The Dark Door | Page 6

couldn't make things happen that were
not true--fantasies, illusions....
Yes, this dungeon was an illusion. It had to be.
He cursed and started down the right-hand corridor, his heart sinking.
There was no such place and he knew it. He was walking in a dream, a
fantasy that had no substance, that could do no more than frighten him,
drive him insane; yet he must already have lost his mind to be
accepting such an illusion.
Why had he delayed? Why hadn't he gone to the Hoffman Center, laid
the whole story before Dr. Webber and Dr. Manelli at the very first,
told them what he had found? True, they might have thought him
insane, but they wouldn't have put him to torture. They might even
have believed him enough to investigate what he told them, and then
the cat would have been out of the bag. The tale would have been
incredible, but at least his mind would have been safe.
He turned down another corridor and walked suddenly into waist-deep
water, so cold it numbed his legs. He stopped again to force back the
tendrils of unreasoning horror that brushed his mind. Nothing could
really harm him. He would merely wait until his mind finally reached a
balance again. There might be no end; it might be a ghastly trap, but he
would wait.
Strangely, the mist was becoming greenish in color as it swirled toward
him in the damp vaulted passageway. His eyes began watering a little
and the lining of his nose started to burn. He stopped short, newly
alarmed, and stared at the walls, rubbing the tears away to clear his
vision. The greenish-yellow haze grew thicker, catching his eyes and
burning like a thousand furies, ripping into his throat until he was
choking and coughing, as though great knives sliced through his lungs.

He tried to scream, and started running, blindly. Each gasping breath
was an agony as the blistering gas dug deeper and deeper into his lungs.
Reason departed from him; he was screaming incoherently as he
stumbled up a stony ramp, crashed into a wall, spun around and
smashed blindly into another. Then something caught at his shirt.
He felt the heavy planks and pounded iron scrollwork of a huge door,
and threw himself upon it, wrenching at the old latch until the door
swung open with a screech of rusty hinges. He fell forward on his face,
and the door swung shut behind him.
He lay face down, panting and sobbing in the stillness.
Coarse hands grasped his collar, jerking him rudely to his feet, and he
opened his eyes. Across the dim, vaulted room he could see the
shadowy form of a man, a big man, with a broad chest and powerful
shoulders, a man whose rich voice Harry almost recognized, but whose
face was deep in shadow. As Harry wiped the tears from his tortured
eyes, he heard the man's voice rumble out at him:
"Perhaps you've had enough now to change your mind about telling us
the truth."
Harry stared, not quite comprehending. "The--the truth?"
The man's voice was harsh, cutting across the room impatiently. "The
truth, I said. The problem, you fool, what you saw, what you learned;
you know perfectly well what I'm referring to. But we'll swallow no
more of this silly four-dimensional superman tale, so don't bother to
start it."
"I--I don't understand you. It's--it's true--" Again he tried to peer across
the room. "Why are you hunting me like this? What are you trying to
do to me?"
"We want the truth. We want to know what you saw."
"But--but you're what I saw. You know what I found out. I mean--" He

stopped, his face going white. His hand went to his mouth, and he
stared still harder. "Who are you?" he whispered.
"The truth!" the man roared. "You'd better be quick, or you'll be back in
the corridor."
"Webber!"
"Your last chance, Harry."
Without warning, Harry was across the room, flying across the desk,
crashing into the big man's chest. With a scream of fury he fought,
driving his fists into the powerful chest, wrenching at the thick, flailing
arms of the startled man.
"It's you!" he screamed. "It's you that's been torturing me. It's you that's
been hunting me down all this time, not the other people, you and your
crowd of ghouls have been at my throat!"
He threw the big man off balance, dropped heavily on him as he fell
back to the ground, glared down into the other's angry brown eyes.
And then, as though he had never been there at all, the big man
vanished, and Harry sat back on the floor, his whole body shaking with
frustrated sobs as his mind twisted in anguish.
He had been