I need help, she thinks.
They seem eager to communicate, but they are apprehensive to her presence.
She sees a vision of Mathias floating before them, and knows instantly that Mathias's cruelty and negative energy made them wary of dealing with humans.
The largest presence of the three entities comes to her.
She felt images flash before her: Tentacles wrap about the sun, jagged black teeth scraping across its surface. Then, another star, one that was blue and bright and enormous. The black comet sets upon it, blocking out their constellations.
Plantlike creatures stretch their bulbous heads up to the sky as it goes dark. There is no panic. Only a knowing fear of what is to come, because it was foretold.
"No," she says, trying to communicate with them using her language. "I know the risk is great to you, that you fear drawing its attention, but we're dead without your help!"
She feels the images flash before her again: Mathias in the event horizon, twisting and turning and screaming. The Harvester grinning, pleased with its work for its master. And all at once, it's not Mathias who's stretched to his limit, frozen in time as he enters the event horizon, it's her.
"Please! Please help us! I'm not like him! I have to save what's left of my family!"
The entity seems unconvinced at first, but, after a time, reaches out. Touching her essence...and then she sees it.
The core of the facility. Weber and his remaining team each take a different position by a vertical sensory deprivation tank. His body looks like a husk; his wiry gray hair reaches down his back. Weber approaches the terminal and enters a password into the screen—he stands before one of the tanks and disrobes, while a girl in coveralls yells at him. Weber ignores the girl, climbing into the tank and shutting the lid while she threatens to destroy the consoles with a fire extinguisher.
The girl's holding the grimoire in her free hand as she approaches the console, ready to swing.
Then the Amarath emerges from the darkness. It snatches the girl up in its jaws and jumps through a portal in the dark to that other place.
She doesn't want to see where it goes.
She knows where it goes.
The lid to Weber's tank latches itself shut with a loud CLICK.
The whole core begins to glow and pulse. White light obscures her vision. The light fades, and the tanks pop open one after another—empty. They retreat to their hiding places, sealed by circular metallic disks. The systems shut down. The core pulses in the dark.
What was the password he entered? She tries to think back to the motions his fingers made, the letters on the screen, their orientation. She replays the sequence in her head a thousand times.
D3ath IS a Myth.
That's a stupid password, Ira thinks, chastising herself for not figuring it out.
She tries to mouth the words, memorizing them.
Then, she sees other things. Perhaps a gift from the Harvester's touch? She sees sweeping, alien vistas, floating mountains, twisting tentacles, rotting pyramids composed of flesh, glass prisons filled with terrible things, evil eyes, black and yellow teeth.
Madness.
She knows, no matter where she goes, that madness will follow her. It will haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. She will never be the same again.
Then, she sees Eddy's twisted, monstrous form, along with others like him, around the pulsing core, as they drain it of its power.
The core darkens.
Then, she sees herself, directing Eddy toward the darkened core.
What was done, can be undone.
The knowledge hurts her brain; she knows what to do.
Then, the visions seem to fade back to the familiar darkness of the core chamber.
Something slimy caresses her cheek.
She glances up into Eddy's remaining eye.
Her sense of self came back slowly, almost eroding the madness of the visions.
"I need you, my love," Ira said. "I need you to do something for me."
The thing that had once been Eddy groaned, and somewhere deep inside her she thought he understood. His massive, hulking body twisted around, facing the dead reactor.
"Wait," Ira said.
The monster stopped, turning back to her.
She felt for his oozing hand in the dark. Grasped it and drew him close to her. As his towering form bent toward her, she reached her free hand out and found his mangled face, caressing his cheek. Before she could stop herself, she kissed his cracked and decaying lips.
"I should have done that long ago," Ira said.
The creature made no sound as it turned for the reactor once more, as if it had already seen what she'd seen. Her hand fell to her side, dripping with blackened slime.
Its hulking mass stood next to the core, and it reached its snaking fingers deep inside it. The edges of the thing's lopsided, tumorous silhouette started to glow with the light of an eclipsed sun. And then it faded, and the creature that had once been Eddy collapsed on its knees as the reactor roared to life.
The lights in the chamber plinked on, and she saw him as he was now.
Eddy's blackened skin seemed to drink the light, his body slowly being engulfed by stretches of shadow, like the gateways the seven-eyed beast had used to traverse their world.
His remaining eye was closing, tired.
"Thank you," Ira said.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the console she’d seen in her vision, the one Weber had used to start the final experiment.
With the password held tight in her mind, she approached it.
"Yog'Elios has killed the sun," she said, breaking the silence. "We don't have much time."
When she looked up from the console, the metal walls were not metal any longer, but a leathery skin that still pulsed with her increasing heartbeat.
She saw mouths open in the skin, mouths filled with thousands of teeth, whose throats retreated into the abyss.
But when she blinked, she thought she saw the skin rot away, worms crawling out of those mouths until they were no more.
She entered the password and almost recoiled in abject terror when the room dimmed with crimson light, casting shadows, portals to that other place, in every direction.
"Hugo, get Lena," Ira said.
He leaned his head to the right, playing with his ear. "Got it."
"We need to strip down and climb into the tanks before the beast comes for us," Ira said. "Hurry!"
The tanks rose from their resting place, gleaming like beautiful glass prisms, catching the crimson light. Wiry metal staircases shot out from each tank as Ira and the others tossed their clothes to the floor.
She watched Hugo make his way toward Lena, who was still lying on the floor, her breathing shallow.
Her eyes found the spot on the far wall where the Harvester had dragged Mathias into that other place. Though he wasn't here anymore, Mathias had won. His machinations and madness might even be the reason they had a fighting chance at survival now. Thinking about that too much would drive her crazy.
Her eyes drifted back to Hugo, who had Lena slung over his shoulder. He was going to be allowed to survive too, while her brother's corpse was freezing beneath the snowy grave she and Lena had dug for him. She felt a great, murderous urge to grab him by his hair and yank him down to the smooth white floor and bash his temples in.
To leave him for that thing to drag him to hell with it.
But, the thing that had been Eddy stopped her. Its mass pulsed in the crimson light; his face had nearly been absorbed by its flesh. The creature loomed before her, its fingers twitching, writhing.
"Eddy?" Ira said.
It made slow gurgling sounds, coming from the human mouth in what might be its neck. Whatever it was trying to say, she wasn't sure.
Tears filled her eyes, catching in her throat. "I never got to tell you. I was such a goddamn coward, afraid of what would happen to you or Nico if I did, and now look at us all." She shook her head, w
iping the tears away. "I love you, Eddy."
The monster raised its massive hand, caressing her face with snakes.
Ira left him behind. It was probably the hardest thing she had ever done, next to burying her brother or leaving her mother and father to rot in their tomb of a house all those years ago.
But the Eddy she had known was gone. Mathias had made sure of that.
Ira started toward the staircase. There was a part of her that wanted to stay with Eddy, monster or not. She reached the bottom of the staircase, touching her hand to the cold metal railing.
That's when she saw Hugo staring at the darkness. She turned around and saw it too.
Seven eyes pulsed, and she could see it pacing around the core chamber, stalking its prey.
She was its prey.
The still-bleeding wounds in her back pulsed as it circled her. It was going to get her, drag her off to that hellish place in the Astral Lands.
Why couldn't she move?
It stopped, opening its mouth, hissing with otherworldly hunger. It reared back, all twenty feet of it seeming to pulse at once, its spines shaking with murderous intent. Like a cat ready to pounce.
The shadow beast snapped at her, its thousands of razor-sharp, blackened teeth open, ready to clamp down and drag her to hell.
Ira closed her eyes, and for the first time in her adult life, she prayed for a miracle.
Then, a moment later, there was no pain. There was only a deep, rhythmic growling. She opened her eyes. She stared directly into one of that beast's seven gray eyes. It snapped its jaws at her, but couldn't quite reach.
That's when she noticed the hulking black mass over the beast. Eddy had grabbed it by its tail, pinning it down with all his strength.
Eddy's good eye found her in the crimson light. His human lips mouthed something. Even with no sound to escape his lips, she knew what it meant.
The beast and the thing that was now Eddy struggled, wrestling in the pulsing crimson light.
With her heart pounding in her throat, she rushed up the wiry staircase to her deprivation tank.
She fumbled with the cold metal latch to the hatch, opening it. She snatched up the breathing mask, put it on, and glanced over to Hugo and Lena.
Hugo had helped her into her own tank. Lena glanced at her weakly.
Ira nodded to her.
Hugo stumbled down the staircase, rolling on the linoleum floor. He screamed when the Amarath's head hit the paneling, just inches from his feet. Eddy had body-slammed it.
"Get up, damn it!" Ira shouted, pulling the mask just far enough from her face to get the words out.
Hugo rolled to his feet and sprinted, screaming, hyperventilating, up his own staircase.
Ira clawed at the lid to her tank, looked over and saw that Eddy was losing his grip on the beast. Those terrible gray pulsing eyes were zeroing in on Hugo now.
Hugo's expression softened, like he was in a trance, just as she had been before.
"Hugo, get in the fucking tank!" Ira screamed. There was no telling if Eddy's grip would hold long enough for him to climb inside his tank. Maybe the beast was just too strong?
Ira closed the hatch to her tank.
A strange taste filled her mouth, and moments later, perhaps an eternity later, she saw the abyss that surrounded her shatter into a swirling crimson vortex.
It was strange, as if she were peering through some other window. Perhaps another effect of the knowledge gifted to her from the Harvester?
She could see Lena’s naked body and her own, glowing together there in their tanks. The symbol of the bridge through the abyss pulsed with its nine points of light, and they were two of the points of light in that circle.
She saw Eddy wrestling with that terrible thing. Smashing it with his free hand. The beast thrashed out, biting down into Eddy's arm and tossing him like a gigantic ragdoll into the floor, shattering the paneling and causing sparks to dance from the circuitry beneath the floor.
It stared at Hugo for a moment.
Hugo was mesmerized. All her shouting hadn't done a damn thing for him.
Eddy was struggling to stand up. His body seemed to be falling apart, dripping into clumps, like mounds of mud and tar.
Then, to Ira's horror, she watched the beast maul him with its teeth and its claws, splashing black filth everywhere.
The creature reared its long black head, showing its teeth—and in that moment she thought its hide was all scales, with patches of blackened spiny fur that spiked and stabbed at the sky. Its seven gray eyes pulsed in the dark and it clamped its powerful jaws down on what remained of Eddy's face.
She screamed into her breathing mask, thrashing at the walls of the tank.
Eddy's monstrous body stopped moving.
The creature rose, locking its eyes on Hugo.
Hugo drifted down the metal staircase, a dead look in his eyes.
You idiot! Turn back! Don't do it!
The beast charged at him.
He screamed, as if he’d regained his sense at the last moment.
But it was too late.
It clamped down on his skinny body and dragged him into the darkness, through a window in time and space.
Ira saw through that window now, saw the terrible skin that passed for land, the way it crawled and seemed to sweat as if it were salivating for the meal that the Amarath had brought into its realm. The sky in that terrible place was the color of a graying, dead lung.
She looked away. Looked to the creature who had been Eddy. His face was gone now, even the one good eye that had so recently regarded her. The creature twitched, writhing, rising from its spot on the cracked floor.
Are you still in there? she thought.
The creature struggled to its massive feet, pulling itself back together.
Eddy's face was nearly gone. An oozing, thick tar-like substance, was threatening to consume what was left of it.
The creature's roars made the tanks shake and reverberate. With its crimson, inhuman eyes, its attention drifted to the pulsing reactor.
Ira glanced at Lena.
We have to go, she thought.
The creature's hulking mass lumbered toward the reactor. If it absorbed the radiation from the reactor, they'd be stuck here.
She tried to think of a bridge to another world. The way that Weber and his team had. She rolled the words given to her by the Harvester around in her mind.
Aml'cath na ule'th ada hote' tekke.
Ira felt those words echo in the crimson vortex and felt her mind open up. She saw her core. The little girl inside that still yearned for her parents’ recognition. She sat a while with that little girl as she built things with her Legos.
The girl looked up at her and smiled. "Time to let go, Ira."
Ira nodded. The girl shattered, and she was at the center of her own being. Chanting the words.
She saw a bridge open up in the vortex. A blackened abyss stretched out before them, and her heart shuddered when she saw the thing at the center of dying stars and broken worlds, the pulsing protoplasmic eye with its stretching tentacles in the dark. Tentacles that snaked their way into every universe, creating black holes in the dark of space and swallowing everything around them, even the light.
The eye of the abyss pulsed green in that infinite dark, and its gaze seemed to focus on them. Its pupils weren't pupils at all, but geometric shapes with uncountable angles, uncountable vertices.
She broke her attention away from the eye and reached out to the creature that had been Eddy. The fear of losing him to this world, or to that terrible abyss, suddenly stabbed out into her mind.
Her hand opened up. But the creature had lost itself in its own instincts, and was stretching its shadowy fingers through the reactor's walls.
The little girl had been right. She had to let go. She had to let go of him.
She closed her hand and lowered it to her side.
Ira said goodbye to the thing that had once been her love for the last time.
She got the feeling that it wanted to trap them there. To close the door in their faces so they would be forced to live there in the abyss for all eternity while it fed off of their memories and their madness.
She stretched and struggled, reaching for Lena's hand. But she was alone in the dark, drifting toward a single point of light. The end of the bridge, a vortex of crimson energy that had no true form in that darkness, like an eldritch bullet train, running straight to hell.
"No," she whispered. "Not without her, not without the baby!"
The eye of the abyss came to fill all that she could see beyond the bridge, ready to consume her essence, as it had likely done to Mathias eons ago.
Time is meaningless here, she thought, as it descended upon her, opening its imperceptible jaws.
Then, even as she was distracted by its immensity, white light came to fill her, and she felt such pain...as if she were being born...
She cried out for Eddy...
For Nico...
EPILOGUE
The white light hurt her eyes. She felt the stillness of the air, and it all came flooding back into her. The terrible, maddening dream that had possessed her.
She sat up in the bed and felt her face with her aching hands.
Had it all been a nightmare? She wondered if she'd just woken up in the facility again, that if she walked outside she'd find only stone tunnels and lonely metal-walled rooms where impossible things stalked in the dark.
There were machines beeping and an IV steadily dripping fluid into her veins.
Maybe she was in the med bay? Maybe she'd had an accident?
But, when her eyesight cleared, she saw that she wasn't in the facility's med bay at all. The walls of this place were...ordinary. There was a sterile smell, something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but recognized as the telltale smell that accompanies a visit to a hospital.
She was in some kind of recovery room.
She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but when she did she only saw seven gray pulsing eyes in the dark, and that was enough to cause her to scream and open her eyes for fear that the thing might find its way to her again.
Mind's Horizon Page 31
