Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

When he said the word simulacrum, the lake, trees and sky around him suddenly fluttered, like a painted curtain rustled by a passing breeze. He ignored the disturbing ripple and tried to focus on the gateway.

“The gateway has opened,” he said, “but it seems smaller. Crooked, almost unstable. If I were to try and pass through it, I would have to do so on my hands and knees.”

That’s when he was struck with a notion so compelling, he felt physically staggered by it. A notion so simple and obvious that he couldn’t believe it had never occurred to him until that moment.

What if he did just that? What if he went through the gate?

Of course, it was a terrible idea. He could almost see the raised eyebrow on Bell’s disapproving face at the very thought of it. After all, they had absolutely no idea what lay on the other side. Would the atmosphere be breathable? Would there even be an atmosphere at all, or would he find himself in some purely theoretical dimension? One of pure thought and energy, where mundane functions of the human body—such as breathing—would be rendered meaningless and irrelevant.

But, could he truly call himself a scientist if he were to pass up such a unique opportunity? What about all the potential knowledge that might be gained on the other side?

What about the danger? What if, in passing through, he was transformed into a radioactive monster like the Zodiac Killer?

Walter stared, mesmerized and silent, at the glistening gate. He was locked in a profound inner war with himself. He knew he would be crazy to take that kind of risk, but he’d also be crazy not to.

He reached a hand slowly toward the gate.

Gracile, reaching tendrils started forming around the edges as the gate pulsed, widening, then narrowing, then widening again. It would be a tight fit, and Walter would need to time himself precisely to push through when the gate was at its widest.

He took a sloshing step closer, fingers less than in inch from the undulating opening.

That’s when he heard a terrified scream.

He jerked his fingers back—convinced that the gate itself had screamed—and stood, unmoving and silent, for several heartbeats, waiting for something to happen. The only sound was the gentle lapping of the water against his legs.

Then a thud, followed by the sound of breaking glass. As if reacting to the sound, the gate shrank and curled in on itself like a salted slug, and then it was gone.

Another scream, this one even more drawn out and intense. Walter spun toward the sound...

...and found himself standing in the middle of Nina’s bedroom. Disoriented and swirling with vertigo, he sat straight down on the suddenly normal, solid wood floor, pushing a shaking hand through his hair and struggling to pull himself together.

He looked around and spotted Bell and Nina together on the other side of the room. They were kneeling, facing each other, holding hands and staring, enraptured, into each other’s eyes. Nina’s gun was on the floor beside her, forgotten.

Walter jumped, startled when he heard another reverberating crash, this time coming from behind the left-hand wall, from the house next door. It sounded as if someone had knocked a television set off its stand. The floor actually shook with the impact.

It was followed by a shattering of glass. Bell and Nina didn’t seem to notice.

“Belly,” Walter said. Excited agitation obliterated any tactful desire to leave the two of them alone in their clearly intimate moment. “ Belly!” He reached out and shook Bell’s shoulder. “I saw the gate! Just for a fleeting moment. But now the majority of the hallucinogenic effects have dissipated, other than a lingering audio component that sounds like screams and crashes.”

“Crashes?” Bell shook his head, as if he’d just been woken up from a deep sleep. “I hear that, too.” This puzzled Walter, for he felt none of the empathic link.

Nina also shook her head, looking down and quickly letting go of Bell’s hands, flushing crimson with embarrassment.

“How peculiar,” Walter said. “Our minds failed to sync up telepathically this time, and yet we are sharing this minor auditory...”

Another resounding howl of human misery. Nina leapt to her feet, gun in hand.

“Jesus,” she said. “That sounds like Mrs. Baumgartner! She and her husband live in the basement flat next door!”

The howl came again from the neighboring house. Actually it was more like crying now, ongoing sobs that ebbed and flowed like a tide.

“You hear it, too?” Walter asked.

“Of course I do,” she snapped. “It’s real!”

“It sounds as if someone has been hurt,” Bell said. “We’d better see what’s happened.”

14

Once they were outside, they realized that night had fallen while they were tripping. Nina led them down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door onto a wooden porch that looked out over a wild, overgrown yard. There was a locked and rusty gate between Nina’s yard and the one next door, and she unlocked it with a small key.

The yard next door was nicer, better kept, and full of robust rhododendrons and camellias, as well as a small leggy patch of pumpkin vines with only a single, softball sized pumpkin. There was a large mossy birdbath guarded by several stone bunnies in various poses.

A set of concrete steps led down to the door of the basement apartment. As they stood there, anguished wails continued to come from within.

The phosphorescent lushness of the bougainvillea that crowded the doorway and the way Nina’s knock caused light to flash in the corners of Walter’s eyes let him know that he had not yet fully come down from the trip. The cries from within the apartment were also unnaturally intensified, seeming to bore their way into the soft tissue of his hypersensitive brain, like hungry maggots.

He shook his head to escape the image.

“Mrs. Baumgartner!” Nina called. “What happened? Are you okay?”

The wailing stopped, replaced by a faint, papery voice with an old country accent.

“Help me. Please, God help me...”

Nina tried the door. It was unlocked. She pushed through it into a neat little kitchen that smelled like a jarring combination of onions and cloying rose-scented air-freshener. Walter wrinkled his nose at the warring odors.

The room was decorated in porcelain kitsch. Milkmaids and bakers and sad-eyed praying children. Cows with strangely human smiles on their bovine faces, and dapper pigs in waistcoats. The sound of canned television laughter came from further into the apartment.

“Mrs. Baumgartner?” Nina called. “Where are you?”

Another sob instead of a reply, and Walter and Bell tiptoed behind Nina as she crept through the dim kitchen and then into a narrow, cluttered dining room that lay beyond.

They all had to turn sideways to inch past the massive antique table that filled the entire room. There was one single place setting at the far end, with a small, neatly folded pile of papers and clipped coupons beside it. The rest of the table was covered with another platoon of ceramic figurines, all rallying around a giant gaudy centerpiece of plastic fruit and candles that had never been lit.

At the open archway to the living room, Nina stopped and gasped, then stepped back involuntarily into Bell. He took her shoulders and looked around her into the room.

“What...” Bell whispered. “What happened?”

Walter came forward and peered around them.

“My God.” He winced and turned his head.

The living room was as clean but cluttered as the kitchen and dining room had been, with too many doily-covered end tables, overstuffed velvet chairs, and a coffee table crowded with glass dishes full of ribbon candy and butter mints. There was a brown floral couch with a single pillow and a crocheted afghan, as if someone had made their bed there. A black-and-white TV was nattering away, some kind of a game show.