The Aberration (7 page)

Guy rummaged through his duffel bag.  “True.  But that’s beside the point.  We have to go upstairs.  Probably to the roof.”

Drake’s eyes practically popped.  “The
roof
?  We’ll be trapped up there!  Why do you want to go all the way to the
roof
?”

Guy looked upward.  “The point of convergence between dimensions is always stationed at the highest point.  A beacon. It’s what’s blocking the cell phone signals.  It’s what’s attracting this storm.” 

He looked at each of them in turn  “I won’t lie to you.  It will get worse from here.  We never faced any direct, coordinated attacks.  Just random attempts to enter our world.”

“What does that mean?” Michael asked.

“That their leader, their master may be behind this.  The Other One, we call it.  If so, then this is a desperate act for them.  We have weakened them as they have weakened us.  It may all come to this moment.  Right here, right now.”

He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and hefted the shotgun.  “And that might be a good thing.”

Drake shook his head.  “I don’t see how anything about this can be considered
good
.”

“You have to look at the big picture.  If the Other One is behind this attack, then it puts itself at risk.  Up until now, we’ve never encountered it directly.  That indicates that it has a sense of self-preservation.  That means it can be hurt.  If it can be hurt, then …”

He smiled.  “That means I can kill it.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed.  “I thought you couldn’t remember much of anything.”

Guy nodded again.  “It’s getting clearer now.  That’s how it works.”

“
What
works?”

“My memory.  After an Aberration closes, the memories fade.  Perhaps to keep us from going mad from the experience.  I have to assimilate into the world again, tormented by dreams, fixated on things I know but can’t explain.  Waiting for another Aberration, whereupon my memory returns in stages.”

Drake frowned.  “Sounds like a hell of a way to live.”

Guy shrugged.  “It is what it is.  I didn’t ask for this.  I was chosen.”

He walked past the rat corpse to the opposite door.  “We can’t afford to linger.  Let’s go.”

Fran held up a hand.  “Wait.”

Guy turned slightly.

“Look… how do we know that you’re right?  Nothing has shown up yet.  Maybe they’re gone.  Maybe it’s over and all we have to do is hold out until morning, like you said.”

“I wish that were true.  But what’s true is that soon this place will be swarmed with Others.”  He placed his hand on the door handle.  “I don’t want to see any of you die, but I have more to think about than just a few individuals.  I have to think about everyone else.  If the Aberration isn’t stopped, it will spread.  The wider it grows, the more powerful it becomes.  It may not be able to be stopped then.”

He opened the door.  The roar of the mill entered the room, almost bizarre in its refusal to be distracted by the macabre events that took place.

Guy looked back to them.  “You all have to do what you think is best.  And so do I.”  He walked out the door into the darkness of the roll floor.  The door closed behind him.

15

Saturnine Ascension

It really wasn’t much of a choice.  Fran, Michael and Drake practically ran out the door.

The rolling mills hummed unconcernedly as they caught up to Guy. Fran thought of wildebeests on the Nature channel; how they would cross the river en masse so that the crocodiles couldn’t pick them off one by one.  Not all would make it, but at least it improved the chances…

Guy walked to the freight elevator and pressed the button.  Nothing happened.  He didn’t seem surprised.

“Elevator is out.  We’ll have to take the stairs.”

Michael’s brow creased as he looked around.  “Out… or cut off on purpose.”

Guy shrugged.  “Either way, we have no choice.  It’s the stairs or nothing.”  He opened the stairwell door. 

They paused; frightened children looking for monsters in the closet.  Something about the shadows transformed the staircase into something sinister; a twisted backbone of steel and concrete that they would have to ascend to escape.  Or at least find the beacon that Guy was sure was up there.  If they made it that far…

She shivered. 
Things are bad enough without letting your imagination run off with you.
  She clutched Michael’s arm tightly.  He was too absorbed in trying to spy into the gloom of the stairwell to notice. 

“I don’t see anything,” he said.  They had removed the small flashlights from their belt holsters.  The thin beams seemed pitiful against the darkness.  Maybe it was just her imagination, but the light seemed to waver as though it was afraid too.

The door slammed shut as they stepped inside, cutting off the red glare of the emergency lights on the floor.  The flashlights were all they had until they reached the roof.

Someone whimpered; she wasn’t sure if it was her or Drake.

“Let’s go,” Guy said.

The climb was slow and hesitant.  After the past few hours, they were ever cautious of the next bend, the next step into the nightmare that held them captive.  The silence was as thick as the shadows.  The only sound was their harsh breathing.  The gloom closed in on them so oppressively that Fran felt as if she had to say
something
.

“Guy… how long have you been doing this?”  She winced immediately as her voice echoed loudly. 

Guy turns his head slightly.
  “
Longer than you’d believe.”

So it was going to be those cryptic kinds of answers.  She pressed on, more to concentrate on something other than her fear than anything else. “You said earlier that you were chosen.  Who… chose you?”

He paused in mid-step.

“I… can’t answer that.”

Michael’s eyebrows lifted.  “You don’t remember?”

Guy frowned as though trying to concentrate.  “I…”  He shook his head.  “I should be able to, but it’s been so long, the lives all jumbled… Maybe I’m not supposed to remember.”

Drake frowned.  “Not supposed to?  Why the hell not?”

Something indecipherable smoldered in Guy’s eyes.  “So that I wouldn’t know who to hate for giving me this burden.” 

His words smothered all further comments on that subject. 

They continue upward.  Sweat slicked Michaels face.  His voice was a hoarse rasp.  “I still don’t know what an Aberration is.  It’s like there’s something, some… force that’s causing our fears to come alive.”

Guy halfway turned, his face shadowed.  “That’s actually pretty close to the truth.”

Fran looked up at him.  “How is that possible?  You said it was nothing like our world.”

“Nothing in the sense of humanity.  Traits like compassion, justice, or moral compass.  No other side.”

“Other side?”

“Everything we know has an opposite.  Good and bad.  Night and day.  Yin and yang.” 

Michael nodded.  “Universal balance.  Right.”

Guy shrugged.  “I suppose.  But what if somewhere there’s a reflection of us without the balance?  Without the side of us that’s good, or at least decent?”  Guy turned back around and stared into the gloom.

‘Every dark thought, every secret perversion, every selfish lust, every murderous intention… what would they be like it they were left to simmer and boil until they became incarnate?  Until they came alive to devour us?”

They all fell silent, staring at each other. 

“We like to pretend as though we’re different from the criminals, the insane mothers who drown their children, the serial killer that dances in the skin of his victims.  We go about with our noses high as if the same darkness doesn’t exist in us.  As if there isn’t a fine line between rage and murder, between sanity and madness.  But when we ignore what lies in the Abyss, what lurks inside of us doesn’t just die because it’s ignored.  It lives.  It breathes.  It feeds.”

Once again silence surrounded them.  This time Fran was grateful for it.

They reached the third floor without incident, then the fourth.  Then the fifth floor.  When they began to the sixth, Drake halted so suddenly that she ran into his back. 

She rubbed her nose.  “What’s wrong?”

His eyes quivered like frightened animals trying to escape his skull.  “I… I can’t go up there.”

Guy paused and turned his head a fraction.  “We can’t stop now, Drake.  We stop… we die.”   

“Come on, Drake,” Michael said.  “How bad can it be?”

They found out as they rounded the corner.  At first glance she thought someone had emptied cans of chunky tomato sauce on the floor and walls. 

If only.

In the corner were the remains; the ribcage that was exposed in the flashlight beams, the organs and intestines spilled out across the floor.  The stench dug into her nostrils, filling them with the smell of clotted blood and rotted meat.

It was Greg’s remains.  His head was barely attached to his neck, his eyes bulging as though still in shock.

Drake vomited behind her.  She had to swallow hard not to follow suit.  It was one thing to hear the expression about being torn limb from limb, another thing to actually
see
it.  It seemed impossible that so much blood could be in one body.  Even the ceiling was stained with Rorschach blots of crimson.

“We already knew about Greg,” Guy said.  His face was impassive, as though he looked at a rose garden instead of the splattered remains of someone he knew.  “No point in getting all out of sorts over it.  This is what they do.  It seems the beacon only opens once blood is spilled.”

He frowned.  “Obviously this was a little extreme even for them.  As if they’re trying to frighten anyone from going upstairs.”

“Well it worked.”  Michael’s voice was hoarse.  “What’s waiting up there that could do this to someone?”

“Doesn’t matter.  Up is the only way out.”

“How can you be so sure?” Fran asked.

Guy looked upward. “Because I’ve done this before.”

“That’s not…”

Guy lifted up a hand.  “Many times, Fran.  You have to trust me.” 

Fran knew the doubt was still painted on her face from the way Guy looked at her.

“I know it sounds crazy.  I know nothing makes sense right now.  But we’ve made it this far.  We just have to make it up a few more flights.”

Drake’s quavering voice drew their attention.  “What… what the hell is
that
?”

They followed his trembling finger.  The stairs that led to the seventh floor were interlaced with ghost-white strands of gossamer ropes.  Almost like…

“Spider web,” Guy said.  Like it was the most natural thing in the world.  They shone their beams upward.  The webbing covered the stairwell as far as they could see.

Drake whispered hoarsely.  “What kind of a spider could do
that
?”

As if in answer a thick strand swung from the darkness and latched onto his face.  Before he could scream, before they could even react, he was snatched up into the dim alcove.  His body flailed helplessly before the darkness swallowed him.

16

Filaments of Chicanery

Everything was blurry and dark, slightly unfocused.  Trees hovered threateningly over Lieutenant Guy as he led a troop of soldiers across a stream of black water.  After he crossed over he threw his fist up, halting his men.  He scanned the shadowy foliage.  The trees and branches were twisted into macabre positions that a dark imagination might interpret into deformed bodies.

Sergeant Xenia quickly joined him.  Her startlingly blue eyes took in the scene.  Her helmet shadowed a face almost cherubic, too delicate for a soldier if appearances counted.  She brushed a stray strand of shock-white hair from her face.

“Is this it?  Is it the Aberration?’

Guy stared steadily.  His arms were prickled with goosebumps.  He had long since learned the identifying signs of an approaching invasion.  “The Threshold is close.  Something is coming.”

Xenia looked back at the tensely waiting soldiers before lowering her voice.  “We might be the last two left, Guy.  I haven’t heard from anyone else since the Trinity detonation.”

Guy didn’t want to think about that.  “For me it was Bermuda.  Flight 19.  Where Antenor…”  He took a deep breath.  “It doesn’t matter, though.  Doesn’t change what we have to do.”

Xenia looked back at the soldiers behind them. “They have no idea what they’re getting into.  What do we do?”

“The only thing we can do.  Keep fighting.  Never look back.”

She pulled a medallion from inside her jacket.  An antiquated pronged key hung from the leather thong.  “Maybe I’ll finally get a chance to use this.”  She kissed it as she always did for luck.

“That ever open any of the gateways?”

“No.  But the Other that I slew had guarded it closely. I think it opens
the
gateway.  The main Threshold.”

“You mean the gateway to the Other One?  I thought that was only a legend.”

Her eyes glittered like blue crystals.  “What is any of this, Guy?  We know better than anyone that all the stories are real.”

“Only the ones without happy endings.”

Someone screamed.

They turned to see one of the soldiers as he was snatched into the trees with horrific force.  Guy whirled, pointing his rifle.  Another soldier was snatched, then another.  The air rang with their cries.

“Where is it?”  Xenia was as bewildered as he was, her rifle swiveling. 

His eyes widened when he saw the thin, near transparent webbing latch on to her pack.  He threw out a hand.

“Lose the pack!”

She frantically tried to unbuckle the straps.  As he reached for her, she was yanked upward.  His fingers grasped for anything as her scream seemed to swell all around him.  He tumbled backward, the key medallion in his hand.  Her body was swallowed in the canopy of shadowed limbs.

Sergeant Guy opened fire.

The muzzle flashes revealed something enormous skittering across the treetops.  Xenia’s body was violently yanked through the treetops, snapping branches.