“Yeah I read a book about that once,” Jack said, grinning slightly. “It was a novel in which World War III happens and we’re wiped out. Kaput. And it described the ecological changes as happening within the space of days. One minute everything was normal, the next bombs were destroying everything, whipping up firestorms, hurricanes, the works. And it just sent everything in a huge tailspin. The sun was blotted out by thick clouds of nuclear shit, and things were all fucked up for like, years. And it got real cold, freezing temperatures. That book scared the crap out of me.”
“I can imagine. And we can assume something similar happened in this case with the dinosaurs. The resulting changes wiped out the dinosaurs; that much we know. Along with Allosauraus and Brontosauraus and T-Rex and thousands of other species, paleontologists have lumped Homarus Tyrannous as extinct. Why? Because none have been seen, and the only remains of them are the few fossils we’ve found. But they’ve survived, and they’re still here.”
“How is that possible?”
“Two things.” He tapped the map again, indicating the area of the North Atlantic. “This area millions of years ago was rich and fertile and lush and humid. The temperature was most likely very warm. I think paleontologists have only unearthed maybe two remains of our little friends here, and those were partial shells. The rest were fragments imbedded in rock, but they were enough for us to piece together. That’s considerably fewer than we’ve found of, say…Mamenchisaurus, of which we’ve only found one complete skeleton, and that’s scarce indeed. Paleontologists have only found one complete T-Rex skeleton since that particular species’ discovery in the 1920s. Anyway, the theory for this is probably because Homarus Tyrannous lived along the ocean floor, and this area”—he tapped along the North Atlantic—”is fairly deep and largely unexplored. It is also my theory that they probably only migrated inland for mating purposes.”
“If that’s the case, wouldn’t they have left fossilized remains on shore?”
“They have, in the areas I’ve indicated,” Glen said. “But there hasn’t been much. That can be explained by…what we’re seeing today.”
Jack’s features grew grim. “The Dark Ones.”
Glen was taken aback by the description of the creatures, but it fit. He nodded, stroking his chin. “Yes, the Dark Ones. Fitting, isn’t it. And very Lovecraftian, too.”
“Do you think they’re some…I don’t know…prehistoric relic from our past?”
Glen shook his head. “I’ve never come across anything fitting their description anywhere. Not even in folklore—” He stopped himself and held up his hand as if stopping himself. “Except for today.” He darted over to the table where he plucked the chapbook he’d poured through earlier and flipped through it. “There’s an old legend in this area about the Lost Village—”
“Right!” Jack exclaimed. “I’ve heard that one. Didn’t that happen near Fort O’Brien?”
Glen nodded. “Exactly. It was a little town where Fort O’Brien is now; in fact Fort O’Brien’s main tourist attraction comes from the Lost Village.”
Jack appeared to be putting the pieces together. “The Clickers came up to breed, as they probably always did, and were followed by the Dark Ones for food.”
“Just as they always did,” Glen picked up. “They followed the Clickers inland much in the way Nile Monitor lizards follow female crocodiles in the hopes of eating their young. Which probably explains why we haven’t found that many fossilized remains.”
“If the Dark Ones destroyed all of them, how were they able to breed?”
“Nature probably allowed a certain number to survive, just as she does with other animal species. Look at the example of crocodiles again; females lay as many as ninety eggs, but in the end only ten ultimately survive through their first few years. The rest are eaten in utero, or within a few weeks or months of hatching by other predators.”
Jack was nodding. He seemed to be taking this all in stride. “So a select lucky few survive, do their thing, and scuttle back to sea. What the hell is their breeding period then? Every ten million years?”
Glen had an answer for that, even though it was still unsubstantiated. “They could breed yearly or bi-yearly. They could also breed less frequently than that. Every ten years, or fifteen. Every fifty. Every hundred. Cicadas go through a seventeen year gestation period. We can’t really tell what the breeding period for these things is without study, but my guess is more like every hundred years. This could explain why we’ve never heard of them till now. They probably come ashore on some remote area…” He pointed to portions of Canada and Greenland. “Somewhere where they aren’t seen by man.”
“If that’s the case, what the hell are they doing here now?”
Glen grinned. “That’s a matter of geology and astronomy. And I’m not an expert at either, but the position of the stars and constellations does have an effect on not only our lunar system, but our geological one as well. My guess is that every four hundred years there is a change in the earth’s ocean currents, particularly those in the Atlantic. And they shift in directions that they normally don’t flow…”
“Thus bringing whatever might normally drift along their currents down to us,” Jack said. He shook his head, leaning the rifle against the wall under the window sill. “What I don’t get, though, is why we hadn’t picked up on this before.”
“Oh, we have,” Glen said, holding up the chapbook. “Only four hundred or so years ago, the only human population in this area were American Indians who witnessed this excursion over the last few thousand years. They traded the tale orally from generation to generation, and I’m sure that in 1605 when the Lost Village incident happened, those Indians that were here knew the tale only as something of an urban legend. An urban legend that was very true.”
“And the Lost Village was comprised of settlers, right?”
“Exactly. European settlers wouldn’t have known about the legend since they’d just settled on these shores. They were, as they now say, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Jack wiped his brow with the back of a bony hand and stared out the window. It was beginning to cloud up again, although the air appeared still.
Glen walked over to the window and stood to the side of it, looking down at the now-silent streets. His voice was low as he spoke. “So what you and Rick call Clickers, which are in reality a form of crustacean long thought extinct, are still alive somewhere deep in the bowels of the Atlantic. And they come up to breed and every four hundred years, when the earth’s position in space shifts, the ocean currents shift with it, bringing them to these shores. And every time they drift on shore to breed, they are followed by their natural predators which modern man never knew existed—The Dark Ones.”
There was a short pause as both men stared out the window at the ravaged town, taking in the aftermath of the Dark Ones’ destructive path. The few bodies that could be seen from the window resembled nothing but piles of cloth-covered, bloody slabs of meat, but Glen thought he recognized one, a man lying face up across the street from Gerber’s Drug Store on the Corner of Main and Hill. That would be James Hemsath, the local preacher. Glen had recently referred James to a Gastroenterologist in Bangor that specialized in ulcerative colitis. Now Reverend Hemsath was dead.
Glen turned away from the window, putting James Hemsath out of his mind. Couldn’t let the emotions get to him now, not while the town was still in danger. He needed to teach Jack the basics of what they were up against. The more they both knew about the situation, the better they would be equipped to handle it.
“So the whole Lost Village legend stemmed from the last—and ultimately fatal—incident of the last time the Clickers came to these shores to breed,” Glen said. “The Indians at the time knew what was happening, and retreated inland. While the settlers…” he shrugged. “Well, you know the story. The closest description we get that anything horrific is happening is that hastily scrawled message.”
“‘Demons from the sea,’�
�� Jack said, quoting the message verbatim.
“Exactly.” Glen said. “And because it was so long ago and the village was essentially wiped out, the settlers that came afterward and made the discovery of the Lost Village treated the Indian legend as nothing but a tale designed to scare children.” He sighed. “But every legend has its basis in fact.”
“What do you think happened to those settlers?” Jack asked.
Glen was about to answer when a faint noise from the east caught his ear.
He perked up, grabbing his firearm and moving back to the window. Jack rose clutching his weapon and the two men crouched in the shadows, barely breathing as the sound grew louder. It sounded like footsteps, only these were different. They were a kind of wet, shuffling gait that got closer.
And closer.
And closer.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Multi-colored bolts of lightning shot up from the nearby hillside and danced through Stacy Robinson’s living room window.
Stacy squirmed in her torn and stained easy chair as the thunder rolled. She hugged the terrycloth robe she was wearing tight to her body and, for perhaps the tenth time that evening, thought about getting dressed in something warmer. At one point Stacy started to get up when she realized her clothes were wet. The power had gone out while they were in the rinse cycle in the washing machine, and she didn’t want to rummage around in the closet for something else. It was too dark. She thought she had a flashlight around somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found. She’d been trying to remember where the flashlight was while she sat in the chair listening to the lightning flash and the thunder rumble as the latest storm rolled in from the ocean.
She settled back into the warmth of the chair and thought about calling the power company when another lightning flash flickered across the ocean. The acid she’d dropped thirty minutes before accented the effect nicely; more multicolored electricity bolts erupted over the sky. This time the colors were psychedelic. They swirled and became huge walking pumpkins with glowing umbrellas and big smiles. The last forty-eight hours were forgotten as Stacy looked out the window at the rapidly darkening sky and laughed as the walking pumpkins began to dance and sing. She smiled and thought briefly about getting dressed. But then another lightning bolt flashed and the colors sparkled again, merging into even more dancing pumpkins. Life was sure grand!
Things were better today then they’d been last night. The terrifying memories of the crab-creatures and Kirk’s death had yet to be forgotten in her confused maze of a mind, but she wasn’t as hysterical as she was last night. She’d been convinced that the things that killed Kirk would come to get her. This morning she actually had a chance to think. She had chilled out in the living room, listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall as she thought about what to do: get some laundry done, pack some things, close out the bank account. Then take what was left of her money and take off in her Trans-Am. Fuck the house and the rest of her stuff. That was the ticket.
Only that hadn’t happened. She’d dozed in the living room and woken up at one in the afternoon. She took a leisurely shower, then began rummaging around for clothes. She stopped intermittently for hits off her bong, a few beers, another tab of acid. By the time the storm really hit and all those gunshots started going off (don’t those fucking redneck assholes know that hunting season starts next week?) she was peaking and starting the laundry. So she was behind schedule. Stacy always found that things worked out best when she worked at her own pace and that when shit happened, it happened. When you rolled with it, you came out still rolling.
She’d put a Nirvana CD in her boom-box, began doing laundry, singing along with Kurt Cobain and mirroring his tortured voice perfectly, his angst matching hers, his pain touching hers. And just as the clothes were in the rinse cycle, the power went out.
She screamed, threw a box of Tide at the washing machine, spilling powdered soap all over the washer and dryer and the floor. She cried hoarsely, her chest hitching with a frustration that came so deep within her that she didn’t know how to quench it.
When the crying fit subsided, she flicked the light switches off and on. The power was definitely out. Great! Just fucking great!
She crossed the darkened living room and picked up the phone. No dial tone. This is just my fucking day.
Might as well make the most of it. The hit of yellow-blotter she’d taken earlier that afternoon had worn off, so she took another. Then she retreated into the living room dressed in the terrycloth robe because all her good jeans and sweaters were in the fucking washing machine, and she popped another top off a bottle of beer and sat watching the lightning roll across the ocean.
It was a nice way of escaping. She learned early on that the best way to make problems go away was to alter her perception of them and their effects on her. This especially became useful after Mother died (you mean after you killed mother. Isn’t that right?). Through some metaphysical teachings she learned from an old boyfriend, she’d come to the conclusion that problems and negativity were caused by people who were not in tune to her world view, which was almost everybody.
She tried altering other people’s way of thinking, but that hadn’t worked. They just weren’t worth the trouble or hassle. When the act of denial was too difficult, she discovered that LSD helped; by dissolving other peoples’ personalities and reaffirming her sense of righteousness. Dissolving…just as Kirk had dissolved.
Stacy sat back and smirked as the realization of Kirk’s disappearance became crystal clear in her mind. He hadn’t died. She’d simply dissolved his negativity and thus, removed him from her world.
She sat back in her chemical haze and let the pumpkins finish their dance and take their bows.
After the finale, the pumpkins did a very strange thing. Stacy wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, so she rubbed her eyes and looked out at the mass of clouds again. The pumpkins had lost their electric sheen and grown dark and wet. They twisted and became hunched and ugly. She squirmed in her chair, wondering what the pumpkins were up to now. They’d put on such a great show, but now the act was definitely lagging. The new pumpkins were sort of hopping and clawing through the muddy hill behind her house, making strange bleating noises. The rain melted away the last of their disguises. A strong musty odor rolled in through the cracked side window. Not only were the pumpkins now ugly, but they smelled bad too.
Stacy sat and waited for them to do something fun and exciting, but nothing happened. They continued to rummage through the mud. She sighed, suddenly feeling cold goose bumps rise along the flesh of her exposed forearms. The pumpkins were still being boring, and she’d had enough of their lagging performance. She stood up, marched forward to the window and pounded her palm on the inside of the window to get their attention. “Hey! What’s wrong with you guys?”
The creatures turned and Stacy saw red eyes glow a deeper shade of crimson as they focused on her. The bleating croaks rose once again, this time filled with a tinge of excitement, and then they began to slither toward her.
The rational side of Stacy’s consciousness suddenly jumped into the driver’s seat. The primal emotion of terror ripped through her body. She took an involuntary step back as the nearest Dark One banged its scaly nose on the window glass.
Stacy stumbled back, her breath hitching in her throat as her terror rose. Needle-sharp nails scratched the glass as the creature seemed to study the transparent barrier with a scaly, webbed claw. The sound reverberated through Stacy’s ear painfully. The creature gave a firm push and the glass shattered into thousands of wet, razor-like projectiles. Stacy jumped back from the sound of the blow and fell on her skinny ass, looking dumbfoundedly at her naked legs. A few small glass slivers had lodged in the smooth flesh and blood was quickly running down her limbs in tiny red rivers. She stared in numbed amazement at her legs, as if trying to make sense of why this happened, when the pungent fish smell wafting in from outside hit her like a sledgehammer. She looked up to see the creature curling back its
lizard-like lips, hissing through rows of serrated teeth. A few of the glass fragments from the window fell to the floor from the upper frame as the creature stuck its head through the opening and began pushing its bulk through.
Stacy screamed and scrambled to her feet. She turned and began running out of the kitchen, down the hall, trailing blood from her cut legs behind her. Terror drove her forward as she rounded the living room, tripped and almost fell sprawling on the floor, up the stairs, down the hall to her bedroom where she ran to the window and looked out at the mass of creatures that were assembling on her back lawn.
The window was open, bringing in the cold air along with the smell of the ocean and the musty aroma of the creatures. The combination of the cold air and the intermingling scents had driven the effects of the LSD and the beer out of her system; she was cold sober. Four more of the creatures were making their way from the beach, and one of them appeared to be carrying some kind of long, thin object. A stick? A piece of driftwood?
A muffled whimper rose from her chest as she raced out of her bedroom to the second floor landing. She peered over the balcony, getting a clear view of the living room and the kitchen. The monster that smashed the window was now in the kitchen and moving toward the living room. Two more were squeezing their scaly bodies through another window in her living room, the sound of the destruction crashing through the house, drowning out the sounds of the pouring rain outside. The couch was positioned beneath that particular window, and the creature trying to enter swiped at the furniture with its claw. Suede fabric and stuffing flew through the air as the seat cushion was disemboweled. It swiveled its head toward Stacy and grunted. She stiffened like a rodent freezing in the sights of a bobcat, and the creature swatted the sofa aside with one arm, batting it against the wall where knickknacks fell with a crash. Stacy screamed and bolted back into her bedroom, then shut and locked the door behind her.
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