by Glynn James
"I'm where I started," he said, as though he was surprised to even be there.
"Where?"
"I thought I was trapped, in a dark place, with monsters and ghosts, but I'm not. I'm still in the toilet, at the service station. The mirror, with you in it, it's here. I'm not in the dark at all. It's you that is trapped. You. You were the face in the mirror that I saw before everything changed."
I didn't need to look behind to know that Adler and Rudy were standing there, watching over my shoulder. Whether they could see what I could see, hear what I could hear, I didn't know, but as the man in the mirror began to make sense of everything, so did I. With each memory that he recalled, another became clear to me. Many of the things that were in my head weren't true. They weren't my memories. They were his, this man who stared back at me from the mirror. One by one the memories broke down and faded away. At first, each of them was vivid, like I had been there, like I had lived them, but then they became fuzzy, memories that were faded after many years. Then finally they were gone, removed completely, not even forgotten, like they had never even been there.
He smokes a different brand of cigarette to me, Mayfair, and somehow the brand is important to him. I always smoked whatever I could find. Now it was all so clear. It was never me that was puzzled by the cigarettes, it was him.
"You've been stuck in my head." It was a statement more than a question.
"Yes," he said, "I remember now. I walked into the toilet, and there was this mirror. It didn't look as though it belonged here. It's so old and cracked. I went to the toilet, and then I washed my hands, and then I looked into the mirror and you were looking back at me. I started to feel sick, dizzy, and then I was in the dark, and lost. I was hurt, like I had fallen or something, but it's not true is it? Was it a dream?"
"No. This isn't a dream, it's real, but you are there and I am here. Somehow, things got mixed up."
I remember now. I've looked into this mirror before. I was here before, but the first time I failed to do something, something I need to do, something that I came here to do. It was the mirror. I'd looked into it, and seen his face instead of my own. Something unexpected happened, and I stumbled, fell somewhere. Did I fall out of the door and off the scaffolding? That would explain my injuries. Did I bang my head? Was I merely confused? Somehow this stranger, this person from another world, had been in my head.
"I don't come from London. I've never even been to London. I don't even know where England is."
"I do. It's where I live," said the man.
"I'm not a salesman."
"I am," he replied, reaching down and picking up his briefcase, like that was significant somehow. He held on to the briefcase like it was precious.
"I never met a tramp on the bus did I?"
"No. That was me, when I was a child. I never knew his name, until now. He was called Rudy, but I have never met him again since."
"No, but I have."
"How did this happen?" he asked. "I just saw everything. I just spent the last God knows how many days in that place."
"I don't know. Somehow when we both looked into the mirror we got mixed up."
"I've been stuck in your head all this time, when in truth, I was standing right here in the toilet. How long have I been standing here?"
He looked at his mobile phone.
"Ten minutes," he said. "I have only been here for ten minutes."
I mirrored him, taking out the mobile phone I had found earlier. I shook my head, confused. I had no idea what this device was for. Earlier, when I had found it, I had known, but now it was only a dead gadget from a forgotten age, with no meaning to me.
The man in the mirror looked away. I don't know what he was looking at, but I could sense his relief, his joy at knowing that he was still alive, and free. As soon as he stepped out of that toilet door his life would be normal again.
Then he was gone, and I was staring at an empty toilet. Just like that, he left.
He didn't even say goodbye.
I stood up and turned to Adler and Rudy. I could tell by their shocked expressions that they had witnessed it all.
"His device," said the voice in my head. "His creation for drawing people here. To make his creations. You could not control it. I tried to warn you, but you came here anyway."
This was why I was here.
This thing in front of me.
It may have looked like a mirror, but it was something far more sinister. The memory, or at least part of it, sharpened in my mind, unlike most of my memories, which were scrambled even more now that many of them had left. My previous life, in London, somewhere called Earth, being a salesman, driving a car, riding a bus to work. That was all someone else's memories. Who was I? Where had I come from? I'd spent so many days now, searching for a way to get back to a world that wasn't even my own. Was it possible that this was where I had come from? Or maybe one of the doors that lead to other places? Was my home through one of those doors?
I looked back towards the mirror, and then to Adler and Rudy.
"That's your world through there. But it's not my world."
"How can you be sure?" asked Rudy.
"Because I remember some things, but I know that I have never known that place. I have never even been there. Those memories were his, they weren't mine. You should go."
Rudy stared at me.
"What? We can't leave you here. I can't leave you here."
"Yes, you can, you have to."
"I can't, and even if I wanted to I couldn't. I don't even know how to."
"Try going through it, going through the mirror, while it is still your world through it. I don't know if it will work, but if CutterJack can bring people through it, maybe you can go back that way. It may be the only chance you ever get."
"I don't think I can do it," said Rudy, shaking his head and backing away.
"You have to try. It may be the only chance you will ever get to go back home. I have to destroy this thing, and I have to do it now, before some other stupid disaster stops me from doing it."
"I think what Rudy is trying to say is that he doesn't want to," interrupted Adler.
I stood there for a moment, confused.
"Why?"
"Because back there I will just be dead!" said Rudy, "Back there, I will go, well, I don't know where I will go. At least with you, I still have something like a life. Back there I was homeless and alone. I led a pointless and hopeless life. At least here I have friends and some purpose."
"What purpose?"
"To destroy those like him. To fight for something. To help you."
I didn't know what to say. It was Adler who spoke.
"I also have no reason to go back now. All the time I was alive, I sought to find my way back to my home, back to the life I led before, but now I am no longer living, and after having discovered all of this, this place, and the knowledge that there are other places, I don't want this to end. There is so much more to discover. Other worlds, James!"
"If you are sure?"
They both nodded.
"And besides," said Adler cheerfully, "we still have to find out who you really are, don't we?"
"Yes, it would seem that way. I thought I was starting to get some idea of who I was."
"Then let us start doing so right now. Destroy the device, before that evil thing that is no doubt waiting for us outside, somewhere, right now, trying to figure out how to get past the Maw and get in here, actually manages to."
I looked back at the mirror. The image of the toilet was gone. Now there was only darkness, no reflection.
CutterJack used this device to capture his victims, and I was here to destroy it. How I knew this, I could not remember, but I knew that it was what I had been sent here to do. I don't know who sent me here, or if there was even a plan for me to escape once I had succeeded, but I knew that if I didn't finish this now, countless more souls would suffer. Somehow the first time I had tried to do this, I had failed, it had trapped me.
&n
bsp; "We can't use this to escape."
"No," said Adler. "I think you are right. My original ideas that he used it to travel were wrong. I can't see how it can be used to travel other than maybe using it to control someone on the other side, or bring people here. There has to be something else, another way. Or maybe it can be used in another way?"
"Yes, but how?"
I heard the familiar sound of DogThing growling.
"We need to find another door."
I felt something warm on my chest, and reached inside my shirt to pull out the compass. It was glowing. A spark of light shot out from it, to strike the mirror, and the darkness inside the glass vanished. Instead, there was a clear image of a wall. I squinted to see what might be significant about the wall. It wasn't like the ancient wall outside. This was made of bricks, not massive stone blocks, and it didn't look that old.
"Look," said Adler, pointing.
The image was changing. Where there had been bricks, there was now a seam of light surrounding what looked like the shape of a door. It opened slightly, and then the image was gone.
"I know that place. I've seen it before, but there is no door in that wall."
"Where is it?"
"It's over the great wall. The scaffolding goes higher, much higher, and then it goes over the wall at the top. I went there, once, a long time ago, long before I discovered this door. But it leads to a platform that goes over the void that is the other side of the wall. But it ends at a brick wall. I always thought it was a curious place to put a wall. It doesn't even block anything. It's just there, on a small rocky outcrop, at the end of the platform."
The compass glowed again.
"The direction of the compass has changed. It's like it's pointing us somewhere, towards the great wall."
"Then let us go, quickly. But first, destroy that thing," said Adler.
I turned back to the mirror and drew my blade, turning it in my hand. With a grunt, I thrust the blunt pommel into the black glass. I hit it again, and again. On the third strike, the mirror shattered, scattering glass fragments across the room.
Unfortunately, so did the ground underneath me. Floorboards collapsed, bricks crumbled, and the roof of the building began to fall in. I stumbled, hauled myself up again and ran for the entrance. It seemed like the very fabric of the building was being torn apart. Through the gaps in the wall, I could see darkness and mist, and things, immense things, clawing at the building and tearing it apart.
I reached the doorway and jumped, barely landing on the scaffolding, skidding to a halt a few inches before I toppled over the edge.
I turned back around, bracing myself, expecting to see a building collapsing, but there was nothing. Even the door had gone.
DogThing sat a few feet away, waiting patiently for us.
"Where now?" asked Rudy, as I tried to get my breath back.
"We go up," I said, glancing at the levels of scaffolding platforms that rose up above us until the darkness swallowed them.
"And let's hope that door is still open when we get there."
Eight floors up and probably two hundred feet from the ground I discovered where the platform finally led to.
It was exactly as Adler had said. Instead of rising up further and further, it drew level with the top of the wall that Adler was so convinced marked some kind of boundary that shouldn't be crossed, at least not from the ground. From there, the platform extended towards the wall, and then over it, where it stretched outwards into the darkness and continued on and on. I stood there for a moment, peering down over the other side of the wall, into the emptiness below. I could still see the ground behind us and some of the Maw moving around. Most of them were up on the scaffolding, following us. The other side of the wall, where I had only been once, by pure accident, was an empty, endless void.
There was scaffolding holding up the walkway on the other side. Roughly every ten feet or so, the metal struts poked out of the darkness and upwards, to hold the wooden planks in place, but I couldn't see where they ended.
"Are we going across there?" asked Rudy.
I shrugged. "I don't think we have a lot of choice."
"It is not far," said Adler, "even if it looks it. The wall on the outcrop is only just out of sight, along the platform."
DogThing was right behind us, and behind him came the rest of the Maw. Below, I could see what might be the last few stragglers jumping up onto the bottom of the wooden slope below.
It seemed to me as I walked across that rickety wooden platform, into the darkness ahead, that with every single step it might give way and we would all tumble down into the darkness below. I'd only walked about ten feet when the wall with the door in it came into view, giving me a little more confidence to move on. I was about half way across the space between the top of the wall and the door at the end when I happened to glance back down into the darkness below.
I wished I hadn't done that.
Very little light was down there, only the faint glow from some stalactites that I could see high above us. I wondered if they were in the ceiling, and if there was a roof to this place that was just out of view. The crystals cast a small amount of light down onto the platform, and the ground below, just enough to see what was there.
At first I couldn't make out what it was that I was seeing; it looked like the surface of some strange rock formation, spread across the ground below. But as I stopped and squinted, trying to focus on the strange, bumpy shapes, something moved.
One of the rocks below shifted, nudging the one next to it. From there, a kind of wave effect spread across the ground. I still hadn't figured out what I was looking at, even though it was moving. I was convinced that I was viewing some new, and strange, but natural phenomenon.
Then one of the rocks looked up and moaned, and I realised that I wasn't seeing the ground at all. They weren't strange rocks. They were heads, every single one of them, thousands upon thousands crammed in together, moaning and moving, shifting, pushing and shoving each other.
The ground underneath the rickety platform that we were all walking on was a sea of zombies.
I stopped walking.
"Do you see them?"
"Yes." It was Rudy who answered.
"Keep moving. Slowly. Quietly."
The voice in my head.
"Through the door. Go through the door. This will all be over soon."
I focused. Tried to fight back the fear, the tiredness, and walked slowly forward, every moment telling myself over and over in my head that there was nothing there, nothing below us, only the door, just go through the door.
One step at a time the door got closer. One step at a time I breathed, slowly, deeply.
I stepped off the platform and onto the rocky ground. It was a small outcrop, as the professor had said, and the wall was merely a free standing block of bricks, maybe ten feet high and ten feet wide.
The edge of the door glowed faintly as I stepped nearer. I reached out to touch it, and just that slight touch was enough to open it.
I stepped through and stumbled into daylight.
I staggered, moving forward a few steps, struggling to grasp my new surroundings. The skeletal remains of massive, derelict buildings rose on either side of me. The ground was broken. It had probably been a road, once. Now grass and weeds broke the tarmac.
It was day, but it was still dark. Above me, the sun shone only through small gaps in the grey clouds that drifted overhead at a speed that was astonishing. A cold blast of wind gusted down the open street, and I had to brace against it to stop myself from falling over.
Rubble, broken windows and burnt-out vehicles littered the street, and not just this street. I was standing in a dead end, with a solid wall behind me, except for the hole through which Rudy and Adler now stepped. The street stretched on and on, and beyond that were more ruined streets, more ruined buildings and vehicle wrecks. From the seat of the car next to me stared the weathered, cold, bleach-boned face of someone who had been dead for a l
ong time.
An entire city lying derelict, ruined and dead.
A noise behind me startled me, and I turned to see the Maw begin to flood through the hole, pacing down the street, spreading out, not stopping, so that the rest of their kind could escape through the door that we had opened. After a few minutes, they stopped coming through.
DogThing was by my side.
"It's time to close it now," said the voice in my head.
I looked down at DogThing.
"Before he escapes too. Before they come."
Then I knew.
The voice in my head was DogThing, and he had been speaking to me all this time.
He looked back towards the door and started to growl. Other Maw nearby spun round and crouched down low, baring their teeth, ready to spring at whatever was coming from the other side, whatever was about to escape with us.
"He comes," said DogThing.
I could hear the thud of heavy feet on the wooden platform, approaching fast. But he never got there in time.
I reached for the door. There was no handle to pull, so I grabbed the edge and pushed, quickly taking my hand away. The last thing I saw through the opening was CutterJack, a few feet away, reaching out with both hands, his one eye wide with anger or fear, running towards us. Behind him were his lizard pets, many of them, tearing along the wooden boards as fast as they could go, each of them with the look of death in their eyes, and beyond that a wave of moaning and screaming.
The cries of countless tortured souls.
I swore that I heard CutterJack scream just as the door closed and vanished, leaving a solid brick wall in front of me. I staggered back, expecting the wall to collapse in front of me, and CutterJack to come bursting through with his lizardcats and an army of zombies, but there was nothing.
It was over.
I turned, seeking the others, Adler and Rudy. They were a few feet away, staring up at the towering ruins that stretched on as far as I could see.
"Something terrible must have happened to this place," said Adler.
"I don't remember," I replied.
I turned back to DogThing and knelt down. This time he came forward and nuzzled his head in my lap. I ruffled his fur.