The Void (15 page)

Then came the sound of wind blowing through the trees of a night-haunted forest. He felt no breeze but he heard it. And in that
crinkle-crick-creek
he could almost make out words. A chorus of them, whispering to him. Urging him onward.

He flattened himself against the wall, feeling along the moss-covered bricks of what he assumed was a hallway. Gradually, his eyes cleared, and as they adjusted to the darkness, he saw the thinnest ray of light in the distance. He edged toward it and he soon realized he was staring at the rough outline of a doorway. He grasped the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand. The door opened and Cyrus was awash in light so bright that he had to cover his eyes. When his pupils shrank and his sight adjusted, he stepped into that light and felt as though he had walked into the waters of the sea, even if the whispers, which had grown into an ocean-like roar, died instantly away.  

The walls were white, if you could call them walls. But he wasn't sure there was anything solid there. They were more like boundaries, as if the great white sheets of light served no other purpose than to mark the dimensions of this room. Cyrus only thought they were walls because there was a door in the midst of the one across from him whose simple wooden frame seemed particularly incongruous to its surroundings. There was nothing in the room, save for a glass table on which sat two crystal goblets of red wine and a gleaming white couch. She rested upon it, her arms spread wide along its back, her eyes staring up at him above an almost mischievous smile.

She was nude. Or she would have been, were it not for a mesh of crisscrossing white linen strands that formed perfect square windows through which to view her body but did nothing to cover her nakedness. Her porcelain skin shone through those openings, unblemished were it not for the jagged scar that ran across her neck, a white-on-white reminder of the past.

“I've been waiting for you,” she said, and though she barely whispered, the total silence of the room grabbed hold of her words, doubling and redoubling them until they echoed round the chamber. “I've been waiting for you for so long.” Her voice was even and still but could not hide the storm that raged beneath it.

“I've come before. I've come so many times. But you've never noticed me.”

“I noticed. But seeing and speaking are two different things. I was never allowed to speak. They never let me. Not until now.”

“They?” She nodded, as if nodding answered all questions. “But I don't understand? Who are they? Where is this? Why are you here, now?”

“I'm here because you brought me here,” she said. “Because seeing me was the thing your heart most desired.”

“Is that what the dreams are? A fantasy? You get whatever you want most?”

“No. Not for all. But for some. And not fantasies. What you see here,” she said, standing, circling the coffee table to where he stood, “is real. The air you breathe. The food you eat. Me. It's all real.”

She grabbed the lapel of his coat and pulled him down to her. His lips found hers, and his hands ran up her arms to her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing her skin through the myriad holes of the thing that mocked the word clothes. This was what he wanted, he decided. His life had not been an unhappy one since that day in the August rain when her life was lost and his forever changed. He loved his wife and he adored his daughter, but this existence had not been his choice. A part of him—a large part of him—wondered what might have been.

Her lips were so cold.

She pulled away, looking up at him. “Do you want to stay?” she asked.

“I can't stay. The ship will drop out of warp. I'll wake up and all this will end.”

“It doesn't have to be that way, you know? You don't have to go. You can stay with me, forever. If you wish. Will you stay? Please say yes. I don't know that I could bear to lose you again.”

He turned over the options in his mind. He wondered what he would do if this choice was actually his to make. But these were only dreams, no matter how real they seemed. And all dreams must come to an end. It didn't much matter what he said, so why not say the one thing she wanted to hear?

“Yes. Yes, I'll stay with you. I'll stay.”

When she smiled in response, it was so bright and full that he thought her face might rip from the joy. But there was something else there. He saw it, though in that moment he wasn't sure if his brain was playing tricks on him or if she was truly trying to hide something. For a split second, competing emotions raced across her face. There was joy there, yes. Perhaps even triumph, though over what, he didn't know. But there was darkness as well, and sadness, if one could see sadness in a smile.

“We must go then,” she said.

“Go?” he laughed. “I thought you wanted me to stay?”

“Sometimes, in order to stay, one must go. In our case, we must go there.”

She pointed behind her, at the curious door he had noticed before, the one set in the gleaming wall of light across from him. She stepped backward toward it, not taking her eyes off him. But he did not follow. Instead, he let his hands slip away from her. There was something about that door. She walked over to it, standing beside its frame.

“Come on,” she said. “We must go, but only you can open it.”

Cyrus was frozen in place. A thousand dreams had come and gone and he had never been afraid. It had been how he said he would survive them. By treating the visions differently from all the others who experienced them during the long sleep of the deep. By ignoring the notion that they contained danger. By believing that, in the end, a dream was just a dream, and that no matter what he saw, no matter what lay behind that door, in reality, it couldn't be that bad.

Even if he opened it to find the worst beast imaginable, it could not harm him. Then why did he fear? Perhaps, he thought, it is not knowing what lies beyond the door. If he were to open it and see, then no matter what he saw, it wouldn't be that bad after all. And yet still he stood, staring, wondering, thinking. But he had never been able to resist that smile, those eyes, that face. He had to play along, if only for a little bit longer.

He moved toward the door. It was nine, ten steps at the most. And they passed like one might expect nine or ten steps to pass. Quickly, without fanfare. They did not seem as though he was walking to his doom. They were just footsteps. He stood in front of her, his hand resting on the handle. She looked up at him and smiled. Now he was sure. There
was
sadness there, no matter how much she tried to cover it. He could still leave, he thought. He could turn and just walk away. That he had come this far said nothing about where he had to go. But standing there, with his hand on the doorknob, he felt as though he had no choice. He had to turn it, so he did.

Cyrus opened the door. There was nothing beyond it. There was no great beast waiting, no cosmic horror. No giant alien to devour him. Just more darkness.

Initial assessments, however, could be deceiving. As he peered into that darkness, its surface began to shimmer. To ripple, to flow. This was not just some darkened room beyond him. This was the same black shadow wall he had seen every time he had dreamed. The same one that stood guard on either side of the street above him.

The room wasn't quiet anymore. He could hear the whispered voices and for the first time, he could almost make out words. Some urged him to turn, to flee. Others beckoned him. Whispered lovingly to him. As the whispers washed over him, with as many begging him to go as pleading with him to stay, he looked over at the wraith beside him. The ghost, the image of Sidney. With perfect, crystal blue eyes.  Her flawless skin, although it had not always been so pale, was just as inviting as ever.

“What now?” he asked.

“You must pass beyond the wall. You must go willingly and you must see this world as it truly is.” She bent down and kissed him again. She smiled, and then she stepped through the wall herself. She turned before she passed beyond the black curtain and nodded once.

Then she was gone. It was not as he had seen it before. The other denizens of his dreams had passed through the shadow wall with no effect. She seemed much more real than they. He watched as the blackness rippled around her, covering her skin like oil before swallowing her whole.

“Sidney?” he whispered. From somewhere beyond, she answered.

“I'm here, Cyrus. I'm right here. All you have to do is come through. Then you'll see, and we can finally be together.”

Cyrus reached up and did something he had always wanted to do; he touched the darkness. A ripple ran around his fingers. It was warm, almost wet, but not damp. There were none of the things he had always feared. No pain. Nothing grabbed him. His finger didn't dissolve away. He looked at it, from the top of the door to the floor, and made his decision. Cyrus took a deep breath, and then he stepped into shadow.

When Cyrus opened his eyes, he looked upon the beyond. He saw into the abyss. He knew what gave the darkness shape and what filled the spaces between space. As he began to scream, he felt his sane mind falling, falling, falling, as if into a deep well. Finally, screaming, he blinked out of existence.

Chapter 11

The transition from the dream world to reality had not been a smooth one for Rebecca. One moment she was standing in the ruined city, staring up at a great fire that burned just beyond her vision. It had seemed so real.

But when the scream came from somewhere beyond that world, the whole of that reality cracked. She was suddenly pulled away, as if a great hand reached down from the sky and plucked her bodily up, up, up. As the world dissolved below her and the scream grew louder, she thought that this was what being born must be like.

She opened her eyes with a flutter, unable to shake off the shroud of sleep. That screaming, what had been an otherworldly shriek, now seemed so close. The world spun and she could find nothing to grab on to, no handhold of reality. She heard the sound of fighting. Other voices shouting. But always the scream, punctuated only by sharp intakes of breath.

Rebecca grasped the two sides of the bed on which she lay, pushing herself to a sitting position. Her eyesight was still confused. There were flashes of color, a mad dash of reds and blues and whites to go along with the cacophony of sound. When her eyes cleared, what she saw made her pass out straight away.

*  *  *

Aidan was the first to awake, having snapped back to reality far more quickly than Rebecca. After years of sleep stasis, the waking symptoms—confusion, disorientation, sensory malfunction—had largely ceased for him. So when he woke, it was a quick affair; an instant to leave the dream world behind in exchange for a waking nightmare.

There was no mystery as to where the ungodly screams came from. Cyrus was sitting in his bed, his roaring raised to a vocal cord-shattering level Aidan wouldn't have thought the human body capable of producing. But the scream wasn’t the worst part. Cyrus's face was awash in blood from two, ragged crimson holes dripping a mixture of tears and viscera. His hands were mired in the gore of what had once been his eyes.

Aidan didn't think. He just leapt to his feet and ran to where Cyrus sat, determined to stop him before he hurt anyone else. Cyrus was not a small man, but he was no bigger than Aidan. Yet before he could begin to subdue him, Cyrus grabbed hold of Aidan and threw him across the room.

Aidan had never felt anything like it before and he sailed through the air for what seemed like an eternity. But down he did come, crashing at the feet of Dr. Ridley, who held a sedative in his hand.

“Get up!” Ridley yelled. Aidan raised himself, adrenalin masking the pain. This time, Aidan avoided Cyrus's grasp, wrapping his arms around Cyrus's throat, determined to hold him fast whether Ridley's drugs worked or not. But Cyrus had the strength of a madman. He reached back and grabbed Aidan, flipping him head over heels to the ground.

Aidan landed hard on his back with a sickening crack, smashing into Ridley's legs and causing the doctor to lose his balance, the sedative skittering away across the room. Aidan wasn't sure he could get up this time. A shadow fell over him and he saw Jack Crawford advancing from the side.

Cyrus lunged at Crawford, somehow sensing where he stood. With a speed that shocked Aidan, Jack slid to the side. For a mere second, Cyrus was off balance, but that was all it took. In that instant, Jack swung his clenched fist and connected with Cyrus's jaw. Like some bizarre recording, the scream was instantly silenced. Aidan watched Cyrus crumple into a pile, his body gone limp.

*  *  *

Aidan, Rebecca, and Captain Gravely sat in silence on the bridge. Crawford stood leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed over his chest. They had been like that for an eternity, it seemed to Aidan, though he knew it had only been a handful of minutes.

Aidan said a quiet prayer of thanks for modern medicine. He had apparently cracked some ribs, but the shot that Ridley had given him was enough that he felt no pain. He did wish someone would speak, even if none of them knew what to say. There were many questions to be answered, but only Ridley would have those answers, if anyone did. So they waited.

Finally, the door to the bridge slid open with a soft whoosh. Ridley stepped inside, wiping his hands on his pants as if he had just performed an operation. They all looked up at him expectantly.

“He's sedated for now. It took three doses of sedatives to accomplish what Mr. Crawford here did with one punch and I can't say how long he will be out.”

“Three doses?” asked Rebecca.

“Yes. According to the scans, his mental activity is off the charts, even now. The computer is to alert me if he even begins to regain consciousness. I put him in the holding cell. I would say there is nothing there he can use to harm himself, but given what he did with his own hands . . .” Ridley stopped speaking when he saw Rebecca shudder. She would see that image in her dreams until the day she died.