Jeffrey Thomas - Subject 11

When he turned away from the sink to approach the table, 5 was standing there directly in front of him and swinging the copper pipe, gripped in two fists like a bat. He dropped his tumbler and the rust-tainted water splashed on his sneakers. The ninety degree elbow at the end of the pipe gashed a dent into 6’s forehead above his right eyebrow, blood rising rich and dark in the crater and overflowing it. His eyes had gone wide and he staggered back against the edge of the sink, but he didn’t go down, so 5 cocked the pipe back and swung it again. His hands came up too late to intercept it and the elbow struck his nose with a crunch. He dropped to his knees, more blood running from his nostrils and his eyelids fluttering. But he was still upright on his knees. As big as he was, 5 was afraid he would rise up yet and return the attack, so she stepped around behind him and bashed him a third time, now on the back of his head with its close-cropped curly black hair. This time 6 pitched forward onto his face, and when his already shattered nose impacted with the floor it spurted out a thick gout of blood. The gout quickly became a radiating puddle, in which 5 saw her dark reflection.

“You don’t want to confess, huh?” 5 said, huffing as she stood over him. Like some torturing inquisitor, through gritted teeth she went on, “I’ll make you confess.”

3 had pulled her top off, then taken 2’s head in her hands again and drawn it to her chest. He had sucked one of her nipples, dark as a chocolate kiss, into his mouth. His hands were on her waist, but she took one of them off and pressed it to her crotch. “Don’t be afraid,” she cooed.

From somewhere below came a high-pitched, banshee-like shriek. It reverberated in eerie diminishing waves.

“Jesus!” 2 said, whipping around.

“Was that 5?” 3 said, clutching his arm.

2 jumped to his feet, and waited while 3 hurried her top back on. “Come on!” he said, and they lunged toward the partly open green metal door.

5 had had a devil of a time dragging 6 into the confessional, an even harder time pulling his limp body up into the office chair. Once the chair had rolled out from under him and he’d thudded to the floor with 5 sprawled comically atop him. By the time she had succeeded in hoisting him into the chair, her white scrubs were smeared with his blood, making her look like a wartime surgeon. Thank God 6 was still alive. For a while there he had been making an uncanny, bubbly snoring sound, but now a vestige of consciousness had returned and his eyes opened halfway in the mask of thickening blood he wore. He began mumbling. Good. That was very good. “Keep talking,” 5 encouraged him as she backed out of the little room, grinning that grin that hurt her face. “Keep talking.”

She closed the confessional door, turned and confronted the swath of blood on the floor that led back to the banquet hall. There was no way she could clean that in time; 2 and 3 might come downstairs at any second, and follow the blood here. Disrupt the research more than they already had.

She had retrieved her copper pipe, and held it ready with determination. Maybe she couldn’t face both of them at once, subdue them and force them into the confessional as she had 6, but she had done the best she could. The rest she would have to trust to Dr. Onsay. She hoped the doctor would be appreciative of her contribution to the body of work. Now, all that remained was for her to perform one last confession herself. She only had to wait her turn, and pray that she wasn’t interrupted before she too could be submerged in the baptismal pool — that she might be reborn.

There had been several more unearthly screams, which seemed to penetrate into every room in the entire vast facility. Having thundered down the flights of steps to the ground floor, 2 and 3 followed the last echoing wail to the hallway off which were the entries for the laundry, the restrooms, the shower rooms, and the dormitories. They were advancing down this corridor to begin looking into each room when a figure burst out of the male dormitory.

It charged right at them, letting out an abysmal howl.

5 had heard the piercing cries, too, but would not leave her post in front of the confessional to investigate. Anyway, she intuitively understood the source of the screams. They originated from an ephemeral byproduct . And didn’t that indicate that the process on the other side of the door was complete?

She spun around and swung the door to the confession room open. Yes, it was as she had thought… and she stepped into the room to seat herself in the vacant chair.

2 grabbed 3’s arm and pulled her against the wall with him just as the running figure plunged past them. In the second that it was beside them, they saw that it possessed a mouth stretched wide but no eyes. It was without hair or clothing as well, completely oily black, and it flashed by them as if unaware of their existence or as if it didn’t care about them, so gripped was the entity in the pain or panic that had inspired it to shriek and flee. They turned to watch the figure, that three-dimensional shadow, continue its charge down the hallway — and yet it had only gone a few yards more before it exploded.

Instantaneously, with a soundless detonation that sprayed like liquid fireworks, the anthropomorphic figure had been reduced to gummy strings and garlands of membrane. The now amorphous mass splatted to the hallway’s floor, tendrils of varying thickness flicking madly in the air, in a repeat of what they had witnessed before in the female dormitory.

“God!” 2 choked, crushing 3 against his chest.

Once again, gradually the whipping tendrils broke off, rippled briefly in the air like eels, and dissolved as if they’d lost their transitory hold on corporeality. Once again, the mass was reduced more and more until it utterly vanished, leaving not a trace.

2 released 3, and as they faced each other he said with urgency, “We’d better find 5 and 6.”

“What?” 3 said, still looking stunned.

“The others — 5 and 6 — let’s find them!” He nodded toward the doorways further along the hallway.

Now 3’s expression was one of confusion. “Others?”

2 gaped at her for a second. “The other two… 5 and 6. You do remember them, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about? There’s only you and me in this place.”

He took her by the shoulders. “3… listen to me. There are four of us! There are two others, a man and a woman. 5 and 6!”

“Honey…” she began, wagging her head.

2 dodged around her then, and took off running down the hallway in the opposite direction from that in which the shadow being had bolted. The drugs, he thought — this was the second morning in which he hadn’t taken them, but 3 had only gone without this morning. The drugs were helping her forget… to resort her memories, to readjust, reboot…

“Hey!” she cried, starting after him, “where are you going? Don’t leave me here alone!”

2 darted from doorway to doorway, but he met no one in any of the rooms of their base camp: the two dormitories, the showers, the restrooms, the laundry. He moved on, then, toward the banquet hall with 3 on his heels, shouting, “Why are you acting so crazy? Stop it!”

But when he came to a halt near the large metal sink, she stopped beside him, and like him regarded the broad trail of blood on the floor. Protruding from the sink was a length of corroding copper pipe, and with recognition 3 picked it up, noting the blood speckled on its end.

Both of them turned to follow the still wet smears with their eyes. Like one long, continuous brushstroke, the blood formed a pathway to the closed confession room door.