Could it be that what we observed was the state of the basement at the wake of the Kikyo Effect experiments? Were time and space completely shredded by madness that a hundred years later the damage continued? A new and different kind of fear entered my consciousness - a dread inconceivable to those secure in location and continuity - because if these speculations were correct then we crossed into a portal. We could be anywhere, anytime, unable to return where we belonged.
It was a distortion of time and space. As I walked through rows of columns, restored unnaturally into the luster of nightmare, I clung onto that rationalization like a lifeline. Reason - it was my only connection to reality - and to restrain my emotion I recalled the details of experiments I already investigated, especially those involving Montuak.
Montuak, a base at the tip of Long Island, New York, was the epicenter of time travel conspiracy. It was claimed that a few, trained clairvoyants, assisted by equipment designed by Tesla, created portals between different times and different spaces. And it was claimed that soldiers were sent to explore those portals; those fortunate enough to return related how the portals looked like tunnels, like passages with doorways into other, parallel passages.
A picture was breaking through the fog, all of the details, all of the conjecture, it was adding up in front of my eyes and suddenly my tactic to soothe my spirit only worsened it.
It reeked of evil.
Those voices, by the gods, those voices. Frantic. Crazed. Disembodied. Their cacophony will not leave me!
Hojo and I were surrounded by a mob we could not see that was desperate to be free of that maze a shattered mix of time and space formed out of the basement. There were shouts of 'the stairs are blocked', cries of 'who's there, who's there', and a slew of vocalizations that froze our blood. If people were trapped within that portal...we shuddered at the implication...how did they survive?
We discovered a door - a door - without a wall. We accepted it. It was as strange as anything could be. Yet, at that juncture, what were we to do? It was wooden and reinforced with bands of metal. We did not find a knob, however, we noticed a hole which was shut at that moment.
We approached the door mindful that anybody could be hiding behind it. Hojo felt it while I watched just in case anything approached, worse, emerged. We took turns prying its hole, a rectangular slice of wood at the top of the door, it was tight as if locked. However, with a knife, we slid it enough to form a crack through which we peered.
We saw the world that existed behind the door - it was utterly, totally disconnected with the universe of that basement. It was a chamber stocked with equipment. We could not understand everything only portions that reminded us of antennas and other radio equipment.
At the center of that laboratory was a chair. It did not face us. While we could not see it, exactly, we knew by hints here and there that somebody sat at it. And that somebody was the focus of the experiment.
A woman appeared. Hojo gasped 'Kagome' while I said 'Kanna'. An man followed and we agreed it was Kagewaki.
A triangular loop of wire was placed atop the chair. A command was given. A switch was pulled. Soon sparks shot out of the loop as the chair (and its occupant) quivered. Soon, too, a wind passed through the door itself and the basement replied by taking the watery, hazy nature of a mirage.
I wanted to run but Hojo, still looking through that crack, refused to budge. I kept inching backward, alternately looking at my friend and at the stairway - it was so far away I feared my feet were going to fail if I needed to run. Sweating, almost crying, my heart raced with fear stoked by the wind that returned like the waves of the oceans.... I realized they were the signals coming out of those antennas.
I shouted to Hojo and begged the man to run even as I was sprinting, intermittently, toward the exit. His reply was to detail the play-by-play at the other side of the door. Kagome (he insisted on calling the woman Kagome) and Kagewaki spun the chair and now its occupant could be seen - it was the Kikyo Lady!
She was alive - if such a thing could be life - half-zombie, half-aware. She was restrained into the chair and fighting while sparks flew. Suddenly the chair burst into flames and Hojo screamed at the sight saying she was up - she was up - and attacking Kagewaki. The Kikyo Lady doll and Kagewaki fell into a rack of equipment and even I was able to see the explosion that followed through the blaze of light that flashed through the cracks of the door.
Hojo staggered away as somebody pounded against the door.
I screamed as at last it gave away and tumbled into a pile of wood.
Amidst the smoke and the fire I saw two shrunken, dead eyes and a face crisscrossed by a webwork of cracks gaze from the laboratory 'reality' to the basement 'reality'.
My shouts to run were ignored and I wondered if my voice joined the background of wails and cries. Was I part of the mob? Was I gone into a different time and space forever disconnected to Hojo? I do not know - only that I fled toward the stairs.
At the head of the stairs again I stopped and looked. As I watched the bright, red color of the 'new' basement disintegrated into the abysmal, onyx void of the 'old' basement. A flash of light left within my eyes the impression of the scene with the door. It was a snapshot of the Kikyo Lady under the frame of the door - she seemed to be crawling into the portal.
The portal itself did not fade out of existence. Rather, it lingered, and every so often, as the harmonies of the universe interweaved, she and her environment reappeared. But the effect lasted only a moment. And as soon as the harmonies disintegrated the everything vanished.
She aged perhaps a day a millennia. Last I saw she still stood under the door. In a hundred years she may be a foot into the portal. In a thousand years she may be a part of that chorus of voices. In a million years at last the cracking would be complete and she would be powder.
The Kikyo Effect - it was the blending of time into a singular point of space. There could be no doubt of it. The experiment, what little of it I witnessed, was the forerunner of Montuak - and, even, foretold its demise. As with 'the Bell', the Japanese were interested with mastering time and space and transforming it into a weapon. And as with everyone who tried to play god only a calamity of cosmic proportion followed....
In the wake of the experiment gone awry it seemed that reality was decimated in the vicinity of the warehouse.
I scaled the stairs with a limp as if my energy were wasted. I passed through the offices of the warehouse I felt my motion become more and more sluggish. I did not want to go but I did not want to stay. Something truly unspeakable happened in front of me and I was helpless to stop it.
I crossed through the garage dazed and confused. While I staggered I was bumped and fell onto the floor. Coughing, my eyes irritated by the dust, my brain too numb to register the shock of it, I tried to see what it was that knocked me off of my feet. What could be seen given the condition was a figure running toward the exit.
I called 'Hojo' but the figure did not react. I stood and chased it out of the warehouse. I paused and looked about the street. Night at that sector of the city did not yield a clue - the figure was gone - and I was baffled.
What happened? I wondered - and then I thought about Hojo.
Was he, too, a part of that portal? What would be his fate?
I shuddered as a whole, new universe of fear overwhelmed me. As Sesshoumaru - the Taisho contact - found me and took me away. As I returned to my home in the wilderness of the Dakotas. I cannot sleep without the sounds of those voices echoing in my dreams. And then I awake only to confront another aspect of this tragedy - a realization of a folly that must be blamed on my oversight.
A hundred years the world was safe, free of the aftermath of the Kikyo Effect, yet my intervention jeopardized that peace. Already, as I spoke to Sesshoumaru, I suspected something escaped - and now I knew the certainty of it. The Taisho were so careful to hide it and barricade it and it only took a pair of interlopers to waste their efforts - because, you see, when I fled I did not shut the door to the basement!
END