The entrance to the secret passage did not elude Logan, Michael, and Andrew for long. The room was well lit, and very little of it had been touched in months, except for one bottle of wine, which sat on a shelf, dust-free, its green, glassy exterior visible.

As Logan reached for it and pulled on it, he discovered that it was attached to the shelf by a mechanism that caused the wall where the cables had run under to lift up and open a passage.

The men looked at each other. That feeling of worry that had been rising in Logan’s stomach had bloomed into a panic, but he could not show fear. His beloved would need him at his strongest.

“Perhaps we ought not move forward without arming ourselves,” Andrew said, giving a voice to a feeling that all three men had.

They quickly searched for weapons. Michael found a lead pipe, which had once been part of the electrical conduit. Andrew found a wrench in the same spot, while Logan forcefully broke a leg off a table to make a thick, sturdy club.

“Perhaps this will be of use,” Andrew said, pointing to a small stash of flashlights in the corner of the room, hidden by some boxes of wine. “He must keep these here for the occasion that his experiments blow the breaker.”

“Let’s go,” Logan said, without a doubt in his mind that Avery would be at the end of their trek into the dungeons of the castle.

It didn’t take them long in their travels to find a large, meticulously cleaned room at the end of the hall they had been travelling. There was some scientific machinery, and as Logan shone his light around, he realized that there were lights there if they could find the switch. But that was not his biggest concern.

The room was filled with human bodies.

The bodies were not strewn about haphazardly. No, the bodies were at various stages of preservation, as far as Logan could see. Some wore hospital gowns; others were clothed, probably in the same way they had been when they walked into the castle.

Most lay on concrete slabs, while others were attached to equipment, no doubt designed to dehydrate them, Logan theorized. There were over two dozen of them.

“Dear Lord… Simon, no,” was all Logan was able to say in response to the discovery. His old friend had done something monstrous here.

“He did this?” Michael asked. “To all of them?”

“No,” Logan said. “He must have found these bodies, snuck them out of hospital morgues. Look, they’re wearing hospital gowns, and that one there is dressed in his best suit, probably pulled right from his coffin.”

Logan knew he was grasping at straws, for among the bodies they could see exactly zero injuries.

“No,” Andrew said. “These are guests. Staff. All the people that Lila never saw leave because she locked herself away. Simon’s patients.”

There were rows and rows of bodies, some laid out shoulder to shoulder on their slabs.

“Avery is not ending up in this place,” Logan said.

“She’s not here,” Michael said. “She must be further into the dungeons. We need to keep moving.”

The men walked forward, unsure of which direction they should go. They had several options.

Logan was examining any clues he could find to see which path Simon had taken more often, but unlike several rooms in the house above, this room was meticulously cleaned. There was no dirt or dust on the floor. Doctor Halle, after all, was a professional.

As Logan looked for an exit, Andrew’s eyes were drawn to a desk and the books resting on it.

“Hold on,” he said as he focused on one of the larger, older tomes.

He pulled the book toward himself and then shone his light down at the page, flipping back and forth, eyes wide with disbelief.

“Is now the time for that?” Logan asked.

“My God…” was all Andrew could say.

“What is it?” Michael asked, somehow more afraid of what information might be found in the book than he was of the bodies in the room.

“This is an early text about the ancient origins of astral science,” Andrew said. “From back in a time when man thought it to be magic. These entries detail a process by which a human soul can be detached from its corporeal form without inflicting death.”

Logan made his way over to the book and looked at it. He saw diagrams of men and women, some of which were translucent. He couldn’t read the language.

“What is this, some type of spectral dissection? Did these people get their souls ripped from their bodies?” he asked.

That made enough sense to Logan. They were unharmed, and what was more, they didn’t stink.

“No,” Andrew said. “This one is for someone who wishes to straddle the line between life and death. To gain the power of the living and the dead. If he tried this on himself—”

Before Andrew could continue, a faint creak could be heard from somewhere in the room. They shone their flashlights around, but all they saw were corpses hanging limp, lying still.

Yet the sounds persisted, sounds of leather straps being pulled, to Logan’s ears.

“Did that one just move?” Michael asked.

The men seemed to all hold their breath at the same time as they peered around the dark laboratory.

More sounds, and as they darted their lights, they saw the thing they feared most: finger twitches, jaws undulating, toes flexing as if their owners were just waking up.

Rows and rows of bodies began to twist and flex, jerking unnaturally at first and then too naturally as they began to remember how humans moved and stood up.

“Oh no,” Logan said.

Andrew quickly closed the book and grabbed hold of his large wrench.

The others wielded their weapons too, ready for whatever might happen.

“We may need to pick an exit here, boys,” Andrew said.

“Well, we’ve got two ways out of here from what I can tell,” Logan said.

“If we split up, we’re going to die,” Michael said. “We need to pick one and run for it.”

The bodies, which were gradually making their way toward proper locomotion as they tested their limbs, had not yet seemed to notice the men. But that changed all at once as two dozen pairs of shriveled eyes turned and locked onto their prey simultaneously.

There was a stutter, a pause, before they began moving. But by the time they did, the men were running.

“We’ll take the right-hand path,” Logan said. “The left-hand path seems to move away from the castle grounds.”

“Good enough for me,” Michael said.

The three men quickly ran toward their chosen exit.

While the dehydrated corpses didn’t seem to move quickly, there were so many of them, and they were so dispersed around the room, that they were easily able to cut the men off and surround them.

The men swung their weapons, and while the undead showed no pain, they were quite light, with all of the moisture having been wicked from their bodies for preservation.

With a single swing, the men could send the bodies flying backward.

“Move!” Andrew screamed as they ran toward the right-hand door.

And while their attacks were effective, their opponents were completely unfazed and could easily get up from each hit and come right back for more.

Traversing the floor was beginning to look impossible.

Logan smashed his table leg into the skull of one of the mummified assailants, creating a gash and a dent that would have killed a man but had no effect on one that had already died.

“These things aren’t going down,” he said.

“There are too many!” Michael cried out.

“We have to keep going forward,” Logan said. “Just keep powering through!”

But Michael didn’t. He stopped and evaluated the situation.

“Go find Avery and Anastasia,” he said.

“Mike, what are you talking about?” Logan asked.

“You heard me. Move!” Michael screamed as he shoved into the crowd of undead and pushed through, leading them away from the exit.

The zombies were not clever creatures. They followed Michael without a thought as he swung at them with his pipe, clearing the area around him.

Logan stared for a moment.

“Hurry,” Andrew said. “We cannot let his sacrifice go to waste.”

The two men nodded to each other and then ran as fast as they could through the door they had chosen and down the corridor behind it.

As they ran, they did their best to ignore the screams coming from Michael behind them as the undead made good on his decision to sacrifice himself.

–

Avery held Simon’s hand as he recited his vows once more.

“In sickness and in health,” he said. He began to laugh, and Avery joined in.

They had been drinking champagne and talking about what they would do with their lives now that they had them again.

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He said the classic vows with some alterations, such as “in body and in ether, until all the planes of existence fall apart.”

And she repeated those vows, giggling at what she thought was supposed to be a fun, romantic little joke in the eyes of the madman before her, doing her best not to give away that she was not his intended bride.

“Do you, the woman now known as Avery Lawson, pledge to carry our love forward, no matter what form it must take?” he asked.

“I do,” she said.

He placed the ring on her finger, and then they just stared into each other’s eyes.

Halle had been planning on this for quite some time, she realized. He had already written up a death certificate for his wife from a foreign country. Perhaps, she wondered, was it a real death certificate? Had he smuggled her body back into their home for his experimentation after her death?

She didn’t want to think of it. Every ounce of her intentions and efforts went into her performance.

“We will one day have a proper ceremony, my love,” Simon said. “But we will have to be careful at first.” He grabbed her hands in his. “You’ll be Avery for a while longer, living her life as she did. Then you’ll say your goodbyes, end things with Logan gently. People will be sad, but they’ll accept it.”

As he spoke, Avery wondered if he was going to go in for a kiss and whether or not she would go along with it. Perhaps he had lost his inclination to kiss after his wife became a living corpse? What an awful thought.

“Just as we planned,” he said. “Then, at your funeral, you, as Avery, will come to me officially. No one will question a grieving widower finding solace in the arms of a friend.”

His voice cracked as tears filled his eyes.

“We can be happy, like we were, just in a better body, a better life,” he said.

Suddenly, his face changed. He was no longer the affectionate, loving man he had been since she had awoken. Now he was stern, and maybe even ashamed.

“You can come out now, Logan,” he said loudly.

Avery’s eyes widened as she looked around the laboratory.

There was a lot of equipment in that room; Logan could be hiding anywhere. Part of her was overjoyed that he had come to save her, but another part feared it wouldn’t be enough with the dark powers she had seen Simon possess.

“And Doctor Hughes, you cannot hide from me. I see all,” he said.

After a moment, both Logan and Andrew stepped out from their respective hiding places near the entrance.

Avery tried to make eye contact with Logan, but she was afraid that Simon would see and would realize the truth that she was not his wife.

“Simon, what have you done?” Logan asked.

To his credit, Simon really did look ashamed of his actions, Avery thought.

“I’m sorry for the fear I’ve caused you, all of you,” he said. “I never meant for my friends to be involved. I promise I will not experiment on you. I give you my word. But I cannot allow you to leave. I only wish you had stayed upstairs where I left you.”

“That’s magnanimous,” Andrew said, “considering the morgue behind us.”

Simon ignored him.

“Of course, the details must be seen to. I’ll have to fake your deaths,” Simon said as if it were obvious and mundane.

“That’s bold talk,” Logan said, swinging his club. “You won’t even be able to get a hand on us.”

“I don’t have to,” Simon said as he flicked his wrist, and Logan’s club flew from his hands.

“What in the world?” Logan exclaimed.

“Nothing in this world,” Simon said with a suppressed grin.

Andrew wasn’t nearly as impressed. He looked angry.

“You fool,” he said.

Simon turned to look at him.

“You absolute fool,” Andrew continued. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to yourself?”

“I know exactly what I’ve done,” Simon answered.

Andrew walked forward toward a nearby workbench. There were several iridescent shards of glass on the surface. Andrew stared at them in awe.

“This is luminace crystal. Do you have any idea what alchemists used this for?” He held up a shard of the glass. “Well, I suppose you would,” he said as he placed it back down on the table. “It’s a wonder you haven’t lobotomized yourself playing with it.”

“Your stripe of academia are cowards,” Simon said, “It is a simple conduit. Without it, none of this would have been possible.”

Andrew was staring intently at Simon’s right arm, which was still not completely aligned with its astral form and shone brilliantly.

“You had to split your soul to get the effect, didn’t you? To grip astral currents?” Andrew asked. “You turned yourself into half a ghost on purpose.”

“Necessary sacrifices,” Simon said.

“You’re a walking hazard to everyone around you. And now it seems you are unstable… having trouble staying human, are we?”

Avery took a step back as anger overtook Simon’s face.

“I am not the hazard,” Simon said. “I am the cure. My work is the cure, not just for cancer, not for tuberculosis, but for death itself. You will appreciate that soon.”

Simon raised his hands in a simple gesture. As he did, Andrew’s hands raised up around his own neck and he began strangling himself against his own will.

“Simon—” Andrew tried to scream, but couldn’t get the words out.

“Let him go!” Logan yelled as he charged at Simon with his reacquired club.

Simon barely looked at him as he flicked his wrist and sent Logan flying sideways, slamming against a large piece of machinery.

Avery couldn’t bear to watch a man die slowly while she did nothing.

“Stop it, Simon, please,” she pleaded.

For a moment, Simon hesitated, looking at her curiously—suspiciously, even.

“We’ve done worse together, my love. Why balk now?” he asked.

Andrew’s face was turning purple as Logan raced to him and attempted to intervene.

“Because it’s wrong,” Avery started to say. “Because they are our friends.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed.

“Since when does that bother you?” he asked. “You begged me not to let you go, you remember? They know too much. We could never be together if they survive.”

“I just want… everyone to live and let live,” Avery said.

Simon took a step toward her.

“Live and let live,” he repeated as he got closer to her and really took a good look at her face—at her eyes.

“That’s not how you talk,” he said.

For a moment, there was only silence, except for the struggle Andrew was enduring.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Avery?”

In the distance, Andrew fell into Logan’s arms, unconscious. His possessed hands still strangled him.

Simon shook his head and walked away from Avery, running toward the machine he had attempted to use to swap the women’s souls.

“Anastasia!” he called out as he approached the limp body that had once been his wife. She lay, her eyes open, her mouth ajar, unmoving.

Simon picked up her frail body from the metal slab and pulled her to his side as he stroked her hair.

For a moment, nothing happened as he looked into her eyes, but then suddenly:

She gasped, taking in air. Her eyes started to blink, and she was moving, fully animated all at once again.

“Simon… why did you leave me on this slab?” she said, her voice hoarse from disuse.

Avery stared down at the loving couple in disbelief.

She looked over to Logan, who had successfully pried Andrew’s hands away and prevented self-strangulation.

Logan looked at the Halles and then looked up at Avery, and in an instant, an understanding passed between them.

“You… you’re all right,” Simon said as he hugged his wife tightly. “I thought— oh never mind, I have you now. I knew something was off about that procedure. We will have to simply reevaluate and try again.”

“Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Anastasia said. “You are a man of science. All data is good data. Remember when you told me that? When you promised me you would stop at nothing to bring me back?”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “And I still promise it.”

“And you’ve always lived up to your promises,” Anastasia said. “You are the most perfect, most loving husband.”

“I am so sorry,” Simon said as tears ran down his face and he cradled his wife against his side.

Suddenly, all Avery could see when she looked at Anastasia was a large, leathery puppet.

“Oh, Simon,” Logan said. “Oh, Simon, you poor, poor man.”

The mad scientist looked confused.

“Do not pity me,” Simon said angrily as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “I have accomplished more in my time than any ten men. What man could do this for the woman he loved? Could you do it?”

Logan didn’t answer for a time.

“To tell you the truth,” he said eventually, “I thought this was a worst-case scenario. Anastasia dying slowly, unable to enjoy life, unable to be herself for so long. She was such a beautiful woman, inside and out. Now at least I know she didn’t live to see the man you became.”

Anger spread back over Simon’s face, amplified through tears.

“She’s right here,” Simon said. “She loves me because of who I became!”

“No, Simon,” Logan said. “She’s not. You’ve lost it, old friend.”

Simon looked at Anastasia and then back at Logan.

“You’re babbling,” he said.

“You really don’t know, do you?” Logan asked.

Simon could only stare at his childhood friend. Perhaps, Avery thought, part of him wanted to hear the truth.

“Has she ever argued with you?” Logan asked. “Ever since she became like this, I mean. Really disagreed? Spent all day and all night angry at you? She used to do that at the drop of a hat. She was a firecracker, and you were a wet blanket. Simon, has she ever asked to leave this place?”

“Why would she leave?” Simon asked. “She knows that I am the only man alive who could care for her like this.”

“Simon,” Logan said, “don’t you understand what you’ve done? Anastasia is dead. Don’t you know she wouldn’t go along with any of this, with killing people? Don’t you remember her? Who she actually was?”

The anger faded from Simon’s face for just a moment as he considered Logan’s words.

“She used to be your better half,” Logan said. “But look at her. This isn’t Anastasia. It’s just you.”

Simon shook his head aggressively.

“You don’t know anything about this,” Simon said. “Tell him, Anastasia. Tell him the truth.”

He looked over at the body of his wife, and she began to speak.

“Logan, I know it’s hard to believe, but Simon really did save me, like he promised he would. Ask me anything. I can answer it for you. It’s really me.”

Logan had been moved to tears. He checked Andrew’s pulse to make sure his friend was alive, then he stood up and faced Simon.

“Sure, Annie,” he said. “Back before you and Simon started dating, we went on a date. Where did we go?”

Simon looked shocked as he stared at his wife.

“It doesn’t matter,” Anastasia said. “Simon was always the man for me.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Logan said. “Where was our date?”

Anastasia looked at Logan and then at Simon.

“I don’t remember,” she said. “It’s been so long.”

“Oh, Simon,” Logan said once more. “Anastasia never told you, did she? Trust me, she had reasons not to. And if you don’t know, there’s no way this puppet could.”

Simon was at a loss for words as he sat his wife down on the metal table.

Anastasia could do nothing but stare at him, and he at her.

“Don’t listen to him,” she said. “You know the truth. Our love conquered death. That’s all that matters. You found me in the vast emptiness of the astral plane, and we will live together happily again one day.”

Even as she spoke, Simon looked at her with horror. Avery thought he was beginning to realize the truth.

But he shook his head, turned to Logan, and instead of embracing truth, he decided to try to kill anyone who argued against the lie.

He soared through the air toward Logan, his astral arm pulling him forward, ready to tear through his best friend.

“I always worried you would lose it if Annie left you, but not like this,” Logan quipped as Simon landed in front of him. “You were always prone to obsession. If I hadn’t introduced you to Anastasia, you’d probably have nothing in our basement but a stamp collection.”

Avery was having none of it. She had been working her way down and around toward the machine where Anastasia now sat. She found the console she had seen Simon working on.

“Step away from the controls, Avery,” Anastasia said from her seat on the metal table. “Only Simon understands them. He built them himself.”

Avery ignored her.

“You’re not the only one here who knows their way around electronics,” she called out to Simon. “I haven’t seen a setup this juvenile since I was an engineering teaching assistant at Carousel University.”

She began working the dials, rotating the knob, and then she grabbed onto a big lever and pulled it. She had no trouble understanding how they worked.

The machine came to life, sending out a pulse of energy that knocked Simon off his feet, sending him to the ground in front of Logan.

Avery had noticed that when he first powered on the machine, his astral form became unstable, causing his right hand to detach from his body. Increasing the power intensity only made the effect worse.

Now, not only was Simon’s arm unsheathed from its corporeal form, but his shoulder and his head were as well. His soul was losing its anchor to his body.

Simon screamed as he struggled to control his body.

“Stop it,” he said. “You’ll tear me apart!”

Logan was quick to go grab the shard of special glass that Andrew had pointed out, the same type of glass used in the mirror of stars.

Quickly, he stabbed the shard into Simon’s ghostly head, breaking it off.

“We may have to split the seven years of bad luck on that one,” he joked.

Simon began to wail, sending forceful waves of energy and causing Logan to fall backward.

“Anastasia!” he cried out.

But Anastasia had fallen limp on the metal table.

“You can’t hold her and yourself together,” Avery said.

She hit the switch on the machine again, sending out a pulse and further separating Simon’s soul from his body until all that was left was a corpse and a spirit.

“You will not take her from me,” the ghost of Simon Halle said. “You cannot kill what is already dead.”

Simon’s spirit once again launched itself at Logan, but just as it did, a large metal pipe flew through the air and shattered the mirror of stars above, sending shards of glass down on all those below, including the astral form of Simon.

As the glass passed through him, pieces of his soul began to dissipate until all that was left were glowing tatters that gave no visible trace of the Astralist, Simon Halle.

In the entryway stood a very injured Michael Brooks. One of his arms was broken, and the other was missing much of its skin, but that didn’t stop him. His other injuries, to his left eye and his jugular, were much more severe.

He fell to the ground against the far wall, barely able to lift his head to see Logan and Avery as they helped lift Andrew and move him away from all the shards of glass.

“What about Anastasia?” he asked, as his breathing slowed.

“I’m sorry, Mike. She didn’t make it,” Logan said.

“What are you talking about?” Michael answered, mumbling under his breath. “She’s right there,” he said, pointing into thin air as a smile formed on his lips and never left.

His body fell dead.

Avery and Logan looked at each other. Avery wasn’t so sure about true love anymore—but she was sure about Logan, and that was all she needed.

They didn’t stop until they were at their cars. When they did, they kissed as lightning struck, lighting up the stormy sky.

The End

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