The Void (29 page)

“In the instant that followed, the lights went out. Before they did, I saw them, the things from the dreams, lurking in the shadows. Those beings, those creatures from other worlds, from one quite the opposite of our own. They are everywhere on this ship. They are wherever the light fails. They stand in the darkness, watching. They watch me even now, here. I do not think they are strong enough yet to do anything. Not of their own accord, at least. I have no reason to believe this, but I think they grow stronger on fear. And there is much to feed them now.

“After the lights failed, several of the crew went mad. Curling. Jacobs. Frier. Even the captain. I do not know who is left. I ran. The last thing I saw was Captain Gravely rip out Dr. Isakson's throat with his bare hands.”

Once again, her words failed her. Ridley even reached out to grab her, such was his certainty that she would faint. As his hands passed through empty air, there was another noise from off camera, one that he could not describe. Whatever it was steeled her and she looked back into the camera with renewed resolve.

“So I've decided on a course of action. My first step will be to disable the engines, if I can. It is my belief that whatever is on this ship must not leave it. Such a thing cannot be allowed to escape. More importantly, if I can I will launch a copy of this holo on one of the ship's evacuation pods so that others may know what happened here. So they will know what we did and never attempt it again.

“Then I will destroy the ship. I believe it has become a gateway, a passage of sorts. Just as I always thought the shadow walls were in the dreams. Doorways to the worlds I witnessed in that awful long instant in the heart of the black hole. I fear this ship has become to them what the shadow walls were to us. A portal by which they may pass through. Hopefully destroying the ship will send them back from whence they came, close the gateway, and eliminate them forever.”

Then she took a deep breath and paused, and Ridley knew this was the most important thing of all. When she spoke again, her voice was on the edge of control; whatever reserves she had tapped on the verge of exhaustion. “Tell William,” she said, “that I did what I must. And that I love him. This is Lieutenant Samantha Erickson, signing off.”

As quickly as she appeared, the girl standing in front of him melted away, back into the tiny device he held in his hand, the simple red light now blinking furiously again. While she had spoken, Ridley had stood in stunned silence, listening as all his worst fears were confirmed. He glanced from side to side, too aware of the darkness that now surrounded him and fearful of the things that must lurk therein.

“She could have been mad,” he said to himself. But even as he did, he knew it was a lie. She had not been mad. She had been the sanest person he had seen in the last few days. For this was insanity, here on this ship on the cusp of a black hole. Let it go back, he thought. In fact, he knew it must.

He looked down at the holoplayer in his hand. The rest of them had to see this. They had to know what he knew. When they did, even Jack couldn't deny the obvious. They had to destroy the ship.

Ridley turned on his heel and rushed out the door. In his haste, he did not hesitate to step directly into his nightmare. When the door closed behind him, Ridley did not find himself in the darkened corridors of the
Singularity.
Instead, he stood on a broken cobblestone drive, one that lead under a canopy of dead and decaying trees to an ancient, antebellum mansion that had once housed the insane.

Chapter 23

“Oh my God, no,” Ridley whispered.

He spun around, hoping against hope to see the door through whence he had just come. But it was gone; his eyes met only the shadow wall. The one he now loathed and feared even more than he had before. The cold wind blew through dead trees and in its clutches carried a whisper, “David.”

He stood there, locked in fear and doubt until what seemed like hours had passed. Even though he had no choice. The blowing wind called to him, beckoned him to walk the path he had trod a hundred times before. To come within the copse of dead trees. To stand in the skeletal shadow of their embrace.

Dr. Ridley walked. He didn't bother to question what had happened. Whatever rules pertained to the world outside of this ship did not hold here. He could trust nothing. Expect nothing. There was only his hope that at the end of this road, at the end of the dream, the one he had never reached, he would find his way back to reality.

He came to the statue that stood in the midst of the ancient fountain, the one he doubted had ever held water. No sooner had that thought left his mind than he heard a gurgling from deep within. A thin stream of liquid came from a hidden opening, weak at first, and then stronger, until the water coursed down the statue of the woman, over the bronze coal that she held in her hands and down the face of the boy, moistening the tears once only carved in stone.

Ridley looked down at the broken pavement beneath his feet. There was a trembling, slight at first, and then unmistakable as the ground began to shake. A wave seemed to pass over him and shattered cobblestones turned smooth and perfectly even, like the day they were first laid. The wave passed on, and ragged trees suddenly stood tall and true, sprouting, over newly rejuvenated grass, great green leaves that in an instant turned bright golds and oranges and reds, raining down on him like an autumn shower.

A whirlwind seemed to roar up the road, passing through the shaking trees and striking the building with such fury that Ridley thought it might collapse down upon him. He held up his hands and closed his eyes, but no sooner had the winds come than they were gone. When he opened his eyes again, the asylum was pristine, a shining beacon on a hill. Patients in white gowns milled about the grounds and when Ridley looked down at himself, he realized he was clothed in the dress of 200 years prior, back when such places were more than just dreams.

“Ah, Dr. Ridley,” a voice from behind said. Ridley whirled around, but the specter that stood smiling at him did not seem to notice either his behavior or the wild look in his eyes. “We were beginning to wonder if you were coming. You found your accommodations satisfactory, I hope?”

“Accommodations?”

“Yes. On your trip down from Atlanta. I take it the train was comfortable?”

Ridley gawked at the little round man in his brown pants, held up by suspenders that peeked out from underneath his white coat. He had an almost unrestrainable desire to hit the man, to punch him squarely in the middle of what he could swear was a smug and sinister smile and then flee. But though the world had changed, he could still see the shadow wall pulsating in the distance, its black tendrils reaching up to the sky.  

“Of course,” he murmured, almost choking on the dryness of his mouth. “Of course, the accommodations were fine.”

“Excellent,” the man said. He slapped Ridley on the back and chuckled as if they were old friends. “I can't tell you how thrilled we are to have you here,” he said, his hand still on Ridley's shoulder. He started to walk, and in doing so, carried Ridley along with him. “Frankly, without your help, I'm not sure this is a case we could crack, but I have no doubt that you will work miracles. This is, after all, your area of expertise.”

“My area of expertise,” Ridley repeated. He felt numb, like he'd taken too many pain killers.

“Right. We deal mainly with men here. Hysterics are a bit of an undiscovered country for us. Your history with the disturbed minds of females is well documented.”

“Yes . . .”

“In any event, this particular patient,” he said, stopping to open the door, “has been extraordinarily difficult.”

Ridley barely heard him. He stared up at the mighty chandelier in the center of the ornate foyer, the only part of the facility most visitors would ever see. He was shocked at its grandeur, particularly compared to the ruin he normally witnessed.

“What are her symptoms?” Ridley mumbled. Absentmindedly almost. Stupidly perhaps, given the circumstances.

“Oh, the usual.” They came to a door. The doctor removed a set of keys and unlocked it. “Abusive to herself. Others. The child mostly.”

“There's a child?”

“Isn't there always in these cases? Apparently, she suffered severe blood loss while giving birth. Her husband says she hasn't been the same since.”

“It can't be,” Ridley thought to himself. Everything here was wrong. The place was too old. The story similar, yes. But not the same.

“She has an obsession,” the small man continued, “not unlike most with her affliction.”

“And what is that?”

“Fire, it appears. She seems to believe that only fire can purify the soul.” The man chuckled heartily. “Utterly bizarre, what the insane can conjure. Don't you agree, Doctor?”

“What did she do with it?”

“Do with it? Do with what?”

“The fire, Doctor. The fire.”

“Oh, well, nothing directly I suppose. It was more hot coals, you see. She burned her son something horrible, with one.”

Ridley stopped walking as he gazed down a corridor that he had traveled before, albeit in days where the paint was chipped and peeled, the windows shattered.

“That will be all, Doctor. I believe I can take it from here.”

“But, Dr. Ridley,” the man said, his fat face instantly turning a flustered red, “you don't even know where we've housed the patient.”

“I know, Doctor. Trust me. I'm the expert here, remember? Now, I have a job to do.”

He continued down the hallway, leaving the other man standing behind him in confusion. Because he didn’t look back, Ridley missed it when the befuddled stare melted away, replaced by something colder, crueler.

Ridley didn't know the room number she was in, not for sure. But he had seen her walk into that room a hundred times and he could simply feel when he reached it, when his steps had taken him far enough that he could be nowhere else. He peered through the tiny, barred opening in the center of the door. She stood there, his mother. In a white dress that flowed all the way down her body, one entirely inappropriate for this place.

Before Ridley could even try the handle, the door creaked open. Ridley looked around and he realized that everyone else had vanished. The doctors, the patients. No one remained but Ridley and the woman in the room. He pushed the door gently and it swung open the rest of the way. He stood in the threshold, between freedom and imprisonment, between her and him. He watched as she turned, spinning in place, until she faced him.

“David. You came, finally. I always knew you would. Eventually. I knew you'd never leave me here.”

She walked over to where he stood, running her hands along the cold concrete of the wall as she did. “It's so lonely here, David. I wish you would come see me more often. I'm sorry, you know, for what I did.”

“Stop it,” Ridley murmured. “Just stop it.”

“Stop what?”

Ridley stood in the doorway, glaring at the thing that masqueraded as his mother. “They feed on fear, they feed on fear,” he repeated to himself in his mind. If it was fear she sought, he would not give it.

Slowly, deliberately, enunciating each syllable, emphasizing each word. “You are not my mother,” he said. “I know what you are and I'm not afraid of you. I know that I am still aboard the ship and that this is all an illusion. The time for games is over. I know the truth, and soon, the rest will as well.”

Ridley watched the look on the demon's face change, as the façade, the lie, dropped away. As the look of caring, of longing, of maternal love, disappeared into what he thought was confusion. What he hoped was perhaps even concern. But despite his mantra, despite his promise to himself that he would show no fear, he felt it creep back into his heart as the beast lowered its gaze and looked up at him under hooded eyes. It grinned and that horrid smirk, Ridley feared, was proof that he was undone.

“So be it,” the beast uttered, no longer the sound of a woman, no longer the voice of his mother. “We gave you a chance,” it said, in its own deep growl, “to reconcile with one lost, long ago, to make things right before your own end. Yet you denied it. No matter. We will give you truth instead.”

At that instant, Ridley felt a rumble in the floor. He turned, glancing out a window in the hallway beyond. Before his eyes, the scene changed. The whirlwind returned. The living trees died a second death, polished cobblestones cracked and shattered. Paint peeled off the walls and rained down around him. Then the whirlwind reached her as well.

Her face began to roil, to split along the edges, becoming the black, empty mouth of the creatures from his dreams. Her eyes sunk into her skull, but the rest of her face remained. Her back arched, arms and legs cracking into impossible angles. She became an image of a demon from man's oldest nightmares, one made all the worse by the human form it still bore.

The thing took one step toward him and Ridley could stand no more. He ran, ran through broken doors and twisting corridors. He ran through a maze of hallways, ones he had never known to exist in the asylum before. Behind him always was the beast. He could see it in the corner of his eye. See its disfigured body jerking behind him at impossible speeds. Felt its hot breath on his neck.

He knew that if he could escape, if he could just get outside the building, then he would be free. He wasn't sure why he knew that. Perhaps it was simply a lie he told himself, one that made his legs move faster. Something to give him hope when it seemed that all hope was lost. He saw it, a doorway at the end of the corridor. He ran faster, but so did the beast, braying at him like a pack of wild dogs.

The darkness seemed to reach him. Tendrils of blackness grabbed at him, smoke-like appendages surrounded him. So close. Ten more feet he thought, even though he wasn't sure he would make it, not with the demon's cold hands upon him. With five feet left, he ran as hard as he ever had, leaping free of the shadow's reach, throwing himself at the door, almost laughing with joy as it sprang open. Then the shock. “Oh no!” he thought. And that was the last truly coherent thought that Dr. Malcolm Ridley ever had.