[b]Moreland[/b]
Approximately 2115 Hours
Mountain City

The sound of hurtling cars down the freeway was not quite the same as that of the overpass earlier. Instead these engines thrummed with the sound of acceleration as their wheels sung on the pavement. That was all the man heard at first in this void, an absolute nothingness. His eyes soon recovered however, as did his other senses, except that it all felt distant and almost dream-like. A bad nightmare or trance he could not stir from and as he came to, he realized why. Someone, rather something, held him by the chest with his back pinned to the grated surface of chain link fence. James was suspended, but his worn-in, filthy sneakers held him still on the railing where he could look down to certain doom of the cars traveling through the night. If the force keeping him back so much as gave at all, he would fall.

[i]"You always wanted to go on a spirit journey, James."[/i]

The voice returned, as soon did the ghostly silhouette that reached out before him; a limb that was almost as wide as a tree's trunk, ending in huge, clawed digits that ignored the flesh and dug into the surface of the soul. He blinked and tried to swallow, finding himself still paralyzed. The invisible lips parted again as the speaker continued, its immaterial form standing with concerning ease upon nothing at all before him.

[i]"Now, either I take what you have to know bit by bit and you take that journey early, or you tell me what you have seen."[/i] The grip tightened as a searing inner pain tore at him, one beyond sight from his seemingly impending demise.

"I... have seen a few people... they aren't just people, but there's a lot now... gathering here." James struggled although he could not even voice himself and not a word came from him, not that it could be heard from the noise of the traffic below. All he could do was flick his eyes between his captor and the world beneath him, watching his shoe strings dangle off the rounded bar, just as helpless as he was.

[i]"And which one did your sight seem the most problematic?"[/i]

[i]"W-what?"[/i]

The hold upon him simultaneously loosened in the physical world and grew worse in the body outside body. He cried out inside himself and struggled to open his eyes again, each one damp as he struggled for control; his shoes now centered on the bar and precariously holding him up. Any further errors or delays would likely be met with worse, perhaps the vagrant man's life. James could not be for certain and in many ways, he really did not want to be. He wanted this to all be a bad trip, something that would sober him up, put him back on the right track after falling off the wagon so many times. Yet all he could do was cringe and whimper to himself, accosted by something no sane person would believe.

[i]"Which ones, James?"[/i] The snarl that accompanied the words emphasized just how insistent this otherworldly thing was, how its faintly luminescent eyes grew more intense in James' vision. And like two dim white embers stoked by returned air, they burned into him with terrible intensity and a certain casualness.