The Ethereal Vision

by Liam Donnelly

CHAPTER 25 — THE ROAD

  Jane woke sometime later in the passenger seat, gasping for breath. She composed herself quickly. It took her a few seconds to once again become familiar with her new surroundings. She put a hand on her chest, thinking of what she had seen while she slept. In the dream, she had been on the beach in Wexford. She remembered now as she thought about it that the sand had changed beneath her, taking on a gleaming, crystalline appearance.

  She recalled looking down at its white, glinting surface, balancing herself with her arms outstretched, afraid that she might slip. She knelt slowly and placed her hands on the glittering surface. She had felt its cool, flat structure touch her skin. Her hands moved over the indentations among it: the tiny peaks and valleys of its lattice-like structure.

  As this large fragment of the memory became clear to her, others began to surface along with it. There had been other people on the beach with her, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what was happening, or what was being said. There was frantic commotion, light, movement and sound.

  She had her eyes closed then, and just as she was about to give up on remembering, she saw—as much as felt—the presence of a dark, black mass that had been on the beach with her in the dream; it was a being of some kind. She gasped loudly and opened her eyes as she recalled this.

  Morris turned and looked at her. She smiled at him and wiped her eyes. She could sense him wanting to reach out for her again, but she didn’t want this, so she turned and looked out the window. Her breathing was somewhat ragged for a moment longer; then she finally relaxed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Just a bad dream.” She saw him look back to the road then, but glance back at her often.

  Max, she called.

  Yes Jane?

  Um…

  You want to know about the dream?

  Yes. What happened to the sand?

  I don’t know much about that, I’m afraid. But the images don’t come from your memory, and they don’t come from your imagination either.

  Then where do they come from? she asked. She heard nothing from him but silence.

  I can’t be certain, he said finally. She felt him turn away from her. The future, perhaps. She saw in her mind’s eye as he looked out through a gap in the rippling tarp at the back of the truck. She thought of saying something else, but disregarded it.

  Directed by Max, they drove through the countryside until they reached the area he had designated for them. Morris pulled the truck into the parking lot of the abandoned warehouse. The door was locked shut with a chain. Jane watched as Morris focussed and ripped it open easily. The chain fell from the door with a clang, and they entered.

  The interior was dark and damp. Jagged shadows protruded from the corners, reaching down onto the floor and across the walls like ancient, dark hands. The smell of industry permeated the room from the moment they entered. There were empty shelves that lined the walls on either side; these rose to the ceiling where the roof slanted upward towards the centre. There were glass windows that were covered with dirt, and Jane could barely make out the stars through them.

  Joel and Carl gathered pieces of wood from the shelves that lined each side of the warehouse. Michael gathered papers from inside an abandoned office to the left. It appeared as though whatever business had been carried on here had ended swiftly. They took the papers outside and crumpled them, then threw them in the centre of the room until they had a pile large enough to build a fire.

  Ciara, Mike and Morris focussed their combined will on the paper and wood. After just a few seconds, it was set alight. Jane saw them smiling at each other as they did this; she could see the elation on their faces at being able to use their abilities so freely. It made her feel that everything she had been through had been worth it.

  They placed additional wood over the growing fire. The warehouse was filled with a bright yellow light and dancing shadows as the various members of this strange group sat down and began to talk.

  Jane was still standing outside the circle they had formed as the last of them sat by the fire. She had a familiar intuition and looked up. On the left side of the interior was a makeshift two-story office. On the second floor was a window that looked over the warehouse. Max was standing in the window and glancing down at her.

  She quietly left the group, walked into the office and climbed the small staircase to the left. He turned when she entered the small, dark room. It was filled with stacks of papers, and a single desk lined the wall on the left side in front of another window that overlooked a different section of the warehouse. A wooden frame cut off this area from the space her friends occupied.

  “What’s going on, Max?” she asked. She didn’t need to say more.

  “So, I take it we won’t be doing pleasantries this time, Jane?”

  She stared at him blankly. She was glad to once again be in his company. In truth, that was what she had wanted more than anything else from the time she had been locked in the facility, but she was tired and scared. There was what felt like a dark liquid flowing through her body as she thought about the presence she had felt in the dream. Even so, she smiled.

  “It is nice to see you again. I’d hug you if not for the fact that you’re intangible.”

  He smiled broadly and actually laughed. The sound brought a tremendous glow to the dark, dank room.

  “Yes, I suppose that would be nice again. Human contact. It’s been a long time,” he said and smiled again. He paused for a moment as the smile faded from his lips. A more solemn expression stole over his features.

  Who does he communicate with on a regular basis? Jane wondered, her brow furrowed at the thought.

  “About the dream, Jane. What you felt was another being like me.”

  “Like you?” she asked.

  “Yes, like me. Or rather, a being who used to be like me.”

  “But isn’t anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?” She watched his face as he paused. The lines creased down from his eyes, giving him an aged appearance once again. It appeared to Jane that he was actually panicking, but that seemed impossible to her. Why would he be panicking?

  “Well…” He hesitated and turned, beginning to pace the small room. Then he continued. “He was cast out; I suppose that’s the best way to put it. He was cast out by us because of his…motives. I’m not sure if it’s a story you want to hear or are ready for.”

  Jane sat on the only chair in the office and noticed that the room around her had begun to shimmer. She watched as the dark interior faded from her view. Behind it, she saw a field of endless stars and below them a tremendous bright light. She kept her eyes closed for a few seconds, then opened them as the dark office disappeared and this dazzling display became clearer before her. The warehouse was gone completely, and she was standing on a concrete platform about two square metres in size.

  She gasped as she looked out at the bright vista in front of her. This was not the sky of night that she had grown used to as a child. No, this was something entirely different. It was a sheet of light, composed of a billion distinct points, some larger than others. Below it was a beautiful, glowing essence that she couldn’t quite see from where she was standing. She was summoning the courage to walk towards the edge when Max spoke to her from somewhere above.

  “Are you going to stand there or are you going to come up here, Jane? We don’t have all night, you know,” he said. She heard the comic edge in his voice.

  She looked to her left and saw a concrete staircase. She climbed it. At the top she found a sight just as tremendous. Max was standing with his back to her on a road that stretched into forever in either direction. At the top step, which sectioned onto this giant road, which she guessed was fifty metres wide, she looked to her left. Again, her gaze fell upon a blanket of endless light. All around her, the world was starlight, and she gasped at its beauty.

  “So…what do you think?” Max said finally. He
turned his hands upward and faced her, smiling.

  “It’s beautiful,” was all she could manage to say.

  “I thought this would be a nicer place to continue our discussion.

  “Yes, well…it certainly is…nice.” He was standing thirty feet from her, and she walked towards him. “What is this, Max?”

  “It’s just a place I created for us to talk from. I’ve been here with other mortals before. I thought it would be nice for you; you’ve been through a lot recently.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s no problem.”

  She was mesmerized by the colossal light source coming from underneath the right side of the road. She looked towards it now as she approached Max.

  “You want to know what it is, don’t you?” he asked. “Go and look.”

  She nodded and began walking towards the edge of the road. She reached it and looked over the edge as the light source grew beneath it. She gasped; below her was a galaxy.

  “Max…is that…?”

  “Your ‘Milky Way?’”

  She wanted to look up at him in response, but couldn’t pull her eyes away for more than a split second from the view below.

  “Yes. This is a different vantage point, psychically speaking. We, of course, haven’t travelled this far physically. Although that is possible, contrary to what earth scientists of your generation would suggest. Still, we are, nonetheless, right here.”

  She could think of nothing else to do but sit and stare at the beautiful cloud of blue and yellow light below her. She lowered herself to the ground and let her legs dangle below the edge of the road. She didn’t care that below her was endless dark: nothing. Max sat beside her.

  After a few moments, she turned and looked at him. His appearance had changed again. He was now wearing a beautiful black silk scarf lined with an intricate pattern that wrapped around his neck. He was hunched down with his arms folded over his knees and he looked at her, smiling. His frame was slim and svelte. In his face, she could see the bright youth of a young man, but also the maturity of someone much older. She liked him this way; he appeared to be at his best for that one moment.

  This is his home, she thought, not knowing why she had this thought or where it had come from. She knew as well that this simplistic understanding was greatly overshadowed by the truths she didn’t know. She felt mild fear at this, but also exhilaration.

  “It is beautiful, isn’t it, Jane?”

  She struggled to find the words. “Thank you for bringing me here,” was all she could manage.

  “I wanted you to see it. It felt important, and…somehow…I feel like I owe it to you.”

  She turned and looked at him again. “Why?”

  His smile faded and he looked into the distance. After a moment, he looked up to the stars above them. “I suppose we should continue our discussion?” he said. He stood and looked down at her.

  She stood as well, and they walked out onto the road together.

  “What do you call this place?” she asked.

  “The road that hangs the galaxies by their hearts.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I showed it to somebody once before, and that’s how she described it. I never forgot that expression, nor did I feel any need to change it,” he said. His brow furrowed and he looked into the distance. “So, where were we?”

  “You were telling me about the…”

  “The one who appeared in your dream. Yes.”

  They walked onward down the road that stretched on into infinity with the endless sea of stars all around them. In this place, Jane feared nothing and had only a lingering feeling of malaise regarding the being she had seen in the dream.

  “He is part of our history, Jane.”

  “The history of you and your kind? Other people like you?”

  “Yes. He has a history of interfering with cultures…civilizations, at very advanced stages of development.”

  “For what?”

  He paused and let his arms fall to his side as he walked. Then he clasped them gently at his front again and looked out to the stars on their left. “To become something more than he was.” Another pause. “A long time ago…” he said, but hesitated. It seemed to Jane that the weight of what he wanted to say was greater than any she had ever seen a person carry before. Finally, he simply said, “Something happened.” He was quiet for a moment and appeared to be lost in thought.

  Her glance drifted from his face to the concrete below, then back again as she considered carefully what her question should be. “What was it you did…or what was it that happened?”

  He cast his eyes downward. “Well…I suppose it does seem obvious.”

  Jane’s brow furrowed as she wondered what he meant by this.

  He looked back up at her. “In simple terms, we imprisoned him.”

  Jane was afraid to ask the most obvious question, but after a few moments found the will. “Why did you do that?”

  Max looked at her for a moment, his eyes blank. “I’ve told you before that part of our function is to assist civilisations during an evolutionary event of great magnitude. In the end—before it happened—he was a threat to a civilisation that was at a stage similar to the one your world is at now, Jane, but just a little further along. It was on a planet in a system on the outer reaches of your galaxy.” He walked towards the edge of the road and stopped, looking down at the galaxy below. She followed and stood next to him as he pointed to one of the outer spiral arms. “There, do you see?”

  Jane looked at the four main arms of the galaxy that she could make out. Her eyes grew wide again at the blazing light below. The arms were a bluish grey with hints of orange and yellow. Individual points of immense light poured out from the clouds of dust here and there. As she followed his direction, initially she could see nothing. Then a distinct point of light became clearer among the millions of others, as he illuminated it for her artificially.

  “It was an incredibly advanced race that showed great promise.”

  “Showed great promise?”

  “Yes. There was…an incident. Their power systems were nuclear-based. He caused a reaction in one of them and decimated half a continent. We tried to stop him, but he was too strong. Six million individuals perished.”

  Jane looked up at his face and saw that he was also staring into the light, just as transfixed as she was.

  “Eventually,” he said after a period of silence, “we found something among the many worlds we visited. An ancient, abandoned piece of extremely advanced technology—beyond the biological, beyond the techno organic. It had psionic components built into its very structure. It came from a race far more advanced than the one I come from, and the intricacy of its construction bewildered even us, as we exist now.”

  She gasped as realisation dawned on her face. “That’s what’s in the ocean, isn’t it? You put it here, didn’t you? You hid it! From him!” she said. Anger crept into her voice.

  “Yes,” he said. “A long time ago.”

  Jane turned away from him and walked down the road, stopping when the distance between them had stretched to fifty feet. She folded her arms and looked up at the stars. In the centre of the sky, below the purple swath of a fading nebula, Jane could see a patch of space filled with the rim of a beautiful, blue galaxy. She could see tiny, individual points of light littered around its arms. She had only moments to take in the serene vista before her thoughts were once again occupied by what Max had told her. When she had finally processed all he had said, she turned around, and they began to speak again.

  “What was it made for?”

  Max gazed at her as he stood against the stars with his hands clasped in front of him.

  “In simplistic terms, it’s an interdimensional gateway,” he said flatly.

  After a moment during which they both merely watched each other, Max disappeared with that same swishing sound. Then the endless sea of stars before her— and the road—faded from view rapidly as the dim, dank
office she was in came back into view. She gasped and looked around in the dark as she breathed deeply. The smell of dampness once again filled the air. Max was standing in front of the window, looking at her.

  “He’s found you.”

  “Who?” she asked, looking around, still getting her bearings.

  “Lucas. He’s on his way here, and he has…additional company.”

  Jane stood up. “How long until he gets here?”

  “An hour, maybe slightly less.” His eyes narrowed to slits as his gaze once again drifted off. “There’s a whole troupe of them, Jane. It’s a veritable army.”

  “Damn,” she whispered.

  “Yes. Damn, indeed. I’ll see you downstairs.” Then he was gone.