Innerworld

  Innerworld

  Part 8 of the

  Sleep Writer Journal

  © 2019 Keith Robinson

  Published by Unearthly Tales

  on May 10, 2019

  Cover by Keith Robinson

  No part of this book may be reproduced without permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Been to the author's website yet?

  Check it out

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  COMING NEXT

  Author's Website

  Chapter 1

  When the impossible innerworld plunged into darkness, Liam fell to his knees with a gasp, his hands groping. The road was still there, warm and solid beneath his palms, but he was completely and utterly blind.

  Then, a few seconds later, light returned. Not the dazzling sunlight he’d become accustomed to but instead a faint bluish-white illumination, barely bright enough to pick out the white lines on the road.

  Moonlight.

  He stared in amazement at the glowing ball in the center of the world where the sun had been moments ago. Now it was a full moon, growing brighter by the second. And as Liam watched, tiny points of light began to appear in the air all around, twinkling, slowly circling the moon. He had to admit it was a spectacular sight.

  “So now it’s nighttime,” he said softly, climbing to his feet. He tore his eyes away from the stars and tried to pick out the distant waterfall in the darkness. “Great. Now I have no idea where I’m headed.”

  He did, however, have a flashlight in his pocket and knew the road would take him most of the way there. He would just have to continue and play it by ear.

  He trudged on, growing weary. All sense of time had deserted him. He’d been sitting around the weenie roast just before 7 PM. It had to be midnight by now. It should be dark, yet it had been daytime a minute ago. Or a semblance of daytime, anyway. These aren’t real days and nights, he reminded himself. This is some kind of artificial world. Heck, maybe I’m not on Earth anymore. Maybe this place is alien-made.

  In any case, Liam had no choice but to pick his way in the darkness with his flashlight beam bobbing in front. The stars circled the moon in a lazy fashion. Liam scoffed at the idea, knowing real stars did no such thing. Still, the effect was mesmerizing.

  He walked and walked. At the back of his mind, he imagined he would start climbing a steep hill at any moment, ascending the impossible upward-curving terrain that towered high above. The waterfall was way on up there somewhere. Then it hit him that he was already climbing that curved terrain; gravity just made it seem flat. He stopped, fearing he’d walked too far.

  Looking back the way he’d come, he was shocked to see a cluster of orange lights shining high above the ground in the distance. That was the village, now clinging to a vertical landscape. He imagined himself as a hamster in a wheel, continually walking but remaining still while the world turned beneath his feet.

  He flashed his beam around. He saw nothing but grass and a few clumps of trees. It was eerily quiet. Even at night there should be noises, particularly cicadas and crickets, an owl hooting from time to time. But there was nothing except the whisper of a breeze.

  It occurred to him that he could try shouting. If the place was so quiet, maybe Madison would hear him.

  “Hello!” he yelled. It was a weak effort, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “HELLO! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

  He waited, listening hard.

  Nothing.

  He waved his flashlight from side to side in deliberate strokes. Maybe she’d see the beam and come find him so he wouldn’t have to find the waterfall by himself in the dark.

  “Where are you?” he mumbled.

  Sighing, he continued walking. He would keep an eye open for the woods. They should start somewhere over to the right across the fields. Remembering what he’d seen earlier as he’d stood in the village looking up at the landscape, he needed to cross the fields, cut through the tip of the forest, and then follow the hills to the cliff edge where the waterfall flowed.

  He remembered the car, too. It had been abandoned off the road just outside the woods. With that in mind, he simply needed to stay on the road until he found the car.

  He picked up his pace, wishing his flashlight would reach farther ahead. In his own world, when the moon was full, he could see the distant hills silhouetted against the night sky. But here, with no horizon and no sky, almost everything was black. It wouldn’t be so bad if there were more towns, street lamps, houses, cars, and all the rest of the stuff that made up the modern world. Instead there was silence and absolutely no sign of life except for the dim lights back in the village.

  Liam squinted. He’d just spotted another light, a fairly big one, way over his head beyond the moon and slow-moving stars. Or perhaps a collection of small lights? It might be a house or a few houses huddled together. It was hard to tell, but it gave him hope.

  Abruptly, he came across the car. It stood silent and motionless in the grass several yards from the road. He stopped and flashed his beam over it, and his jaw dropped open. It wasn’t just any old car. It was a police car. A big, powerful police cruiser just like the ones that drove around his neighborhood. The front end was crumpled against a tree.

  He went to peer in the side windows and found empty seats. But then, as he moved around to the front, he saw fragments of glass from a shattered windshield.

  “Oh no,” he moaned.

  Steeling himself, he crept closer and circled the car, flashing his light low. After a minute, he let out a ragged sigh of relief. No dead officers. No rotting corpses. No skeletal remains. Whoever had crashed the car had been carted off to the hospital—or the morgue.

  Liam shone his flashlight into the trees. This was about where he needed to leave the road and cut through the forest. Either that or keep following the road around endless hairpin bends. His head told him that the forest would cut the journey down and save a lot of time, but his nerves were advising him to stay on the road.

  “In horror movies, people always stray from the road and get eaten by werewolves,” he muttered, trying to make up his mind. The forest was so, so black. But then, so was the road ahead. Still, he clearly remembered it was a very short section of forest he needed to cut through. He’d be through in no time.

  He plunged into the trees and began stomping around on brittle twigs and dry leaves. In a way, he was glad the world was so devoid of life. At least it meant he didn’t have to worry about mosquitoes and snakes and other nasty critters. But he missed the lightning bugs and the chirping of nighttime cicadas.

  His flashlight picked out spindly branches and clumps of bushes, which he tried to navigate while staying true to his path. If he didn’t end up going off course and walking in circles, he should be able to reach the other side in no time.

  A noise to his right brought him up short. He paused, shining his flashlight around. What was that? It came again, a rustling sound among the trees. Someone was there. Or something.

  “Hello?” he called nervously, instantly thinking of all the scary movies he’d seen where the last thing a victim said before being stabbed to death was “Hello?” in a loud, quavering voice. He bit his tongue and listened in silence.

  The noise came again, closer now. He pointed his flashlight beam in that direction, certain he would be able to see whatever it was.

  And then he saw it, shambling toward him, a heavyset man with half his face missing and a slimy substan
ce glistening on his ragged shirt. It wasn’t the same man he’d seen back at the house, but he had the same horrible disfigurement and rotten-onion stench.

  A Lurker.

  Liam yelled and bolted. His chest heaved as he flashed his beam behind him, searching for the Lurker as he sprinted through the woods. He glimpsed the nightmarish shambling figure in the bouncing light.

  Outrunning the creature and hiding somewhere should be easy enough, but for how long? What if it sniffed him out? What if there were others nearby?

  He zigzagged wildly between the trees. Annoyingly, unlike much of the landscape, this patch was uneven and slippery with loose soil and dry leaves. On impulse, he switched off his flashlight and stumbled in darkness for a full half-minute, his hands outstretched. The Lurker couldn’t follow him now!—unless of course it could see in the dark. It could probably hear him anyway, what with all the cracking twigs and exclamations every time he tripped and bumped into something.

  He slipped around to the far side of a tree and waited, his heart pounding. He had a nasty coppery taste in his mouth. He stood as still as possible, catching his breath and listening intently.

  A noise sounded in the darkness—rustling leaves, shuffling footfalls, not too far away and getting closer. Liam fought with indecision. Should he make another run for it or wait and see if the creature passed him by? He held on a little longer, trying to breathe quietly and calmly despite the need to pant like a dog.

  The Lurker was close now. Liam’s entire body tensed up, coiled like a spring, ready to launch into a sprint.

  But then the shuffling stopped. A silence followed, then another shuffle, then silence again. Liam held his breath, wondering, hoping that the creature had lost the scent. Sweat dribbled down his face and tickled his nose.

  The Lurker moved again. The shuffling grew louder, easily within twenty feet.

  Liam pressed back against the rough trunk, his head turned to the right, trying to make out shapes in the gloom but barely able to see his own two feet.

  A twig cracked. Liam thought he saw movement, a black shambling figure. The moment he saw it, it saw him and let out a low, mournful moan. The shuffling intensified, quickened, changing direction and coming toward him. Liam whimpered and tore away from his hiding place, fumbling to switch on his flashlight.

  When the beam came on, he only just stopped himself from colliding with a tree that had materialized before him. He dashed around it, glancing backward and aiming the beam at his pursuer. He glimpsed two wide, staring eyes just before the creature jerked and lifted a skeletal hand to shield against the light.

  Liam ran.

  Chapter 2

  Liam lost count of how many trees he zigzagged between in his panic. He climbed a slope and slipped back down the other side. He tripped and badly grazed the palm of his hand, dropping the flashlight. He picked it up and ran on, the light trained firmly on the leafy ground. Assuming his mad dash hadn’t taken him way off course, he should emerge from the trees soon.

  He saw light ahead. Without hesitation, he altered his course and crashed through the woods toward the soft glow that silhouetted the distant trees.

  Then he heard another moan. This one was loud, somewhere to his left and ahead. It couldn’t be the same Lurker; it had to be another, coming to intercept him. Shocked, Liam put on more speed, giving the Lurker a wide berth.

  It lunged out of the gloom, throwing itself toward him as he instinctively shone his flashlight at it. This Lurker had an eye missing, nothing but an empty black socket. As the beam played across its ugly features, the creature recoiled and staggered away, tripping on its own feet. Liam caught a glimpse of lumpy yellow flesh on its face and arms, but he also saw flashes of shiny white skull and bone showing through, too.

  Then Liam was past, dashing away, his feet hardly touching the ground.

  It didn’t like the light, a small, logical part of his mind informed him.

  Shut up and run! the rest of him screamed.

  His legs kept pumping, spurred on by terror and adrenaline. He scampered the rest of the way through the forest until he burst out of the trees into the light.

  He had a breathless moment to take in the brightly lit, cheerful burger restaurant with a sign that said ‘All food FREE.’ Then he noticed five more Lurkers lumbering toward him from the shadows of the trees a short distance away. They came for him as he stood gawking at the misplaced restaurant.

  With no time to think, he rushed in through the glass entrance door and skidded on the slick, shiny floor. The place was immaculate, but then it probably didn’t get many visitors. Surprisingly, a few customers were seated around tables. They refrained from glancing up despite his dramatic entrance, continuing instead to munch on burgers and fries.

  The Lurkers clustered outside on the fringes of darkness, squinting in the light that flooded out of the restaurant windows. They looked like they were fighting some unseen force, unable to step any closer, their faces buried in the crooks of their arms. They really couldn’t stand the light.

  Liam tore his gaze from them and sought help. There was only one worker that he could see, a pasty-faced teenager with terrible acne. His name tag read Jonathan.

  “What can I get you today, sir?” he said in a bored monotone.

  Liam pointed out the window. “How about a machine gun?” he snapped. “Seriously, can’t you see what’s out there?”

  Jonathan blinked, glanced toward the windows, and returned his attention to Liam. “And would you like fries with your order, sir?”

  “I’m not hungry!”

  Actually, that wasn’t quite true, but right now food was far from his mind. At least seven Lurkers were outside in the shadows, shuffling around the building, looking for something. Each time one came close to the glass, it squinted and recoiled, then tried to look in again, then recoiled again, and so on, over and over.

  Liam would have liked to lock the door just to be safe, but the idiot behind the counter was bent on selling him fast food. After a while, the Lurkers slunk away out of sight, receding into the shadows.

  At last, Liam turned to Jonathan and studied him in silence. The teenager looked normal enough but acted as weird as all the other people Liam had met in this world. Was he a robot? The idea of androids had seemed like the obvious answer earlier, but now doubt crept in. This wasn’t TV. Jonathan looked way too human even if he acted weird.

  Maybe Jonathan was a real person after all, but he’d been hypnotized. Or worse, lobotomized. According to the movies, surgeons in the olden days would ‘treat’ psychotic patients by severing nerves at the front of the brain. As a result, the patient was calmer but ultimately a vegetable, a shuffling zombie unable to string two words together. Liam had seen this barbaric process in horror movies he wasn’t supposed to watch, but he’d discovered—much to his shock—that the process was based on fact. The so-called treatment had been commonplace until as late as the 1970s.

  Liam stared at Jonathan, and Jonathan stared back. There was definitely something vacant about his expression. Lobotomized? he wondered. Hypnotized? Or a robot?

  “Where did you come from?” he asked carefully, trying to be friendly. He felt as though he were talking to a child.

  Jonathan stared back. “Good day, sir. What can I get you?”

  At a loss, Liam decided this was as good a time as any to answer the call of nature. “Uh, is there a restroom?”

  The server nodded and pointed. “Yes, right over there.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Liam walked away, curious. He pushed open the men’s restroom door. Inside was a clean, white-tiled floor and a single cubicle containing a spotless toilet. There was a urinal outside the cubicle along with a sink and a trash can. All very normal. Liam relieved himself and walked back outside. He approached the server, who stood in the same place as always.

  Movement came from the half-hidden kitchen area behind Jonathan. Liam noticed two cooks shuffling around doing mundane kitchen duties.
r />   He glanced back over his shoulder at the customers. Four of them. One sat alone near a window, and behind him Liam glimpsed a Lurker hurrying past outside. The customer seemed unaware or uncaring of the ugly brutes. Three other customers sat together at a table in the middle—a mom and dad, and next to them a toddler perched in a highchair. The parents were munching on their burgers, talking amiably to each other.

  Liam wandered closer. They never glanced his way even when he stood a yard from their table glaring rudely down at them, deliberately pushing boundaries. They continued their conversation unabated, the dad saying something about how the car was acting up and he’d have to take it to a garage. The mom sighed, saying, “That’s all we need.” The toddler, a cute blond girl, squirmed in her chair and started fussing until the mom put down her burger and offered the girl more of her fries.

  Liam sat down next to the woman and stared hard at her. She didn’t react. He might as well have been invisible. He edged closer until his nose was inches from her cheek. No way she’s a robot, Liam decided, peering at her skin. No blemishes or pimples, but it looked real enough. She had lipstick on, a little eyeliner, neatly plucked eyebrows. She was definitely not a robot. Nobody could make a robot look this real. But the idea of a robot was far more appealing than a bunch of people who had been lobotomized.

  On impulse, he scooped the woman’s burger and fries onto the floor in one sudden, sweeping movement. It was so unlike anything he’d ever done before that it made his heart pound. He stood, prepared to offer a stream of apologies.

  The man and woman stopped talking. The woman glanced at the empty spot on the table where her food should be, then at the mess on the floor. Then she smiled. “Oops. Naughty girl.” She shook her head and wagged her finger at the toddler. “Be good now, Chloe.” She reached for her purse and said to her husband, “I’ll be right back.”

  But she couldn’t get up with Liam standing in the way. She appeared to notice him for the first time and looked confused. She waited.

  Liam stared at her, refusing to move. “Something you want to say?” he asked gently.