Then, she heard it panting, laughing, its imperceptible jaws right next to her head—teeth clicking shut over and over again.
There was a rush of wind.
She screamed.
She felt something slice at her back, and she dove forward, hoping for a means of escape, of safety.
Her arms clanked against a metal wall, and she dropped her flashlight. It spun around, revealing that she'd just tumbled into the elevator.
"No," she said, panting, feeling the still-stinging pain from her bleeding back. "No, no, no, no!"
She crawled around, pounding on the walls in the dark. Hoping that there was still some way out, even without power in the facility.
Then, as if something had walked over her grave, she felt it moving above her, staring at her from the ceiling.
The flashlight was still in the center of the elevator. Just in reach.
Would she have time to grab it? Would that stop it?
It seemed like it predicted her movement; they lunged at the same time. Its massive black claws, hit the elevator's flooring, rattling it as she snatched the flashlight up.
Its head reared back as she lifted the flashlight, shining it directly at its face.
She screamed.
And then there was silence.
When she opened her eyes, it was as if it hadn't been there at all.
Ira practically collapsed on the elevator floor, sobbing like a stupid child.
There was no telling how long it would stay away. She had to move.
She tried standing up. Her back felt like it was on fire, but she managed to get up.
Mathias had gotten them out of the Astral Lands by thinking about the place they were trying to get to. It hadn’t worked for her the first time, why would it work now... Maybe it took focus? Maybe she had to hold a clear image of the place she intended to reach in her mind?
She shut her flashlight off and placed her trembling hands on the wall, thinking of the core as she did so...
And then...as if waking from a terrible nightmare. She saw it. Not as it was, but as it had been. She could see her brother, Hugo, Mathias, all huddled around Eddy, who was carrying Lena in his arms.
Ira stepped through the doorway and stopped. Tears welled up in her eyes. "Eddy?"
He smiled at her, setting Lena down.
"I thought you were..." She couldn't even finish the sentence. She was just so glad to have him back.
Eddy approached her. She couldn't help but notice the strange smell in the air. The others, they seemed so strange. She couldn't focus on them.
He got closer.
The smell got worse.
It was coming from him.
"No," she said, backing away from him. "This isn't real!"
THIS ISN'T REAL!
The mirage shattered before her eyes, and she was confronted by the truth. It towered over her. Its skin had the consistency of some kind of blackened jellyfish. Its legs were hulking, blobular things that seemed to have no sense of structure to them. Its arms were disproportionate, but nearly as massive as its legs.
It extended its hands to grab her. Its fingers were like swimming eels, dripping with that same blackened slime she'd seen on the stairwell.
She screamed, but it was too late.
It grabbed her.
Ira could feel her body sinking into the creature's filth. Could feel the empty spaces of shadow open up, ready to consume her flesh the way it had probably done to Lena.
Lena, Ira thought. The baby!
Ira opened her eyes to find herself staring into the drooping eye of something which had once been human. It was sinking into the creature's flesh, black lines of filth threatening to absorb its face. Its one good eye regarded her with what she almost thought was adoration...
That's when she recognized who that face belonged to.
It was Eddy.
His mouth had been forced open by the blackened filth that threatened to consume his face. It made him look like he was forever screaming as he sank further and further away from his own humanity.
She felt the creature's arms slithering around her, drawing her closer.
"Ira!" It was Mathias's voice. She struggled to get a good look at him. "Get away from him, he's lost all sense. Poor Lena has been mangled!"
"No-n-no!" Lena's voice was wounded, like she'd inhaled liquid nitrogen. "H-he didn't...saved me..."
"Don't listen to her," Mathias said. "She's clearly delirious, mad."
Then she saw it, as if seeing through Eddy's eyes:
Tentacles of twisting dark clouds reach out, wrapping themselves around and eclipsing the sun. Filaments of plasma dance with shadows around the sun's outer layers. Jagged black teeth scrape across the surface, sending coronal material off into the vacuum of space.
They rejoice, ending their song.
Even the sun's light isn't able to escape. The light collapses back inward toward the star eater, until there is nothing left but darkness.
He turns and notices her dirty blonde hair blowing in the wind. Her face is red; she's been screaming.
Ira opened her eyes, shouting and screaming at the creature who had once been Eddy.
What Mathias had said was true. He'd discovered something deep in the dark, and now it was here.
"Let me guess," Mathias said, rolling the words in his mouth carefully. She turned around in the creature's arms to see him grinning yellow and mad in the dark. "The sun went dark, and you just saw it?"
"How did you know?"
"I saw it too." He laughed, pointing at his head. "I'm too far gone, I'm afraid. I can't control the visions I see, or where my essence wanders."
"You're insane."
"Am I?" He chuckled. "You're the one being held by a monster, seeing the end of the world!"
"Eddy..." She turned to him...he hadn't crushed her like she'd thought he would. Perhaps the vision she'd had wasn't so wrong after all? She reached up to caress his malformed face. She couldn't be sure, but she almost thought there was a hint of recognition in his remaining eye. "Tell me, big guy, that you're still in there somewhere?"
The creature grunted, removing her from its grasp and backing away as if it was ashamed of its own existence. Blackened goo dripped off her arms.
"Listen," Mathias said, drawing Ira's attention. "Without the light and warmth of our parent star, the atmosphere itself will freeze, compacting in layers on the frozen Earth; the oceans too will freeze, until the Earth resembles Europa's fractured and frozen shell. Even this place won't save us, unless the Feds designed it to survive a vacuum—something I highly doubt. So, we can't dawdle."
"How long will all that take?" Ira glanced at Hugo, who was staring at Eddy's body dumbfounded, then to Lena, who was barely conscious, her skin turning a bright red in places.
She saw it firsthand, she thought. Went out onto the surface without any protection. Without proper treatment, she could die.
"It hardly matters, considering." Mathias sighed. "There's no telling how long we've got. Nothing like this has ever happened, it's the stuff of science fiction."
"Give me your best guess then," Ira said.
"Less than a month, at the earliest, and maybe three at the latest. We've got to activate the final experiment."
"We still don't know if it will work..."
"We have to take the chance. If we die...then at least we tried."
"Great..."
"Now you see the importance of my and Weber's work here. Without the Mind's Horizon experiment we will all die."
"Can you get the reactor started again?" Ira asked.
"We've got the salt deposits," Mathias said. "So, I'm more than certain that we can."
"Do it, then." Ira knelt at Lena's side. "Hey, can you hear me?"
Lena nodded, moaning.
"Damn, yo," Hugo said. "She don't look so good."
"No thanks to you two," Ira said, glaring at Hugo and Mathias.
3
Mathias approached the core, watchin
g Ira and the creature in the dark. He didn't trust that thing, not one bit.
There was a hiss in the air when he removed the reactor's fuel tank and carried it over to a nearby table. Next he removed a hose from a nearby sink (no doubt put there just in case someone was doused with dangerous chemicals) and turned the knob. The water flowed into the fuel tank slowly. He used his flashlight to read from Weber's diary and the grimoire he kept so close to his chest as he scraped salt deposits into the tank.
It was regrettable. He'd thought he'd have more time to perform the ceremony on Hugo...when that thing showed up with Lena in its arms. And then, Ira had showed up too...there was zero chance that Ira would let him perform the ceremony.
And Hugo seemed to be watching him carefully in the dark. Mathias was surprised that he hadn't raised more alarm at what he'd almost done...
"How can you be sure you've got the right mixture?" Ira asked.
"I've studied Weber's work and the schematics to this pyramidal structure extensively," Mathias said.
No, not just that, a voice echoed through his mind. You wandered aimlessly through lands untold, saw floating, broken worlds, the tentacles of great beasts the size of galaxies, impossible dimensions the mind was never meant to see.
"I'm sure you have," Ira said, crossing her arms.
He was about to mouth a reply when he saw it.
That same eerie green light they'd fled from in the Astral Lands, now at the chamber's circular hatch. Mathias's eyes drifted to it slowly, hoping against hope that he was only hallucinating. His mouth twisted into a scowl. His eyebrows clenched in pure terror. His pulse thundered, threatening to choke him to death. "No!"
"What is it?" Ira asked.
The otherworldly green glow swelled in the doorway, became two-dimensional apparitions of light that snaked across the wall like a reverse silhouette in the dark.
Mathias cradled the solution he'd developed in his arms and rushed over to the dead core. "No, you won't take me! You won't take me!"
Desperately fumbling with the fuel chamber, he glanced back.
Like gargantuan fingers gripping at the top of a cliff, glowing green appendages materialized, became flesh, gripping at the circular edge of the doorway where previously there had only been the silhouettes of light. Mathias shook the fuel tank vigorously, opening the compartment on the side of the reactor and sliding the cylinder inside.
Then, emerging from the mouth of the doorway like a wraith, the harvester of the abyss's hooded figure came into the core chamber. Its enormous appendages seemed to retract to its sides. The expression etched into its elegant, terrible mask was not a happy one. It seemed to glide atop the metallic floor, as if it wasn't really there at all.
4
The Harvester stopped to regard Ira with those blackened pits for eyes. She felt her heart seize in her chest for a moment.
In that moment, she had a vision of a monster at the center of an infinite black abyss. It pulsed green in the dark, its tendrils innumerable, stretching through black holes, tearing through both three-dimensional reality and that place Mathias called the Astral Lands. Surrounding it were the broken shells of dead planets, floating islands and pyramids from lost civilizations, and dead stars.
Then, as she came back to reality, she realized that it was creeping toward Mathias.
He's the only one who can start the reactor, she thought, her heart clawing its way up her throat.
"No, you can't take him!" she screamed, running after the Harvester.
The Harvester's laughter was like spiders swarming over her skin as it shifted its attention from Mathias to her. She felt a shame greater than any she'd ever felt fill her up like contaminated water poured into a broken glass. How could she save this man? This man who had murdered her brother, had turned Eddy into that thing?
She glanced at Lena...her swelling belly...her shallow breath.
That's why, she thought.
"No!" Mathias fell backwards, scrambling to escape.
There will be no escape, the Harvester said, reaching a twisting, segmented appendage across the entire length of the chamber.
Mathias screamed and struggled, but he couldn't fight the Harvester's grip. Its appendages wrapped around his body, dragging him across the floor. His feet kicked at the air as the creature lifted him off the floor and drew him close.
"No!" Ira stood up, fighting with her own terror, and got in front of the Harvester. Its torso twisted around to look at her, its twisting, snakelike appendages still wrapped about Mathias's midsection, its mask's grin showing teeth now, white lights glowing in the infinite blackened pits of its eyeholes.
No? it said, its voice shaking all that she was or ever would be.
"We need him!" Ira said. "Without the reactor started, we'll die here!"
The Harvester rose, towering almost twenty feet in the air. This one is mine. The bargain cannot be undone.
"Then take me instead." She shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes as she thought of her essence being snuffed out by the eye in the abyss. "He knows how to get it started, none of us can. At least with him here, my brother's child will have a fighting chance..."
The Harvester stared at her for a moment. Then, its terrible laughter filled the chamber like maggots in a rotting wound. It turned its back from Ira, dragging Mathias into the shadows.
Ira gave chase. "No! Take me instead! Take me! Take me!"
It spun around and lashed out with its free appendage, twisting, gargantuan fingers wrapping around her body, threatening to crush her bones to dust.
Yes, do it, she thought. Take me instead, end it.
"Yes, take her!" Mathias seemed overjoyed, even in his terror, trying to pry the Harvester's fingers away. "Put me down and take her! I'll save everyone, I promise! I promise!"
The Harvester stared at her for a moment. Its mask's expression twisted into a frown at first, and then a grin. No.
"Why not?" Mathias asked, squirming, tears dripping down his chin, lit green by the Harvester's glow. "She's seen things, terrible things, too!"
We will give you the required knowledge necessary to save yourself, the Harvester said, its mask too close to her face. She could smell something beneath it, a stench that was neither rot nor death—something older, far more ancient. The price will be heavy. Your mortal mind may not survive for long. And, in exchange, we shall one day visit upon you a fate worse than death. Its grin widened, the mask cracking and readjusting to its newfound proportions. Do you accept this bargain, Masku?
"That's not fair! You're still taking him!"
Ours is a new contract, it said. You have nothing to do with his, nothing to bargain with in exchange for his essence.
Do you accept?
She thought long and hard...her eyes drifted to Eddy's monstrous silhouette, Lena's body on the floor...she had no choice.
Do you accept?
With a lump in her throat, she said, "Fine...I accept..."
Its appendages retracted, save for a single finger, which hovered above her forehead. Very well then.
It touched her forehead; Ira collapsed to the floor, cradling her head and screaming. It was like someone had opened up her scalp and bathed her brain in dry ice, the pain both hot and cold at the same time. She tried desperately to crush her own head with her hands to stop it from getting worse.
And it did get worse.
The visions flooded into her mind as the Harvester turned back toward the shadows, dragging Mathias kicking and screaming into the Astral Lands. She saw the gateway open, and watched the Harvester step into a room no bigger than her mother and father's family room. There was a hole in the crumbling stone floor. The hole in the floor gave way to darkness, and in that darkness, there was a star and several planets, their atmospheres and heat twisting in beautiful concentric circles around a black hole. There were great, impossible tendrils reaching out of the event horizon, like some gnarled roots from an ancient tree.
Mathias reached for her. And she hear
d his bones snap as the Harvester crushed his pathetic mortal body and dropped him into the abyss. His body stretched and twisted and seemed to freeze in place above the event horizon, his face twisted in unimaginable pain and terror.
The Harvester turned to her, its mask's expression twisted into a foul grin, its eyes sparkling with the light of dead stars. Remember, a fate worse than death.
The gateway closed.
Its laughter echoed in the chamber.
That's when it happened.
Fires ripped through her mind, and she saw the darkness twist and form into visions as the knowledge gifted to her by the Harvester took hold.
She stands on the Earth, peering through it as though it isn't there at all, her eyes fixed on the southern constellations. Even those melt away as she reaches out beyond. Where she's going, she doesn't know.
All of her doubts fade away once she leaves her body behind.
She arrives before she can see their world. She can see a blue star shining bright, casting daylight onto a lush, green world.
Like ours once was, she thinks.
The entities appear as glowing orange masses and they swarm her, flooding her mind with visions; she sees them in their cities, about their daily lives. They appear to be some kind of plantlike creatures, like mobile Venus flytraps. They dwell in massive cities that appear to cause no harm to their world.
They're people, she thinks.
She sees a family of them entering what looks like some kind of cathedral.
Inside, the aliens are chanting, their vines and flora twisting and vibrating in the air.
They speak of things that she knows, somehow, have yet to come to pass.
They were beings who had the ability to reach beyond time and space and see things that gave them great insights into the mysteries of the universe. Things which allowed them to avert disaster time and time again.
Disasters like the one her world now faces.
Maybe they reached out to her to ease her troubled mind, as if to say: "See? We're real, just like you. Calm down, come and sit with us and talk of the end of the world."
She returns to the present, surrounded by the glowing orange forms.
Mind's Horizon Page 30