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Saheel watched as the particles from his thumb streamed hungrily into the portal. It felt like sin. A spiritual war raged inside him — on the one hand, he saw this experience as a test of character, perhaps a last hurdle before he was allowed to gain entry to heaven, but on the other, he was starting to have doubts about the whole god thing.

So he prayed, fervently, that god was real.

Once the vote had gone through, a bathroom tile with a strap fastened itself to his wrist. Little dots were carved over its surface, presumably the speakers, while a small notch on the strap could be pressed down to activate a microphone. Far more wondrous was the way it projected a beam that evaporated any shadow it fell on, and the dazzling effect of turning on seven of these units in a cramped room made Saheel shut his eyes. Even that didn't bring him darkness, because it illuminated the space behind his eyelids, treating him to a diagram of his blood vessels.

"This defies logic," said Eirlys.

Wincing, Saheel opened his eyes, but lighting everything up had only made the portal darker. When he looked at it, it was like the cells in his eyes just gave up. He turned his light off, and the others did, too, going back to torchlight. He hated the feeling of standing there, unable to see, while bones ground together and rolled over his shoe.

IT IS NO MERE DARKNESS, said Kari, shuffling around. YOU WOULD BE SIMILARLY UNABLE TO BRING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE.

"We've made a terrible mistake, doing this," said Saheel. "We shouldn't be meddling with things we don't understand."

Eirlys grabbed his hand and squeezed it in a grip that would have been reassuring had it not been as cold as a bag of frozen peas. Without warning, she brought her lips to his ear, and he nearly punched her in shock.

"We can send the others in ahead of us," whispered Eirlys. "That's as safe as we'll get. If we oppose this and just close it... well, the audience won't be pleased."

"I don't know if I can do this," he whispered back, trembling. "This is crazy."

"So sit back and let it play out."

Haralda stepped towards the portal, her torch dying out as she got closer. She was shaking, puffing out her chest to keep her head as far back as possible, and she held out the clipboard in the same way he clutched his crucifix.

"As chairwoman, I'll be the first to step through," said Haralda. "It would be improper for harm to come to anybody else."

"Are you sure?" asked Tarquin, leaping up. "I'd be quite happy to take your place for the good of the team, wouldn't—"

Haralda cut him off with a stern look. "This isn't up for discussion."

And she walked forward, inches now away from the void. Saheel didn't envy her — what did it look like, to have the whole of her vision consumed by the emptiness of death? She froze up, as if daring something to come rushing out, but the bone fragments drifted through as lazily as ever.

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“Having second thoughts?” asked Tarquin.

She shook her head.

Something was wrong. Should Saheel go? He set off, half running towards Haralda as she poked a finger through the portal, only for a twisted mass of bone to latch onto her and yank, hard, and it took her by such surprise that she fell over, her legs slipping over the fragments like wet gravel, and just as she was about to be tugged wholly into its depths, Saheel caught her by the shoe.

She hung there, suspended between the priest and whatever was pulling on the other side, and he could hear her hollering what felt like miles away. They'd nearly lost her.

Saheel dug in with his feet. Whatever was pulling her, it was strong, like arm wrestling a bear. He leaned backwards against the force to outweigh it, and found himself being lifted up as well, the veins on his arms bulging as he put all of his strength into trying to get her back. But he couldn’t get enough purchase, and he soon left the ground, hurtling himself towards that pit of darkness.

"What did I say?" Eirlys wrapped her arms around his stomach, grunting. Behind her, the others lined up, forming a train, all of them leaning back to struggle against this impossible strength. Even Kari was there, at the end, their stick thin limbs working uselessly.

The seven of them were getting pulled in, their feet slipping over the bones as they lost ground. Saheel didn't have to imagine what the portal looked like from close up anymore. What it looked like was staring into the open mouth of a gigantic shark. He could hear the bones grinding together.

"We have... to work... together..." panted Tarquin, his faux-fur coat ripping at the shoulders as he strained. "Give it all you've got! On three... one, two, three!"

In unison, they heaved, and Saheel's feet scuffed against the ground until he was able to stand.

"One, two, three!"

Saheel was flung backwards by the force of those behind him, taking him off balance. Briefly, they managed to get Haralda's head back out on this side, with only her arm still in the darkness. Her face was flushed with rage.

"Close the blasted portal!" she bellowed.

And Saheel's poor stance caught up with him. The underworld reeled him in as he scrabbled against the ground in a desperate search for friction. He managed to get his thumb in the upright position, all as innumerable particles streaked across his vision into the portal.

6👍 1👎 — MAJORITY REACHED

The portal snapped shut, like a closing eye, and they fell onto the deep layer of bones, stabbed and scratched and scraped by the jagged fragments. Saheel switched on the bathroom tile torch to chase out the shadows. Haralda sat up with a stump in place of her right arm that was gushing with blood.

She growled, face pale, and said, "My clipboard! Where's it gone?"

"THAT'S what you're worried about?" said Tarquin breathlessly. "We need to vote to heal everyone, right away. All those in favour?"

"Wait," gasped Saheel, even as his thumb started spewing a stream of light straight into the bones underneath him. "Haven't you noticed? Something's seriously wrong with this voting system! Why did the light go into the portal, and now, why is it going into these bones? Until we get an answer—"

"Whoops," said Faust, sitting guiltily with his thumb up. "Sorry."

Eirlys sighed. "Well, we've already called the vote. We have to see it through."

6👍 1👎 — MAJORITY REACHED

There was a blinding halation, brighter than even the bathroom tiles, and the bones underneath them juddered. They dislodged themselves, tearing holes through Saheel's robe as they raced to the centre of the chamber just as iron filings home in on a magnet. The sound was cacophonous, full of clinking and smashing, and he cried out, shielding his face until the floorspace of the room became spotless.

The bone pile grew, towering up towards the ceiling, twisting around itself as the pieces slotted together into a circular blob with nine depressions — the same pattern as the floor. The torsos of seven skeletons crunched out of the mess, while two of the holes remained unfilled. From the bottom sprouted a wave of flesh, sweeping over the pile like a timelapse of algae engulfing water, and Saheel gasped with horror as muscles, blood and skin knitted their way across the humanoid forms.

There it was, complete, a hellish mound of flesh and bone, the upper half of seven naked humans hanging out of it like flagpoles, and one of the humans, unmistakably a black-haired Irishman with a scraggly beard, turned and looked Saheel straight in the eyes, twenty years older than when he’d last seen him.

Sean.