Dark Company

by Natale Ghent

  “Hello!” she said, testing the sound. There wasn’t the slightest trace of echo. Her voice dropped off, the same as before. What was this place, and how did she get here? She strained to look at her feet. She was wearing only one shoe. What had happened to the other one? All at once it came tumbling back to her—the bicycle, the car, the girl beneath its wheels.

  With great effort, Meg attempted to get up and was shocked to see her right arm flop uselessly to one side. “Oh,” she said, her forearm dangling heavily at the elbow. She tried to raise herself with her other arm but gave up when the pain spiked through her. She lay back. The table was a giant feather pillow, spongy and light. She was too sick to move again, so she just lay there for the longest time, fighting the nausea and the pain.

  “Poe,” she murmured, reaching for something familiar to hold on to. “I was on my way to school to see Poe.” She wondered where he was and if he was worried about her. They had planned to listen to music and do homework together after class. She had an assignment due! When she thought of him, her soul filled with a loneliness so deep she felt she would drown. She wanted to feel his arms around her, feel the firmness of his lips against her mouth.

  The pain surged, sweeping her down into a fathomless liquid black. She seemed to stay there for an eternity, her anguish and the darkness vanquishing even the smallest chance of hope. She would never see Poe again. Or her mother and father or any of her friends. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be with them all again. She fought to hold onto the images of their faces. Hard as she tried they were beginning to gutter and fade. Yet the other face, the face of the man with the ice-chip eyes, it haunted her and would not leave. Who was he?

  After a great span of time, a being emerged from the vapour. It didn’t maintain a constant shape, but moved in and out of form like a brilliant cloud, its face dissipating as quickly as it formed. It stood beside her, emitting a delicate and diffuse white light. Meg was so relieved to see someone that she didn’t mind at all how they looked. She even managed to smile through her misery.

  “Hi,” she said, waving the fingers on her good hand.

  The being gazed at her benignly. Meg was encouraged.

  “Um, can I ask you something? Can you tell me where I am and what I’m doing here?”

  The being spoke, its voice polyphonic as though many voices spoke as one. It was modulated and distant, like the voice from a half-remembered dream. “You are on the other side.”

  “Oh.” Meg looked around the room. It was the same cottony mist as before. “The other side of what?”

  “Manifest life.”

  Meg thought about this for a minute. “You mean, this is heaven?”

  “Some call it that. We simply call it the Light.” The being disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the bed.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Meg said. She was going to ask about her missing shoe when a bolt of pain shot through her arm. She winced and cried out. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You are transforming.”

  Meg looked at her floppy arm. “Transforming …?”

  The being split in two and merged back into one. “You are transforming,” it said again. “When you are ready, you will be reassigned.”

  “I see,” Meg said. But she didn’t understand at all. “What am I transforming into?”

  “Whatever fulfills your soul’s purpose.”

  “Does everyone transform?” she asked.

  “No. Many are reincarnated as human and return to the earth plane.”

  This gave Meg hope. “That’s what I would like.”

  “Not possible.”

  The being shifted again. She squinted her eyes to catch it, but it wouldn’t stay still. She frowned, frustration and sadness welling up in her. “I liked my human life. I just want to go home.”

  The being responded by undulating like a jellyfish, igniting hundreds of tiny lights that twinkled throughout its form. Meg found it so relaxing to look at, so fascinating and beautiful. Her frustration ebbed. “I hope I’m not being rude,” she said, “but, what are you?”

  “I am your Incubator.”

  “You don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

  “My shape is necessary to ensure your transformation is as clean as possible.”

  “You don’t have any shape at all.”

  “We can’t allow you to assume the configuration of another,” the being said. “We don’t want you to be contaminated.”

  “We? How many of you are there here?”

  “Our numbers are ever-changing.”

  “Are all of you formless?” Meg asked.

  “We take shape according to our purpose.”

  “So … what’s my purpose?”

  “As yet to be determined.”

  It was all so vague. Meg felt frustrated again. She wanted to sit up but the effort still proved to be too much. She wilted back down onto the bed. “I feel so sick.”

  “It is a very important time,” the being said. It shimmered and began to fade.

  “Please, don’t go,” she begged, the pain arcing in her body and drawing her back into the dark.

  When Meg resurfaced, she felt as though she’d been gone a thousand years. She couldn’t remember anything coherent. She wondered who she was and what she was doing. Her thoughts were slippery and ephemeral, as shapeless as the atmosphere in the room. There were images, like snapshots, and attendant emotions, but their significance and connection were lost to her. There was the boy. His face struck her with a longing so profound she thought she would cry, though his name she’d long since forgotten. She fought with all her strength to hold onto him, focusing on his face and the memory of his lips against hers. She would never let him go, ever—she promised herself that. She would fight her transformation to the very end. And then she would find the boy, no matter what it took, and uncover the mystery of her past and her life with him.

  “I will not forget,” she vowed.

  Meg blinked at the white atmosphere around her, listening. She was feverish and sick, but the pain had mercifully subsided, leaving a throbbing ache in its place.

  “It’s not what I imagined,” she said.

  “What did you imagine?”

  It was the Incubator. It had returned.

  “How long have I been here?” Meg asked.

  The being drifted in and out of focus. “We don’t measure time here. Everything that ever was and everything that ever will be exists simultaneously.”

  Meg thought about this. “If everything exists simultaneously, then why can’t I just snap my fingers and transform instead of going through all this suffering?” She attempted to make her point by snapping the fingers on her bad arm. It flopped insolently around, the same drunk fish as before.

  “Process is necessary,” the being said.

  Meg tried to follow it as it swirled around the bed. “So, there is an order of operations.”

  “If you want to think of it that way, yes.”

  Meg bit her lip. There were so many questions to ask. Only she was finding it difficult to grasp the words. Something important had happened to her. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. Her mind was a shoebox of old photos, a jumble of untethered images. She couldn’t make sense of any of it. One thing she did know, she hadn’t always existed in this weird cloud world. Her memory of the boy was proof of that. She missed him so much.

  “Why do I have to be alone?” she asked. “I don’t like to be alone.”

  “You must be quarantined until you are fully formed.”

  Her longing for the boy made her bold. Meg raised herself awkwardly. “What if I don’t want to be …”—she searched for the right word but came up empty-handed—“whatever it is I’m becoming? What if I just want to go back to the way I was … before all this?” She made a gesture across the room with her good arm.

  “Not possible.”

  “But, why?”

  Her question hung in the air unanswer
ed. The being had already left.

  In the ensuing void, Meg remained alone. It was impossible to trace how long she had been in the white room. Mysteriously, she was no longer bored but was fixated on the slow and deliberate changes that were taking place in her body. Something was definitely happening. Her floppy arm was still floppy, but the pain that had overwhelmed her for so long had nearly vanished. She floated directionless in the ether, her mind releasing memories that fluttered beyond the understanding of words. She knew that she was forgetting great chunks of things, that her memories were slowly eroding as surely as her body was changing. But it wasn’t a clean process. Some memories were stubborn, clinging to her subconscious like burrs, eventually leaving only the barbs behind—just enough to remember the idea of the burr that created the hooks in the first place. The ice-chip eyes never left her, though, nor did the boy’s face, much to her relief. His image rose and fell in her mind’s eye, an anchorless ship, its appearance inspiring longing, but with nothing to tie it to.

  After a vast empty span, a new being arrived—a silver being. This one seemed to have a set form, though it fluctuated as well, as if its body continually experienced a kind of mild tremor. Its eyes were the colour of burnished steel and slanted upward. It had high cheekbones and a pointed chin, giving it the sylvan quality of a woodland faerie.

  The being stared at her. Meg stared back at him—if it even was a “him.” It was hard to tell. There was an androgynous aspect about it. It didn’t seem to be wearing any clothes, either, just a gossamer fabric with a life of its own, a flowing extension of its form. Meg turned away. She felt funny looking at the being, like it could see right through her.

  “Rise,” it ordered.

  It didn’t move its mouth when it talked, but she could understand it perfectly, as if it was somehow speaking inside her head. Meg sat up and hung her legs over the side of the cottony bed. To her amazement she was able to stand.

  The being looked at her with visible concern. “There’s something wrong,” it immediately deduced. With a swift motion of its hand it produced a full-length mirror so she could see her reflection.

  Meg was shocked by her image. Although she couldn’t remember how she’d once looked, she knew that it was nothing like the way she appeared now. Her skin and hair were so white they were nearly blue, and her eyes were a fantastic shade of violet. There was a soft magenta glow around her—not nearly as brilliant as the being’s silver halo yet a glow nonetheless. Her features were slanted upward and as smooth as the silver being’s. But she had somehow retained characteristics from her former life. Her nose and chin were rounder. And she had a distinct shape. She was decidedly female. This made her smile. It was a small victory but it meant so much to her. The transformation hadn’t erased her entirely.

  The being pursed its lips. “It shouldn’t have any colour at all,” it said to the ether. “Recruits are white until their Frequency is determined. And look at its form—and its appendages … It’s so … stunty. It should have grown much more during the transformation.”

  Meg lifted her floppy arm. It dangled uselessly from her elbow. It had a deep, jagged scar that ran like a lightning bolt from her shoulder to the tip of her index finger. She could have done without that. But it was a small price to pay to retain elements of her human life, so she was willing to put up with it.

  The silver being studied her as though evaluating a toxic dump site. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “What’s my name?” Meg asked.

  The silver being looked at her as though her head had just dropped off. “Why does it move its mouth?”

  “I don’t know,” Meg said.

  “What a mess,” the being groaned. “The Council will not be happy about this. In my entire existence I have never seen anything like it. It’s an absolute aberration.”

  The heat rose in Meg’s cheeks. She didn’t want to stand there being insulted by this being. “Please stop calling me ‘it,’ ” she blurted out. “I’m not a thing. And how do you tell us apart if we’re all supposed to look the same?”

  The being gaped, incredulous. This made her more upset.

  “If I’m so awful, why don’t you transform me back and go work with someone else? I never wanted any of this in the first place.”

  The being sighed with exasperation and righted itself. “I have no choice, unfortunately. And to answer your question, we have no trouble telling recruits apart. Each being has its own energetic print—like a thumbprint. We don’t need distinguishing features to set us apart from one another. And we have no need for names here either.”

  “But I like having a name,” Meg said, her anger subsiding. “I don’t feel comfortable without one.”

  “Comfortable?” The being waved her quiet. “You should have relinquished all of that long ago in the Place of Forgetting.”

  Meg looked around at the white walls. “Is that what you call this cottony room … the Place of Forgetting?”

  “Yes,” the being said. “Your mind should be clear as a child’s, except for the information we provided during your transformation.”

  “It isn’t clear,” Meg said. “It’s all tangled up. I feel things.” The boy’s face flashed in her mind, and in the mirror she saw tears of liquid light welling in her eyes. “I’m confused and lonely. I want to go home.”

  The silver being grew impatient. “You’ll just have to learn to control yourself.” It looked at her floppy arm in dismay. “We have to fix this before the Council sees you.”

  The being produced something it called a healing cord and began binding her arm from her shoulder all the way to her wrist. The cord was shimmery and it hardly weighed anything. It seemed to instantly strengthen and straighten her arm, but did nothing to hide the scar. Meg didn’t mind. She was happy her arm worked at all. She flexed her fingers.

  “It feels strong.”

  “It’s not a cure but your appendage should be functional now,” the being said. “We still need to dress you.”

  With a flick of its fingers it produced a gleaming white robe and draped it over her body. The fabric was light and glimmered like moonstone. It fused to her skin, flowing as though alive. The being fussed with the robe in a futile attempt to cover her arm. The robe waved tauntingly, accentuating both her scar and her female form. The being picked at the fabric like a disgruntled monkey.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” it finally conceded. “It’s time for you to leave the Place of Forgetting and stand before the Council.” With a finger snap, it dismissed the mirror back to the ether and glided away from her across the room. It glanced over its shoulder, expecting her to follow.

  Meg struggled where she stood. Her feet were heavy and clumsy as stones. She couldn’t move them.

  “Think,” the being instructed her. “Use your thoughts to project yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about where you want to go and you will go there.”

  Meg concentrated on the wall. Nothing happened.

  “Think harder,” the being said. “Imagine yourself moving toward the wall.”

  Meg focused as hard as she could. All at once there was the sound of air rushing through a tunnel, and her body lurched forward several feet as if she were sliding on ice. The feeling was so exhilarating, she shouted, “Hey! This is amazing!”

  “Please, control yourself,” the being admonished. “Such outbursts will not be tolerated before the Council.”

  “Oh.” She lowered her eyes in embarrassment. “I just can’t believe it actually worked.”

  “Of course it worked. Now try again.”

  Meg furrowed her brow, concentrating her intention. The whooshing sound grew to a roar, and in a stream of glittering stars she slid wildly across the ice again. “Holy smokes!” she exclaimed, forgetting what she’d just been told.

  The silver being folded its arms with strained forbearance. “There is no need for such an emotional response. In fact, you should have left
your emotions behind eons ago. Something isn’t right. You’re supposed to be pure—a blank canvas. But you’re the furthest thing from it. I can’t imagine what went wrong.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Meg said, even though she was sure that it was. She’d done everything in her power to prevent her transformation from happening.

  “Whose fault would it be?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. The guy in the white room said he was in charge of my transformation …”

  “Your Incubator? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Maybe I was contaminated,” she said. “He seemed to be so worried about that.”

  “Nonsense,” the silver being clipped. “You’re just going to have to control your thoughts and movements and not let whatever it is that’s affecting you interfere. An essential degree of subtlety is required here. You don’t need so much power just to get about.”

  Meg frowned to keep from smiling. She liked having power.

  When the being saw the look on her face it misunderstood and reconsidered its approach. It assumed a gentler stance, softening its tone.

  “Think of yourself as … a leaf upon the water.”

  Meg concentrated again, imagining a lovely green leaf bobbling along on a sparkling blue river. To her delight, she began to glide forward with the most pleasant swishing sound.

  “Good,” the being congratulated her. “Now follow me—and try not to talk with your mouth open.”

  ABDUCTION

  Caddy crouched on the ground, a cornered animal. The man glared at her, his face shifting in the flickering candlelight. She wanted to memorize everything about him, to take what she could before he killed her. He was tall, dark-skinned—Native, maybe—dressed in jeans and a worn black suit jacket with a battered top hat pushed down over his dark mane of hair. Over his shoulder he wore a fringed tan leather satchel. His hands were the size of dinner plates. It was clear she couldn’t fight him off, though she would try. She didn’t want to die like this. She clutched her safe stone, gathering her courage.