Black Horizon

by Robert Masello

  “You'll need to move around a bit more than that,” Sprague muttered, and flicked the music suddenly off. The monkey waited, tensely, as if expecting it to blare again, then cautiously began to explore his surroundings again. With one arm, he reached up to the bottom of the camera, mounted just above his head, and delicately probed the metal corrugations of its underside.

  Sprague could only make out the creature's movements by watching him on the TV monitor; the infrared camera at the opposite end of the chamber carried an unobstructed, but remote, view of him. Still, Sprague thought, if he could get an image, even this clear, of the visitor Logan last entertained here, it'd be more than anyone else had ever done. If he could see, or in some way simply detect, the presence of that spirit Jack had claimed was his dead mother -- dead now for well over twenty years! -- wouldn't that set Frelinghuysen back on his heels! Wouldn't that make the scientific establishment sit up and take notice! Sprague, Dr. Orson Sprague of the Institute of Abnormal Psychology, would become the man who was singlehandedly responsible for opening this world onto the next, for extending humanity's frontiers further than they'd ever been. He would wield an influence, in the course of human history, greater than that of Darwin, Marx, and Freud, combined!

  Provided his linchpin didn't slip.

  He sat back in his chair -- the monkey was contentedly grooming itself at the moment -- to think about that linchpin once again. When Jack had been lifted, wet and naked, out of the tank, he'd been very slow to come around, very disoriented. His account of his mother's physical transformations, of her strange words to him, of their journey together toward a black and churning horizon, had been garbled and confused, contradictory and elliptical. It had taken Sprague at least a couple of hours to calm him down and get it all straight. And after managing that, he had seen no point in telling him about the two heartbeats, one subsuming the other, that had shown up on the electrocardiograph; it would only have served to alarm him all over again. He had told Nancy, later, that it had been nothing more than a technical glitch in the machine, which he had already corrected. But there was no telling if she'd believed him.

  There was a bright popping light from the tank room, and Sprague looked up to see the monkey leaping away from the camera he had just clambered onto. He landed on the floor, chattering loudly, and raced across the room to the opposite pole; shinnied up that and rested, once again, on top of the thermistor. Sprague checked the thermistor's meter, and saw that the monkey's body heat was rapidly raising the temperature inside the container. Everything, Sprague reflected, was working admirably.

  And then, just as suddenly, it wasn't. While looking at the reading of the thermistor the monkey was sitting on, Sprague noticed that another of the devices, fully fifteen feet away, had suddenly registered a small but significant air movement. It could have been a breeze, of course, set up when the monkey flew through the air, but as Sprague watched the tiny arrow, like the indicator on a speedometer, it didn't decline; instead, it increased, just slightly. Something was stirring up the air at the far corner of the lab; Sprague glanced at the four squares on the TV monitor, and saw nothing but the empty chamber, and the monkey on the pole.

  But the monkey was staring in the direction of that third thermistor, too, and holding himself perfectly still -- almost as if he was hoping to remain unnoticed.

  Was there some sort of draft in there, some way for air to flow in, or out, that Sprague had not anticipated?

  The last thermistor, nearest to the control booth where Sprague was sitting, suddenly registered its own marginal air current. But again, without any heat equivalent. The monkey, which was now looking in that direction, screamed, and flew off the pole. He raced the length of the lab on all fours, the whole time turned in sort of a three-quarter fashion, as if to see over his shoulder. He had no sooner arrived at the far corner of the lab than he spread open his jaws and bared his teeth. But at what? Sprague couldn't see a thing on any of the infrared monitors. The monkey reared up on its hind legs, took a vicious swipe at nothing but air. He backed up against the wall, then took off again, screaming, and flailing his tail.

  “What the hell is going on in there?” Sprague said, aloud. The monkey was now racing around and around the lab, sometimes swinging himself by the metal poles, frequently stopping to lash one arm, viciously, at whatever he believed was chasing him. The themistors were all registering the violently disturbed air now, and if Sprague had not been able to see for himself the direction in which the monkey was fleeing, he would have been able to discern the clockwise movement just from the sequential way in which the four thermistor meters were waxing and waning. The cameras were functioning equally well; each time the monkey passed closely enough to trigger their flash response, a bright light went off, and the monkey, even more panicked, would race away, running around and around the tank room, scampering over the wrestling mats, sometimes over the tank itself, looking every-. where, anywhere, for some sort of refuge from his unseen pursuer.

  How long, Sprague wondered, should he let this go on? The devices were all, more or less, working properly -- but this bat-shit monkey was getting so agitated now he might somehow damage one of them. The experiment should probably be stopped, the monkey pacified -- somehow -- and put back in his cage and returned to Cazenovia's lab. But Sprague was not exactly anxious to go into that tank room and try to catch the little fucker just now. He was likely to get bitten, clawed, or worse. As a first step toward calming the creature down, he deactivated the flash response on the four video cameras. But that didn't seem to slow him down a bit; he was still running, from something else. Sprague sat back, puzzled, and looked again at his array of instruments -- and saw now something he had missed before. The temperature readings, also recorded by the thermistors, were all exactly three degrees below where they'd begun; he hadn't seen it initially because the change had apparently come suddenly, and so uniformly, throughout the room. It was very odd for it to have happened at all, much less in that uniform way.

  There was a crash against the glass and Sprague jerked back in his chair. The monkey was flattened against the glass wall, his hooded eyes wide with terror, his mouth open, spraying foam and spittle; he was balanced, precariously, on a tiny ledge in front of the control room, his fingers pasted against the window. He was screaming, over and over and over again, trying desperately, it seemed, to press himself through the glass and into the dimly lighted chamber where Sprague was sitting. His tail, curled around behind him, was thumping against the glass, too. Sprague knew the glass would hold, but still, instinctively, he drew back. The monkey screeched, his fingers slipping and sliding on the smooth glass, trying to gain some purchase.

  Could it be, Sprague thought, that even without Jack Logan here, he'd managed to tap into something extraordinary?

  The monkey stopped screaming. He seemed almost to cough, then turned his head slowly to the left. He caught his breath, and screamed again; it seemed to Sprague that he was trying to turn his head back to the right again, as if he were trying to resist some opposing force. His jaws kept snapping, and biting, at the air. His tiny ears lay flat against his skull. The head kept turning, inexorably, to the left. The monkey was now looking back over his shoulder, the tendons in his throat taut and bulging. Just when Sprague thought he could turn no farther in that direction, the head whipped around again to the right. Then the left. Then the right. The head was twisting back and forth, more and more rapidly, the eyes wide open but strangely blank, the screeching altogether stopped. The thing could no longer catch its breath. The head lashed left, then right, then left, each time a little farther around, far as it seemed possible to go, until suddenly it spun so hard to the right that there was an audible crack and it just kept going ... all the way around to the front again. The head drooped backward, on the stalk of the neck, as the arms fell listlessly from the glass. A second later, the creature toppled into a little furry heap on the floor. On the TV monitor, it looked like an empty hand puppet.

  T
he temperature in the room had dropped another three degrees. Sprague tried to compose himself by making a note of the change, and then by checking the other instruments. The air movements, recorded by the thermistors, appeared to have stopped. He glanced at the monitor again: the monkey lay just where it had fallen, below the window of the control booth. He felt he should go in and retrieve it.

  What had done that to the creature's neck?

  He turned on the lights all over the laboratory, and looked slowly around. The only movement was a tiny ripple in the plastic bag that covered the ceiling vent. And then, even that stopped. The instruments registered no further changes. He stood up, looked around again. As a scientist, he should examine the monkey's remains as quickly as possible, to determine exactly what had happened. (What did he mean, exactly what had happened? He knew what had happened -- its neck had been broken. What was he trying to tell himself -- that this had somehow been accidental? He'd seen it, though he couldn't believe it, with his very own eyes.) But there was nothing in the laboratory -- at least nothing he could see -- that might have caused it. And if there was... well, a monkey was one thing, and he was quite another.

  He strode purposefully to the glass door, kicked up the floor bolt, and threw it open. The air was appreciably cooler than that in the control booth. The monkey lay a few feet to his left. He walked over, crouched down beside it. It had landed on its back, with its arms oddly folded across its abdomen; the fur on its chin and chest were matted with blood and spittle. Perhaps he should first put on some rubber gloves, Sprague thought -- this was likely to get messy.

  The lights went out, all over the lab, and the hair on the back of Sprague's neck suddenly stood on end. Still kneeling, he whirled around, staring into the darkness of the tank room. Over the intercom, he heard a woman's voice say, “I hate monkeys.”

  He crawled a few feet away from the dead animal, toward the sensory-deprivation tank. It was then he realized that the violet light above the control console was on. Behind the glass, smeared with the residue of the monkey's ordeal, he thought he saw something move, something that was standing in the shadows of the room.

  “But then, it wasn't monkeys you were after, was it?”

  It was a young woman's voice, almost girlish. And so -- now that his eyes had become accustomed to the light -- was the figure lurking in the control booth; it was a young woman, as best he could make out, with long dark hair. She was wearing some sort of jacket.

  “You were after me, I think.”

  Sprague's mouth was so dry he couldn't speak.

  “Do I have to introduce myself?”

  “No, no... you don't,” Sprague croaked. “I know who you are. You're just as Jack described you.” He swallowed, hard.

  “So are you,” she said, and laughed, merrily.

  His back was pressed against the cool, curved surface of the tank. “I never expected to raise you so easily.”

  "Raise me?” she said, teasingly. “Where did you think I was -- hell?” She laughed again, while Sprague slowly got to his feet.

  “No, of course not,” he said, “I didn't mean that -- it was just a figure of speech. I didn't mean -- “

  “I know what you meant,” she reassured him, “don't worry about it.”

  Her figure seemed to fade in and out of view, its outlines never entirely clear. It was, Sprague thought, like addressing a hologram. “You were here once before, weren't you,” Sprague said, “in the tank with Jack.”

  “That tank?”

  “Yes,” Sprague said, resting his fingertips on the top of the cylinder. “I was able to detect your heartbeat.”

  She paused, as if considering how to answer, then said, “I wasn't with Jack; he was with me. And neither one of us was in that tank.”

  Sprague, emboldened now by the continuing exchange, said, “Where were you then, if not here?”

  “Oh, Christ,” she sighed, “I expected more than this from you.” To his amazement, she slumped into the chair at the control panel. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  She was either swiveling in the chair, or coming in and out of focus again.

  “I'm doing you a big favor, you know.”

  “You are?”

  “By appearing... even as much as I am. By all rights, you ought to be dead first.”

  “But Jack can see you all the time.”

  She snickered. “Ah, but Jack's a special case, isn't he? Jack's got talents.”

  “That's what I want to know about,” Sprague breathed, “his talents... your talents... the afterlife.” He could hardly believe he was talking to a spirit, that all his work had finally brought him to this astonishing encounter. But what should he be saying? What could he do to make the most of it? His mind was racing, trying to grapple with all the possibilities. And how -- how -- could he salvage some sort of proof of what he'd done?

  “What Jack can do,” she finally said, “he can do because of me. I kept him alive in my body, and now he, in a way, keeps me alive in his. These little forays you've been arranging for him, into the Other World, they've brought us very close together again.”

  Sprague, still trying to figure out what he should be doing, said, “Glad to have been of help.”

  “Oh, you've been more help than you know,” she said, “only not everyone's so happy about that.”

  “Who's not happy?”

  “Oh, all the usual suspects... the ones who died in the last ten minutes and haven't yet accepted it... the ones who think they shouldn't have died at all... the ones who think the dead should stay that way and the living ought to stay where they belong. In other words,” she summed up, “all the usual narrow-minded fools.”

  “Is there something I could do,” he said, “to make it up to them, something that would convince them that my intentions were never to...” He trailed off, in the face of her renewed laughter. What had he said that was so funny? Her teeth, in the violet light, appeared to glow red. “Why are you laughing?” Sprague said, angry despite himself.

  For one split second, her face seemed to change utterly -- to flatten out, her eyes to sink deeply into their sockets. She stopped laughing, and leaned forward.

  “I'm laughing because you're so damned anxious to please the dead, and you don't give a shit about the living, Sprague. Don't you think that's funny?”

  “No.”

  She chuckled softly, but with no real mirth. “Well, I do... it's probably why you were chosen in the first place.”

  “Chosen? For what?’

  “For immortality,” she said, grandly. “For making the discovery that will rock the world. Haven't you felt it all along, Sprague? Haven't you known it, in your heart of hearts? Haven't you always been sure that you were the one?”

  He didn't know how to react -- was she being sincere, or simply taunting him?

  “No, I mean it,” she said, as if intuiting his doubts. “You want proof of the Other World, and I'm the one who can give it to you. Proof,” she said, rising from the chair, “that you can see...”

  The jacket seemed to dissolve before his very eyes -- her shoulders showed naked through the glass.

  “... and touch...”

  She turned fully toward him, her bare breasts gleaming in the violet light.

  “... and offer to the world. This world.”

  She was leaning forward on the console, her long dark hair slipping over her shoulders and swaying, gently, in front of her breasts. Her lips were parted; in her eyes was an invitation. She paused, expectantly.

  Sprague slowly moved away from the tank. Was she really going to wait there for him? His shoes squeaked as he stepped off the mats. Was she really going to give him all she'd promised?

  “There's just one thing you'll have to do for me,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  He approached the open door to the control booth.

  “You'll have to make sure Jack keeps coming back.” Her eyes were following him, though her head didn't turn.

  He entered the booth. She wa
s arched over the console, entirely naked. She cocked her head now in his direction. She looked real enough, substantial enough, to touch, and feel.

  “Jack's the key,” she said. “He must keep coming back.” With one finger, she flicked off the violet light.

  “Can you promise me that?” she said, from the pitch darkness.

  “Yes,” Sprague said, “anything, I'll do anything you ask, but please...” He put out his hands, the fingers extended, and plunged toward her. He felt nothing, then something -- the back of the empty chair. “Please,” he said, “don't go yet -- I've waited so long, there's so much I still need to know. Please don't go yet.” He waited in the blackness, his heart pounding fiercely, his hands clutching the back of the chair. There was no sound, no movement -- no sign of another's presence. “Please,” he said, but there was no reply. “Please.”

  He didn't know whether to feel desolate or elated -- crushed at her disappearance, or exhilarated by her promises. He bent forward, to grope for the light switch, and only then became aware of not being alone. He felt a light pressure against his upper back, as if someone were leaning over him. Two arms snaked their way around his shoulders. Something soft, and very wet, nestled against his cheek.

  “You're here,” he whispered, not yet daring to turn around. “You're here.”

  The lips nuzzled his cheek again; they were stickily wet, and clinging.

  Slowly, slowly, he straightened up, feeling the weight of her -- her bare breasts? -- pressing between his shoulder blades. But as he turned, so, apparently, did she -- he could feel her still pressing against his back, her arms still entwined around his neck. “Please,” he said, “let me touch you... let me turn on the light and look at you.” He turned again, but she still remained behind him. It was as if she was playing some childish game with him.