In Between Worlds

Another Meeting With My Demon

Getting home that day felt like walking through a dream I was terrified to wake up from.

I could still feel her. Jessica. Her soft skin against mine when she helped me up. The faint scent of lavender from her hair. The way her cardigan felt wrapped around my bleeding knuckles. The way her hand had fit in mine — small, warm, human — while a demon king screamed inside my chest.

For ten minutes in the Whispering Woods, Akuma had been silent.

Ten minutes of peace. Ten minutes of just _me_.

I was going to hold onto that for as long as I could.

I closed my bedroom door, kicked off my shoes, and collapsed onto my bed face-first. And I smiled. Like a complete, utter fool.

My phone buzzed. Chioma.

_Chioma: Jess said u fell in the woods??? Are u ok??? She’s freaking out._

I stared at the text. _She’s freaking out._ For me.

The spiral mark on my chest gave a faint, warm pulse. Not pain. Not death. Something else.

_Alex: I’m fine. Just clumsy. Tell her thanks._

I didn’t say _tell her I love her_. I didn’t say _tell her she saved my life today_. I didn’t say _tell her I’d die a thousand times if it meant she’d hold my hand once_.

Some things are safer locked in the box.

I tossed my phone aside and exhaled. The ceiling fan spun slow circles above me. Mom was downstairs watching Zee World. Dad wasn’t home from work yet. Normal. For one second, everything was normal.

Then I remembered who I was.

I sat up. School bag. Textbooks. I was the best in Mathematics and Further Maths in all of JSS3. I’d held that position since JSS1, back when I still thought differential equations were the scariest thing in my life.

I couldn’t lose that. Not now. If I wasn’t smart, if I wasn’t _useful_, what was left? Just a boy with a demon. Just a monster waiting to happen.

So I pulled out my Further Maths textbook. _Permutations and Combinations_. The pages were familiar. Safe. Numbers didn’t lie. Numbers didn’t whisper. Numbers didn’t want me to kill my classmates.

_“How many ways can 5 boys and 3 girls be arranged in a row if—”_

I solved. And solved. And solved.

The sun went down. Mom called me for dinner. I said I wasn’t hungry. The lie tasted like ash, but she didn’t push. She was used to “Alex is studying.”

Time bled away.

7 PM. 8 PM. 9 PM.

The house got quiet. Mom went to bed. Dad’s car pulled in at 10:30. I heard him moving downstairs, then the shower, then silence.

And before I could even think, before I could even dread it, it was night.

Night. My worst part of the day.

Over these three years, I’d learned one truth like a law of physics: *Akuma always came out during the mid-hours of the night.*

12:00 AM. Midnight. The witching hour. The devil’s hour.

I didn’t know why. Maybe the veil between worlds was thinnest then. Maybe he just liked the dramatic timing. Maybe he knew I was weakest when the world was asleep and I was alone.

From 12:00 to 12:13 AM — exactly thirteen minutes — I wasn’t me. Not fully.

I could feel him rising as the clock ticked. Like a tide. Like a sickness. My skin would go cold. The spiral mark would burn. My eyes would bleed to crimson. And his voice would replace mine.

_“Good evening, little host,”_ he’d say, using my mouth, my tongue. _“Did you miss me?”_

I always did. Not because I wanted to. Because he was part of me. And you always miss the parts of you that are missing, even if they’re poison.

But tonight… tonight I was tired.

Tired of being afraid. Tired of being a passenger in my own body. Tired of him using my voice to count down the deaths of strangers. Tired of Jessica having to save me without knowing it.

Tonight, I wanted to confront the king of the underworld by myself.

No Jessica. No Chioma. No math textbooks. Just me. And him.

So I made sure I didn’t sleep.

11:00 PM. I splashed water on my face.

11:30 PM. I did push-ups until my arms shook.

11:45 PM. I sat on the edge of my bed, Bible in my lap.

Mom’s old Bible. Leather cover. Pages thin as whispers. She gave it to me when I turned ten. _“For protection, Alex. The word of God is a shield.”_

I didn’t know if it would work on a demon king. But it was all I had.

11:57 PM.

The air changed.

It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it. But the night _shifted_. Like a room going quiet when a predator walks in. The ceiling fan’s hum got lower. The crickets outside stopped. Even the air felt thicker, like breathing through wet cotton.

My skin prickled. The spiral mark was ice.

12:00 AM.

Every creature went silent at once.

No dogs barking. No cars on the street. No wind. The world held its breath.

The night suddenly felt _wrong_. Like a song played in the wrong key. Like a smile with too many teeth.

And then he came out.

Not a full manifestation. He couldn’t, not yet. The veil was thin, but not broken. But I saw him. In my head. In the mirror across my room. In the dark corners of my ceiling.

Akuma.

Seven feet tall. Skin like obsidian, cracked with veins of molten gold. Horns that curled back from his head like a ram’s, but wrong. Too sharp. Too alive. His chest was bare, the same spiral mark as mine carved into his flesh, but his _bled_ black smoke. And his eyes—

His eyes were crimson. Not red. _Crimson_. The color of fresh murder. The color of the end of the world.

Looking at them, even in my mind, sent cold shivers down my spine and locked my lungs.

I was with my Bible. I thought of raising it. I thought of screaming a verse. _“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not—”_

I couldn’t move my hands.

It wasn’t paralysis. It was _fear_. But not normal fear. Not the fear of a test or a bully or the dark.

This was a fear that was out of this world. No — it was different. The fear I felt was one words couldn’t describe. It was primordial. Cellular. The kind of fear a mouse feels when the hawk’s shadow passes over. The kind of fear your blood remembers from ancestors who saw gods and ran.

My heart wasn’t beating. It was _hammering_. Trying to break my ribs to escape.

And then he spoke to me.

Not in my head. Out loud. Using the air in my room, the dust, the dark. His voice was like that of a million giants speaking in unison, like mountains grinding together, like the sound the earth would make if it could scream.

It wasn’t sound. It was _weight_. It pressed on my chest until I couldn’t breathe.

*“ALEX.”*

My name in his mouth was a curse. A claim.

*“IF YOU WEREN’T MY HOST…”*

Each word vibrated in my bones. My teeth. My eyeballs.

*“THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN YOUR LAST DAY LIVING.”*

Those words killed me completely.

Not metaphorically. My heart _stopped_. My vision whited out. My legs gave out and I hit the floor, knees first, then face. The Bible slipped from my hands and landed open, pages bent.

No, I didn’t collapse.

I _fainted_.

The world went blur, then black, then nothing.

I felt my consciousness sucked out of me like water down a drain. Like my soul was a thread and he’d just yanked it.

The last thing I heard before the dark took me was his laugh.

It wasn’t cruel. It was _fond_.

_“Sleep, little host. You’re not ready to face me yet. But you will be. Soon.”_

---

*I dreamed of the Whispering Woods.*

But not the woods I knew.

These woods were wrong. The trees were made of bone. The leaves were black. The sky was red, and it was bleeding.

I was ten again. Barefoot. In my pajamas. The spiral mark on my chest was fresh, still wet with blood.

And Akuma was there. Not in my head. _There_. Towering over me, blocking the red sun.

_“Why?”_ I asked him in the dream. My voice was small. Ten-year-old small. _“Why me?”_

He knelt. The ground cracked under his weight. He brought his face close to mine. His breath smelled like graves and burnt offerings.

_“Because you looked back,”_ he said. His voice was quiet now. Almost gentle. _“On the night the veil thinned, all the other children ran. But you… you turned around. You looked at me. And you weren’t afraid. You were… curious.”_

“I don’t remember that,” I whispered.

_“You wouldn’t. I took it from you. Mercy.”_ He touched my cheek with one claw. It was cold. _“You invited me, Alex. With your eyes. And now you are mine. Until you are strong enough to be free. Or until you break. Whichever comes first.”_

Then he stood.

_“Wake up. She’s calling you.”_

---

*I woke up choking.*

6:03 AM. My alarm hadn’t gone off.

I was on the floor. The Bible was still open beside me, Psalm 23. _“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”_

My head was pounding. My mouth tasted like metal. My uniform was soaked in sweat. The spiral mark was dull, aching, like a bruise.

And my phone was ringing.

Jessica.

6:03 AM. Why was she calling me at 6:03 AM?

I fumbled for it, fingers shaking. “H-hello?”

“Alex!” Her voice was panicked. Breathless. “Alex, are you okay? I had the worst dream about you. You were in the woods and you were hurt and there was blood and— and I couldn’t reach you—”

My heart stopped again. But not from fear.

From something else.

_She dreamed of me._

Akuma was silent. For the first time in hours, completely silent. Like he was listening. Like he was _afraid_.

“I’m okay, Jess,” I said. My voice was hoarse. Ruined. “I’m okay. I’m here. I’m alive.”

“Promise me,” she said. “Promise me you’re not going to the woods anymore. Promise me.”

The spiral mark burned. _Lie,_ Akuma hissed, waking up. _You’ll go back. You always go back. The woods are yours. I am yours._

I looked at the Bible. At the open page. At the sunlight starting to creep through my window.

“I promise,” I told her. And for the first time in three years, I meant it.

Because if Akuma was afraid of her, even in my dreams…

Then maybe, just maybe, I had a weapon after all.