He called out again, “Libby!” and was again met with complete silence.
Then, with a sudden gush of relief, he thought, I’m dreaming. I’ll wake up soon, and Libby will be right there next to me, and I’ll tell her all about it, and we’ll have a good laugh. I wonder why I’m dreaming this?
He reached up and touched his shoulder, wincing as his fingers brushed the oozing and aching scrape.
Hey! If I know I’m dreaming, this must be a lucid dream! I’ve never had a lucid dream before. May as well enjoy it, and explore a little.
He walked around the room, avoiding the worst of the fallen debris, but still yelped once as his bare foot contacted something sharp and painful. Hobbling, he went up to the bookshelf, and looked at the battered and dust-covered spines, barely readable in the gloom. The books were bound in dark leather, and were ancient, to judge by the faded writing.
Liber Ivonis. Cultes des Goules. De Vermis Mysteriis. Unaussprechlichen Kulten. Necronomicon.
All were in languages he didn’t speak, to judge by the titles, so he moved on.
He made a complete circuit of the room, and ended up standing before the doorway underneath the arch. A set of three stone steps led up to it, but beyond it was completely lightless. A cool breeze flowed from the door, carrying with it a faint aromatic scent, and he shivered.
If it was a lucid dream, maybe he could control it. He said out loud, “I want my robe!” feeling vaguely foolish as he did so.
Nothing happened.
“How ‘bout a flashlight?”
Still nothing.
“Shit. I thought lucid dreams would be more fun than this. That I’d be able to fly and teleport and do magic. And that there’d be lots of scantily-clad women. What do I get? Rocks and dust and broken crap.”
He took two steps up, peering into the darkness.
Walking stark naked into a dark hallway in a strange place seemed unwise, so he stood there, uncertain. Another shudder rippled over his bare skin. He retreated into the room and found a wooden box to sit upon.
It being a lucid dream doesn’t mean that there might not be a monster hiding in the dark. At least it seems safe in here. Also, if this isn’t a dream, and there really has been an earthquake or something, it’s better to stay put.
• • •
It was several hours later, Duncan couldn’t be certain exactly how long, that he finally gave up on that idea. He had slept uneasily for a time, his head in his hands, but thirst kept waking him up. Why couldn’t this have happened after he got his drink of water? He got up once to pee in the corner of the room, returning to his seat on the box after peering cautiously up through the hole in the ceiling. The coffee table and sofa remained visible through the gap, but the light hadn’t changed. It was still dark, with only the faint, shimmery quality of the moonlight on edges and corners.
Shouldn’t it be morning by now? Or at least near dawn? It still looked like the middle of the night. And why hadn’t Libby noticed anything? Heard the noise, or at least noticed that he was gone?
He shouted, “Libby!” up toward the hole, again, to no effect. Then he returned once more to the box.
He’d been told before that he lacked imagination, that he was solid, reliable, and stable, but not creative. Honestly, he had to admit it was true enough. Accountancy and financial consulting had been a good choice of a career. He was a steady employee, and could be self-motivated when he needed to, but his best qualification was that he took direction well. He was good with details, sharp about numbers, fast, and efficient. But other than that, he was mostly interested in what he called “guy stuff”—sports, news, friends, food, beer, and sex. So he had filled his life with those things, and considered himself lucky if he had a baseball game to watch, a full fridge, and a steady girlfriend. He wasn’t good at thinking outside the box, largely because he’d never had to.
Now he was out of the box, and he didn’t like it.
He stood up, stretched, yawned. “Well, if this is a lucid dream, it sucks.”
He walked back to the archway, which appeared to be the only exit from the place, and again took two tentative steps up. There was once more that brush of cool air against his bare skin, carrying with it a trace of some unidentifiable spicy odor. He reached out his left hand, and his fingers touched the rough stone of the wall. Extending his right hand out and upward, to avoid if possible cracking his head on any low obstacles, he plunged forward into absolute darkness.
The passageway was smooth and unobstructed. There was familiar coolness of hard-packed dry earth beneath his feet. His left hand contacted nothing but rock as the tunnel slanted gradually upwards, and his right hand touched nothing at all. The air became progressively cooler, and goose bumps stood out on his arms and chest. Finally there was an angle to the right, and the incline increased, but he became aware of a change in the light. A faint grayness, not enough to make out any objects, a shift subtle enough that at first he thought was a trick of the eye. He realized, though, that he could see his hand in front of him. Vague, but visible when he moved it. The light continued to increase, until he could see the contours of the stones that made up the wall, the smooth surface of the floor.
All at once, the tunnel opened out into a wide room. The light was still dim, and he couldn’t see the other side of it from where he stood, but it was at least better lit than where he had come from. There was a window cut into the stone wall near where he stood, but too high to peer out of, and through this a chilly breeze flowed. He shivered, once again wishing for and not getting his robe, which probably still hung from a hook on his bedroom door.
He went up to the window. All he could see out of it was a rectangle of gray, featureless sky. He hooked his fingers over the edge of the sill and tried to find toeholds so he could lift himself up and find out more about where he was. He succeeded, after one failed attempt that left him with a scraped knee, but finally ended up with his elbows propped on a broad, flat sill almost three feet deep, the lower part of his body dangling, pressed uncomfortably against the cold stones.
He was looking out over a landscape he’d never seen before.
A skittering sense of panic rushed through him, like a rock skipping on the surface of a lake, leaving little shuddery ripples behind.
Where the fuck am I? His heart pounded in his chest, sweat standing out on his skin despite the chill. This can’t be a dream. It’s too real. But it can’t be real. It’s too dreamlike…
He looked out through the window, the breath whining in his throat, elbows aching from supporting his weight on the rough-hewn rock. There were undulating hills dotted with brown, scrubby plants and rust-colored stones. The aromatic smell was stronger. It was a dry, desiccated odor, and he was reminded of a passage in one of his college history texts that described the spices the Egyptians used when they embalmed dead bodies.
Not a comforting thought.
He hung there, feet dangling, for some minutes. Nothing moved. There was not a sound, no bird song, no rustle of little animals in the leaves. It looked like an artist’s depiction of a dying world, a world where everything wise enough and mobile enough had long ago departed. A tired, ruddy light came from somewhere behind him and whatever strange building he was in.
He briefly considered climbing through the window, but it wasn’t possible from his vantage point to tell how high up it was in the wall, or if there might be a sheer drop on the other side. In any case, the vista in front of him looked singularly uninviting.
Finally, he pushed himself out and away, and landed with a soft thump on the floor inside.
His thirst was becoming unbearable, and for the first time, the thought crossed his mind that he might be trapped. He still wasn’t certain if this was a dream, but in the end, it didn’t matter much. While he was there, what he felt was the reality. If in a dream, he spent days without water and finally perished of thirst, would that mean the agony, the terror, the despair would be any less?
He padded across
the earthen floor away from the window. Whatever this room was, it was considerably larger than the one he’d fallen into. The far edges were obscured in shadow.
He stopped, suddenly, and shouted, “Is there anyone here?” Even his voice sounded thin, sapped of all of its blood and vitality. He stood still, listening, expecting no response, and getting none. A faint noise, whether caused by his call, or not related to him at all, came from the darkness. It was a dusty, dry creak, like stone on stone, quiet enough that when it ceased he half convinced himself that it had been his imagination. No human voice, nor even the rustling and squeaking of mice or other small, subterranean animals, followed.
A shudder rippled through his frame, and his eyes blurred for a moment with hot tears. His chest heaved, but he fought the sensation back and started walking again, toward the dark side of the room.
There was more fallen masonry in the middle of the room, and he added a bruised shin to his other injuries before clearing the rubble. He slowed as the light from the window diminished, but kept walking even after he had descended once more into total darkness.
Despairing thoughts echoed in his mind, loud in the oppressive silence. Buried alive in the crypt. Left here, alone and naked, to die slowly. How long will I keep walking before I give up? Or will I finally drop from exhaustion, hunger, and thirst? My body will lie here and slowly mummify, and no one will ever find my bones.
The room, whatever its function to those who had constructed it, was immense. Long after the light was gone, he kept walking, and other than small pieces of fallen stone, his tentative feet and outstretched arms encountered nothing. He walked more confidently after a time, still moving forward, although with no clear idea of why.
When he finally struck the opposite wall, it was with a glancing scrape to his left shoulder. He stopped and swore loudly, massaging it, fighting down a combination of rage and frustration that came welling up from his belly.
And then, he heard the same sound he had heard before—a grating noise, like the grinding of a stone millwheel, this time from nearer at hand.
He turned his head in the dark toward the sound, and shouted, “Hello?”
The faintest of creaks answered him.
He put out his left hand and walked along the wall toward the sound, fingertips lightly brushing the stone. He had only gone about twenty feet or so when the wall took a sharp turn to the left, and the floor sloped downhill. Straight ahead, but still too distant to illuminate anything, he saw something that set his heart pounding against his ribcage.
Firelight.
Fire meant inhabitants. And even hostile inhabitants were better than a solitary death in an abandoned catacomb. He had been in this place for how long? Perhaps ten hours? And already, he was ready to risk anything in order simply not to be alone in the dark. The light flickered and wavered, its quality somehow more alive than the dreary ruddiness of the sky outside the window.
He walked steadily downhill toward the light, which soon revealed itself as coming from another stone archway. He looked down at his own body, now just visible. The red light glimmered garnet on the bloodstains on his legs and across one side. Without any conscious will, he ran, bare feet thumping on the packed earth of the floor, only slowing as he came, squinting, into the full firelight shining through the opening.
He hesitated for a moment on the threshold, and then stepped through the arch.
The room was stone-walled, as all of them had been, but this one had a ceiling so high as to be out of sight. It had no windows. In the center of it, taking up most of the room, sat a huge statue of a Sphinx, its face angled away from him. The thing was enormous, the top of its head barely visible in the gloom. Its hind legs, smooth-carved and rippling with muscle, towered over him. The massive paws alone, resting on the ground directly in front of him, reached nearly to his waist.
Walking silently, he made his way around to the front of the Sphinx. Directly between its forepaws was a huge bronze brazier, in which a fire burned steadily. But more importantly, beneath the brazier was a stone basin with a pool of dark, still water, reflecting the light from its surface like a mirror.
His thirst surged tenfold. He said, in a thick croak, “Water. Thank god.”
Immediately there was the same grating noise he’d heard before. The Sphinx’s head moved, angling downward. Rock dust came down in a trickling stream from the sides of the neck. His thirst forgotten for the moment, he looked up into the statue’s immense face.
And then the Sphinx’s eyes opened.
The eyes were glossy, liquid, alive. The irises were green flecked with gold, the pupils an inky black, the whites as smooth and unblemished as polished alabaster. It regarded him with a gaze that was curious, intelligent. Duncan froze, body and mind, in such a balls-clenching panic that he was unable to utter a sound.
And then it spoke.
“You’re naked,” the Sphinx commented.
“I know,” he was able to gasp out, after a moment.
“I thought you might.” The Sphinx’s tone was conversational, its voice deep, resonant, like a cello. “It just seemed odd.”
He looked down at himself again, and then back up at the Sphinx’s face. “I... I wasn’t wearing any clothes when I fell through the floor of my apartment, and ended up here.” He swallowed painfully. “Can I drink from the pool?”
The Sphinx’s mouth curled upward a little in an ironic smile. There was the same creaking grate of stone on stone, and another thin tendril of dust spiraled downward. “What does that mean, can you drink? The water is right there. Have a drink if you wish to.”
“You won’t grab me, or hurt me, will you?” His cheeks burned at how cowardly it sounded.
“Of course not. Why would I do that?”
He moved forward, and knelt down, reaching out to cup his hands into the water. He saw his own reflection. His hair was disheveled, his face pale and grime-streaked, an ugly scrape across his shoulder. Above him, he saw the reflection of the Sphinx looking down at him. Its smile widened, and he caught a flash of sharp white teeth.
“Of course,” the Sphinx said, “the first thing you should learn here is that everything you see and hear is a lie.”
He looked up in alarm. The thought, What would it feel like to be bitten in half? bounced through his skull, and he braced himself for the pounce, for the teeth to pierce his torso, tearing sinew from bone. But the Sphinx didn’t move. It simply continued to watch him.
Another frozen moment, but he recovered more quickly this time. Well, fuck this. If it kills me, it kills me, but I’ll be damned if I won’t have a drink of water first. He scooped up water in his hands. Even the feel of it against his skin was delicious. He took one drink, then another, and another.
I have never known what it was like to quench thirst until now. He stood again, sated for the time being, rivulets of water leaving trails down his chest. He backed away from the Sphinx, who still regarded him with an amused expression.
“Better?” it asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. There are many hard ways to die, but thirst is certainly one of the worst. And there you have the second lesson you must learn—fear may be a necessary companion, but it is a poor guide.”
“Who are you? And where am I?”
“Those are two different questions, of course. Which would you like me to answer first?”
He ran his arm over his mouth, still wet from the pool. “Who are you?”
“Look at me. Who do you think I am?”
He leaned his head back till his neck ached. The Sphinx craned its own massive head downward, its shining eyes looking into his. There was a brief moment when his mind teetered on the edge of complete incredulity, and he wondered if he was neither dreaming, nor lost, but had simply gone insane.
No. No, that’s not possible. How...? And he said, in a small voice, “Maria?”
“Ah,” said the Sphinx.
“You look... you look like my sister...”
“Do I?”
“Just like. Exactly like.” And as he watched, the resemblance became closer. The angle of the nostrils, the sardonic lift of the eyebrow, the way the carved waves of hair fell against the shoulders. Did I not see it at first, because I was so thirsty and afraid? Or did its face change when I thought I recognized her?
“There you are, then,” the Sphinx said.
“But Maria... Maria died.” The old grief rose in his chest, a painful grip on his heart.
“Did she?”
“A car accident. When she was seventeen.”
“A pity.”
“She was my twin sister. My only sibling.”
“It must have been hard for you.” There was a hint of mockery in its voice.
“But you’re not Maria. You look like her, but you’re not her.”
“No,” the Sphinx admitted. “You’re correct about that.”
“So the fact that you look like her... that’s a lie, too.”
“That is one way of looking at it.”
“Am I dreaming?”
The Sphinx didn’t answer for a moment. It finally said, its voice thoughtful, “If I told you yes, might I not be telling the truth?”
“Of course.”
“And if I said no, might you still be asleep and dreaming?”
“I suppose.”
“Then what is the point of asking?”
He shook his head, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “What the hell is this place?”
“Yes, that was your other question. Where are you?”
He looked up, waiting, but the Sphinx didn’t say anything more. It continued to watch him, its green-gold eyes glittering in the firelight.
“Well?” he finally said.
“It is a hard question to answer,” the Sphinx said. “What is this place? I could tell you what it is called, but what would a name tell you?”
“It’s a start.”
“Yes,” the Sphinx said, its voice deepening until it made his innards vibrate, a sound as rich as the bass pipes on an organ. “A start. That is exactly what it is.”
Kill Switch Page 27
