"You know what?" I growled at the smug ghost, unable to hold back my rage at his insensitivity any longer, "You have no fucking idea what I've been through, what my childhood was like, what I've had to endure! So stop standing there and berating me until you get a fucking clue!"

I had walked closer to him as I barked, but my sudden outburst seemed to do nothing except amuse him because I saw his lips play with a smirk. Emma, on the other hand, did appear taken aback though she was hard to see from my new position. After a moment of silent anger between Damian and I, she reached a hand out and took hold of my upper arm, tugging me around to face her.

"Mark, calm down," she ordered.

My gaze fell from the guy leaning on my door to the girl who had grabbed me. Vision settling on her face, I saw that her expression was stern yet her eyes were at least attempting to be compassionate. I took in a deep breath to calm the rage, still turning my agitation on her.

Although Emma straightened up and removed her hand from my arm, she didn't speak. Her look remained confused while she watched me step away, around the couch toward my bedroom. I walked right onto my mattress, plopped my back against the wall, and sunk to sit on my ground-level cot. Jesus, Mark, get it together, I whispered silently, hanging my head to rest between two palms. I needed to think.

Assuming that I didn't wake up at some point just to realize my dreams had gotten more vivid after their years in hiatus, was taking these kids at face value really a good idea? Even being proven spirits, they could have ulterior motives. They could be manipulating me.

For all I knew they were actually demons luring me into limbo. Perhaps McGraff himself was using them as a ploy to return and make me a prisoner in my own body for some nefarious use. I realized that despite my experience with astral travel, I had no frame of reference here because I was completely in the dark to what lay beyond and what different spirits were capable of.

But I couldn't allow myself to pass up a possibility that would help me with Tyler, so I began contemplating what was to gain if they were being honest. I was well aware that I hadn't the knowledge to make it into another realm or dimension or whatever the hell you wanted to call it.

Therefore, there would be little point in me flipping them off and simply jumping planes to seek my lost lover out. It would just lead to me traversing the unseen within this world and never severing ties with my body. These kids clearly had a way to get me to Hell, the subsequent freedom gained by letting McGraff's spirit take my place allowing me to be able to travel entirely liberally regardless of realm boundaries.

The biggest problem with that outside of the innocent lives lost should they be unable to properly punish the killer, went back to my inexperience. I didn't really know how to defend myself should demons attack me and I got the feeling that the ghosts weren't too keen on sharing much detailed information. It made me wonder if there were rules creatures were expected to follow regarding such things. In that case, what if I were to break these laws? What would happen to me then?

Why don't I just kill myself and accomplish the same thing? My earlier retort repeated in my brain. Religious people seemed to believe there was punishment for suicide. I had never been religious, but what if there were truth in that?

Maybe I'd be damned to walk this world like the ghost kids, a scenario that brought me full circle to the argument against giving up the chance to be capable of traversing multiple realms in search of Tyler. I still didn't like the idea of inadvertently getting stuck in Hell, but if I didn't take the offer, I might go the rest of my pathetic life regretting it. 

"Alright," I breathed, lifting my head to look at the teens who had circled around me once more, "I'll do it, but I have one last question."

"What is it?" the girl removed her hands from her hips and crossed them.

"How do I fight? I mean, if something out there tries to attack me. I'm assuming it's a bit different than throwing punches," I almost laughed.

"Yeah, a bit," her reaction wasn't what I had expected. Instead of immediately returning to her take-charge attitude, her expression was soft at first, contrasting the solemn attitude Damian wore and the excited high-five that the younger boys gave each other. 

"Think of it as a dream," bat boy was the one to explain, "One you have better control over. Reach into your own energy and pull it out as a weapon."

I thought about his advice for a moment. Astral projection, meditation, really any energy work or 'witchcraft' actually worked on the premise of manipulating the energy that comprises your life-essence to achieve a goal. If you think about it, prayer is the same thing; just a collection of intent in order to make something happen. Working on that idea and the techniques I had learned for lucid dreaming, I understood exactly what he meant.

"Okay. Tell me what to do then," I decided.

"Get comfortable and start," Emma inhaled sharply, "We'll meet you when you are ready."

I nodded slowly as I leaned my head back against the wall and shut my vision. In my chest, my heart had begun to race. Such excitement was counterproductive to the peaceful state needed for pushing spirit from body, but everything was too sudden and frightening for me to do much about it. I tried not to think about the negative or my possible inability to perform.

My thoughts flew to the reason I was doing any of this crazy bullshit again.

"Hey," a gentle voice addressed me, its hand tapping my shoulder.

Startled, I peered upward from my spot curled next to the dumpster in the alley outside of a restaurant that had closed for the night. Standing there was a man dressed in a trim button down and slacks. His beautiful eyes were large and soft, contrasting with the pitch black hair that framed his face.

"S-sorry," I cleared my throat, attempting to gain my feet. However, I slipped, banging into the trash bin and starting to fall back into my previous position.

"Woah!" he reached out to support my shoulders from underneath, "Careful, buddy. Are you okay?"

I glanced at him before nervously pulling away and attempting to walk off...only for him to grab my arm, causing me to spin around and face him. Initially, I had thought he was an employee who had been inside the store late which was why I was eager to leave. I didn't want the police called or any other trouble. The sense I got from actually looking at him, though, was different.

"I'm Tyler," he smiled.

"Mark," I offered sheepishly.

"You look like you could use a place to sleep," he continued.

"I don't-"

"It's not much," the man interrupted, "But you're welcome to bunk with me."

I had been kicked out of my previous apartment after not paying rent for two months. I showed up midway through the second to find an eviction notice plastered to my door. Instead of going in anyway and trying to squat there for a while longer, I fled as soon as I read 'or you will be forcibly removed' on the paper. The drugs had my paranoia in overdrive and even though that's where I eventually ended up regardless, I was too scared to face cops and chance being thrown in jail.

The next thing I lost was my job. Thanks to the handouts of kind passersby, I had been able to scrape along with enough food to keep the hunger pains at bay. Finding new work and new shelter had begun to seem way too far out of reach so even though I anticipated some sort of trick the entire journey, I went with the strange man. The first thing he said to me when we entered the shabby flat explained a lot.

"I know how it is," he immediately began unbuttoning his shirt once the door was closed behind us, "I just got fired because of my habit."

My view of the man became less critical and more curious at that point. When he laid his shirt on the couch, which looked like a bulldog had been using it as a chew toy, my gaze found the fresh pricks on his inner elbow.

"Well," I sighed, my voice raspy from dehydration, "I've been out of work for months so I won't be much help."

Tyler shrugged, "Doesn't matter. It's cheap; there's just one bedroom. With two of us, it'll be easier to find ways to make ends meet."

"I'm a terrible liar," I replied, instinctively aware that he wasn't above dubious means.

The man took a step closer to me and grinned, "I'll teach you."

Before I had even realized it, I had fallen into the meditative state I sought. My goal clear in mind, my body began to numb and my consciousness started to drift. I focused behind closed eyes, picturing the appearance of my bedroom, the area around it, the building, and finally, was looking down upon the decrepit neighborhood where I lived. 

Ashamedly, my lips curled upward. I didn't deserve to be happy; I just couldn't help it. Not only the peace of flying, but the spiritual affirmation was far too elating. Suddenly, a sense of hope overwhelmed me. I would fix this. I would rescue Tyler, I would beg him to forgive me, and I would finally be in the arms of the man I love again. 

As I glanced downward, a vision of me sitting on my bed flashed and I felt the gentle tug of my muscles twitching. Instantly, I forced my attention to stay on the night sky and the sounds of the city below. Due to how long it had been since last doing this, I knew that I could easily revert if I didn't remain both relaxed and focused. It was honestly a difficult skill to master. One of the reasons why I had never bothered to get clean was due to how the disassociating effects of drugs helped the process.

But now I was both out of practice and without a hit, not that I planned to ever go back there. Raising the spiritual outline of where my arms should be, I imagined using them to help me travel. Wings were a common help for envisioning flight, but I preferred the idea of propulsion jets in my palms. My heart grew heavier as I floated higher, which is supposed to serve as a sort of warning. 

The further your spirit roams while still being attached to the physical, the more the animal of you panics. It's precarious since one must both trust their instinct and also override base carbon impulse in order to reach a different level of awareness. I was leaving nothing important behind and I was used to the feeling, so this override was much simpler for me.

No amount of apprehension reached me until I had risen so high that the Earth had begun to look like a satellite picture. At that point, it was exceedingly difficult to feel my body although the pressure in my chest remained. I stopped, hovering in the atmosphere on lookout for the ghosts. A few minutes or a few seconds, it was hard to tell in this state how time was passing, but eventually, the kids did show.

"Like riding a bike, huh?" Emma greeted me with an evil grin.

"Now what?" I wondered.

"You know that initial fear when you successfully astral travel for the first time?" she asked rhetorically, "Get ready for one even worse."

My heart skipped and I was momentarily in my apartment again.

"Don't lose control now!" Emma's shrill voice brought me back.

"Sorry," I muttered, fighting to stay in the sky.

The goth girl twisted and looked out in the cosmos, "You need to go out there."

"Into space?" my brow furrowed.

"No, space is still in this world," she snapped, "You need to look beyond this universe. Pretend," she turned to me, "That you're projecting from your body from right at this point."

"So like I jumped from my body to get to this plane, I need use the same technique to jump into the next one?" I surmised.

"Yeah."

"How do I know which is the right one? I have to be able to visualize this world to get here, but I have no idea what other realms look like," I questioned.

"It'll be dark," Damian spoke up, both our sights jumping to where he hovered, staring blankly into nothing, "Almost like...a black hole. You've seen pictures of them: pitch emptiness in the middle and swirls of energy around it," the boy slowly turned, placing eerie eyes upon me, "Follow the screams."

It was hard to break his gaze, yet somehow I managed to look to Emma again for confirmation.

"And it'll be cold, deathly cold," her tone was as hollow as her companion's expression, "Just remember not to be scared."

"Sounds like asking too much considering how you just described the place," I chuckled nervously, "Why?"

"While you pass through the entrance, your energy is going to be amplified since to get in, you have to pierce its veil," the girl answered, "And most demons feed on fear. It'll be like inviting them to come after you."

"Great," I mumbled.

By that time, I had decided that it would serve me best to take a deep breath and jump right in rather than give myself time to chicken out. So as strange a concept as it was, I 'closed' my eyes once again and began contemplating the image of Hell they had conjured for me. I vaguely heard one of the twins joke something about 'cold feet' when I saw the black hole and was removed completely from the world I knew.