Rushed

by Brian Harmon

  “Thanks, Isabelle. You’re right. I have to believe I’m not just here to die.”

  “Don’t forget it. Not even if it all seems lost.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “Good.”

  Eric approached the top of the hill. He felt so tired. It was as if he’d just hauled himself up the side of an enormous mountain.

  “You helped me escape from Altrusk, Eric.”

  “It was you who helped me escape.”

  “But I’d still be there if I hadn’t met you. You saved me. And I can never repay you for that. I…” She trailed off, the words lost before they crossed her lips.

  “I know. And I promise you, I won’t go down without giving everything I have.”

  “You’d better not.”

  “I swear.”

  “Good.”

  Eric reached the crest of the hill and surveyed the land before him.

  “You’ve seen it…”

  “It’s…”

  “Apocalyptically terrifying.”

  That was about as perfectly as he could have ever described it. Before him lay what looked like a lifeless crater at least four miles across. At the very center was the cathedral. He’d expected some kind of grand architecture, towering spires, a gothic monolith, perhaps. Instead, it was nothing more than an enormous hole in the ground.

  “This is where I let you go,” said Isabelle. “Don’t forget what I said.”

  Eric was staring into the black abyss at the center of the barren crater with his mouth agape. Now, at Isabelle’s words, he drew himself up. She was right. He didn’t come all this way to die. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Bye,” said Isabelle.

  And then Eric stood all alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Eric made his way down the slope of the crater. No plants grew here. The earth lay crushed beneath his feet, the soil barren. It was no explosion that formed this crater, nor any falling celestial object. The earth had not been forced into this shape in an instant, but instead over billions of years. The weight of two worlds pushed down on him, literally driving him against the ground so that every step was a labor. Even the air here felt heavy.

  Inside that hole at the crater’s center was the point where the two worlds met. A singularity, the denizens of the fissure had called it. This was what happened where worlds collided. He could actually feel the pressure against his skin.

  No creatures roamed the crater and Eric did not blame them for keeping their distance. It was uncomfortable here. His ears felt as if they were about to pop. He couldn’t quite catch his breath.

  There was also no sign of the foggy man. Not since he came across the carcass of the floppy-eared cat had he seen any evidence of the mysterious figure shrouded in nothingness. He hadn’t left any more traps.

  It didn’t make sense. The foggy man had almost a full-day’s head-start. He clearly had nothing to fear from the creatures in the fissure. Why, then, had he not simply come straight here to the cathedral? Why go to all the trouble of leaving those golems? Why reveal himself the way he did at the church? And why go to all the trouble of ambushing him at the factory, only to toss him back out onto the path?

  What was his plan?

  Feeling as if he suddenly weighed as much as a full-grown horse, Eric made his way slowly across the rocky floor of the crater to the stadium-sized hole at its center. Even as he approached the rim of that mysterious abyss, he expected something more. Surely a structure of some sort stood waiting for him inside the hole. Or perhaps he would find that the hole itself was a cathedral, with an ornate stairwell winding downward among marble columns and gorgeous glass lamps. But as he peered over the edge, he found nothing but shadows and gloom.

  Even Father Billy’s dilapidated old church was more of a cathedral than this. How did the word “cathedral” ever even come to mind with this place? To Eric, it seemed like the exact opposite of a cathedral. It was as if he were gazing into one of the deepest and darkest pits of hell.

  Several sets of wooden steps led down to a walkway that circled the rim of the hole and gave access to two questionable-looking staircases that descended along the inner walls on opposite sides.

  Eric walked carefully down the steps, half-expecting to fall under the burden of the crater’s strange gravity. He crept gingerly to the aging railing and peered down into the darkness below.

  It was like a bottomless pit. Even with the sun still shining overhead, the light only reached into the hole a short distance. The rest was utter blackness.

  There was such a wrongness about this place that Eric had to steel himself against the urge to turn and run away. Surely whatever madness the dream would plunge him into would not be nearly as bad as whatever awaited him down there.

  That heaviness was even stronger here. He could feel it crushing down on him as he peered down, threatening to push him into the abyss.

  He had no idea where he was going to find the courage for this.

  “Frightful, isn’t it?”

  Eric jumped and turned. There, standing at the railing only a few feet away, peering down into the same blackness, was the foggy man.

  But he wasn’t foggy now.

  He was just a man.

  Eric was certain there was no one here when he approached. There was literally nowhere to hide.

  “You.”

  “Me,” the stranger admitted. Without his mysterious shroud of invisible fog, there wasn’t much about him that was even remotely frightening. He wasn’t very big. In fact, he was rather scrawny in his dark jeans and black tee shirt. And he was barely more than a child, at most only twenty-one, with tousled black hair falling over a round and youthful face.

  He turned away from Eric and strolled along the railing, still staring down into the darkness below them. “Fascinating. I’ve been to a lot of strange places, but this is definitely the most intense. Can you feel it?”

  Eric remained silent. He didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. He could feel it. There was a strange energy about this place. It was more than just the heaviness. He couldn’t quite describe it.

  “It’s terrifying, isn’t it?”

  Still, Eric did not reply. But he did agree. This place was terrifying.

  The young stranger stopped walking and placed both hands on the rail. “What could be down there?”

  That was the question of the day, wasn’t it? What was hidden at the bottom of this hole? What could possibly be worth all this trouble? Eric wondered that himself. He also wondered if the answer was remotely worth the very likely mortal cost of finding out.

  “There’s more than one fissure leading away from here, you know. Another one stretches out over Lake Superior. Another into Canada. At least two run west from here. There are other singularities, too, each with its own fissures snaking off it. There are places like this all over the world. But only this fissure is so well-defined that you can use it to travel all the way to its singularity.”

  Now he turned to Eric, his intense eyes fixed on him. “Why is that?”

  Sensing that his time for remaining quiet was over, Eric replied, “I wouldn’t know.”

  The no-longer-foggy man stared at him with those piercing blue eyes, studying him, considering.

  Eric stared back. He wasn’t sure what this mysterious person wanted him to say, but he had no intention of playing along. This was, after all, the man who left three monsters to kill him and then clubbed him over the head and threw him out a loading dock door. He would have liked to walk over there and knock the stupid kid on his pompous ass…but of course that brought him back to those three monsters. Punching anyone who could do such a thing simply seemed like a very dumb idea.

  Finally, the young stranger turned and looked down into the darkness below them again, as if deciding that Eric really didn’t have an answer for him. “I’ve never come across anything like this place before. It’s
wrong. It scares me.”

  “It’s a scary place,” Eric reasoned.

  “I know about scary places. I’ve been to a lot of them. Just a few months ago I was in Mexico. There are these caves there…” He trailed off and stared down into that darkness for a moment, his eyes distant, distracted, haunted. Then he blinked it away and smiled at him. “Four men went insane and ate their own hands.”

  Eric couldn’t make himself hide his revulsion. He didn’t know what was worse, the idea of men devouring their own hands or the fact that this psychopath could relate such a thing with a smile on his face.

  But perhaps the smile was nothing more than a mask. Perhaps that haunted look that had passed over his eyes a moment before had revealed some shred of his humanity.

  He hoped so, at least.

  “But this…” The man gazed down into the darkness again. “This feels so wrong… No matter where I am, the wrongness of this place doesn’t go away.”

  Eric had no idea what this meant, but he didn’t bother saying so.

  “My tricks don’t work here. Why?”

  Eric actually glanced around, expecting to find someone else here with them. But they were alone. The question was obviously for him. “What?”

  There was no smile this time when the stranger turned his eyes on him. He glared. “I can’t shift here. Why can’t I shift here?”

  “Why would I know that?”

  “Don’t play games with me.”

  “I’m not playing games,” Eric replied calmly. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what you mean by ‘shift.’”

  For a moment, the young man continued to glare at him silently. He seemed to be trying to decide if he was being lied to, but Eric had no idea why this person would think he had any answers for him.

  “Who do you work for?”

  Eric stared back at him. “What?”

  “Answer me.”

  “Creek Bend High School.”

  This seemed to catch him off guard. “What?”

  “I’m an English teacher.”

  “I told you not to play games with me.”

  “And I told you I’m not playing games. Just who do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know. FBI maybe.”

  “FBI…? Really?”

  “Maybe.”

  Eric chuckled. “Right. I’d make a great FBI agent, wouldn’t I? Stumbling around here like an idiot, nearly getting myself killed. Repeatedly. Cursing at that ape-thing that was throwing rocks at me back at the lake. That was very professional. Even better, I should join the CIA. Become a secret agent.”

  The foggy man, still missing his fogginess, considered him for another moment.

  Eric considered him back. Did this guy actually think he was some kind of government agent? It seemed ridiculous that anyone could mistake someone like him for something so grand.

  “You weren’t carrying a gun at the factory,” the stranger recalled. “Or a badge.”

  “I don’t sound like a very responsible federal agent. And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about you hitting me over the head back there, why don’t we?”

  “I want to know who you are.”

  Apparently, Foggy didn’t care to discuss that matter at the moment.

  “I’d rather talk about who you are.”

  “Answer me.”

  “I don’t have any answers,” growled Eric, beginning to lose his patience.

  The young man stared at him, apparently still trying to decide if he was playing dumb or legitimately stupid.

  “How do you do it, anyway? How do you make the golems?”

  Again, the stranger lowered his face and stared down into the darkness. Eric didn’t think he would answer, but like so many other times today, he was wrong. “I don’t know, honestly. I just can. I find a container. A box, a closet, the trunk of a car, anything. And then I… I just…funnel some part of myself into it.”

  “A part of yourself?”

  “It’s difficult to explain. It’s like a kind of energy deep inside me.” He glanced up from the empty abyss beneath them and met Eric’s eyes as he said, “I’m not sure…but I think it might be my soul.”

  “Your soul…?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said again, as if afraid that the man he’d three times tried to kill might think he was bugshit crazy for saying such a thing.

  Now it was Eric’s turn to gaze down into the darkness and ponder. His soul? Really? He could hardly deny the possibility that a man could utilize his own soul to make monsters, certainly not when he’d already been attacked by three such beasts in only a few short hours. But there was something profoundly unsettling about using one’s own soul to create such foul abominations.

  The man went on: “I funnel that energy out and into something…incredible. And I make it live. That’s a grossly simplified description, but it’s as good as I can explain it. They don’t make words for what I do. Not in any language.”

  Eric had no doubt. “And the fog?”

  “Fog?”

  “That half-disappearing thing… Where you look like you’re standing in an invisible fog.”

  “Huh. Never heard it described like that before.”

  “So how do you do it?”

  “I shift back and forth through physical space.”

  “How does that work, exactly?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “You have to grasp the concept that there are things beyond our world.”

  “I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem for me today.”

  The foggy man shrugged and said, “Reality is layered. It’s a spectrum. The world exists across most of this spectrum, but most life on earth only exists within a small portion of it. Humans, in particular, only exist within a narrow band of it. I can slide along that spectrum, out of that narrow band, effectively disappearing from this world altogether. Or I can shift to the very edge of that band and only partially fade away, if I choose. You wouldn’t think only partially leaving this plane of existence would be useful, but it turns out it scares the shit out of people.”

  “It is exceptionally frightening to see.”

  The man grinned. He seemed quite proud of himself.

  “So then, can you move between these two worlds without using the fissure?”

  “No. The two worlds here are completely separate. All the worlds in all the fissures are. They each have their own spectrums. I can shift along the spectrum in any world, but I can’t just jump between worlds. That’s pure science fiction.”

  “Right. What was I thinking?”

  Again, he gazed down into the abyss. “But it doesn’t matter in this place. Nothing works here. And I don’t know why.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you want. I don’t know why you can’t work your voodoo here. I could guess it’s because the singularity screws everything up.”

  The foggy man stood at the railing, contemplating this in silence.

  Eric stared at him. “Have you tried going down there yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m afraid.”

  “You? Afraid? Maker of golems? Traveler of strange worlds?”

  “I didn’t survive this long, doing this job, by being stupid. I can tell when things don’t add up. And this place is seriously wrong.”

  “So you work for them, then? The people Father Billy told me about?”

  The man looked up at him, surprised. “‘Father Billy?’ Really?” He laughed. “That’s a bit of a stretch. But yeah. Them.”

  “Bad people.”

  “Good, bad, what’s the difference? They pay good. It’s a fun job. Speaking of fun, wait until I tell them I found William Lonneskey hiding out in an old church out here.”

  Eric glared at him. “Just leave him out of it.”

  But the young man ign
ored him. “That should be interesting.”

  “What’s your game?” Eric asked, eager to move off the subject of Father Billy. “What are you trying to accomplish? You try three times to kill me and then at the factory you just sucker-punch me and leave? Now you want to have a heart-to-heart? You beat me here. You had almost a whole day’s head start. Why didn’t you just take whatever’s down there and leave before I even arrived?”

  “I already told you, it’s wrong down there.”

  “It’s been wrong everywhere I’ve been today!”

  “It’s extra wrong down there. I arrived yesterday evening and stood right here, looking down into that darkness. Immediately, I knew I couldn’t just go down there. All my tricks failed me. I couldn’t sense anything. It was like looking into absolute nothingness. I climbed back up into the crater, where my tricks still worked, and I looked for somewhere in the spectrum where this place was safe, but no matter where I went, it was always the same. It was death.”

  If this man could do his “shifting” thing in the crater, then that explained why Eric never saw him as he approached. He was likely shifted as he approached the cathedral. The better to catch him off guard.

  “So how did I fit into it all? How did you even know I was coming?”

  “I didn’t. I have a few rules that keep me alive in my line of work. The first one is always watch your back. Jobs like these, I leave golems covering my trail, just in case someone decides to follow me. When one of them is disturbed, I know about it immediately. They’re a part of me, as I’ve said. I also instantly know the results of those confrontations. I know when my golem does its job and I know when someone manages to get away. So I knew you were following me. I knew you managed to beat the first two golems. But then you never found the third one that I left at that village.”