C h a p t e r N i n e
A Sprinkle of Light
Crash. I stumble into the room clutching my shoulder, having just barged the door down.
‘You sure you okay?’ Tom still hasn’t stopped shaking; he’s still pale.
‘I think so… I guess tonight is finally catching up with me…’ His face looks more drawn than usual, and the black marks under his eyes tell me he’s tired. He sits down, just inside the room.
‘You could go back, you know. I can go alone, I’m sure it’s not that difficult.’
‘No way!’ Tom says, struggling to stand up and consciously trying to stop trembling. ‘I want to find out what happened to Ia--… If I go back, you know they’ll kill me. You know we’ll probably never be able to go back, right?’
I notice he stops mid-sentence after saying Ian again. It hit a nerve with me as well. Perhaps it was the look on my face that made him stop…
‘I suppose…’
I finally turn and look around. It’s dark but the little light from some unknown source shows me the entire room.
Surprisingly, it appears small and cluttered. As usual, pipes wind around the room in every direction like intestines, but, most unusually, there are large machines
everywhere. The closest one to me is literally only two feet away, and they are positioned in rows on top of piping which connects them all. The lower area of the machine is a coppery half-sphere of metal and around six feet above is a large barrel-like mass of similar metal. This is connected to the relatively low ceiling. Each row is only a few feet away from another. There are no switches, levers or anything that would require manual labour.
Where are we?
Every machine is covered in dust so I can make out none of the stencilled-on pictures and words. Some are broken, fallen over or generally in disrepair, and cover the thin paths through the room, while others look in pristine condition.
I can see no one.
I begin to walk slowly down the closest path between rows, carefully stepping over each pipe connecting them. Again, there’s no Information Kiosk. It always seems that whenever I want one, they’re never in sight. Though, I think bitterly, I’ll probably find one at the exit... if there is an exit.
Up ahead, I see a tiny dot of bright white light shoot between machines, temporarily lighting them up more than normal, and then disappearing into the clutter. It’s like a star in the night sky, becoming obscured by a cloud.
‘Did you see that?’ I ask quietly.
‘Yeah… What was it?’ replies Tom.
‘Maybe it has something to do with why this room is “Out of Bounds”?’
‘Maybe…’
Tom didn’t sound convinced.
Another light flits between machines ahead of me. This time, it clearly lights up the floor and I temporarily convulse in shock. There’s a skeleton crumpled there. Not just any skeleton, this one still has flesh in places. A disgusting, dead, white flesh. In the brief moment of light, it looks slimy, or wet.
It was a dead body; a really, really old dead body that had been left to rot. I’ve never seen the management leave things like
that lying around before.
The remnant of this poor mudokon reminds me eerily of Ian. He’s just lying there, right now, lost in the pitch black of the corridor. In the morning, workers will carelessly walk over his corpse, taking no heed as they step on his soft flesh; just another feature of the floor. Just another layer of muck.
We reluctantly fall into a creep. There’s something strange about this room that I can’t put my finger on.
The room is causing both me and Tom to be as silent as possible. We didn’t even comment on the body, and as we continue, I notice that the room is much, much longer than I initially thought.
A tiny light to the left. This one is level with me, and it’s close enough for its white steady light to cover my body, making me look positively morbid. It doesn’t move quickly like the other two, it seems to be almost lazily soaring through the air. It goes behind the closest machine, and reappears out the other side.
Both I and Tom have stopped tip-toeing to watch.
The light comes out behind the machine on my left, passes in front of me (so closely, I’m sure I hear the faintest hum) and then passes behind a machine to my right.
The floor in front of me is suddenly lit, with our shadows cast upon it. We spin around, and see five of the lights dancing in the air together, terrifyingly close to Tom.
For some reason, he edges backwards until he somehow manages to get me between him and the dots.
I feel like I want to touch them, to be where they are… to be with them. Another one arrives; I see it come from a distance, weaving between wreckages of machines across the room.
There’s another, but they no longer feel welcoming. A cold chill prickles down my spine. One comes from behind us, and Tom grabs hold of me. It doesn’t stay there; it swerves easily around us and joins its friends. They become particularly bright, but I can still see each individual one. We are both awash in the bright white.
Suddenly, the lights stop dancing randomly in the air, and burst forwards towards me.