A Tear in the Veil

by Patrick Loveland

  “Yeah, nothing bad ever happens in Colma. Fuck it, sure. Once we’re out of the city proper, we can have a picnic there if you like.”

  They reach Stockton, take a left around the corner, and continue down the hill.

  “Is… uh… ‘Billie’ gonna be alright on her own?”

  “Definitely,” Siobhán replies, apparently uninterested in elaborating.

  Felix hears a little humming and Siobhán looks behind them so he does too. The top half of Grieves’s head is following them down the rain pelted sidewalk about ten feet back, eyes even wider than usual. Felix looks ahead but Siobhán keeps watching him as they go.

  Siobhán asks, “What is his deal, anyway? You don’t seem too bothered by him, freaky as he looks.”

  “Oh, I was at first, believe me.”

  They close their umbrellas as they enter the Stockton tunnel and Felix has to raise his voice some over the roaring cars and honking.

  Grieves seems to notice they’re talking about him and comes up out of the sidewalk, taking steps like he’s getting out of a pool. He mumbles about how rude they are as he walks behind them.

  “Near as I can tell, he was real lonely before we ran into each other! Now we’re like BFFs or some shit! He does his own thing sometimes but never stays gone long!”

  “Smashing!”

  “I don’t know what he has to do with all the other stuff going on, but he has grown on me!”

  They leave the tunnel, open their umbrellas, and continue down Stockton.

  “Felix…”

  “What’s up?” Felix asks while looks around for any signs of danger from here to Market Street. Bulbs, fliers, blimpwhales, glowing moss on a passing bus. Nothing out of the norm.

  “What is it that you think is going on?”

  Felix frowns and asks, “Why do you say it like that?”

  Siobhán says, “Uh… I just mean, what’s going on? What’s got you so spooked?”

  They cross the street and walk past the Hyatt.

  “The only ones I knew who I could ask look kinda like big smashed jars of strawberry jam right about now.”

  “What?”

  “They’re dead. Killed, alright? I told you this already.”

  Siobhán says, “I have selective hearing sometimes. Chill, alright? People die or get killed all the time, though. What made this so bad?”

  Felix stops near a triangular corner of a Levis store and an angled stairwell ending at the corner of Stockton and Post.

  “I don’t know about you, but I work at a video game store! This mutilation and gruesome death shit is new to me!”

  “Okay, sorry. You’re sensitive, I get it.”

  They continue down Stockton toward Powell Station past Union Square in silence. Grieves babbles behind them incessantly, apparently set off by something in their conversation about him. Or not… never can tell with him.

  As they approach Geary, the light changes and they have to wait at the corner. Grieves seems to be mumbling about Siobhán’s martial arts prowess and throwing him back through the wall. He doesn’t seem mad. Not very, at least. More like surprised and impressed with her chop-socky skills.

  The light changes again and they cross Geary and continue down the sidewalk.

  Felix watches the rainwater rush through the gutters on the sides of the street. He feels light-headed as a new pill wave crashes on him and he goes all tingly and euphoric. The water streams through the gutters and he imagines it rushing faster and faster until it’s a tsunami of rainwater washing the cars and everything else down toward Market and slamming it all into the Diesel store and Old Navy at the intersection. He and Siobhán just tread in place impossibly under the surface, watching it all rush and crash and they laugh and laugh…

  Felix stops walking. Siobhán notices and stops too.

  She says, “What?”

  Something’s missing.

  What is it?

  Grieves’ mumbling.

  He looks back at the intersection of Geary and Stockton.

  Through the slits in his goggles specs, Felix sees that Grieves has stopped in the middle of the intersection and is staring down Geary to the right. He’s saying something but Felix can’t make it out. The light has changed and cars are passing through Grieves as he stands and stares.

  Felix takes a few steps back up the sidewalk toward the intersection. Grieves turns his head toward Felix and the look on his grotesque face stops Felix in his tracks.

  Grieves looks scared.

  The last of the cars pass through him and Felix can hear what he’s saying now.

  “Yoou’re-in tr-ouble bbig-troublein bigg-trou-ble-ssshould go you-shouldd g-go…” Grieves continues reiterating this as he descends into the street.

  Felix yells, “Wait! What do you mean?!”

  A few people walking up the sidewalk notice Felix yelling and give him strange looks but he doesn’t care. He hears Siobhán start covering for him with, “He’s a little drunk, sorry. He can’t get enough of that Zima shit. It’s a real problem, y’know?” The people move on and Siobhán stares them down as they hurry away up Stockton toward Grieves unknowingly. “I’ve tried everything. I even…” she trails off then says, “What… the actual… fuck?”

  Felix is still focused on Grieves, who has stopped descending and his is still visible from the eyes up. Felix feels a tug on his dragon sleeve. Siobhán says, “Felix…”

  Grieves’ hand emerges from the rain pelted street and he jabs his finger a few times in the direction he was staring then he descends out of sight into the asphalt.

  “Felix!”

  Felix hears a strange whirring sound rising in volume but he’s pretty high so he’s more concerned with Siobhán’s attitude.

  “What?!”

  Siobhán grabs his silly snow goggle specs and whips them off his face and tosses them onto the wet street. She covers his mouth with her gloved hand. Smells like calf skin and rose water. He shrugs in protest but she just points at the source of the whirring sound he’s been ignoring.

  Siobhán whispers, “Be quiet,” in an insistent tone.

  A blue-black vehicle is hovering about thirty feet above the street and gliding toward the Geary-Stockton intersection from down Geary to the east. It’s the hovercraft thing I saw on Wahrheit’s roof… or one like it.

  Seeing it now, Felix decides it’s more like a “flying jeep”, a competitor with helicopters for the affection of the US Army and Navy in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were abandoned for a few reasons but this one looks to be the evolution of the idea.

  The main structure is canted or gulled near the center of its length and houses two shrouded, downward-facing rotors front and back like a bent figure 8. A thick black mist swirls through the rotors and around the vehicle sporadically. On the bottom center of the main structure there’s a long cylinder strutting from an articulated hydraulic support and it’s long enough to extend a few feet past the front rotor shroud. Antennae and arrays of monitoring equipment resembling that on top of the monster cop vans are built into it near the center and sitting in what serves it as a pilot seat amongst all this and between the rotors is one of the big, man-shaped blobs of deep black madness.

  Its eyes are all grey and cloudy, unlike the different shades of one color in the other’s he has seen.

  The monitoring arrays are clustered like barnacles all over the main structure of the vehicle and look like dense patches of baseball-sized artificial eyeballs as if crafted by Swiss clock makers. The aperture-framed “pupils” fluctuate and shift constantly but they’re generally too large as if they’re dosed and they reflect on the back curvature at certain angles like a cat’s would. They swivel back and forth like the eyes of a drunken sailor in a game of cards maybe.

  Siobhán lets her hand slide off Felix’s mouth as she watches the thing floating by above the street.

  There’s a faint, colorful glow on the surface of the horrible mess in the pilot seat, which must emanate from visual display
s in front of it. Its eyes barely move like it’s entranced by the visual feeds from the monitor eyes. Rain pelts its sporadically squirming surface while it just watches its screens or projections like a couch potato watching Family Feud.

  Felix is high enough that he’s already forgotten Siobhán‘s warnings and says, “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

  Siobhán whispers, “Shut up, idiot…”

  One of the intricate mechanical eyes scans toward them then away but lolls back, examines them, and locks in place. The rest of the eyes twitch and roll toward them and lock on in an automated wave of glinting movement, which resembles dropping a pebble into a pond. The vehicle eases to a forward stop. It hovers in place and the grey-eyed mucksack leans forward in its pilot seat. Actually it’s more like the seat is articulated and it shifted the creature closer to the displays.

  The eyes on the squirming creature twitch and pulse as they fill with blue coloring from almost black up to matte cobalt and vibrant electric. Some are left grey and stupid but the rest become intensely focused. After poring over the glowing displays, the creature shifts and twists in its seat and looks directly at Felix and Siobhán down on the sidewalk.

  Felix swoons as the eyes pierce into his. Even from up there, the eyes are almost hypnotizing him. The combination of the pill high and those mesmerizing eyes makes his whole body tingle and he feels like he’s in a pool of thick, warm fluid–

  NO!

  Felix floods his mind with images and sounds and the remembered smell of these creatures and their handy work. Sewage, urine, blood, burst organs, bile, shit, stomach acid, screams, animal moans, pain, snapping, and ripping!

  He shakes his head and yells, “Not today!”

  Felix grabs Siobhán’s hand and pulls her the other direction so hard that she drops her umbrella. He tosses his own and hauls ass down the sidewalk with her in tow.

  “Hey!” Siobhán yells and tries to pull her hand out of his.

  “No time!”

  He looks back at her and something in his eyes softens her glare. She leaves her hand in his and runs with him. Past her above the intersection the vehicle maneuvers to follow then glides swiftly through the air after them.

  Felix pulls Siobhán through the O’Farrell intersection crosswalk. The whirring gets louder behind them but he doesn’t look back.

  They get confused looks from impeccably messy techsters inside the sleek, shiny Apple store at the corner of Stockton and Ellis as they run past it toward the Powell Station stairwell it shares a wall with.

  Felix drags Siobhán around the Apple store corner into the stairwell and chances a look back up as they jump down a few steps at a time. The flying jeep slows to a stop above the street outside. He wonders what the techsters in the store would think if they could see that.

  The mucksack rolls and pours itself out of the vehicle and reforms into its rough humanoid form with surprising grace as it reaches the sidewalk.

  They rush down into the bright, drab beige entry level of the station past a guy playing bongo drums with a hat out.

  As they run between and weave through throngs of rush hour cattle down the long stretch toward the paid BART area and turnstiles, the station goes dark. The lights are still on but that same artificial, murky darkness Felix was caught in running through Colma is swallowing all the light coming out of them.

  “Shit! Speed up, boy!” Siobhán exclaims. She effortlessly pumps past Felix and starts pulling him by the hand down the stretch instead. He can barely keep up and almost stumbles. She lets go of his hand and yells, “If you didn’t look like that I’d leave you here!”

  “What?! What does that mean?!”

  “Keep up!”

  Felix runs with all he has toward the BART paid area and stairs. He can’t help but admire Siobhán’s preternatural grace and agility even while terrified or as close to even uncomfortable as he’s seen her. The humming and wet slapping sounds of the nasty monster rushing through the station behind them clear his head though.

  Dense packs of silhouetted people all around watch Siobhán and Felix running and their eyes glint strangely, reflecting the unseen light as they seem to frown or stare or shake their heads.

  Siobhán reaches the BART fare paid area and vaults the waist-high glass wall without hesitation like a gazelle, continuing toward the stairs to the platform. She glances back and sees Felix fumbling for his transit card.

  “Fuck your card, Felix– Oh shit!”

  Felix tries to look back but all he sees are silhouettes of people and inky darkness. He hears the hum right behind him and the smell is making his eyes tear up.

  Siobhán slides to a stop, whips around, and snaps her fingers, which cuts a symbol in the air for a moment before it glints and twists into itself. There’s a flash behind Felix that all but blinds him the rest of the way and he almost runs straight into the low glass wall. He hears a shrill wail that vibrates through his teeth and bones.

  Siobhán taunts, “Yeah, I got tricks too, bitch!”

  Felix has just enough presence of mind and body to throw himself over the wall but he botches the landing by throwing his weight wrong and slams into the smooth, hard station floor.

  Before he can moan, Siobhán has him up and is pushing him along in front of her down the stairwell to the platform.

  “Why is there a porker after you?!”

  Felix responds, “I told you we were in trouble!”

  “I thought you were exaggerating!”

  She keeps nudging and guiding him down onto the dark platform. It’s a long open stretch to the other stairwell on the far end which Felix can’t see right now but knows it’s there from his many trips into and out of this station. The only cover down here is a set of cylindrical metallic columns that run parallel down each side of an island platform. Well, that and the dense herds of rush hour commuters on each side and patches between.

  Felix hears the slapping sounds of the ‘porker’ moving again above and behind them upstairs and can just make it out coming down from the top of the stairwell as a big dim silhouette with its glowing blue eyes. He can see the swirling 3-D fractals messing with the air around the larger, brighter blue eyes. He breaks off his gaze before it can pull him in and concentrates on the platform in front of them. There are more people than usual. Even for rush hour.

  Siobhán’s gloved hand gently but firmly grasps his shoulder from behind and she starts guiding him through the crowd on the SFO-bound side of the platform.

  There’s a shudder and creak from the walls on both sides of the platform and vent-slats appear and flap open in them. The glowing green gas starts belching then pouring out of them full blast.

  Siobhán says, “Oh, that can’t be good…” and takes a silky, almost-black purple bandana out of her back jeans pocket and quickly wraps and ties it around her face before clasping Felix’s shoulder again. He tries to cover his mouth and nose with his dragon sleeve but already feels a little dizzy from the gas. It’s cool and sweet like nitrous at a dental office. The gas is cool in his lungs but his chest feels warm and kind of nice which is confusing. His limbs start to feel a little heavy and tingly too.

  He remembers a torn green t-shirt in his pack and tries to slip it off. Siobhán releases him for a moment and he takes the pack off to rummage through it. He takes the torn t-shirt out and ties it around his face. As he goes to close the pack, he feels the weight of the camera and pistol. This pack is probably just going to slow me down.

  Felix covers himself with the pack and slips the gun from it into his waistband then takes HDV-426 out by the carry grip on the top and drops the pack on the platform.

  Siobhán seems to hear something that he can’t and grabs his shoulder again. She guides him down into a crouch and says,

  “Stay low. It can see a lot better than we can but the chatter will confuse it.”

  From her voice it sounds like she’s watching behind them as she pushes him through the forest of silhouetted people. There are comments and
disapproving grunts from the forest as they push through.

  Felix asks, “What’ll these people think?”

  “Don’t much care.”

  One of the trees says, “Fuck you too, weirdo.”

  Another says, “Yeah, what is this… Occupy Powell Station?” and a few of the other trees chuckle or scoff.

  Felix is confused by this for a moment until he visualizes what they must look like in the light with the cloth over their faces and the sleeping pad on his pack.

  The gas is still getting in through the t-shirt and he’s feeling hazy and stupid but it’s almost pleasant. The platform is getting brighter and he can see the faces of the people more clearly. With each breath, the people pulse between silhouetted forms covered in greyish translucent flowers, bulbs, and amoebas and normal people looking at them with disgusted or nervous eyes. Is that the gas? It feels nice…

  Siobhán slaps the side of his face to clear his head and pushes him onward. It stings but that’s the point and it gives him a moment to get back with it. It gets a bit darker again but continues to brighten as he breathes. Things are more clear and normal. For a moment, Felix is relieved but then he realizes, If I can’t see the darkness, can I see the monster?

  He looks back through the crowd and can only vaguely see the black, man-shaped blob down by the stairs. With each breath it becomes less defined and he can see through it more.

  Felix feels the beginnings of panic trying to make him run screaming any way he can.

  If I can’t see it, I can’t get away! It’s going to eat me! It’s really going to fucking eat me!

  Felix blinks a few times and realizes he can’t see the blue-eyed muck man anymore at all. He stifles a yelp but drops his camera and stops, crouched in place and shaking.

  Siobhán whispers, “What’s wrong you?!”

  Felix shudders and stammers, “I c-can’t see it!”

  “Neither can I but we have to keep going!”

  “I can’t!”

  Siobhán digs her fingers into his shoulder with such effortless strength that they feel like talons. Her makeup job and hood combine with her eerie, mirrored eyes into a genuinely fearsome scowl and for just an instant Felix is more frightened of Siobhán than the monster down the platform. He still can’t move, though. She locks the depth of her claws, but starts to twist them in his jacketed flesh.