"Dad! Jared! Sarah!" Aaron shouted as soon as the van stopped.

A sudden gust of wind sent a huge splat of rain onto the windshield.

"What... Aaron?" Sarah asked.

I heard Aaron gulp, "Who..." another gust of wind rocked the car, "Who..." Aaron kept glancing towards the backseat, but he stopped before his eyes went all the way, "Who...

Who is Richard?!"

Suddenly, my headache cleared.

Everything came back to me and my body seized up in the paralysis of absolute and total terror.

Jared and Sarah both gasped, their eyes widened in shock and their bodies shook with realization and horror.

Slowly, they turned back to look at "Richard".

I heard a low chuckle come from the back.

In the backseat, sat a human-like shape. Its entire body was darker than black, pure absolute shadow with zero features. It gave the impression of a hole torn through reality that led into the abyss. Its only features were the two unnaturally wide eyes that it stared into my soul with, and its unbelievably wide smile that consisted of only teeth, no mouth.

Sarah screamed violently, recoiling away from the thing but was held in place by her seat-belt that she was too panicked to unbuckle and get away. Jared just stared with his jaw dropped. Aaron looked at me worryingly, pleading for help. I couldn't move.

"Richard" chuckled again and Sarah finally managed to pry herself out of her seat-belt, tumbling to the floor of the van. Desperately, she reached and grabbed for the door, pulling it open and practically throwing herself outside.

"Richard" threw its arms into the air, stood up, its feet phasing through the floor, gave each of us one last grin, then walked directly through the back of the van as if nothing was there.

Jared finally freed himself from his stupor, jumped out of the car and brought Sarah back in, trying to calm and reassure her all the while. Aaron was shaking in his seat, I didn't know what else to do... I got out and hugged him, trying to calm him down. But I was shaking just as much as he was.

That thing... what... what the hell... what the hell was that?

Did it just leave? Was it still lurking around? Where did it go? Why was it with us to begin with?

I shivered uncontrollably as I reached a horrific realization:

Could we even trust our own eyes and ears anymore?

Our own thoughts?

What was real?

What was just an illusion?

I thought back to the fairies. They had been similar to this thing, in a way. When we first encountered them, Aaron was the only one that could see them. Whatever that thing was, it operated in a way similar to them. My body was covered in goosebumps.

How much of what we experienced... was reality?

How much of it was just an illusion?

How many layers were there to it?

I cursed as I thought... How many times had something like this happened before? Had we danced with death dozens of times, without even knowing it? What about right now?

Maybe even this was a delusion, and the four of us were actually marching straight into the clutches of some horrific monstrosity. The four of us... Was there even actually four of us?

I stared at Sarah and Jared, stared so hard that I started to get dizzy. What if this whole time... one of them was a monster too, working in tandem with the thing that had just revealed itself. What if both of them were monsters? What if they were waiting for the right moment for our guard to be down, and they would prey on Aaron and I?

I looked down at Aaron, who was sobbing in shock and fear.

What if Aaron was just an illusion, too?

Was... Was I even real?