so menacing in the dark, but now, it just looked like a forest. Not even a particularly creepy one. Aside from all the people who went missing in it, of course, but that was just to be expected in the world he lived in. There was nowhere truly free of danger, so it seemed silly to hold one place particularly responsible over another.
Ronnie promised himself he wasn’t going to go far. Just far enough to get near the spot that most frequently haunted his dreams. It should have been due to its proximity to the place where he’d come so close to being eaten alive, but it wasn’t. That was just one of the many reasons his dreams always dragged him back to the spot, sometimes physically.
Maybe it was a stupid idea. In fact, he knew it was. It was the kind of thing he would have screamed at a character in a horror movie for doing, and that same voice was echoing from somewhere in the back of his mind, but he ignored it.
Now that the dreams were back, Ronnie knew it was only a matter of time before he wound up back here anyway. This was the only way he felt like he could regain some sense of control.
It had sort of worked with Colt, before the panic attack. Being intimate with him had given Ronnie something else to associate with the act. It felt like he had taken back something that belonged to him, even if it was only piece by piece.
Maybe he could take his mind back the same way.
If Vaughn and all the other ghosts inside him wanted him to come to this place so badly, so be it. He wasn’t going to let them keep dragging him out to the forest without his permission or consent. He was done waking up not knowing where he was and how he had gotten there. Whatever reasons they had for being so insistent upon haunting this particularly insignificant plot of land, they could do it in the light of day.
Besides, it wasn’t like he was totally helpless. If he ran into another ghoul, the psychic meat grinder that had been downloaded to his brain the moment he’d killed Vaughn would take care of it. The issue was turning it off. If he ran into a human, well, the Glock in his waistband was pretty reliable, too.
He wasn’t sure he could actually shoot someone, but he hadn’t thought he was capable of killing someone either, and he had done that twice already. When the situation called for it, he found a way.
The forest was quiet, save for the faint cooing of birds in the trees above and the light rustle of wind in the grasses. The leaves on the ground yielded to his sneakers with a satisfying crunch, and the crisp air that filled his lungs was better than a jolt of caffeine.
He was done being afraid. He was done hiding away, letting two dead men keep him from living his own life.
As humiliating as it had been, telling Colt the truth he’d kept hidden for so long felt good. Freeing. He’d been sure if he ever spoke the words aloud to another soul, it would conjure the past up like some vengeful spirit out of a bottle, but it had the opposite effect. Sure, he had a hard time looking Colt in the eye now, but it was one-sided, and he’d get over it eventually.
“Okay,” Ronnie said, taking a deep breath as he came to the spot he’d traversed a thousand times in his dreams, and more than he would have liked in the waking world. It felt the same awake as it did asleep, if he was being honest with himself. Like a liminal space existing partially in both worlds, but fully in neither one. As he drew closer to the clearing, it was his own existence that seemed to grow tentative.
This was it. This was where Colt’s mother had been killed. This was where Vaughn had made the decision that would seal both their fates forever, even though they wouldn’t cross paths for decades. Ronnie felt like a trespasser, even though he wasn’t the one who’d initially decided to come.
He looked down at his hands, just to remind himself they were still his. He held his breath for a few moments, irrationally convinced that somehow Vaughn was going to take over now that Ronnie was on his turf. As if he had more power here