XXXII
“Ahh crap,” said The Accountant, as a swarm of winged beasts swooped from up above and nearly tore off his skull.
The next two that swooped lost their heads. The Accountant swung his sword in one hand, and fired rounds from his stupendous gun in the other, seeing nothing whatsoever, but feeling death itself, closing in around him.
“Where the hell are we, boss?” shouted Bean, firing wildly into the air.
“What?”
Their ears were deafened with the sound of screeching and flapping wings, and their own rapid gunfire. All around them, creatures of all composite and posture came scurrying out of their nests and burrows, driven by the sweet nectar of fear which dripped from the two men’s glands.
The winged beasts that circled overhead blocked out the Light from seven moons so that the once amber sky, turned mournfully black. Neither man could see more than an inch in front of their faces. They drew their weapons and backed against one another, spinning in small, slow circles.
“I can’t see a thing. This aint good.”
“Oh God,” shouted Bean, in sheer panic. “There’s something in my pants. It’s biting me. God, it’s biting me.”
He kicked his legs to shake off the itch and the clawing that had started at his ankles and now ran up the back of his right leg. He could feel its teeth and lips against the skin behind his knee.
“Do something,” he shouted. “Get it out, get it out goddamnit.”
The Accountant didn’t flinch. He swung his hand backward and stabbed his sword into the creature’s head before it could properly latch onto his partner’s trembling leg.
“C’mon,” shouted The Account, leading the way back through the door.
They both dove through together, wrecking their bodies in the process and narrowly avoiding a set of gnashing teeth which appeared out of nowhere as if the world itself were alive, and the doorway, its scavenging mouth.
Both bookkeepers collapsed in a heap on a pile of soft sand, unsure from where, or what it was, they had just escaped. They lay there for some time, breathing heavily and drifting into a delicious sleep.
It was the sound of waves lapping gently on a sandy shore that woke The Accountant to his absurd reality. He wasted no time and jumped to his feet, unsheathing his long sword, and pacing defensively around his colleague’s comatose body.
The sand beneath his feet glittered. It caught the Light and shot it back into the air with magnificent colour. It felt as though he were standing on isle made from a shattered mirror ball. But just as their edges were sharp and jagged, so too were they soft, warm and easing.
“Where are we?” moaned Bean, the bright sun stinging his eyes.
“Stay down. Rest. We’re fine,” said The Accountant.
He could see small waves breaking not far from where he stood. And he could see too, a small cabin that was surrounded by massive palm trees, which gently swayed back and forth. The sky was blue and clear with not a cloud whatsoever.
It was the horizon, though, which vexed his logic. It bent and warped in a way that a horizon should not. The sky itself, upon closer inspection, was concave. It was as if the one horizon had been stretched like elastic, up and over his head, and pinned on the other side. And outside of the horizon, as if the sky were glass, The Accountant could have sworn he could see the strangest apparition of all.
“Can you walk?” he asked Bean.
“God, I feel like my whole body has been through a grinder.”
“It’s the door. The feeling will pass soon.”
“That was incredible,” said Bean. “I’d almost forgotten how wonderful dying is.”
“Don’t get used to it. We’ll be back in Heaven in a jiffy. And there’ll be no more death.”
Bean stared up at the blinding sky, feeling the warm sun on his face. “Yes,” he said. “No more death. Praised be Light.”
“How’s your leg?”
He could feel a cool trickle of blood from the creature’s bite.
“Hurts like all hell. I’ll be fine, though. Just give me a bit.”
“You need to heal before we go back through. We’ll get some rest over there,” said The Accountant, pointing to the cabin by the sea shore.
“Couldn’t bug ya for a lift?”
With his eyes fixed on the horizon, The Accountant dragged his colleague though the glittery sand, towards the cabin beneath the swaying palms. It was no easy feat. The air was strange. It was both heavy and buoyant. It felt, for the most part, as if he were underwater, and pushing through some invisible elastic that refused to snap, no matter how hard he exerted. Whatever gravity was present here, he was surely ill-prepared for its effect.
Finally, though, he made his way to the cabin, towing his colleague along by the cable that adjoined them both. There, they both lay in coloured hammocks, catching their breaths which, in this new environment, felt as if two dozen sandbags had been piled upon their chests. And while Bean marvelled at the beach’s tranquillity, and at the colour gleaming from the terrific sand, The Accountant stared unyielding, out through the warping sky.
“What the hell was that before, in that world?” asked Bean. “It felt like the air had teeth.”
“It shouldn’t be. None of this should be. What you saw was theoretical. These dimensions that we have found ourselves in are made of ugly and unstable mathematics. There is nothing elegant about irrational function. But as long as The Arc is down, then there is no way to rule out the possible.”
“Which means what?”
“We cannot assume what may or may not happen next.”
“God help us,” said Bean, marking out a star on his heart.
“You see that?”
The Accountant was pointing out to the horizon, right in front of the cabin door. It was hard to gauge properly if there was actually anything to see. The sky looked smudged, and the sun itself seemed as if it were behind a layer of Perspex.
“There,” said The Accountant, pointing out a smudge that moved from one side of the sky to the other.
“What is that?” asked Bean. “Is that a cloud?”
“It looks like another world,” said The Accountant. “Can you see the shapes through the sky? There is another world, on the edge of that horizon.”
“So we’re in a world, inside of a world?”
“Unfortunately, we cannot afford to negate this absurd and ghastly form of rationale.”
“So where is this world then?” asked Bean, certain there was a black and white answer that would expunge his swelling fear.
“I’ve no bloody idea.”
The Account stared implacable, at a girl, on the other side of the sky.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” he asked.
“Probably clouds. A storm coming maybe.”
The Accountant and Bean lay in their hammocks, lightly swinging, and watching with canine wonder, as the heavy shadow moved about the sky. If they knew what was happening in that other world, they’d be running right about now.
“Looks like a face,” said The Accountant.
There was, what looked like the beady eyes and wreckful grimace of a man, staring at the sand globe in his hands, and seeing it not with merry wonder, but instead, as capable of his maleficent intent.
“Is that God?” asked Bean.
The man’s eyes sneered into their world.
“No,” said The Accountant, coldly. “It most certainly is not.”
In the other world, a girl screamed, and her face came into view as the man turned the sand globe in her direction. The look in her eyes was one of imminent collision. Both The Accountant and Bean threw themselves out of their hammocks.
“Run, run as fast you can.” shouted The Accountant.
In air like this, what a witty thing to say.
It was maybe a second later that a tremendous earthquake threw both men to the cabin’s roof, along with every single glittering speck of sand on the isle. The air trembled and shook, back and forth; and back and
forth again.
“What’s happening?” shouted Bean.
The faster the air shook, the more suspended the men became. They hovered in mid-air, neither rising nor falling, while, around them, the world they inhabited became an incredible display of colour and sparkle. Where they anywhere else, other than inside, of course, they might have found it delightful. But amidst an air of suspension, and being so desperate and unable to move their limbs, they felt fear - absolute God-given panic; the kind that strips a man of his training, and his wits.
In the other world, the man, holding the globe, looked bored and despondent. And when the shaking stopped, the men slowly floated back down towards their seats like feathers, tossed from the side of a building. They floated blissfully, amidst a sea of glittering sand, and it took an incredible amount of time, for them, and all the sand on the isle, to finally settle.
The Accountant charged ahead, pulling on the cable that attached the two men. It was near impossible to escape. The air itself had become thicker and heavier, full of the glittering sand. It didn’t stop The Accountant, though. He had his eyes set on the door that was a stone’s throw away. But here, in this world, there is little chance that the stone could ever be thrown, let alone land.
The air shook again, as the man in the other world picked up the globe in his both hands, smothering the sun entirely for the two escaping bookkeepers.
“I can’t see,” shouted Bean, allowing himself to be dragged along. “It’s an eclipse.”
The Accountant looked over his shoulder briefly.
“The sun is gone,” shouted The Accountant. “We have a minute or two before gravity propels us. Get up you son of a bitch and run.”
He did as he said, ignoring the searing pain in his leg and diving into every next step. And then, just as quick as it had become dark, the sunlight returned, and with it, the sand and the sky once again became a collage of shape and colour. The two bookkeepers lifted with the sea and the sand and the air, just a hand’s reach away from the door; and then everything stopped.
In the other world, so too did everything stop.
The girl’s look of dread was frozen over the horizon.
Everything stopped; once the globe had left the man’s fingers.
The Accountant turned. He could see, through the horizon, what looked like another planet being hurtled towards theirs. He turned back to the door and stretched his fingers, clutching a loose nail in the frame. And he pressed his finger into the nail and he dragged, as hard as he could, his body forwards, despite the horrific pain.
Bean turned too and seeing two worlds set to collide, he let go and gave up.
The Accountant pulled himself onto the doorframe and steadied for a second, unsure what kind of godless and uncertain reality he would be plunging into next. This unsurety was unlike him. These worlds were beginning to have their effect. They were changing him. And if they were changing, god knows what was happening right now, in Heaven.
The Accountant turned, facing his colleague, and his planet’s impending doom. So focused was he, and so passionate was his intent, that he didn’t flinch for a second, as he dragged his colleague’s limp body up through the doorway, and into his arms.
“Certainty or bust,” he shouted, in faith-like rebellion, diving backward through the door with his colleague in tow, a millisecond before their world collided with the forehead of a young girl.