Serial Thriller 73

Let the fun continue.! This is the 73rd installment of a continuing fictional story. Before each new segment, the last paragraph from the prior edition will be shown in quotations.
“ He began speaking in a tongue I did not understand as he had been doing when I arrived. My eye lids shuttered and then opened wide. I was there! What had only been an image locked in my imagination was now a world every bit as real as the one I lived in everyday.”
By C.L. Harmon
The swamp that I had dreamth

of several weeks before. Being in the boat with the vines strangling me and the book on the boat was real. I was there again! Only this time, I was standing and there were no invading vines stifling the life out of me. It was peaceful and the sounds that had seemed so unfamiliar before were now soothing and familiar.
The boat drifted to the shore and I cautiously exited feeling my shoes sink slightly into the marshy soil. I began walking slowly while my steps made a sucking sound from the muddy ground beneath my feet. I felt anxious, but not fearful. A large turtle crossed before me and stopped to give me a slow turning glance as he did so. A few yards away I noticed a cave carved out of the dense forest that seemed out of place and not quite real. It was not a rock cave, but one that was literally cut from the foliage of the swamp.
I felt compelled to enter, but still clutching my reality and connection to Father Blaine and my presence at the church, this place still felt dreamlike. It was as though I had one foot in my reality and the other in this one. As I walked through the midst of that place, I could feel that someone else was there. It was a familiar presence and one that did not frighten me. It was dark, but I could see the path ahead of me. I moved easily as though I was weightless for several steps. Then the sense of that free movement ceased. Without warning, I was face to face with Porter. He reached for my hand and forced my fist open. I didn’t even know I had made a fist. He said nothing as his fingernails sank into the back tips of my fingers and he pried my fist open. He then turned my hand over and the dirt slipped away and fell to the ground. I was back!
It took a few seconds to catch my breath and my eyes had tears in them. I stumbled and fell to my ass. After regaining my composure, Father Blaine stretched out his hand to help me off the ground. Once on my feet, I noticed that my shoes were covered in mud and there were slight cuts on the backs of my fingers from Porter’s fingernails digging into them.
“It gets easier each time you go over. But it never gets easy,” Father Blaine said.
“I was there. I was really there, wasn’t I?” I was overcome with fear, excitement and curiosity at the same time. There was a sense of jubilation in my voice and I had a million questions for him. “My friend was there! I mean that was Porter I saw, right?”
“Yes…and no.” His words resonated with hesitation.
“I don’t understand. That was real, right? I mean I was there. Look at my shoes and…and my fingers. I saw him!”
“Yes you saw your friend. And he was there, but not all of him. Just as you were here and there at the same time, he too was there and somewhere else. I guess one could say another dimension. He is trapped between that world and the next just as we are all trapped in this world now. Death frees us from this world, but it does not free those from that world. They are already dead and Porter’s release will take a much greater sacrifice than death. It will take the truth!