The Man From Taured (34 page)

"I see," Whitten said. "So your goal is to curb the advancement of humanity? That doesn't sound like the land of the free and the home of the brave to me."

"We don't want to stop people from advancing, but advancement without rules and without some kind of regulation will create chaos. It could be destructive. People could die."

Whitten cleared his throat. "OK. So, you already know that I work on the radio wave experiments. I have worked hard for the government that you claim to work for. Why are you here now?"

"We have been monitoring you, Dr. Whitten," Ezekiel said. "We know that you have moved on to other things besides long distance radio communications. Well, check that, perhaps you have moved on to other forms of long distance communication. Communication to other dimensions?"

Whitten felt fear in his heart. How did they know this?

"You're spying on American citizens?" Whitten asked.

"We keep track of people we feel might be important," Ezekiel replied, as if this made it OK. "You were conducting experiments that we thought were valuable. But once you made contact with other dimensions, well, we have to step in. The world is not ready for this kind of thing. Not yet."

"How can you say that?" Whitten asked. Now the fear was slowly being replaced with anger. "How can you decide what advancements are correct and which are not?"

"The walls between dimensions are there for a reason, Dr. Whitten. They are not meant to be breached. The entity that you spoke with is vastly dangerous."

How did they know? Dear God, here was a man at least ten years younger than Whitten telling him that he knows about other dimensions and the Void. How was that possible?

"How do you know about this?" Whitten asked.

"Do you think you are the first?" Ezekiel said. "Do you think that there are not others out there trying to break down the walls between dimensions? There are people all over the world conducting experiments like yours and who have been for years. Some of those experiments have led to disaster. We know of the Void. The Void has been plaguing mankind for centuries, Dr. Whitten. The devil, demons and other entities that have been banished to the realm of superstition all stem from it. It is imprisoned where it is for a reason."

"How can you know?" Whitten replied. "Have you spoken to him? Do you know how he was imprisoned?"

"You've spoken to him, then?"

Whitten realized he had been trapped. "Yes."

"He showed you things didn't he?"

"Stop calling ‘he’," Whitten replied. "The Void is beyond male and female, even though it is a living thing. It
is powerful and beyond our understanding."

"And yet you would work with it, or him, or whatever it is to bring it into this dimension?" Ezekiel still had that smile on his face. It was as if he were discussing the weather and not the discovery of the century. "The Void would enter this world and absorb it into itself. It wants nothing but to conquer and destroy. You should know this."

"What you say is not true," Whitten said. "It just isn't."

"You telling me that it isn't right doesn't make it any less so," Ezekiel said. "I don’t have to come here and tell you what we do or why we do it. We do not have to justify our existence or why we are here. We also don't have to explain what we know or how we came into existence."

Whitten sat there stupefied. This young man was a wisp of a thing and he was not one for violence, but right now he wanted to reach out and smash the young punk in the face. He wanted to grab the ashtray on the table in front of him and bash in the cretin's face and head. He wanted to taste blood on his lips and smash his skull until Ezekiel's brains were all over the floor.

"I am just here to tell you to cease and desist all attempts to breach other dimensions," Ezekiel said. The young man stood up, brushing dust off of his pants. "This is the only warning you get. You are dealing with things that are ancient and very dangerous. Dangerous to you, but more importantly, dangerous for all of existence here in this planet and any other planet in our dimension."

Ezekiel stared at Whitten for a moment, cocking his head to the side as if studying him. Whitten felt as if he were under a microscope. He stood up just so that he was taller than the young man.

"I can tell how angry you are, Dr. Whitten," Ezekiel said. "I can understand that. I am telling you now that it would be a horrible mistake for you to act on that anger in any way that involves contacting the Void or breaching other dimensions. Let me ask, did he promise you immortality?"

Whitten opened his mouth and then closed it again. He sputtered for several seconds, trying to come up with a denial or some kind of answer that made sense. Instead, he just shut his mouth and glowered at the younger man.

"I thought so," Ezekiel said. "It – he - does that. It’s one of the things that the Void has offered to those of us in this dimension for years. Are you looking for that? Do you fear death, Dr. Whitten? I know you were close to your mother and she died recently. Has that affected you?"

Whitten reached back, involuntarily, balling his hand into a fist, ready to strike the impudent man. He held his hand there, ready to strike, but something in the young man's face held him there.

"Go ahead, Dr. Whitten," Ezekiel said, that infernal smile never faltering. "Strike me. I would rather you do that than continue with your dangerous experiments. You can even kill me if it will save this realm. I am willing to die for that. I do not fear death. Neither should you. Immortality is a lie, Dr. Whitten, and the Void is the master of lies."

They stared each other down for what felt like hours, but was actually just a few minutes. Whitten lowered his fist. Ezekiel gave a nod of satisfaction, as if he had won.

"I’m going to leave now, Dr. Whitten," Ezekiel said. "However, you are now warned and you know that we are watching you. I am going to trust you to be smart enough not to continue your experiments. If not, however, you will see what we can do to stop you. You won't like it."

The rage flooded Whitten again. This was his chance, a voice inside his head was screaming, the one chance he had to kill this impudent swine. Ezekiel was alone. He was a skinny little kid and nothing could stop Whitten from smashing him over the head, pounding his head into the coffee table until he was bloody.

"I can see from your face that you are tempted right now," Ezekiel said. "You want to throttle me. You think that what I'm doing is destroying your dreams. That is not the case. I am helping you. I am helping everyone."

Ezekiel pulled back his coat. In a holster hitched beneath his armpit was a gun. It was apparently made of brass and it looked like it fired something other than bullets. Whitten had never seen a pistol like it before.

"Plus, I have ways of protecting myself, Dr. Whitten," Ezekiel said. "I may look like a skinny young man, but I am far from it. There are things in this world and others that you cannot fathom. There are things you cannot possibly understand. Stop trying. Do what you can to improve the world, not destroy it. Fight for the light."

Whitten quivered from head to toe in barely-contained rage. "You cannot stop me."

Ezekiel sighed. "We can and we will if we have to. You are breaching dimensions with your radio waves and your direct contact with the Void via your mirror greatly weakens the dimensional barriers. You are causing great harm every single time you speak to the Void, Dr. Whitten. We have machines in place to keep him at bay, but you make it harder each time."

Ezekiel turned at that point and walked back toward the kitchen. He walked without fear, as if he knew that Whitten would not come after him. As if he had defeated Whitten, taken the air out of his sails.

Whitten stood rooted to the spot until the back door slammed and he heard the large black car start up and pull away. Then he clenched both fists and let out a long rage-filled scream. He grabbed the ashtray from the coffee table and threw it across the room. He rampaged, tearing apart the shelves, throwing the knickknacks across the room where they shattered into pieces and skittered across the floor. He kicked over the coffee table and tipped over both sofas.

When he was done he stood breathing hard in the middle of the dining room. Behind him the living room was a disaster.

What was he going to do? What did he do next? Did he pack up his equipment and flee? The Void had told him that the rift in the barn was only in one place. What if he couldn't find another?

"No," Whitten whispered to his empty house. "No, they are not going to stop me."

Augustus Whitten would not be deterred. He had to summon the Void. That was what he needed to do. He had to speak. This was what would make him famous and it was his destiny.

The Void was offering him immortality. Who could turn away from that?

"Not me," Whitten whispered. "Not at all."

What he didn't know was that, as he whispered those words, his eyes turned completely black for just a moment.

***

"So, they are calling themselves IDEA, now?" The voice said through the mirror and this was followed by a low rumbling sound that Whitten took for laughter. "They have been after me for centuries. Yes, Ezekiel is correct. They have been countering my movements each time. They are fools, Augustus. I have shown you the reality of dimensions and I have promised you immortality. That shall be the case."

"What do you want me to do?" Whitten asked. "Will they come to me? Will they try to destroy me?"

"Almost certainly," Void replied. "They will come again and we must be ready. I have already made arrangements. The rift in this barn is now attached to the mirror. If you bring the mirror with you, I shall go with it. When they come, we must set traps for them so that they pay for their insolence. Then we will run."

"We have work to do," Whitten said.

"Yes."

Whitten spent days arranging things around the lab, guided always by the Void-possessed version of himself in the mirror. He was soon tapped into more power via the electrical lines that provided power to the nearby town. His machines hummed to life and they were louder than ever.

After two weeks of work, Whitten stood back and stared at the handiwork inside the barn. There were more machines and the boards of the barn itself were vibrating. The electrical bolts were firing almost constantly from one sphere to the next. It was like standing in the middle of a thunderstorm.

"Good," the Void said from within the mirror. "Now, turn up the power and cycle through the frequencies. Cycle through fast."

Whitten moved to the controls and began dialing through the frequencies. He moved the dial fast, up and down. In the middle of the barn, amidst all of the machines, a white light began to appear. Beams of energy emitted from the antennas he had placed in a circle around the barn. It was wavy, like looking at something through the surface of a pond, and bright white.

"Yes," Void said. "Yes, that's it."

Then, as Whitten cycled through again, the disc of white light solidified. A picture emerged. It was a field, much like the fields that were right outside the barn. There were trees with bright red leaves and purple tree trunks. The grass and plants inside the meadow waved and blew in the breeze. Giant birds of the brightest colors flew over the field and meadow, wheeling and sweeping and turning around. Whitten gasped, his breath catching in his throat. He had never seen something so beautiful. He breathed deep and could smell the meadow, but there were smells there that he could not identify and could not describe.

"Good," Void said again. "GOOD!"

The mirror erupted.

It was like a volcano spewing black lava, shot out of the mirror and across the lab. The black substance burst through the white disc and entered the world of the bright meadow and birds. In an instant the grass and plants in the meadow turned black and disintegrated as it touched them. Tendrils spread out as more and more of the substance erupted from the mirror, reaching out and wrapping around the birds as they flew overhead and turning them black, absorbing it into itself.

Something exploded in the corner of the room. There was the hot smell of burning wiring and wood. Flames erupted from one of the transmitters. The white disc in the middle of the room flickered.

The Void screamed.

"NOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!"

The disc collapsed. Something else exploded in the far corner. Sparks flew into the air and landed on the beams of the old barn. Then another transmitter burst into sparks and more flames erupted. Whitten grabbed a blanket and ran around the room, smothering the flames when he could.

"NOOOO! NONONONONONONO! I was almost there!"

Inside the mirror the black version of Whitten was having a tantrum. The mirror-version of the barn was being smashed to pieces by his black reflection. The Void broke things apart, throwing the pieces around. The screaming was now inarticulate, more like some kind of animal, and as the black-Whitten smashed more of the reflection equipment to pieces the screaming eventually grew beyond even the roars of animals.

Whitten stomped out more flames and began turning off the machines. The smell of smoke was overpowering and he felt sick. It was hard to breathe. He held a handkerchief to his mouth and nose and then pulled open the barn door. Smoke billowed out into the air, caught by the wind and tossed away into the night. He took in great gasps of air.

Inside the barn the noises had stopped. Whitten was shaking with fear. He had nearly burned the barn down, but he had also seen what the Void could do when he wanted to. He could still see the tentacles of blackness reaching into the sky to pull down the brightly colored birds.

"What have I gotten myself into?" Whitten asked.

Immortality. That was the goal. He reminded himself of that and went back into the barn. He walked over to the mirror.

The black-Whitten stood there calmly again, staring out at him.

"I was so close," the Void said. "I had almost absorbed all of it."

"What did you do?" Whitten asked. "Did you destroy them?"

"No, it is not destruction," the Void replied. "They become part of me. They are absorbed into me. We become one. I am immortal. I have always been and always will be. I am the first that ever was. Before there was life there was me. I am the true nature of the universe and I return the dimensions to its original state."

Whitten felt his strength returning. It was true. He need only look up at the sky, at the darkness between the stars, to know that the blackness was there first.

"Make me immortal," Whitten said.

Black-Whitten studied him through the mirror.

"Are you ready?" The Void asked.

"I’m ready," Whitten said. "My soul is yours. My life is yours."

Whitten held his hands out at his sides and closed his eyes.

The blackness erupted from the mirror. A steady stream of it flowed out
and this time it plunged deep into Whitten's nose and mouth. He felt his insides rebelling, but then the blackness touched his internal organs and turned them into facsimiles of organs. His entire body began to shudder and he nearly fell over. The darkness kept coming and now he felt fingers inside his brain, rewiring him, turning him into something that was part Void and part Whitten. His thoughts were now shared with the Void. His life belonged to the darkness. He opened his mouth to scream, feeling as if he were being violated inside and out, but the blackness just poured in faster and thicker. He was no longer breathing. His life was over, and the new life had begun. He did not need air. He needed nothing but the Void.

Whitten lost all sense of time and place. He had been standing there for an instant and he had been standing there for an eternity. When the black substance stopped, he stood shaking. He breathed out, and a cloud of black mist escaped. He looked at himself in the mirror, now seeing his true reflection.

His eyes were black pits.

Thoughts ran through his brain that were not his own. Conquer. Destroy. Yes, take it all. Take it all. It must be his.

Whitten turned toward the table to his right and lifted his arm in the air. He smashed it down, splintering the thick wood. The top of the table broke apart, splintering even further, and then broke in two. He grabbed one of the metal boxes atop the table with both hands and easily crushed it between his fingers.

He felt alive. He felt powerful.

He felt immortal.

"Let them come," Whitten said, seeing the world through his new eyes. "Let them come."

***

Whitten fell asleep sometime that night, but he had no idea when. He had lost track of time again, not remembering what he had done once he was possessed by the Void. He awoke and it was dark, the smell of burned wiring still pungent in the air. He was going to have to spend weeks getting new equipment out here and set up. He needed more power. He needed more power to keep the portals open.

Something was moving outside.

Whoever or whatever it was, was trying to be very quiet, but Whitten had new ears. He could hear them clearly. Yes, it was human. Muttering with each other, whispered commands.

"Move quietly. He's still in there."

"Come up around that way. I think he's asleep."

"Get him subdued fast."

"Destroy the machines."

Whitten got to his feet. He felt strong now. Although the barn was pitch black, he could see clearly, as if there were an unearthly glow around the entire place. He could also see through the walls of the barn.

A dozen of them.

One of them was Ezekiel.

He knew it instantly. As if he could smell him. The young man had a strange glowing aura around himself. The others were white blobs, but Ezekiel's form was shot through with color. Ezekiel was special.

Delightful.

Whitten turned around, studying the men that were now all around the barn. They would get a surprise soon.

"Hello, Ezekiel!" Whitten called. It was probably foolish, but he couldn't help himself. "Welcome back!"

The men stopped talking, but they kept coming. Each of the twelve men had some kind of weapon in their hands. Whitten laughed and ran to the mirror. He grabbed it with one hand and tucked it under his arm. It was as light as a dinner plate.

That was when something outside exploded.

The tripwires he had laid. Yes, buried death and booby-traps abounded in this barn.

The entire barn shook and dust fell from the ceiling. Whitten laughed and heard men outside screaming. He scanned the area and at least two of the twelve men were gone now, rolling on the ground screaming, their limbs blasted off.

Something else exploded.

One of the men had run toward the two injured men and tripped another wire. The body flew into the side of the barn, splintering the boards. This body fell to the ground in a heap and did not move.

Whitten ran to the back of the barn. There was a small door there, hidden by branches and brush piled up against the side of the barn. There was shouting outside. The large door at the front slid open. There was a loud click and four shotguns went off.

Another trap.

More screaming.

One by one the machines in the room exploded. Shrapnel flew through the air. The barn was now burning. The loft started first, having been recently stuffed full with dry straw. The fire spread along the loft floors and the roof. The explosions continued.  More booby-traps, more bombs.

More screams.

There were only three of the men outside left. He had taken out so many without lifting a finger, letting the traps do their work. Lovely. Whitten felt victorious. Arrangements had been made and they had all worked out beautifully.

Whitten stepped through the door, pushing the brush away. He stepped into the black, but the darkness was like a bright full-moon night to him. He could see all the way to the tree line.

"Stop, Dr. Whitten!"

He froze.

"Ezekiel," Whitten said. "I should have known you wouldn't fall easily into the traps I set."

Ezekiel was holding that strange brass gun. Held in two hands, pointed at Whitten's heart. He still held the mirror under his arm. In one swift movement he swung the mirror around and planted one end into the ground, the glass surface facing Ezekiel.

Ezekiel fired.

Bright white energy erupted from the barrel of the gun, sizzling through the air. The energy struck the mirror. The mirror roared back and blackness burst from its surface and hit Ezekiel like a fire hose directly in his mid-section. Ezekiel was lifted off the ground and flung backwards, then hurled sideways and smashed through the barn wall. The barn was now completely engulfed and part of the roof fell where he had vanished.

Had Ezekiel turned to dust? Vanished, perhaps, like the others that touched the Void? Probably not, he thought. That little shit probably had some kind of protection against it. It was too risky to assume anything.

Whitten turned and ran. The night was ablaze in bright orange light. There were more explosions and screams as the men that were left tried to get around to the back of the barn. There was a hideous sound as the roof fell in completely, the entire top of the barn now sunken. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky.

Whitten ran to the tree line and then pushed through. The mirror was still light as a feather. From within, and within his own mind, the Void told him which way to run. He emerged in a clearing, still on his property, where he had placed a small shed. Inside that was a car that he had purchased recently. He had almost no idea how to drive but the Void told him not to worry.

Seconds later he was inside the driver's seat, the engine running. He backed out of the garage, bouncing over the meadow, the horizon bright orange, turning the night into day, as the barn burned. There was another explosion as the timers on the bombs inside the house went off. Now that was burning.

Whitten reached the road twenty minutes later, after winding his way down dirt roads, his spine screaming at him from the bouncing and jostling. When he reached the paved road he threw his head back and laughed.

He laughed for a long, long time.