Kayden paused, looked back at the dark behind. Andre was gone. The end of the stairway held only darkness. He called for his brother, but the murmur of voices came through the pool of black. The scrap of metal was low, beneath the rasp of chalk on a board. Pine scent of cleaners leaked through with sawdust. The janitors used it to clean up vomit, Kayden recalled. I always felt so small, and the teachers always looked so big; like we were rabbits, they were foxes or big, mean dogs.

Kayden looked back at the stairs. Muck spilled down each step, and would soon flood the bottom. “No choice,” he breathed, and his racing heart kicked up into a gallop. Dark mud bubbled and dripped, but something moved deeper inside it, slithered and hated. He recoiled from the tiny bursts of bruised purple that watched.

Darkness washed over him as he stepped back, cold yet grasping. Kayden blinked at the powder-white wall, which held little placards. Each had the smiling child, only little Kayden looked distant, dower. Was I ever happy? He considered the past. The hall of the school was dressed in gloom. Every space or crack had an ichor, which bled onto the stone. Little tendrils pried through the gaps to waver in the air. Fresh spilled blood slept beneath; smell soured like pennies left to molder. He coughed. Children and teenagers passed him, ignorant of his intrusion on the mix of elementary and high schools. They moved through the hall, and a young woman walked through a plump kid, both indifferent.

“Did your father ever…do anything to your brother?” a voice whispered the question.

“I don’t know,” young Kayden muttered.

Skin felt tight, sweat cold, and the world wavered as unsteady as ship upon a tempest torn sea. Waves of nausea washed over him, memories rose unbidden but fell away. Mind unmoored from body, he was adrift, but drowned in countless dying worlds. Back to the amalgamation of memories he returned, tossed upon low eddies. Faces were drowned in lifeless smears; sunken eyes were horror haunted. They grinned, leered, as they passed him with gimlet eyes of fiends.

Andre walked out of a classroom. He weaved around the other students, and kept well-clear of them, so they were outside reach. Kayden yelled for his brother, but it was fruitless. Young ladies watched Andre as he passed, and then whispered behind their hands. Lovely features contorted, skin split so barbed tongues waggled. Each shake rattled like a snake. He followed his brother as walls bloated, shrunk, or grew. Faces on placards leered nasty, low laughter fell dead on the filth covered floor. A mop bucket set next to a dark pool filled with chunks. Things squirmed inside with too human faces. Hands pawed at Kayden covered in lacerations, which oozed a pungent odor like mushrooms. Even the floor felt uneven, though appeared flat. He’d stagger, when his foot lifted too high to miss the distorted earth.

Kayden tripped, righted himself, and then spilled forward. He landed upon a deep crimson pool, slid. Little creatures with crunchy shells cracked and popped, screamed like children burned alive. A young woman walked past, books pressed against her chest, simple dress down to slight ankles. A tail of translucent flesh over bone waved at him as she passed. The world felt distant, blurred, and vomit dribbled from his lips. He drew in a sharp breath and rolled out of the warm ichor. A woman glared at him with a broad smile full of cannibal teeth.

He squeezed his eyes shut, “These are not my memories.” This is mine and something else, Kayden thought. It is so real. Maybe, it is part of me trying to remember or recall. Is my brother’s death the reason for anything? Is this the reason for this need, a need to save? I couldn’t save Jillian too.

He shook his head at the thought, for he could still save her. Dampness beneath him grew cool as he thought of her. The smell of fresh cut grass greeted him. Kayden’s brow drew down. Blades of grass, half shorn, pricked his face and forearms. He opened his eyes, and swallowed sour spit. His stomach turned, head light. A door banged closed in impish wind, sound sharp.

“No,” he looked at the house, which stared back at him. Kayden shook his head, sat up, but his hand pressed on the book’s cover. He bumped into the well.

A wave of nausea wiped away the world, his childhood home, to leave dead galaxies, devoured of the placid sanity of reality. Bruised purple light blazed over him. Somewhere, a mad monk gibbered, cursed, and pleaded, but revelations assailed him, which he wrote in a leather bound book. Kayden tried to see him, though blinded, but caught a deathly visage. Astrad, he knew, was his name; although, he knew it from deep within. The mad man’s name scoured the mind, lingered on the tongue. Was it he who showed him his brother’s recollections?

Quick as it came, this slip in reality receded. Kayden faced the house of his family, terrors teased from his mind’s shadows. The past crept closer, memories came, but he shook them off. Behind him was the road, though darkness filled the road past the edge of the property. Eyes, beech wood brown with charred edges, returned to the house. It stood, windows dirty, holes in the roof, but refused to fall.

Two graves set next to the house, but he knew the names upon them. “That night, after they buried you,” Kayden saw Isaac on the stone, “I pissed on your grave.”

After urinating on the tombstone, he had never set foot on his family’s land again. Even when he lost his house, Kayden had refused to come home. Jillian had wanted to visit it, but he’d refused.

Her face swam to the surface with eyes nearly closed upon the edge of sleep. Kayden retreated from the memory. I may have lost my job, he swore, but I’ll get her into rehab. The smile faltered then broke, and he frowned. His ex-wife’s sleepy eyes lingered, though the image died back to the darkness.