XXXIV
The bookkeepers fell for what felt like an eternity, feeling their stomachs race to their mouths. One would think they would get used to it after a while, but they didn’t. It was horrible, the sensation of falling forever. Eventually though, they landed, and not an inch from the door, on a yellow carousel, that just wouldn’t stop spinning.
Both men gripped as best they could, one to the ankles of a horse, and the other to a tailpipe of a bright red race car. Their stupendous guns fell by the wayside, and slid away from their clutches, off the edge of the carousel, and into the spinning vortex below, disappearing entirely.
The carousel spun at such a terrific speed that it almost outran its neon Lights. Neither man could lift their bodies, nor shut their eyelids. And their words, as they tried to shout and console one another, were forced back into their mouths.
The Accountant steadied his sight as the carousel spun around and around. His eyes felt like they were the size of peas, and the force upon them was agonizing. Still, though, he focused as best he could, on finding the door, and getting the hell out of this dimension.
“Everything is calculable,” he thought to himself. “Math is faith, and faith is certain and whole.”
Bean, on the other hand, could barely muster a syllable. His mind felt like a vacuum that was shredding his every thought into immediate dissipation. Every feeling he had in his body and mind was snuffed like a candle by the tremendous weight and the constant whirling. He gripped as best he could, but with every kick of the horse’s hoof, he neared closer and closer to the edge.
The horse, unto which Bean clung, looked down at him with a disagreeing look on its face. It neighed loudly, before shaking its head angrily and saying, “This is not your world.” It spoke with a horrible growl as if a motor were caught in its throat. And its voice was unaffected by the speed in which the carousel turned.
“Let go of my leg, human.”
Bean refused to let go. He could hear the whir of the vortex below, and though he couldn’t see it, he assumed that it was there.
“Into the void you go,” said The Horse, stomping its free hoof on Bean’s kicking legs.
His hands started to slip, and it wouldn’t be long now, before he met with his weapon, into a swirling mass of infinite division. He had heard about these vortexes; theoretical as they were; equations that divided an atom into infinite fractions of itself.
Bean couldn’t lift his arms. He couldn’t reach a single weapon. He merely clung for his life while his partner studied the patter of Light, as they spun in terribly fast circles. The Accountant’s fear had been reduced to a single block of logic.
“Find the pattern,” he thought to himself, his mind free from the carousel’s tremendous gravity.
He watched how the Light morphed, ever so lightly, as they completed each rotation in each fraction of a second. His mind was like a hurricane, but such was his training that he steadied himself with his faith, and he ignored the parameters of the world in which he was bound.
He counted each fraction as his eyes passed the warping of Light, which he was certain was the door from which they had come. And while his partner struggled to fend himself from the attacks of a barbarous horse, The Accountant calculated calmly in his mind, the distance between himself and the door; and when, and at what angle and velocity too, he should jump, to safely make it through.
The Accountant turned his head at his partner who by now, was holding on by the tips of his fingers, and whose eyes were closed as if he had chosen his fate. The Accountant tugged on the cable that bridged the two men, before unwinding more slack between them.
“Bean!” shouted The Accountant. “Bean!”
His voice didn’t carry. It stood still. But at the velocity in which the carousel spun, The Accountant’s plea was heard a hundred times over. And when it was heard a hundred times more, the message sunk into Bean’s dissipating mind, awakening him from his reluctance to go on. He turned his head, which felt like granite block, and he tried to call out, but each kick from the horse’s hoof stopped him in his tracks.
“Get ready!” shouted The Accountant.
Hearing took several seconds, which for Bean, felt like several weeks.
“I jump. I pull you through,” he shouted, pulling on the cable.
Bean could see, out the corner of his eye, the horse about to take a final strike.
“It’s just a ride,” it said.
As the horse stamped its hoof, The Account let go of the race car and was flung from the edge of the carousel. As he travelled, suspended in nothingness, he stared deep into the vortex with spite and disbelief.
As the horse’s hoof passed an inch above Bean’s face, he shut his eyes, and in his crumbling thoughts, tried to imagine the bliss and surety of Heaven.
The Accountant’s calculations were exact. Instantly, the cable pulled tight, and Bean was ripped from beneath a crushing hoof, hanging precariously above a hissing and spitting vortex. His body was limp and folded backward like the pages of a book.
The second he was thrust into the doorway, The Accountant grappled at the sides until he stood upright in the middle of the frame, with his legs and his shoulders pushing against both sides, jarring him into a solidified state.
“Lord of Light and Light of Love,” he sang as if this were all some well-staged opera. “Whose grace I do extol. Invoke in me, divinity, thy power to be whole.”
Bean awoke, feeling his skin being pushed away from his bones like a sheet of plastic. His head hung backwards and he could see so clearly, into the mouth of nothingness where before his very eyes, Light and matter were being perpetually halved, then halved, and halved again.
He screamed, but his voice was divided into infinite syllables.
“Hang on, buddy” shouted The Accountant, gripping the sides of the doorframe, as the cable slowly wound upwards.
Bean could feel his bones now, starting to tremor and weaken. His whole body felt like it was about to shatter into a hundred thousand pieces. There was no pulling, no vacuous gravity. There was only pushing, and at such a manic state that it seemed as if every atom in his body were attempting to flee at the same time, and as such, they bound one another, in their excited states.
As his body slowly lifted away from the vortex, Bean could see, in its centre, a single vibrating and coloured string; and on its internal diameter, there was row after row of razor-like teeth. He shut his eyes and felt his skin floating above his body.
“God, give me strength,” shouted The Accountant.
He was a master of logic. In his thoughts, everything was big and stable, everything was definable. Evert pattern was repeatable, and every outcome was predictable. Existence, as he understood it, was certain. There were no points of indecision. There were no marks of probability. Everything was one.
The sheer pull from the vortex was immense. The Accountant could have carried or dragged a thousand Beans through the most inhospitable deserts and mountain ranges. He could have carried him on his shoulders, from one event horizon to the other. But now that his colleague’s Light was being sucked into the spinning vortex, it weighed more than a star, and he had barely the strength to hold him steady, let alone pull him up to safety. With every passing second, he felt his own feet slipping.
“Fear not, my friend,” he shouted, taking a knife from a holster on his ankle. “You are Light, and I am too am Light, therefore, we are one. You live through me. Go with God. Go with Light.”
Bean shook horrendously. He could see The Accountant clearly, from the beam of Light that poured through the doorway behind him. And he could see the knife in his hand, and the point in the cable where he was about to cut. He could hear and see too, in his periphery, the maddened laughter and hysterical mockery of a carousel horse as it passed him, round and round again.
“Save me,” he thought.
“You’re far braver than I,” said The Accountant, cutting his colleague free.
Both men fell, one through a doorway
and into another dimension, and the other, downwards, into the swirling void of infinite division. In the briefest moment, Bean saw himself as the complete sum of his parts. Flesh, as it were, was just a dress that he had worn upon trillions of atoms, which now hovered momentarily, in the shape of a body of a man.
And in the next instant, he was gone.
XXXV
“Should I knock?” asked The Young Cripple.
“I think it might defeat the purpose of sneaking around.”
The Young Cripple slowly turned the handle and pushed the door open. She took a breath – an old habit – before walking through, expecting her every molecule to once again be pulled apart and quickly put back together. She expected to feel the wonderful sensation of dying, but it didn’t happen. Instead, she and T passed normally through the door and entered a room full of coloured mats, where a large group of infants sat, unattended.
Driven by a sense of worry, The Young Cripple rushed over to the children thinking that at any second, something drastic and terrible might happen. But as she spun in slow circles, her passion and worry quickly congealed into a frosty state of unease.
“What’s wrong with them?” she asked.
T’s radio was playing an old nursery rhyme, backward.
“Why is there no-one supervising? Why are they left alone like this? Why don’t they move?” she asked.
The infants all sat upright like pieces on a coloured chess board. The girl had never seen children so still and unaffected. She leaned forward and inspected and the face of a little boy or girl, it was hard to tell. She pushed her face right against the infant’s so that their noses touched, and their eyelids crossed one another. She herself blinked maybe fifty times and was rattled by the growing discomfort, but the infant did not react at all.
“Should I touch it?”
“God no. Let’s just keep moving; find this Collector.”
“Wait, one second,” said The Young Cripple, pressing her finger against the infant’s warm face.
Its skin pressed in and dimpled, as any child’s would, under the weight of her touch, but it didn’t react as any child would. It didn’t blink. It didn’t flinch. It didn’t move an inch. It merely sat there, allowing The Young Cripple to pester and prod away with her estranged curiosity.
“Shouldn’t it cry? Shouldn’t it move?” she said, pressing the infant’s cheek once more. “This is so strange; so creepy.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“I can’t help it. It’s so damn weird. It’s like they’re…”
She went child by child, touching their cheeks, and each reacted in the same cold and distant manner. They looked as if they existed, like she, but they reacted the complete opposite. To touch, they felt like she imagined they would. Their skin was soft, warm, and elastic. But there was no reaction whatsoever from either one. They were either drugged or…
“Without fear,” spoke a man in a posh accent, scaring The Young Cripple as he appeared behind her, carrying a black bag, and a large serrated knife. “Isn’t it just dandy? No reason at all to crawl, or to move. Thus no danger. Certainty. It makes you want to pray. Lord do Light and Light of love, you are the very best. If wisdom were nectar then I’d drink it from your breast.”
The Young Cripple fell backward, knocking over several of the infants like bowling pins. She stared despondently at the man, who had barely to reach further than his own toes at this moment, to capture, or fatally cut her.
“Fruit?” he said, resting the bag on a table and taking something from inside.
“No,” said The Young Cripple, slowly backing away.
The man threw a handful of fish heads into the gaps between where the infants sat. Neither one budged. They neither agreed nor disapproved with their serving.
“Now that’s weirder. Do you think…Is it to eat or play with?” asked T.
“I don’t wanna find out. Let’s just go,” said The Young Cripple.
“You’d best get going,” said The Orderly. “Group therapy is about to get underway. And today is puppet show day. Three cheers for the bright and cheery worm.”
“We should ask him,” whispered T.
“Ask him what?” replied The Young Cripple, whispering with the grit of a muffled punch. “He has a knife.”
“Just ask him if he knows any collectors, that’s all. It’s not at all suspicious.”
“Not in the least,” said The Young Cripple, ironically. “Excuse me,” she said.
“You’re excused,” said The Orderly.
The man turned to her with the same prosaic expression as the group of infants. His face was full, round, and entirely unblemished. There was not a single line, crack or mere indentation to show that he had ever smiled or frowned, or reacted in any kind of way, emotionally. He looked like a brand new shoe. His face was unworn, as if, like the new shoe, it were stuffed with something soft, spongy, and inanimate.
And he wore a white tracksuit that was pulled up over his stomach.
“It seems I’m lost,” said The Young Cripple. “Could I ask for directions?”
“Lost? What a strange premise. Lost? How could you be lost when you’re here?”
The Orderly gave The Young Cripple a baffled look. He still had the knife in his hand, and the girl wondered, with how he swung his arms around so loosely, whether or not he knew.
“I’m looking for someone,” said the girl.
“I am someone,” replied The Orderly.
“In particular. I’m looking for someone in particular.”
“Of course you are. Very good then. Good for you. Be sure to see the puppet show,” said The Orderly, turning away and walking down the hallway. He whistled as he walked; but not a cheery tune, this was just a prolonged note; neither high nor low. It reminded The Young Cripple of the sound that the bullet made.
“What are you waiting for?” urged T.
“And say what? He’s an idiot.”
“Follow him. You heard him, group starts in a minute.”
“And?”
“Maybe it’s an assembly or something. We can blend in, and you know, ask around.”
“Easy for you, you’re a radio. You just get to sit there and keep quiet.”
“You could do the same you know. Just open your mouth a little less.”
"That’s not nice.”
“Just go.”
The Young Cripple stood up and followed the man, but ever so cautiously. She stared back at the infants who, regardless of the stench of brine, sat still like statues.
“Lord of Light and Light of Love,” sang The Orderly, “guide me to the hall, Ensure my feet are sparse and neat, that never shall I fall.”
He walked with a wide stance as if he had just soiled himself.
Every few steps there was a room, and neither of them had doors. The Young Cripple peered in as she passed each one. She didn’t want to. She dreaded the thought of what might be lurking inside. She couldn’t help herself, though. Her fear, for the most part, had her constantly flirting with danger, and other types of nefarious and precarious events.
They looked like any normal room in a hospital, or in a boarding school. There were many rows of beds, and they were all neatly made up, with the sheets pressed so tightly that it was a wonder anyone could use them at all. Opposite the entry way to each room were a basin, a waste basket, and a silver toilet bowl.
“There’re no seats on any of the toilets,” said The Young Cripple, pretending to gag. “Gross.”
“I don’t see how being higher is any cleaner?”
“You wouldn’t. We’re not gonna have to stay here are we? I don’t wanna have to stay here. I can’t sleep around other people. It’s a real condition. I could die.”
“I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to either. Let’s just keep focused. Remember why we’re here.”
“Right,” said The Young Cripple, addressing a more serious tone.
It was maybe a second or two later
before her attention started to wane once more, and with it, her hardened focus. She forgot entirely why they were there, and instead began to wildly imagine all sorts of dastardly things like slugs, snails, and slimy snakes, all slithering about at the bottom of each toilet bowl. Instantly, the radio started playing a song, but T stopped it immediately.
“Stop it,” whispered T.
“I didn’t do anything. It’s your stupid radio. Turns on whenever it wants.”
“Your stupid fear does the same thing.”
“Then don’t tell me to stop it, if you’re doing it too.”
The Young Cripple didn’t notice that The Orderly she had been following had disappeared, but she could hear a commotion coming from one of the rooms further down. She walked slow and cautious towards the noise. There was a great deal of shouting, some singing, some wild cursing, and what sounded like a thousand sets of hands, clapping out their favourite song. The noise itself had no particular rhythm and was entirely disorientating.
“This must be it. Are you ready?” asked T.
“Are you kidding?” replied the girl, looking back over her shoulder. “No.”
“Great. Let’s go.”