by Tim Meyer
Their parade crunched through the wooded area, snapping twigs and branches that had fallen during the last storm. The path was narrow but easily navigated. As they moved through the woodland, Amanda was stricken with a certain sense of dread, a foreboding that caused her muscles to tighten and cramp with discomfort. A trickle of sweat ran down her back.
“How much farther before we give up and head back?” Amanda asked Barnes, as if he were the one in charge now. He'd seemed to have inherited the role of leader when he had suggested they embark on this little escapade. Even though she knew she still called the shots and could steer them home any time she wanted. It was fun letting Barnes lead them. In fact, it eased her nerves a bit. Being in charge all the time placed a lot of pressure on her shoulders, and since they'd come to Spring Lakes and had dealt with its mega-bitch director, she felt there was no escaping from that demanding role. It was good to climb into the back seat, let someone else drive awhile.
“Just a little farther,” Barnes replied, stepping over a tree that had fallen across the path.
They'd already been hiking for ten minutes, and the woods were getting thicker. The foliage was beginning to take over the path, and Amanda found herself brushing away hanging vines and leafy arms every fifteen steps or so. She wondered if there would still be a path in another fifteen minutes. That, and the graying skies, provided some anxious concern. She could smell the dampness in the air, the earthly musk, and the threat of rainfall, a heavy, sky-opening downpour, quickly became very possible. Not that a little water bothered her, but she hadn't brought extra clothes, had left her bags at the hotel, and she didn't feel like spending the rest of the day feeling like a soggy cocoon.
Just when their route had become overcrowded with branches and clusters of drooping vegetation, they saw a break ahead—a field lit up by an afternoon sun that had begun to poke through the cloud-congested skies. She saw where the straw grass met the tree line and began to feel a little better about their situation; although, there was no sign of their missing guest. They hadn't discovered another garment during their trek even though Barnes had claimed to see the woman's footsteps in the mud, evidence she'd come this far, which had been the only reason Amanda had allowed them to continue their pursuit.
They exited the woods and entered the field. Amanda felt the straw grass brush against her pant legs, and she headed toward the center of the field where the grass had died some time ago, the circular shape reduced to a bed of dead, yellow straw and powdery dirt. She thought she saw something out there, something colorful that contrasted the yellowish tinge of the hip-high grass. Something...
Turquoise.
As they approached, the scene took form. A woman in a greenish-blue sweater was kneeling, praying before an altar that wasn't there. Amanda saw nothing before her, no religious statues of any kind. There was nothing but the circular area in the middle of the tall grass, a small void that someone had carved into nature.
Someone had to have done this, she thought. It couldn't have formed naturally, the circular shape that was stamped into the middle of the field. She was quickly reminded of crop circles, the kind she'd seen on TV specials and movies, the kind in real life that were often done by pranksters and ancient-alien wackadoodles. She looked to the sky as if answers were scribbled among the parting clouds, but, of course, there was nothing written there save for the bleak promise of sunshine and natural warmth.
That sinking feeling returned, and the bottom of her stomach plummeted. She knew they shouldn't have come here without the authorities, an official witness to all the bad things that were sure to come.
We shouldn't be here, she thought. It's not too late to turn around. Call the cops. Let them deal with this.
But they didn't turn around. Didn't call the cops. Didn't let someone else deal with the situation at hand. Barnes led them to the fringe, where the straw grass ended, and the giant circle of dirt and dead vegetation began. Amanda's stomach rolled. Uneasiness gripped her shoulders. Her bones filled with anxiety, a cool rush of apprehension.
She had a clear view now. The missing guest, Julie Finch, was kneeling before an object, about the size of a refrigerator, that was halfway embedded in the dirt. There were five small stones around it, placed in a circular pattern and spread evenly apart. The object in the center was disc-like, coated in a gunmetal shell. It looked like a rock, the rocky and rough exterior providing no definite shape, even though it appeared ovoid.
Amanda's entire body felt on fire, trepidation burning up her nerves.
What the hell is this?
The lost woman mumbled something, repeating the expression over and over, but it was in a language foreign to Amanda's ears. Sounded more like syllables than words. From the looks on everyone's faces, no one else recognized the jargon either.
“Mrs. Finch?” Cunningham asked, his voice cracking. He took a reluctant step toward her, his hand gliding toward his belt where he had a small baton. Amanda wanted to protest even the thought of using a weapon in this situation, but she couldn't locate her voice. Cunningham continued, picking up his pace, and his confidence. “Mrs. Finch, I think you better come back to the facility with us. Everyone's real worried about you. Especially Mrs. Charon.”
The woman ended her strange mantra. She didn't turn around. Instead, she kept her focus on the object in the dirt, that circular thing that looked like a giant quarter, only not as smooth.
Then the surrounding stones began to glow. Purple at first, but then the color changed, blending in shades of pink. Then blue. Dabbles of orange and red. Magenta and fuchsia streaks. The stones cycled through a myriad of colors before they stopped, burned out and were reduced to a lifeless gray again. The five rocks, which seemed misplaced in this world, sat half-buried in the dirt as if they hadn't been glowing only moments ago.
Amanda watched Mrs. Finch carefully, expecting her to do something, to carry on with whatever she'd escaped here to do. To say something. Anything. But instead the woman kept completely still, frozen, like she'd been at Spring Lakes, doing her best imitation of a tree, some inanimate object that existed in nature. Continuing to face the mysterious object embedded in the field, she didn't move a muscle. Didn't flinch. Kept her focus on the abnormal formation before her.
A shiver rifled through Amanda's body, and she suddenly felt foreign in her own skin.
“Mrs. Finch?” Cunningham asked, moving closer to the woman and the stones. Within a couple seconds he was right behind the sixty-nine-year-old woman, his shadow closing over her. “Mrs. Finch, I really think we oughta—”
The thing in the dirt made a strange noise, a loud braying noise that sounded like a broken car horn. At least, Amanda thought that was where the sound had come from. She supposed it could have come from the sky or somewhere deep in the forest. But it was too loud to have come from those places. The noise was close. Too close. She considered the possibility that the woman had vocalized the harsh sound, but nothing human could be responsible for such an awful racket. The drawn-out honking was dominant, forcing Amanda to cover her ears. The entire group followed suit, clapping their hands against the sides of their heads, their faces strained with worry and pain. Phelps closed her eyes and dropped to her knees. Cunningham walked backward on his heels and collapsed after he'd taken a few steps. He writhed on the ground, the sound too much for his head to handle. Barnes kept his footing, but he too pinched shut his eyes, bracing against that awful noise. He grimaced as the sound droned on for all the world to hear.
The old woman didn't seem to mind the noise. In fact, she seemed to embrace it. Her body rocked from side to side, as if she was swaying along to some pleasant tune's catchy rhythm. Amanda couldn't see her face, but she pictured the woman smiling as she let the awful din fill her ears, carry her off to some delightful mental space.
Amanda's head began to ache, the pain dull at first, but, as the never-ending out-of-tune trumpet sound dragged on, it grew to be much worse. Like someone had her head in a vice and the two sid
es were ratcheting down. The discomfort developed over the next few seconds, got so bad she envisioned her head exploding, popping under the pressure. She fought off the pain and the ridiculous notions, forcing herself to believe it wasn't that bad and it would all end soon. Then she closed her eyes, begging for the constant pressure to end, making deals with gods she had never believed in.
When she opened her eyes again, it was night.
Huh? What?
In two seconds, the world had changed. It'd gone from light to dark in the snap of two fingers, and Amanda's brain couldn't process it, couldn't accept this shift in reality. She shook her head, unable to commit to the idea of losing several hours over the course of a few seconds. The time shift had sent her into a daze and the world slipped before her, her vision tilting askew. She blinked, hoping to return to the past where things made sense, where time made sense. When that didn't work, she smacked the side of her head several times with the heels of her palms, hoping to reset her vision. But no, the sky continued to cloak itself with the dark, an endless starry expanse revealing the cosmic roadmap of the entire solar system.
This can't be.
But it was. And here she was, under the night's sky, in the middle of the field that felt hundreds of thousands of miles away from where she'd been only moments ago.
Around her feet, her companions knelt in the dirt. They weren't moving. They were still just like the woman had been prior to the strange sound. Just like the sixty-niners of Spring Lakes, stiff and trance-like. Their eyes were settled on the thing in the dirt, only, that was gone too. It was all dirt now, a small mound of powdery brown. Nothing unusual about it. The stones that had been there were gone too. Just dirt and matted straw grass, as if something big had lived here for a long time. Something enormous. Something circular.
Her mind raced. She turned to the group. Their eyes were closed now; despite clenching them shut, red streams dribbled down their faces, the blood flowing steadily onto the earthen pad before them. Their mouths were in motion, though, their lips moved so quickly Amanda could barely make out a word. She surmised they probably weren't speaking English anyway, but some indecipherable alien language instead. She picked up on the same syllables being recited over and over, like a prayer. A foreign mantra. An exotic narrative that made zero sense. Silent whispers in the dark of night. The peculiar vocalizations coming from the old woman, the young security guard, and the only two people here she truly trusted made Amanda's body break out in gooseflesh. Her head crawled as a horde of invisible insects scurried across her scalp.
She faced the center of the circle. In place of the disc-like object was now a man. A tall man. Impossibly tall, perhaps the tallest human being she'd ever seen in real life. His arms were long, almost too long, bent awkwardly in places, as if he had some bone disease, and his fingers—they were long too, gnarled with a severe case of something akin to advanced rheumatoid arthritis. The knuckles were so swollen they looked like flesh-covered golf balls.
His face, however, was perhaps the most normal thing about him, and it was very, very recognizable.
“Hello there, pequeña,” the man said, his voice roughened from decades' worth of hard boozing and an out-of-control cigarette habit. “So glad you could make it.”
She removed her hands away from the sides of her head, found that awful noise had faded into obscurity. Now she could focus on the face before her. She gave her companions one last glance, saw their mouths twitching in sync with each other, reciting their chilling prayer until the end of time would come, until the hand of doom would come sweep them off their feet and carry them toward an elegant oblivion. The blood leaked more freely now that their eyes had opened, freshets of crimson pouring down their faces like a new spill, pooling in the dirt around their knees.
She told herself this wasn't real. It didn't feel real, so, therefore, she convinced herself it wasn't.
An illusion. It had to be. Some fucked up daydream.
Day-night-dream.
“So glad you could join us.”
“You're not him,” was the first thing she said to it, and it was an it. It had to be. There was nothing else she could call it. Though it wore flesh and clothes—a Sunday's best special—it had no right to call itself human. The thing before her was disjointed, a novice's attempt at hammering down the human anatomy. Disproportionate appendages. A face that was more bone than skin. A gangly frame that stood eight to nine feet off the ground. Her grandfather hadn't been anywhere near that tall.
This was not him.
Just a terrifying imitation.
“Of course, it is. I'm him. Oh, I am, I am, I am.”
Behind him, the trees moved, though there was no wind to speak of. It was as if something giant were lurking in the brush, pacing back and forth near the tree line like an attack dog waiting to be free from its kennel. The oaks swayed; their branches bending violently in the still, starry backdrop.
“No,” she said confidently. “You're not him. And this... this isn't real.”
The thing pretending to be Grandpa Guerrero frowned like a despondent clown. “Why must you say such painful things? I'm real. So is this place. Everything you see here is one hundred percent real. Everything you see is sixty-nine.”
Sixty-nine?
She thought she had heard that last part wrong, but deep down, she knew she hadn’t. He'd said that number, and he'd meant it.
Sixty-nine. He had said 'everything is sixty-nine.'
“What is sixty-nine?” she asked, without giving it much thought. An instinctive reaction to her begotten curiosity. “What's the significance of that number?”
Her grandfather, or rather, the thing that wore his appearance like a new coat, grinned devilishly. Its crooked fingers caressed its pale face, and the hideous figure seemed genuinely delighted that the question had been proposed. Giddy almost. “Sixty-nine is everything!” it said with glee.
She didn't understand but she knew that was the point. She wasn't meant to understand, comprehend what the orchestrator of this nightmare was trying to convey. Not this way. This thing, she doubted, held any answers. Only riddles.
There were other things she wanted to ask before it all went away, before the dream collapsed and sent her spiraling back toward reality. But movement beyond the field, the way the trees arced and whipped on the dark that bordered this place, held her attention.
The answers to the riddles of this place were there, she thought, beyond the field.
Where the giant horror roamed.
She faced the grandfather-thing. His face had already begun to change, its faux skin melting like soft candy under the sun. Its wrinkles twisted and its flesh fell away, revealing the pink tissue beneath its mask. Its eyes expanded and then almost simultaneously contracted, as if they didn't know what size they wanted to be. Boils began to form on its face, pulsing, threatening to explode with infectious, disease-carrying filth.
“Sixty-nine!” the thing barked. “Sixty-nine! Sixty-nine!”
Its jaw unhinged, broke off on one side, disconnecting near its left earlobe. It swung free. Still, the creature was able to speak with a clarity that pulled the plug on Amanda's current understanding of actuality.
“Sixty-nine! Sixty-nine! Sixty-nine!”
It lunged forward, swinging its boneless arms wildly. They moved like ropes, loose and undulating, with the grace of a habitual drunkard.
It came for her.
She screamed.
Closed her eyes.
Opened them.
Daylight flooded her vision. She was on her back, facing the sky, the warmth of the afternoon toasting her skin. Flipping over, onto her hands and knees, she surveyed the area, wondering if the others were okay, if they'd seen what she'd seen, or if the grand illusion had been too much for them to handle. Because it was an illusion; it had to be.
There was a commotion.
Barnes and Phelps were crouched over Cunningham. The kid was screaming, holding his face, clawing at his flesh. She c
ould see blood, a glistening red mask that covered most of his features. His cries were shrill, and, like a colicky infant, there was no consoling him. Barnes and Phelps were trying their best to quiet him, holding him down and shushing him. His arms began flailing all over the place, his legs kicking, lashing out against whatever invisible monsters plagued him. They told him they couldn't help if he kept jerking around. Just then, he bolted up and Amanda got a good glimpse at his face—what was left of it—and the horrors it held.
His eyes were gone. In their places were two scarlet trenches, two tunnels that led into the depths of his skull. They were filled with blood. Two red rivers poured down his face, soaking the front of his uniform.
The kid screamed again, screamed until his vocal cords splintered.
And Amanda heard someone laughing. A low, pleased giggle that set a wave of shivers across her neck. She turned and saw Julie Finch sitting in the center of the circle, cross-legged, watching the scene unfold, a joyous expression capturing her face. Her whole body hitched as she suddenly exploded with uproarious laughter. She cackled at the bright sky.
Her eyes glazed over, a cloudy-white film taking full control.
Something poked out of the woman's mouth, and Amanda knew exactly what it was the second it happened—the leg of a grasshopper, some insect-like appendage, pushing its insect body past the tongue, farther into the woman's gullet.
Into her soul.
11
After the ambulance left, with Cunningham, for the hospital, after Mrs. Finch had been heavily sedated and quarantined, the police had questions. A small crowd had formed around the facility, no more than fifteen people, nosy onlookers who had heard whispers of a peculiar situation unfolding at Spring Lakes, locals who had come running once the flashing lights and sirens were seen and heard. A reporter from a local rag dropped by, but she was turned away by the police presence and was forced to remain a member of the undistinguished crowd.
Barnes and Amanda had told the cops everything. Well, not everything. But close enough. They told them about the garment they'd found near the entrance of the woods and that they had thought they could bring back Mrs. Finch easily, without the aid of law enforcement, especially since they had believed she hadn't gotten very far. They had gone to the end of the path where they had found the field and had discovered Mrs. Finch in the center of it, praying. It was weird, borderline bizarre, but she was pre-Alzheimer's, so they had thought nothing of it at the time. Maybe she was confused, maybe she thought she was back in church or receiving some holy sacrament. Amanda told the cops she hadn’t speculated about what the woman was doing out there, that their only intent was to bring her back safely. They had tried to help her off the ground when...