“You know what this is, Chuck?” the woman’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts, snapping him back to the here and now.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“It’s nearly 4:30. Jarvis left an hour ago. Rollins is on vacation and Bailey called in sick again.”
“Alone at last.” Chuck’s feeble attempt at humor fell flat, and the woman he’d ever only known as Control allowed it to hang in the air without comment. In perfect silence, he looked up at the camera as he ran his fingers through his hair, weighing the consequences of the situation.
According to the handbook, there shouldn’t have been a decision at all. Standard operating procedure dictated that the data be handed off to a Level I Whisk, someone who had more field experience. Someone who’d actually passed the advancement exams instead of continuously screwing up the translocation equation.
“So what’s it going to be, Chuck?” Control’s husky voice had always reminded him of a film noire heroine; he imagined her in the booth, veiled by shadow as crimson lips parted just above the microphone. But there was something else in her tone this time. In fact, it almost sounded as if the woman was barely holding back tears. But, given the effect the recording had on him, that was to be expected.
Chuck sighed and leaned back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. Worst case scenario: He’d get his ass chewed out and a mark in his file. But best case could end with a promotion if he played his cards right. Having no close ties to friends or family, Chuck’s job was everything to him. He parlayed his loneliness, his longing for intimacy, and lack of hobbies into ambition. Maybe he’d failed in other areas of his life. Maybe he’d alienated everyone who’d ever given a damn about him and isolated himself behind walls of solitude. But a career? That should’ve been easy. There were rules and guidelines, clearly defined steps leading to a sense of accomplishment and pride.
Despite his ambition, it seemed like that damn equation would never give up its secrets. He’d spent countless hours scribbling numbers in a library of notebooks, plugging in variables as he struggled to make the math balance; he woke up in the middle of the night, feeling as if the solution was just slightly out of reach and trying to prove that this time it had really come to him in a dream. For months, he’d slaved over the problem without making any discernible headway, and repeated failure had worn him down to the point that Chuck had begun questioning his own skills. For a man whose job was the single thing he had going for him, this was the worst case scenario.
“I’ve got this, Control.” Chuck listened to his own words, secretly wondering if they sounded as confident as he hoped. “I’m going in.”
Reattaching the leads to his instrumentation, Chuck inspected the halo to ensure it hadn’t been damaged when he’d scrambled off the couch. The piece of equipment looked like a hardhat’s webbing embedded with circuitry and sensors; the halo was insanely expensive, and if it had been damaged, Chuck’s pay would be docked for years to come.
Wiggling each sensor nub with his fingertip to ensure it wasn’t loose, he couldn’t help but wonder why Control had even given him the option to proceed with this mission. She knew the handbook as well as he and a large part of her duties lay in safeguarding his well-being. Perhaps that was it, he thought. Maybe a bond had formed over the years, and she realized his eagerness, his drive to rise to the top of his profession. Maybe she didn’t want to disappoint him. Or perhaps she was just bored and looking for something to kill the last few hours of their shift. It was anybody’s guess. All he knew for certain was the halo appeared to be undamaged. Slipping it onto his head, he lay back upon the couch, fidgeted until he was comfortable, and took a slow breath through his nose.
“Chuck”—the lights in the room dimmed as Control’s voice came through the speakers—“you can still back out, you know. It’s not too late.”
The stop and go rhythm of her words, however, implied that her statement was a mere formality. She seemed to know as well as he that aborting The Walk was not an option. Continuously flubbing the translocation equation had really started to do a number on Chuck. His repeated failure chiseled away at his confidence, eroding the very supports that propped everything else up. At some point, frustration would mutate into unfocused anger, and that type of distraction would lead to careless mistakes. Which would only make matters worse.
Once he was caught in a downward spiral, burnout wouldn’t be that far away; and Chuck knew he was already well upon his way. He could see the warning signs listed in the handbook manifesting in his own life: stacks of dirty dishes piling up in the sink, mornings when he skipped a shower and wore the same clothes to work as he had the day before, and his interest in any sort of recreation waning. It was only a matter of time. And he couldn’t let that happen under any circumstance; if he got to the point where he could no longer function effectively, The Institute would let him go. He’d seen it happen before. With nothing else to take the place of his career, what would his life become?
“Cut the chatter, Control.” His thoughts pinged Chuck’s tone with a harder edge than he intended, so he attempted to mask his irritation with a whispered joke. “I see dead people.”
If Control understood the reference, she didn’t show it. She proceeded with protocol as he took another deep breath and purged the tension from his body, channeling it down through his legs and releasing it via his feet chakra. The lights continued to dim until his office was a landscape of silhouettes and shadows. From the overhead speakers, a bell chimed three times in slow succession, each wavering ring allowed to fade before the next was struck. The scent of sandalwood wafted on the borders of perception as jets hidden within the walls puffed scented vapor into the room.
With the halo nestled against his head, Chuck closed his eyes and emptied his mind of conscious thought. As he slowly inhaled through his left nostril, he pictured a current of white light looping through his sinuses and filtering through his brain before being pulled down into his diaphragm. He held the inhalation for five heartbeats and released a long sigh, exhaling further tension, worry, and all the mundane concerns of a flesh-bound spirit. After five more beats of his heart, Chuck repeated the process through his right nostril, slipping deeper and deeper into relaxation.
He visualized his hands as clearly as if his eyes were open: the wrinkles on his knuckles, semitransparent hairs sprouting from the tops of his fingers, and the glossy shine of his nails. At first, it was as if his hands were illuminated by a spotlight upon a darkened stage; but within seconds, details of the room flooded his imagination and he felt—as well as saw—the phantom appendage flex without actually being moved physically.
Two minutes passed before he drifted toward the ceiling, his astral form slipping from his body like a balloon from the grasping hand of a child. He looked down upon a body that appeared to be wrapped in the arms of sleep; his chest rose and fell with evenly spaced breaths and his eyelids flickered slightly. Chuck knew he wasn’t sleeping, though; he existed in the boundary separating wakefulness from dreams, floating weightlessly with a silver ribbon streaming from his sternum.
“Have a good Walk, Chuck.” Control’s voice came as if from a great distance, fuzzy and comforting. “You come back safe, you hear?”
And then the physical was gone. There was no sense of movement or travel, no sudden rush of speed or the sensation of falling like other Whisks reported. For him, the break was always instantaneous, an entire reality set supplanted as he seamlessly transitioned into The Divide. Normally, Chuck saw trapped souls as a faint glow in an expanse that couldn’t be described as either light or dark. On occasion, he’d even caught a blur of movement in his peripheral vision, a flutter of pale wings that vanished upon further investigation. The Divide was nothing and everything rolled into one, a gestalt of probabilities where there’s no past, present, or future. There was only an endless state of Now. Usually. This time, however, Chuck didn’t hover within the ultimate Zen; this time, he’d set down squarely within a Cutscene.
Storm clouds flickered with lightning above a scorched panorama of cinders and ash; hot winds belched the stench of carrion, leaving an oily patina over what he thought of as his skin, and smoke roiled from fissures in the baked earth, bottomless chasms that burrowed into infinity. The landscape was ringed with mountains, each boulder suggesting the features of a tortured face within its shadows and crags as waterfalls of acid bubbled ravines into dissolving stone.
A castle stood in the distance, and its soot-stained walls looked as though they’d burst, full-formed, through the ground, hurling rubble in a starburst pattern as they ruptured the earth. Towers rose from each corner of the castle and their stone facades were perforated with windows shaped like glowing tombstones. Halfway up the south tower was the silhouette of a man. Though the distance was too great to make out anything more than a vague impression, Chuck felt the person’s gaze burn into his soul: anger, hatred, resentment, and cruelty…every base emotion known to man concentrated into a beam of such intensity that Chuck felt as though fiery needles were piercing his aura.
It was an illusion, of course. Chuck’s emotions were under control, which meant that he was invisible to all who inhabited this nightmare world. This fact was proven when the silhouette moved away from the window. The man (for Chuck was certain the figure had been male) had simply been looking across the wasted vista, perhaps surveying the world he’d created for himself with some sick sense of pride. He certainly hadn’t been looking at Chuck.
With the man gone, Chuck’s attention returned to the Cutscene. Spires jutted from the tops of each tower and tattered banners rippled in the breeze, the winds fueled by a vortex that swirled the clouds above the stronghold into a never-ending spiral. A sickly yellow glow radiated from the clouds, throbbing and pulsing in erratic rhythms as thunder growled in the distance.
What Chuck didn’t know at the time was that a man named Albert Lewis lurked somewhere behind those parapets, playing out fantasies so twisted they’d been impossible to duplicate in life. But here, in the realm of the dead, he had a sandbox where he could build as much and as far as he desired; here, every degenerate whim that had ever poisoned his mind could be realized. This was his world, and deconstructing it wouldn’t be easy. In fact, it would prove to be the most dangerous assignment Chuck had ever undertaken. But there was no choice. He had to journey into Lewis’s demented playground and do what he could to set things right.
It was the only way.
Chapter 5
Crawling
Water sloshed over the edge of the tub as the corpse rose to the surface. The strands of floating hair plastered themselves over a head that emerged from the tub like a crowning newborn entering the world. The corpse’s face looked bleached and distended, the flesh ballooning out so much that the eyes were nothing more than dark lines amid abscessed lids. Patches of skin had sloughed away from its puffy cheeks, revealing darker tissue that glistened as its head swiveled toward Lydia.
Opening its mouth, water cascaded over swollen lips. As the liquid gushed out of the dead woman’s mouth, Lydia thought she detected hints of movement within the flow; tiny creatures darting around. Their bodies flashed silver as they streaked in erratic patterns, propelled by tails that flicked so quickly as to be only a blur. The impression she got was definitely fish-like, yet something about the proportions seemed wrong. Every so often, Lydia thought she could make out the hint of necks, of humanoid heads attached to the long, slender bodies. But the things were so small—no bigger than the width of a hair really—that she couldn’t be sure.
She knew she should be horrified by this. Yet she watched it all with a strange sense of detachment, almost as though she were sitting in the back of someone else’s mind and looking through eyes that were not her own. Perhaps the tide of adrenaline that had fueled her up until this point had finally abated. Perhaps she was in shock. But, in all honesty, at that moment she didn’t feel as if she even had the energy to care.
That imagination of yours will getcha in trouble every time, you mark my words and see if it don’t.
The voice in her mind wasn’t her own, though it was familiar. She couldn’t be certain, but Lydia suspected this was another memory, breaking through her amnesia just as the corpse broke the surface tension of the water.
But there was no time to explore the possibility further. The dead woman’s arms flopped over the lip of the tub, and for a moment the corpse draped over the edge like a saturated rag doll. The thing’s back was mottled and streaked with black, as though one continuous bruise ran from the shoulders to the base of the spine, but the skin beneath the discoloration was shriveled with wrinkles. Water poured off its body and pooled on the tiles below. Halfway out of the tub, it seemed as though whatever dark magic had reanimated the cadaver had fled, leaving it as limp and lifeless as it deserved to be.
Even so, Lydia took a step back as she cupped her hand over her nose. The smell emanating from the body was overpowering and so much worse than the stink that had accompanied the creature in the hall. The stench had a wet quality to it, as if everything within the dead woman’s skin had turned into a slurry of liquefied tissue and clotted blood.
The corpse’s body jerked as though a jolt of electricity zapped through it and its shoulders flexed. The dead woman rocked from side to side, gaining momentum as her torso snaked forward. Within moments, she had slid over the edge of the tub and her body plopped into the puddles on the floor with a squish as Lydia scrambled backward a few more steps.
She knew she should be racing toward the broken sink, but was loathe to turn her back to the corpse. Even though it seemed incapable of standing, her imagination tortured her with images of it suddenly springing, knocking her to the floor, and smothering her beneath the chill of waterlogged flesh.
Lydia tried to keep herself from blinking as she studied the monstrosity on the floor. It didn’t exactly crawl, but waddled, rocking its body from side to side as it inched across the tile. The swaying motion squeezed water from the thing’s pores as if its flesh were a sponge and a wet trail marked its passage as it edged closer to the woman with outstretched arms. The left hand was practically useless; the wrist was severed so deeply that it seemed as if only a thin ribbon of flesh kept it from falling off. When the hand was lying flat, the injury wasn’t noticeable. But the slightest movement caused the hand to bend backward, revealing gristle and shredded muscle surrounding bone. This happened every few seconds, the hand flapping in a macabre wave while the rest of the body wriggled, its intact twin digging fingernails into the grout as the corpse pulled itself forward.
The thing may have tried to speak. Its mouth moved, but the only sound released was a faint gargling from somewhere deep within the remains of its lungs. Even if words had been produced, they probably couldn’t have made it past the thing’s swollen, blackened tongue.
Unexpected emotion paralyzed Lydia as she watched dirty water leak from the corners of the thing’s lips. Her eyes warmed with tears and her mouth hung open as she tried to form words of her own. She, however, was just as incapable. Though she felt like she should say something, there simply were no words.
Instead, another snippet of memory slammed into Lydia’s mind. An injured dog dragging its carcass off the street, crawling toward a mailbox shaped like a scaled version of the house behind it. She sat in a car, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that it felt as though her knuckles were about to burst through her skin. The beagle had come out of nowhere, had darted between two parked cars, and she’d slammed on the brakes as she jerked the wheel to the left. The stench of burnt rubber accompanied a thud that she felt more than heard as the car fishtailed and her hatchback straddled the center line. It would have been kinder if she’d hit the dog head-on. A bloody swath marked its progress across the road, smeared onto the pavement by the intestines trailing behind its mangled hindquarters. With her window down, Lydia could clearly hear the breathless whimpers that accompanied each movement and knew the dog had to be i
n excruciating pain. And yet it continued on inch by inch, pulling itself ever closer to the house. A small boy burst from the front door and ran across the lawn, yelling and crying as a harried-looking mother with red hair chased after him.
Like her other flashbacks, this one disappeared as quickly as it had descended upon her, leaving her with only lingering emotions: Guilt twisted her gut and sorrow scooped a hollow cavity between her throat and chest. She felt like weeping, like whispering an apology to the universe until it finally decided to accept her contrition, like pinching herself until the sharp sting of physical pain overrode emotional turmoil with something palpable; but all she could do was continue watching the thing as it squirmed on the floor.
It’s not a thing! It was a woman once. Someone like me!
The thought struck her like a physical blow, causing her head to snap back. Somehow, the corpse’s outstretched arms didn’t seem threatening now. Maybe it simply wanted to know it wasn’t alone. Maybe it reached out for compassion, for reassurance that there was something else out there, something besides cold bathwater and the darkness of eyes it was no longer capable of opening.
Not it…she.
How long had the body languished in this bathroom? How long had it been suspended somewhere between life and death? Did she pray for release? Or did she long to become the person she’d once been, someone who had a family, perhaps even children.
Lydia squatted, balancing on the balls of her feet, and tried to see past the grotesque mask the woman’s face had become. Somewhere beneath all that water-bloated skin were the traces of an honest-to-God person. She’d probably cried into a pillow as slivers of a broken heart pierced her soul; she would have had moments of carefree laughter, times when she felt broken and defeated, instances when self-confidence had empowered her into acts and deeds she never thought possible. She would have known the warmth of the sun on her face long before the icy bathwater had chilled her to the marrow.
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