Parallax (William Hawk)

by William Hawk

  “I feel like this should have been more exciting,” said Jeremy, morosely pushing food across his plate with a fork.

  Grace sighed. “Hunter screwed us up. We can’t advance unless all of us advance.”

  “Maybe we’re still advancing,” said William. “This is an exceptional situation.”

  “Maybe,” Trina said, “but Proof doesn’t know. And they’re not telling us anything.”

  William stayed conspicuously silent, and the other three waited for his input. Trina’s eyes landed on his wrist. “What is that?”

  He looked down. She was pointing at the bracelet that the Ancient Engineer had given him.

  “It’s a bracelet,” he replied.

  “Well, duh,” said Trina. “Who gave it to you?”

  William swallowed hard and decided that it would be better to lie. “Shana. It’s supposed to calm anxiety, and she said I would feel better if I wore it during our final snap.”

  “That was nice of her,” said Grace. “Do you feel anxiety now?”

  William took a deep breath and then released it. He felt his chest quiver a little, his hands tremble. “Honestly, yes. I do.”

  Trina peered at the etchings on the bracelet. “What do those mean?”

  William told the truth. “I have no idea.” He set down his fork. “Are we all ready to advance to CA3?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to happen,” said Jeremy.

  “All we can do is try,” replied William, standing up from the table.

  

  A few minutes later, the four members of the team stood in the door of the pod tank, looking at the casket-like shapes. William was having trouble processing the idea that this would be the final time he went into a snap. The team had done nearly fifty of them by this point, and he’d started to enjoy sliding into other people’s bodies for a few minutes.

  “Come on in, don’t be shy,” said Shana. She was standing in the corner, waiting. “They’re the same pods.”

  Overhead, the parallax was softly playing. “So who wants to choose the last one?”

  “I nominate William,” said Jeremy, “just to calm his anxiety.”

  “Any objections?” asked Grace. Nobody voiced any, so she nodded at him. “It’s all yours. What are you thinking?”

  William tapped his front tooth with an index finger. “Someplace modern and no more hospitals.”

  They laughed at that, which broke some of the tension and allowed the other three members to relax a little. One by one, they climbed into their pods.

  “Hey guys,” said Jeremy, “in all seriousness, I really don’t want to go back to Menoram. So let’s do this right.”

  For a moment, the four teammates looked at each other, and then they lay down in the pods. Shana affixed the cuffs and closed the tops.

  William looked up at the parallax. He saw symbolic eagles and large rallies. It looked like a scene from the twentieth century. That would be safe. Nobody would force him onto a ventilator there.

  He chose it.

  CHAPTER 31

  NAP.

  In the blink of an eye, William found himself standing in a line of people wearing what looked like gray sacks. They were trudging forward, their shoulders slumped, feet shuffling ahead. All of them had been shaved bald.

  Five hundred breaths.

  He looked down at his hands. They were small and delicate. He looked at his feet. They were miniscule. Then he realized what had happened.

  He’d snapped into a child.

  A little girl, from the looks of it. She was really cold. Her chest was shivering and her feet felt like lumps of frozen clay. William’s heart instantly went out to the poor girl. He could feel the deep sadness and fear within her.

  Next to him, another line of people trudged along. A woman turned her head toward him. Her eyes were hollow and dead in their sockets. “Katarina,” she said, “you must tell them your name.”

  Four hundred sixty-two. Four hundred sixty-one.

  William waited in line, head bowed. And then he looked ahead. At a small wooden table were a doctor, a nurse and a military officer. The officer carried a pistol in a holster at his waist. His jacket was emblazoned with an insignia showing an eagle holding a cross that was bent at all four corners.

  William knew that insignia. It was a swastika.

  He was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. He felt a flash of incredible regret and pain. He’d accidentally chosen to experience one of the worst moments of human history.

  The line inched forward. As they drew closer to the table, William could see that the doctor was opening each person’s mouth and inspecting their teeth. He could see the doctor lifting the people’s arms to gauge muscle tone. If sufficient health was determined, the doctor jerked a thumb toward the nurse, on the right. She was leading the people into a large warehouse.

  For the others, the people who presumably failed the health test, the doctor gestured to the officer, on the left. He was guiding people to a ramp and loading them onto a waiting train, like cattle.

  He glimpsed a yellow nimbus ahead in line. That was Trina. A blue nimbus was behind him. That was Jeremy. An orange nimbus was being escorted by the nurse into the warehouse. Grace.

  Three hundred seventy-four. Three hundred seventy-three.

  His host inched forward in line, shivering. He felt her scrunch her tiny toes in a futile effort to stay warm. Futile, because the air was nearly freezing. The party officials were wearing thick pea coats and leather gloves.

  The man in front of him was given the thumb to the left, and William watched his entire body sag. He wouldn’t move, so the officer came and propelled him roughly by the arm toward the ramp and the cattle train.

  Then the officer looked down at William’s host. He had short blonde hair, clear blue eyes, and a strong jaw. His face was cruel in its indifference. Then William saw it.

  Coming into focus around the man’s head was a black nimbus.

  “Hunter,” he said.

  “William.”

  “Shouldn’t you be in Menoram?” William asked. “How did you get here without the pod?”

  “I can do anything I want. I’ve grown more powerful than you could ever believe.”

  Hunter delivered that last line like he meant it, and William didn’t have reason to doubt. To occupy someone’s body without a pod was impossible unless you surrendered to a different power, an evil power.

  William’s attention jerked back to the tag-along. His tiny host had stepped to the front of the line. She was facing the nurse and the doctor.

  “Name,” said the nurse.

  The little girl said nothing.

  “Name!” shouted the nurse, her brow creasing in anger.

  “You have to tell them your name,” said William.

  She must’ve heard him, because the girl finally squeaked out an answer. “Katarina.”

  “Last name?” said the nurse.

  She wouldn’t speak. She turned her head and looked at the hollow-eyed woman in the next line. The woman’s lower lip was trembling, but she said nothing.

  William decided to help the girl again. “If you don’t tell them your last name, you will never see your mother again.”

  He’d guessed it was her mother, and he was right. Katarina turned back to the nurse. “Katarina Berghoff.”

  The doctor crouched down. His eyes were clinical blue, as cold as an iceberg. “Open your mouth, Katarina Berghoff.”

  William felt his host’s tiny mouth open. The doctor inserted a gloved finger into the aperture. He was close enough to see the doctor’s eyelashes, his fuzzy eyebrows, his flared nostrils, the tiny bits of hair at the edge of his beard. He felt the doctor’s finger probing the teeth.

  Then the doctor removed his finger and wiped it on a towel. “I want you to jump, Katarina Berghoff.”

  “Where?”

  “Up into the air. Here, touch my hand.”

  The doctor held his hand about half a meter above William�
�s head.

  William’s host turned back toward her mother. “Jump for him, Katarina.”

  “Jump,” said William. “Your life depends on it.”

  He felt his tiny body compress itself into a crouch and then explode upward in a large leap. Her hand missed the doctor’s by a few centimeters.

  “Almost,” said the doctor, studying the child’s body. “Do it again.”

  Katarina crouched down and leapt up again. This time her fingertips grazed the doctor’s palm. William felt his host’s little body fall onto the ground.

  “Very good,” said the doctor, nodding to the nurse. “Pick yourself up and follow the nurse. We have something special planned for you.”

  William’s host pulled herself to her feet and toddled toward the nurse, who gestured for her to follow.

  “Katarina!” a voice shouted.

  It was the girl’s mother. William felt his host break into a panic, and she bolted back and wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs.

  Two hundred twenty-two. Two hundred twenty-one.

  Hunter was on him in an instant. William felt the officer’s strong hands on his little shoulders, and he was hauled off the woman’s legs. He felt the mother grabbing him and pulling him back.

  “Don’t take her!” shouted the mother.

  “Stand down!” shouted the officer.

  “It’s my baby! She stays with me!”

  The officer pulled his weapon from his holster and pointed it at the woman’s head. “She comes with us.”

  The host’s mother clenched her jaw tightly. Her lips became a thin bloodless white line in her gray face. She bent down and slowly unpeeled the girl’s tiny fingers from around her leg.

  “Go with the man,” she said.

  “No,” William heard Katarina’s voice say.

  “Go. You must.”

  The officer finally yanked William away. Hunter’s host’s strong hand found the space between William’s tiny shoulder blades and pushed him. William stumbled a few steps and fell onto the dirt.

  The officer started back to his position next to the table, but after a couple of steps, he stopped, as though he’d forgotten something. His face changed its expression. A dark, horrific look spread across his face like rancid butter.

  He turned back. He lifted his pistol and shot the woman in the side of the head.

  The mother’s blood splattered across the person behind her, and the woman’s body crumpled to the frozen dirt. The other gray figures standing in line were shocked, but nobody dared react.

  William cried out and then felt a strong hand clamp across the mouth.

  One hundred forty-nine. One hundred forty-eight.

  He found himself being carried in the arms of the nurse into the warehouse and placed in a small holding pen with a group of other people. Three guards with rifles at the ready stood on an observation platform, looking down on them.

  The little girl sat down on the floor and cradled her knees in her arms. William felt incredibly sorry for his host. He’d never known the internal anguish felt by a small child who watched her mother be killed. This was another level of empathy, understanding the absolute worst thing that could happen to a person. He couldn’t imagine anything that would rip apart a young soul worse than this.

  The little girl looked up. Through her eyes, William watched the people milling around. Some were hunchbacked and elderly. One was mentally handicapped. Others were healthy. William wondered what exactly was the criteria for entering this warehouse. Then he decided that he didn’t want to know.

  Seventy-two. Seventy-one.

  A minute later, he felt the hair stand up on his arms. There was a presence nearby, one that he’d felt before. Something strange and ancient.

  Scanning the room, he saw it. It was humanoid, with four limbs and a face, and it was creeping along the observation platform behind the guards. Its pale white skin was carpeted with a creepy blanket of small horns.

  It was Little Horn.

  William’s blood instantly ran cold. Somehow this time the fear was even greater, because the Ancient Engineer had described the entity in more detail.

  “Don’t move,” he told the little girl.

  Katarina sat stock still, her thin arms locked around her knees. He watched Little Horn creep along the platform and then descend slowly down one of the pillars until it landed on the dirt. It stood up to its full height, which seemed nearly eight feet tall, and scanned the sad gray people penned in the concentration camp warehouse.

  Then the creature spotted him. It move through the sad gray people. They paid no attention to it.

  “They can’t see it,” William said. “Only we can. Now close your eyes, quickly.”

  She obeyed. William could feel Little Horn drawing closer. He was suddenly glad for the bracelet that the Ancient Engineer had given him.

  The little girl’s skin went cold. It was as though ice water had been tapped directly into the space between her eyes.

  Forty-three. Forty-two.

  She opened her eyes. Little Horn’s face was right in front of hers, its enormous humanoid body crouched down before this tiny, pathetic girl shivering on the cold ground. The creature was so close that William could feel every icy breath. He saw the tiny horns on the creature’s skin pulsing, opening and closing, like horrific little carnivorous flowers.

  “William,” said Little Horn.

  William didn’t reply.

  “You can’t run from me forever,” the creature said.

  The little girl was trembling. Little Horn lifted a hand, as though it were going to snatch the girl’s eyes out of her skull.

  Than Little Horn stopped. Its face turned slightly. It rose to its feet and moved away.

  Katarina turned around to watch it. Behind her, another person had entered the pen, a sad gray man with a blue nimbus around his head.

  Jeremy.

  Leaving the little girl behind, Little Horn made a beeline for him and immediately pounced. Jeremy’s host fell to the ground, writhing beneath the power of the ancient horror.

  “William!” shouted Jeremy. “Help me!”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know! Do something!”

  Jeremy’s host lay on the ground, struggling under his invisible enemy. William could only imagine how strange this looked to the other people in the warehouse pen. He briefly wondered about people in other times and other settings who appeared to be possessed. How many of them were struggling with invisible demonic entities?

  Little Horn was sprawled across the man, as though it were in a wrestling match. William realized that it was moving its skin across the skin of Jeremy’s host. He could hear dozens of small smacking sounds. It was the sound of something feeding.

  “Oh God,” said Jeremy, “please stop him. He’s taking me. He’s too powerful.”

  Katarina leapt to her feet and ran across the floor of the pen.

  William tried to stop her. “No, Katarina!”

  The little girl pounced on the demon’s arm. With the flick of it wrist, Little Horn flung her through the air. She sailed clear across the warehouse and landed on a pile of sacks.

  Ten. Nine.

  William felt the girl’s pain. “You can’t fight it, Katarina. You have to avoid it instead.”

  She looked at Little Horn. It had finished with Jeremy’s host and stood up. The body of the man was slick with blood, twitching like a dying frog.

  “Jeremy?” said William. “Are you okay?”

  At first, there was no response. Then Jeremy’s host stood up. The blue nimbus was gone. His eyes landed on William’s. They looked different.

  “It’s your turn, William.”

  That wasn’t Jeremy’s voice. It was Little Horn’s. Jeremy’s host bounded across the floor with an unearthly power and speed.

  One.

  Katarina took in a sharp breath.

  Snapback.

  CHAPTER 32

  ILLIAM WOKE UP IN THE PO
D AND immediately pounded on the cover with the heels of his hands. Through the glass he saw Shana arrive. A few seconds later, the lid slid open. She undid his cuff and he leapt out.

  Violent scratching came from Jeremy’s pod. It sounded like a wild animal was trapped inside. Shana’s brow creased, and she went over to open it.

  “Don’t!” shouted William. “Don’t touch it!”

  She looked at him, confused. “What do you mean? It’s just Jeremy, and he wants to get out!”

  William ran over to Jeremy’s pod and threw himself between Shana and the release button. “Something happened, and I think we need to talk to Proof before we let Jeremy out.”

  She looked skeptical, and his eyes pleaded with hers.

  “All right,” she said.

  “I’ll release Trina and Grace,” he said, “while you find Proof.”

  She disappeared into the corridor, and William opened Trina and Grace’s pods. The two women sat up and wiped the conducting foam from their shoulders.

  “William, what happened?” asked Grace.

  “I heard you and Jeremy talking, and then there was just . . . nothing,” added Trina.

  He just pointed to Jeremy’s pod. Inside, Jeremy was snorting and snarling and scratching like a wild beast.

  “What happened?”

  “We ran into Little Horn.”

  “Oh.”

  “And it kind of . . . ate Jeremy’s host.”

  Trina’s mouth opened. “You mean like a cannibal?”

  “No,” said William. “It’s kind of hard to describe. It ate the host with its skin.”

  Grace covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God.”

  Trina looked like she was going to be sick.

  “And that’s the result,” he said, jerking his thumb at the pod.

  Proof entered the room. He glanced at Jeremy’s pod, heard the grunts and scrapes. A look of concern appeared on his face. “William, tell me what happened. Quickly now.”

  William repeated the story, and when finished, Proof looked stricken, but in control. He went over to Jeremy’s pod and looked down at the snarling creature within. Then he looked up at the other team members.