"There is a reason why all things are as they are."

-Bram Stoker, Dracula

Fourteen

It seemed like a cliché, but all he saw was a bright light. There was no path that lead to it, where the light got more intense with every step he took. It was tough for Will to tell if he was looking around or was unable to move; it could have been an entirely ethereal experience. His world simply was devoid of anything else, material or otherwise. Time stood still or didn't exist at all.

Where are you?

Will heard the question, but it sounded like it was posed internally. Did he ask himself? Was there somebody else here? Where was here? He remembered everything about his time at the otherworldly movie theater and remembered that he was able to find the doorway that he needed. The projector screen served as the doorway that he walked through; or stumbled through to be more precise. With everything that he heard about that place from the people back home, the doorway should have brought him back to his safer reality. Instead, it took him into an illuminated void. He started to wonder if maybe he died, and he was experiencing an incredibly dull afterlife.

You don't know, do you?

"…no, I don't."

That time Will heard the words, but only his own. The question again came from inside his head, but who put the words there? He wasn't sure if he felt a small measure of comfort in knowing that he wasn't truly alone, or a sense of dreadful curiosity in wondering who else was here. If it was someone else to begin with. Who knew if this place triggered a voice that had always been with him but lie dormant, just waiting for a catalyst?

It's okay. You'll understand soon. Just…

The words gave way to a static sound that Will could not escape. It encompassed every inch of where he was, filling his ears and his brain to the point where the only thing that mattered was finding solace in silence once more. Unfortunately, he was unable to move, so he just had to bear it.

…you c…un…f…behind…all…

He could barely hear anything behind the wall of static, but someone or his own subconscious seemed to be trying to give him a message. 'Behind' was the only word he was able to make out, but behind what? And what was behind it? The noise was so deafening that hearing himself think was beginning to become a challenge. If he could scream, he would have, but what good would that have done?

"Will? Will can you hear me?"

Yes, he thought to himself. Wait…who was that? It was a female voice cutting through the static. Dawn? Suddenly the lights started to dim, the static began to dissipate, and a tingling sensation came over him. Shapes started to form, and he felt a softness in the palms of his hands. The light gradually got lower and lower, until it was merely the size of a baseball and hovering a few feet above him. He closed and reopened his eyes a few times to adjust to his new surroundings.

"Oh, thank God! You're alive!" Dawn exclaimed as her face appeared in Will's point of view. She gave him a relieved smile, which he gladly returned. A quick scan told him that he was lying down on a bed in a hospital room. His hands were tightly gripping the cotton sheets that were pulled up to his stomach. He let go of them when he felt Dawn's hand gently clasp his left.

"You're not wearing your glasses." Will remarked as their eyes locked. She was beautiful with them, and maybe it was due to what he just went through, but in the moment, she was an angel. An angel with bags under her eyes and exhaustion strewn about her face, but an angel nonetheless. It could have also been because of the light behind her head.

She broke their gaze with a turn of her head and cleared her throat. "Umm, right, I should get the doctor to let them know that you're awake. I'll be right back. Can I get you anything? Water? I'll get you a water."

Dawn was out the door before Will could say anything. Now that she was out of the room, he exhaled a deep breath and sat up. He felt pins and needles in his legs and feet as he tried to swing them over the side of the bed, stopping when he finally noticed the IV in his arm and EKG lines attached to his chest. He thought about removing them, but eventually just lied back down. It served as a good chance to think about everything that just happened.

The prior deaths and the dreams that Will was having gave him the nagging feeling that his town and Pure had something to do with it. His suspicions were confirmed when he found out that the others who were trapped in that place with him had taken it. But he never touched the stuff. Will knew what the potential side effects were, however, none of those ever included being transported to a nightmarish, alternate reality. Why was he taken there? More importantly, why were those people taken there and would they really turn up dead? He didn't see Teddy get killed. Maybe he was still alive, he thought to himself.

Looking up at the clock on the far wall told him that it was just about 3 a.m. He would have been there for about six hours, but it only felt like an hour at the most. His attention was diverted to the door as Dawn walked back in with a water bottle, flanked by a middle-aged man in a white coat, glancing down at a clipboard as he entered.

"Welcome back, Mr. Carroll." The man stated as he finally looked up and offered a pearly-white smile. "My name is Dr. Garcia. How are you feeling?"

That was a loaded question, Will thought to himself. Dawn placed the water bottle on the small tray table that was attached to the bed, offering her best sympathetic smile. "Okay," Will started as he looked down at all the wires and tubes that were connected to him, "all things considered, I guess. A little confused as to what happened to me."

"To be honest, so are we." Dr. Garcia replied. "Tell me, what's the last thing that you remember before you woke up here?"

My roommate Teddy being dragged down into a pit full of bleach-skinned, demonic pygmy creatures with no eyes, Will thought to himself. His lips pursed as he attempted to clear his mind of such thoughts. Maybe Teddy is okay, after all. He eyes shot upward as if he were really trying to think, even though he knew what the answer should be. "I was with Dawn at the movie theater," Will began while casting a glance over to her, "we sat down, and the lights started to lower like the film was about to start. Then I woke up in this hospital bed."

"Do you remember eating or drinking anything at the movie theater?" Dr. Garcia asked. "Did you smell anything that may have been out of the ordinary?"

Will shook his head amid gulping down some water. "No, I don't think we got anything. All I remember smelling there was popcorn."

"I went out to get some popcorn and drinks," Dawn offered, "when I came back, I thought Will just fell asleep." She turned around to face Will, clasping her hand down on his and wincing. "I'm sorry, I should've tried to wake you up immediately, and maybe you wouldn't have wound up here."

"That's not necessarily true." Dr. Garcia said before Will could respond. Will did move his other hand on top of Dawn's and gave her an encouraging smile. "We're not sure why or how it happened yet, but you fell into a comatose state Mr. Carroll. I was hoping you would have eaten or drank something from there so we can pin down a physical item that might have caused it. Right now, all we can do is speculate as to whether it was an airborne pathogen. Why it only targeted a couple of people, all of whom have had seemingly different adverse reactions…"

The doctor suddenly stopped talking and silence hung over the room. Will looked to the doctor and then back at Dawn, who was biting down on her bottom lip. She was purposely averting her eyes, so Will craned his neck to try and catch her attention.

"A couple of people?" Will asked, now looking back to the doctor. "Did others wind up here?"

For about fifteen seconds, nobody said a word. His question just hung there as Will awaited an answer that he feared he already knew. The doctor finally broke the silence with a sigh, followed by a quick nod.

"Four others in the theater fell into the same state as you did. Unfortunately, none of them woke up. Another person that was brought in early Saturday morning just passed away less than an hour ago. You're the only person who has woken up."

It confirmed what Will had feared the most. The doctor must have been talking about Teddy, and the other people that were with him. But there were only two others with him in the Other World. Then he remembered the massive bloodstain that seeped through his door when he first entered. There were no remains on the other side though, but with how things worked in that world, that might have not meant that much. Still, he needed to know. "Who was the other person that was brought in early yesterday?" Will asked.

The question caused the doctor's lips to tighten, and exhale through his nose. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have shared any details to begin with. There's a Willamette police detective that asked me to contact him if anyone were to wake up." Dr. Garcia replied as he wrote something down on his chart. "I'm going to give him a call but ask to give you an hour or two, so that you can recover and get your bearings."

Will nodded as the doctor headed towards the exit, only stopping and turning at the threshold. "Oh, and Mr. Carroll, that person was brought in early Saturday morning, not yesterday. It's Tuesday. I'm afraid you've been out for a little over two days."

The revelation didn't send Will's mind swimming with a thousand thoughts per second like it probably should have under normal circumstances. He knew that the real world's idea of time was subjective in that place. His conversation with Teddy had told him that much. Still, to find out that he had been unconscious in this plane of existence for over two days did take him by surprise. He was also extremely worried about leaving his room unattended to for that long. There was still enough Pure stored in that room to implicate him as a high-level dealer and land in a federal prison. If he didn't wind up back in the Other World and get killed first, that is. He needed to reach out to Horace and try to make sense of everything.

"Are you alright?" Dawn asked, which surprised Will more than anything he heard today. He was too busy lost in his own thoughts that he temporarily forgot she was there, which made him feel worse than he already did.

"Sorry," Will said while reaching for the water bottle again, "and thank you for this, by the way. I really hope I didn't cause you to worry too much."

Dawn gave him a lopsided smirk as she sat down in the chair beside his bed. "Sleep is overrated," she said with a light shrug, "especially since you were getting enough for the both of us."

The comment made Will genuinely laugh, which in turn made his ribs hurt a little bit. He lifted his shirt a little bit, but didn't see a bruise, so he figured there was some atrophy considering he'd been out for so long. At least his body had, in this world. It still didn't make sense to him but dwelling on it wouldn't help matters.

"That's a nice sentiment, I suppose." Will replied. For someone who hated even any remote feeling of vulnerability, here he lies all but exposed in front of this girl whom he just recently met, and it didn't feel uncomfortable. "Thank you for being the first person I saw when I woke up."

She did the best she could to hide her blush, but it spread all over her cheeks. "Well, umm, yeah well…" Dawn stammered while brushing some loose strands of hair from her face and putting her glasses back on, "…I mean, I don't know how great your vision is considering I look like a wreck, but you're welcome."

"You look great, just so you know." Will stated firmly with a genuine smile. "Does anyone else know that I'm here? My roommates?"

His concern was for the one that was in the Other World, of course, but he figured that Dawn would have told his roommates that he was in the hospital. Really, he was digging for a specific answer, and by the concerned look that briefly flashed over Dawn's face, he may be getting it.

"Yeah," Dawn began after clearing her throat, "they tried calling your mother first but didn't get through to her. I went by the house and told Curt that something happened at the movies, and you had to be taken to the hospital. And that's when Curt told me that Teddy…"

Dawn's words trailed off into silence and her hands started fidgeting in her lap. Will had to hear it though.

"What about Teddy?" Will asked as innocuously as he could.

"That person that the doctor said was brought in early that Saturday morning…" Dawn said, her voice breaking the slightest a couple of times. She had to take a moment to pause and remove her glasses to rub her eyes as a few tears gently rolled down her cheek. "…I'm so sorry Will, but that was Teddy. He passed away earlier this morning."

Will let the words sink in as he was now faced with the truth. His roommate was dead, and he didn't do anything to deserve it. He wasn't a bad guy, nor was he someone that was purposefully against the Order. The whole purpose was to convert, not to kill. That's what Will had been told. Was he lied to? Was this all an accident? He looked over at Dawn and swallowed hard, thinking what he should say. Will was still fatigued and getting everything straight in his head was a challenge. Lying to Dawn also felt wrong. But what choice did he have?

"My God…" Will muttered, "…he never came home Friday night and I figured that maybe he crashed at his date's house. John said it was unusual. What the hell is going on here? What happened at that movie theater?"

Before Dawn could say anything, the door swings open and a nurse walks in. The large, middle-aged woman gives Dawn a quick smile.

"Welcome back Will, we thought we may have lost you." The nurse commented matter-of-factly as she turned her attention to the monitor he was hooked up to. "I'm sorry to break this up, but Will's going to need some rest."

"You don't think I've had enough rest?" Will wryly asked the nurse.

"Yeah you probably have," the nurse remarked without missing a beat, "but doctor's orders. There are a couple of people that want to talk to you later. Since you've woken up, you've become something of a minor celebrity, as macabre as that sounds. Take this."

The nurse presented a white, oblong pill to Will. He hesitated before taking it, smirking to suppress a laugh at the irony. He took the pill and swallowed it without the assistance of water.

"That should help quell your headache." The nurse said while motioning for Dawn to follow her out of the room.

"I don't really have a headache, but okay. I'm okay, you know." The last comment was directed towards Dawn. He firmly clasped his hands around hers and gave her a smile, which she returned warmly. He glanced towards her lips and briefly thought about what it would be like to kiss her, but this wasn't the time nor the place. The color rising in her cheeks told him that she probably wouldn't have minded it. "You should get some rest. I'll give you a call later?"

"Okay. Get some more rest, I guess?" Dawn said with a grin before slipping her hand out from his grip and following the nurse out of the room.

As soon as they left the room, Will began looking for his cell phone. It wasn't on the end table and he could lean up far enough to see that it wasn't on the ledge where the vent was. It was probably with his clothes somewhere. With all the stuff attached to him, he should've asked what he should do if he had to go to the bathroom. Although feeling around the sides of the bed, the metallic thing he felt was most likely the answer.

Will let out a deep sigh, as all he could do was lay his head back against his pillow. The bad part about being alone was that he was stuck with those thousands of thoughts that were swimming through his mind. There was no beautiful blonde distraction anymore. Who knew if Pure had been found amongst the victim's belongings; amongst Teddy's belongings? His roommate didn't deserve to die, and he was guessing that neither did the young kid who worked at the movie theater, or the woman whose daughter was probably crying herself to sleep. The detective was going to come in and ask him questions, and he couldn't decide if he was worried more about being caught or not getting to the bottom of what was really going on. He had to get in contact with Horace; more importantly, he needed to reach his mother. He also had to get out of here before he could be questioned.

He pressed the call button next to his bed.

Dawn rubbed the bridge of her nose as she walked away from Will's room. She only managed to get three or four hours of sleep over the last two days, which was pretty incredible when she thought about it. The night at the movies kept replaying in her head. She came back from the concession stand and thought he had fallen asleep. She thought about waking him up but decided against it. It made for a boring first date, however she knew what it was like to pull an all-nighter or two. College students always have strange sleep schedules, she told herself. So, she let him sleep, as she sat back and tried to pay attention to the movie, even though she would look over at him every five minutes or so. He didn't move or make a sound the entire time.

About an hour into the movie is when she heard the commotion coming from the lobby. One of the ushers was found sleeping in the supplies room, and the manager couldn't wake him up. He wound up never waking up, nor did middle-aged man who was there on a date with his wife, nor the mother of the little girl who was heard crying for her mommy to get up. The latter would've been the roughest one that night, if not for the fact that Dawn couldn't stir Will.

So many things were going through her mind as she stumbled over to the vending machines. What caused this? Was something at the movie theater poisoned? But Will didn't eat or drink anything; he was out before Dawn got back. She had heard rumblings about Pure, the pill that showed up at parties and probably in the desk drawers of some professors. Will didn't seem the type to take any drugs though, despite the parties that his house regularly hosts. She couldn't help but think how fitting it'd have been that she would cry and worry and feel a certain way about a guy who wound up being on drugs.

With the thoughts flashing through her mind, it took almost half a minute to realize that the dollar she put in the vending machine was spit back out at her. Smoothing it out and re-inserting it didn't work. She let out an enormous sigh and closed her eyes, letting her forehead fall against the machine.

"You look like you've been through hell."

Dawn raised her head back up and to the right. The woman was about fifteen feet away, leaning against the back of a sofa in the waiting area. In contrast to how Dawn felt and probably looked, this woman was freshly made up and wearing a smart looking navy-blue pants suit. Even if Dawn didn't intern at channel nine, she would have known who Karen London was. This was the type of woman that Dawn strove to become after college. That fact made her fumble for words.

"Umm, yeah, well…" Dawn rubbed the back of her neck and gave a weak, lopsided smile, "…long day, or two."

"You can say that again." Karen responded before taking a sip from a styrofoam cup. "The coffee here's not bad, for a hospital. The café's just back there."
Karen motioned behind her down the hall, but before Dawn could take a step, the reporter stood up straight and took a step into her path.

"You came out of the room of that guy that just woke up, right?" Karen asked, even though it came out as more of a statement.

"How did you…"

Karen waved off the question and shook her head. "I heard that one of the people woke up and well, you look like you've been here since it happened. Plus, you didn't come out crying. After two days of waiting and hoping that he will wake up, you'd probably have to be helped out of that room."

Dawn stood speechless as Karen effectively broke down how she figured out that Will was the one that woke up. All she could do was nod once in response, which caused the reporter to smile.

"Well, I'm glad that your friend woke up. Or is he more than that?" Karen asked.

"I…I don't really think I'm the best subject for an interview." Dawn said as she attempted to save face. "Will's my friend."

"So, his name is Will," Karen noted, slipping completely into reporter mode, "and he's a student at Clearview with you, right? Has he fully recovered?"

Dawn frowned, knowing what Karen was trying to do. It momentarily made her second guess whether she should pursue that line of work. She didn't know if she would have the stomach to confront someone like this.

"Look," Karen said with a sigh, sensing Dawn's reservations, "I'm sorry to come at you like this. But everything that's been going on here has been strange and the death toll is rising. There are rumblings in the police department that all of this could be connected to the drug Pure. Nine people are dead, and a few of them were reportedly found with those pills on them. Six people randomly slipped into some sort of coma and your friend Will is the only one that woke up."
Silence hung between the two women as Dawn soaked in everything that she heard. Karen had a great point. There is something going on in this town, and her instincts told her that she should try and figure out what it was. She didn't think that Will was taking Pure, but how could she really know? Was the money that he seemed to have really from his family? Despite her feelings for him, this was her chance to actually do what she came to college for.

"His last name is Carroll." Dawn stated.

The man in the overcoat watched the two women from down the hall. He recognized the older one as a local reporter but wasn't sure who the younger girl was. It didn't matter who she was. All that mattered was that she mentioned Will's name; his full name. Down the road it could mean trouble. Now though, there was much to rejoice about. He grinned as he pulled out his phone and dialed. It only rang once.

"This is Horace. Tell her that Will survived the trial. The next phase will begin soon."