“‘That regard’?” Nancy pressed.
I nodded. “For all your father has seen, he’s still human and he’s been missing for months. Even I couldn’t last months in there without completely losing my battle to the void. Your father won’t be the man you knew when you last saw him. He’ll have had his mind warped either to their influence, or his constant struggle to keep them out will have put him into a catatonic state, where he keeps everything, from both realities, out. William Dyer won’t be of much use to anyone in there.”
Nancy started hitting me in the chest with her elbow as much as the awkward closeness would allow. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. He wouldn’t hide somewhere that would destroy him!”
I put my arm up to block her hits. “I hope that you’re right, but it isn’t likely. Our best hope is that he still retains enough of himself that in time he could return to being a functional person.”
“Merde.” Leo cursed.
“Damn you!” Nancy threw a glance at Leo and shouted, “Damn both of you.” She returned her eyes to me. “You don’t know my father. You don’t know the type of man he is. He survived that horrible place that you read about because he is a survivor. He will always survive because that is the type of man that he is!”
I had obviously challenged the image that Nancy had of her father and I felt immediately guilty for it. I was trying to prepare her for the truth, when I probably should have been comforting her. Nancy had already come to expect the worst, and her entire journey to find her father was an act of fanning the flames of her own hope.
“You’re right.” Leo, always the gentleman, was attempting to save face before I even could. “We do not know your father, but we are trying to help.”
Nancy remained quiet, so I took up the torch. “Either way, we need to be prepared for when we enter. Your father might have survived the creatures that dwell in the void, but I am not so certain that we will.”
“What do you mean?” Leo asked, obvious relief at the change of subject flashing across his face.
“Those creatures that slither into our brains from the void will be trying to gain purchase and anchor themselves to us. We won’t be there long enough for it to be permanent, but they will manipulate our minds and our emotions all in an effort to make us their avatars in this world. We won’t be them, but we could become puppeted by them.”
Panic crossed both of my companion’s faces, and I tried to explain. “For the most part, aside from some strain, I will be fine. I have enough practice with the void that this will be a very simple sparring match. To that regard, Leo will have little to contend with as well, but, unfortunately, his resistance will be nothing like mine. Leo will most likely be distracted and quick to temper.” Leo frowned but kept his eyes on the road. “Nancy, you are the one I am the most concerned about.”
Her panic intensified and I made a quick note that Leo should be the one to explain things to her from that point forward.
“You have no practice with the void, and this will make you susceptible to its influence,” I explained.
Her face paling, Nancy asked, “What will it do to me?”
I shrugged, suddenly wishing I hadn’t. “They can manipulate emotions and thoughts if you can’t resist them, and guessing their agenda is impossible. We simply won’t know until you are in the Heath.”
Looking at Nancy, I knew I wasn’t helping, so I tried a different tact.
“If you force yourself to focus on your goal, it will be harder for the void to find purchase in your mind. Focus on finding your father. It won’t stop them and they will try to control you, but as long as you focus on finding your father, they can’t own you.”
I poured confidence in my voice, but I doubted that she bought it.
“How will we find Dyer?” Leo asked.
This time, I was the one grateful for the subject change. “We will ask a local,” I answered.
“You just said that no one lives in the Blasted Heath,” Nancy countered.
“Almost no one.” I sighed. “There are always exceptions to the rules. The Blasted Heath...the things reaching through the void managed to get their hold on one man. He held onto his own will for much longer than I suspect even I could. In the end he succumbed. They wiggled into his mind and turned him into their puppet. He speaks for them and I don’t think there’s much of the original man left aside from the shell that is his flesh.”
“Who is this man?” Leo asked.
“Ammi Pierce,” I supplied. “When the thing under the ground first came, Ammi was one of the first to have direct contact with it. He knew the people whose well that it had fallen into, but when they disappeared, and the rest of the people of the Heath had left, he stayed. I don’t know how long he’s been there, but I’ll bet that the void will keep his body from failing him.”
“He can’t die?” Nancy was obviously trying to forget about the earlier horrors that I had suggested, so I indulged her.
“I’m sure that his body could be destroyed, but death as we know it wouldn’t make any difference. The void would just choose another to house their collective will.” I lowered my voice, only a little. “Try not to forget: Ammi speaks for the creatures reaching through the void, but the creature beneath the Blasted Heath has no voice. There will be two beings, at least, hiding your father.”
There was really nothing that Nancy could say after everything that I had told her, and while she was scared, she seemed to be accepting it all. That was odd, but relieving. If I was right about her father, we were going to need her even more.
We rode in silence for a few more miles before I saw the haze ahead of us. It was the presence of the void I had previously mentioned. Those who couldn’t sense the void’s presence wouldn’t see anything, but I saw a fog with an unknown color to it. It reminded me of a purple bruise.
Leo put on the brakes as we approached it, slowing as it came into his less focused senses. He glanced at me and I provided him a nod, encouraging him to drive through it. He mumbled “Merde,” again and took his foot off of the brakes.
Nancy didn’t seem to notice, and I watched her as we crossed into the presence of the void.
In my own mind, I felt the things reaching into and through me. Indescribable creatures existed in the periphery of my vision and their inky tendrils slid across the surface of my mind. They grasped at any stray thoughts they could find, so I gave them the same defense I always did: Baseball.
My defenses against the void were to give them things they couldn’t use, and as a child I had thoroughly enjoyed playing baseball. As the void reached for me, I played an imaginary game in my mind. I hit the ball and rounded the bases. Of course, over the years I had built up my other mental defenses, turning my mind into a walled fortress, but even a fortress needed a moat, and that was baseball.
Nancy didn’t have baseball, and while I was hitting home runs, I watched as Nancy’s eyelids lowered halfway and her body untensed completely. She sagged between Leo and me as the creatures of the void played with her pliable mind.
Leo had a very different reaction. As we drove into the mist, his face tensed and his brow furrowed. He had the look he took on in battle. It was concentration and focus. All Leo had was a moat, and it was going to take everything in his mind to defend against the void. He wouldn’t last, but he would last longer than Nancy did.
“Is that a cat on the window?” Nancy suddenly asked. She pointed at the window and I frowned. This was a weird reaction. The void-beasts were testing her perceptions.
Leo looked at Nancy and then to me. His look of concentration had turned to one of general discomfort. I optimistically took that to mean that he’d managed to reach a standstill with the beasts.
The road curved as we came over another hill and the countryside began looking withered and gray. The trees had completely lost their leaves and swayed even though there had been no breeze that afternoon. There was no living vegetation on the ground, only dirt and dead grass.<
br />
A gravel road broke off to the left and I directed Leo down it. It ended in a small one-room house, eerily similar to the ancient child’s shack from the Dream Lands. Behind it was a small barn. Both of the structures were in a poor state and had fallen into disrepair over the many years that Ammi Pierce had lived there.
Or, if the stories were true, they had fallen into disrepair even before that.
Leo pulled the truck to a stop directly in front of the house. Ammi Pierce stood on the remains of what used to be a front porch, watching us and not moving.
Ammi Pierce was wearing stained overalls with a surprisingly white undershirt. From his chin to just past his waistline was a long, white beard that needed to be washed. His thinning hair was just as white as his undershirt and his feet were bare. I could see his incredibly long toenails from the truck.
I started to get out of the truck when I realized that Nancy wasn’t even thinking about it. Her eyes were still glazed over, but they had focused on the shell of a man standing outside. I had to remind her of her focus.
“Nancy, your father is somewhere near here. We’re close, keep your eye on the ball and we will get out of here soon.”
I mouthed at Leo, “Keep your eye on her.” He hesitated for only a moment, obviously trying to think past the foreign thoughts clawing at his mind, before nodding in the affirmative.
To Nancy’s credit, her eyes came back into focus and she forced herself to sit up straighter. “Let’s get this over with,” she said to no one in particular.
We all slid from the cab of the truck, and I lead the pack closer to Ammi Pierce. The only movement that he made the entire time was with his eyes as they followed us.
I started as Ammi’s raspy voice barked. “You can’t have him!”
Nancy and Leo started as well, and I noticed that Leo had pulled his pistol, holding it at his side.
“You can’t have him!” Ammi barked again. He added in a much quieter voice, “He’s been too much fun...”
There was something just behind his vocal cords as he spoke, and I could almost hear the beasts riding his body.
“Whatever happened to you Ammi?” I asked, slowly resting my hand on my own holstered gun. “That creature didn’t even land in your well.”
There was a sudden confusion in Ammi’s eyes and the voice that came out didn’t carry with it the sounds of the creatures. “N-no. It was in...in...” he frowned as the last piece of whatever was Ammi in there tried to recall his neighbor’s name. “...Nahum’s. It...destroyed them.”
The voices returned. “They couldn’t handle the color from the stars. I couldn’t either, so when the new voices began to get loud enough to understand, they made me a promise.”
“They would help you keep people away from the blight, in exchange for,” I waved my hand at the old man, “this?”
He nodded at us and smiled, showing his toothless mouth. “I don’t need to eat or drink, and the damned blight would ruin it all for me anyway. I am eternal...” his own voice returned for only a moment, “...to...s-save Arkham.”
Ammi Pierce’s sacrifice put a pit in my stomach. This was but one beachhead in a war that raged far larger than our own world, yet Ammi stood as a dam to its torrent. They had convinced him that if he didn’t stand there, taking all that they gave him, the blight would continue to spread.
It wasn’t true. Unfortunately, they had lied to him. Whatever had been left behind to live in the the lands of the Blasted Heath only had so much reach, and its own aura was keeping people away well enough. As it wore at the veil between realities, the voices had found the panicked and shattered soul, ripe for the picking.
It was too late to tell Ammi that. It might even damage him to do so. I had thought all that remained of the old man had been lost to the creatures, but his sense of hope had allowed him to hold onto the last pieces of his soul.
Hand still on my pistol, I didn’t really care about Ammi’s story, and returned the conversation to what we really needed to know.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
Ammi’s brief surfacing vanished and I was talking to the beasts in the void again. They smiled.
“There are very few places in your world that such a man could hide, but I already told you. You can’t have him.”
“We do not have time for this,” Leo was suddenly shouting. He stepped forward quickly, lifting his pistol and taking aim at Ammi. As he stepped forward, he knocked over the clearly influenced Nancy, sending her to the ground.
Spitting as he shouted, Leo demanded in French, “Where is Dyer?”
Ammi only smiled at Leo, not afraid of what a gun might do to his body.
Annoyance filled my mind, and while some of it was mine, I recognized the influence of the void. They wanted me to drive this outburst to its seemingly inevitable conclusion. I fought through it and focused to think.
This wasn’t Leo’s fault any more than my annoyance was mine. I had to speak to Leo and get past the creatures’ puppetry.
I stepped over Nancy who was now writhing on the ground trying to get back to her feet with no success.
“Leo, please listen to me.” I was gritting my teeth as I spoke. “This isn’t a man. The void needed a toy, someone to play with and entertain them. It chose Ammi. It wormed into his mind and, piece by piece, replaced and changed the man into a puppet.” I sighed as some of the void’s fog lifted from my mind. “He has power, more than I do when I touch the void. Why do you think he hasn’t made you put the gun down yet?”
Leo frowned as confusion covered his eyes.
“Think Leo!” I shouted. “Why hasn’t he stopped you from shooting him?”
Leo’s face showed his struggles to push through the void’s fog on his own mind and think about the situation.
“He is not stopping me from shooting him, because he doesn’t think that I will shoot him. That...” he frowned as a new idea came to him, “...or he wants me to shoot him.”
I nodded. “If you shoot him, the void will choose a new toy. Of the three of us, who do you think the void will pick?” I could see that Leo wasn’t getting my point, so I explained it for him. “Nancy’s too easy. They would be done with her in a day.” I pointed at myself. “I can resist them and if push came to shove, I might even be able to hurt them. There’s only one person here would could put up enough of a fight to be entertaining.” I sighed and pointed at Leo. “There’s only one viable replacement for Ammi Pierce.”
Leo held the gun aimed at the still smiling Ammi’s face for a second longer as my words sunk in. When they did, he lowered the gun quickly and stepped away from Ammi.
Leo didn’t want to be a puppet.
As he got further away from Ammi, he grabbed Nancy by the arm and pulled her to her feet. Then he looked her in the eyes and began demanding for her to focus.
That was why I liked Leo. He was a soldier in every sense of the word. He wasn’t going to focus on how close to losing his mind and soul he had just come. Instead he was going to focus on making sure that no one else did. It made him a very useful ally for staying on point.
I turned away from my friend and back to the still-smiling avatar of another reality. “I, on the other hand, can do whatever the hell I want to you.”
With how thin the veil between worlds was there, I was surrounded by the power of the void. Normally, my access to that power can be limited by how much work I have to put forth to grab it, but in the Blasted Heath, the void was tissue paper that I could easily tear.
I drew my sword and used the void’s power to lift Ammi Pierce off of the ground. I held him about a foot from the ground, incapable of retreating from what I was about to do.
The symbols carved into the black blade of the sword began to glow. I had never seen it happen before and could only assume that it was also feeling how close the other reality was.
The smile vanished from Ammi Pierce’s face and he began to flail about in the air.
I pressed the tip of my magical sw
ord against his abdomen and watched as it sizzled and smoked the flesh underneath the cloth. I pressed harder and Ammi let out a howl.
“I believe that you can’t die. Heck, I could kill the bastards riding you right now and a handful more would fill the space I emptied.” I pressed the sword an inch deeper, slicing and burning flesh as I did so. “Why would I want to kill you when I could make your life hell?”
The creatures inside had long thought of themselves as incapable of being hurt in our reality. These beasts had never met me and this gave me the immense pleasure of introducing them to what pain really was.
“You’re done ‘playing’ with Dr. Dyer and we don’t have the time to let you play with us either. Give him to us and we will leave.”
He howled again as I pressed the sword in deeper and began to twist.
The howls turned into words.
“The house!” Ammi was screaming with every voice in his head. “Dyer’s in the house!”
Nancy grabbed those words with every ounce of her will power and became a driven woman. She sprinted toward the house.
“Leo,” I said. “Go with her.” Leo took off after her as I held Ammi on the end of my sword.
“Please let us down, let us down!” The possessed man was shouting.
I shook my head at him. “Not until I see Dr. William Dyer inside that pickup truck.”
The door to the house slammed open with a bang and out walked Nancy and Leo. Between them hung a dirt-covered old man. He was wearing a suit like what he would wear to teach class. His facial hair had become long enough to cover his neck. His hair hung to each side of his head and looked as dry and brittle as gray straw.
It was Dr. William Dyer’s eyes that looked the worst. They darted around in every direction as if trying to view everything at once.
Or...possibly as if trying to avoid seeing something specific.
Dragging Dyer out, Nancy was talking to him the entire time. It wasn’t audible to me, but I could tell that she was hoping to snap him out of whatever fugue he had entered.
Leo and Nancy moved past me and to the truck. As they did, Leo looked at me and nodded to Nancy. “We need to get them out of here now,” he said.
The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set Page 30