Sam felt his whole body curl inward on itself in preparation for the life-ending smash that would accompany his arrival at the bottom of this impossible hole. He felt himself falling
Falling
Craning his neck upward he could see the hole with its patch of blue sky above, impossibly far away and fading in the distance.
Why haven't I hit bottom, he thought. The first shock and instinctive reaction was wearing off, he was falling now, racing through the air, as though from a great height. The wind whistled around him, making flapping sounds with his pant legs. Windmilling his arms and legs set him to spinning, then remembering how skydivers looked in the sports documentaries he was able to get himself spread-eagled out flat. Looking down he could see nothing but empty blackness.
Falling
How is this possible, he thought, his logical mind finally beginning to function again. I must have fallen several thousand feet, how can I have a fissure in the ground under my yard that size?
Falling
I don't believe it, he thought, there aren't any cracks in the earth this large.
Falling
"What is happening to me." Fear began to worm its way into his mind, not the overwhelming fear of falling or hitting bottom but a new kind of fear, a fear that the world is not right. Its tendrils of doubt began their slow work on his mind, feeding on themselves and his half-formed doubts.
The fear slowly began to take him over, it was a horrible thing and he could feel it coming but he could not stop it.
"Am I insane? Am I dead?" He screamed at the walls going by, the fear that shook him rocked his careful balance in the airstream and he windmilled frantically to get control. At last he stabilized, panting and fearful, arms and legs outstretched falling down into blackness.
Falling
Unable to think coherently he welcomed the madness that flowed into him, blocking out all conscious thought. It ate away at his reason until there was none left and he was reduced to a mewling slobbering thing where moments before had been a functional human being.
Falling
Then the screaming had began, it was a terrible, throat-ripping sound. The kind of sound a man might make as his soul is ripped from him before his eyes. If there had been ears to hear it, the scream would have caused the listener to shudder in abject horror and cover their ears to block it out, but of course there was nobody to hear the awful sounds.
Screaming, he fell into the darkness.
When finally his tortured lungs and throat could no longer scream, the sounds reduced to a whisper and finally died away as even that became too much.
Falling
How long he fell into madness he had no idea.
"Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God," he mumbled over and over, his voice unrecognizable, the words ripped from his mouth by the air racing past. His brain paralyzed by monstrous thoughts and half-remembered memories of Hell and the afterlife.
Falling
After awhile his brain began to function again, slowly crawling out from under the blanket of fear that paralyzed it. He started examining the walls flashing past. Down here in the darkness there were occasional small patches lit by some unknown means and the wall could be seen. He was intrigued that it did not appear to be natural stone, but to have been worked somehow.
"Just like in the imager," he thought. Then grimaced as this observation opened a new set of possibilities. His imager, his Nobel Prize winning imaging system, the imager that could see into.
..somewhere..
..some other place, a different dimension, a view of another planet, a view of Hell itself, he didn't know. He shook himself at the memory and closed his mind, unwilling to follow the thought any more.
Falling
But the thoughts intruded themselves on him no matter how resolutely he tried to force them away. The imager which had shown him a whole new world, a world full of things from his worst nightmares. It was with an awful fascination that he had watched the imager, a voyeur into dementia for the images that it showed were compelling and horrific, mesmerizing and repellent. A whole world opened up before him, populated with demons and monsters of every description. He found himself drawn to it, attracted to its grotesque denizens, compelled by the events half felt, half viewed that his imager presented.
Even now, as the wind caused the tears to form in his eyes, he could feel the fascination of the images. He shuddered, but then it had all changed.
The creatures had noticed him....
He wobbled in midflight, unable to push away the images. The things in the imager had discovered him, found out that he was spying on their world. They crowded around the imager screen as though it was a porthole and they could also see through. They began pressing against the viewer, their hands (if that was what they were) pressing as though against a plate of glass.
Truly afraid he had shut off the imager. Nervous that something strange, something he could not explain was happening. He resolved to not take any more chances and had left the imager turned off.
Falling
But the lure was too great. He worked some of the equations to better understand the imager but he could not concentrate, his thoughts turning more and more frequently to the viewscreen. At last he could no longer stand it and switched the unit on.
Bending close, he peered intently into the imager as it warmed up. For a minute there was nothing visible and then a giant clamp-like arm smashed up against the invisible surface. With a cry he had fallen backward, then looked in fascination at the underside of the arm with its rows of sucker-rimmed teeth, the suckers gripping the imager surface.
He waited breathlessly to see what would happen, watching the tiny teeth gnash and chomp fruitlessly against the imager surface. Engrossed as he was he didn't notice the arm begin to pry the invisible surface of the imager off.
When he finally noticed, the arm looked like it had partially pulled up a sheet of glass that covered the imager. In a flash of panic he had turned off the unit, watching intently as it went black.
Falling
Even now, even here, he continued to puzzle the problem. What had happened? His logical brain turned it over and over. In the days that followed he had obsessed over the thought that somehow there really was a hole between the dimensions and that something could pass between them. He didn't really understand how the imager worked completely, it had been a happy accident that allowed it to work at all. Still, he felt he had a working grasp of the principles involved and could prevent anything unusual from happening.
Falling
At last his calculations had shown some adjustments he could make to the imager. He felt more confident after that and resolved to switch the imager on again.
Falling
Cursing himself now, he thought back over that fateful day. It was two days ago, when he had convinced himself that there was nothing to worry about, he even jokingly took a baseball bat and placed it in the corner of the lab, "just in case" he had laughed. He was still laughing and confident as he switched the imager on.
Falling
As the image came into view he could see them all crowded around the imager again, only this time it seemed different, as though they were closer to him than before. He looked at them in fascination, mesmerized by the oozing, pulsating strangeness of their bodies. It almost seemed as if they were looking back at him.
Just then there had come a scratching sound at the back door - a funny sliding, scraping sound. He turned away from the imager and opened the door.
Falling
falling
Looking down he saw two small figures about half his height, they wore grotesque costumes that covered them from head to foot. One had a flipper or fin or tentacle or whatever outstretched and this had made the noise against the door.
"It's a bit early for trick or treat," he had said with a smile.
Falling
Even now, after two days what happened next still tugged at his sanity. He curled up into a ball and increased his velocity through the air, falling uncaring into infinity.
But the memories would not stay away, try as he might to suppress them, they returned.
"tttt-rrrrr-ii-kk oorrrrrr tttt-rrrrr-eeee-a-tttt," had come a thick, barely intelligible imitation.
"ttrickk orr ttreatt" the words were getting more recognizable.
With a frown he had looked down at the two figures more closely. One of them began to open, not the unzipping of a suit or the unfolding of crossed arms, but the opening of a misshapen body tightly constrained into a more comfortable shape. Tentacles with mouths and rows of teeth in them began to unfold from it. The other head began to split down the center, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth and a long tongue that began probing the air.
With a cry he stumbled backwards, unable to believe, unable to understand, unable to think coherently when faced with such a cosmic blasphemy. By incredible good fortune his hand had bumped into the bat. Without thinking he grabbed it and ran for the door, swinging with everything he had, relishing the fleshy sounds the bat made as it sunk deep into monstrous flesh.
How he had avoided the tentacles and teeth and barbs and stingers and poison slime he never knew, he only knew that he was able to get the door closed and locked. Backing away he looked at the imager where the ring of grotesque faces still looked in as though they could see what was occurring. With a cry he had jumped to the controls and switched off the imager, watching with fierce pleasure as the faces faded away.
Then he had backed into a corner with the bat and sat down facing the back door.
Falling
It was the next day before he could force himself to look in the back yard. Everything was peaceful, normal, and completely tranquil. Even with the evidence of his eyes it was hours before he went outside, carefully holding his bat at the ready, to make careful circuits of the house checking into every bush and corner of the yard. Then he went back inside and checked the house more thoroughly than he had ever done before. Each room was checked a dozen times, each cabinet, each drawer, each closet, each crawlspace was given the same careful treatment.
Finally he went back to the lab and sat down beside the imager exhausted, to fall into a troubled sleep.
Falling
That afternoon he awoke without feeling refreshed. His troubled mind had feasted on a continuous stream of nightmares leaving him sore, nauseated and lethargic. It was while he was splashing cold water on his face and looking in the mirror that the thought came to him. It was an awful thought. A thought that shriveled his insides with horror. A thought that opened wide a door of horrible new possibilities. It wormed its way in, poisoning his thoughts until at last he had to face it.
Falling
"I've opened a portal into Hell, what if it isn't closed just because the imager is shut off"
Falling
He sat in his seat, lost in the ramifications of his grisly thought. It was at this minute the doorbell had rung.
Still lost in thought he automatically opened the door, to be faced with two small inhuman figures. With a cry he had stumbled backward in fear trying to think where he had lain the baseball bat, sure that they were attacking again.
"Trick Or Treat" one had said.
The words triggered a fresh attack of fear, the previous monsters had been able to mouth those words as well. It was too much, without the confidence the bat had given him he couldn't withstand his own fear and in a panic he had run into the backyard not seeing the impossible hole in the ground until too late.
Falling