Josephine turned back to the window-sized gate and held out her hands. She brought her hands together closer. The gate halted its opening. “It works!” Her triumph was short-lived. The mark upon her breast flared and she fell to her knees with a cry of pain.
I rushed to her side and helped her up. The eye of the Black Wind focused on me, glaring, and I felt my soul quake. I was nothing before its glare. It was hungry and I was food. I would be the first consumed when the Outer God’s minions arrived.
“It…He is fighting me.” Josephine bowed her head.
“All your life, you’ve learned to fight, to evade, to escape the Black Wind. Use what you know. I believe in you.” As I spoke, the first howls and jeers of the bandits came through the portal. I needed to help as much as I could. If Josephine could at least keep the gate from opening any wider, we would have a good choke point. It would be the Battle of Thermopylae. Hopefully with a better ending.
I squeezed her shoulders. “You know what to do. Fight him. Fight the Black Wind. Close the portal.” I stepped back and left her to do what she could while I went for my father’s gun. It was not much, but it was something.
A glint of metal from the floor stopped my steps. I had not lost my father’s gun to the chasm, but I had returned to this world with another weapon—one I had chosen to carry. A weapon that could help close the gate.
It could also kill Josephine in the process.
I picked up the scroll case. In this reality it was as long as my palm and twice as thick as my thumb. The end cap came off in my hand as if eager to help. The rolled tube of paper was stiff with rough edges. I could still see pieces of the plant fibers that made the paper. It reminded me of papyrus, but every instinct I had screamed that the paper was not of this world.
I unrolled it with careful fingers. Swirling glyphs filled my mind. I don’t know how, but I understood what they said. Not the exact words. Only their true intent. I could not grasp it in whole. I understood the concepts. I understood that I could use this spell—for that was what it was—to close and seal this breach between our worlds.
I also understood that it might harm, even kill, Josephine. I looked at her back as she struggled with the tear she’d created. It was smaller, yes, but she would not close it in time. If she died, I didn’t know what would happen to the gate. My heart feared for her. The bandits might use their ranged weapons to repeat what had happened in the Dreamlands and murder her in the name of their otherworldly god.
And yet, if I used the spell, it might tear her asunder. It was a choice. A choice only I could make. I couldn’t ask her if she would sacrifice herself. Could I? Saving the world from the chaos of the Dreamlands might require a sacrifice. Was there really a choice?
Two things answered my unspoken question at the same time. First, a cyclopean abomination appeared upon the horizon so large I could not find anything to compare it to. It stared at me with its writhing tentacles playing over each other as it moved with impossible speed. Second, Josephine cried out, horror plain in her exhausted voice. “He comes! Doctor, help me!”
I straightened and chose the only path I could. “I have the Elder Sign. I’ll use it.”
Josephine did not answer. She focused on making the portal smaller, but she only managed to keep it the same size, her body trembling with the effort.
If my patient died, her blood was on my hands.
So be it.
I raised the scroll and began to read in that impossible language. Line by line. After the first sentence, Josephine straightened, a strength flowing into her posture. After the second sentence, she echoed my words. After the third, she echoed my words and drew glowing glyphs, clockwise, in front of the portal, ending with a pentagram to seal it.
With each line of the spell and Josephine’s echoed response, the portal grew smaller. The abominations on the other side of the breach howled their fury. As did the Black Wind. With eldritch might, the Outer God tried to suck Josephine through the portal before it closed, heedless of the damage it would do to her mortal body. A foul wind pulled books and papers from the shelves and my desk. They clattered, fluttered, and thumped to the floor in an unholy cacophony of sound.
I found myself holding Josephine by the waist with one arm and the tatters of the Elder Sign spell in the other hand as we finished closing and sealing the gate together. We yelled the last line, struggling against the grasping wind and the noise that threatened to burst our eardrums.
Then there was nothing.
Chapter 14
When patients have momentous breakthroughs in their therapy, it often looks like a catastrophic breakdown. There can be tears, shouts, curses, temper tantrums, and the tearing of clothing. A psychologist learns to identify a breakthrough in and among patients acting out. After the wild release of emotion, the patient’s demeanor tells all. Do they watch to see your reaction or do they turn inward to examine themselves? A breakthrough can be a lovely thing to witness. It can also be destructive and painful. In Josephine’s case, her breakthrough saved more than herself.
There was no hole in reality in my office wall. No portal to the Dreamlands. No racing bandits with hooves and horns. No abominations seeking to consume us whole—body and soul.
Josephine and I tumbled to the floor before my unmarred bookcase. My patient sobbed as if her heart were broken. Undoubtedly it was, and would be for a long time to come. Kneeling next to her, I held her tight and rocked her back and forth, grateful she was still alive. I tried to make soothing noises, but my voice was raw from the spell I’d wrought.
Someone shouted at my office door and shook it. The noise of our fight to close the portal had not gone unnoticed. There were at least three voices there, clamoring to get through the locked door. I heard Nurse Heather’s strident voice command the rest to move aside.
Still holding and rocking Josephine, I heard the door unlock and watched it flung open. Even as the orderlies rushed in with Hanna and Nurse Heather behind, I threw up a hand, warding them all off. “It’s fine. Everything is fine here.” I tried to muster as much authority as I could from my kneeling position. My face flushed, my cheek throbbed where Josephine struck me. “We have had…a breakthrough. I believe all will be well now.”
Nurse Heather pushed the orderlies aside and gazed at the shambles of my office with a disapproving eye. I could just imagine what she was seeing. I followed her gaze as she visually picked over the books and papers on the floor, the overturned chair—I do not know when that happened—the mess of files and spilled notebooks on my desk. I met her gaze without flinching as she narrowed her eyes at the mark on my cheek.
“This is a new one for you, Dr. Fern. Usually your patients are sappy, sleepy, and pliant. What happened?”
I narrowed my own eyes at the question. “That is between me and my patient.”
Nurse Heather put her hands on her hips. “I will need to tell Dr. Mintz something.”
“Tell him that Miss Ruggles, my patient, had a breakthrough. We now understand what has been causing her…” I glanced at the girl in my arms and pushed on with the lie, “…hysteria. That is all he needs to know. He will understand.”