Read Online The Aberration by Bard Constantine - Free Book Online

The flashlights were all they had until they reached the roof.
    Someone whimpered; she wasn’t sure if it was her or Drake.
    “Let’s go,” Guy said.
    The climb was slow and hesitant.  After the past few hours, they were ever cautious of the next bend, the next step into the nightmare that held them captive.  The silence was as thick as the shadows.  The only sound was their harsh breathing.  The gloom closed in on them so oppressively that Fran felt as if she had to say something .
    “Guy… how long have you been doing this?”  She winced immediately as her voice echoed loudly. 
    Guy turns his head slightly.   “ Longer than you’d believe.”
    So it was going to be those cryptic kinds of answers.  She pressed on, more to concentrate on something other than her fear than anything else. “You said earlier that you were chosen.  Who… chose you?”
    He paused in mid-step.
    “I… can’t answer that.”
    Michael’s eyebrows lifted.  “You don’t remember?”
    Guy frowned as though trying to concentrate.  “I…”  He shook his head.  “I should be able to, but it’s been so long, the lives all jumbled… Maybe I’m not supposed to remember.”
    Drake frowned.  “Not supposed to?  Why the hell not?”
    Something indecipherable smoldered in Guy’s eyes.  “So that I wouldn’t know who to hate for giving me this burden.” 
    His words smothered all further comments on that subject. 
    They continue upward.  Sweat slicked Michaels face.  His voice was a hoarse rasp.  “I still don’t know what an Aberration is.  It’s like there’s something, some… force that’s causing our fears to come alive.”
    Guy halfway turned, his face shadowed.  “That’s actually pretty close to the truth.”
    Fran looked up at him.  “How is that possible?  You said it was nothing like our world.”
    “Nothing in the sense of humanity.  Traits like compassion, justice, or moral compass.  No other side.”
    “Other side?”
    “Everything we know has an opposite.  Good and bad.  Night and day.  Yin and yang.” 
    Michael nodded.  “Universal balance.  Right.”
    Guy shrugged.  “I suppose.  But what if somewhere there’s a reflection of us without the balance?  Without the side of us that’s good, or at least decent?”  Guy turned back around and stared into the gloom.
    ‘Every dark thought, every secret perversion, every selfish lust, every murderous intention… what would they be like it they were left to simmer and boil until they became incarnate?  Until they came alive to devour us?”
    They all fell silent, staring at each other. 
    “We like to pretend as though we’re different from the criminals, the insane mothers who drown their children, the serial killer that dances in the skin of his victims.  We go about with our noses high as if the same darkness doesn’t exist in us.  As if there isn’t a fine line between rage and murder, between sanity and madness.  But when we ignore what lies in the Abyss, what lurks inside of us doesn’t just die because it’s ignored.  It lives.  It breathes.  It feeds.”
    Once again silence surrounded them.  This time Fran was grateful for it.
    They reached the third floor without incident, then the fourth.  Then the fifth floor.  When they began to the sixth, Drake halted so suddenly that she ran into his back. 
    She rubbed her nose.  “What’s wrong?”
    His eyes quivered like frightened animals trying to escape his skull.  “I… I can’t go up there.”
    Guy paused and turned his head a fraction.  “We can’t stop now, Drake.  We stop… we die.”   
    “Come on, Drake,” Michael said.  “How bad can it be?”
    They found out as they rounded the corner.  At first glance she thought someone had emptied cans of chunky tomato sauce on the floor and walls. 
    If only.
    In the corner were the remains; the ribcage that was exposed in the flashlight beams, the organs and intestines spilled out across the