RATATADUMTATATDUDUMDURARATATAUDUMUDURATATRRATATATDUDUMATARATAT–

The cacophony was music of a sort. No melody or unifying beat, but each drum beating a steady pulse albeit at slightly different tempos. It was music only a machine could love. And to be fair, this usually was music to Matt’s aural processors but today the racket sounded a little off. A percussionist was not at their place in the orchestra. 49 drummers drumming, and 1 skiving off.

Matt turned its attention away from its custom heartbeat monitoring interface. Naomi had expressly programmed it to avoid this situation. “Keep them alive, just this 50.” That’s all Matt had had to do, and then all of the play with ‘Offerings’ could be amusement for the next 1000 years. But this was no disaster; it was a planned-for eventuality. If anything, Matt was surprised it had taken the first one this long, and the first one sets an example.

*****

Marie and Oto stared at the great greyness.

A horrible thought occurred to Oto, that there could be another door in this near identical, but empty, Space that led to a third. And in that third Space, another leading to a fourth. And then who knew where it would end. He didn’t say this though.

“I think we should head back,” Oto said resolutely.

“Yes… but a horrible thought just occurred to me,” Marie responded lightning fast.

“It occurred to me too. And so it probably occurred to Crisper.” He paused, before repeating, “I think we should head back.”

Oto turned his back on the void and waited for Marie to follow.

“I’d like to have a funeral,” she spoke gently.

“Of course, I’ll have Matt fabricate the details,” Oto replied.

Marie continued: “Not because he deserves it or because he even wanted one – he probably didn’t. But the covenators are going to do something stark raving to grieve their fallen leader and I just need something down-to-earth – something small – to keep a hold of. And I’d like to think there’d be a simple, little funeral for me when I go, which can’t be long now, and that you’d be there Otohiko and you’d say a nice thing or two.”

She composed herself, “So I think I’d like to have a funeral for Crisper too.”

Oto nodded and took Marie’s arm. They exited the second Space and were engulfed by the dark of the tunnel once more. In silence they took their seats in the vehicle, sparked the headlights, and began their return from the underworld.

It was after about half-an-hour that Oto noticed Marie was shivering a little. The car’s temperature control didn’t seem to be working properly. He checked the dashboard but couldn’t understand any of it. The red button, the green button, the wheel and the pedal – that’s all he’d needed to get them this far. Marie gave him a look that sternly told him to stop fussing over her, and that’s when the lights went out.

The car rolled to a pathetic stop as Oto impotently hammered the green button. There was a creaking sound of the automatic brakes applying and a thud as a single tiny emergency LED illuminated the interior with a faintest ghostly blue. Oto was still pummeling the button. Marie rested her hand on his for a moment. He untensed and turned to her for reassurance.

“You’re worried,” she observed.

“We’re in a pitch black tunnel, with miles to go, you can barely manage the 100 paces, and everyone we know is too terrified to come down here to help us.”

“We’ll figure it out. Maybe the car just needs a break, a little time to recharge.”

Marie began methodically rotating each knob and flicking each lever on the dashboard. “Something here is bound to do something. Maybe there’s a distress beacon to call Matt. Chin up Oto.”

After several long minutes, it was painfully clear that none of the triggers did a damned thing and that Oto was getting more jittery by the second. His pulse quickened every time he raised his eyes to meet the darkness ahead.

“My eyes aren’t even adjusting to it. And the car’s obviously gone: complete power failure,” Oto said. He nervously twiddled a knob and nearly jumped out of his skin as white noise lurched out of the speakers.

“Not completely complete power failure then, eh?” said Marie as she took over the twiddling and from the hiss began to emerge sounds. She tuned into them, remarking “This sounds a right racket. What station do you call this then?”

Oto winced as he tried to sense any reason among the clatter of thuds from the radio. There was an anxiety to the sound that, matched with the wall of blackness inches from his face, sped his heartbeat to an uncomfortable tempo.

Marie kept fiddling with the knob. She was making tiny, little motions now like she was searching for something almost imperceptible, like a safe-cracker in an old Earth heist film. The white noise faded back in, smothering the clatter. She twiddled a millimeter more, straining her ears. Her eyes widened.

Zzhzzzzzhzhzhzhzzzzzhhzhhzzzzh… du-dum… du-dum…

She looked up to Oto for recognition of what she could hear. He was wide eyed too, but he wasn’t listening to the radio. He was looking straight ahead into the thick, heavy black of the tunnel. Slowly a dark form could be delineated from the absolute blackness. The shape gained ground, but remains fuzzy and monochrome in the deep darkness. Oto, without taking his eyes off it, grasped at Marie’s hand and gripped it tightly.

And the radio played clearly a marching beat: du-dum… du-dum… du-dum…

Marie looked on as the form arrived in the path of the car. She knew. She knew from the second she saw Oto’s eyes fixed on it.

“Crisper?” she called out, her voice wavering.

Crisper’s face emerged from the darkness, contorted and greenish in hue, it reminded Marie of a eutrophic lake.

“It appears –” he allowed himself a quick chuckle, “– that we can’t die. You hear me: WE CAN’T DIE!”

Crisper broke down into hair-raising, guttural laughter that came from so deep within it was more similar to retching or vomiting. From the driver’s side, Oto could see a severed rope trailing from Crisper’s neck and noted his body was almost 180 degrees out of whack with the angle of his head. The best that could be observed was that he was alive.

The hacking hysterics subsided and Crisper turned back to them, “Oh don’t think me mad. Do not think me depraved. I am is completely compos mentis. In fact, I’ve never felt better.”

The trail of ooze snaking from his left ear down to his right shoulder made Oto doubt that.

“You obviously read my letters. You found Crisper’s Door and followed the tunnel and found Crisper’s Second Door. You saw the void. And now you witness me, risen from the dead. The Resurrection of Crisper. Crisper the Undead. Crisper the Immortal. Well, Crisper the Immortal comes to you with a request.”

Crisper slammed a revolver on the bonnet of the car.

“I need to know,” He looked dead at Marie, “Do you believe me? That we can’t die, here, in this godforsaken place? Maybe we’re already dead?”

“I believe you Crisper. I can see you can’t I?” Marie’s voice carried softly to him, “Hand me the gun, I’m not having you shoot me, I’m perfectly capable myself.”

The rim of the dashboard was glowing gently again in the car, it hadn’t escaped Oto’s attention even with the ghoul at the window. His finger was inching its way silently to the big green button while Marie and Crisper spoke. He could almost hear her voice in his head, not until we’ve got the gun Oto.

Marie lowered the window and was hit by a wave of rancid breath. Crisper offered the gun, but kept his hand firmly gripping it.

“I want to see. I need to see what happens. How quick it is, what it looks like. Please do this with me, it’s been a lonely business.”

“And what if I die, what if I don’t come back?” Marie asked.

He fixed her with a horrific stare, “Then you’ll be luckier than me.”

He released the gun to Marie, who looked down at it and took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Crisper watched hungrily on, yellowed eyes bulging and green veins popping.

“I was going to have a funeral when we got back,” she said quietly.

“I don’t care for funerals,” Crisper snorted.

“That’s what I thought,” Marie replied as Oto hit the big green button and the vehicle kicked into gear. The lights flashed, the wheels span and they sped straight into the dark towards the castle and away from demented shrieking of Crisper who vanished into the dark.

After driving in silence for a while, Oto turned to Marie who was still clutching the gun. “I guess the car did just need a break to recharge… are you okay? You did well back there with that thing.”

“I’m fine, Oto. Just a little shaken, and very confused.”

“If what he was saying was true, we can’t let him out of this tunnel. Even if it’s not true, we need to keep him away from everyone up there. The Coven with a leader resurrected from the dead, one, they’ll be insufferable, but two, they’ll all shoot themselves and their kids in the head the second he asks them.”

“You’re right.”

“Okay. We’ll seal the door when we leave and never come back.”