Darkest Designs

by Dale Mayer

  Well, it couldn’t be worse than this. Could it? Oh boy. She so didn’t want to try it out and see. The fall could knock her out again too.

  But…maybe she could sit very close to her feet? There had to be something there for her foot to stand on. She ignored the fact that there had to have been something for her right foot initially too. She hadn’t heard anything drop away either. In fact, she could barely hear anything.

  She took a deep breath and crouched down slowly, swearing at her unsteady movement. With her bum down as far as it could go, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs, she dropped her weight onto her backside, as close to the heel of her left foot as possible.

  And sat down.

  And fell backwards.

  ***

  “Storey! Where are you?” Eric spun around inside the confines of the portal. Only his father stood at his side. “What happened to her?” he asked him, a hard knot of suspicion forming in his gut.

  His father opened his eyes wide, and held his hands out in innocence. Eric’s suspicions solidified. “She must have fallen,” his father said, his voice holding just that perfect mix of concern and confusion that he’d used so many times before.

  And Eric knew. “You pushed her, didn’t you?” He watched as surprised anger lit the depths of his father’s gaze.

  “I did not.”

  “Did too.” Eric didn’t care if he sounded like a two year old arguing the point. In truth he wanted to break down and cry. Things couldn’t get much worse. For the first time, he didn’t know what to do. Somehow, this seemed too big to deal with. How could he possibly help Storey now? And all because of his father.

  His father snorted. “So what if I did. Good riddance I say. Her influence on you was nothing less than a disaster. You’d never have spoken so disrespectfully to me before.” He stabbed the air with his index finger. “I blame her for the mess my life is in.”

  Eric glared at him, emotions welling up. He wanted to punch that smug look off his father’s face. He balled his fist and pulled back his arm. A red wave of anger and a need to hit out at something overwhelmed him.

  “Eric. Don’t.” Paxton’s sharp voice caught Eric just as the power built in his upper arm. Eric stopped, frozen, a fierce welling of denial inside. This wasn’t fair. His father deserved to get his ass kicked and Eric was just the one to do it.

  “No! Not you.” Paxton seemed to read his thoughts. “He will be punished. I heard what he said. We all did.”

  Releasing his breath in a heavy gust, Eric let his arm drop and turned to face his mentor and friend and a dozen of the council. He tried to school his features back into the non-emotional, calm expression his people were used to. He knew he didn’t make it when Paxton took a small step forward, his hand outstretched toward him.

  “He pushed her out of the portal,” he cried out, anguish cracking his voice. “He pushed Storey out into the In-between. After she went and risked her own life…again…to rescue him.”

  The look of horror on the collective group of faces made him realize he wasn’t alone in his shock and dismay. These people knew how final such a move was. How absolutely wrong it was. His people were peaceful, serene. Acts of violence were few and always shocking when they happened. But this…that their leader, even one that had been recently deposed…had done something so horrific to the visitor who’d saved them all…

  If nothing else, it was satisfying to see the repugnance in their faces as they stared at his father.

  Paxton ordered the Councilman to be taken under guard. Eric almost snorted at that. They didn’t have much in the way of guards. At the rarely used underground dungeons, there might be a few on retainer, but they were hardly in prime condition.

  “Throw him in the dungeon. That way he can’t bribe anyone to let him out.” Eric caught the outrage in his father’s face. He turned. “Did you really think such an act would go unpunished? That you could return home a hero? That all your problems would go away if you could just get rid of Storey? Because I have to tell you, your problems are just starting. I for one will be asking for the death penalty.”

  At the shocked outcries from the others in the room, Eric strode as far away from his father as he could get and headed to Paxton’s workbench. He had to focus on Storey. There was little information in the archives about In-between, the layer of nothing that existed between dimensions. Growing up he’d been fascinated by the early trials of portal travel. There’d been a few people who’d lost their lives in the development process. But he needed to go back and see if they’d ever rescued anyone who’d gotten lost In-between. Maybe there was a way to retrieve Storey. Or to help her find her way home.

  Of course there was. Her stylus. Eric spun around searching for Paxton in the growing crowd. Where had all these people come from? He watched as more people rushed in to confirm the news. Had Storey really disappeared In-between? They’d talk until they had no more words to say, but that wasn’t going to help Storey come home. He caught Paxton’s eye, motioning him to come to his workspace.

  “Everyone, let’s move this discussion into the conference room.” Paxton opened the double doors and motioned the crowd out of his space and into the large common room. “I need to speak with Eric first, then I will give you all an update as I know more. Please go in and get comfortable. We’ll find a way to handle this mess.”

  “You’d better,” someone called from the crowd.

  “Storey needs our help. She helped us…”

  “And the Councilman must pay for what he’s done.” Shouts and raised voices followed the group as it made its way into the larger room. Finally Paxton closed the main doors to the lab, locking them, and walked over to the workbench. “Now maybe we can have a few moments.”

  Eric strode over to the adjoining conference room door and shut it behind the last person moving through the lab to join the group mingling and talking loudly. This and the recent battle with the Louers had given them something to talk about for decades to come. Too bad most of it was at Storey’s expense.

  Paxton hurried toward him. “Now Eric, are you sure she’s lost In-between?”

  Eric ran a hand through his hair as he thought on what had happened. “She was in the portal with us. I could see her, then there was a small rush of wind, she shrieked and was gone. I searched the blackness, but you know you can’t see very much at all during a transfer.” He stopped for breath, and closed his eyes briefly. Would the echo of Storey’s scream ever fade? He almost hoped not. He needed to keep her alive…until he could find a way to bring her back.

  “We’ll find a way to help her.”

  “We need to contact her stylus," Eric said. "See if it can communicate from In-between. If it can, we might be lucky and get a way out of this fast.”

  Paxton was ahead of him. He already had his stylus in his hand and an electronic tablet on the desk. In seconds his hand flowed over the screen. “My stylus is already checking. Our connection is growing every day.” Paxton shook his head. “It can hear and anticipate my needs now.”

  Eric snorted. “After all this time? Unbelievable.”

  “I wished I’d known about their abilities earlier,” Paxton admitted. “If it hadn’t been for Storey…”

  “Exactly. She’s done so much for us,” Eric muttered, peering down at the tablet. He couldn’t read what Paxton’s stylus was writing.

  “Eric, back up. I can’t see what I’m doing.” The exasperation in Paxton’s voice made Eric smile. He stepped back to give his friend room to work.

  “It says it can hear the stylus, but there is great distance between them. Communication is splotchy.”

  Eric laughed with relief. Splotchy meant there was still some communication. “That sounds like Storey’s vocabulary.”

  Paxton snorted. “Another of her influences.”

  There was no arguing with that comment. Storey had dropped into their world – literally – and they were forever changed. They needed to get her back safely to where she belonged.
“But we can communicate. First off, let’s make sure she’s okay. I’d hate to think of her lying somewhere with a broken leg.”

  When there was no answer, Eric glanced at his mentor. The confusion on Paxton’s face had him asking, “What’s wrong?”

  Paxton held out his hands, palms upwards. “There is nothing In-between. It’s empty space. In theory she couldn’t be hurt. There’s nothing for her to have hit in the fall – unless she was carrying something. By that same logic, she should be unconscious from the pressure. The absence of atmosphere…I’d think.” But he looked doubtful. He turned back to his stylus. “Let’s find out what the stylus knows.”

  Not much was the answer that trickled in a few minutes later. The stylus said it was caught In-between, and had no information as to how to get home. It did confirm that Storey had been pushed from the portal just before the arrival at Paxton’s lab and that she hadn’t been physically hurt in the process. Just as Paxton started to ask another question, the communication was cut off.

  Instead of feeling better, Eric paced, his mind full of more questions. Unfortunately, uninjured from the fall didn’t mean she was still unhurt or if she’d suffered emotional or mental trauma.

  Paxton seemed to think both were inevitable under the circumstances. But to Eric, Paxton was once again underestimating Storey. She was tough mentally. Stronger and more adept than any other female in Eric’s acquaintance. But not even she could withstand atmospheric pressure issues like Paxton had described. If there was no atmosphere, she wouldn’t be able to breathe either. And that meant it was all over. The stylus might not even know that yet. Eric shook his head at the puzzle. Did the stylus know when its owner was unconscious? Dead? It must, because the bond between stylus and owner would break. That was how the stylus had come to be Storey’s in the first place – the bond between it and its previous owner had broken when the owner became ill. But if it was no longer bonded, could it still communicate with other styluses?

  He shuddered. So many questions and no answers.

  “Oh dear.” Paxton murmured. “We need to be able to talk to her stylus.”

  That definitely understated the problem. Eric glanced at the monitor in front of him. “Why can’t we access our archives here and see if there is anything helpful?”

  “My stylus is looking for answers.” Paxton rubbed his face. “We just have to be patient.”

  “Patient? Storey could be dying right now.”

  “Actually,” Paxton took a deep breath, looked up at Eric, and in a low voice said, “It’s more likely that she’s already dead.”

  Storey fell into nothingness. Again. She twisted in panic as her body went into freefall.

  The thing was…she wasn’t falling fast like a six story drop. More like she was on a slow descent – almost as if there was little to no gravity. And it appeared endless. What the hell? No wind whistled past her ears, but her hair floated gently upward from the force of changing altitude, not streaming her like she’d expect.

  And she should have stopped by now.

  Suddenly she did.

  “Ohhmph.” She groaned at the shock as much as the pain. Her face had smashed flat against a hard surface. An invisible surface.

  “Stylus what is going on?”

  The humming in her head reassured her. That at least was normal. She paused, her thoughts hiccupping on the idea that speaking to a pencil was normal and having it answer back was normal too. ’Cause neither would have been something she’d have considered ‘normal’ any other time except this last week. Lord her life had changed!

  “Stylus, what am I lying on?”

  Nothing.

  “I can see that. How is this happening? It’s like the rules of normal reality don’t exist here.”

  They don’t. You aren’t in the Louers’, Torans’ or your home world. In theory there might be no rules here. Or you might be able to create the rules you want.

  That made her stop and think. The suggestion didn’t feel wrong. As she considered the strangeness of what had happened to her since she’d arrived, it started to make even more sense. “Like stopping?” she questioned. “I was wondering about why I hadn’t stopped falling, when all of a sudden, I stopped.”

  Maybe.

  She closed her eyes, took a breath and said, “I’m falling.”

  Instantly her body dropped, leaving her stomach back where she’d been resting. Shit.

  “Stop!”

  She stopped, coming to another jarring slam against nothing. She laughed. How freaky cool was that? She rolled over and sat up. On nothing. “Now that’s weird.”

  It would seem this reality answers to your thoughts, even instructions.

  “And how cool is that?” Still, playing here for an hour or two was not the same thing as being stuck. But was she stuck? Could she get out the same way she’d stopped falling? She wouldn’t know until she’d tried.

  “I want to go home.” Nothing. Then, getting all the way back to her reality might be a bit of a stretch. How about the one she’d left to arrive here? “I want to go back to Eric’s dimension.”

  Try instructions not requests.

  “Take me back to the Torans’ dimension.” Old habits rose to the surface and she added, “Please.”

  Nothing changed. “Okay, maybe there’s a time delay?”

  I don’t think so. Everything is instant here.

  She frowned. “Then what am I doing wrong?” She stood up and turned around. “Is anyone here? Can anyone hear me? Hello.”

  A faint echo sounded.

  Hello.

  She frowned. “An echo means something has to be here. Sound bounces off objects in order to create an echo. Right?” She couldn’t remember much about the science behind the repeating sounds, but she was pretty sure they couldn’t exist if they didn’t have something to hit and rebound off. She vaguely remembered hearing an echo when she’d been screaming for Eric.

  “Hello!” she shouted.

  Hello.

  There it was again, faint, but definitely an echo. Excited, she strode off in the direction of the sound. She kept her gaze in front of her so as to not look down at the endless nothingness beneath her feet. New reality or not, some fears needed to be kept submerged before she created them accidentally. “Stylus, is it possible that there could be people here? Like yet another reality? Maybe there’s a whole new species of people who live in this In-between dimension. I mean, why not? I’m breathing and speaking. Thankfully I don’t have to go to the bathroom or have an appetite right now, cause that’s just not going to work out too well…but maybe there are others like me here.” The concept brought a smile to her face and a lightness to her footsteps.

  We don’t believe so.

  “But you don’t know – do you? And if you don’t know, you can only guess.” She laughed. “This is new for both of us. Not just me.”

  Since meeting you, there has been much new for both of us.

  She stopped, considered the stylus’s words and nodded. “True enough. Well, together we can find whatever the sounds are bouncing off of. Maybe that will lead us to a way out.”

  Or lead you further from your point of entry.

  Ah shit. She hadn’t thought of that. She spun around and looked back the way she’d come. Of course, she could see exactly…nothing.

  And she’d lost track of how long she’d been travelling. “Do you think I need to keep track of where I landed?” She chewed on her bottom lip, worrying away on that new concern and wishing she’d thought of it earlier. “Did you keep track of it?”

  We have noted the coordinates of your entrance point to this dimension and your exit point from the Toran dimension.

  She brightened. “So we can go back there at any time, right?”

  In theory, yes. However as our knowledge doesn’t cover this instance, we can’t confirm that.

  She pondered that. “I think you should keep track of every step I take here. On all levels. Because we fell a long way in that first dr
op. Add the other couple of smaller falls and the vertical distance could be huge. It might be hard to get back up there.”

  You should be able to think yourself back there.

  She nodded. Theoretically that might be possible, in reality, well, that remained to be seen. Should they try to regain their same starting position? But she’d tried that back when she’d first entered the Louers’ dimension. She’d ended up in a whole different location.

  And if that happened here, she’d lose track of where the echo had come from. She spun around only to realize she wasn’t at all sure she was facing the right direction anymore. Damn it.

  She stood for a moment, hands on her hips and studied the thick endless fog around her. “Hello?”