“Yeah. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the smell out of my nasal passages.”

“Right? And given what I used to do for a living, I was exposed to all kinds of horrible smells. But void crawler stink is the absolute worst.”

Luckily, she hadn’t been injured seriously when her Civic hit the scorpion thing…the void crawler. Her knee throbbed, but now that she was sitting, it felt a little better. She had a couple of other aches and pains, but they were minor for the most part. She was surprised she didn’t have a killer of a headache, but so far, so good.

“So what brings you to the Nightway?” Edgar asked. “I assume you’re new here or you’d have known to watch out for void crawlers. No offense.”

“None taken. I am new to the Nightway. If you hadn’t stopped to help me, I’d be dead.”

She told him her story then, glossing over some of the details but making sure to hit the high points.

When she finished, he said, “Sounds like you’ve been through a lot. I hate to tell you this, but you probably have more to go through yet, and it’s going to get worse. Maybe a lot worse.”

His words didn’t exactly cheer her up.

“How about you?” she asked. “Have you been here long?”

“Yeah. I don’t know exactly how long, though. Time doesn’t operate the same way here as it does back home.”

“What is this place?” she asked. “Do the laws of physics even work here?”

“When they’re in the mood. The Nightway is like a path between worlds, one that circles the outermost edge of the Gyre. Because of that, reality here is…situational.”

Lori didn’t understand, but she didn’t ask for further explanation. There was only one thing that really mattered to her right now. “How do we get back to our world?”

“The Nightway has on and off ramps, just like a regular highway. The trick is finding them.”

“I didn’t have any trouble getting back before.”

“That’s because the Cabal brought you here. At first, they can only hold a person in this dimension for so long. But the more you come to the Nightway, the more you adjust to it and the longer you stay. If you get home and stay home, you’ll be okay. But if you enter of your own free will – like you did this last time – you’re stuck here. Unless you can find an exit.”

“You said you hate the Cabal. Have you dealt with them too?”

“Sure have. Fuckers.”

Edgar drove in silence for a time, and Lori waited for him to say more. It took a while – so long she thought he would say no more on the subject – but then he finally started speaking.

“My story’s pretty much the same as yours. I didn’t see any Shadowkin, though. I had encounters with weird people, some of the same ones you’ve met, some different. They all had something wrong with them – one eye way bigger than the other, extra fingers on each hand, a forked tongue like a snake’s – and they had red pinky nails, too.”

Lori had checked Edgar’s left pinky before getting into his van, and she’d been relieved to see it wasn’t painted. Then again, she supposed that didn’t necessarily mean anything. All a member of the Cabal had to do to go incognito was remove the polish from their finger. The thought wasn’t a comforting one.

Edgar continued. “They all gave me the same message yours gave you: Confess and atone – or suffer. But the bastards wouldn’t tell me what I’d done or how I could fix it. One of them said it wouldn’t be a true confession if I had to be told what to say, and if the confession wasn’t true, atonement wasn’t possible. Whatever the fuck that means. I’d find myself in the Vermilion Tower on and off, and several members of the Cabal would torture me while the rest looked on. Things started happening in the real world, too. Bad things.”

She didn’t like the sound of that, not at all.

“The Cabal did something to my friends and family. They started to change, become crazy…evil. They began hurting people. Killing them. All to get to me and give me that goddamn message again. My wife, my two kids, my brother, my mom, my best friend….”

The man’s voice had grown thick and Lori thought he might start crying. But all that came out was a lone tear, and he wiped it away before it could get halfway down his face.

“I tried, but I couldn’t figure out what I’d done. Or at least, what the Cabal thought I’d done. The next time I found myself in the Vermilion Tower, they locked me up in a small chamber. I wasn’t alone, though. They gave me some new friends. Hundreds of them, as a matter of fact.”

“The beetles,” Lori said.

Edgar nodded.

“This’ll probably sound stupid since I’m an exterminator, but I’ve always hated insects. Damn things creep me out big time. Maybe that’s why I chose to make a living killing them, I suppose. The beetles – big black ones like none I’d ever seen before – crawled all over me, taking little bites out of my flesh. Not enough to kill me, but it hurt like a motherfucker.”

In the dim glow of the dashboard lights, she could see small scars and pockmarks on his face, neck, arms, and hands. She tried to imagine the pain he must’ve experienced, and she was glad she couldn’t.

“I tried to knock them off me, tried to crush them with my hands, stomp on them, but there were so many. Too many to kill them all. I bled from dozens of wounds, dozens upon dozens, and of course the beetles triggered my phobia, and I was terrified as well as in pain. I screamed myself hoarse, and I kept screaming after that, except it came out as a sort of whispery rasp. I started talking to the beetles then. Guess I’d kind of lost my mind a little. I begged them to stop hurting me, told them they could have anything they wanted if they just left me alone – or better yet, helped me escape the tower. They told me they would. For a price.”

She felt a cold heavy weight settle in her stomach.

“Oh god.”

He nodded. “They didn’t take my legs right away. First they entered me and rearranged some things inside so they could remain there without killing me. It hurt so bad, I wished they would’ve killed me. When it was over, I lay on the cell floor, barely conscious. When one of the Cabal came to check on me, the beetles flooded out of my mouth and attacked her. I don’t know what sort of powers the Cabal possess, but evidently immunity to flesh-eating beetles isn’t one of them. Once she’d been reduced to a skeleton, the beetles went back inside me, and I hauled ass out of there. The beetles had to kill a couple more Cabal members on the way out, but I made it. There were vehicles in the courtyard. Only a couple looked like regular cars, though. I stole one of them and raced off down the Nightway, pedal to the fucking metal. Eventually, I got lucky and found an exit. I made it back home, and the instant I did, the beetles came out to take what I owed them. They didn’t wait for me to park – goddamn impatient things – and I lost control of the vehicle. I guess I hit a telephone pole. I don’t know. I’d lost consciousness by then. Cops found me, called for an ambulance, and after the docs amputated what was left of my legs – which wasn’t much – I spent a few weeks in the hospital, after which I left with these.”

He reached down and tapped his right prosthesis. “All in all, it was the best deal I ever made.”

Lori wondered if she could ever become so desperate that she’d be willing to make such a sacrifice. Based on what the Cabal had done to her so far, she thought she might.

One thing about Edgar’s story was encouraging, though. It was good to know members of the Cabal – whatever they were – weren’t all-powerful. They could die just like anyone else.

“How did you end up back here?” she asked. “Did the Cabal bring you back?”

“Nope. Once you learn to navigate the Nightway on your own, it’s harder for the Cabal to pull you into it themselves. They can, however, keep harassing you in the real world, which is what happened to me. They continued changing people I knew and sending them after me. Finally, I couldn’t stand others getting hurt because of me, and I hopped in my van and started searching for an entrance to the Nightway. It took a while, but eventually I found one. I’ve been driving this road ever since.”

“Can’t the Cabal find you easier here? After all, this is where they live. You’d think it would be where they’re most powerful.”

“They’re still after me, all right, but they seem to have a harder time finding me on the Nightway. Don’t know why. Maybe something about the Nightway itself interferes with their senses? Whatever the reason, I’m just grateful for it. Gives me some breathing room, you know?”

Lori thought of the vibrations she’d felt beneath her bare feet when she’d stood on the Nightway’s surface. If Edgar was right, she’d be safe from the Cabal as long as she kept moving. She doubted things would prove to be that simple in the end, but for now she’d enjoy remaining hidden from the Cabal for however long it lasted.

“Are you still trying to figure out what you need to confess?” she asked.

“I’ve mostly given up at this point,” he admitted. “If I run across a new potential avenue of information, I check it out. Otherwise….” He let his voice trail off.

On one level, it was a comfort to meet someone who’d also had run-ins with the Cabal. But hearing that Edgar had never been able to discover what the Cabal wanted from him made her despair of ever being able to learn what they wanted from her. Would she end up like Edgar, wandering the Nightway for the rest of her life, trying to keep the Cabal from finding her? And what about what he’d said, about how the Cabal had transformed people he knew and set them against him? Had that happened to the people she knew and loved back home? Larry, Justin, Reeny…. The thought made her sick. She had to learn what transgression she’d committed that the Cabal wanted her to confess, then discover what she needed to do to make everything right again – if that was even possible at this point.

“It may take me a while, but I should be able to find an exit for you,” Edgar said. “It’ll let you out at the same place you left. It’s how they work.” He paused, then added, “Most of the time.”

They drove on in silence for a time after that, both lost in their own thoughts. Eventually, Lori spoke again. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you helping me? You could be putting yourself in danger by doing so – assuming the Cabal are looking for me.”

“They are, no doubt about that. And there are other reasons you might be dangerous to me. You could be one of them in disguise or something else pretending to be someone you’re not. Transformation and deception are a way of life on the Nightway. Way of death, too.”

“So why are you helping me?”

“I got friends.”