A flash of lightning. 

Then, darkness.

The sky cries soft tears.

The burnt-out husk of a Queen Anne mansion looms high on a hill.

A girl weeps quietly in the shadows by the front veranda. 

I become mindful of my approach so as not to startle her.

I start to make out the features of this girl when I’m ripped from my dream into the cold, hard dirt of reality. 

I awoke flat on my back. My body ached all over. I couldn’t see for a few moments. Cold, damp earth seeped into my clothes. The air had the aroma of dead leaves and freshly turned soil. My heart was beating itself into a panic. I sat bolt upright and a small coin fell from my good eye onto my lap. It was rough silver with markings I couldn’t decipher. I expected it to feel cold in my fingers, but it was warm. I could’ve sworn the eye in the center was glowing. Was it my imagination? 

I flipped the coin over to reveal another eye trapped within the three-sided prison of an Egyptian necropolis from antiquity. It stared at me with a piercing intensity. I instinctively reached up and brushed my fingers over my right eye with a minutia of melancholy. I never could see with it. Not ordinary things, that is. My dead eye illuminated a kaleidoscope of colors that guided me, warned me of danger, and saved my life many times over.

Somehow I felt I needed this token, so I secured it in one of the small unoccupied pouches on my belt of useful things. I was still a bit disoriented. Something was bothering me. My dead eye hurt. That was never a good sign. 

I looked up to find two enormous trees locked together in an eternal embrace. One was truly beautiful and full of life. It wore its pretty patterned bark like a cloak underneath a vibrant canopy of green leaves. Even the grass growing around its trunk was lush and fertile, and smelled of spring. 

But this expression of life couldn’t mask the smell of dead leaves that wafted from its partner. Shards of bark fell onto the dusty patch of earth below. Its limbs were brittle and barren of any foliage.

Thick roots from each of the trees had invaded my grave. They were interlocked in an endless battle vying for possession of whatever corpse might have lain in this patch of earth.

The low burn of twilight painted a backdrop behind the skeleton trees of the forest in hues of deep violet and vermillion. Deep shadows crept toward me along the landscape. 

I heard someone breathing hard. Was that my breathing? I finally moved within the small space of my shallow grave. White wisps of downy feathers glowed in a pile underneath where I lay. I hoisted myself up the three or so feet and took in my surroundings. 

Deep inside the forest was this city of the dead. Ghost-white skyscrapers crowded around me in neat little rows. Faded inscriptions whispered forgotten names. Crooked old trees stood sentinel, their bare branches reaching towards the twilight sky. Beyond was a landscape of trees and who knows what else in the dimming light of day. I shuddered at the thought of what might have lain in the land outside this necropolis.

Was I dead? I don’t remember dying. But then again, who does?

I kept to slow movements so as not to disturb any unsavory things that might lurk in the shadows. My dead eye had yet to find anything out of the ordinary, but who knows what happened on the way here. 

Why couldn’t I remember the place I was before? 

I scanned the horizon one more time. Standing still is fine if you are a tree. I needed to find my way forward.

Then I saw him. I stared into the wiry feathered face of a raven. He stared right back at me, matching my intensity.

“That was quite a fall, my dear. Are you well?” He flitted between headstones until he found one to his liking a few feet from me.

“I don't remember any fall.” But that would explain why I hurt. My lace-fringed shirt, vest, and trousers were dressed in the charcoal of ashes and some of the pale white feathers from my grave. I brushed them off before tightening the cross strap of my satchel and then my belt. The goggles on my head were loose, and I secured them. 

All the while, I didn’t take my one good eye off this creature. 

“Where am I?” I was surprised by how harsh my raspy voice sounded.

The Raven’s eyes lit up with a knowing intensity. “You are there. And I am here.” 

He hopped and fluttered to a new gravestone closer to me. 

“What do you remember, little one?”

My stomach tightened. The only thing I could remember was the dream … and … I opened my mouth and almost let my name slip out before changing my mind. I thought better of giving this stranger power over me.

“Not much, I’m afraid. Did you see how I got here?”

I continued to brush at the ashes as I tried to figure out this odd little creature. 

“Alas, no, I only just arrived here myself.”

The hairs on the back of my neck tingled all the way through to my spine. Something sinister was lurking behind his innocuous-looking feathered face. I tried to remain calm so I didn’t startle him.

“Why are you here?” 

The Raven ruffled his feathers a bit and cocked his head from side to side. “To do what needs to be done. Whether I like it or not. Hurry on, little one.”

I began to pace a bit, trying to look as if his presence didn’t bother me. I turned and peered into the coming evening to look for my escape. As my focus came back toward the Raven, my dead eye finally woke up with a searing pain that felt as if it were on fire. And then I saw in perfect clarity—a crimson glow exploded around the Raven in the blood red hues of his aura. Within the ever-changing crackle of his aura, another figure towered over the forest with an unforgiving gaze that penetrated to my very soul.

I stepped back from him.

“What are you?”

The Raven seemed unfazed by my reaction. He hopped onto the gravestone right in front of me and stared at my good eye. Not with malice or fear, but with something else. Something blacker than his matted and mangey feathers. 

“My dear Anna, we don’t have time for silly games. I’m trying to save your life. Hurry on now.” 

How did he know my name? I hadn’t spoken it. 

“Save my life? We’re in a graveyard. What kind of —” 

“CAW!” 

His screech almost deafened me.

“Look behind you, my dear.”

I turned around slowly.

I saw the trees and the fading glow of the sun’s last light. Then darkness. It was almost night, so that didn’t surprise me. But there was movement within. A shifting. Very subtle. Very slow. But determined. 

I faced the Raven again. He had a smug look about him. “What you almost see is evil without regret or remorse. It is coming for you. Hurry, we must.” 

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Whatever you are.”

With false confidence, I strode away from the Raven. I made it only a few feet before a black tentacle evaporated the ground in front of me. I jumped backward. The throbbing of my dead eye was now matched by that of my heartbeat.

I changed course back towards the Raven, who landed on a gravestone near me. He looked up at me with one piercing eye.

“My dear, The Darkness Within will devour your soul and wrench every bit of life out of you one agonizing molecule at a time until you are nothing. I may not always be truthful, but I do keep my promises. And for this aspect of your journey, I have vowed to keep you safe.”

“The Darkness Within. Within what?”

“Humanity.”

As I was taking in the Raven’s answer, more ground vanished near us. There was no time to ponder the significance of his reply right now. 

The Raven’s aura flickered to the warm fiery hues of vermilion. Looks like I wasn’t the only one afraid now. He turned and flapped his wings. It made him appear twice as big. “We must leave. Now.”

My dead eye tingled madly. Danger was very imminent. Whatever this so-called raven was, he was not my priority right now. 

I nodded my head slightly, and the Raven took flight. 

I broke into a run to keep up with him. After only a few steps, I slammed into a headstone that split in two due to the force of my impact and its age. I stopped for a moment to get my wind back. A sharp glance behind me into the nothingness revealed no shallow grave, no trees. Nothing. It was as if the last few minutes of this new life of mine hadn’t existed at all. 

I forced myself to my feet and into a run just as three black tendrils crushed the gravestone I broke. I found my way to a more even path and followed the Raven as best I could. Even he appeared frightened by this shapeless monster with the deadly tendrils.

My dead eye burned hot, and I felt the rush of wind as the ground right behind me ceased to exist. I stepped up my pace, but I just couldn’t muster up as much energy as I should. That fall that I don’t remember must have taken more out of me than I figured.

“Hurry on, little one!” The Raven scolded me. 

“I’m going as fast as I can!” 

“Hurry on, or you’ll be dead!”

I moved as fast as my bones let me and tried to catch up to the Raven. My demise was close, and that scared me; I didn't dare look back again. But if I was dead already, would it even matter? 

My breakneck pace didn’t last long. The Raven stopped just a short distance ahead of me. A thick grove of trees reached out like a tunnel over the rest of the path as far as I could see. I was puzzled, since he had just told me to pick up my pace. 

Then I felt it. 

I could go no further. There was nothing physically holding me back. It was as if I lost the desire to progress forward despite my adrenaline pumping and my dead eye vibrating with hot intensity. The goddess herself had paralyzed my body and rendered me inert.

I took a breath and tried to push forward. Nothing. I willed my limbs to move and again, nothing.

The Raven stared at me. “Well?” 

“What?”

“Say the name so we can pass.”

I was confounded. “What do you mean? What name?”

I thought the Raven was going to explode from my response. “You mean you don’t know?!”

“No. What name?”

The Raven hopped back and forth as if pacing nervously. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to this. I knew you weren’t the one, and yet she insisted. Bah.”

“Look, I don’t know what kind of trick you’re playing on me, but you said we needed to move and now I can’t. How is this my fault?”

“Because, my dearest little Anna. If you are indeed who she believes you to be, you will know how to pass this gate into the next hour.”

“And if I’m not?”

“Then you are as dead as the others buried under the embrace of the twin trees.”

I thought for a moment about how many graves there must have been back there. Dozens? Hundreds? Some of them were very old. As if to reinforce the point, the hackles at the back of my neck pulsed as the Darkness obliterated more of our surroundings. 

The Raven looked foaming mad now. “You need to name the guardian of this gate out loud so you can have power over him to open the gate! Now think, little girl, before I get really angry. I’m not planning on dying with a half-wit like you by my side.” 

But what name? The only name I remembered was mine. I closed my good eye. I felt a chill emanate from the pit of my stomach. My dead eye illuminated a glowing green object at my waist. I instinctively reached into my belt of useful things and pulled out the coin that had covered my good eye when I woke up here. It was warm, almost hot, and one of the inscriptions was glowing a vibrant emerald green. When I looked at it and tried to read the unfamiliar characters, A jolt of energy flowed through my veins and I heard a voice that was not mine say aloud words I couldn’t remember forming.

“Behold, Khonsu, Lord of Luna, open the Netherworld that I may see my beloved Em. I am the Akh of prophecy. I am Anna. O all you gods and all you spirits be aware! Prepare a path for me.”

I was stunned into submission, unable to move as I recovered. I had been possessed by a power I didn't understand so it could cast a spell in a language I had never spoken before.

My dead eye revealed a crystalline blue fire that lit the trees ablaze with its cold light. Within the sparkling snowflakes of energy vibrating in midair, I saw the ages-old god wave his hand to reveal the moon in the night sky. Luna shone her light down upon our path. 

Trees singed by a spell of the old gods cracked and groaned as they were released from their duty.

I felt as if weights had been lifted from my body, and I was free to move again. 

The moon fell from the sky and I heard the last remnants of the graveyard crumble into dust as I pulled myself to safety. 

I stepped under the first trees and the black, bare branches lit up with a glow of leaves that illuminated the path before us. I was awestruck by the beauty of this orange tunnel. And was vaguely aware of the trees behind us collapsing inward upon themselves once more. I hoped that would give us some measure of protection … for now, at least.