CHAPTER 11: PHANTASM

I'm on a train, but there's no one at the helm,
And there's a demon in my brain that starts to overwhelm,
And there it goes, my last chance for peace,
I lay me down, but I get no release,
I try to keep awake, I try to swim beneath,
But still I find this narcolepsy slides,
Into another nightmare.
And there's a demon in my head who starts to play,
A nightmare tape loop of what went wrong yesterday,
And I hold my breath 'till it's more than I can take,
And I close my eyes and dream that I'm awake

            ~Narcolepsy, Third Eye Blind

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Deep beneath the surface of Sunnydale, Faith made her way stealthily through the twisting tunnels that led off from the sewers. The light from her flashlight seemed a thin protection from the shadows that threatened to close in, and she could feel them pressing against the edges of the illumination, eager to devour the light that had no place among the caverns in the earth. She repressed a shudder and forced herself to think of other things. Getting all wigged out wasn't going to help her find…

She stopped, the mouth of the tunnel opening up to the broken stone remains of an old building, thick pillars rising up into the arches of an entryway. The doors had rotted off or been taken away long ago, and now the opening gaped like a leering mouth, inviting her, daring her to step inside.

Just an old building, she reassured herself, stepping forward.

It had been a church once, before whatever earthquake had sent it plummeting into the embrace of the earth, and a few stone pews still stood, a crumbling testament to those who had worshipped here once. Many of the pews had been destroyed when the church fell though, and huge chunks of stone littered the broken floor, forcing her to take her time as she approached the back of the building.

She could see the altar rising up from the floor ahead, bereft of any symbols to identify what sort of place of worship this had been. She raised the beam of her flashlight above the altar, the light traveling up the crumbling wall, and then leaped backward, nearly losing her balance atop the pile of rubble she was climbing, as she saw the form of a man looming above it. Heart thundering in her ears, she couldn't help but chuckle at herself as the image impressed itself upon her brain, making sudden sense. Of course, this was a church after all; Christ hanging upon the cross would be a natural decoration above many altars. She had only seen the form for a moment though, and thought its pale tint was the color of dead flesh, the feet and legs of some terrible creature that had launched itself at her.

Regaining her feet, she felt reassured somehow. She'd never been much on church—a heathen, her mother had called her—but the presence of the Christian savior was somehow comforting, a talisman against the creatures of the night. Surely there were no vampires here, in this once holy place. They would have found it, at the very least, distasteful.

She made her way to the altar quickly after that, her steps no longer hesitant, and gained the rise the altar sat upon. It had to be there, she thought, taking a last glance around the room, flashlight making a sweeping arc of the ruin. There were crumbling alcoves everywhere, but none of them deep enough to lead off into a separate section, and she guessed if any of the clergymen had made their home here, it had been on a level beneath the church; a level that no longer existed.

Gripping the flashlight between her teeth, she knelt down by the altar, fingers tracing the edges of the old stone, searching for a seam. Somehow she knew it was there… she could sense it, as if it were a beacon that called to her. She made a slow circle around the edges of the structure, fingers finding no holds along the corners, and at last, she stood, looking down at it curiously. On impulse, she slid her fingers beneath the slight lip of the surface, gripping and pulling upward—and was rewarded by a shift in the stone. With a heaving shove, she threw the stone top aside, her ears cringing against the loud crash it made as it fell to the floor, shattering into pieces.

Quickly, she stepped back and grabbed the flashlight from her mouth, shining it down inside the box. Nothing stirred within except a cloud of dust, and she could see the moldering remains of several items beneath; some sort of cloth, a few rosaries made of rotting wood, nothing of any note or value.

Gripping the flashlight in her teeth again, she reached in and shoved these aside, and beneath the old cloth, which disintegrated with her rough motion, she was rewarded by the sight of several old books. Their size seemed somehow grotesque, swollen beyond normal proportions by the water that had somehow crept in over the years, and her heart sank as she realized that whatever information they held was likely lost forever; they'd fall apart the moment she tried to open them. She put her hands on the edge of the stone and sighed around the flashlight. Damn, she'd been so sure—

The flashlight caught a glint of something metallic to the left of the books. She reached in, fumbling through the dust and debris, fingers encountering metal. She felt along the length of the item, getting a feel for its size and proportion, and then wrapped her fingers around what felt like a slender metal tube. Her heart leapt with excitement as she realized she had found it. Surely the scroll was in the tube!

She wrenched her arm to draw it free… and cold, dead fingers clenched around her wrist. Frantic, she kept pulling, her single thought to keep hold of the scroll and her flashlight at all costs, some dim part of her brain realizing that she'd never find her way back out of here without light. So overcome by the thought of escape, she didn't realize that she was pulling the creature that held her free of its prison.

The flashlight swung crazily, sending shadows scurrying back and forth over the surfaces that had seemed so benign a moment before, and she panicked, making a last desperate lurch to get away. Her feet caught in the rubble of the floor and she slid downward, her belly scraping down the side of the altar, and she felt the momentum shift as the creature rose above her, still holding her wrist. Overcome with terror and the sudden realization that she was all alone down here, she brought her head up, wanting, needing to see what it was—

Buffy had been dead for a long time. Worms crawled in and out of her sunken eye sockets and through the hole where her nose had once been. Her blond hair hung ragged and dirty, and huge chunks of it had fallen free, leaving ragged holes in the tight green flesh that covered her skull. Her lips had disintegrated long ago, but her teeth were still whole, and she seemed to leer at Faith as she looked down at her, her face a nightmarish Halloween mask.

Faith opened her mouth to scream long and loud, dropping the flashlight, and it hit the ground, clattering as it flickered and then went out. The scream locked in her throat, and tears formed in her eyes, terror hammering in her heart like a living thing.

The last thing she heard was Buffy's voice, whispering like the cold of a grave.

"It's not what you think."

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Faith woke, her throat giving voice to the scream her dream self hadn't been able to, and she thrashed around on the bed, trying to break the creature's grip on her, until at last she fell on the wooden floor of her room. The breath went from her lungs in a rush as she struck the surface, and she stopped struggling, suddenly aware that it was daytime, and she was safe in her room, not caught beneath the earth in the grasp of Buffy's hideous corpse.

She flipped over onto her back and sat up, bracing her elbows against her knees and running her hands through her hair. What the hell?

The door to her room opened and Beatrice stood there, blue eyes icily calm. "Faith? Are you all right?"

She looked up, wondering how she must appear to the older woman, still half-terrified and out of breath like she'd run twenty miles. Finally she managed to nod. "Just… a nightmare."

"You're sure you're all right?" Beatrice inquired again, and this time there was a note of concern n her voice.

She looked up, slightly annoyed that her Watcher was still there. "I said I was fi—"

As Faith watched, tiny beads of blood gathered at the base of Beatrice's throat, welling up along the line of a cut so thin she could barely see it. The beads swelled, growing into droplets, and then droplets gave way to a torrential flood. Faith scrambled to her feet, terrified beyond all coherent thought, and with sickening clarity, she saw Beatrice's head slid sideways atop her neck, the flesh rending with a thick tearing sound, blood spewing forth in a geyser from the stump of her neck. Her head fell from her shoulders as if in slow motion, striking the floor and tumbling to land at Faith's feet like a horrible gift.

"Ungrateful bitch," Beatrice spat, her bloodied face contorting with hatred as she stared up at Faith.

Faith put her hands over her face to block out the vision, feeling another scream rising up from her gut—

And she woke, sitting bolt upright in bed, barely managing to bite back the sound.

"What the fuck?" she exclaimed, leaping up from her bed and throwing the blankets aside. She put a hand to her forehead and paced the length of the tiny room a few times in quick succession, trying to bring her mind back under control.

A sharp rap on her door made her start, and she froze, eyes wide, her imagination running gleefully away with disturbing images of what lay on the other side of the door.

"Faith? Are you awake?" came Beatrice's muffled voice through the door.

She breathed again, unaware that she had stopped until that moment. "Um, yeah. I'm up. I'll be down in a few minutes," she added hastily, not wanting the woman to come in.

She could almost feel Beatrice's presence recede, and she sank down onto the bed with relief, head in her hands. It was way past time to figure out what the hell was going on inside her twisted brain.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

"Faith… why didn't you tell me about this before?" Angel asked, looking up at her enigmatically.

She couldn't tell if he was worried, disappointed, angry or what. And she didn't much care.

"I didn't think it was important. Look, Angel, I've had lots of nightmares since…" Finch. The blood on her hands. The professor she'd so casually gutted. "I've had a lot of nightmares," she concluded, leaving it at that. "And none of them were as… real as these. They're really wigging me out. Am I… am I going crazy?" she asked, sinking down into a chair.

He looked at her face, so frantic and scared, so worried that maybe something was wrong with her. Whatever her reasons for not telling him before, at least she was telling him now, and wasting time on recriminations would be just that; a waste of time.

"No," he said gently. "I don't think you're crazy." He rose from his seat and took a step toward her, stopped, hesitated. "Faith… you're a Slayer. Your dreams can be prophetic—"

The look she gave him was so full of naked terror that for a moment he forgot what he'd been saying. She squirmed in the chair, as if she wanted to crawl away from him, hide from what he was saying.

"You mean these things could be real? They could… happen?"

"Probably not exactly like you saw them," he said, trying to sound reassuring. He moved toward her with more certainty now, kneeling down beside her. Her hands twisted in her lap and she looked as if she were ready to bolt out the door at any second. Calmly, he reached out, grasping one of her hands in his and pulling it toward him. Her skin was incredibly warm and he could feel her heartbeat pounding rapidly through the thin skin of her wrist.

"Faith," he said commandingly, and obediently, she turned her eyes on him. "Listen to me. Dreams almost never mean exactly what we see. Their meanings are usually more symbolic of deeper truths. In the case of a Slayer though, the truths tend to be more of a prediction of future events than the random ramblings of the subconscious." He felt her begin to pull away and held onto her hand more tightly. "That doesn't mean you'll be coming face to face with… corpses," he said, stumbling over Buffy's name and finally avoiding it. "It means there's something bigger at work here. Maybe it's even… maybe it's a warning of what's to come."

"I don't care what it's trying to tell me!" she said desperately, struggling to break his grip on her. "I just want it gone."

He grabbed her other hand and held them both tightly, moving so that he was directly in front of her, their entwined hands between them. He caught her eyes with his and held them, intense and sincere.

"The only way to get rid of the dreams, Faith, is to listen to them."

She shook her head, hair tumbling about her face, head lolling away from his.

"Faith," he shook her once, and her eyes snapped back to him, large and fearful. "Trust me."

She looked at him for a long moment in silence, and he could see the thoughts rush through her mind, could see how torn she was, how undecided. At last she closed her eyes and nodded once.

He let go of her hand and reached up to touch her cheek. "It'll be okay," he said quietly. She sat there a moment longer, her eyes still closed, and then she jerked her head away as if his touch had burned her.

He drew his hand back, surprised, but she was looking at him now, the fire back in her eyes, fear relegated to the background.

"Let's do it, then."

He hesitated, wondering… then he nodded and stood. "Okay."

"Where do we start?"

"With the history of the local churches," he replied, already moving toward the bookshelves.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Faith stepped out into the daylight outside the mansion, list of books to look for clutched in her hand. She paused, her other hand reaching up to touch her cheek… she could still feel the touch of his hand there, so gentle and caring upon her skin. How many times had she been touched like that in her life? Once? Twice, maybe? It unnerved her, the effect he'd had on her, and she'd been damned glad to get out of there.

Yeah. Damned glad.

She stood there a moment longer, dark eyes uncertain, and then she let her hand fall away from her face, pushing the incident from her mind as she made her way toward Sunnydale downtown.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

It was well past sundown when she returned to the mansion, arms laden with bags of books.

"You know, for a town that's only a hundred and two, this one sure has a lot of history," she said, dropping the bags unceremoniously on the floor.

Angel stood at the table, arms spread wide as he leaned over it, looking intently at whatever he had laid out upon it. "It's a lot older than that," he said distractedly.

"That's not what the sign out front says," she said, moving over to the table to see what had him so enraptured.

"It wasn't called Sunnydale, back then," he answered, still not looking up. "The Spaniards settled here sometime in the 1700's, and even more ancient civilizations lived here before then. The earthquake of 1812 was enough to send the Spaniards on their way, though, and only scattered peoples lived here until the Mayor officially founded it as Sunnydale in 1900."

She nodded, seeming impressed. "Somebody's been doing their homework."

"That's old news," he said dismissively. "What'd you get?" he asked finally looking up and stepping away from the table.

She shrugged and waved her hand in the direction of the books she'd carried in. "All kinds of stuff. Have a look." She wandered closer to the table. "What'd you get?"

"Maps," he said shortly, rummaging through the bags. He sifted through the books as he stacked them off to the side, shaking his head in annoyance. "I don't think official history is going to tell us much… did you manage to get—"

"Check the brown paper bag," she replied, leaning over the table to have a better look at the old map. It was yellowed with age, its edges split and wrinkled with time, and the landscape it depicted didn't look anything like the Sunnydale she was familiar with today.

Angel returned to the table a moment later with a few small leather-bound books. "Where did you get these?"

She looked at them and shrugged. "Sunnydale's Sunny Christian Bookstore," she said offhandedly. "The old lady behind the counter was so excited that I was interested in them that she told me all about the Sunnydale church history. I barely escaped with my heathen soul intact," she added with a wry grin.

Angel nodded, thumbing through the pages. "These are handwritten," he noted. "Did she say anything else about them?"

"Just that they were probably useless except for collecting. Said no one could read them. I figured your magnifying glass could help with that, though."

"They seem to be written in some kind of code," he said in agreement. "I think they're journals of some sort."

Faith shrugged again, moving away from the table and dropping into a nearby chair. "That's your department." She glanced back at the table, her mind still on the map. "So you really think this scroll is in a church underground, like in my dream?"

"It seems too blatant a message not to investigate, don't you think?" he asked, looking over at her.

"I guess…" Her face was troubled, and she glanced away from him, not quite willing to voice her thoughts.

"You won't be going down there alone," he said, as if reading her mind.

"Yeah," she said abruptly, leaping to her feet. "Well, good luck with your reading."

"You're not going to stick around?"

"I've gotta patrol."

"I'll let you know if I find anything," he called after her, but she was already gone.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Angel spent three nights of solid reading before he found it.

He hurried from his seat by the fireplace to the map on the table, finger coming to rest on a small building.

He looked back at the book, skimming the paragraph he'd just read with the magnifying glass again, and then looked to the map, tapping his finger against the drawing with certainty.

"There…"

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

The vampire servant glanced up nervously as his mistress rose from the scrying pool, her face alive with an emotion that frightened him more than her frequent outbursts of rage. She looked… happy.

"He's found it," she hissed, lips parting in a cruel smile.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

"Can't you just go down and get it yourself?" Faith asked, her voice edgy with irritation.

"I won't be able to touch it," Angel said, pulling the sewer grate from its resting place. "According to this Brother Leemin's journal, it's protected against evil."

"But you're…" she trailed off at the look he gave her, lowering her eyes. "Okay. Then it's safe," she concluded forcefully. "If the vamps can't touch it—"

"Faith, if they figure out where it is, they'll find a way. We have to get it." He fixed her with a look that was so intense and warm that it made her want to punch him.

"Fine," she said moodily, and before Angel could utter another word, she lowered herself onto the ladder and began descending into the sewers.

He followed after, sliding the manhole cover back into place as he went.

Several minutes later, another set of hands slid the cover off.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

The tunnels were just as she'd dreamed, and she had to fight herself to keep from turning tail and running back the way they'd come. At least she had more than a paltry flashlight this time; she'd come armed with torches and glow sticks, just in case.

Angel moved beside her, just slightly ahead, leading the way, glancing back at her every now and then as if to make sure that she was still there. They moved deeper into the tunnels, away from the center of town, at last reaching the point where earthen tunnels branched off from the man-made concrete.

"It's not far now," Angel said, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder over at her.

She bit back a nasty retort and nodded, tightening her grip on the flashlight as they descended down the curving slope of packed dirt. The tunnel twisted once or twice, and they were just coming up around another turn when she was overcome with a sense of déjà vu. She watched the arched opening materialize out of the darkness like a mirage, its appearance freezing her in place.

"Faith?" Angel asked softly. He had stopped and turned toward her, his dark eyes gentle and questioning.

"You're coming in with me, right?" she asked quickly, harshly, her eyes darting toward him.

He nodded, and she hesitated only a moment before shoving past him. "Let's do it quick, then."

Together, they passed under the arch, and despite his presence, Faith felt herself breaking out in a cold sweat. It was freaksome, how exactly like her dream this place was. The standing pews stretched away like sentinels before her, their decimated brothers and sisters strewn across the rocky floor precisely the same way she remembered.

"Fuck," she muttered, wiping a hand over her cool, slick brow. She thought Angel shot her a concerned look from the side, but she didn't bother to look back, moving even faster toward the altar.

They reached the altar and Faith hesitated, looking at Angel expectantly. He nodded once and grabbed the lip of the stone top, throwing it from the altar with far more ease than she had in her dream. He gave her a penetrating look, and then stepped back, waiting.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and stepped forward, flashlight trembling in her hand. The light bounced over the contents within, revealing exactly what she'd seen before. Biting down on the inside of her cheek, she leaned over, shoving the cloth and the books aside, hands happening on the metal tube that she had half-expected not to be there. She inhaled sharply as she gripped it tightly and yanked it free, so fast and hard that she nearly fell backward. She was still expecting cold, decaying hands to grab her when she felt Angel reach out and catch her, steadying her on her feet.

She looked at him for a moment in silence, still trying to break free of the remembered horror of her dream, and then one corner of his mouth quirked in a smile.

"You did it."

"Yeah," she said, holding up the metal scroll case in front of her, looking at it as if dazed. It didn't look like much, plain and battered and rusting with age, and at last she snapped out of her trance and pulled away from him.

"Let's get the hell out of here."

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

She was feeling much better by the time they rounded the corner back into the main sewers, the scroll case tucked reassuringly in the inner pocket of her jacket, the memory of her nightmare behind her.

Now all they had to do was get back to the mansion and—

Nine sets of glowing yellow eyes greeted her as she came into full view of the main corridor.

"Shit," she swore softly and spun—

Seven more sets of eyes glowed in the corridor behind them.