She chose corridors and hallways where the singing seemed strongest, loudest. She didn't know what she'd find at the source, but she hoped it might be light, safety from the thing whose eyes she could feel stabbing into her back. The thing she feared would be there, staring at her in the dark with those seven glowing eyes—if she wasn't too scared to look.
5
"Where the hell is that coming from?" Ira asked.
Hugo shrugged. He was even more useless to her now that he was deaf. If she wasn't hallucinating, she thought she heard some kind of music—singing even. It was quiet, just at the edge of recognition, but she swore it was there.
"Damn it, Lena, where are you?"
So far, they'd combed through several corridors and still hadn't heard or seen any sign of her. She wasn't in the chamber where they'd been held captive.
Hugo avoided eye contact with her. She was thankful for that. When she looked back at him, he seemed to be mumbling things under his breath, scratching at the bloodstains that coated his neck and soaked into his long johns.
The darkness rang out from all sides, as if it were attempting to strangle the small circle of light made by her flashlight. That had to be her imagination, her paranoia. She had to force herself to keep looking onward, no matter what her eyes might find in the dark corners of her vision.
Three more corners turned and still no sign of Lena.
Wait. No.
There was a light shining at the end of the corridor.
Carefully, quietly, she picked up the pace. Hugo was left behind in the dark. As she advanced on the light, she wondered what she might find. Lena cowering with a flashlight? Some autonomous instrumentation which had yet to die in the wake of the fusion core's death? Or, more likely, would it be Mathias, stalking the corridors with a bottle of chloroform and a cloth in hand?
She rounded the corner and was unsurprised to see Mathias toying with the lock of an experiment chamber door, cursing lightly under his breath. He was a shadow of his former self. His hair was almost white. She could see protrusions of his spine through his sweat-stained long johns.
His yellowing eyes looked to her flashlight fearfully, "No! Please, don't take me! There's still time yet!"
Ira rushed him, grabbing him by the collar. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't bash your head into the concrete!"
"I-Ira?" His breath stank to high heaven—his teeth had started to rot, just like Weber's had. "Y-you don't want to kill me. I know how it works. H-how to get it started again. I wandered for so long searching for the answer, but I know now! I know now!"
There was something odd about his voice. Like he'd aged two decades between the time she'd last heard his voice over the speakers of their cell and now. She remembered her vision before Hugo's flashlight and voice brought her back to her senses.
It's not possible, she thought. He's just losing it, that's all. Just like Weber did.
"I thought I'd never see you again, Ira," Mathias said. "How terrible it was, wandering the dark, running from him. It was my penance, yes, that must be true. I see that now. To wander without sleep through the Astral Lands.
"I'm..." His eyes and furrowed brow looked crazed and yet, strangely remorseful. "I am truly sorry for what I did, all of it. Truly sorry. Can you forgive me?"
God, just shut up!
"Why were you trying to get in there?" Ira gestured to the door Mathias had just been fiddling with.
He cackled; she resisted her gag reflex at the smell. "The fusion reactor. It runs off of saltwater to produce the reaction. I saw it. I saw it in the blueprints before I got lost. The byproduct is helium. I think that room is where they kept concentrated sodium chloride used for the creation of new saline solution for sensory deprivation tanks. If we can get the core restarted, we can start the final experiment protocol."
"You're still going on about that?" Ira asked.
"Don't you see what's happening? The world is dying at last, I've seen it...heard the song calling to it. The Harvester and the creatures that seem to stalk this place are the least of our concerns.
"You've seen it too, haven't you?"
"Seen what?" Ira asked.
"The black comet," Mathias said, grinning wide and yellow.
Ira's grip released. She held her head. "What the hell is going on? Is this what hell is?"
"Maybe," Mathias said. "I think it...yes...I think it's that thing, the Amarath. The creature creates portals in the dark to its own little corner in the Astral Lands. But, now—" he chuckled "—now the shadows are joined, they are one. How fortunate that we have not stumbled into its domain."
6
Lena found herself half-limping, half-running, across a desert of decrepit, rotting leather. Sometime after she'd turned that last corner, the sky had turned gray. Somehow, she knew it always had been there, hiding behind whatever protected sane people from demons, la chupacabra, and UFOs. The ground seemed to go on and on and on. Yet, it was also as if the horizon was moving, like a convalescent home resident taking deep breaths off their respirator. There were things in the distance she couldn't quite make out. They looked like pits, or craters, but they seemed to be moving too.
And the singing...the singing was quieter here.
She could feel it coming from behind her...and to the right of her, just over a hill, and in several other directions too. She wanted so desperately to get away from this place, to get back to the singing, find its source. Then, maybe she'd be safe?
She certainly couldn't turn back. There was a constant pressure bearing down on her, like the feeling you get when you're being watched. The temptation to glance behind her was strong, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She was too much of a coward.
Somehow, she knew that if she did— It'd be the end of her.
She'd have to find another way.
There was a sound like heavy breathing behind her. She felt the ground shake with each step it took after her. Her heart fluttered, threatening to seize in her chest from pure terror. It was biding its time with her. It didn't have to rush, did it? No. It could find her any time, around any darkened corner, or it could wait for her to wear herself out, or to sprain her ankle in one of those holes—
They weren't holes.
She could see teeth in them, black and yellow and rotting, jagged things that opened and closed.
They were mouths!
If she tripped and fell into one of those, she'd have a lot more than a sprain to worry about.
That's when she noticed the smell.
It was a persistent stench, the faint aroma of death and rotting human flesh. She knew that smell all too well. She found herself captivated by the decomposing body parts that were littered carelessly across the land. Some of them still had their bloodstained lab jackets and long johns on. She watched one of the mouths open up wide, causing a nearby bloody female torso to fall in. It chewed and chewed and chewed. Even from this distance, she could hear the brittle sounds of bones snapping. She wondered how long it would be before there were no more body parts left to feed the land.
Not long, a voice said in her mind. Not long at all.
She could scarcely hear the music over the crunching of bone—
"Shit!" She teetered on the edge of one of those mouths. It opened so wide it had crossed her path in the time it took for her to blink. She could see deep inside the pit. It was like looking inside the biggest throat she'd ever seen. The walls of flesh had rows of razor-sharp teeth embedded in them; they pulsated as she shuddered.
She backed away from the edge of that mouth, careful not to upset it. When she was a safe distance away, she ran.
At first she just wanted to get away from that thing! Then, she heard the singing again, coming from a place over to her right. There were more mouths, all of them opening and closing in some sick kind of anticipation at her approach.
There was no way of knowing if moving toward that choir of voices would be her salvation, but she had no other choice. Tears spattered
down her cheeks as she limped as hard and as fast as she could. There was a mouth expanding directly in front of her path.
I'm sorry, she thought at no one in particular. I'm sorry I was such a fuckup! Sorry I let so many people down! Poor little Sophi...I'm sorry I couldn't take care of you! She placed her hands over her belly. But your sister, or your brother, will be different. All I need is to survive this. Get past that thing, and I promise I'll devote my life to them! Just, please, God—if you exist—don't let me die here!
The mouth in front of her seemed to respond by opening wider. As if to say, there is no God, and I will devour you here.
At first, Lena's despair hit its peak. She was almost ready to walk over to that hole in this unholy land and throw herself in if it was inevitable...but, something inside her snapped.
No, I'm not gonna die here!
She clenched her fists and pumped her legs harder, wincing through the pain and the fatigue until she got herself up to a proper sprint.
The hole, mouth, whatever it was, drew closer.
And closer.
She'd have to jump at the last second and hope she reached the other side, if she tried to run around it she knew it would just open wider.
She was almost on it.
Then, she took a deep breath, jumped...and screamed as loud as her lungs would allow.
Was it all a dream?
Lena could feel the cold concrete floor beneath her hands and feet. She could feel a slight pressure at the back of her skull, the same kind of feeling you get when someone's watching you.
Can't look back, she thought. Gotta keep moving forward. It's the only way.
There was a dim light coming from down the corridor; she could just barely make out a sign in front of her.
It said TOP FLOOR, and below that it said LEVEL 1 STAGING and SECURITY with arrows pointing this way and that.
How did she get here? Had she really just been running through that hellish place?
The elevators were out, and she hadn't gone up any flights of stairs that she knew of. Yet, she was near the entrance to the facility. It was colder up here, too. Much colder.
The singing! She could hear the singing again!
It was louder here too, almost painfully loud.
Lena had the strangest compulsion to get up off her hands and knees and follow the voices to the source of the singing. Any thoughts other than those pertaining to following that compulsion seemed to ebb as quickly as they came. It was as if the space inside her brain could only contain the choruses coming from down the hall, and little else.
She obeyed, standing up and following the arrow to the main gate. She thought briefly of the freezing temperatures outside, that she'd need protective gear, but those thoughts too were silenced.
Before she knew it, she was staring at the long icy tunnel that led to the mountain's surface. The singing was so loud that her eardrums felt like they might burst.
The pain was almost unbearable, even here.
Still, she stepped out into the icy tunnel. Each step forward on the ice was like stepping on hot coals. She started laughing at this thought. The laughter seemed to persist long past the point when her mouth had chattered shut from the severe cold.
If she could think, she would probably be thinking about how foolish this was. How, once she emerged from that cave, she would likely die.
The light grew and grew. She felt cold rivers of blood dribbling down both sides of her neck.
Soon, she lost the feeling in her hands and feet. The cave entrance loomed. The singing was so loud it felt like she was being bombarded by constant microbursts.
With the feeling in her limbs gone, she emerged from the tunnel.
There they were, gathered at the edge of the cliff. Raising their limbs to the sky. They were massive. Their bodies had grown great tumorous masses, exposing shadows which seemed to betray an infinite space beyond. It looked as though each of their hands were composed of snakes.
Her eyes followed their gesture toward the sky, to the dim circle of the sun, and just below its noonday position in the sky.
It was like someone had torn the sky open, revealing its truth. It stretched halfway across the sky. She thought briefly that it looked strangely like a dark comet.
It was headed straight for the sun.
The comet seemed to collide with the sun, wrapping itself around it like a serpent coiling around a mouse.
And then the sun went dark, vanishing as though it had never been there at all.
The singing stopped.
The sky got darker and darker.
One of the creatures turned toward her with its featureless, bulbous head. Eddy's remaining, decaying eye, focused on her, his face nearly swallowed by the thing he was becoming. The creature's massive body split away from the pack, stomping through the snow toward her, its snakelike hands reaching out to do God knows what to her body.
She screamed.
The pain in her limbs couldn't stop her from running back into the cave.
She knew she wouldn't get far.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"You commanded all the doors to open," Ira said. "Why didn't this one?"
"One can only guess," Mathias said.
"How are we going to open it?" Ira asked.
"I was working on that before you grabbed me," Mathias said.
Ira turned back to look for Hugo. He wasn’t there. Maybe he was lost in the dark? Maybe that thing had gotten him?
"Why can't we take some solution from one of the tanks?" Ira asked.
"We need an exact mixture that matches what was used to produce the fusion reaction."
"We can just walk through here.” As if coming out from the depths of the abyss, Hugo walked right past them and placed his hands on a wall shrouded in shadow. Then he was pushing them through the wall and was gone.
Ira blinked, thinking it was just the pitch-dark playing tricks on her eyes. She backed up, shining her flashlight around for any sign of Hugo's body. "What in the fuck?"
Mathias straightened up. "The fool...but, yes...yes, maybe he's right?"
"What are you saying?"
Mathias walked forward and placed his gnarled hands in the wall, then, with a low, rumbling chuckle coming from deep inside his throat, he pushed himself forward and vanished too. Ira watched his gnarled feet get swallowed up by the wall.
She stood there, rubbing her eyes, hyperventilating, disbelieving. Maybe she was going mad? Maybe they hadn't been by her side at all?
"Hello?" Ira said quietly, hoping she was right. That the apparitions had gone away.
"I'm not following you," She said, shaking her head. "You're not real. This isn't real."
It was madness!
That was it. Some kind of fever dream that she couldn't wake from. All of this couldn't possibly be happening...could it?
Ira meant what she said, she really did. She was adamant about not following after them...
But now she was alone. Or was it that she was now aware of her loneliness? The darkness around her seemed almost to be alive, as if it were closing in on her. Part of her wanted to curl into a ball, find some place to hide with her flashlight clutched close to her, but she knew that wouldn't save her.
The maddening thing was, part of her thought they were right, that Mathias and Hugo had really phased through some kind of portal, that it wasn't all in her head—part of her could even rationalize it as if it were completely natural.
It almost made her laugh.
She inched closer to the wall, shining her light briefly across the surface. The wall didn't catch the light the way other surfaces did. Maybe it was just her imagination? Maybe Hugo and Mathias hadn't been here at all and she was just going mad talking to herself?
She placed her hand on the wall, just as Hugo had. Then, she screamed as she felt something grab her hand and pull her through.
Then she was falling. The sensation was like those nightmares she'd had as a child where she'd fall from the to
p of the Empire State Building, only to wake up when she hit the ground.
Only there was no ground here. Just endless dark.
Then, all at once, there was ground and she was lying on it. The sky was black, with two dim stars shining in the distance. One red, and one white.
"Good of you to come," Mathias said.
Hugo waved a shaky hand at her. She was disgusted by the fact that it was almost comforting. These men—no not men, boys playing at being men—who were her enemies. She'd rather embrace them than all of this madness, or her own loneliness.
"I almost fell through before Hugo found me," she said. And at that thought, she was very worried for Lena. "Oh my God."
Mathias nodded. "You're worried for Lena."
Ira nodded, getting to her feet. "How do we get back?"
Mathias shrugged. "This isn't an exact science."
Hugo smiled, turned around, and started walking. "This way."
There was an uncomfortable moment when she and Mathias made eye contact. Did he suspect something was wrong with Hugo too?
Hugo was already trudging through the crimson sand, thousands of feet away, when she finally said it. "He's not acting normal."
Mathias nodded.
But they followed Hugo all the same. That voice deep inside Ira screamed for her to turn back, to run from these madmen. But, she'd tumbled through the wall too, hadn't she?
Hugo led them down a staircase of crumbling, ancient steps composed of red stone. The steps twisted and snaked down into a massive canyon. It was the same place she'd seen earlier, she was almost certain of that.
The towers with their crumbling relief were there in the distance. And, something she hadn't noticed before, too. A massive pyramid at the end of the canyon, situated just below the dim pair of stars.
It seemed like they'd marched for days. The towers on either side of the canyon appeared almost to be peering down at them, and maybe they were.
"Who do you think lived here?" Ira asked.
"The Astral Lands are not home to ordinary creatures," Mathias said. "They are often under the sway of a particular entity, or the mirror of a place in our world."
"How do you know that?"
Mind's Horizon Page 27