Ascending

by Wright, T. M.

  So he stood motionless, afraid to move, uncertain of where he might go if he did move.

  He was whimpering, too, out of fear. He did not hear the doors to the stairs being pushed open. They were down a short hall, around a corner, and the tower was so well constructed that sound did not travel well in it. But though he did not hear the door open, he sensed that something murderous and strange had just entered his world of panic, his world of swollen bladders and communication wands. His world 1,160 feet above the earth.

  "What am I doing here?" he whispered.

  He turned his head stiffly to the right.

  Steve Huckaby and Fredrick Dunn appeared around the corner, from down the short hallway which led to the stairs.

  They were wrapped in the presence, the fog, as if wrapped in cocoons.

  Lenny stayed very still as they approached.

  ~ * ~

  The old woman was still pleading, "Help me, please help me!" when Ryerson Biergarten happened upon her. And when he bent over and peered into the dark, impenetrable oval that had been her face, he tried to reassure her. "You are still with us," he whispered. But he knew that it was a lie. She was, perhaps irrevocably, where he soon would be—the same world that Lenny Baker had one foot in, the world that had produced Steve Huckaby and Fredrick Dunn. The world that now was taking them back.

  Ryerson straightened.

  From behind him, he heard, "Hold it right there!"

  Dammit! he thought, and turned and looked. A cop was at the top of the hump of the walkway, twenty feet from him, under a lighted, overhanging sign—one of twenty in the walkway, each bearing a different message—which advertised the musical The Little Shop of Horrors.

  Ryerson nodded at the woman at his feet and shook his head. "You can't help her—don't try to help her," he said.

  "Hands where I can see them!" the cop ordered.

  "My advice," Ryerson said, "would be to leave this woman right where she is. Don't touch her."

  "I said put your hands where I can see them!" the cop repeated, and raised his pistol slightly. This is what he could see: Ryerson Biergarten, hands at his sides, left hand hidden by his pant leg and the bottom of his brown sport jacket. The woman lying on her back, feet together, arms out from her body a little. Her head was turned toward him, but Ryerson's foot hid most of it.

  The cop, gun still pointed stiffly at Ryerson, took a few quick, nervous steps forward. The woman's face became visible to him. He did not believe what he was seeing. He said to Ryerson, "Good Lord, what's she got on her face?"

  "Nothing," Ryerson answered.

  The cop took several more quick, nervous steps forward. "She's got something all over her face! What in the hell is that?"

  "There's nothing on her face," Ryerson said. "Don't touch her."

  The cop leveled his gun even more stiffly at Ryerson. “Is that some kind of threat?"

  "It's not a threat."

  Several more people appeared in the hallway. One was the cop's partner, who had gone up the left-hand stairway at the entrance to the tower—it led to Waldo's Restaurant. That cop took up a position near his partner, drew his gun, and pointed it at Ryerson. He did not immediately focus on the face of the woman lying at Ryerson's feet. From his vantage point, her face was partially hidden. He was new to the Toronto Police Department, and what consumed him now was the fact that this was the first time he'd drawn his weapon.

  "What do we have here, Stan?" he said out of the corner of his mouth.

  Stan's gaze was transfixed by the woman's face. He could only shake his head in response and mutter an incoherency.

  The next to appear behind Ryerson as he faced the two cops was the CN Tower's head of security, a beefy man named Allen who was wearing a white shirt, black pants, and spit-shined black shoes. He carried no weapons, but liked very much to act as if he did. "Okay," he barked, "what the hell's going on here?" He had been summoned by the blond woman in the voluminous earth-colored skirt who had screamingly sought out the first official-looking person she could find.

  Another security guard appeared and stopped just behind Allen. He focused at once on the face of the woman at Ryerson's feet, and whispered, "God, what's she got on her face there?"

  Ryerson realized he had nowhere to go. He had supposed he would be going up into the tower, after Fredrick Dunn. But he knew that that was not about to happen now.

  The cop ordered again, "Hands where I can see them!"

  "What the hell is going on here?" Allen barked. "What the hell's she got all over her face?" asked the security guard.

  And Ryerson reached down, toward the woman, and put the tips of his fingers into the darkness where her face should have been, from where he could still hear the words "Help me, please help me!"

  He had no concrete idea what would happen to him.

  He felt a sudden queasiness in the pit of his stomach. He felt a sudden, screeching pain sear his arm.

  Then he collapsed face-forward over the body of the woman.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The fear that swept over Allen when he rolled Ryerson off the woman and looked into the darkness where Ryerson's face should have been was like a physical blow. He stumbled backward, arms wide, hands in a mad search for something to steady himself. "Call someone!" he whispered. His hand found a window ledge. He grabbed it. "For God's sake, call someone." He looked at the two cops; both still had their weapons drawn. “Call someone," he blubbered at them. "Please call someone!"

  ~ * ~

  At Sparkles, the Sky-High Nightclub, an expectant calm had settled over the people who had been huddled at the windows. While the bartender made a phone call to security, a few of those people wandered back to their seats. One of them, a young man, was the first to catch a glimpse of Steve Huckaby and Fredrick Dunn. He screamed a long, ragged scream—the kind a man makes in anticipation of great and imminent pain.

  Others in the bar turned and looked. They saw Steve Huckaby and Fredrick Dunn, too, and some of them screamed the way the man was screaming, and some of them sat very still, and some of them smiled, thinking--hoping—that what they were seeing was only a show of some kind, some new attraction at the Sky High Nightclub, and some fainted. One, a beautifully dressed man of thirty, slammed the side of his head into the edge of a table and was dead within moments. Two brothers vacationing from New Jersey at the nightclub "in search of honeys" pulled handguns out of shoulder holsters and trained them on Steve Huckaby and Fredrick Dunn. "Holy Jesus," said one of the men. "Look at those poor slobs on fire!"

  "Yeah," said his brother, "they gotta be sufferin' awful!"

  And they both fired.

  One of the bullets struck a woman in the back of her head, ricocheted from her skull, and passed cleanly through a window. Several seconds later, the bullet landed on the hood of a Jeep CJ4 passing 1,160 feet below, on Front Street West. The other bullet embedded itself in a wall after passing through Fredrick Dunn.

  He was not aware of the bullet. He was not aware of the heat. He was aware only of his need for space and air. Aware of too much light around him. Aware that there were faces swimming before him, and faces swimming in his memory, too, although he did not recognize them.

  He was also aware of pain, as if he were being squeezed on all sides at once. The same sort of pain a newborn might feel moments before it emerges from the womb.

  Steve Huckaby was feeling the same kind of pain.

  The same need for space and air.

  And both of them realized at once that their need was not going to be satisfied here, in this place.

  They had to go up. Farther up into the tower.

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson Biergarten felt something solid beneath his feet. He felt cold air moving around him, and he heard the distant muttering of many voices. But he could see very little, as if he had just come in from bright sunlight. He tried to speak. "What is…" he said, but he knew that to one would hear him, because his voice was hollow and weak, as if he were speaking into a pillow
.

  His eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Shapes appeared around him. They were dull red against black, the shapes of people clustered nearby, and they were shouldering closer to him.

  "What is—" he said again, intending to ask, What is this place? but he was stopped by a sudden shrieking wail that arose from the people drawing close.

  He realized that he was crouching, as if he were hiding in a closet under a low shelf. He straightened slowly. His eyes adjusted further to the darkness and the people who were clustered around him became a more vibrant red, the darkness beyond them a richer, deeper darkness, as if it were the darkness of space itself. But it was not that kind of darkness. It was a living, violent darkness, like the darkness inside a storm, a darkness so deep that the cold air moving around him could have been itsbreath.

  "What. . ." he began, and again a shriek rose up from the people shouldering closer to him.

  "What is this place?" he said, but again the people shrieked as soon as he spoke. "Who are you?" he wailed.

  And they shrieked over his words, as if wounded by them.

  ~ * ~

  The bartender at Sparkles was all but incoherent. He could barely hold the telephone. "What do you mean we can't use the stairs?" he said.

  "They're hot," answered an officious male voice on the other end. "The east stairs seem to be okay, but our suggestion would be to stay put until we're sure. Do you understand?"

  "Hot?" said the bartender. "What do you mean 'hot'? Get us the fuck down from here!"

  "We have people on their way up to you now. It's going to take a while. We've got to cool the stairs. We've got to go up a hundred and twelve stories."

  "And the elevators are out?" the bartender asked incredulously.

  "Yes. I'm sorry. They are. They're out." A pause. "Do you have a doctor up there?"

  "A doctor? What the hell for? We have dead people up here."

  "So there is no doctor?"

  "Yes, there are doctors. They say that there are people dead up here. Get us down, please get us down!"

  "We're doing what we can . . ."

  "And meanwhile people are dying—"

  "We have help on the way up to you."

  ~ * ~

  Lenny Baker wasn't sure whether he was moving or standing still. He thought he was trying to feel his way in the darkness, but he had no way of being sure of that because he felt buoyant, as if he were afloat and unmoving—like a fly caught in a web—and the connection between his brain and body had become spongy, as if the temperature of his skin were exactly the temperature of the air.

  He had no sensation of breathing, of the need to inhale and exhale.

  He could see movement in the darkness, as if the darkness itself were in motion. He could hear the distant muttering of many voices, like a flight of geese high overhead.

  He could hear Ryerson's voice distantly, too. "Who are you?" it said.

  "Rye?" Lenny called. "Are you there?"

  "Who are you?" Ryerson said again.

  ~ * ~

  Steve Huckaby and Fredrick Dunn moved like ghosts through the closed doors of the elevator. Then they moved up, through the ceiling of the elevator, through the shaft of the tower above the elevator, and farther, past the corridor where a thousand small copper plaques bore the names of members of the Sky-High Club, past people caught on the Space Deck—on the other side of the blood-red elevator doors, waiting to go down—"Is there a phone?" one asked. "I think there must be something wrong—where's a damn phone?"—past the graffiti-littered poster of the Matterhorn (THIS ELEVATOR IS GOOD TO THE LAST DROP), behind it, beyond it, up through the shaft and into the density of the concrete, into the point of the tower.

  And up. Still up. Like ghosts, into the darkness and cold and wind above the tower.

  To their place of safety.

  The place of their birth.

  ~ * ~

  Light exploded into Ryerson's eyes, and he screamed because it was painful.

  Then, as quickly, the light was gone.

  And darkness returned.

  But the sudden flash of light had shown him… architecture. Was that right?

  No, he realized. He hadn't seen architecture, he had seen a landscape, a backdrop to the people shouldering closer to him. A landscape revealed in the sudden blinding and painful flash of light.

  "Ryerson?" he heard. "Where are you?" It was Lenny Baker's voice. Ryerson thought, Where am I? I haven't a clue!

  He felt suddenly as if he were in a chair and he was slipping out of it.

  While, about him, the people shouldered closer.

  They would never reach him, he knew, though he didn't know how he knew it. He hadn't a clue about that, either.

  But yes, he realized at once, he did. He'd had clues all his life. It's what he was himself—a clue to this place and to these people shouldering closer to him. He realized that if he were a religious man, he would believe that this was hell. Or heaven. But what did he know? What could any of the living know about this place? It was like expecting an infant to know what it was to be old, to know the purpose and meaning and mechanics of its own birth and its own death.

  Entities were born here.

  Entities like Fredrick Dunn and Steve Huckaby.

  And perhaps he, Ryerson Biergarten, had been born here, too.

  ~ * ~

  Inspector Erik barked at Allen, the chief of security at the CN Tower, "How many are up there?"

  Allen looked very confused. "I'm sorry, Inspector"—he smiled a quivering, apologetic smile—"we're not sure. It's not something we keep close track of. But the stairs are being hosed down. The heat should dissipate—"

  Inspector Erik caught the attention of a firefighter running past. "How soon before we can get up those stairs?"

  The firefighter slowed a little, shook his head once—Inspector Erik wasn't sure what the gesture meant—and continued running.

  "Damn!" the inspector whispered, watched the firefighter a few moments, then turned to Allen and said, "Men's room?"

  "There are several," Allen answered.

  "The nearest one."

  Allen nodded in the direction the firefighter had run. "Past the concession area, to the left."

  ~ * ~

  "But are they alive?" asked a reporter for the Toronto Star, referring to Ryerson Biergarten and the woman he had fallen on.

  Dr. John Lloyd nodded. "They're breathing. That's all I can tell you." Ryerson's body was not visible from the area where the bank of reporters stood, twenty feet inside the Front Street West entrance to the tower, near Waldo's Restaurant. "We don't want to move them—we don't know if that would be wise. For the moment, we're leaving them where they are."

  "And the people in the tower?" shouted a reporter.

  Dr. Lloyd shook his head. "I know nothing of that situation. That is an ongoing situation, a developing situation, and it is outside my purview ..."

  "Sorry?" shouted another reporter.

  "I have no idea what's happening to the people in the tower," Dr. Lloyd clarified.

  ~ * ~

  "I see something up there," said a man standing near a window at Sparkles.

  "What do you see?" asked his date.

  "Movement," he said.

  She put her face into the window, looked up. "I don't see anything, Charlie. I see darkness."

  "No," he said. "There's more than that. It's like heat ... waves of heat."

  "I see it," she announced. "Like the air's moving."

  "Waves of heat," Charlie said again. "See, the stars are twinkling from it."

  "That's what stars do, Charlie."

  "More! They're twinkling more. Look, can't you see that?"

  "But what could be up there?"

  "Nothing at all," Charlie answered.

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson thought he was at a great altitude. He could see nothing to suggest that that was true, but it was what he felt.

  "Ryerson?" he heard. "Are you there?" Lenny Baker's voice, but Ry
erson was hearing it as if over a telephone line, over a great distance.

  And the people shouldered closer, ever closer, but never so close that they could touch him—as if they were merely a huge panoramic picture and his perspective on it changed constantly; the picture got bigger or he got smaller.

  And as close as they were, their eyes were always lost in shadow. He wondered whether they had eyes at all.

  "Ryerson?" Lenny Baker pleaded, and Ryerson heard anguish in the man's voice.

  Then there was another explosion of light, the same as before, and it hurt him.

  In it he saw the same landscape, the same backdrop—horizon, earth, sky. But little else.

  Another pulse of light stabbed at him. He swiped at it as if it were an insect. And the people shouldering closer moved off.

  Another pulse of light. Another. Another. They piled up in geometric progression, like the revolutions of an engine starting, and with each pulse, Ryerson's pain weakened, until, at last, he was in a very rapidly pulsing daylight.

  Alone.

  Except for two men standing together on the vast empty plain between him and the horizon. Two men he thought he could reach out and touch, as if they were merely distant figures in a painting.

  They stood very still.

  Ryerson reached for them, saw his arm go up at right angles to his body, saw his fingers stretch, thought, I am looking at someone else's arm, someone else's fingers! But he knew that he was looking at his own arm, at his own fingers. But they were reaching into an alien world, a world he had trespassed in, but was not a part of—a world that he had never been a part of, a world that could produce creatures like Fredrick Dunn and Steve Huckaby and then set them loose—by accident or by design—on his own world.