Fog settled over the concrete expanse with only the operating table and anesthesia machine beside Meredith. As the mist crawled over the anesthetic unit, the plastic cracked and dissolved into sand. The tabletop moaned as it crumpled on itself, rust devouring its entire surface. Two small footprints dented the brown-crusted metal, but Amelia wasn't anywhere to be found.
Meredith surveyed the now impenetrable fog. Around her, the mist simmered in every direction—never settling, never rising, only displacing with motion.
Below her, the concrete remained unchanged from that of OR14. Somewhere deep into the wisps of opaque, odorless smog, a metallic bang shot across the expanse and a piercing shriek rattled from a distance. It echoed twice then ceased abruptly.
Meredith froze, her ears tracking the sound. Her heart hammered as she waited. One minute passed, then two minutes, then five minutes. Only a motionless breeze whispered above her. So without direction, she strode further into the fog.
For miles, she hobbled through emptiness. Though upon further inspection, it wasn't complete emptiness. Despite nothing physical—nothing tangible—this world seemed more slumbering household than a deserted building, more erased drawing than a blank canvas, more abandoned than never formed. Something lived here once. Perhaps it still did.
The wind arrived at steady intervals akin to the breath of a dying man. Around her, the mist spun itself into discernible shapes then dissolved into its amorphous form.
Another rattling shriek—this time further off—swirled the mist as if it recoiled in fear. When it echoed, it was not a lone scream, but a thousand in a chorus. Meredith picked up her pace. Without a compass or a landmark, keeping terror to her back seemed a reasonable plan.
While she progressed, if her pathless travel could be considered such, Meredith discovered patterns in the shapes surrounding her. One giant block—the home where she raised Kyle—formed but evaporated whenever she approached it. Another wisp of fog thickened to form a soccer net: Kyle's soccer net. A third patch condensed into the rough shape of a car, or more specifically, a 2005 Honda Odyssey. Meredith supposed they might have been a square and two rectangles. But her heart filled the outlines and made the details concrete. They even had an order. As she walked, the objects of her shared past with Kyle thinned, eventually stopping and solidifying into the darker outline of a wall. Beyond it, waves crashed, a Beach Boys song swooned, and another scream rang out. Meredith's focus darted forward, and she jogged until every hint of the shrieking disappeared.
Among the distortions of mist, rose a dark distant figure that did something the others did not. It moved.
On a few occasions, it paced back and forth. At other times, it twirled, its hair spinning and fluttering in bursts as if under a slow strobe light. Most of the time though, it floated there and watched her. Meredith ignored it as best she could.
After another mile, within the dozens of shapes of her recent past (her apartment, various ORs, her used sedan), one pattern caught her eye. She recognized it too well. In fact, as its form simmered like heat waves rising off tarmac, it snapped in place. It was the only piece of the world that felt real since Kyle departed.
As if struck by liquid nitrogen, the shape—a building—crystallized then distorted to match Meredith's memory. Before her, rose the garage door of an abandoned storage room. Nobody ever bothered to check there. Nobody even bothered to visit the entire hospital subbasement. She watched it, uncertain of everything except what this world was commanding her to do. It waited there, staring at her.
To the door's side, the rusted keypad hung at an angle, still connected by a sizzling arterial wire. A loud click cut through the fog, and the garage opened. Motor reeling, its rust tarnished surface squealing in agony, the maw stretched wide and rattled dust from its face. The metal panel rose, its shaking and struggling motions moved the entire earth beneath Meredith's feet. An electric humming called from within as, without a switch being flipped, the swaying overhead bulbs flickered.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
TerrorA world unseen dies over and over. It shrieks at a pitch that you cannot hear. It rots with a stench that you will never quite know. It isn't a place meant for you and I, it is merely a bank for the dead and dying; a vault of visceral agony. I...
