Fic: Jabberwocky, Part 28a/?, Red Cortina, by Sytaxia
Title: Jabberwocky
Author: Sytaxia
Pairings: None in this portion; other parts include Sam/Gene, Sam/Annie, Ray/Chris and Sam/Maya.
Rating: Red Cortina for this portion, other parts run the full gamut from white to red.
Warning: Disturbing imagery in this portion; other parts include full on slash and het, violence, and disturbing imagery of varying levels of intensity, some quite bad.
Continuity: Takes place sometime between 2.6 and 2.7, and is starting to form an AU that replaces/overlaps with 2.7 and 2.8.
Word Count: 11,507 for Part 28/This portion. 251,920 words by the end of this part.
Summary: Overall: The CID team plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a serial killer that seems disturbingly connected to Hyde, and that will stop at nothing to reclaim his only surviving victim: Sam Tyler. Part 28: After more time spent amongst the twisted revelations of his nightmare world, Sam awakens to a horrifying reality...
Chapters: Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here. Part 3a is here. Part 3b is here. Part 4a is here. Part 4b is here. Part 5a is here. Part 5b is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here. Part 8 is here. Part 9a is here. Part 9b is here. Part 10a is here. Part 10b is here. Part 11a is here. Part 11b is here. Part 12a is here. Part 12b is here. Part 13a is here. Part 13b is here. Part 14a is here. Part 14b is here. Part 15 is here. Part 16a is here. Part 16b is here. Part 17a is here. Part 17b is here. Part 18a is here. Part 18b is here. Part 19a is here. Part 19b is here. Part 20a is here. Part 20b is here. Part 21a is here. Part 21b is here. Part 22a is here. Part 22b is here. Part 23a is here. Part 23b is here. Part 24a is here. Part 24b is here. Part 25a is here. Part 25b is here. Part 26a is here. Part 26b is here. Part 27a is here. Part 27b is here.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to
mrskeeler for an absolutely wonderful and incredibly fast beta job, and lots of thanks to everyone that has influenced this fic and mutated this bunny, including
irenak, who supplied the title,
liquorishflame,
elfbert,
echo_voice,
wiccagal_1996,
dorcas_gustine,
hambelandjemima, dakfinv,
dorsetgirl, and many others. Thanks to everyone who's stuck by this fic; I promise, the ending is in sight...
Disclaimer: They're not mine, I'm just playing with them.
Sam opened his eyes to find himself standing in the sitting room of the house that he’d grown up in; his mother’s figurines and the “Blue Danube” music box were lined up neatly on the mantel, but there was no sign of his father, nor of his mother. He slowly walked back and forth across the room, and then left, searching the house, and finding that it was exactly has he’d remembered it, but empty, and still. The air seemed to hang as if it were too heavy, and even the light that shone in through the windows was far too still, as if it had been frozen in time, not even the dust stirring in the shafts of light that poured from the windows. Nothing stirred, not even when Sam past the curtains, and it seemed as if the house were lost, taken out of time and locked perfectly into place, never to change and never to move.
“Hello?” Sam called out, and his own voice seemed incredibly stunted and quiet, as if the sound itself were unable to move in the still, heavy air. Sam shook his head, and then stared out the window: the light was incredibly bright, shining down on the old street, the sky crystal clear and dazzling blue, the most perfect day that any child in Manchester could ever hope for. Sam stared out the window, and saw a brief flash of orange and white, knowing that it must be Ivanhoe, let out to hunt the mice that would sometimes be seen in the gutter. A figure moved slowly along the street, and Sam saw the old and bent figure of Alfie, part ironmonger and part rag and bone seller, slowly making his way down the street. He seemed older, more stooped than he had when Sam had seen him upon his first visit to Ruth in 1973, and Sam took another curious glimpse about the house, and noticed that the broken clock and that his parents’ wedding photo had both been removed from the room.
Sam moved closer to the unmoving, silent shelves that stood next to the mantle, and saw that several albums stood there, T Rex and Gary Newman, Bowie and Joy Division… Sam tried to remember the dates on the albums, and then noticed the television: it wasn’t the same set that he had seen when he and Annie had searched the house earlier, it was a newer model, equipped with an old-fashioned, cord-attached-to-the-set remote control, the type that cheaper televisions came with in… 1980. Sam spun about him and stared at the items that were standing on the mantel, and realized that there was a small, porcelain bird sitting on it, the one that he’d given his mother at Christmas of 1979. He remembered weeding flower patches and doing small repair work all through his tenth year, saving pennies up, and eventually convincing his Auntie Heather to take him for a secret trip in to Kendal’s, where he’d found that even having saved five quid meant that he still couldn’t get anything really nice and fancy for his mother, until he saw the bird. It was amongst several small figurines, which constituted the entirety of the store’s stock that were within his price range, and he’d stood there for over an hour, trying to determine which of them was the prettiest, before Heather had eventually put her foot down and forced him to choose. He’d run past his mother upon returning home, trying to hide the package from her sight as she’d questioned Heather about why it took nearly two hours to take little Sammy out for an ice cream, and the look on his mother’s face when she’d unwrapped it and seen the foil-stamped box, and then pulled the bird out from amongst a pile of tissue paper, would always remain in his memories. It was the happiest that he’d seen her since his father had left. To this day, the bird was still sitting amongst Sam’s old school photos in her little house.
“Hello?” Sam called out again, not sure that he wanted an answer; the memories of his later childhood, as it had slowly crept into adolescence, were the last innocent memories that he had, and the thought of them being dirtied by the presence of the double or the test card girl didn’t sit well with him at all. When Sam didn’t receive an answer, he moved towards the door, and let his hand linger for a moment over the door knob, afraid to turn it and look out onto the swiftly changing world of 1980. He couldn’t tell how long that he stood there, listening to the sound of nothing, which was far more deafening than he’d ever imagined; the moments bled slowly into one another as he waited there, and then he finally worked up the nerve and turned the knob, pulling the door open.
The sight outside of the door was far different from that from the windows; directly outside of the door, the edge of the wood and the large maize field glared at Sam, and the wind and rain shrieked and howled. Sam stood, horrified, at the sight of his nightmare world on his old doorstep, and it seemed as if the wood were growing closer, edging towards the door as if to force itself inside of the house and overpower him, dragging him back to the damp and festering scents. The wretched nightmare sounds of the creature loomed around him, screaming in his ears, and Sam found that he had to fight against the force of the wind to shut the door, eventually throwing his entire body against it and listening to the howls and screeches of the dark, black and green world beyond as he forced it shut, the suction of the wind pulling to the very last at the edge of the door.
Once the door was shut, Sam’s back and weight pressed against it, Sam let himself drop down, sliding against the door and feeling his shirt bunch against the painted wooden surface, tears rising in his eyes and his chest heaving from the exertion of fighting against the wind and the wood and the creature as they struggled to enter the sanctuary of the frozen house. “This isn’t funny! What the hell is going on?” Sam screamed out, his voice raw and terrified, hanging without moving in the eerily still air. Sam shook his head and buried it in his hands, feeling his own tears hot against the flesh of his palms.
“This is a good memory! This is a safe place, and you don’t get to bloody ruin it, you heartless bastards!” Sam shouted it out to no one in particular, and then fell to sobbing, his entire body shaking as the tears ripped from his eyes in free-flowing torrents. Sam shook his head back and forth, and then he heard the snap and flare of the television coming to life in the sitting room, and he looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and wide, not wanting to go towards the sound, and yet somehow knowing that he had to. He found himself standing, and then walking, each step resonating through the room, deep sounds that he felt, rather than hearing, echoing through the heavy, oppressive silence. The sound of television static was strong and hard as he entered the sitting room, but it did nothing to alleviate the horrible, claustrophobic stillness of the house.
Sam stared at the flurry of black and white on the television screen, and eventually found himself kneeling in front of the set, waiting to see what it was that he was to be shown in this new corner of his nightmare world, and wondering if he stood a better chance in the field, running from the encroaching wood and the pursuing creature.
*Sam? Do you know who this is?*
The voice came through the speakers of the television set, strong and clear, and Sam’s head snapped up, his eyes glued to the screen as he recognized his Auntie Heather’s voice.
*Your mum’s gone home for a rest. It was all I could do to force her to leave, she’s been here next to you for so long. I’ll stay here with you until she can come back, though, I promise.*
“Auntie Heather? I can hear you! Heather, I can hear you! Please, please tell me Mum’s all right! Heather! Auntie Heather!” Sam reached out and slammed his palms against the television, willing her to hear him with every fiber of his being, and yet knowing that there was no way that she could ever hear him.
*We’re all so worried about you, you poor little darling. Your pretty Asian friend, Detective Sergeant Roy, and her boyfriend, Detective Inspector Suggs, have both been in to see you.*
“Maya is NOT dating Suggsy? How in the bloody hell did that happen? What’s been going on? What’s happening? Talk to me, please, let me know what’s happening!” Sam was holding his face incredibly close to the screen, his nose nearly pressing against the front of it, and he beat his fists against the top of the set, and then the sides, searching for some sign of a picture inside of the glare of the static and finding nothing. He strained his ears to see if he could hear anything else in the background, and found that he heard only the muffled sounds of the television, before Heather spoke again.
*My poor darling nephew. You’ve been so very sick these past few weeks, Sam, we thought we might lose you. They say they need to operate again, on your brain this time, but they don’t know if you’re strong enough to survive that.*
“I’m strong enough! Is it the tumor? I heard the bloody doctors scaring the living shit out of poor Mum the other day! Get them to stop doing that!” Sam pounded and screamed again, but the voice from inside the television didn’t seem to notice.
*They say you’re brain’s too cramped up there, and that there’s a tumor putting pressure on it, and leaning on some sort of gland, making your body chemistry go starkers. That’s why you’ve been asleep so long, they say.*
Sam’s mind reeled, “Cut it out! Cut it out! Fix it, get me to wake up! Cut it out so that I can get out of this bloody mess!” Sam felt his forehead slam softly against the screen of the television, but continued to shout at and to pummel the television set, his fists making hard noises against the sides of it as he did so. The tumor was pressing on a gland, the killer was taking glands… Only the two glands in the head hadn’t been taken, Sam realized suddenly, and then he knew with a cold, horrifying certainty that whatever the killer had intended to rip out of his skull, the tumor in 2006 was pressing on it…
*The doctors told Ruth she has to decide if she wants them to try and operate, or if she wants to wait to see if they can fix you with drugs first, at least halfway. They told her drugs might not help, but the operation could kill you.*
“They made her decide that? Those bastards! They can’t give her that choice! God, Mum, why are they doing this to her? Just cut the damned thing out of me! I’m strong enough! I’m strong enough, I swear!” Sam’s nose was pressed tightly against the screen, and he felt tears leaking down his cheeks once again as he thought of his mother, forced to choose between the operation or the drugs, either one of which was likely to kill him. And they’d probably put it just as bluntly as that, or maybe worked in some horrible medical terms to try and make it as confusing as possible for her… Anger welled up inside of Sam, and he found himself slamming his fist into the front of the television screen, and feeling the hard, thick glass there suddenly give way, as if it were made of the thinnest glass possible, instead of the normal glass of a television. He felt two small, very small hands come up, reach up from inside the hole that he’d created in the television, and he realized that the test card girl was reaching up to him, as if she lived inside of the television itself when she wasn’t out haunting him or shining on her card.
“No!” Sam screamed as the hands pulled him down with a horrible, inhuman strength, and he felt himself being dragged through the screen, the remainder of the glass breaking away around him as he struggled against the force pulling him downwards, his clothes ripping against the shards of glass around him as he fell, head first, into a long, dark tunnel.
Sam was falling, then, the hands of the little girl gone, but her laughter echoing around him as he felt himself tumbling rapidly down a long, spiraling tunnel of twisting, brackish air, spinning madly out of control on a crazed free fall through a tunnel of hissing, growling, screaming sounds, dark swirls of black and red dancing around his face as the cold, biting wind bit at his skin and tore at his eyes, almost as if the rapidly moving air, so different from the horrifically still air in the house, were trying to eat him alive as he continued on his descent. He found himself screaming then, madly clutching at anything, but the walls of the tunnel seemed to be made of mist, of thick, decaying vapor that moved swiftly through his hands as he reached out to try and slow himself. He was flailing madly, shrieking in pain and fear as he continued to accelerate, and then, as suddenly as his fall had started, it stopped.
Sam was gasping, panting, choking for breath as he had been during his fall, but he was laying still, the ground underneath him coarse and soft, grainy and hot, and he lifted his head slowly and realized that he was lying on a beach of some sort, or in a desert… The soil was a thick red, mixed with sand, and there was no plant life of any sort around him. He felt his fingers raking through the thick, fine grit of it, and he slowly and shakingly climbed to his feet and stared around him. A bright, white glare shone overhead, the sun a thick, angry orb filling the sky with waves of heat, making the sandy soil around him shimmer and move as if it were made of water, and he squinted against it, shaking his head and feeling his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, the skin on his shoulders already starting to feel incredibly hot and prickly in the desert heat.
A shadow moved towards Sam, and he stared ahead, trying to shade his eyes with his hand, and saw the figures of the double and the little girl there, both of them staring at him with a hard, accusing fury, the little girl shaking her head as if she’d just seen another small child committing some horrible act of misbehavior in a schoolyard. The double glared at him, and then lifted a finger upwards and pointed at the sky, and Sam dared to look upwards, feeling as if the hot sun would melt the eyes right out of his face. Several large, black shapes were moving lazily about in the light, a blue so bright and scorched that it seemed almost white making them stand out in sharp contrast, thick winged figures slowly circling above him.
“Do you know what those are, Sam? They’re waiting for you. Two worlds, and they’re waiting for you in each of them.” The double’s voice was cold and angry, harsh and sharp like the light and the heat, beating down on him in thick, cloying waves.
“Where the bloody hell am I now? What the fuck is going on?” Sam tried to meet the double’s gaze, tried to stare back at it as angrily as it was staring at him, and found that he was incapable of doing so.
“That’s exactly what I want to know, Sam. We’ve been trying to help you, Sam, and we’ve been so very patient. But you keep stalling, you keep fiddling around and not concentrating on anything! All that we’ve done, and it’s all been for you.”
“I’m supposed to be grateful, am I? I’m supposed to be kissing your damned feet for showing me all of this?” Sam’s voice was a dry, rasping growl, an animal sound deep in his throat, and he took a step towards the double, suddenly feeling all of the fear and frustration of the past weeks building to a sharp, white-hot anger inside of him as he advanced towards the leering mirror image of his own face.
“Do you know what those are?” The double looked upwards at the hideous shadows of the carrion birds once again, and Sam saw that they were circling lower, as if closing in on something, as if they were closing in on him. “I’ll tell you what they are, Sam…” The double’s voice echoed strangely on the thin, dry desert air, and then seemed to engulf Sam, cold and sharp and clawing at his skin like the wind and like the claws of the creature, and Sam felt his eyes close for a moment against the onslaught, the world suddenly going from incredibly hot to incredibly cold all at once, the air suddenly going from thin, hot, dry desert air to… To…
Sam thrust his eyes open and realized that he was under water, dark and swirling around him, brackish and cold and enveloping him totally. He tried to lift his head upwards, to find some sign of a surface anywhere in the pool or lake or ocean that he was in, and he found that there was none. The water was getting dark, the light not coming from above, but still fading away, and Sam felt himself sinking, being drawn down further and further, the water crushing tightly around him. His lungs were straining for air now, pulsing painfully inside of him, and he felt his throat start to fight against his closed mouth, start to push for him to inhale, just inhale, to bring some sort of air inside of him, but there was no air… Sam eventually lost his battle with his own body, and his mouth and nose opened, letting the frozen tang of deep sea water enter into him, rushing to fill every inch inside of him, seeming to fill not just his lungs, but his head and bowels and stomach, weighing down hard on him from the inside, filling every single inch that there was to fill… Sam tried to scream, tried to fight, and found himself twisting madly in the water, slipping upside down and from side to side, his struggling only helping the water to fill him as it crushed him from the outside, his body screaming for air as he fought, fought, fought…
The cold concrete floor of what Sam had come to think of as “the monitor room” suddenly rushed up and smacked itself against Sam’s shoulder, and he screamed, air flooding back into him, his body once again dry and breathing on the ground of the room. He jumped to his feet and rushed towards the walls, slapping at them, madly fingering the spaces between the walls, digging at the concrete of the corners for some sign of an opening, for some wait to free himself from the nightmare.
“They’re vultures, Sam. And they’re drowning. Not themselves, I’m sure you know, oh no, that’s what they are. And you’re letting them come down. You’re letting it all happen, Sam.” The voice of the double was still incredibly hard and angry, a deep, menacing tone that seemed to come from directly behind Sam’s ear, and he turned his head slightly and saw his own face there, staring at him accusingly, glowering at him, its eyes hard and wide with an anger that seemed to reach out for Sam, as if the double were trying to attack Sam with his eyes. “You’re letting them all in, you’re letting it in!” The double suddenly reached out and grabbed Sam by the lapels of his leather jacket, and then thrust him across the room, still holding tightly to him, spinning him around so that Sam’s back slammed against the opposite wall, his shoulders smacking into the concrete between two of the flat panel screens there.
“I’m not doing any of this!” Sam screamed out, and then the double reached down and landed a quick, hard jab into Sam’s belly, forcing him to double over as the air was knocked out of him. The double pulled his arm back, and Sam barely had time to register the movement before the strange, perverted copy of his own arm slammed into his jaw, forcing his head to snap upwards, the back of his skull smacking against the concrete with a thick, wet crack.
“We are running out of time! There’s only so much help that we can give you! You know what happened, Sam, all of it, you know what the answer is! We keep pushing, and pushing, and you never, ever listen to a bloody thing we say! You stupid, selfish, little arsehole!” The double was screaming at him now, and Sam felt its fist ramming into his face and chest repeatedly, the blows squeezing him against the hard surface of the wall, as if the double were trying to flatten him against the concrete. “We are running out of time! You cannot, cannot let this happen!” The double’s voice was a furious, frantic scream as he continued to pummel Sam, and Sam tried to fight back, tried to strike out against the blows, tried to at least block them, and found that he couldn’t, the double was moving too quickly for him to be able to defend himself.
“You can’t do this, Sam. You’re spoiling it all. You’re a liar, and you’re selfish, and you’re mean,” the little girl’s voice was hurt and on the verge of tears, but the venom in her words was unmistakable, and Sam saw her leering at him from behind the double, a frightening, hungry look in her eyes that made his blood seem to stop in his veins, and he realized that he was shaking, thick ripples of movement building at his center and working their way outwards, his entire body rebelling against him, and then he felt it.
There were hands on his chest, and it was dark, and he was still shaking, pain searing through every part of his body, a thin, dark voice softly muttering, “It’s mine. I’ll have what’s mine. Not long now… It’s mine…” Sam realized what voice he was hearing, and he struggled to open his eyes, only just realizing that he’d even closed them as the double beat him, the little girl glaring at him from behind him, and Sam fought, hard, trying to latch onto the sound of the voice, the feel of the hands, trying to retain some memory of the creature made man, of the nightmare that was hunting him, and then realizing that he was trapped, that the killer had him again, that his hands were moving along his chest, fondling him like a toy, the killer’s voice still whispering in his ear, “Mine. Not long now… I’m coming back for it…”
Panic rose up inside of Sam and he started to thrash madly about, trying to force the hands of the killer away, fighting against something that was part ghost, part memory, and part premonition, a sick vision of what could be… “No… No…” Sam was muttering it over and over again, his limbs moving in every direction and pain shredding through him as he continued to fight, to struggle against the unseen presence of the killer, and he tried to force his eyes open, tried to force himself to look at the man, to try and understand who it was that was hunting him, but his eyes wouldn’t open. He reached out, still scrambling madly against everything and nothing, the strange feelings of being trapped in the desert, vultures circling madly above him, of drowning, drowning deeply in an ocean with no surface, of the wood and the field pushing their way through the door of the house that he’d grown up in, all coming back to him at once, overlapping with one another, scorching heat and frozen saltwater mixing with howling winds and stinging rain, the anger of the double and the little girl, the horrible, perverse pleasure of the killer, everything seeming to warp into one great, oppressive covering that was smothering him, flooding and burying him alive…
“Sam? Sam! Sam!” And then there was the one sound that didn’t belong. It was angry, and harsh, and slightly panicked, but it wasn’t a nightmare sound. Gene was calling his name, and his voice was somehow making it through everything, slipping through the cracks in the nightmare amalgamation of pain and pressure and reaching out to him, a lifeline in the dark. Sam continued to struggle and flail, reaching out for Gene’s voice as if he could grab hold of it, as if it were a line that he could climb to drag himself out of the wretched nightmare hell that held him, and Gene’s voice continued to call his name…
Author: Sytaxia
Pairings: None in this portion; other parts include Sam/Gene, Sam/Annie, Ray/Chris and Sam/Maya.
Rating: Red Cortina for this portion, other parts run the full gamut from white to red.
Warning: Disturbing imagery in this portion; other parts include full on slash and het, violence, and disturbing imagery of varying levels of intensity, some quite bad.
Continuity: Takes place sometime between 2.6 and 2.7, and is starting to form an AU that replaces/overlaps with 2.7 and 2.8.
Word Count: 11,507 for Part 28/This portion. 251,920 words by the end of this part.
Summary: Overall: The CID team plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a serial killer that seems disturbingly connected to Hyde, and that will stop at nothing to reclaim his only surviving victim: Sam Tyler. Part 28: After more time spent amongst the twisted revelations of his nightmare world, Sam awakens to a horrifying reality...
Chapters: Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here. Part 3a is here. Part 3b is here. Part 4a is here. Part 4b is here. Part 5a is here. Part 5b is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here. Part 8 is here. Part 9a is here. Part 9b is here. Part 10a is here. Part 10b is here. Part 11a is here. Part 11b is here. Part 12a is here. Part 12b is here. Part 13a is here. Part 13b is here. Part 14a is here. Part 14b is here. Part 15 is here. Part 16a is here. Part 16b is here. Part 17a is here. Part 17b is here. Part 18a is here. Part 18b is here. Part 19a is here. Part 19b is here. Part 20a is here. Part 20b is here. Part 21a is here. Part 21b is here. Part 22a is here. Part 22b is here. Part 23a is here. Part 23b is here. Part 24a is here. Part 24b is here. Part 25a is here. Part 25b is here. Part 26a is here. Part 26b is here. Part 27a is here. Part 27b is here.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to
mrskeeler for an absolutely wonderful and incredibly fast beta job, and lots of thanks to everyone that has influenced this fic and mutated this bunny, including
irenak, who supplied the title,
liquorishflame,
elfbert,
echo_voice,
wiccagal_1996,
dorcas_gustine,
hambelandjemima, dakfinv,
dorsetgirl, and many others. Thanks to everyone who's stuck by this fic; I promise, the ending is in sight...
Disclaimer: They're not mine, I'm just playing with them.
Sam opened his eyes to find himself standing in the sitting room of the house that he’d grown up in; his mother’s figurines and the “Blue Danube” music box were lined up neatly on the mantel, but there was no sign of his father, nor of his mother. He slowly walked back and forth across the room, and then left, searching the house, and finding that it was exactly has he’d remembered it, but empty, and still. The air seemed to hang as if it were too heavy, and even the light that shone in through the windows was far too still, as if it had been frozen in time, not even the dust stirring in the shafts of light that poured from the windows. Nothing stirred, not even when Sam past the curtains, and it seemed as if the house were lost, taken out of time and locked perfectly into place, never to change and never to move.
“Hello?” Sam called out, and his own voice seemed incredibly stunted and quiet, as if the sound itself were unable to move in the still, heavy air. Sam shook his head, and then stared out the window: the light was incredibly bright, shining down on the old street, the sky crystal clear and dazzling blue, the most perfect day that any child in Manchester could ever hope for. Sam stared out the window, and saw a brief flash of orange and white, knowing that it must be Ivanhoe, let out to hunt the mice that would sometimes be seen in the gutter. A figure moved slowly along the street, and Sam saw the old and bent figure of Alfie, part ironmonger and part rag and bone seller, slowly making his way down the street. He seemed older, more stooped than he had when Sam had seen him upon his first visit to Ruth in 1973, and Sam took another curious glimpse about the house, and noticed that the broken clock and that his parents’ wedding photo had both been removed from the room.
Sam moved closer to the unmoving, silent shelves that stood next to the mantle, and saw that several albums stood there, T Rex and Gary Newman, Bowie and Joy Division… Sam tried to remember the dates on the albums, and then noticed the television: it wasn’t the same set that he had seen when he and Annie had searched the house earlier, it was a newer model, equipped with an old-fashioned, cord-attached-to-the-set remote control, the type that cheaper televisions came with in… 1980. Sam spun about him and stared at the items that were standing on the mantel, and realized that there was a small, porcelain bird sitting on it, the one that he’d given his mother at Christmas of 1979. He remembered weeding flower patches and doing small repair work all through his tenth year, saving pennies up, and eventually convincing his Auntie Heather to take him for a secret trip in to Kendal’s, where he’d found that even having saved five quid meant that he still couldn’t get anything really nice and fancy for his mother, until he saw the bird. It was amongst several small figurines, which constituted the entirety of the store’s stock that were within his price range, and he’d stood there for over an hour, trying to determine which of them was the prettiest, before Heather had eventually put her foot down and forced him to choose. He’d run past his mother upon returning home, trying to hide the package from her sight as she’d questioned Heather about why it took nearly two hours to take little Sammy out for an ice cream, and the look on his mother’s face when she’d unwrapped it and seen the foil-stamped box, and then pulled the bird out from amongst a pile of tissue paper, would always remain in his memories. It was the happiest that he’d seen her since his father had left. To this day, the bird was still sitting amongst Sam’s old school photos in her little house.
“Hello?” Sam called out again, not sure that he wanted an answer; the memories of his later childhood, as it had slowly crept into adolescence, were the last innocent memories that he had, and the thought of them being dirtied by the presence of the double or the test card girl didn’t sit well with him at all. When Sam didn’t receive an answer, he moved towards the door, and let his hand linger for a moment over the door knob, afraid to turn it and look out onto the swiftly changing world of 1980. He couldn’t tell how long that he stood there, listening to the sound of nothing, which was far more deafening than he’d ever imagined; the moments bled slowly into one another as he waited there, and then he finally worked up the nerve and turned the knob, pulling the door open.
The sight outside of the door was far different from that from the windows; directly outside of the door, the edge of the wood and the large maize field glared at Sam, and the wind and rain shrieked and howled. Sam stood, horrified, at the sight of his nightmare world on his old doorstep, and it seemed as if the wood were growing closer, edging towards the door as if to force itself inside of the house and overpower him, dragging him back to the damp and festering scents. The wretched nightmare sounds of the creature loomed around him, screaming in his ears, and Sam found that he had to fight against the force of the wind to shut the door, eventually throwing his entire body against it and listening to the howls and screeches of the dark, black and green world beyond as he forced it shut, the suction of the wind pulling to the very last at the edge of the door.
Once the door was shut, Sam’s back and weight pressed against it, Sam let himself drop down, sliding against the door and feeling his shirt bunch against the painted wooden surface, tears rising in his eyes and his chest heaving from the exertion of fighting against the wind and the wood and the creature as they struggled to enter the sanctuary of the frozen house. “This isn’t funny! What the hell is going on?” Sam screamed out, his voice raw and terrified, hanging without moving in the eerily still air. Sam shook his head and buried it in his hands, feeling his own tears hot against the flesh of his palms.
“This is a good memory! This is a safe place, and you don’t get to bloody ruin it, you heartless bastards!” Sam shouted it out to no one in particular, and then fell to sobbing, his entire body shaking as the tears ripped from his eyes in free-flowing torrents. Sam shook his head back and forth, and then he heard the snap and flare of the television coming to life in the sitting room, and he looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and wide, not wanting to go towards the sound, and yet somehow knowing that he had to. He found himself standing, and then walking, each step resonating through the room, deep sounds that he felt, rather than hearing, echoing through the heavy, oppressive silence. The sound of television static was strong and hard as he entered the sitting room, but it did nothing to alleviate the horrible, claustrophobic stillness of the house.
Sam stared at the flurry of black and white on the television screen, and eventually found himself kneeling in front of the set, waiting to see what it was that he was to be shown in this new corner of his nightmare world, and wondering if he stood a better chance in the field, running from the encroaching wood and the pursuing creature.
*Sam? Do you know who this is?*
The voice came through the speakers of the television set, strong and clear, and Sam’s head snapped up, his eyes glued to the screen as he recognized his Auntie Heather’s voice.
*Your mum’s gone home for a rest. It was all I could do to force her to leave, she’s been here next to you for so long. I’ll stay here with you until she can come back, though, I promise.*
“Auntie Heather? I can hear you! Heather, I can hear you! Please, please tell me Mum’s all right! Heather! Auntie Heather!” Sam reached out and slammed his palms against the television, willing her to hear him with every fiber of his being, and yet knowing that there was no way that she could ever hear him.
*We’re all so worried about you, you poor little darling. Your pretty Asian friend, Detective Sergeant Roy, and her boyfriend, Detective Inspector Suggs, have both been in to see you.*
“Maya is NOT dating Suggsy? How in the bloody hell did that happen? What’s been going on? What’s happening? Talk to me, please, let me know what’s happening!” Sam was holding his face incredibly close to the screen, his nose nearly pressing against the front of it, and he beat his fists against the top of the set, and then the sides, searching for some sign of a picture inside of the glare of the static and finding nothing. He strained his ears to see if he could hear anything else in the background, and found that he heard only the muffled sounds of the television, before Heather spoke again.
*My poor darling nephew. You’ve been so very sick these past few weeks, Sam, we thought we might lose you. They say they need to operate again, on your brain this time, but they don’t know if you’re strong enough to survive that.*
“I’m strong enough! Is it the tumor? I heard the bloody doctors scaring the living shit out of poor Mum the other day! Get them to stop doing that!” Sam pounded and screamed again, but the voice from inside the television didn’t seem to notice.
*They say you’re brain’s too cramped up there, and that there’s a tumor putting pressure on it, and leaning on some sort of gland, making your body chemistry go starkers. That’s why you’ve been asleep so long, they say.*
Sam’s mind reeled, “Cut it out! Cut it out! Fix it, get me to wake up! Cut it out so that I can get out of this bloody mess!” Sam felt his forehead slam softly against the screen of the television, but continued to shout at and to pummel the television set, his fists making hard noises against the sides of it as he did so. The tumor was pressing on a gland, the killer was taking glands… Only the two glands in the head hadn’t been taken, Sam realized suddenly, and then he knew with a cold, horrifying certainty that whatever the killer had intended to rip out of his skull, the tumor in 2006 was pressing on it…
*The doctors told Ruth she has to decide if she wants them to try and operate, or if she wants to wait to see if they can fix you with drugs first, at least halfway. They told her drugs might not help, but the operation could kill you.*
“They made her decide that? Those bastards! They can’t give her that choice! God, Mum, why are they doing this to her? Just cut the damned thing out of me! I’m strong enough! I’m strong enough, I swear!” Sam’s nose was pressed tightly against the screen, and he felt tears leaking down his cheeks once again as he thought of his mother, forced to choose between the operation or the drugs, either one of which was likely to kill him. And they’d probably put it just as bluntly as that, or maybe worked in some horrible medical terms to try and make it as confusing as possible for her… Anger welled up inside of Sam, and he found himself slamming his fist into the front of the television screen, and feeling the hard, thick glass there suddenly give way, as if it were made of the thinnest glass possible, instead of the normal glass of a television. He felt two small, very small hands come up, reach up from inside the hole that he’d created in the television, and he realized that the test card girl was reaching up to him, as if she lived inside of the television itself when she wasn’t out haunting him or shining on her card.
“No!” Sam screamed as the hands pulled him down with a horrible, inhuman strength, and he felt himself being dragged through the screen, the remainder of the glass breaking away around him as he struggled against the force pulling him downwards, his clothes ripping against the shards of glass around him as he fell, head first, into a long, dark tunnel.
Sam was falling, then, the hands of the little girl gone, but her laughter echoing around him as he felt himself tumbling rapidly down a long, spiraling tunnel of twisting, brackish air, spinning madly out of control on a crazed free fall through a tunnel of hissing, growling, screaming sounds, dark swirls of black and red dancing around his face as the cold, biting wind bit at his skin and tore at his eyes, almost as if the rapidly moving air, so different from the horrifically still air in the house, were trying to eat him alive as he continued on his descent. He found himself screaming then, madly clutching at anything, but the walls of the tunnel seemed to be made of mist, of thick, decaying vapor that moved swiftly through his hands as he reached out to try and slow himself. He was flailing madly, shrieking in pain and fear as he continued to accelerate, and then, as suddenly as his fall had started, it stopped.
Sam was gasping, panting, choking for breath as he had been during his fall, but he was laying still, the ground underneath him coarse and soft, grainy and hot, and he lifted his head slowly and realized that he was lying on a beach of some sort, or in a desert… The soil was a thick red, mixed with sand, and there was no plant life of any sort around him. He felt his fingers raking through the thick, fine grit of it, and he slowly and shakingly climbed to his feet and stared around him. A bright, white glare shone overhead, the sun a thick, angry orb filling the sky with waves of heat, making the sandy soil around him shimmer and move as if it were made of water, and he squinted against it, shaking his head and feeling his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, the skin on his shoulders already starting to feel incredibly hot and prickly in the desert heat.
A shadow moved towards Sam, and he stared ahead, trying to shade his eyes with his hand, and saw the figures of the double and the little girl there, both of them staring at him with a hard, accusing fury, the little girl shaking her head as if she’d just seen another small child committing some horrible act of misbehavior in a schoolyard. The double glared at him, and then lifted a finger upwards and pointed at the sky, and Sam dared to look upwards, feeling as if the hot sun would melt the eyes right out of his face. Several large, black shapes were moving lazily about in the light, a blue so bright and scorched that it seemed almost white making them stand out in sharp contrast, thick winged figures slowly circling above him.
“Do you know what those are, Sam? They’re waiting for you. Two worlds, and they’re waiting for you in each of them.” The double’s voice was cold and angry, harsh and sharp like the light and the heat, beating down on him in thick, cloying waves.
“Where the bloody hell am I now? What the fuck is going on?” Sam tried to meet the double’s gaze, tried to stare back at it as angrily as it was staring at him, and found that he was incapable of doing so.
“That’s exactly what I want to know, Sam. We’ve been trying to help you, Sam, and we’ve been so very patient. But you keep stalling, you keep fiddling around and not concentrating on anything! All that we’ve done, and it’s all been for you.”
“I’m supposed to be grateful, am I? I’m supposed to be kissing your damned feet for showing me all of this?” Sam’s voice was a dry, rasping growl, an animal sound deep in his throat, and he took a step towards the double, suddenly feeling all of the fear and frustration of the past weeks building to a sharp, white-hot anger inside of him as he advanced towards the leering mirror image of his own face.
“Do you know what those are?” The double looked upwards at the hideous shadows of the carrion birds once again, and Sam saw that they were circling lower, as if closing in on something, as if they were closing in on him. “I’ll tell you what they are, Sam…” The double’s voice echoed strangely on the thin, dry desert air, and then seemed to engulf Sam, cold and sharp and clawing at his skin like the wind and like the claws of the creature, and Sam felt his eyes close for a moment against the onslaught, the world suddenly going from incredibly hot to incredibly cold all at once, the air suddenly going from thin, hot, dry desert air to… To…
Sam thrust his eyes open and realized that he was under water, dark and swirling around him, brackish and cold and enveloping him totally. He tried to lift his head upwards, to find some sign of a surface anywhere in the pool or lake or ocean that he was in, and he found that there was none. The water was getting dark, the light not coming from above, but still fading away, and Sam felt himself sinking, being drawn down further and further, the water crushing tightly around him. His lungs were straining for air now, pulsing painfully inside of him, and he felt his throat start to fight against his closed mouth, start to push for him to inhale, just inhale, to bring some sort of air inside of him, but there was no air… Sam eventually lost his battle with his own body, and his mouth and nose opened, letting the frozen tang of deep sea water enter into him, rushing to fill every inch inside of him, seeming to fill not just his lungs, but his head and bowels and stomach, weighing down hard on him from the inside, filling every single inch that there was to fill… Sam tried to scream, tried to fight, and found himself twisting madly in the water, slipping upside down and from side to side, his struggling only helping the water to fill him as it crushed him from the outside, his body screaming for air as he fought, fought, fought…
The cold concrete floor of what Sam had come to think of as “the monitor room” suddenly rushed up and smacked itself against Sam’s shoulder, and he screamed, air flooding back into him, his body once again dry and breathing on the ground of the room. He jumped to his feet and rushed towards the walls, slapping at them, madly fingering the spaces between the walls, digging at the concrete of the corners for some sign of an opening, for some wait to free himself from the nightmare.
“They’re vultures, Sam. And they’re drowning. Not themselves, I’m sure you know, oh no, that’s what they are. And you’re letting them come down. You’re letting it all happen, Sam.” The voice of the double was still incredibly hard and angry, a deep, menacing tone that seemed to come from directly behind Sam’s ear, and he turned his head slightly and saw his own face there, staring at him accusingly, glowering at him, its eyes hard and wide with an anger that seemed to reach out for Sam, as if the double were trying to attack Sam with his eyes. “You’re letting them all in, you’re letting it in!” The double suddenly reached out and grabbed Sam by the lapels of his leather jacket, and then thrust him across the room, still holding tightly to him, spinning him around so that Sam’s back slammed against the opposite wall, his shoulders smacking into the concrete between two of the flat panel screens there.
“I’m not doing any of this!” Sam screamed out, and then the double reached down and landed a quick, hard jab into Sam’s belly, forcing him to double over as the air was knocked out of him. The double pulled his arm back, and Sam barely had time to register the movement before the strange, perverted copy of his own arm slammed into his jaw, forcing his head to snap upwards, the back of his skull smacking against the concrete with a thick, wet crack.
“We are running out of time! There’s only so much help that we can give you! You know what happened, Sam, all of it, you know what the answer is! We keep pushing, and pushing, and you never, ever listen to a bloody thing we say! You stupid, selfish, little arsehole!” The double was screaming at him now, and Sam felt its fist ramming into his face and chest repeatedly, the blows squeezing him against the hard surface of the wall, as if the double were trying to flatten him against the concrete. “We are running out of time! You cannot, cannot let this happen!” The double’s voice was a furious, frantic scream as he continued to pummel Sam, and Sam tried to fight back, tried to strike out against the blows, tried to at least block them, and found that he couldn’t, the double was moving too quickly for him to be able to defend himself.
“You can’t do this, Sam. You’re spoiling it all. You’re a liar, and you’re selfish, and you’re mean,” the little girl’s voice was hurt and on the verge of tears, but the venom in her words was unmistakable, and Sam saw her leering at him from behind the double, a frightening, hungry look in her eyes that made his blood seem to stop in his veins, and he realized that he was shaking, thick ripples of movement building at his center and working their way outwards, his entire body rebelling against him, and then he felt it.
There were hands on his chest, and it was dark, and he was still shaking, pain searing through every part of his body, a thin, dark voice softly muttering, “It’s mine. I’ll have what’s mine. Not long now… It’s mine…” Sam realized what voice he was hearing, and he struggled to open his eyes, only just realizing that he’d even closed them as the double beat him, the little girl glaring at him from behind him, and Sam fought, hard, trying to latch onto the sound of the voice, the feel of the hands, trying to retain some memory of the creature made man, of the nightmare that was hunting him, and then realizing that he was trapped, that the killer had him again, that his hands were moving along his chest, fondling him like a toy, the killer’s voice still whispering in his ear, “Mine. Not long now… I’m coming back for it…”
Panic rose up inside of Sam and he started to thrash madly about, trying to force the hands of the killer away, fighting against something that was part ghost, part memory, and part premonition, a sick vision of what could be… “No… No…” Sam was muttering it over and over again, his limbs moving in every direction and pain shredding through him as he continued to fight, to struggle against the unseen presence of the killer, and he tried to force his eyes open, tried to force himself to look at the man, to try and understand who it was that was hunting him, but his eyes wouldn’t open. He reached out, still scrambling madly against everything and nothing, the strange feelings of being trapped in the desert, vultures circling madly above him, of drowning, drowning deeply in an ocean with no surface, of the wood and the field pushing their way through the door of the house that he’d grown up in, all coming back to him at once, overlapping with one another, scorching heat and frozen saltwater mixing with howling winds and stinging rain, the anger of the double and the little girl, the horrible, perverse pleasure of the killer, everything seeming to warp into one great, oppressive covering that was smothering him, flooding and burying him alive…
“Sam? Sam! Sam!” And then there was the one sound that didn’t belong. It was angry, and harsh, and slightly panicked, but it wasn’t a nightmare sound. Gene was calling his name, and his voice was somehow making it through everything, slipping through the cracks in the nightmare amalgamation of pain and pressure and reaching out to him, a lifeline in the dark. Sam continued to struggle and flail, reaching out for Gene’s voice as if he could grab hold of it, as if it were a line that he could climb to drag himself out of the wretched nightmare hell that held him, and Gene’s voice continued to call his name…