Authors: Simon Strantzas
"Try switching to the other rooms," Rose said.
Fisher tabbed through Room Two's and Three's feeds and saw the ghostly image of a made bed and then of one unmade and slept in. Back to Room One, there was nothing.
"That
is
strange," Fisher said, leaning closer. "If the cameras weren't working, we'd get an error. That fact alone --"
Rose's finger pointing to the screen interrupted him.
"Did you see that?"
"What?"
"
That
! Look!"
Fisher did look, and at first didn't see anything in the black display. Then, glimpses of something indistinct appeared faintly in the darkness.
Fisher scratched his head. He'd never seen a camera fail that way before. Then, the darkness parted further and Fisher saw a strange shadow in the room. It stood still, hovering over Sanderson. Something about its shape niggled at the back of Fisher's mind, something that coiled the anxiety in the small of his back, and when it sprung he had to cycle through the video feeds once more to confirm his fears. The bed in Room Three was unmade, but there was no one occupying it.
"Breem is in with Sanderson," he said.
Rose ran to the door while Fisher tried to study the readings. The screen of the polysomnograph was flickering wildly, drawing thin blue and red lines across the entire width of the display as rows of white corrupting code scrolled upward. "I don't understand," was all Fisher could think to say, his brain tripping over the incomprehensible events.
"Fish! Come here!"
Fisher went to the door and saw Rose standing by Room One, looking though its tiny window.
"Rose, what's happening in there?"
She struggled for words. "It's -- I can't --"
Fisher raced over and lightly pushed her aside to look through the window, but he too struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. Thick black smoke covered the ceiling, spewing forth from the unconscious Sanderson's gaping mouth. It billowed out in waves and continuously rose to join the cloud that amassed above and was slowly circling the room. There was a faint humming noise but Fisher couldn't be sure he wasn't imagining it. Beneath the darkness stood the muttering Breem, oblivious to the darkness creeping downward.
"We need to get him out of there," Fisher said, desperately trying to make sense of what he was seeing. "
Doctor Wy
never wanted them so close to each other."
"Why not? What's happening?"
"I don't know. We need to get him out of there now and worry about the rest later." Fisher put his hand on the doorknob and then recoiled. It was vibrating. Rose cupped her hands and looked through the window set in the door.
"Hurry, I think he's having a seizure!" she said, and opened the door.
There was a drone as though insects were swarming. The sound pierced Fisher's head, the sensation like knives cutting through his skull. Rose ran into the room toward Breem, who had fallen to his knees and was rocking, releasing choked moans. Fisher covered his ears and called Rose back but she didn't seem to hear him. Above them the dark cloud swirled faster, swelling and contracting as though it were breathing. From that darkness split two protrusions like thick fingers; they slowly stretched toward the floor behind Rose while she held Breem's shaking body. As she turned to Fisher, screaming something he couldn't hear, the darkness behind her began to solidify and take shape. Fisher yelled and frantically pointed to where the two figures were forming but she didn't understand. The shapes were barely four feet tall, thin and childlike, and as they reached their arms toward her the cloud descended further, the storm brewing. Breem's lips moved as though he were silently incanting, each word causing further tumult above. Fisher screamed "Get out of there!" as loud as he could, louder than he thought was possible -- so loud his panic flared white-hot. But it came too late. Rose looked behind her, and everything slowed down in Fisher's mind. The two figures finally reached her and when they lay their dark hands upon her there was a bright flash like lightning sparking in the gathering storm and it blinded Fisher for an instant, leaving an after image burned on his retina like a photograph. He saw laughing children, but the laughter was without warmth, and as he blinked the image away he saw those two dark shapes fall apart, disintegrating in thousands of tiny shadows like flying insects. She was gone in an instant, and he saw remnants of what she had been as they bobbed along the surface of the dark swirling clouds above. Then they sank out of sight forever.
Fisher shook as he closed the door. He could still see through the window though, see the cloud churning as its turbulence settled. Sanderson had ceased moving as the endless spewing of darkness filled the room. In the shrinking space near the floor, Breem continued his inaudible speech, bent as though in prayer.
Fisher paced, his hands over his ears to block the noise but it didn't stop his heart from racing furiously, the pounding filling his head. He didn't know what to do or understand what he had witnessed; Rose had disappeared so quickly, so impossibly, that it left him numb. The droning noise worsened the sensation, creeping through the bones in his hands to fill his head with rough cotton. Everything was dull and shifted out of sync, as though he had fallen asleep and in his dreams was no longer part of what he surveyed. Fisher saw Breem through the door's tiny window, saw his face turning a deep crimson. The muscles in the man's throat stood out as though he were commanding the darkness above to stop. Fisher almost believed it was working. The spin of the dark cloud orbiting the room slowed as the effort exerted by Breem increased. His entire face shook, beads of sweat running down his cheeks. Breem poured every breath out to stop the thing, and as his kneeling body began to waver the tumultuous rolling of the cloud began to ebb. Soon it came to a full stop, settling upon the ceiling like a calm pond, and then Breem collapsed onto Sanderson's bed in a heap. Fisher took hold of the door handle to retrieve his and Sanderson's lifeless bodies. If he could get them to safety ... but before Fisher could open the door streams of dark shapes swarmed from the cloud above and with them came a sickening noise that filled Fisher with terror. Everything the darkness struck was consumed in a flurry of bright flickering sparks. The electronics in the room were the first to go, devoured seconds, then the stands and wires. Fisher removed his hands from his ears to bang on the door, but the sound paralyzed him with instant dread. There was nothing he could do but watch as the finger-like projections of darkness descended on the unconscious body of Breem. There was a bright flash and he was gone. Left behind was an image burned into Fisher's retina of Breem being joyfully beaten by a crowd of leering strangers.
Fisher's head throbbed. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't take his eyes from the thundercloud in the window, terror weighing his limbs down. There was a ringing in his head he feared might be his brain about to burst until he recognized the sound. He managed to turn away from the small window and quickly made his way back to the control room. The telephone there continued to ring, as though waiting patiently for his return. He shook as he picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. He did not speak. He did nothing but listen and stare at the door to Room One and at the small dark portal in its frame.
"Fisher? Are you there? This is
Doctor Wy
."
Fisher's eyes began to water.
"There's been -- We had --"
"What's happened, Fisher? Is there something wrong? You were supposed to call me."
"There wasn't time. It's Rose and -- and Sanderson. He's -- and Breem, he--"
"
Breem
was there?"
Doctor Wy
's voice shook as he spoke. "Did he come into contact with Sanderson? I told you to not let anyone in." Fisher couldn't say anything. All he could hear was the sound of a windstorm, and that terrible droning that could no longer be blocked. "Fisher, you must listen to me now. The experiment is a failure. I should have known better; some things cannot be controlled. It's my mistake and I have to clean it up. What time is it? Stay there; don't do anything. I'm going to make a call and send someone right over."
"But," Fisher was dizzy from confusion; "I don't understand. What's happening?"
"There's a darkness, Fisher, that is slipping into the world through the dreams of the weak. A force of corruption, of entropy, that is taking this world apart to feed itself. I thought -- naively it seems -- that there might be some way to control it, to slow it. Perhaps even reverse it, but I see that was a mistake. I thought I could plan for everything, but one cannot plan to thwart entropy. By its very nature it's unpredictable. I only hope I can stop this in time. Whatever you do, stay there until someone arrives. I -- I'm sorry about this, Fisher."
But Fisher could not hear those words. They were overwhelmed by the sound of droning. He dropped the receiver to the floor and tried to rub the pain from his temples. "It's okay," he chanted. "It's going to be okay.
Doctor Wy
is sending someone." On the desk were his headphones and he put them on, desperate for anything that would block the noise from getting inside his head. He turned the volume of the white noise machine up as far as it would go but it was no use. It did nothing to mask that horrible droning. Fisher threw the headphones to the floor, nearly weeping, and watched them break into far too many plastic pieces, scattering them for all eternity. Unwillingly his eyes moved to the polysomnograph which was still drawing Room One's feed across the console screen. The peaks fluctuated so wildly it was a solid wall of color, yet how was it possible when Sanderson had ceased to be anything but some sort of gateway?
Amid the noise around Fisher was something sharp and sudden, yet he could not place it, not until it repeated. He stepped from the control room to the sound of an echoing creak and saw the door to Room One had bowed out, its window a spider’s web of cracks, barely containing what lay behind it. Dark flying things swarmed, splinters popped off of the frame and landed a few feet way. Fisher wondered where was the help
Doctor Wy
promised him? He had to escape the lab before what was amassing inside Room One broke free.
Fisher ran to the front door of the lab and tried the handle but it would not budge. He fumbled the key from his pocket, almost dropping it in his heightened state of anxiety, yet when he tried it he found it would not fit the lock. He scrambled back to the control room, throwing everything aside until he found Rose's keys on her desk. He ran back but it made no difference; the door would not open, no matter how hard he shook it. Desperate, he tried the front windows but found they too were locked. Outside them, on the other side of the fogged and dirty glass, a pair of figures moved slowly back and forth. He banged on the windows to get their attention.
"Help me!" Fisher screamed. "You've got to get me out!"
If something was said in response, he couldn't hear it. There was only the sound of glass and wood continuing to break behind him, and then the horrible droning became something far worse, something like the screeching of machinery. He was afraid to turn and instead banged his numbed fists harder against the window, but the figures did not pause. Fisher pressed his face against the glass and saw through the haze two pale thuggish faces scowling at him as they had so many months previous, though they had traded their suits for coveralls, and were adding small shadows to the growing pile in front of the window. Just like bricks to a wall.
Fisher screamed, afraid to turn and face what was coming for him. It sounded of storms and mistakes and regret. Yet in the window he could see a reflection, a reflection of the swarm that advanced upon him. Fisher could not speak. The noises the cloud made -- the sight of those insect-like things swarming as though one -- were nothing compared to what he saw within the darkness that enveloped him. There was a series of flashes like sparks in the roaring surf. They lit his face as he stared into the dark swirling void and saw something else moving towards him. There was a sound, like hoof beats, pounding in his ears, and then there was nothing. No noise of any kind. Just an image waiting to develop.
"You
have
to help me, Reggie. You're the only one I have left whom I can trust."
Alistair Burden had barged through my office door and again into my life after having been back in New Hamburg for less than a week. I didn't know he was coming at the time, let alone that he'd arrived, so his sudden appearance in my examining room while I was with Mr. Rutherford was startling to say the least. Part of me felt hurt he'd not called to let me know, after five years, that he was on his way, but considering the troubles he'd had in
Hamilton
, I suppose the last thing he would have wanted was to announce his arrival anywhere. I could feel the stigma he carried settling like a cloak around him.
"You'll need to give me a few moments to finish up here. Why don't you take a seat in the waiting room?"
He looked back from the door at Mrs. Rutherford, waiting for her husband, and at the Ostin twins and their mother, all of who, along with my nurse Polly, were staring back at him wide-eyed. He swallowed, his Adam's apple travelling the length of his neck, and it fell deathly quiet in my office.
"If you don't mind," he said after some contemplation. "I'd rather wait somewhere more . . . private."
I looked at Mr. Rutherford who scowled and shook his head. I understood Alistair's concerns immediately.
"Polly?" I called. "Will you show Mr. Burden to my office?"
She arrived in the doorway smiling, but her artifice peeked through. Alistair thanked us both, but I could see the reaction of each of my patients was a defeat that shrank him further.
I was with him about fifteen minutes later. He sat on the leather couch I had facing my desk, but was hunched over on the edge of the seat, hands between his jittering knees. Polly was in the corner of my eye, doing idle work as she attempted to eavesdrop on what Alistair and I were about to discuss. I shut the door behind me to exclude her, and fancied I heard a heavy sigh from her end of the corridor. I smiled despite myself, but the moment was fleeting. When I sat down in the chair behind my desk, the smile had long since disappeared.
"It's good to see you again, Alistair. How have you --" I stammered, not knowing how to finish such a foolish question. I cursed myself, but my friend did not seem to notice my gaffe.
"I'm truthfully at my wit's end," he said, and ran his fingers through his thick wavy hair. Clumps of it stood straight up, as though horrified to be near him. "I'm sorry for barging in on you. It's just that I don't know where else to turn."
"It's all right," I said, and looked at him over the edge of my desk. He seemed much smaller than I remembered him. Frailer. He looked up at me. "Perhaps," I continued, "you should tell me what the trouble is."
He shook his head. "I was wrong to come here. No one can help me," he said. "It's too late to stop them."
"Stop whom?"
He said nothing, and instead studied the diplomas on my wall, hung there to reassure my patients of my credentials. He turned around and looked straight at me for the first time, and I pulled away slightly. His eyes -- his eyes had sunken into his face, and the skin was jaundiced and tight as though he'd been through things he could not explain.
"How much do you know about what happened to me in
Hamilton
?"
I struggled for a diplomatic answer, but no decent one was forthcoming.
"I know you were campaigning for mayor there, and were doing quite well until . . . there was some
unpleasantness
. . . ."
Alistair laughed, and the deep sound was not as I remembered it. It had become hollow, mirthless, over his years away, and I could no more hear my old friend in it than I could see the happiness that once lay behind his crazed, tired eyes.
"You always
did
have a way of putting things, Reggie.
Unpleasantness
, indeed. I know what you've read -- what
everybody
has read -- in the newspapers or heard on the radio, but let me assure you from my own mouth: I had nothing to do with the deaths of Melinda and Arkin Rand.
Nothing
. Everyone wishes I did, though. There is little the people of
Hamilton
want
more
than to catch a cuckolded politician who got his revenge. But I promise you, I am innocent of the blame."
I cleared my throat, but was interrupted by the sound of the Ostin twins outside as they bickered about who would be last on my examination table. The noise was inexplicably loud, as though they knew I could hear them and wanted to draw me out before I was too deep into Alistair's story. Their ploy worked, in a way, as I saw from my clock I had already kept them overlong.
I stood and opened my drawer. "Here, take some of this," I said, and handed him the bottle of scotch and tumbler I kept for emergencies. "I'll be done within the hour, and we can then go to lunch and catch up on everything that has happened to you."
He looked up at me with eyes both dark and circled and instead of taking the bottle took my hand at the wrist. "You
do
believe me, don't you? I wouldn't lie to you, Reggie. You
know
that."
"Of course I do," I said. "Of course."
"Thank you," he said, and as he took my hand I could see his eyes had dampened. For a moment, images of what had happened to his wife and her lover flashed through my mind, and I wanted to recoil from his touch. I tried to keep my face from betraying me however. As I took my leave, he retreated to the couch and held his head in his hands, shaking as though he could not bear both its weight and the weight of his past.
After I was done with the twins and their mother, I told Polly that I was stepping out to lunch and she should inform any patients that I would return shortly. She smiled and nodded but her eyes did not stray far from Alistair and his disheveled appearance. I could see the fear and curiosity welling within her, and I knew that she was desperate for us to leave so she might pick up the telephone. "Um . . . Perhaps, you should keep Mr. Burden's visit to yourself for the time being."
"Yes, Doctor Reilly," she said, but I knew at once she had not really understood me.
"I'm serious, Polly. Not a word."
"There's really no point," said Alistair. "I’m sure the news was already all over town the moment I stepped in here."
"Nevertheless, I'd prefer we consider this a case of patient confidentiality for the time being."
Polly nodded again, this time defeated. I was fairly certain I'd be able to count on her discretion . . . at least, for the remainder of the afternoon.
I took Alistair across the street to The Elk's Horn where I knew it would be quiet at that time of day. Nevertheless, those few souls in the pub stared when they saw who was with me, and though I tried to ignore it I could hear whispers passed between them as we walked by. Never before had hearing my name spoken been so unpleasant.
"Reggie, are you all right?"
"Hm? Yes, of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
He looked over my shoulder at the people we had passed, and then shook his head. I urged him to take a seat.
"I would like to try and help you," I said. "But to do so I'm going to need to know everything. If you're innocent--"
"I
am
innocent.”
"And I believe you if you say it's true, but--"
"I admit Melinda and I had been having problems even before my run for mayor began, but I was completely unaware of them until after her death."
"But the papers--"
"The papers got it wrong, as usual. They wanted only to play up the liaisons between her and Rand -- who was one of the senior lawyers at her firm -- and how this had been happening practically in plain sight for over a year."
"And yet you knew
nothing
?"
"I suppose it sounds implausible when put that way, but it didn't seem so strange at the time. I knew she was unhappy, but I'd attributed that to the long hours I was working to make my political career a reality. I couldn't see that those same hours and that same work was distracting me from the truth. Until the two of them were found dead in
Rand
's apartment, I thought my marriage was intact.
"The police wasted no time in bringing me in and making me their prime suspect. There was nothing concrete linking me to their deaths, of course -- nothing they could produce that even suggested I knew about the affair -- but I'd conveniently been alone and out of touch with everyone on my campaign team that evening in an attempt to get at least one full night's rest. I'd been having trouble sleeping for weeks, and at the time I'd attributed it to the stress of my campaign, but in hindsight, I'm not so sure."
"What do you mean?"
"I can't properly explain it. I had a feeling in my stomach, like a moment of prescience, and everything felt . . . not
wrong
, but shifted. As though things -- the world, everything -- were not as they were. Does that make any sense? No, I can see it doesn't. Regardless, I felt
off
, and I wanted to get back to normal. My campaign depended upon it.
"So, I took a few sleeping pills and set my alarm and wished Melinda a good night. She seemed a little anxious, in retrospect, to see me turn in, but I thought little of it. When I awoke, she was gone, and the police were knocking at my door."
As he said this, I heard a knocking sound from somewhere in the pub and turned around, yet there was nobody close by. At least, not close enough to have heard what Alistair was saying.
"You know the rest, I imagine. There was an investigation. There was no trial, but there was public outrage, especially in the media. When the coroner finally concluded it was Rand who killed Melinda in a murder-suicide, I had already been tried and convicted in the press -- a mayoral candidate who commits murder is front-page news, his absolution is not. Even though my name was technically cleared, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who believes I am truly innocent. Everyone just assumes I used my influence to get away with murdering them both and wants nothing to do with me. Needless to say, I lost the election.
"I moved out of the city fairly quickly once I realized it had turned against me. I wanted to go away and hide for a little while, let the furor over what had happened die down. There was enough money to last me a while, and once Melinda's will was settled I was due a little more. There was no reason why I shouldn't have been able to vanish.
"But I suppose I'd underestimated just how pervasive the media is, and just how poor a portrait had been painted of me. There was nowhere I could go where I wasn’t recognized and condemned on sight. I couldn't even walk down the street without throngs of people stopping in their tracks. There was a suffocating air of whispers around me at all times. I don’t think I need to tell you that it started playing tricks on my mind. At least, I think they were tricks."
He took a drink then from the glass that had been sitting in front of him, untouched until that moment. With trembling fingers, he put a thin cigarette to his lips and lit it. The smoke rose in wavy tendrils that curved back towards him, reaching like ill-defined fingers. For a moment I thought I could hear the whispering about which he had spoke, but the silhouettes of the pub's patrons had not moved, only multiplied, from where they sat and watched us. Alistair cleared his throat, and I detected a slight warble as though it were his fear he was trying to swallow. "Go on," I said as comfortingly as I could.
He stammered, as though unsure of how to continue.
"This is difficult for me to tell you, Reggie, because it won't really make much sense. I've known you too long to think it will. And yet, you're all I have now that Melinda is gone. It's amazing how a life spent with such narrow focus and aim can be derailed so quickly, and how few friends one has once the chips are actually down. No one came out and admitted it, but I heard my campaign team quit as soon as Melinda's death was discovered. They didn't even wait to find out if I was considered a suspect or not. Everyone deserted me except those I had paid to stay and defend my innocence, and I was never certain
they
believed in me either, even when the truth was revealed. And
those
men, those lawyers, were people I'd dined with and had over to the house. They were supposed to be my friends, and they fell victim to the rumors, as did everyone else. It's one of the reasons I came back here; I knew you wouldn’t abandon me as they had. I knew I could count on you to listen, even when what I had to say sounded implausible. And I knew that, if I were wrong, if I were losing my sanity, you'd know what to do to help me.