“Yes! Hurricane is here, too.” He pointed to the simple door of tree branches lashed together with twine that shut out the steamy Congo jungle. “He’s right through that door.”
Yet, Hobbs did not move. “We are trapped, aren’t we? In here, we live and think and dream, but beyond the portal there is nothing. Solid ice. We are buried alive, and if we try to flee, we will surely die.”
He uttered a dry, mirthless chuckle. “We are already dead, and this is Hell.”
“No!” Dodge was vehement, but there was a hint of doubt in his outburst. “I will not accept that. While we are alive, we can find a way. We have to. He has the Pres…He has Molly!”
“Molly.” Hobbs gaze fell then just as quickly returned. “You are right, of course. Never give up, not while a single thought or breath remains. How do you propose we make our escape?”
Dodge sighed at the small victory. “First, we collect Hurricane. With the three of us working together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.”
“Just like old times.”
They found Hurley in a rustic log cabin, hunched over a notebook at a writing desk, illuminated by a single kerosene lamp. Dodge knew this place from the owner’s description; it was a bungalow on the Hurley family property in the austere highlands of the Cumberland Plateau. Hurricane came here to write; this was the place where he had recorded the stories that had eventually been transformed by Dodge into the Adventures of Captain Falcon. Hurley wrote longhand, in a careful, almost delicate script that seemed at odds with his explosive demeanor.
It didn’t take much persuasion to convince the big man of the illusory nature of their condition. His implicit trust in the Padre’s word overrode any lingering doubt; if Father Hobbs had said the flood was coming, Hurricane would have started building an ark. Moreover, the Padre’s presence seemed a natural antidote to the constant siren song of the waking dream, and none of the men had any trouble staying in the moment.
“So how do we get out?”
Hobbs deflected the question to Dodge with a glance. “When I left before, it was as simple as concentrating on the image of where I wanted to go.”
The priest positioned himself in front of the door, closed his eyes and lifted the simple lever latch. The door however would not budge. Hurley raised an eyebrow. “That door doesn’t have a lock. Don’t need ‘em out here.”
“The door — that is to say, the portal to the Abyss — is blocked by ice.” Hobbs did not repeat his earlier dire prediction, but it was evident in his eyes.
“Maybe there’s another way out.”
“This place is a prison, built to contain an evil beyond our comprehension. There isn’t going to be a back door.”
Dodge didn’t ask how the Padre had arrived at the first conclusion. “People break out of prison all the time. Whoever designed this one was counting on the prisoners forgetting reality and living entirely in a dream of their own making. We’ve already broken that chain.”
“Very well,” replied Hobbs sourly. “Now if you can just hypnotize yourself into believing that the way out is not buried under a sea of ice, we’ll be home free.”
“Now hold on Padre,” Hurley interjected. “Let’s think this through. First, we’re not really here in my cabin, right? So where are we — I mean where are our bodies while our minds are here?”
“We’re just inside the portal.”
“Right.” Hurley drew a square on a page of his notebook, then drew three stick figures alongside. “So this Abyss is a physical place as well as a… a mental place.”
Dodge thought he saw where Hurley was leading. “Yes. There must be some kind of open space on the other side of the doorway, and we are there, even though we can’t see it.”
“Hmm. And how big is this space?”
Dodge and Hobbs exchanged a glance. “How big?”
“If it’s a physical place — a room or ice cavern of some kind — then it has to have physical dimensions, walls, a floor, a ceiling. That chamber outside was enormous, and look how high up the wall the door was.” He sketched a rough cylinder on the paper to illustrate his point, and when he was done, the stick figures appeared to be suspended in a gigantic milk can. “I’d say this pit we’re in must be pretty big in all directions. Maybe we can break through the wall somewhere up here —” he pointed to an area near the top of his sketch— “above the icefall.”
“Except we can’t see those walls to break through them.”
“Maybe there is a way.” Despite his earlier sarcasm, Hobbs now seemed to have warmed to the idea. “I was joking when I said it—”
“Joking? You?” Hurricane asked, grinning.
“Funny. However, when I suggested that we might be able to hypnotize ourselves into finding a way out… Don’t you see? We are being hypnotized right now.”
“You can wake us up?”
“I don’t know. Whatever is at work here — strong magic or a science beyond our comprehension — is unlike anything we can conceive of. But even the dreamer can sleepwalk.” He glanced at the low roof of the cabin. “We can’t do it here though. We need to a place with some room to move. Follow me.”
Hobbs lifted the latch and pushed the door open to reveal a cavernous enclosure, lit dimly by the flickering flames of hundreds of small votive candles. Even without identifying the religious imagery therein, Dodge knew that they were in a cathedral. It seemed only appropriate; what better place to pray them out of the Abyss?
He led them to a place in the center of the nave directly in front of the dais and instructed them to close their eyes. “Listen to the sound of my voice. If your mind wanders here, you may become lost again in forgetfulness.
“Imagine now that you are suspended in a warm fluid, like an embryo in the womb, cushioned and protected by the amniotic fluid. Float now, free of gravity, free of all limitations.”
Dodge felt the warm liquid environment completely enveloping his body. He was no longer conscious of his own weight bearing down upon his feet — he wasn’t standing anymore, but drifting in a tranquil sea.
“Rise now to the surface. Reach up and touch the sky.”
Eyes still closed, Dodge began kicking with his feet like a swimmer ascending to the surface. The viscous environment slowed his movements, like a dream dance. After what seemed an eternity of sinuous undulating, he felt the cool air of the surface on his face.
“Very good,” Hobbs said, his voice muffled by the fluid environment separating them. “Now, break through the sky!”
“How?”
“Hurricane, use your guns!”
At the first thunderous discharge, Dodge’s eyes flew open and what he saw defied comprehension. Hurley hovered a few feet below the painted ceiling of the cathedral, eyes still closed, with both of his enormous pistols blasting straight up. But instead of piercing wood and masonry, the bullets were creating what looked like spider web fractures in a sheet of glass and through those cracks there was only deep shadow.
He saw all of this in an instant, and then he began to fall, slowly at first, until he looked down.
It was like something from a nightmare. When he had first entered the sacristy, he had observed a high vaulted ceiling, looming perhaps four stories above. Now, looking down from the upper reaches of the cathedral was like looking down from the top of the Empire State Building. The walls had stretched like taffy, growing in response to his somnolent ascent, so that now a drop of several hundred feet loomed below.
He flailed in the air, feeling the wind of his free fall whip through his hair, and then it occurred to him to try activating the exoskeleton…
Except I never deactivated it.
He stopped instantly, hanging in mid air twenty stories below the place where Hurley hovered, blindly blasting away at the ceiling not just of the cathedral but the Abyss itself. The twin semi-automatics abruptly fell silent as the last cartridge in each was fired. Hurricane automatically ejected and replaced the magazines, but before he could resume the blind assault, Dodge rose up beside him and laid a hand on his arm. The giant nodded in understanding and waited as Dodge forced open one of the fractures.