CHAPTER 1 - THE EMBERLAINES
It was the roar that woke Levan up.
A rumbling, earthshaking roar.
A roar with earthquake tremors for fingers—with tectonic plates for hands.
It shook the dormitory walls, it shook the floor, and it shook the ceilings.
It shook everything.
Except…Did it?
Or, maybe, was it…just shaking…him?
Just shaking him?
Shaking him?
S H A K I N G H I M
Levan gasped.
He sat upright, blinking rapidly, his heart pounding.
Sweat gathered at his forehead, already cooling against the feverishly hot skin of his scalp.
His ears undulated, flexed, and equalized, as if the atmospheric pressure had increased a thousandfold.
His thoughts were a hot slurry.
I’m sick, he thought. I’ve…gotten sick in the middle of the night and…
Levan trailed off.
The sound.
The roar.
It was still here.
What is that?
What time was it, even?
Levan wasn’t one for personalization. There were no posters on the walls, no furniture beyond what had come with the dorm when he had moved in. The scholarship folks had given him a $200 Target gift card to furnish his dorm. $200—just for posters of bands, lava lamps, and a crappy futon or whatever else he might need.
$200. Just for posters and lava lamps.
Wild.
The scholarship people hadn’t really given him $200 for posters and lava lamps, though. They’d given him $200 so they could take a photo with him—the charity director and Levan each with a finger on the crowded gift card.
A picture for the charity to post on social media….
That was what the $200 was really for.
Levan had just been incidental.
He’d spent some of the money on a rice maker, the rest on enough rice to last the semester, with some cash left over. Nothing to personalize and decorate the room. He didn’t even have the rice maker anymore—he’d sold it once he’d eaten more rice than he could stand. So no rice maker, either.
That was nine months ago.
Levan glanced at the only thing that passed for “decor” in his dorm room: the bulky, hard plastic-shelled digital alarm clock he’d found gathering dust in the corner behind the door when he first moved in.
The lime green, digital-segment numbers read 2:38 am.
2:39 am.
Levan rose from the bed, swaying, his eyes adjusting to the dark.
The floor….
The floor was shaking from the noise.
Levan squinted in the darkness, but saw only phantom shadows and optical illusions move across the cold linoleum of the dorm room.
A rug, a part of his brain thought. I could have gotten a rug, too, and…and what the hell is that noise?
Construction workers, he thought—the first idea on the list. M
Maybe there’s nearby construction going on: Roadwork or something.
But this loud?
Maybe they’re tearing up the whole damn road, and they just waited until…
He glanced at the bulky digital alarm clock once more.
…until 2:39 am to do it.
Right.
So, probably not construction workers. More ideas came to mind, and Levan organized them in descending order based on how rational they were.
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An eighteen-wheeler, coming through, maybe, thought Levan.
Still not loud enough.
More wheels, maybe?
36-wheeler? 54-wheeler? 324-wheeler?
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled out loud, his voice clogged from waking in the middle of the night. “Onto the less rational options.”
An image popped into his mind.
A tank—one of those big old tanks from World War 1.
“Exactly, Levan,” he told himself. “Tonight is the Semi-Annual World War 1 Aficionados’ Midnight Tank Parade. How could you forget?”
Except, even the Semi-Annual World War 1 Aficionados’ Midnight Tank Parade didn’t explain the sound. It explained the roaring, sure. It explained the grinding. Maybe even the shaking of the ground.
But it didn’t explain the rush.
It was a rushing roar, like water.
That made sense. That felt right.
Like a high-power dam.
That’s what it sounded like.
That’s what it felt like.
Like millions of tons of water, a hydroelectric surge surrounded him, enveloping him and rushing all around him.
Everyone else has to be hearing this, he thought. Everyone else in the dorm.
He’d go out and ask.
Levan hesitated.
He didn’t hear any talking.
He didn’t hear any yelling or commotion.
Levan made his way slowly to the door, his path lit only by the thin, pale green light of the alarm clock. With a weary finger, he slid open the small, paint-crusted covering and peered out through a small window at the upper center of the door. The hallway on the other side was empty, silent, and completely drowned in darkness. There were no people, no movement, no lights, no…no anything.
[ Chosen Soul ]
Levan spun.
He’d heard a voice, just then. A strange voice, except not out loud. Just in his mind.
Maybe you’re still asleep, Levan told himself.
The “Sleep Theory” was rapidly climbing the ranks of likelihood in his mind, surpassing the late-night construction work, the 36-wheeler, the 324-wheeler, and even the midnight tank parade.
I’ll just go lie back down, then.
Levan froze, as a million pinpricks erupted down his spine and the back of his neck.
There, lit by the soft green glow of the digital alarm clock, was Levan’s body.
Not the body he piloted right now, standing in the dorm room window, investigating the noise, but another Levan, in bed, under the covers.
Asleep.
If that’s me…then who am…I?
[ You Are You ]
[ Lives Will Diverge… ]
[ Splinters Shall Be Cared For ]
[ …Chosen Soul ]
There was the voice again.
Levan couldn’t process it. His gaze was fixed on the figure sleeping gently under the covers. He exhaled breathlessly.
This is how I sleep?
It broke Levan’s heart to see the way he slept. But it made sense, he supposed.
Levan slept in a small crescent shape, a fetal position, curled up and hugging himself, hunched and hiding. Vulnerable.
And I look so small.
Levan had always been on the shorter side, on the slighter side.
Straight hair, a shade between dark brown and black, fell on Levan’s eyes and forehead while he slept, and his chest rose softly up and down with his breathing. His eyebrows knitted together, his lips in a sort of trembling expression, hugging a ball of covers.
Again, that feeling in his heart.
Sadness, sympathy, empathy.
A thought came, against his will. A thought from the forbidden territories of his mind, the part of his brain had worked very hard to ignore and pass over.
How can you see this little sleeping child and still leave? He asked his parents.
But Levan’s parents were not around to answer the question.
He stumbled backward.
“You’re supposed to wake up when you realize you’re dreaming,” he said—he accused. Who was he talking to? The voice, maybe? The rumbling? The roar?
“Clocks are supposed to look strange in dreams…So look…strange,” he added, whirling and pointing a vicious finger at the bulky alarm clock.
2:41 pm, it read, in lime green.
More hypotheticals came to him, more solutions and explanations, and once again, Levan ranked them in descending order of rationality.
He stopped when the voice came again.
[ Chosen Soul ]
[ You Have Been Called Along The Emberlaines. Your Journey Begins Now ]
Called along the Emberlaines.
A dream. A dream. This is a dream.
He looked at his hands, his forearms, pale in the darkness.
It didn’t feel like a dream, but it had to be, or….
He moved down the list of rational options.
LSD—err, some other type of psychedelic. I don’t know. I’ve never been on one. But I’ve been drugged.
How?
When?
For what purpose?
He continued down the list of solutions, now into much more dubious territory,
Astral projection. I’m astrally projecting. Spontaneous astral projection.
Except that didn’t explain the roar.
We astrally projected so we wouldn’t miss the midnight tank parade, his brain helpfully offered.
“Does anyone hear that?” he asked aloud, still too embarrassed to raise his voice enough to actually be heard.
On the bed, his own sleeping body stirred a little, then fell deeper into sleep.
As he did, the floor by the bed began to…change.
Levan took a step back, and just in time.
The roaring grew louder as a six-foot-by-six-foot section of the floor near the bed ripped apart. Linoleum cracked and crumbled, splitting and separating to reveal a layer beneath. Where there should have been floorboards and insulation, there was instead a pool of blinding light, as if a small pond had always been waiting just to the side of his bed. The light moved like water, scaldingly bright, glowing golden and scarlet, roiling, rushing, folding over itself and running beneath him, flowing in a direction he couldn’t see.
I’m dead, he realized. He’d skipped over that solution because…denial?
But it has to be that, he realized, his heart sinking. On the bed, his body turned over once more before drifting back into a deep sleep. Maybe too deep a sleep.
[ Chosen Soul ], the voice began once more, the words blooming into his mind like flowers planted eons ago.
Levan didn’t answer. He stared at the roiling rift in the floor. Then he looked to the bed, where his body still slept, hugging himself with the blankets, since there was nothing and no one else to hug.
Levan felt wetness at the corner of his eye.
I die like this? He wondered.
Aneurysm, or something?
Rare condition I never learned I had?
Blood clot, maybe, to the brain?
Rational ideas in descending order.
Rational ideas in descending order.
Rational ideas in descending order.
[ You Are Not Dead ]
And, somehow, he believed it. He believed the voice.
He was not dead.
He was not dreaming.
He was not astrally projecting.
There was no construction outside, no hydroelectric dam, no 18-wheelers, no tank parade. None of that.
Just a roaring river of golden, scarlet light.
[ The Emberlaines ]
Right, Levan adjusted when the voice told him. He felt his spine straighten, his shoulders roll back. His chin rose.
The Emberlaines.
He took a step forward.
Then he paused.
“Do I have to go in?” Levan asked.
[ No ]
[ It Is A Choice ]
Levan nodded.
He took one last look at his body in the bed.
Then he took a step toward the rift in the floor.
Toward the Emberlaines.
Rational ideas, ranked in descending order.
Well, there were no more rational ideas.
So, I guess, the only thing left to descend…is me.
