I never made it to the hammock. The lake evaporated, taking everything green and alive with it. Most of what made me human drained away, leaving my spirit rattling around the cold, numb husk that passed for a body in this realm. Transition complete, I lay crumpled and stunned in a heap of frigid dust.
I already missed Vermont. Missed the girls. Missed life. Missed everything. Desperately.
I even missed the pitted plains. That pale, blue sun. Even those giant bugs. The Liminality was a paradise compared to this place.
I would have sold my soul to Wendell if that would have kept me out of here. To think how I had begged and hounded Luther to show me the way. What an idiot. What a fool!
The wind rearranged the sand grains in front of my nose. I was in no hurry to look up. I just wanted to lay here and let the elements take me, bury me half in the ground like those Old Ones in the pitted plains. I would exist in my own singular singularity, a singularity of one, as it should be.
My gaze latched onto a splash of color that startled me right out of my trance. The sheer chromatic intensity of it jarred amidst all the muted taupe and rust surrounding me. It was a ribbon. Bright blue. The one Luther had tied around the rolled up note he had written for his old friend Olivier.
I gathered the courage to face my fate and sat up. Patience, I told myself. Like all things bad, ‘this too shall pass.’ That phrase was ancient and unattributable, but it was quite possibly the most comforting snippet of language ever written. If I had ever gone to high school and had a yearbook, I would have chosen it for my motto.
This time, at least, I had reason to hope my exile would not be permanent. Something would show up eventually to and transit me back. I couldn’t control or predict when, but it had happened once before, why wouldn’t it happen again?
I snatched up the note and hauled myself to my feet. A broad and shallow valley spread before me, its lowest reaches smeared with a gray blotch of humanity. A horde of marchers flowed downhill like a river seeking the path of least resistance.
Clouds of dust curled over their heads, dispersed by eddies of wind spinning off the weird, dark cyclone that impaled the farthest reaches of the valley. The storm, if that’s what you could call it, receded from the procession, but it was evident from the chaos at the head of the column that it had plowed into the vanguard before veering off.
The column was headless now, the tight mob that had led the charge had been shattered and dispersed, a thousand souls blotted away in one swoop. Those who had marched behind them were now surging forward to fill the void.
The scene below, in a single glance, told me all I needed to know about the Horus. The damned thing was just another kind of humongous reaper. Only this time there was no need to confine anyone in pods. The souls here were eager and desperate to be reaped.
I had no interest in going or even knowing where it led. Maybe if I was stuck here for eternity I might feel differently. I was lucky that way. Special. I had an out. I had Vermont. God knows what the Horus intended for the poor suckers chasing it. Of course, they had no choice but to hope it was someplace better. The Deeps, though, seemed an unlikely way station for spirits destined for a higher existence.
I could imagine the despair of the people who had counted on the Horus being their ticket out of this existence, who with the storm bearing down, had been so certain their time had come, and yet it hadn’t. Some of them had to deal with the realization that they might never catch the Horus.
I wondered whatever made Urszula’s crowd think that they could ever take such a monstrous thing down. Talk about David and Goliath. What balls, what chutzpah they must have had to go after it the way they did and succeed. Twice! Of course, Urszula had never told me how.
