Nullity

In a grand dance hall a horde of people dressed in magnificently tailored coats and supple, silk dresses spun round and round to the waltz of an orchestra. Music resounded through the hall and chatter from the party-goers added a breath of life to the room. A lone figure in the center of the floor stood out amongst the crowd of elegantly dressed guests; A man dressed in a long, tattered trench coat was slowly turning in graceful circles to the music, laughing gleefully as he mimicked the motion of the crowd.

The party-goers were all but oblivious to the existence of this stranger, but to the man the crowd of dancers were all cast in eerie, green, light. Round and round the crowd waltzed while the stranger feigned a curtsy here and a swift salute there to the oblivious spectres. As the waltz came to an end the crowd began to applaud as they slowly faded into thin air, leaving the stranger clapping in an empty room.

“Playing with ghosts again are we, Philip?” The voice came from the silhouette of a man leaning against the entryway of the dancing hall.

The voice startled the clapping man and his body snapped around towards the large doorway.

“William! You startled me. I um, yes I suppose I was. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” The man on the dance floor picked a bag up from one of the worn tables nearby and slung it upon his shoulders as he walked to the door.

“Jealousy I suppose. I like to imagine what it’s like to see what you see.” William unslung a rifle from his shoulder as he spoke and started to walk down the hallway.

“Well that’s a little ironic considering the, well you know.” Philip raised one finger in a circular gesture to the cloth band around his own eyes and was met with an unimpressed stare from his brother. The young man cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Anyway it’s rare for me to find them in a moment of peace. Most of the ones I stumble across are reliving much less pleasant moments.” Philip’s tone changed to soft and somber. He could feel William frown from ahead of him.

“Did you get the part we came here for?” Philip attempted to change the mood and the conversation.

“I did. We got lucky, I found a few spare coils from the hotel’s heating system near the roof. More than enough to fix the library’s heating system before the snows fall. Looks like we’ll live to freeze to death another winter.” William took his rifle and strapped it vertically to his backpack. He pulled a pair of thick gloves from his bag. The gloves had a thin sheet of metal covering their entire exterior and strange wires running from devices attached to the wrists.

William gently slapped the gloves together and rubbed his hands for a moment before electricity sparked from the tiny glass tubes on their wrists. William took a step forward towards an open elevator shaft and grabbed the cable hanging in front of him. His gloves gripped the cable with no effort and he began to slide down the cable without any sign of friction.

Philip watched his brother gently drop for about three floors before he grabbed the cable with his bare hands and mimicked William’s effortless descent. As they neared the hotel lobby, William, his gloves still gently humming with electricity, grabbed the cable a little tighter and slowly brought himself to a stop at the lobby doors. William leaned his head forward and pulled a release on the gloves with his teeth to gracefully dismount the cable.

As Philip reached his brother he put one foot on the lobby floor before hushed whispers distracted him from dismounting the cable. William turned around and saw his brother’s confused expression.

“Hey, let’s go, you know we can’t stay here too long.” William spoke softly but firmly as he unslung his rifle once more and looked out of the windows of the hotel lobby.

“There’s something in the basement. I can feel the vibrations of something moving down there.”

“All the more reason for us to get out of here, Philip, let’s go.”

“William, it’s wounded. I… I think it’s a person…” Philip turned his face directly towards his brother. William couldn’t hide the surprise on his face and after a moment he nodded to his brother. Philip quietly descended into the dark of the room below as William charged his gloves and followed after him.

As the pair descended into the basement the air felt stagnant and musty. Using the vibrations coming from the elevator cable, Philip was able to get an image of the elevator shaft below. He slowly brought himself to a stop on top of the elevator car itself and waited for his brother.

As William landed on the elevator car, he put away his gloves and pulled out a strange piece of headgear, an almost bowl shaped helmet with a light affixed to the front. Attached across the helmet’s brim were a pair of red and blue lensed goggles. William turned on the headlamp and no visible light was cast from it. As he flipped down the goggles the entire elevator shaft lit up with a wash of pale light through the lenses.

“Ladies first.” Phillip gently whispered to William as he opened the elevator hatch for his brother. William scowled from behind his cumbersome headset before silently hopping into the dark car below. Phillip was about to follow after him when he heard his brother’s voice.

“Phillip, you need to see this.” William’s voice held his usual calm and even tone but the urgency was impossible to mask.

Phillip quickly hopped down into the car and the minute his boots hit the floor he could see everything William was seeing. With the vibrations from every heartbeat, Phillip could see the outline of the entire room. The basement was a massive room with an arched ceiling and a grand chandelier hanging in its center. The walls were decorated with massive posters that Phillip could only make out the outline of and the room itself had a multitude of counters with ornate registers. The awe of this beautiful room only stuck with Phillip for a moment before he saw what was causing William alarm.

The doors of the stairwells and other elevators were sealed shut, seemingly by the doors melting to themselves, and in front of each door was a massive stack of mummified bodies. The corpses’ faces were twisted with expressions that indicated they had died in horrendous pain and fear. Around every exit to this makeshift dungeon there was a pile of similar bodies, except for one pair of double doors. The doors leading past the counters on the farthest wall of the room were unobstructed by mounds of the dead.

Both brothers took a moment to absorb their surroundings before William spoke out loud, never once taking his eyes or rifle off the unsealed doors.

“Phillip, this is wrong. No one here could possibly be alive. We just came down the only way in or out.” As William spoke the whispers returned to Phillip once more.

“I… I can hear someone down here. You don’t hear that William…?” Phillip’s voice gently trailed off as he lost focus on his words and fixed his senses on the voice gently calling out in the darkness.

“It’s past those doors. Someone needs our help, William.” Phillip spoke in an almost trance-like tone now. Phillip slowly began to walk forward towards the doors. As Phillip stepped forward, William grabbed his brother’s wrist and pulled him close to whisper directly in his ear.

“Phillip, there is something wicked happening here. We need to leave, now!” William whispered the words with venom and hearing his brother’s intense voice directly in his ear was like a poke in the eye to Phillip. He stopped walking and shook his wrist free of William’s grip but before Phillip could say anything in response a noise from the doors caused the pair to whip their heads around.

Standing there in front of the doors was a small girl, dressed in tattered clothes, her face set in a sort of stoney sadness. The sudden appearance of this child caused both William and Phillip to jump in surprise. William leveled the barrel of his rifle at the girl and Phillip raised his hand to gently lower it as he slowly stepped towards the child. The little girl made no movement until she rushed forward with speed that caused both William and Phillip to let out a yell. The child ran forward and grabbed Phillip’s waist as she started quietly sobbing and Phillip felt an intense, unnatural sadness wash over him.

“William…” Phillip hugged the girl tightly in his arms as he spoke softly to his brother.

“William, she’s dead.”

“No, Phillip, that is a living child, I can see this one too. That is a little girl, a little, living, human girl.” William stepped forward to examine the child and as he went to place his hand on her head it was met with nothing but air.

“Oh. No…” William let out a soft groan of sadness before his expression changed to confusion.

“Wait, why can I see her, and more importantly why can she see us?”

Once more before Phillip could answer his brother a noise interrupted them both. A loud metallic banging struck the floor above them and echoed all the way down the elevator shaft. The sound caused the little girl to release Phillip and take two steps backwards.

“The Mechanikin! Phillip we have to go now or we’re going to be fighting machines in a literal tomb.”

The little girl grabbed both the brothers’ hands and tried to lead them through the doorway but instead accidentally led them both face first into the doors. She popped her head back with an embarrassed look before disappearing again. Seconds later the doors swung open.

The room they entered was a large cinema room, with a blank white screen at its front and rows upon rows of seats in its center. As they entered the room, William tipped over a large metal cart in front of the doors to try and slow their pursuers. The girl led Phillip to the front row of seats and pointed to a tiny corpse that lay curled up on the seat, tightly clutching something to it’s chest. As the girl gestured to Phillip there came a horrible, metallic, scraping noise from the elevator shaft in the opposite room.

“Phillip… I… I don’t have a plan. Looks like we’re trapped down here.” William's words had an almost detectable dismay to them now. Phillip felt his heart start to race with fear until the little girl grabbed his hand more aggressively and very intentionally pointed to the small corpse before them both. Phillip reached down and gently pulled the frail arms of the body away from one another, revealing a tiny, heart-shaped locket. Phillip took a moment to stare at the locket before a thunderous crash slammed against the double doors.

“Phillip, you need to hide, now!” William had dropped to one knee with his rifle shouldered and pointed to the now shaking door.

Instead of listening to his brother, Phillip grabbed the locket and for a moment everything stopped. There were no sounds, nothing Phillip could see any longer. In an instant Phillip was awash with the green light of a grand ballroom. Spectres applauded around him as a waltz faded and Phillip looked around in awe as he noticed a heart-shaped locket around his neck.

“Phillip, are we dead?” William’s voice once again startled Phillip as he turned and saw his brother checking his neck for a pulse. As he looked to William, Phillip saw the girl standing at his brother’s side. She pointed to the locket at Phillip’s neck.

“William, I think she saved us.”