The Sphere (43 page)

As we’re walking back we run into Beatrice.

“I was at Wuthering Heights,” she says breathlessly. “They don’t know anything about Heathcliff, but the rumor is that Cathy has disappeared, and he’s gone to look for her at Fife Park.”

“Fife Park?” asks Morgan with surprise.

“I know,” says Beatrice, “it’s odd. We all know the world ends there.”

“The world doesn’t end there; there just isn’t anything beyond Fife Park. It’s a blank space to be inhabited. These ignorant Sphereans,” grumbles Morgan, “they think they could fall into the void if they come too close to the edge beyond Fife Park. They don’t realize the Sphere is just that—spherical, and besides...”

“Have you seen it?” I interrupt. “Have you seen with your own eyes that there’s nothing there?” Morgan looks surprised. “Right,” I go on, “I guess there’s nothing to lose by checking to see what’s there and looking for Heathcliff.”

I spend the walk puzzling over the remains that we found in the little cemetery.

“You look much better,” Beatrice says suddenly.

“Actually I am,” I say with surprise.

Maybe I should take my recovery as a good sign, an indication that I’m on the right track to solving the mystery. But it still bothers me that I don’t know what the remains are.

“So do the remains have something to do with the winged creatures or not?” I ask angrily. I was only asking myself, but I seem to have said it aloud.

“Their faces are all the same,” points out Beatrice. “At least the ones we’ve found.”

I look at her in surprise. I hadn’t even noticed. I open up the bag we’re carrying and see that she’s right.

“But there’s nothing remotely like a wing in all the pieces we have,” says Morgan.

“True,” I say, still pondering the remains. “That dry material, it’s like cardboard, it’s so... flat. Maybe they dry out like that after dying. Brr—just the thought of it gives me chills!”

I look at my companions’ worried faces as we walk along. It’s hard to believe that they ever seemed wooden to me, that I ever saw them in black and white. They’re the most vivid things I’ve seen in a long, long time. They’ve given me thousands of reasons to hate them and love them all at once. I care for them, all of them. They’re so complex. But who isn’t, really? Axel. Me.

We’re close to Fife Park now; we’ve left the center of the Sphere far behind us. The ground has become a real mire, and our feet sink deeper into the mud with every step.

“How strange!” says Morgan, “It’s not like this even when it rains a lot. What’s going on here?”

Before the words are even out of her mouth a trap snaps shut on one of her feet. Beatrice and I don’t react quickly enough and Morgan goes flying, yanked up by a cord attached to the metal trap around her foot. She tries to break it with her magic, but to no avail. She swings through the air like a helpless little animal, her wild mane of hair waving back and forth. From the ground we can barely hear her shouts. She vanishes. The cord must be fastened to some kind of mechanism that I can’t see from here. We hear the creaking of metal wheels pulling the trap up and carrying Morgan off, but the sun is blinding, and we can’t keep looking up at the sky. As expected, Beatrice loses her role in the face of such a shock. That’s what has been happening lately: any unexpected little detail is enough to send her off the rails, so it’s even worse with something like this, something far beyond the comprehension of one poor little Spherean. She gathers up her skirts, tying them up with the cord she has around her waist, and races off into the mud without a second thought.

“Bice, stop!” I shout, terrified. “There could be more traps.”

Beatrice stops so abruptly that I’m afraid she’ll be yanked up into the air like Morgan. A few seconds pass, long as hours, and nothing happens.

“What do I do now?” Beatrice looks back at me in anguish.

“Try to come back by stepping in the same places.”

“Impossible! How do I know where I stepped?”

It looks like she’s about to burst into tears. She’s recovered her role.

The mud is a viscous mass that reaches up to our calves. After Beatrice ran through it the mud immediately oozed back into a smooth layer, with no trace of her footprints. She’s trembling from head to toe.

“Turn around very slowly. Try to stay right where you are, and don’t move your feet very much.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can,” I encourage her, “of course you can. Turn around. That’s all you have to do, just turn around.”

Beatrice still has her back to me. She twists her head around to try and see me. Her pale, sweaty face is getting more haggard by the second. She starts to sway back and forth.

“Are you all right?”

“No, I’m very dizzy. Something really strange is happening, Dissie. Please help me.”

Could the mud have some kind of drug or poison in it? Beatrice stands there, frozen in place, wobbling more and more.

“Tell me exactly what you’re feeling.”

“It’s... It’s...” she says doubtfully, “like there’s something
inside
me.”

My heart turns over.

“Inside? How?”

“Yes, inside my body. Right where my stomach is.”

I’m afraid some kind of creature has gotten inside of Beatrice’s body. We don’t know what we’re up against, and in the Sphere anything is possible.

“It’s squeezing me, it’s squeezing me tight!”

Beatrice whimpers and presses her hands to her stomach.

“I feel it around my neck, too, it’s holding me tight,” she insists.

I crane my neck and squint, but I can’t see anything holding her.

“Turn around, Bice, come this way.”

“I can’t. It’s got me. I can’t move.”

I don’t see anything on her, just the little droplets of sweat sliding down her neck and glittering in the sun. Suddenly I realize that before now the sweat I’ve seen in the Sphere has never seemed real, because it isn’t real—but this is.

“Are you scared?”

“What?” asks Beatrice, bewildered.

“Afraid—are you afraid?”

“Please, don’t talk nonsense, I’m begging you. Now is not the time.”

That’s it—Beatrice is feeling fear, and she doesn’t know what it is! Real fear, not from her role.

“Bice, listen carefully. That thing you feel squeezing you—it’s nothing.”

“How do you know?” her voice trembles.

“I know, I’m absolutely sure, you have to trust me. It’s nothing. Turn around and look at me.”

“But... I shouldn’t move my feet. What if the same thing that happened to Morgan happens to me?”

“Nothing will happen to you. Turn around.”

I’m tempting fate. There’s no way to know if there are more traps, or where they might be.

Beatrice moves her feet slowly until she’s facing me. Her brow is furrowed—something I’ve never seen—and her eyes are bulging, her mouth pressed into a line.

“Look at me. Just look at me. Walk really slowly, in a straight line.”

Beatrice manages to make her way back, her entire body shaking violently from fear. The worlds are mixing: it’s the first time a Spherean has experienced a human emotion. My time is about to run out—I know it.

Beatrice trembles in my arms.

“That intensity. Do you really feel that way in your world?” she asks me, her eyes still filled with real terror.

“Calm down, Bice. It’s over, it’s all right.”

Beatrice’s eyes are round, enormous, transparent, pleading.

Dissie...

“Did you hear that?”

Beatrice looks at me blankly. She has no idea what I’m talking about.

Dissie...

A strong beeping starts to mingle with the voices.

Eurydice...

Beatrice is still shaking. I gaze at the medieval woman who has been my refuge ever since I came to the Sphere. I feel sorry for her pain, and I imagine her serene again, weightless and ethereal, like she used to be. I imagine it with as much strength as I can, and the trembling stops. Her face relaxes, and her eyes recover their usual serenity.

Dissie...

The beeping is getting louder and more ear-piercing. Images of Carl, of Axel, of the accident. The Count’s gaze floating up in the clouds like a pointing finger, reminding me that I have to find Mina, that my time is not infinite, that I can only go out the way I came in. The images keep coming, overlapping at a dizzying speed. I try to focus, to think about something else, but they keep appearing in my mind.
We’re not flat!
...
I could tell you a story
– the words of Dracula and Charon echo endlessly, forming a disturbing whirlwind. I feel Beatrice’s hand squeezing mine.

“What do you have there?” she asks, pointing to the center of my chest.

I look down again, just like I once did in the Count’s mansion.

“Where? I don’t see anything.”

“There... there’s light.”

“Eurydice, Beatrice!” We hear Sherlock’s voice in the distance.

“Over here, William!” yells Beatrice.

Soon we see him approaching.

“Judging by his appearance, I think he’s in his role,” I say to Beatrice.

“Yes,” she says softly, “he looks like himself this time. The same as always: blond, lanky, serious.”

“Lanky?” I ask, surprised.

“Yes, you know how he is. Lean.”

Sherlock’s hair changes color. It lightens right before my eyes to a dark blond. Now that Beatrice has given me a description, the image I had of Sherlock has shattered. I feel a wave of frustration. I preferred the face I’d imagined for him.

“Finally, I’ve found you two,” says the detective.

I’d always seen him as sturdier, more attractive... Now when I look at him he’s tall and quite skinny, just as Beatrice described.

“And Morgan?”

“She was caught in a trap,” Beatrice answers anxiously. “Her foot was caught and she was pulled up into the air.”

“Why didn’t she use magic to get free?” asks Sherlock.

“She tried,” says Beatrice, “but she couldn’t. I don’t know why not.”

I’m suddenly thoughtful. It’s surprising how different Sherlock is from the way I’d imagined him. All at once everything makes sense.

“I know why her magic didn’t work,” I say. “She’s been taken by someone like me. Your world is ruled by mine.”

Beatrice lifts her hands to her mouth in astonishment.

“But... what about the Creator?”

“The Creator exists, Beatrice... though it seems to me that it’s really many creators.”

“It can’t be!” she shouts.

“I’m afraid it is.”

Sherlock scrutinizes me with his usual seriousness, analyzing each and everyone one of my gestures, my words, trying to understand what deductive process has led me to my conclusion.

“Dear Eurydice,” he says, measuring his words, “then your theory of permanent death is the answer to our riddle?”

“No,” I say with relief. “No one can kill you permanently. Beatrice has always been right: the Sphere is a perfect and indestructible place. I’m afraid that the actions of someone from my world have disrupted its balance. But even if someone wanted to, they could never destroy you.”

A powerful clap of thunder splits the sky in two, and the ground shakes.

Tall, grayish figures appear on all sides of us. They’re like flat ghosts, with their faces all alike and no expression whatsoever. I know that inside they’re empty—horribly empty.

“The remains from the cemetery,” exclaims Sherlock.

“They’re like us...” says Beatrice, her face wild, “but something has flattened them.”

“They’re just like that,” I say. “Nothing has flattened them.”

They put their icy hands on us and lift us up into the air. There’s nothing we can do. Their flat bodies flap in the wind, making a slapping noise like the sound of huge wings beating. They move so quickly that all I can see is a horizontal smudge where the countryside next to Fife Park should be.

Finally we reach a flat plain where they stop. It is—just like Morgan said—a blank space. Like a page waiting for words. One of the flat creatures opens a gate hidden in the whitish material. They fling Sherlock, Beatrice, and me into the hole like we were just objects. We roll down a path that seems to stretch out forever, lost in the deepest darkness, the most terrifying silence.

––––––––

I
can’t tell how long we’ve been trapped in this hole. Human fear has returned to torment Beatrice, Sherlock has changed roles three or four times, and I’m getting weaker and weaker. I know it’s because I’ve failed to solve the case. I listen to my friends’ ranting with tenderness and understanding—I know what’s happening to them. I know the missing people are being kept somewhere not far from here. They’re probably tied up, restrained somehow so they can’t move at all. This interruption of the action is what has disrupted the balance of the Sphere: the roles must never stop. I understand Morgan and Merlin’s theories. It’s the lack of movement that has so severely weakened the Sphereans in the hospital. The manipulation of the kidnapped Sphereans is causing our worlds to mix together.

Once again I hear the intermittent beeping that shakes me to my core, and the voices, too. They call out desperately, begging me to come back. I don’t know how much more time I have before my stay in this world becomes permanent.

A tiny point of light appears in the distance. It grows larger, little by little, until it’s a blinding beam of light, and we have to fling our arms up to shield our eyes. The slapping sound returns. Now we know there were never any wings at all. In the blink of an eye the creatures pick us up again and carry us off against our will. The cardboard hands and bodies grasp us with unexpected strength.

“Where are you taking us?” asks Beatrice, terrified. The kidnappers say nothing.

Slowly I begin to notice an odor. I close my eyes and search my memory.

“Blood! Sherlock, we’re near the blood I smelled in Ambrosio’s cell. I wasn’t wrong! It was human blood.”

“That’s right,” says a metallic voice.

The bright light in this place dazzles me, and it’s some time before I can see who it was that spoke. The kidnappers hold us down. Once my eyes can finally make out something other than dark greenish smudges, I see a small, emaciated man with an enormous head. It’s hard for me to believe it’s a human being. His twisted legs can barely support his weight; they’re nothing but two spindly threads covered up by his pants. The little man is wearing a ridiculous black leather suit with a cape, and a helmet that looks like it came from an old-fashioned diving suit. An assortment of tubes connect him to a crude robot with rusted wheels. Through the glass of the helmet I can see his sallow skin and the veins standing out at his temples.