Someone Else's Scream

"The distance between celebration and catastrophe is measured in hours, not miles—one moment you're raising glasses, the next you're running blind through darkness toward a sound no one should make."

A deep growl dragged me from sleep like a hand reaching into a dark well and hauling me toward light I wasn't ready for.

The sound resonated through my bones before my brain could catch up, a primal vibration that bypassed thought entirely and spoke directly to whatever ancient survival instincts still lived in the base of my skull. My eyes snapped open to absolute darkness—not the gentle grey of night-adjusted vision, but the kind of black that pressed against your face like something solid.

I blinked rapidly, struggling against the thick residue of sleep that clung to my consciousness. My eyes felt gummed, sticky, as though the dream I'd been pulled from refused to fully release its grip. The air around me was heavy and wrong, charged with a tension I could almost taste—metallic and sharp, like the atmosphere before a lightning strike.

"Lois, what is it?" Paul's voice cut through the darkness, sharp and laced with an anxiety that made my stomach clench. The words were barely above a whisper, but in the oppressive silence, they carried like a shout.

I forced myself upright, my movements sluggish and uncoordinated, as though my limbs were fighting through water. As I sat up, the vague outlines of Paul and Kain materialised from the shadows—dark shapes against darker background, more suggestion than substance. The campfire had died to a feeble glow, its embers offering nothing resembling comfort or illumination.

"The wind is picking up. Do you think it's another dust storm?" My voice sounded foreign in my own ears—strained, tight, edged with something I didn't want to examine too closely. I could feel the faint stirrings of wind against my exposed skin, the tentative fingers of what might become something far worse. The thought of a dust storm—being swallowed by that choking, blinding chaos—sent ice cascading down my spine.

"I hope not," Paul replied, his tone carrying weight that had nothing to do with weather. He'd crouched beside Lois, his hand closing around her collar with the particular grip of someone preparing for something bad. The dog was a knot of alertness in the surrounding uncertainty, her growl continuing low and constant—a sound that vibrated through the air like a warning siren nobody knew how to switch off.

"I think something's out there," Kain whispered, his voice barely registering above the susurrus of shifting dust. He moved with careful deliberation, positioning himself between Paul and me as though his body could serve as barrier against whatever lurked beyond our sight.

The tension wrapped around us like a living thing, constricting tighter with each passing second. The three of us—four, counting Lois—had become statues in the darkness, every sense straining toward the void that surrounded our camp. My skin crawled with the particular awareness of being watched by something I couldn't see. The waiting was its own torture, the anticipation of threat more exhausting than threat itself.

Then Lois exploded.

Her bark shattered the fragile silence like glass breaking in a cathedral. The sound was violent, immediate, and so loud that adrenaline flooded my system before conscious thought could intervene. This wasn't a dog barking at shadows—this was alarm, pure and primal, a warning that something was fundamentally wrong.

Something's not right. The thought hammered through my skull, urgent and relentless. My brain churned through possibilities, desperate for explanations that might make this normal, that might transform terror into mere inconvenience.

"What's going on?" Glenda's voice, tight with concern, cut through my spiralling thoughts. She was moving toward us, her figure gradually separating from the shadows as she was drawn by Lois's alarm.

My eyes, now slightly adjusted to the darkness, found Kain. He stood by the dying campfire with a frying pan held ready—an absurd image, domestic weaponry against unknowable threat. Then my gaze shifted to Glenda, and the anxiety carved into her features mirrored everything I was trying not to feel.

"We don't know," Paul admitted, the words a confession of our collective helplessness.

"Probably just the wind picking up dust," I said, trying to convince myself as much as anyone. Even as the words left my mouth, a gust of wind swept through camp as though called by my lie. The wind grabbed at us, sculptor and subjects, coating exposed skin with fine particles that stung my eyes and gritted between my teeth.

"It's getting stronger. We'd better get inside the tents," I suggested, forcing urgency into my voice to mask the fear beneath it.

"Come, Lois," Glenda commanded, her voice firm despite the tremor beneath it.

But Lois wasn't moving. The dog stood locked in place, her growl deepening into something that seemed to vibrate through the ground itself. Every muscle in her body was coiled, a spring loaded and ready to release violence. Her eyes remained fixed on the darkness ahead, seeing something we couldn't, sensing threat that our inferior human senses couldn't detect.

Then chaos erupted from the direction of Jamie's tent.

"Duke! Get back here!" Jamie's voice tore through the night, panic and urgency colliding in a sound that made my heart lurch. He exploded from his tent, a blur of motion in what little light the dying embers provided, chasing after Duke. The dog had bolted, his barks piercing the darkness with a desperation that matched Lois's warning.

"Shit!" The word burst from my lips before thought could intercept it. I was on my feet without deciding to stand, adrenaline making the choice for me, every nerve screaming that we'd run out of time for caution.

"I got him," Jamie called, his voice closer now, carrying the particular relief of a crisis barely contained. He hovered over Duke at the edge of their tent's canopy, one hand gripping the dog's collar while Duke continued barking defiance at whatever lurked in the darkness to our right.

Then Kain's voice—and the raw terror in it stopped my heart.

"Shit! We're surrounded!"

He was backing toward the fire, seeking the pathetic protection of its dying light, his eyes scanning the darkness with the wild desperation of prey that has finally spotted its predators. The frying pan trembled in his grip.

Surrounded.

The idea of unseen things watching from every direction, of being ringed by threat with no escape route—my blood seemed to crystallise in my veins. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a drumroll announcing doom.

Karen and Chris emerged from the final tent, their expressions carved with confusion and fear. "What's going on?" Karen's voice quivered, and Chris positioned himself beside her with the particular protectiveness of someone who knows something terrible is unfolding but can't identify what.

"I think it's just a dust—" Paul's attempt at explanation died mid-word.

Something was happening near the Portal.

The glow bloomed on the horizon like a wound opening in the darkness—bright rainbow colours painting the distant dunes in light that had no business existing at this hour. The spectacle was hypnotic and wrong, impossibly beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. The colours danced and swirled before vanishing as abruptly as they'd appeared.

The hairs on my neck stood rigid. A chill that had nothing to do with temperature raced down my spine.

If I didn't activate the Portal, then who did?

Or what?

"Is that Luke?" Karen asked, her confusion reasonable given the distance and the dark.

"I'm right here," I responded, my voice steadier than the storm inside me. Fear and curiosity were tearing at each other, fighting for dominance of my nervous system. My body shuddered involuntarily—a physical betrayal of the internal conflict.

"Duke, stop barking!" Jamie's command cracked through the tension, frustration and desperation bleeding together.

Lois answered with her own growl, deeper still, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere beneath her—as though the earth itself was warning us through her throat.

The night that had held such peace hours ago—Joel's song, Glenda's violin, the toast that had made us feel like a community—had become a theatre of dread. Each of us stood on the edge of an abyss we couldn't see, our fears magnified by darkness and the growing certainty that we were not alone in this wasteland.

Then the scream came.

It ripped through the night like a blade through flesh—a sound so raw, so saturated with terror, that it seemed to freeze the very blood in my veins. Human. Unmistakably human. And close.

The camp erupted.

"Lois!" Glenda's voice shattered with panic as the dog, propelled by whatever instinct drove her, bolted into the darkness. Glenda's love for the animal was absolute—she didn't hesitate, didn't calculate. She simply ran after Lois, her figure swallowed by night within seconds.

Paul lunged after the fleeing dog, his hands grasping at empty air where Lois had been a heartbeat before. Without pausing, he plunged into the darkness after Glenda, vanishing as though the night had eaten him.

Kain seized the frying pan from the fire's edge, its metal still warm from the embers. The cooking implement had become a weapon—absurd and desperate and all he had. With grim determination twisting his features, he too disappeared into the shadows.

Behind me, I could feel Jamie's presence—a grounding force in the pandemonium, the one person still connected to our camp.

"Grab Duke!" I shouted, my voice torn raw with urgency. Then I launched myself forward, legs pumping, chasing the vanishing silhouettes of my companions into the void.

The desert betrayed me almost immediately.

The ground here was treacherous—dunes that shifted beneath my feet, terrain that looked solid and proved otherwise. My heart was a frantic percussion in my chest, each beat counting down to something I couldn't name. I was running blind, trusting direction and momentum to carry me toward my people.

The dust caught my foot.

I went down hard, the ground rising to meet me with jarring impact. My palms scraped across grit and stone, pain flaring bright and immediate. The wind I'd been breathing was knocked from my lungs, replaced by the taste of dirt and copper.

"Duke!" Jamie's call reached me from what seemed like miles away, a tether to reality that was rapidly fraying.

I lay there for a stunned moment, chest heaving, vulnerability washing over me in waves. The darkness pressed down, suffocating and absolute. The campfire's comforting glow was nowhere to be seen—I'd run further than I'd realised, or the fire had died completely.

"Please be safe," I whispered into the uncaring night, a prayer cast toward people I couldn't see, couldn't reach, couldn't protect.

I forced myself upright, muscles protesting, palms stinging where they'd been abraded. My surroundings offered nothing—no landmarks, no light, no indication of direction. Panic clawed at my throat as I spun, trying to orient myself in the unyielding blackness.

"Where the fuck am I?" The question escaped as barely a whisper, torn from someplace deep and desperate. I was lost. Actually, truly lost. Alone in shifting dunes beneath a black sky, separated from everyone and everything by darkness that seemed to have substance.

"Lois!" Glenda's voice reached me from somewhere distant, her tone shredded by desperation and fear. The wind was howling now, its gusts growing vicious, driving grit against my exposed skin with needles of gritty spite. I spun again, trying to track her voice, trying to find any bearing in this chaos.

Then another scream tore the night apart.

Human—unmistakably, horribly human—and it cut off with a suddenness that suggested violence rather than choice.

Almost simultaneously, the sky above me exploded with light.

The illumination was brief but blinding—a flash that seared my dark-adjusted eyes and revealed the landscape in stark, shadowless detail. For one frozen instant, I could see everything: the dunes stretching away, the distant figures of my companions, the Portal's familiar structure rising from the dust ahead.

Then darkness crashed back like a wave, and I was blind again, but now I had direction.

I ran toward where the Portal had been, my feet finding their rhythm despite the treacherous ground. The image of that brief illumination burned behind my eyes, a ghost-map I could follow even in blackness.

When I reached the Portal, its giant screen flickered to life, casting an eerie glow across the desolate landscape. The display showed shifting images—familiar locations cycling through their eternal rotation. My study. The Driveway. Kate Gibbons’ front door. Places I knew, places I could name.

All except one.

One panel showed somewhere I had never seen, had never programmed, had never even imagined. The location was unfamiliar yet pulled at something in me—a compulsion I couldn't explain and couldn't resist.

In my peripheral vision, I spotted Paul and Glenda, their silhouettes stark against the Portal's luminescence. Relief flooded through me at the sight of them—alive, apparently unharmed.

"Everyone okay?" My voice emerged steadier than I felt, the concern beneath it barely contained.

"I think so," Paul replied, his tone carrying the particular tremor of someone who'd just confronted something terrifying and survived.

"Good. I'm going in," I declared, my gaze locked on that unknown location, that image that shouldn't exist on my Portal's screen. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic protest from the rational part of my brain. Every survival instinct I possessed was screaming at me to stop, to retreat, to leave the unknown alone.

But something deeper—something reckless or brave or simply stupid—propelled me forward.

The Portal waited, its light painting my face in colours that seemed to shift and breathe.

Whatever had activated it, whatever had brought that scream from a human throat, whatever was out there in the darkness—I was about to find out.

I stepped toward the swirling colours.