The Thing Beyond the Glass
The thing before me had eyes where none should be.
That was my first coherent observation.
There are certain habits which education engraves upon a man so thoroughly that even terror cannot
wholly abolish them. Mine was anatomy. I had spent too many years studying the human structure, too
many nights opening bodies beneath the hard white brilliance of surgical lamps, to look upon any living
thing without instinctively seeking the architecture beneath it.
And so, while every primitive portion of my mind demanded that I flee, another part counted.
Two arms.
No.
Four.
There was another beneath the left.
And another-
I blinked.
Four.
I could see the humerus of one limb turning beneath translucent flesh. Radius. Ulna. A wrist of sorts.
Fingers far too long.
Another limb possessed no arrangement I recognized. It bent where no joint should permit movement
and terminated in something that might have been a hand had the hand been designed by someone who
understood its purpose but had never seen one.
There were more limbs upon its left side than its right.
I counted again.
There were not.
I stepped backward.
The chamber surrounding us offered no greater reassurance.
I call it a chamber because walls seemed to exist, although I could not determine where they began.
Black structures climbed upward into a darkness that should have concealed their heights, yet somehow I
could see their ends.
They leaned.
Or I did.
Something red drifted between them.
Rain, perhaps.
Except it was falling upward.
The creature moved.
I stepped aside before it did.
Only afterward did I realize what I had done.
It stopped.
So did I.
One of its eyes opened beneath the fourth arm.
I had known that would happen.
My breath caught.
"No."
The word disappeared into the chamber.
The creature regarded me.
Not hungrily.
Not angrily.
That would have been easier.
It looked upon me with recognition.
And from somewhere inside me arose an emotion so immediate and so intimate that for several seconds I mistook it for fear.
It was shame.
Old shame.
Familiar shame.
The sort belonging to an offense remembered so often that memory itself has worn smooth around it.
Yet I could recall no offense.
I stared into that impossible arrangement of flesh and eyes and experienced the most dreadful certainty of my life.
I knew this thing.
Impossible.
I had never seen it.
But I knew it.
The impression was like encountering one's reflection in a mirror broken years before and abandoned somewhere in the London fog.
Then I heard her.
"Doc?"
My heart stopped.
"Gine?"
Her voice came again.
Not behind me.
Not ahead.
Not above.
It came from somewhere for which direction seemed an inadequate concept.
Every eye upon the creature turned toward it.
And I awoke.
***
I sat upright with such violence that pain flashed through my chest.
For several seconds I could do nothing but breathe.
Morning light filled the bedroom.
Too much morning light.
I stared at the window until the familiar arrangement of curtains and glass restored some dignity to the world.
"A dream," I whispered.
My voice sounded ridiculous in the empty room.
I pressed my palms against my eyes.
A physician dreaming of anatomically impossible monsters. There was humor in it somewhere.
The unconscious mind is an inelegant dramatist. It steals without shame from memory, sensation, anxiety and whatever nonsense one happened to encounter before sleeping, then assembles the pieces without regard for reason.
That was all.
I lowered my hands.
The clock had stopped.
Or perhaps I had forgotten to wind it.
I looked toward the door.
It stood slightly ajar.
That troubled me more than the dream.
I distinctly remembered locking it.
I lived alone and had developed the habit after several petty burglaries in the district. The key remained upon the bedside table.
I picked it up.
Perhaps I had risen during the night.
Sleepwalking was hardly impossible.
I dressed quickly, annoyed by the lingering unease.
When I pulled the door open, my hand came away wet.
I stared at my fingers.
Crimson.
For one absurd instant I thought someone had painted the handle.
Then I smelled it.
Metallic.
My professional mind supplied the conclusion before the rest of me accepted it.
Blood.
"No."
I touched thumb to forefinger.
Tacky.
Not entirely dry.
I should have examined it.
Instead I crossed immediately to the basin and washed my hands.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
The water clouded pink.
Someone began pounding upon the door downstairs.
Not knocking.
Pounding.
Authoritative.
Urgent.
I dried my hands upon the nearest towel.
The pounding continued.
"All right!"
I descended.
My heart had begun beating unpleasantly hard.
When I opened the door, Jim stood upon the step.
A younger constable stood beside him.
Jim looked as though he had not slept.
"Good morning," I said.
Neither answered.
Jim stared at me.
Something in his expression produced the same sensation I had experienced before the creature.
Recognition without understanding.
"Doc," he said.
"What?"
"Where were you last night?"
I almost laughed.
"At home."
"All night?"
"As far as I am aware."
The constable looked toward Jim.
Jim's jaw tightened.
"What time did Gine leave?"
I stopped.
"What?"
"My sister. What time did she leave?"
"Shortly before sunset."
Jim stared at me.
I felt suddenly defensive.
"She insisted upon walking. I offered to accompany her."
"She never came home."
For a moment the words meant nothing.
Then everything inside me tightened.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what I said."
"That is impossible."
"Why?"
Because I had heard her.
The answer rose immediately.
I nearly spoke it.
Instead I said, "Because she would have gone directly home."
"She didn't."
The constable stepped forward.
"Doctor, may we come inside?"
I looked at Jim.
He was not looking at me as my oldest friend.
He was looking at me as a man attempting desperately to remain my oldest friend while something else demanded his attention.
I moved aside.
They entered.
***
The younger officer noticed the towel.
Of course he did.
I had left it beside the basin.
Red streaks crossed the white cloth.
"What is that?"
Jim turned.
I felt an irrational impulse to hide it.
"Blood."
The officer's expression changed.
"Whose?"
"I don't know."
Jim looked at my hands.
I raised them instinctively.
Clean.
"It was on the bedroom door."
The officer went upstairs.
Jim followed.
I remained below for several seconds before irritation overcame unease.
By the time I reached them, the officer was examining the handle.
He looked at me.
"Where?"
"There."
"Where?"
"On the handle."
He stepped aside.
The brass was clean.
Not wiped.
Not stained.
Clean.
Ordinary.
I stared.
"No."
I touched it.
Cold metal.
Nothing more.
"I washed my hands," I said.
Neither man responded.
"I did not clean the handle."
The officer glanced toward the towel he had carried upstairs.
The towel remained stained.
"So you woke with blood on your hands?"
"No."
The distinction suddenly seemed extraordinarily important.
"It was on the handle. I touched the handle. Then it was on my hands."
Jim spoke softly.
"Doc."
"I did not clean it."
"I didn't say you did."
"But you're thinking it."
The young officer looked uncomfortable.
I pointed toward the towel.
"If I wished to conceal blood, why leave that?"
No answer.
"And the basin?"
Still none.
"This is absurd."
Jim watched me.
"Where is Gine?"
"I don't know!"
The force of my own answer startled me.
Something moved behind my eyes.
Not memory.
Something adjacent to memory.
A sensation.
Rain.
Glass.
A terrible metallic sound.
Then nothing.
I gripped the bedpost.
"Doc?"
"Search the house."
Jim frowned.
"What?"
"Search it."
The officer began to object.
I cut him off.
"Every room. Every cupboard. The cellar. The garden. Everything. If you believe something happened here, then find it."
Jim studied me for several seconds.
Then nodded.
They searched.
They found nothing.
No weapon.
No blood beyond the towel and basin.
No torn clothing.
No sign that Gine had ever been harmed within my home.
No explanation.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, when Jim finally descended from the upper floor, I found myself wishing they had discovered something.
Anything.
Evidence would have been comprehensible.
Absence was not.
***
There are memories which possess shape.
One remembers a room, a voice, a street, a face.
Even incomplete recollections have edges.
What troubled me was something else.
I possessed guilt without memory.
It sat within me like a grave whose marker had been weathered blank.
I knew something had been buried there.
I could not remember what.
That evening I attempted to reconstruct the previous day.
Gine had visited.
We had taken tea.
She had laughed when I complained about the rain.
Had it been raining?
I remembered rain.
No.
I remembered hearing rain.
Or perhaps-
I stood from my desk.
The room tilted.
For an instant the floor seemed to climb toward the wall.
I caught myself against the chair.
Pain tightened across my chest.
Then disappeared.
I had eaten too little.
That was all.
I returned to my notes.
Gine arrived-
When?
I could not remember.
Tea.
What had we discussed?
Marriage.
Yes.
No.
Perhaps.
I remembered her hand in mine.
I remembered blood upon it.
I dropped the pen.
The image vanished.
"Gine?"
Silence.
Then-
"Doc?"
I stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
Her voice.
From the corridor.
I ran.
"Gine!"
The corridor was empty.
"Gine?"
Again.
"Doc?"
Behind me.
I turned.
Nothing.
Then above.
Then beneath.
Then somewhere so distant that it seemed carried across miles.
I followed it.
The corridor stretched.
I stopped.
My house did not possess a corridor this long.
The lamp at its end diminished until it resembled a star.
"Gine?"
The walls darkened.
Rain began striking the windows.
Except there were no windows.
I smelled blood.
The floor tilted.
I reached for the wall.
My hand touched something cold and transparent.
Glass.
Cracked glass.
Beyond it stood black pillars beneath a red sky.
"No."
The word emerged as fog.
Something moved between the pillars.
Too many arms.
I backed away.
The creature followed.
"No."
Its eyes opened one after another.
I knew the order.
Left.
Upper.
Beneath the arm.
The one near its throat.
Then-
I closed my eyes.
"Doc?"
I opened them.
Jim sat across from me.
A cup of tea rested between us.
***
"You're pale," he said.
I stared at him.
We were sitting in my study.
Morning light filled the windows.
"How long have you been here?"
His expression changed.
"Since breakfast."
I looked at the clock.
Half past nine.
"What day is it?"
Jim put down his cup.
"Doc."
"What day?"
He told me.
I laughed.
He did not.
"That cannot be correct."
"Why?"
Because Gine had disappeared yesterday.
Except according to the date he had given me, yesterday had occurred-
I stopped.
"Where is Gine?"
Jim became very still.
There are silences in which nothing is said.
And there are silences in which an entire conversation occurs before either participant dares speak.
This was the latter.
"Why are you asking me that?"
"Because she's missing."
Jim's face lost color.
I stood.
"The police were here. You were here."
"No."
"You searched the house."
"No."
"The towel-"
"Doc."
I went to the basin.
White towel.
Clean porcelain.
Nothing.
My stomach turned.
"No."
Jim followed.
"What happened last night?"
"Nothing happened last night."
"Gine came here."
His eyes closed.
Only briefly.
But I saw it.
"Why did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"That."
He turned away.
"Jim."
He walked toward the window.
"Tell me where she is."
He said nothing.
"Tell me!"
His shoulders moved with a breath.
Then he said:
"Gine is dead."
The room became extraordinarily quiet.
I smiled.
Not because anything was amusing.
Because the statement was so absurd that my face apparently possessed no more appropriate response.
"No."
Jim did not turn.
"No."
"Doc-"
"She was here."
He faced me.
"When?"
"Yesterday."
Something broke in his expression.
Not anger.
Grief.
Old grief.
"No, she wasn't."
"She sat there."
I pointed.
"We had tea."
"Doc."
"She laughed about the rain."
His eyes filled.
I hated him for that.
"You are lying."
"Why would I lie?"
"I don't know."
"She has been dead for years."
Something struck the window.
Tap.
I looked toward it.
Rain.
Tap.
Tap.
Except the sky was clear.
Jim continued speaking.
"There was an accident."
Tap.
"You know this."
Tap.
"You were there."
Something cold tightened around my chest.
"No."
"Doc-"
"No."
"Please."
"I saw her yesterday."
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The window cracked.
I stepped backward.
Jim did not react.
A thin line spread through the glass.
"Can't you see that?"
"See what?"
The crack branched.
Beyond it the street vanished.
Black pillars stood beneath a crimson sky.
"Doc?"
Jim's voice stretched.
The room tilted.
I fell upward.
***
Rain moved toward the sky.
I lay upon something hard.
No.
I hung above it.
The creature crawled between the pillars.
Its limbs struck crystal.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"Gine!"
"Doc!"
Her voice came from everywhere.
I tried to move.
Something held me across the chest.
I pulled against it.
A restraint.
The creature came closer.
Its face changed as it moved.
Not changed.
Reflected.
Fragments.
My face.
Gine's.
Jim's.
None.
I could not count its eyes.
I could not count anything.
"Help me!"
"Doc!"
"I can't find you!"
Something warm ran across my forehead.
Upward.
I touched it.
Red.
Blood.
Mine?
Hers?
The creature reached toward me.
I screamed-
-and woke in my bed.
***
Days passed.
Or I believed they did.
I began writing everything down.
That was the physician's solution.
Observation.
Record.
Comparison.
If memory had become unreliable, then paper would serve where recollection failed.
I recorded meals.
Visitors.
Weather.
Dreams.
Conversations.
Every morning I read the previous day's entries.
Some I remembered.
Some I did not.
Some contradicted what I remembered.
One morning I found:
Jim says Gine has been dead three years. Automobile accident. I was present.
Below it, in what appeared to be my handwriting:
This is not true. Gine visited yesterday.
Below that:
STOP ASKING ABOUT GINE.
And beneath that:
FIND GINE.
I stared at the page.
All four entries were mine.
I remembered writing none of them.
A fifth line occupied the bottom.
The handwriting deteriorated halfway through.
SOMETHING HAPPENED.
That sentence frightened me more than anything else I had written.
Because I knew it was true.
I simply did not know what it meant.
***
Jim returned.
Or perhaps he had never left.
We sat together in the study.
I asked him about the accident.
His face tightened.
"You don't remember?"
"No."
"Perhaps that's for the best."
"No. It isn't."
He looked older than I remembered.
"When did we become old men?"
That surprised a laugh from him.
"We've been working on it for some time."
For several minutes we were boys again.
Not literally.
Yet I remembered muddy shoes, stolen apples, a broken window, Jim swearing I had thrown the stone when both of us knew perfectly well it had been him.
I remembered Gine following us years later, furious that we would not let her join some childish expedition.
I remembered-
Gine older.
Gine laughing.
Gine's hand.
Gine-
Rain.
I gripped the chair.
"Tell me."
Jim looked away.
"Tell me about the accident."
"You were driving."
The room contracted.
"Was Gine with me?"
Jim looked at me.
He did not answer.
That silence answered for him.
Or I thought it did.
"What happened?"
"It was raining."
Of course.
"The road?"
"Bad."
"Another vehicle?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I wasn't there."
That stopped me.
"Then how do you know?"
"Doc-"
"How do you know what happened if you weren't there?"
His face blurred.
I blinked.
For an instant I could not remember his name.
I knew him.
I knew that I loved him as a brother.
I knew that he had annoyed me for most of my childhood.
I knew that I trusted him.
But his name-
"Jim?"
His face returned.
"Yes."
Relief nearly made me laugh.
"Something happened," I whispered.
"Yes."
"To Gine."
His expression twisted.
"To all of us."
The window cracked.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I did not look.
***
Eventually I remembered the road.
Not all at once.
Memory returned as geography.
First the rain.
Then darkness.
Then two lamps ahead.
No.
Headlights.
A road shining black beneath them.
My hands upon a wheel.
Someone's voice.
Gine?
I turned.
There was no one beside me.
Then there was.
Then I was standing in my study.
Then I was driving again.
"Gine?"
No answer.
Something moved across the road.
I turned the wheel.
Metal screamed.
Glass became stars.
The world inverted.
And I was back before the creature.
Its eyes opened.
I knew them.
I knew-
I woke.
No.
There was no waking.
The black pillars remained.
But now one possessed a silver edge.
Another had stitching.
The crimson rain struck my face.
Cold.
Real.
Something pressed brutally across my chest.
I reached for it.
Fabric.
A belt.
The creature disappeared.
In its place hung shattered glass.
I stared.
My breath came in short wet gasps.
The world was upside down.
No.
I was upside down.
The realization arrived slowly.
Automobile.
The black pillars-
Frame.
The crystalline landscape-
Glass.
The red rain-
Blood.
My blood.
"No."
Somewhere beyond the wreck someone was shouting.
A man's voice.
Not Jim.
"Sir! Can you hear me?"
I tried to answer.
Nothing emerged.
"Stay with me!"
Another voice.
"There's one in here!"
One.
I turned my head.
The passenger seat was empty.
Gine was not there.
I stared at it.
Empty.
No blood.
No body.
No Gine.
Something inside me broke more completely than the glass.
"Gine?"
Her voice answered.
"Doc?"
Impossible.
It came from nowhere.
Everywhere.
From years ago.
From yesterday.
From beyond the road.
From inside me.
Perhaps I only remembered it.
Perhaps I had been remembering it all along.
My vision darkened.
I understood.
Not everything.
One thing.
Enough.
Something had happened.
Yes.
The investigation.
The blood.
Jim.
Gine.
The creature.
The impossible rooms.
The missing hours.
All of it circling something my mind had refused to name.
Not Gine.
Me.
I was dying.
The thought was remarkably simple.
I had pronounced death many times.
I had signed certificates.
I had watched breathing cease.
I had placed fingers against throats and felt nothing answer.
I understood death.
I was a physician.
I knew exactly what it meant.
I am dying.
I repeated it.
I am dying.
Again.
I am dying.
The words remained perfectly comprehensible.
Their meaning did not.
How could I be dying?
I was thinking.
How could there be a moment after the final moment when there would be no one left to know that the moment had ended?
Where did thought go when there was no thinker?
What happened to memory when there was no one remaining to remember?
I tried to imagine nothing.
I imagined darkness.
Darkness was something.
I imagined silence.
Silence was something.
I imagined absence.
But there I remained, observing the absence.
My mind could not construct a world in which it did not exist to observe the world.
So it constructed another.
The black pillars returned beyond the windshield.
The road disappeared.
Red rain rose toward an unseen sky.
And between the pillars stood the creature.
"No."
It watched me.
Every impossible eye opened.
I knew the order.
I had always known the order.
For one moment I thought I understood why.
Then something moved behind the broken windshield.
A hand.
Long.
Pale.
Jointed incorrectly.
It reached toward me.
I stared at the shattered glass separating us.
"No."
The fingers touched the windshield.
They did not stop.
The glass rippled.
Not broke.
Rippled.
Like black water disturbed by rain.
The hand passed through.
Every rational thought I possessed disappeared.
I screamed.
It seized my wrist.
Cold fingers closed around me.
Behind it, somewhere beyond direction, Gine called my name.
"Doc?"
The hand pulled.
The windshield opened like water.
And I passed through.
For one impossible instant I looked backward.
The overturned automobile hung beyond the dark surface.
Rain fell upon it.
Men moved around the wreck.
Someone leaned through the broken window toward a body suspended by its belt.
My body.
I wanted to tell them I was still there.
I wanted to tell them I understood.
But the thing holding me pulled harder.
The road vanished.
The wreck vanished.
The rain vanished.
There were only the black pillars.
The creature.
And somewhere impossibly far away-
or impossibly near-
Gine's voice.
"Doc?"
I turned toward it.
And something in the darkness turned with me.
