Shadow - Monsters, Machines and Mad Scientists!: Episode CXLIV - The Cavern of Forgotten Dreams, Part IV

It all changed in the blink of an eye. One moment Ellis was running towards the cottage, about to pass through the doorway into the warmth inside, the next-

"What in Shadow is this?" Gulliver shouted in alarm as they stepped into sudden, cold, damp darkness, their feet splashing to a stop in a puddle.

They had come to halt where they stood, on the threshold of the cottage, only there was no threshold now, no doorway, no cottage and no snowy forest. There was only an endless darkness, edged with cold stone, running with streams of water and ancient lichens.

"Where are we?" Ellis asked, his voice echoing off into silence.

"I know this place," Annabella replied.

Gulliver and Ellis both glanced her way. She was staring around them, as if taking in every detail, her expression one of both familiarity and alarm. She reached out to touch the walls, felt the water running across the surface, then let her hand drop.

"This is where Doctor Barkham had me kept after... this is the city beneath the sea..."

"Fracture, right? Where Siren went after she left us, looking for M. Marveille."

"Yes... and no. This city is older. It is the city beneath the city beneath the city. There is Shadow, then there is Fracture and then there is this city, so old no one even knows its name."

"I don't get it," Gulliver asked, sounding even more panicked than before, "where's the cottage, and the forest and... those creatures?"

"I don't know," Ellis replied, "but it seemed to me that that world was made from my memories, or at least, what might count for memories. This must be Annabella's."

"The Velociganths..." Gulliver muttered.

"What was that?"

"The velocignaths, the ones that attacked the ship before we arrived. They appeared just after I had been thinking about a time when Siren and I were lost at sea, surrounded by velocignaths."

"It's just what I suspected, then," Ellis concluded, "this place is somehow taking fragments of our memories and turning them into some kind of nightmare reality."

"But why? And what about those creatures?"

"Perhaps they were a memory of someone else from the crew, or perhaps..."

"They are coming!"

Ellis cocked his head to listen and, sure enough, behind them in the corridor came the echo of clicking mechanical legs, hurrying towards them, their pinsharp limbs snicking in the stone with every step.

There was no point saying anything else, so they simply ran. There was only one way to go and instinct, fuelled by adrenaline, carried them forward into the dark. And on and on it stretched - a tunnel of no escape, with a relentless, advancing enemy behind: a perfect nightmare.

And, just like in any other nightmare, the rules could change at any moment. Ellis blinked again and-

They came to a stumbling stop as the corridor they had been running down was suddenly a small, square room, devoid of ornamentation, with only a desk and four chairs in the way of furniture. It didn't become the room, there was no transformation. It was a corridor and then it was a room.

"Okay, I'm not sure 'ow much more of this I can take," Gulliver said, his voice rising hysterically.

"I think this is it, though," Ellis replied as calmly as he could, thought he was still trying to catch his breath.

He blinked again and there was a door in the wall before him, blinked a third time and it was open, a fourth and there was a man in a suit. Part of him was terrified, the other part-

"What is this?" he laughed, "The Matrix?"

The man was sitting at the desk now, having spectacularly failed to traverse any of the space between the door and the chair in the meantime. He tilted his head in a distinctly inhuman way - the first continuous movement Ellis had seen the man achieve - and flashed a smile: so rapid and brief as to be almost a blink in itself.

"That was one of the references we took, yes." the man replied. Despite all appearances, its voice was definitely not human, sounding somewhere in the conceptual space between a growl, an aria and the apocalypse. If Ellis had not been looking at the man and hadn't seen the words formed in his mouth, he would have been sure it had been produced by a choir of monsters, not a single being.

"References you took?"

"When we delved into your minds. We took things, used them and manipulated them, made them real for a time. To study. To learn."

"And what, exactly, did you learn?"

"Many things, especially from the two of you." The suit's gaze flickered for a moment between Ellis and Annabella. "We had not realised it had yet begun. You caught us..." he tilted his head again, "...sleeping, you might say, but now we know. Now we will be prepared. It will happen soon."

"What will happen?" Annabella asked, eyes wider than usual.

"You two are keys. You know that. You have unlocked realities, but now the doors are left wide open. And you are not the only ones." The suit flashed his brief, horrible smile once more. "This is what we have been waiting for."

Ellis didn't understand any of this, but that didn't stop a cold feeling forming in the pit of his stomach as he listened to the man's words. It was the feeling of knowing you are responsible for something awful yet to come, and yet knowing nothing useful about it and able to do nothing to prevent it.

"This is all about them, then, is it?" Gulliver said, his voice quavering, "And what about the rest of us? What about me?"

"You'll have your role to play too, Gulliver Blake. The rest? They were useful for testing certain... reactions."

"Those are our friends!" Ellis shouted, "You can't just treat them like lab rats!"

"Friends? Really? When you've done such a good job of keeping them all at a distance? Did you truly know any single one of them?"

"I knew them," Gulliver replied and he sounded angry now, "they were definitely my friends. Where are they? What 'ave you done to them?"

"Their part is over now. They have been returned."

"And what about us?" Ellis asked.

"We still have things we want to know. You will be held until-"

During this whole conversation Annabella had been standing still and tense, but now she took that a step further. She had gone completely rigid, her hands clenched into fists at her side, the muscles and tendons visible in her arms as she pulled them all taut. Ellis saw this out of the corner of his eye, was about to turn to her to check she was okay when suddenly she opened her mouth and screamed.

Several things happened at once. The man in the suit grabbed his head as if he was experiencing a sudden, intense pain. The room seemed to flicker, as if a fluorescent light were about to burn out, and, as it did so, the man's face flickered too, turning from recognisably human to something other: alien, ridged and wider at the top and flanged like some kind of coral, with too many eyes and a long, low, open mouth, like that of the subject in Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'. Despite its alien appearance, however, there was something horribly familiar about it.

Annabella's scream seemed to last a long time, though it was only a few seconds. The suit clutched his head, the room flickered and then - darkness: cold, wet darkness, as Ellis found himself floating, exhausted in the midst of the underground lake.

There was the sound of splashing and spluttering nearby. Ellis scanned the darkness, turning around so quickly that, for a moment, he plunged himself beneath the icy surface, taking in a huge mouthful of stale water, forcing him to cough it all out as soon as he returned to the air and only then, when he had retched himself wretched, could he call out to the others.

"Annabella," he coughed, "Gulliver! Are you alright?"

The nearby splashing continued, accompanied, this time, with a familiar scream. It was the same one which had dismissed the illusion mere moments ago, only this time it sounded watery, a horrible, gurgling cry.

"Annabella!" he called, suddenly panicking. An awful thought was forming. What if the strange little girl couldn't swim?

The darkness was starting to resolve itself, a contrast between the hollow dark air and the slick dark water. What light there was - coming from far away and yet glowing brighter - reflected off the droplets of water in the air, the ripples on the surface, the foam where, even then, a pale hand was sinking into blackness.

"Annabella!" Ellis screamed and, putting all his energy into the strokes, crawled his way towards where the bubbles were rising. By the time he neared the point where he had seen her, however, he was no longer sure exactly where she had gone down.

“She was just there,” Gulliver said from somewhere to his right. Ellis glanced quickly his way and saw the gangly pirate take a deep breath, then dive below the surface. Ellis did the same.

Underneath the rippling glass, the water seemed even colder, and yet there was light, of a sort, a faint glow, impossible to see through the waves and reflections, emanating from somewhere far beneath them. There was a hint of shapes, of artificial geometries, like lights pouring out of the windows of a city, and yet less distinct, almost like the stars in a nebula. Against this glowing backdrop, Ellis could see Gulliver and Annabella quite clearly. The latter was drifting down, ever deeper, whilst the former was kicking with all his might towards her. Ellis turned their way and powered through the water as well as he could, but it seemed he had covered no distance at all before he found himself running out of breath and had to kick for the surface.

He emerged, desperate for in, into the glow of bright, hypostatick lights as the silhouette of the Absolution loomed towards him.

“There he is,” came Siren’s voice from the deck, and despite all that was happening, even then, in the water beneath him, his heart leapt to hear it and to know that she was safe and well. But there wasn’t time to wallow in such feelings, and so, once his lungs were full once more, he dived below and sought out Gulliver and Annabella once more.

They were far beneath him now, and it seemed like it could not be possible that they would make it. He started to swim towards them, but even as he did so he saw Gulliver reach her, put an arm around her and begin to haul her back up. They moved so slowly, it was like something was trying to hold them back and Ellis could see by Gulliver’s motions that he was struggling, that he needed air soon. Annabella could only be worse, so he kept kicking towards them.

Suddenly he was beside them. Gulliver was looking faint, but still swimming as powerfully as he could, so Ellis grabbed Annabella’s other arm and, turning one-eighty in the water, pushed for the surface. He could feel the weight of the water, the force of it holding him back, but he could see the lights of the Absolution also and could hear, in his memory, Siren’s voice calling for him. So he kicked and kicked and, even when Gulliver seemed to lose power and dropped limp beside him, he kept going, holding on to both his friends until they reached the surface and the light and-

-Air! Blessed air, rushing into his mouth and throat and lungs so cool and refreshing he almost didn’t notice the water that came with it, or the tingling feeling in his limbs. He glanced to the side, saw Gulliver and Annabella unconscious on the water’s surface and then he heard a series of splashes as the crew of the Absolution dove into the lake all around them. Their rescuers at last.

I can sleep now, he thought. And he did.