A Tear in the Veil

by Patrick Loveland

  He starts to feel the pull of the eyes and the constantly boiling, swirling limb and joint soup that makes up its filmy surface. He closes his eyes and shakes his head, clearing the hypnotic effect but he’s unable to get rid of the images of split, ripped, sliced human appendages and organs recently seared into his mind.

  Felix looks toward it again, unfocused and a little off-center to avoid the pull.

  Is it toying with me?

  Not interested in tempting it with signs of forfeit, Felix picks up speed and jogs up Clark to C then tears around the corner and runs as fast as his fatigued legs will carry him.

  He reaches El Camino Real and hurries across all six lanes, more careful not to end up hit by a car cruising through the dark this time.

  As he rushes up the gradual slope to the station, Felix looks back and can’t see the figure. He feels like it could come from anywhere.

  It’s just gonna let me get to the station then claw into me and eat me on a nearby roof. I just know it.

  He crosses the street and hurries under a sidewalk overhang outside the station.

  Oh shit! There it is!

  The dark creature is climbing onto the top of the overhang a little down the slope. When it climbs, it becomes an amorphous blob of malformed limbs, tentacles, and diseased organ slop that doesn’t resemble a human form at all.

  Felix breaks into a full run again, anticipating the creature’s talons or claws or whatever it has that can eviscerate a person so violently sinking into him and pulling him away.

  But that doesn’t happen and he finds himself safely inside the darkened station. It’s so dark, though, that he runs straight into the turnstiles and doubles over, slamming his chest down into one and knocking the wind out of him.

  “Hey! What’s wrong with you?!” Felix hears the attendant yell from her booth. He looks over at her, straining through his mild panic as he tries to catch his breath.

  As his eyes adjust to the shadowy artificial darkness, he can make out the woman’s face as a kind of matte black reduction with glistening black eyes. It looks like Dolores from Fleischmann Medical Center. He’s almost sure. The ground is vibrating below Felix’s feet and he whips his head back to the station doors. It has stopped just outside of the station and watches him like before.

  His breath starts to return and he stammers, “S-sorry. In a hurry.”

  She shakes her head and says, “You still have to pay!”

  Felix takes his pass out of his pocket and makes a few attempts at getting it into the slot before it goes in and passes through the system inside the turnstile. He grabs it on the other side and the pizza slice barriers open with a thunk.

  Without looking back again, Felix makes a beeline for the stairs that lead down to the platform.

  Behind him in her booth, he hears Dolores say, “Fuckin’ tweakers.”

  Felix runs down the stairs and reaches the platform.

  Of course there won’t be a goddamn–

  Oh hell yes!

  The one time he really needs it and he actually gets it: A BART train is sitting at the platform, doors open and waiting for city bound passengers.

  I should buy a fucking lottery ticket at the liquor store when I get home intact! Like organs still inside and everything!

  He bolts down the platform and reaches the train but the doors start to close. He lodges his arm in the closing doors and they open back up. Felix steps in and grabs a pole then looks at the doors nervously, trying to will them into closing faster. After a long moment, the doors close and seal.

  That vibration is back. Felix bends over and looks out the windows. He can make it out down the darkened platform, many of its glowing eyes locked on the BART car as it watches from the base of the stairs.

  “–Okay, we’re done checking the systems and ready to head on. This is a Pittsburgh-Baypoint bound train.–”

  The figure takes a couple flowing steps down the platform but stops abruptly, its surface swirling all around it like liquid in a comically large, jarred punchbowl spiked full of animated corpses. Japanese game show large.

  It seems to have noticed something further down the platform or maybe in the train itself.

  The train starts moving and Felix exhales slowly, unable to take his eyes off the creature as they pick up speed. He’s still staring at it when they round the first bend out of the station and he loses sight of it. There’s a disorienting moment when they enter the underground tunnel and normal light returns with a shuddering, almost tangible pulse, just as everything goes dark outside of the train car. Felix has to squint but he is more than a little thankful for the return of normal light. He looks out through the empty driver’s compartment at the rear of the train just to be sure that thing isn’t following somehow. Satisfied that it isn’t, he slumps down into a bench seat affixed parallel to the length of the car. He’s drenched in sweat and his muscles are burning.

  Looking around, he sees that the only other passenger in this car is an elderly woman down near the doors to the next car who is trying to act like she isn’t watching him carefully but mostly failing.

  There’s a vibration from his pocket and he jolts, almost jumping off the bench. Then he hears the theme from The Third Man and realizes it’s just his phone ringing. He takes it out, sees that it’s Rudy, and answers.

  “H-hello?”

  “FELIX!” Rudy is breathing hard and he sounds terrified.

  Felix asks, “What’s wrong?!”

  “You have to get out of the city! Shit… I don’t even know if that would do it!”

  “What are you talking about, Rudy?!”

  “Remember those things Wahrheit wouldn’t talk about?! The thing I saw?!”

  “Yeah! One just followed me from– Oh man… I think Wahrheit is dead. I saw a hand–”

  “Dead? Then we are fucked!” Rudy exclaims.

  “What is going on?”

  Rudy speaks quickly through agonized tears and he chokes up as he blurts, “Those things killed Lacy! Fucking tore her apart! I didn’t even tell her about this shit! I come home and she’s all busted and sliced open and there’s one of those things in our bedroom! I barely got away–”

  “She’s dead? Oh shit…”

  “They must be after everyone who knows!”

  Felix says, “Knows what? We don’t know anything!”

  “We can see them, can’t we? That must be enough! Doesn’t matter– We just need to get far away from this place! I don’t know where it’s safe but we have to try for it…”

  “Where are you?” Felix asks.

  “I don’t even know… I just ran out of my complex and kept going until I ended up in a construction site I think. I need to find my way out and–”

  Through the phone, Felix hears a loud shuffling and creaking and a hum much like the figure that followed him made, then Rudy shouts, “OH FUCK!” What Felix hears next is chaotic. The hum gets louder then there’s heavy breathing and sounds of running and it gets quieter. Doors slamming. Creaking and splintering. Rudy yelps then more running. Sounds like he’s running across gravel maybe outside, then it gets quieter and Felix can hear low steps and a door closing gently.

  Rudy whispers, “I think I’m cool. I’ll stay put until…”

  There’s a sizzling sound almost like frying bacon and the hum rises out of it fast.

  Rudy’s voice is meek and full of dread as he pleads, “I didn’t say anything… p-please don’t k–”

  Either the phone is knocked further away or Rudy is, because his terrified yelps become more distant. What follows makes Felix’s hands shake and his stomach twist in a knot.

  The hum rises in intensity and becomes a howl like a warped turbine engine through a distorted reverb pedal then it’s all sickening sounds of brutality barely heard over it. Scuffling sounds like there’s a short struggle as Rudy probably tries to protect himself by maybe covering his face and head with his hands or grabbing for a defensive hold but that gives way to him shrieking and indistinct
slapping sounds and many long things whipping through the air. Slicing. Wrenching and snapping. Rudy screaming then trying to scream through a thick gurgle. There’s one last big slurching pop and Rudy is silent and the distorted turbine sound fades back down to the hum level.

  Felix is shaking as he listens in silence.

  There is nothing but the hum for a long moment, then a wet sliding as the hum gets louder. The sliding stops and the hum is close to Rudy’s phone. Felix feels a static tingling on his right ear. The video call mode has turned on. He pulls the phone from his ear and looks at the screen and straight into several piercing, hollow eyes. Where they would be different shades of red on the creature that chased him, these are shades of unnatural green from British Racing to brilliant celadon and jade on up to bright candy lime.

  He feels the hypnotic pull of the eyes and tries to look away but can’t. Everything other than the screen and those eyes swirls and fades away. The surface of the phone starts to bubble up and change, slowly becoming the shape of the eyes as it seems to push through into the train car. It takes all he has left but Felix succeeds in closing his eyes and shaking his head.

  He drops the phone on the floor of the train car and the wet, grotesque eyes search about before locking back on him. One of the eyes has formed almost entirely out of the surface of the phone screen.

  Felix rises up off the bench, lifts and tucks his leg high, and kicks down onto the phone hard, cracking it.

  “FUCK YOU!”

  He kicks down again, slamming his foot down into it and shattering the screen.

  “FUCK YOU!”

  Another kick and it starts snapping and popping apart.

  “FUCK YOU!”

  He keeps kicking down until it is a scattered pile of parts with no resemblance to a phone, cursing the whole way. He’s breathing hard as he looks down the train car and sees the old woman staring at him, wide-eyed. He shrugs and throws out his open hands wide as if to say, “What?” and the woman gets up and hurries through the doors into the next car.

  Felix slumps back down onto the bench and buries his face in his hands. He rubs his eyes and slouches forward. He looks at the pieces that were his phone then leans back and slams his head back against the window a couple times before resting against it.

  The BART train stops at Daly City station. His car stays empty save for him. The train starts moving again.

  He slides his head a bit against the glass and stares at the ceiling.

  Careful what you wish for?

  Too true.

  Felix can’t help but smile and he’s more confused about that than you are.

  Closest he can figure, it’s defeated amusement born out of the absurdity of the whole thing.

  The reality of this life is far more complex and even more pointless the more I learn about it.

  It’s too bad it will be over soon. Or is it?

  Or…

  Am I… am I actually crazy?

  Is this all in my head?

  If I am crazy, am I doomed to just run around thinking I’m going to die horribly and freaking other people out?

  But…

  I can smell blood and half-baked shit from my shoes…

  He carefully looks over at his reflection in the window across the aisle for just a moment. He sees dried blood from his nostrils down to his upper lip and fresh bruising where he hit his face. Then he catches sight of the scar on his jaw and striking, different colored eyes for the first time in a long time and looks down at his shoes to escape.

  Yep, blood and shit.

  Either this is all real or my senses are actively deceiving me in concert.

  Felix brings a few fingers to his mouth and deposits some saliva on them, then rubs the blood from beneath his nose.

  He looks back up at the ceiling and imagines he can see twinkling stars up through it like the opening is a ring created by the dark trees in a meadow at night and he’s looking straight up through them. The thought is soothing for reasons he can’t place.

  A song pops into his head because he’s always loved the emotion it evokes. Haunting and strange but kind of fun in a way only The Pixies could muster. Also, it reminds him of something his dad once said. He sings it to himself because… why not? I do hope everything is alright… and I do believe in… hm-hm-hm-hmmm…

  Felix rotates his head against the glass while he sings and hums and looks toward where the old lady bolted from. Someone is making their way from the next car back to his. Looks like a man.

  “Great. Bitch sicked the bart cops on me.”

  Looking and smelling like this, I’m psych ward bound for sure. ‘How about a little seventy-two hour vacation, Felix? Or maybe a bullet for breakfast? It’s a specialty for special occasions!’

  Or maybe that’s the safest place for me with these horrible things crawling around?

  Something about the man doesn’t look right. Felix takes his head away from the glass and leans forward for a better look.

  Definitely not right.

  The man walks through the door at the rear of the next car. Not through it like it’s open. Through it.

  Felix jerks back in his seat.

  As the strange man continues through the closed door of his car, Felix turns his head and looks up like he’s studying a route map. In his peripheral vision, Felix sees the man take one casual glance at him then sit on a bench near the far doors on the other side of the aisle. That distant, not mortified part of Felix notes that they are now sitting perfectly opposite in the car. Felix on the bench by what are currently the southwest entry doors, the man on the other side of the car and on the bench by the northeast doors. He has even taken up the same pose and posture of Felix, looking up at the ceiling in the corresponding opposite spot.

  The train slows to a stop at Balboa Park station and the doors open. A young couple gets on goes to sit near Felix. He glances at them, then back at the route map.

  Something about the look of Felix must bother them because they abort on sitting down, keep going down the train, and make their way through the doors into the next car. Probably the smell, actually. Or both.

  The BART train starts on its way again, swaying and rocking on a long curve.

  Felix steals quick sideways glances at the man down the aisle.

  For fun, let’s just call him Grieves.

  Grieves wears a thick, dark overcoat, dark pants, a blue and grey horizontal striped sweater, and black combat or work boots. Dark is the best word because his overcoat and pants were probably black but now they are covered in a layer of fine, bright blue dust like glowing pool chalk. What really makes Grieves freaky is that what Felix can see of his flesh and body is translucent. Layers of skin, muscle, and bone on his hairless head and hands are all but see-through and in no particularly uniform way. His mouth and eyes are the worst. The big, wet eyes seem to be lidless or fixed wide open and his teeth can be seen through his closed mouth which gives him this perpetual maniacal almost leering smile look.

  He seems to vibrate at a varying rate and his “flesh” glows a faint but radiant blue and the internals past it glow pink and orange and red. The bright dust must continually flake off of him.

  Felix can’t help but stare at Grieves’s reflection in the window just behind him.

  Grieves turns and lowers his head and meets Felix’s gaze. His unending stare is grotesque and terrifying. Depending on how the light hits Grieves’s eyes, they look either dark-rimmed with pale orange irises and piercing black pupils or dead shark black all over, much like freaky-face Audrey’s.

  Felix looks back up at the map, hoping Grieves will too. He doesn’t.

  Grieves is staring straight at him now and won’t stop.

  Grieves stands and begins walking down the aisle toward Felix. Fresh sweat is beading on Felix’s forehead and in his hair.

  Grieves’s movement is close to normal but he will sporadically speed up or slow down for an instant. He makes it down the aisle and stops on Felix’s left.


  Grieves just stands there for a long moment then bends over and stares at Felix’s face.

  Felix locks his eyes on the route map, hoping this glowing, see-through, man-like abomination will decide he isn’t worth its time.

  Grieves sits next to Felix on the bench, his face right next to Felix’s cheek. He just glares at Felix point-blank. Grieves’s breath smells like a soldering iron.

  Felix looks over at Grieves without moving his head. From this close, he sees that Grieves’s orange eyes seep fluid the same blue as his glow and dust. Felix can also see what must be Grieves’s sinuses through his translucent nose, nasal cartilage, and nasal bone opening.

  There’s also a glowing rectangular strip of fine, even lines of varying widths peeking out of the collar of Grieves’s sweater on the right side of his neck.

  In an odd, gravelly voice, which shares the speed-up, slow-down properties of his movement but occurs far more frequently, Grieves says, “I-its imp-olite to ss-tare.”

  Felix jolts and winces upon hearing this and looks back up at the map.

  “It-’s i-mpo-lite tt-o sta-rre… It’simpo-liiiiiiite to-oo stare.”

  Felix looks sideways at Grieves again. He can see Grieves’s mostly clear, Jello-mold brain through his skull and muscle. He could be imagining it, but he thinks he can just make out tiny pinpricks of electricity crossing synapses deep in there.

  Felix looks away and shuts his eyes tight.

  “Ar-re yoo-ou laik mee?”

  Grieves waits for an answer then gives up and continues his verbal water torture, “Imp-olite… sss-tari-ng.” He cocks his head a bit. “It’svery-yy im-politeto-staaaare. It is imp-…polite to stare.”

  Felix bolts out of his seat and runs for the doors to the next car then rushes through them. He looks back through the connecting doors as he hurries through the car. Grieves is still sitting but follows Felix with his eyes. Felix stops about half way through the car and watches Grieves through the doors to the rear car. Grieves mouth is moving and Felix assumes he’s still chastising him.