Zone

by Jack Lance

  Eight months later she talked about this incident as a patient of Dr Richardson, while he listened and took copious notes. He sat across from her, his legs crossed, his pen poised over paper.

  ‘And that’s when the nightmares started?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘They started when I was still in the hospital. In my dreams I go back to that rumbling darkness. There are things in there that can see me. I run away every time, but I never get away. I know they’re pursuing me. Every time I think they’re going to grab me, I start awake.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Richardson mumbled.

  ‘Later on, I experienced another but similar kind of nightmare. I’m in my mother’s Tupperware room and the door is closed. But something is kicking it in. Suddenly the lock breaks, the door opens, and behind it I see that same darkness again, and they’re there. I’m sure of it, even though I can’t see them.’

  Stretched out on the burgundy couch, she gathered her courage and told Richardson what she thought the nightmares meant.

  ‘I was dead,’ she whispered. ‘I can remember being dead.’

  Richardson sighed and shook his head. ‘Sharlene, I understand what you’re saying. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. But …’

  There was that word again.

  ‘But …’

  Resigned, she let the torrent of words pour out of him.

  As she lay there, he talked about her mother and father, and he talked about Todd. Todd had raped her in the dark, and that’s where her anxieties originated. What she had experienced after taking those pills had only compounded her fear of the dark. Dr Richardson called it ‘nyctophobia’. Her dream about the Tupperware room, he maintained, was related to the psychological terror her father had foisted on her. At the same time, it was connected with her love for her mother, whom she dearly missed.

  Sharlene did not believe him. She hardly listened to him. She understood what he was trying to say, but unlike her he hadn’t been there.

  She had been on the other side.

  There were demons there. And they were still with her.

  Every time she found herself alone in the dark.

  V

  5:47 A.M. – LATER

  TWENTY-NINE

  Alone

  Sharlene opened her eyes to the dark, and for a blissful moment felt nothing. Then she screamed.

  Something was crushing her legs. And her head started pounding, as if her skull had been split open. At length, after her screams were reduced to whimpers, she began to take stock of her surroundings.

  She was on her back, on a floor. Something of consequence was lying across her legs, binding her. Whatever it was, it was rectangular in shape and the source of the horrendous pain savaging her body.

  She struggled to get it off her. Tensing her stomach muscles, she held her breath, clenched her teeth, and pushed up with all her strength as another heart-wrenching cry split the night. Shards of glass littering the floor had cut deeply into the palms of her hands.

  She slumped back down.

  Were those snakes she saw dangling from the ceiling?

  Her final cry stuck in her throat. She opened her eyes wide.

  Using her injured hand, she felt around the inside pocket of her uniform jacket. Did she still have it? Or had she lost it?

  Searching desperately, she found her flashlight and pulled it carefully out of her pocket. She couldn’t let it slip from her bloodstained hand and roll away into the gloom. When she flicked at the switch, however, the light refused to go on.

  A frustrated growl rose up in her throat, and then the flashlight responded, shedding light on her predicament.

  To her relief, what she’d thought were snakes dangling from the ceiling turned out to be power cables.

  The lead weight on top of her legs was a trolley. She was in the upper-deck galley. Around her was chaos. The floor was strewn with dishes, bowls, cutlery, food scraps, shards of glass, broken china and various other pieces of debris.

  Sharlene touched her throbbing right temple and felt a large, painful bump. Her hands and the side of her head were bleeding. The trolley was still crushing her legs.

  She heaved herself up, pushing the ponderous cart with all the strength she could muster. It refused to budge. She fell back and gasped for breath. Tears welled in her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks.

  From somewhere deep beneath her she heard a shrill, grinding, screeching noise that sounded like tearing metal. Then she felt the floor start to give way.

  She had to get out of there. But first she had to get the trolley off her. One of its sharp edges was cutting into her skin like a dull butcher’s knife, and she could no longer bear the pain. She could think of only one thing to do – try to lift the end of the trolley a little and at the same time draw her legs out from beneath it.

  Clutching the edge of the trolley with both hands, she pushed it up as though her life depended on it and managed to lift it enough to free her right leg. But then the heavy cart dropped down on her left leg, igniting another round of excruciating pain. She had no choice; she had to keep going. She had to free her other leg and there was no one to help her. She made another attempt to lift the trolley, wrenching her leg at the same time. Her pants tore and a bloody welt appeared on her thigh, as if she had been cut with a scalpel. She held her breath, bit back the pain, and kept doing everything she could to save her left leg, even though she knew she was tearing flesh and perhaps even veins.

  At agonizing length, she succeeded in getting her leg out from beneath the lead weight, only to have the trolley almost land on top of her right hand. She managed to draw it back, just in time, before the trolley crushed her finger bones into powder.

  Free at last, Sharlene lay there, panting.

  She had once seen the movie Saw II with Todd Bower. The scene that had stayed with her involved a heroin addict falling into a pit filled with hypodermic needles. Repulsed, Sharlene had wondered how much something like that must hurt.

  Now she knew.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ she groaned.

  After a few dreadful minutes, the pain began to ease and she was able to consider her situation. What was the last thing she remembered?

  Being yanked backwards.

  That dark shape. What did it do to me? And to the plane?

  She racked her brain, but she hadn’t a clue.

  What time was it? she wondered. Sharlene aimed the flashlight at her watch: 5:56. She had been out of commission for half an hour.

  She glanced around, taking in the extent of the wreckage surrounding her. She could be wrong, but it felt as if the Princess was no longer airborne.

  If that was true, where had Jim landed?

  And when had he landed? Where was he? Where was Aaron? Where were the passengers? And where is that thing that was here with me?

  She shone her light this way and that around the galley. No doubt about it. She was alone.

  The floor beneath her shifted again. It felt as though she was on the deck of a ship on a choppy sea. And it was quiet. She heard no trace of passengers, crew members, or anyone.

  Sharlene pointed the flashlight at her left leg. Blood was welling up along both sides of the long rip in her pants. She lunged to her right when the left side of the galley began to shift. She heard a high-pitched metallic grating noise, which she feared might be the death throes of the Princess of the Pacific.

  Now what? What was she going to do?

  The destruction in the galley suggested that the plane had suffered a rough landing.

  Where was everyone?

  Were they all dead?

  They wanted us, and they succeeded.

  But Sharlene was still alive. She had no idea how that was possible.

  Another gut-wrenching shriek of tearing metal sliced through to the core of her being.

  Princess was breaking up. Any moment now a piece of roof or bulkhead could collapse on her. In the ebony darkness surrounding her, the metallic moans and shrieks were all the
more ghostlike and terrifying.

  If she stayed here, she would be buried in falling debris.

  She needed to act, to do something.

  But they lurked in the darkness behind the galley curtain.

  Maybe she would be safe here after all, at least for a while.

  The temptation to stay put grew stronger. This was not a safe place, but for the moment anything was better than having to confront the unknown outside the galley.

  She remained motionless until a massive chunk of metal fell from the ceiling of the plane and landed beside her with a heavy thud. Had it come down slightly to the right, it would have crushed her skull.

  Crying out for help, Sharlene tried to get up. She realized it wouldn’t be easy, and it wasn’t. When she put pressure on her left leg the pain nearly undid her. Her other leg didn’t fare much better, nor did her head. It pounded unmercifully, she felt light-headed and dizzy.

  The movie Saw II again came to mind. Why would people subject themselves to the most gruesome torture just for a feeble ray of hope? Why didn’t they just accept their fate and settle for a swifter, less painful death?

  She understood now. The instinct for survival outweighed any degree of pain or suffering, assuming a person wanted to live.

  When she had taken those pills, years ago, she had lost all hope. She had no longer wanted to live. But since then, circumstances had changed. She was a different person now.

  Sharlene grabbed hold of the edge of the counter, using both arms to hoist herself up, trying to keep her weight off her bruised leg.

  She had to open the curtain. What horror would it reveal?

  Holding her flashlight like a weapon, she pushed aside the curtain and shone the light into the dark space beyond it.

  She saw no one. Nothing.

  She dared to take a breath. A quick search revealed no passengers, and no members of the flight crew. The upper deck was deserted.

  The Boeing must have made an emergency landing, Sharlene reasoned. But where in God’s name were the passengers?

  Maybe downstairs, in Tourist Class. Everyone was still there, they had to be. Hundreds of people could not have vanished into thin air.

  She limped toward the stairway, doing everything possible to keep pressure off her left leg. Every step forward counted. At the top of the stairs, she stared down into the dark depths. She could make out very little. She did, however, hear the sound of water lapping against the body of the airplane and she saw the wash of water at the bottom of the stairs. For an instant she thought to shout for help.

  She didn’t, because if she did the demon or whatever it was that haunted the plane could emerge once more from the darkness. It was no longer a nyctophobic hallucination. It was the ugly truth.

  She had to find Aaron. He had to be still on board. He wouldn‘t leave her behind, would he? No, her heart told her, unless he were no longer alive …

  Hesitantly, she clutched the handrail with both hands and stepped down one step on the stairway.

  As she made her way awkwardly down the steps, the sounds of sloshing and sucking water grew louder.

  Nothing reached for her from the darkness.

  Where, oh where in God’s name are the 350 passengers and crew?

  Except for the sounds of sloshing water, it remained quiet. It was as though she was on a ghost ship adrift on the Pacific Ocean.

  Sharlene sensed that she was truly alone, the last living soul on board the Princess of the Pacific.

  But then she heard a cry from below.

  It started as a low, guttural sound, but it swelled into a blood-curdling wail. Sharlene had once heard a hyena howl, and this sounded a lot like that. She felt goose bumps break out on her skin.

  I’m behind the door. Maybe I’m dead after all, along with everybody else.

  That was probably it. After she had taken those pills, she had managed to return to the physical world with the assistance of highly trained medical staff. This time she had no assistance from anyone, and now there was no chance of making it back. She was trapped here.

  Afraid to step further down the stairway, Sharlene suddenly felt an inexorable urge to go back up. As she turned around, her foot slipped and she fell over backwards. Her head hit something hard, igniting immediate and excruciating pain. She felt dizzy and faint. But she managed to roll over and get up on her hands and knees, then crawl up and away from the stairway.

  The howling from below died away, but the Princess erupted in a new round of horrifying screeches. Her nose tilted up as though taking off from a runway. Sharlene feared that this time the fuselage would surely rupture, but the tilting eased and along with it the metallic screeching.

  Silence. Blessed silence.

  Did she still have her flashlight? she wondered. She worried that she had lost it. But to her ultimate relief she found it still clenched in her right fist.

  The pain in her left leg and in her head tormented her, and she had to fight hard to maintain control of her senses.

  In that same moment, Sharlene heard a stamp of feet on the stairs.

  Something or someone was coming up.

  She forced herself upright. Wobbling, struggling for balance, she pushed aside the pain of her injuries. The emotional fear of what might be coming at her transcended physical pain. She bit her tongue and limped away as fast as she was able.

  The only egress open to her was forward, so that was the direction she went. She was too afraid to look back. She kept on going, her tormentor seemingly gaining on her. In her mind’s eye, she could see a black-garbed creature reach out a sharp claw and rip at her back.

  ‘Do it!’ she heard herself cry out, her voice gravelly and choked. ‘What the hell are you waiting for? Do it!’

  Sobbing, she limped on past another seat, onward to who knew where. She no longer cared.

  Suddenly the noise behind her ceased. Was this it?

  Sharlene squeezed her eyes shut, awaiting the end of life as she had known it.

  This was not where she wanted to spend her final moments.

  An image of paradise took root in her mind.

  She is stretched out on the white sand and Aaron is caressing her. Overhead, the sun is shining like fire in the clear powder-blue sky. He is kissing her and will make slow and passionate love to her.

  Sharlene returned from this rapturous dream to the cold, dark nightmare that had become her reality.

  She was tempted to catch a glimpse over her shoulder.

  Only then did she realize that only ten yards separated her from the flight deck. And the door was open. She aimed her flashlight at it and saw no one inside.

  She took a deep breath and another step forward. She didn’t care about the pain. Another step. And another one. Just one more.

  Incredibly, whatever was behind her did not try to grab her or ravish her.

  She started a short sprint, her jaws clenched, one hand on her bleeding left leg, the other clutching the flashlight as if for dear life.

  She reached the cockpit, stumbled inside and pushed the door shut behind her.

  The nose of the aircraft tilted further up. Outside was darkness. She spun around and found that she was alone.

  Someone started banging on the door. Then she heard an ear-splitting crash, followed by a second one. In the bright light from her flashlight, she saw dents appearing in the metal door. The lock was about to give, just as it had when her father had pounded the door down.

  But she wasn’t finished. Not yet. Sharlene slung her arm around the armrest of Jim’s seat. With a wild cry of exhortation, she hauled herself up a final time.

  A third crash. The door was on its last hinges, she believed.

  Then it stopped. For a span of time impossible to determine, all was silent. As she looked around the flight deck, she dared to relax her arm and leg muscles. More seconds ticked away.

  ‘Sharlene!’

  She heard the voice, muted through the door.

  ‘Sharlene!’

 
The voice came louder this time, and it belonged to Aaron.

  At least, it sounded like Aaron. But it couldn’t be him. It was impossible.

  She hesitated an instant, driven by whatever shards of hope she had left, wanting to grab hold of them like someone grasping at straws while dangling over an abyss.

  But then the straws snapped in two.

  Aaron was no longer on board the aircraft. Either that, or he was dead, like all the others. This had to be the voice of the demon that had chased her into the cockpit, and the demon was not human.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed hysterically. ‘Leave me the hell alone!’

  Another silence. Then she heard him shout again.

  ‘Sharlene? Are you in there? Is that really you?’

  The voice did sound a lot like Aaron.

  ‘Open up! It’s me! It’s Aaron!’

  ‘No, it’s not you,’ she said quietly, to herself.

  The doorknob rattled and she heard renewed pounding on the door, but with less strength and determination than before.

  ‘I can’t open the door from this side. You have to do it, Sharlene!’

  She didn’t answer. She was frozen in time and place.

  ‘Open up!’ Aaron cried, his fist pounding on the door. ‘For God’s sake, if you can, open the door, Sharlene!’

  Sharlene stood teetering on the tilted floor. She braced herself, swallowing the pain.

  This wasn’t over yet. They wouldn’t let her go. And she knew the door was going to collapse – with the same inevitability as death.

  But she was resolved to fight and not go quietly into the night.

  She was no longer the vulnerable girl she once was.

  She jammed the flashlight into the inside pocket of her jacket to free both hands, and then began frantically searching the cockpit.

  Where was it kept?

  Then she remembered. It was behind one of the overhead panels.

  She found the compartment where it was kept, pulled it out, and gripped the wooden handle in her right hand. She stared down at it, as the incessant pounding on the door suddenly continued.

  ‘Open up, Sharlene. Hurry! We don’t have much time.’