PursuitThe bag screamed. When he looked down at the bag in his arms, he could have sworn that it screamed. He dropped it and ran faster up the slope on the edge of Whichway Woods.
His pursuers gained on him. Long-legged Raggedy Albert and well-conditioned Musclehead led the pack. But Loose Lips, Stickyfingers, and the rest of the rebels were close behind.
Zenith Maelstrom trained his eyes on the hill ahead, lest he slip on the dark green moss. But something darker appeared—the shadow of a gigantic raven. Zenith looked up as Hugh dove at him and grazed his head with the tip of one powerful wing. As the bird soared away, giggles escaped from the small child perched upon his wide neck.
His sister, Apogee, laughing at the plight of her big brother.
Zenith reached the top of the hill and saw the three foul mouths cackling at him. In front of these portals sat the horrible bag. Impossible. He’d dropped it halfway down the hill. A change of color, an obscene blush, rippled across its haphazardly stitched surface. The bag’s mouth opened wide into a grin, and a terrible thing arose from within. A blood-red cloak, covered in cryptic symbols. The phantom’s cowl was drawn tightly around one of Four Eyes’s eyeballs, now a milky gray, corrupted by the spectral presence floating before him.
The awful, unfathomable Wraith.
Observation"Interesting,” Dr. Venneller said as he slid his eyeglasses back up his nose and jotted in his notebook. “In prior dreams, this ‘horrible bag’ is the gateway to the world of monsters. But now the bag itself has made an appearance in—” He flipped back to the previous page. “GrahBhag.”
Zenith slumped in his chair, cracks in the leather irritating his neck. “Yeah, well, it is a dream.”
The psychologist looked up. “I wouldn’t be so dismissive. Understanding these dreams could be the key to unlocking your memory and finding your sister.” Zenith nodded his head but allowed his mind to wander as Venneller launched into his usual lecture about repressed memories.
There was no reason to listen. Zenith’s memories weren’t repressed. He recalled every painful moment of his two adventures in GrahBhag, although he’d fabricated the chase he’d related today. He’d improvised the story to get through the “recount your latest dream” portion of his twice-weekly therapy session as quickly as possible.
What a change from a month ago, when Venneller had discovered the journal, containing the actual details of Zenith’s time in GrahBhag, protruding from his backpack. Zenith was horrified when the therapist insisted he read it aloud, but Venneller assumed Zenith was recounting a dream. Zenith found it surprisingly therapeutic to share some of the ordeal he’d survived without fear of repercussions. In the following sessions, he enthusiastically relayed his whole history with the horrible bag, from its mysterious appearance on his front porch through every twist and turn of the two adventures inside.
He didn’t tell his psychologist that his last trip had ended when he’d exited the bag in a police evidence locker. After a few panicked minutes trying to escape from the locked cage, he’d been discovered by a sergeant who’d asked how he’d gotten in there.
Zenith had opened his mouth, hoping his brain would come up with something. A simple “I don’t know” was all it could manage.
It was enough. On a hunch, the sergeant brought him to the detective interviewing his parents, who had contacted the police after finding the horrible bag, but not their children, at home. After many tearful hugs and kisses, the questions commenced. Where had Zenith been? What had happened? Where were Apogee and Kevin? All Zenith could think to say was, “I don’t know.”
His parents’ frustration at this response evaporated when his mother spotted the A-shaped scar on his wrist. His father asked who had done this to him. Zenith thought,
A cloaked specter called the Wraith burned it into my wrist, but again said, “I don’t know.” The questions ceased and hugs resumed.
The police and Zenith’s parents reached their own conclusions. Someone had taken Zenith, Apogee, and their friend Kevin Churl. (Sort of true.) Zenith had escaped. (Actually, he’d been ejected.) The traumatic experience had wiped Zenith’s memory. (Just the opposite—he remembered everything.)
The sessions with Dr. Venneller were meant to help Zenith remember events that, in reality, he’d never forgotten. Zenith had uttered “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember” many times in that first session before Venneller discovered what they now called his “dream journal.” Initially, it was easy to fill the hour with talk of GrahBhag, but the thrill of sharing his experiences had since dwindled. The therapy sessions were pure theater meant to satisfy his parents and the police, while his true work was done each night before bed, writing the account of his two trips to GrahBhag and sketching the horrible bag on each page. These pictures seemed to hold the key to retaining his memory. He kept his journal open on his nightstand so he would see an image of the bag first thing in the morning, and, just to be safe, he’d taped Apogee’s drawings of GrahBhag up on the walls of his bedroom. He knew from experience that if he were ever to wake without seeing the horrible bag in some form, he’d forget everything. Then Apogee and Kevin might be gone forever.
There was an awkward silence as Venneller waited for a response. Zenith straightened in his chair. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
The therapist scooted his glasses back up his nose. “It’s difficult to bring into focus, isn’t it? I think we should explore other ways to uncover what your mind so badly wants to conceal. I’m going to speak to your parents again about hypnosis.”
Zenith squirmed in his seat. “Hypnosis? I thought we decided against—”
“We’ll revisit all this next week.” Venneller rose from his seat and ushered Zenith out.
Copyright © 2025 by Rob Renzetti. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
