Chapter 80: Fragments of Reality
The leather steering wheel of the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon felt wrong beneath Elijah's hands. His grip was too tight, knuckles bone-white from the pressure, fingers digging into the material with enough force to leave impressions. His hands repositioned constantly—sliding up, then down, then gripping at ten and two with textbook precision, then shifting to a one-handed hold at six o'clock, then back to strangling the wheel with both palms.
It was the grip of someone barely holding on, barely maintaining control—not just of the vehicle, but of themselves.
His jaw was clenched so tight that a muscle jumped rhythmically in his cheek, visible even in the rearview mirror when he glanced at it. His eyes were red-rimmed and slightly too wide, darting between the road ahead and the mirrors with paranoid frequency. Dark circles had formed beneath them, speaking of nights without proper sleep, of exhaustion that went bone-deep.
Sweat beaded at his temples despite the air conditioning running at full blast, small droplets that occasionally broke free and traced paths down the side of his face. His breathing was shallow and quick, chest rising and falling in an irregular rhythm that suggested someone on the edge of a panic attack.
The voices had started about ten minutes ago.
At first, they'd been quiet—background whispers that he could almost convince himself were just the radio static or the hum of the engine. But they'd grown louder, more insistent, demanding his attention whether he wanted to give it or not.
*"You know, you and my late father are more alike than you realize."* Mallory's voice, crisp and cutting even in his memory. *"If the two of you were put together, you would be mistaken for being his child."*
The words echoed in his skull, bouncing off the inside of his cranium like they were searching for somewhere to lodge permanently.
Then Augustine's smooth, cultured tones joined the chorus: *"These families achieved everything through actors they used to play the part they gave them."*
And again, overlapping with itself, the same voice from a different moment: *"You know, this Azaqor fellow and the persona used reminds me of those actors. Maybe, if I think about it, Azaqor was used as a tool in Halvern internal conflict. What do you think?"*
*What do you think? What do you think? What do you think?*
The question repeated, each iteration slightly distorted, slightly wrong, until it didn't even sound like Augustine anymore—just a warped recording of human speech playing at the wrong speed.
Elijah shook his head violently, trying to physically dislodge the voices, but they clung like cobwebs, sticky and persistent.
The G-Wagon rolled through Theodore Road, a middle-class neighborhood that exemplified suburban normalcy. The houses were modest but well-maintained, with small front yards protected by white picket fences or low brick walls. Some had garden gnomes standing guard among flower beds bursting with late-season blooms—marigolds and chrysanthemums adding splashes of orange and yellow to the green lawns.
Trees lined both sides of the street, their branches forming a natural canopy overhead that dappled the pavement with shifting patterns of light and shadow. The leaves were beginning to turn, hints of red and gold appearing among the green, autumn asserting its claim despite the still-warm weather.
On one lawn, a group of children played an energetic game of tag, their laughter carrying through the open windows of the G-Wagon. They couldn't have been more than eight or nine years old, still young enough that joy came easily, that the world was mostly good and full of possibility. One little boy with a backwards baseball cap was "it," chasing his friends with outstretched arms while they shrieked and scattered across the grass.
Two houses down, in a driveway that had seen better days—the concrete cracked and sprouting weeds through the fissures—a teenager in a faded band t-shirt had set up an impromptu target practice. Empty beer bottles stood in a careful line along the edge of the driveway, and the teen held a BB gun, taking careful aim. The soft *pop* of compressed air was followed by the satisfying *crash* of shattering glass, and the teen pumped his fist in victory before setting up another bottle.
It was all so... normal. So mundane. So perfectly, beautifully ordinary.
Which made what Elijah saw next all the more horrifying.
His eyes tracked across the lawns, moving from the playing children to the teenage marksman, then beyond to another yard. This one had a chain-link fence, the kind that let you see through to the property but kept dogs and small children contained. Inside the yard, a little boy—maybe six years old, wearing denim overalls and a red striped shirt—was playing alone with a yo-yo.
The toy was one of those cheap plastic ones you could get from a vending machine, bright neon green that clashed with everything around it. The boy looked intensely bored, the kind of soul-deep boredom that only children experiencing the endless stretch of a Saturday afternoon could feel. He made the yo-yo go up, down, up, down, the string getting tangled occasionally, requiring him to stop and unwind it with chubby fingers.
And standing right behind him, close enough to touch, was the figure.
It materialized for just a split second—there and then not-there, flickering in and out of existence like a faulty light bulb. The form was humanoid but wrong, composed of that same reddish-black substance Elijah had seen before, writhing and coiling in patterns that hurt to look at directly. The details were indistinct, blurred at the edges as if reality itself was rejecting its presence, refusing to let it fully manifest.
But the grin was clear. Oh god, that grin was crystal clear.
That crescent slash of darkness, impossibly wide, curving with malicious delight as it looked down at the oblivious child playing with his yo-yo.
Elijah's jaw dropped open, the hinges of his mouth going slack. His eyes widened until they felt like they might fall out of their sockets, every muscle in his face going rigid with pure, distilled terror. His breath caught in his throat, strangled by the shock, leaving him gasping soundlessly like a fish pulled from water.
His hands spasmed on the steering wheel, jerking it slightly to the left before he caught himself.
He blinked hard, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment, then opening them again.
The figure was gone. Just the little boy with his yo-yo, now successfully completing a "walk the dog" trick and looking moderately more entertained than before.
*Hallucination. Stress. You're losing it, Elijah. Get it together.*
But his heart was racing, hammering against his ribs like it was trying to break free. Adrenaline flooded his system, that fight-or-flight response that made his hands shake and his vision sharpen to painful clarity.
He forced himself to take a deep breath, to focus on the road, on the simple mechanical act of driving. Press gas pedal, maintain speed, watch for obstacles, follow the lines painted on asphalt. Simple. Basic. Grounding.
Except he'd been staring at that yard, at that impossible figure, for too long.
His eyes weren't on the road.
When he looked forward again—really looked, properly focused on what was directly ahead of his vehicle—his blood turned to ice.
A little girl, no more than four years old, was riding a tricycle directly in his path.
She'd clearly just emerged from between two parked cars on the right side of the street, her small form suddenly occupying the space where clear road had been just seconds ago. The tricycle was pink and white, with streamers attached to the handlebars that fluttered as she pedaled with the determined concentration that small children brought to all physical activities.
She was maybe twenty feet away. Then fifteen.
Time seemed to slow and speed up simultaneously—that strange distortion that happens in moments of crisis when the brain goes into overdrive, processing information at speeds that make seconds feel like minutes while simultaneously making everything happen too fast to properly react.
Elijah's foot slammed down on the brake pedal with all his strength, his leg going rigid, his entire body thrown forward against the seatbelt. The G-Wagon's anti-lock braking system kicked in immediately, the pedal pulsing rapidly beneath his foot as the system modulated brake pressure to prevent the wheels from locking up.
But the vehicle was heavy—nearly three tons of luxury SUV that didn't stop on a dime regardless of how good the brakes were.
*SCREECH*
The tires protested against the pavement, leaving dark streaks of rubber, the smell of burning filling the air. The G-Wagon shuddered and jerked, the suspension compressing as weight transferred forward, the backend wanting to fishtail.
Elijah cranked the steering wheel hard to the right, trying to swerve around the girl, praying that there was enough space, enough time, enough *something* to prevent the collision his mind was already playing out in horrifying detail.
The tricycle seemed to fill his entire field of vision—that cheap pink plastic, those white streamers, and the little girl's face as she finally looked up and saw the massive vehicle bearing down on her.
Her eyes went wide, her mouth opened in a scream he couldn't hear over the squealing tires, her small hands frozen on the handlebars, unable to move, unable to process what was happening fast enough to save herself.
The G-Wagon lurched to the right, tires still screaming, rear end swinging out slightly before the vehicle's stability control caught it and straightened the trajectory.
And then, finally, mercifully, the SUV stopped.
The nose of the G-Wagon was inches—*inches*—from the little girl's tricycle. Close enough that if Elijah had leaned forward, he could have touched the handlebars through the open driver's window. Close enough to see every detail of her terrified face, tears already streaming down her cheeks, her chest hitching with sobs that were just starting to find their voice.
For a frozen moment, nobody moved. The entire street seemed to hold its breath.
Then the little girl found her legs, pushed hard on the pedals, and rode away as fast as her small limbs could manage, the tricycle wobbling dangerously but staying upright. She was heading toward a house with the front door open, where a woman—presumably her mother—had just emerged, her face white with terror as she rushed toward her daughter.
Elijah sat in the driver's seat, his hands still death-gripped on the steering wheel, his foot still pressed hard on the brake even though the vehicle was fully stopped. His entire body was trembling, fine tremors running through every muscle group, his teeth chattering despite the warmth.
Sweat poured down his face now, not just beading but actively running in rivulets, soaking into his collar, dripping from his chin onto his lap. His shirt was drenched, sticking to his back and chest, as if he'd just run a marathon in summer heat.
His breathing came in ragged gasps, harsh and loud in the suddenly quiet interior of the G-Wagon. His heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest, each pulse so hard it was almost painful.
"Oh god," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Oh god, oh god..."
His hands shook as he lifted them from the steering wheel, staring at them as if they belonged to someone else. He wiped at his face with one palm, trying to clear the sweat, but more just kept coming.
*I almost killed her. I almost killed that little girl because I was seeing things, because I'm losing my mind, because—*
And then the world shifted.
It happened without warning, without transition. One moment he was sitting in his G-Wagon on Theodore Road, and the next he was standing on a street corner, and everything was wrong.
He was smaller. So much smaller. His perspective had dropped by at least two feet, his eye level now aligned with car door handles instead of windows. He looked down at himself and saw small hands, child-sized, fingers that were soft and unmarked by years of work and life.
He was wearing clothes he recognized from old photographs—a blue jacket that was slightly too big, jeans with patches on the knees, sneakers that lit up when he walked.
*I'm... I'm a kid. I'm myself as a kid.*
But it wasn't a memory. He wasn't *remembering* being a child—he *was* a child, experiencing it in real-time, present tense, standing here and now.
Rain poured down from a gray sky, heavy drops that soaked through his jacket within seconds, plastering his hair to his head, running into his eyes. The sound was deafening, that white noise roar of heavy rainfall that drowned out everything else.
And weirdly, impossibly, that rain was following him. Reaching him even though he was sitting in a car on a dry street.
Back in the G-Wagon—because he was still there, still sitting in the driver's seat even though he was also standing in the rain as a child—Elijah's adult body was reacting to water that wasn't there.
His shoulders hunched forward instinctively, trying to protect himself from the downpour. His hands came up to shield his face, palms turned outward as if to deflect raindrops. His head tucked down, chin to chest, the universal posture of someone caught in a storm without an umbrella.
He blinked rapidly, trying to clear water from his eyes that wasn't actually falling. His mouth opened slightly, and he could almost taste the rain—that clean, mineral tang of water from the sky.
It was so real. Every sensation was perfect, indistinguishable from actual physical experience.
And as little Elijah—because that's who he was in this moment, regardless of the adult consciousness occupying that small body—stood on the rain-soaked street corner, he looked around, trying to orient himself.
He recognized this place. This street. He'd been here before, in actual memory, in real history.
Across the street, slightly elevated on a small hill, stood a mansion. The entrance was marked by ornate iron gates, the kind with decorative flourishes and family crests worked into the design. The gates were open, and a car was parked in the circular driveway just beyond—a luxury sedan, black and gleaming even in the gray light of the storm.
Two figures emerged from the house, moving toward the car with the purposeful strides of people who had somewhere important to be.
William Halvern. Younger than Elijah had ever seen him in person, but recognizable from photographs and news articles. His face was less lined, his posture straighter, but the resemblance to the man Elijah had killed was unmistakable.
And beside him, Viola Halvern, also younger, her hair styled differently but her features the same. She was carrying something—no, *someone*. A little girl, maybe three or four years old, cradled in her arms in princess-style carry, the child's head resting against Viola's shoulder.
The little girl was wearing what could only be described as a princess outfit—a frilly pink dress with layers of tulle and lace, the kind of thing that little girls begged for and parents paid too much money for. Even from across the street, even through the rain, the dress was visible, that bright pink standing out against everything else.
Little Elijah stared at them, water running down his face, his small body shivering from cold and something else—something primal, instinctive, a warning that his child's mind couldn't quite articulate.
And then the little girl's eyes opened.
She hadn't been asleep. Or if she had been, she woke with the sudden alertness of a predator sensing prey. Her head lifted from Viola's shoulder, turned, and her gaze locked directly onto little Elijah across the street.
Her eyes were... wrong. Too knowing. Too aware. The expression in them wasn't that of a small child—it was calculating, cunning, filled with intelligence that shouldn't exist in someone that young.
She smiled. Not a child's innocent smile, but something edged with malice, with secret knowledge, with satisfaction.
And then it appeared.
The creonish humanoid figure materialized next to the family group, its form flickering like a poorly tuned television signal—there, not-there, there, not-there—each flicker accompanied by a soft static sound that Elijah could hear even through the rain.
Its body was composed of those reddish-black whips, writhing constantly, never settling into one configuration. The form suggested a humanoid shape—head, torso, limbs—but the details were all wrong, all distorted, as if someone had described a human to an alien and this was the alien's best attempt at recreation.
The figure placed its hands—or what passed for hands, the whips coalescing into something approximating fingers—on the shoulders of William and Viola.
Both adults immediately changed. Their postures slumped, shoulders curving inward as if bearing an immense weight. Their faces, which had been neutral or perhaps mildly pleasant, transformed into expressions of profound sadness. Not just unhappiness, but soul-deep despair, the kind that came from losing everything that mattered.
William's mouth turned down at the corners, his eyes going dull and lifeless. Viola's face crumpled slightly, lips trembling as if she might cry, though no tears fell.
The little girl in Viola's arms maintained her cheeky look, her smile growing wider, more triumphant, as she continued to stare directly at little Elijah.
Then the figure's hands—those impossible, writhing appendages—began to change. The ends sharpened, the whips hardening into something resembling claws, dark and pointed and clearly sharp.
It dug those claws into William's and Viola's heads.
Blood welled up around the points of penetration, bright red against pale skin, running down their faces in thick rivulets. It traced paths along their cheeks, dripped from their chins, soaked into their collars. Their expressions became even more despairing, even more hopeless, as if the blood being drawn was taking something essential with it—not just physical vitality, but will, hope, the very desire to continue existing.
And the little girl—Chloe, that had to be Chloe Halvern—grinned even wider. Her small mouth stretched into something that shouldn't have been possible for a child's face, showing teeth that seemed too sharp, too many.
While still cradled in Viola's arms, she lifted one small hand and made a gesture at little Elijah across the street.
She drew her finger across her throat slowly, deliberately, the universal symbol for death. Her eyes never left his, and her grin never faltered.
I'm going to kill you, the gesture said clearly. Or you're already dead, and you just don't know it yet.
Little Elijah felt fear spike through his small body, cold and sharp and overwhelming. He tried to step back, to run, but his legs wouldn't obey, frozen in place by terror.
And then another figure appeared at the mansion gates.
This one was different. While the humanoid figure was composed of solid-seeming whips that writhed and coiled, this new presence was entirely gaseous—a reddish smoke or mist that moved with its own volition, swirling and eddying in patterns that suggested intelligence and purpose.
The smoke coalesced into a vaguely vertical form, taller than a man, with no clear features or limbs, just that red mist shifting and flowing, simultaneously ethereal and somehow more threatening than the solid figure.
And the blood—all that blood running down William's and Viola's faces—began to move.
Not dripping, not falling due to gravity, but flowing horizontally through the air, drawn toward the smoke figure like iron filings toward a magnet. The streams of blood detached from the adults' skin, suspended in mid-air, forming thin crimson ribbons that stretched across the space between them and the smoke.
William and Viola began to wither.
It happened rapidly, their flesh sinking inward, their skin taking on a gray, desiccated appearance. Their clothes hung looser on frames that were collapsing, their faces becoming skull-like as the blood—and with it, their life force—was drained away.
Within seconds, they were little more than husks, their bodies crumbling to ash that the rain should have washed away but instead just... disappeared. Scattered to nothing. Erased.
Only little Chloe remained standing where they'd been, still grinning, still staring at little Elijah. Some of the blood streams diverted to her, seeping into her skin, and her already-too-knowing eyes brightened further, glowing with an inner light that was distinctly inhuman.
The humanoid figure and the smoke figure both began making sounds—ke ke ke ke ke—a wet, clicking laughter that sounded like insects and drowning and things that should stay buried.
The humanoid figure's form began to enlarge, expanding like a balloon being inflated, growing taller and wider, its reddish-black whips multiplying and lengthening.
And little Chloe, along with the smoke figure, suddenly dropped to their knees before the growing humanoid. The gesture was one of worship, of supplication, bowing before something greater and more terrible than themselves.
Little Elijah felt his own legs betray him. His knees bent without his permission, forcing him down into a kneeling position on the wet pavement. The rain continued to pour down, but he barely noticed anymore, too focused on the impossible scene before him.
The world shifted again, that nauseating lurch of reality being rewritten.
Suddenly little Elijah wasn't across the street anymore. He was standing—no, kneeling—right next to little Chloe and the smoke figure. But they weren't on the ground.
They were on something else. Something that felt solid beneath his knees but shifted slightly, the surface warm and oddly textured.
Little Elijah looked up, trying to understand, trying to orient himself.
And up. And up. And up.
The humanoid figure towered above them, impossibly large, its head so far away it seemed to touch the clouds. The whips that composed its body were thick as tree trunks now, coiling and writhing in patterns that created wind and sound—that wet sliding noise of flesh against flesh, that clicking laughter amplified to deafening proportions.
And its face—that grinning, impossible face—stared down at them from its vast height, the crescent slash of its mouth curved with satisfaction.
Little Elijah looked down at what he was kneeling on and felt his mind rebel against what he saw.
Fingers. Five of them—no, six, just like the symbol—each one the size of a building, the palm they extended from vast enough to hold a dozen people comfortably.
He was kneeling on the palm of the giant humanoid figure. They all were—himself, little Chloe, the smoke figure—all of them held in one massive hand like toys.
Terror unlike anything he'd ever experienced flooded through little Elijah's body. He shook violently, his small frame convulsing, his teeth chattering so hard he bit his tongue and tasted blood.
This isn't real, he tried to tell himself, his child's voice high and frightened. This is... this is just a figment of my crazed imagination. I'm still back in my car. I'm an adult. I'm not really here.
Back in the G-Wagon, Elijah's adult body remained in that hunched, rain-protection posture, eyes squeezed shut, breath coming in rapid pants.
"This isn't real," little Elijah said aloud, his voice gaining strength despite his terror. "All of you... you aren't real. What's real is me realizing you're all just my psychotic episode-type hallucinations. You're not real. You're NOT REAL!"
The moment he shouted those words—putting all the conviction and desperation his small body could muster behind them—the world responded.
Cracks appeared in the air itself, spiderwebbing out from little Elijah's position, spreading across the sky and the ground and the massive figure holding them. The cracks looked like fractures in glass, complete with that crystalline appearance, light refracting through the breaks in reality.
The giant humanoid's grin faltered, its form beginning to flicker more rapidly, the solidity of it wavering.
The cracks spread faster, multiplying, intersecting, until the entire scene looked like a windshield after a high-speed impact—still holding together but only barely, about to shatter completely.
And then it did.
Elijah gasped, his eyes flying open, his adult body lurching forward against the seatbelt. His hands flew to his chest, clawing at his shirt, trying to get air into lungs that felt compressed and useless.
He was back. Fully, completely back in the G-Wagon. The street was dry. The sky was clear. The rain was gone. He was adult-sized again, sitting in the driver's seat, the steering wheel still in front of him.
Gasping. Can't breathe. Need air.
His hand shot out to the window control, slapping at it desperately. The window rolled down with that smooth electric whir, and blessed fresh air flooded into the vehicle. He gulped it down, leaning toward the window, his chest heaving.
The oxygen helped, the panic slowly receding, though his hands continued to shake and his heart still raced.
What the hell was that? What the hell is happening to me?
He sat there for long minutes, just breathing, just existing, trying to convince himself that he was okay, that he was sane, that he wasn't completely losing his mind.
Movement caught his eye—something in the back seat area, visible in the rearview mirror.
He turned, looking over his shoulder, and saw something that shouldn't have been there.
A bracelet.
It was lying on the floor of the back seat, partially tucked beneath the driver's seat, as if it had rolled there from somewhere else. The angle was such that he shouldn't have been able to see it at all—it was only because he'd turned at exactly the right moment, with the sunlight hitting at exactly the right angle, that the light caught on its surface and drew his attention.
The bracelet was delicate, clearly made for a woman or child. The band was composed of what looked like silver, though it could have been white gold or platinum—hard to tell without handling it. Small charms dangled from it at regular intervals, each one shaped like something organic—leaves, flowers, perhaps small animals, though the details were hard to make out from this distance.
Elijah unbuckled his seatbelt and shifted in his seat, reaching back between the seats with one long arm. His fingers brushed the bracelet, and the moment they made contact, he heard it.
A sound—soft, barely audible, emanating from the bracelet itself.
It was like the gentle rush of a waterfall heard from a distance, or the soothing crash of ocean waves against a shore. The kind of sound they put in meditation apps, designed to calm and center and ground.
Whoooosh... shhhhhh... whoooosh... shhhhhh...
The sound only lasted for a few moments—maybe five seconds total—before fading into silence, leaving only the ambient noise of the neighborhood around him.
Elijah picked up the bracelet carefully, holding it in his palm, examining it more closely.
The charms weren't what he'd thought. They weren't generic nature symbols. Each one was actually a tiny, intricately carved representation of something specific—a particular type of flower he didn't recognize, a leaf with distinctive veining, a small creature that might have been a salamander or newt.
And on the inside of the band, barely visible, was an engraving. The letters were tiny, requiring him to squint and hold the bracelet up to the light to read them:
"Remember what you are."
He stared at those words, his mind working through implications and connections, trying to understand what this meant, why this bracelet was in his car, how long it had been there.
And slowly, a look of deep contemplation settled over his features. His eyebrows drew together, not in confusion or fear this time, but in the focused concentration of someone working through a complex puzzle.
His fingers traced over the charms, feeling their shapes, their weight.
"Remember what you are."
Not "who." What.
The distinction felt important, significant, laden with meaning he was only beginning to grasp.
He sat there in his G-Wagon, on a peaceful suburban street, holding a mysterious bracelet, and for the first time since all of this had started—since the museum, since Augustine's visit, since the visions and the voices and the impossible things—he felt like he was on the verge of understanding something crucial.
Something that would either save him or destroy him.
He just didn't know which yet.