“A rend in the very fabric of reality,” was the way in which the professor visiting from the university described it, to no one in particular.
Right before he tried to walk directly into it.
We were ready for it, of course. It’ll do that to you when you aren’t used to it. Two of our men grabbed him handily by the shoulders and pulled him back, heels dragging on the soft ground.
As he protested and struggled, I checked the markings on the ground. Four more feet and he’d give up and come to his senses. He would still feel the urge, as we all do, but that relentless impulse would dull to a more bearable thrum. A familiar dread curled in the pit of my stomach, an unwelcome reminder that my own body would so readily betray me should I be the next to slip up.
The edges of the portal shimmer, like the air above a car roof on a scorcher of a day. Closer to the centre, that shimmering air thickens… No, congeals and becomes murky, with a dark impenetrable-seeming core. Clearly exuding an unnatural danger, and yet so tempting. The unknown.
A portal to another dimension. A wormhole. A black hole. A gateway to a higher plane. Honestly, were these any more or less of an explanation than the professor’s?
No one knows. Because no one who has given themselves to that call of the void has ever come back.
Does it even lead to anywhere at all, or are you simply destroyed? Do you disintegrate into your component atoms, or is the very flesh melted from your bones as you die screaming into the abyss?
The latest iteration has mercifully materialised rather deep in the woods, so mitigation of its effect is more manageable. So far, they’ve appeared – among other places – in a quiet cul-de-sac, in the retail park on the outskirts of town, and in the worst incident to date, the school. The heavy silence we encountered in the schoolyard was unforgettable, a disaster of unimaginable proportion marked not by sirens or screams, but by birdsong and the gentle afternoon breeze.
They disappear as randomly as they appear, hours or days later, having consumed hundreds of poor souls or none at all. Every portal has opened within three miles of the centre of this previously sleepy, rural town. As with everything else related to the phenomenon, the cause is unknown. Research is ongoing.
There are only so many cover stories and clean up jobs the residents will buy before this blows up into something much bigger, I fear. People are dangerous when they no longer feel safe. Carbon monoxide leak, spree killer, mass suicide by a cult. At the very least, only so much ‘bad luck’ can befall one town before it gains a reputation for being cursed.
Maybe it is, for all we know.
Inside a ten-foot radius of the portal, unless there is someone or something to physically restrain you from doing so, you will be overcome with the urgent, all-encompassing desire to enter it. We blackly call this the dead zone. Something has gone very wrong should you find yourself here. The scientists say they do not know the mechanism by which this occurs. It emits no unique frequency, no pheromone-filled scent or toxin. No siren’s call drifts from within its depths. That they can detect anyway. It defies exploration or investigation.
Between ten and twenty feet away, is something of a grey area. The first exposure may affect you more severely than any other, and as such one must exercise the utmost caution on that first occasion. The professor, despite the warnings, seems to have been somewhat overcome with his own excitement on seeing the phenomenon for himself. Beyond this first encounter, the effect does not continue to dwindle, if anything, continued exposure seems to slowly yet surely chip away at your sanity.
When you reach the twenty-foot mark, that urge fades to an incessant drumbeat at the base of your skull. What if? What if what if what if? It is possible to ignore, but it takes discipline.
For one hundred feet around the portal, you won’t immediately be drawn in. Within this distance unsuspecting victims have a restless sense that they are missing out on something. An itch in the back of your head that says maybe you should go and see. Get up, take a walk. See where it takes you. It would be a mistake as you’ll soon find your your legs have carried you willingly into mortal peril.
I’ve seen many people cross through since I’ve been a watchman, most during the early days when the situation was out of control. It’s actually not easy to pass through the portal. You have to be determined - which they invariably are given all I’ve told you already. They push their way happily through the dark treacly core and onto wherever… or nowhere.
I often lie awake at night, praying the call will come to say they have made progress on how to shield us from it, or at the very least that the latest one has closed up and vanished. A small reprieve would be welcome. When I do sleep, it’s fitful and full of nightmares, my psyche offering up grim depictions of the depths of hell and all its creatures, guessing at what may lie beyond that gateway. It’s hard to cope, living in fear of something you have to constantly remind yourself to be afraid of.
Can you see the problem with guarding this malevolent tear in reality to stop people entering it?
It’s like parking a wheelbarrow full of smack in a rehab clinic for safekeeping, but the staff are as much addicted as the patients.
There is, of course, a system. It’s imperfect, we still lose men with alarming regularity. But until there are some developments on how to deal with this thing, we guard it. I have been doing this long enough to know that we are an expendable commodity.
Never step within the ten-foot radius. Prevent others from doing so, by force if necessary.
Guards posted closest to the portal work in short shifts, two hours only before rotating off. Shifts guarding farther out are longer but still restricted.
They give us pills to take daily - we aren’t told what they are, but we speculate that they may be antidepressants or something else that changes your brain chemistry. I can’t say they have helped.
In our downtime we are encouraged to occupy our minds, be it games, books, TV, podcasts, music, and to actively recall these when we are on duty. All the better to dull that urge that grows the longer you stand near the portal.
The men have their own talismans. Crucifixes, rabbits’ feet, obsidian, protection runes, black salt. All useless in my opinion, men of all beliefs have been claimed just the same. Some, myself among them, purposefully refuse any good luck charms. We take the knowledge that we are weak and unprotected against it, and the tiniest slip up could end us, and let it wash over us. We focus that terror, nurture it even, and try to recall that sense of dread the next time we approach for duty, even when it’s like sand slipping through our fingers.
It’s exhausting, it really is. Fighting such a primal urge. Wouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world? Surely whatever is on the other side must be better than living in fear? It couldn’t hurt to find out. I could be the first to come back and tell the others what’s through there.
I stepped eagerly forwards towards the shimmering air.
“MAN DOWN!” was the last thing I heard before the darkness consumed me.
When I woke, I was in a hospital bed. I blinked blearily and recognised the field hospital we helped set up days before. My head was pounding, and my mouth dry as the desert. Classic tranquiliser hangover. A specially devised cocktail to drop you like a stone – last resort if you get too close.
“Ah, you’re up! Good man, you know the drill,” said the medic, handing me a glass of water before I could open my mouth to ask.
I did know the drill. This was my second lapse this month. I’ve been doing this for four months. One of the longest serving men on the squad – there aren’t many of the original team left now.
I drank deeply, then allowed the medic to carry out his examination. “You’re the third one this week,” he frowned once he finished taking my pulse. “For a while we seemed to have things in hand, but it’s getting more frequent again.” He ticked a few boxes on his clipboard then hurried away.
It was only later as I laid in my own bunk that I mulled over his words. By now we hoped things would be getting better, not worse. I stared, as I often did, at the map of the area hung on the pockmarked wall. Each portal was marked by a red X, not a single one crossing a whisker over the black line delineating the exact three-mile radius from the centre of town. Perfectly contained.
Doubt washed over me like a wave of icy water. Not only do I have to contend with the horror of continually battling my own feeble mind, now a new thought reverberated around my skull. Are we merely expendable, or are we the experiment?
~