Quiet beeps, with the under tone of a droning hum, serenaded Ashton to consciousness.  The pounding in his skull made him wish he hadn’t woken.  He pried his weighted eyelids open to look blearily at a white-tiled ceiling.  He started to turn his head, but the ache in his neck stopped him, so he tried to raise his hand to his forehead.

The rattle and clank, followed by his hand jerking to a stop, startled him.  He pulled on his tethered wrists.  Screw the pain.  He twisted his head to stare, dumbfounded, at the cause of his inability to move.  Metal handcuffs secured both of his arms to the bed rails.  He looked farther afield.  Machines, some dark, some alive, stood sentinel around him.  And a thin, green cotton drape stretched across a corner of the room that must contain a door.

Hospital?  What happened?  

A soft scrape jerked Ash’s attention to the opposite corner of the room. 

A man with styled brown hair, and dressed in a suit shifted in the room’s visitor chair.  His dark eyes made Ashton uncomfortable.  They stared at one another for a minute before the person cleared his throat.

“Ashton Palmer?”

Ash blinked, trying to bring his eyes under control.  “What happened?”  He was surprised at how rough his voice sounded.

“That’s what we would like to know.  Are you Ashton Palmer?”

“Yes.”  He jerked his wrists.  “Why am I tied?”

“I am Detective Bryce.  Your ID declared that you were Mr. Palmer, but I needed your confirmation.  Your reappearance has caused you to become a person of interest.” 

“Reappearance?” Confused, Ashton rattled the cuffs in a vain attempt to scoot into a sitting position. 

“Why did you enter the Millers’ apartment?”

“Who?”  He gave up the effort to sit, and flopped back.  “What happened?  Where am I?”

The detective continued without answering his questions.  “Where have you been for the last year?”

Ashton’s jaw dropped and he shook his head, sending more pain shooting.  Nausea roiled in his stomach.  “What?”

“A missing persons report was filed by a Mrs. Lydia Palmer on July twentieth of last year.  I had almost decided that you should be added to the list of possible victims, but here you are instead.”

A year?  What the hell?  That doesn’t seem right.  Blurry memories trundled through his thoughts.  Something weird had definitely happened. 

Wait a minute.  Victims?  

The sound of a door opened, then the curtain rattled and slid to the side.  A middle aged doctor walked in, followed by a nurse.

“Ah, you’re awake finally.”  He said as he set the clipboard down on the counter.  “Detective, I hope you haven’t been badgering my patient?” 

Bryce cleared his throat and leaned back in the seat.  “Just asked him a few questions, doc.”

The doctor studied one of the monitors.  “Really?  The alarms at the nurses’ station went off because his heart rate accelerated.” 

He pulled a pen light out and Ashton blinked at the bright light that flashed into his eyes.  The nurse busied herself, writing down readings from the rest of the monitors.  But Ashton had trouble concentrating on the medical staff.  Detective Bryce held his awareness.  

The doctor reached across the bed, cutting off the detective’s gaze, to pull the flimsy patient gown over Ashton’s shoulder.  He probed the exposed skin with cool fingers.

“How are you feeling?  Any pain here?  No?  Good, the rash doesn’t seem to be spreading.”  The doctor sat on the bed next to his knees.  “I’m going to assume you don’t have a problem with your name, or Detective Bryce would have mentioned it when we came in.  Do you know the date?”

Ashton felt sweat start to form.  He shook his head.  “I thought I did, but now… I don’t know.” 

The doctor encouraged him to continue with a gesture.

“He says I have been gone a year?  That can’t be right?  I have only been gone a week.  I’m sure of it.” 

Compassion softened the doctor’s eyes.  “You have a concussion, Ashton.  Some level of amnesia isn’t unheard of.  The memories will likely return after a few weeks.  Do you remember getting hit on the head?”

Ashton closed his eyes.  A slide show of distorted pictures flicked through.  Racing through a forest on horseback.  Summer heat, fall leaves, wet snow.  Strange faces flickering in torch light.  Opening his apartment door…

And everything was wrong. 

Has it really been a year?  I swear it feels like I was only gone for a week.  “I went home.  And when I opened my door, all of my stuff was gone.  This woman came out of my bedroom and started to scream and that’s all I remember.” 

“Mrs. Miller’s husband hit you from behind and knocked you out.  A little extreme, from my point of view.  I have you on antibiotics for the rash that you have on your chest, and I’ll prescribe some Amitriptyline for the concussion symptoms.  Unless any of your symptoms worsen over night, you will be released tomorrow.”  The doctor stood, then collected his paperwork.  “I’ll let you and Detective Bryce get back to your conversation.”   

Ashton watched the doctor and nurse leave the room, then turned reluctant eyes toward the detective.  He rattled his hands.  “Do these need to stay?”

Ashton felt like an insect that a reptile watched, trying to decide if it was on the menu or not.  But then, Bryce climbed to his feet and pulled the keys out of his pocket.  After a moment, both handcuffs resided in the detective’s pocket and Ashton rubbed his wrists.  “What did you mean by victim?”

Detective Bryce sank back into the chair and leaned back.  “So, is your official story that you don’t remember anything?”

“What do you mean official?  I really have only been gone for a week.  I don’t know what’s going on.  Where is my stuff?  Why is someone else living in my apartment?”  Panic bubbled just under the surface. 

“So, where have you been this week then?”

“I…”  Ashton snapped his mouth shut.  What was he supposed to say?  A unicorn kidnapped me?   Unicorn?!  A clear memory slammed into him and he saw the white hide and lethal horn.  His breath caught.  His eyes jumped to Bryce’s. 

The detective watched him with a calculated look.

“I… don’t actually know.”  He pulled his eyes away and looked at his blanket-clad knees.  “It’s all really blurry still.”

“Blurry… Huh.  Well your old lab, at Dyson-Smith Corporation, is under investigation.  There have been a dozen deaths that I am tracing back to them.  And at least as many missing.  You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Dead?  Are you kidding me?  Dead how?”

“Forensics is still working on that.  Some sort of drug, we are assuming.  Whatever it is, it literally scares them to death.” 

Phantom pain fluttered over his chest, and Ashton scooted into a higher sitting position.  More flashes of memory came and went, too quick to hold onto.

The detective sighed and stood.  “Your mother should be here in the morning and you will be released into her care.  I expect notification of your whereabouts.  I have my eye on you Mr. Palmer.”

Ashton watched the detective leave his room.  My mom.  Great.  Just what I needed.  

His thoughts circled back to what detective Bryce had to say.  The acid of fear burned in his gut. 

How can I give him answers I don’t have?  This week is still blurry.  But a year?  

I can’t have been gone for a year.  Can I?  

Ashton stepped out of the obscuring mist into ankle deep, slushy snow.  Leafless trees dripped their burden of the melting stuff around him and he shivered.  Hunger and a desire to rest for a few minutes pushed him forward, out of the shock of the climate change.  His tennis shoes soaked through in a couple of steps and he wrapped his blanket around his shoulders for warmth.  

He needed to think. And a place to do it.

Regrettably, there didn’t seem to be anything available.  He slogged through the tree trunks and looked for a road, or any other sign of habitation. 

I need to get home.  What the hell am I doing?  I have absolutely no idea.  

He pulled the blanket tighter and looked up into the cloudy sky.  The sun appeared to be directly overhead.  No wonder I’m so hungry.  We ate well before dawn today and its now lunch time.  

The realization that he was well and truly alone hit him.  What have I done?  I can’t get back to Silren. He took a deep breath, and held it, to stave off the incipient hyperventilating that threatened.  Is it too much to ask that I could just wake up in an insane asylum bed, and have all of this be some kind of dream? 

Unfortunately, he knew he was perfectly sane.  

Really?  And I believe this why?  After everything that has happened to me, why do I believe that I am still sane?  What am I becoming anyway?  

Not ready to face the answer to that, Ashton shied away from the rest of the thought.  He turned to more well worn paths.

Why do I want to get home so badly?  I didn’t hate my life, but I could have been happier.  And it’s not just worry over my Mom.  Safety?  Security? Could it be something as simple as, it’s comfortable?  

I may not have been happy working at the lab, but I was one step away from my dream job.  Even if they were slow about letting me transfer, I would have made it eventually. And now, because of Silren carting me off, I may have lost my chance.  I’ve missed five days of work.  Unexcused.   I’ll be lucky if I still have a job.  How do I explain this?  

A shiver shook his body.  Does any of this really matter?  I need to get home.  Who cares why?  And I need out of this snow.  Why am I walking here?  

He sighed at his stupidity and concentrated on shifting between veils again.  The fog rose, and he stepped into it.

This time when he exited, the sudden shift in light came as the first shock.   

Dusk had fallen.  Every other crossing he had made so far, the time continuance had remained constant.  But this occasion, half the day had passed.  

The second shock came at the end of an advancing pitch fork.  Ashton swung his head around.  He stood in the middle of a cabbage field.  Weather-beaten farmers stared at him in varying degrees of astonishment.  They were fast overcoming their state though.  A mumble had begun that Ashton couldn’t understand.  Their words sounded archaic to his ears.  And matched their clothing.  He spun and saw that they moved toward him, their looks far from friendly.

“Uh oh…”  He pulled his thoughts together to focus on a new shift, but then pain exploded in his head, and everything went black.
 
******
Stench assaulted his nose.  Barnyards, in desperate need of cleaning, had smelled nicer.  His head ached and he groaned, which made him cough from the restriction around his chest. What the…  

He pried his eyes open.  The flickering light of multiple torches wavered into view.  They illuminated a dirt square filled with milling peasants.  He glanced down at himself.  Rough rope lashed him to a wooden post and people continued to pile chunks of wood up and over his feet.  

“Oh my god.  I’m in the middle of a B horror movie.”  He struggled against the rope.  Several people noticed he was awake and made gestures to hurry.  

He knocked the sore spot on his head against the wooden stake and groaned again.  Concentrate. You have to concentrate Ash.  He closed his eyes and took a breath.  It was a challenge to drown out the noise of imminent death.  

Power moved sluggishly through his body.  The sound of sticks cracking reached his ears.  A whiff of smoke.  He built the details of home in his mind.  The sights, the smells, the sounds.  A tidal wave washed through him and the Nightmares’ mark ignited. Screams reached his ears, but were suddenly cut off.  

A jarring thump reverberated up his spine.  His eyes flew open, and he toppled over sideways to land with a thud on concrete. 

The wet crack of a bottle shattering greeted him.  “Holy Mary, Mother of God…” the words slurred out of the dimness.

Crap, I can’t believe this!  I’m still tied to the damn stake.  

Ashton managed to twist his head to the side and saw the homeless man plastered against the brick wall.  The man looked at him then at his broken drink then back at him.  

“Musta been a bad batch.”

Ash wiggled his arms, hoping to get free, but the villagers knew how to tie something up.  “Excuse me, sir?  Can I get your help with these ropes?

“You made me drop m’bottle.”

“I’m sorry.  I can get you another if you get me untied.”  

The man shifted from foot to foot before he stepped forward and clumsily pawed at the knots that secured him to the wooden stake.  His alcohol laden breath wafted across Ash as he loosened the rope around his chest.  

Ash squirmed out of the coil and sat against the brick wall.  His head dropped into his shaking hands.  That was close.  Way too close.  Feet shuffled near him and he looked into the face of homelessness.  He reached into the back pocket of his pants and took out his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and handed it to the man.  

The stranger took the bill like he couldn’t believe it was real, but then he shoved it in a pocket and left the dim alley for the brighter lit street.  

Stiff and sore Ashton, climbed to his feet and assessed his new location.  The alley looked vaguely familiar.  He peered around the corner and couldn’t believe his eyes.  Home!  I’m just a couple of blocks from home.  

Light spilled out of the bars that littered the street.  People congregated on the corners, chatting, or slowly walked along the sidewalks.  And the heat of summer sank into his bones.  I’ll never again complain about the temperature.  He left the alley.  

He stopped the first couple he passed.  “Excuse me? What day is it?”  

“Day?”  The man looked at him funny but answered, “Thursday.”  

“Thank you.”  He smiled and started to limp home.  Thursday, this all started on Thursday evening.  Its only been a week.  I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed.  Tomorrow I’ll deal with whether or not I still have a job.  

The steps to his apartment building came into view.  He hadn’t dared to let the relief he felt have free reign until now.  He climbed the steps and fished his key ring out of his pocket.  Cooler air wafted out of the open door, and he stepped in.  He glanced at the wall of mail boxes while he waited for the elevator but decided that it could wait till tomorrow too.  

A yawn took him by surprise.  He limped down the hall and had never been so happy to see a door before in his life.  He pushed it open and stepped into his apartment.

And stopped dead.

Everything was wrong.  All of his furniture, his pictures, his possessions were gone.  Replaced. He stared in shock at the unknown belongings.

His hands rose to his forehead, where’s my stuff?  

A woman stepped out of the bedroom.  She froze.

“Where’s my stuff?” He asked out loud, his voice breaking.  

She started screaming. 

He took a step towards her and yelled over her shrieking, “Where are my things?”

The woman’s eyes widened and that was the only warning he got.  Once again, pain exploded in the back of his head, and he was plunged into darkness.

The next morning, Ashton sat astride Silren.  Silence stretched between them.  The sun had just started peeking through the evergreen branches that populated the current veil.  Their third crossing of the day.  

Small talk was not high on Ashton’s to-do list.  The dream from last night had left him with too many unanswered questions.  The Unicorn must have had his own reasons for silence, because he didn’t attempt to break it.  

The Nightmare’s words kept circling through his head.  He had the power to get himself home; he just had to follow his heart?  What the hell does that mean?  He continued to worry at the knot of compressed information and instructions she had implanted in him.

That was what the fireball that slammed into him had been all about.  But why?  Why did she slam a twisted up chunk of information into me? The little he had managed to work free didn’t make a lot of sense.  

Ashton turned his attention outwards and looked down the path.  In the distance, he could just make out two symmetrical trees, one on either side of the trail.  The mare’s voice whispered through his mind and gave name to the gate-like points.  Pillar marks.  

Pillar marks, she continued, delineate a point in a veil where two or more veils mesh and are thin enough, for those who know how, to cross.  The information untwisted from the ball, of its own accord, and flowed through him.  

As they approached the trees, he felt his mark start to react to Silren’s use of power.  His scientific side finally resurfaced from wherever it had hidden since this whole insane trip had started.  He observed the process take place without interference. Analyzing the procedure to gain a better understanding of how it worked.  It was an odd circumstance though.  Instead of relying on his visual observations he had to rely on internal feeling.  The power, as it interacted with the pillar marks, felt like a thick velvet curtain. And the way Silren passed through was to pull an edge back and slip behind it.  

Simple enough until he realized that he could feel another curtain underneath the one they passed.  Does that lead to a different veil?  

He barely had time for the thought to form before they had left the coniferous forest and had entered a meadow area.  Grey clouds were rolling in and obscuring the midmorning sun.  Ashton looked back and saw that two tall hummocks of grass stood as the Pillar marks in this terrain.  This was the most jarring crossing yet as far as land differences went.  He needed a closer look at the gate.

“Stop Silren.  I need to go.”

The Unicorn looked over his shoulder, but he came to a stop.  Ashton slid down and landed in the dust of the road with a thump.

“Take the blanket off.  I’m going to roll in the grass for a moment while you relieve yourself.”

Ashton folded the blanket and tucked it under his arm as he watched Silren canter a few lengths off the road.  Once the Unicorn had all four legs flailing in the air Ashton turned back to the Pillar marks.  He walked up to them and studied the points.  Other than appearing to be identical, they looked completely normal.  Though oversize.  He walked around them.  Nothing happened.

He glanced over at the preoccupied Unicorn.  Silren still had his feet in the air.   

He sorted through some of his new knowledge.  Standing before the Pillar marks, he closed his eyes and relaxed.  The power moved like sluggish water under his skin.  A fire kindled in the mark over his heart and the water picked up speed.  An equine scream sounded dimly in his ears.  He opened his eyes to a thick mist.  Blindly in the white, he felt with his hands, sorting through the different edges of curtains until he found one he liked; then he slipped behind it.  

The rain came as a shock.

Black clouds hung low over the terrain.  Red leafed trees dotted the countryside.  Green fields, separated by white fences, met his eyes.  His hair dripped, and he shook it as he stepped off the road.  Two tall, red trees stood as the Pillars here.  Silren cantered through them and slid to a stop.  Even with the distance between them Ashton could see anger in the Unicorn’s eyes.  

Too bad.  So he can’t control everything anymore.  

“What are you doing, Human?”

“Going home.  What do you think?”

“Damn it, Ash, we’ve been over this.  You need to see Pyrrhus.”

“Ah, a name!  At last.”  He shrugged the strap on the grass bag across his back more comfortably. “No.  You need me to see this person. You never asked me.”

The power came quicker to his hand this time and he stepped between the Pillars and into the mist.  

Clouds scudded by overhead and Ashton shook out his wet hair.  The fields were now filled with crops and the fences were gone, replaced by low stone walls.  He turned at the sound of hoof beats and watched Silren trot through the stone Pillar marks.  

“Ashton, it is easy to follow someone through the veils if you are close enough to them.  You won’t be able to elude me.  Besides, you have no idea where you are going.”

Irritated that the Unicorn was right, Ashton folded his arms and stared into Silren’s blue eyes.  “And I suppose you won’t show me the way, right?”

Silren’s tail switched, then he heaved a sigh.  He lowered his horn to scrape it across the dirt of the path.  “Ashton.  You have a power that is growing in you, whether you like it or not.  It needs to be dealt with.”

“And why does it matter to you?  You just want to use me.”

Silren’s head snapped up and he took a step back.  “That is not true.  Yes we need your help, but it’s for the sake of the entire world.”

“That’s insane.  What can one person do?  No one has that much power.”

“No one in recorded memory has, but there’s always a first time.”  Silren said.

“Count me out.”  He shivered, then turned back to the Pillars. “I guess if you won’t show me the way home, I’ll have to find it myself.  I may be a guy, but I can ask for directions.”

The mist formed and he stepped into it.

“Stubborn Human.”

This time he exited past large wooden posts, into a dreary landscape.  A sodden, windswept moor stretched around him.  The road led a few meters ahead to a crossroads.  A cloaked figure huddled over a smoky fire that had been built in the middle of the intersection.  The sound of Silren’s hoof beats drew her attention and the woman looked up at their approach.  

Silren exhaled quickly in surprise, and stopped midstep.  “Ashton.  We need to leave.  Now.” 

“We’ve been over this, Horse.”

The woman stood, and a smile stretched her face.  She waved her hand.  “At last. A traveler.  I’m so hungry.”

She shook back the hood of her cloak and let her golden ringlets pour free.  Ashton sighed at the vision and walked forward.

A trumpeting neigh split his eardrums and Silren leapt past him, blocking his sight of the woman.  He tried to go around, but Silren used his shoulder to body-slam him to the side.  Ash shook his head, the realization struck that a moment before his thought hadn’t been his.

A loud purring laugh filled the clearing.  “You’re too late beast.  I have his scent.  He’s mine.”

“My horn has tasted your kind before, Lamia.”

“Silren?” Ashton asked.

The Unicorn held his head low, his horn pointed threateningly at the woman.  “Get on my back now, Ashton.”

Not daring to argue, he grabbed a fist full of mane and pulled himself up.  One slow step at a time, Silren backed away.  The woman laughed and transformed into a hideous half-lion half-woman beast and lunged at them.  Silren sprang to the side, but he still managed to score a line across her shoulder.  She shrieked and turned a glare on them.

“You will pay for that.”

Silren snorted, but didn’t bother to respond to the remark.  Ashton stared at the creature.  She had the body of a lion, with the naked torso of a woman.  Her golden ringlets perfectly matched a lions coat and her hands had claws.

Damn it.  Why is it only girls get ruby slippers?  There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like home.  Silren pivoted on his hind legs and sprang into a full gallop.  Ashton clamped down with his knees to keep from being thrown.

A deafening roar echoed, but Ashton didn’t dare look back.  His mark burned as Silren raced past the wooden Pillar mark and into the rain from the veil with the wooden fences.  Ashton crouched low over Silren’s neck as the unicorn pounded through the mud of the roadway.  A quick glance over his shoulder assured him why Silren hadn’t stopped after the crossing.  The lion beast had followed them through.

Ashton could feel Silren grunt with every pounding hoof beat.  They were traveling faster than any other time Ash could recall, yet the Lamia gained on them.

Silren’s labored voice whipped back to him on the wind.  “Ashton… I don’t think…  I can make the next mark.  I will have to fight.  Keep going… You have to get away.”

Another tendril of knowledge unfurled from the ball.  “Keep running Silren.  I have an idea.”

Mud flew in their wake.  Ashton focused on the road that was bracketed between Silren’s ears.  Calling the power, he felt the fire.  Silren’s horn blazed in response and the unicorn stumbled.  Holding his focus, Ashton forced his will to form reality.  They dove into a mist that hadn’t obscured the road a moment before.  Racing out the other side, Silren slid  to a stop then spun to face each direction in shock.

The Unicorn panted, his head still twisting this way and that.  “Where the hell are we?”  The new veil felt of summer.  The leaves on the trees still held a growing greenness to them.  “We weren’t near enough to the next Pillar mark to cross.  How did we get here?”  Silren said.

Ashton slid off the fatigued Unicorn and noticed, for the first time, the blood that dripped down the white flank.  “You’re hurt.”

Silren looked over his shoulder.  “It’s shallow.  She got me with her claws when I spun.  I’m a unicorn.  I can’t reach it with my own horn, but if I find a small pool of water I can heal it.”

“What was that thing?”

“It was a Lamia.  And they eat people like you, though she was starving so she likely would have tried to eat me too.  And unfortunately, we led her to a populated veil.”  He said sadly.

“Is there anything we can do?”

“No, it’s too dangerous.  I will send someone to warn the veil.” He paused and looked around again. “As soon as I figure out where we are. Speaking of, how did you do this?”

“Do what?  You said you wouldn’t make it to the next Pillar so I made the crossing for you.”

Silren’s stare made him uncomfortable.

“It’s not supposed to be possible to cross veils without doing it at a gate Ashton.  That is why the Lamia didn’t follow us this time.  She couldn’t.  Why do you think we keep walking across veils until we come to a different Pillar?”

More pieces clicked into place.  The Nightmare was right.  He did have the power to get home.  That realization freed something that Ashton didn’t want to look too closely at yet.

He walked up to Silren and rubbed the soft white velvet of his cheeks.  The deep blue of the unicorn’s eyes held incredible peace, if Ash would just open himself to it.  

“Are you sure you will be ok?  I’m worried about the claw marks.”

Silren blinked and Ash saw worry cloud the blue.  “Yes.  They will be gone without a trace as soon as we find a pool big enough for me to submerge in.”

Ashton leaned forward and kissed Silren’s forehead just below the horn.

“Ashton?”

“I have to go home, Silren. I know you don’t agree, but I can’t leave my mother to worry, and I’m going to lose my job at this rate.  I’m going to have enough explaining to do.”  He picked up the dropped blanket, and started to walk down the road.  His power flowed out around him and the terrain started to fade.  

“No!  Ashton!  You can’t go back.  You don’t understand.  It won’t be the same.”

Silren’s voice faded with the mist.