Others Within 4: Coat of Many Colors

The forest seemed to breathe in unison, each inhalation clenching around the overgrown path. Lark didn’t recognize the foliage around him—all the jagged edges of leaves that sliced and tugged at his gear.

Something was wrong. It settled deep, deep in his bones. Small signs of the corrupted assured him of his path. Trees that were ripped from the earth still grew rotting flowers that smelled sickly sweet and alluring. Rivers seemed to pause at the tributaries that they were supposed to flow into…animals flew and moved backwards in broken, impossible to track movements.

Lark knew without seeing that the entrance to the Other was close enough to have an effect on the world around him.

I will bring you back to me. The thought was assuring as his eyes darted around the tree lines. Tree limbs rustled in the unfamiliar and animals cackled. So unnatural, so mocking. He paused as he watched a shadow waver along their hidden path. It shimmered, and an energy reached forward and called to him. It looked as if something was beyond that he could just barely make out, seen through the haze of a hot summer’s day.

He’d done it. He’d reached the boundary. One of the very few places where the umbilical of the Other and his world met naturally. Heaven…hell…purgatory—it made little difference, really. Each culture had a different means of explaining the echoed charade of the world in front of him. He knew the legends, had studied them for decades. It all amounted to the same thing.

Lark looked past the shimmering wall, trying to make out the shapes beyond. Everything seemed to have been touched by the corrupting hand of the supernatural. Animals of oddly bright, stark colors looked at him beyond the barrier, their head cocked to the side as they watched him deliberate. They all had the same smile, quick and understanding, decorating their faces.

Should he cross? Allow the Other to change him in that same, irrevocable way?

There was no coming back from there unscathed. He would see things; he would be broken and made new. Lark knew this. He was ready to embrace it. Anything to bring back Marie.

“Mitchel.” His friend’s name was a whisper. He stretched his hand out.

His friend stepped closer to him until their shoulders touched. His experienced eyes looked past the wavering shadow—the only indication the Other was within reach—and glanced at Lark. There was a moment of hesitation, and he could see plain fear in his friend’s eyes, before Mitchel handed him the rolled parchment of thickened leather.

It tingled beneath Lark’s grasp, whispering those cloy promises that had brought him into the cursed forest that God had damned at the beginning of time. “I’ll bring her back, allow her to live the life your God once promised.”

He unrolled the thick leather—little imagination let it be human—and each roll released a ripple of power and sigh of satisfaction. Now that he’d followed the last riddle, he knew it would be different once more. His eyes roamed the wrinkles and dark red blotched ink made of blood, reading the long dead language as easily as English.

Abandon the love of God

Follow a path sacrificed to the Coat of Many Colors

Seek the Serpent within the Rainbow

“Abandon the love of God?” He glanced at his friend.

I did that two years ago when Marie was murdered…

“It means to abandon this world,” Mitchel said. His voice cracked and he paused, watching the trees in the Other contort in an unfelt wind beyond the barrier. “God’s most beloved creation.”

“Not hard to do.” Lark’s voice broke. “What’s left for me here?”

“Marie wouldn’t want this for you—”

“How the fuck would you know what she would want?” The words were bitter, loud. “She’s dead. She was murdered. She was murdered before she even had a chance to figure out what she would want.”

“What you’re trying to do—” Mitchel hesitated once more and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lark. I can’t go any further.”

“I’m trying to do?” Lark turned his back on the barrier and scowled at his friend of over a decade. “You were the one that convinced me that this was all real, that stole this.” He waved the leather scroll in his face and he flinched back. “It was your idea to see the Many Colors to bring her back.”

“And I was wrong. I see that now. I was wrong on so, so many things, and more than you know. I was blinded—stupid and so very arrogant. Surely now you can look beyond that monstrosity and see that.”

Lark turned his attention back to where he was merely steps from the Other. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s not natural. You know this isn’t right. You’re having the same dreams I am. The dead should stay dead.”

Lark looked away. He was having dreams. Horrible nightmares. He dreamt of a half-formed, squatting creature that seemed like a skeleton sitting on a roof with a man who fell from where he stood. He dreamt of a creature made of sludge with piercing eyes and wings that stole the sight and tongues of others. He dreamt of a massive insect-like creature with cages beneath him with living and dying bodies that screamed and fed it, dreams of creatures made of cloth that devoured people from the inside out. He had so many dreams of monsters that all reached out and demanded their commander to be released. The creatures looked at him and called him Scholar and begged him to break the binds. Lark did not know what that meant.

“I watch the world spiral into suffering each night through shut eyes,” Lark said. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not stopping until Marie is back—not until Marie is back and the man who hurt her is at my feet and dying.”

A strange expression ghosted across Mitchel’s face before he said, “Step away from the barrier, Lark. We need to talk. I’ve not been honest with you, and some of the things I need to tell you aren’t easy for me to say. It’s important you know everything if you’re going to go in there.”

Lark shook his head. “No, Mitchel. I understand if you’re afraid, but I have got to do this.” His friend reached to stop him but Lark stepped away and into the shadow.

For a moment, all he could feel was the needles…tearing, gnawing, searing…

He collapsed to the ground, gasping and sputtering. For a moment, the unsettling sensation was all he knew until the feeling faded and left him exhausted. It was a struggle to stand, his legs shaking. Lark looked behind him, expecting to see his friend past the shadowy barrier.

There was nothing, just a horrible blackness that stretched too far for him to see the end of, as if he could step off the edge of the land. “Mitchel!” His voice echoed, thrown back at him from the chasm he’d stepped in from. Lark took a step back to his world, but there was nothing but an empty feeling, freezing.

“No,” he said, jerking backward. I’ve come too far to be foolish. He walked backward until the feeling left his body. There was no going back for him—not yet. One more glance at the emptiness, and he turned back around to where the Other lied. Now that he was inside the barrier, the colors were so much stranger, running together, as if he was looking through panes of stained glass. Everything looked unwelcoming with strange angles and movements. Trees with more branches than he could count reached out toward him and roots snaked the ground, looking like writhing masses of worms. The colors were simultaneously muted and bright, a strange dichotomy his brain was having a hard time processing.

Where is the path to the Coat of Many Colors?

A screech cut to a gurgling short caused him to look ahead. There, several feet ahead of him was a bird—vibrant and beautiful—struggling on the ground, feeble wings jerking as it died. Lark walked toward it and knelt.

He studied the dead animal. It was beautiful with colors almost too bright to look at directly. Blues, violets and greens shimmered as the shadows of blood, scarlet and sad, pooled beneath it from some unseen wound. Blank white eyes stared at him accusingly. He reached out to touch it…

Another shriek, identical to one he’d just heard, sounded ahead.

Lark stumbled backward at the grotesque sound and cackling laughter met his reaction. Lark’s eyes darted around the tree line and he caught the glimpses of massive animals watching, of smiles with fangs. Ape-like monsters that stayed at the edge of his sight. His heart pounded in his throat as he pulled his machete out and held it defensively. He walked toward the sound and found another beautiful bird killed similarly. Another shriek several feet ahead with more cackling, chittering laughter.

Follow a path sacrificed to the Coat of Many Colors, he thought, beginning to move forward. The path was overgrown and Lark soon found himself hacking at dense, sharp foliage that cut back, causing deep, vicious lacerations he bled from. Thick vines tried to hang him, moved to wrap around him, and he struggled along the path.

Lark had no choice but to follow the dying, screaming animals and soon the path was covered in struggling colors, beating wings, and pooling blood. The laughter was always heard ahead—grating, like steel against stone. He tried not to think of whatever was guiding him.

All at once, everything stopped and Lark stepped into an opening where the trees dipped their roots into the edge of a pool of water. He could see the snake’s head first—a massive thing more vibrantly colored than the corpses he’d followed. It coiled, half in the water and half out, waiting and staring.

Lark tried to swallow his heart and opened the scroll once more.

Speak to the Coat of Many Colors

A Serpent of Knowledge and Spite

Barter your Desire

Sell your God’s Love

“I know why you’ve come, human, and your arrogance is becoming. You seek the treasure of life.” A voice, simultaneously oily and dry and devoid emotion, whispered and clawed at his thoughts in his mind. The snake raised its head, stretched its sinuous body out, and dipped its tail into the water. “I have a price.”

“I’ll pay anything—give my soul—it doesn’t matter.”

“Your soul?” The Serpent laughed, and the sound pounded in his eardrums, a horrible pressure in his temples. “Human, there are those who would offer me their soul in homage. I do not desire something so petty and worthless.”

“What do you want, then?” Lark stepped forward, eager and desperate. “I’ve come too far to be turned down now.”

“I desire nothing more than God’s most beloved creation. They cast me from it before memory was created and many times before. Release me and I’ll return.”

Lark came to the realization of who he was talking to as the snake leaned forward, a furl of dagger-like spines uncurling from its back. So many religions and cultures had a name for a similar—spirit? Deity? Did it matter? All his research, all the lectures he’d given before Marie had died—all of it had prepared him for this.

It took everything in him to not turn and flee.

He cleared his voice, hoping it would come out strong and would not show the fear that had now rooted him to the spot. “Anything to get Marie back. What?”

“Something so trite as permission. The betrayal of a human beloved by their God is all I need to touch the earth once more.”

That is not so much, he thought. If not him, it would be someone else—and if this was all he needed to revive his daughter, he would do that and more.

“Bring her back, and make the bastard that murdered her pay, and you have my permission.”

The snake laughed at that. “You have called her murderer friend for many years. He brought you to me as I asked him.”

“I don’t…” He didn’t finish, but didn’t have to.

“Mitchel has worshiped and sung my praises since youth, but moments before his greatest triumph, he grew frightened.”

“But, why? Why me?”

“It is you, because we want it to be you. You are the Scholar. We look for the Mother, the Scholar, the Witch and the Little one. We are not done with you yet. We have more for you. That is all you need to know.” The Serpent reached out, almost touching Lark with its snout. “You have nearly reached your potential and you have released the Artist for the new realm. Be proud of that. For you, I will end Mitchel’s life, be assured. I will take care of his cowardice, when I rise out of this land.”

Power washed through the area, pressing against him, as the Serpent inched its way out of the water. Lark could now see the shackles that squeezed its middle. The Serpent was a massive thing, wrapped as if around the world. It hissed once, straining, and the land around him moaned as the ancient metal shattered.

God, what have I done? “But…” He cleared his voice, barely able to speak as he stared up at the Coat of Many Colors that uncoiled from the water in triumph. “What about Marie?”

The Serpent smiled. A slight upturn of its massive maw that glimpsed fangs. “I keep my promises.”

It lifted its tail out of the water, bringing a writhing body out of it. It threw it forward with a flick of muscle and scales. Lark caught the small bundle, the weight bringing him to the ground. He unwrapped the white shroud that covered the body of his seven year old daughter.

Marie groaned…whimpered…opened her eyes and began to scream. Lark watched the rotting body fill with the light of life and in that moment he realized the betrayal.

The Serpent laughed within his mind, a broken sigh of a laugh that echoed in the wind as it moved around him to leave him alone at the edge of the pool. Lark clutched the screaming body that now housed his daughter’s soul and knew there was nothing he could do but watch her rot away.

We are not done with you yet.