Mathias grinned. "Because—"
"Because he has seen it," Hugo said. There was something she didn't like about his voice, something otherworldly.
"Seen what?" Ira asked.
"The fruit of hidden knowledge," Hugo said.
They didn't say another word for the rest of the journey. Hugo led them up a stone staircase leading up to the pyramid.
Mathias seemed eager to get inside. She could see the madness that festered beneath his crazed eyes and grinning mouth, like so many maggots crawling beneath the surface, consuming what little grip on sanity the husk of the man—the monster—had. She would have to remain on guard around him. There was no telling what he might try to do.
It was after me! she remembered him say. The Harvester was after me!
They reached the top of the winding stone staircase and gazed upon the awe-inspiring face of the pyramid they'd seen from untold miles away. There were two rows of pillars leading all the way to its front face. The pyramid was black. The material seemed to drink in the dim light from this world's host stars in totality.
"Our answers await inside," Hugo said, marching forward.
Ira waited until he was out of earshot before she said, "Hugo is seriously freaking me out."
"He's been changed by his experience with..." Mathias paused.
"With what?"
"Eddy."
Mathias followed after Hugo. Ira stayed behind briefly, squeezing the life out of her flashlight.
The path leading up to the pyramid was almost as long as the canyon had been. How long had they been in this place? She was almost certain that she'd seen the suns change position more than once.
If they really had been here for whatever passed for days, how was Lena fairing back in... It struck her that this wasn't her world. That, indeed, all of this was happening. It was not just some elaborate fever dream of madness brought on by the dark as she had thought when arriving here. That thought alone caused a part of her mind to break, something she would never recover from.
No matter how long they marched, the pyramid only seemed to climb higher into the sky, swallowing it with its immense darkness.
"Behold the entrance." Hugo's possessed voice shocked her to attention.
The pyramid was so massive that it touched both horizons. An oppressive triangular doorway loomed before Hugo, its frame carved with ornate serpentlike things with too many eyes. A hieroglyphic symbol stood above the doorway.
Hugo walked forward and placed his hand on the doorway. Three shadows danced up the wall and retracted into Hugo's hand.
Then, as if the entire planet were shaking, the door faded into darkness.
Hugo gestured forward. "The way is open."
Mathias and Hugo disappeared into the doorway. Ira hesitated a moment, looking behind her, before she followed them.
It struck her that the hallways, rooms, and corridors were all laid out in a very familiar fashion. The corridors were curved, just like the facility they had been living in. The rooms had observation areas and strange experiments where what looked like the dried-up carapaces of massive insects stood decomposing in the stale, dead air. It was like a maze, but familiar. If Hugo hadn’t been guiding them, she might have been able to find her own way. The only difference between this place and the facility—besides scale—was the ornate imagery etched on the curvature of the walls.
The imagery seemed to come alive as Hugo led them deeper and deeper into the pyramid, taking on an almost organic texture. Perhaps the facility they'd been living in was also a pyramid? But what would be the point of hiding something like that?
She felt she knew the answer to that question.
"The walls," Mathias said. "I've seen several of these pyramids in other lands...yet, none of them had anything like these hieroglyphs."
"They are a telling of the origin of the first oros," Hugo said. "One version of it, anyway."
"What's an oros?" Ira asked.
"The closest word in...our language might be somewhere between horizon and universe," Hugo said.
"Why between them?" Ira asked.
"What is a universe if not a horizon, a limiting circle of mortal sight?" Hugo said.
"What does it say?" Mathias asked, his voice eager. Too eager. She wished he hadn't asked.
"If you had the necessary means to activate the message it would tell you that the original universe, the one that all others are mirrored from, was created by the formation of a consciousness so powerful that its birth cry brought physical existence into being in a baptism of fire, and its anger at what it had inadvertently created fractured it into untold and unquantifiable others, like a mirror smashed in its center."
The carvings in the wall reflected only part of Hugo's telling of the story, she guessed because it was meant to be activated by some unknown mechanism. Its face was full of tentacles, mouths, angular hieroglyphs, and other unspeakable creatures which she didn't dare look at for very long. It was also segmented like a mirror, just as Hugo had said. It seemed like it would never end.
"Its true name has been long lost, and even if you could pronounce it, all mortals but those with the strongest of will would be driven insane by its mere mention. But, I suppose it could be likened to your big bang."
They rounded another corner. The mural continued.
"It is said that each universe has a mirror of that original being, one that is decidedly the lesser of it."
"How do you know all of this?" Ira asked.
Hugo smiled. "It is as Mathias said. I have awakened."
Somehow, she doubted it. When she stared into Hugo's bloodshot eyes, she saw only darkness. An abyss staring back at her.
2
Lena felt the Earth moving beneath her. It shook and waved and passed her by. It seemed somehow appropriate. They say that there's a white light, or a rush of stars, at the end. That was all bullshit, though. At the end, it was nothing but blackness.
There were sounds, though. Though, those sounds seemed to be reaching deep inside her mind, past the ringing in her ears and into her very soul.
Snarling, and thunderous beats, as if the devil himself were calling to her soul—just as her mother always warned her would happen if she didn't "learn to close her damn legs." If she was headed to hell, she could already feel the flames roasting her skin.
Then, she opened her eyes to the blackness and saw there were no flames. She was, however, sure that she wasn't on the ground. It took her a few moments to figure out that she wasn't dead, and that she was being carried.
She looked up. The snarling was coming directly from something above her. There was a faint light, silhouetting a massive bulbous form. She couldn't feel her arms, or if her back was lying against anything. Then, she realized that the flames she thought were baking her skin were actually an intense fever.
What happened? She couldn't remember being sick before. She couldn't see very far, but the faint aroma of recycled air told her that she was inside the facility...again.
She remembered a nightmare, where she had been separated from her body. She had watched herself wander through the dark until she found the entrance to the facility. She’d appeared to be following something, but what that was, she couldn't be certain.
Why would her body wander off on its own?
Her body had stepped out into the tunnel. She’d screamed at herself to not go out into the cold unprotected. But her body wouldn't listen. It walked through the icy tunnel barefoot, paying no attention to the pain she felt. The circle of light that marked the end of the tunnel was her death. When she emerged from the tunnel, there were hulking monstrosities with shadows for skin, calling to the sky with hands that wriggled like worms.
Their arms were reaching to the sun.
No.
They were reaching for the black comet that was heading toward the sun.
Then, she’d dreamed something even more impossible. The sun actually went out, turned off, like a lightbulb burning out, or a candle gettin
g snuffed out.
What if it wasn't a dream?
She chuckled.
What a funny thought. Her chuckling turned into a laughter so painful, it felt as if her throat might be torn to shreds.
The growling presence from above silenced her. She felt something beneath her; it had the consistency of mucus. Her body slid in the dark, landing hard on concrete.
She looked up, staring into glowing crimson eyes. The light that cascaded from those eyes revealed a familiar face.
Lena tried to scream, but her voice was barely a whisper.
No one would hear her cries for help.
No one was coming for her.
3
The corridors inside the pyramid looked cracked, worn. As if there'd been a massive earthquake in this place eons ago. The ceiling was so tall, Ira couldn't imagine that anything human had walked these halls.
"Where are you leading us?" Ira asked Hugo.
"You shall see soon enough," Hugo said.
"I-I have a confession to make," Mathias said, stopping in his tracks and falling behind.
Ira hesitated to turn around and face him. The shadows lurked behind them, dancing around their flashlights, and she feared what she might see if she dared to look past him. "What is it?"
"I'm afraid I've done something," Mathias said, his voice shaking. "Something unforgivable..."
"And that's news?" Ira asked.
"He has summoned something to your world," Hugo said.
"What do you mean, your world?" Ira said, but knew that she didn't want to know the answer to that question.
"He's right," Mathias said. "There is something coming...if it's not already here."
"What?"
"My panicked cries for help were the beacon, my memories the map." Mathias ran his shaking hands through his white hair. "I was such a fool. Yes. That's what I was. The others shut me out...I had to find the password to the final experiment." He repeated final experiment for a while as he leaned against the stone wall, pulling out white, wiry hairs from his scalp and staring at each strand as if it were the last. "So I sought out something that would be similar to my own essence—yes—and I found one. But it was a being that was capable of consuming entire stars, and it had no love for sentient life. It must have followed me."
"Eats stars?" Ira shook her head. "That's crazy!"
"All of this is crazy, Ira," Mathias said, opening his hands, letting the hairs he'd pulled from his scalp fall to the alien floor. "How much further is it a stretch for that to be real?"
"He has been carrying a dangerous grimoire," Hugo said, pointing to a lump in Mathias's lab coat.
"Weber's book?—" Ira shot forward, fighting with Mathias for the thing that rested inside his coat—"You've been carrying it this whole time!"
She didn't know why she was so apprehensive toward the idea, she just knew somewhere, perhaps unconsciously, that they needed to get rid of it. Despite how scrawny Mathias was, his grip was fierce, his strength nearly unbreakable.
"No! We need it, it's the only way we'll survive!" Rotten spittle sprayed from his mouth.
"Don't listen to him," Hugo said, chuckling. "He means to sacrifice me to the Harvester."
Then, two books fell from Mathias's coat pocket, smacking against the floor. The echoes reverberated down the dead corridor. Mathias let go almost instantly, dropping to cradle the books.
Ira almost felt sorry for him. "Is that true?"
"What the hell do you care?" Mathias shot up, holding the grimoire and a notebook as a mother might hold their child close to their chest. "He murdered your brother, or have you forgotten that? So what if I want to exchange places with him?"
"I—"
"You all hide from the chaos, covering your eyes from it, as if that will save you," Mathias said. "I'm the only one who dared to stare into the abyss, despite the toll."
"None of this would be happening if it wasn't for you!" Ira shouted, getting in Mathias's face.
Mathias tapped the tattered journal. "Come now, you can't possibly believe that. Those creatures that accompanied Eddy in destroying the core? Weber created them, just as I did. I found a journal entry. He failed, time after time, to sacrifice a substitute subject to the Harvester. Their bodies morphed into hideous, monstrous things, and they became catatonic. He locked them up down there, just in case they woke up.
"Eventually, it would have come down to this. I at least gave you a fighting chance at survival!"
Ira grabbed him by his collar. "Survival? Is that what you call this? All your machinations!"
"We must go," Hugo said. "Now that his plans are exposed, he is powerless to execute them."
"What?" Ira turned back to Hugo...something was off. She felt as though she couldn't really focus on his body. As if his movements were somehow imperceptible to her eyes. "But what about the grimoire?"
"The beast is already after us," Hugo said, turning and heading—gliding—down the corridor. "It matters not whether we have the book or not. Once its master hungers for prey, there is no stopping it."
Mathias clutched both books closely as he followed after Hugo.
Ira wanted desperately to shout at them to turn back. But being left there—like an island of light in a sea of darkness—would be too much, and she hurried to catch up with them.
The corridor funneled out into a large chamber. Ancient dust particles, perhaps older than the Earth itself, fell from the ceiling high above in the dark. Hugo seemed to vanish into that all-consuming dark.
"Now, we can really begin." Hugo's voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
"No," Mathias shook his head, backing away. "No-no-no! Why didn't I see it earlier?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Ira shook her head, looking for Hugo in the dark. Her flashlight seemed not to reflect off of anything, as if the shadows themselves were feeding on the light.
What's the matter, Masku? The voice that she heard no longer belonged to Hugo, but something else, something whose voice seemed to shake the very fiber of her being, the outline of her existence. Had it been inside her head this entire time? Had she only imagined it speaking audibly? You failed to find a suitable substitute and complete the bargain, now you must pay the price.
When Ira turned her head, it was as if a veil was lifted from her eyes. She saw at the center of the room a hoodedfigure, cloaked in rotting flesh and cobwebs, its face—a mask eons old, eyes of blackened pits and a carved mouth, grinning deep with malicious intent. Its arms were raised to the ceiling, high above in the unknowable depths of that darkness. But they were not arms at all, but great, segmented appendages which had the consistency of a serpent's skin, ending in three massive grabbing fingers.
The darkness washed away. A hellish green glow seemed to emanate from the creature.
Ira found that she was screaming, backing into Mathias.
"No!" Mathias screamed in her ear, his hands clutching at her shoulder with a deathgrip, forcing her forward. "Take her instead! Take her!"
"What the hell are you doing?" Ira shouted.
"I don't want to be swallowed by the abyss!" Mathias said, his eyes crazed, bloodshot.
The thing in the center of the room was reaching for them. Its appendages seemed to have no limit to their reach. You will find peace in nonexistence, Masku.
"We have to run!" Ira didn't know why she grabbed his hand, why she decided to save him. She yanked his hands off of her and bolted for the entrance, dragging him along with her into the corridor. The green glow gave chase through the corridor, spreading like a virus.
"Why?" Mathias asked. "I was ready to give you to him, why would you save me?"
"Shut the fuck up and run!"
You cannot run from me, Masku. I will always find you, no matter where you turn, no matter where you hide. You are but playthings, and the abyss will have you tonight.
She should have just left him behind. But, no, she felt that she might need him—and all the mad knowledge he possessed.
<
br /> Sharp pains erupted through her chest, cascading through her lungs and lining her throat like needles. She couldn't stop. Not if she wanted to outrun that thing.
There seemed to be no end to the corridors. Where once they had been familiar, now they seemed to be arranged like a maze. Ira didn't think that it had been like this the first time through.
A sickening, inhuman laughter filled the stale air around them.
"He won't let me go," Mathias said, chuckling lightly.
"How is this possible?" Ira shook her head, stopping to catch her breath.
"Are you still so foolishly attached to your notions of what is and isn't possible with all of this as evidence?"
"I keep thinking it's just some kind of nightmare...that I'll wake up in the cell you put us in."
"No such luck." Mathias's back hit the wall, and he slid into a crouch. "Just leave me...I'm doomed anyway."
Ira glanced behind her. The green glow was snaking its way toward them, forming into jagged, serpentine shapes. "As much as I'd like to, I think I may need you before all of this is over."
He shook his head. "I've failed...I've failed at everything...made a mess...made a mess of the whole affair."
Ira walked over and slapped him. "Snap the hell out of it! You deserve worse than death for the shit you've pulled, God knows, but you can still try to make up for what you've done by helping Lena and I get out of this mess!"
Mathias sat there, staring at her with his yellowing, bloodshot eyes, and nodded. "Yes...yes, you're right."
Ira grabbed him by the wrists and yanked him to his feet. "How do we get out of here?"
"The book..." His eyes sparkled with madness. "It names this place as the Astral Lands. We must leave it through a door in our minds."
"What the hell does that mean?"
The green light was almost upon them. Ira started moving down the hall, pulling Mathias along with her.
"How did we get here?" Mathias said. "That thing was pretending to be Hugo, it opened a doorway. The book says that we must think on the place we wish to reach."
"That's it?" Somehow she doubted it.
"The darkness...even now the Amarath is using the dark as a means of getting to our world...perhaps, if it followed us here, we can use the dark to return to our world?"
Mind's Horizon Page 28
