an astronaut returned from a mission to Planet Hell, the Hodgson thing
had crossed half the original distance between us. It was twenty feet
away, relentlessly dragging itself forward, obviously not offended by my
language, driven by a hunger almost as palpable as the stench of hot tar
and rotting vegetation that earlier had been borne on the wind from
nowhere.
In frustration, Bobby struck the door with the shotgun barrel.
That steel plug tolled like a bell.
He didn’t even bother to point the weapon at the Hodgson thing.
Evidently, he, too, had reached the conclusion that the impact of stray
buckshot against the walls of the chamber might energize the place and
leave us trapped here longer.
The light show ended, and over us fell absolute darkness.
If I could have stilled my storming heart and held my breath, I might
have been able to hear the whispery slippage of rubber boot soles over
the glassy floor, but I was a one-man percussion section. I probably
couldn’t have detected the sound of the Hodgson thing’s approach if it
had been beating a bass drum.
When the luminous phenomenon in the walls had been extinguished, surely
the phantasmagoric engine had shut down altogether, surely we had come
all the way back to reality, surely the Hodgson thing had ceased to
exist as abruptly as it had appeared, surely Again, Bobby struck the
vault door with the shotgun. It didn’t toll this time. The tone was
flat, less reverberant than before, as if he had slammed a hammer into a
block of wood.
Maybe the door was changing, in the process of dematerializing, but it
was still blocking the exit. We couldn’t risk trying to leave until we
were certain we wouldn’t be passing through it while it was in a state
of flux and possibly capable of taking some molecules from our bodies
with it when it vanished for good.
I wondered what would happen if the Hodgson thing had a firm grip on me
when its very substance began to transform. If, for even a moment, my
hand had become one with the steel of the vault door, perhaps part of me
would become one with the pressure suit and with the squirming entity
inside the suit, a close, too-personal encounter that might destroy my
sanity even if, miraculously, I survived with no physical damage.
Blackness pressed liquidly against my open eyes, as if I were deep
underwater. Although I strained to catch the slightest sign of the
approaching figure, I was as sightless here as I’d been in the corridor
outside the room where I’d found the ve ve rats.
Inevitably, I recalled the kidnapper with the white-corn teeth, whose
face I’d touched in the blinding dark.
As then, I now sensed a presence looming before me, and with more reason
than I’d had previously.
After all that had happened in this Mystery Train terminal, this
antechamber to Hell, I was no longer inclined to discount my fears as
the product of a hyperactive imagination. This time I didn’t reach out
to prove to myself that my darkest suspicions were groundless, because I
knew that my fingertips would slide down the smooth curve of the
Plexiglas faceplate.
“Chris! ” I jerked in surprise before I comprehended that the voice was
Bobby’s.
“Your watch, ” he said.
The radiant readouts were visible even in this soot-thick murk.
The green numbers in those displays were changing, counting forward so
rapidly that many hours were falling behind us in a fraction of a
second.
The letters in the day and month windows were passing in a blur of
continuously changing abbreviations.
Time past was giving way to time present.
Hell, in truth I didn’t know exactly what was happening here.
Maybe I didn’t understand this situation at all, and maybe a bend in the
fabric of time had nothing to do with what we’d witnessed. Maybe we were
entirely delusional because someone had spiked our beer with LSD.
Maybe I was at home, snug in bed, asleep and dreaming. Maybe up was
down, in was out, black was white. I knew only that whatever was
happening now felt right, felt a lot better than would a sudden embrace