Through a Glass Darkly

by Bill Hussey

  Whirling beyond the fissure: at once a world, a universe, a single entity, a mass of beings, a macrocosm, a microcosm. Later, he would not remember his comprehension, but now he saw and understood in a moment a new dimension in its generality and specifics. A dimension of impossible suffering. Of chaos.

  The wheeling kaleidoscope began to settle. At first, Jack thought that everything beyond the breach had lapsed into darkness. It looked like the coldest night. Perhaps the last, when the universe was spent, or the first, when the stars had not yet been strung out.

  Then something stirred.

  One slick body moved against another. Things were gathering at the opening. As they moved forward, jostling for space like the Christmas shoppers, the light from the window display shimmered off their oily limbs. The rent had stopped at five or so feet, but hands reached now from inside, grasped the frayed edges of this world and stretched the oval wide. As their heads reached through, the shrieks began. Not from the crowds still gathered around Jack, they did not seem to see the creatures, but from the mouths of the monsters themselves. From the opening, six came screaming into the world, dragging their soft, spongy bodies behind them. Tendrils lashed back into the void, as if part of them wanted to remain in that chaotic womb. As the last of the six stepped out, the tear began to heal itself, closing off thousands of other beings. The figures of Mary and Jesus were stitched back together. The nativity returned to its three dimensions. And now another group, not told of in the Bible story, had gathered beside the manger.

  Contorted, disfigured, they had no uniform features or shape. As their eyes fixed on him, some clustered, some seemingly blind, Jack had another intuitive flash. In the first few hours of their lives, they had possessed the same form. Some cruel art had mangled their bodies, reconfigured their limbs and grafted additional features into already crowded faces. They were, in fact, living experiments that had escaped some vast laboratory. As with his earlier understanding, this insight was later lost in a memory characterised only by confusion and dread.

  They crept, scuttled, dragged themselves to the window. As one, they passed through the glass as if it were water, and advanced towards Jack. Their feet made no impression on the snow. Colour drained from Jack’s vision. The broken bulbs became grey, the snow turned whiter and the faces of the unseeing people blanched. Everything was the silvery monochrome of a black and white film. Everything except his blood, which remained shockingly red in the washed out world.

  Tentacles writhed through the snow and touched the sinking pools. In the midst of terror, words read by his father years ago, entered Jack’s mind:

  Her skin was white as snow, her lips as red as blood, her hair as black as ebony …

  They closed around him, chittered and shrieked, until their voices rang in his mind.

  ‘He’s dead.’ His mother. ‘Dead without the blessing. His soul isn’t clean …’

  They had come to take him. Hell was beyond the breach. Hell that he had glimpsed; hell that waited now.

  I’m good. I am, please. Please, don’t let them take me. Dad, please …

  Their faces began to melt. Heads caved into torsos, rippling bodies collapsed. Pouring into each other, becoming a single uniform slime, they pooled over the bloodstains. Errant eyes, ears, claws and tongues rose to the surface of the ooze. Having gathered itself, the mass banked a hair’s breadth before Jack’s eyes. He saw his own dead face reflected in their surface. Splinters of coloured glass were embedded in his cheeks and forehead. The skin between his eyes was bubbling, burned and black.

  A needle-point span out. Jack screamed, but in the reflection he saw that his mouth did not move. They punctured his pupil. Their mass grew smaller. Jack felt Them slipping coldly into his mind, dripping through his brain, creeping into his thoughts. In a moment, the pool was gone and only his blood remained upon the snow.

  Thirty-three

  Jack’s Story

  There was no sulphur, no brimstone, no Devil with his black book. But Jack knew that this was Hell nonetheless. He had never imagined that there could be anything more frightening than the damnation of his nightmares. Strangely, the demons that populated those dreamscapes would now be welcome faces in this emptiness. There was neither light nor colour here, neither shadow nor shade, no smell, no sound, nothing to stimulate his senses. He was alone in a forgotten corner of reality. Alone for all time …

  And then he felt a sliver of visceral sensation. That meant he had a body. How many times had he heard Father Soames preach that only the Spirit, divorced from the Flesh, may pass over? Something was now moving inside his flesh. This was not Hell.

  This ‘something’ was embedded deep inside his mind. Mind wasn’t the right word, because he could feel the substance lying against the tissue of his brain. Lodged there like a kernel of corn stuck between teeth.

  Them.

  The creatures from the rift. Their gentle movement sounded like a thickly silted sea lapping against the shore. Maybe they were feeding from him, parasites sucking away his bones and organs from the inside. No. No, he knew they were sleeping. He could sense their exhaustion. And he knew, without knowing how he knew, that as dangerous as they were, they would not harm him. He was their home now. Their sanctuary. He took strange comfort from them. For, if they were sleeping inside him, then he could not be dead.

  *

  Shadows moved across the gauze of bandages. He tried to sit up, but the sheets were tucked tight, pinning him like a butterfly to a card. A trundling sound passed by. He pictured a trolley, pushed by the big fat matron who had straitjacketed him to the bed. The trundling stopped.

  ‘Good morning, sleepyhead.’

  No big fat matron had any right to have a voice that sweet.

  ‘M-morning … where am I?’

  ‘You’re on the Aikman Memorial Ward. Shall I get your parents …?’

  ‘Why are my eyes bandaged up?’

  ‘You’ve got a few burns and bruises. I’ll get Dr Shelley to take a look at you.’

  ‘Please stay.’

  Not long ago – at least he didn’t think it had been long ago – he had thought that he would never again hear another human voice. Now he was awake, surrounded by smells and sounds and shadows. He had never realised before how beautifully crowded the world was. Tears smarted against the cuts and burns around his eyes. His body didn’t seem able to contain the great heaving sobs that worked through him. An arm was placed around his shoulders and drew him close.

  ‘It’s all over now, Jack. You’re safe. There’s nothing to be frightened of.’

  ‘Now, Jack, you remember what we talked about? You might be a little shocked by the scarring, but remember, you were very lucky. Coming back after being clinically dead for four minutes is no mean feat.’

  Jack wriggled free of his mother’s hug. He felt that he should face this alone. He squinted as the bandages were unfurled. The air was cold against his parched eyes. There were three people gathered around him, and it was from their words, rather than from their shapes, that he recognised them.

  ‘How is it, boy?’ his dad asked. ‘Do you see us?’

  ‘Blurry …’

  ‘I need to take a look in your eyes now, Jack. Try not to move them.’

  The doctor’s torch burned into his pupils. Red-etched veins floated before the light. The muscles of his optic cords felt so tight he was sure they would snap.

  ‘Okay, that looks fine. It’s going to take a few days for your vision to settle. You’ve had over a week for your eye muscles to become lazy, but I don’t foresee any problems with recovering your sight fully. Right, let’s show you the scarring.’

  ‘It’s not bad, Jacky.’

  ‘Mum, don’t call me that.’

  ‘Any chance of giving him a new nose, doc?’ his dad said. ‘He got that one from my mother-in-law.’

  ‘James, for God’s sake.’

  It was the first time Jack had laughed, and the first time his dad had made a joke since the accident. It
was nice to have the old fart reading to him every day, putting on comical pirate voices for Treasure Island or scary voices for The Jabberwocky. But it was in those periods between reading, when his old man just sat by the bed, holding his hand and whispering – ‘Glad you made it back, son. You’re gonna be all right. No question’ – that he missed the jokes. They were much more comforting than those whispered reassurances.

  Dr Shelley brought a small, vanity-style mirror close up to Jack’s face.

  ‘Now, I confess I don’t understand you, young Jack. We wondered whether you’d have to have stitches, but the lacerations healed almost in hours. That’s what’s known in the medical world as a miracle. (I might write to the Pope and demand canonisation!) So, no scarring on that count. The burn, however …’

  Since he had been told what had happened: that a live wire had swung into him, peppering his face with glass and burning 240 volts between his eyes, Jack had imagined himself hideously deformed. In his dreams he pictured the bandages being removed and his mother and father standing back, horrified and repulsed.

  ‘I wondered if that would be your reaction,’ Dr Shelley would say, ‘so I took the liberty to procure this …’

  He would bring out a heavy iron mask. Like the one worn by the disfigured mastermind, Doctor Doom, arch nemesis of The Fantastic Four, or the illegitimate king in the Dumas novel. His father would strap the mask securely in place.

  ‘Oh, no,’ his mother would complain. ‘I can’t bear seeing that over the breakfast table each morning. Hideous. Can’t … can’t we send him back, Doctor? To the dark place? He could live there forever, and the things that crawl inside could keep him company …’

  He stared hard into the mirror. His face appeared to be the same shape it had always been. A little swollen perhaps, and there were a dozen or so angry scratches where the glass had been removed. There was only one startling blemish: a white scar, bridging his nose and wiring his eyes together. Jack gripped his mother’s hand, but it was a reaction of relief. It wasn’t so bad. In the right light, it might actually look pretty cool. He could live with …

  Something shifted. Something cold, surging away from his mind. He snatched his hand back.

  ‘You still with us? As I said, Jack, you were very lucky,’ Dr Shelley said. ‘You’ve just got that white blaze as a souvenir.’

  And Them, Jack thought, I have Them, too.

  A few days later, his vision sharpened. Within a certain proximity he could make out faces quite distinctly. He was squinting at the Sub-Mariner comic his dad had brought him when the honey-voiced nurse (‘Nurse Alice’, so she had told him, with a wink) drew back the curtain around his bed.

  ‘Morning, sweet cheeks,’ she said. ‘You’re leaving me today, I hear.’

  ‘Yeah … sorry …’

  ‘I should think so. You’re the most handsome patient on the ward. Don’t tell Mr Sheridan that; I always tell him he’s the best looking.’

  Jack felt his face grow hot. He couldn’t believe how he’d embarrassed himself in front of her the other day, bawling like a little kid. Being able to see her now didn’t make things any easier. She was so beautiful that he found it difficult to think about what he was going to say, so everything came out wrong. She leaned over him, checking the few remaining dressings on his burns. Her heavy breasts rubbed against his chest.

  Holy Shit. Not now! Jack panicked.

  His penis stiffened against her arm. She must have felt it, but she stood up and smiled, as if it was nothing unusual.

  ‘S-sorry,’ he stammered. ‘You know. About the other day. Being a baby and …’

  ‘You’re a sweetie. Gonna break some hearts someday.’

  She straightened up and smoothed the creases out of her uniform. As she checked her lapel watch, Jack leant forward and took hold of her hand.

  ‘I want to tell you something. I haven’t told Dr Shelley or my parents. It’ll sound stupid, you won’t believe me, but I still feel them … I need to tell someone …’

  ‘All right, Jack, calm down. Let me close the curtain, okay? Then we can talk.’

  She drew the plastic screen around the bed and sat down beside him. His mouth felt dry. Should he tell her? He hadn’t told Dr Shelley. The day he’d woken up, the doc had asked him if he had experienced anything during the time he had been ‘clinically dead’. Something in Shelley’s attitude had told Jack to keep shtum. Shelley had gone on to say that, if he had seen anything, there was no need to be scared. It was all just chemical reactions in the brain. It wasn’t real.

  Her hand was cool in his.

  ‘The night I had my accident. I saw …’

  His shoulder grew warm. How to say it. How to even come close to describing what had happened.

  ‘In the shop window. Not the window. This thing, opening up and …’

  A painful tingling reached down his arm …

  ‘… They came out of a tear …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A tear in the world. I saw …’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  … reached like a strip of fire and stretched into his fingers.

  ‘Jack? What’s the matter?’

  He looked down at his hand, expecting to see it engulfed in flames, burning the pretty white fingers that interlaced his own. He tried to pull away, but the invisible heat seemed to fuse them together. Without knowing how, he turned his vision inward and saw the little black sac that nestled in a nook of his brain. It was empty.

  His consciousness shifted again. No longer cognisant of the pain, he became aware of them. They were all around him, smothering him, dripping from his mind and coursing through him, like cold blood. Alice’s face, the enclave of his curtained off bed, the exterior noises of the hospital, all vanished. He was conscious only of the deafening rush. Of being borne through his own body, encased in their dark mass. They screamed through his arm. Split him between his fingers. Drew him out of his body. Into her. He saw …

  Don’t you ever tell Mummy, Alice.

  … himself, through her eyes. He was speaking slowly, his face blank, his eyes rolled white in their sockets.

  Mummy won’t love you anymore, if you tell her what we do. Now touch it, baby, touch it like I showed you.

  He saw Alice’s father. And the playroom. And the red-spotted knickers that she had spent all night trying to clean with soap and scalding water. He saw her hands, not white and pretty, but swollen and raw.

  They shrieked as she pulled her hand away. Over their screams, he heard the rush again, this time running backwards. He moved with them, through the widening space between fingers, back into his body, which felt as cold and unwelcoming as an abandoned house. As his senses slotted into place, he felt them coalesce into the sac.

  Alice the nurse, Alice the little girl, backed away from the bed.

  ‘No-one has ever been inside me since him.’

  ‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry’, Jack said, his vision returning. ‘You saw them, didn’t you? Please, I’m scared; I want to know what they are …’

  ‘You were inside me.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. Please, help me. What are they? I don’t want them inside …’

  ‘Inside me. Like him. Not like him. He was never in here,’ she brushed her temple with shaking fingers. ‘What are you? Something bad, something very, very bad … Stay away. Don’t ever come near me. Don’t you ever, ever come near me.’

  Thirty-four

  Jack’s Story

  ‘There’s something very wrong with him, James.’

  Jack crept downstairs and sat shivering on the bottom step. Through the gap in the sitting room door, he saw his dad by the sideboard pour brandy into two glasses.

  ‘He’s not been the same since the accident.’ His mother – out of sight – ‘And now Miss Simpson says he’s daydreaming in school; that he’s alienated his friends. All he does is sit in his room, reading comic books and playing that racket.’

  ‘He’s almo
st a teenager, for crying out loud, Claire. And he’s just getting over a pretty nasty experience. Here, stop bloody pacing about. Drink up.’

  ‘It’s not just that,’ his mother sighed. Her thin arm came into view and took the drink. ‘He doesn’t want to be near me. He doesn’t even kiss me goodnight.’

  ‘Well, show me a twelve-year-old lad that likes kissing his mother.’

  ‘Why won’t you believe me? There is something different about him. Did you notice how that nurse looked at him when we came to take him home? She’d been so fond of Jack and then, when he said goodbye, she looked … I don’t know, she looked frightened.’

  Jack tiptoed back upstairs. He closed his bedroom door gently behind him, switched off the light and crawled into bed. Stretching his hand into the darkness, he skipped the needle of the record player back an inch and turned down the volume.

  How could she think he didn’t want to be near her? He was desperate for her to comfort him, to tell him that everything would be all right. That they were still in Kansas, Toto. And how could his dad think that his behaviour was normal? As if those parasites sleeping inside his skull were as welcome a change as the downy hair growing around his dick.

  He should tell them.

  God, no. Then even his dad would consider calling in a nut-doctor. Or worse, he might laugh and insist that ‘the creatures’ demonstrate what they could do. Jack shivered. What if his old man told him to stop being a weirdo and give his mother a goodnight kiss? With his lips touching her cheek, what secrets would he discover? He was old enough to know that his parents had lived different lives before he came along. Lives that he had taken no interest in before, and that had only been hinted at. If the creatures laid out his parents’ sins and tragedies before him, would he ever be able to look at them in the same way?

  He must take care not to touch anyone until he figured out what these things were. What they wanted. But it was so hard, and he felt so alone.