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Beyond the Veil
Wilkins struggled to open his eyes, but a film seemed to cover them. As he tried to raise his hand to his face, he realized it was mired in a soft, sticky substance. He tried to move, but the ground beneath him flowed as if he were lying on the surface of a lake, which only gave way when he pressed against it. His entire body ached, most of all his head, which felt as if it were being crushed under a pile of masonry. He twisted his wrists and flattened his palms against the strange surface. He pushed, but they simply sank into the ground, becoming trapped inside it.
His breath came in shallow, ragged gasps as panic filled him. He pressed down with his knees, and they too became trapped inside the clinging surface. He tried again to open his eyes, but they refused to obey. He writhed in place, but the more he struggled, the more he was consumed. There was no sound or smell, only the sticky substance in which he was trapped. He felt himself drawn into it. His legs were covered from his feet to his thighs, and his arms were engulfed to his shoulders. He pulled his head back; fearful he would suffocate should it be pulled under. It was as if he were slowly sinking below the surface of the sea, or rather, it was pulling him in.
There was no wetness, nor did it feel dry. There was no heat, nor was there cold. There was nothing but the pressure of what was consuming him, the stickiness of the substance, and the feeling of being drawn into it no matter how much he struggled.
He tried to call for help as his hips were drawn under. As soon as he opened his mouth, the sticky, grasping goo filled it. He hadn’t even felt it on his face, but now it filled his throat and coated him from his jaw down his neck. It grew over his back and squeezed his chest. It crept up his head, tendrils growing across his scalp and pulling at his hair, threatening to drag him fully under. The pressure slid up his cheeks and covered his eyes, and it slithered into his nostrils and ran down the back of his throat and into his lungs.
He wanted nothing more than to scream in terror, yet whatever surrounded him now filled him as well, wrapped around his larynx and stifling any sound he might make. It finally closed over the top of his head, and he was completely encased in the unknown murk.
Wilkins coughed and rolled over. Vomit spewed from him again. He felt dirt under his hand and realized he was propping himself up on solid ground. He opened his eyes and looked around. The sky was dark and there was no sun to be seen, yet a dull orange glow bathed the landscape. There were no clouds, yet the air seemed shrouded in a perpetual haze. He looked up and found there was no end to the space above him.
Comets streaked across a field of darkness. Distant stars blazed as planets spun about them. Far-off galaxies swirled in a myriad of colors. It was as if Wilkins could see the entirety of the cosmos with the naked eye. The infinity above him was unfathomable, and he felt as if he would plummet through open space forever.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched the ground with both hands. The soil between his fingers and his own weight on his hips were the only reminders he wasn’t falling through the endless void.
Wilkins opened his eyes again and looked around, careful not to gaze upon the unending sky above him for fear he might simply fall from the world should he look upon it again. Gently rolling hills surrounded him. In the distance grew a forest of pine trees, utterly black despite the light diffusing them.
Closer, he saw the train—or what had been a train. It writhed on the ground like a wounded animal, long and slender and towering over him. Flesh and metal twisted together, and glass flowed into and out of both with no apparent pattern or reason. Blood and oil flowed from open wounds in its side, and a low growl emanated from the end where the engine should have been.
Movement to one side drew Wilkins’s attention. A hulking form shambled toward him. White feathers sprouted from mangled flesh as the thing slowly made its way through the open field. Its head swayed back and forth as if it were searching for something, despite having no eyes with which to see. It turned toward Wilkins and the flesh of its chest parted. Bloody flaps peeled back, revealing an eye in the center of its torso. The strange orb met his own, and the twisted figure raised an arm toward him. A mouth in its palm moved, and a coarse voice asked, “Have you seen my dog?”
He shook his head, his mouth agape in shock at what he was seeing. The creature sighed in frustration and moved on, the sightless head bobbing back and forth as the mouth on its hand rambled on with threats to hold the train’s operators responsible should any harm befall her beloved ‘Princess.’
Wilkins turned away from the shambling mass of flesh and feathers as he remembered he should be searching for something as well.
“Richard?” he called out. His voice was hoarse and his throat raw. He vaguely remembered what happened. He pictured Henri with the idol, the strange green glow and the inky blackness, and then being consumed by the darkness. How he came to be in that strange landscape, and what had happened to the train and its occupants, was beyond his ken.
“Richard?” he called out again. Desperation filled him as he considered his friend might have met a fate similar to that of the old woman in the feathered hat. His gaze fell again on the train, and he saw a section of fabric adorning part of it.
Pinstripes and fine Italian silk covered a bulge of flesh, and above this, two faces twisted together. There was thankfully no sign of life between them, as the flesh of the bodies were melded together with each other along with the metal, glass, and wood of the train car in which they were embedded. One mouth was locked in an eternal scream, while the other was engorged with four eyes inside of it, each pointing in a different direction and sprouting fine black hair from around the irises. Wilkins took a step closer, and the eyes all turned to face him. He shrieked and ran from the thing as the train again lurched. “Richard!” he called out.
“Over here,” Richard called back from further toward the rear of the train, somewhere in the undulating field.
Wilkins stumbled toward the sound as quickly as his aching body would carry him. He passed by other passengers, all of them blessedly still and devoid of any sign of life. Their bodies were twisted and mangled, though none bore any obvious wounds. They were simply not as they had been before. One had limbs contorted at impossible angles, while another seemed to be melting in place, its flesh and bones sagging and congealing around the parts which remained whole. Nowhere did he see a figure, alive or dead, that was not horribly misshapen.
He ran his hands along his own body, up his chest, and across his face. Terror filled him thinking he, too, might be horribly deformed and not realize it. Once he found everything to be in its proper place, he focused once again on finding his friend. “Richard, call out again.”
“Wilkins,” Richard cried out. “Dear God man, hurry!”
Fear struck the anthropologist at his friend’s words. What had happened to Richard? Was he trapped within the body of the train, or was his own form now a twisted mass of deformity? Wilkins quickened his pace, jogging with a severe limp toward the sound of Richard’s voice.
He found the American kneeling in the open field, a body cradled in his arms. Blood covered him, soaking into his clothes and running down his lap. Wilkins feared some of it was his own. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
Richard shook his head and looked down at the form he was holding. A skinless face turned up to him with pleading eyes. The entire body was devoid of skin, and bare muscles twitched in agony. One arm was half raised, the hand curled into a claw. The muscles on the face contorted, and tears of blood ran down its cheeks. Only a full head of curly, red hair marked this had once been the woman Richard called Gretchen. Tears ran down Richard’s own face as he gazed into her eyes. She drew one last, ragged breath, then the arm fell limp and her head lolled to the side.
Richard looked up at Wilkins, the body still clutched tightly to his chest. “What—” he began, then choked back a sob. “What happened?”
The scholar could only shake his head as if to say I don’t know.
“The sky,” Richard said. “There’s no sky.”
Wilkins resisted the urge to look up for fear of drifting into the endless void. “I know.”
Richard gently slid the corpse from his lap and placed her hands over her chest. He reached out to slide her eyes closed, then realized there were no lids with which to close them. Wilkins fished around in his coat pockets until he found a handkerchief and somberly laid it over the face of the dead woman. Richard nodded in thanks and rose to his feet. “What now?”
Wilkins looked around. The terrain about them was wholly unfamiliar and foreign. They were nowhere on Earth he could fathom, and given the endless heavens above, he was quite sure they had well and truly departed from any reality they knew. Descriptions of Hell itself—or any version of damnation from any culture he had studied—paled in comparison to what he had witnessed thus far; and he had no desire to explore this place further.
“We need to find a way back,” Wilkins said.
Richard looked around as if to suggest a path, then his eyes locked on Wilkins’s own with a fear the Englishman had never seen in his friend before. “How?”
Wilkins cast about as well, at as much a loss as his companion. “I can only assume we should start in the last place we were before we were here: the observation car.”
They turned to the train, which still writhed and flexed with a life it should not possess. Bulges of flesh contracted as it moved, and exposed veins throbbed and pulsed as oil and blood pumped through the unnatural body of the beast.
“Well,” Richard said with a deep sigh, “I’d rather look for the tail than the mouth of it.”
Wilkins nodded in agreement, and they set off. From what he could tell, they were alongside the center of the train. As they trekked toward what they thought to be the rear, the receding volume of the creature’s constant growling confirmed their assumption. They soon reached the end, which narrowed to a bulbous tip which writhed and twisted more freely than the rest. It rose several feet from the ground and swayed to and fro. They circled behind it, giving it plenty of space should it suddenly change its momentum and decide to crush them beneath its immense bulk.
Finally behind the thing, they saw it ended not in the door and windows they had expected, but rather a sphincter of clear muscle spun from fibers of glass that flexed yet did not shatter. It pulsed open and closed with regularity, and from within there was a soft green glow.
“Well, that’s promising and disgusting at the same time,” Richard said. “So, we need to crawl into this thing’s...”
“Maybe?” Wilkins said with a shrug. He had no solid information to go on and expected any assumptions of what should be would prove inconsequential in such a strange place. However, the green glow was akin to that which had come from the idol in Henri’s hands, and if it had been what sent them there, perhaps it would be what would return them to their own reality.
Richard shrugged as well, then strode toward the rear of the train creature.
The tail was several feet off the ground, but not out of reach. The constant swaying would be a challenge, but the regular rhythm of it was predictable enough. Richard lowered himself into a half-squat a dozen paces from the thing and watched it for several moments. He raised himself to the balls of his feet, then sprinted at it. He leaped and grabbed onto the edge of the opening, hands closing around the exposed glass muscle fibers. The train reacted, and the giant sphincter suddenly began to squeeze closed as the swaying motion of the tail halted. Richard pulled himself onto the edge of the opening, then turned and waved to Wilkins. “Hurry up, before it closes!”
Wilkins took a deep breath and ran toward it. He jumped with all his might and grabbed onto Richard’s hand. The circular muscle was closing slowly, but there was barely three feet of open space above them as Richard grunted and pulled him up into it. The tail of the train slammed to the ground, and they both held on lest they be thrown from it. The glass strands were sticky under Wilkins’s grip and coated in some mixture of fluids. A horrid smell overpowered him as Richard drew deeper inside.
Both firmly rooted in place, they turned their attention inward. The entire section of the train seemed to be closing, but the green glow within persisted. If Wilkins’s assumptions were right, they would pass through it and back into their own reality. If he were wrong, they would be crushed to death inside the anus of a giant living train.
“Ready?” Richard asked.
“No,” Wilkins said.
They nodded to each other, then released their grip on the glass fibers and let themselves slide further inside the beast.
