When I beckon, walk. Be it the depths of hell, or the heights of glory, trust in my direction and you shall be uplifted forevermore.

Some time before his twenty-first birthday, months after initial scare of Kenton Abbey, Iyan found himself encompassed by a terrible sense of wanting. The post office was cold and dull, and provided no more balms for Iyan's boredom than his vague wanderings around the woods. His nightmares had returned in full around this time, plaguing him with the images of death, children, and failure in a horrid series of colours. When he wasn't running from the black-eyed corpse of his long-dead cousin, he was nearly tearing his hair out with boredom and impatience. There was nothing of interest that could be in the middle of this spectrum of existence. Cursed to sleeplessnes and forbidden from productivity, Iyan had wished most strongly that year to be somewhere other than Tottenham Cross.

As if his suffering was not enough, Aunt Myra fell ill, plunging her into a tender depression that made the entire house dark, quiet, and quite miserable to be in. No amount of reading or company could inspire her to smile, and her fevered disposition only worsened by the week. With Uncle Hans escaping to the closest drink or work, Iyan was alone in his anguish. How he wished for a friend! The stag he had grown close to in the nearby woods was long dead, murdered by the locals who wished for a few photos in the news and a horn to hang above the house. Hardly anybody at the public school had looked his way, and that was when Iyan was there. The only sort of conversation he'd had with anybody was at the post office, and then, he was only ever an employee, a box to stamp and file mail. It was enough to drive him into a depression.

If there was one thing Iyan could rely on of Aunt Myra's, it was her religion. Prayer would save him. Hadn't it always saved Myra? He presumed the only reason she was still ill and out of sorts was due to her reluctance to leave the house and visit with a priest. Unfortunately for Iyan, Kenton Abbey, home of spirits and his sleepwalking, was the only home for priests within fifty miles. Nightmares were the gods of that despicable church. Since his initial incident in the depths of its haunted halls, Iyan found himself avoiding even the street the abbey was fixed upon. Perhaps, however, the time to plunge himself once more into the depths was now. Work had been slow, his guardians distant and unreachable. Had Iyan a friend to visit, surely he could have avoided the nefarious curiousity that now pulled him out of the house and towards the source of troubled dreams. Even as he walked towards the familiar black spire, spine twitching as though to say leave while you yet can, Iyan could already feel his heart pounding. Was this not what he wanted? Excitement? The forceful push of blood through his frail veins? Restlessness was indeed a cruel master.

The building was just as dusty and broken on the outside as it had been several months ago. The front door sagged on its hinges, the painted glass on the front panel revealing a saint quite without a head. The limb in question had cracked onto the steps, a yellow shard strangely dull in the light. Iyan brushed it aside with a foot and hesitantly pushed the door in. Silence was all that greeted him. No ghosts or rats had been assigned to welcome visitors to the decrepit abbey. Relieved, Iyan found himself wondering why the building had not been restored, why there was assuming of the duties the previous owner possessed. Perhaps others had discovered the basement?

Unsure what he looked for (or, so he told himself, as there was an unconscious determination to revisit his past horrors), Iyan made his way through the dining hall, ignoring the eerily excitable expressions of the statues around the massive table. The rumours surrounding the creation of the statues was a tale worthy of being explored, but Iyan noticed only the path downstairs. Some other curious being would have to delve into the mysterious scratched upon the marble and stone.

Bedrooms floated dustily by, so quickly did he walk. Would it still remain? Was the cold, grey surface still plagued by ghosts? Iyan shivered the faster he walked, until he found himself facing the door to the basement. Tendrils of darkness seemed to reel out from under the frame. The faint hiss of wind, locked in the drafty underground, sounded from behind the thick wood. A hesitant hand reached up, gripped the handle. Despite his hesitation, Iyan felt the door open, and he was thrust into the room.

The room was darkness incarnate. He strained and held his eyes as far open as they would go, but Iyan saw nothing, nothing but the pale silver basin, illuminated as though it had stolen the light from everything else. The whispering of the wind, he realised, was coming from the basin.

What am I doing? It's not too late to leave. I can go back home, go back to bed... back to being bored. It wasn't that, he decided, that was so terrible. There's no life there. Everybody is floating from one place to another, filling the air with their terrible greyness. Iyan shivered again. If death awaited him here, then it was better this way. At least here, it would be a personal affair, a victimless crime. He stepped closer, only to see that the apparitions form before were gone. There were no hands to pull him under, not this time. He looked closer, brought his face to the unnatural water. He gasped, his nose dipping just under the surface, as the basin's truth rippled clear.

What Iyan saw was himself, a crown of black and gold affixed on his brow. Branches twisted up from it to form horns, feathers tied to the brim. His eyes were not his, he recognised, his lungs seizing as fear took hold of him. They were cold, dead eyes, as though painted like the crown he wore. What terrified Iyan the most from this spectral image was his mouth, stained red, teeth clenched in a smile better suited for wolves. It was too dark for wine, this red that dug in between each tooth and slipped into violent trails down his lips.

Iyan knew it was blood.

Iyan next opened his eyes to see there were no more lights in the woods. Even the voices were gone. All that remained was the memory of the abbey, but even that was fading, until all he was left with was an impression of distrust.

Sitting alone in the field, Iyan felt at once the desire to be in the company of someone, even if they were insane and filled with an unending source of energy to scream. He pushed himself off the ground, staggered in the last direction he had seen people run. Turning his head to inspect the eerily empty forest, he gasped in shock as the crown slipped down his brown and filled his vision with darkness. The loss of sight only lasted a few seconds, but it rattled him, filled him with desire to flee. A murderer's arms would be a warm sight, he considered with a desperate breath.

Iyan pushed his crown up and made to move into the trees when a familiar sound filled his head.

Come to me, he heard, like a breath of wind carried across an ocean. It was a voice he had assuredly heard before, but he could not place where. Regardless of its origin, Iyan felt a pang of panic as it swirled around him. Had the twins somehow trapped his crown, filled it with some magical trick? He made to remove it and hurl it into the darkness, but the voice spoke again. Go where the light lies, little fawn.

Iyan wanted to ignore it, but found that he could not. His hands moved against his will, pushed his crown firmly back where it belonged. His feet, by the gods! They pushed him forward, despite his crying out and grasping of all that stood between him and his commanded fate. When he could at last control his own body, he was too excited with stopping to notice the pool and the people around it. Only when he had exercised his own will long enough to bend over and expel the vomit that pushed at his throat did Iyan lift his gaze and look upon the robed figures by the water. They said nothing, only extended their arms and beckoned him closer. Iyan saw none of them wore a crown, but their faces were painted in the same symbols that decorated the fixtures of wood he wore.

He wanted nothing to do with this terrifying group, but he recalled his own desire for people, and found he had no choice. Where was he to go? His companions had long abandoned him to the trees. Iyan took a hesitant step forward, hands clutched against his arms. What purpose was there in all of this? How he wished he'd stayed home! Alas, he was now before this odd collection of foreigners, his arms being pulled into theirs, his head cradled before the pool of water. It occurred to him that he was likely still drunk, poisoned on whatever it was that the Fellings laced their drinks with. Was this all yet another illusion?

The water proved otherwise. When he realised they meant to submerge him, Iyan began to kick and struggle. How he would have rather died, than remain in any capacity under this strange surface! Death, he tried to scream, but the painted faces did not care. Blackened hands, running with some dark ink into the water around him, pushed, held, restrained. Even as he choked and swallowed the foul water, Iyan remembered. He had seen this, two years ago! Had these hands not already drowned him in the darkness of Kenton Abbey? Revelation or not, Iyan was drowning now. The hands would not relent. The shirt, previously lightweight and well-suited to the sweat-inducing activities of the festival, weighed him down now, pulled his limbs under the water until he was fully submerged.

Iyan's legs sank down, despite his desperate flailing. The faces of his killers grew blurry and faded from sight, until all he could see was the water. It moved so thickly, so slowly for the waves. Perhaps it was always this leaden. He had been betrayed by it so often, forced into death's presence that Iyan had never paid much attention to the qualities of water. He tried to scream, alert the people above that he was dying, but he swallowed more water and sank a little deeper. It was not long before even the water disappeared from view, until the darkness pulled him all the way down. He closed his eyes and filled the water with his tears. This was then end.

Just as he had given up hope, the cold rush of air smacked him, and his eyes flew open to see the trees once more. Robes cushioned his fall to the ground, hands held his crown to his brow. It was a minute before Iyan could breathe again, but his first attempt at a gasp for air reduced him to choking. Was this what really killed people, the suffocation after submersion? He reached for the people to help, to expel the water that strangled him, but they only stared with their dark eyes. Iyan could feel his lips numb. His fingers reached to his throat, but his vision wavered and he fell backwards. All around him, the figures leaned in, observed passively his convulsions. He suspected they wanted to witness him die, but one last question entered his mind before he fell unconscious: why hadn't they left him under the water?

The group waited. It was not long before the shuddering of Iyan's legs stopped, until his hands ceased their desperate clawing at his throat. Still, they waited, gazed until Iyan's throat bulged and swelled. Blue eyes, worn down by years of being cast at the ground, opened and stared at something they could not see.

Iyan opened his lips and spat forth the stone that had been lodged in his throat, and a rush of air filled him at last. Though the gathering did not care much once he could breathe (and weep uncontrollably at the gift of underserved life), they cradled the stone in their hands and stood. Pulled to his feet, Iyan was jostled ahead of them somehow, and led the procession back towards the noise and the light with water pouring from his hair and tears flowing freely down his face. In the glow of the approaching fire, his crown shone brightly, and his companions smiled to themselves amidst the crowd.