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“With the other ones, I think I cut too deep. I was too young. Too eager. And I was still thinking in three dimensions, you know? Trying to find the portal inside the physical bodies. But they lurk in the corners of reality, don’t they, at ninety degrees to the rest of us. So that was the wrong approach.”
Mary shook her head. She didn’t understand a word.
“Look. I’ve been tied up before. This is no big deal. Okay? So far, you haven’t actually done anything. So if you let me go, I’ll just walk away, and you can disappear.”
The little man in the yellow plastic raincoat turned to look at her. She hoped she had finally got through to him. It was hard to tell what was going on behind those coke bottle glasses.
“Don’t worry. I think I’ve figured it out. I’m just going to peel back the surface layer. It will hurt a little bit, but you’ll be alright.”
Mary tugged on the handcuffs linking her to steel poles driven into the concrete. They were too tight. Not so tight that they cut off her circulation, but tight enough that she couldn’t slip out of them.
“Of course, if that doesn’t work, I’ll have to go deeper. I apologize in advance. But it’s not an exact science. Not anymore. The Aztecs, maybe, they had it down to a fine art. But they had a lot more to work with.”
She decided to scream again.
“Small animals were easier. Birds, at first. Then cats. Finally dogs.”
The screaming hadn’t helped. She hadn’t really thought it would. He’d been open about that from the start, since she’d first woken up, naked, staked out in the derelict warehouse. “Scream as much as you like,” he’d told her. “Nobody on this side of the flesh will hear you.” She’d tried it anyway. Just in case.
“I could sense it inside them, even back then. I knew it was there. But it kept moving. Shifting. It refused to be tied to one place.” He stood between her feet, looking down at her with his head on one side. Sunlight from a high window formed a halo around his spiky white hair, obscuring his expression. “As fast as I caught them, opened them up, it was gone. As if it was taunting me. Testing me.”
Mary smiled up at him. “You like what you see?”
This stopped his monologue. Temporarily, at least. He took a few steps to the side, looking down at her from a different angle. Mary squinted as the sun’s rays shone directly into her eyes. A natural redhead, she avoided the sun whenever possible.
Now she tossed her auburn curls in front of her face and peered coquettishly at her captor. “Come on. Whatever you want. It’ll be our little secret. I won’t tell anyone. As long as you let me go afterwards.”
He pushed his glasses higher onto the potato-shaped nose they claimed as their territory. His head tilted at that peculiar angle again, as he ran his eyes over her naked flesh. They stopped at her stomach.
“It’s inside you, you know. Can’t you feel it?”
She maintained her smile. “The only thing I want inside me...”
He spun on his heel and walked quickly to an old wooden table.
“It won’t work. They all try that, sooner or later. Normally later than this. But I won’t be distracted. This is more important.”
It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she kept the seductive smile in place. “Can’t it wait? Just a little while?”
He stepped closer again. Something flashed in his right hand, glittering in the sunlight amid dancing dust particles.
Mary’s smile faltered. “You don’t need that.”
He spread his hands and shrugged. “But I do.”
The knife probably wasn’t very big. Under normal circumstances. Under current circumstances, Mary couldn’t imagine a more dangerous-looking object.
“Please. I don’t know what I’ve done. Or what it is you want from me. But I can get you money. Lots of it.”
The man stepped up between her legs and lowered himself slowly to his knees. He was careful not to touch her. Not yet.
“Look, there’s nothing inside me. Nothing. I’ve been on the pill since I was a teenager. So there’s no chance. None.”
He took off his coke bottles and placed them carefully in an inside pocket of the raincoat. Without them, his eyes shrank to narrow slits and a frown possessed his lips. He raised the knife to eye level, twisting it to get a more comfortable grip.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this for a long time now. It won’t hurt too much. I promise.”
Mary’s mind raced. Was it better to scream and give him what he wanted? Or would that just encourage him? Should she grit her teeth and not give him the satisfaction? Assuming she had any choice in the matter.
“I really hope it works this time. I don’t know how many more of these I can take.”
“Then don’t.”
His entire face wrinkled in concentration as he looked up at her, seeming to see her, even without his glasses, for the first time.
“But I have to.”
She shook her head. “No. You don’t.”
Their eyes locked for a moment. Then it was gone. He dropped his blurry gaze to her stomach. “You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand. Please. Explain it to me.”
Mary knew that if she lost him now, it was all over. This was even harder than maintaining a seductive smile while handcuffed and naked on a filthy concrete floor. But she had to stay calm. Stay in control. Of herself, if nothing else. She felt her sanity slipping away, clinging by its fingernails to a crumbling cliff that was being eroded by fear and panic.
The man between her legs sighed. Then he smiled. He didn’t put down the knife.
“Okay. We have a few minutes before it’s time. Before the portal opens. Before it jumps again.”
She nodded. “The portal. What is it? Where does it go?”
He reached out absently and stroked her bare skin. It took everything she had not to pull away from him. She couldn’t help the goosebumps that spread across her body. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.
The man shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just the portal. It calls to me. Always has. It wants me. It needs me. And I need it.”
Mary nodded. “I see. But why? What do you need from it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t belong here. I have thoughts... feelings... cravings... I have to get away. Before I hurt people.”
She almost laughed. Instead she thought of those fingers, her delicately painted fingernails, slipping one by one from the edge of that cliff...
“It’s happened in London before, you know. 130 years ago.” His eyes were closed now. “Not far from here, in fact. Just a few streets away. In Whitechapel.”
Mary’s hopes fell. A chill ran across her skin, and every hair on the back of her neck stood to attention.
“He wasn’t the first to hear the call. Or the first to find the portal. But he was the first to bring it into the open, when the press got hold of the story.”
No. No. No. No. No.
The little man who filled her entire world shook himself. “It’s time.”
“No.”
He raised his knife and placed the tip gently in the middle of her chest, just below her ribcage.
“You can scream if you like. It helps with the pain. And it opens the portal wider.”
“No.” She twisted as far as she could, but that wasn’t very far. Not far enough.
The knife pressed down, slicing smoothly through layers of skin. Mary clenched her jaw tight. Her eyes too. And her fists. She had decided that she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream in pain. Her earlier screams had been trying to attract attention. They hadn’t been born from pain. Or fear. Those, he would not hear.
Then it stopped. The burning sensation down the front of her body was still there. God, yes, it was still there. But the knife had stopped just above her navel.
Mary raised her head and opened her eyes. She instantly regretted that move.
His hands were inside her, gently pushing aside the surface skin.
“It’s beautiful.”
Mary whimpered. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t give him that. But the whimper slipped out before she knew it was there.
The man with the bloody hands looked up at her, radiant. “At last. At long last. Oh, thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you.”
Mary nodded. It seemed the polite thing to do.
The man looked down again. Mary couldn’t see what he saw, what held his attention. All she could see was his face grinning wider than before as he lowered it towards her stomach. He seemed to glow with an inner light.
“So beautiful. So dark. A gateway to infinity.” His face was almost touching her now. Mary felt sick. Sore and scared and sick. And cold. The cold was finally getting to her.
She unclenched her jaw. Had to force the muscles apart. But she had to be ready for what came next.
Except she wasn’t.
The little man in the yellow raincoat leaned forward and his face disappeared inside Mary’s stomach. She yelped. It wasn’t a scream. It was a yelp. Surprise, more than anything else.
There was no pain. No sensation. She couldn’t feel what was happening inside her open stomach. Nothing but a warm fuzziness. Even the burning knife cut had faded to a gentle tingling.
Then the little man pushed forward and his entire head vanished inside her.
This time, even Mary had to admit that it sounded like she had screamed. Just a little one. Maybe a big yelp. She focused on that. Yes, just a big yelp. She was fine. No pain. She was okay. She checked the image in her head. One ruby red fingernail still clung defiantly to the edge of that cliff. She would not let go. She would get through this.
Until the man between her legs pushed his shoulders and upper arms inside her.
Mary froze. Time froze. The world stopped in its tracks. Tilted sideways. Cracks appeared, running at ninety degrees to everything else.
Then the little man pushed with his legs and vanished up to his waist inside Mary’s stomach and she started screaming and screaming and screaming as the cliff crumbled under her expensive fingernails and she lost her grip on the last moments of sanity she would ever know.