Gossamer Falls

by European P. Douglas

  “One’s coming down near the hotel!” Karl shouted and he started to run towards the cloud like a small child to an ice cream truck. Landy watched him, a moment of longing to do the same coming over him, but he stood still. Karl had dropped his bag, and his hat came off as he ran. The cloud got lower and lower and then Karl jumped up with both arms in the air to slice through it.

  When his hands and forearms made contact however, rather than glide through it, the cloud took on the form of webbing and wrapped around his arms. At once the screaming came, and when Karl landed on his feet, he lost his balance and fell, his face getting caught up in the mesh around him too.

  Landy and those guests outside ran to him, but there was nothing they could do. They could see the horrific results of touching the cloudy substance and none of them wanted to touch him. In desperation, Landy grabbed hold of Karl’s thrashing legs and started to put him towards the water, hoping that this might wash it away or at least ease the suffering. No one else stepped forward to take up any part of Karl’s body, and it seemed an age before Landy’s own feet finally splashed in water.

  He pulled Karl right in until his whole body submerged a moment and then it looked like he wasn’t going to come back up for air. Landy pushed from under his back and his face appeared above water. It was red and mottled and none of the stuff had come off him, but it seemed like he had fallen unconscious. That was some relief at least.

  “Is he alive?” someone asked.

  “Looks like it,” Landy said, regaining his breath, “Run up to the front desk and call an ambulance.” While the man ran off to do this, Landy moved Karl to the shore so he could lay on the silty ground there, his body and most of his head still submerged in water. He didn’t know why, but he felt it was best to leave him in the water for now. He looked up at the sky and saw there were very few little clouds left in the sky, and none of them seemed set on a course for the hotel.

  It was then that all the screams began to reach their ears from town. How many people had been just like Karl in wanting to touch this stuff? Landy had been one of them himself, and had there not been guests around, he might have been the one to run and jump at it. He looked sadly at Karl, and he didn’t think the annoying salesman was going to make it through the night.

  Landy began to look a little closer at the stuff spread on the injured man’s face, chest and arms. It looked hard now, like calcified rock, only it was getting clear like tubes of ridged ice. He plucked a stick out of the water and poked quickly at the substance, dropping the stick at once in case anything happened to it. The stick had made a noise like tapping on stone, and Landy didn’t know what to make of it.

  Sirens were wailing the town now and the shouts of pain and confusion were filling the air up there. He supposed they were lucky it was only one person hurt down here by the hotel. Landy looked to the sky and thought about what to do.

  “You guys should get back inside the hotel in case more of this stuff starts to come down,” he called the guests assembled on the grass by the shore. “I’ll stay here by him until the doctor gets here.” How long would that be? By the sound of things there were countless emergencies in town right now and all of they were much closer to the doctor's than here was.

  Karl was unconscious but breathing. The marks on s his body looked to be deepening to a purple colour that was less painful looking but Landy couldn’t be sure this was not a worsening sign for whatever poison or agent was in the clouds. The idea of a Soviet attack came to him for a moment and this in turn led to a more likely idea, a military weapons test gone wrong and ordinary people paying the price for it. He wondered was he in danger himself for being in the water with it.

  Checking the sky once more and seeing there was no sign of any more of these drifting clouds, Landy got up and went to the storeroom to the side of the hotel. He pulled out a large tarp that covered his sailing boat when it was not in use and dragged it down to the shoreline. His intention was to drape it over Karl so no more could land on him if it started up again, and Landy wasn’t able to move him fast enough. As he leaned over, though, he saw that there was no longer any need. Karl was dead.

  Chapter 5

  Anderson Schall bellowed from the megaphone over the wailing siren of the police car he was driving.

  “Don’t touch the substance falling from the sky! Return to your homes, please!” People were standing about dumbly as he went by and no one was heeding his calls. He looked to the sky, glad it was clear now. Whatever it was that had fallen on the town for fifteen minutes recently had done more death than any other single event in its history. At least three people were dead that he knew of and he had no doubt the number was going to rise, especially if people were not listening to his warnings.

  He saw a bunch of young teenagers standing by a tree looking up at the floss that had entwined there and hung down. Anderson pulled up and got out of the car.

  “This stuff is killing people!” he shouted at them, “Get home and make sure you don’t touch any of it on the way!”

  “What is it?” little Terry Hargreaves asked, and it was then that Anderson saw the teary fear in all of their eyes. He felt bad now for shouting at them.

  “We don’t know yet, boys,” he said in a softer tone, “But we do know it is very dangerous and poisonous if you touch it.”

  “Where did it come from?” Ed Tipping asked.

  “Looks like it came down from the mountain,” Anderson said looking up to the far-off peaks. The truth was he didn’t know where it had come from. He’d never heard of anything like it before, and he didn’t think there was any such poisonous plant or such up in those mountains. The story about the burned-out village of Mercy came to him. It had been an unexplained event that torched the whole mountain it sat on, in the middle of winter with snow covering the whole peak. It was said when the sheriff was found burned to death, he was holding a branch with what looked like a hand clasped in his own.

  “Will someone go up there to find out?” Ed asked. He seemed least afraid of them all.

  “I guess so,” Anderson said and then he nodded to the police car. “Get in there boys and I’ll get you home.”

  On the short route to drop the boys off at their homes on nearby streets, Anderson counted eleven separate clumps of the candyfloss substance. They were attached to the roofs of houses and cars, the side of trees, and one slap bang in the middle of the street. Thankfully no one had been hurt by these and no foolish people were standing around looking at them.

  “Sheriff, you there?” came the voice of Deputy Harry Sanders.

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “The doc is flat out, and ambulances form Emerson will be close to an hour. I think we're going to lose more people before this over.”

  “I know,” Anderson conceded, “Just try to get people off the streets and make a note of any locations where you see this stuff has landed or is sticking.” There was utter defeat in his tone and though he could never have prepared for something like this, Anderson felt somehow that he had let his town down and he hadn’t been able to protect them when they needed him most.

  “OK,” Harry said and then asked timidly, “What are we telling people?”

  “The truth, Harry,” Anderson said, “We don’t know what the hell this is, where it came from, but we know it’s highly dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.”

  “You don’t think that might cause a panic?” Harry said, and Anderson sighed.

  “Don’t you think people screaming and dying all over the town is panic enough!” It was hard not to snap at people this evening. There was silence on the line for a few moments and then Harry came back on.

  “We got a call saying someone was hit out by the hotel too. You want me to head out there?”

  “No, call them back and tell them not to touch the stuff and the doc will get out there when he can.”

  “Will do, over.” The line went dead and Anderson sat in his car and looked around at the street he was on. Peopl
e were standing in their yards and looking up at the sky as they talked excitedly with their neighbours. No one seemed to have been hurt along here - a blessing in itself - but they were all in danger being outside like this. He stopped the cruiser in the middle of the street and got out.

  “What's going on Andy?” David Hollows asked from the relative safety of his porch swing seat. At the called question, everyone who heard it was looking at Anderson now to hear his answer.

  “Truth is we don’t know Dave, but we need people in off the streets until we know the extent of what’s happened and if it's likely to happen again.”

  “Is it true some people have been killed by this stuff?” Lauren Jones asked from her garden.

  “I’m afraid it is, Lauren. It’s highly dangerous, poisonous to the touch we think, and no one should go within twenty feet of the substance. If you see any, report it to my office or myself or deputies.”

  “What are you going to do?” Dave Hollow called out.

  “The doc is doing what he can around town, and there are ambulances on the way from Emerson that should be here soon. After that, we’ll have to make sure we know where all of the substance is and find a way of getting rid of it safely.”

  “Where did it come from?” someone called, but Anderson wasn't sure who had said this.

  “It looks like it came down from the mountain, but to be honest, we won’t know that until we go up there to have a look. That will come later, though, after we feel the town has been made as safe as we can make it.” This caused a bit of a stir and nervous glances were exchanged between the people on the street, and the low murmur of conversations started up again.

  Another car turned onto the road, and Anderson looked on as Mayor Allgood pulled up and got out.

  “Don’t worry, folks,” he said, walking towards Anderson, “Good men like the Sheriff here, and his deputies, are getting the matter in hand. We’re going to have a town meeting about all this in the morning down in the sports hall of the high school, and you are all welcome to come along!” This was the first Anderson was hearing about a town meeting and he didn’t like the idea.

  “Are you sure you want to do that so soon?” he asked Allgood under his breath. Still smiling like a pro, Allgood said,

  “We need to calm them all down, give them something to focus on. Tomorrow we’ll tell them what we plan to do, and everyone will go home happy.”

  “What do we plan to do?” Anderson asked.

  “The council members and I will come with something tonight that we can present to the people tomorrow morning.” He walked off then and started talking to those whose lawns were closest to him. Anderson watched him ease into the crowd and listen with a look of concern on his face and then laugh and shake hands with people and pat them on the shoulder as he assured them everything was going to be fine. Anderson had never liked the man, and he wasn’t about to start tonight.

  Anderson got back into his cruiser. There were a lot of people to make sure were safe and a lot of cataloguing of affected sites. The ambulances still hadn't arrived, and it was going to be a very long night before the mayor's meeting ever took place.

  Chapter 6

  Tired as he was, Lawrence went to the meeting in the morning. Many of the residents of Gossamer Falls had been up through the night, and it was a bleary congregation that lined the rows of small seats in the gym hall of Gossamer High. As if to remind the town of what it had recently endured, a hardened tangle of the substance had attached itself to the side of the gym hall. It clung to the bricks directly above the usual entrance to the building. As a safety precaution, everyone had come in using the emergency exit to the side.

  Throughout the night, wild rumours began of the number of clouds or people affected and killed. Theories about the small formations ranged from Russian attacks, to chemical accidents in the large plant in Emerson. It would be good to hear the facts from the town councillors and know what the plan was to deal with the problem. Lawrence looked around to see all those in attendance. The place was full, but many had opted to stay at home, whether it be out of fear or just to catch up on a missed night of sleep, it was hard to tell, but Lawrence would have thought everyone would have been here after such a momentous event.

  Sheriff Schall stood by the door, leaning back against the wall with a large steaming coffee in one hand. He looked like he’d been though one hell of a night. His eyes were red, his skin pasty white, and stubble sprouted from his chin. Many people who had witnessed the death of Simon Denver were also in attendance, though some of those looked like they might be drunk. There was a hum of garbled conversations in the crowd, but the worried faces of most showed it was no social occasion.

  A stage had been set up at one end of the hall, and there was a table with three chairs that faced out into the crowd. Lawrence knew the mayor would fill one seat, but he didn’t know about the other two. Perhaps the sheriff would go up there?

  “What are we all waiting for!” someone shouted from the centre of the throng, and most people fell silent.

  “The mayor will be here in a few minutes and we’ll get started,” Sheriff Schall called back, not bothering to single out the person who'd called out with his answer. At that moment, Tammy came through the door and she and Lawrence met eyes at once. They had become separated during the night and he’d gone to her house to see if she was alright, but he couldn’t find her. Someone, though, had told him she’d gone home with one of her friends and she was safe. He was certainly glad to see that it was true.

  They were far apart in the room, and it would take a lot of effort for her to get to him, or he to her, so they waved meekly, and she shrugged and indicated she would stay where she was near the door and see him outside afterwards. It was amazing how much could pass between them with so few gestures.

  Mayor Allgood came in with his aide - Derek Gough - and the mayor went up on the stage, smiling and nodding to the crowd. His aide waited at the bottom of the steps looking over the same crowd as though they were enemies of his boss.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Allgood said, stepping up to the microphone (though he could be heard fine without it in the cavernous hall.) He beamed at the crowd gathered like it had been nothing more than a stronger than usual gust of wind that had upset the town last night.

  “What the hell is going on?” David Hollows shouted, standing up near the front of the crowd.

  “Alright, alright, take it easy,” Allgood said making a gesture of pushing his hands downwards. “Let me tell you what we know, and what we plan to do.” Hollows didn’t look satisfied, but he sat back down slowly. Allgood smiled at him and then looked to the broader crowd. “As of yet, we don’t know what the substance is or where it came from...” He didn’t get to say anything more as the crowd erupted with disbelief and questions were fired at the mayor from all angles, so many that he couldn't make them out.

  Sheriff Schall walked up onto the stage, calling out for quiet and waving his hands for attention. Slowly the murmur of conversation died down, and he said,

  “The mayor won’t be able to answer any of your questions if he can’t hear them being asked!” Allgood nodded to him.

  “Thank you, Sheriff.” He looked back over the gathering, “The police, the doctor, councilmembers - myself included - and ambulance services from Emerson spent all night reacting to this strange event. There was a hell of a lot to do, and we did our best to contain the effects of this, and I think many people are alive and well today thanks to that work done.” There was some grumbling, but in general most agreed this was probably true.

  “As we speak, members of the council are keeping watch for any more signs of these clouds coming down from the mountain. We will not be caught unawares again.”

  “What are you planning to do with the stuff that is laying all over town?” Hollows called up, and some people muttered in agreement.

  “We are going to have the Doc take a look at it and see then what the best course of action is. We know it is
poisonous, or at least it is initially, but we need to know if it still poses a threat once it has hardened like what you’ve all seen coming here this morning.”

  “Then what?” Hollows was not letting it go.

  “Well, we get rid of it of course.” He knew the ‘how’ question would follow, so he moved on to the next thing he wanted to say swiftly. “One of Sheriff Schall’s Deputies will be leading a team up into the mountains to see if we can find the source of this phenomena, and we will be looking for some volunteers to go along and help.”

  “Surely this is no job for an ordinary member of the public. Isn’t there anyone trained to do this kind of thing?” Hollows said. More and more people were muttering in agreement every time he spoke up.

  “We don’t even know what ‘this kind of thing’ is,” Allgood said, his slick veneer dropping slightly for a moment before he caught himself and turned back on the smile.

  “I’ll go up with the deputy!” Lawrence called out. In a strange way he somehow felt responsible for all that happened. He had been the first person to see this thing happen after all, and he couldn't help but think, if he had acted differently or reported it, might things have turned out differently?

  “There you go!” Allgood clapped his hands and then pointed to Lawrence, “That’s the community spirit!” He looked to Hollows then and said, “You could do with a little bit of that.” Hollows didn’t take the bait.

  “Why don’t you go up there and have a look as representative of the local government?” he asked. Allgood didn’t miss a beat,

  “That’s exactly what I’ll be doing,” he said. While everyone else in the room was watching this exchange, Lawrence found his eyes drawn to Sheriff Schall and what he saw was odd. It seemed that this was the first Anderson was hearing about this expedition to the mountains. Lawrence and Anderson had been in high school at the same time and took a lot of the same classes. At this moment Anderson looked exactly like he did when a pop quiz was announced all those years ago. Whether he was ready for it or not, he didn’t like it getting sprung on him.