The Fearful Void – Part 23

Silvery moonlight shone down through the window. It illuminated the sleeping face of Louise de la Vallière. The girl's expression was locked in a mask of disquiet, and her shallow breathing and occasional whimpers were the only noises in the room.

A soft susurrant something sounded from the shadows of the room.

Come.

It – it? He? She? They? – spoke without speaking. It spoke in words she did not recognise, in a language she did not know and which was not even the strange babble Alma spoke.

Rise. Help. It hurts.

Louise rose, and yet did not rise. Something climbed off the bed, yes, something which glowed and shimmered like the heat haze of the heights of summer, but the sleeping figure of the girl lay there.

"Where are you?" she mouthed, voice echoing chorally.

Come.

Like a flickering image, like a character in a badly-made kinephotographic show, the heat haze which left blackened footprints burned into stone stepped through the door. And the silhouette of Louise de la Vallière was left to mark its passage.

...

In her dreams, the girl wandered through familiar corridors made unfamiliar by the ravages of time. Through worn walls a scarlet sky burned bright, dark clouds close to the ground. Spectres spun at the corner of her eye, though whenever she looked they leapt away. Perhaps they were not real; perhaps it was just the strange flickering of the light which sent shadows dancing.

She was all too used to nightmares like this. She dreamed of fire and blood and breaking all too often. The world in ruins was no unfamiliar sight to her.

Drawn by the voice, she wandered. Moaning echoed in her ears; gasps and groans and sighs and screams. When she went to look for their source, she found two shadows entwined, unreal phantasms locked in an embrace. One was sheathed in smoke, flames licking from within the darkness to reach out and devour all near to it; the blackened stone it squatted and bounced on seemed to char and weaken in its presence.

With one hand, she reached out and cupped the smoke boiling off it, letting it escape through her fingers. It was a vaguely unclean feeling, uncomfortably hot and greasy. The spectre seemed to notice her then, whirling and collapsing off the blackened-stone shadow, only to pull itself up on all fours like some predatory beast. Underneath it, dead plants sprung to life, before being consumed by the heat of the malevolence Louise could feel radiating off it.

Come.

The voice – voices? – called again, and Louise left the burning shadow behind her with but a thought, suddenly elsewhere.

Polluted water and verdigris bronze ghosts flickered through the corridors, holding hands. The shadowy figures got out of their way, but Louise did not, and they walked through her. It hurt. It hurt throughout her body; like she had been beaten with rods and then thrown in ice-cold water. The spectres screamed monstrous, incoherent shriek-whispers, and Louise was away.

Ghosts of shadow and flickering light flocked and swirled around each other. She kept well away from them, still hurting from the last contact. Like morbid birds, they flocked and shrieked and swirled around her.

Come.

Under the bloody sky and blackened clouds, shadows slept. Their hunger radiated off them. Strangeness drifted through their tenebral forms; something she could not quite describe nor understand. And other among them had other spectres sleeping on – on? Within? – them, them. Away from the others, something blinding white lay draped in thin night-skin, light-bones revealed through its hide, and that one – ah! That one had something which resembled a girl in all wrong ways within its ribs and bones, something which mocked humanity by its absence, something which wore a twisted skull with pale, raw skin draped over it. Inhuman eyes stared at her from a predatory face, babbling hissing whistles at her. The girl-within moved, and the beast without moved.

Louise screamed, and wished that she could wake up. Clenching her teeth, she thought of Cattleya and that time and

flicker fast, bloody red and shadow and ash and blinding light thrashing and screaming, her own skin peeling away to reveal the same horrors, looming lifeless black cold iron that feel and hears and sees nothing and yet is almost the same and yet is not

she collapsed to her knees, clutching at her head. What... that... it...

Come.

Shadows leered and leapt. Some hid inner pollutants while the rest were merely darknesses in a roofless room lit by the bloody red sky. The pain in her head spiked, but no blessed unconsciousness came. Of course it wouldn't come. This was a dream. Here, she could not escape from the agony by passing out. So she stumbled onwards, and screamed each time a shadow flensed her flesh by merest contact.

As she stumbled towards the centre of the room, the distances stretched and stretched and stretched, as if a small child had seized here and there and was pulling. And with each pull the stone under her feet – burned wherever she stepped – lost its colour, becoming cold and whitish-grey and dreadfully smooth. But such an expansion in one direction had its own consequences, and so the walls around her folded in.

The chamber became a tunnel. And then it became an ossuary. Skeletons lay like firewood. Unable to shut her eyes, drawn ever onwards Louise picked her way through them. They were ancient beyond belief, more like dust than bone, and when she slipped and stepped on one they disintegrated like ashes. She tried very hard to avoid them, but by the time she reached the end of the tunnel her feet were gritty with the mortal remains all around her.

And the chamber which lay at the end of the tunnel was much worse. So much worse. There had only been so many bodies which could fit in the tunnel. There was not such a limit in this vast hollow space. The tunnel had led out onto a gantry, and from here she could look down into the sea of bleached white, splattered with crimson drops.

Fearing to do so, but unable to satiate her curiosity, Louise looked up. And saw metal things, like... Founder, the only thing that came to mind was the vats in which wine was made, except the red being poured off the top was...

... was very red. And it was falling down. Down onto... things. Skeletons were stacked around the sphere like... like a child's casually discarded toys. Here a pile of bones lay, with no order to them, while there a nearly-complete set sat, skull grinning. Some were clothed in rags and tatters, while others were but bleached blankness.

And in the centre of this cavalcade of horrors was a sphere, vast black vines connecting it to the distant walls. A stylised 'A' was marked on it. Numbly, Louise took one step onto the gantry that led to it, her feet protesting at the feeling of the metal grating under it.

Free us!

Another step. And another.

Louise de la Vallière rested one red-haloed hand on the metal.

She gasped.

She flickered.

She disintegrated into ash, and woke screaming

And the sphere bent. And bulged. And warped. And twisted.

From the wound in the world out spilt the void.

...