The Aberration (10 page)

“Guy…”

Guy finally stared at Michael’s hand on his shoulder.  He realized that the screams had finally stopped.  The creature was dead.  Only the limbs moved, twitching involuntarily.

“It’s over.  It’s dead.”

Guy rose from the creature’s innards, covered in blood and viscera.  He leaned against the wall, panting before he managed to stand upright, looking around.

“Fran?”

Her voice was faint.  “I’m here.”

Michael and Guy searched frantically, pushing aside quivering limbs until they found Fran under part of the steaming corpse.  One of the creature’s limbs was punched right through her chest.  Michael groaned as he fell beside her.

Guy knelt down and cradled her head gently.  “Fran…”

She tried to smile.  “It’s ok.  I know it’s… bad.”

“I’m sorry, Fran.  This is my fault.  You shouldn’t have been involved.”

Fran winced as she shook her head.  “No.  You… needed our help.  It’s like you… said, Guy.”  She coughed, staining her lips crimson.  “We were… chosen.”

Her body sagged as her eyes filmed over.  Guy carefully laid her down and closed her eyes.  Michael’s shoulders shook as he covered his face in his hands.

Guy slowly stood up.  He located his duffel bag and lifted it from the slick blood.  “Michael.”

Michael slowly gathered himself and looked up.  “It’s… still not over, is it?”

“Not yet.”

Michael gazed at Fran as he stood.  His fists clenched tightly.  “Let’s do it, then.”

They turned and ascended the final stairwell.  When they reached the door to the roof, Guy turned to Michael.  “This is as far as you go.”

“What?  But I thought…”

Guy set the duffel bag down and pulled out a contraption that looked to Michael like a pretty large explosive.  Guy pressed a few buttons on the display.

“Whatever happens, this can’t be allowed to spread.  When I go through that door, I will be on the other side.  The door will close.  When you open it, you will still be here.”

Michael’s hands trembled.  He hastily wiped them on his shirt. 
Getting these bloodstains out will be impossible.
  It was funny what the mind thought of in moments of sheer panic.

“You’re… leaving me?”

Guy’s face was resolved, more focused and sure than Michael had ever seen him.  “I’m giving you a chance to survive.  The focus will be on me.  If I’m right, you should be able to go to the fire escape and get to the ground.  When you do, get as far away from the mill as you can.”

He pointed at the bomb.  “This will go off in fifteen minutes.  It should be enough to level the building, given all the compressed air and dust in this place.  I can’t take the chance of the Threshold remaining open.  It has to end here.”

“What… what about you?  How will you be able to get away?”

Guy looked Michael in the eye.  “It doesn’t matter what happens to me.  Only that this evil is stopped.”

The two men looked at each other.  Guy nodded.

“Remember –as far away as possible.  I hope you make it, Michael.”

Guy reached in his shirt and pulled the key medallion out.  Immediately it glowed with a faint light.  The door handle emitted an answering glow.  Though it was impossible, the door had altered.  It appeared antiquated; rusted and old.  The surface was covered with the frozen features of endless screaming faces. 

The key slid into the elaborately carved handle.  Guy turned it and opened the door.

Michael gasped.

It is not the mill of the roof.  The clouds were liquid flame.  The rooftop was an ancient castle tower with black, rutted flagstones and ramparts made of human skulls. 

The wind shrieked like the voices of the dead.

Michael’s mouth hung open.  He raised a mute hand as Guy stepped through the doorway.  He did not look back.

The door closed before Michael could say a word.  He quickly stumbled to the door.  It was once again normal.  Just the door to the mill as it always was.  He opened it and stepped outside.

He was immediately soaked by the pouring rain.  The rooftop appeared normal.  The wheat silos were clearly visible, the conveyor clicked along as it transferred the raw product from one bin to the next.  Michael looked around frantically.

“Guy?”

No one answered. 

“I can’t… I can’t believe it.”

Something hummed.  It was a sound like arcs of unbridled electricity.  Michael turned. 

A quivering cord of violet-black energy stretched from the rooftop to the sky until it was lost in the dark clouds that hovered ominously above the mill like a descending tornado.  The cord pulsed, crackling like lightning.  For a brief moment Michael saw something in that pulse, an image like a hologram that flashed for an instant.  It was Guy, walking toward a towering figure that wore shadows like a normal man wore clothes.

The image faded away.  Nothing was left but the pulsating energy cord and the torrential rain.

“Jesus Christ.”

Michael searched until he spotted the fire escape at the edge of the roof.  He hobbled over and painfully clambered onto the ladder.  It was slippery and his injured arm handicapped his movements, but he descended as fast as he could, dwindling down into the pouring rain.

20

Unselective Paramnesia

When Guy strode out to the rooftop he was immediately struck by the sensation of repetition; an echo across boundaries he could not see but knew existed.

Everything was blurry, the colors washed out.  Burning towers shot pillars of wavering flame into a sky that already rippled like liquid fire.  Ghostly faces appeared and vanished in the hellish clouds, screaming in agony and terror.

The beacon flickered brilliantly, a sizzling cord of continuous lightning that crackled into the fiery heavens.  The surrounding towers were cloaked with Others in numbers so thick that the walls appeared sentient, spires of fluttering wings and shifting bodies.  Their forms differed, but each was as twisted and hideous as the next.   Countless pale eyes glimmered as they gazed his direction, their silence as loud as a thousand screams in his mind.

“I have been waiting for you.”

Guy turned to face the Other One. 

Velvet shadows draped the tall, gaunt figure whose face was partially covered by a richly lacquered opera mask beneath the wide brim of his feathered hat.  The visible flesh of his face was the color of polished bone, the lips bloodless as they quirked in an almost smile.  His voice was oddly soothing, soft as a mother’s whisper when he spoke.

“You know what this is, don’t you?”

Guy swallowed painfully.  “The other side. The… Aberration.  And you –you are their master.  The Other One.”

Again the pale lips almost smiled. “Is that what you think?”

Guy took a wary step back, though the Other One made no movement toward him.  “I… know what you are.  What it is that you’re trying to do.”

“Do you?  One can only know ascertain the truth if they are sane, Guy.  Are you?”

Guy found that searching the Other One’s face was futile; the eyeholes in the mask were empty as deep space, yawning mouths that stretched to blackened infinity.  Guy tore his gaze away to look at the fiery horizon.

“I didn’t come here to have a conversation.  I came to end this.  To avenge those who were killed trying to stop your invasions.”  He looked up.  “I’ve come to kill you.”

The Other One did not appear distressed.  “Haven’t you had enough killing for one night?  Do you truly wish to continue your murderous rampage?”

Guy winced.  “I… don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The Other One tilted his head.  “I think you do, Guy.  How could you not, when you’re covered in the blood of everyone you worked with tonight?”

Guy raised his crimson hands.  The dagger was still in his grasp, slicked with blood.  His clothes were just as bloodstained, like a butcher gone mad.

“No.  It wasn’t me. It was the spider…”

“The…
spider
?”  The Other One’s whisper was tinged with mockery.

Guy nodded eagerly.  “Yes, the spider!  And then the Others… they killed Greg first, and then Rob, and then…”

The Other One threw back his head and roared with laughter.  The clouds rumbled with echoes of muffled thunder.  “You are truly ignorant of your madness, are you not?  Your insanity has blinded you from the truth!”

“The truth?”

“The truth that you murdered all of them! Remember when you came in early and threw Reese off the building?”

“I don’t see anything,” Reese said.  “Why in the world did you…”  His eyes widened as Guy brusquely shoved him.  His mouth opened in a scream that was swallowed by the sudden pull of gravity that snatched him toward the concrete below…

“You see?  Now don’t you remember going on your rounds and chopping Greg to pieces?”

Greg tried to scream, but the dagger had already severed his jugular.  As crimson sprayed from Greg’s ruined throat, Guy struck repeatedly, over and over until the walls were painted red…

Guy clutched his head.  “No!  That never happened…”

“Oh, but it did, Guy.  You held the others captive while you contemplated your next victim, but then Rob escaped.  You caught him at the door, remember?”

Rob’s hand was on the handle when the shotgun blast from behind plastered chunks of his chest over the door’s surface.  Guy stepped forward, the gun still smoking in his hands. Rob fell slowly, his face frozen in a never-ending scream…

Guy sank to his knees.  “That’s not true!  Get… out of my head!”

The Other One clasped his gloved hands gleefully.  “But you’ll miss the best part!  Surely you remember murdering Drake, don’t you?”

The makeshift noose tightened around Drake’s neck, his legs kicked futilely a foot off the floor.  Guy waited until Drake’s eyes bulged near to bursting before slashing across the stomach with the ancient dagger.  Intestines exploded from Drake’s midsection like scarlet serpents…

Guy knelt on the flagstones with his eyes squeezed shut.  He groaned as he tried to shut his mind of the intruding visions.  “No. It’s you… you’re putting these images in my head…”

“And what about Fran?  Surely you remember
that
lovely piece of work…”

Guy stood up slowly and turned to Fran, who shuddered on her knees with her hands bound.  Tears trickled down her cheeks as he raised the dagger.  The duct tape on her mouth muffled her pleas.

He rammed the blade into her chest with all of his strength.

The Other One shook his head sadly.  “What a shame.  It was such a glorious moment.  Face the truth, Guy.  You cut the phone lines, you doused the lights, you tied them up, and you slaughtered them one by one.”

Guy’s eyes burned as he raised his head.  “
No
. You
lie
.  Michael was with me at the end.”

“Michael?”  The soft voice was all too amused.  All too knowing.

Guy’s hands trembled.  The dagger was still in his grasp, slicked with blood…

“The same Michael that you threw off the rooftop after you slit his throat?”

Michael gurgled, blood streaming from the ruby gash that opened in his neck.  When Guy shoved him, he toppled over the railing and plummeted downward, dwindling in the pouring rain…

  Guy threw back his head, choking on his scream.  “
No
.  They didn’t die that way.  They saw what I saw.  They knew it was real…”

The Other One sighed with fatherly patience. “You filled in those blanks yourself, Guy.  That’s what insane people do.  You supplied their thoughts, their actions to excuse the fact that you butchered them like animals.”  He shook his head as he looked down at Guy.  “Or do you think it’s a coincidence that every time you have one of your
visions
, someone ends up dead?”

Guy felt the strength leave his limbs. 
It can’t be true.  It can’t be…
He gritted his teeth.  “Lies.  It’s all lies…

“It’s all
true
.”  The shadows billowed around the Other One, the Others swayed on the towers as though feeding on his words.  “You create a fantasy world in which you’re some immortal slayer of evil all so you can avoid the truth –that you are most vile one of all!”

Guy shook his head.  Even that small effort felt weak, as though with every whispered word the Other One sapped him of his strength.  “No. 
No
…”

The Other One was a majestic shadow that towered over him.  His head seemed to touch the clouds; his eyes were pits of fire.

“You’re a
psychopath
, Guy.  Why else would you stand here, surrounded by your own demons?  You don’t understand people, except as targets for your hatred.  You detest them, Guy; you despise their duplicity, their weak and pathetic natures, their lies, their constant need for self-reverence…”

Guy squeezed his eyes shut.  It was too much.  The darkness swelled along with the hypnotic voice, stretching toward Guy with gluttonous fingers.  It was over.  He knew he had failed, as he had so many times before. 

Pain bloomed in his shoulder.  He opened his eyes to a view of the large raven that perched with its talons sunk in his flesh.  The obsidian eyes stared into his, willing him upright.  Its harsh caw shattered the stillness, causing the Others to stir from the towers agitatedly, slicing through the mesmerizing tones of the Other One, who halted in mid-sentence.

“What is this?” 

Ravens surrounded Guy, filling the air with their raucous cries.  The clouds above his head roiled; darkened further by the myriads of ravens that entered through the beacon from the other side.

The beacon shimmered.  For a brief moment, Guy saw the mill rooftop in the afterglow.  It was still pouring rain but Michael was visible.  He looked around until he spotted the fire escape at the edge of the roof.  He hobbled over and painfully clambered onto the ladder, descending into the pouring rain.

The image faded away.    

Guy looked at the dagger in his grip.  The blade glowed faintly.  The ivory haft was carved with winged figures.  He looked at the Other One, who stared back silently.