Memory Hole

by Douglas Jern

  Zachary raised his hands, looking from the thug to Homer, and took in the scene.

  The walls of the small room were for some reason covered in mirrors, reflecting him, Homer, and the thugs again and again, turning the three into a multitude. The effect made his head spin. He looked down at the floor to shake off the onset of vertigo and was instead faced with an even more unpleasant sight. The floor was a bloodbath, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the source of all that blood.

  “Jesus Christ, Joey,” he whispered, staring at the body of his former informer. “What did they do to you?”

  “So, it was you after all, Detective Zimmerman” said Homer. “I had a feeling you were the one who introduced Laura to Joey. He told you about me, did he not?”

  “Where’s Laura?”

  “I am asking the questions here, Detective.”

  Homer’s voice sounded familiar, and now Zachary remembered where he’d heard it before.

  “You! You’re that reporter! The one at the scene where Vinnie was killed! And you made me make that phone call!”

  “Excellent deduction, Detective. Shame you will never know the whole truth.”

  “If you wanted to kill me you would’ve done it already.”

  “Indeed, I was hoping to gain some modicum of knowledge from you before your elimination. Sadly, it seems you are far less cooperative than I had hoped. I could torture you, and believe me when I say the idea strikes me as most enjoyable, but I am afraid I have more pressing matters to attend to.”

  You sure talk a damn lot for someone with pressing matters to attend to, thought Zachary.

  “I am sure Laura will have realized by now that there is no way out of here except through this room. But she is a crafty one, and I would rather not leave her to her own devices for too long. No hard feelings, Detective.”

  He turned and started walking toward a narrow doorway in the far corner of the room. That must be how Laura had escaped.

  Homer suddenly stopped in front of the doorway.

  “Actually, would you mind keeping him alive until I get back?” he said to the thug with the gun. “I might just be able to capture Laura alive, and perhaps the two of them together can give me what this one alone will not. Of course,” he added with a smirk, “if he tries anything stupid, feel free to kill him. Safety first, as they say.”

  He turned to the man with the broken nose.

  “You can still make yourself useful. Stand guard by the doorway here. If you see Laura, catch her. Alive.”

  With that, he left the room. The sound of his footsteps faded as he walked away into the depths of the warehouse.

  While the man with the broken nose went to his station outside the doorway, the armed thug took a few steps back from Zachary, keeping the gun trained on him.

  Zachary laced his fingers together on top of his head. The voice in his head resumed its nagging commands to save Laura, but his instinct of self-preservation prevailed. Homer had told the thug to kill him if he tried anything stupid, and right now, “anything stupid” could mean anything at all. He was reluctant to even look at the guy in case he took offense and decided to blow Zachary’s brains out.

  The seconds crawled by with frustrating slowness. Zachary kept still, the man with the gun remained silent, and the voice continued to nag. It took all of Zachary’s discipline to resist its urgent pleas.

  Maybe that was why he didn’t notice that they had company until the thug jumped and snapped the gun toward the corridor entrance.

  “What the fuck?” he uttered, and then a deafening gunshot drowned out anything else he might have had to say. He fell over like a giant domino and made a splash in the pool of Joey’s blood. There was a gaping hole where his left eye had been.

  His companion stormed into the enclosure and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the fresh body on the floor. Acting on instinct rather than reason, Zachary leapt at him with a flying tackle, grabbing his head with both hands and driving it into the wall.

  There was a loud crack, as if someone had smashed a coconut with a sledgehammer. The man’s legs jerked in a spasmodic dance as he slid down the wall, his head leaving a trail of blood and clots of hair. The mirror on the wall had cracked, and four large splinters stuck out the back of the man’s head like a bizarre piece of body art.

  Zachary backed away from the dead man. He looked down at his hands, expecting them to be shaking, and found that they weren’t.

  Jesus Christ, he thought. I just killed a man with my bare hands.

  Then he looked to his left and saw the person lying on the floor halfway through the doorway and forgot everything else.

  “Good God… Leo…”

  How Leo had managed to get the warehouse door open and drag himself down the twisting corridor was a mystery to Zachary, but he was undeniably there, and he’d just saved Zachary’s life.

  “Could shoot… this time,” said Leo.

  “Leo…”

  Zachary sank to his knees, not noticing the blood on the floor, not even caring that Laura needed his help. Right now, in this moment, he wished for nothing but to be by Leo’s side until the end.

  And the end would come soon, he realized as he saw the state Leo was in. There was a wide trail of blood running down the corridor, disappearing around the corner. He must have crawled all the way here on his belly, like a wounded slug leaving a trail of red slime. The pain must have been unbearable. And yet he’d come, driven by a sense of duty, a desire for vengeance, or perhaps just a final will to power, a last wish to decide his own fate that defied any logical explanation. Whatever it was that had driven him, it was clear that he was running on fumes and would soon dry up completely.

  “Leo, I’m sorry,” Zachary managed, his voice thick with tears. “I should’ve stayed with you. Please forgive me!”

  He took Leo’s hand and held it tight. It was cold.

  “It’s okay… Zach,” said Leo. His voice was so weak it could barely be heard. “Help… Laura. Leave me.”

  “Thank you, Leo. I owe you my life.”

  “Then… go. Get him. For me.”

  “I will,” said Zachary. “I swear I will.”

  Leo smiled. “Good luck, sir.”

  It was the last thing he ever said.

  Zachary wiped his eyes and stood up. He picked up his gun from the floor and once again heard the voice.

  Get a move on, Zach! He’s almost got her!

  Zachary walked with determined strides across the enclosure toward the small doorway in the corner. He’d save Laura, all right. But he wouldn’t give her the privilege of killing Homer. That was his job. For Leo.

  00:11 – Homer

  Leaving the Survivors to watch Zimmerman, Homer went in pursuit of Laura. How she had known about the secret exit was a mystery, one that he hoped to learn the answer to once he found her.

  Not that finding her would present much of a challenge. It seemed that in her desperation to escape the mirrored enclosure, Laura had forgotten all about the state of her shoes, which had been covered in Joey’s blood. Though only faintly visible in the dark, her footprints gave Homer a simple trail to follow. It was almost too easy.

  Homer followed the footprints through the warehouse, passing aisle after aisle of shelves, some of which still appeared to be stocked. Considering who owned the place now, he doubted any of the boxes and crates stacked haphazardly on the lower shelves contained much in the way of spark plugs and hubcaps. He was not interested in what sordid business went down here nowadays, but the few remaining boxes did offer a hiding place or two.

  The trail turned right, into a narrow aisle between two rows of shelves.

  “There you are,” whispered Homer, drawing his knife.

  He took a few slow steps into the aisle, all his senses sharp as razors, the switch to the Memory Hole primed. If Laura got the drop on him now, he would have to act fast, or else she would kill him. His heart rate increased, and the corners of his mouth seemed to draw themselves upward
on their own. This was living! To be on the hunt for a prey that could just as easily be one’s downfall, treading the thin line between glory and obliteration, with nothing but one’s senses and wit to rely on—what greater thrill, what purer joy could life offer?

  One more step into the aisle, one more pause to listen. He heard the unmistakable sound of breathing, suppressed but not entirely silent. She was close now, so close. He inched forward, eyes locked on a wooden crate on the lowest shelf on the right. She must be behind it. He pressed on, knife at the ready, the box only six meters away, then five, then four…

  Laura stepped out into the aisle and stood in front of him, hands on her hips, hard eyes glaring. Neither of them moved. A pine needle dropping to the floor would have been like a cymbal crash. Finally, she spoke:

  “Well, here I am.”

  “So you are,” he replied. It lacked punch, and he cursed himself for surrendering the initiative. What was she planning? She had no weapon, and she was standing well within his range. He could kill her any second. So why did he feel nervous?

  “You were right, you know,” she said. “Jeffrey and I first discovered our power when we were children. It brought us a lot of joy, but also a lot of sorrow. It was the same for you, wasn’t it?”

  “It was. I lost someone dear to me because I could not control it.”

  Laura nodded.

  “So did we. Our parents. They aren’t dead, but they might as well be.”

  “I see. And what did you do then?”

  “We handled it in our separate ways. Jeffrey came to hate our gift and did all he could to isolate himself from it. As for me, I let it grow, learned to control it, to use it.”

  “You had the right idea. It pains me to hear that Jeffrey squandered his gift. Imagine what he could have achieved!”

  She shrugged. “I think Jeffrey achieved many good things, power or no power. But what have you done, exactly? Killed. Struck terror in people’s hearts. Is that really something to be proud of?”

  “I have no interest in debating morality with you, Laura. I do what I do because I can. Are you any better than me in that regard?”

  The comment hit home; Laura cast down her eyes. Whatever her gift was, she had clearly developed it at the expense of unknowing guinea pigs, just like he had. He was not surprised. No matter the context, it was usually those with considerable beams in their own eyes who hastened to point out the motes in others’ eyes. Laura was no different.

  “I am not judging you,” he said. “In fact, I would be willing to let this whole thing slide if I could count on your cooperation. I am curious, you see, about your power. How does it work? What does it do?”

  Laura’s head snapped up and she shot him a look of such hatred, such sheer loathing, that he instinctively shied back. He remembered his own feelings toward Alan after Rick’s death and understood. She would never forgive him. That left him with one thing to do.

  “I see. Well, that is a shame, but I cannot say I am too surpri—”

  A gunshot interrupted him. Laura looked in the direction of the enclosure with an anxious look on her face.

  “The good detective must have overstepped his boundaries,” said Homer. “Pity. I was hoping he could tell me something about you. Now I suppose I will never know.”

  “You may yet,” said Laura, cryptically.

  “Oh? Well, I’m all ears,” he replied.

  “Then I’m sure you can hear it.”

  He looked at her, puzzled, then realized what she was talking about. From behind him, heavy footfalls echoed through the warehouse, approaching at speed.

  Zimmerman? Impossible! He—

  The first bullet penetrated his back and lodged itself in his right lung before he had time to turn around. The second one tore through his left kidney. There was a click and a muttered curse from behind him. It seemed Zimmerman had run out of bullets. But it was enough. Homer could tell his wounds were fatal. Zimmerman’s appearance had been unexpected, but he could use it to his advantage. Just imagine the look on that oaf’s face when he realized he had just killed the woman he had meant to protect!

  Smiling at Laura, Homer recounted the last three seconds, once again amused at how destiny can change course so radically in such a short time.

  The heat rose, the world began to twist, and the Memory Hole swung open…

  Swi—

  …and Laura closed her eyes.

  For a moment, Homer’s brain ceased to function. The sight of Laura’s closed eyelids, shutting her off from the influence of his power, had shocked him out of his senses.

  She knows! She knows about the trigger!

  The greatest secret of the Memory Hole, its most fatal weakness, was the need for Homer to see the target’s eyes. It was a limitation he had discovered early in his experiments, and one that he had never been able to overcome no matter how hard he pushed himself. The active distance may have expanded, the length of time he could manipulate may have lengthened, but the rule of eye contact was ironclad.

  And now it had been revealed. Laura had shut him out. As his punctured lung filled with blood, he realized that he was dying. Drowning, just like Alan.

  He had only one chance. He turned his back on Laura and dashed towards Zimmerman, expending all his energy in a last-ditch effort to save himself. His heart pumped like a bellows in his chest, sending blood gushing out of the holes in his back in thick, scarlet streams. It was getting hard to breathe. He could feel his body start to wind down, like an old mainspring succumbing to metal fatigue. His limbs grew heavy and his vision darkened. Somewhere behind him he could hear Laura shout.

  “Zachary, don’t look at him!”

  But it was too late. He was in range, and the switch was primed and ready. Locking eyes with Zimmerman, already feeling himself start to keel over, Homer opened the Memory Hole.

  Switch

  The gunshot wounds were gone, and even the gloomy interior of the warehouse seemed positively radiant once the dark wings of death fled from his vision.

  Zimmerman cried out in pain and dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his belly. Blood flowed from the wounds in his back.

  He did not get back up.

  Homer got to his feet and took a deep breath. This was his closest brush with death in a long time, and he had almost forgotten how terrifying it was. He had not noticed the pain, but he had felt the presence of death as it began to wrap its cold arms around him in that final embrace. If Zimmerman had hit him in the head, or the heart, he would be dead by now. It seemed that despite everything, luck was still on his side.

  At least, that was what he thought until he felt the barrel of a gun against the back of his head.

  “Don’t even think about moving, Bobby,” said Laura. “Or I’ll know.”

  00:13 – Laura

  “How do you know that name?”

  Homer raised his hands. Keeping Brianna’s gun trained on Homer’s head, Laura took a step back to make sure he couldn’t spin around and grab it. She would see his intentions, but she already knew how deceptively fast Homer could act on them.

  “I know everything about you, Robert Bauman,” she said, and relished the confusion and frustration emanating from his mind at the utterance of his old name. “I know you smashed that window thirty years ago and made Rick take the blame. You haven’t changed at all, have you?”

  “No one knows about that! Who told you?”

  “You did, Bobby. You told me when you killed Jeffrey. It just took me some time to make sense of it all. But I finally did.”

  There was a moment of febrile activity in Homer’s mind as it made new connections between her words and his memories from the day before, until understanding flashed like a cartoon lightbulb.

  “You’re a mind reader.” It was a statement, not a question. “Of course! You and Jeffrey both read my mind. You both saw through the Memory Hole.”

  “Not quite. Jeffrey had a vague feeling that something was off, but he didn’t realize the truth
until it was too late. You were right about that—this thing is like a muscle; the further you push it the stronger it gets. I’ve used my power to get what I want many times, but I’ve never grown so much in such a short time ever before.”

  While talking, she probed the depths of his mind, searching frantically, while monitoring Zachary’s condition on the side. He was still alive but fading fast. She was running out of time.

  “These past few days I’ve learned things about myself that I never would’ve dreamed of if it weren’t for you. I suppose I should thank you, but…”

  She’d found what she sought. It was time.

  “But what?”

  Despite his situation, Homer was excited, eager to hear more. For the first time in his life, he’d met someone who shared a gift like his. His mind was on fire, burning with a desire to fill an emptiness that had been there ever since that day thirty years ago, one that had nothing to do with the loss of his brother. It takes one to know one, and no one had ever really known Homer Moley. But Laura knew what he was, and it was more than she ever wanted to know. He was the kind of person who would go out of his way to tread on a beetle if it caught his eye, just because he could. The kind of person who would throw a beer bottle at someone’s head to make them obey him, because he had to be in charge.

  “…but you killed my brother, and I will never forgive you for that, you son of a bitch.”

  She turned her mind to Zachary, slipping inside with ease. He’d been under her influence for so long now that entering his head was second nature. Though there was no need for spoken words, she couldn’t resist putting on a show for Homer. Turnabout was fair play, after all.

  “Zachary! It’s time. Get up! Open your eyes!”

  Without a word, without even a groan of pain or effort, Zachary dragged himself up to his knees. Obeying her mental command, he looked at Homer. He could barely focus and swayed like a punch-drunk boxer before the knockout. The sizes of his pupils didn’t match up, and his mouth was hanging open, spilling blood on the floor. Without Laura’s influence, he couldn’t so much as have lifted a finger, let alone his whole upper body. He’d be dead in seconds at this rate.