The Sphere (44 page)

“Welcome,” says the repugnant creature, gesturing for us to sit down. He bares his uneven, yellow teeth in a foul grimace. “Come in, come in, make yourselves at home.”

“Creator, help us!” Beatrice whispers in a trembling voice. She reaches for her pocket to find her rosary.

The little man bows dramatically. “At your service, milady. It is I: your creator.”

“You... you... No, you can’t be the Creator!”

Beatrice looks helplessly from Sherlock to me, begging one of us to tell her that this is not her beloved Creator.

“Call me Necrus.”

Beatrice presses her hand to her mouth and the rosary falls to the ground. One of the flat creatures rushes over to pick it up and take it to Necrus, who considers it and then wraps it around his wrist like a bracelet.

“Delightful.” I can’t stand his whistling voice. “Thank you for the gift. A little quill and an inkwell—these creatures are so charming...”

Beatrice goes pale. Her expression is one of utter disillusionment.

“Of course he isn’t your creator, Bice.” I look up to see long neon lights. As I look past the revolting little man I feel my stomach shrink. “
What
have you done to them?” The sight of the missing Sphereans fills me with horror. We’re in some sort of macabre laboratory, and the missing people are unconscious, chained to dirty, broken-down operating tables, with tubes inserted all over their bodies. “Answer! What have you done to them?” I run toward them but the flat creatures stop me. I struggle until they let go, but I can’t get any farther. The flat things have formed a wall in front of the prisoners. “You can’t kill them,” I warn him. “Even if you try, you’ll never destroy them.”

“I know,” Necrus says bitterly. His gloved hands make a plasticky squeak. Two of the flat creatures bring over a golden chair, a sort of throne, and the little man sits down, lifting his cape with an affected gesture. “If you are really so clever you ought to know that I do not intend to destroy them, but to obtain their essence... I thought you were more intelligent. I see I was mistaken.”

Necrus crosses his legs and rests his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. I hear the creak of his leather garments. The flat creatures bring the robot closer to the chair to ease the pull on the tubes. Necrus watches me with his cow eyes, the reddish eyelashes falling limply over a dark iris so large it covers the entire visible part of his eye. They’re sad eyes, and cold—the kind that keep you from seeing what’s inside.

“Eurydice, poor Eurydice. You turned out less helpless than I’d expected, which was a rather serious inconvenience, I must admit. But you also turned out less clever, much less clever. I must thank you; you’ve been most entertaining.”

My eyes are giving off waves of fury. 

“How could you attack people like these?” I look at the intubated Sphereans, and at my companions. “Who would ever want to do away with something so beautiful?”

“You fell in love with the Sphere in the end, eh? Dracula was right.”

I hurl myself at Necrus, but his guards stop me. They hold me tight, twisting my arms around behind my back.

“So it was you watching me the whole time?”

Necrus smiles and his face becomes even more chilling.

“Don’t give me that look. Don’t be resentful, it doesn’t suit you. I can’t kill the Sphereans, but I can kill you.”

“Allow me to suggest otherwise,” says Sherlock casually, as if he’s just trying to be informative. His inscrutable expression and the way his hands are tucked in his pockets tell me he’s completely in his role. “We don’t know Eurydice’s nature. It’s difficult to know how to destroy something when you don’t know how it came to be.”

Necrus observes the detective with curiosity and then turns back to me:

“You should be dead by now. But it doesn’t matter, nothing but a small delay. It’s a shame that you’ve ruined the romantic ending that I’d written for you. It was so... appropriate for your
gothic
character.” The word
gothic
drips with sarcasm. “That’s what you like, right? I saw you walking in the cathedral cemetery, pathetic and melancholy. Alone, helpless, separated forever from your great love. You ought to have been buried alive, like the heroine of a gothic novel, don’t try to deny it... But of course! I forgot that you’ve never read. You don’t have the least idea what I’m talking about. You haven’t been
infected by the uselessness of words
,”  Necrus gestures theatrically with one hand as he speaks. “I’d prepared you an ending worthy of your little talent, of your little faith in the world of creation. You should have died in that tomb, resting for all time next to the remains of this useless things.” His gaze passes over his army and becomes icy, clouded with frustration.

“If I may,” Sherlock interrupts, lifting his index finger, “I’d like to ask how you were able to bring permanent death to these flat beings.”

Necrus pins his gaze on the detective and his breath becomes louder and angrier. Hearing his creatures called flat awakens a painful bitterness in him. His gloves wrinkle as he clutches the arms of the chair.

“He could kill them because those flat, soulless things are his own work,” I say. “He is their creator.”

Necrus jumps to his feet. The robot plows into the armchair, its wheels bouncing up and crashing back down again, making all the loose pieces inside the ridiculous machine clank and clatter.

“Chain her up!”

“That’s right, isn’t it, Necrus?” I go on. “These are your flat characters. What happened—you couldn’t give them any shape? And how did you make so many? I guess for you practice didn’t make perfect.”

Furious tears are flowing beneath his helmet and smearing the dirty glass. Twenty or so of the flat characters start to move when he orders them to chain me up, but then they stop, as if they had stalled.

“You’re no good for anything!” The tinny voice becomes a wail. Necrus doubles over with weeping, as if he had a sharp pain in his stomach, and sniffles through his tears. “They don’t even know how to follow the simplest orders.”

“Interesting,” says Sherlock, taking his pipe from his coat pocket. “Your original idea was that they would be useful... When did you realize that their obedience was faulty?”

“Chain him up,” says Necrus, his voice thin as a thread. He points with a trembling finger.

The flat characters do nothing. Necrus is visibly upset. It’s clear that his health is extremely fragile. He sits back down and struggles to reach over and press some buttons on his robot. After a while his breathing becomes even again, and the glass of his helmet clears up. I look around, but I don’t see any doors. I’m thinking furiously, trying to come up with the best way to free the Sphereans and get out of here. The flat characters are still not moving, but there are hundreds of them, and I don’t know when they might reactivate.

“Where are the other Sphereans?” asks Beatrice innocently. Neither she nor Sherlock has any idea how serious our situation is. I wouldn’t expect anything different—this breaks every rule of their world, and I’m not surprised that they can’t comprehend it. “Where’s Morgan?”

“Morgan,” replies Necrus, composing himself once more, and showing us the twisted grimace he has for a smile. “An interesting character. Passionate, complex, too haughty for my liking. I’m not sure if I want her attributes; that’s why I’m keeping her with that other useless beast that my incompetent servants attracted when they took Cathy. Jane, I asked for Jane Eyre—was it that hard to identify her? Apparently so, these bumbling fools can’t tell the difference between
Wuthering Heights
and
Jane Eyre
. They brought Catherine...”

“But you have Catherine chained up and full of tubes; she must not be so useless to you,” remarks Sherlock.

“Holmes, Holmes, Holmes. The exceedingly brilliant—and irritating—Sherlock Holmes.” Necrus drags out the
r
in
irritating
. The veins in his forehead are turning blue. “You never cease to amaze me. I ought to have taken you. Although I admit that if I did not, it was only because I enjoyed watching you feeling around in the dark. The infallible detective Sherlock Holmes, unable to solve a case.” Sherlock shrinks back and goes stiff, clearly insulted. “It’s true, Catherine isn’t Jane, but there’s something of use there. That’s why I am also extracting her essence.

Extracting her essence? I look carefully at the tubes coming out of each of the unconscious Sphereans. They all seem to end in a large glass container, some sort of distilling device.

“Where is Heathcliff?” asks Beatrice at once.

“Caged, as wild animals ought to be. There is nothing I could want from him.”

“Not Heathcliff, please!” Beatrice tumbles to the ground, letting loose a torrent of tears.

“Moving, but trite. Our blessed Beatrice, the soul of the
Divine Comedy.
Too sweet, a bit cloying to the modern palate. You ought to have stayed on the sidelines and gone on sending your daily prayers to the ‘Creator’ without being a bit bothered. But no, you had to feel the pain of those around you, you had to stick your nose in.”

“Leave her be!” I shout, going over to Beatrice to embrace her.

Now I know exactly where I am. This is the home of all of literature. I can write a different ending and make things turn out differently. I hear Axel’s words inside me, clear as day, as he explains his love for literature. Then doubt washes over me and for a moment I feel just as incapable and useless as I always have. I don’t know if I can write my own ending.

“Do I detect a moment of divine illumination, dearest Eurydice?” Necrus says sarcastically. “Yes, all of them”—he points all around us—“are the very ones you never wanted to meet. Ironic, don’t you think? Ironic, since I suspect they will be your companions for all eternity.”

“No, they won’t,” I protest fiercely. “I’ll get out of here. I’ll get back to my life.”

I feel so weak that even speaking takes a great effort.

“Oh, really? And how do you plan to do that?”

I clench my teeth, powerless. The truth is I don’t know how to leave the Sphere. I know I must rewrite my destiny, but I don’t have any idea how to do it. I don’t know what I thought would happen—I guess I thought a magic door would just open or something.

“Yes,” Necrus goes on, “your worst fears have become reality. You’ll be trapped here forever. Just accept it.”

A thunderous crash comes from the back of the room and Necrus leaps to his feet.

“Morgan!” Beatrice cries. “Thanks be to the Creator—you’re all right.”

Morgan comes toward us carrying what I assume is the portrait of Dorian Gray. A moment later Ambrosio appears, running after her, out of breath.

“I’m sorry, my lord, I’m sorry. I humbly beg your pardon, my lord, for this most unfortunate error...” With every word the monk bows to Necrus.

“Stupid!” Necrus is so enraged that he spits inside his own helmet.

“She used her magic. She hypnotized me and forced me to set her free.”

Morgan makes a face at Ambrosio.

“We have to do something right away,” whispers Morgan. “I’m afraid that if the others stay connected to that thing much longer, the damage to the Sphere will be irreparable.”

I glance over at the distiller.

“Nice little invention, eh?” says Necrus, pushing his cape back to rest his fists on his hips.

I run over to the chained Sphereans, but I barely get my hands on the tubes before the flat creatures stop me.

“What for? What do you want to do?” I look at Necrus in confusion. “All this won’t help you any.”

“How little you know... How little you know about anything!” Necrus mocks me.

“What are you trying to gain by this?” asks Sherlock.

“Immortality,” Necrus replies proudly. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Lord, you already are immortal,” says Ambrosio as he prostrates himself before Necrus.

“Silence!” Necrus slaps him with the back of his gloved hand. “All this that you see before you is my life’s work. A whole lifetime spent researching how to achieve immortality.”

“We are immortal,” murmurs Beatrice, innocent as a child.

“My lord is the most powerful being in all creation,” says the monk as he stands up, trying to imitate Necrus’s arrogant pose.

“It was you, wasn’t it, Ambrosio?” says Sherlock with his usual aplomb. “You let him into the Sphere.”

“Yes,” Ambrosio answers, sticking out his chin. “And I’d do it again, a thousand times over. He is the supreme creator, the only one with real power. He and he alone is the true unmentionable one.”

“Nosferatu? This nobody is Nosferatu?” Morgan says, pointing scornfully at the miserable little man. She goes over to him. The top of his helmet doesn’t even reach her shoulder.

“Silence!” shouts Necrus, shoving her away. “Chain her up.”

The flat characters leap at Morgan but she sends them flying across the room like they’ve been blown away by an explosion. All it takes is a slight movement of her arms to the sides as she utters her incantation. Then, furious, she lifts her right hand and Ambrosio floats up into the air. Her hand moves to one side twice and the monk slams into the wall over and over. Then, without even touching him, she leaves him there, stuck to the wall, his feet straining to reach the ground.

“By the blessed Creator, Ambrosio, how did you let this thing into the Sphere? Why? So it was you who made the hole, that was how I could get out,” says Beatrice, shocked.

“Delightful!” says Necrus, applauding. His heavy gloves muffle the sound. “It’s marvelous to see the characters in action. To see how they make use of the tiny bit of freedom they have within the brutal confines of their assigned characteristics. Don’t you feel sorry for yourselves?” Necrus yells. “You’re nothing but puppets! Simple marionettes dancing in the hands of your
creator
.” He pronounces the final word bitterly. “You, with your insignificant lives, always so busy with the infinite repetition of your roles.” My companions stare at him, astonished. “You want to know how I got into the Sphere? Fine, I’ll give you the pleasure. I’ll tell you all about it so you can shut your ridiculous little eyes and imagine it in living color—with all the ‘living’ you have in your puny little lives, anyway. All I had to do was find one miserable, servile character. Ambrosio was perfect.” The monk’s eyes open wide and he looks with bewilderment at the man he considers his lord and master. “A character whose story had a crack in it, just enough space for me to slip in and speak with him. It was a piece of cake. All I did was tell him that my name started with N, and he assumed I was Nosferatu... Nosferatu...” Necrus erupts in forced laughter. “Just another pathetic character. Ambrosio took the bait right away. I promised him a better life, to publish more female characters for him, a more merciful ending. All I had to do was alter a few lines in his plot and I had him eating out of my hand. He let me possess him. He himself said the spell that let me into your world. If you possess a ‘Spherean,’ as you insist on calling yourselves, you have automatic access to this world. I admit that I spent months in fascination, watching the precision of your movements and your forms. Then I realized I had no time to waste. I asked this stooge”—he points disdainfully at Ambrosio—“to take me to Romeo and Juliet, two of the most exquisite literary characters of all time. That was when my army of flat characters made their first mistake. Something as simple as trapping Juliet was impossible for them. Get up onto her balcony, pretend to be Romeo, and kidnap her—that was it. But none of these useless creatures could pull off the imitation. So I had to go myself. I had to personally climb up to that balcony, which wasn’t easy with all this,” he says, touching the tubes that connect him to the robot with a hateful look. “I fell, but I still made off with Juliet. My suit tore, but I managed to kidnap one of the most important female characters in literature.”