The Angel of the Abyss

by Hank Schwaeble

  He touched one of the key cards to the pad again. Nothing. He looked at Amy and shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

  “Any ideas?”

  Hatcher shook his head, tipped his chin back and peered up. Solid ceiling. No maintenance portal, no panels. He glanced at the walls. No wall plate hiding a phone, no locked cover protecting emergency controls. Only a solid touchpad that didn't look like it would budge without significant prying with a tool he didn't have and probably wouldn't be any help if it did.

  He took in a long breath and held it. The darkness stared back. “Wait here,” he said.

  “Oh, no no no,” Amy said, shaking her head. “No way.”

  “We can't just sit here. Look, we obviously miscalculated. They knew we were coming. Or she did, at least.”

  “I'm going with you.”

  “No.”

  “This isn't up for discussion. I'm not letting you walk out there by yourself. And if I can't physically stop you, I'll appeal to your manliness and tell you not to leave me here alone.”

  Hatcher raked his hand across his face. He palmed his chin and worried his jaw a bit with his thumb, considering his options.

  “Let me walk a couple of steps, see if you lose sight of me. We'll keep talking. Just a few feet, then straight back. There might be a wall right there, for all we know. Maybe a light switch.”

  “You're not going to let me come with you no matter what I say, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Jake Hatcher, you are a stubborn, sexist, chauvinist pig of a man. And if you don't jump right back in here the moment I lose sight of you...” She scooped her hand into his and kissed him on the lips.

  Hatcher held onto her eyes with his for a moment then kissed her once more on the forehead and turned toward the opening. Her hand reluctantly slipped from his fingers as he stepped out of the elevator. He leaned out at first, glancing to each side. Pure black. He looked over his shoulder and took another step.

  “I can still see you,” Amy said. “Good.”

  He reached a hand in front of him, fanned it from side to side. Nothing. He twisted to look at Amy. “Tell me if—”

  The elevators doors collided shut. No hiss, no warning. Just the dead thunk of them coming together, obliterating all the light. Amy's expression hadn't even had the chance to change before she disappeared.

  He lunged to cover those two steps he'd taken, crashing into something solid. Maybe it was the door, should have been the door, but he couldn't tell. He hammered with his fists, rammed with his shoulder. He dragged his fingers from side to side, clawing, trying to find the divide. At one point he thought he heard the faint hum of machinery, but placing his ear against the surface did little to amplify it.

  The darkness was absolute. He started to scream Amy's name, but stopped himself. She wouldn't be able to hear him. And something about shouting, making noise in the sea of pitch surrounding him, seemed unwise. That was the thing about being alone in the dark. You had no doubt about it being dark, but could never be sure about the alone part.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He groped for the button, found it. He pressed it once, twice. Nothing. For whatever reason, the screen would not light up.

  He rolled until his back was against the – wall? door? – and tried to orient himself. The black was so thick he could almost feel it pressing against him, seeping into his eyes and ears and nostrils.

  Sensory deprivation could have quick and significant effects on lucidity, a fact he knew very well. When cut off from stimuli and under stress, the brain had a tendency to create its own, fill in the void. The key was to keep himself in the moment. He tried to control his breathing, ward off anxiety. If this was the door he was up against, walking straight ahead should put him on a path to hit something. He could always turn around and walk straight back. But he knew that wasn't exactly true. It was very hard to walk a straight line for any distance, even in daylight, without some visual point of reference guiding you. In the sightless black, it was nearly impossible.

  But he didn't see many options. The darkness was unnerving. Someone or something brought him into it, wanted him to experience it. The last thing he wanted to do was just stand there – as his comrades so often said in the field – with his dick in his hands.

  He straightened and stepped forward. He told himself to point his shoe straight and touch the back of his heel to the tip of the other toe each time. Basic Field Training. If left to the human body's own device, most people trekking on foot will unconsciously veer to the left, due to the right leg being dominant and taking imperceptibly longer steps. Many a person lost in the wilderness found themselves after days of hiking back near where they began, having traveled in a giant circle.

  Heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe… aw, fuck it. He gave up and took a few normal steps forward, one palm out.

  “I can't imagine there's no one else here, enjoying this,” he said, the quiet finally too much to take.

  Silence. No discernible echo, even. Nothing but nothing in every direction.

  One more step, two, three. Then a body appeared, erupting into view. A white glow popping out of the dark. Its details so bright, it seemed to have an aura.

  A corpse.

  The body was laid out on something invisible, maybe a black slab hidden in the darkness, though he couldn't be sure. A woman, days dead from the look of her, maybe longer. She was Caucasian, blond, just a few feet away. A flimsy white dress like a short nightgown draped down on the sides from her chest to mid-thigh. She glowed a florescent shade of white. Then whatever light shone on her flickered and she disappeared. Full dark, again.

  He waited for something else to happen. Moments stretched. He stepped toward where the body had been, bumped into something. Groped around, felt something hard, bone under flesh. A leg, two of them. Knees. But they were bent and facing him, shins pointed down.

  The light flashed on again. The corpse was sitting directly in front of him, staring, colorless eyes rimmed in empty red, fixed on his. Lips beginning to part.

  A noise rattled from his throat and he yanked back, stumbling. The light flickered once more, then cut out.

  “I cannot tell you how gratifying that was. To finally see you show fear. Someone should mark the time and date.”

  It was a woman's voice. Breathy, amplified. Familiar. He couldn't quite pin the direction. Somewhere in front of him.

  “What makes you think I've never been afraid?” he said, turning his head from side to side, hoping to get a bead on the voice when it responded.

  “Oh, I know you've been afraid. In fact, you're afraid more than you're not. You just never show it.”

  “Is that what this is about? You wanting to scare me?”

  “That wouldn't be too hard, now, would it? So many fears to choose from. Like this.”

  A different figure appeared next to him, illuminated by some bright, unseen light. A creature from childhood nightmares, with rows and rows of thin daggered teeth overpopulating a gaping maw, scraggly strings of black hair draped over grey skin, eyes like puddles of tar. Long, gnarled limbs, reaching. A thick tendril of mucus spanned the gap of its mouth as it made a gurgling hiss, leaning behind knobby hands, cadaverous fingers that darted out to grab his head.

  Hatcher tripped trying to get out of the way as the light vanished and the darkness swallowed him again. He planted a hand on the floor, pushed himself up. Tried to regain some composure.

  “The ol' jar of grapes you tell me are eyeballs would be more effective,” he said. “I see. Not scary enough? How about this?”

  The darkness shifted. It wasn't completely black anymore. He was no longer standing, but lying. Soft, padded warmth beneath him. He was in bed, his bed, staring at the ceiling, Amy sleeping next to him. And there, in the quiet, in the peace and comfort of a calm night, he was sinking in a pool of dread. />
  He knew this feeling, knew it like a body part, but had no sense of the particular night. It could have been last week or last year or any night in between. It happened often. Always in the gloaming void before drifting off, that brief span where he lingered in a twilight of semi-consciousness, suspended between wakefulness and dreams. That one, elastic instant in which he could sense eternity stretching out before him.

  His eyes would flip open and that was the worst, that moment of awareness, the point where consciousness and unconsciousness swapped places, the overlap creating the sensation of a reveal, a peek behind the curtain. Always carrying with it that feeling of helplessness, of panic, of an inarticulable knowledge he didn't want to have, knowledge that chilled him down to the deepest parts of who he was. Eternity was forever. And forever was relentless.

  In the light of day it was a simple fact of existence, but on those nights when sleep unlocked the door to his mind only to leave it open a fraction too long, it was a vengeful haunting, a specter slipping past the threshold, pouncing out of the void, molesting the child within. Nights when his drift into sleep was slow enough that the world fell away until it was only him and his thoughts, when everything was still, when his soul could hear the cold, beckoning whisper of what awaits. Eternity was forever, and he'd either spend it being tortured in unspeakable ways, or he would just not exist at all, in any form, ever again. Gone. Eternally absent, nonexistent. Gradually traceless, and never, ever returning or remembered or missed, for millions, billions, trillions of years. An infinite number of lifetimes stretching ceaselessly into the future, a future in which he didn't exist, and never would.

  He didn't know which possibility chilled him the most, and he didn't care to find out.

  Raising his head, he tried to look around the room, wondering if he'd simply been dreaming. Then he saw there wasn't a room, that he wasn't lying down. He was on his feet, submerged in absolute darkness, back to where he'd been. If he'd ever left.

  “I'm sorry, was that a little below the belt? It's the uncertainty that gets to people, the indefiniteness. The reason we stare into the abyss is because we know it holds our fate in its depths, if we could only get close enough to see, to peer far enough down. And, by we, of course, I mean you.”

  Light again, sudden, almost blinding as it flashed on. This time it illuminated a large, round bed a few feet in front of him. It had a bright red comforter, quilted with heart-shaped stitching, silk sheets and pillows, smooth with a light golden sheen. Deborah was propped at the head of it, directly across from him. She was mostly skin. A sheer bra with blue trim barely contained her breasts. A matching thong left even less to the imagination. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs at the ankle, flicking the blue fuzz of her high-heeled slipper a few times and hooking a finger over her bottom lip like a centerfold.

  She took a deep breath, pulling her legs back, and rose to her knees, stretching her arms like a waking bird of prey.

  “Jake Hatcher,” Deborah said, exhaling audibly, the words riding the current of her voice. “As I live and breathe.”

  The float of her scent reached him and he bit the inside of his lip. His body reacted in ways he couldn't control, as it always did. His brain started to anticipate the movement of her limbs as his eyes struggled to choose between the sultry depths of her gaze or the lines and curves of her flesh. Carnates did not fight fair.

  “I'm not actually sure either one of those applies,” he said.

  She made a pouty face, bottom lip stuck out. Her head angled to the side and she smiled. She dropped forward onto her hands and crawled toward him. “I liked talking about what was below your belt. Let's go back to that.”

  “What did you do with Amy?”

  “We don't need her at the moment. If it's a threesome you want, I'm sure I can rustle up one of my sisters. In the sorority sense of the word, in case your mind is really in the gutter. And trust me – one of them would be much more accommodating.”

  “Where is she?”

  Deborah rolled her eyes, wagged her head in disappointment. Her pageboy haircut swing from side to side, the shimmering black so dark it reflected almost blue. “She's fine. Will you stop acting like the mayor of Dullsville? Let's focus on the important stuff, like the fact she's not here.” She leaned back onto her knees, indicated her body with a slow sweep of her hands. “And I am.”

  Hatcher hated all of this, hated the pull these women exerted. Hated the way they made his mind go places, his body feel things. Hated the amount of self-control he had to exercise. Hated wishing he didn't have to hate it.

  “It's going to take more than pheromones.”

  “Don't kid yourself, Jacob. If I really wanted to overcome that prized willpower of yours…” she leaned forward again, this time onto one arm, the other hand pushing forward one breast until it almost escaped its cup. She ran her tongue across her lips and batted her eyes shut, “you know I could.”

  She smiled again and crept her way to the edge of the bed, panther-like. “And that's what really eats at you, isn't it? Knowing I'm right.”

  “At the moment, I'm more interested in how you knew we were coming.”

  “Okay, you're already starting to bore me.” She swung her legs over the edge and crossed them, leaning back onto her hands. “While I'm inclined to gloat about how I knew you wouldn't be able to stay away, I'm not inclined to listen to all the tedious protests you'd start blathering. Let's just say I have my sources. You just met one of them. And when someone starts making discreet inquiries to the police about information pertaining to my whereabouts, and that someone is an ex-cop connected to another certain someone, well, math may never have been my strong point, but I can still add two plus two. The more important question is, why are you here?”

  “I need information.”

  “Check the Drudge Report.”

  “I think you know what particular information I mean. I doubt there's anything that goes on in whatever circles it is your type travels that you don't know about.”

  “And what makes you think I'd help you? In fact, I'm not even sure what to make of you being here, gratifying as it is. Given all the awful things you've said about me, how could you be sure you'd ever be allowed to leave? Alive, that is.”

  “Because if you wanted to kill me, or throw me in a cage, you'd have done it already. Last time I saw you, you had me underground and helpless. You knocked me out somehow and I woke up in...” he paused. “A car.”

  “Vivian's car, you mean.”

  “It was a rental,” he said, as if that made a difference.

  “So now, all of a sudden, you trust me?”

  “No. I just don't know where else to start. And it's not just that. There's a reason you'll help me.”

  “Oh? What's that?”

  “You like me. And while I don't pretend to understand the workings of a mind like yours, or even begin to comprehend the web of agendas and motives you all have going on, I think deep down you want to. Help me, that is.”

  “Help you do what? Save your former paramour from the clutches of damnation? Your favorite pastime of late, from what I hear.”

  “Yes.”

  She tapped her chin with her forefinger. “I suppose you're right about one thing. I do like you. You amuse me. That's why I'm going to give you some good advice. The best advice. Go home. Leave this alone.”

  “I can't do that.”

  She gave him a long look, like a picker at a rummage sale inspecting an unusual object and thinking about what to offer. She slid off the bed and circled to the side. Another light shone down next to the bed and she reached into the cone of it for a pack of cigarettes sitting on a pedestal near the headboard.

  She lit the cigarette with a large silver lighter, set the lighter down near an ashtray. She inhaled before she turned to face him.

  A long plume of smoke puffed out of the side of her mouth
, spreading out and disappearing into the darkness above her. “Even if I wanted to help you, I'm not sure I could.”

  “All I want is information.”

  “That's what I mean. While it may seem to you that we know everything, you may be shocked to hear that isn't always the case. It just seems that way. To someone like you, I mean.”

  “But you do know what I've been asked to do, right? I find it hard to believe you wouldn't.”

  “I can guess. Not knowing everything isn't the same as not knowing anything. Who contacted you?”

  “Sahara Doyle.”

  “The TV psychic? Ha! Now I really think you should just walk away. If I were you, I wouldn't trust a thing she tells you. I'm serious, Hatcher.”

  “Why?”

  “Let's see, hmm, did I already mention the part about her being a TV psychic? That pretty much covers it. Sort of screams, ‘will do anything for money’, don't you think?”

  She took another drag from her cigarette, tilted her head back. Her smirk was subtle. Just subtle enough he pictured obscene ways he could wipe it off her face, replace it with painful looks of ecstasy. He bit the inside of his cheek. Hard.

  “It wasn't really her telling me anything,” he said. “As much as who she put me in touch with. Your pal. Raum.”

  “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

  Hatcher tried to interpret what she meant, failed. “I don't understand.”

  “That much is obvious. Look, Hatcher... for a man of the world, a man who's shown what I will admit has, at times, been a gritty set of street smarts, and perhaps what many would consider an admirable amount of fortitude, you sure are credulous. I'm starting to worry someone might offer you candy from the back of a van.”