by Stephen Laws
“Self-transcendence, Gilbert. Transmogrification. All those Returners. They were all more like animals than human, weren’t they? All except Bissell. He was a real scientist, questing after truth. The Darkfall absorption in that Leeds factory didn’t turn him completely insane like the others. That’s because he wasn’t as terrified, wasn’t as ignorant as the others. The absorption destroyed their minds, but not Bissell. He gave the clue, Gilbert. The clue!”
Rohmer swung downwards, seized Gilbert and dragged him to his feet, holding him as close as a lovers’ embrace. Gilbert struggled, but could not break free.
“I killed somebody once, Gilbert. I killed him for no more reason than I wanted to do it. What comes from me is as much to do with the Darkfall erosion as anything. But that doesn’t mean to say that I can’t be absolved of that. It doesn’t mean that I can’t be transmogrified beyond the human to another plane to find the Real Me!”
Gilbert twisted again, taking Rohmer off balance. They fell against the desk that he had been previously sitting on. It scraped to one side as they slid to the carpeted floor. Rohmer still held Gilbert tight as he thrashed to be free. Rohmer began to make shushing noises as if Gilbert was a child who needed to be restrained for sleep.
“Bissell told me what he should have done when his hands began to be absorbed in the floor. He should have stayed calm, he shouldn’t have panicked. He was sure that the fear and the terror of the absorption was the reason for loss of mind and humanity. ‘Can you imagine, Gilbert? What if someone could undergo that absorption with a cool . . . dare I say it? . . . scientific rationale. Wouldn’t that truly be self-transcendence on Return? Isn’t that More than Human? Being able to see other planes, other realities. And to Return, free of the shackles of human physical embodiment. Free of human morality. Able to be the Real You!”
“Rohmer! Let me up . . .” Gilbert thrashed on the floor beneath Rohmer’s weight. Rohmer seized him by the throat to restrain him, as if Gilbert’s physical resistance was also some kind of intellectual resistance to what he was saying; as if that grip could force Gilbert to see sense.
“All it needs is a lack of fear. When it happens, accept it with cool scientific appraisal. Don’t fight it, embrace it. Allow the Darkfall to absorb you, allow it to transmogrify you. When you Return, you’ll be . . . you’ll be . . .” Rohmer was bursting with the ecstasy of the prospect, “. . . be . . .”
Darkfall exploded in the skies. The building cracked and shuddered again. Pain stabbed in their ears, plaster dust swirled and was swallowed by the gusting storm winds and blasting rain.
“See! See!” shouted Rohmer into the storm, rain and blood running from his face and dripping from his chin. “It’s beckoning.” He gripped Gilbert’s chin and forced it up so that he could see the blue-white flickering of Darkfall lightning beyond the broken windows. “Remember what Bissell said, even to you!”
“Let me up,” sobbed Gilbert. “For the love of God, let me up!”
“Go first,” said Rohmer, staring intently into Gilbert’s eyes. “Now that I’ve told you the truth, you don’t need to fear. You’re a good man of science. You must want what I want. To know.”
“You said that this was a Primary Darkfall, not a Secondary . . .”
Rohmer released his grip around Gilbert’s neck, grasping his face instead so that his jaw clamped shut and further speech was impossible.
“Go first,” said Rohmer. “Without fear.”
He began to push Gilbert’s face towards the carpeted floor.
Gilbert tried to scream, but his mouth was clamped shut by Rohmer’s grip and only a ululating, muffled howl vibrated from his throat.
“Without fear, you idiot!” screamed Rohmer. “You’re a scientist!”
Gilbert sobbed with a horrifying and muffled terror.
“Without fear!” screamed Rohmer again . . . and pressed Gilbert’s face down hard on to the carpet.
Gilbert’s forehead sank into the pile with a crimping sound like a footstep in fresh snow. He began to sob uncontrollably. Rohmer snatched his hand quickly away from Gilbert’s mouth, staggering back to his feet and watching in awe as Gilbert was able to scream at last: a naked shriek of terror. He began to beat at his head with his gloved hands as his face began to sink into the floor.
“Stop it, you bloody fool!” shouted Rohmer. “Don’t fight it!”
Gilbert tried to squirm away, pulling his mouth into a distorted rictus. Spittle sprayed from his mouth . . . and now, with one last deeply horrible squawk, his face was dragged completely into the floor. His body began to thrash wildly. Rohmer stood back, screaming obscenities at him.
One of Gilbert’s gloves flew off, and the next time his hand hit the floor it stuck and began to sink into the carpet pile. Thunder crashed and boomed outside. Darkfall electricity crackled and danced on the rims of the shattered windows.
Gilbert’s squirming body vanished into the carpet like quicksand.
Screaming in fury, Rohmer lunged to the spot where he had vanished, stamping his feet as if dancing on Gilbert’s grave.
“Without fear, you bloody weakling! I said without fear! Don’t you want to be. . .”
The Darkfall exploded in the skies beyond the windows. Jagged blue lightning stabbed through one of the ragged gaps and found the only thing in the office block that was moving. A piercing bolt of blue fire hit Rohmer between the shoulder blades, flinging him across the office in a shower of sparks. He collided with a hessian screen, and sprawled on the carpet.
“. . . changed?” he gasped.
His back was hideously burned and smouldering, the long black coat split up its length to the collar. Rohmer rose to his knees, lifting first one hand and then the other in front of his face to see if the material of his gloves was broken. “Not yet, not yet. I’m not ready.” The gloves were unbroken.
He rose unsteadily and turned back to the shattered windows, breath coming in sobs. His teeth were blackened, his hair singed. Smoke rose around him.
He smiled.
“Thank you . . . thank you . . .”
He turned and tottered towards the office doors.
TWELVE
They reached Floor 9 on the staircase when the Darkfall strike shook the building. A massive crack zig-zagged like lightning through the plaster of the opposite wall as the sounds of thunder roared in the stairwell. Great chunks of plaster fell from that wall, crashing and exploding in clouds of dust to the ground floor, nine storeys below. That dust was billowing and choking them as they struggled to ascend. The second strike was even more fierce. The stairs juddered beneath their feet, the stair-rail vibrating visibly and emitting an echoing whanng!
Jimmy tottered back two steps, reached for the wall to steady himself, and then saw the blood on his gloved hand. He snatched it back hastily and then looked up to where Cardiff and Barbara were hanging on to each other under the storm’s onslaught, coughing and choking in the shower of plaster. Jimmy looked at his bloodied hand and then back to Cardiff, and to Cardiff‘s bloodied shirt front.
“Come on!” choked Cardiff. “It’s coming . . .”
“The blood, Cardiff! The blood!”
From somewhere below came an enraged crashing and bellowing. .
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Jimmy? We’ve got to . . .”
“No, wait,” snapped Jimmy. “Flesh contact with the wall that’s what they said. That’s why we’re wearing these gloves. But what about the blood?”
“What . . . ?”
“There’s blood on my hands, blood on your clothes. Is that ‘tissue’? Is that flesh contact? Shit, Cardiff . . . what happens if we touch anything when we have blood on our hands and clothes?”
“Christ,” said Cardiff through gritted teeth.
A monstrous shadow lurched on the stairs two floors below.
Cardiff looked at the blood on his hand, where he had been clutching his chest.
The shadow below screamed and howled.
“Come on,”
said Cardiff. “Move!”
The thing staggered on the stairs as a slab of plaster from above exploded on its shoulders, shrouding it in a cloud of dust. It lashed out at its non-existent attacker, groping through the plaster-dust with encrusted, mutated talons. Finding nothing, it lashed at the walls and screamed in fury.
The Food Smell was still above it, and those pangs which had been temporarily assuaged by what it had found in the wall below, were now growing ever-sharper once more. Above the roaring and cracking of the storm, it could still hear their voices, still smell their presence. It lunged to the stair-rail in the blue-blackness, straining to ‘see’ where they were. More plaster chunks exploded in the thing’s face and it staggered back again, lashing out.
Barbara! Baaaarbaaraaa! I need you . . . need. . .
It lunged up the stairs again, after them.
Barbara stepped down to Jimmy, her white face frozen in fear, and seized his arm.
“Oh God, let’s go! I can hear it. It’s calling to me in my mind, and it’s horrible!”
And now they were climbing again as the building grumbled and shook. Below, something exploded with an echoing crash. It seemed as if the entire structure of the office block must surely collapse in a grinding, tearing, disintegrating avalanche of rubble. Cardiff staggered and almost fell back against Barbara. Jimmy grabbed him and shoved, and they were climbing hard; breath catching tight in the choking dust-air. Above them, something gave way with a long, rending metallic screech. An indeterminate mass of concrete and steel plunged down the centre of the stairwell, exploding like a bomb on the ground floor below.
Another piercing roar, and the stabbing pain of a Darkfall strike. Jimmy fell headlong forwards, throwing out his hands instinctively to check his fall.
“Jimmy! No!” shouted Cardiff, whirling to see what was happening.
But he was too late.
Jimmy sprawled, his hands now braced solidly on the steps in front of him. He looked up directly into Cardiff’s eyes, gritted his teeth, and waited for his hands to sink into the concrete.
“I know it wasn’t you that set me up, Cardiff. It was Pearce.”
The Secondary strike stabbed pain again, the detonation reverberating long and loud.
“Look after Barbara . . .”
“Jimmy!” shouted Barbara. “Look . . . look. It’s alright.”
Jimmy’s hands were not sinking into the concrete.
With a sob of relief, he pushed himself away from the step and back to his feet again. Cardiff seized him with a bizarre feeling of savage relief as Jimmy gazed at his bloodied hands.
“Thought I was going into the concrete, Cardiff. I really did.”
“Really would be a hardened criminal then, wouldn’t you?”
Barbara was shaking her head now, the jade pendant dancing around her neck. The thing was speaking to her again, and the sensation was deeply horrifying. “Please, please. Let’s just get away from here.”
They climbed.
THIRTEEN
Rohmer staggered like a sleepwalker through the second-floor door leading out into the stairwell. He waved weakly at the plaster dust which billowed at him, did not flinch when a tangle of wire, metal and concrete shattered to pieces against the far wall and dropped into the tangled wreckage on the ground floor below. The landing shook beneath his feet as he tottered to the staircase and looked up. He could see nothing above him, but knew that they were up there.
“Brother . . .” he said, and then the dust caught in his throat and he retched. Coughing blood and phlegm, he raised his voice and shouted up the staircase into the sounds of the storm and the destruction. “Brother! Wait for me, brother!”
Smouldering, he began slowly to climb.
FOURTEEN
The clouds of dust swirled and parted as it leaned out over the stair-rail, looking up. And now, two flights higher up on the other side of the staircase shaft . . . it could “see” her, also leaning over the banister and looking down. It “saw” the look of horror on her face, felt that peculiar flooding of complicated emotion within, and then the all-consuming hunger. It called to her over the raging of the storm: “Baaaarbbbaaraa!”
“Oh God, Mr Cardiff!”
Barbara jerked back from the stair-rail as they continued their ragged ascent.
“It’s just below us . . . and it saw me!”
“Don’t . . . don’t . . .” There was a band of tight steel around Cardiff’s chest. His breath was catching in ragged wheezes.
“. . . don’t stop . . . keep moving!”
It hauled itself up the steps after them, urged on by the hunger. It could sense the food/thing called Barbara’s terror. It could feel her strength ebbing away.
A whirling chunk of concrete hurtled from above, bouncing on the stair-rail beside it with an echoing clang! A jagged shard imbedded in the thing’s chest, making it stagger.
Pain.
Hate and rage and hunger bellowed from its insectile jaws in a spray of spume as it tore the concrete chunk from its body and discarded it on to the stairs. Up above and opposite through the swirling, billowing clouds, it could see the food/thing that the others called Jimmy, standing at the rail. He had flung that concrete chunk at it, and was shrinking back now as it lunged furiously at the stair-rail roaring its lust and its hate at him across the gap, before . . .
“Brother. . .
. . . turning back to the stairs, taking another three steps upwards and feeling that gnawing pain of hunger inside. The wall at its left cracked and split. Rain and wind began to spit through that crack, but the thing’s attention was focused on the Food above as it. . . .
“ . . . brother. . .
. . . continued to climb, clutching at the stair-rail and heaving its monstrous bulk upwards. Saliva and spume dripped to the stairs beneath it in mucous puddles and . . .
“Wait for me, brother!”
. . . it turned at last, looking back down the way it had come for the source of that voice. Without eyes, it scanned the billowing clouds of plaster and concrete, the tangled rain of rubble and collapsing masonry . . . and at last it saw the blurred form that was climbing the stairs to meet it. It recognised the Food Smell of this one, knew from its ‘link’ with the food/thing called Barbara that this was the one they called Rohmer.
It looked up to where Jimmy Devlin had been standing. He was gone with the others, still climbing to get away. And then it looked back at the slowly ascending form of Rohmer, calling to it as he came. There was something about Rohmer’s voice, something about the way that he called to it.
It turned, feeling the hunger gnawing at the mutated contortion which was its gut, and began to descend towards him.
A cloud of choking plaster dust enveloped Rohmer on the stairs. White powder settled on his blackened face, making him look like some ghastly clown in smeared make-up. Coughing, he waved at the dust, dimly aware that his back was hideously burned, but the pain was somehow muted. He could smell his burnt flesh, could feel how the fabric of his long black coat had been fused into his charred flesh. He knew that by rights he should be dead or dying, but the drugs inside him and the knowledge that he had been touched by that wonderful power from the skies, obliterated it all. He felt a strange kinship with the thing somewhere above him on the stairs, and he called . . .
“Brother . . . ?”
. . . again, as he waved at the all-enveloping grey cloud. It thinned, and now he could see something moving above and beyond him. A monstrous shambling shadow was moving down the stairs through that dust cloud. The staircase shuddered and groaned, and Rohmer put out a gloved hand to steady himself on the quivering banister. More rubble and tangled metal fell past him and down into the stairwell. The dust cloud spiralled in a vortex over the stairs and was sucked away into the staircase shaft.
The thing stood at the landing on the tenth floor, weaving from side to side and looking down to where Rohmer stood on the ninth.
He held his arms wide and smiled: “Brother!”
Spume, saliva and blood dripped from John’s misshapen head as the thing he had become started slowly to lumber down the stairs.
“We can’t leave him,” said Cardiff, looking back over the rail on the twelfth floor at what was happening below. He started back down.
Jimmy caught him by the sleeve.
“Cardiff, are you bloody crazy? Leave the bastard!”
“I can’t leave him to that . . . that . . .”
“Why NOT? For God’s sake, come on and let’s get out of here. We don’t owe him anything after everything we’ve been through. The man is insane.”
Cardiff pulled away from Jimmy’s grasp. “Do you think I want to go down there for Christ’s sake? I just can’t let . . .”
“This is a hell of a time for Lone Ranger tactics. . .” began Jimmy.
But Cardiff had already started down the stairs. Thunder roared and another crack appeared through the plaster wall beside them. The staircase juddered again and Jimmy heard the metal staples and stanchions holding the staircase to the wall begin to split and crack. Barbara looked at him helplessly as he pushed on past her and staggered down the staircase after Cardiff.
“Brother?” said Rohmer, arms still held wide as the thing came on. A rasping, dreadfully sibilant sound was coming from the chaotic, nightmare jigsaw that was its face and jaws. Its arms were no longer weaving at its side . . . they were raised. The deformed talons on the end of those dreadfully shredded and mangled arms were grasping through the air towards him. There was no sign of kinship on that dreadful visage, no sign of recognition . . . and Rohmer suddenly began to feel that strange elation leaking away from him. He took a faltering step back as it took another step down towards him. Four more of those steps and it would be on the landing. Was it . . . could it really
. . . be grinning at him with a face that was not a face?