Nillium Neems (15 page)

"Is my Snoopy Cap a lie?" I asked. "Is
Mousy’s friendship a lie and Dr. Hammy’s sacrifice? Are all those
you killed, those Black List patients a lie?"

"No, but they are meaningless. Meaningless,
worthless gestures."

And that was when the Director made his
first mistake. If he had said yes, they were nothing but lies, I
would have given up then and there. But they weren’t. The
friendships were real, the comfort of my Snoopy Cap was real, the
triumph over his minions and my fight with the Hooded Man. And that
long, long list of death. That too was real. It wasn’t much, but it
was enough.

I ran at him and placed both hands around
the demon’s throat. He snarled in disbelief that I would dare to
touch him, and that’s when things got interesting...

It was the blackness in his heart, welling
up and revealing itself for what it was. His skin quivered and
blackened into a midnight shade, and his eyes became two holes,
dark sucking voids that were an absence of color, not merely black,
not anything.

He screamed at me, more a scream of fury
than of fear, and reached up to grab my hands. Inhuman strength
drew them apart from around his neck, till he held me at arm’s
length. With a snarl he threw me backwards into Siegfried and Paul,
knocking all three of us to the ground.

I leapt to my feet, turning to face the
monster. His form quivered once more and the transformation
continued. The blackness spread all around his feet in a pool of
shadows, so dark his form could no longer contain it. Though he
remained pretty much himself in appearance, his shadow continued to
grow, revealing a winged and demonic form, at least twice the
Director’s size.

Siegfried raised both arms, exerting the
last of his will and materializing weapons for both me and Paul.
Two heavy sledge hammers appeared from the air and fell to the
ground, both weapons slightly aglow with some unearthly power. I
raised an eyebrow in question at this rather odd choice.

"Take them and slay him," Siegfried said
haltingly, his whole body flickering between slug and man. "Strike
not at the Director’s form, but at the very heart of his power. You
are the only chance we have, Nillium Neems."

He reverted back to a slug, no longer able
to sustain his old appearance. The Director screamed with fury and
leapt upon him like some wild animal, rending at him with his
teeth. His mouth opened wider than any human maw should have been
able, and to my utmost horror, he swallowed Siegfried whole.

Paul put his hands to his mouth in shock. I
just yelled, picked up a hammer, and charged the Director. He was
too fast, catching my arm as I brought it down and hurling me
backwards. I hit the wall with a thump, denting it slightly, and my
hammer followed shortly thereafter, nearly squashing my head as it
hit the wall beside me.

I got shakily to my feet and pulled my
weapon loose, noticing the grotesque jigsaw of veins and bones, and
it came to me what Siegfried must have meant with his departing
words.

"Paul!" I shouted, as he
picked up his own hammer and charged towards the Director. "Forget
attacking him. The Director said it was this
stuff
within the walls that gave him
power, the remains of trapped patients."

"So?" Paul replied, circling the Director
and striking when he’d found an opening. The blow did no noticeable
damage other than to knock his opponent back a few steps.

"Siegfried said to go for the heart of the
Director’s power. That’s what all this stuff has to be!"

Paul just rolled his eyes at me.

"That’s stupid, it runs through the walls.
We’d have to bring down the whole building to do any damage." He
lunged at the Director again, but his foe was getting wise to his
tactics and ducked under the blow, coming up beneath his arm and
throwing Paul like he’d thrown me. The little Frenchman landed on
the floor and slid, his hammer right beside him.

"Listen, Mousy!" I shouted, hoping that name
might at least get through to him. "The first bone I pulled out of
the walls back in my room was all dry and crumbly, right? Only
dried blood stuck onto it. It looked ancient. These ones
don’t."

"And?" he asked, getting to his feet and
picking up his hammer once more.

"I think it’s because these
bones and veins and stuff are stronger. This is the center of the
Director’s power. I bet the bones aren’t this, um,
fresh
anywhere else in
the building."

That got him to listen to me. He looked
thoughtfully at the walls around us, while keeping one eye on the
Director, who was slowly stalking towards us.

"
If
that is the case..." he said
slowly, "then would simply destroying the supporting beams of this
office and collapsing the roof be enough?"

"I hope so," I answered, hefting my hammer
and grinning.

And so we both went at it, hammering at the
supporting beams that were nearest us. The very first blow revealed
them not to be beams at all, but very large bones. They broke all
the same under our joint attack.

The Director didn’t charge us like I thought
he would as soon as he saw what we were up to. He simply raised a
hand and made a sweeping motion, like a forceful beckons to come
towards him. The door to his office burst open and all eighteen
remaining Tormentors came to his aid.

I guess that was a positive sign that we
were doing something right, though at the same time a bad one
because it meant we were pretty well screwed. The Tormentors
hesitated for but a moment, before splitting up into two groups to
go after me and Mousy, while the Director directed them from a
distance (as Directors do, ha ha).

Before they could fan out and corner me, I
dropped my weapon and ran. It would only slow me down. If I dared
to try and face them all I would die. Simple as that. I skirted
around the Director and headed towards the window.

Hey, you might judge me now, but it wasn’t
like I had any options. I didn’t hesitate or even stop to think,
just dived through the glass and soared into the air. I guess I was
hoping the grass below would cushion my fall.

I closed my eyes so that I
wouldn’t have to see the ground approaching, wouldn’t have to see
death rocketing towards me. I let out an oomph as I struck, my
breath knocked from me. I lay still for a while, wondering how many
bones, if any,
weren’t
broken. At least I was alive. I made an attempt to get to my
feet and my toe caught on something, sending me plummeting forwards
once more, once again hitting the ground.

As I lay there, slightly dazed and looking
upwards at the leaves overhead, it occurred to foolish little me
that it wasn’t the ground I had hit, but a tree branch. Right above
me was the twisty little branch nub that I had caught my toe on,
looking down mockingly at me.

I twisted my head to look beneath me and saw
the grassy earth of the Yard still a good two stories down. I was
lying on a thick, hooked branch that easily supported my weight.
Carefully getting to my feet, I started to climb, the grainy wood
under my fingers somehow comforting.

It was an easy enough climb, the branches
closely spaced with each other and providing ample handholds to
pull myself up. I looked at the stars above me as I climbed,
twinkling like little diamonds in the uppermost branches. They were
so beautiful that my breath caught at the sight.

I swore to myself in that moment, that no
matter what, I would hold one of those glowing gems in my hand.
Poor Mousy, AKA Paul Souris, was almost certainly dead, Siegfried
had been eaten alive, the Mushrooms were squished, and there was no
way I could fight the Director. Standing up to even one Tormentor
was hard enough, but eighteen of them? Impossible.

So, I just kept climbing. Nothing else in
life mattered anymore. Up and up I went, slipping once or twice,
but catching myself on any of the numerous branches that offered
handholds. Maybe I’d even live up there, safe in the sky where no
one could harm me.

A noise of some sort, possibly a shout of
rage, echoed up from far below. I ignored it. It wasn’t like any of
my enemies could fly. My legs started to ache from my fall, and
bark scraped at my hands. It didn’t bug me one bit, for in my
single-minded pursuit of the stars, I was as determined as I’d ever
been about anything.

The first star came within reach, hanging
from the branch like fruit. There were several of them within my
grasp, each one no larger than a golf ball, but still the most
magnificent treasure I had ever laid eyes on.

Smiling like a little girl plucking flowers,
I pulled the first one loose, holding it between my fingertips as I
brought it up for inspection. My brow furrowed in confusion the
deeper I looked at it. It was oval in shape, made from glass or
crystal, with some darker shape within. Being in no immediate
danger, I brought the star or whatever it was right up to my eye,
straining my gaze as I peered into it. I felt like a little kid
with her first kaleidoscope.

The first sense of foreboding shivered
through me, at about the same time the star came up to my eye, and
thus I was only half-surprised to see a tiny human silhouette
within. Arms crossed over its chest like a mummy, it also had a
shriveled yet horribly alive look to it. If it was only bigger, I
had the terrible feeling that I would have seen its eyes, wide open
and staring helplessly at me, begging for release.

Holding the one star within my hand, I
reached out with my other and plucked another one from where it
hung. Putting my eye to this one as well to compare the two, I saw
it looked not at all shriveled like the other, though it still held
the mummy-like pose.

I glanced at the ground far beneath my feet,
then at the two little crystal prisons that I held. Winding back my
arm, I threw them both downwards, watching them plummet to the
earth far below. There was a small puff of light as they hit the
ground and two pale, translucent figures rose slowly skywards,
saluting me as they passed by. They disappeared into the Heavens
above, winking out of sight.

Plucking a few more from their branches, I
compared them with one another and made an important discovery.
Some of them were like the second I had picked, whole and mostly
normal looking, while others were like the first starry crystal
that I had taken. Shriveled, mummified, sucked of life.

I looked around at the hundreds if not
thousands of other crystals and pieced my thoughts together like
so. If each crystal contained a patient’s imprisoned spirit, then
they were there because the Director had put them there. If some
seemed just recently dead, while others were in various stages of
decay, then that meant they had been imprisoned longer. So it was a
logical assumption that the Tree was slowly draining them overtime,
somehow feeding the spirits strength to the Director. Meaning in
all likelihood, that I was sitting in the very heart of the
Director’s power.

With these newfound thoughts, the once
beautiful Tree suddenly looked a lot less so than before. Branches
swollen not with good health, but with gluttony from those it had
eaten, an all-consuming monster. An image popped into my head, of a
monstrous void, roots sucking the life from everything around it as
it grew fat on the souls of the dead. Who knew how deep the Tree’s
roots went. A hundred feet, a thousand? Perhaps all the way down
into Hell for all I knew.

I could see them in my mind, curling and
twisting, snaking their way into the very walls of Atrium. I
remembered the sickening display from the Director’s office, when
he had punched a hole in the wall, and it came back to me that I
might have seen just a hint of wood in there, the searching fingers
of this demon’s roots.

No doubt remained in my mind that this Tree
was the source of the Director’s power. All I had to do now was
find a way to kill it. I smiled as the dear thought of fire came to
me, and just how destructive that force was to anything even
vaguely plant-like. I’d used flames a time or two in my various
escape attempts from the Ward.

Even if all of those memories had been
nothing but false, they were real enough for me to know how easy it
is to start a fire. A spark from a piece of metal, sunlight through
a magnifying glass, or if nothing else, just rubbing some sticks
together in the right way. And though I lacked glass or metal,
there were sticks all around me in abundance.

I broke a few branches and tried rubbing
them together, building up a fine layer of sweat on my brow and
getting nowhere. I took my Snoopy Cap off and mopped my forehead,
putting the Cap on the branch beside me. It was only then that I
noticed the paper, the Black List, still taped to the inside. All
the names of the dead I was fighting for. And taped right next to
it, the lighter I had taken from Higgins office...

Peeling off the tape, I grabbed the lighter
and clicked it. A cheery little flame winked into sight at the end.
Stripping leaves from the Tree around me and breaking off some of
the smallest branches, it was only a short while before I had a
small flame going. It was far too weak to catch the Tree itself on
fire, the thick bark offering ample protection to all but the
hottest fires, but it was just perfect to spread from leave to
leave.

I smirked as I watched flames spread, a
contagion from leaf to leaf, branch to branch, traveling outwards
like the emissary of death. A thunking sound from below startled me
and I glanced down to see the Skeleton, formerly known as Dr.
Sirius, clawing his way slowly up to my level.

He punched his bony hands into the Tree,
sharp claws easily sticking through the iron hard back, and then
dragged himself upwards another few feet, before repeating the
process. And he wasn’t the only Tormentor after me, not by far. For
the others knew what threat I posed and followed behind him, all
making their way up in one way or another.