Burton began to feel light, like a balloon. He bobbed up and out, twisting around to see his body lying on the couch, Lady Helena, Challenger and Abberline kneeling beside him.
His astral form grinned, and he turned and rose up through the ceiling and straight into a dark abyss.
14. The Dweller on the Threshold
Captain Richard Francis Burton stared into the abyss, and the abyss also stared into him. The blackness was vast, without light or heat. The nothingness went on forever.
He felt the presence of someone behind him. Burton turned, afraid the apparition would depart like all the other times. But this time, instead of fleeing to the periphery of his vision, it held still.
Burton regarded the figure carefully, his heart pounding, his throat tightening. It was him. The Other Burton. The feeling was like that of looking in a mirror, save for the permanent scowl on Other Burton’s face.
“You killed me,” said Other Burton, and Burton didn’t recognize his own voice, realizing that we all must sound different to ourselves. He was hearing himself for the first time as others heard him, and it was disconcerting.
“I did not mean to,” said Burton. “I am sorry, for you have lost so much. We both have.”
“Only one of us can prevail,” said Other Burton. “We cannot both exist. One of us is the lie; the other is the truth.”
“Agreed,” Burton said to his double, nodding. “But how do we decide which one?”
The Other Burton was silent for a long moment before raising a hand that now held a sword. He gave a cry of rage before lunging toward Burton, who moved out of his way just in time to miss the blade’s stinging arc as Other Burton attempted to embed the weapon in his right shoulder.
“Bismillah!” said Burton. “Wait. I am unarmed.”
“Only if you want to be,” said Other Burton as he lunged once more. This one Burton parried, surprised to find an identical sword in his hand.
“So that’s how it works on the astral plane,” said Burton as he counterattacked.
They danced back and forth for a couple of minutes, swords clashing, but neither Burton got the upper hand. Each version anticipated what the other was going to do.
“This isn’t going to work,” said Burton panting. He pulled back, tossing his blade aside. They had the same training and were equally matched.
The Other Burton regarded him. “We must duel to the death.”
“Why?”
“It is the only way to resolve the rupture in Time. The rupture that allowed their incursion into this world.” He gestured, and Burton felt a cold presence surrounding them, watching them. He looked, but just as with the Other Burton, he could only discern them indirectly, over his shoulder, behind him.
He felt naked and afraid, as if he were a microbe being examined under a microscope by intellects vast and cruel and unsympathetic.
“They were going to come anyway,” said Burton. “They were here before.”
Other Burton shook his head. “They came because of you. Isabel went missing because of you.”
“No,” said Burton. “What I did had nothing to do with her. I—”
He stopped. Could the Other Burton be right? It was something they had changed that caused Time to run along this deadly new course, a course in which Isabel had been in Hyde Park that day and had been snatched from his life. A course in which no mediums went mad. A course in which Edward Bulwer-Lytton started a Dagon cult and was now at war with London.
“I am sorry,” said Burton. “We have both lost so much. Isabel—”
“My Isabel!” Other Burton shouted. “Yours yet lives, in some other version of Time. In killing you, I will take your place, the time streams will merge, and I will have her back. And the world, my world, will no longer be filled with monsters.”
Burton could see the madness in his bloodshot eyes. How many sleepless nights had he endured? How many evenings did he spend stalking Hyde Park in search of his Isabel? The toll it must have taken on him. This poor man wasn’t the doppelganger. Burton was.
“Bismillah!” Burton swore.
He looked in the direction the stygian entities’ presence was strongest.
“Bismillah!” he swore again, raising his fists. Somewhere in the distance thunder echoed.
“You may be right about me,” said Burton. “But you cannot possibly know how the time streams, as you call them, will merge. Time may indeed be a river, but plotting its course is not like locating the source of the Nile. There will be ripples, eddies. Something else will change. Something you didn’t intend.”
Other Burton held his sword down at his side, pondering his words. “My fight is not with you. It is these otherworldly entities that caused this. They are the reason we traveled through time. They are the reason history is bifurcated.”
Burton regarded his double. “You said there was a rupture that allowed their return to this world. What did you mean?”
“Can’t you feel it?” said Other Burton. “It’s all around us now, growing in strength. The mediums felt it first, because they are sensitive to ethereal vibrations. Bismillah! I sound like one of them. There was a time I thought them mad. Now, I doubt my own sanity.”
“I know what you mean,” said Burton. “So this tear in Time is what has given rise to all this madness? Bulwer-Lytton’s cult, this sudden interest in the occult?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Other Burton. “It makes as much sense as anything else. I just want my time stream back, before we made a mess of it.”
Burton nodded.
“It was the artifact that did it, you know,” said Other Burton. “The object Miss Marsh showed us was the same one that was part of R’lyeh’s control mechanism. We smashed it.”
“Of course,” said Burton. “Smashing it in the past meant we could not have possibly seen it in the present. How could I have been such a fool?”
“How could we have been such fools,” Other Burton corrected. “It was the unresolved paradox that created the rupture. It is the rupture that gives power to Bulwer-Lytton’s infernal weaponry.”
“If we close the rupture,” said Burton, “we will stop Bulwer-Lytton. We’ll stop them all.”
“But what about Isabel?” said Other Burton.
“It might bring her back,” Burton offered.
“Perhaps.”
Burton watched in horror as the blackness around them resolved itself into chaotic indigo mists through which strange, not even remotely humanoid shapes toiled.
“They are here now,” said Other Burton. “On the astral plane. They intend to finish us. Punishment for not doing their bidding.”
“How do you know this?”
“They shout at my mind through the crimson mists,” said Other Burton. “Our previous contact with the shoggoth in R’lyeh primed our minds for them, and them for us. Can’t you feel them?”
Burton didn’t know what he felt. An eerie feeling of something wet pawing on the back of his neck.
“What do we do?” he said. “Can we die here?”
Other Burton shrugged. “I suppose I don’t truly exist, and you are merely the spirit form of your body back on Lady Helena’s couch. What have we got to lose?”
Burton took up his sword from where he had tossed it and grinned a savage grin that made him worthy of his nickname, Ruffian Dick.
“To heal the rupture, one of us must cease to exist.”
“You mean die,” Burton corrected.
Other Burton raked a hand through his beard. “I’m already dead. I am nothing but unused potential. I mean cease to exist.”