The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  "Okay," she had answered.

  "So, the nothingness is a white piece of paper, your mind is fresh and clear, and ready for your thoughts and memories and imaginings. You take the pen, the black ink, and you cut across the page, just a line at first. You cut through that whiteness, you cut through it with your ink. From the line you can create anything. Animals, the beach, pretty trees and flowers. Paper and ink, and you create your own world."

  Mae took the fountain pen and touched the tip of the pen to the page, leaving a small black mark. She lifted the pen, closing her eyes and opening her mind, allowing the blankness of the paper to transfer to her imagination. Then, with her eyes closed, she touched the tip of the pen again to the blank sheet of paper, and drew her hand toward her, leaving a shining trail of ink on the white page.

  "Paper and ink," she said, her eyes closed tightly. Mae had imagined a black line cutting through the whiteness in her mind. From that black line, the whiteness split, opening on the tree in their backyard, an old tire swinging lazily in the soft breeze. She had smiled, smelling the honeysuckle and lilacs, watching the tufts of cotton from cottonwood trees float and shimmer in the sunlight like dust mites on a quiet, Sunday afternoon. She giggled, rushing forward to the swing, remembering the cool feel of the grass on her feet, the rush of wind as she swung high into the trees.

  "And the world opens," her father had said. "You don't need to take the pictures of places and people and things inside… that place. You only need your mind and the tools to create. Your memories and dreams will become part of your reality."

  ***

  It was so long ago, but to Mae, it seemed like she’d just had that conversation. Her body was submerged to her waist now, all physical sensation in the lower part of her body all but gone, but she barely noticed. In her mind, she saw a blank open space, like a white sheet of paper that stretched on in every direction. For a few seconds she enjoyed the blank page where a world would soon be created. She took a pen a drew a horizontal line. The line stayed in place on the piece of paper for a moment, a cut in the blank reality, and then it widened slightly. Light and color spilled onto the blank page, the line splitting wider as more and more color bled through.

  The liquid in the stasis tank crept higher up her torso, spilling in around her breasts and shoulders. The machine whirred softly, distantly now as Mae slipped into that other reality in her mind. She didn’t want to go to the beach this time, not when it was snowing like before. She wanted to be with Adam, when they’d first kissed on that mountain road.

  The line opened and the world opened on that mountain trail in autumn. With the colors of leaves and crisp blue sky, and the rays of warm sunlight filtering through the branches on tall trees, came the spiced and earthy scent of fall. The leaves crunched under their feet as they walked, she and Adam, their fingers intertwined and warm against the chilly fall air.

  “I wish you would have come last weekend,” she said, and squeezed his hand for emphasis. Adam laughed.

  “No, I’ll leave you to your nights out with the girls,” he said, “too much estrogen is bad for the health.”

  Mae chuckled, because it was true. Adam probably wouldn’t have liked going to the movies with her and three of her girlfriends from school. A horror movie at that, with all four of them squealing and screaming during the scary parts.

  “What was it about?” he asked.

  “A videotape,” Mae said. “When you watch it, a girl calls you on the telephone and tells you that you have seven days to live. The whole movie is a countdown of those seven days, and at the end, they finally realize that in order to live and dodge the death curse, they have to make a copy of the video and pass it on.”

  Adam chucked and shook his head, saying, “Yeah, I don’t understand why people watch this.”

  “Well, that’s not even the best part. The best is when this little girl, you know, the one who calls you after you watch the video? Exactly seven days after you watch the video, she pays you a visit. Only she comes crawling out of the video, literally comes out of the television set and kills you.”

  “I wonder how that would work with flat screen TVs,” Adam mused.

  “I don’t think that would make a difference because—” Mae paused when she realized he was teasing her. She scowled, and he burst out laughing.

  “You don’t really get off on that stuff, do you?”

  “I like scary movies,” Mae shrugged. “It’s like an adrenaline rush, you know?”

  “But how is it scary? I mean, a girl coming out of a TV? You have to believe in that stuff, at least a little bit, for it to be scary. Otherwise its just fantasy la-la land.”

  Mae shrugged again but didn’t say anything.

  Adam stopped walking, eyeing her carefully.

  “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

  ***

  The thick liquid in the stasis tank was up to her neck and rising. It felt like the sensations in her body were slowly melting away into nothing, the nothingness creeping up her body until it would swallow her whole. As before, the closer she was to being fully submerged in the liquid, the slower she was submerged. It had something to do with the shock on her mental stability, to be utilizing all of her senses one second, and then deprived of all sensory function the next.

  The liquid crept, crawled up her skin at a snail’s pace. In a few minutes, the liquid would cover her face and ears and the world would be blocked out. She would be left with only the world she’d created in her imagination.

  And that was okay. She liked that world.

  You don’t believe in that stuff, do you? Adam had asked, but she couldn’t remember if that had actually happened, or if it was only happening in this other world she’d created from the paper and ink. Her thoughts seemed to move in slow motion, as if in a dream, where the memories blended with her thoughts and ideas.

  Maybe Dr. Whaler was right. She considered again, believing for the first time since he’d told her that none of it was real that maybe it was possible. Everything was so… distant now.

  Do I believe that stuff? She wondered how she had answered Adam. How she would answer him. Belief in the supernatural? In weird, crazy things that you can’t explain? Of course she believed.

  Maybe not little girls spilling out of television sets, but she believed.

  When she was just a little girl, before the terror had really begun, she thought her… ability was normal. Her parents had told her that sometimes when she got angry or upset, things moved on their own. They told her it was a scary thing that needed to be controlled, that she must always try and govern her emotions so that nothing bad would happen.

  But she had never told them that things moved on their own when she was happy, too. And sometimes they would float.

  When the doctors and scientists had taken her to the rooms with the white, padded walls, they had played a song for her, and things had moved just like they did when she was angry or sad or happy. It wasn’t until she was with those doctors, sensory wires on her head and chest, that she had realized her ability was not natural. Her ability was supernatural.

  She had seen chairs and beds lift off the floor and hover in mid air, rocks and trees rip from the ground, people flung from where they were standing.

  Mae believed in the supernatural because she had seen the supernatural in action. It was a part of her life, as much as eating and breathing were.

  The thick liquid lapped at her earlobes as she considered this, thinking back to the world she'd just created, or a memory she'd just visited—she couldn't remember. She'd been walking with Adam through the woods during autumn, and was happy. Fall leaves fluttered in the crisp breeze and crunched under their feet as they walked.

  Or was it Ryan in winter, the snowflakes like so many tufts of cotton blowing on the wind, the smell of cold and damp in the air.

  She couldn't remember, and decided that it didn't really matter anyway. She knew the answer to his question.


  ***

  "You don't believe in that stuff, do you?" Ryan asked (or was it Adam?), and Mae squeezed his hand and kissed him on the cheek. She liked the way his skin smelled, and how the stubble on his cheek brushed against her lips. She pulled him off the main trail into a stream bed that would be filled with winter runoff in the springtime.

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see," she said, as they followed the stream bed, which cut upwards into the steep slope of the hill. Her legs burned from the effort of climbing, until they finally came to a clearing that was out of sight from the main trail.

  Her feet slipped on the ice and snow that layered the streambed, but Ryan caught her arm and kept her from falling. Ryan's eyes twinkled and he snuck a kiss on her cheek as he helped her regain her balance.

  Her feet slipped on the dark wet leaves and Adam caught her, wrapping his strong arms around her waist and steadying her.

  The world in her mind interchanged between autumn and winter, between Ryan and Adam. She was losing control of this world she'd drawn in her mind. All the while, in the back of her mind Dr. Whaler was telling her that it was all fake, all just a fiction to escape, but she shook her head and ignored that voice. It didn't matter if this was real or not, not here. Whether a memory or a figment of her imagination, it didn't matter.

  The forest was thin around the clearing, the branches almost bare and allowing an unfiltered view of the clear blue sky above.

  "Mae," Ryan said, "what are we doing here?"

  "I want to show you."

  "Show me what?"

  "You asked me if I believe in that stuff." Mae took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, calming her body.

  "Okay..." Adam sounded skeptical, and Mae smiled at him.

  "Maybe not all that horror stuff with ghosts and killer video cassettes, but I do believe in some of that stuff."

  Ryan stared at her, his mouth frozen in a half smile, confused. He shrugged as if to say, good for you, but I think it’s all baloney. Mae gave him a brief kiss on the lips, then tensed the muscles in her body and closed her eyes.

  "I want to show you," Mae said, "so you'll believe too."

  She took his hand and led him, she wasn't sure who, Ryan or Adam—it didn't matter—and she led him down the path until they came to a clearing. It was the clearing that overlooked the rolling Berkshire Mountains, mist playing between the colors of autumn leaves.

  "Kiss me," she said, and it was Ryan who hesitated at first, smiling and looking at her as if not sure she was being serious.

  "Kiss me," she said again, and he leaned forward and gently brushed her lips. She felt his warm breath on her skin and the warm tingle of energy.

  It started with a faint whirl of warm energy, the smell of static electricity in the air.

  ***

  When she was almost fully submerged in the warm liquid that swallowed her senses, Mae's eyes shot open. By now, her arms and legs were already well into the stasis tank, and her breathing and heartbeat had taken on a slow and hypnotic quality that was soothing and made her want to close her eyes and slip again into the void. But Mae forced herself to stay awake and alert. She moved her head as much as possible, eyeing her surroundings.

  She had controlled her ability.

  It did not matter whether it had happened in the memory, fictional world, dream or whatever it was, she had controlled the power. It was as if she'd opened a door in her mind that she hadn't known was there, and behind the door was a switch she could turn on or off at will.

  Awake, and in the real world, as she slipped into the tank that would prevent any use of her power at all, she flipped that mental switch and concentrated.

  The liquid enveloped her mouth and nose, crept up and around her ears, blocking out the faint sounds of the equipment and a distant rumble.

  On eyes and face, and the crown of her head, she felt the burst of energy, and had she been able to smell the air, it would have smelled like the breeze in a lightning storm. Her heart raced, and she felt a surge of adrenaline in her own body.

  The metal IV stand with bags of clear liquid suddenly lifted into the hair and was flung the short distance to the wall, where the metal shattered and the bags of fluid exploded.

  No extreme emotions, no musical cue used by the scientists. Nothing but her force of will, and that mental switch.

  Mae smiled as her head slipped fully beneath the surface of the liquid, which closed in around her like a blanket. All physical sensation ceased in that split second, and she floated in the tank, unable to move or feel, trapped in her own hell.

  But she had controlled the power.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Whoa! Did you see that?" the lab technician exclaimed as he jumped back from the mirrored glass. His eyes darted from the monitors, which showed that the girl was now fully submerged in the tank, to the IV stand, which had been sent flying across the room, exploding as it hit the wall.

  Dr. Whaler said nothing, but stepped closer to the mirrored window and studied the pieces of metal and puddles of IV fluids. He took off his glasses and stroked his greying beard, swaying slightly with the movement of the semi trailer. His eyes were red with fatigue, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep for a few hours as they drove west toward the Summit. The implications of what he'd just seen were disturbing. Before, she'd been on drugs that were specially designed to inhibit the entanglement function of her brain, yet she had pushed through. She had been provoked, yes, but had still overcome those drugs to pique. And now, on the brink of being devoid of all sensory perceptions, she'd unleashed her power in a controlled burst. He knew that Mae knew he would be watching, and Dr. Whaler couldn't help but feel that her show of power was a personal slight against him. She was winking at him

  He had to report this to Harrison, and he was afraid of what it might mean for their carefully laid plans. Before, when she'd shown her power, she'd been provoked, angry and agitated, but now, she seemed to be calm and collected. She was controlling her power, initiating the entanglement and piquing at will.

  Harrison would be upset, yes, but he would also be intrigued, and would set about at once to put this new development to use for Il Contionum. Mae's powers had fallen into their hands once, with unexpected results, and Harrison had put that power to use. A bomb without a bomb, as the reporter from Chicago had so eloquently put it.

  He was sure that Harrison would do the same here. He would find some way to use Mae's ability to control her power for the benefit of the organization. For the benefit of the world, really.

  "Dr. Whaler?" the lab tech asked.

  "I saw it," the doctor mumbled. "She's piquing without agitation or provocation. She's learning to control the entanglement."

  "Sir?"

  Dr. Whaler shook his head and rubbed at his tired eyes. "Get it cleaned up in there and set up a new IV stand. She'll need her fluids for the drive."

  The tech hesitated, and Dr. Whaler stared at him.

  "Is it safe?"

  Dr. Whaler opened his mouth to answer but decided he better not make any promises. The stasis tank was designed to prevent the subject from experiencing any physical sensation, and would therefore theoretically prevent the entanglement process. The tank had worked thus far, but the subject was displaying her abilities at a level they’d never seen before. If the tech died while setting up a new IV stand, then so be it. At least they’d know just how dangerous the subject currently was.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Heather listened to the muffled voices in the hallway and prayed. She didn’t believe in a god per se, but if in fact there was a higher power listening to her frantic whispers, she hoped that higher power would throw her a bone. Sweat dripped on her forehead as she strained to maintain her balance, hoping that no one would be throwing away their trash at this time of night. She was in the trash chute, wedged precariously above a thirty foot drop, her legs and back pressing the opposite sides of the metal chute to keep from falling. The sides of th
e chute were slick from garbage juices, and the smell made her want to vomit, but she held on. Falling into the metal dumpster below would result in serious injury, and climbing out of the chute, even into the little hallway closet that housed the chute, wasn’t an option.

  They were still out there.

  Heather had almost gone down the stairs, but had changed her plans at the last second. Of course they would have expected her to go downstairs, and get out the building. At the time, she didn’t think that there were any more soldiers than just the three who’d entered her apartment—how could there be without drawing too much attention?—but now she knew. The exits were covered by an exterior team, and if she’d gone down the fire escape as she’d hoped to do, she would be dead. She had no doubt that they would do to her what they’d done to the Duke. She would be executed, and her death covered up and buried.

  They would kill her like they killed the Duke. They. Il Contionum. She knew who they were in theory, but not really. Some secret government organization? But she didn’t think an organization as sweeping and powerful as Il Contionum could operate within a government. Somewhere, somehow, there would be a leak. Especially now, with computer specialists hacking every protected network they could find for fun, there was no way something like this would go unnoticed.

  Well, she reminded herself, that was exactly what had happened. She and the Duke had noticed, they had begun to dig around and explore the data, and now the Duke was dead.

  And she would be dead too, if she didn’t play her cards right. Heather shifted in the chute, propping herself with her arms as she changed positions. Her sneaker slipped on the metal, and she almost went crashing down, but she caught herself. Heather grunted with the effort to maintain her balance, trying hard not to taste the smells of other peoples’ trash.

  Focus. I’ve got to focus, she thought. I’ve got to think my way out of this. Exits are covered, the fire escape is covered. When she didn’t leave the apartment, they would almost certainly search each floor until they found her. They might have missed the trash chute on the first sweep, but a thorough search would reveal her hiding place. She had to get out of the building. She had to stop these people, whoever they were. Heather knew that she shouldn’t get involved, but it was what the Duke would do. He would stop at nothing to expose this organization they called Il Contionum, and if she got out of there alive, she would do the same.