All Souls' Day

IX

They finally emerged at their destination. A ladder extended from that last grated portal to a platform a dozen feet below or so. From there, it dropped down to the floor of the vast room. A dimly lit chamber with a long walkway connecting to a large open ring. A glowing ring that reached from the floor to the ceiling. And within that ring a view to assorted landscapes beyond. That view would change every few minutes, as one member from a whole queue of sheep would walk through. Remarkably, each sheep appeared to be taking turns, waiting for the sheep ahead of it to enter the portal and then waiting for the portal to change before walking through itself.

After they had all descended to the first platform, taking extra care to help the little girl down the ladder, the younger Christina caught sight of the line of sheep in the distance. "How... are they doing that?"

"Why? Is that the weirdest thing you've seen in this place?" the older Christina asked with a sardonic smile.

"Heh... fair point," the other replied.

"They're ruach-infused," Phil explained.

"Right, you mentioned that."

"A ruach is an incorporeal entity," Phil continued. "It's unclear where they fall in the hierarchy of beings here, but whatever it is they appear to be instrumental in influencing human affairs and shaping or reshaping history."

"What the hell is with the sheep then?"

"Well, as I said, they're incorporeal. As far as I can tell, that has something to do with them being bound to the fabric of spacetime itself. Since we're beyond normal spacetime along some other dimension here, they require a carrier. A corporeal organism to which they can attach and cross dimensional boundaries. Once they're on the other side once the host organism dies they are free to 'reattach' to the other... universe, I guess. Since livestock have been routinely slaughtered throughout human history, it provides an ideal avenue of entry. That may be why they apparently had a growing amount of influence in the past couple hundred years, considering the record increase of animal slaughter subsequent to the dawn of the industrial revolution and all."

"Heh, okay, not gonna lie. You lost me a little bit."

"He does that from time to time, doesn't he?" the older Christina interjected. She gave Phil a warm smile, but in her eyes there was something more. Something like nostalgia mixed with grief. It was the other Phil she was thinking about. The one she had known for years. The one she had married. The one she had lost, before her own untimely death, and the one she had lost again less than a year ago. Was there some better truer space or time beyond all this where they might meet again? A part of her never lost hope.

The younger Phil that was actually there broke his gaze with Christina and looked off to the end of the platform. "So here goes nothing, eh? I'm gonna try to reprogram the portal from there. Anyone have any preference on time? We all come from different times after all."

"The earlier the better," the older Christina spoke up. "As far away from the invasion as possible."

"Invasion?" the younger asked, but the others ignored the question.

"I guess that means my time, since I'm the youngest and all, eh?"

"Technically, that's little Christina here, Phil," the older Christina remarked.

"Heh, I guess it might be foolish to pick back up my life where it was anyhow," Phil said.

"Wait, why?" the younger Christina asked. "Why can't we go back to my time and—?"

"Because there's still another you," the older replied. "Another us back there. And trust me, a few short years from your time the world is not worth going back to."

"Why?" the younger asked. "The invasion?"

The older nodded somberly. "Remember the locusts? Entire hordes of them. Multitudes of swarms of them coming from... oh my god..."

"What is it?"

Phil gulped and lifted his hand. There he pointed off to the walls in the distance. An innumerable mass of sickening insectoid silhouettes. A whole swarm of whirring chittering monsters in the dark.

"Move!" the older Christina barked at the others. "Take the girl and get to the portal!"

"But what are you—?"

"I said move!"

Christina, the elder, fought the locusts with ferocity as the others escaped down the remaining ladder and ran toward the portal. She managed to toss the powder on one as she swung her rod at the others. Yet, for all her effort, one creeped up behind and rose its stinger in the air, before slamming it into her back. She called out with a blood curdling scream, before dropping her metal staff to the floor below.

The weapon lodged itself in a crevice, and in the midst of pain and anguish she fell from the platform to the floor below. When she did, it was in just the horrifically wrong way, as she became impaled on that metal rod, piercing through her chest just below her heart.

The three cowered, awaiting the inevitable onslaught of the locusts. The portal still had yet to open again. But then, just as their doom seemed near, a solitary sheep stepped forth from the queue and slowly sauntered toward the ghastly horde of monsters. With what looked like a nod from that curious wooly beast, the locusts stopped in their tracks, before slowly backing up and then hopping and crawling away back into the dark.

The younger Christina took the opportunity of this strange retreat to run back to the elder woman. The strange solitary sheep looked on, staring at them both ominously.

"Oh my god! Christina! Oh my god!"

"You—you have to get... get through the gate."

"We're not leaving without you!"

"No good. I'm—I'm just glad I'm in shock."

The younger Christina held the older woman's bloody hand, stared in her face and started to sob.

"There has to be something. Something we can—"

The older Christina closed her eyes and took in long slow breaths. The stinger wouldn't have killed her. It only would have made her wish she were dead. She had seen it before. A fate debatably worse than death. Torturous pain for months on end. The blood rushing out of her wound emptied out the toxin, even as it bled out her life.

"You..." the older Christina muttered between breaths. "You have to... to go. It was... always a long... shot."

The younger Christina shook her head furiously between weeping tears. She had never had a sister. But this woman. Her older self. Someone that knew her in ways she didn't even know herself. And now she was passing away.

The older Christina stared into the eyes of her younger self and smiled. And then as though knowing the woman's own thoughts, she breathed out, "I never had... a sister." She then closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and let out one long last breath.

"Christina!" Phil called out to her from the portal, the little girl clinging to his hand. "We have to go! Now!"

She wiped her tears away and nodded her head, before running back to the portal and there past the sheep. It turned its head as she passed, knowingly. It almost seemed to smile.

The three of them ran across the stone bridge as fast as they could. Man, woman, and child. All of them running through that round glowing gate. So focused on making it through, that they paid no attention to what came through behind. The sound of its clicking clacking hooves was drowned out by the deep drone of the gate and subsequent explosive burst of sound as they passed through it. The gate seemed to collapse all around with a whoosh.