The Lost and the Damned (22 page)

“What the fuck are those things?” I heard Katie scream.

I looked back at her, not knowing what to say to her. I shook my head, lost. I looked back at the creatures in the funnel. Those that had heads raised them toward us, appearing to look at us, even if they didn’t have eyes. Those that had mouths gibbered and chattered, the sound barely audible over the siren which continued. I looked back at Katie. She clung to the new door that had dropped down, keeping herself as far from the bridge as possible.

Looking down at the creatures, my skin crawled. There was a very powerful wrongness about them. They mocked the human condition, gibbering half-formed parodies of what man is. I saw some of them had red blood trickling down their pale skin. Some banged their limbs against the metal sheet walls, making a reverberating sound that probably indicated they wanted their food. When the creature in question had no limbs, it banged its torso and head against it. I was thoroughly freaked out, but I was kept from panicking by the fact that they were down there and I was above them. They couldn’t reach us.

There was a thump and I turned my head to see what the two-armed no-legged creature was doing. The thump was from the creature clawing its arm into the metal of the wall. It was using its long fingernails to grip a rivet and was trying to pull itself up. As I watched, it pulled its torso up, then its other hand clawed and gripped at where two sheets of metal connected. It was pulling itself up! I looked around and the other monstrosities seemed to take its example. Using whatever body parts they had, they tried pulling themselves up, the writhing mass now pushing itself up the walls.

“Oh shit,” said Katie, seeing the same thing.

“We need to get across the bridge!” I said to her, shouting to be heard above the siren.

I looked at the door across the bridge. It was a heavy metal door like we had seen previously, but it had a handle and could open. I prayed that once we reached the other side that another door did not slam down in front of it.

I began to step across the bridge. Since the creatures were clutching and banging against the walls, the bridge was vibrating as well. I could still get across it, but I did not trust myself to go quickly. I took a few steps, looking down to see limbless monsters below me sneering up with drooling mouths, their limbed compatriots still climbing the walls slowly. I saw the one with two arms and no legs the highest up, but had a small bit of relief when it lost its grip and slid down to the bottom. Then I watched as it began to climb again, this time with greater speed.

I turned around and looked at Katie. “Come on!” I shouted. She still stood clutching the door. “Come on!” I repeated, but she still stayed. Keeping my balance the best I could, I walked back to her and took her hand, gently pulling her away from the door. “We need to cross the bridge before they get up here!” She finally began to walk with me toward the bridge.

I stepped forward across the bridge. I looked anxiously at the monsters climbing around us. While some of them slipped back down to the bottom, others were actually making their way up. Behind me, Katie was slowly making her way, edging one foot in front of the other. I wondered if it would be fast enough.

Keeping my balance, I walked across the bridge. Every step was agonizing, hearing the chitter of monsters, watching them leer at us with sightless faces from below the bridge and feeling them bang on the metal sheet walls. I made my way farther and farther. I felt relieved when I made it to the other side of the bridge, then was tense again when I saw how far some of the creatures had gotten. Without a further thought, I grabbed the handle of the door. I prayed that the door had not rusted shut. Not now. I pulled with all my might and was rewarded with a squeak and the door opening just an inch.

I looked back and Katie was almost halfway across the bridge. “Hurry!” I said before clenching my teeth and pulling harder on the door. It opened a few more inches and I kept pulling. I clenched my muscles and made one big pull, pulling the door another foot open. It was not completely open, but it was open enough. Beyond the door was complete blackness, the light from this room not even penetrating. I didn’t care. Even blackness was better than this. We could go through and pull the door shut behind us.

Turning around, Katie was still at the halfway point. She had made the mistake of looking down, seeing the monsters in the hole watching her. “Katie! You need to come across!” I shouted.

She looked up at me, her wide eyes filled with fear, and nodded, taking a step. Midstep the two lights on either end of the bridge shut off. Only the light in the middle of the bridge remained. The siren light still turned, flashing the room with red. Behind Katie there was now darkness. In front of her was me, standing in the darkness. Only the middle segment of the bridge where Katie stood was lit.

“I can’t see the bridge!” she said.

“Watch the red light!” I said. “When it touches the bridge it lights it!” Every time the siren light spun, she could see the bridge in front of her. The problem was it took two or three seconds to make its revolution, so she was still looking at darkness most of the time, then there was a single moment of it being lit.

“I can’t!” she said. I saw tears in her wide eyes. She was frozen in place.

“You have to! I know it’s dark, but you have to!”

She was still crying, and I saw her head turn toward where the two-armed no-legged creature was climbing. It had climbed the farthest and it was nearly horizontally level with the bridge.

“Katie, I need you to walk!” I shouted.

Her crying eyes looked at me and I could clearly see that she didn’t think she could do it.

“Katie, you can do it! Just walk forward. It doesn’t matter if you can’t see! The bridge is wide enough!”

She looked back at the creature, which had swiveled its sightless head and had opened its mouth to growl at Katie, displaying black teeth and a long tongue covered in drool.

“Katie!”

She didn’t react to me. She kept staring at that thing. The thing appeared to “stare” at her with its sightless face. It licked its lips. Katie and it kept staring at each other.

I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my gun. I clicked the safety off. I knew this might be our only chance. With shaking hands I aimed at the sightless creature. I pulled the trigger twice, the gun lurching in my hand. The metal sparked near the creature’s head, but the second bullet struck true, a red hole appearing where an eye socket would have been. It held on for a second before falling down the funnel. When it slowed to a stop, the other creatures leaped upon it, biting and tearing at it.

Katie broke gaze from creature and looked back at my direction, trying to find me in the darkness. “Katie, now!” I shouted.

She nodded, sniffing up her tears. With new energy, she stepped forward, taking a number of quick but still tentative steps toward me. While some of the creatures had turned on the fallen one, there were a few that were still climbing quite high on the walls. I trained my gun on some of the other creatures, but knew she needed to get across quickly. I couldn’t depend on shooting them all.

I stepped a few steps out on the bridge and waved her past me. Another creature with two arms, two legs, and no face was coiled like a spring high enough up. If it jumped… I fired a bullet at it. I missed, but the sparks from the ricochet were large enough that they distracted the creature, causing it to fall below.

Katie was at the door. “It’s dark! I can’t see anything in there!”

I felt a thump and below me I saw another two-armed legless creature holding onto the bottom of the bridge. Its mouth snapped at the grate under my feet. “Just go! Now!” I said, jumping back.

In front of me, Katie disappeared into darkness. Breaking into a run, I followed her, slipping past her into utter blackness.

Eleven

TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW ROOM 2. PATIENT 457. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. ASHBORN

DOCTOR: You’ve talked a great deal about space in our chats together, but never at length on time itself. What do you think of time?

PATIENT: Time is the one great illusion that keeps things sane. It’s the guide that keeps the common man from insanity.

DOCTOR: So time doesn’t exist?

PATIENT: Not truly. When time stops being real, all men will go insane.

DOCTOR: And you think that will happen? Time becoming unreal, I mean.

PATIENT: It’s happened once, just nobody has noticed. But it will happen again. Eventually everything will be bared, naked, fragile and able to be manipulated. Those that know can use this moment to become gods. Those that don’t will become just another of the throng of insane onlookers. It will happen again, I tell you, mark my words it will happen again.

DOCTOR: I see.

Once again I fell.

I recognized I was falling through blackness again, but such recognition was reactive. I could not muster a thought. I knew it was familiar. Beyond that my mind was blank.

I fell into the dining room again. The young boy again. The little girl again. He walks into the living room again. It’s all familiar, played for me once again. I don’t want to follow him. I know what’s going to happen. I know what awaits the boy in that room. I know that I have to follow him and experience everything he went to. I try to hold myself back.  I fix myself on the dining room, trying to hold myself there. My mind has barely any will to it, but I fix what I have on this room.

The little girl turns to me. She already spoke her usual lines to the boy, but now she turns to me. I had been ignored previously, but this time she looks at me. Strange eyes for a little girl, she stares at me. She speaks in her little girl voice, “Mankind is an essentially flawed race. Their humanity turns the possible into the impossible. Only when you forget that you are human will you remember that you are a god.”

For a moment, I remain there, her words sinking in. Then my concentration fails me and I sucked into the living room and everything that is there. The angry man, his rage and his violence. I experience it again. He mercilessly beats that poor boy and I feel that boy’s pain, his embarrassment, his feeling of betrayal. And rage. I feel such a powerful rage. That is, until the pain overwhelms me.

Then it’s black.

I woke up with my head down in a book. For a moment I thought I was back in college, having fallen asleep while cramming for a final. Only when I lifted my head and looked around did my memory came back to me. With annoyance, I realized I was spending a lot of time unconscious. Moreover, nearly every time I went unconscious they changed things on me. Either something very supernatural was going on or they had a dedicated crew to cart me around every time I passed out. At this point I was leaning toward the supernatural.

If I was wrong? Well, then I hope those guys have a good union.

This time I was in a library. Bookshelves lined the walls and I saw aisles of bookshelves after bookshelves. I sat at a brown wooden desk next to a wooden railing. Below was an even bigger library, complete with computer terminals and a circulation desk. A library of this size made me think of a university, particularly with tables just made for students to spread out on. A private library wouldn’t have so many tables, a public library wouldn’t be so big.

I looked across the table and saw Katie with her face down in a magazine. I smiled when I saw a small amount of sleep-drool dripping down. I looked around again and confirmed that there were people in the library, but they all seemed to be going about their business, studying or wandering through the stacks. Compared to everywhere we had gone, this place seemed… safe. I swung my head around quickly, just to make sure I wasn’t wrong. No, still safe.

“Hey Katie, wake up,” I said.

 She didn’t stir at all.

“Katie, wake up!”

Nothing.

“Katie?”

I tapped on her head, trying to be gentle and not invasive.

She still didn’t stir.

 Finally I hit her roughly on the back of the head, “Katie!”

Her head shot up, her hair messy, her eyes sleepy. She looked left and right. “What? Huh? What?”

“Katie!” I said insistently. Her eyes locked on me, and it was a moment before there was a flicker of recognition.

“John?”

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” I said.

“I was sleeping?” she said, still disoriented.

“Something like that. We passed out.”

“Why the hell did we do that?”

I remembered that the last time we went through the blackness and woke up elsewhere she was still catatonic, so this was new to her. “That’s just how it works. How it has worked, at least. We find ourselves falling in black space and then we wake up. Isn’t that what you experienced?”

“Eh?” she said, looking incredulous.

I sighed. “What do you last remember?”

“I remember… I remember being on that godforsaken bridge, with, with those… things!”

“And after that?”

“I remember you shooting and running through that door.”

“And after that?”

She took some time responding. “After that, I just remember black.”

“Falling?” I prompted.

“Maybe,” she said noncommittally.

“A dining room?”

“A what?” she asked.

Okay, I guess that repeating nightmare might be specific to me. “Never mind. I also experienced everything going black and woke up here. I just woke up a few minutes ago. It looks like a library.”

“A library, eh?” she said. “I never liked libraries.”

“And this isn’t the first time this happened – the whole waking up somewhere completely different. It happened twice before. That’s how we got to that place with the pyramid.” I felt I had to insist on what I knew was true, even in the face of sheer implausibility.

“The Well?” she said. “So you didn’t bring me there? Y’know, kidnapped me and dragged me up there?”

“No! I thought we went through this?” I was getting pissed.

She smiled. “We did, I’m just fucking with you. You’re cute when you’re angry.”

I narrowed my eyes and snorted before looking away.