Paradigms Lost (58 page)

CHAPTER 80

Nightmares on Demand

It was a terrible sleep, filled with indescribable oozing fear, and a slithering feeling of something creeping ever-so-slowly up on me . . . with the echoing sensation of complete loss and loneliness, not a friend or companion for a thousand miles. I forced my eyes open.

A monstrous black shadow, barely visible against the gloom of the night-shrouded bedroom, loomed above the bed. Blank eyes glowed the gray leaden color of winter, and a shadowy, taloned hand stretched towards my throat. My heart hammered completely out of control, each beat jabbing pain through my chest. I tried to speak, to even scream, but my throat was drier than dust and only a faint, incoherent croak escaped. The thing smiled, that frozen witchlight limning a mouth filled with sharklike teeth, and one talon traced a sharp, ice-cold line down my cheek, screaming images of dismemberment and abandonment through my head.
I can’t move!
I thought, my horror rising.

But that was what it
wanted
. It wanted,
needed
the strength of my fear and horror. I was handing it the weapons it needed. I pushed against it, focusing will against fear, forcing my hand to grasp the little cylinder I’d strapped into it. Unfortunately, my arms were caught in the covers; I probably shouldn’t have used any covers at all, but mountain cabins without heat aren’t amenable to that sort of thing. I concentrated, trying to ignore my fear and the icy claws near my jugular, pulling my hand out one millimeter at a time. The thing’s expression flickered, as though it was nonplussed by my ability to act at all, and a tidal wave of terror thundered down on me.

That might have been a mistake on its part. I let that terror galvanize my arm into motion rather than immobility, and my hand came fully out from the bedclothes. Pointing my shaking hand as best I could, I squeezed my thumb down on the button.

A blazing line of blue-green fire seared its way across the room as the overpowered laser pointer sent enough concentrated photons streaking outward to set paper across the room on fire. Seeming bright as the sun in the pitch-black room, the laser carved a razor-thin line across the black shadow. The dead eyes doubled in size and I heard an ear-piercing shriek of agony and shock as it literally stumbled back, unable to just vanish as it had when confronted previously. I tried to rise and give pursuit, but my adrenaline-soaked muscles shook and I fell with an undignified
thud
and
clatter
to the floorboards, the equipment hung over me banging the wood and jabbing into me, feeling weak and shaky as a crippled old man. The thing was clearly worse off, though, and it fled out the doorway, fading; the feelings of horror, fear and loss now focused
outside
of me rather than inside. I knew I must be feeling what
it
was feeling now, and I dragged myself to my feet and staggered after it.

I was shaking, sick to my stomach, and trying to push myself as hard as I could. It didn’t occur to me until I was going through the doorway that thing could probably sense what I was doing, or at least where I was and what my intent was. So I wasn’t at all ready when black claws slashed across my hand.

The impact was . . . weak. The thing might be able to assume solid form, but it was still more a thing of spirit than flesh. But it wasn’t trying to hurt
me
, I realized too late, as the strap holding the pointer in my hand came apart and the second pillow-soft but swift blow knocked the pointer from my hand. I staggered away, trying to find the miniature laser, but the casing was black and totally invisible in the darkness.

Without a weapon to hand, I faced the monster, towering above me in pain-filled rage. I grasped for the smartphone; enough subtlety, it was time to turn on the lights.

There was nothing in the holster. With renewed horror, I realized one of the clattering noises when I fell out of bed had been the phone falling to the floor. And my laptop was . . . on the other side of this thing.

It gave a soundless roar, a silent bellow filled with screaming terror and hate and doom, sending my pulse skyrocketing. It snarled and smiled again, keeping between me and my equipment, sending another wave of horror and isolation and loss that almost made me faint. My heart staggered, and I realized that the monster meant to kill me with fear alone.
I have to fight this!

But . . . it had cut the strap. It had touched me, but it hadn’t actually
hurt
me. I had hurt
it
. And there was something . . . else, something nagging me . . .

At those thoughts it moved another step towards me, almost immersing me in twisting living darkness, screaming despair and death into me.

Into me.

Now, I could feel it. It was . . . it was not quite real. Or the
fear
was real, but the
source
was not. It was the difference between burning with fire, and burning from having soaked in ice water, or swallowing habanero puree. The pain is real, but only one of them is really going to
hurt
you.

And I could prove it, by remembering
real
fear. I remembered fighting Elias Klein, a friend turned monster, and how the terror welled
up
from within in cold flaming waves as I tried to outrun him. I remembered the inhuman colonel as he prepared to sacrifice me in the Heart of Eönae, and the pure
knowledge
—not mere sensation, but bone-deep knowledge—that I had failed, that Syl, Verne, and all my friends were dead because of that. I remembered running down a Florida street, duelling a creature that could kill me with a glance.

The external pressure of fear wavered, hesitated for a moment, and I focused once more, this time on the greatest fear of all. I let myself for once feel it fully, as I had for one moment in the hospital almost two years ago. I brought out that memory and made it
real
, the moment when the urbane and ordinary man before me had transformed into a hulking, shaggy nightmare of diamond teeth and claws, with a shrieking roar that shattered glass and left nothing but total terror in its wake, the moment I had first faced the Werewolf King, Virigar.

And in the moment that memory became the truth of terror, the thing in front of me stumbled backward, shredding and coming apart like mist in a wind, screaming its own fear, fleeing that image of horror in my head, leaving behind a trailing sense of loss, abandonment, sadness, and defeat.

I sank, shaking and soaked with sweat, to the cabin floor. Something had happened here. Something that might just tell me what I needed to know.

I didn’t feel a sense of triumph, or even of relief. I felt a tragic loss. And that—more than anything—told me I was on the right track.

CHAPTER 81

Secrets of Ancient Days

“You need what?” Verne looked confused. I had driven back to his house the next day, and slept there while waiting for him to wake up in the evening. I had not gotten much sleep in the cabin, even though the thing had made no attempts on me the rest of that night.

“I need to know about Atlantaea. At least a few details.”

He nodded, still clearly not understanding what I was looking for. “I will tell you what I can. But you must understand that I have spent countless centuries
not
thinking about it.”

“You’ve forgotten a lot?”

He sighed. “There are . . . limits on what a mortal mind can keep within itself, Jason, and though I do not die as do normal men, still my mind is very much that of a mortal man. I never forgot certain events, aspects of the world that were important to me, but as half a million years passed, I had to make choices of what I would keep. The
soul
never forgets, true, but accessing that memory once it is lost from the immediacy of the mind requires, at the least, that the right set of ideas or reminders trigger the recall.

“So, I will try to answer your questions, but understand that I may have no answers.”

“Okay.” I thought a moment, getting my questions in order. “Your descriptions of Atlantaea were always pretty vague—mainly I guess because you were talking about events that happened, not giving me a virtual travelogue. I’ve gotten the impression of some kind of, well, shining city of fantasy crossed with super-tech, skyscrapers and aircars and all that, with these Seven Towers surrounding it like a wall. But other things you’ve said make me wonder—I mean, it couldn’t have been just one city.”

He laughed. “Ahhh, no, certainly not, my friend. And I apologize for giving you such a, well, clichéd and inaccurate picture. And yet . . . it is not entirely inaccurate, in its way. The . . . the impression, the spirit—that is accurate. It
was
a ‘shining city,’ Jason, the City of the Seven Towers, and indeed that was how many would have represented it, as a city with Seven Towers defending it. But that representation would be no more accurate than picturing, oh, the United States as being the city of Washington flanked by a giant Eagle and the Statue of Liberty.”

“So Atlantaea was like Earth today—lots and lots of cities all over the planet—and the city you are talking about was more like the capital?”

He considered that. “Not . . . exactly. The city that many called simply Atlantaea was the founding location of the government from which the rest of the civilization grew. It was more than the capital, it was the very heart of our culture. There were other cities, other outposts; for example, one around each of the Seven Towers, which were themselves spaced around the Earth in a mystically, but not geometrically, symmetrical pattern. But because Eönae was our patron from the beginning, and because we did not grow from multiple opposed, advanced civilizations, as you have and still are today, we did not spread so randomly and completely over the globe. Many areas were still very wild, even at the height of Atlantaea’s power.”

“So . . . you never reached the population we have now.” So far, this was actually fitting together better than I thought.

“On the contrary, the civilization of Atlantaea had more citizens than you could grasp, Jason. Because we did not limit ourselves to this world.” He gave a soft laugh at my expression. “In a hundred thousand years, Jason, can you imagine that human beings would not have spread out? If they were not to overrun this world, then naturally there was only one way to go. Outward, to the stars.”

“Whoa.” I had to assimilate this. I realized I was guilty of making the wrong kind of assumptions again. I associated magic, gods, and so on with faux-medieval material; Verne was talking about something far beyond that. “How big
was
Atlantaea, then?”

He gestured upward. “Step outside, and gaze upward, Jason, and realize that all of the stars you see were once part of the Atlantaean . . . Empire, I suppose. All of them. At the end, Atlantaea held sway over essentially the entirety of the Galaxy, and was poised to sweep outward to others of those island universes.”

“Urk. Okay, I’d better leave
that
for later. So, your
Earthly
population never reached our level, then.”

“Oh, certainly not. I believe Earth stabilized at something short of a billion people, of which over one hundred million lived in the capital city.”

Biiig
city. “What about this area? What was here back then?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I see where you are going, I think. Unfortunately . . . I cannot be certain. The geography has changed considerably, both due to unnatural and natural forces, since that time. Off to the east, on or near Cape Cod, was one of the Towers, so it was not an entirely deserted area, but this far out . . . I suppose it would have been something like an isolated suburb. The Towers, due to their nature, attracted many wizards, priests, alchemists, and so on to their general neighborhood, and many such would live relatively nearby; with flight or teleportation capability usually available, ‘nearby’ could have a very broad interpretation. If you are asking if someone of that civilization might have lived at the site of your friend’s cabin, I would say it is entirely possible—even probable, since you have come here asking the question.”

“Good. Then, assuming that what I think is right . . .” I sketched out a plan of attack. “I’m not a magician, but would this work as I’ve planned it, or do I need someone like Syl to activate it?”

“Normally . . . yes, but in this case, I think your knowledge and technology can carry the day. And the creature is, after all, aware you are far from ordinary. This will lend a certain mystical force to your actions against it.”

“Come again? I thought you said I was a mundane?”

He smiled. “And you are, Jason, but there is no human being—no living intelligent being, in fact—who is so mundane as to have absolutely no connection to the mystical. Life and thought and souls are mystical in the very essence of what they are, and because of that there is some real magic in us all. Magic depends on belief, symbolism, and knowledge. The symbolism inherent in you—in what you have achieved previously, in your dedication to your work, in your courage in facing and defeating this creature already—these will give a not inconsiderable reinforcement to your actions as you have outlined them. Not a spell, as such, but . . . call it sympathetic magic. If the target believes in magic, and is affected by it—and all such beings as this must be fall into that category—it will, by believing, invest some of its own power into your countermeasures.”

“So, I’m basically hitting it with psychological warfare that it’s going to make real?”

“Well put.” He grew serious again. “But it is not without risk, this plan of yours. Even if you are right, the creature may not be able to control itself long enough. If you are wrong, the creature will attempt to use the weaknesses of your approach against you—and it will do so now with full knowledge of what you can do, and why.”

“Not the first time I’ve been betting on a throw of the dice. But I’d appreciate it if you can hang out close by—as close as you think you can get without blowing your cover.”

The black-haired, immaculate head gave an assenting nod. “But of course, Jason. Tomorrow night?”

I nodded myself. “No point in giving it any more time to prep. Tomorrow night we finish this, one way or another.”