“Why are they all here?” I asked Gus.
“Just visiting,” he said casually, but did not look me in the eye.
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with what’s happening at the bald spot on the other side of Razorback Hill, would it?”
“Damn you! You’ve been snoopin’ around, haven’t you? You and your friend. They told me he was coming around, askin’ all sorts of questions. Where’s he now? Hidin’ in the bushes?”
“He’s over there,” I said, pointing to the top of Razorback Hill. “And if my guess is correct, he’s standing right in the middle of the bald spot.”
Gus dropped his jug. It shattered on the boards of his front step.
“Do you know what’ll happen to him?”
“No,” I said. “Do you?” I looked around at the Razorback folk. “Do they?”
“I don’t think anyone knows, leastmost them. But they’re scared. They come here twice a year, when that bald spot starts acting up.”
“Have you ever seen what happens there?”
“Once. Never want to see it again.”
“Why haven’t you ever told anyone?”
“What? And bring all sorts of pointyheads here to look and gawk and build and ruin the place. We’d all rather put up with the bald spot craziness twice a year than pointyhead craziness every day all year long.”
I didn’t have time to get into Creighton’s theory that the bald spot was genetically damaging the Razorback folks. I had to find Creighton.
“How do I get there? What’s the fastest way?”
“You can’t—”
“They got here!” I pointed to the Razorback folks.
“All right!” he said with open hostility. “Suit yourself. There’s a trail behind my cabin here. Follow it over the left flank of the hill.”
“And then?”
“And then you won’t need any directions. You’ll know where to go.”
His words had an ominous ring, but I couldn’t press him. I was being propelled by a sense of enormous urgency. Time was running out. Quickly. I already had my flashlight, so I hurried to the rear of his shanty and followed the trail.
Gus was right. As I crossed the flank of the hill I saw flashes through the trees ahead, like lightning, as if a very tiny and very violent electrical storm had been brought to ground and anchored there. I increased my pace, running when the terrain would allow. The wind picked up as I neared the storm area, growing from a fitful breeze to a full-scale gale by the time I broke through the brush and stumbled into the clearing that surrounded the bald spot.
Chaos. That’s the only way I can describe it. A nightmare of cascading lights and roaring wind. The pine lights—or lumens—were there, hundreds of them, all sizes, unaffected by the rushing vortex of air as they swirled about in wild arcs, each flaring brilliantly as it looped through the space above the bald spot. And the bald spot itself—it glowed with a faint purplish light that reached thirty or forty feet into the air before fading into the night.
The stolen book, Creighton’s notes—they weren’t mystical madness. Something cataclysmic was happening here, something that defied all the laws of nature—if indeed those laws had any real meaning. Whether this was one of the nexus points he had described, a fleeting rent in the reality that surrounded us, only Creighton could say for sure right now.
For I could see someone in the bald spot. I couldn’t make out his features from where I was, but I knew it was Jonathan Creighton.
I dashed forward until I reached the edge but slowed to a halt in the sand before actually crossing into the glow. Creighton was there, on his knees, his hands and feet buried in the sand. He was staring about him, his expression an uneasy mix of fear and wonder. I shouted his name, but he didn’t hear me above the roar of the wind. Twice he looked directly at me, but despite my frantic shouting and waving, did not see me.
I saw no other choice. I had to step onto the bald spot … the nexus point. It wasn’t easy. Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to run in the other direction, but I couldn’t leave him there like that. He looked helpless, trapped like an insect on flypaper. I had to help him.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and stepped across—and began to stumble forward. Up and down seemed to have a slightly different orientation here. I opened my eyes and dropped to my knees, nearly landing on Creighton. I looked around and froze.
The Pine Barrens were gone. Night was gone. It seemed to be predawn or dusk here, but the wind still howled about us and the pine lights flashed around us, appearing and disappearing above as though passing through invisible walls. We were someplace … else: on a huge misty plain that seemed to stretch on forever, interrupted only by clumps of vegetation and huge fog banks, one of which was nearby on my left and seemed to go on and up forever. Off in the immeasurable distance, mountains the size of the moon reached up and disappeared into the haze of the purple sky. The horizon—or what I imagined to be the horizon—didn’t curve as it should. This place seemed so much bigger than the world—our world—that waited just a few feet away.
“My God, Jon, where are we!”
He started and turned his head. His hands and feet remained buried in the sand. His eyes went wide with shock at the sight of me.
“No! You shouldn’t be here!”
His voice was thicker and more distorted than yesterday. Oddly enough, his pale skin looked almost healthy in the mauve light.
“Neither should you!”
I heard something then. Above the shriek of the wind came another sound. A rumble like an avalanche. It came from somewhere within the fog bank to our left. There was something massive, something immense, moving about in there, and the fog seemed to be drifting this way.
“We’ve got to get out of here, Jon!”
“No! I’m staying!”
“No way! Come on!”
He was racked with infection and obviously deranged. I didn’t care what he said, I wasn’t going to let him risk his life in this place. I’d get him out of here and let him think about it for six months. Then if he still wanted to try this, it would be his choice. But he wasn’t competent now.
I looped my arms around his chest and tried to pull him to his feet.
“Mac, please! Don’t!”
His hands remained fixed in the sand. He must have been holding on to something. I grabbed his right elbow and yanked. He screamed as his hand pulled free of the sand. Then I screamed, too, and let him go and threw myself back on the sand away from him.
Because his hand wasn’t a hand anymore.
It was big and white and had these long, ropey, tapered, rootlike projections, something like an eye on a potato when it sprouts after being left under the sink too long, only these things were moving, twisting and writhing like a handful of albino snakes.
“Go, Mac!” he said in that distorted voice, and I could tell from his face and eyes that he hadn’t wanted me to see him like this. “You don’t belong here!”
“And you do?”
“Now I do!”
I couldn’t bring myself to touch his hand, so I reached forward and grabbed some of his shirt. I pulled.
“We can find doctors! They can fix you! You can—”
“NO!”
It was a shout and it was something else. Something long and white and hard as flexed muscle, much like the things protruding from his shirtsleeve, darted out of his mouth and slammed against my chest, bruising my breasts as it thrust me away. Then it whipped back into his mouth.
I snapped then. I scrambled to my feet and blindly lurched away in the direction I’d come. Suddenly I was back in the Pine Barrens, in the cool night with the lights swirling madly above my head. I stumbled for the bushes, away from the nexus point, away from Jonathan Creighton.
At the edge of the clearing, I forced myself to stop and look back. I saw Creighton. His awful transformed hand was raised. I knew he couldn’t see me, but it was almost as if he was waving good-bye. Then he lowered his hand
and worked the tendrils back into the sand.
The last thing I remember of that night is vomiting.
10. AFTERMATH
I awoke among the Razorback folk who’d found me the next morning and watched over me until I was conscious and lucid again. They offered me food, but I couldn’t eat. I walked back up to the clearing, to the bald spot.
It looked exactly as it had when Creighton and I had first seen it in August. No lights, no wind, no purple glow. Just bare sand.
And no Jonathan Creighton.
I could have convinced myself that last night had never happened if not for the swollen, tender, violet bruise on my chest. Would that I had. But as much as my mind shrank from it, I could not deny the truth. I’d seen the other side of the veil, and my life would never be the same.
I looked around and knew that everything I saw was a sham, an elaborate illusion. Why? Why was the veil there? To protect us from harm? Or to shield us from madness? The truth had brought me no peace. Who could find comfort in the knowledge that huge immeasurable forces beyond our comprehension were out there, moving about us, beyond the reach of our senses?
I wanted to run … but where?
I ran home. I’ve been home for months now. Housebound. Moving beyond my door only for groceries. My accounting clients have all left me. I’m living on my savings, learning Latin, translating Jon’s stolen book. Was what I saw the true reality of our existence, or another dimension, or what? I don’t know. Creighton was right: knowing that you don’t know is maddening. It consumes you.
So I’m waiting for spring. Waiting for the vernal equinox. Maybe I’ll leave the house before then and hunt up some pine lights—or lumens, as the book calls them. Maybe I’ll touch one, maybe I won’t. Maybe when the equinox comes, I’ll return to Razorback Hill, to the bald spot. Maybe I’ll look for Jon. He may be there, he may not. I may cross into the bald spot, I may not. And if I do, I may not come back. Or I may.
I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know anything anymore. I’ve come to the point now where I’m sure of only one thing: nothing is sure anymore.
At least on this side of the veil.
Pickman’s Modem
LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS
I hadn’t seen Pickman on-line for some time; I thought he’d given up on the computer nets. You can waste hours every day reading and posting messages, if you aren’t careful, and the damn things are addictive; they can take up your entire life if you aren’t careful. The nets will eat you alive if you let them.
Some people just go cold turkey when they realize what’s happening, and I thought that was what had happened to Henry Pickman, so I was pleased and surprised when I saw the heading scroll across my monitor screen, stating that the next post had originated from his machine. Henry Pickman was no Einstein or Shakespeare, but his comments were usually entertaining, in an oafish sort of way. I had rather missed them during his absence.
“From the depths I return and greet you all,” I read. “My sincerest apologies for any inconvenience that my withdrawal might have occasioned.”
That didn’t sound at all like the Henry Pickman I knew; surprised, I read on, through three screens describing, with flawless spelling and mordant wit, the trials and tribulations of the breakdown of his old modem, and the acquisition of a new one. Lack of funds had driven him to desperate measures, but at last, by judicious haggling and trading, he had made himself the proud owner of a rather battered, but functional, 2400-baud external modem. The case proclaimed it to be a product of Miskatonic Data Systems, of Arkham, Massachusetts, and Pickman inquired innocently whether anyone in the net was familiar with that particular manufacturer.
I posted a brief congratulatory reply, denying any such knowledge, and read on.
When I browsed the message base the next day I found three messages from Pickman, each a small gem of sardonic commentary. I marveled at the improvement in Pickman’s writing—in fact, I wondered whether it was really Henry Pickman at all, and not someone else using his account.
It was the day after that, the third day, that the flamewar began.
For those unfamiliar with computer networks, let me explain that in on-line conversation, the normal social restraints on conversation don’t always work; as a result, minor disagreements can flare up into towering great arguments, with thousands of words of invective hurled back and forth along the phone lines. Emotions can run very high indeed. The delay in the system means that a retraction or an apology often arrives too late to stop the war of words from raging out of control.
These little debates are known as “flamewars.”
And Pickman’s introductory message had triggered one. Some reader in Kansas City had taken offense at a supposed slur on the Midwest, and launched a flaming missive in Pickman’s direction.
By the time I logged on and saw it, Pickman had already replied, some fifty messages or so down the bitstream, and had replied with blistering sarcasm and a vituperative tone quite unlike the rather laid-back Pickman I remembered. His English had improved, but his temper clearly had not.
I decided to stay out of this particular feud. I merely watched as, day after day, the messages flew back and forth, growing ever more bitter and vile. Pickman’s entries, in particular, were remarkable in their viciousness and in the incredible imagination displayed in his descriptions of his opponents. I wondered, more than ever, how this person could be little Henry Pickman, he of the sloppy grin and sloppier typing.
Within four or five days, both sides were accusing the other of deliberate misquotation, and I began to wonder if perhaps something even stranger than a borrowed account might not be happening.
I decided that drastic action was called for; I would drop in on Henry Pickman in person, uninvited, and talk matters over with him—talk, with our mouths, rather than type. Not at a net party, or a convention, but simply at his home. Accordingly, that Saturday afternoon found me on his doorstep, my finger on the bell.
“Yeah?” he said, opening the door. “Who is it?” He blinked up at me through thick glasses.
“Hi, Henry,” I said. “It’s me, George Polushkin—we met at the net party at Schoonercon.”
“Oh, yeah!” he said, enlightenment dawning visibly on his face.
“May I come in?” I asked.
Fifteen minutes later, after a few uncomfortable silences and various mumbled pleasantries, we were both sitting in his living room, open cans of beer at hand, and he asked, “So, why’d you come, George? I mean, I wasn’t, y’know, expecting you.”
“Well,” I said, “it was good to see you back on the net, Henry.…” I hesitated, unsure how to continue.
“You’re pissed about the flamewar, huh?” He grinned apologetically.
“Well, yes,” I admitted.
“Me, too,” he said, to my surprise. “I don’t understand what those guys are doing. I mean, they’re lying about me, George, saying I said stuff that I didn’t.”
“You said that on-line,” I said, “but I hadn’t noticed any misquotations.”
His mouth fell open and he stared at me, goggle-eyed. “But, George,” he said, “look at it!”
“I have looked, Henry,” I said. “I didn’t see any. They were using quoting software; they’d have to retype it to change what you wrote. Why would anyone bother to do that? Why should they change what you said?”
“I don’t know, George, but they did!” He read the disbelief in my face, and said, “Come on, I’ll show you! I logged everything!”
I followed him to his computer room—a spare bedroom upstairs held a battered IBM PC/AT and an assortment of other equipment, occupying a secondhand desk and several shelves. Printouts and software manuals were stacked knee-deep on all sides. A black box, red lights glowering ominously from its front panel, was perched atop his monitor screen.
I stood nearby, peering over his shoulder, as he booted up his computer and loaded a log file into his text editor. Familiar messages appeared on the screen.
; “Look at this,” Henry said. “I got this one yesterday.”
I had read this note previously; it consisted of a long quoted passage that suggested, in elaborate and revolting detail, unnatural acts that the recipient should perform, with explanations of why, given the recipient’s ancestry and demonstrated proclivities, each was appropriate. The anatomical descriptions were thoroughly stomach-turning, but probably, so far as I could tell, accurate—no obvious impossibilities were involved.
The amount of fluid seemed a bit excessive, perhaps.
To this quoted passage, the sender had appended only the comment, “I can’t believe you said that, Pickman.”
“So?” I said.
“So, I didn’t say that,” Pickman said. “Of course I didn’t!”
“But I read it…,” I began.
“Not from me, you didn’t!”
I frowned, and pointed out, “That quote has a date on it—I mean, when you supposedly sent it. And it was addressed to Pete Gifford. You didn’t send him that message?”
“I posted a message to him that day, yeah, but it wasn’t anything like that!”
“Do you have it logged?”
“Sure.”
He called up a window showing another file, scrolled through it, and showed me.
“PETE,” the message read, “WHY DO’NT YUO GO F*CK YUORSELF THREE WAYS ANYWAY.”
I read that, then looked at the other message, still on the main screen.
Three ways. One, two, three. In graphic detail.
I pointed this out.
“Yeah,” Pickman said, “I guess that’s where they got the idea, but I think it’s pretty disgusting, writing something that gross and then blaming me for it.”
“You really didn’t write it?” I stared at the screen.
The message in the window was much more the old Henry Pickman style, but the other, longer one was what I remembered reading on my own machine.
“Let’s look at some others,” I suggested.
So we looked.
We found that very first message, which I had read as beginning, “From the depths I return and greet you all. My sincerest apologies for any inconvenience that my withdrawal might have occasioned.”
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