by Mark Tufo
“Whistlers are coming,” he said abruptly.
He cleaned off and then we left that forsaken place. It was right here that I had the thought: if that was the only way in, was it the only way out? It had been an unimaginable nightmare getting through, but at least we had been going down, gravity had been a friend. What would climbing back up and out of there be like? Staying in here and starving to death seemed a viable option. Trip was quiet as he led us out of the stairwell and into a fairly well lit corridor. It’s hard to say at this point if the heavy feeling in my chest was due to the rigors and stress of the ordeal I’d just been through or the building itself. There was an oppressive atmosphere, something you might feel when you walk into a house where a mass murder has occurred. A thick, tangible feeling of evil that clings to every surface and drips in voluminous globs from the ceiling. Sure, it sounds like a literary exaggeration, but we’ve all been in those types of places. Some will say it’s psychosomatic, that you are only feeling that way because you know that a tragic murder occurred there—like that time you took a tour through Lizzie Borden’s home and were followed by an unmistakable air of fear and malice as the hostess gleefully recounted what went down all those years ago.
But that doesn’t explain your feelings about that house you were thinking about buying some five years previous, the beautiful split-level with a sunken living room, plus a sauna and a hot tub in the backyard. Damn near everything you wanted in a home, even the price point was sweet, yet something about the place just tugged at the corners of your mind enough that you could not ignore it. After some investigating, you came to find out that the entire family had been murdered by their youngest son. He had zip-tied all of them while they had slept and somehow the slight twelve-year-old had managed to pull each of his three siblings into the master bedroom. The creepiest part was that he had worn a clown mask the entire time, even as he sliced each throat from ear to ear, starting with his sister first. When they’d found him, he had been sitting at the kitchen table sipping chocolate milk through a straw so that it would fit through the mouth hole. He was nude, save that mask, told the police that all the dried blood had made his clothes stiff. What I’m getting at is that evil leaves a residue, doesn’t matter how much bleach or paint you use, you can never get rid of the taint, and that was exactly what I was feeling in that corridor.
Jack had at least gone back to a semblance of keeping an eye out. He had his rifle up and was scanning the area. I was walking around like I’d taken a double dose of lithium and it had just kicked in, wouldn’t surprise me at all if I just started spontaneously drooling.
“Mike, we can’t afford to have two of us checked out.” Jack tapped me on my shoulder.
“Yeah,” was about the best I could offer, though I was able to bring my weapon up. We were going down a corridor much like the last one, though at the end, instead of going left, we were about to go right. “Trip?”
“No more stairs,” he said with vacant eyes.
The door was twice as wide as a traditional door and was painted a bright red color; almost every square inch of it was covered in warning stickers of various types. Wherever we were trying to go, here we were. I was looking at a large dial on the door, something you would expect to see on a bank vault. I can’t say I was saddened to think we would not be able to get in. Trip yanked on the handle and the door opened silently on hinges that had seen plenty of oil. His face lit up in a variety of hues, most ranging in the deep violets. When I looked from him to what was causing the illumination, I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at. There were black wispy clouds floating around, each had some sort of internal lighting that caused the lining to be tinged in an electric purplish color. I reached out to touch one and Trip grabbed my arm.
“That wouldn’t be such a good idea,” he told me as he reached into his pocket and took out a marble, then tossed it into the small cloud. It shone bright for a millisecond and the marble, which I thought would pass through and to the ground, maybe with some electrical scarring to it, just ceased to exist. It was gone, like some sort of parlor magic trick.
“Each one is a gateway,” he elaborated.
“There’s hundreds of them.” Jack had poked his head into the chamber, careful to avoid the matter swallower.
I did the same. There were almost as many of the purple floaters as there was free space; they also seemed to be lazily drifting in more or less the same direction.
“Purple people eaters, of all the fucking things,” I said.
I think Jack and I struck on it at about the same time. Though I voiced it first.
“We need to go down there, don’t we.” Phrased like a question but no upward lilt at the end.
“I’m going to need to steady my nerves for this,” Trip said.
I thought he was going for his traditional standby. Instead he pulled out a handful of what looked suspiciously like Quaaludes.
“Want one?” he asked before downing two of them.
I was just about game. Jack shook his head, either in disbelief at Trip’s action or as an indication that he did not want one.
“More for me,” as he took another.
The clouds for the most part hugged the walls; now, that’s not to say there weren’t a few dozen hanging around in the middle, just that most were off the beaten path.
“Trip, what happens if we get touched by those?” I asked. I had to know.
“Don’t,” was all he told me.
“I’ll go first,” Jack said.
“You sure?”
“No,” he answered honestly.
He ducked under and stepped over another, and was now a good three feet inside the chamber that was easily thirty feet across. I did the same before any nerve I had left ran from me. Vast was a word I could use to describe the thing I was in. The end, if there was one, was too far off in the distance to be seen, though it curved to the left so it could just have been an optical illusion.
Trip sidled up to me. “Follow the purple lit juncture points,” he said.
“I liked Dorothy’s yellow brick road better,” I said; that got a smile from him and a nod from Jack.
“More than a false wizard at the end of this path,” Trip added.
“Shit, Trip, I’d rather marry a witch,” I said merely as a tension breaker.
He stopped for a second. “I think this is the timeline where that happens.” He left it at that.
When and if I got home, that would not be included in the retelling of this story. Pretty sure Tracy wouldn’t be all that appreciative of it. Jack looked back at us and then began moving forward. We followed. It was tense inside the collider, but as of yet no enemies had followed, and the clouds were moving at about the same pace as us, making staying clear of them fairly easy.
Trip stopped, just pulled up short.
“Not the time for a bone.”
I’d gone a few more steps before stopping. Jack had not yet turned, he was determined to get to wherever we were going. Having had a taste of home, he was more determined than ever to forsake this place.
“Back,” Trip said barely above a whisper. “Too early.” I heard that clear enough.
I half turned my neck to yell over my shoulder, “Jack, hold up for a second.”
I heard a few more footfalls before he did so. The sigh was pronounced; I knew that sound, it was exasperation.
“Mike, tell him we don’t have time for…”
“Back! Run!” Trip turned and looked over his shoulder before darting off. “Not fucking around, you need to run!”
I looked back to Jack to let him know I was going to follow Trip.
“Bullshit,” Jack said, but I heard his footsteps right behind mine as he ran to catch up. “If this is because he forgot a Phrito bag, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
“I’ll help you, if that’s the case.”
I mean, I wouldn’t, and Jack wouldn’t actually hurt him, though he would want to. But I distinctly got the feeling this had nothing t
o do with snacks. Trip was petrified of something.
I was looking at something my head could not reconcile. There was what appeared to be one of the purple edged clouds taking up the entire width and height of the chamber, coming toward us. But if that was the case…
“Faster, Jack!” I pointed.
He’d been so focused on the back of Trip’s head and where he wanted to slap it, he had not seen the giant anomaly. He pulled up alongside me just as I was trying to find another gear. Jack yanked me hard to the left. I stumbled for four steps until I righted myself. Talk about turning a blind eye. I’d basically stopped looking at the just as deadly small clouds and nearly shorn off the side of my head by running right into one.
“Thanks,” I told him, though I felt like an idiot for even needing his help.
The big cloud was easily a hundred yards from our initial entry point and now our emergency exit point. That was good news, as we were about fifty yards away. The bad was it was traveling faster than we were. I was doing the math over and over in my head on a subconscious level and I kept coming up short. Jack and I were at full sprints, as was Trip, though we were able to catch up to him; without a word, we each grabbed a shoulder and pulled, being ever vigilant of the smaller clouds that swirled around us. We were at twenty-five yards; at best, the cloud was at forty. If the calculations I was doing were right, we were going to be about five feet short. I had no as of yet undiscovered gears to kick myself into. I was running as fast as I could while still staying away from the marble munchers. Every once in a while having to side step or duck or even jump over an obstacle naturally slowed us all down. We got our first and presumably only break—beggars can’t be choosers and I was happy for it. I don’t know if the black cloud racing for us was created by stitching together the smaller ones, a patchwork maybe, or if the large cloud was so big and dense that it was creating its own gravitational field.
Much like Saturn might do to an errant asteroid, the big one was yanking all the clouds ahead of it into itself, absorbing them, eating them, gathering their energy—all of that or none of that. Didn’t matter, but this maelstrom was clearing the field for us. The way ahead had been sucked free of debris, like a magnet picking up metal filings, just that fast. We had thirty feet, the cloud forty. One stumble, one twinge of a muscle, one misstep and this race was over. I had no real clue what would happen to us if we failed, but there was no part of me that thought it would be a good outcome. Jack was basically picking Trip up in an effort to move him along faster.
“Toss!” was all he could get out.
I didn’t think bowling with old stoners was a sanctioned event, but I was game. Trip’s legs were still going a mile a minute, though they were no longer touching ground. I pushed when Jack pushed; we got some air time out of Trip. There was no question in my mind that he was going to put his arms out like he was Superman, though it did little to protect his rapid descent. Jack was next, though we launched at about the same time. I didn’t make it, at least not all of me. There was the horrible smell of slow roasting plastic and the summer-sweet smell of burnt ozone. Surprisingly, all that hurt was my elbow and shoulder that had hit the ground, and the side of my head as I’d slid into the wall.
“Mike?” Jack asked, turning quickly.
“I’m hit, Jack.”
“All right,” he said as he knelt over me. “Let me check you over.”
“I’m freaking out a bit.”
Trip was eating a banana.
“What?” he replied when I looked at him. “I always eat one after a run. The potassium is good at keeping leg cramps away.”
“You’re all right, Mike.” Jack was down by my feet.
“You sure you’re not just saying that? Like in all those war movies when the Sarge tells his favorite private that he’ll finally be able to go home now? But what he doesn’t tell poor Jimmy from Nebraska is that his guts are leaking all over some island in the middle of the Pacific.”
“We’ll have a funeral for your boot later.”
He held up my leg so I could see the bottom of it. The sole had been neatly shorn off, the heel was completely gone and I had maybe a quarter inch of thickness along the whole foot.
“The worst thing for you is the limp you’re going to have walking in those.”
“Holy shit, that was close.”
I let my head gently touch the cool concrete. I was finally able to take a breath that wasn’t ragged and filled with dread.
“What was that, Trip?” Jack asked.
“Time thread. It shouldn’t be here, not yet.”
I sat up on my elbows. “What’s it mean?”
“The end.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound ominous.”
I stuck my hand out for Jack to help me up. I turned back just in time to see a small shower of sparks where my head had been. “What the fuck?”
“Whistlers!” Jack had fired a small burst into one of the grotesqueries that was coming down the hallway. We were trapped.
“We have to go back in there!” Trip said the words, though I think he meant anything else.
“I’d rather take my chances against the whistlers than whatever that thing was.” That was Jack’s vote, and I much preferred the enemy we knew as well. They could be killed.
“We don’t have much time,” Trip said, grabbing me by my shirt. “This is the only way, Mike.” That he used my real name was the only convincing I needed. The rational part of him, the part in the know, was back, at least for the moment.
“Jack, let’s go.” I lightly tapped him on the shoulder as he sent a burst of rounds into the whistlers.
Trip shut the door. The chamber was a lot cleaner, as if the time thread had swept away most of the tiny clouds; but like any broom, it had still left some dirt behind. That was sort of what had happened, but more like it had taken substance away from them until they had disappeared and now they were beginning to reappear. Which made this journey that much more dangerous, as the clouds just started showing up all around us. At first we were moving cautiously, keeping one eye on our six, expecting the whistlers to come bursting through at any time. Trip kept urging us faster. At times we were running; I felt like we were racing a car with no brakes down a mountainside—sooner or later we were going to lose control and crash into something. I didn’t think the haste was warranted; it would be pretty hard for the whistlers to make up the ground. Found out that wasn’t what he was worried about.
“I knew I should have studied knitting,” he said as we speed-walked.
I didn’t think this had anything to do with a purl stitch.
“Thread will be back.”
We needed no further impetus, no way possible we could make it back to our initial entry point.
“It’s still in this collider?” Jack asked.
Trip didn’t say shit, we just started running in earnest this time. Not so easy to keep up a good pace when one leg is a solid inch, maybe two shorter than the other. I should have taken my boots off. Now I didn’t have the twenty seconds to spare to do so. And then a staple careened off the wall to our right. Didn’t need to turn around to know where that came from. Though I did, just human nature to get a look at what wants to kill you. I had a bit of good fortune to watch as the whistler that fired had a heaping dose of misfortune. He was so intent on popping a round into one of us that he ran headlong into a cloud the size of a small watermelon. What came through the other side was something straight out of a Halloween story. His head, neck, and a neat semi-circle of torso had been cleanly removed from his body, which had enough muscle memory to make four more of those awkward strides before it came to a skidding stop. Didn’t deter the dozen others from following, though.
Not stopping to fight was going against nearly every instinct I had. Waiting to get shot in the back by a lucky or even a well-aimed shot is one of the most helpless feelings you can have. The only thing we had going for us was that the whistlers were so adamant on stopping us that they had fanned out and
were becoming victims of their folly as they had fist-sized holes removed from various parts of their bodies wherever they made contact with the clouds. Thought we were going to be all right, right up until out of the corner of my eye I saw Jack hitch to the side. Thought maybe he was avoiding a cloud or had a stitch in his side. That was when the light reflected off of a pair of staples sticking out of his thigh. The grimace on his face was all I needed to know that it was hurting like hell. Gotta give it to the man though, he was still soldiering on.
“It’s coming,” Trip said ominously.
Jack was slowing up. I’m sure each stride tearing through his muscles was beyond excruciating. I wasn’t going to wait for his bravado to kick in. Not like his staying behind would in any way inhibit the enemy that was coming. He nodded a quick thanks as I moved over and grabbed underneath his arm and did my best to support that side of his body. I felt a stinging singe to my side as a cloud materialized, taking my shirt and four or five layers of skin. Blood had begun to ooze out from the wound that I can only describe as feeling like a second degree burn. More and more of the clouds began to appear the further we went. Enemies in front, enemies behind, enemies all around.
“Trip, how much further?” I asked, my teeth clenched together.
“The convergence point of the lemniscate.”
Yeah, because I knew what the fuck that was. I didn’t question him on it because we’d either get there or we wouldn’t, and I didn’t have the energy in me to do it. We ran another hundred yards; I wasn’t even on fumes any more, more like vapors. Jack was flagging something fierce, by this time the staple poison was starting to worm its way through him. I was two steps from calling it quits, ready to die facing my enemy, when up ahead I saw a light. Not really a light, because it didn’t illuminate, it didn’t make anything brighter. The rift—that was what it looked like—was not much bigger than a fridge and roughly the same shape, though the edges instead of being straight were bowing outward, like something heavy was sitting on top of the box the fridge had come in. The opening was definitely the source of all that ailed this world and I didn’t think the tree-trunk-thick wildly rising and falling arc of electricity that was shooting into it was doing any wonders either—for the world, I mean; I’m sure the rift was quite fine with it.