Fic: Jabberwocky, Part 19b/?
Sam stepped slowly away from the edge of the wood, acutely aware that the wind was howling as it rushed past him, maddeningly strong. He stepped forward and realized that he was still naked, and that as he walked away, he was heading toward the immense, green field that lay beyond the wood. He stared at it, and then glanced around. The wood stretched out behind him, filled with more of the horrible, clawing, hissing, growling sounds, and the huge field loomed ahead of him, perhaps a mile of nearly knee-high tall grass leading up to what seemed to be miles upon miles of the tall, green fronds that looked even taller than him. To his left, nothing but the wood, the field, and the strip of grass between the two was present; it stretched back far past his line of vision, rolling along strange, small sloping hills. To his right, the wood terminated in what seemed to be a tall wall of rock, only it wasn’t like any wall of stone that Sam had ever seen.
Sam scanned the wall with his eyes; it was actually quite small, so far as rock bluffs were concerned, perhaps rising only about twenty feet up, and its surface was a deep, reddish brown in color, with dark brown recesses forming along it, and thick, dense green plants growing through it. The plants were like tall weeds, oversized dandelions or garden flowers without any blossoms, and certainly nothing like any of the plants that he was used to seeing growing along rock walls. There was no moss there, only the thick plants and the dark patches of thick soil, and then the tall, dusty red-brown of the rock wall itself. Where the wall ended, the strip of grass began, followed by more of the great field, which again stretched out for miles upon miles. Sam paused and looked around, searching for a sign of anything, even the double or the test card girl, and eventually decided that he was alone at the edge of the wood. He gave the area another look, and then started to walk towards the rock wall. It looked like it had a great number of hand and foot holds in it, and if he could climb to the top, he could easily see the tops of the forest and the field, and maybe make out where he was.
Sam started to walk slowly towards the wall, and the wind shoved at him, pushing him forwards and then pressing hard against him, thrusting at him from first the left, and then the right. Confusion gripped Sam as the wind continued to buffet him from all sides, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was incredibly hot, and Sam felt the sun beating down on him, despite the thick clouds that were starting to form overhead. The land was also incredibly humid, and it seemed as though a mist were starting to form, even though it seemed to be midday. The air was filled with hot moisture, and it clung to his skin, forming a thick, uncomfortable film against him as he walked. He was sweating profusely in the heat and the humidity, but he continued on, the rock wall growing closer and closer as he made his way towards it.
The damp air seemed to be clinging to the soil as Sam continued his journey, and the air was thick with a deep, musty smell of old earth, as if the top soil were evaporating into the air. The scent was thick, and cloying, and, coupled with the heat, the damp, and the wind, made the entire area seem muggy and uninviting as Sam finally reached the base of the wall. A thick glaze of clouds was forming overhead, blotting out the sun, and the heat was dying down, the air cooling incredibly around him as he looked up at the face of the rock wall. There were definitely more than enough hand and foot spaces for him to climb, and he reached out and felt the rock, only to find that it was dusting away from his hands slightly; the rock wall wasn’t rock at all, but a sort of bluff made out of hard, impacted earth. Sam grimaced as he reached up, and found that the dirt didn’t break away as he started to climb.
The wind ripped at Sam from each side, and sometimes pressed into his back, as he made his way slowly up, each time afraid that the thick, compacted soil would break loose, forcing him to drop to the ground. He still didn’t recognize the plants that grew along the wall; they were dark green, leafy things, although Sam did see a thistle or two growing up amongst them, thick, white-haired stalks raising up amid the green foliage of the other plants. The wind had started to come and go, sometimes pushing forcefully against him, raging as if he were in the center of a storm, and sometimes dying away completely, leaving the thick, damp air incredibly, horribly still. The clouds continued to build overhead, and soon thick, fat rain drops were falling, causing the earth of the wall to sheer away under them, leaving dark, rank trails of earth in their wake.
Sam slowly continued his climb upwards, trying to hurry as the rain started to fall more rapidly, heavy droplets of it splattering sporadically against his back, shoulders, and face as he made his way up the wall. The wind continued to behave in its bizarre, erratic fashion, whipping at him from all sides or leaving completely. Eventually, Sam reached the top of the wall, and pulled himself up and over the side, aware that his skin was bruised and cut from dozens of hard, rock-like outcroppings of solid earth, thorns and prickling bits in the plants, and the hard, thick surface of the wall itself. Dirt and mud streaked his naked flesh as he lay, panting, at the top of the wall, and then he climbed to his knees and looked down. It was more than twenty feet, perhaps thirty, but he’d managed to scale it. The forest loomed beneath him, dark and forbidding, its strange, horrible sounds still floating up to him on the shifting, crazed wind. He saw the tops of the thick trees swaying under the force of the wind, and tried to recognize the trees. Some appeared to be oak, but those were yellow leaved and straggling compared to the others, which were thick and dense and incredibly dark.
Sam turned and saw the top of the rock wall, no, the dirt wall, he reminded himself, stretching forward, a high, flat plain littered with rocks, and scattered with thistles and the strange, leafy green plants that he’d passed on his way up. The clouds were gathering with incredible speed above him, and the light had taken on a horrible, sickly green color as they blotted out the sun. The air still felt incredibly damp, but it had cooled considerably, making him shiver as the temperature continued its rapid drop. As he walked along the wall, he saw sunlight shining down from the far side, where the clouds had yet to form in the sky, and he was struck by the odd, cartoonish division between the sunny portion and the darkened portion.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, a deep, throaty sound that split the air, and Sam suddenly felt as if the air had dried considerably, as well. He moved forward along the wall, and found that the light over head and the cloud layer, as well as the feeling of thick moisture in the air, and even the temperature, was as erratic as the wind. It was as if he could take five steps in any direction and experience a completely different sensation of hot or cold, damp or dry, wind ripping from one direction or the next or not present at all. He tried to understand what it could mean, and then he looked towards the edge of the outcropping and saw his double standing there, holding the free hand of the test card girl. They were both smiling maniacally at him as he turned his gaze to them.
“So what’s this, then? I thought everything was shaping up, back in 1973. What’s this new horror world? And what the hell is with the bloody weather?” Sam asked, and the double and the girl laughed in response to this.
“I’d’ve thought it was quite evident, Sam. You’re out of the woods, but you’ve still got a long way to go. You should know where you are, Sam, and I hope you’ve thought about everything that we discussed, the last time we spoke.” The double was leering at Sam like a rapist studying his intended victim, and the sensation made the hairs stand up wildly on the back of Sam’s neck. As the double spoke to him, the clouds continued to mass overhead.
“I know exactly where I am, this is just another damned nightmare, just some other piece of shit vision that my mind’s throwing at me! And I’m not listening to anymore of the bollocks you’ve been spinning for me, you bastard!” Sam screamed it at the double, and thunder rumbled more loudly in the distance. The rain had reached them, and was still splattering down in only occasional, incredibly heavy, fat droplets. The clouds were stretching out further, and yet massing even more, becoming thick and dark and blotting out the world. The cold air was also reaching them now, filling the entirety of the top of the bluff, although the air continued to shift between incredibly damp and incredibly dry, as if the shifting wind were forcing pockets of different moisture levels about. Sam was suddenly struck by this thought, but he pushed it far away at the back of his mind as he moved towards the double and the girl.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a nightmare, not yet, anyway,” the double said, and then he picked up the girl and smiled at her, tossing her affectionately in the air and catching her. “And watch your mouth; there’s a child present.”
“That,” Sam pointed at the girl, “Is not a child. That’s another bloody damned nightmare, and I’m sure she knows far worse words than I’m using,” Sam let the contempt drip off of his tongue as he said it. The light was fading rapidly, and the sky was now thick with the billowing, murky clouds. They reflected the hidden sunlight oddly upon the land, and the entire sky seemed to be the sickly green that he’d noticed as he’d started his climb; a dense, bottle green over a thick grey, a color that he’d never even thought the sky capable of attaining.
“Oh, Sam, don’t say that. You’ll hurt my feelings,” the girl said, a pout on her pretty child’s face, and then she looked up at the double, who smiled down at her, and then back at Sam. This time, there was nothing pretty or childish about her smile; it was a haunting, frightening leer, something that should never appear on the face of a child, especially not a pretty little girl, and it made Sam’s guts wrench to see it. She looked completely and totally demonic, and as she fixed him with that stare, Sam noticed that she wasn’t blinking at all, her eyes unnaturally wide fixed upon him, as if she were some horrific doll in a modern gothic novelty shop.
“Hurt your feelings, will I? Good one, that,” Sam said sarcastically as the double frowned at him. The double and the girl were inching slowly towards the edge of the bluff, and Sam suddenly felt the urge to walk towards them, and towards the edge, although he had a strange feeling of dread at what he might see.
“Come along, Sam, come have a look. It’s a special surprise, just for you, Sam,” the double was grinning madly at him as they made their way towards the edge, and thunder cracked in the distance once again. The rain seemed to snap to at that moment, going from the thick, sporadic drops to a full downpour in mere seconds, coming down in buckets and sheets around them, turning the earth into dark, slick, sticky mud.
As Sam made his way towards the edge, shivering in the cold rain, the mud seemed to suck at his feet and ankles. It was incredibly thick and dark, and seemed almost like hands pulling him downwards. Sam found that he had to lift his feet up, pulling each one away as he stepped towards the edge. The thick, dark earth suddenly reminded him of the dirt that he’d seen while on holiday in Italy, the rich, post-volcanic and incredibly thick earth of the vineyards that he’d gone to see with a former girlfriend.
“Very good deduction, Sam. Volcanic ash, settled over two thousand years ago, and now the richest and most fertile soil on the earth. The entire area’s filled with it. Loess.” The double smiled at him as he said this.
“Luss? I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, you daft bastard,” Sam said as he continued to make his way towards the edge. The double and the girl were now standing so close that they could jump off, and Sam could see the fields stretching on and on like a giant patchwork quilt beyond them.
“Come on, Sam, look down, see the present we’ve made for you, here in this wonderful world,” the girl giggled as she said this, and the sound made Sam shiver intensely. He continued to work his way towards the edge, and then, suddenly…
The world dissolved, and Sam found himself back in the woods. The horrible sounds were filling the air, pressing down towards him, and he was alone with the double, who was still wearing his 2006 suit, one hand raised forward, an index finger wagging back and forth.
“Not so fast, Sam. Not quite ready for that, I don’t think, but we’ll come to it eventually. For now, just listen, Sam. Listen to the sounds of the woods as they gyre and gimble around us,” the double’s tone was stern and admonishing, and Sam was again filled with the desire to plant his fist into that hideous copy of his own face.
“Now you hold on. You said I was out of the woods. No more bloody woods!” Sam shouted, and the sounds continued to grow around him, the wretched, sinister slither and growling noises rising up from the underbrush and slinking through the dense leaves of the trees.
“Oh, Sam, things are never that simple, and you know it,” the double said, and then he smiled at Sam, a smug, upturned parody of Sam’s own, widest grin. “Just listen, Sam. It’s incredibly important that you listen; it might help you to realize what’s real, and what’s not. And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Your great breakthrough, your ticket back to the real world.” At this, Sam came to attention, and he heard voices snaking their way through the other sounds that crushed down upon him from the forest’s canopy.
*ICP’s up to 24 mils, if we don’t go in soon, we’ll have to install a shunt*
*Immune system’s too weak for that*
*Honestly, gentlemen, based upon the orientation, we may be able to remove at least most of the mass via trans-nasal, trans-sphenoidal surgery*
*I’d put a higher survival rate on after that than after a full craniotomy*
*Likely a mixed glioma, pressing into the temporal lobe*
*Very difficult area, Morgan*
*I’m sure I can pull at least part of it, if anything, reduce the swelling and allow us to biopsy the tissue*
*If we can’t relieve the swelling soon, we’ll have to shunt*
“What the hell is that? What the hell are they talking about?” Sam was shouting frantically at his double, who simply cocked his head to the side and widened his eyes as he gave Sam a huge, nearly frightening grin.
*Mrs. Tyler, we think we may have found the reason behind the initial accident, and Sam’s prolonged coma. We’ve isolated a tumor in the left temporal lobe of Sam’s brain, and, with your permission, we think we might be able to remove it….*
Sam felt his eyes widen as he heard this, “Remove it! Cut it out! I don’t care if you have to take the top of my head off for a while, just get me out of here!” The double started to laugh as Sam launched into his tirade, screaming at the sky, and then the voices were blocked out, leaving only the horrible noises of the forest. As Sam listened, the growling, slithering, rumbling noises seemed to draw closer, until they were almost deafening, and the leaves around him started to shake.
“So, there’s one new piece of information. Now, what does that tell you about what’s real, and what’s not, Sam? Think hard on this, we don’t have much time left here. Soon, we’re going to have to take you back to the bluff, show you our little surprise.” The double was grinning at Sam as he said this, but his eyes were hard and cold. Sam stared at him for a moment, and tried to think of what the double could possibly want him to say in response.
“So in reality, I’ve got a tumor in my head, yeah? That what you want me to say?” Sam couldn’t think of anything else that he could say.
“Sam, that’s what I just pointed out to you. What we just heard. You don’t get points for telling me the obvious. Now, what does that tell you about what happened in reality, though? What does that tell you about what reality really is? Think hard on this one, Sam, you know the truth. You know what really happened, out there in the big, bad world, don’t you?”
“I… I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I had an accident, I woke up in 1973, and now they’ve found a, a bloody tumor in my head in 2006. So if they can cut it out, then I wake up out there, right? So… I have to solve the case in 1973 to wake up in 2006? Is that it?”
The double started clapping, “Bravo, bravo, Sam, you’re definitely coming closer to the mark. All of what you just said is true, but you’re missing out on one vital fact, and that fact is what you need to get back. Think hard Sam, think about the accident. How did you end up in 1973?”
Sam shook his head, an angry, perplexed, and somewhat devastated expression creeping over his face. He had no clue what the double was talking about… Sam was jolted out of his thoughts as the growling seemed to concentrate on one area of the forest. “What the bloody hell…”
“Now, Sam, I’m afraid we’ll have to continue our little talk back on the bluff, and then my little friend and I can show you our present. But for now, Sam, I think I should ask you this: what’s the most important fact of your 1973 world, right now, right this second?” The double was looking pointedly at the rustling spot in the foliage, where the noises, as well as the movements, had started to concentrate.
“The case…” Sam whispered it as the leaves and the trees shook, and the sounds continued to pulse and spread from their point in the leaves.
“Very good, Sam, but what that really means, Sam, is that there’s one very, very important fact about the case, and you should really be paying attention to it. It’s the way that you’ll solve the case, if you ever do, Sam. Think about it, Sam, what’s the most important fact that you know, about this case in particular?”
Sam felt his heart start to pump inside of his chest, beating so quickly that he could hear the blood pounding in his ears and throat. He looked up at the double with wide eyes, “I’m being hunted,” he whispered, and then the noises coalesced into a great, deafening crash, just beyond his field of vision, in the dark. Sam started to sprint forward, running through the woods, not paying attention to the leaves and branches cutting at his face and body as he ran. Behind him, the thing that was hunting him snarled, and Sam could almost feel its breath against his back. Something, something he’d never seen nor heard of before, something huge and menacing, was chasing him, was almost upon him. Sam continued to run, and he heard a strange sound behind him, something that had to be the creature, yes, that was the only way to describe it, even though he’d never set eyes upon it, the creature was pouncing. Sam tried to sprint forward faster, hoping that it wouldn’t catch him.
Sam felt his heart beating in his throat, his breath burning through him, his legs burning with the sudden force of his running through the hard, uneven ground. He pumped his arms faster, felt his legs pound along the ground, and then a root seemed to reach up and grab at his foot, and he was falling, collapsing to the ground, his leg twisting beneath him. The thing behind him, the huge, hideous, unknown creature, was snarling as it soured through the air and began to attack its prey…