Flight Into the Void

"a car crash of weird fiction and Philip K. Dick"

The Pit and the Pendulum by Harry Clarke (1919)

Summer of 1969. John and I took a Cessna 510 Centrofage through the Alps. A clear and sunnyish day at Fairoaks. It was early, quarter to seven in the morning, and my gills were getting thirsty.

Cessna was a brand-new model, born just a few days ago at our request. We had some government allocation for leisure this year. A muscular alloy made of fast-twitch fibres. It was a good pick.

We flew above the peaks, admiring the mountains. The air was wintry and smacked us with an icy blast, leaving cobweb marks on our cheeks every time we opened the shutter.

John didn’t know the first thing about flying. His nervous system was trained for shipjacking. So I had all the fun.

Over Switzerland, the wings whacked and rattled. Turbulences! From the clouds’ edge, the Matterhorn emerged. Cities full of interconnected flesh-tissue. Hive minds. They know a thing or two about collectivism in mainland Europe. The valleys shimmered with green excrement of the whole living organism, as if someone had scattered mirrors among the peaks.

Flying west, I saw the landscape. A gigantic panorama. Glaciers and ridges. Then, past everything, Mont Blanc arose. A giant threatening the skies. A big Eye of the Austrian president adorned it. The man was overseeing it all. Heading towards Chamonix, I felt that the world under us pulled into an endless tale of meat, the tale of folk who had sought their place there.

The view of the range energised John and me. Our mandibles shot up and electrocuted. Plasmic force was tingling our glands almost to an orgasm. Then we talked about our skiing trips and the holidays we’d spent together. One vivid memory was from the Italian Alps.

“John, do you recall that time we spent New Year’s Eve in the Aosta Valley?”

“Ah, yes. The four of us, merging and melting. You with Ann, and I with Lydia. That small wooden hut. The windows had gorgeous crystal patterns, and we sat by the fireplace.”

I nodded and looked up at the sky, thoughtful.

“Agreed…” I said, then something caught my eye. “Ah!”

There they were: round cloud formations, radiating an iridescent colour. I couldn’t help but be drawn to them.

“Do you see that beautiful cloud shape over there? Those look like iridescent lenticular spleen clouds. How about we climb above?”

“It’s beautiful, but wouldn’t that be too much for our Cessna?”

“Even more, mate. Those clouds are too high for a blood-piston engine. We’re already high for this stock model. But we can climb higher!”

“I say we do it then, Edward. Why not? A little adventure now and then isn’t bad for the spirit”

“I agree! And Supreme Being rewards courage well!”

We went up, smiles on our gobs, passing through a thinning alto layer.

The closer we drew to the sphericals, the more it took our breath. Before our eyes, they had arranged themselves into multicoloured, luminous spleen-discs, suspended side by side, surely copulating. I counted nine shapes, split by a gap.

John broke the silence, opening the speech mouth, down his belly. “Edward… Those are wondrous! I can’t believe they’re real.”

“I agree, John! One of those moments we’ll carry to our graves.”

We marvelled at it, with the fleeting joy it gave to our mandibles. But my gills were dry at this point. Too dry. We needed to land. I needed water.

But unexpectedly, our ears were blasted by a deafening noise, as if an orchestra of trumpets had erupted at once. I covered my ears with my gloved hands, jacking out of the input of the plane, disconnecting my nervous system.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw John shouting something to me with his scream mouth, but I couldn’t make anything out, even though his lips moved.

A gust of wind forced me to turn forward, right hand plunging into the steering cavity connector. I was recalibrating its neural networks now. I had to do it fast, one-handed in the socket. The other hand pressed my ear, convinced my eardrums might burst. And then, just as abruptly as it had started, the noise stopped.

“My God! What was that!?” he yelled with his scream mouth, top of his neck stalk.

“Very strange…” I said. “Maybe it was some kind of noise from the Cessna. John… I can’t find any explanation.”

The light around us dimmed, plunged into darkness, and flared back again. Something had eclipsed the sun. No, I thought, not only the sun, but the very universe itself...

My heart pounded, paralysing my hands, tingling in the sockets of the Cessna. The darkness returned full-on. We were swallowed by the clutches of black.

There were no clouds. Nothing at all. The plane seemed suspended in the void. I tilted the aircraft, trying to glance down at the Earth. No fields. No mountains. We were hanging in blackness.

“Ed… we still… flying? Can’t feel the Earth beneath us… My mandibles… They don’t detect it.”

He was right, but I couldn’t comfort him. I swallowed, my throat dry. My gills, my gills needed watering.

“We’re flying, John. The instruments say so... but to tell you the truth, I’ve no clue.”

His big head leaned towards the window, pressing his scream mouth closer to the glass. His breath fogged it up, then he wiped it clear.

“It’s not night, but something else,” his speech mouth whispered from down the belly. “Night has stars, or some glimmer of light. But this… just doesn’t.”

A shiver ran down my spine. I didn’t say anything. I feared that naming whatever engulfed us might provoke it.

“I’ll turn on the landing light, let’s see,” I said, and flicked the switch with my mind command.

A cone of green light burst out. High above us, the beam caught a shape. It was motionless and didn’t reflect the light. Not like clouds would. It simply hung there. Immense and implacable. It was dark, and… triangular. It was as if it had always been there, above our heads. Hiding. Or watching.

The humming came back. It started low, then swelled into waves that rose and fell.

My friend clutched at his head. “Edward! Edward, it’s alive!” I looked over. His face had turned pale white in the glow of the cockpit. He was clawing at his seat belt. Something deep in my mind told me this was the worst thing to do. His panic would only feed what lurked above.

I was certain, somehow, that the thing thrived on terror, like leeches sucking blood.

“Stop, John! Control yourself! I believe it feeds on… on our emotions!” I shouted, leaning towards him. But my words couldn’t reach him. He was beyond reason. Beyond sanity. His mandibles shooting voltage erratically.

The black triangle closed in on our aircraft. I knew I must remain calm. I told myself that even if I’m mistaken, panic wouldn’t save me. The plane was no longer doing anything. Nothing I did seemed to matter. Whatever was to happen, even death. So be it.

My companion fared far worse. He had fallen into a trance, muttering. Prayers or curses. His voice dissolved into incoherence. He lost his mind. Poor fellow. Poor John.

The shape was now so close it nearly brushed the fuselage. The Cessna’s lights reflected off its matte surface. There was no roughness. No imperfection. Only a flawless, obsidian block.

Beautiful, I found myself thinking.

I heard a thud, and the plane lurched down. Then the humming doubled down.

My surroundings liquefy, I'm no longer in the aircraft, but in a chalet in the Alps, not in spirit, no, but in flesh, on the sofa, sipping Scotch whisky, my body in union with John and Lydia, clustered, pleasuring ourselves, and I smile but now I'm in a boat, sailing to Islay, my God-mind writing, rewriting, conjuring it all, placing me now… in Istanbul, a bipedal cat, through the narrow streets, my name is Chikka, and I purr at my owner, but he shoos me away, selling carpets to the crowd of fluorescent Frenchmen, the coral reefers, and I have freedom, so much freedom, ecstasy of it, and I grin, and I grin, but I decide to… end it. I imagine the fields of France, and—

So it was. I was above a small village, landing in a crop field beside a farmhouse.

I looked over my shoulder. God. My friend… the sight of it. John… John’s body, slumped in his seat, the face going up. The flesh was coming off it in the daylight like the skin off my knuckles, going, and… gone.

From the barn, a figure emerged. The owner of the land. Must have been. I wanted to say sorry for our rogue landing and pay for any trouble. I had a few bio-francs in my pocket.

I waved and jumped out of the cockpit.

As he came within a yard, I called out in French, “Hello, sir! My name is Edward! Had to make an emergency landing!”

The farmer stood shocked.

So I tried again.

“Hello—” I began, but his voice cut me off.

“—Halt! Stehen bleiben!”

I froze. He had spoken in German. I knew this region. This was France. The man… And now I noticed. He looked odd. He only had one mouth and no gills. This is not how most of us look. He was around seventy, with several days’ stubble, wearing a strange jumpsuit.

He shook himself and rushed towards me. When he was near, he whispered, “You mad? Speaking French like that?”

“I don’t understand,” I stammered in French. “This is France. Burgundy, is it not? I know the area. Are you from Germany?”

“We’re all from Germany, idiot. This is Reich territory!”

I got it, but stared at him in shock. “H—how can this be Reich territory?”

He looked at me like I were a fool. I peeked at his jumpsuit; it bore German lettering “REICHSBAUERN—LANDWIRTSCHAFT, Ausg. 1985.”

“Wait… what year is it?” I asked.

“1992,” he said. “September 1992,” the farmer repeated.

Those words drilled through me with a chill.

I was motionless. It began to dawn on me: a German triumph. The war had not ended the way we wanted. Not here.

The farmer nodded towards my aircraft. “That is one strange thing you are flinging in. You also seem augmented. Impure. Not legal in the Reich, but come. I’ll help you. If you want to live, you must forget who you are. There’s no France here anymore. We have to cut you up a little bit as well. Can’t be walking around like that.”

I looked at the Cessna. Inside, in the dim cockpit, sat John’s body. Silent and motionless. Dead.

“What is your name, sir?” I asked.

“Thierry, now you follow me,” he said, raising a warning finger. “And don’t you speak French again! Not in public!”

I took a step forward, then another, following him. Forever.

—from the diary of Edward Davies, 1997.

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Third Eye Horror
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