TITAN
Interlude: Evil

The room wasplain. Empty. The floor was white and bare. The walls (were they walls?) werevague and intangible. This room might not have had walls or they were out ofreach. There was light and he could see, but there were not any bulbs orflames. The light just seemed to be.

Eric was notsure of anything. Not even himself. He just knew that he was there (wherever“there” was), in a place, and it was not a dream (or was it?). He felt nothing.No wind. No heat. No cold. He did not even feel his own weight. Yet lifting hisarms and legs required tremendous effort like moving in molasses. But there wasno reason to move. There was nowhere to go. There was only the room and it waseverywhere.

Somehow,Eric knew he was not alone. He did not know how he knew this. But he was awareof another presence.

And another.

One was inthe room with him and the other was not… but still it was there. It wasever-present. Still, Eric could feel nothing. His heightened senses wereunplugged and he was left with only the most basic: sight, smell, touch, taste,and hearing. His body recorded the images around him, but no more. His mindmade no judgments or analyses. Eric was restarted in DOS mode; there was onlythe most basic of functions.

And theroom. The room was there. It showed him nothing.

Then itshowed him her.

Sarah stoodopposite him. She was the first presence. Eric realized that now. Sarah wasokay. Not dead. Sarah had never stood before. Her hair was long, deep, andchestnut brown and it flowed around her gorgeous, cream face. Amidst the graynothingness, Sarah was vibrant. She had color and presence. Her eyes were sogreen they stood out of her head. A silk white dress clung to her body asnaturally as flesh. Her legs were long and toned, not twisted and bent. Herarms were straight and smooth, not curved and broken. Here she was everythingshe had not been in life: perfect—untouched by pain or deformity.

Finally,Eric felt something and knew it completely: Sarah was beautiful. Thethought brought to him a kind of joy so pure and unconstrained by consciousfeeling that it overwhelmed his disconnected being.

With thatthought, that feeling, he received other things. He saw her and knew this waswhat she would have looked like. This was who she might have been. Memoriescame to Eric now. He remembered what Sarah had been like. She had beenhandicapped with cerebral palsy, microcephaly, and many other maladies. Thesenotions flashed in Eric’s mind like a camera bulb’s flash. Sarah’s shape on thecouch burned into his brain. Sarah sitting in her special curved chair burnedinto his brain. Sarah lying in her bed, surrounded by pillows and oxygen tanks,burned into his brain.

Sarah’seyes.

Her eyesburned into Eric’s brain. He saw them in his mind’s eye. At her sickest,Sarah’s eyes were always alive. They found you and held you whole.Sarah’s eyes seemed to read your soul. Her eyes were the only things shecontrolled. Eric remembered thinking before she died: She’s trapped in there.Her body is a prison and she is trapped inside, condemned to stare frombright green eyes that can never participate in the world. But they are pure.Her eyes are jewels of God. A recompense for her imprisonment and sufferingfrom God Himself.

That evaporated. The room swallowed up hismemories. Stole them from his mind. The feelings of goodness, of Sarah, and ofGod were gone. Eric was left with Sarah…

…only…

It wasn’tSarah. It was the other one.

Her eyeswere gone. The beautiful green eyes had died, burned out into white blankness.The color she radiated faded to drab black and white and gray. Except for herdress. Her dress was red. Crimson red. Death red. She changed verysuddenly in a burst of crimson light. Eric felt it in his soul. However benignthe place had been before, it had changed. It was not a good place.

The absenceof temperature that had persisted initially was replaced with cold. A deep,all-encompassing cold. Eric felt it in his bones. His body put off no heat todefend against it. The cold was inside him. It chilled his spirit. Eric feltthe changes but did not move. He did not huddle unto himself for warmth, he didnot rub his hands or his arms; his body did not react. Only his eyes. Theystared out feeling everything his body would not (could not?). They looked towhere Sarah had been replaced by something that resembled Sarah…

Whathappened next burned in Eric’s memory so deep that it would never beextinguished. It could never be forgotten. It became a part of him like hisheart, pumping blood through his body—but this thing did not pump blood orlife: it pumped the horror of Hell itself.

A line ofred ran down from the corner of “Sarah’s” mouth. Like the dress, it was cruelcrimson. It gave off color that nothing else did—or could. And just like that,she opened her mouth wider than seemed possible exposing a maw of the blackestsort. This maw was not empty. Blood bubbled up over her lower lip and spilleddown her jaw. It did not soak the dress. The dress was made of it—blood. Andfrom the abyss of her mouth, which gurgled of death itself, a sound both deepand terrible erupted. Not a scream or a yell. There was no human interpretationof what came out of her mouth. It was the sound of death. It was evilcoming from the throat of the thing that looked like his sister.

What hadonce been a place of nothing was now everything. Every sense Ericpossessed awakened in that terrible instant and he knew terror. This was not amonster under the bed. This was not a creeper hiding in the dark. This was notthe unknowable dread beneath the surface of the ocean. This was fear, despair,sorrow, and real horror given life in Eric’s soul. He stood face to face withthe death’s head of his sister mewling perfectly despite the waterfall of bloodspilling down her chin. And from her, he felt the presence of somethingterrible and old.

God’smistake… Evil…

Eric steppedback. The difficulty of movement remained, but impelled by the living face ofHell, he found the strength. It was a bad idea.

TheSarah-thing’s white, dead eyes fixed on him as soon as he moved. Its browcarved a severe “V” between her eyes. The blood running from her mouth ceased.Her lips shaped into the demented perversion of a grin and her lifeless eyeswidened. Her arms came up—with fingers curled into twisted claws—reaching forhim.

Sheshrieked.

It was ahigh-pitched, piercing whine that lasted several moments before dying and thenrising again. She snapped forward, seized his shoulders, and brought herhellish howls right into his face trying to close its ghastly mouth around hishead. Eric jerked away.

There’snowhere to run!

Eric ran. Hemoved, but the room did not. Eric put distance between himself and theSarah-thing, but he crashed right into her again. It was like being in a Mobiusstrip—it kept repeating. No matter where he turned, there she was:screaming and spitting rage.

Finally, hefell. Eric crashed into the monster that looked like his sister and she hunchedover him hissing terror in his face. There was nowhere to go. As if it had notgotten bad enough, thick, black liquid coursed from every orifice of her face.Her eyes, her nose, her mouth, and her ears oozed with the oil of death. Andstill the screaming came. No gurgle at all. Because it was not a throat. It wasa gateway to Hell.

Ericscrambled backward and stumbled to his feet. The darkness was closing in. Ericran to it. Anything was better than staring Hell in the face. He ran and ran.The mewling hatred spewed just behind his footfalls. She was right behind him.Twisted and terrible. Coming, always coming.

Then therewas a door with a window. It appeared as suddenly as a flash of lightning does.Eric swung it open and hurled himself through it with the door still clutchedin his hands. Then he slammed the door shut to the pursuing Hell. It was quietnow. Back to the way it had been before. Eric climbed to his feet and went tothe door.

Its facesmashed against the window.

Ericrecoiled. The thing slammed itself against the door, drenching the window withits blood and black evil. He was safe, but it was right there. Ericfaced terror and fled. He escaped, but not really.

It is always there… and it’s trying to escape.