That’s when I heard a very familiar groan coming from the end of the tunnel past the body. I froze in place, my shoulders and neck very tense. Slowly I turned my head to look at the bend in the corridor. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew somewhere down the tunnel it was there. I listened to the silence, hoping my ears had deceived me. I broke out in a sweat. Maybe Katie was right. Maybe not that way.
I heard the groan again and this time I was sure. It was the monster from hospital. When I heard the first thudding step, I ran.
Katie looked at me strangely when I ran past her, but she fell in behind me just the same, running for our lives. At the tunnel opening I paused, looking left and right for someplace to hide. Trailer offices, machinery, empty space, empty space, trailer. Katie caught up to me, breathing heavily. “Didn’t we just come this way?” she asked.
I heard that groaning voice again, louder behind us. I saw Katie whip her head around. If there was a question of whether she heard the voice the first time, there was none now. I heard the steps echoing down the tunnel. “What is that?” she asked.
There weren’t a lot of hiding places unless we wanted to scale the pyramid and look for somewhere to hide there. I wasn’t looking forward to that so I decided on a trailer. Without answering Katie, I dashed to one of the trailers, leaving her to sigh and follow me. I grabbed the door and pushed, finding it locked. Katie caught up again. “It’s not easy to run in slippers,” she said, gasping for breath. “Locked?”
I shook my head, took a step back and kicked in the door. These were cheaply made trailers, so the lock fell apart easily. The door swung in and banged on the wall. At this point I didn’t care if any of the scientists heard it. I just wanted to be hidden when the monster got here. I got in the trailer, offering my hand to help her in, which she refused, getting in by herself. I closed the door behind her as best as I could; without the lock it barely closed.
The trailer contained a broad desk, a personal computer, a couch, and a small mini-fridge all stuffed into a very small space. I immediately went to the window, peering out sideways without moving the drapes. I could hear the crash of footsteps in the distance. I strained to see anything, but saw nothing. No one else seemed to be reacting. Why were the people around here so clueless?
“Hey, liquor!” said Katie, peering into the mini-fridge. “Vodka, whiskey, and some of those tiny bottles you get on the airplane! Fuck yeah!”
“This is not the time for that,” I said tersely.
“This is exactly the time for it,” she said. “Scared out of our wits, looking for to hide, barely able to function – that’s fucking Miller time!”
She seemed to be taking the danger well. I didn’t share her enthusiasm for approaching it drunk, but at least she was handling it. Maybe getting something to drink would do her good, calming her nerves.
I watched her up end the bottle of whiskey into her mouth, taking four long gulps before pulling it away. She wiped up some of the whiskey that had dribbled down her lips with the back of her hand, settling into a smug grin. “Now I feel like my old self,” she said. “Nothing feels quite as comfortable as the warm welcoming arms of alcohol.”
Then again, I thought, alcoholism is a harsh mistress. Maybe she was better with her medication.
Our conversation was interrupted by the loud thudding footsteps of the monster. I looked out the window and saw a dark form towering over one of the trailers. It turned its head, looking between the trailers. It was looking for something. I swallowed hard. Was it looking for us?
I pulled away from the window. “We need to hide,” I said.
Katie was on the floor, nursing the bottle of whiskey. “Sure,” she said languidly, “where?”
I looked around the room again. There was hardly any place to hide. I decided to go for the obvious, under the desk. It would be the first place anyone looked, but at least it was out of sight. Katie crawled under the desk with me, still carrying the bottle of whiskey.
She turned and looked at me, her face just inches from mine. Her beautiful eyes had less clarity than earlier. “You try any funny shit and I’ll deck you,” she said. Her breath stank of alcohol.
I nodded, not wanting to even give her a chance to hit me for a smart comment. I instead listened for the footsteps of the beast, finding them closer than I thought. I struggled to hear them over the sloshing of Katie’s bottle. I was sure that they were coming closer. Dammit! How did it know we were here? Why was it searching for us?
The footsteps of the monster got closer and closer. Now even in her liquored up state, Katie couldn’t pretend to ignore the sound. Her eyes were wide, looking at the top of the desk as if she could see through it and the walls to the sound. There was no doubt about it; the monster was coming this way. Its footsteps crunched into the ground and the gravel. Every few steps, it would let out its groan: “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak…”
The noise of its footsteps grew louder and louder. Now we could feel the reverberation of its steps. Its steps didn’t vibrate as much as in the hospital, but the trailer was flimsy enough that I could feel every footstep. The desk moved slightly with every step.
“What the fuck is that?” whispered Katie.
“Shhh!” I whispered.
The trailer started shaking more as it stepped closer to our trailer. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” whispered Katie. I put my arms around her and she held tight against me.
I heard the groan and knew that it was right outside our trailer. I didn’t hear any more footsteps. I imagined it leaning down to our window, peering into the trailer, looking for us. What did it have against us?
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak…” The voice was deep and distorted, welling from deep within that monstrous form.
That’s when I realized something, paralyzed in fear with Katie holding me very tightly. The voice wasn’t saying “Maaaak”. No, there was a subtly lost in the distortion. No, it was saying “Maaaaaaaaaaaaax.”
Max. It was calling for Max. It suddenly made sense. It was looking for Max. We had seen him earlier, talking to Dr. McNeil. He was somewhere around here. The creature was looking for him. Did the monster kill the doctor? It was in the area of the body. It could have… I don’t know, smelled Max on him and killed him. Even with this realization, it was so hard to think with the creature right there. I heard it sniffing outside the window. It was definitely searching for someone. Searching for Max.
Katie began to shiver and I held her tightly. I laughed at myself. I didn’t think this would be how my day would go. No clue where I was, hiding under a desk in abject fear holding a drunk girl. I was sure there was some sort of noir cliché there. I was so scared it was funny. I almost didn’t care what happened as long as this moment passed. Surely the monster attacking would be worse than this waiting.
Just as I was actually considering getting out from under the desk and facing the monster, I heard its massive footstep. Then another. And another. It was walking away. I heard it call for Max again, farther and farther away. I got up from under the desk and looked out the window, again peering from the side of the drapes. I could just barely see its dark form walking amongst trailers, looking here and there. I was having trouble seeing it, since it had disappeared into some strange white mist that had appeared. I hadn’t seen the mist before. I watched for a minute, as the beast disappeared. The mist was getting thicker. I saw the far trailers disappearing from sight into a whiteness.
Katie had come up from under the desk and now stood swaying. “Is it gone?”
“Yes, for now, I think. There’s some mist out there though.”
“Oh,” she said, pausing for a moment and staring at the floor. “I think I drank too much.” She burped.
“Get some water or something,” I said, annoyed. “Maybe there’s some in the fridge.”
She fumbled in the mini-fridge while I looked out the window at the mist. It was thick. I couldn’t see anything past where it started. And it was definitely rolling in quickly. Already the
pyramid was out of sight. Trailers were getting engulfed every second. I immediately had a flash of the red electricity that rolled in. Somehow it felt like that.
Katie was chucking bottles from the fridge and I think she found a water bottle. Focused on other concerns, I was already worried. I opened the door and stared out at the mist. There was something wrong with it. It wasn’t exactly mist. No, this was different. At first I thought it was rolling in, covering things and obscuring them. But that’s not what was happening. Instead, it looked like the ground was dissolving into whiteness. Trailers seemed to disappear and unravel. Instead of mist, things were dissolving into a whiteness that was beneath them, like drawings being erased.
“Katie, I think we have a problem,” I said, staring at the door. I turned my head and looked out a different window. It was happening all around us.
“Eh?” said Katie, pausing in the midst of chugging an entire bottle of water.
Where could we run to? I watched as the creeping whiteness crawled toward us, dissolving the land and the sky. Was everything going somewhere? Were they going to reappear elsewhere? I didn’t know, but I knew that if we survived this, I needed to stay with Katie. I reached down and grabbed her hand as whiteness overtook us.
Ten
TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW ROOM 5. PATIENT 457. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. MERILL
PATIENT: I want to go home.
DOCTOR: Why do you want to go home?
PATIENT: I don’t belong here, and there are monsters here.
DOCTOR: Monsters? There are no monsters here.
PATIENT: You may not call them that, but that doesn’t change what they are.
After the whiteness overtook us, I experienced a strange numbness of both mind and body. It felt like my whole body had been bathed in ice water, even my senses. After some immeasurable amount of time I felt a prickly sensation, which gave way to a tingling throughout my body. The tingling turned into a strange warmth that flooded through me, giving my senses back.
I was standing, that was the first thing I was aware of. I first thought I had been blinded, for all I could see was white, a depthless white. It was not a vastness that my eyes could penetrate. It was an absence of space, as if the whiteness had some strange substance that pressed against my eyes themselves. My fears of blindness were only removed when I raised my hand and saw it in front of me. I looked down and saw my clothes; my shirt untucked, my tie crooked. It was then that I realized that my other hand was tightly tensed and grasping. I turned and saw I still held Katie’s hand.
Her eyes were wide, her green eyes ever more brilliant in stark contrast to the whiteness. She showed recognition when I looked at her but did not speak. For some reason I thought that if I spoke, the whiteness would blot out the sound, muffling it in its thickness. We stood in the middle of whiteness, holding hands tightly. We were lost.
It was Katie who broke the silence first. “What happened?” Her voice was inappropriately loud, surprising her as well.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wish I knew.” I looked around. “No, I don’t wish I knew this place.”
I started walking forward, tugging her arm with me. I was surprised that there was something hard beneath our feet.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Walking.”
“But we don’t know anything about this place.”
“True,” I said, “but we aren’t gaining anything by standing still.”
“But we could walk into something dangerous,” she said.
“Dangerous?”
“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated and still drunk, “something bad. I don’t want to end up someplace bad.”
“Like what? A place where everything is completely white that appears to be the literal definition of nowhere? Yeah, we should watch out for something like that.”
“Yeah, well fuck you,” she said, still following me.
After a minute of walking, she said, “See anything?”
“White,” I said.
“Yeah, me too.” Pause. “Do you think we’re getting anywhere?”
“I’m not sure if we are anywhere,” I said.
“No, not fucking philosophically. I mean actually.” Still annoyed, she said, “Like do you think we are making any progress or change in position relative to where we started? How’s that fucking definition?”
“It’s a good one,” I conceded. “No, I’m not sure if we’re getting anywhere. Do I think we’re getting anywhere? Yes. At the very least the walking helps my nerves. It makes me feel like I’m doing something, not standing scared in one spot.”
“Yeah, I can appreciate that,” she said. I must have raised an eyebrow when I looked at her, because she continued. “I wasn’t always messed up. I wasn’t always catatonic or whatever. I used to have no patience for indecisive people and fucking around. No time for half way or half assed.”
“What happened?” I said, making conversation as we trudged through whiteness.
“Fucking white light,” she said.
“White light?”
“There’s more… It started with white light, then got so much worse. So so much worse.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “How?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Really.”
“Okay, I’ll back off,” I said. “Still, if it started with white light, I’m sure this place is no picnic.”
I turned my head to look at her, finding her giving me a glare that could kill puppies. If they were small puppies. With weak hearts. I turned back around to look where I was walking, but knew she continued to glare at me, willing my hair to light on fire.
We walked in silence for a few more minutes. It all looked the same. I wondered if she was right. Maybe we weren’t going anywhere. I’d hate to think we were on some equivalent of a treadmill, continually walking in place.
“I’m not going any farther,” she said, stopping in place. I stopped a step or two ahead of her.
“Come on, it’s not too bad,” I said.
“Yeah, it is. Look, I’m wearing slippers here. Hospital slippers. They’re not exactly good arch support. My feet hurt.”
“I’m sure you can keep walking,” I said. “We haven’t been walking that long.”
“Sure, I can keep walking, but that’s not the point. My feet hurt. I don’t want to keep walking if we’re just walking for the sake of walking.”
“But we’re not going to get anywhere standing still,” I countered.
“I have yet to be convinced by the idea that walking is any different,” she said petulantly.
Frustrated, I threw up my hands. I decided that if she was willing to stay there, that was her choice. If I walked away, I was sure she’d follow. I wagered she was more afraid of being alone than losing the argument. I hoped.
I turned around and walked forward quickly. Or at least, that’s what I tried to do. I turned and stepped forward, banging my face on something hard. I stumbled back in pain, holding my nose, hoping it wasn’t broken.
Behind me, Katie started laughing. That just made me mad. Here I was in pain and she was laughing at me. But the longer she laughed, the more I softened. It was not a mocking, malicious laugh. It was a laugh of genuine mirth and the first real laugh I had heard her make. It made me realize that for all she had been through, there was someone special underneath all those defenses and trauma.
She kept laughing, covering her mouth. “I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing,” she said between giggles, trying to stifle herself, “But it’s so funny.”
“It’s not funny!” I said, my voice muffled from my hand holding my nose. I knew I was blushing.
“No, you’re right, it’s not funny,” she said, still laughing. “It’s fucking hilarious!” she said, descending into another fit of laughter, clutching her sides.
Finally, after I was thoroughly ridiculed, she seemed to recover. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, still smiling a dazzling smile. “Are you hurt?”
I rubbed my nose. It didn’t seem broken. “Only my pride, I think.”
“It was really funny,” she said.
“Yeah, I got that,” I said, still rubbing my nose. “So what did I walk into?”
I turned around and still saw just whiteness. I reached my arm forward, finding nothing in front of it. I took a step and my finger tips touched something hard and unyielding. I pressed my hands against it and identified a hard surface. I followed it up and down to the “ground”. What was it? An invisible barrier? The edge of the world? A wall cleverly painted white? It was a new mystery, but it was something.
“What is it?” asked Katie.
“A wall? I have no idea.”
She walked forward, arms held in front of her until she also touched it. “Wow, trippy.” She felt around it. “Maybe it’s a force field.”
I shook my head and continued feeling around. I discovered that it ended about a foot to the left of where my hand first touched. After that it was just empty space. “Hmm,” I said.
“What?” asked Katie.
Not answering, I waved my arm in the space next to the surface, confirming it was completely empty. Tentatively, minding my nose, I stepped forward in that place. I turned my head right, looking at the surface. After a moment I relaxed and stepped forward. It was more obvious from the other side.
“Hey, where’d you go?” asked Katie. “You just disappeared.”
“Walk around it,” I said.
Katie stepped around, saying a simple, “Oh,” when she saw it.
On this side it was plainly a large metal door. This door had seen some very bad years. The door had visible rivets that had rusted over. There was no sign or designation on the door. It was just a giant rusted metal door with a handle.
“I guess it rains a lot here,” Katie said.
I gave her my best what-the-hell look.
“Well, you see the rain could have caused it to rust up so heavily and…”
“Yeah, I got that,” I said.
“Just trying to help.”
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