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  "Of course you did," he said calmly and with little effort, he twisted away. The strength in my arms evaporated. He stood above me, looking down.

  "Joe killed her."

  "No, it was you. How many others have you killed?"

  "It was Joe!" Wildly, I looked around the room. "Joe! He'll tell you himself. He loves killing."

  "There's no one here but us."

  "He was here. He's gone now, but he was here. He fed you, don't you remember? You drank his blood."

  "Look at your arm."

  My eyes focused on a narrow line of congealed blood running down my forearm. But the arm wasn't mine, couldn't be mine–it was Joe's. I had seen him cut himself just there, had seen the blood. From my kneeling position, I looked up at Aurora's massive canvas. The unfinished portion seemed impossible to fill, a black hole swallowing all that approached it. It had swallowed Aurora, driving her outside her artist's tower to meet her fate. Would it also swallow me?

  "You owe it to her," said Victor, as if he could read my thoughts. "Aurora said that the difference between the artist and the monster was the difference between life and death."

  Abruptly he walked away. He seemed tired again, his energy spent. I heard the quiet rustle of cushions as he settled back on the sofa. I looked back at the painting. A sound came from beyond the walls of the building–a distant train blaring its lonely, mournful tune through the night corridors. Fading slowly, echoing, vanishing forever.

  I was alone with the canvas, the brushes, and the odor of the paints.

  THE POUNDING ROOM

  Bentley Little

  When I read the following story by Bentley Little, I knew it was a Borderlands story before I even finished it. Although I’d read (forgive me) little by Bentley, I had always liked the way his stuff tends to always be a little skewed from the reality most of us know so well.

  Little has published his short fiction in the small press and also genre magazines such as Night Cry and The Horror Show. His first novel, The Revelation, appeared in 1990. He says he is a faceless bureaucrat who wears a beard working in a large southern California city. I’ll have to see if I can spot him next time I’m out there.

  Thumpthump…thumpthump…thumpthump…thumpthump.

  I hear it even now, the pounding, like the amplified beating of my heart. But it is not my heart. And it is not the pulse of blood rushing through my veins, though it does come from within me.

  Or maybe it comes from without.

  It’s hard to tell.

  I like to think that it arises from that portion of my mind which is my memory, but it is more immediate than an ordinary remembrance, and I hear it much more often.

  When I arrived for work that first day, I did not know what to expect. I’d been interviewed the week before in the corporate boardroom on the fourth floor and was hired on the spot, with hearty shakings of hands all around. I was given to understand that I would have an office, but how big that office would be and whether I would be provided with a secretary had not yet been decided. In fact, not a whole hell of a lot had been decided. My official title was corporate liaison, but it was an entirely new position and the job description was necessarily vague. My duties would be better understood by both myself and my employer once I’d begun working and gotten a handle on the situation.

  So I really had no idea what I would be doing.

  The corporation manufactured computer parts, not the microchips and high-tech components but the simpler and more practical housings and frames. It was one of the largest companies of its type on the West Coast, and the parking lot alone was gigantic. I went through the gate and told the man in the booth that I was a new employee. He checked my name against a list on his computer screen and waved me on. It was not yet eight, but the lot was almost full, and I ended up parking out in the cheap seats and hiking it in. A blonde bimbo in a red Fiat sped down one of the rows and almost hit me, slamming on her brakes only at the last moment when she saw that I would not cross her path in time for her to miss me, and I vowed that the next day I would come early and get a decent parking space.

  The facade of the main building was fake Deco, and though I saw other employees entering through a side door, I decided to go through the lobby in the front. I had not been told where to report, and I thought it would be best on the first day to behave conservatively. I pushed open one of the double glass doors and entered the huge lobby, approaching the receptionist, an attractive black woman wearing a phone headset. I cleared my throat. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m Charles Nichols, the new corporate liaison.”

  The woman looked down at a mimeographed sheet in front of her, then smiled up at me. “Glad to have you with us,” she said. “Mr. Gibbonz will be out in a moment to take you through your orientation.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She pushed a button on the console in front of her, then gestured toward one of the cool pastel couches which rimmed the lobby. “Have a seat.”

  I moved toward the closest couch. Mr. Gibbonz. Out of the four board members who had interviewed me, I liked Gibbonz the least, though there was no concrete reason for my feelings. He was a short, almost squat man with a thin, pointed nose and the clothes of a dandy. He had a condescending manner and a smug, bored voice to match. I sat down on the couch, but before I could even pick up one of the magazines on the adjoining table, Mr. Gibbonz was walking through the doorway behind the receptionist.

  He shook my hand heartily. “Welcome aboard,” he said. He smiled, revealing white even teeth.

  I returned his smile and said, “It’s good to be here.”

  Gibbonz led me past the receptionist and through the doorway into a wide hall lined with photographs of computers and computer parts. He waved at the business-suited men and women we passed. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what we have in store for you today,” he said.

  I nodded. “It crossed my mind.”

  “Well, the particulars of your position haven’t been ironed out yet, but we have plenty of things to keep you busy in the interim.” He stopped in front of an unmarked door and opened it. A well-lit stairway led down. “This way.”

  I followed him down the steps. The light dimmed considerably as we rounded the corner, and the remainder of the stairwell was quite dark. From below, I heard a ragged, rhythmic, muffled pounding.

  Thumpthump…thumpthump…thumpthump.

  A slight feeling of apprehension passed through me, but Gibbonz was unmindful of both the noise and the darkness, and I followed him down into the gloom.

  “As liaison,” he continued, “your first assignment will be to interface with the—”

  But I did not hear the next word for we had reached the bottom of the stairs and he had pushed open the wooden door.

  The room before us was dark and small, not much larger than an average office. The floor was earthen, the bare walls and ceiling were constructed of old unpainted boards, and the stifling, humid air reeked of human perspiration. In the center of the room was a long black table around which sat sixteen or seventeen men. The men were all shirtless, their sweaty torsos glistening even in this dim light, and over each of their heads was a brown paper sack in which were cut two crude eyeholes. The men were pounding stones against the top of the table in an even rhythm, gripping the small rocks in their hands and bringing them down in time on the black wood, and it was clear that this was the source of the noise.

  Thumpthump…thumpthump…thumpthump.

  Gibbonz walked around the table, and I followed him. The men continued to pound on the table, as if they did not see or notice us, their beat not wavering. Behind those holes in the sacks, eyes may have watched our progress, but the sacks themselves turned neither one way nor the other. At the front of the room, on a small raised platform, was a dingy throne, covered with faded red velvet. Gibbonz gestured toward the throne. “This is your office,” he said.

  “Is this a joke?” I demanded.

  He shook his head, and I could see from the expr
ession on his face that he did not understand my reaction.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, backing up. “I was hired as a corporate liaison, and this is not…I didn’t think I’d be…”

  “We told you this was a new position, Mr. Nichols.”

  “Yes, but you led me to believe I would…I mean, I outlined the type of position I was looking for—”

  “Mr. Nichols—”

  “I thought it would be a normal job!” I glared at him. All this time, the men had continued to pound on the table. The rhythmic thumping was starting to give me a headache, driving a wedge into my brain, and all I wanted to do was run out of the room and back up the stairs. I turned around to look at the men. Their positions had not changed. They remained entirely unmoving save for the synchronized pumping of their arms. The top of the table was unscuffed, I saw, despite the constant battering of the stones. I glanced up at the ceiling. A single small bulb in the shape of a flame peeked out from a knothole in the wood.

  “Sit down,” Gibbonz said gently. He laid a hand on my arm, and there was something in that touch that prompted me to ascend the platform and sit down on the throne. Below me, I could see all of the men, the sacks over their heads, the unceasing pumping of their arms. I wriggled a bit, trying to get comfortable, but the seat of the throne was hard and lumpy as if under the padded material there were rocks.

  Gibbonz handed me a short kingly scepter–tarnished brass with a head of the same faded red velvet as the throne. “Hold this,” he said. I took the scepter. “You will get a fifteen minute break at ten and three, a half-hour lunch at twelve.”

  “I don’t have a—”

  “I will inform you of the time,” he said. He turned and began walking toward the stairs. “Good luck!” he called back.

  The door shut.

  I was alone with the men. Though it was daytime, though we were in the midst of a large modern corporation, I was afraid. The pounding did not grow louder–it remained constant, as always–but my perception of it changed. Without Gibbonz’s presence there to deflect it, all my attention was drawn to the scene before me. The unnaturalness of it, its incomprehensibility, put me on edge. I felt like a little boy constantly on alert, knowing a monster is going to jump out but not knowing where or when. I did not really think anything was going to jump out at me, but I felt that same fear, experienced that same feeling of expectant nervousness.

  Thumpthump…thumpthump…thumpthump.

  I tried to think about something else, tried to concentrate on my apartment, on a movie I had seen the day before, or anything other than the room in which I was sitting, but my attention was drawn back to the bizarre tableau before me.

  And the pounding, pounding, pounding. This must be what it is like to work in the engine room of a ship, I thought, or to work with a jackhammer. I did not understand how anyone could be around such constant noise for any length of time. It was deafening, all-encompassing. My thoughts, my inner words, took on the rhythm of the pounding, coming to me in bursts of two, separated by a pause.

  Thumpthump…thumpthump…thumpthump.

  I don’t know why I did not just get up and leave. Perhaps I thought that Gibbonz had locked the door. Knowing that the door was locked, having this fear confirmed would have been far worse than the suspicion. Or perhaps I thought this was a joke, a prank played on first-day employees. Or perhaps I thought this was all part of some elaborate psychological test to gauge my reaction under stressful circumstances and that my behavior was being filmed with a hidden camera. I do not really know what I thought. But I know I was afraid to leave the dais, afraid to stand up from the throne, afraid to let go of the scepter.

  There were eighteen men. I counted them. Nine on each side of the table. Only I was not sure they were men. I could see their sweaty torsos, but their heads were hidden under the sacks, and I had the horrible feeling that if I looked under those sacks I would not find human heads. I thought of talking to them, of yelling at them, but something stayed me. I was afraid to speak to the men. I was afraid they would not answer.

  I was afraid they would answer.

  It was horribly hot in the room, and already my underarms were soaked. I could feel my shirt sticking to my wet back. Rivulets of sweat poured down the sides of my face from my uncomfortably damp hair.

  And still the pounding continued. Never ending. Never changing.

  Thumpthump…thumpthump.

  The pounding must have hypnotized me somehow, lulled me to sleep, because after that I stood up from the throne and set the scepter down. I stepped off the platform. Moving slowly, as if underwater, I reached the man at the end of the table and grabbed with both my hands the sack over his head. I could feel the coarse fibery paper between my fingers. The man’s arm continued to move up and down, the rock solid in his clenched fist, unmoving, unchanging, as I slowly pulled the sack from his head.

  It was my father. His face was grayish yellow, his eyes closed, a fine white powder on his mustache. He looked exactly as he had when he died. The old face grafted onto the sweaty body would have been ludicrous, almost comical, were it not for the fact that the head was dead and the body, arm pumping strongly, was undeniably alive.

  My cold hands were trembling, but I moved on to the second man and pulled the sack from his head. It was my mother. Her skin was sallow, her thin face at rest, her eyes and lips closed. The sack had apparently been supporting her, and when I pulled it off, her head lolled limply on her right shoulder. Her hand, clutching her stone, continued to beat on the wooden tabletop.

  I put my hand to her forehead, and her eyes suddenly popped open, burning with a red intensity.

  Then I was on the dais again, on the throne, clutching my scepter, staring down at the men, all of whom still had sacks over their heads.

  The door opened at the far end of the room, and I wondered if it was time for a break yet. It couldn’t be, I reasoned. Gibbonz had just left a few moments ago.

  He walked toward me. “Five o’clock,” he said. “Time to call it a day.”

  I stared at him. This had to be a joke, but it wasn’t funny and I could think of no possible punch line.

  “You just left a few minutes ago,” I said.

  He laughed. “Time flies when you’re having fun. Come on.” He took the scepter from my hand, placing it on the wooden platform next to the throne, and I followed him across the room, out the door, and up the stairs. As I walked back into the real world, leaving the hot hell of the dark room behind me, I saw that other people were indeed leaving as if it was time to go home, small groups of men and women putting on jackets, taking out keys, checking purses as they walked down the hall toward the exit. I looked around for a wall clock and saw one nearby.

  Four fifty-nine.

  Where had the day gone? What had happened to me?

  Though I was out of the room and in a modern well-lighted hallway of the company, I felt a shiver run down my spine. I turned to Gibbonz, trying to keep my voice as nonchalant as possible. “I thought you were going to tell me when it was time for break and lunch. You left me in there all day.”

  He looked at me, puzzled. “What?”

  A passing woman turned to smile at me. “Charles,” she said, nodding.

  It was a greeting, an acknowledgment from one acquaintance to another, but I had never seen the woman before in my life. The confusion must have shown on my face, because she laughed. Her laugh was tinkling, musical. “Judee,” she prodded. “Lunch?”

  I nodded, pretending I understood. Apparently, I had met this woman at lunch.

  What the hell had happened to me?

  Gibbonz held out his hand. “Good first day,” he told me. “You’ll fit in well. See you tomorrow.”

  I shook his hand but said nothing. I had no intention of coming back here ever again. I walked out to the parking lot alone, got into my car, and drove home.

  That night I lay awake, thinking of that hot, sweaty room, hearing the pounding, seeing the unmoving bodies of the men with
the sacks over their heads, and I knew I had to go back again. I could not leave everything as is. I would spend the rest of my life wondering about that room, those men, that corporation. I had to know who—what—those men were, what was under those sacks. I wanted to discover that there was nothing out of the ordinary at all, that tomorrow I would arrive to find that it was all a test, a joke, an initiation rite, and that I was now the proud owner of a nice new air-conditioned office. But I knew that was just wishful thinking.

  I reported the next morning to Gibbonz’s office. He did not seem surprised to see me, and he did not act as if anything out of the ordinary had occurred the day before. He simply shook my hand, said hello, and led me down the hall, through the door, down the stairs to the room.

  Everything was unchanged.

  I was tempted to ask about the duties of my job again, but it would have been pointless. I had no intention of staying here any longer than necessary. He handed me the scepter, I climbed the dais and sat down on the throne.

  Thumpthump…thumpthump…

  Gibbonz left without a word, and I was alone with the men. The table on which they were pounding seemed newer than it had yesterday, and the single candle bulb seemed dimmer than before. But it was probably just my imagination.

  I was scared, but I forced myself to put down the scepter and step off the platform. My heart was pounding, and the sweat was pouring down my face. I slowly approached the first man, and I stood there for a moment, staring at his glistening muscles. I knew he was big enough to easily beat the crap out of me, but somehow that was not something I worried about. That possibility did not frighten me.

  The stone in his hand came down on the table in hard, even strokes.

  I took one step closer. The man made no attempt to restrain my hands as I put them on the top of the sack. He neither flinched nor yielded, in no way acknowledging my presence, his untiring arm coming down in jackhammer strokes, striking the table.