Eschaton: Tesseract

The dining and living rooms were a mess, and the fact that they had suffered a near total collapse of molecular identity did little to improve the situation. The rooms upstairs had a similar interaction with the basement. Once familiar contours were now surreal and strange. Three guests were missing, a fourth injured by gunfire, and a fifth had leapt out a window with blood on her hands and superstition on her lips.

Turpin was still roaming at large. An uneven clatter of bone and tissue rattled around the house, the walls buckling in response to his warped passage. It would only be a matter of time before the Crooked Man made his way back through their space and collected another guest. Those in attendance had to admit that, in retrospect, they had not known Dr. Andrea Wex very well. No, not very well at all.

*****

Of Dr. Andrea Wex, two things were definite: she was a mathematics genius and an undiagnosed psychotic. The one trait served her well in the course of her studies and occupation, while the latter only rarely impeded her interactions with colleagues and neighbours. Wex had proved herself affable and outgoing over the two decades that she served in the public eye, even if somewhat prone to the odd burst of esoteric metaphysics. She dutifully attended all professional functions and hosted a Christmas party for the neighbours every year. Wex always recycled, volunteered at charities, and was well regarded by most who met her.

Christopher Turpin was the scion of the Turpin family fortune. He could not for the life of him tell you what that amounted to or how it was earned. Christopher was also a part-time gigolo. It was Wex's custom to employ young Turpin several times a year as time permitted and stress demanded. He was already present when the other guests arrived, his uncouth manner sitting at odds with the impeccable wardrobe that he wore. Nevertheless, health and youth go far in making new friends, and Turpin had hit it off with the highly educated Reba Setton.

Setton was an anthropologist by education and something of an occult geek by preference. Her work focused on the origins and developments of local folkways. She had only recently turned 32 and had attended the soiree in the mistaken assumption that it was a belated birthday of sorts. She had come with a friend, sociologist Charlie Hogg, but had more or less abandoned him to the mercies of the other guests once she had begun talking with young Turpin.

Also gathered there were Donald and Tammy Smythe, a middle-aged couple who happily self-identified as medical doctor and wife, and Paul and Hazel Massey, a retired couple who had formerly been involved in finance. Both couples were childless and were subsequently quite fond of Dr. Wex. It pained them to see such a vibrant woman slumming with a creature like Christopher Turpin, but they had an unspoken agreement not to mention it when they saw their friend. Andrea was positively delightful. There was no sense in letting bad manners get in the way of a good friendship.

*****

Dinner consisted of goat meat pepper soup. Wine flowed freely and Dr. Wex seemed to be in her element. She gave a discourse on a new delivery system she was working on for the Department of Energy, making sure to keep the lesson in colloquial terms so as not to lose the audience. Several guests commented on an odd table piece that occupied the center of the table: a wooden statuary depicting a hunchbacked dwarf with pointed teeth. Reba cheerfully explained that the work was of Yoruban origin. Dessert followed. The group chatted amicably over parfaits in the den.

As the night crept into nine o'clock, the party became a dichotomy. The younger guests had acquired that brittle edge that follows any lengthy period of alcohol and affability. The older ones were wondering if there were any legitimate reasons to leave. The Smythes were chatting to each other on the couch, with Tammy casting the occasional meaningful glance at her wristwatch. The Masseys spoke with Hogg about a documentary the latter had watched not too long ago.

Reba Setton waited restlessly for Turpin to come back from the bathroom, not knowing that Dr. Wex had called him to the basement about ten minutes earlier. Regardless, Setton did not have to wait for too much longer. The house underwent its first buckling at precisely three minutes after nine: as was later gathered from Wex's notes, it could hardly have happened at any other time.

The buckling was prefaced by a low and steady infra-bass vibration that shivered up from the stomach to the back of the teeth. Dinner, snacks, and alcohol did not do well under such circumstances, and Donald Smythe lurched to a wastebasket to void the contents of his guts. Shortly thereafter there was a terrific sliding of surfaces, and the walls of the living room rippled like a living thing. While the eyes promised the mind that there were abrupt recombinations of curvilinear form, the touch failed to confirm it. Objects in the room appeared to be superimposed with objects from other rooms in the house, but from other angles no such imposition occurred.

Later researchers and forensic examiners would frequently compare the alterations of perception to analytical cubism: multiple configurations of perspective were layered over singular spaces, although the specifics of those configurations would change depending on the position of the observer. Needless to say, maintaining any kind of contact with the superpositioned objects was quite tricky. One had to maintain a consistent perspective while simultaneously feeling out the new angles by touch. A change in view resulted in a change of surface.

Paul Massey pulled out his cell phone and called emergency services while Hogg ran worriedly to the bathroom. Suffering under the weight of a greater vertigo than he had ever known, Charlie Hogg placed one hand on a nearby wall to steady himself for the final rally towards the toilet. Something like a burp emerged from his mouth. Something wet, percolating, and fearful. In response, a rattling clatter was heard from inside the wall. It sounded like damp gravel rolling itself along the seams.

The Crooked Man unfolded itself from the conjunction of wall and ceiling, showing itself as a brief and hideous bloom of cartilage and inverted muscles. A tessellated origami of teeth and jawbone formed once, briefly, and let out a hollow, hungry sound. With crooked hand and crooked intent, Turpin's remnants reached out and stroked Hogg's wrist, causing the poor man to withdraw in horror. Too late: contact established, the work was done, and Hogg's entire frame began its own bloom and recoil. His skeleton burst through his innards and his innards leapt from his skin. This process soon expended its energy and turned back upon itself.

All that remained of Charlie Hogg was a corrugated stain over the floors and a pained scream that echoed throughout the house for the remainder of the event.

*****

Nathan Poseda and his partner, the young Anthony Monck, had arrived on site some twelve minutes after Mr. Massey had put in the call for emergency services. As first response they had a duty to enter the house; as a veteran of Afghanistan, Poseda had an impulse to investigate. Upon entering the premises, Poseda reeled from the ocular assault. It would be several hours before his eyes compensated for the shifting wavelengths of light being given off by the different collapsed entities.

Rubbing his eyes with one hand, Poseda held the other up and advised everyone to speak in turn. The room stunk of panic, and the two older couples were fighting to speak first. Monck, against regulations but with some tacit approval from Poseda, went around the rooms to try and uncover whether there were other survivors or assailants.

The situation was hardly improved by forcing the survivors to speak in turns. The account was provided by four apparently stable minded individuals. Nevertheless, while that account was consistent, uniform, and completely supported by the environment he had stumbled into, Poseda found that the event in its entirety was utterly incomprehensible. Monck returned with Setton in tow. The rookie was pale and visibly shaken. His hand trembled as he pointed Poseda to the room where Hogg had met his end.

A veteran of two tours, Poseda was able to vomit quickly and with a minimum of interference to his duties. For the first time, he heard the telltale clatter of the Crooked Man. Then, he had no idea what it meant; now, he would give anything to have remained ignorant. Paul Massey's voice cried out from the living room, followed shortly thereafter by the sound of Monck's pistol. Poseda ran into the living room and found himself staring at two abominations unfolding themselves before him. Monck's pistol lay on the floor, the fungous objects over it bleating in futility. Then they were gone, Massey and Monck, two more cartilaginous spots on the warped floors before him.

It was soon to be made obvious that this was the fate of all those touched by the Crooked Man: he could exercise discretion in the selection of victims, but having run out of them he would be driven by some terrible imperative to seize upon whomever remained. Whether this was a fault of the person or the structure has never been determined. At this early point, all parties were still possessed of a feverish optimism. Surely those remaining, barring perhaps another loss or two, could find a way out of the nightmare. At the very least, they could make their way to the front door, away from the Crooked Man, away from its corrugated victims.

It was equally possible that nobody was as prepared for a digression into insanity as they had previously thought.

*****

Nathan Poseda held his hand tight against his side, the gunshot wound still impossibly fresh. She had shot him! He couldn't believe it... Reba Setton had seemed so composed when he arrived. But then again, a lot could change over four days.

All efforts to reach the outside of the house had failed. The front door had proved impossibly elusive, always extending itself several meters beyond whoever was closest to it. The effort was made considerably more difficult by the fact that the floor contained warps and wefts that couldn't be seen until the perceptions of all observers had aligned in a specific manner: people would stumble over flat planes or find themselves straining to traverse dips in the floor as if they were walking uphill. Poseda himself had once tumbled face down over the lip of a rug, rolling for what seemed like several minutes until coming to a rest mere inches from where he had tripped.

Unable to reach the front door, the party had tried for the back, only to find that it had swollen shut in the terrible new contours of the house. Nothing would budge it save for a subsequent buckling that saw a further molecular collapse between basement and den. The back door then blew wide open, sending shards of wood and shattered brass like shrapnel back into the house. Tammy Smythe was struck blind by the flechettes and had collapsed in a dead faint.

Hazel Massey had made a run out of the now opened portal straight into... well, nobody could say for sure. Outside the door was a great yawning nothing that was neither black, nor white, nor any colour known to light. It was nothing and it stretched for never. The poor woman had plunged into it, her body warped interminably, and those foolish enough to look out there could see the after effects of her image receding into a distance.

The after image never faded. Her horror hung there, interminably fixed for all time. Oddly enough, glancing out the windows provided a glimpse of the world they had left, as it was when they had left it. But nobody had quite the courage to make a try for it. At least, not until Setton had lost her goddamned mind.

Reba Setton had held it together far longer than anyone had any right to, given the circumstances. She had helped the blinded Mrs. Smythe recover and offered emotional support. When Poseda finally committed himself to understanding the phenomenon, Reba did what she could to further the investigation. Indeed, it was Reba who first offered to search through the superposed aspects of the basement for any kind of information pertaining to Dr. Wex or her project, just as it was Reba who was able to provide any kind of interpretation of the papers once they were found.

Reba was able to determine that Wex had implemented some kind of effort at tesseract technology. The house itself was the engine and the structure, but neither she nor Poseda could figure exactly how the blasphemous thing was to transport itself. Turpin was either its first impetus or its first victim. It was probable that he served both functions. Whatever had been done, Turpin's resultant transformation had left him in the form of the Crooked Man, that terrible phenomenon haunting the spaces between planes; neither was sure as to why those touched by the Crooked Man could not affect similar autonomy.

That had all taken place in the first two days or so. It was difficult to tell time with any kind of precision. All mechanical clocks had ceased functioning since the house's first buckling, and all electronic devices would reset their accounts following subsequent ones. The buckling of the house had increased in frequency as time crept on, but the increases were incremental and from them Setton had been able to work out a formula that granted some degree of time assessment.

The Crooked Man made only one reappearance in those first two days. The florid abomination had leapt from a crack between a fallen bureau drawer and an adjoining wall. Mr. Massey had been alone in that room at the time, weeping in frustration, and was caught wholly unawares. Not that it much mattered. The Crooked Man was unassailable, and even the stereophonic noise of his passage offered little in the way of room for manoeuvre as it seemed to operate according to a spatial meter all its own. Paul had been rendered mid-sob, his biological mass reduced to the same pasty residue as those before him.

Poseda had woken on the third day to the sound of monotonous droning. Reba was sitting in the centre of a collection of miscellaneous items, including goat's meat from the original dinner, medicine from the bathroom cabinets, and an assortment of jewellery. She held a silver kitchen knife in her left hand, drew it swiftly over her right wrist, and sprinkled the blood in a circle around her.

Poseda had rushed forwards to seize the weapon. Fixing him with a wild-eyed stare, Reba hissed “Don't you dare!” He ignored her, determined to help; Reba drew Monck's service revolver from her waistband and shot at him three times. Two bullets missed, and one slammed into his hip. The blood came out slowly, trickling down in an improbably thick rivulet that seemed to disappear into itself once it ran a few inches down. The pain was unbearable.

Reba had stood up, speaking in a low rapid tone about a completion through widdershins. It was hard to make out what she said and still harder to understand those parts he heard: she was spinning inside the circle, rambling about an uncasting and the need to break the configuration. The whole thing was a mess but it was evident that she perceived herself to be enacting some kind of ritual.

The telltale clattering of the Crooked Man appeared, causing poor blind Tammy to shriek in fright. Giving away her position. Poseda lurched painfully towards the den, hoping against hope that he would be able to identify some weakness, some way of dealing with the abomination. All to no avail. The widow Smythe was gone forever, reduced to a miserable echo, and Poseda hadn't even seen it happen. Defeated, he returned to the kitchen only to find the window broken and Reba gone.

There was no superposition of images. Reba had left the crooked house without leaving the vestigial misery that had accompanied every other guest. The crazy witch might have made it after all. Poseda shook his head; he would never make that attempt. With heavy heart he turned to tend to Hazel, who was well on her way to incomprehensibility. Food was running out and he estimated that the water in the cisterns wouldn't last past another one or two days. With some luck, rescue would come soon.

*****

Reba Setton woke up to a pounding headache. It took very little time for her to realize that she was deaf, but her eyes worked and she could feel dew on the lawn beneath her. She stood up and glanced back at the house. Alarmed at what she saw, Reba ran as fast as she could. She didn't stop to hail a cab until she was a full two blocks away. The cabbie was harmless and obtuse, and tried to make polite conversation with the weary Setton. Reba made perfunctory remarks while repeatedly looking to the driver's mirror. It was impossible for her to be sure, to be absolutely sure... but it seemed to her as if the perimeter of the house had expanded itself by several meters.