Sasha Okhotnikov sat in the Vologda regional airport. When this area was part of the CCCP, Sasha thought, the airport was probably well maintained. Now the consistent incurrence of the snow and time had turned it into an old, run-down soviet relic which smelled to Sasha of damp carpet and cabbage.
Sasha held his passport and plane tickets with careful respect, like they would crumble in his grip if he were not delicate with them. He had never had reason to leave the country, let alone fly on a commercial airliner halfway across the globe. He trusted his fixer though, who had made all the necessary arrangements for his journey. He had a well-made passport under a false identity, and Iskraa was secured in a special luggage container with all the necessary paperwork taken care of to travel with her.
He had been reluctant at first to part with her in such a way. After all, she was not a child’s vacation bag, and should not be treated as such. But he was given assurances that she would be handled with great and personal care and would remain on the same airplanes on which he would travel. His contact even made accommodations so he might verify Iskraa’s safety between flights.
Sasha the hunter was satisfied. Besides, the prospect of the chase and the challenges it presented were worth a few temporary travel inconveniences. And if what the spirit said was true...Well, he and Iskraa would deal with that when and if the time arrived.
* * *
Noura’s mother, after three days of coddling her daughter, had at last decided that Noura was well enough to return to the life of an adult and permitted her to return to her condominium in Glasgow. Dinah, with a level of forgiveness that only pets can produce, greeted her at the door with an outpouring of feline affection. This made Noura feel all the more guilty for having spent so much time away from her recently, but she stroked her friend behind the ears, poured her some cream and figured, as an apology, it would have to do for the time being.
Noura had put on a good show of being tough and well for her mother, but in truth she was frustrated to the point of exhaustion that she knew nothing about Wayside and the newly formed force that prevented her from shifting there. The shadow form, the beast that now guarded that point in her mind, was present now whenever she even thought about Wayside in even a casual way.
Noura sat at her desk and looked at her reflection in the dark computer screen.
“What should I do, Dinah?” She said to the cat that had quickly moved to occupy her lap.
Dinah meowed.
Noura bit her lip, and instead of turning on the computer, she picked up her cellular phone.
“Hello,” said a man’s voice.
“Demon,” said Noura.
The man sighed. “Well if it isn’t Noe Naysayer. People are not going to make appointments with me if the name ‘Demon’ sticks, you know.
“Demon?”
“I mean, who’s going to go to Dr. Demon, Psychotherapist? Anyway, to what to I owe the pleasure? You haven’t rung me in weeks. I was beginning to think you’d finally lost it and gone to sea.”
“Sorry, Darren. I’ve been...distracted.”
“Sounds like a severe case of non-communicus-with-childhood-friend’s syndrome.”
“Now really, is that the sort of humor a psychiatrist is suppose to be using?”
“If the psychiatry student is talking to a friend and not a patient, then yes. It’s called sarcastic transilluminance,” said the man.
“You made that up.”
“I did, yes.”
“Um...”
“Well?”
“Look, can we have a coffee? I need to talk to someone.”
“Well,” the voice sighed dramatically. “We have been friends for a long time, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to charge you double for a coffee session. Especially since you’ve been actively and egregiously avoided my phone calls for the past month.”
“Two weeks, and it wasn’t my fault. Just meet me at The Green Bean, please.”
“Fine, but I’m counting this as a date. Honestly, the minute you say you’re in school for a psychiatric degree everyone you know develops deep-seated psychoses for you to cure.”
“Really not funny,” laughed Noura. “9’o clock.”
“Yeah, alright. Green Bean, 9’o. Tah.”
Noura pocketed the phone and stood to get her coat. She realized that despite her frustrations, Darren had once again proven his audacious knack for making her smile.
The Green Bean, a hot spot for the college cognoscenti, was a 24-hour coffee shop in Merchant City. Noura liked it because even though their coffee was mostly traditional, they gave even their most commonly ordered items fabulously awkward names. The staff they did this to entertain their patrons, but Noura supposed it was the owner’s eccentric way of making tourists feel awkward when they ordered. Anyway, none of the regulars thought twice of asking for a “Foam-headed bastard step-child with two black eyes” or a “rosy wet-nurse locked in the closet” or any of the other arcane items on their hand-written chalk menu, and the place was always full of regulars.
Despite his feigned reluctance on the phone, Darren was waiting when Noura walked in from the Glasgow night. Darren always had a casualness about him that Noura found a real comfort, and tonight he sported dark blue jeans, a gray hooded zip-up and a 5 o’clock shadow. He stood, hugged her with great familiarity, and then pulled out her chair in a very gentleman-like way as she joined him at the table.
“Hey,” he said as he returned to his chair. Noura saw there were two steaming drinks already on the table. “I took the liberty. A ‘Drooling idiot in lamb’s wool’ for me,” Darren pointed, “and a ‘mad, sexy doctoral student’ for you.”
Noura raised an eyebrow.
“What, that’s the drink!” Darren put a hand to his heart. “It’s the special, I swear it.”
Noura smiled but her eyes didn’t share the sentiment.
“Oooo,” said Darren, stirring sugar into his drink. “This might be genuinely serious, yeah?”
Noura picked up her drink and let the warmth of the mug heat her hands. “It’s about Wayside.”
Darren leaned back, his tongue pressing on the inside his cheek. “Wayside? You mean that city we thought up as kids?”
“You may not remember it, but you used to go there too.”
“Wow, we haven’t talked about that place in years. I can barely even remember what we said it looked like, let alone anything specific about it.” Darren’s rapped his forehead with his knuckles in thought. “Wasn’t the door in a coat closet or something?”
“The basement broom cupboard in your parents’ house, actually. At least that was the door you used.”
“Mmm,” Darren said wistfully. “Nope. Not an inkling of recollection. All I remember about that basement is the silverfish.”
“Nowadays, when I think about Wayside, there’s something...wrong...with the thought.”
“Wrong?”
“There’s something dark in the way of my memory of it.”
“So don’t think about it,” Darren shrugged.
Noura bristled. “That’s your prescription? ‘Don’t think about it’?”
“Look, it was a fantasy. Like when we built a spaceship out of cardboard boxes and flew to Uranus.”
Noura slumped. “Oh my god, Darren, please be serious for once.”
“Look, why are you saying all this? What do you want me to do?”
Noura took a mouthful of her coffee and swallowed her frustration along with it. “I just need you to help me remember.”
An hour later, Noura was lying on her couch in her dimly lit living room, with Darren seated nearby on the recliner. He wore the composure of a doctor now, which Noura couldn’t help but find amusing.
He spoke in a soft, even tone. “I want you to relax.”
Noura giggled, and Darren’s voice took on its natural tone. “Look, do you want me to do this or not.”
“Sorry. I am serious about this. I’m sorry. Really.” Noura breathed out, her hands laid flat on her stomach.
Darren resumed his even tone. “I want you to count backwards slowly, starting from one hundred.”
“One hundred.”
Noura shut her eyes and watched the afterimages of her vision swim away into the static of her mind.
“Ninety-nine.”
“Picture this room in your mind. I am sitting in the chair, saying these words. Continue to count, slowly.”
“Ninety-eight.”
The image of Darren she produced was one with thick brown horn-rimmed glasses and a lab coat, but it was him nonetheless, and she accepted it as close enough.
“Ninety-seven.”
“Now, see yourself, lying on the couch in this room. You are calm and relaxed. Perfectly comfortable.”
“Ninety-six.”
She was there, in a black sequined evening gown with diamond earrings.
“Ninety-five.”
As you continue to count down, you see yourself growing younger. You are twenty, finishing school. I’m there with you; we’re going back together.
Ninety-four.
It’s afternoon, and we’re in high school. You see me on the side of the road as you’re walking home, but we’re not really hanging out anymore. I’m smoking with my mates, trying to look cool, but I cough and burn myself with the ash. You laugh at me and I smile back, embarrassed.
Ninety-three.
We’re eleven and Reilly Sullivan is threatening to take your candy frost. I march over and try to defend you, but you punch him in the nose and he runs off in tears.
Ninety-two.
We’re eight, and you’re over at my house. My dad’s told us to go somewhere so he doesn’t have to babysit us, and we decide to play in the basement.
Ninety-one.
We crawl into the broom cupboard and pretend it’s a cave, and you say you’ve found a door in the back.
Ninety.
You open the door to Wayside.
Darkness. Noura no longer felt her body. There was the beast, and there was the point -- clear and burning like a single star in a velvet sky, but there was no Noura there. She had no body she could use to pass through the point and come out in the other world. There was only the point and the beast.
She could make it out now, the creature. Not a shapeless monster, but a wolf, large and black, who cradled the point like it was her cub she protected.
There was something else there. A boy. Noura thought it might be the boy Grim, but instead she could now see that it was Darren, whose hair had been a like a mangled pile of brown straw back then. Back when they had first found Wayside. His eyes darted around the darkness, a look of utter confusion painted on his young face.
The wolf opened its eyes. It lifted its massive form onto clawed paws and snarled a warning snarl.
“Noe?” the boy called into the dark.
Noura tried to run, tried to will her consciousness into some form that could protect the young Darren from the black wolf, which she knew would lash out to defend the spark.
Suddenly it was an adult Darren there before the beast, and as he looked toward her she felt herself given form at last.
“Get to Wayside, Noe,” This Darren said in the calm meter of the doctor.
Noura nodded and turned to the point. She wrapped herself around it and through it.
An endless field of gray opened before her.
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