by T D Raufson
Just as the probe entered the slot, a menacing warble issued from the phone. Silas pushed back from his desk and jumped up from his seat in case he had triggered the device. The tool hung between the plates where he had inserted it. He stared at it with his last breath trapped in his chest.
No blades shot out of the sides.
The ringing continued.
No deadly gas filled the room.
The ancient box sat on the blotter with a tool hanging from it.
The ringing continued.
He was okay.
He released his breath in a slow hiss.
The phone continued to demand attention.
He scowled at the irritating disturbance as if it had tried to kill him and did nothing while he marshaled his pulse and breathing. The ringing ended.
A minute later, when he was ready to return his attention to the puzzle, a light on the phone’s surface blinked, demanding he deal with business. Three things convinced him to abandon his new toy, his phone never rang, no one ever left a message, and it was the secret line to the White House.
“Not today apparently,” he growled as he carefully lifted the dodecahedron from his desk and set in onto the glass shelf.
Even though the impossible had happened, there was no reason to take a chance and leave the landmine of a puzzle box out where he could mistakenly kill himself. He put the tool and lenses back into the case, rolled the case up, and placed it back in his drawer. With everything back in place, he jabbed at the button on the phone and waited for the irritating caller to tell him why they had disturbed and damn near killed him.
“Silas, this is Tara.” The excited voice of his friend filled the room. “Look, I brought you close to me for those special situations I knew I would be facing. This is one of them. Have you seen the papers this morning? I know you don’t read domestic news so you don’t get pulled into it, but this isn’t just domestic. Look, I know you know something about the occult. I’ve sent you a few links; give me a call when you’ve had a chance to review them. I need someone on this. My cabinet is all, hair-on-fire, right now. I need to know how to react to this. I need to know if this is real. Call me back when you get this.”
Silas stared at the phone, three years of silence and now a call at dawn. He had to admit it was good to hear from her, but he would have preferred if she wanted to have drinks and talk over old times. Silas reviewed the call in his mind. The closest thing to occult he had ever done was make pledges cover themselves in goats blood and repeat the lyrics to Metallica songs in Latin. He had studied most secret societies, and his great-grandfather had made sure he knew the truth about them, but he wouldn’t call that occult. The world believed far more about those societies than was ever true, thankfully. What was Tara going on about today?
He turned to his left and smacked the keyboard. The monitor sprang to life and a password challenge jumped onto it. He keyed in the twenty-four characters he had randomly selected and memorized for this month and waited. The screen appeared, and he quickly navigated to a not well-known e-mail account where the message was waiting. He clicked the first link, and his newsreader filled the screen.
The impossible picture on the front page made him check the source newspaper to make sure it was a real story and not something three guys in IT had slipped into the President’s in-box to get her going; not the best way to end a career. Convinced, he turned back to the story. The picture was of a long snake-like creature that had several muscular arms along its body. It was wrapped in between cars stopped on a dark street in Egypt. The open mouth, forked tongue, and large teeth made it look very unhappy. The story said it had rushed into the street screaming in Arabic and trashing cars. When the police approached it, several of the men in the front fell over dead. The others opened fire as they retreated and although several of them hit the target there appeared to be no damage done to what some officials called a “basilisk”.
Silas flipped to another link. This one was more his speed. Two very attractive Indian women were standing at the end of the street surrounded by lines of men who were handing them money, food, and several other parcels. They appeared to be naked from the waist up. The picture was altered from the original; the publisher of the story had blurred the inappropriate parts. Even ignoring the possible fake pictures, Silas was not sure what the news was here. Then, he looked at the blown up pictures and the highlighted regions that showed the women had no legs. From the waist down they were snakes.
“What is this, the Chinese Year of the Lizard?” Silas commented aloud as he flipped through several more stories.
In each one, the creatures at the forefront reminded him of some mythical lizard story. He had no idea what to tell his friend. Each story told the same tale. The creature was confused or disoriented. They had wandered into the street, mall, or other public place. They all seemed to be peaceful until they were pressed for information and then reacted violently, or in the case of the females, charmed their questioners. This had to be a joke.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number he knew but never called. It rang once, and Tara answered.
“What took you so long? I don’t have time to be waiting on you.”
“If you want to bust something, look in your own pants, Madame President.”
“You’re never going to respect me, are you?”
“Do I need to send the pictures out?”
“Funny—Now, seriously, what do you think? Crazy stuff, huh?”
“I think you’re wasting tax payer money playing jokes on your old college lovers.” It was a fact, and it was in the past, for her.
“No joke, Silas.” She paused to make the point clear. “I’ve seen them, on video anyway. Secret Service won’t let me get close to one of them.”
“Someone’s playing a joke on you then. Look, this kind of stuff can’t happen. These creatures don’t exist.”
“I know. But, they’re on every news channel. I have governors calling. They’ve called out the National Guard. Texas has a breakout of five giant lizard men who have taken over some kind of sports equipment plant. That one’s been kept out of the news. I have to take a stance on this. I know those guys down there. They won’t wait much longer.”
Silas swallowed.
It wasn’t a joke.
If it wasn’t a joke, then what was it? Something his grandfather had told him as a child made him shift in his chair.
“Tara, listen. I’m not your guy on this. I’m out of my league.”
“Bull, Silas, this is just up your alley. I want you on this. There’s a plane waiting for you. Get to Texas. Find out what’s going on. You have my backing on anything you need. I’ve already called your boss. Open the packet on the plane. It has everything you need. If it doesn’t, call me on the cell in the packet.”
“I’ll see what I can find out then,” Silas answered, surrendering to the insanity of it.
“Silas, I know you hate technology, but keep me in the loop on what you find. This could take a nasty turn.”
“Or it could just go away,” he reassured the woman at the top. “I’ve got your number.”
The line clicked off, and Silas stared at the next story. It was a little different. The story said a young woman was being questioned about a fire in an apartment building in Bangkok. Apparently the fire started in her apartment but spread through the entire building in seconds. They found no evidence of accelerants, and the girl said she was asleep when the fire started. She was the only one to escape the building.
Silas closed the reader and sat back in his chair. For a moment, he thought about Tara and why he was willing to sit in a cell every day for her. He knew it was over, but something about the way he had been raised didn’t allow him to abandon her when she needed him. He put the past aside and turned his mind toward the problem again.
He had been rubbing the rune on his key box as he thought about it. He had never really believed his grandfather’s warning. Even if the old man had been on the level,
what did this have to do with an ancient, long forgotten wizard king? Silas pushed his grandfather’s tales out of his head and looked around his office. There was not much he could use here; he would grab what he needed on the way. As an afterthought he opened the locked drawer again and took his tools with him. Something was nagging at him, and it had little to do with June in Texas.
June 21 – About the same time – Kennesaw, Georgia.
A scream had forced Adrian out of his sleep. He couldn’t tell at the moment if it had been his dream or if it was real. He couldn’t remember dreaming. He didn’t feel completely present.
He threw back the covers on his bed and slipped his feet to the floor. He was not fully awake because his head felt larger, and his hair felt funny. In fact, his whole body felt strange. As always when he first woke, he looked down at the floor and his feet. Green and blue scales covered his legs down to the four claws on what had been his feet. A fifth claw gripped at the wood floor from the back of his foot. He stifled a scream of his own and ran his hands over his eyes. He could feel his heart racing at the change in appearance. This had to be a dream.
A new scream from down the hall drug him from his stupor. There was something going on in his parents’ room.
He threw the covers to the side and ran for the door. Adrian pushed his odd appearance out of his mind. His mother needed his help. Everything else would have to wait. He yanked the door handle to open the door, and the hinges in the wall ripped free from the wood frame. He stared at the reptilian hand that was holding the door for a second before tossing it onto his bed. This was a weird dream; too much pizza, had to be too much pizza.
He ran down the hallway and opened the door to his parents’ room more carefully. He wanted to help her, not make it worse. He stepped into the room. His mother was crouching on the edge of the bed looking at a monster covered in scales standing on the other side of the bed. Out of its back, a tail twitched back and forth as its long-nosed and horned head looked around the room. Adrian lunged across the room at the back of the large lizard attacking his mother.
The monster must have seen him coming. It spun around using its tail and arms to catch Adrian and throw him into the corner of the room. His mother screamed louder as the lizard looked from him to her. It shook its head and raised its arms up to its waist. It turned clawed hands up and out to each side.
Adrian expected the monster to rip him open and eat his guts, but it just stood there and looked at him. Something that reminded Adrian of sadness passed over its eyes as it looked from him to his mother.
Adrian glanced at the bed where his father should be. Had the monster already feasted on him? Where was he? Why wasn’t he helping? He couldn’t see him.
“Mom,” he shouted as he stood up. “Calm down. I’m going to help you.”
Her scream stopped with a gurgle as if it caught in her throat. She stared at his face. Her eyes were wide, and she tilted her head to the left to look at him again. She stared at him like she would a troubling stain. Her eyes widened more than he thought possible, and the scream in her throat escaped as if shot from a cannon.
The monster turned to face him.
“Adrian?” His father’s voice was coming out of the monster’s mouth.
He felt himself mirror his mother’s actions. The monster hadn’t eaten his father; the monster was his father. Adrian slumped backward against the wall. It was too far away to hold him so he slid down onto the floor.
“It’s me, your dad. Trust me, I know how hard this is. You have to listen to me. Your mom won’t listen. She’s freakin’. We need to calm her down.” The permanent sadness in his father’s eye was mirrored on the reptilian face of the monster.
Adrian looked down at his own hands. He still had no idea why he and his father were lizards, but it was important to calm his mother down.
“Mom, it’s dad and me. Calm down.” Adrian tried to help. “It’s Adrian. We’re not going to hurt you.”
He stood up from the floor finally and placed his hands out in front of him to show her he was not going to hurt her. He looked just like his father had a few moments before.
She stopped screaming again but just shook her head and then started crying. His dad moved to comfort her, but she cringed and slid back further toward the corner of the bed.
“Dad, what’s going on? What happened to us?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll find out as soon as we can calm her down.”
“Shut-up,” she shouted from the corner. “I don’t know what demons you are, but you’re not my husband and son. What have you done to them? Why are you doing this to me? Get ye behind me, Satan.” Spittle flew from her lips as she cried and yelled the last words. She clutched with trembling hands at a small cross at her neck and pointed it at each of them. Her eyes showed hatred. The fear was going away.
She self-consciously covered herself and the thin gown she was sleeping in with a robe she left at the foot of the bed. As she did, she watched each of them. Her eyes darted from corner to corner. She shifted her feet on the bed and then stepped down at the foot of the bed. When her feet were on solid ground she still shifted back and forth. She never dropped the cross and always kept it between her and them.
“Mom, listen to me.” Adrian tried to use a comforting voice like his father used from time to time. “Don’t I sound like myself? Can’t you see it’s me? I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I’m still Adrian. I’m your son.”
He felt a sharp pain of worry that she might not believe him. What would he do if she didn’t? Maybe he would wake up. Even as he thought the thought, he knew he would not be waking up from this. It was too real. His mother had always been there for him. How would he get through this if she didn’t believe him? What would he do?
She looked at his face and his eyes. Her face softened a little but then terror filled her face.
“What’s happened to you?”
He felt the thrill of her recognition. Maybe all of this would be alright.
She reached out to him for an instant, but then she pulled her arms back around her and hugged herself. She kissed the cross and pointed it at him. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“My little boy. Why did you take my little boy?”
She dropped her face into her free hand and cried. As she broke down, she leaned back against the wall and slid down onto the floor next to the bed.
“Mom, it’s still me. Nothing’s happened to me. No one has taken me. I’m here with you.” It was the truth as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t deny that he didn’t understand why he looked different, but he was still the same person he had been. He could feel the fear of her rejection grow with every word he spoke.
“Lies! I’ll hear no lies of the devil.”
She refused to listen and moved her hands from her face to her ears. With her eyes closed, she leaned from side to side in time to her sobbing moans. His father had turned away from them both and was staring at the mirror shaking his head at his strange appearance. Adrian stood from his corner and approached him.
“What’s happened, dad? What caused this?”
He held his hands out in front of him. His father turned from the mirror and looked at him with a look Adrian had never seen before. His eyes looked tired and weak. Adrian thought he was going to faint, but his hand dived into the top drawer in the dresser. In a flash his father’s hand was out and pointing a stainless revolver at his own temple.
“Dad, No!” His words came out just as the trigger clicked the double action revolver to life. The flash filled the space between the barrel and his father’s head. Adrian had expected a slow motion explosion of events. He expected to see the bullet travel the short distance and burrow into his father’s head. Instead, the whole sequence was over in the flash and bang of the revolver.
His father was leaning against the dresser. Adrian’s ears were ringing and his mother was screaming again. She leapt up and ran past him through the door. Adrian felt like the only sane per
son in the room, and that was an awful feeling for an eighteen year old. Although he often said he was the only sane person in the house, he didn’t like being right.
He reached out to catch his father, but he was still standing. Adrian looked for the wound and pulled clothing from the drawer to stop the inevitable bleeding, but there was none. His father stood there looking at him through disappointed eyes. He dropped the gun to the floor. Adrian wanted to scream, but it would serve him no better than it had his mother. He pulled his father’s scale-covered shoulder toward him and looked at his head. The bullet hadn’t even scratched him. The force of the shot had pushed him over. His eyes were vacant, and there was no reaction. The shot must have knocked him senseless.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he screamed at the vacant stare.
His father didn’t say anything. Adrian released him and stood in the middle of the room. What the hell was going on?
June 21 – 1000 EDT – Signal Mountain, Tennessee
Clouds flowed over her long scarlet wings as Melissa descended from the malevolent sky. Cool wisps of fog flowed around her head and streaked across her body, leaving swirling eddies in her wake. As she broke through the darkness, tendrils of mist chased her toward her destiny in the slender valley below.
She scanned the approaches for the spy who would alert him she was coming. The blue-green water of the river and small lake reflected moonlight onto the valley, casting a chilling light over the land. The walls of the valley closed in on her like his fist. The single moraine, more ancient than she, ignored her as she dropped from the sky toward it. Turning away, she flew toward the menacing wall of the valley. On a flat outcropping along the cliff’s edge, a tower, the only witness to her approach, scrutinized her with no malice. It convicted her with its single digit, pointing out the unobserved invader. He knew she was coming. She could not surprise him. What was she doing here?