He kept his eyes closed and counted to five, knowing that the next few seconds could define his future. Taking a deep breath, he dared to look.
The plastic enclosure was on the table exactly as he had left it. Circular blue food container, a layer of sawdust in the bottom, water bottle clipped to the side. All was present apart from the enclosure’s resident. He looked blankly about the empty sitting room, wondering if it had somehow escaped. But the lid of the container was still securely closed and escape would be completely impossible. Not quite able to believe his own eyes he opened the lid of the container, combing his fingers through the sawdust. He knew of course that the mouse wouldn’t be able to hide itself in such a thin layer, but he checked anyway. He needed to be sure. Satisfied, he closed the lid and took a step back. There was no question about it. The mouse had disappeared. He had expected the eureka moment to be accompanied by excitement and elation, but for him the enormity of what he had done made his legs feel weak, and he could do no more than flop down heavily in his favourite chair by the fireplace. It dawned on him that he had achieved the impossible. Even he didn’t believe what he had done. He didn’t know how he had done it exactly. He tried to recall the symbols, the numbers and the words but they were already gone—fading away like a dream at the moment of waking. Although he wasn’t sure what he had tapped into or how, he knew that he had somehow blurred the line between possible and impossible. Already he was thinking about how he could use it, and how he could now finally develop the illusion that would get him the recognition that he deserved.
The mouse reappeared an hour later. Rick had been deep in thought about the enormity of what he had done when he heard it scurrying around in the plastic container. He lunged up and hurried over, lifting the mouse out carefully and almost dropping it due to his hands shaking so much, but he managed to keep it in his grasp. It appeared to be perfectly healthy and although he was no vet, it looked to be showing no ill effects of its disappearance. This time he did whoop and cheer and carefully placed the mouse back in its container. (He retired it from a life of experimentation and kept it as a pet, naming it Houdini.) Although he was optimistic by the reappearance of the mouse, he was dismayed to find that upon trying to repeat his experiment with a second rodent (third if you counted the initial escapee) he couldn’t do it. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, to will the words into existence to no avail. The next two weeks were an exercise in frustration, as no matter what he tried to do to replicate the incident he was unable to will the numbers and symbols into existence. His frustration gave way to depression, and he was close to giving up altogether when he made the breakthrough that would change his life forever. Following another failed attempt to make the symbols and words appear, he had wilted down into his chair and took a long sip of coffee, then glanced over to Houdini, who had since been upgraded to a much larger enclosure.
“Help me out here, Houdini. Tell me what to do,” he had said to the mouse, which was far too busy cleaning itself in its nest area to pay him any attention. He glanced back to the other mouse, who he had named Herman, still on the desk in his enclosure. Herman looked at him, sniffing at the air and wondering when he too got to retire to a life of luxury like that of his fellow rodent Houdini.
“I’m working on it, Herman. I’m working on it,” Rick said in response to the unspoken question. He leaned back and closed his eyes allowing his body to sink further the seat. He was close to sleep when they reappeared. The symbols, the words. They began to flow. Slowly at first and from left to right across his closed eyes, then they started to veer off, come in from different angles, words writing on top of words, symbols interlinking and pointing to other words that exploded into kaleidoscopes of colour, which in turn formed their own words and symbols. He began to read, forming sentences, speaking them under his breath. Just as before, he felt pulled along by some unseen force, the words and symbols building to a crescendo before suddenly stopping. Heart racing, Rick opened his eyes.
Herman was gone.
He leaped from his chair and danced around the room.
“Ha-ha! I get it now, Houdini! I know how to do it! I was trying too hard! The key is to relax—relax and let the mind do the work!”
Ecstatic, he waited for Herman to return, and exactly as expected he reappeared an hour later. Rick actually saw it happen this time. The air in the cage seemed to twist and warp and buckle, and then there he was. It looked like a cheap Hollywood special effect but it was quite real. With his adventure complete, Herman too was retired to chez’ Houdini and Rick was left with what to do with his new found gift. The process became easier the more he did it. Buoyed by the excitement of his antics with the mice, he had started to test the method on larger animals. Cats and dogs went and reappeared just as easily and seemingly with no ill effects. The process wasn’t just limited to living things either, as he found he could shift static things too. His television, his chair. Each time he drifted into that strange, pulled along state driven by the symbols and numbers, he felt that he understood a little more—even though every time he opened his eyes he would always be overcome with that forgetful waking dream feeling. He had even tried to write some of them down, but the half-remembered words and shapes seemed wrong on paper and held neither meaning nor power.
He set up two video cameras and began to record his experiments, watching the tapes play back in awe as he made various things in his home vanish and reappear. Excited, he began to draw out plans for his master illusion, quickly realising that the previous limits no longer applied. As he grew bolder, he began to focus on vanishing increasingly larger and more complex objects. First a horse grazing in a field, then his beaten old Ford, (which he half hoped wouldn’t re appear.) In every instance they would return exactly an hour later, showing no ill effects of their journey to wherever it was that they went. The word vengeance began to pop into Rick’s mind, and over the next days was joined by other words. Retribution. Justice. Power.
Confident in his new ability, he started to think of the best way to showcase it to the world. He would be bigger than Houdini, More famous than Copperfield. He would finally show everyone that he was just as good, if not better than Andy Levine. He knew that in order to do it, he would need an illusion so spectacular that there could be no doubt of his power. But first he had to do one more thing. He had to perform the experiment on himself.
V
He wasn’t quite sure what would happen when he pictured himself in his mind and willed the symbols to come. But sure enough as the intensity and speed of the process increased, he began to feel a lightness in his stomach and a tingling of his fingertips. The symbols intensified and as they approached the crescendo he felt his stomach lurch—it was the same sort of feeling as when you drive a car over a dip in the road too quickly, then his ears popped and he knew he had arrived. He wasn’t sure what to expect when he opened his eyes, but the reaction wasn’t one that he had anticipated. He was decidedly underwhelmed.
The world was much the same, yet different at the same time. The air had a distinct dry, coppery taste and everything seemed dull and washed out. He had made himself vanish inside his apartment and he guessed that he had arrived in the other world in the exact same place, although the apartment in this world (or dimension if that was indeed what it was) didn’t exist. Instead he arrived on a barren plateau, which dropped away to a thin, dirty looking river through what would have been the main road leading to the centre of town. The breeze ruffled his hair as he stood in a new world, which so far as he could tell was empty. He walked aimlessly, but never straying too far away from his starting point. It was twilight and as he looked to the skies he saw constellations that were unknown to him, and marvelled as the moon drifted into view from behind the cloud cover. Unlike the regular moon of the other earth, this one sported two small moons of its own. He saw no plant life, and no sign of anything living. As the hour approached and full darkness came with it, he heard the sound. It was a horrific high pitched noise
like fingernails scraping down a chalkboard, or an errant knife scratching against a plate. Unease prickled within him and he glanced over the broken and craggy horizon towards the direction the sound was coming from—and he saw them. Winged things silhouetted against the moon, moving towards him with the undulating motion of snakes. Those sounds again, enough to raise gooseflesh on his arms and sweat to run down his forehead. They were coming towards him, as if they could sense him, or smell him. His hour was up, and he waited with clenched fists as his fingers began to tingle and his stomach vaulted. The atmosphere grew bright and he closed his eyes, and then he was back, back in the world he knew. The sound of the winged things stayed with him for many days, and he knew he could never again send anything to that place. Not with those things, even if it meant he would never have his revenge, nor his time in the spotlight. But time makes things seem less dangerous, and as days gave way to weeks, he had gone from not ever doing it again, to performing the feat only on an inanimate objects during daylight hours. He suspected that the winged things were nocturnal. Besides, he reasoned to himself, he would only need to do it once in order to get his well deserved recognition. He was set, and after shaving and cutting his hair, he called his manager to make the arrangements. He had something spectacular planned.
VI
When the press release was issued stating that he was going to make a section of the Great Wall of China disappear, the world went crazy. The red tape had been difficult to wade through, but with the help of a hot shot lawyer named Fife and a thoroughly unpleasant broker who managed to swing the insurance called Robinson, contracts were signed and authority given by Horoshimo Mashima, who was the senior president of the Chinese Heritage Management Bureau. Internet forums buzzed with speculation, and Rick was thrust from obscurity back into the limelight, suddenly in high demand for TV interviews and radio appearances. Slowly he released more details. After the section of wall had been vanished, a number of volunteers chosen at random would be able to walk from one side to the other through the space the section once occupied. During the entire media circus Andy Levine’s representatives had remained silent, apart from releasing a short statement saying that they would be watching with great interest to see what his respected rival was able to accomplish. It was standard public relations stuff of course, and Rick would have bet his life that they were privately furious. The day rolled near and the excitement built.
The section of the wall selected was a fifty-foot length in the northern Juyongguan region, and with assistance from the Chinese government, it had been cut off by makeshift barriers behind which a huge crowd had gathered. Down at the base of the wall, a temporary scaffold floor had been put in place on both sides of the structure. It was here that people would have the opportunity to cross through the empty space once the wall had been vanished. Although they weren’t needed for any reason other than to add to the drama, giant red curtains had been set up and draped over the selected section of wall, covering it completely. Finally after months of preparation everything was ready.
Though nobody knew it at the time, the last day on earth had arrived.
Back in the present from his vantage point high above the city, Rick glanced at the Dictaphone which seemed to glare back at him, the red recording light casting its accusing eye towards him. He looked to the window, and shivered as he realised how late it had become. The last sliver of light was falling below the horizon, and the room was now cast into deep, angular shadows.
Now that he’d had time to think it over he was sure he knew what had happened and what had gone wrong. Everything had started according to plan. The crowds were hushed, and the television cameras poised as he stood by the base of the wall, eyes closed and arms extended out to the side. A dramatic, orchestral score played as subtly hidden smoke machines covered the stage and wall in artificial mist. He had the section of wall firmly fixed in his mind and was waiting patiently for the words and symbols to begin to dance their unique patterns in his mind’s eye. Maybe it was the nerves or the excitement, he wasn’t sure. But as the words increased in speed, he found his thoughts drifting, his concentration breaking. He thought about the public, the worldwide reaction to his incredible feat, he thought about how popular and famous he would become. The section of wall in his mind began to warp and shift, and then vanish altogether like a bad TV signal. Instead he saw himself in the centre of the words in his head, receiving the praise of the world, shaking hands with millions, more popular than the Pope. If he had only been able to stop then, to take a moment to compose himself and try again he might have been able to fix it, but he knew the process didn’t work that way. He knew that once it began he would simply be a passenger, dragged along to the conclusion. He forced himself to concentrate on the wall and push everything else out of his mind, but he couldn’t rid the selfish images of his worldwide fame and the glory of his vindication. He panicked, and instead of letting the words flow naturally he tried to make them move, to manipulate them, to give him time to get himself together. It was an intense struggle as he tried to undo what was happening, the image in his mind shifted repeatedly from the wall, to him, to the population of the world, each melting and fading into each other. He shifted symbols, pulling them away when they tried to interconnect, wiping away the brightly coloured explosions. There was a high pitched whine, one that seemed to come from deep within the centre of his head. It was almost unbearable, and he was on the verge of screaming when his mind’s eye went blank, and he knew that something had gone horribly wrong.
Silence.
His stomach flipped and he swallowed down an acid tasting burp. He didn’t want to, he didn’t want to see what had happened, but he forced himself to open his eyes. The first thing he saw was the wall. It was mostly still in place apart from a large diagonal section which was missing. The red curtains had been sliced through and were hanging loose, fluttering in the gentle breeze. He could see the cross section of the ornate stonework which looked like it had been cut away with laser precision. It was then that the noticed the silence. He looked around and screamed.
VII
Maybe it was because he tried to mess with the symbols or change something that had already been set in motion, but whatever it was, something had gone horribly wrong. The two thousand people who had been on and around the stage were gone. He waited an anxious hour for them to reappear, and as each moment ticked agonisingly by, he was unable to shut the image of those winged, flying things out of his mind. The first hour came and went, and then another. It was only when dawn broke the next day and he awoke cold and bleary eyed on the temporary stage floor that he realised that they weren’t coming back. He had broken the process and cast two thousand people into some bizarre mirror earth with no way of bringing them back. But it wasn’t just them. Almost a year had passed since that day and he hadn’t encountered a single human being since. There was nothing left. No bodies, no sign of anyone ever being there at all. It seemed that people had been going about their daily lives one minute, and had simply been…erased from existence the next. He had spent months knocking on doors, criss-crossing the country and searching for some sign of life other than his own, but eventually had to concede that it was pointless.
How many people were in the world? His mind wandered as he chewed on the number and tried to put it into a perspective he could comprehend.
Seven billion.
Such an overwhelming number. He had tried to bring them back of course, but he had only ever learned to send things. He had no idea where to start when it came to bringing things back. He couldn’t even refer to his research, as his books and other notes were thousands of miles away on another continent... One thing he knew for certain, however, was that whatever he had broken in the symbols when he sent the seven billion inhabitants of the world to that dry, washed out place, had left some kind of doorway open. Not open to him—but to those flying, winged things. And although it had taken them a while, they had finally found him.
He stood and
picked up the Dictaphone, carrying it with him outside to the balcony. The wind had picked up and he could hear it even louder now, the horrific high pitched screeching. They were close. He held the Dictaphone to his lips, somehow able to stop them trembling.
“And so, that is the story of how the world came to an end. I make no excuses, and no words can ever express my sorrow for what I have done.”
He hooked his leg over the balcony, lowering himself gently to the other side. Hanging on to the rail with one hand, he clutched the Dictaphone to his face with the other as an immense shadow passed screeching overhead.
“My name is Rick Michael Jones, and I am truly sorry. Please, forgive me.”
He depressed the stop button, and tossed the Dictaphone through the open balcony door. To the sound of beating leathery wings, he took a deep breath and stepped out into oblivion.
He was snatched out of the air, having fallen only fifty feet.
The last man is dead.
About the Author
Michael Bray has been writing horror fiction for over fifteen years. He is also a musician and a father, and resides in his home city of Leeds, England with his wife Vikki and daughter Abi.
Dark Corners - Twelve Tales of Terror Page 26