by Carver Pike
“Not me. My image,” T-Nate informed him.
“Damn, bro, you got a copy of his rap sheet or what?” Sergio joked.
“I was a fan, and the news was kinda disheartening,” Gabe admitted.
“Yeah, my image sure fucked things up for me over there,” T-Nate said.
Gabe glanced over at Sergio and then Ty. He didn’t understand what was going on.
“You’re on the other side of the mirror, and no matter how I try to explain it, it’s not gonna make sense,” Sergio said.
“Please try,” Gabe pleaded, “’cause I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“Then you just might be as normal as the rest of us, kid!” Dozier announced.
“When you were back home,” Sergio began, “something must have set you off. Something made you so mad that you wanted to do something terrible to someone.”
Gabe stared at Sergio and remembered Allie and Charlie. He nodded.
“You were in front of a mirror when you became so desperate that you said the words ‘I can’t take it anymore’,” Sergio continued.
Gabe remembered standing in the bathroom, washing his face. He didn’t know if he’d said anything, but he did feel a flash of anger as he thought about Allie and Charlie sleeping together. He’d wanted to kill them. That’s when his reflection had attacked him.
“Maybe. I might have,” Gabe admitted.
“Ain’t no maybe about it,” Dozier shouted.
“When a person becomes so desperate that they’re about to do something terribly wrong,” Sergio said. “Something that a normal person isn’t capable of, their darker, evil self takes over. It’s what we call your image. Your image took over and pulled you through the mirror, into his world, this one.”
Gabe looked over at Ty expecting to see Ty holding back laughter, but he looked dead serious. There was no smirk where he expected it.
“You’re not joking? This is fuckin’ ridiculous. It’s not possible,” Gabe angrily announced.
“Look around you. You’re on the dark side, amigo. You freed your image to do what it does best. Whatever you were thinking about doing in front of that mirror is what your image is going to do,” Sergio added.
“Allie,” Gabe said under his breath.
“I’m guessin’ that’s your woman,” Dozier said. “Well, she’s dead, brother. If your image ain’t caught her yet, he will.”
Gabe couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His reflection was trying to kill his girlfriend? It was absurd. Everything that had gone on since the previous day was absurd, starting with the sudden change in Lisa’s behavior to his falling through the mirror.
He half expected to wake from all of this to find that it was only a lousy nightmare. He expected to open his eyes and find Ivy/Lisa, still resting on his chest, or jerk fully out of his pre-vacation stupor by the sound of Charlie banging loudly against the side of his cubicle.
“If this is all true,” Gabe said. He felt ridiculous even entertaining the idea that it might be true. “If this is all true, how do I get back to the other side?”
T-Nate laughed. Ty covered his mouth to prevent himself from snickering.
“You can’t,” Sergio said. “Not until your image is desperate enough to pull you back, and when that happens, that means he’s done and you’ll be a murderer over there.”
“Why do you think there’s so many people in prison claimin’ to be innocent?” Dozier asked. “It’s cause most of ‘em are!”
Chapter 4 – The Outer Rings
On the outskirts of the city, the land became more rugged. The buildings and alleyways of the city began to thin out and disappear.
The large spotlights on the sides of the Bull Dozier shined out at the war-torn plains. The land was burnt to the ground. Trees, aged and wilted, stuck up out of the ground like jagged stakes.
The van plunged through the darkness, lit only intermittently by cracks of purple lightning far off in the distance. The unnatural light was barely bright enough to cast an eerie glow over the deserted land, illuminating how barren it was. Ash lined the dirt road. Pools of muddy residue bubbled at random spots and seemed to stretch on for miles.
As the van lurched forward, bouncing its way over the unpaved ground, figures started to emerge from the bubbling pools.
First, their bony fingers stretched up out of the mud and gripped the drier ground around it, followed by their bodies as they began to lift up and out of the pools until they lay on the dirt, free of the soot.
All over the ashy plains sat these creatures, on all fours, like mutated alien life forms that had had their bodies stretched out. Their arms were longer than their legs, and their torsos were so stretched out that they leaned way forward.
Thick, grey skin like the hide of an elephant covered them. To complement their long and bony faces, they had jaws that were jagged and torn from many years of climbing in and out of the mud. They had no ears, but yellow eyes that were set far back in their skulls.
Inside of the Bull Dozier, T-Nate and Dozier frantically flipped switches.
“I’m going stealth,” Dozier warned everyone. “The lurkers are on to us.”
“The what?” Gabe asked.
“Lurkers,” Sergio repeated. “Look out the window.”
Gabe stood and looked out the thin slot between the metal shields. The van’s spotlights shined on one of the lurkers as it approached them. Gabe jumped back and nearly fell over as the spotlights shut off. The air was filled with high-pitched shrieks as the lurkers were surrounded by darkness.
“They’re calling for others,” Dozier said.
“What the hell are they? Are they dangerous?” Gabe asked.
“It’s not them we have to worry about,” Sergio informed him. “They just watch the roads. They report to Singe.”
“Who?” Gabe asked.
“Singe,” Sergio said. “He’s a supernatural. There are things in this world you would never see on the other side of the mirror. The images are bad, but the supernaturals can never cross over through the mirror, and they’re much worse than the images.”
“Imagine being born and bred in a world full of evil and pain, and never being allowed to leave it,” Ty added.
The thought gave Gabe chills. He sat back down on his bench and rubbed his temples.
“We better stop and talk to ‘em,” T-Nate suggested. “We’ll never make it through the outer rings without their permission.”
Dozier slapped the steering wheel with an open hand and angrily turned towards Gabe.
“They didn’t fuck with us on the way in,” Dozier said.
“They don’t always,” T-Nate reminded him. “You know how random they are.”
“There ain’t nothin’ random about those things. They know what they’re doing. Somethin’ ain’t right,” Dozier said.
He turned and glared at Gabe.
“Pickin’ this dude up was a mistake, man,” Dozier hissed. He wagged a finger in Gabe’s direction and added, “You better be worth all this.”
Gabe threw up his hands in disbelief. He hadn’t asked for any of this and he still didn’t understand why they were going through all of this trouble to rescue him in the first place. Dozier slowed the van, stopped and then turned on the outer lights.
As he and T-Nate prepared to exit the vehicle, Gabe turned to the others.
“What is going on? Okay, I get it - kinda. I’m in a strange mirror world. But what is all this talk about me being worth it? Why did you go through all this trouble to rescue me in the first place?” Gabe asked.
Sergio shrugged his shoulders. “The Soothsayer will explain everything once we get to the Dwellings.”
***
Dozier and T-Nate stepped out onto the road with their guns in hand and sloshed through the muddy soot. They kept their weapons pointed at the ground to look unthreatening. As they approached the edge of the road, over twenty of the lurkers surrounded them. They moved mostly on their fingertips, making a strange scraping noise
as they maneuvered.
One of the lurkers, only recognizable as the leader because of the strange black symbol carved into its forehead, spoke to them in an alien language, with a raspy, whispered voice. Neither Dozier nor T-Nate understood what the leader was saying, but knew that they’d better start explaining their presence on the road before the creatures assumed the worst.
“We’re returning to the Dwellings. We was on a mission for food and wouldn’t you know it, there ain’t no damned food in Darkar. It’s the asshole of the underworld I tell ya,” Dozier blurted out and laughed a little, as if expecting the lurkers to find some humor in his ranting.
The leader of the lurkers slithered forward and stretched its long neck out so that its face was only a few inches from Dozier’s. It tilted its head from left to right, concentrating on Dozier’s face, as if it were reading his mind. Dozier wiped sweat from his forehead.
“We’d like to continue on as soon as possible. The roads are dangerous,” T-Nate said.
The lurker whipped its head around and moved within an inch of T-Nate’s face. It sniffed in his scent and opened its mouth. A thin tongue unraveled and slithered its way out towards T-Nate’s eyes. It lingered in the air right next to his eyelashes. The lurker sniffed once more and then yanked its tongue back into its mouth and snapped its jaw shut with a chomp.
T-Nate flinched. It dipped to his right and shoved past Dozier as it made its way rapidly towards the van’s door. T-Nate attempted to block it, but the other lurkers quickly reacted and moved closer to warn him. He threw up his hands in surrender and backed off.
Inside, Sergio and Ty held their guns down against the benches and leaned back, remaining dead still.
“Don’t move,” Sergio warned Gabe.
The lurker climbed up the few steps into the van’s cargo area and twisted its head around the corner. Gabe’s eyes opened wide as he watched the horrid creature begin making its way towards them.
The lurker’s head moved from left to right as if scanning the entire van, remembering every sight that it took in. Gabe looked over at Sergio and saw that he was frozen in place.
The lurker moved to Sergio first and slid its wide face in front of his. It opened its mouth, revealing jagged teeth, and then quickly snapped its mouth shut. Sergio flinched a bit and the creature moved on to Ty.
He didn’t look quite as nervous as Sergio. He stared back at the lurker relentlessly. It was obvious that he’d been through this type of unspoken interrogation before. The lurker must have sensed his lack of fear because he tired of Ty quickly and moved on to Gabe.
As the creature slithered over to get a better look at him, Sergio slid his finger into the trigger of his gun. The lurker moved its face to within inches of Gabe’s. Its yellow eyes grew wide and it lifted up one of its hands. Long sharp claws suddenly came out of the fingertips.
The lurker pulled back and raised high into the air above Gabe, stretching its body out menacingly, like a king cobra about to strike. It opened its mouth and rolled its head around, staring down at him with its teeth bared.
“Cut-ter. Cuuuutttter,” it shrieked.
Gabe’s instincts kicked into gear. He snatched the gun out of Sergio’s hand and lifted it to the lurker’s head. Its eyes opened wider and it hissed at him before Gabe pulled the trigger and sent a rapid spray of bullets into its face.
The lurker jerked backwards as the bullets ripped into its flesh. It landed on the bench next to Ty and went into spasms. Ty lifted one of his wooden stakes and rammed it through the neck of the creature, silencing it.
The lurkers seemed to sense the demise of their leader, reacting before Dozier and T-Nate even understood what was going on. One of them lashed out with its right hand and tried to rip the flesh from T-Nate’s arm, but years of full contact football had prepared his reflexes well. He leaped backwards and dodged the attack.
All of the lurkers moved towards the two men. Dozier and T-Nate raised their guns and hesitated, but Dozier’s instincts took over as soon as one of them lashed out at him.
“Kill these motherfuckers!” Dozier yelled.
T-Nate opened fire, spraying the creatures with hot lead. They backed towards the van door.
“Behind us!” T-Nate yelled. Dozier spun around and fended off their rear.
Sergio and Gabe threw the dead lurker out of the van. The other lurkers stopped attacking and seemed to be drawn to the body of their dead leader. They fell to all fours and surrounded the body.
Dozier and T-Nate couldn’t make their way to the van because the crowd blocked them. One of the lurkers leaned its head forward and opened its mouth. Its long tongue wrapped around the ankle of the dead lurker. It walked backwards, dragging the dead one off to the side of the road.
The remaining lurkers pounced on the dead one and began eating it, ripping their teeth into its flesh.
“Go! Now!” Dozier ordered.
They ran to the van and as they reached it, some of the lurkers began to shake violently and growl as if an overwhelming anger had set in. Loud shrieks pierced the air.
Dozier was reaching back to close the door when a lurker pounced forward and sunk its teeth into the door. Dozier slammed it closed, shaking the lurker loose, but the others were already on the van.
They climbed all over the vehicle, crashing their claws and teeth into it. Gabe, Sergio, and Ty huddled in the center, away from the benches. Dozier jumped into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine.
“Punch it! Go!” T-Nate yelled as one of the lurkers hopped onto the windshield with its claws and fangs out.
Dozier stepped on the gas and the lurker slid off the windshield. The van leaped forward and barreled over the lurkers that remained in the road. They continued to attack as the van drove on.
The ones on the roof rolled off and crashed to the ground. More lurkers pulled themselves up out of the ashy mud and attacked them, but the Bull Dozier wouldn’t be stopped by the determined creatures.
“What the hell happened in here?” Dozier screamed.
“I don’t know. The lurker said something to Gabe and then…” Sergio tried to explain.
“It called me by my last name, and I had to shoot it before it got me first,” Gabe interrupted.
He looked to Ty for reassurance.
“You saw it, man. It was gonna kill me,” Gabe added.
Ty nodded. “It was about to attack him,” he said.
“What’s your last name, man?” T-Nate asked.
“Cutter,” Gabe informed them.
“No shit?” Dozier asked as if he’d heard the most bizarre thing ever.
“That guy on the street. The one who branded me kept calling me Cutter too,” Gabe said.
He reached down to his chest and lifted the bulletproof vest. He ran his finger gently over the raised skin where the half-moon symbol was branded. The red light could still be seen blinking underneath.
“Oh, we’re fucked. Why didn’t the Soothsayer say somethin’ about this?” Sergio asked.
Gabe was confused.
“Somebody please explain what’s going on,” he begged.
“Apparently your image is Cutter,” Ty piped in. “Cutter’s a mean son of a bitch. Everyone’s gunning for him over here.”
“He’s double crossed all of the bad dudes over here,” Sergio added. “He attacked the Dwellings once while we were there. He was roundin’ up slaves to sell to Colossus. His gang killed a lot of people, man.”
“And if people think you’re Cutter, we’re in a lot of trouble,” Dozier hollered from the front seat.
“Didn’t think I’d ever see you look so afraid,” Gabe said.
Dozier turned in his seat and glared at Gabe, leaving T-Nate to nervously steady the wheel. “I ain’t scared of nothin’. I’m just sayin’. You better be as bad ass as your image, ‘cause we got a lot of fightin’ ahead of us,” Dozier said as he turned and slapped T-Nate’s paw off the wheel.
Loud screeching and shrieking came from outside. The lurke
rs had faded off somewhere in the distance. The new cries were from something different. They could see a huge wall of fire stretching as far as the eye could see. The flames licked high into the air, as tall as a skyscraper.
There were no detour roads around, only a path that drove right through the flames.
“We’re almost there,” Dozier warned. “Sit tight.”
“The outer rings,” T-Nate said. “When we get to the first ring it’s gonna get a little bit hot in here.”