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Song in the Dark

A Night in the Woods fanfic by Chris Shaffer

Night in the Woods is copyright Infinite Fall, story and original characters copyright Chris Shaffer 2019, all rights reserved

Day 1: Welcome Back

The mural on the bus station's wall depicted a beautiful, sunny day over the valley. An old-fashioned train, spitting out cartoon-fluffy clouds of steam or smoke or whatever, seemed to float over the valley on invisible tracks. On one hill sat a coal-filled mine cart, celebrating a lifestyle that no longer existed. A stream ran over a hill on the other side. In the middle of it all the figure of an old soldier towered over the woods, shouldering a bayonet-affixed rifle and wearing a dome-shaped helmet, just like the war memorial in the middle of town. A banner reading 'Historic Possum Springs' spread out front and center.

"So, fancy new mural for the bus station, huh?" Eric asked nobody in particular as he made sure his suitcase survived the bus's cargo bin. "There's a good use of state money. 'Welcome to Possum Springs, where the jobs are shit, mining is over, and you get to watch the rest of the world die first because it'll be a decade before we catch up to rest of reality!'" The red fox raised an imaginary toast to the empty bus station with a black-furred hand.

The vending machine behind him KA-CLUNK'ed as it gave up a soda. Eric jumped and let out a startled yelp.

He turned to see the janitor, a cyan-colored bird with a beard, wearing a flannel shirt and a tool belt. The janitor pulled a can of soda out of the machine, opened it up, and chugged it with a loud slurp.

"Holy hell, where did you come from?" Eric asked.

"Always here, except when I'm not," he said as he took another drink.

"I'm_certain_you weren't there a second ago," Eric said. He looked around, in case he'd missed anyone else, but the only other sign of life was a 'back in 20 minutes' sign at the ticket counter.

"Somebody's gotta keep an eye on this place when people don't pay attention," the older man said as he took another sip of his soda. "Speakin' of which, things to fix." He turned and left through a door marked 'Employees Only.'

Eric shook his head, shouldered his backpack, and turned his suitcase over so he could roll it out into the parking lot. He pulled out his phone to call a taxi, only to find out that there wasn't any signal -- ah, right, 'Historic' Possum Springs. He let out a sigh of relief when he realized there was already a taxi in the parking lot. The driver sat behind the wheel with an elbow sticking out the open window, reading a worn paperback book, as the radio blathered on about how immigrants were destroying American jobs.

_Because, y'know, it was all of the immigrants who closed down the coal mines and the glass factory,_Eric thought to himself as he made his way over.

Eric tapped on the roof of the car to get the guy's attention. The driver, a bear bulky enough to look like he had trouble getting in and out of the car, scowled at him.

"Heading to Maple Street."

The man grumbled at him and popped the trunk. Eric put his suitcase in the back, closed the lid after a couple of attempts to get it to catch, and climbed in the back. Without a word, the guy took off while Eric was still buckling his seatbelt.

* * *

Eric had forgotten what 'construction season' was like until he saw all of the barriers warning people away from road repairs. He remembered Possum Springs as the sort of place where certain times of the year, pot holes only got fixed because the local papers shamed the city into paying for it. At some point during the drive over, it'd started drizzling -- not necessarily umbrella-worthy weather, but everything was now wet and miserable and gray.

"...pened up last night," the driver said, a couple of blocks from Eric's family's place.

"'Scuse me?" the fox asked, ears perked.

"Sinkhole. Opened up just last night." The driver pointed back.

"Wow, that's... pretty bad..." Eric said with a frown, noticing with a distinct lack of surprise that there was also a lot of road work being done on Maple as well. "Mine's that blue one there."

He indicated a house and the driver pulled up and popped the trunk. A few minutes, twenty bucks, and a brief conversation about a political petition later, Eric hauled his suitcase into the house.

"Hey, I'm home!" he called out.

Nothing.

He frowned and set his suitcase and backpack in the hallway, and went into the kitchen. He picked up a note from the table.

Eric,

At the grocery store getting stuff for dinner. Your dad's at the store. There's some tuna salad in the fridge if you need something to eat. Sorry we weren't able to make it to your graduation.

Welcome home.

--Mom

A sandwich later, the fox headed towards the center of town, silently thanking anyone or anything listening that at least it wasn't too windy. The rain he could handle, but the wind would bring a chill he'd feel even through his fur. The weather gave the town a gray cast that matched the one that always seemed to settle over it in his memories.

A black and orange shape darted around the edge of his field of vision. He glanced up to see one of his neighbors, a black cat in an orange shirt named Mae, running and jumping on the power lines, using them to get along like they were her own personal sidewalk. It still baffled him that someone only two years younger was not only capable of acting so childish but also physically capable of running around on those lines without destroying them or herself.

Didn't she kill a kid once?_he thought to himself. _No, wait, if she had, she'd probably still be in jail or it would have been all over the news or both. That's a stupid question. You're stupid.

He kicked aside some wet leaves and ducked through the old underground trolley station tunnel, passing by the pierogi stand and a mural depicting miners on their way to work. The mural had been vandalized, recently-so according to the guy who ran the pierogi stand. Someone had crudely painted "NUKE POSS" before trailing off into just swipes of paint over the image, apparently having lost interest eight letters into "Nuke Possum Springs," an ancient slogan of disaffected youth.

The tunnel at least gave him some respite from the sprinkling up above, albeit by literally burying himself in a representation of everything Possum Springs used to be. So, really, just trading a physically-oppressive environment for a metaphorical one. He stopped and leaned against one of the pillars, watching the water run over the tracks where the trolley used to take workers to the mine -- before the mine died off and took the trolley's purpose with it.

Some years later, a massive flood wiped out the tunnels and turned big chunks of the station into a waterlogged ruin. A combination of historical significance and sentimentality about the old pierogi stand kept the whole mess open. People sometimes fished down here, and Mr. Salvi went hunting for junk in the old wreckage that he could fix up and sell.

He could hear the sound of rain from up above washing down into the water, filling the tunnels with white noise. But despite that, he was sure he could hear someone humming a tune... The tune sounded familiar, but without lyrics he couldn't place it. He looked for the source, but none seemed obvious. It didn't match the radio up on the counter at the pierogi stand, nobody else was humming or singing, and he was pretty sure Mr. Salvi wasn't out there now.

Eric shook his head to clear it, and lost the tune he heard. He mentally wrote it off as some trick of sound, white noise combining with probably some rain ringing on a pipe or something. People look for patterns, and he'd happened to hit on a pattern that sounded like music to his ears. That's all it was.

The fox decided that the train station wasn't the best place to be alone with his thoughts. He went up the stairs on the other end and ventured back out into the rainy gray city center.

* * *

The bell over the door of the liquor store rang as Eric strolled in. He swiveled his ears as he looked down the aisles for someone specific. Now that he was out of the rain and someplace familiar, he perked up considerably. Where before the gray outdoors had drained the color and life out of him, he was replenished now that he was someplace dry and kind of warm.

"Hey, there, buddy!" came a voice from behind him. "Welcome home!"

Eric turned around with a smile to hug the older fox standing there, his father Richard. Despite his approaching middle age, his father's fur was still a bright red, his ears sharp with black points.

"Thanks, dad."

The older fox reached up and brushed some dampness off of Eric's ears, and the younger fox's ears flicked away from his fingers.

"Didn't get too wet, did ya?"

"No, no, I'm good," Eric said as he took a moment to straighten his headfur back the way he liked it. "I cut through the train station for a good chunk of the walk from the house."

"You get y'self some pierogis now that you're home?" came another voice from just around the corner.

Eric caught the flicker of a shadow dance across his dad's face, something deeper than a frown but not quite a scowl. As he turned, Eric came face to face with a brown bear the same age as his father who lumbered around the corner. He smirked like he'd just said something legitimately clever or even vaguely interesting.

"Welcome back," he said as he held his hand out to Eric.

"Thanks, Randall." As Eric shook his hand, he felt like the room had cooled by a few degrees. It wasn't anything directed at him, just... something lingered in the room. An awkwardness.

"You're joinin' us here at the store?" the bear asked.

"Once I've had a little bit of time to settle in back home," the fox said.

"Probably just a couple days," his dad spoke up, out of nowhere. "After Harfest." His tone was much firmer now, like this was an important declaration.

Eric flicked an ear back but tried not to show his surprise. He'd intended to take a week or two, maybe get a bead on living arrangements beyond crashing at his parents' house. As far as he knew, his dad knew that. Eric simply just nodded, as noncommittally as he dared without contradicting his father in front of his business partner.

"I'll get a time card ready," Randall said with a nod before wandering off.

Eric glanced at his father, hissing "What was that about?" under his breath.

"Just think you can start sooner rather than later," his father said.

The younger fox frowned but let it sit for the moment.

"We can talk about it later at home," Eric said. "Mom's out getting groceries for dinner, I was mostly just stopping by here on the way to catch up with her at the Food Donkey."

Richard shook his head. "Food Donkey closed last year. Your mom's at the Ham Panther, out by the highway."

"Well, crap. Really?"

"Yeah," he said, in a 'you should have known this' tone.

"Is the Ham Panther the only place you can go to shop for stuff?"

"There's a Snack Falcon now," his dad snorted. "They've only ever got this one guy working there and he's terrible, just terrible," he said with a surprising amount of exasperation given they were literally talking about a register jockey at the convenience store.

Eric, having little investment in the Snack Falcon or its employees, wasn't sure what to say to that.

"Hey, when'd you get back?" another brown bear, this one only a year older than Eric, asked as he walked by. A couple of cardboard cases of something or other filled his arms. He set them down, opened the top one, and began putting bottles on a shelf.

"Just got back a little bit ago. How are you doing, Jim?"

"Can't complain," he said with a shrug. "Don't help much when I can," he added with a chuckle, smirking like his father. He glanced past Eric and spotted the older fox behind him, and the smirk fell. "Have a nice trip back?" he asked, desperate to change the subject.

"Bus ride wasn't too bad. The leaves always look nice from the road." Eric shrugged. "How's your brother?"

"RJ's alright. Still a punk, but alright," Jim said, smiling like that was the funniest thing he'd heard or said all day. He moved the now-empty case to the floor, opened up the next one, and kept going without looking away from his conversation. "So how come you're just getting back here now? There a Halloween graduation?"

Eric sighed. "I was graduating at the end of the summer semester, and then there was some glitch right before the ceremony and I had to make up a credit by testing out of a class. They let me do the ceremony anyway, I got the credit taken care of, it all took a few weeks to sort out, and here I am."

"Cool, cool," Jim said, doing his best to sound interested. "So when are you starting here?"

"In a couple of days," Eric said, biting back an 'apparently' at the end of that.

"Cool, good to see you back behind the counter." Jim held a hand up and Eric slapped it.

"Good to be back," the fox said, trying to sound enthusiastic. "But until then, I'm gonna get out of here and let you guys get back to work," he said, turning to his father. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"See you at dinner," Eric's dad said as he went in for another hug.

Eric hugged him back and slipped out of the store, trying hard not to look like he was desperate to get out of there. However much getting to the store had revitalized him, something going on he didn't quite understand had drained the feeling from him already.

* * *

Eric felt the drizzle on his ears as he just stared at the abandoned Food Donkey, not too far from the train tracks. Weeds grew up through cracks in the parking lot, the earliest beginnings of nature's reclamation. He was pretty sure he saw someone moving around inside the building, either some meth-head stealing copper pipes or drifters come in off the rails.

Possibly both, he supposed.

It was just a grocery store, it wasn't like he spent countless hours there as a child or anything. But it was a sign of a time that, in his eyes, had passed and gone. On the way out here he'd also discovered that a few other businesses, including his favorite Italian restaurant, Pastabilities, closed down. Judging from the condition of the restaurant's building, it must have been pretty recent. Coming home had not been much of what he'd hoped.

The wind carried some damp leaves past him, and he thought he heard music on the breeze. It came from the woods just up the hill, and his first thought was that someone was out there with a radio or something and the gust carried the sound. After all, it's not like the wind blowing through the trees could produce a melody.

When he looked away from the store, he was already walking towards the hill. He went with it, assuming it was just the curiosity getting to him. He trudged up the hill, starting to make out a proper tune coming from the woods. Whatever the music was, it was familiar enough that he found himself humming along and keeping up rather well. He couldn't place a name or artist to it, though.

The woods before him went into the hills. He knew they went deep, and there were old mine shafts and tunnels and hollows out there. He had spent some time in those woods as a kid, both actually as a child and later as a high school student getting up to things he ought not to have been up to.

Now, the woods felt like they were opening up to him. Despite the lack of an obvious trail, his gaze followed an open path between the trees, laid out before him. The tune he heard continued, the source still unseen. Was that a saxophone, maybe another brass instrument in the background...?

Eric sneezed. The sneeze became a snort and he stopped and shook his head. He'd stopped humming. The music he'd heard was also gone.

The forest was different. The path was gone, and everything in front of him was just jagged trees going every which way. Behind him, a chain link fence separated him from the slope of the hill leading down to the Food Donkey.

Eric blinked. Where had the fence come from? It was too wide, he couldn't have walked around it without noticing. He certainly couldn't have climbed it, either. Could he? No, definitely not without noticing. The wind blew from the woods, and a shiver ran up his spine. It wasn't a pleasant shiver.

He quickly moved to climb back over the fence to get back into town, his musical curiosity and drift into nostalgia suddenly no longer fun.

* * *

Eric got home and shrugged off his jacket, hanging it up on the coat rack like he'd done so many times growing up. He reached up and wiped rain off his ears. The door opened behind him and he turned around to find his mother, Lyn, coming in the front door, arms loaded down with groceries.

"Let me get that!" he said, startling her. He caught a plastic bag before it fell to the floor and gently took another from her.

"Oh, Eric, you scared me!" his mother said, her ears laid back. She had one arm free and gave him a hug. "Did you just get home?"

"I got back a little while ago, then I went out again, and I just got back in." Eric carried the groceries to the kitchen and checked the bags for anything that needed to go in the fridge.

Lyn joined him a moment later, having gone back to the car for another bag. Like his father, she was visibly approaching middle age, her fur more of a reddish-brown color, bits of early gray showing on her eartips and the sides of her muzzle.

"Have you seen your dad yet?"

"Yeah, I wandered around town, stopped by the store. Saw dad, saw Randall and Jim. The usual." He noticed her ears flick back a bit when he mentioned the Ballards. "Did something happen while I was away? Dad got real weird about them."

"We've had some problems. Your dad will probably tell you, he's got more of a handle on it than I do."

Eric frowned at that, more about the dismissal of the topic than the fact that the topic was a topic at all. The Hostetlers and Ballards both owned half of the liquor store, having inherited from forebears who'd gone into business together. Once the older generations had shuffled off the mortal coil there'd been mild clashes between Eric's father and Randall but nothing that threatened the business itself. The notion that things had taken a dramatic turn while he was away at school and nobody told him was concerning.

"Seriously, don't worry about it," his mother said as she caught him brooding on the subject. "I'm sure it just seems worse than it really is. We're having pasta with chicken for dinner. I'll get started on it here in a bit, but go put your stuff away while we wait for your father to get home."

Torn between asking more questions and busying himself with what really was a necessary task anyways, he decided to lose himself in the latter. Sure, he was planning on moving out sooner rather than later, but he didn't relish trying to live out of a suitcase in the meantime.

Clothes, books, laptop, just the essentials. A handful of years of living light in college stuffed into a big, hard-shelled, beaten-up suitcase and a worn backpack. His old room was just how he left it, though he could see traces where boxes had taken up residence and had been recently moved out in his time away. Eric took advantage of an opportunity to go through some old stuff he'd left behind -- more clothes and books, mostly -- and made a note as to whether there was anything to be dumped at Goodwill or a used bookstore when he moved out.

An almost disappointingly-short amount of time later, he he had his laptop out, plugged into the wall, and connected to the wi-fi to start browsing apartments. It took him a few minutes to register why the handful of listings were all so affordable, but again the writing on the wall was clear. Possum Springs was dying. It had very little to attract new residents other than cheap rent. And even then that wasn't enough to keep people living in town.

On an idle whim, he opened a fresh tab on his browser and started looking at job listings as well, the day's conversations nudging him into considering alternatives to just going into the family business. As he fell into the rhythm of clicking entries off a list for closer inspection, he started humming the tune he'd heard earlier. He still didn't know where it was from -- maybe something from the high school band? That made the most sense.

"Eric, dinner!" his mom called out from downstairs.

He snapped out of his daze. He stared at his screensaver, a looping animation of some swirling leaves, and brushed the touchpad to see that he'd somehow lost an hour, and was that -- he heard the tune from earlier again, but not because he was humming it. It came from outside, like a car had driven by blasting it on a radio, and faded as if the car passed.

Definitely a saxophone. And a tuba.

"Did you fall asleep?" his mom called.

"Coming!" he replied as he snapped the laptop shut.

* * *

Eric shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen table, where his mother was serving up plates of spaghetti with some sort of cream sauce and chicken. His dad sat at the table, thoughts resting heavy on his brow and shoulders as he read something in the newspaper.

"Sorry, I accidentally took a nap or something," Eric said as he pulled out a chair and sat down. "Hey, dad, how was work?"

Richard folded up the newspaper and tossed it onto a side-table once Eric had a seat.

"It's holding together, for the most part. But I wanted to talk to you about that." He watched Eric's face closely.

"I imagine so," the younger fox said, guarded, as his mother poured him some iced tea. He took a sip and waited for his father to continue.

"We need you to start a little earlier than you planned. The Ballards have been trying to take more control over the business, and I need the extra pair of hands there."

"What, to keep an eye on them?" Eric asked, frowning.

"Among other things." Eric's dad gave his mom a look before turning his attention back to Eric. "I think Randall's been taking from the company."

"Wait, when? Why?"

"I think he's always done a little skimming off the top, but it's been minor enough until now."

"Holy crap, dad, then why..."

"RJ's been fighting a drug problem."

Eric's eyes widened with surprise as he almost dropped his fork.

"I found out, and had to be the one to tell Randall, and he's been taking it out on me and the business ever since," his father continued. "While taking what he can, I think, to try and get RJ some help. Thing is, if he'd just asked--"

Eric's mother reached up and placed a hand on the older fox's shoulder, and that shut him up.

"Just eat. Both of you," she said. "Eric's been home all of twenty minutes. You can talk about this after dinner."

"We'll have to talk about it tomorrow," Eric's dad said. "After dinner I've got to head back out. I've got a meeting."

"What meeting?" Eric asked, hoping this is something to steer things away from the store.

"Just local business association stuff," he said around a mouthful of pasta.

"That reminds me, when did Pastabilities close?" Eric asked.

"Yesterday, day before," Richard mumbled around a mouthful of food. "Someone screwed up, and good people paid the price," he muttered under his breath.

"Damn, I liked that place. And Food Donkey, too. I saw. Which reminds me," he asked, taking a bite and chewing thoughtfully. "Have any of you heard any weird noise out in the woods lately? I was out there, and thought I heard music or something."

Richard stopped and gave Eric a look.

"Probably just hitchers off the train with a radio," his mother said.

"That makes sense," Eric said. Then he remembered he'd heard the music down in the tunnel, too, and frowned. He noticed his father watching him. "You okay?"

"Yeah, buddy, yeah I'm good," his father said as he got back to working on dinner, eating faster now. "Just trying to finish dinner so I can take care of the meeting."

Eric took the hint and just focused on dinner. His mother seemed relieved that the conversation had stopped for the moment, and his father... Well, Eric caught his father glancing up at him with a weird look a few times, just to focus back on his plate when he noticed that Eric was looking at him. He just brushed it off as a long day at work or something and focused on his food.

* * *

Eric woke with a start on the couch. He needed a few moments to re-orient himself.

"-if pirating a movie about first-degree murder gets you more prison respect than one about grand larceny?"asked a crocodile on the TV, the noise kind of in the background.

Okay, he was home, and on the couch, and the TV was on, and -- what was that burning smell? Someone was coming inside.

"Dad?" Eric asked.

"Hey Malloy,"his dog co-host began. "You know what I think about the law?"

"Oh, you didn't have to stay up for me," his father said as he hung up his coat.

"I fell asleep on the couch -- were you at a bonfire or something?" Eric asked. "You smell like smoke, and I don't mean cigarettes."

Richard paused a moment.

"What, Garbo?"the crocodile on TV asked.

"I had to give one of the guys a ride home after the meeting, and one of his neighbors was burning leaves," Richard explained as he kicked off his muddy boots.

"...That's a whoppah!"the dog said, before both hosts and the studio audience cracked up laughing.

Eric had a weird feeling, but decided to keep it to himself for now.

"Coming up next: stupid sandwiches!"the crocodile said as the laughter died down and they went to commercial.

The younger fox sat up and smoothed down the fur on the side of his head, and shook his head because he was pretty sure he'd slept on his ear funny. Richard shuffled past him into the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge.

"Well, unless you need me for anything, I think I'm going to properly try to fall asleep," he said.

"You probably need it," his old man said before taking a swig of his beer.

"I probably need it," Eric agreed as he shuffled up the stairs, leaving his father to change the channel as he sipped his beer.

The trip upstairs to his bedroom was kind of a lazy blur. Eric heard the song again, but he wasn't sure if it was just in his head or if he was humming it, and the fact that he couldn't tell just hammered home how tired he was. He vaguely remembered kicking off his shoes and pants before all but literally falling into bed.

After a few moments, he got back up and leaned against a beam of old, worked spruce. It looked like an old pit prop, one of the supports that held up the roof in coal mine shafts, but this one was freestanding. He was surrounded by them, a veritable forest -- some just the vertical beams, some with the vertical beam and a bit of crossbeam, like a tiny gallows. Where he would have expected to see brushes or shrubbery in this not-quite-forest he saw piles of broken wagon wheels and the frames of mining carts.

He was outside, and it was night, and there was an odd cast to the sky around him. Swaths of purple painted the sky in the distance, and something like an eclipsed moon hung in the sky. But it wasn't eclipsed the way the moon normally was, it was more like an eclipsed sun -- a black circle surrounded by a bright ring. Lightning flashed in the distance, but he couldn't tell if it was behind clouds or through thick, humid haze or both.

The only thing that stood out beneath the sky was a bunch of bright orange light in the distance and down a hill a little ways. He made out orange windows of city buildings and pinpointed matching lights that could have been street lamps. Some of the buildings stood at strange angles, and he was fairly certain he could hear music coming from the city, carried on a breeze he could somehow perceive without really feeling. Like he was feeling it through a coat, though he was just wearing his shirt and pants.

Wood creaked behind him. Something rustled. He wasn't alone. There was something out there -- from the angles of it, either something really fast, or two somethings.

Eric turned around -- the night sky was deep blue, the unlit chunks of old mining equipment standing black against it. He faintly heard the music coming from the city behind him. He couldn't make out the instruments, but he was reasonably sure it wasn't the same tune he heard earlier. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.

"Hello?" he tried to ask, though no sound came out. "Can anyone hear me?" he tried again.

He snapped his fingers next to his head, and he could hear the sound. It echoed like he was standing in a long, narrow tunnel.

_Huh,_he thought. He looked around and pondered whether to head towards the city or not. He knew he wasn't alone in the forest, but were there people in the city? Something like people?

Something moved in the wagon wheel bushes, and the rustling moved with it. His ears swiveled as he tried to track it, but the best he could do was determine it was getting closer. He saw a shape darting between shadows -- which was saying something, as he hadn't realized there were distinct shadows as opposed to a wave of foreboding darkness -- and took a few steps back.

Eric glanced towards the city and was certain he saw something moving through there. He tried walking towards it, until he heard the rustling behind him. Then he tried running. But the not-quite-forest of mine fragments still stretched out before him and the city didn't seem any closer.

The music he heard ahead of him got louder, though. There was a tuba, a saxophone, and he was pretty sure a violin. He reflexively started humming along with the tune he heard, and realized he could hear himself. The city sharpened in his view, like it was closer now, until he stopped to breathe.

A sound like a thunderclap went off in his ears and some... some _force_swept across his ankles and sent him skidding to the ground. He rolled over onto his back to get up and a figure in tattered, patchwork robes leapt from the shadow and grabbed him. It let out a hissing shriek like a slowed-down recording of breaking glass, and it took him a moment to realize it was speaking.

"Bring... me back with you..." it hissed in his face.

Eric tried to tell it 'no,' but no voice came out of his mouth. He struggled against the grip of bony fingers but dislodging them was like trying to tear up the roots of an ancient tree with his bare hands. He squirmed and fought against it, and out of desperation made the only sound he could make.

He hummed.

He hummed a single, clear tone. He didn't know enough about music to tell you what note it was, only that it reverberated through him like he'd been standing beneath a ringing church bell. And in that moment, it felt about as pure as a church bell's ring.

The figure's robes rippled and blew as if in a breeze above him, and he felt those fingers loosen. It let out a loud shriek, a wordless vocalization of pain, and then a bright light swept over the landscape. He felt its grip leave him, and his last thought before everything went black was:

Wait, was that a dream?