Not only did Walter feel like he finally, truly understood his friend, but in that moment, he also felt completely understood by Bell. A feeling so monumental and unprecedented that it almost brought him to tears. Never once in his twenty-two years of life had he ever felt that level of understanding from another human being.
Not from family. Not from a woman. Not ever.
It was as if their skulls had become transparent, allowing the secret patterns of their thought processes to sync up in a mirrored burst of neurological fireworks. He looked at Bell, and heard that deep, distinctive voice even though his lips weren’t moving, except for the slightest hint of a Mona Lisa smile.
Unlike the previous blend, this formula seems to induce a profound empathy, bordering on telepathic.
Still clinging to the rigid guide rails of scientific method, even at the height of his trip, he forced himself to double-check his own slippery perception.
“What did you say?” he asked Bell.
“I said,” Bell replied, his lips moving normally, “That unlike the previous blend, this formula seems to induce a profound empathy...” But he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he stared toward the lake, a look of awestruck wonder washing over his face.
* * *
Another bullet cracked off of a nearby rock.
“Ten more bodies,” Allan called out over his shoulder. “Ten more victims. Kill me now and you’ll never find them! Think of their families, never knowing what has become of their loved ones!”
It was a lie, of course. Allan never hid his work. But the police were fools, and easily manipulated.
“Sir?”
The voice was questioning, its owner desperate to be told what to do by someone in a position of authority. Hopeless without orders, like they all were.
“Awaiting orders, sir.” Another voice, another pig, equally flummoxed. Just like Allan knew they would be.
Pathetic.
“Hold your fire!” This new voice stronger, more cocksure. The boss pig. “Take him alive!”
And then there he was—a fat, pig-snouted silhouette, squealing orders from the cliff top, police lights edging everything with red and blue. Reinforcements had arrived. The bait had been taken.
With the police bullets held momentarily in check, Allan took advantage and broke for the pines at a dead run, keeping to the hard-packed sand and shale near the cliff. Behind him, the cops floundered in the loose sand of the beach, their sty-mates stumbling and squealing as they came stampeding down the steep embankment as if herded by predators.
In twenty strides Allan was under the sheltering shadows of the trees, pushing his way through the scratchy undergrowth. Above, the searchlight shattered into a thousand shining spears stabbing through the interlaced pine boughs like the shafts of light in a religious painting, shining down on the messiah.
He laughed softly to himself. While he was unquestionably superior—even God-like, in his own way—he certainly wasn’t on this earth to save anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact.
More like an Angel of Death.
Now that he was out of their line of sight it would be easy to evade the bumbling porkers and return safely home. By the time he reached the southern edge of the woods and returned to his hidden car, he would be nothing but a ghost, vanished into thin air, just like he always did. Laughing and taunting the flat-footed swine from the safety of the ether.
Behind him he heard his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth like the fat hulking beasts they were. But then there came a new volley of animal sounds, agitated barking, growling and baying that crackled like forks of blue lightning across his vision.
He looked back. Hunched and snouty pig shadows lumbered through the trees behind him, swinging flashlights in hoofed hands as they snorted and oinked to one another in their sub-human speech. But running ahead of them was an entirely different pack of animals. Predators, not prey. Allan could see little but the menacing, low-slung shadows with gaping, slathering maws flashing vicious teeth and lolling tongues. But he knew what they were, and that knowledge was like ice water in his belly.
Dogs. He hadn’t counted on dogs.
Humans were abysmally stupid, soft, pampered and useless, their ancient instincts atrophied by modern convenience. But hounds, they’d never strayed far from their natural state as hunters, gleefully free from the limitations of morality and civilization. They posed a genuine threat, ugly and amplified to nightmarish proportions by the acid surging though his synapses, and for a terrible moment, Allan found himself nearly paralyzed with fear.
Must think.
Yes, he needed to rely on his superior mental acumen. He might not be strong enough to single-handedly overpower a pack of hunting dogs, but he could easily out-think them.
Water. That was the answer. He could wade into the lake to throw them off the scent.
So he leapt over the mossy hulk of a fallen tree and veered left, heading for the shoreline. The trees and undergrowth grew denser and he had to force his way through. Pine branches and blackberry vines clutched at him like grasping, clawing hands, leaving tingling patterns of sensation on his body that glistened in the corner of his eyes like snail trails.
The trees seemed to be twisting and shifting to block him, deliberately getting in his way, then opening up again behind to let the howling hell hounds through. All of nature was working against him, jealous of his abilities.
Ahead, through the pulsing tree trunks, he saw the glimmer of water.
Almost there.
* * *
Without thinking, Walter turned to see what his hallucinating friend was staring at, expecting to see nothing, or some figment of his own chemically enhanced mind.
What he saw was a small slit in the air above the surface of the lake, approximately six feet from where they sat. About twelve inches long, it pulsed with a strange, shimmering glow around the edges. As he watched, the slit elongated and bulged slowly outward, until it was first the size of a child, and then the size of a tall man. It gaped open, disturbingly wound-like, and dark water began to flow through it like blood, creating strange spiral currents in the surface of the lake.
This wasn’t unprecedented. He’d seen glimpses of these kind of glowing “wounds” during past experiments. But this time he felt sure that Bell could see it, too.
“Tell me what you see, Belly,” he said, whispering without knowing why.
“An opening,” Bell said, staring transfixed at the shimmering slit. “Like a kind of... gateway.”
“Yes,” Walter said. “Yes, that’s it exactly.” He gripped Bell’s arm. “Do you realize what this means? Our minds have become perfectly synchronized! We are sharing the exact same vision. It’s incredible!”
“Incredible,” Bell repeated, although it was difficult for Walter to know if he had actually said that out loud, or just thought it.
Bell rose to his feet and waded into the lake, utterly unmindful of his designer trousers and expensive shoes. Walter never let go of his friend’s arm, wading in beside him without a moment’s hesitation. He barely noticed the chilly water and thick, clinging mud sucking at his own shoes.
“But if it’s a gateway,” Bell whispered. “What’s on the other side?”
3
Allan battled his way through the last rank of trees then caught himself on the edge of the lake, ready to slip silently into the water. But the bank was undercut. It gave way beneath him and he splashed awkwardly into the water in a shower of dirt and rotten leaves.
The dogs bayed louder, frenzied by his closeness.
He cursed. Betrayed again by spiteful nature. Finding his balance, he started right, hunching into the undercut, knee deep in water with his ankles tearing clinging reeds up from the mud with every step.
There was a boat landing just around the next point—nothing more than a dirt road that went into the lake so weekend sailors could back their boat hitches into the water. There were always a few rowboats and canoes tied off or turned upside d
own and stored to either side of it. With his strength, they would never be able to catch him if he took one.
Behind him, the dogs reached the bank, snuffling and milling around, reluctant to dive in. The squeals and grunts of their pig masters echoed their confusion, and the piercing beams of their flashlights darted everywhere. Except in his direction.
He laughed and, as silently as he could manage, headed for the closest canoe, only a few yards away. It was floating in the high tide, its tether submerged under the lapping waves. He squatted down in the cold water and reached for the knot, fingers groping blind in the weeds and mud until he found it. The wet rope was swollen, the knot slick and tight. Methodically, he went to work, pulling and teasing it apart.
As he did so, a dancing light on the surface of the water around the tether was mesmerizing. It carved swirling arabesque calligraphies into his retina, a cursive cuneiform that seemed almost decipherable, if only he could concentrate on it long enough. It was trying to tell him something—a story of other worlds, of pathways between realities, of an endless, ever-repeating, never-repeating pattern of possibilities. He thought he heard a clear deep voice, speaking directly into the vibrating cortex of his tripping mind.
A profound empathy, bordering on telepathic...
The ripples turned jagged, and began jumping. Baying filled his ears. He looked up to see dogs and grunting, two-legged pigs splashing down from the pine bank and racing toward him as red and blue lights screamed and sirens bounced off the trees along the dirt road that led to the launch.
The water had tricked him! Made him forget the knot. He’d been crouching in the water just staring at the hypnotic patterns.
Enraged, he surged upward, tearing the canoe’s iron mooring stake out of the mud, using it to swipe around at the dogs that churned the water around him. But there were too many of them, all around him now. The pigs were among them, grabbing his arms, his shirt, his throat. A hundred piggy hoof-hands groping him and violating every part of his body as dog teeth tore at his pants and the flesh beneath.
His head was plunged maliciously into the water and then wrenched back out again.
“Cuff him!” This from one of the gleeful pigs. Their laughter and squealing swirled around them like thick, choking smoke from a grease fire.
“Careful!” one pig said. “We wouldn’t want him to accidentally drown while resisting arrest, now would we?”
“That would be terrible, wouldn’t it?” another replied.
“We have to take him alive!” This from a cop standing on the shore and calling over the shoulders of his more aggressive brethren. “What about the missing bodies?”
“Shut up, Jensen,” the first pig snapped.
Again, Allan’s head was shoved beneath the surface of the lake. Water filled his nose and throat, and blinded his eyes. The thrashing bites of snarling dogs tore at his wildly flailing limbs, then the bright bite of steel as a handcuff closed around his left wrist.
He lost his grip on the mooring stake and kicked out with a boot heel instead. The response was more piggy squealing, and a lessening of the crushing weight that was holding him down.
Allan fought his way to the surface, retching and gasping and swinging as dogs and pigs fell away all around him.
“Son of a bitch broke my damn kneecap,” an injured piggy cried.
“I told you not to...” the other began. Then his voice trailed off. “Wait... what... what the hell is that?”
Allan backed away from them, snarling and tearing at the dangling handcuff. He waited for them to charge again, wary and ready to fight to the death. But they didn’t. They were staring at something behind him, their snouted, pig-eyed faces bathed in a pale flickering light.
He looked back over his shoulder. The dented canoe was floating away from him in the knee-deep water, drifting further into the lake, but that wasn’t what had caught the eyes of the gaping, awestruck cops.
A strange shimmering fissure hung in the air, just a few feet away, like a rip in the night. As he looked, it seemed to grow. He thought he saw movement within it. He heard voices, whispers.
Was it another hallucination?
No. The pigs were seeing it too. Unless his visions were somehow bleeding into reality? Impossible. But yet...
“What are you waiting for, knucklehead?” one of the pigs bellowed. “Get him!”
Allan turned back around to face his pursuers. The swine and the hounds were coming for him again with renewed fervor. He took a sloshing step backward, instinctively reaching to catch the drifting canoe. His hand passed right through the plane of the shimmer and didn’t touch the canoe. Instead he felt a swirl of cooler water and a chilly breeze. Curious, because the air around them had been warm, still, and dead all night.
Then the pigs were reaching out for him. The dogs leapt, snarling and snapping. He had to act, and fast.
Allan threw himself backward, screaming defiance, falling.
The shimmer surrounded him, engulfed him. It’s curious, clinging glow filled his eyes, filled his lungs, filled his mind. A sickening disorientation overwhelmed him, obliterating any sense of up or down. All of a sudden, the squealing pigs and snarling dogs looked like salvation to him.
He reached for them, bellowing for them to pull him back, save him from this terrible spinning nothingness. His arms pinwheeled, trying to stop his fall, and then...
* * *
Walter and Bell each reached out a hand toward the undulating gateway, doing so at the exact same moment, as if they were two arms attached to one body. The edges of the gateway seemed to respond to them, sending out glistening tendrils in all directions, like the tentacles of a sea anemone.
A millisecond before their fingers touched the strange, shimmering substance of the gateway, a stocky, heavy-set man with a reddish brown crew cut came tumbling backward through the opening. He staggered against Walter and Bell, knocking them back so the three of them fell together, flailing in the shallow water.
A flood of terror and shock raced through Walter, induced by the sudden, inexplicable appearance of this strange man. As quickly as it manifested, it began to dissipate in Walter’s racing brain as he registered how utterly ordinary the man really was. This wasn’t some kind of trans-dimensional alien or spiritual messenger from a higher plane of existence. It was just a regular, everyday kind of man, about 5′10″, thick and barrel-chested. In his late 30s or early 40s. Unremarkable but for his muddy clothes and thick, chunky-framed glasses.
Walter couldn’t imagine that an extra-terrestrial being would need glasses. Besides, this man was likely a manifestation of the acid.
He was genuinely amazed that his own mind could create such a realistic, flawlessly rendered vision, down to the slight stubble on the stranger’s beefy jowls.
“Belly,” Walter said, helping his shivering friend find his footing in the slippery muck of the lake bed. “Do you see...?”
“Yes,” Bell said. Leaning against Walter for footing, he reached out a hand to help the wet stranger. “Who are you?”
Without responding, the stranger looked back over his shoulder at the swiftly shrinking gateway behind him, as if he expected something to follow. He turned again and narrowed his eyes at Bell, his gaze suspicious in the glow of the lantern, before reluctantly accepting Bell’s help to get back to his feet.
“Who are you?” the stranger echoed. His voice was as mundane as his looks, with just the slightest hint of a New England accent around the “r.”
Walter reached out to help steady the disoriented stranger and found a pair of handcuffs dangling from the man’s left wrist.
Before he could register the significance of the handcuffs, however, Walter felt the sudden brutal intrusion of a third mind into the warm, empathic connection he’d formed with Bell. The profound telepathic loop between the two friends was wrenched into a shrieking, distorted triangle by what felt less like a human presence than a howling void filled with jittering coded symbols and bitter, black rage.
Then the bottom seemed to drop out of the world, and Walter was suddenly plummeting into that terrible void inside the stranger’s mind, like a helpless Alice down a rabbit-hole filled with dark, violent imagery.
He saw page after flapping page of letters, many seemingly written using some kind of complex cipher or code.
He saw a pretty young brunette, no more than sixteen years old, her big blue eyes wild with terror as she ran away from a parked station wagon. She seemed to be reaching out to him, but before she could grasp his outstretched hand, she was gunned down, shot repeatedly in the back.
He saw the stranger pull a squared-off black hood over his head, repositioning his glasses over the roughly cut eye-holes. On his chest was a crossed circle, like the crosshairs of a gun sight. The afternoon sun flashed off a bright edge of a blade that was gripped in his bulky fist.
Walter saw a blood-spattered car door that had been removed from the vehicle to which it had once belonged. On that door, the handwritten words “Vallejo” and “by knife.” Then that same crossed circle seemed to burn like an all-seeing eye above a list of dates that twisted away before Walter could read them.
He saw the skyline of an unfamiliar city, a grim pale tower on the top of a hill, like the barrel of a gun pointed at the foggy gray sky, looming over a quaint cluster of homes.
He saw a yellow cab, the friendly, mustachioed driver talking casually over his shoulder to the stranger in the instant before the driver was shot, point blank in the head, his glasses flying off and clattering against the dashboard.
He saw the stranger tear a young blond woman’s brightly patterned blouse, his hands crawling with unnatural, flickering sparks that burned the fabric and the flesh beneath, but somehow left him whole and untouched by flame.
The burnt woman’s agonized screams followed Walter down deeper into the tunnel of bleeding wounds and charred flesh and anguished mouths until he abruptly hit bottom, a gritty cement floor inside some kind of industrial building. He couldn’t see Bell, but he could feel a deep, almost cellular awareness of his friend—close at hand, sharing his vision as he got slowly to his feet.
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