Operation Antarctica

- 17 -

The dance washed over Banks in a wave of blackness and void, starless and bible-black at first, then slowly taking form as they drifted with the beat. Part of him was aware that he still stood inside a pentacle, on the floor of a golden saucer, hovering now above the broken fragments of a shattered dome.

But that part was insignificant compared to the vastness of the void, and the call of the dance. Banks wanted to fall into it, to let it take him off and into the deep dark, where there was nothing but the dance, and peace, forever.

I want this.

And with it came realization.

This is what I want. It’s what I have always wanted, in my heart. The fucker is still inside my head. And it wants something else.

He tasted salt water at his lips, and remembered how Carnacki had stood, alone in the dark, remembered where Churchill had found his ‘demon.’ He had a final epiphany.

“Wiggins,” he shouted into the dark. “Go left. Ten feet then head for the door.”

“Then what, Cap?” the private’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere, a boom like the voice of God in the dark.

“Then jump. Jump if you want to live.”

He felt the assisted boost of Wiggins’ thought that, along with his own, moved the saucer slightly to one side, away from the shattered roof of the dome.

“Jump, Private, that’s a fucking order,” Banks shouted, and, judging to luck, left the pentacle at a straight run, heading for what he hoped was the doorway.

He met Wiggins just as his vision cleared. They almost wedged each other into the doorway. The second it took them to disentangle themselves was almost the end of them both; the saucer started to accelerate, heading toward the sea.

Banks didn’t hesitate. He threw Wiggins out the open doorway, then jumped through after him.

The fall seemed to take forever.