The Median

by Nicholas House

Continue with recon and keep us appraised. Cleanup crew are inbound,” came the almost garbled response across the radio before another blast of static and a bleep.

  “Oh well, looks like we’re all but done here,” sounded a different voice.

  “I should bloody well hope so too, supposed to be at home with the wife and kids to…” the voice faded away as they continued down the corridor, out of earshot again.

  Michael slumped against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief before carrying on towards the morgue. As he went it became apparent that the lights were getting duller and eventually ceased to work altogether, the corridor lit only by the glows from offices and adjacent rooms. Although his better sense was screaming for him to turn back he pushed forward until he finally rounded a corner to his destination but was immediately forced back by a figure of a person stood halfway down the next hall. Michael stood for a few seconds, his back flat against the wall, hoping that he hadn’t been seen. He stood in silence for several more seconds, his heart pounding so hard against his chest that he felt it may give him away. More seconds ticked by, slow enough to be self contained eternities until a word drifted gently around the corner to Michaels blood pulsing ears.

  “Hello?” the voice seemed scared and lost but with a relief that came only with the breaking of solitude, “I know you’re there…Please come out,” the voice began to tremor with fear. “There’s something dark here…And it’s coming back to get me…To get all of us.”

  “I’m here,” stated Michael softly, without thinking. He didn’t know why but he stepped from the shadows and began walking towards the figure which still stood motionless against the brightness of the still working lights at the end of the hall.

  “Help me! Please god, help me!” the man stated in terror as Michael still approached. “He will complete himself and then return for us all!” he finished quickly.

  “Who?” the question was still asked even though the answer was known. Still, as what light there was drew across the mans face, there came no response. He was a young doctor but his face had become long and drained of all colour. His white coat was now dulled a dirty brown and had streaks of blood down it coming from 3 deep stab wounds through his chest. This had been Millaians work, the first doctor who had found him, but now he was dead and to Michael’s realisation this soon became sickeningly apparent. He composed himself and turned slowly to the door to the Morgue, taking hold of the handle firmly and, breathing a deep fear-fraught breath, opened it. Just inside laid the body of the young doctor, his coat dyed red with his own blood and his face twisted into a vision of horror.

  “Is that me?” asked the young doctor quietly, unsure what was transpiring.

  Michael faced him head on and knew what he had to do; there was no doubt, he had taken the final steps towards being a Median. “It’s time to let go,” he finally replied calmly, not afraid anymore shadowy dreams or apparitions in the night for he knew there were much worse things to be afraid of now, “once you do, you’ll be safe,” he went to place a reassuring hand on the mans shoulder but thought better of it once he remembered he wasn’t entirely real. “Trust me, there’s nothing to worry about on the other side.”

  The doctor nodded shallowly and closed his eyes as his shape rippled and began to drift away. His being scattered, taken like dust in the wind leaving a faint echoed voice on the air which came back to Michael and whispered. “Thank you,” smiling slightly he abruptly entered the morgue, carefully stepping over the body and headed for a specific door in the freezer cabinet. He stopped for a second before pulling open the small door, unsure of how he knew which one Hollie was in with such certainty. He stepped back and looked carefully at the whole wall of metal doors but still came to that same one. He could sense it was her; some residual trace of her past life left a dull imprint on his newly horizoned mind. He quickly pulled at the handle, forcing the door open and the cold, metal body-plate inside to slip quickly out. On it laid a black body bag, apparently unaffected by the low temperatures but still freezing to the touch. He grabbed a zip which lay on the top and pulled it some way down revealing the body concealed inside. It was, indeed a woman, her skin frosty and turned a faint shade of blue by the sub-zero temperatures. Michael scrambled in his coat to find the picture Richard had taken from Chris’s apartment and held it up to her face. Apart from the corpse’s distinct colour change and lack of any identifiable expression it was her. He again began to search his coat for the syringe and vial of serum with which he would attempt to resurrect her. Once found he clumsily managed to draw the liquid into the syringe and, after pausing slightly to assess the best way he should go about doing it, pinched the sterile needle into her frozen arm and began injecting the substance.

  Richard came to a halt at the crossroads of what, in the real world, would have been a busy area, even in the middle of the night. He grinned briefly at the idea that he was stood in the middle of the areas busiest intersection and wasn’t causing all out chaos or even better that he hadn’t been killed. To this effect his thoughts were quickly thrown back to the matter at hand. In a way, he hadn’t been killed because he was already dead and if he didn’t speed up his efforts he was about to stay that way. He looked about the empty street with the cold, air of absence weighing increasingly upon him. Buildings stood as a testament to mans echoed legacy that had no place here, the only reminder of its continued existence being the occasional shimmer of a car, static in place for several days, imprinting itself upon the fabric of this reality. Richard had never fully understood how this could happen, how long standing fixtures of the living world could, over time, press through to here. None the less they did, buildings, roads; even furniture providing it had been there long enough. He continued to gaze about the street; she was here somewhere but now too close to know exactly where. Ahead of him a figure appeared in the middle of the street but before it could know where it was faded away again. Just another soul passing through on its way to the other side, not able to know or even acknowledge where it was before it was sped on again across the existent plains. Richard continued to stare at the buildings, not knowing where to start but aware that he didn’t have time to systematically search them all. Closing his eyes, his thoughts drifted out into the void of emotion, he knew there was a good chance that it wouldn't work but a long time ago he had been taught that in the absence of anything, something can be very loud to a well trained ear. Having no idea what this meant until his first trip to the Median World he came to realise that Medians are natural Empaths. Empathy being the root of the ability to commune with the other side, understanding those who had come from there and was just another one of the abilities this place enhanced without question. His mind drifted around the street, probing into the story high buildings finding nothing as it went, only an increasing sense of harrowing emptiness now he had opened himself this place. The tormenting feeling grew within him, attacking his primal fears and was about to force him to stop when suddenly something hit him. An overwhelming sense of sorrow traced through his body and convulsed him into weeping. Composing himself he turned sharply to the street he had just walked down and ran towards the second building along from the intersection. He forced his way through the door, shattering its imprinted image on this world and rushed up a set of stairs, knowing exactly which apartment to head to. He stopped abruptly at a door on the third floor, breathing heavily from the run. The feeling was stronger than ever here, but even though it was one of the deepest miseries he had ever felt it was still relieving simply because it did not belong to him. He went to take the handle and remembered something Chris had once told him ‘The worst feeling is better than no feeling at all’. He nodded to himself, slowly opened the door and stepped into the apartment. From the far end of the entrance hall came the sound of sobbing, to which Richard quickly followed into the living room to find Hollie huddled in the far corner of the room, holding her knees so tight that her hands had gone white and mumbling incoherently amongst the sniffled crying. She d
id, indeed, look like her picture, only now looking as though she had been through hell and back, which to some extent, was actually true.

  Richard stepped closer to her and reached out a hand carefully. “It’s alright, Hollie, you’re not alone anymore.”

  “No!” she snapped abruptly, “you’re not real! Just another one of them!” she began to rock back and forth repeating the words ‘Not real’ over and over.

  He thought about who ‘they’ may be but decided that getting her away was the top-most priority. “I assure you I am as real as I possibly can,” he stopped for a second and considered what he had just said, “in this place at least,” he added quietly. “I’m here to help you, take you back.”

  “They say they want to help me too…They lie!” she raised her head towards Richard and tilted it slightly, wiping a tear from her face. “But, you don’t look like them…You look normal.”

  Richard stepped closer to her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re in danger here, I’m going to take you back,” his curiosity about what she continued to