Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You must be very careful,” Mr. Czito said. “We’ve done everything we can to protect you physically with the new suit. But we cannot protect you from mental invasion. You must protect yourself. If you encounter the creature again, and we fear you will, you must ignore it. Mr. Tesla said you must ignore it at all costs. The thing will try to stop you. It cannot stop you physically. But it can reach into your mind and stop you there. And that is a greater danger than a physical assault. It will try to reach into your dreaming mind and pull it to the surface of your conscious awareness. It will use your greatest fears and desires against you. It will do all it can to destroy you— or make you its slave. You must resist with all your power.”

  “Now what was that you said about this being simple?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Czito said. “It’s not simple. That’s why you’re here to do the job. Only a Houdini could do it.”

  “Only a Houdini could try to do it,” I said. “And I’m going to try with all my might. I know that creature. And I know every word you say is true. And I’m going to give it all I got.”

  Mr. Czito solemnly nodded.

  Within minutes the U.S.S. Cypher had flown over the Coast Ranges of California and miles out across the Pacific Ocean to the off-limits cordon established by the U.S. Navy’s warships— the place where the Bell operated at the bottom of the sea. By the time our ship had submerged to sixty feet of depth, I had already slipped into the new pressure suit and a sailor was fitting its helmet over my head. Through the red glass I saw Mr. Czito and Lt. Nimitz watching me. Mr. Czito held the long control switch in his hands. I turned about and followed the two navy divers up the ladder. We got up into the escape trunk. Mr. Czito extended the long, flashing control switch up to me, and I took hold of the end of it and pulled it up into the escape trunk with me. The crystals in the switch filled the whole interior of the escape trunk with flashing lights.

  Then the lower hatch was closed, and again, as it did on the earlier night, the chamber began to rapidly fill with water.

  Then a dim red light flashed above our heads, a light much less noticeable than it was in our last dive, for the lights from the switch flashed through the swirling water of the escape trunk. One of the divers had opened the top hatch and had begun to swim out. The second diver followed upward in the red haze, and I followed after both of them.

  I came up out of the hatch and saw the purplish flashing light again, far below on the bottom of the ocean.

  “Can you hear me, boys?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” one of the divers said. “Loud and clear.”

  “Mr. Czito?” I asked. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Czito said, his voice coming through with perfect clarity. “I hear you.”

  “I’m going straight down,” I said, “jam in the switch, and come straight back up.”

  “I’ll be watching and listening,” Mr. Czito said.

  I started down into the ocean, turning the anti-gravity control on my chest plate to its positive gravity mode. I shot down toward the purple light at a great speed, and heard a strange suction sound as I went. A bright red glow surrounded the immediate space around my body. The purplish-red light on the ocean bottom grew larger and the long arms of purple light spun around it an incredible speed, much faster than they did two nights earlier.

  “I’m approaching the device,” I said. “It looks like a big reddish sphere of light.”

  I kept descending. Suddenly, in the midst of the sphere of light I saw the distinct shape of the Bell at its center.

  “I see it now,” I said. “I see the Bell. I’m about to land on the sea floor.”

  I turned my anti-gravity control switch to the off position. My feet touched the bottom of the ocean. Mud swirled up around me and engulfed me. I stood motionless for a moment and allowed the mud to settle.

  “I’m walking directly toward it,” I said.

  I began a steady march toward the Bell, expecting at any moment to see the giant fish-head form in the ocean above it. Mud stirred before me up to my knees. I kept walking forward.

  I was getting close to the Bell— perhaps I was only fifty feet away from it when I noticed movement off to my right. I turned to look and saw a dark vortex spinning in the waters of the sea. The vortex opened up and revealed a field of glowing blue. Then against this field a figure walked forward— the familiar figure of a woman— a woman I would have known anywhere.

  It was my mother.

  She was wearing the dress in which she had been buried, but she looked much younger than she did at the time of her death. Somehow I could see her in vivid, full color, and I suddenly realized that I was viewing her through the red filter of my diving helmet. I realized that this was not possible— not possible if we were both in the same physical universe.

  “What’s happening?” Mr. Czito’s voice sounded in my helmet.

  “I’m seeing something,” I said. “Some kind of vision, I think.”

  “What is it?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “It’s my mother,” I said. “She’s standing before me on the bottom of the ocean.”

  “It’s a trick,” Mr. Czito said. “You know that’s not possible.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “That creature is projecting the image of your mother into your mind. He’s using your own mind against you.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it seems so real.”

  “Ignore it!” Mr. Czito said. “Look away!”

  “Ignore the little man in the tin can,” a voice reverberated in my helmet. It was the voice of the monstrous fish-head.

  “Did you hear that, Mr. Czito?” I asked.

  “What?” Mr. Czito asked. “Hear what?”

  “He didn’t hear a thing,” the voice of the fish-head said, “because I wasn’t speaking to him. I was speaking to you, Houdini.”

  “I know what you are,” I said. “You’re one of the Nameless Ones, the NYMZA.”

  Deep, guttural, disgusting laughter sounded in echoes inside my helmet.

  “You have become educated!” the fish-head said. “You are a scholar! You are a remarkable intellect!”

  Again the guttural, maniacal laughter sounded in my ears.

  A strange high-pitched voice screamed: “He is a most remarkable man!”

  “Indeed,” the voice of the fish-head sounded. “Houdini is a most remarkable man!”

  A great assemblage of snorting, grunting, and cackling voices reverberated in my helmet.

  “Woo-woo!” one of the voices cooed. “Woo-woo, Houdini!”

  “Hello, Houdini!” another strange voice intoned. “You are so remarkable you must be a god!”

  “He is a god! He is a god! He is a god!” chirped another voice.

  “He thinks he is a god!” screamed yet another insane speaker. The assemblage screamed, ranted, snorted, and chortled.

  “He is a god who loves his mother!” a voice shouted.

  “How sweetly-sweet,” another voice mocked.

  The assemblage groaned, grunted, ranted.

  “Shut up!” I shouted.

  The assemblage groaned and screamed.

  “You’re all filth!” I shouted.

  “He called us names!” the high-pitched voice shouted.

  “What’s happening down there?” Mr. Czito’s voice asked in my helmet. “Are you talking to the thing? Don’t talk back to it! Ignore it!”

  “How dare you try to use the image of my mother!” I shouted.

  “I use everything,” the disembodied voice of the fish-head replied.

  “How dare you speak of my mother!” I shouted.

  “I do as I wish,” the voice of the fish-head sounded. “I can make it possible for you to do as you wish, too. I can give you power, too. Your mother, your dear departed mother— would you like to speak with her? I can arrange that. Listen!”

  And then the image of my mother cried out in my mother’s voice: “Tataley!”

/>   “Stop it!” I screamed at the fish-head. “Stop it!”

  I looked away from the image of my mother, and began to stride across the bottom of the ocean to the Bell, walking right through the rapidly flashing arms of light that spun all about it.

  Now a vortex formed directly in front of the Bell, and opened up into another blue expanse. Inside the vortex I saw an image of a room, the image was so clear that it looked real, three-dimensional and actually before me in space. It was a large room filled with distinguished-looking people, and I saw myself standing in formal attire on a speaker’s platform, receiving an award from another man.

  “Houdini, the scientist, world-renowned,” the fish-head intoned, “as famed as De Vinci, Newton, Aristotle— Houdini, a greater mind than Nikola Tesla’s. I can give you this, and your mother, and more. I can give you all the empires of the earth.”

  The scene changed. I saw myself looking as I did at the age of twenty-one, dressed in a resplendent robe, and seated upon a throne before a great assemblage in a massive temple. The fish-head’s voice continued to sound in my helmet:

  “I can make you emperor of a thousand worlds, with a harem of the most beautiful women which the mind of man could conceive— and a life of ten thousand years. Not enough? One hundred thousand years, then! Still not enough! Very well. I can make you one of us, one of the gods— immortal! All you need do is turn around. Turn around and go back.”

  “To the tin can with the little man?” I asked.

  “What was that?” Mr. Czito asked.

  The vortex in front of me twisted again, revealing another scene. It was a dreary gray landscape, an empty plain punctuated only by dead trees. Strange people stumbled across the plain, dressed in the disintegrated wrappings of mummies. I could see their sunken, noseless faces, faces neither alive nor dead.

  “Turn back, Houdini!” the voice of the fish head growled. “Turn back— or this will be your eternal fate— to wander forever in the land of the living dead! Turn back! Turn back, you stupid insect!”

  I looked upon the walking dead, and my stomach twisted into knot. I looked away from the scene— but kept walking forward. Then I looked back in the direction of the Bell.

  The vortex closed up, and the Bell became visible again in front of me. Bolts of electricity shot around its circumference at an incredible speed. I walked into the midst of the spinning electrical bolts. The field of red light surrounding me brightened and I heard a crackling, buzzing sound, like wireless static. I kept marching toward the Bell.

  “Turn back now!” screamed the fish-head. “Or I will crush you out of existence!”

  “Start crushing, you son of a bitch,” I said, and I walked right up to the Bell with the switch in my hands and rammed the end of it against one of the metallic knobs protruding from its side. The end of the switch plugged right into the knob— the port. It was just like inserting an ordinary electric plug into a receptacle on a house wall.

  The moment I plugged the long switch into the Bell, all the crystals flared into an almost blinding brilliance. Even viewed through the red visor of my helmet the light was almost unbearable. I looked away.

  At that same instant I heard an unearthly growling that increased in volume to an insane scream. It was the fish-head going into some kind of agonized fit.

  Over the sound of the scream I heard Mr. Czito shout: “What’s happening? What did you do?”

  “I plugged in the switch!” I answered back.

  “Then get out of there!” Mr. Czito shouted. “Get out now!”

  I turned on my anti-gravity switch and shot off the bottom of the ocean like a bullet. The voice of the fish-head kept screaming inside my helmet as I rapidly ascended to the Cypher. I could hear it and several other voices chanting something in a strange tongue. They were chanting and screaming all at the same time. It was a cacophony of madness.

  “You are accursed, Harry Houdini!” the fish-head suddenly screamed above the chanting voices. “Forever you are accursed! No matter where you go, or what you do, our curse shall fall upon you…in time!”

  The voice of the fish-head and the other chanting voices ceased. I saw the two navy divers swimming before me. I turned my anti-gravity switch completely off.

  “Are you all right, sir?” one of the divers asked.

  “You bet I am,” I said. “Let’s get back in the ship.”

  I swam behind the navy divers and followed them back through the hatch on top of the ship.

  We got inside the escape trunk, and one of the divers closed the hatch. The water inside began to drain away. In a few more moments, all the water was out, and the hatch below us swung open.

  I descended the ladder, got to the bottom, and a sailor behind me began unfastening and unscrewing my helmet. In a moment my helmet came loose and was lifted off my shoulders. I turned around and saw a sailor, Kolman Czito, and Lt. Nimitz standing in the corridor looking at me.

  “I plugged it in,” I said.

  “And it’s working,” Mr. Czito said. “Let’s get you out of the suit and then I’ll show you.”

  Two sailors came forward and unlatched the catches on the upper part of my diving suit, and its top snapped away at the waist. One of the sailors pulled the top off, up over my head. I then slipped off the suit’s legs and boots.

  “That’s faster than forty-five seconds,” I said.

  “About twenty,” Mr. Czito said.

  I followed Mr. Czito to a control board which contained several dials and gauges.

  “See there?” Mr. Czito asked, pointing to a needle on a gauge slowly moving toward zero. “The electro-magnetic field strength in this area is steadily dropping. It will keep dropping until the device ceases generating electricity.”

  “What will you do then?” I asked.

  “We’ll send down a team of divers,” Mr. Czito said, “and bring the device aboard ship.”

  “You’re going to bring the Bell aboard the Cypher?” I asked.

  “It will be safe to do so at that point,” Mr. Czito said. “We will then transport it to a laboratory where it can be safely dismantled, studied, and destroyed.”

  “How long do you think it will be before you can bring it aboard?” I asked.

  “A few hours at most,” Mr. Czito said. “It depends on how long it takes for the switch you inserted to completely shut the device down. We’ll monitor it from the Cypher and from the surface ships.”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “You job is done,” Mr. Czito said. “We’re already flying back to Jack London’s ranch.”

  “Right now?” I asked.

  “We’re probably already in the air,” Mr. Czito said.

  “We’re airborne,” Lt. Nimitz confirmed.

  “You know that thing down there,” I said, “it tried to stop me just like you said it would.”

  “I know,” Mr. Czito said, “I could hear you.”

  “That thing,” I said, “you know it is pure evil.”

  “I know,” Mr. Czito said. “We know.”

  “I was up on Sonoma Mountain tonight,” I said. “The place is a chaos of time distortions. I saw all kinds of creatures coming out of fields of lights— creatures from other times, other worlds.”

  “We know about the time distortions,” Mr. Czito said. “They will stop now. We’ve shut down the operation of the Bell.”

  “So Sonoma Mountain and its people are safe?” I asked.

  “They’re safe,” Mr. Czito said. “Everyone is safe from the Bell now.”

  In minutes the U.S.S. Cypher landed in the meadow below Jack London’s cottage. I stood with Mr. Czito on the lower deck, waiting for the door of the ship to slide open.

  “I understand something happened to you the other night when you went down into the ocean,” Mr. Czito said.

  “You heard,” I said.

  Mr. Czito nodded, and then asked, “How do you feel?”

  “Strange,” I said. “Very strange. I have a sort of stiffness in my neck
. And my body— my whole body— it doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. I’ve been switched, apparently. I’m not really the Houdini you used to know, and I’m not referring to how the years have changed me. I’m not literally the same mind that you once knew as Houdini. I’m a parallel version of him trapped in this body.”

  “You seem very much the same,” Mr. Czito said.

  “My wife can sense a difference,” I said. “Or I should say the parallel version of my wife in this universe can somehow tell that I’m not the man she married. Something about me is subtly different.”

  “Is she the only person who has noticed?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “The only person?” I asked. “She’s the only person— unless you want to count my dog, Bobby. He knows. In fact, he seems terrified of me for some reason.”

  “Dogs have a different range of sensory perceptions than humans,” Mr. Czito said. “There’s no telling what he’s seeing when he looks at you.”

  “He’s certainly seeing something,” I said.

  “Once this matter with the Bell is settled, Mr. Tesla is going to give his full attention to your problem,” Mr. Czito said.

  “Does he think he can get me back to my home universe?” I asked.

  “We can’t promise anything,” Mr. Czito said, “except that we will try our best to do it.”

  “That’s plenty good enough for me,” I said.

  The door in front of us suddenly slid open and revealed Jack’s horse barns lit by the moonlight.

  “See you again sometime, perhaps,” Mr. Czito said, extending his hand to me.

  “Perhaps,” I said, shaking Mr. Czito’s hand. “Perhaps in another twenty-two years.”

  I went through the door of the ship and down its steps, and planted my feet upon the earth of the meadow. I kept walking toward the horse barns, got up to them, and then turned around.

  The U.S.S. Cypher was already ascending into the sky, following in reverse that same ‘z’ trajectory it had taken earlier. It slipped back and forth in the air like it was a pendulum suspended on a string.