Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

Wallace felt the pull the moment they hit the road. He gritted his teeth
against it. He hadn’t known what it’d been before. He did now. He looked
down at his arms, expecting to see his skin beginning to flake off. Not yet, but
soon.
Wallace thought Hugo would turn toward town, perhaps driving down the
main drag and back to the shop.
He didn’t.
He went the opposite direction, leaving everything behind. The forest
grew thicker on either side of the road, the trees swaying in a cool breeze,
limbs clacking together like bones. The sun sank lower in front of them, the
sky pink and orange and shades of blue that Wallace couldn’t believe existed,
deep, dark, like the farthest depths of the ocean.
No one followed them; no cars on the road passed them by. It was as if
they were the only two people in the entire world on a lonely stretch of road
that led to nowhere and everywhere all at once.
“Faster,” he said in Hugo’s ear. “Please go faster.”
Hugo did, the engine of the scooter whining pathetically. It wasn’t built for
speed but it didn’t matter. It was enough. The wind whipped through their
hair as they leaned into every curve, the road a blur beneath them, flashes of
white and yellow lines shooting across Wallace’s vision.
It was only a few minutes later that Wallace’s skin began to rise and flake
away, trailing behind them. Hugo saw it out of the corner of his eye, but
before he could speak, Wallace said, “I’m all right. I swear. Go. Go. Go.”
Hugo went.
Wallace wondered what would happen if they never stopped. Perhaps if
they went far enough, Wallace would drift away into nothing, leaving all the
pieces of him behind. Not a Husk. Not a ghost. Just motes of dust along a
stretch of mountain road, ashes spread as if he’d mattered.
And maybe he had. Not to the world at large, not to very many people in
the grand scheme of things, but here, in this place? With Hugo and Mei and
Apollo and Nelson? Yes, he thought maybe he mattered after all, a lesson in
the unexpected. Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that the great answer to the
mystery of life? To make the most of what you have while you have it, the
good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.
In death, Wallace had never felt more alive.