Psychomech (42 page)

‘Brought back,’ Wyatt snarled, ‘—by your husband, I suppose.’

He snapped open the shotgun, popped the third cartridge into the still smoking chamber, closed the gun.

‘Look!’ Terri’s trembling hand on his elbow straightened him up. ‘He’s coming!’

Koenig was walking towards the house, his face cold and impassive now, his pace measured. Only his eyes showed emotion, and they burned. If ever Wyatt had seen a man with murder in his face, Willy Koenig was that man.

‘Gareth,’ Terri repeated, ‘he’s
coming
?’

‘I see him,’ he answered. He drew back the bolts on the door and opened it, then aimed the shotgun directly at Koenig. ‘It’s the only way now, Terri,’ he said. ‘Don’t look…’

The black stone corkscrew stairs seemed to wind interminably tighter and tighter as Garrison/Schroeder rode Psychomech steeply upwards and towards that terminal turret wherein he knew the Black Room waited with its terrible secret, that Honor he had feared above all horrors.

But Psychomech had at least given him the strength he needed to face that Horror, so that now he knew only a predominant determination to be rid of the thing once and for all. His integrity—his very existence—would be impure, imperfect, indeed jeopardized if the Horror were allowed its tainting, taunting co-existence.

Jeopardy, yes, for even now he could feel the reverberations of the Horror (which must also have certain of its tentacles or acolytes in the Otherworld), telepathic murmurs which threatened once again, unknowingly warning him of imminent dangers and dooms. Dangers to his multimind here in this sinister pile of black stone, and to his physical being in—

—In the Otherworld!

And at last, as any man on the brink of waking. Garrison/Schroeder finally knew that he dreamed, that his existence was in truth a subconscious existence quite apart from his physical reality. Perhaps the Machine itself imparted this knowledge to him; or maybe it came as a result of his expanded dual mentality and his now almost fully developed ESP powers. Whichever, he knew he dreamed, and that after he disposed of the final Horror he must awaken.

But awaken to what? To all the dangers of the Otherworld? To treachery?

Treachery from whom? From which quarter?

If only he could remember more of the Otherworld… but he could not. What Garrison/Schroeder could do, however, was reinforce his defences. He put out mental hands, gave mental commands, and it was as if the black castle knew!

As if the castle were a living thing which feels its life ebbing, the entire structure trembled and cracks appeared in its walls. Black dust and stony debris rained down from the darkness yawning above, and a half-light filtered in through the shaken walls. And onward and upward Garrison/Schroeder rode the Machine, and the castle’s quaking grew steadily worse.

Now the pile’s lesser creatures took to flight, like rats fleeing a foundering ship, and their leathery shapes of darkness scuttled on the spiralling stone stairs or flitted frantically overhead. Perhaps the Horror, sensing Garrison/ Schroeder’s approach, might also attempt flight. He would not let that happen. Once again he extended ESP hands to set up mental barriers, sealing all escape routes. And though he acted subconsciously, still the act had its parallels in the waking world.

And at last, rising up from the great spiral stairwell. Garrison/Schroeder found himself on a great stone landing beneath a high vaulted ceiling. And on the landing a huge black door riveted his gaze, beyond which—

Beyond that door… a room, a riddle, and a Horror.

The end of the quest.

The Black Room…

Koenig saw the shotgun in Wyatt’s hands, ignored it, came straight on. He was just ten paces away when Wyatt thought,
he must be stark, raving mad!
and started to take up the slack on the trigger.

At that precise moment a grey wall appeared, a dome that reached up and over the roof of the house, shutting the house in and keeping Koenig out. The German paused, came closer, touched the grey wall of the dome. It was weird, like grey solidified mist. Not warm, not cold, but hard as stone and equally impenetrable. Koenig walked its perimeter. There was no way in. It was simply a great grey blister sealing off Wyatt’s house from the outside world.

Koenig shuddered and thought again of the force which had driven him, against his own will, to approach Wyatt where he had stood in the doorway cradling that shotgun. And that had been after he had witnessed Suzy’s death by the same weapon in the same hands. It could only have been Garrison who had taken command of his will; but by the same token only Garrison could have created the grey dome.

Koenig nodded to himself. His life had not been in jeopardy, no. Garrison had merely used him to keep Wyatt in the house while he created a more permanent barrier, the dome. But nevertheless it had been—unnerving. To say the least!

He walked back toward the Mercedes, cold sweat drying on his back and making his shirt cling…

Terri and Wyatt sweated, too, but on them it was the sweat of absolute terror. They stood, mouths agape, staring at the grey wall where it loomed just beyond the open door. The wall seemed slightly translucent, letting a little light into the house but not much. It also created an overpowering sense of claustrophobia. And at all of the doors and windows it was the same story. The house had become a rat-trap, and they were the rats.

‘Trapped!’ Her voice was a tiny, echoing thing.

Wyatt was ashen in the dim light. ‘Yes,’ he croaked, ‘but there might still be one way out. It’s him or us now.’ He reeled away towards the stairs, Terri tugging at his arm and begging:

‘Oh, no! Not that, Gareth. It’s murder, just Murder.’

‘Murder?’ He turned to her. ‘But it always has been. What did you think I was going to do to Koenig, Terri? What do you think he would have done to we? This has gone past right or wrong now. Now it’s life or death—ours or Garrison’s. Can’t you see that? Can’t you feel it building up? Believe me, if I don’t get him, he’ll sure as hell get us!’

They were half-way up the stairs when she grabbed his arm again. ‘Gareth!’

Her voice was a breathless tremor of disbelief.

He turned, stumbled, sat down on the stairs. He clutched the shotgun and stared.

The grey wall had followed them, had closed in behind them, shutting off the rest of the house. The stairs went down into greyness, were lost from sight in it.

Wyatt jerked to his feet and dragged Terri scramblingly, gaspingly up to the landing. The grey wall followed, came to a halt at the head of the stairs. Terri’s teeth were chattering as she hung on his neck. He dragged her almost dead weight to the door of the room of the machine. There he released her, aimed the shotgun at the single remaining fused padlock, closed his eyes and squeezed on one trigger.

The shotgun blast not only removed the padlock but slammed the door back on its hinges. Wyatt stepped inside—and staggered as if struck in the forehead! Nothing he had so far experienced could compare with this. This was utterly weird—and so frightening as to be almost unbearable.

Psychomech seemed encased in a glaring, pulsating blue fire laced with traceries of slow-flickering golden energy, like a continuous yellow lightning working in slow motion. Central upon the machine’s bed, Garrison’s entire body seemed to expand and contract in time with the pulsing of the alien radiance, his prone form grotesquely swollen in one moment and hideously shrivelled in the next. The whole scene—of man and machine alike—seemed to melt and flow in the pulsing light, creating an awesome stroboscopic effect which defied the eye to define any real or solid outline.

The worst thing, however, had got to be the continuous
fluctuation
of Garrison’s form, that monstrous bloating and shrinking…

Wyatt remembered why he was there, jerked up the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed. One cartridge left. He centred the sights of the weapon on Garrison’s pulsating body and pulled the trigger.

A golden web of apparently delicate energies leapt the space between Psychomech and the muzzle of the shotgun. The path of the charge was blocked. The barrels split at their ends and curled back on themselves like hot plastic, and Wyatt was snatched from his feet and hurled like a rag doll out through the open door. The door slammed shut behind him, shimmered for a moment—and where it had been the grey wall now reached from ceiling to floor!

Terri fell on Wyatt where he lay sobbing on the floor against the wall of the corridor. His back was badly bruised and his forearms singed, but apart from these superficial injuries he seemed unharmed. She helped him up, supporting him as they limped to the bedroom where they collapsed upon the bed. The grey wall followed, cocooning them in the dim room with the bed and its black sheets. It was like being underground, like being buried alive.

Wanting to scream but instead of screaming panting uncontrollably, the lovers clung, their agony of terror binding their bodies together more surely than passion, their tremors
becoming
the vibrations of passion. She felt him against her, standing erect, huge as she had rarely known him.

In the next moment they parted, stripped and fell upon one another in a frenzy.

‘One last time,’ she sobbed.

Last time? Yes, she was right. The last time. He could feel it. Feel it?—it was overpowering! The growing malignance, the enmity, a fearful psychic force filling the house, the room, the very air they breathed.

They made agonized love, clawing at each other, hurting one another and not caring, not even feeling…

The door to the Black Room.

Garrison/Schroeder’s flesh tingled. He drove the Machine against the door, felt it give before Psychomech’s irresistible strength. The Black Room, black as ink, with its black-sheeted bed, lay open to Garrison/Schroeder’s gaze.

And upon the black bed, writhing like a nest of pallid pythons, death-white against the black—

The Garrison facet was in ascendance. He cringed, his mind shrinking down into itself, hiding, seeking solace. The man on the bed was his father, frantically copulating with one of his sluts. But could Garrison be sure? Their faces and figures seemed to be melting, changing even as he watched. Now the girl was his first true love, and the boy his best friend that had been. Or perhaps they were simply any pair of cheating lovers, caught in their act of passion by the one it would hurt the most? But no, they were not just any pair of lovers. The Garrison face knew what he was seeing, and the knowledge was a dagger turning in his heart.

Even cringing he looked again at their white heaving flesh, then reached out a thought and slowed their frantic sexual activity. In slow motion they continued to couple—and yes, they were unmistakably his wife and her until now secret lover. They were Terri Garrison and Dr Gareth Wyatt.

Terri and Wyatt, white against black. Or black against white!

Garrison’s ultimate hangup: his own betrayal!

‘
No!’ he whispered. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Nonononono…!’

‘
No!’

Crisis!

The half-suppressed Schroeder facet wanted to react but could do nothing. In another moment he would share a madman’s mind.

But Psychomech—the repaired, complete Psychomech, the Grand Psychomech as Otto Krippner had envisaged it, the Otherworld Psychomech—was already reacting. Already delivering its surge…

Garrison/Schroeder came awake. He knew who he was, where he was,
what
he was. And he knew that Adam Schenk had been correct.

‘Light,’ he uttered the word from Schenk’s horoscope. ‘Let there be light!’

He opened eyes no longer scarlet but uniformly golden. And he could see. He could see more clearly than any other man or living creature before him. He saw the straps where they held him down and dissolved them. He dissolved the connections that linked him to Psychomech. He floated free of the machine’s couch, his body turning through ninety degrees until his feet grazed the floor. He floated to the door and it disintegrated before him. He floated down the corridor, across the landing, and came to a halt outside ‘Wyatt’s bedroom.

And the light of his anger shone out of him, and the strength of his anger was that of an earthquake. And he was glorious in his anger. And there was a Great Power in him…

Wyatt came once, twice in rapid succession; Terri too, while all about the lovers the house commenced to. shake and rumble. And creeping under the bedroom door from outside, a kaleidoscope of colours wove weird patterns on the carpet. Still clutching and clawing, they squirmingly adopted one of passion’s oldest positions. Terri’s body bucked and heaved against Wyatt’s face and mouth and he tasted sweat and salt and the fruit of his own lust. Even with her mouth full of him—seeing the light from outside growing intense where it burned beneath the door—she began gurglingly to scream. She screamed m sexual frenzy, in a nightmare rictus of fear.

He came again, into her gaping mouth—came, came, came un-endingly, impossibly—draining himself, destroying himself. And—

The bedroom door bulged inwards, fragmented, shattered into a thousand flying shards and splinters.

Garrison/Schroeder stood in the riven doorway, golden-eyed, awesome—and full of anger. He could have destroyed them there and then, but something caused him to hold back. Instead he slowed them down, bringing them as he had done in his dream to slow motion where they crawled from the bed to huddle at the base of the grey wall.

No one in the whole wide world he could trust. Only Koenig.

Koenig, yes—and perhaps one other…

At Schloss Zonigen, a heavily muffled figure in a blue, outsize parka emblazoned with the crossed spanners of a mechanic waddled penguin-like down the vaulted, neon-lighted corridor of ice deep in the heart of the centuries-stilled glacier. His breath plumed in the air, a myriad miniature snowflakes to add their glittering layer to the frosty floor.

Reaching his objective—a stalled electric rail car, rimed white over its black and gold where it stood abandoned in a lay-by—the mechanic snapped open the battery cover and shone his torch inside, examining the bank of six large batteries. It was as he had suspected: some inefficient clown of a driver had failed to check and change the batteries. All six were dead as dodos. They wouldn’t power a small boy’s train set let alone the black and gold four-seater. He would have to get a service car down here and change the batteries. Or he could have the car towed back to the service bay and do it there. Christ!—as if it weren’t bad enough just
being
in this God-damned morgue without actually having to
work
here!