Chapter 24

Enlightenment

(Part 2)

Razor stumbled into the wall of the cave, nearly braining himself on the rock. "Damn you, Tommy! Answer me!"

No echo. No response from Tommy---no sound at all. It was like being in a lightless room lined with bales of cotton. "How could a place be so effin' dark?"

He leaned back against the wall he'd just stumbled into and peered back the way he'd come---or, at least, he hoped it was the way he'd come. "Should be able to see daylight back that way, at least."

But he couldn't see a thing. He was hopelessly lost. He slammed a fist into the stone wall in frustration, and it came down in something slimy.

He backed away from the wall with a strangled sound of surprise and revulsion. "Damn! What is this stuff?"

Scenes from old monster movies about gelatinous creatures that ate by dissolving human flesh with acid flickered through his mind. He tried to shake the slime off his hand, but it clung like rubber cement. And it began to burn his skin. "Oh, God, it's acid!"

Without really thinking about what he was doing, he tried to wipe the slime off on the fabric of his pants leg. It wasn't until the slime came into contact with his bare knee that he remembered that he was still wearing nothing more than T-shirt and shorts. He yelled, "Oh, crap!!!"---ripped off his shirt and began wiping the hand and the knee with it. Both the hand and the knee burned as if he'd splattered battery acid on them. "I can't believe this! I'm totally freaked! I'm gone! My mind is blown! My---"

"Razor!"

Razor gasped and jumped as if a wasp had just gotten him in the seat of the pants.

"Tommy?" Even as he asked the question, he realized that the voice wasn't his friend's.

The voice responded, "No, but I'm a friend. Come with me."

Razor looked around, struggling to make out something - anything - in the pitch black. "Who are you?"

The mystery voice responded, "Just a friend. I'm going to lead you to Tommy."

Razor almost managed a laugh at that one. "Lead me? How? It's black as pitch in here!"

The voice chuckled, "Aw, you can see okay. I'm right here; look."

And to Razor's astonishment, he discovered that he could see. Right in front of him stood a young man, fair-complected, medium height and slight of build. He smiled at Razor and prompted, "You can see me, can't you?" His tone was light; almost teasing.

Baffled, Razor admitted, "Well, yeah, but---who are you? Do I know you?"

The stranger smiled absently. "I'm a friend of Wish's. Here, let me take care of that?"

He reached out and touched Razor's hand, lightly, fleetingly, then bent and touched his knee in the same manner. It took Razor a few seconds to register the fact that the burning sensations from the mystery goop he'd gotten into were gone.

The stranger gave him a quick, lopsided grin and turned away, beckoning for him to follow. "That should take care of that problem, at least. Now, come on?"

He walked away, moving slowly enough for Razor to keep up with him.

Something finally hit Razor, and the hackles on the back of his neck stood straight up: He could see this stranger but he could see absolutely nothing else. The stranger seemed to be his own light source. He lit himself up, but he cast no light on anything else around him---not the walls, not the floor, not the ceiling, not even Razor. Razor held a hand up between them experimentally; the only time he could see the actual location of his hand was when it was directly between his eyes and the stranger, and it blocked out some of the light coming from the man.

Hackles on the rise or no, this was his only chance of finding Tommy and getting out of this spookfest; he followed him.

After they'd been under way for what felt like hours, during which his eerie guide said absolutely nothing, Razor finally mustered enough nerve to venture a question: "Hey---is Tommy okay?"

The stranger stopped and pointed to the floor just ahead of him. The glow around the man seemed to ooze out from the finger and stream down to the point on the floor indicated. There it illuminated what looked like a heap of cloth.

"You can ask him yourself, if you like."

Razor edged past the man and hurried to it. As he approached, it stirred and unfolded itself into something recognizable as a human form. He gulped and ventured, "Tommy?"

Tommy looked up, bleary-eyed. "Unh? That you, Razor?"

Razor all but threw himself on his friend. The stranger who'd brought them together watched the friends' reunion, smiling---and then he faded from existence.

Razor noticed that the illumination around Tommy had faded away, leaving them in the dark again, and turned back to the stranger to ask him what'd happened to the lights---and discovered that there was no longer anyone there. All that was left of their eerie benefactor was a gently glowing spot of yellow light on the cavern floor?a kind of squarish shape about the size of two human feet placed side by side.