice emerged from the darkness on his side of the tent, thick with interrupted sleep but sharpening rapidly toward alertness. The sound of him—my son, alive and speaking, still miraculous despite everything—cut through my focus on Duke for a fraction of a second.

"I'm not sure."

The admission cost me something to make. My heart had begun its own rebellion, hammering against my ribs with an intensity that felt disproportionate to the situation. But my body knew things my mind hadn't processed yet. The cold night air pressing against the tent, the quality of the sounds outside, Duke's continued straining against my grip—all of it was feeding some ancient warning system that operated below the level of conscious thought.

We moved together, Duke and I—a scramble of limbs and urgency that had us off the sleeping bag and across the tent before I'd fully committed to the action. Joel was there in the darkness, a shape I could feel more than see, and I pressed Duke into his arms with a desperation that bordered on prayer.

"Hold Duke. I'll go and find out."

The command was also a plea. I was trusting Joel with something precious, transferring responsibility for Duke's safety in a moment when I couldn't be certain any of us were safe. Joel's hands, still clumsy from abrupt awakening, wrapped around Duke's body with a grip that would have to be enough.

I moved toward the front of the tent, the canvas flap a barrier between me and whatever waited outside. The night air seeped through the mesh, cold against my skin, carrying scents I couldn't identify and sounds that were growing more ominous by the second. I pressed my face to the mesh, straining to see through the darkness, to make sense of shapes that refused to resolve into anything recognisable.

"It's getting stronger. We'd better get inside the tents."

Luke's voice, and beneath the words I heard something I'd rarely detected in him—genuine concern. Not the performative worry he sometimes displayed, but something that sounded almost like fear.

A gust of wind hit the tent like a fist, the fabric shuddering under the impact. The sound triggered a memory so vivid it felt more like a blow—that first night in Clivilius, the dust storm that had nearly killed Paul and me, the way the world had dissolved into choking chaos and we'd survived only through blind luck and desperate crawling.

I turned back toward Joel, fighting to keep my voice steady even as my chest constricted with remembered terror.

"I think it's just an approaching dust storm."

The words were meant to reassure. They failed. Even as they left my mouth, I could hear how hollow they sounded, how inadequate they were against the growing chorus of wrongness that was building outside our fragile shelter.

"Come, Lois."

Glenda's command cut through the wind, her voice carrying that particular authority she used when situations demanded immediate compliance. But beneath her words, Lois's growl continued—deep and sustained, a sound of warning that vibrated through the night like a low frequency only dogs could properly hear.

Then came the gasp. A sharp intake of breath from somewhere outside, loud enough to penetrate the wind and the canvas and the chaos of my own thoughts. And in the same instant, I felt it—the brush of familiar fur against my leg, the sensation of Duke slipping past me with a desperation that spoke of something he'd perceived that I hadn't.

No. No, no, no—

"Duke! Get back here!"

The scream tore from me as I exploded through the tent flap, my bare feet hitting Clivilius dust that immediately began working its way between my toes. The night air slapped against my exposed skin—I'd been sleeping shirtless, and now the cold bit into me with teeth I barely registered.

Duke was already disappearing into the darkness, a pale shape being swallowed by shadows that seemed to have substance, that seemed to be reaching for him with invisible hands.

"Shit!"

Luke's shout jangled through the chaos, a single syllable loaded with alarm that confirmed everything my instincts had been screaming. I was crouched at the edge of the tent canopy, my hands finally—finally—finding purchase on Duke's fur, dragging him back toward me with a grip that bordered on bruising.

"I got him!"

The words were triumph and terror combined, my voice cracking on the declaration even as I pulled Duke's trembling body against my chest.

But Kain's voice shattered whatever relief I'd begun to feel.

"Shit! We're surrounded!"

Surrounded. The concept refused to fully form, refused to attach itself to any concrete image my mind could process. What could surround us here? What existed in this barren wasteland that could constitute a threat requiring that particular word?

Fear—pure, primal, and utterly irrational—gripped my chest like a vice. My heart seemed to stutter, then launch into a rhythm so rapid it felt more like vibration than beating.

"What's going on?"

Karen's voice preceded her emergence from the tent she shared with Chris, both of them stumbling into the chaos as confused as the rest of us. Their silhouettes against the night were shapes of uncertainty, postures of people trying to orient themselves in a situation that defied orientation.

"I think it's just a dust—"

Paul's voice cut off mid-word, the silence that followed more alarming than any scream. I saw what he saw in the same moment—the distant dunes illuminated briefly by colours that shouldn't exist, rainbow light that flickered and danced before vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared.

The Portal. Someone—or something—was using the Portal.

"Is that Luke?"

Karen's question carried hope that felt misplaced, desperate logic searching for an explanation that would restore normality.

"I'm right here."

Luke's response came from nearby, close enough that I could have reached out and touched him. Which meant whatever had activated the Portal in the distance wasn't him. Wasn't any of us.

The implications of that realisation crashed through me, adding another layer of dread to the terror already building in my chest. We weren't alone in Clivilius. We'd never been alone. And whatever else existed here had just announced its presence.

"Duke, stop barking!"

My plea was swallowed by the wind, by Duke's frantic struggles. His body vibrated against mine, every muscle straining toward some threat I couldn't see, some enemy my human senses were too limited to detect.

Then came the scream.

Not a human scream—something else entirely. A sound that seemed to bypass my ears and enter directly through my spine, a frequency of pure terror that turned my blood to ice water and my muscles to wet rope. The scream spoke of predators and prey, of hunting and being hunted, of the food chain's brutal simplicity in a world where humans had suddenly been reminded they weren't at the top.

Chaos erupted. Bodies scattered in every direction, primitive instincts overriding rational thought as everyone sought escape from a threat they couldn't identify. In the confusion, in that split second when my attention fractured across the camp, Duke made his move.

He was gone before I could react, slipping from my arms with a desperation that suggested he knew exactly where he needed to go, even if that destination was straight toward the danger rather than away from it.

"Duke!"

His name ripped from my throat as I lunged after him, my fingers closing on empty air where his body had been moments before. The wind had become a living thing, a hostile presence that seemed determined to drive me back toward the tent. Dust stung my eyes, my cheeks, filling my mouth when I gasped for breath.

I plunged into the darkness anyway.

The world reduced itself to sensation—the grit scraping my bare feet, the wind tearing at my exposed skin, the fine dust particles embedding themselves in my lungs with every desperate breath. Visibility had collapsed to almost nothing; I was running blind, guided only by the occasional brush of fur against my fingertips that told me Duke was close, tantalisingly close, if only I could—

There.

My fingers grazed his coat, felt the familiar texture of his fur for one heartbeat of hope before he slipped away again, drawn forward by whatever compulsion had seized him.

My heart was a war drum in my chest, each beat driving me forward through the howling darkness. Fear for Duke had consumed every other thought, every other concern. Joel in the tent, the mysterious threat surrounding us, the screaming wind—none of it mattered except finding my dog, protecting him from whatever had invaded our camp.

Please. Please let me reach him. Please—

Duke's yelp shattered my desperate prayer.

The sound froze me mid-stride, my body locking up as if I'd been struck by lightning. It was a sound I'd heard only once before in all the years Duke had been mine—a cry of pure agony, of sudden and overwhelming pain that transcended normal canine vocalisation.

The memory surfaced unbidden, unwanted—Duke as a puppy, underfoot in our kitchen while Luke transferred a roast chicken from oven to counter. The roasting bag had burst at exactly the wrong moment, spattering scalding fat across Duke's back in a constellation of burns that had sent him into that same yelp of betrayed shock.

I remembered the panic of that moment—Luke and I united in desperate purpose as we'd rushed Duke to the laundry sink, plunging him into cold water, our voices tangled together in reassurance and apology. It was perhaps the most connected we'd ever been, those frantic minutes when nothing mattered except our dog's welfare.

The burn had been minor. Duke had recovered within days.

This yelp was worse. This yelp carried finality in its frequencies, a note of damage that couldn't be undone by cold water and careful nursing.

"Duke!"

The scream stripped my throat raw, an animal sound that belonged to the darkness surrounding me. I stumbled forward, legs tangling with each other, and then the ground was rushing up to meet me. I hit the dust on hands and knees, the impact driving breath from my lungs, dust flooding into my mouth and nose until I was choking on Clivilius itself.

I crawled. The campfire had become a distant pinprick, barely visible through the swirling storm—I'd come so much further than I'd realised, driven by desperation into territory that might as well have been another dimension entirely. The world was sand and wind and darkness, and somewhere in that chaos was Duke, hurt and alone and needing me.

"Duke!"

My voice cracked, broken by the dust coating my throat. The word was a prayer cast into void, hope against hopelessness.

Then fingers closed around my wrist. Cold fingers, strong and insistent, stopping my blind crawl with a grip that brooked no resistance.

"Karen?"

The question emerged from confusion and desperate hope. Long hair brushed against my bare chest—a familiar sensation, a pattern my exhausted brain tried to fit into the context of someone I knew.

"No."

The voice was female but wrong. Dry and unfamiliar, belonging to no one in our camp. A stranger's voice in a storm of impossibilities, another variable in an equation that had stopped making sense hours ago.

Fear spiked through me—fear of the unknown, fear of whoever this was and what she wanted, fear that ran parallel to my terror for Duke without diminishing either. I tried to pull away, to reclaim my arm and my autonomy, but her grip only tightened.

"Take him."

Three words that didn't make sense until they did—until something was being pressed into my arms, something warm and furry and horribly, terribly still.

"Duke?"

His name emerged as a whisper, loaded with hope and dread in equal measure. My hands found his head, fingers searching for the familiar contours of his skull, the softness of his ears, some sign that the body in my arms was my Duke and that he was okay, that he would be okay.

His breathing was wrong. Shallow and laboured, each breath a struggle that I could feel beneath my palms. Something was desperately, catastrophically wrong.

"Duke, what's wrong?"

The question was absurd—he couldn't answer, couldn't explain what had happened in those terrible moments when he'd slipped from my grasp and vanished into darkness. But I needed to ask, needed to fill the silence with something other than the sound of his failing breaths.

Then I felt it. Warm liquid trailing down my forearm, following the path of gravity, dripping from my elbow onto the dust below.

Blood.

The realisation hit like a physical blow, driving the air from my lungs. My dog was bleeding. My dog was bleeding in my arms in the middle of a dust storm while some unknown woman gripped my shoulder and the world fell apart around us.

"We can't stay here."

The woman's voice cut through my spiralling horror, urgent but controlled.

I couldn't move. Couldn't think. My eyes had filled with tears that blurred the darkness into something even more impenetrable, and all I could do was stare down at Duke's shape in my arms, feel the warmth of his blood soaking into my skin, count the breaths that were coming slower and slower.

"It's not safe."

She tugged at my arm, her grip finding new purchase on my shoulder. The wind howled its agreement, and somewhere in the distance, sounds of conflict had erupted—shouts and movement that belonged to the rest of our group facing whatever threat had descended upon us.

I let her guide me. My legs moved without conscious direction, carrying Duke's weight through the storm while my mind remained frozen on the sensation of blood against my forearm, the increasingly desperate quality of his breathing, the terrible possibility that was becoming more certain with every step.

The campfire emerged from the chaos like a lighthouse through fog—warm, flickering light that should have meant safety but instead illuminated the nightmare I was living. As we entered its glow, I could finally see what my hands had been telling me.

Blood. So much blood. It painted my arms in streaks of crimson, had soaked into the fur of Duke's belly, was dripping onto the dust beneath us in a steady rhythm that matched the slowing beat of his heart.

"Help me!"

The plea tore from my throat, raw and desperate. It was a cry for assistance I knew might not exist, for intervention that might already be too late.

"Jamie! What's happened?"

Karen's voice preceded her appearance, her face swimming into view through my tear-blurred vision.

My legs chose that moment to betray me completely. The strength that had carried me back through the storm evaporated, leaving me with limbs made of water and a body that couldn't support its own weight, let alone Duke's. The ground tilted, darkness rushing in from the edges of my vision—

"I've got you."

Chris's arms wrapped around me, catching me before I could fall, providing stability I no longer possessed. His grip was firm, his presence a anchor in the storm of my disintegration.

Karen lifted Duke from my failing arms with a gentleness that made something crack in my chest. The mysterious woman—our unexpected saviour, whoever she was—began speaking in tones that carried the weight of authority.

"The creature's wounds are serious. He has lost a lot of blood."

Karen's gasp was the sound of hope dying, a sharp inhalation that carried all the fear I couldn't express.

The woman turned to me then, her gaze cutting through the fog of my grief with unsettling directness.

"There's nothing you can do for him now."

The words were meant as release. Permission to let go, to accept the unacceptable. Instead, they landed like blows, each syllable driving deeper into the wound that had opened in my chest.

"Duke."

His name emerged as a sob, the sound scraping past the dust in my throat, tears cutting hot trails through the grime coating my cheeks. I broke free from Chris's grip—or he released me, recognising the futility of trying to contain grief this vast—and gathered Duke back into my arms.

His fur was matted with blood. His breathing had become something barely recognisable as breathing at all. But he was warm, still warm, and where there was warmth there was life, and where there was life there was—

"The lagoon."

The word emerged with sudden clarity, cutting through the chaos of my thoughts. The lagoon had healed Joel. The lagoon had defied every law of nature and medicine to bring my son back from death. If Clivilius could work that miracle, surely—surely—it could work another.

"It's too dangerous. What's out there will smell the blood and most certainly attack again."

The woman's warning was steady, practical. She was thinking like a survivor, calculating odds and risks while I was operating on nothing but desperate love.

"I can't protect you out there."

The admission should have stopped me. It didn't.

The sounds of conflict near the Portal had intensified—shouts and movement that demanded attention.

"Your friends need help."

The woman was gone before I could respond, moving toward the distant chaos with a bow in her hands and a quiver on her back. A warrior, apparently. A fighter who'd appeared from nowhere to deliver my dying dog into my arms.

I didn't watch her go. My attention had narrowed to a single point—the river, with its whispered promises of healing, its impossible properties that might, just might, offer salvation.

"Jamie."

Karen's hand closed on my shoulder, spinning me to face her. The fear in her eyes was a mirror of my own, but beneath it lay something else—the practical recognition of someone who'd assessed the situation and found it hopeless.

"There's no time."

"The river has healed before. It can heal again."

The words came out fierce, defiant. I was arguing with reality itself, demanding that the universe provide another miracle because the alternative was unthinkable.

"Then I'm coming with you."

Chris materialised at my side, a makeshift torch in his hand casting light and shadow across his determined features. I didn't have the capacity to argue, to insist he stay, to manage anyone else's safety when I couldn't even manage my own heart.

The river was behind the tents—not far, not far at all. I'd walked this path dozens of times in the days since we'd arrived. But tonight, with Duke's blood warm against my chest and his breaths coming in increasingly desperate intervals, the distance felt impossible.

Joel had no blood.

The thought surfaced from somewhere, a fragment of memory that carried the weight of proof. My son had been dead. My son had been throat-slit and bloodless and beyond any hope of revival. And the lagoon had brought him back.

If it could do that—if Clivilius could accomplish that miracle—then surely it could save a dog. Surely it could close the wound in Duke's belly, restore the blood that was even now dripping from my elbows, give him back to me whole and healed.

Please. Please let it work. Please.

The river appeared before us, its surface catching the torchlight Chris held aloft. Karen had followed—of course she had, her instincts overriding common sense, refusing to let someone wade into dark water alone with a dying animal.

I stepped into the river without hesitation. The cold was a shock—sharp and immediate, a physical sensation that cut through the fog of grief and terror that had wrapped around my brain. The water rose around my legs, my waist, reaching toward the precious burden I carried.

"It's okay, Duke."

The words were a lie, but they were a necessary lie. My voice had to carry comfort even if I had none left to give.

"You'll be okay."

I lowered his body into the water, cradling his head above the surface while the rest of him submerged in the river's embrace. The torch light flickered across his eyes, catching the dark pools of his gaze, and for a moment—just a moment—I saw something there. Recognition. Trust. Love.

"I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you, Duke."

The sob that escaped me was ugly and raw, the sound of something breaking that could never be repaired. My hand found his ear, rubbing the familiar velvet softness, feeling the shape of him one more time, memorising texture and warmth and the particular way his fur grew in the spots I'd touched a thousand times before.

"I'm so sorry."

Tears fell freely now, dropping into the water, mixing with his blood, creating swirls of colour in the torchlight that looked almost beautiful if you didn't know what they represented.

Then—movement. A small shift against my palm, barely perceptible but unmistakably real.

Yes. Yes, please, yes—

Hope flared in my chest, brief and brilliant. The lagoon was working. Clivilius was performing its miracle again. Duke was going to be—

His tongue, rough and warm, dragged weakly across my wrist. A kiss. A final gesture of affection from a creature who had loved me unconditionally since the day we'd brought him home.

I leaned down and pressed my lips to his head, tasting blood and river water and the particular scent that was uniquely Duke, would always be Duke, would never be anyone else.

His breath stuttered. Caught. Stopped.

His eyes, which had held mine with such trust, slowly closed.

"No, Duke! No!"

The scream tore from somewhere deeper than my throat, deeper than my lungs—from some fundamental part of me that was being ripped away along with his last breath. I shook him, gently at first and then with increasing desperation, as if motion could restart what had stopped, as if enough force could reverse what was already irreversible.

The water around us erupted into chaos—my thrashing, my desperate attempts to revive him, the physical manifestation of a grief too large to contain. Chris's hands found my shoulders, trying to offer comfort that couldn't possibly exist. Karen was there too, her face blurred through the curtain of my tears.

"I'm sorry, Jamie. Duke's gone."

The words were final. Absolute. The period at the end of a sentence I'd been refusing to read.

Duke was gone.

The dog who'd greeted me every morning for years. The dog who'd slept at my feet through arguments and reconciliations, through moves and upheavals, through the slow erosion of my relationship with Luke and the sudden catastrophe of our arrival in Clivilius. The dog who'd been a constant when everything else was chaos. The dog who'd loved me without reservation, without judgment, without any of the complicated emotions that made human relationships so fraught.

Gone.

The word didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense. Duke had been alive minutes ago, warm and breathing and fighting against my grip to chase whatever had called to him in the darkness. How could something so vital, so present, simply stop?

The river seemed to sense my despair. Its current shifted around me, gentle and somehow beckoning, as if offering an escape from the unbearable weight of what had just happened. The darkness of the water, lit only by Chris's flickering torch, promised silence. Peace. An end to the pain that was tearing through my chest like broken glass.

I let myself sink.

The water closed over my head, muffling the sounds of the world above—Karen's cry of alarm, Chris's shout, the chaos of a night that had already taken everything from me. Down here, in the cold embrace of the river, the sharp edges of grief dulled slightly. The pressure of the water felt like arms wrapping around me, holding me in the darkness, offering the comfort that nothing on the surface could provide.

I hung there, suspended between the world of the living and something else entirely. Duke's body was gone from my arms—Karen must have taken him—but the sensation of his weight remained, a phantom presence I would carry forever.

The ghosts of darkness surrounded me. Not real ghosts, not spirits of the dead, but something worse—the shadows of everything I'd lost, everything I'd failed to protect, everyone I'd let down through the accumulated mistakes of a life that had somehow led me here, to this river, in this impossible dimension, mourning a dog while a war I didn't understand raged on the surface.

My lungs began to burn. The body's insistence on survival, even when the mind had surrendered.

Somewhere above me, hands were searching the water. Voices were calling my name. The world was demanding my return whether I wanted to go or not.

But for one more moment, I stayed in the darkness with my grief.

For one more moment, I let the river hold me.

For one more moment, Duke was still with me, still warm, still breathing against my chest.

Then the hands found me, and I was being dragged toward light and air and a world where Duke would never exist again.