by Phil Tucker
Here? There was nothing but an increasingly pointless series of decisions to make as to which path to follow. Did it matter whether I went left or right, up or down if the path itself never changed?
In a way, we’d exchanged the maze of the corridors for this open-air labyrinth of spider strands. Perhaps we needed to delve one layer deeper. Penetrate the mystery just a little further, so as to emerge in the web’s center. But no matter how I racked my brain, I couldn’t divine a way to do so.
My frustration continued to mount, giving rise to a restless irritability that I recognized. That I’d fled to Seattle to forget. An anger that barely hid the terror. That sensation of helplessness, of being unable to make a change in the unfolding tragedy before one’s eyes.
It was all too easy to remember the waiting rooms. The strangely harsh hospital lighting; that distinctive smell of sterility, disinfectants, and ion air filters, like putting your nose inside one of those disposable latex gloves. The voices over the intercoms. The distant beeping.
Sitting in waiting rooms had changed in the end to sitting in my mother’s hospital room. I’d always heard of loved ones reading to comatose relatives, staying up all night and patiently reading their favorite books, but I’d never done so. I’d felt too… empty. Horrified. Bereft. Watching my mother on that hospital bed, murmuring in pain and wondering why the doctors couldn’t give her more pain medication had filled those hours with a blankness I couldn’t overcome.
Instead, I’d been filled with a panicky anger. This frustrated inability to do anything. To make a difference. To do anything other than wait. To witness death stealing into the room, knowing that at some point Dr. Avisham would discharge her to go home and into a hospice program.
It had been too much for Justin. He’d come visit for an hour or so then catch a ride back to the apartment. I didn’t blame him. He was only – what – fifteen at the time? Too much for a kid. I’d made myself stay. Made myself sleep on those god-awful couch beds, go down to the hospital cafeteria at odd hours along with the other ghosts and forlorn relatives to grab an apple or a cup of coffee.
Something was dying with my mother, something she represented. Something more than just her person. A sense of… I’d wrestled to put it into words. I’d grown up always feeling like my life was charmed. That I was destined for greatness, to be a hero, just like in my favorite books and movies. That my family was special. That sense had taken a serious blow when my father left us. But seeing my mother die?
It was too much. It was a crash course in reality. Knowing I wasn’t special. That anything could happen to me. My parents could get divorced. My mother could die of such a rare form of cancer even the latest genome therapy couldn’t help.
I sat there in the armchair by my mother’s hospital bed. Hunched over an armrest, head propped on my hand, staring at the white sheet that rose and fell with each of her hitched breaths.
Nothing special. No hero. No charmed life. I wasn’t going to experience great things. I was not different from all the other millions of people out there going about their lives. Eating at drive-throughs, watching the latest summer blockbusters, hoping on Saturday nights at the bar to touch the magic but instead stumbling home drunk and alone.
I leaned back in the chair, which stretched with a plasticky sound beneath my weight. That was our culture’s biggest crime. I watched as the sheet rose and fell. Every story, every movie, every commercial and game told us we were different. Made us feel special. Did everything to make our banal lives bearable. Lied to us to keep us going, to keep us working, to keep us spending our hard-earned cash on entertainment that would only lie to us some more.
And I’d fallen for it. Well, not any longer. I took a deep, shuddering breath. The scales were finally falling from my eyes. I’d never tell myself I was special again. Never imagine myself the hero. Different from everyone else.
The door to our room opened and a nurse entered. They were always sneaking in to check vitals, adjust IV bags, press buttons, and then slipping back out. Making it impossible to rest. To sleep.
“Chris?”
I didn’t recognize her. She wore a nurse’s uniform, but didn’t look like a nurse. Didn’t have that air of brisk, professional goodwill, that impersonal charm. Instead, she gazed upon me in a vulnerable, pained manner, her eyes wide, her skin pale.
“Yes?” I sat up, suddenly nervous. “What is it? Something wrong?”
“Yes – there is, but…” She bit her lower lip, glanced back out the open door into the hallway.
“What?” I glanced at the screen that revealed my mother’s vitals. I’d come to decipher the numbers and graphs over the previous weeks. It all looked normal. “What’s wrong?”
“Chris, this is going to sound really weird, but you have to listen to me.” She moved to the door, peered back outside, then carefully closed it.
I stood, that panicky fear giving way to anger. “What’s going on here? What’s really weird? Who are you?”
“I’m… I’m Lotharia.”
I glanced at her uniform. The letters on the name tag were scrambled and illegible. “Who?”
“Damn. I’d hoped… look. We don’t have much time. The… ah… hospital director is going to come for me really soon. We need to get out of here.”
OK. So not weird, more like crazy. My anger froze as I studied her. “You’re not a nurse, are you?”
“No. I’m your friend. You have to trust me.”
“Listen, Lotharia, or whoever you are – I’m going to ask you to leave, all right?” I tried to sound firm, to sound calm. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not my friend.”
“OK, wait.” She held out her hands as if I were about to rush at her. “Let me think. You’ve seen The Matrix? You know when Keanu Reeves gets that cell phone from Morpheus in the beginning, and Morpheus tells him to get the hell out of his office before the agents get him?”
I narrowed my eyes. This, I hadn’t expected. “Yeah?”
“OK, well, I’m like Morpheus right now. And this is like the Matrix. You’re trapped inside a virtual reality game. Your mother died years ago, Chris. This is just a memory the game has locked you into.”
“Oh… right.” I tried to smile reassuringly. “Just like the Matrix. Got it.”
Lotharia’s tentative smile fell away. “That didn’t convince you.”
“No,” I said. “My mother’s dying. This is a really, really bad time for you to be playing games here. So leave, or I’m going to call security.”
“Shit. Fine. Um – I know about Justin. He’s under arrest. And—damn it, most of what I know is from your future. Which makes me sound even more insane. Um.”
I reached out for the phone.
“Wait! When you were little, you swam out toward this tree in the center of a flooded lake, and then you dove down and it got really dark and you thought you saw movement and you told yourself it was the devil and you freaked out and nearly drowned, but you got back to shore where your family was having a picnic and never told anybody, and the fact that they didn’t even notice you were upset made you so depressed you didn’t talk for three weeks!”
I froze and stared at her. “How the hell do you know that?”
“You told me,” she said. “You told me in the game. Chris. You have to believe me. This isn’t real. This is a trap. Your mother died five years ago. You’re trapped in a memory.”
“No, for real.” My hands were shaking and my temple pulsed with pain. “How do you know that? Because you’re right. I’ve never told that memory to anyone.”
“I’ll tell you everything, I promise,” said Lotharia. “But if we don’t get out of here now, it’ll be too late.”
“Too late?” I felt like I was drowning. Like I was back in that flooded lake. Lost and thrashing and with an unnamed evil rising to confront me. “Too late for what?”
&nbs
p; The lights flickered and the ground shivered. A series of emergency beeps immediately sounded from the computer panel and Lotharia’s eyes widened.
“Xylagothoth,” she whispered. “He’s coming.”
18
“Xylago-who?” I moved to stand protectively over my mother, one hand reaching for the bed’s sideguard. “The hospital director? That’s his name?”
Lotharia cracked open the door and peered into the hallway. The lights flickered again, and this time a klaxon began to wail from deep within the hospital. It was pretty damn creepy, and suddenly I remembered why so many zombie movies were set in hospitals with power outage problems.
“Sure, the director. We have to go.” She looked back at me. “Now.”
I was torn, hovering in a state of agonized disbelief. This was just like the freaking Matrix, but—
Beads of sweat had broken out across my mother’s brow. A deep, rational part of me wanted to simply refuse to believe this madness.
“Chris,” said Lotharia, moving over to the other side of the bed. “Listen. We go now, or it’s too late. The lake, remember? You told me about that layer of cold water you dove into, said it was as sharply divided from the warm water of the surface as if cut with a razor?”
Cut with a razor. That’s exactly how I’d thought of it, my paddling feet punching down into the icy water as I swam in the warm. I stared at Lotharia, unable to breathe. How did she know that?
The lights flickered again, went out and were briefly replaced by a red, emergency glow before coming back on.
“Think,” said Lotharia. “Why aren’t people shouting? Where are the nurses? The other patients? Can you hear anybody else reacting to this?”
She was right. I should have heard something from out in the hallway, but only that lonesome klaxon wailed on, along with the frantic beeping of the bedside monitors.
Lotharia moved back to the door and held out her hand to me. “I’ve got to go. Chris. Please. Trust me. Trust your instincts. Break free of this trap. Come with me.”
Madness. Pain cut through me as if my soul were being torn out by the roots. I took a step away from my mother’s bed. A second step. My body fought me. I reached out for Lotharia’s hand and my mother suddenly groaned, twisting beneath the sheets in pain.
Lotharia grabbed my hand and pulled. I stumbled after her, out into the deserted hallway. The lights were doing that horror movie flickering thing and the nurse’s station was abandoned. Coffee cups and pens and everything lay as if dropped moments ago, like the Mary Celeste. I darted looks into the rooms beside my mother’s but they were all empty, sheets mussed as if patients had leapt up and ran away.
“What’s going on?” I hated how scared I sounded, but I was getting pretty close to panicked. “My mother—”
“Come on!” Lotharia broke into a run, racing down the broad hallway toward the distant double doors that led out to the elevators. I held tightly to her hand and ran after, half turning back to gaze at my mother’s doorway.
Lotharia skidded to a stop. A shadow had appeared in the frosted windows of the double doors. Large enough that it had to be a trick of the light.
“Back,” whispered Lotharia. “Back!”
I ran after her. The double doors behind us crashed open. Again, I looked over my shoulder. Shadows flooded the end of the corridor, moving like ink in water, tendrils snaking out as if hungry for us, covering the doors and whomever had just come through them.
“That’s—that’s not real,” I gasped. “Not possible!”
“Anything’s possible in here,” said Lotharia grimly. She put on speed and I was forced to look ahead as we sprinted back around the nurse’s station. My mother’s room was empty when we passed it, and that hit me like a punch to the gut. A flash of the empty bed and I nearly tripped, the strength going from my legs, the need to find her, protect her, be by her side overwhelming me.
Lotharia hauled on my arm and got me going again. “No time! Come on!”
Down another hallway. Lights flickering, drowning us in shadow. That wailing klaxon, right out of Silent Hill. Something about the darkness. Something familiar. As if, instead of scaring me, it was welcoming. Something I’d normally embrace.
We’d almost reached the next set of double doors when Lotharia fell. Her hand tore from mine, and I turned to see a snake of shadow had curled around her ankle and was dragging her back toward the seething darkness filling the hallway behind us.
“Run!” Her scream cut through my daze. “Chris! Run!”
In the movies – in Golden Dawn, even – it was easy to be a hero. To react with immediate decisiveness. Yet in real life? This shit wasn’t supposed to happen. Couldn’t be happening. I stood, frozen, as Lotharia was pulled inexorably toward the frenzied shadows advancing down the hallway toward us like a tidal wave.
“Chris!” There was anger mixed in with her terror. “Wake up! Run!”
No. I couldn’t run. Couldn’t abandon her. Just like I’d never wanted to leave my mother’s side. Or Justin’s.
Justin’s? Why had I thought of him?
I blinked. Lotharia jerked another yard closer to the shadows. What could I do? This was a game, she’d said? Then where was the fucking UI, the controls, my inventory? Nonsense! I searched for a weapon, even a terminal on wheels with which to attack the shadows, and found nothing.
My whole body was shaking with adrenaline, my vision narrowing, a roaring filling my mind. Lotharia was almost inside the wall of shadows; any moment now. Run. I should run, flee the darkness—
No.
Embrace the darkness.
The darkness is mine.
I was holding something. A sword. I looked down at it in stupefied wonder. Its blade drank the light. It was sharp down one length, the side that ultimately curved up, and this sharpened slope glimmered black-blue, like the depths of the ocean. What the…?
Void Blade, a voice whispered from the depths of my mind. A shiver ran through me. Use it.
I yelled and dashed forward, raising the blade overhead, and brought it slicing down upon the rope of shadow that held Lotharia’s ankle. It parted easily, and the blade cut several inches into the linoleum.
“Chris?” Lotharia’s eyes couldn’t have been any wider.
I took her hand and helped her up. “Come on!”
We backed away as a figure emerged from the shadows. For a moment it looked like a dozen shadows flickering over each other, a score of silhouettes, but then it resolved itself into a figure I’d come to loathe toward the end of my mother’s life: Dr. Avisham.
Professional, disinterested, clinical, with a thin veneer of warmth and concern, the doctor had guided us through my mother’s treatments right up until her final hospitalization, upon which he’d simply disappeared, refused to return our calls, and left us to wrangle the final details with the staff doctor and the hospice people.
His high brow, his distinguished beard, his eyes glittering behind his austere glasses. He’d once been so incredibly reassuring and inspiring. A figure of hope. But as my mother’s condition had worsened he’d lost interest, or perhaps simply stepped away, knowing there was nothing he could do. Either way, he’d abandoned us, and so much of my anger had fixated upon him.
I’d vowed to go to his offices, after, and confront him. Demand to know where he’d been. But to my shame, there had always been a reason not to, and then I’d moved to Seattle and done my best to forget.
“Christopher,” said Dr. Avisham, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
My throat dried up. A flood of emotions choked me. My old anger warred with my desire to be polite, to not alienate this man who held the secrets of life and death in his palm.
“It’s not him,” whispered Lotharia. “Don’t be fooled.”
“Lotharia,” said Dr. Avisham. “You stra
y. Come here. Now.”
Sharp, short words, and each of them caused Lotharia to flinch. To my surprise, she took a half step toward him, her face wild with fear and loathing. I grabbed her hand, and this time it was my turn to pull her back.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” I said. “This is some fucked up shit. But you’re not Dr. Avisham. And this isn’t real. So, no. Lotharia’s coming with me. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“Are you, now?” Dr. Avisham smiled, that cold, supercilious expression that cut me like a knife. “How amusing. Step away from her this instant, young man. Do you hear me? Return to your mother’s room. That’s your place. By her side! What are you doing out here? Abandoning her? What kind of son are you? Weak? I always knew you were weak. Too weak.”
He advanced on us, swelling as he approached, his words punching me in the gut. “You never believed she would pull through, did you? I could tell. Read it in your eyes. Your noble fatalism. You gave up on her. And now you’re doing it again. Leaving her alone to die.”
“No,” I croaked. The sword was gone from my hand. His words hurt more than blows, because on some level I couldn’t deny them. I hadn’t thought she had a chance.
“Did you do everything you could? No. Did you research, look for every experimental treatment available across the country, the globe?” His smile grew wider, colder. “No. You were passive. Pathetic. Putting all the responsibility on my shoulders. Even now you blame me, when in truth it was you who failed her. Failed to explore every avenue, every possibility.”
“No,” I croaked again. My shoulders were rising defensively about my neck. I couldn’t breathe. My pulse pounded in my ears. “I talked with my friend. He’s a doctor at Mass Central, he said—”
“It doesn’t matter what he said. You gave up. Right from the beginning.” He shook his head in amusement. “And to think. You thought yourself noble to sit by her side like a block of wood. When a true son, a loving son, would have been out there, moving heaven and earth to save her—”
