The Man From Taured (32 page)

"Shhhh," Nathan whispered. Was there something wrong with his voice? "Just relax. Just lay back. Relax."

She was on her back now. Nathan was so warm, his arms so strong, his lips soft and gentle. That was like him, but not so aggressive. Her nightgown was gone. She felt his skin beneath her fingers, but her fingers were not her own. She felt like a puppet on a string. Her hands in his hair as he pressed against her.

"Nathan," Mary Ann said in a whisper. "Oh, Nathan."

He was on top of her, against her, and then inside her. She moaned.

Was he bigger? Her hands were on his chest, doubts carried away in that moment of pure pleasure.

"No," Mary Ann whispered. "No, wait."

Nathan was moving now. She was rocking. The bed was rocking. She tilted her head back and moaned. She was getting carried away by it. There was someone, or something, inside her brain telling her to relax. This was Nathan. This was happening. Relax. Just relax. Enjoy it.

"No," Mary Ann whispered. She got some control of her hand and she pushed back on his chest. She pushed back and his head pushed away from her neck.

She opened her eyes and stared up at her husband.

Except that his face had changed.

In fact, it was changing rapidly. It was Nathan, and then it was a series of men she had never seen. Mary Ann opened her mouth to scream and the person on top of her, inside of her, looked into her eyes.

There were no eyes. They were black pits. And it smiled at her.

"Relax, Mary Ann," it said, its voice no longer like her husband's. "Relax and enjoy it."

She screamed, but the creature on top of her put its hand on her face. Then there was that thing inside of her head again. No longer gentle, no longer whispering to her. Now it was commanding her to relax, to stop pushing, to stop resisting. She felt her thinking get slow again. The pain was going away. She was slipping away, imagining a place of endless darkness, but the darkness was alive. A world of swirling, twirling, twisting darkness. A planet made of living darkness.

It was the most horrible thing she could imagine.

The darkness spoke to her. The darkness told her that she had been chosen. Her father had made a deal and had promised her to it. She was chosen to allow it access to her world.

It made no sense. In the real world the thing on top of her moved faster, began moaning like a real human male. Then finished inside of her like a real person.

When it finished, it pulled out and she felt the thoughts in her head dim. There was just the thought that she had to sleep. She had to forget this. She had to make love to her husband when he came home and that she would have a child and believe it was her's and her husband's.

Mary Ann nodded. She closed her eyes and was asleep. She had no dreams. She had nothing inside her head until morning came. Sunlight was streaming through the window and she heard movement in the house.

She sat up. She was naked, which was odd, but not entirely unusual. She felt like she was a bit hungover. She remembered the storm from last night, and something about the phone, and something about being very afraid. She had had a dream about Nathan being home and having rough sex with her, but it was all a dream.

Right?

"Nathan?" Mary Ann called.

"I'm home, hun," Nathan called.

He was in the kitchen, probably making coffee and something for breakfast. Mary Ann had never wanted to see him more than she did that morning. She had an overwhelming desire to be with him. It was an intense desire unlike anything she had felt since she was in high school.

Mary Ann put her robe on and got up, padding down the hall and into the kitchen. She smiled.

There he was. Her husband. Real. Not a dream.

Nathan smiled at her, cooking up some eggs on the stove and drinking a cup of coffee.

"You look a little like you had a party here last night," he said. "How ya doin'?"

She didn't respond. The desire was overwhelming. She just came to him and kissed him and kissed him hard and with love and with passion. He was surprised, probably still a little tired from a long night at work, but he eventually kissed her back.

They never made it out of the kitchen.

***

The images changed. Flew past like a film on high-speed. Time zipped past.

It was nine months later. Mary Ann was in the hospital and there were doctors all around her. They were telling her to push. She was pushing with all her might and the doctors were using some kind of vacuum thing to help the baby come out. The pain was intense, but it was almost over. She closed her eyes and pushed for the final time. When she opened them again, for an instant, the doctor's eyes looked like black pits.

Then there was crying and screaming and her son was out. He was bloody and he had a huge head of dark hair and his mouth was open and screaming.

"Noble," Mary Ann whispered. "His name is Noble."

Noble felt as if his brain were on fire. The images had come so fast. Tears poured from his eyes and he felt like something clutched his heart. Whitten still held his head in his hands, but when the images ended he released him. Noble felt as if his strings had been cut and he collapsed to the floor. Then he vomited what little was left in his stomach onto the lab floor.

"Do you begin to see where you stand in all of this?" Whitten/Void said. "You are the son of the Void, Noble. That's how you can do what you do, and the limits of your abilities have barely been reached."

"Why?" Noble asked. "Why do this if you're just going to absorb the entire dimension?"

"What living creature doesn't wish for an offspring," Whitten/Void said. "And you are incorrect in your thoughts that we wish to destroy this dimension. Of the entire multiverse this dimension is the one that Void finds the most intriguing. The people here are...unique. He wants to take this dimension over, but he wishes to possess everyone and everything here. From that point he can then take over the rest of the multiverse. From here he can rule the way he was meant to. The darkness was here first. By right it should all be his."

"You're insane," Noble said. "Does Void imagine that now that I know this I am going to simply sit by his side while he turns the world into a nightmare? While he destroys countless other inhabited dimensions?"

Whitten/Void laughed. The floor felt as if it were vibrating from that laughter.

"While he would appreciate it if you would do that, Noble, we do not feel that this is enough of a plan," Whitten/Void said, mixing up its tenses in the constant conflict and confusion going on within Whitten's brain. "No, if need be, we will take you over as well. From there, we can make you impregnate Olivia and provide a grandchild."

"Why?" Noble asked, despair in his heart and mind. "Aren't you immortal? Why do you need progeny?"

Whitten/Void stepped forward, kneeling down in front of Noble. "Because that is what we want."

Noble felt nothing but revulsion and sorrow. Sorrow for his parents. Sorrow for his entire life. He had never stood a chance. Never. His life had been determined before he was born.

He was the son of the Void. He was both human and Void. The Void had raped his mother and produced – him.

"There is more to this tale," Whitten/Void said. "There is more that you need to know to understand how utterly hopeless your attempts to stop us are."

"No more," Noble said, holding up his hand, weakly, feeling as if he had no fight left in him. "Please, no more."

"Yes, Noble," Whitten/Void said. "The world as you know it is ending. You can join us and become part of us, retaining some part of your individuality as we tear down the rest of the walls and absorb the rest of the dimensions, or you can have your mind forcefully taken. The choice is yours, but you need to know. Whatever you choose, we will produce a line, a genealogy that can expand and expand. There are more things in this universe than you can imagine. The light will soon succumb to the dark. With a family, we'll be able to conquer whatever is left. But you need to see."

Noble attempted to crawl away. He wanted to stand and fight. He wanted to run. His legs had no strength. His arms would not move right. Whitten/Void came and placed his hands on his head and once again he was gone.

"No," Noble whispered, but it was too late. There was no fighting it.

The world slipped away. He smelled the smells of a bygone era. His hands were that of a young man.

"I'm Augustus Whitten," Noble whispered. "Dear God."

It's the early 1900s and Augustus Whitten is a man on a mission. He is in his early 20s and anxious to get back to work. He has spent the last several weeks finding more funding for his work. As his work drifts more and more toward the strange, it gets harder and harder to find that financing. He has just met with Nikola Tesla and the genius inventor has agreed to help him find that money.

Augustus Whitten is a man obsessed with immortality. He thinks he can punch through to the other side and talk to those who have passed. If he can learn what's there, he can learn the secret of immortality.

He is not a man who spent his entire life doing this. He was, up until recently, a very respected scientist. He was studying alongside Tesla and Thomas Edison on the uses of electricity and working on ways to expand communication. He has done some experiments on radio waves and the uses of radio transmissions to make them longer, go farther. The work he
had done was so good that it attracted the U.S. military who were always looking for ways for soldiers to communicate via longer and longer distances. Perhaps even find ways to communicate via zeppelins and the ground more easily, or even securely, or the new aircraft that have already been co-opted.

It was during those days, trying to make a radio that would project its waves further than any other (or perhaps could be used for some kind of weapon) that Augustus Whitten first punched through to the other side. That was the day he realized that this life was not the only one. For the first time, it sank in that he was not alone, that there was so much more. The day he realized that maybe, just maybe, if he could do the work right, find the right frequencies, he might find a way to immortality.

He sat in front of his tuners and radio wave projectors. He had bought a large tract of land in Nevada where there was nothing for miles, just flat, flat, desert land. At night, like it was now, there were no clouds and he could pick up waves from the other side of the world and project them for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Above the house and the huge barn he used as his lab was nothing but dark, dark skies and bright stars.

Whitten sat in a chair in front of the radio wave transmitter. Next to that was something to listen to any response he got. The night that had changed his life he had been doing the same thing, hovering around the same frequencies, even wearing the same clothes.

He had been down at the far end of the dial, seeing if that made a difference as to how far the radio waves went and if he got any more interesting responses. There had been nothing but noise, just white noise, random noises from the universe, the planet itself.

"August -."

The voice was deep, buried in white noise, and over fast. Augustus had frozen in his place, sure that after hours of listening he was hearing things.

Augustus was now awake, as if he had been splashed with water. He rubbed his eyes and sat up straighter. He adjusted the dials, moving the pointer very slowly. Listening now. He picked up a pair of amplification headphones that he had built himself and put them over his ears. The things were big, made of brass, and heavy, but they also did their job. The hiss of the world, the universe, filled his head and his mind.

"Augustus."

The voice was even more faint. Barely a whisper, buried in all of that static. Augustus held his breath, his fingers gentle and barely moving the dial at all.

"Augustus, hear me."

He was nearly knocked off his chair.

What was he to do? How would he respond?

Whitten turned and adjusted his transmitter so that he would broadcast at the same frequencies. The microphone he had made was primitive, but it also worked like the headphones. He had heard recordings of his transmissions, knew that his voice sounded horrible, but it would be something.

"This is Augustus Whitten," he said through dry lips. "I am speaking to the individual that called my name. Can you hear me?"

He listened, hearing only more static. A constant hissing in both of his ears, filling his brain with noise.

"I hear you."

This time the voice was louder, ahead of the static instead of buried within it.

"Who are you?" Augustus asked. "How did you know I was listening?"

"I know many things, Augustus Whitten. I know many things about you. I am what you have been seeking."

Augustus’ heart sped up. He was sweating. The headphones amplified the voice so loud that it was as if it were echoing in his skull. It was almost painful. As if the person speaking had such a low bass sound that he was able to feel it in his body rather than via his ears.

"Who are you?" Augustus repeated.

"I am the Void. I am the darkness. I am what you seek."

"What do I seek?"

"Immortality."

Augustus was sweating now. It ran down his face and made his hands slick. He was barely able to hold onto the base of the microphone and the heavy brass headphones slid off his head. He adjusted both and reached up to wipe his upper lip. He was shocked when it came away slicked with blood. He wiped again and realized that he was bleeding from his nose.

"Can we talk?" Whitten asked. "I can barely hear you."

The static was back, louder than ever. The sound was so loud that it was like a spike into the center of his head.

"Yes."

"How?"

"Go to your mirror."

Augustus was puzzled. Mirror? What mirror?

Then it hit him. Over in the far corner of the barn, covered with a thick black cloth, was a large oval mirror in a frame. Augustus had had it removed from his house when he had started to let his hair grow long and as his obsession with his work grew and things like personal hygiene had gone out the window. It was far back into the shadows of the barn, surrounded by cobwebs and equipment he was no longer using. 

"The one in the corner?" Augustus asked, wondering how this voice new about the mirror. However, something was wrong with his thinking. It was as if the voice were deep inside him, massaging him, making him accept what it said as truth.

"Yes. Leave it where it is. Look into it. Look into the shadows."

The voice faded to nothing and now there was just static. Again, it was loud, louder than Augustus had ever heard before. Within that static he could hear voices. Thousands of them, talking over each other and drowned out by the static that he could just barely hear it. The sounds were screaming, babbling, insane and it chilled him to the bone. It was the sound of madness. The sound of hell itself.

Augustus put the head phones down. He stood up, wiping his nose again. More blood. It was flowing freely now. He looked down and saw that his white shirt was spattered with blood. That was bad. You could never get blood out of white.

He walked across the room and dug into his jacket to find a handkerchief. He found it and squeezed it against his gushing nose. The handkerchief was quickly soaked with blood. He held the handkerchief there for a while and eventually the flow of blood slowed and then stopped. His face felt sticky with dried blood, but he figured he would wash it later.

Where was that mirror?

Yes, over there.

Whitten walked across the lab. His machines were still humming away. Electricity wandered up and down two exposed wires that went almost up to the ceiling. Across the lab from where he was were two huge spires and atop those were huge metal globes. Electricity fired from one to the other, like Zeus with his lightning bolts, striking the other with force. It was loud, but Whitten was used to it. That had been another gift from Tesla.

There it was. The mirror. Leaning against a wall at an odd angle, with benches and tables in front of it. Whitten moved the benches and equipment aside, dragging them across the wood floor.

Leave the mirror where it is.

OK, then.

Whitten straightened the mirror, but left it where it was. He removed the blanket covering the glass. He tossed that aside and stood back to see what was there.

Glass. It was dirty and dusty. Whitten stepped forward and wiped down the front of the mirror with the sleeve of his shirt. He succeeded in smearing the dirt and stuff around. He kept at it, wiping and wiping until the right sleeve of his arm was covered in dirt and nearly black. Then he stepped back again.

He saw himself. His hair was standing up all over his head. His glasses looked crooked. Whitten did not remember bending the frames, but he must have. He had dirt streaked across his forehead and cheeks. The lab was behind him, the electricity sparking all over and lights indicating how many of his machines were on. Shadows lurked in every corner.

"What?" Whitten asked.

Was he supposed to say something? Was there some kind of magic word that he was supposed to say to make it do something? Was this a fairy tale?

Something moved in the corner of the mirror.

Whitten whirled around and looked into the shadows. There was nothing in the barn itself with him. Just his machines. He turned back around and looked into the mirror again. Something moved in the shadows of the machines behind him.

It was like a snake, twisting and coiling, turning and churning its way out of the corner and getting closer to the mirror. Whitten forced himself to stay looking at the thing as it wound its way closer to him. It was all he could do not to turn around again, not to run, because his reflection showed him that whatever was behind him was coming up right over his shoulder.

He looked up at his own eyes and gasped.

The eyes in the reflection were black pits. Deep within the recesses of those pits were tiny flecks of red that swirled and twisted.

The reflected Whitten was also smiling at him.

The black snake object wound itself around the Whitten-reflection and then entered its mouth and nose. The smile on the reflection got wider and began moving of its own accord.

"Good evening, Dr. Whitten," his reflection said. It was not his voice at all. The voice was deep and strange. "How good of you to talk with me."

"Who are you?" Whitten asked, his throat clicking from dryness. His heart was pounding. This was a joke, his brain tried to rationalize. This was all a joke.

"I am the Void," his reflection said. "There is much to tell you. So much that I am afraid we could be talking all night. I am speaking to you through a very tiny hole in the walls between dimensions. The hole is right around this mirror, where it is, which is why I asked you not to move it. I don't know if this gap will last or how long."

"I'm confused," Whitten said. It was true. He had never been more baffled than he was right now. "What's happening here? Am I losing my mind?

His reflection smiled wider at him, the ends of the smile reaching up past his nose. "You are not dreaming," it said. "The world you live in is the dream. This is the reality. Open yourself to me, Dr. Whitten. I can extend into your universe and provide you with knowledge that will baffle you, amaze you and change everything about you. Will you allow it?"

Whitten felt himself nodding before he realized he was doing it. It was as if he were in a trance. The voice was inside his head, seemed to be coming from the mirror, from the walls, from the air around him. There was now a heaviness in the air, as if the black snake in the mirror were now resting on his shoulders.

"Allow me in, Dr. Whitten," the reflection said.

He extended both hands to his sides, his palms facing the mirror. He opened his mouth. None of this felt voluntary. None of this felt like he was doing this on his own. Were there fingers inside his head pulling his strings?

The mirror erupted. The Whitten in the mirror vomited thick black substance. The mirror glass cracked and then the air was filled with the blackness. Whitten felt a moment of pure panic when the substance smashed into his face, rocketed up his nose, down his throat, into his mouth and into the ducts of his eyes. He rocked back and there was an instant when he was sure he was going to suffocate. Then his brain exploded.

There was the image of bright white light behind his eyes and his head felt as it were going to burst like an overripe pumpkin. Images began flooding him. Now he could breathe, but he could not see. He could not hear. It was as if he were no longer standing inside the barn.

He saw images of creation itself. The endless void and darkness that existed before anything existed. Then there was a bright flash of white light. Whitten had always assumed that the light and the dark lived together and existed together, but now he knew that it was violent. The light and the dark fighting each other, battling for the right to exist, to dominate. Creatures came out of the void and out of the light and battled on continents made of pure darkness and light. It was a battle that raged for what would be centuries in human terms. For the beings of light and dark, it was the matter of a few days, a few hours, an instant.

He could not see what it was that gave the light the advantage, but it happened. The light enveloped the darkness, banishing it to the center of a globe, like the middle of the world. The darkness raged there, twisting and punching at the light, but the light continued to press its advantage, began building layer upon layer of worlds and dimensions around it. The white built a prison of dimensional walls around the darkness, holding the void at bay.