Because try as he might to persuade himself that he was only dreaming, Gus knew this time it was different.

This was real.

The branches tearing at his arms, the jagged rocks digging into his feet, the pain in his lungs as he gasped for breath-they were all real. At least it wasn’t night, as it was in the dream, but the thick trees were so dense they nearly blocked out the sun completely. Gus really was in the wilderness, and there was some Thing after him. He could hear its hot, rough breath coming through the forest towards him.

And where was Shawn? He was the one who had talked Gus into taking this descent into hell. He was the one who had said that a little fresh air would be good for them. And yet he was also the one who couldn’t make it through the opening scene of Cliffhanger without suddenly realizing he’d forgotten to ask for extra fake butter on his popcorn and running out of the auditorium, not returning until any pretense of a realistic depiction of death in high places had been replaced by that pressing issue of how to find a hundred million in stolen government cash at the top of a mountain.

Shawn had been right by Gus’ side when they first entered this savage place. What happened to him? How had he disappeared? Had the Thing that was chasing Gus gotten him first? When it finally caught up with him, would Gus see shreds of his best friend’s mangled flesh snagged on its gleaming fangs? Or had Shawn simply taken a wrong step and plunged the way Gus did in his dreams? Gus had a vision of Shawn’s broken body sprawled out over a bed of jagged rocks, and for a brief moment envied him the quickness of his death.

This was it, then. The end. The fate that he’d been dreaming about for so many years. It was finally coming true, just as the Oracle or the Norns or the Magic 8 Ball had been trying to tell him since he was a little kid. If he had paid attention to those dreams, if he had followed the warnings, would he be facing his doom today? No doubt he would, Gus knew. He’d read enough Greek tragedies and seen enough Twilight Zone episodes to know that trying to avoid your fate only brought you to it faster.