Cross is running.

Running, running, running through an endless, hungry darkness. It is dank, humid. The sound of dripping water, echoing. Perhaps a cave. Or the sewers. It is too dark to tell.

Someone, something is behind him. Following. No, chasing him. And if he is caught, Cross knows he will die. Really die. Snuffed out of existence at long last.

He cannot let that happen. There’s too much he must attend to. Family. Faith.

Alice.

And so he runs. Following, by instinct, a twisting path. Deeper and deeper.

And the thing keeps pace. In fact, there’s now an unearthly glow coming from behind him. Blue-green and flickering. Not enough to light his way, but it’s there, at the edges of his vision.

Finally, he hits a wall. At full speed. Stunned, he crumples to the ground, scrambling around to face his doom. Terrified, but determined to look full-on at the source of his destruction.

Only to find…himself. Standing there. Wreathed in ghostly flames of green and blue. Cold flames that do not burn. Not exactly. An awful halo of hellfire. The look on his doppëlganger’s face is one of smug disdain.

This other-Cross, this hell Cross, is wholly naked, glistening with blood and filthy water. Scarred from head to toe, yet somehow more at home in his ruined flesh than the Cross who is backed against the wall before him.

The Monster opens his mouth, as if to speak. His fangs are distended, glistening in the will-o’-the-wisp glow cast by that mantle of flames.

He opens his mouth and says:

***


Cross wakes from his day sleep with a start to an empty sepulcher. At first sure that he’s still in that underground place. That, any moment, the Other Cross will come for him, rip out his throat, and devour his soul.

But no, now with the help of his heightened senses he can see the rough hewn desk. The familiar walls of the storage room he and Alice had made their lair.

And of course, Alice is not there.

Where is she?

It’s a thought the Burned Man often has these nights, after what should have been their reunion turned sour. Because of him, of course.

Where is she? The question is actually an ache, something he can vaguely locate in the area where his heart no longer beats.

Cross sits up and draws his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.

What had It, what had he said? At the end of the dream? What was the doppëlganger’s message?

Cross can’t recall. Or maybe he does, in fact, know and simply doesn’t want to remember.