The Hollow Places (23 page)

The others saw
what was happening and Naomi started to fight again. Will began
grunting to Simon's right and Ian Moody also attempted to free
himself; in his own parlance, he hadn't signed up for this. Only
Jonathan, the man in the black-blue business suit, was implacable.
He neither looked at them, nor at the thing above, reaching for his
skull. He looked dead ahead, having truly accepted his fate.

Simon focused
only on reaching Firdy who stood only a couple of feet away,
goading him with his proximity. He wanted to destroy the body that
Firdy had stolen. With a roar and a ferocious twist, he managed to
free his shoulder from the wall. His elbow followed with a snap of
suction. And then his wrist and hand. He made a grab for Firdy, but
the man stepped out of reach.

“Save your
energy,” Firdy said, “we'll need it.”

And with that,
the water worm silently attached itself to the back of Simon's
neck.

*

The Third flicked
through Simon's mind and body, such as they had become, as though
she was shuffling a deck of cards. Never had she been so powerful
nor Simon so powerless to resist her. His mouth, miles and miles
away, was taught with shock. It was as though electricity was
firing through him, twitching his limbs, tensing his muscles,
extending him to his limit. He thought he would split apart, but
not before the Third had found all she sought and had consumed all
she could.

She separated
him into piles, saw the connections and respected them. Not all of
them made sense to her, even after all the people she had
dissected. Like notes to herself in a margin, she made new
connections, compromises here and there.

It hurt Simon,
but it was not a physical pain. It was terrifying and seemed to go
on and on, although he gathered that perhaps only seconds had
passed, because no part of Firdy's grinning facial expression had
changed since it began.

He didn't know
how much he could bear, but he knew that that didn't matter to the
Third. He wasn't meant to take it. This was the end of him and the
beginning of someone new.

Through
translucent images – his father saying goodnight, knowing that
no-one would ever see him again; the French girl, falling,
open-mouthed and silent; his mother, hung from a corner bed post by
a rope made from a bedsheet – he saw that Firdy was moving now, but
as if in slow motion. He appeared to be surveying the room and its
inhabitants, all of whom were hooked up to the Third, like
batteries, giving up everything they had.

Far, far away,
Firdy was in conversation with the Third. The thoughts floated
towards Simon and clung to him like cobwebs. He didn't have the
energy to blow them away.

“What about
me?” Firdy thought. “I'm ready.”

A new
whirlpool opened up directly above him. It gathered momentum and
eventually it was reaching down, a wagging finger, extending
towards Firdy's head.

ONE BODY.

“One
body.”

ONE MIND.

“One mind. One
mind.”

NO MORE
EXPERIMENTS.

“No more.”

NO MORE
MISTAKES.

Firdy opened
his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He was the mistake the
Third was referring to and he knew it, which meant that everyone in
the room knew it. The Third's condemnation silenced him, but he
knew it would all be over soon. One final indignity and he'd be
allowed to move on.

He may have
been an experiment gone wrong, but without him this wouldn't have
happened. He'd watched behind the scenes, cleaned up after them
when necessary, picked up the pieces when the Third dropped out. He
had manipulated the Third's helpers, as necessary, and he had got
them all here tonight, with Sarah and Zak into the bargain. He'd
been loyal. Becoming one with the Third was more than his reward,
it was his right.

As the
shimmering thing reared, preparing to make contact with Firdy,
Simon knew that his chance to make some kind of stand had come and
gone. He didn't know when the moment should have been; perhaps just
after the Third had returned, the moment Sarah had placed a knife
into his hand, while Firdy had been on his back, paralysed and
orgasmic.

“Kill it,”
Sarah had said.

If he had
plunged it into him then, perhaps the consequences would have been
better than this. Maybe some chance was better than no chance at
all.

He sensed the
Third circling them, but she was interested in him in particular.
He was in good physical shape, but probably no better than Naomi or
Moody. It was his mind that she valued above all. Apparently, it
was unlike the others. It had corridors and doors, stairs, straight
lines, basements, keyed and coded but not unbreakable, low ceilings
and, impressively, an attic with a single window to which no room
led directly. It was always an effort of will to get something up
into that room, but not so when moving things in the other
direction.

Of the eight
people in the room, his mind was most like that of Jonathan -
except that all Jonathan's doors were double and triple-locked,
with little movement in any direction - and Firdy, but whose stray
memories were cracking the floorboards, smothering the skirting,
taking over the walls.

The Third
asked herself if Simon's mind was too strong. Was Firdy's too
weak?

Would the two
of them linger? And if so, would they reject each other?

Balance was
everything. Everything.

With the plans
for Simon laid out so explicitly, he knew that there would be no
life worth living on the other side of this experience, should he
survive it, and he only had one weapon left to upset the process
for everyone, if not stop it entirely.

Before the
Third could interrupt him, it was out in the wild.

“She won't
take you,” Simon thought.

Firdy curled
his lip in an approximation of an insolent smile. The worm was
almost touching his furrowed, scarred forehead. He shielded his eye
from its light with his hand.

“No more
experiments,” Simon thought. “No more mistakes.”

Firdy's
upturned face glowed with silver light reflected from above. The
watery cord that would connect him to The Third was hovering.

“... Do it!”
Firdy thought. “Don't listen to him.”

“Experiment
and mistake,” Simon persisted; “you're both.”

Firdy had been
holding his breath, but now he sighed and stared aghast as the
Third withdrew her tendril from him. It shrank back as though he
were poison.

“You can't do
this,” Firdy yelled, but the room absorbed his words. His mouth
continued to rage in silence: “I'm your son! Your real son! I did
all this for you! You owe me!”

The proboscis
that had been meant for Firdy slipped into the ceiling like a
snail's head into its shell and it became as though it had never
existed.

SIMON'S RIGHT,
thought the Third.

Simon felt the
heat of Firdy's rage, sudden and alien and boundless. It
accelerated through his system and brought tears to his eyes.
Within moments, it felt beyond his control and more powerful than
any emotion he had ever felt, even his love for Sarah, at once
filial and paternal. There would be no reasoning him down from this
fury. It had come from a very long way away.

Firdy strode
towards Simon.

NO MORE
EXPERIMENTS.

To punctuate
the thought, the floor opened up beneath the Cat. In one moment, it
had been crouched beside Naomi, keeping guard, hopeful that there
would be some prime scraps of warm skin left over when the process
was over, and in the next moment the ground beneath it lost its
solidity. The Cat scrabbled uselessly for a moment and then the
floor become solid again, a ceiling as far as she was concerned.
For a few seconds, she was a black figure on the outside of the
Third, drowning, and then she was gone.

NO MORE
MISTAKES.

Firdy started
running for Simon. He almost made it, but his final step met no
resistance. He threw his hands out, the good hand and the clawed
fingers, and they latched onto Simon's leg. He began the agonising
business of hauling himself up, finding purchase on his jacket and
skin and hair. Simon threw punches down onto Firdy's head and
shoulders, but he hadn't realised how weak he had become over the
last 48 hours, or how strong Firdy could be in the midst of his
rage. Firdy was not to be deterred. He climbed, hand over withered
hand, until they were face to face.

Firdy yelled,
flecks of spit flying from his mouth, but again the sound was
lost.

“You ruined
it! I can't believe you ruined it! This was my only chance.”

He planted
both his hands around Simon's throat. He squeezed.

Simon
attempted to prise away the leather-clad fingers, but he was
already losing consciousness. This time, he would not be joining a
communal mind. This time he was sliding towards death.

He mustered
enough energy to throw a final punch at Firdy's face and succeeded
in drawing blood, but that was all. His nose didn't break. Far from
it. Firdy spat blood in Simon's face and tightening his grip.

Eyes closing,
Simon put his hands around Firdy's neck too and pressed his thumbs
as hard as he could into the space where his Adam's apple should
have been. He felt nothing. He pushed and squeezed with all his
remaining strength, with all his rage, allowing it to spring up
from all his hiding places, he squeezed with all the life he had
left. He was furious, with himself, with the Third, with everyone.
It wasn't meant to be like this.

He felt
Firdy's grip slipping. Not only was Firdy's hold strangling him,
but it was keeping him from falling. If he dropped, he would fall
through the Third and drown. Simon knew that if he could stay alive
for another minute, maybe thirty seconds more, he could survive
this.

Having failed
to protect Sarah, his goal now was to remain with her for as long
as he could. He hadn't told her that he loved her, but that didn't
matter down here. Connected through the Third, she would feel his
love for her. Despite his failures, she'd know that he loved
her.

He did his
best to keep pressure on Firdy's throat, but he could not draw the
breath that would have given him the strength to go on.

The blackness
was dotted with stars.

“I'm losing,”
he thought and was stunned. Somewhere, deep inside, in a chest in a
basement, he had believed that everything would be okay in the
end.

With that
thought, he was overpowered.

“If I don't
get to live,” Firdy thought, “neither do you.”

LET GO
NOW.

Lights shot
across the sky.

LET GO.

It was a white
sky, peppered with black stars.

LET HIM
GO.

On the moonlit
horizon; a ghost ship sailing.

Pain rushed through his skull. It was the intense
pressure of The Third's consciousness, but more powerful than ever.
She had interrupted the process of her transformation in order to
make the men release each other. Simon would have screamed, but
with Firdy's hands around his throat he was still unable to draw a
breath. Instead he waited for it to be over.

It was a wail
and a screech and a roar, a wave of nails dragging itself through
his head.

For the final
time that night, his viewpoint was from outside his body. He became
one, not with the Third, but with the blackness. To his relief, he
felt no more physical sensation, but he still had to do battle with
emotion.

Most of all,
he regretted having obstructed Sarah's attempts to run. Even though
she would have been caught, he could have allowed her the chance to
make her own choice, to fight; to die with self-respect, unlike
him. He had allowed the uncertain future he had feared to become no
future at all.

He hoped that
the Third's transformation would be impossible without him, but he
didn't believe that was the case. The Third was desperate and so
she would try, with or without him. Sarah's future, her lack of it,
remained fixed.

He wanted to
go back for her, but there was no back or forward or anything.
There was only blackness, accepting him whole.

He waited to
disappear.

He waited a
long time.

A white dot
crossed his path. Again. Above. Below.

It appeared to
be circling him.

A full stop,
he thought.

The object was
approaching, slightly bigger each time.

He willed
himself to keep it in focus and after achieving some success he
realised that the object wasn't moving; he was. Through will and
persistence, he managed to stop spinning and then, having confirmed
that he could move somehow, he willed himself towards the light.
There was nothing else.

The light had
many arms, beckoning him. For a moment, he considered that this
might be the Third as seen from the outside, but he felt peace, not
panic, and allowed himself to continue. Having resisted death for
so long, he was relieved to succumb. All that was left was to hope
that Sarah and the others would not suffer for much longer.

He slid
interminably, focusing on the mouth of the tunnel ahead. Every now
and then it winked out of view and he felt a flush of fear, but it
returned each time, saving him from thoughts of being trapped in
the dark with nothing but his thoughts - of Sarah and of all the
lives he had destroyed. A pang of loneliness weighed on him from
all sides, crushing him.

When he next
saw the entrance to the tunnel it was shining more brightly than
before. Octopus-like rays stretched out from it, setting the
darkness alight ...

… His head
broke the surface of water. He choked and coughed and vomited as a
wave washed over him. His lungs burned and his chest ached, his
head spun, but he kicked and kept his head up. Soon, he was able to
breathe again, though it hurt to do so. The moon shone down on him
long enough for him to realise that it had served as his beacon,
then it hid behind a cloud.