Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 62 - Maze

Photo by Dan Asaki on Unsplash

Within seconds, the pulsing black circle doubled in size, then tripled, growing from the diameter of a quarter to that of a softball, then larger, before the small caravan of tossed-together sojourners even had a chance to move.

“Now!” Tabitha commanded, her voice surprisingly forceful, considering it was projecting out of the body of a ten-year-old girl. “Girlie…Olivia…whatever your name is. We have to move now!”

Tears still streamed down Olivia’s face, the emotional upswell from having just talked to Charlotte, from hearing the voice of her deceased mother-in-law, of the overwhelming sense of hope that welled up within her at the idea of seeing David, of seeing him soon, of knowing he was perhaps only a quick three-hour drive away. She could be in his arms rather than in this cold and barren place buried within miles of concrete and metal curving under Chicago’s skyline like the circulatory system of some monstrous beast.

But before her very eyes, the putrid green telephone on the wall crushed in on itself, its sides folding inward, the twisted cord flipping wildly as it was sucked inward into the pulsing black sphere like some horrid gaping mouth inhaling a sea-colored strand of plastic spaghetti.

Tabitha snatched hold of Olivia’s bicep, gripping it with her tiny hand, and tugged her further from the wall.

“Move, Olivia!” she snapped.

The others stumbled over their own feet, a trembling stampede. They lumbered forward as if they were running in water, straining against some invisible force in a panicked attempt, grasping for momentum over the terror of having seen a black hole spontaneously generate directly before them, effortlessly appearing as if nothing more than a sudden breeze, within centimeters of Olivia’s hand, as she’d clutched the receiver of the telephone. They were blinded by the terrible thoughts of what could have happened had Olivia moved just the slightest bit — if her fingers had been set around the phone’s receiver in just the slightest different way.

“Olivia, now!” Tabitha barked again, and her words finally broke through through Olivia’s distraction and horror, connecting. Olivia nodded tentatively at first, and then, in a beat, determined, the reality of the situation suddenly sank in. She turned and looked Tabitha in the eyes and nodded more firmly.

“Yes,” Olivia said. “Right. Let’s go.”

“Let’s go, indeed,” Frankie said from the middle of the pack. He lingered as far as he’d dared while still trying to distance himself from the rapidly growing black hole. None of them had any intention of placing themselves directly in the path of yet another anomaly like those that had appeared above Lake Michigan earlier that day and began to swallow everything in their path.

The five of them - bespectacled and thin Tony with his ridiculous walrus-like mustache, James with his protruding belly and sweaty mass of curly hair, Frankie with his trim tucked-in shirt, Tabitha in her tiny red dress, and Olivia wearing light blue shorts and a rock concert t-shirt — all turned and ran with unexpected speed down into the gaping maw of the tunnel.

And David. All Olivia could think about was David, and sadness overflowed in her, pouring outward as she ran, running on legs much faster than she ever remembered. But she didn’t occupy her thoughts about the speediness of her stride. She couldn’t push David’s face from her mind. She struggled so dearly to see the faces of Mark and Rosie. Their images were quickly fading into some strange negative image, faded and murky. But David, who had died in the kayak accident and not amid all this time warp noise and nonsense, David’s face was clearly in front of her as she ran down the concrete tunnel, their footsteps echoing like tiny explosions, a rattle of noise, bouncing and surrounding everything with pandemonium.

Tabitha now lagged, struggling to keep pace with her tiny legs.

When Tabitha first occupied this bodily space as a child, she rarely partook of freeze tag or hide-and-seek with the neighborhood children who would gather on summer evenings, nights hot and sticky with heat and humidity coming off of Lake Michigan to the east. But she’d watch them, most often, through the screen of her open bedroom window, not necessarily wanting to join them in their play but curious nevertheless. She was bemused by their preoccupation with the trivial. The neighborhood kids with their BMX bikes and mix-tape-filled Walkmans lived preoccupied lives, not just playing outdoor running games but scouring TV Guide for the next inane sitcom, or strolling down the street to the Stop-and-Go convenience store, wasting quarters, dropping them one after another, into Super Punch-Out and Frogger and Pac-Man.

As she struggled to keep up with the others, Tabitha turned her head and saw the black hole as she’d first seen it just days before. It had been just outside this very building — a future version of this building. That first black hole swallowed up the entirety of the ENH Initiative before her car with Sam and Darke inside being sucked into it, flung upward as if nothing but a tiddly wink being snapped across the floor. Just as before, here was another black hole, or perhaps inextricably, maybe the same black hole as at the beginning of this entire mess, sometimes disappearing, then unexplainably back again, exponentially multiplying in size and number with each breath, rapidly, like an angry growing monster chasing them down this maze. Chasing down these feebly running figures in ancient bodied made new again as they feverishly scrambled down the endlessly twisting network of concrete tunnels.

As she ran or struggled to in this weak little body, Tabitha thought of the kids from her neighborhood, of the day she walked into the Stop-and-Go with her father as he stopped to fill his tank of gas. Jenny Harrison and Mary Helbert were hovering over Jason Strankham’s shoulder as he animatedly jerked a joystick back and forth, his blonde hair matted and sweaty and his face contorted as he faced the video game. She’d heard Jenny and Mary talk about how cute he was — and how rad — but Tabitha didn’t understand. Jason reminded Tabitha of a dirty sock and imagined he smelled like one, though she’d never gotten close enough to find out for herself. Now, running through the tunnels under ENH, the thought of Jason and his inevitable smell made her chuckle, and she was surprised by her bemusement amidst such a trepidatious predicament.

That same day, as her father waited in line to pay for his gasoline, Jason slapped the side of the Pac-Man machine and cursed before storming out of the store like the petulant little boy he was. Jenny and Mary diligently followed him.

“You want to try it?” her father said, seeing her still staring at the Pac-Man machine.

“What? No,” she’d told him.

She hadn’t been thinking about the game. She never saw much appeal in any game, and she never saw the purpose. But then her father reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. He sorted through the coins and extracted a quarter, holding it out.

“Give it a shot,” he said with his warm smile, and she obediently took the coin and slid it into the machine.

“Nothing’s happening,” she said.

“You have to press the one-player button,” he said, pointing to a white button next to which was a warped yellow blob with googly blue eyes and two clownish feet. “It’s right there. Where it says ‘start game.’”

Tabitha followed his instructions, and already iconic music, somewhat familiar to her even though she’d never played the game, filled her ears. She navigated the yellow character, wacca wacca wacca wacca, jerkily through the maze.

“I’m supposed to avoid those monsters, right?” Tabitha asked.

“Ghosts,” her father said. “They’re called ghosts.”

She moved Pac-Man to the far bottom right of the screen and then downward, swallowing a larger blinking white orb. The game’s sounds suddenly changed, and the ghosts turned blue, scrambling in different directions.

“What happened?” Tabitha asked her father. “They’re not chasing me anymore!”

“You changed them,” he said, grinning. “Get ‘em!”

And now here she was, back in the same body of that tiny little girl, her body once again a couple of years away from the one that tore into her father’s discarded stereo speakers from which she’d extricated her first powerful set of magnets in a time still long before she began her studies in astrophysics and would eventually lead the Large Hadron Collider team at ENC. But now she was in that same body again, with the same memories and years more. As she ran through this tunnel far beneath the streets of Chicago, winding past the maze of pipes and cabling, a monstrous black pulsing beast bearing down on them, Tabitha laughed aloud again at the memory of that day, of her father watching over her shoulder and cheering as she chomped on large white dots in the Pac-Man machine, dots that transformed the monstrous ghosts into something else, something that could be destroyed.

“You have to hurry!” Olivia called over her shoulder, slowing down to run alongside Tabitha.

“Don’t slow down!” Tabitha panted, grinning, euphoric almost as an idea took hold in her brain, that tremendous endorphin rush of having an idea and knowing it was right. “Go!”

Olivia grabbed Tabitha’s wrist and pulled it, and Tabitha felt instantly like she was running faster.

Now Olivia craned her neck, saw the black hole, and felt its pull. It seemed to be tugging at her and slowing her steps. She felt as if she was now suddenly moving at a crawl. Turning back, she saw Tabitha’s face. But rather than panic and fear, the small red-headed woman in the girl’s body was smiling. She was smiling, and now it was Tabitha, her tiny hand clutched firmly in Olivia’s, pulling them forward, faster and faster down the concrete tunnel, her smile growing wider with each rapid step.

“Dr. Habash!” Tabitha called out to the group ahead of them in the tunnel. “I know what we have to do!”

Photo by Jack Niles on Unsplash