XI
Of all the wandering souls I wondered if only I was more solid, more alive. Someone had to have been in my situation before. I couldn't be singular in the vast universe of souls. I need to find more people like me, still tied to their world. Maybe they would help me get to my own. For now I was on my and would probably get eaten by some unknown monster or that dancing demon and his hounds. For sure I needed a place to rest. Even souls tend to tire out. The stress of last night had finally run dry, and I was exhausted nearly the point of passing out.
The occasional townsperson drifted by as she walked the dimly lit streets, curious onlookers in their varied garb sneaking glances at her. The were streets but no cars, no carriages, no horses, no transportation of any kind. These people just idly walked by in dreary grey pallor. She looked back at them, a thought at the corner of her mind, why weren't there more of these shades. The universe was so vast, and there were so many mirrors. The place seemed too sparse, too lacking in life. Where was everyone? The question blooms in her mind like a bruise — slow, aching, impossible to ignore.
Maybe the old stories were true in a way. There were tales whispered across centuries about mirrors stealing souls, about reflections that blink when you didn't, about spirits trapped behind glass. Maybe humans have been seeing the symptoms of alien experiments for thousands of years, mistaking science for superstition. Maybe the aliens weren't the only thing dragging other beings into this world. One thing she knew. If they had a way in, there definitely had to be a way out to her world. If not, and she couldn't find her world, maybe she'd find a cure to her situation. She needed to be in a safer place. Being eaten by shadow hounds was not a good ending. She needed answers, before her body died and she became just another shade wandering the streets.
A church bell cuts through the thinning fog like a spine‑straightening note. The resounding peal was not warm, not holy, but present, and in this place that's enough to feel like hope. It was loud enough to wake her up and make her pay more attention. The echo called to her down the cracked and crumbling edifices and sidewalks. She turns toward the sound. It reverberates from somewhere beyond the crooked houses and the drifting shades, a slow, solemn gong that doesn't quite match the rhythm of any earthly church she's ever known. But it's a direction. A purpose. And right now, purpose is fuel, oxygen to fill her up, to carry on with another breath.
She glances back at the graveyard gates. The nameless grey old man gone, the candle snuffed, the cane‑man vanished into the fog with the hounds. If there was ever a moment to seek guidance, this is it. And if any place in this strange world might hold answers, it would be a church.
She steps forward; boots she doesn't really wear crunching on cobblestones that shouldn't exist. The weak, filtered sunlight from the mirror‑sky paints the street in jaundiced gold. The shades around her drift aside, parting like a tide. Some watch her with hollow curiosity. Some don't notice her at all as she walks briskly toward somewhere that could help her. The compass in her mind finally shone a destination.
She moves past a woman in a toga whose outline flickers like a candle flame. Past a Victorian boy clutching a broken wooden horse. Past a half‑alien shade whose limbs bend in ways that make her stomach twist. All of them fading. All of them lost.
The bell tolls again. Closer now. Her steps grow faster, more sure.
She follows the sound down a narrow street where the fog has thinned enough to reveal a crooked steeple rising above the rooftops. The building beneath it is warped, leaning, its stained‑glass windows cracked and yellowed like old teeth. But the bell keeps ringing, steady and slow, as if calling her by name. The bell tolls a dozen times, signaling noon.
This was church in a world of mirrors and monsters. A priest, sometime more human, or with the face of a human, could be inside. She squares her shoulders, breathes in the cold, borrowed sunlight, and steps toward the stone steps and large double doors. If there's any place to ask for an epiphany in a world like this, it's here.