by Tim Meyer
Amanda turned to the others. “I wonder why.”
Barnes shrugged. “Maybe it's been experimenting up until now. Seeing what it can get away with? Now, maybe it's expanding its reach a little.”
Kim shook her head. “We don't even know what it is. If there even is an it. Who's to say it still isn't some disease? Something that attacks the brain like some advanced, never-been-discovered form of Alzheimer's?”
The three of them craned their heads toward the facility's director.
Though Amanda enjoyed the theory of a super, fast-acting form of Alzheimer's affecting a small portion of the facility's populous, she couldn't buy into it, mostly because of what she'd seen in the field. There was no scientific explanation for what was happening. Nothing medical. This whole thing was...
Unearthly.
Amanda replied first. “I can assure you that what we've witnessed isn't some undiscovered sickness or disease, or some variation of a degenerative brain condition.”
“She still doesn't believe us,” Barnes added. “And I get that sentiment. I really do. It's not an easy pill to swallow, but you have to look at all the evidence here. All of it. That includes what you can see with your own eyes.” He motioned to the folder, documented proof that something unnatural was taking place at Spring Lakes. “There is something wrong here, Kim, and the longer you deny it, the longer you don't admit that we have a major fucking issue, the more people are going to get hurt. Like Cunningham kind of hurt. You feel me?” When she didn't respond right away, he added, “People will die, Kim. People will fucking die.”
She seemed to scan his thoughts. “What makes you believe so easily? What makes you think what you saw out there was real? I mean,” she scoffed, “do you honestly expect me to believe you saw a man out there? A man who showed you things? A monster in the trees?”
“I trust my eyes, Kim. And my brain, and its ability to recognize the difference between reality and fantasy, and what happened out there in the field—that was fucking real.”
“Ask Cunningham how real it was if you don't believe us,” Amanda snapped.
Kim chewed on her tongue, and Amanda could only imagine the venomous words that were resting there. “Okay,” she said, dropping her intimidating pose. “Suppose it is real. All of it. Every word.” She looked at them, surveying their faces, as if trying to seek out leverage, something she could use to swing the conversation—the debate of reality versus fantasy—in her favor. “What does it want and how do we stop it?”
Amanda opened her mouth to speak, but then she realized she didn't have an answer. She was about to tell them they needed to work it out, piece together whatever information they had and come to an agreement, a well-informed decision, when Phelps spoke up.
“It seems to see into our memories,” she said. “The thing in the field, it can look inside our heads... dig up the past, make us see things we don't particularly want to see. It uses our memories against us, almost as a weapon, and I think... I don't know... I feel like it may feed off them. I think it lives off that. And it has lived off that for a very long time. Maybe even before this facility was built.”
“So...” Kim said, placing her fingers on her temples, trying to wrap her mind around Phelps's theory. “It's feeding on the memories of the people here?”
“And anyone who gets too close. In our case, I think it felt threatened by our presence. It lashed out and attacked, thus, what happened to Cunningham.”
Amanda snapped her fingers and pointed at Phelps. “That's a great theory and all, and I'm not saying you're wrong, but that still doesn't explain the significance of sixty-nine, though. Why it chooses to touch those people when it can very clearly have its way with anyone else.”
She nodded. “Sixty-nine-year-olds aren't the only ones that can be affected, hence, our own experiences. I think it chose those people because of their age. The number.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“I have a theory about that too, actually.”
“Oh, this oughta be good,” Kim said, rolling her eyes, clearly not completely buying into the conjecture being so casually tossed around. Everyone ignored her.
“Sixty-nine is a significant, popular number, and probably for all the reasons you can imagine, something I'm not going to explore here—but use your brains, the infantile portions, and figure it out for yourself. But regardless of that aspect, the number sixty-nine is often viewed as the yin-and-yang of the number world, a number that represents duality, yet an interconnectedness. It could represent a relationship, a marriage between two individuals, two separate entities coming together and joining, becoming one in the spiritual sense. Opposites that unite, interact and take on a form all on its own, greater than what was envisioned individually. It could mean that, or it could mean a sense of balance, a choice, two options that lead us to the same destination. It could mean fate.
“I like the first idea better, though,” she said, sounding confident in her assumption. “I think the notion that this thing needs us to become whole, borrow from us, consume our memories, fits with the number sixty-nine and what it says on the whole yin-and-yang aspect. Opposing forces coming together for the greater good.”
“The greater good?” Kim scoffed, again, and her three visitors were starting to become numb to the sound. “Excuse me if I missed the section of your prattle where you mentioned the good in all of this. People are being tormented here for Christ's sakes. Dying. I've got an entire staff and guests who are terrified out of their wits, have no idea how to explain or rationalize what's happening to their loved ones, people they care about. Tell me, Miss Phelps, where is the greater good in that?”
“I think there's something else out there,” Phelps said, turning and addressing Amanda and Barnes. “The something in the woods... the thing we couldn't quite see but know it's there... something that's big... something that's dangerous.”
Amanda felt a chill run up her arms as she recalled what she'd seen near the tree line, that amorphous white shape that brushed through the edge of the forest.
“You guys both saw it. I know you did. We didn't know what it was, not at the time, but, now, I think I know.”
Amanda continued to see past the field, beyond the rows of tall grass. At the time she'd been so scared of the thing that posed as her grandfather that she hadn’t had time to worry about what was out there, lingering near the tree line. Everything had happened so fast her brain couldn't catch up to the madness. But there was something there, she was sure of it, among the trees. Something waiting. Something hungry. Something that didn't feed on memories, or dreams of memories.
Something with teeth.
“What was it, Phelps?”
“I think it was the enemy.”
“The enemy?” Amanda looked to Barnes and he only shrugged as if to say, I have no idea what she's talking about either.
“Yes. I think the true enemy is the thing in the forest, beyond the field. In a way, I think the field is protecting us from it. It's using us, a certain selected number of individuals, the sixty-niners, and taking their memories, draining them, stealing them, their lives, and it's turning their thoughts and mental images into energy, thus using that energy to protect us from whatever is out there beyond the field.” She gasped for air, looking relieved to have gotten all that out. “You know, the yin-and-yang of it all. A balance. That's all it is, I think. Just balance. Just sixty-nine.
“And when we went out there to explore it, The Field, we disturbed it. Threatened it. Threatened that balance that could have been in place for centuries, maybe longer. Maybe forever. We threatened and it lashed out. Attacked us. Protected itself, and the balance.”
No one spoke right away.
Phelps's enthusiasm faded when the silence lingered.
Kim squirmed in her chair. “I can't be a part of this... lunacy. How on Earth could you possibly know all of this? Or Christ, even think it up?”
“Never claimed to know anything,” Phelps responded, pluckin
g the cigarette out from behind her ear. “It's just a hunch. A guess. A theory. I've done some research using what we saw out there, explored what I felt, and this is what I've come up with. Just a hypothesis.”
“It's crap.”
Barnes put up his hand. “Now hold on just a sec. I like to think of myself as a realist. I don't go around believing any old thing. I don't believe in magic, ghosts, and no god has ever appealed to me, made me want to get on my knees and give praise. But what we witnessed out there... really shook me. Everything we've seen here has been... just too much. Too much for me to disregard what Phelps is trying to tell me, however impossible it may sound. Now, I don't know that I necessarily agree with everything she said, but... I don't know, there's a part of me that... agrees. It feels right.”
“I still don't understand sixty-nine,” Amanda said, following along. “You're saying this thing… it just likes the significance of the number and that's why it chooses to prey on the people here? How does a thing like that understand numbers, their supposed significance?”
Phelps bit her lip, let go of it, then popped the smoke into her mouth. “No. Yes. Maybe. What I'm saying is this thing, The Field, it recognizes the number's significance. How that's possible is beyond our understanding at this time. But I think it chooses its—let's call them sacrifices—because of the number. Sixty-nine to us is just that—a number. It holds no significance beyond that. That's just how old these people are. To us, it's as meaningless as if they were sixty-eight or seventy. But, to this thing, it's not just a number. It's something else. It's what these people are. They are sixty-nine. To the universe, in the scope of cosmic numerology, that defines these people—their age, their number. Sixty-nine gives this thing power, and this thing has chosen these people's existence, their length of life on this earthly plane, to draw from. Take that however you want, dissect it, sift through it, but the evidence... the evidence is there, man.” She pointed at the folder, teeming with articles, to demonstrate her point.
Kim, still doubtful, shook her head. “This is utter nonsense. And I won't—no, can't—be a part of it. The three of you, from here on out, are on your own.”
Amanda turned to her. “Newsflash, bitch. You are a part of it. In fact, I think you've helped perpetuate this thing.”
Kim's face blanched at Amanda's language. “How dare you speak to me like that? Who do you think you are? All of you—what gives you the right to disrespect me and what—”
“All right, all right,” Barnes said, stepping in and waving his hands like a referee. “We don't need to rip each other apart—that thing out there is doing a good enough job of that as it is. What we need to do is put our heads together and figure out a way to eradicate this thing and save these people before their time is up.”
“Sounds great,” Phelps said, sucking on her unlit cigarette. “But one question, though—if indeed my theory is correct, why would we want to stop something that is protecting us from something that's a far greater threat to our existence?” Phelps arched her brow. “Why would we want to contribute to our own destruction?”
“Because one, as tantalizing and well-spoken as your theory may be, we don't know it's one-hundred percent true. It's just speculation right now, and I mean that respectfully.”
“Finally, some sense-talking,” Kim interjected, but Barnes went on ignoring her.
“That's all it is right now, that's all any of this talk is. And two...” He shrugged as if he'd given up trying to explain things. “Because people are dying, Phelps. And we have to protect them. That's what we do. Even if your theory ends up being true, we can't sit idly by and watch, allow, people to die. We can't. If some infectious disease came along and threatened the planet, would we let it kill thousands just to save everyone? No, we wouldn't. We would find a way to save the thousands and everyone else; not only because that's our job, but because that's the right thing to do. We save people. Every single one we can.”
Phelps bit down on the filter, seemingly unconvinced by Barnes's speech.
Kim waved her hands in the air. “Do whatever you want. But leave me and my staff out of it. Come tomorrow, these people will be dead and that'll be the end of it.”
“Until next year, when it kills more of them,” Amanda said. “And the year after that. And the year after. On and on, until the end of time. What then?”
Kim showed them her palms, raised her shoulders. “That's life. People die. In here, it happens all the time. So it goes.”
“That's a great way of looking at life, Kim. You should be really proud of yourself.”
A smirk pulled the woman's lips to one side. “Life is death, Mrs. Guerrero. Life is death.”
17
Resting with her elbows on the handicap ramp's railing, Phelps puffed out an enormous cloud of cigarette smoke. The early afternoon sun hung high in the sky; the orange globe providing her with the warmth she needed to battle the chills. She wasn't getting sick but found herself unable to shake the icy bugs that continuously skittered across her flesh. Smoking her cigarette down to the filter, she turned and saw Barnes and Amanda stepping through the back door, both looking like they'd just lost a war.
“We gonna do this?” Phelps asked, the question itself spawning another round of shivers.
Amanda nodded. “That bitch won't be of any help. We're on our own from here on out. She wants no part of it, won't even ask the other security guard to accompany us.”
“Can't say I blame her on that account,” Barnes said, opening his palm, begging Phelps for his own smoke. She gave him his pick of the pack. Didn't take him long to pop the thing in his mouth and spark the tip. “In fact, it might be better if it was just the three of us. No sense dragging another innocent life into this mess.”
“Still,” Amanda said, pacing the concrete walk. “It'd be nice if we had another witness. Someone with some authority.”
“I don't think it likes authority,” Phelps blurted out. She lighted her second cigarette in a row and it tasted almost as good as the first, a rare instance. “The Field, I mean. It targeted the guard, right? I mean, none of us were harmed. Then, we went into the woods with Kim and the cops, and we couldn't even find the thing. It was like it wanted to keep a low profile. It wants to operate in secret, even though the nature of its existence doesn't allow that to happen, fully, since it needs to feed on the sixty-niners. It needs people to survive but likes to feed quietly. Maybe that's why it's only been taking one a year, or every other.”
(our secret)
(one a year)
(to avoid suspicion)
“Then why seven now?”
Barnes suggested, “Maybe it's hungrier. A growing boy needs his lunch.”
Phelps blew smoke out through her nostrils. “Maybe the thing it's protecting us from is getting stronger. Maybe it needs more power to fight it off. To prevent it from escaping.”
Amanda turned her head at this.
“Whatever its purpose, whatever its reasons, one thing is for sure—so far, we've gone after it twice and it hasn't tried to harm us. Cunningham was an outlier. It didn't even attack the two cops that came with us the second time.”
“Then why Cunningham, I wonder,” Barnes said, smoke fogging before him.
Phelps thought back to the moment when Cunningham was about to use his baton. “Maybe it felt threatened by Cunningham. He had a weapon.”
“The baton,” Amanda said, almost a whisper.
“Exactly. I got the sense he was itching to use that thing.”
“So, it felt threatened and lashed out.” Amanda looked at the two of them, studied their expressions. “You don't think us going out there for a third time, with the intentions of stopping it, is going to put it in defense mode.”
Phelps arched her left eyebrow. “I don't really know.”
Barnes pinched the cig between his teeth and grimaced. “I still don't understand why it didn't just try to kill us the first time. Surely it had to know we weren't bringing it early Christmas pres
ents.”
Phelps shook her head, staring off into space. “Maybe it needs something from us. Maybe it wanted us to see.” It made sense to her, that the thing in the field exclusively made itself visible to them, or, as visible as it could. She kept picturing the anatomically inaccurate version of her grandmother lying on the hospital bed, her arms dangling at impossible lengths, wearing a smile of pure evil design. She pictured the thing lifting her grandmother's arms, reaching for her. Fingers that were gnarled like old roots.
(our secret)
(killed them all)
(all the boys)
The hair on her arms went fully erect. What she'd seen out there felt so damn real, even though she knew it was all an elaborate mirage, something The Field projected before them. Something only meant for their innocent eyes. They'd all seen different things, experienced alternate past truths. It stood to reason that The Field had access to their minds, was able to leaf through their memories like a child's picture book. “Maybe it wants us to help it?”
“Help it do what?”
Phelps had burned through half her cigarette, decided it had lost all its allure and threw the butt into the collector next to the garbage can. “Maybe the sixty-niners aren't enough. Maybe the thing in the woods is getting stronger, and the sixty-niners simply aren't working anymore. It needs more. More of... more memories.” She turned to them now, her eyes sparkling with new ideas behind them. “That's why it took all of the sixty-niners this time, instead of just one. Maybe it's getting more powerful and The Field needs more energy, more power, to fight it.
“And it needs us, needs our tragic moments to help.”
Barnes and Amanda exchanged looks.
“I don't know, Phelps,” Amanda finally said, after a few seconds of breathless silence. “I think we're jumping to all sorts of crazy conclusions.”
Phelps's gaze targeted the ground. “Yeah, you're probably right. I just... I have all these feelings inside me.”
“Feelings?” asked Barnes, who was savoring every last hit of nicotine. He smoked the thing like he wanted it to never end—slow, inhaling deeper with each pull.