by James Axler
The others, looming over him, seemed to be closer than they had a moment ago. Too close. And the air, which had been whistling around his ears, now seemed so static and dry. Dusty, almost…
A blinding pain shot across his skull, running from the back of his neck, up and around so that it blinded his only eye, making him shut it tightly to try to stop the agony, which seemed as though it wanted nothing more than to take a physical form and force its way out through the socket.
He screamed.
And when he opened his eye once more, he was bemused to see that the others were, indeed, standing over him and J.B. Only instead of looking down at them, they were looking around.
Without even sitting up, he knew why. The hard-packed dirt was solid beneath him, and he could see from the periphery of his vision that they were on level ground. Level with where they had been before their descent. Raising himself on one elbow, he looked around. To his left, he could see the flat expanse of waste that they had trekked across the previous day. He recognized the scrub and rock they had used as landmarks to count off the miles.
They should be in the crevice.
But it was no longer there.
More than that, to his right, where there had previously been only the flat lands that stretched on the other side of the crevice, there was now a wall of rock that stood about forty yards high, on a steep incline, about three miles away. It was like an inversion of the crevice.
And maybe it was just as real?
“I don’t know what just happened, and to be honest I don’t really give a shit how. The real question is, what can we do about it?”
Ryan turned to the Armorer, who was sitting up, his arms clasped around his knees as he surveyed the territory. The laconic wryness of his tone belied the real urgency of his question.
“Keep going,” Ryan answered simply. “I figure that we really were seeing them in the distance, and when they disappeared it wasn’t down a nonexistent hole. It was behind some kind of wall they could put up mentally. Something that could get inside our heads.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Doc murmured. “Down the hole and out of sight. Make something grow smaller and then make it grow bigger. Is it really that way or does it just seem to be that way?”
“Not make sense.” Jak spit. “Have to go like real, then see. Just be ready for any shit.”
“Looks that way,” Krysty said slowly. “That crap that Jak and me were feeling last night… Mebbe that’s the mechanism they use, a kind of super doomie power that can play on our fears.”
“How know what scare us?” Jak questioned.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to know us.” Mildred shrugged. “Anyone getting this far would be exhausted, so a deep drop and a narrow path would be daunting. Like that wall is going to be bastard to climb,” she added, indicating the distant barrier, which seemed to stretch across the horizon.
“Can’t be that hard if it doesn’t exist.” J.B. shrugged.
Mildred laughed shortly. “Still hurt like hell to get down that nonexistent drop, didn’t it? Wonder what we would have looked like to anyone watching as we went down an imaginary drop?”
“No more stupe than we’ll look climbing an imaginary mountain,” Ryan replied. “But if that’s what we have to do—”
“That is if it truly is imaginary,” Doc interjected. “There is, of course, the possibility that the abyss was a dream, yet the mountain is real. The one a mask for the other.”
“You know, we could talk about that all day,” J.B. said quietly, spitting on the ground in disgust at their impotence. “We’re not really going to know one way or the other, even when we reach it. But one thing I can tell you for sure is this—the longer we stand around, the farther those coldheart bastards get from us, and the harder it’s going to be to get the kids back and get our jack.”
The Armorer was right. If they intended to finish their mission, they had little option but to continue regardless. And so they started forward again, in silence, hearts and limbs heavy, and all the time knowing that this was exactly the frame of mind that the clouding of their reality had been intended to produce.
Just how hard was it going to be if they had to fight on two planes simultaneously: the mental and the physical?
* * *
MORGAN’S EYES flickered, then rolled back into their usual position. He was surprised to find himself being cradled by the baron, and even more surprised by the distant look in the man’s eyes. It was as though the hardened baron was a million miles away.
And then, as if suddenly noticing that the old man had come to, and not wanting to give anything away, the baron’s worried mien suddenly hardened into its usual mask.
“What did you see, old man? Tell me,” the baron snapped in a harsh voice. It was unnecessarily abrupt, and despite his best intent couldn’t entirely hide the anxiety he felt.
Despite his own fear, exacerbated by the sudden intrusion of the visions he didn’t want to see, Morgan felt a pang of pity for the baron. K wasn’t a man he would have ever thought that he could have sympathy for, and yet he could see that the man had a… A what? A weakness? Was it a weakness to have feelings for your own flesh and blood? Perhaps it was if you were a hard-fighting and hard-fought leader of a ville. So, despite the stubborn streak of his nature that told Morgan to tell the baron to get fucked, in spite of any consequences, he took a deep breath and started to speak.
It was halting and confused as he tried to explain in words the things that he had seen and felt primarily as a series of impressions and emotions, but as he went on the baron’s face changed yet again. He was absorbed by what the old man was telling him. It confirmed his worst fears about the powers of those who had taken the children. At the same time, it boosted his self-esteem. At the back of his mind, still there despite the fears for his own child, was the lurking fear that his judgment had somehow been in error when he allowed these events to happen. But after all, if a man of Morgan’s undoubted doomie sensibility was easy meat to whatever was behind the intruders, then no one could hold him responsible and use that fact to challenge his position.
By the time the old man had finished, the baron had moved back and away, and was hunkered against the wall of the shack, elbows resting on his knees and chin in his hands as he focused on the story. Morgan, for his part, had moved in the opposite direction and had wiped the spittle from his beard. He turned to the barrel where he kept his own personal brew and scooped out a mugful that he downed in one swallow.
K didn’t see it that way. As soon as he saw what the old man was doing, he sprang across the room, swiping the mug from the old man’s fist in one smooth and swift motion.
“No,” he yelled, “you’re not doing that. I want you sober and awake so that you can tell me what’s happening.”
Mutely, Morgan followed the progress of the mug as it flew across the room, its tin body clanging as it hit the boards of the cabin floor, the fire hissing and flaring as a spray of alcohol swept across it like an incoming wave. He turned back to K and looked him squarely in the eye. When he spoke, it was with a hushed gravity that made the baron look away uneasily.
“You idiot. Do you really think that those poor bastards are going to be able to get your daughter back? You don’t give a shit about the other kids. Why the fuck should you? Their parents wouldn’t care squat about your kid, after all. But you should give it up, K. She’s gone. And no amount of making me face going mad seeing what it can do and letting it get inside my head is going to make any bastard difference. Not one little bit. They’re as good as chilled. And so is your daughter. The sooner we face it, the better. Whatever the fuck those coldheart bastards were who took her and the others, they weren’t human. Mebbe once. Before whatever it’s that makes the black fist got hold of them and changed them forever. Mebbe they still have some kind of
humanity in them. But if they have, it’s so buried that there ain’t no way it’s ever going to find a way out.
“Face it, K, she’s gone. You lost. We all did. And those poor fuckers you sent after them with the promise of gold? They’re gone, too.”
Chapter Four
Doom. An overwhelming sense of it; a kind of despondency that weighed heavily and seemed to bodily add to any kind of forward momentum so that every step was a task that seemed almost beyond accomplishment.
So it was that they trudged across the hard and hollow earth toward the tower of rock that stood in front of them. It stretched across their vision in the same way that the crevice had but a short time before, and even appeared to curve at the same oblique and impossible angle as it reached the periphery of vision.
Each of them knew that it was an illusion. As they walked in silence they told themselves that, repeating it internally like some kind of mantra. It should have helped to reinforce the knowledge, and perhaps see the illusion crumble in front of their eyes. Yet the edifice remained solid to all appearances.
Krysty, who was the only one of them possessed of the kind of mutated sense that was in any way a match for the mind or minds that had created the wall, felt a despair that was unlike anything that she had ever known. It was more than just the sense that the illusion in front of them was stronger than they could defeat. It was as though the mind itself that had created this was thrusting tendrils into her own consciousness, attempting to find her weak spots and probe at her feelings and memories. To find out more about those who were approaching, perhaps? She wondered if the others were feeling this, or if it was something that was her own experience because of her mutie blood.
If it was her alone, then she had to be strong. She tried to think of anything that could blot it out and block the tendrils of despair with a wall of memory that was designed to combat the negativity. Back where she came from, in Harmony ville, those with the mutie strain and those without had always worked to further their own positivity, and she drew on these lessons.
But the toll on her was great, and the effort it demanded caused her to walk at a slower pace, and to fall back until she was lagging behind the others. Such was their own burden that they didn’t, at first, notice. It was only when they were within a spit of the seemingly impenetrable rock face that Ryan turned back and noticed. He rushed toward her.
“Krysty, what…?”
She shook her head, flame-red tendrils of hair hugging the contours of her face. “Can’t you feel it?”
“What?”
The woman smiled grimly. So it was just a mutie thing. She tried to explain, but the words came out halting and vague. It was like trying to capture a wisp of smoke borne away on the breeze. If she had but known it, she wasn’t the only one having such problems in explaining what was happening to her.
“Can you shut it out for long?” Ryan asked with a calm he didn’t feel. He was worried for Krysty, sure. But he had the others to think of, too, and the safety of all his people was at threat unless she gave an honest answer.
Her twisted grin—half humor and half agony—was all the answer he needed.
“I can try, but every second is a battle. And I don’t think I can win the war, Ryan.”
He nodded grimly. “I know we’re exhausted, people, but we need to get past this obstacle as soon as we can.”
“For what, I wonder?” Doc mused. “Just what lies on the other side? Is it worth our effort, or should we perhaps just leave well enough alone and turn away? After all, do we really need the money?”
As he spoke, he could feel the waves of pressure recede slightly, so negligible as to barely be noticeable, and yet it piqued his curious nature, and he got to his feet and walked toward the rock.
“Perhaps it would be best if we just gave this up as a bad lot and walked away from it, maybe head off in another direction altogether,” he continued with all the conviction he could muster.
Krysty, who had been kneeling as she tried to gather her strength, leaned forward. “Ryan, look.”
Doc was walking toward the rock face as he spoke, and the sheer wall seemed suddenly to shimmer in front of him. For a moment, it became semitransparent. As though through a veil, they could see flat land beyond. A land that seemed to extend beneath a wall of rock that was, bizarrely, still there.
To each of them, it was apparent—if not clear why—that the rock wall was little more than an illusion, and one that it would now be easy to simply walk through as though it wasn’t there. It was as if the consciousness that had created it was somehow impeded or lessened when they considered turning back.
Which, Ryan figured, kind of made sense if the mind behind this was building it as a defense. Why waste the energy it needed if the enemy was no longer a threat? Suppose it could see inside their heads, but had no way of physically seeing what they were doing? If it only locked onto consciousness, then perhaps it might be able to fool it for long enough to pass through.
Ryan stood and followed Doc on his steady progress toward the shimmering rocks. “Fireblast, we don’t need this crap, Doc! You’re right, mebbe it’s about time we gave this shit up as a bad idea. It’s not our fight, after all.”
Krysty held back, unwilling to enter the fray as her psyche might betray the actions that Ryan and Doc were seeking to further. Mildred and J.B. looked on, uncertain as to how either of them would stand up to such scrutiny of conviction. But while they hesitated, for their own reasons, Jak walked forward to join Doc and Ryan.
“Screw this shit. Say we get fuck out, leave ’em to it,” Jak agreed, his impassive visage giving away nothing of the inner turmoil as he sought to convince himself that he should walk away from a fight. It was something that he had never done, and in truth he had no intention of doing so now. Whatever had constructed the illusion of the rock wall didn’t have to know that, though.
The three men advanced on the rock, their self-imposed conviction making the opaque now transparent.
Doc was the first to the surface that now shimmered and flickered like a light that was defective, there and gone in a strobe that was as fast as the blink of an eye. He indicated to the other two that they should stay, as with his other hand he stretched out and tried to touch the surface.
It gave in front of him like a pool of liquid that inexplicably remained on the vertical plane without flowing over him. His hand penetrated the surface without the kind of rippling that he might expect, for although it looked like an illusion of light, it felt as though he was actually plunging his hand into a wall of fluid. There was some resistance and give, and it felt as though the light was flowing and closing around his hand like a dense, viscous fluid.
“We cannot head back to Baron K and tell him that we have reneged on his mission,” Doc said calmly. “I guess we shall have to proscribe a pretty big circle if we are going to avoid him on the way back, seeing as we’ll be without his precious cargo.”
As he spoke, he could feel the fluid grow lighter around his hand and arm. He was able to penetrate it with greater ease. Past the elbow now, and it seemed to be giving him less resistance with each moment. He had almost convinced himself that they would be turning back, so it was little wonder that the so-called rock was giving way. Indeed, so much had Doc convinced himself in his quest to break down the illusion that he had to remind himself to actually move forward: first one foot, then another, so that he was moving within the confines of the illusory rock face.
A moment of panic almost overwhelmed him as the strange semisubstance of the illusion hit his face. It was like plunging his head into a pool of molasses, thick and gloopy, sticking his hair to his head yet not actually making him wet. It felt dry and hot against his skin, which seemed the opposite of how it should feel, and for a second that panic was reinforced by the sudden fear that he may not be able to br
eathe. Yet, despite the feeling of being closed in by this elusive thing that was not, he was still able to suck air into his lungs. Dry and hot, but still oxygenated.
Doc felt confidence well in him as he took in a breath. He had it beaten, and he would be able to get through to the other side with ease. If he could do it, then that should break the illusion and allow the others—even Krysty—to follow with ease.
And yet, paradoxically, even as he thought this he knew that it was a major mistake. If whatever powered this illusion fed on their received thoughts to know how much power to put into the defense, then to think such a thing was to reveal that it was being deceived. And that way lay disaster.
Even as these thoughts flashed across his mind, he felt the illusion start to regain a kind of solidity that swiftly passed beyond the point it had been fixed upon when his hand first pushed into it. Now it passed from feeling like a dry mist around him to being like molasses again, and then to a state where it was more alarming. It began to increase in pressure around him, constricting his chest and making breath hard to take—not that this mattered, as the hot dry air became like dust that began to choke in his lungs. He felt his arms and legs become encased in something that was, bizarrely, both clinging and also hard around him. It stopped him from moving back to where the others were watching in mute and frozen horror. He could feel that, although it was impossible to see as he was now unable to turn his head.
Around him, the sky and land beyond the end of the illusory wall, which had previously been clear through the transparent and fading defense, was now disappearing as the air around him grew gray, shot through with red streaks of iron ore and sandstone as the rock started to attain the consistency of the land that it sought to copy. Even this was soon lost to him as the opacity grew to such a degree that it began to block out any light around him.
