The Very Last Days of Mr Grey (7 page)

There was a smell, like humidity. Like a ride…

He remembered how the door had floated in the wall, how it wasn’t quite touching the ground—most importantly, how it would have been of sufficient size to hide a window. He remembered the sound of shattering glass he’d thought he’d distantly heard as he’d passed through that doorway.

Was this place he found himself the result of the last impulses of a destroyed and dying brain? Was it black because his visual cortex was on the pavement? Mute because his auditory nerve no longer existed in useful form?

“Or maybe it’s just a dream.” There appeared a man, though this wasn’t quite right: Mason could not see or hear, but he could
sense
both the man’s presence, and his statement.

“There are more than just five senses. Proprioception, nociception. And even more still.” The man moved closer. “But let me ask you this.” He leaned in. “If this
is
a dream, how would you know those things?”

Mason wondered how he would know he didn’t.

“A valid question.” Before Mason could think, the man added, “And no, I’m not. Mind reading… It’s not impossible, Builders do it often. But it is not what I am doing. You are broadcasting your thoughts. Should you wish me not to hear them, you’ve but to stop and my reception will cease.”

Mason… something. ‘Tried’ would be the wrong word, but he did exert an effort, applied a force to some vector.

The man smiled. “You’ve only to open your mouth.”

“How?” Mason said. Then he realized he’d said it. How he knew this, was a mystery. He wanted to ask, to solve this mystery. He sought the answer for more pressing ones instead: “Who are you? And where is this?”

“This,” the man gestured, twisted so it took in everything, the nothing that that was. “This is you, Mason. This is yours.”

“My mind? And you didn’t answer my other question.”

“Who am I?” A pause. “I am the one… who is going to help you. And this place, is not your mind.” He pointed a finger at Mason, and Mason was past wondering how he knew this without being able to see anything. “You are there, your mind”—he pointed at Mason’s head—“is there. This is simply a place that is solely yours, where no one else can venture. Where no one else can harm you.”

“But—”

“But how can this be? you ask. Here I am, in your space. And could I not harm you?” He leaned in, tapped Mason’s forehead. “Did that hurt?”

“What? That was a tap, of course it didn’t hurt.”

“Well there you have it then!”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“You really wouldn’t know that.”

“I would!” Mason shouted. “I do.”

“Now you see.”

The realization hit Mason hard, a punch to the chest—or a baseball bat. This was a dream. He was dreaming.

“You are not dreaming.”

“No,” Mason said, “I’m lucid dreaming.”

“It occurs to me now how odd that you even know what a dream is. Hmm, though I suppose they do things differently beyond the Fog.”

“Just because I’m dreaming doesn’t mean I wouldn’t know what a dream is. It’s like zombie movies, you’d definitely know that these things getting up and eating people are zombies—look at that bath salts guy.”

The man was frowning at Mason. “I understand your individual words, but not how you’re using them.”

Mason thought for a moment. “Likewise.” He was a bit more relaxed now. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a lucid dream. That made sense, remembering things while dreaming was always tricky. Always hard to tell what was false memory. He’d like to get out of here, try flying, find some girls—better still, find some girls to fly with. He could fly while having—

“You’re leaking again.”

Mason looked at the man. He sighed. “I was almost out of this dream.” He stewed for a moment, then said, “So, dream oracle, what are you here for?”

“As I said, I’m here to help you.”

“Oh, to help huh?”

“And to ask for your help in return.”

“Sure buddy, what kind of help?”

“I should remind you this is not a dream.”

Mason nodded.
I’m in complete blackness and silence, yet I can see and hear you
, he thought.
Definitely not a dream. Nope, not at all
.

“Your sarcasm leaks from you like a faucet.”

“You’re not helping your case here.”

“I need you to get me out of here.”

“I don’t know how you got here. I don’t even know where here is. I’m not even sure how I got here.”

“No, not this place. Where I physically am.”

“You’re not actually here?”

“No.”

“Where then?”

“Joffrey Columns. I don’t imagine you’d know it, seeing as you’re beyond the Fog.”

Mason felt a tug at this, a sense of realness. If he believed in an afterlife, that’s what he’d think this was. He didn’t though.
But if energy doesn’t die, does it have memory?
The whispered words inside his mind spun in the darkness.

The man looked oddly at Mason. “What?”

“How?”

“Excuse me?”

“Getting you out.”

“You’ll need to be able to cross over—”

“To the other side,” Mason finished.

“To
a
side; you can’t just go willy-nilly. No telling where you’d wind up.”

“And how do I do that?”

“Do you recall the first time we met?”

“You mean, just now, like, minutes ago?”

“Days.”

“Right. Days have passed, of course. We’ve been talking for days, and look at all we’ve accomplished!”

The man pursed his lips. “We spoke once, a span of days back. Do you not recall this?”

“I do not…” But there was something. He didn’t remember, but he sensed he should, that if he were awake, he would be able to. That if he could see—really see—he might recognize this man.
Jamais vu
.

“Well. There was a door there, a door that will take you somewhere you must go. A door that contains many things. Prevents them from escaping. And this,” he gestured around, “is how you get there.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t. If it did, I wouldn’t need your help.”

“I mean, if the door is somewhere else, how is it here?”

“You are thinking too linearly.”

“How else can I think?”

“Geometrically. Or better, topologically.”

“I can’t go anywhere. I’ve got cops after me. In suits. Federal cops.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I ran from a hospital.” He shook his head and muttered, “I’m losing my mind.”

“That is one thing I do know Mr Grey—”

“Don’t, please. Just call me Mason.”

The man nodded. “I know that you are not crazy. This is real; as real as anything can be.”

“You were doing good with the first few words, then you jumped the shark.”

“You need to learn that reality is what you make of it.”

“I’m haunted by the ghost of a philosophy teacher.” Mason fell heavily to the ground. This is what he thought, in any case. He had no physical sensation of it, as he had none of the usual five senses.
Or more
.

“I’m no ghost.” He was quiet for a moment. “Not in any sense you mean.”

“What do you want from me?”

The man sighed. “I want your help. I’m stuck here. You can free me.”

“I don’t even know where this is.”

The man shook his head. “This conversation is going in circles. It appears your mind is not able to hold memory.”

“What?”

The man sighed heavily. “I don’t mean here.” Mason saw without looking—realized he’d never been using his eyes in the first place—that the man was pointing downward, where ground would be if there were more than just void. “I mean where I am. This is but a projection. As I said, no one but you can come here. Only you can bring things here. Only you can free them.”

“So you’re stuck in purgatory and you want me to rescue your damned soul.”

“Purgatory?” His expression grew thoughtful. “I believe I have heard that before. From Sera’s dreams. The place I am in is called Joffrey Columns.”

“Of course it is. We all have our own hells.”

The man knelt, his suit dirtying with the void. “Will you help me?”

Mason grunted, then groaned. “Stop being so earnest. At least give me a hope of saying no.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“Purgatory.”

The man shook his head. “Think of it as you wish. Do you know how to get here?”

“By dying.”

“No, Mr Mason, that is not the way.”

Mason didn’t even have the energy to object.

“If you believe you can’t get here, you can’t. But, if you believe you can, then… then you have a chance. You have a choice. I’m not asking you to make it now, I just want you to consider it.” His voice grew earnest once more. “Find Sera, she can help you now that you’ve proven yourself.”

Sera. Mason remembered
her
. The dream that drugged him with hallucinated tea. “Help me drug myself and pass out.”

“That was so you could meet me. That drug, it allowed me to find you.”

Mason looked at the man for the first time in a while. “What?”

The man shrugged. “I’m not sure. Where I’m from, we have a drug we all take. It’s what was prescribed to you. It opens a backdoor. Not for me, for a machine—but I was able to figure out a way to use it despite this.

“Then Sera simply helped you to sleep, so I could find you.”

Mason thought of the ocher powder. “She put me to sleep, so I could meet a ghost in my dream.” Then he frowned. “Wait, the doctor’s in on this? I knew I didn’t like him.” Of course, that’s what hallucinations
would
make him think. Conspiracy. It was seeming more likely that he really was in his death throes at this moment, splatted on the concrete.
Look before you leap
, he thought, and laughed bitterly. That doctor though…

“The drug, prevents you from dreaming. It allows—”

“I must not be taking enough.”

“No. That’s what it does where I’m from. Here… Here it does something else. It allows you—” he shook his head, expelled breath. “It frees you, frees your dreams.”

“Where you’re from? What do you mean? Where are you from?” Mason realized his assumption, that the man
was
a man. That he was from, here. But now, Mason wondered, was he something else? A devil? An alien? Both those seemed idiotic and ignorant. Neither likely existed.

“You are letting your thoughts leak again.” He stood. “We’ll have to work on your memory.” Then the man looked past Mason, and Mason felt a sense of confusion, of wonder, arise in the man. “An alien. Interesting. I would never have thought of that.” He chuckled. It was not an amused one. “Even now, off that vile drug, I still lack imagination.” He looked at Mason again. “Sometimes I wonder if it was stripped from me. If taking it as a baby, as a child, irreversibly altered me somehow, took something away that I’ll never get back.”

Mason wondered if the man was referring to the same drug he was taking. But seeing as how this was a dream or the last moments of his life—or purgatory—it didn’t really matter. “You didn’t answer my question.”

The man smiled. “So I didn’t. But at the same time, I did.”

Mason waited.

“I told you where I was from, your faulty memory is not my concern.”

“It is if you want my help.”

“You have a point.

“Let’s try something new, shall we? I am from Alterra. I don’t know if you’d be aware of it, or where it is in relation to here, or what you’d even call it. It’s—I suppose from your perspective anyway—beyond the Fog.”

“Beyond the fog? Is that some euphemism?”

“I suppose it is. But it is also literal, and that is the sense in which I mean it.”

When Mason looked blankly at him, he asked, “You do know of the Fog? I mean, you must. Unless…” he trailed off, thinking. “I will have to ask Sera about that. She is beyond it now, here with you.”

“Maybe you should ask her to help you.”

“It doesn’t work with her. Not that I expected it to, she’s from the same place as I am.”

“Is she who drugged me?”

“Oh, dear, your memory is going to be an issue. She helped you. You should—” The man looked upward, quickly knelt.

“Mason,” his voice was frantic, urgent. “I must go. I— Look, find Sera again. She will help you.”

Mason distinctly heard the sound of a door. Heavy and metal. In echoed in what sounded like—what he knew was—a stone room. There was a smell of steam.

“Please, find—”

Then the man was gone.

Mason was lost once the man disappeared. He thought it meant he was dying, fading away. That his internal dialog had ceased, and so, soon, would he.

But there he sat, for an unknown amount of time. Except that time did pass, and it was more than a while.

Finally, after hours that could’ve lasted minutes, he stood, and began searching the void for some way out.

If this truly was
his
place, as the man had said, then he should be able to find such a way.

But when Mason did finally find a door, and turned the knob, and it opened, he could not enter it. He tried, but it was as though he were dreaming, and stuck in one place. The door was there, and it was open, and Mason could move, but despite all these, passage was still denied to him.

But if he’d found one door…

He headed toward the opposite end of where he was, for he felt there should be symmetry.

He was right, and there was a door, somehow misting into awareness as he got near it, like eyes adjusting to dark. He grasped the knob, applied force.

Nothing happened. The handle didn’t turn and the door remained shut. He tried harder, leaning into the twist.

Then he kicked it in frustration.

It thudded against its frame, silently.

Then something slammed into it from the other side, and he fell back. Again, a pounding, and this time he felt it shake.

Defeated, frightened, he ran at the other door, began kicking at it and beating on it.

Eventually, he collapsed to the ground and leaned against the wall.

A thousand things banged on the doors around him.

Then the door he could not pass exploded and in that gaping darkness he saw a face he would never forget, large and impossible and terrifying. It began pushing its way through, distorting, what passed for flesh twisting and catching as it shoved its way in, as the doorway itself bent to allow, for even it couldn’t resist, and Mason knew it was over for him, that he had no chance, and he gave up, let go of hope. And fell.