XXXI
The Young Girl had spied on maybe sixty doors and seen sixty of the strangest apparitions, before - to her surprise - she came across a symbol that she knew, one that had seen before. She stood silent, and dumbfounded, running her fingers over the sigil.
“Maybe we shouldn’t look,” said T, his voice, a beckon of worry.
The Young Cripple had no reason to worry, though, for this sigil had been with her the entire of her life. It represented hope, Light, and love.
“It’s ok,” she said assuring. “We don’t have much choice anyway, do we?”
“Guess not.”
The Young Cripple continued to run her fingers along the sigil and smile.
“It’s the symbol of our troupe. But what’s it doing here?”
She stared back along the corridor where she had come, and passed her eye once more, ever so briefly, at the sigils on each door. In each room she had encountered a different being; some of them enormous and almost impossible to define, and others she’d encountered were so incredibly small that only by pure chance was she able to see them. In some rooms, the beings were of four, five and six dimensions, and in some they were three, like her, as well as those that existed without form at all, inside a single dimension.
She stared back at the sigil she knew so well.
“They’re cataloguing,” said T.
“Who are they? And cataloguing what?”
The Young Cripple crept up to the door once more, as she had the others, and she slowly pulled the flap back and peered through. And what she saw was pure horror.
“Oh my God,” she gasped.
In the room, there was a man bent over on his knees, and appearing as if in the midst of prayer. His back was hunched over and his face pressed against the ground. And sticking out of his back were a host of wires and tubes that were dug into his spine with massive needles, which ran from his body up into what looked like a meter box, which hung from the roof.
“What’s happening to him?”
The man was heaving on the ground as if some current were running though his spine. His folded body rippled like a wave, and his head tapped against the floor with each jolt making the faintest thump.
The Young Cripple beat against the glass window.
“What are you doing? Don’t do that. Someone will catch us.”
“Hey,” she shouted, banging on the window. “Hey, you, look up here.”
In between her banging, she could hear, ever so quietly, the sound of the man praying. She stopped her banging and listened more intently.
“What’s he saying?” asked T.
“It’s the story. The story of Light. He’s repeating it, over and over.”
“What is that?”
“It’s just a story, something we tell; a kind of prayer. Everyone learns it off by heart. Everyone we save.”
“We?”
“My family. Our troupe.”
“So he’s from your troupe then?”
“No, he’s not. He’s just a person.”
“Have you met him before?”
“We travelled the whole world before I died. We saved everyone. But why is he here? The saved shouldn’t suffer. He should be in Heaven.”
“You said it yourself, this is Heaven.”
“No. Heaven is different. It’s peaceful. It illuminates. If this is Heaven, then where is all the Light?”
She looked left and right in the infinite corridor. She squinted as hard as she could to find a speck of Light, but all she could see, and all she could feel, in her thoughts, and on the rough of her skin, was a cold and mephitic darkness.
“This is not Heaven.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“My father, the master, he was a prophet. He spoke to God. He is the only man to have ever seen The Sun of God. And I know because he told me. And I wrote every prayer that there is. I scribed every one of his visions. I know because I’ve seen it too, in my own mind.”
The Young Cripple peered in the room again, and she beat against the door with her fist. This time, she broke the man’s spell. He lifted his head and The Young Cripple almost vomited.
“Where are his eyes? What did they do to his eyes?”
“We should go. We should run. We shouldn’t be here. Forget my body. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go. C´mon.”
“We can’t leave him like this. He’s in pain. It’s inhumane.”
“There’s nothing we can do.”
“Hey,” she screamed.
The man was staring right at her, as if, even without eyes, he could see her clearly. HIs face was covered in cuts and abrasions, and his mouth trembled as he muttered his story over and over until his jaw locked, and not a sound escaped his mouth.
“I’m gonna get help. Stay there. I’ll get help.”
The man amassed a great deal of strength, and he shook his head.
“I promise I’ll be back,” shouted The Young Cripple.
The man uttered something, but it was lower than his breath.
“I didn’t hear. What did you say? You have to shout.”
The man concentrated, and he willed the strength of a mountain.
“Find the boy,” he said.
“What boy?”
“The boy.”
“The boy at the door,” said T. “The one I told you about.”
“Where is he?” shouted The Young Cripple. “Do you know him? Do you know where he’s gone?”
“The boy,” said the man, silently cursing the girl’s insolent curiosity.
“Let me help you.”
“The boy,” versed the man again, gaining strength. “There is no hope for us, but you can close the door to this world, and you can save whoever comes next. Find the boy.”
“What is this place?” begged The Young Cripple.
“You know where we are. We did as you said. We followed the Light. And this is where we ended up.”
“Who did this to you?”
“We did this to ourselves,” said the man, spitting loose teeth onto the floor. “They’re using our Light, our souls for energy.”
“Why? Who would do this?”
“It doesn’t matter. It is being done. There’s at least one of us from every world, and from every parallel universe. Since the boy disappeared, the door of time has remained open. And no matter who or how many come, they all end up here. There’s so many. And every day, the soldiers bring more. I have no idea what they are building, or what they are doing here. We are like cattle - tied to these wires and tubes. If I stop the prayer, if I forget a word, they shock me. I just… I tell the story. That is all. I exist only to feed them. And they just…”
His body convulsed as a charge of electricity bit his spine.
“The boy…he knows,” said the man, stuttering.
“Knows what?”
T’s radio started to hiss.
“Everything,” said the man.
“What does that mean?” asked The Young Cripple, desperate and naïve.
“How?” asked T. “You only had to tell him your story, to talk about the life that you lived, and he would never know. What happened? What did you do?”
“We only had one story. That of Light, and The Sun of God. Now there is no other life, no other existence, not from what I’ve been told; there is only this…this farm of fear and Light.”
“What happened to your stories?” asked T. “What did you do with them?”
“We traded them, for salvation.”
The man started to laugh manically.
“We traded them for this.”
“Who would make you do such a thing?”
The man smiled at the girl.
“Ask her.”
“What? Me?”
“You don’t remember me do you?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“You and that whore. You took the needle out of my vein, and the noose from around my neck. You fed me hope and belief. And you made me tell you my story, so many times th
at in the end, I could barely even remember my own name. You emptied me of my past, of all that I was. And this is what I got in return.”
“It wasn’t that way, I promise.”
“I’d forgive you I would, if you could give back what you tricked me into giving away. Give me back my memories. Give me back my soul.”
“I don’t know what the master did with them. They’d be back on our planet. Probably in his carriage.”
“They’re here; buried with the boy. You find the boy, you find our stories.”
“Where do we find him?” shouted T.
“Follow your fears,” said the man.
“What does that mean?” asked The Young Cripple.
“You’ll find the boy at a place where demons dwell; where they leisure and share their miseries. There’s an old man in Ward Number Five, they call him The Collector. He grants wishes. See him. He can help you.”
“Please, sir. I need to know,” shouted The Young Cripple. “Is this Heaven?”
“Yes,” said the man, feeling licks of electricity on his tongue. “Yes, it is.”
“But where is the Light?”
“Follow the cables that run overhead,’ said the man, with a smirk.
The Young Cripple looked upwards.
“What are they for?”
“Go, find the boy. His absence is an anchor for this atrocious vessel. Find him, and cast this wretched Heaven adrift."
“But how do we get out of here?”
The man shook his head.
“The way in, is the way out.”
“But how?”
“Imagine. That’s all. Ward Number Five. And, forget about us here. Save the rest of existence, those that are still to die. You have to find that boy. Only he can restore equanimity.”
The man started to convulse, and returned to his hunched persona, pulsing up and down as he once again, rode the low tide of electrical current which ran through his spine. His mouth continued to utter the only story he knew. As if the last minutes had never occurred, the man swept into a manic rhythm and continued his disturbing and sickening worship, but on the second verse, he swallowed his tongue, and abruptly ended his prayer.
The Young Cripple and her friend backed away from the door.
“Did I do this?” she asked.
“No,” said T. “Your heart is too kind for this. But we do have to go. Now!”
The two ran back down the corridor towards the door they had entered from.
“I can’t go back in that room. Let’s find somewhere else.”
“There’s nowhere else. And we can’t open any of those doors. This is it.”
The Young Cripple closed her eyes tight and gripping the radio, she dived through the doorway.