Page 49 of The Devouring Time

I drift on the sea of his voice, my eyelids growing impossibly heavy, then gently sliding closed.

“You are now in a deep, pleasant state of relaxation. I will count down from five, and as I do so, you will sink further into the basement of your mind. Five…four…three…two…one…”

I float in a void, comfortable and relaxed. Everything seems impossibly distant, as though all my concerns have turned into smoke and blown away.

“There is a door in front of you. You can see it very clearly, from the details of the knob to the grain of the wood.”

Obediently, my mind conjures up a sturdy door with a glass knob.

“On the other side of the door are the memories you’ve lost. They can’t harm you in any way—they’re just memories. You’re perfectly safe. When you open the door, you’ll recall and describe them as best you can. On three: three…two…one. Open the door.”

I turn the knob in my hand and swing the door wide.

I’m in Hart’s Leap, inside the hidden room where Myers and Hart ambushed me. The sting of the needle still burns in my upper arm. My legs refuse to work, and I slide to the floor.

“Poor Mr. Caine,” Hart says. “Are you afraid? You should be.”

Something grips me, dark and implacable. I struggle against the hold, but after the injection, even my thoughts are sluggish. Unable to fight, I can only experience a surge of terror as some force tears me out of the scene in the hidden room. I’m falling, falling, falling through vast black gulfs of infinity, while somewhere far off voices scream like a chorus of the damned.

I stop falling. My thoughts are everywhere and nowhere, scattered fragments that only slowly coalesce. My body feels even more removed, as though I’ve been pulled apart and badly put back together.

Where am I? My vision is more blurry than usual—did I get a knock on the head, perhaps? But it seems wider as well, wrapping around well to my periphery and showing the ceiling above.

I shake my head, but the movement feels wrong. I’m semi-standing in a stone room, with a window overlooking a sea of green. The air is humid, thick, but somehow not oppressive.

And in front of me is a monster.

The portion of my mind that knows I’m under hypnosis recognizes it, or ones like it, from my dreams. Five round, black eyes glare from atop its head, a trunk-like appendage held half-raised before it. Its segmented body is partly supported on a soft, mossy bed atop a circular stone.

I jerk back in instinctive fear, but the movement feels wrong. My face flexes, my body clicks up in segments, my arms—too many arms—wave. And the creature before me mimics every motion perfectly.

It isn’t another entity. The monster I see before me is my own reflection.

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I recoil in terror from my reflection. What is happening? I can’t be this—this thing!

Some piece of my mind remembers I’m under hypnosis, and the word blueberry hovers on my lips. This can’t be real, it’s just a delusion, I can’t actually be in the body of a monster…

I saw a man turn into a gelatinous, tusked horror at Cleo’s. Others saw it, too. It was real.

This is real.

A door opens, and several more creatures like me enter what I now see is a small room. In other circumstances, I might find them, if not beautiful, at least interesting to look at. Their—our—chitinous exoskeleton is brilliantly colored, emerald green on the back fading to bright blue legs and then a scarlet belly. The head is the same blue as the legs, and the trunk-like appendage on the front is banded with white and orange, shifting to crimson graspers at the tips.

“Welcome, traveler,” says a voice in my head.

I try to make some exclamation, but my mouth, tucked under the trunk, isn’t meant for vocalizations. The colors on my trunk flash and strobe, but I don’t know why.

“Be calm. We speak mind-to-mind. You will learn to as well.” A pause. “Don’t be afraid. You won’t be harmed. You are simply a guest. Cooperate, do not hurt the body you are currently in, and we will place you with others of your species. If you refuse to eat or try to harm this body, you will be restrained until your sojourn is at an end.”

This must be a hallucination, brought about by the injection Hart gave me. It can’t be real.

Overwhelmed, I grasp at any branch held out to me. They said they won’t hurt me. I just need to cooperate.

“What are you?” I try to think at them.

It must work, because one says, “We are The Ones Who Become.”