by Ben Farthing
“When did you change your mind?” Chris asked.
Riley wasn’t sure. When she’d realized her life had meaning. If she was meant to stop this supernatural disaster, then she could be meant for other things, too. It wasn’t worth risking giving that up to save the life of a murderer and psychopath. “I want to live,” she said and opened the door into Deck Two.
45
The Deck Two corridors had shifted further into the other dimension.
The ship that this counterfeit Aria overlapped with was falling apart. Gaps in the floor presumably dropped into Deck One, but cloudy shadows blocked the view.
The walls on either side of the corridor were mostly studs, allowing Riley to see inside. The shadow people were all gone. She hoped they’d fled, but she suspected they’d been taken.
Riley and Chris walked until they came to the same entrance as before. The opening in the wall was still there, a gap from the crossing over of dimensions.
Inside, the giant ball of fleshy dough had grown. It now took up at least half the room. Over fifty bodies were stuck into it at the bottom.
“So many,” Riley whispered. Maybe her story about a whole nest of starfish wasn’t just a story. She couldn’t believe just one could have brought this many people.
The silvery cords that extended from the corpses’ hands and feet had grown so numerous that they hid the floor in multiple layers.
Riley couldn’t take her eyes off them. Every little glowing pulse that passed through the strands was a tiny bit more of the other dimension prepping this one for invasion.
Chris stepped into the room. The strands burst under his shoes. “Nothing to do but walk on them.”
Riley followed. It felt like walking on wet spaghetti, except they burst like stepping on a large beetle. “What do we do? Just shove the bombs into it?”
The pile of dough had become a hill, expanding like actual dough left to rise. Riley didn’t want to touch it, but she didn’t know if sticking the bombs to the outside would do enough.
“You don’t want to touch it. We need a pole of some kind,” said Chris. “To shove them inside.”
“We don’t have it.”
“One at a time, then. Blow up one edge, set the next bomb deeper inside.”
Riley knew if she hesitated, she might lose her nerve and run away. So she forced herself to approach the foreign machinery.
Glowing strands popped under her feet. The dough smelled of rotten vegetables now. She didn’t remember if it had smelled earlier. Now it was pressed against the ceiling, expanding outwards.
Riley took a steel cube from her pocket. She snapped off the lid.
Chris squeezed a healthy dollop of catalyst into the cube. Riley snapped the lid back on.
“Now shove it in,” Chris said. “We’ve got about thirty seconds.”
Riley resisted the impulse to throw the cube. She didn’t know if the bomb would bounce off the surface.
She closed her eyes and thrust her hand at the dough, opening her fingers at the last second to shove the cube against the soft surface.
“No!” shouted Chris. “Don’t let your skin touch it.”
Too late, as the bomb broke the surface, her fingers pressed into the dough. Lightning ran up her arm into her mind. The silvery lights shooting across the floor turned a deep violet. Chris faded in and out of view. The whole ship faded out of view.
Riley found herself above a furious orange ocean, clinging to a rock. Wet wind whipped against her skin. She kept her eyes on the rock in front of her, terrified of what was below her in the ocean or out on the horizon.
The rock was cold under her fingers, but rumbled like a car’s engine. A piece broke off, and she slipped but managed to jam her foot against a small outcropping. The broken piece was replaced by more rock that pushed out from within.
“Chris?” she called.
She thought she heard an answer, but it was swallowed by the crash of waves against the rock. She forced herself to look around.
It was the same ocean she’d seen when she’d wound Dad’s watch, only now there was no ship. The rock she clung to was one of countless in these eternal shoals.
Below, the ocean was threateningly shallow. A solid surface flashed into view sporadically as the waves rose and fell.
A blood-red web of taut arteries was suspended above the ocean floor, between the rocks. It dragged human forms along its maze-like paths, their directions less random the longer Riley watched. The captured people moved toward the horizon.
Riley wanted to look, but her mind refused. Some part of her could sense the threat of insanity in that direction. If she looked, it would be beyond comprehension. And the fear that gripped her was not that an ancient entity was waiting to be seen, silhouetted by the horizon, but rather that she would see one key feature of this scene of waves and rocks and too-close ocean floor, and the whole picture would come into focus, and she would no longer be able to ignore that she was in a mouth, clinging to one of a million teeth, waiting to see if she would be swallowed before the approaching creation snatched her away for itself.
“The Deviser,” she whispered to herself. The world around her told her that was false, that the Deviser couldn’t be understood in such simple manners as having a mouth or teeth. This was only a natural threat in the Deviser’s world, equally ignored by the scheming deity until it could prove useful in the Deviser’s great construction.
Riley felt her head turn toward the horizon. She could feel that it would drive her mad, but she couldn’t go on not knowing.
Hands closed around her waist. They pulled.
Riley tumbled onto Chris. Both fell into a tangle of silvery strands.
“Are you awake?” Chris was already dragging Riley by her arm.
She jumped to her feet.
“It’s about to go off. Run!”
Riley let Chris drag her back towards the door. Her body and mind had reached the precipice of understanding and then been yanked away. She felt a mixture of disgust and grief. And then an explosion knocked her to her knees again.
It wasn’t as bad as when Chris killed the starfish. Riley stood back up.
A chunk the size of a pickup truck was missing from the massive pile of dough. Silvery strands went dark.
Chris winced. “I thought it’d do more.”
Riley’s mind found its way back to the present. She was stopping that other world from crossing over. As badly as she needed to see what was over there, her desire to survive was stronger.
“So we use more explosives,” Riley said. She pointed to the dead strands. “It’s working.”
“I don’t know if we have enough. But what other option do we have?”
They trudged back to the hole they’d created.
Gunshots roared from behind them. Riley felt the air pop next to her face. Chris yelled and fell over.
Riley spun around.
Nathaniel stood in the doorway. He’d found one of the crew’s assault rifles. Wendy stood behind him, arms behind her back. She wept silently, but her expression was cold.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Nathaniel called. “I won’t let you interrupt the Deviser’s plans.”
Riley yelled back, “You don’t understand what it is.”
And as she knelt down to help Chris, she thought to herself that neither did she.
46
Riley knelt over Chris. Dead strands popped under her knees.
Blood soaked into Chris’s shirt right in the center of his belly. He lifted his head to look at himself. “I’m okay,” he wheezed and then groaned in pain. The blood spread until it covered his whole gut.
“Put pressure on it,” Riley put Chris’s hands on the wound. That’s what they did in the movies.
Nathaniel yelled her name. He enunciated both syllables. It pulled her away from the tiny disaster she’d been sucked into. She looked up.
She and Chris were a few feet from the missing chunk of doughy foreign machinery. The floor of the w
hole room was filled with silver pulses, except for the dead spot underneath them. The expanding dough pile had a chunk carved out of it that she could walk into and spin around with arms wide, not that she wanted to.
Nathaniel and Wendy still stood in the doorway, thirty feet away, too afraid to come in and disturb the Deviser’s plans. Or maybe they were too afraid of the Deviser’s plans, eager to help them to fruition, but scared to get used as a human corpse battery.
Riley turned her back to them. She couldn’t solve that problem yet.
Chris had bunched his shirt over the wound. The bleeding had slowed. “In case I don’t make it out of here, tell Eddie I didn’t get taken. Tell him I stopped the dark world from crossing over.”
“We haven’t stopped it yet.” Riley bit her tongue. That’s not what she was supposed to say here. She was supposed to say that Chris could tell Eddie himself.
Nathaniel yelled again. “Get back from there. I’ll do what must be done.”
“Do you think he’ll shoot you?” Chris wheezed.
“Probably. He’s a dick.”
“You could throw a bomb.”
“He’d definitely shoot me then.”
Chris strained to lift his head again. “I’ve still got that plastic pistol. How’s your aim?”
“I’m not Annie Oakley. I can’t draw and aim that fast.”
“What would you say to continuing with our work and hoping he doesn’t shoot?”
“Maybe I can buy us some time.” Using her body to block Nathaniel and Wendy’s view, Riley helped Chris pull the rest of his steel cubes from his pockets. She yelled over her shoulder. “Wendy! I’ve seen it. I touched this, and I saw it. A whole different world.”
Wendy responded with hope in her voice. “You saw the Deviser?”
Riley thought of the leviathan whose tooth she’d clung to, of the deep primeval knowledge that even that incomprehensible creature was like a cockroach to the Deviser. She thought of the web of blood vessels, a vanguard to the arrival of the Deviser’s creation. “I saw him. He’s getting his next gift ready.”
“Riley,” Nathaniel called more calmly. “Come over here and talk.”
Riley brought out her own bombs. She opened the toothpaste tube. “How much in each?” she whispered.
“A little less than you’d use to brush your teeth. That’ll give us about a minute to get away.”
Riley yelled to her aunt and uncle, “You come over here. If you touch this, you can see, too.”
Wendy spoke excitedly to Nathaniel, too quiet for Riley to understand.
“Before I do this,” Riley whispered, “can you stand up?”
“I’ll try. You might have to drag me.”
Chris wasn’t a huge man, but Riley still guessed he weighed close to 200 pounds. “I’ll try.”
Riley saved half the explosives for the ship’s hull. She snapped off the lids of the others, quickly added in the catalyst, then snapped them shut.
She walked into the gap in the dough. The air in here buzzed with energy. She wasn’t about to touch the surface again, so instead, she threw one cube as hard as she could. It broke the surface and stuck inside.
Nathaniel yelled at her. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it.”
Riley threw two more.
“I swear to god I’ll shoot you.”
“I want to see him again!” she yelled back. Let them puzzle out how throwing these little cubes would help her see the Deviser.
She threw the last of them into the dough.
Chris was crawling to his feet.
“He stays down,” ordered Nathaniel.
Riley counted backward in her head. How long had it been since she put in the catalyst? Fifteen seconds? And it wasn’t an exact timer anyways. She counted down from thirty to give herself a buffer.
Chris stood hunched over, hands over his belly. “Not the worst pain I’ve felt,” he said through gritted teeth. Blood dripped past his missing finger and down his pants.
Riley scooped up the remaining explosives from off the floor where she’d left them. She held them in the crook of one arm and put her opposite arm under Chris’s shoulders.
Twenty-five seconds left.
“He stays where he is.” Nathaniel raised the rifle back up to his shoulder.
“That’s not what the Deviser wants,” Riley answered.
Wendy touched Nathaniel’s back and whispered something.
“You don’t know what it wants,” Nathaniel’s tone was accusatory but unsure.
Twenty seconds left.
Riley helped Chris limp away from the bombs. If this were even the size of the first blast, they were still too close to survive.
“I said stop!” Nathaniel yelled.
“We’ve already been blessed,” Riley riffed. “Our turn is over. We have to leave.”
“That man is no friend of the Deviser’s.” Nathaniel was practically frothing with hatred and frustration.
Chris mumbled an undoubtedly snide comment, but he was breathing too hard for Riley to understand it.
Fifteen seconds. They were ten feet from the doorway. Nathaniel wouldn’t miss from this range.
Wendy pushed the rifle’s barrel down to aim at the floor. “She’s trying to help. Listen, honey. This is Tommy’s little girl. She’s been looking for the Deviser her whole life. She just didn’t know it until recently.”
Nathaniel looked his wife in the eye. “I don’t know. You didn’t see her downstairs. She repeated this deceiver’s lies.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t confused. But now she’s clearly communed with the Deviser. It was her turn, like she said. Now maybe it’s our turn.” Wendy took Nathaniel by the hand and led him into the room.
Ten seconds left.
Riley didn’t want to kill her aunt and uncle. “Wait, stay here and talk with me first.”
“Wendy’s right,” Nathaniel said. “It’s our turn.”
“Do we need these?” Wendy reached for the bombs that Riley carried against her chest.
Riley jerked back. “No!”
Nathaniel ripped them away from Riley, his elderly hands still strong. “You won’t keep this from us. We deserve this more than you.”
Chris mumbled again.
Nathaniel raised the rifle. “And after this, I’ll deal with him.” He pulled Wendy toward the center of the room.
Five seconds.
Riley couldn’t save them. They didn’t deserve it. She hurried Chris for the door. Chris stumbled, but she kept him on his feet. Guilt welled up inside Riley. She couldn’t leave her aunt and uncle to die.
“They’re bombs! Drop them and run!”
Nathaniel and Wendy turned back around as if seeing Riley’s face would tell them whether or not to believe her.
Riley saw her father in Nathaniel’s jawline and nose. And saw herself. If Dad had stayed in this cult, would Riley be as dangerously naive as her uncle right now?
But it was a pointless thought. Dad hadn’t stayed. He’d seen the danger and left. Riley had never heard about the Deviser until yesterday. She wasn’t meant to worship it. She was meant to stop it.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Wendy and then waited for the explosion.
Lights pulsed across the floor. Wendy and Nathaniel stared at Riley. Wendy held onto Nathaniel’s elbow like she was escorting him to a formal party. The expanding dough behind them shuddered in time with the silvery lights. It hadn’t done that before. Maybe it sensed the bombs.
“Sorry for what?” Wendy asked. Concern appeared on her face, showing that she finally understood that Riley had been lying, that she had no intention of seeking the Deviser, that it wasn’t anyone’s turn to see it.
Riley braced for the explosion.
It didn’t come.
“Keep walking.” Chris forced the words out one at a time.
Riley remembered the buffer she’d added when she started counting.
“You hold on a moment,” Nathaniel said.
The room e
xploded.
47
Standing in the doorway, Riley and Chris were plenty far away from the first explosion.
But Nathaniel and Wendy were halfway between, and Nathaniel was carrying another six bombs.
The first blast hit Riley like a soft ocean swell. The second knocked her off her feet to slam her into the corridor wall behind her.
The sound of the explosion hit next, and Riley’s hearing went quiet.
Riley sat on the floor. Pain in her chest sharpened with each breath. Warm blood trickled down the back of her neck. She must have split her head open when she hit the wall. The whole world felt fuzzy, and her thoughts moved in slow motion.
She thought she’d bruise on every inch of her body that had been facing her aunt and uncle.
At the thought of Nathaniel and Wendy, Riley looked back into the room.
The silver lights from the strands had gone dead. Now the floor was covered in what looked like floppy spaghetti noodles, except for where Nathaniel and Wendy had been standing—which was marked with a crater into the floor—and at the center of the room.
Riley’s sluggish mind didn’t want to look at the center of the room yet. She stood up. Her legs hurt like they’d been beaten with baseball bats, but they weren’t broken.
The crater where Nathaniel and Wendy had been standing wasn’t empty. Two sets of legs lay askew in the depression. Wendy’s feet were still attached, but Nathaniel’s weren’t. Riley didn’t see their upper bodies anywhere. That close to the bombs, they were likely in hundreds of charred pieces.
Riley suddenly remembered Chris. Her mind clawed away some of the fog. She looked around to find him lying on his side against the corridor wall. His gut was bleeding profusely again.
Riley rolled him over. She used both hands to put pressure on his wound. “Are you still here?” she asked but couldn’t hear a thing.
Chris’s eyes fluttered open. His skin was several shades lighter. He’d lost so much blood. He asked her something.
Riley shrugged. “I can’t hear you.”
He mouthed the words again, slowly, and then made an obvious show of looking into the room. “Did it stop?”
