Frank looked at the gateway and saw through it into the physical world. A world that he remembered, that he did not even know he had lost. A world that, even as he stood watching, was being devoured by the dead, that was being swept over by a plague, sucking at its very life to feed the empty shells of the departed that swarmed through the diminishing barriers between the two planes of existence.
Frank extended a trembling hand towards the gateway and his fingers experienced the tingling vitality of the quivering surface, sending small shocks crawling up his arm and across his face. Robert fell from the chair and knelt in front of the portal, his own hand now lifted and moving towards the threshold of the two worlds.
For a second, the flesh of the dead man and the skin of the living touched and a bright blue light danced across the portal, a pure and new energy born in that moment of contact.
Alex screamed again as the stem flung its head at her, ‘Frank, no! Please, my son. Send Jake through! Please, Francis!’
Robert pushed his hand through the gateway and opened it, the skin immediately beginning to die, and Frank was then roused from his stupor.
He knelt by Jake and gently eased him towards the open hand and whispered, ‘Your father’s waiting, Jake, everything will be fine now.’
And Jake’s tiny hand fell into and was enveloped by Robert’s outstretched palm. Robert then drew every last ounce of strength from the depths of his being to pull his son through the portal and into his arms. The skin where it had died on his hand remained grey and decrepit, but he squeezed the boy firmly nevertheless.
Now that her son had passed through the portal, and Alex could see him safe in her husband’s arms, she prepared herself for the battle with the thing growing from Daniel’s body. She still had both arms locked around the trunk and was evading its attacks, feeling the thing’s blade-like teeth scrape across her skin, as with each thrust the monster forced her back.
She breathed hard and under that breath she steadied herself. ‘Come on you fucking freak, just a little closer, one more time, come down one more time. I’m going to take all your pain away for you!’
At that moment the head dived again, teeth showing, screaming wickedly. Alex was almost caught off guard by a blur of black that briefly touched the edge of her vision, movement, something big but not a spider and moving in towards her, then seeming to vanish again. But she remained focused enough to sway out of the path of the head, releasing the stem it was attached to as it passed and this time clasping one arm around the thing’s neck, where the stalk met the head.
The thing’s stemmed body flailed violently and Alex had to dig her feet into the ground, as if she held a vital length of rope on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. But restricted by her locked grip, the stem’s efforts slowly grew less and less aggressive and the syrupy mixture that fed into Daniel’s back through the second stalk began to slow.
Alex waited until the thing’s energy seemed to be depleted, if not completely expended, and began to hit the seamless face, which had partly decomposed whilst through the portal. She hit it repeatedly, hit it until the flesh on her knuckles wore down then disappeared, exposing the bloody tissue underneath and even the white of her bones. Alex continued battering the face with blows from her fist, even when there was no face left to hit, merely a bone skull growing from a succession of motors, relays and coils. These she smashed through, to leave only the mechanical innards displayed which she ripped away and threw onto the floor of the sphere.
Daniel watched as the thing that had spawned from his own chest was annihilated by the woman and all that remained of it was the automated responses that jumped and jolted along the stem like convulsions in a limb.
Then Daniel spoke again. ‘Tear the monster from me, rip the foul contamination from my body and rid me of its disease forever.’
He wrenched his other arm free of the hooks that held his skin fastened to the sphere’s surface. Alex tore the stem from his body, like tearing off an infected tail, and as it jumped in her hands in involuntary spasms, she flung it to the outer shell of the sphere. As it passed through one of the spaces in the sphere’s perimeter, the vicious blades tore it into hundreds of pieces and it fell like thick flakes of pink and silver snow.
Daniel moved forward, the umbilical cord fixed to his back snapping and hanging in mid-air seeping the black liquid, like a burst oil pipe. Daniel’s body buckled, starved now of the substances that had fuelled it and of the stem-entity manipulations. The realization of his existence and the state of his being weighed down on him, but before he could hit the ground Frank was there to catch him, and he cradled him to the floor. Frank removed his tunic quickly and gently wrapped his father’s body, covering the horrific mutilations, and then he put one hand to his father’s cheek and looked into his pale blue eyes. Saddened as they were, they had recovered their depth and vitality.
‘No, Father, don’t leave me. I have been so alone and now I have found you. Forgive me for leaving you to endure this torture…’
But Daniel was smiling and he spoke low and slowly, ‘My son, it is you and your mother that I beg forgiveness from. I was such a fool to think I could change everything to get you back, when it was not mine to change. I have been so selfish, Francis, but no more, you are here with me now and your dear mother would be so very proud of you.’
Daniel’s hand closed around his son’s. Instantly the same bright blue light that had played on Frank’s hand, as it had breached the portal to touch Robert, was re-ignited and surrounded the two men like an aura, pulsating and bathing them in its incandescence. The light travelled along the floor of the sphere like a burning fuse speeding to the explosives and upon reaching the portal it webbed itself across the space to form a matrix of illumination that seemed to scaffold the gateway, ensuring it stayed open.
Alex fell to her knees and watched Jake through the portal. The bright blue array seemed like a grid of fire, burning with an intense and ethereal glow, and Alex knew at that moment she could not follow her little boy into the real world ever again. The vision of her husband and child locked in an embrace started to wane, as if it were viewed through a gathering dust storm, distorting and flickering around the edges, the connection weakening.
Alex watched as the light field also began to change around Daniel and Frank, rising and falling like a heartbeat, oscillating as it seemed to gather energy, ready to convert that latent power into something much bigger, much more expansive. Alex rose to her feet and made to take a step forward, but a long, thin, talon-hand rested on her shoulder, halting her. Alex turned slowly, but as she did so the energy that had been accumulating in the light now shifted and exploded with the potential of a trillion nuclear explosions, saturating the entire plane with its radiance.
The soulless shells that still wandered on that side of the veil, the ones that had not yet passed over to wreak havoc on the earth, were instantly vaporized. For an instant they were shadows, silhouettes against the angry red sky, and then they were a wisp, an elemental form before nothingness, leaving only a small mound of ashen powder as their legacy.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Alex felt the light pass over and through her body and closed her eyes. She heard the distant, faint choruses of screams, awful and desperate sounds that were stunted by the rush of the energy burst. Cries of agony and despair that barely had time to form and fall from the gargoyle mouths of the soulless shells before they were evaporated along with everything else.
Alex turned and opened her eyes and there stood the giant man in black, just as ancient, bent and abandoned as he had appeared at the camp fire, but with an almost mischievous glint sparkling in his eyes, below the rim of his black hat.
‘I told you we would meet again, Alexandra Douglas. Have you done what you needed to do?’
‘Is it finished now?’ asked Alex, more tired than she had believed it was possible to feel and still be awake.
The man smiled, and as corrupt as it was, it was pulled by muscles that no
w seemed to shape it into an entirely human act. ‘Nothing truly finishes, Alexandra. But it is the end of this beginning, yes. Look,’ and he held his hands wide.
Then the sphere, the great hall, the asylum were no more and Alex was standing on a verdant hillside that rose from a weaving stream and was lushly carpeted with an abundance of flowers and deep green, dew-sodden grass. The colors were impossibly alive and Alex saw that they changed their hue, even their shape, as she gazed on them. The explosion of blue light had swept over the landscape like a purging wave, removing everything, not just the soulless shells, but the sum of all that had existed there.
Once there had been buildings, rotten, moldering and decrepit, vast seas of desert scorched by fire orbs that hung low in the sky and dark mountains that penned in the land and cast long, menacing shadows across it, immersing the abysmal creatures. But now the spaces were being filled in, and as Alex shielded her eyes from a warm but not blistering sun, she witnessed broad strokes of greens, yellows, blues, reds and whites dash away from the hillside to populate the blankness. And rivers, lakes, hills and forests proliferated, to replace ugliness with beauty and tranquility.
The giant in black moved past Alex and held out a long-fingered hand, but the talons were missing now, replaced by opaque nails, and the skin was albino white, not grey and lifeless. ‘Come, Alexandra.’
Alex looked up at his face and he repeated, ‘Come, Alexandra,’ but his face betrayed his words and Alex saw it was an invitation with no compulsion and little conviction behind it and she remained.
Alex knelt by Frank and his father, the two still shrouded by the blue light, as if they were painted onto the very air. Frank turned slowly and looked at Alex and he seemed as if he were looking across the expanses of time itself; then he was looking past Alex and his eyes were welling, his mouth falling open. Alex followed his gaze.
There stood the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. If Alex could have described an angel, she would have described the image she now beheld. And there was a sound, a whisper that filled Alex’s body with joy and sorrow in equal measures, existing close to her ear and reaching over galaxies, each syllable rounded into music, yet stretching away into infinity. It was as if an angel whispered and Alex wept anew at its sound.
The vision was more light than substance, its outline only discernible through soft lines of white and silver, but the form distinctly female, nonetheless. And the face was beautiful, though it was not configured as beauty is on earth. There was a grace and loveliness that transcended the aesthetics of proportion, ratio and harmony of balance and Alex felt weak in its presence, weaker than in the presence of the spiders or the hordes on the planes beyond the trench. The cheeks were elongated from high ridges below the eyes, sweeping down to an almost pointed chin. The mouth spanned the width of the face, delicately curved into a consuming smile, with lips that blossomed into curled red petals. The nose was long and narrow, only flaring delicately at the nostrils, and the skin was as pale as moonlight. By contrast, the hair was raven black and the eyes were large brown orbs that regarded Alex, and then the two prone men.
Daniel stirred in his son’s arms and before Alex’s eyes the man’s desecrated body began to regenerate itself, the torn flesh and split bones coming together and fusing in seamless repair.
His arm stretched out as if to touch something only he could perceive and his mouth formed breathless words, ‘Eve. Eve.’
The vision moved forward and Alex stepped back almost vagrantly to allow its passing. As the figure drew close, Alex felt the air shaking her being at unimaginable speeds and for the briefest of moments she was permitted a taste of heaven.
Frank lifted his father to his feet, his ravaged body looking weak and diminished, but intact and whole, and the two men faced the vision.
Frank began to see through the transformation the face had undergone, as had his father moments earlier, and he now spoke with the same mixture of awe and yearning, ‘Mother.’
The vision spoke, and although its mouth formed words, the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if they stood in a crowd of thousands and listened to their whispers. The words formed and unformed, echoing and repeating in different tones and pitches, overlapping themselves and accompanying each other like musical instruments.
‘Francis, my dear, beloved son, it is not time yet to be together, to be as one, my darling child. Look after your father now and I will wait for you both across time until you come back to me.’
The vision that was Eve held out the delicate shape of a long-fingered hand, sculptured in white light, and fine hairs of that light broke off and merged with the blue aura that surrounded Frank and Daniel. There was an explosion that spread out in a stretched, disc-shaped, thin blue cloud, and then reversed and rushed back in on itself, imploding into a speck of silver light, and Frank and Daniel were gone.
The vision turned to Alex and smiled, then looked at the man in black, its perfect face darkening slightly, seeming to fleetingly admonish the man.
When the vision turned back to Alex the benign smile had returned and she spoke again, ‘This man means well, Alexandra, but death has tainted his soul because he will not let go. It is his fate to not let go of death, but your destiny is your own now, inside you know your own heart, follow it my child. The rules are not to be broken, but they may be bent, occasionally.’
The vision then brushed her insubstantial fingers across Alex’s cheek and it felt like summer rain, tingling on Alex’s skin long after it had gone. Alex looked down at her hands and the blue aura that had illuminated Frank and Daniel now played on her skin. When she looked up again, the vision had gone and she stood alone on the hillside with the giant man. The portal was still visible, but now Robert and Jake were mere suggestions of themselves, their images distorted and deviated by the blue web spanning the vortex.
Alex looked at the man and her voice sounded flat and weary. ‘Where did Frank and his father go?’
‘Back.’
‘Back where?’
‘Back where everyone is entitled to go, Alexandra.’
‘And that is where?’ asked Alex, feeling all the energy in her body starting to sap and wash out through her limbs, as if a tap had been turned on to allow its escape.
‘Back to where it begins. Back to earth, the physical plane, and rebirth. Another chance.’
‘Reincarnation?’
‘If you like. But there is a price Frank must pay first, child. The blackness stole part of his soul and that must be addressed before he can continue on his journey.’
Alex fell. She knelt on her hands and knees, barely able to summon the strength to tilt her head and look up at the man. ‘And what has happened on Earth? What will my son have to endure?’
‘You made the decision, Alexandra; it was you that passed your child through the gateway. What he must endure now is his destiny, based on your actions.’
‘I wanted life for Jake, or at least a chance at it!’
‘Then that is what you have given him, Alexandra.’
‘And the Earth? You didn’t say what has become of it.’
‘Because I don’t know, I’m not God, Alexandra.’
‘You sure about that? Anyway, what is your name? What do I call you?’
‘I was called Gabriel once, but that was before time began and I do not remember that. You grow weak, Alexandra, you have arrived at that time and now you must decide.’
‘What is happening to me, Gabriel?’
Gabriel knelt and lowered his head so he could speak into Alex’s ear, and his whisper was sweeter now, ‘The angel told you, Alexandra, you’re confronting your destiny, my child. The light is calling you back to the gateway, pulling you. But your soul does not want to go and it is siphoning your will, your purpose, soon the decision will be made for you.’
Alex rose. She felt very sleepy now and the idea of sleep promised bliss and weightlessness and a buoyancy of spirit.
With great physical effort Alex r
aised one hand, finding the action just as taxing on her concentration as on her muscles, and she spoke, the words coming out thick and slowly now, ‘Take me to the gateway, Gabriel.’
Gabriel took her hand, and lifted her from her feet effortlessly, but with a gentleness that did not seem conducive with his immense, yet spindly form. He walked to the gateway and as Alex’s body neared the phenomena, tentacles of the electric blue light that spanned the event leaped out to meet it. The connections became a network of iridescent paths that excited and pulsed the nearer Alex approached, until Gabriel stood two feet from the portal. The opening swelled and yawned, as if it would devour them, growing to fully ten feet in diameter, and gaped like a mouth formed through pure energy.
Gabriel lowered his head and spoke in hushed tones, ‘Look, Alexandra, look. Your world. You choose, my child, you must choose now.’
Chapter Thirty
2055
‘Open your eyes, Jake,’ said the young woman and the man opened his eyes to let summer flood in.
‘How long have I been asleep, Angelica? You should have woken me,’ he said.
‘Two hours, that’s all, you needed the rest, love.’
The young man rose, unsteady on his feet as the vehicle’s suspension rose and fell with the contours of the road, and sleep still governed his co-ordination. Shaking his head and clearing the fog in his brain, he kissed the woman’s cheek and touched the cheeks of the twin babies in the improvised cots by her side.
Then he made his way down the truck and squeezed into the cab, sitting next to the driver as he spoke, ‘Duffy, how we doing?’
‘Same as yesterday, same as tomorrow. I’m fine with the driving if you want to sit a while,’ replied the driver, a tall, muscular reliable man in his late forties, who had lost his whole family to creatures from the Event.
‘No,’ assured the younger man. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s not as if it’s the rush hour. Ever!’
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