Signalz

by F. Paul Wilson

  No hunger, no fatigue, and once-in-a-lifetime inspiration. A writer’s dream.

  He’d finish it here in this strange, lonely place…and then he’d have to find a way back. Because what was the point of writing the Great American Novel if no one was ever going to read it?

  ERNST

  Ernst found Slootjes just where he’d expected: at his desk downstairs in the archives. The clutter was even worse than earlier, but the loremaster wasn’t poring over the materials. Instead he sat slumped back in his chair, staring off into space. For a heartbeat or two, Ernst thought he might be dead—a heart attack from the stress of the Atkinson memoir—but then his chest moved as he took a breath.

  “Saar?”

  Slootjes started, then his eyes focused. “Oh…Ernst. Sorry.”

  “You looked like you were lost in space.”

  “Lost in thought is more like it.” He sounded so tired.

  “About what?”

  Slootjes pierced Ernst with his sad gaze. “All the lies that are my life.”

  Ernst blinked. “I’m sorry…what?”

  “It’s the title of a story I read long ago. I don’t recall who wrote it or a single thing about it, just the title. Because I’ve been living that title.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “That memoir, Ernst. It’s all true. Your grandfather witnessed the other side of the Veil and realized that he’d been lied to since he joined the Order, and that he’d been lying to the son he was grooming to join the Order. And you, Ernst, your father, Ernst Drexler the first, you’ve been lied to all your life as well.”

  “Be careful, Saar.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean your father intentionally lied to you. I’m sure he was convinced the lies he told you were true, and thought he was passing on arcane truths to his son. But they were lies, lies, lies.”

  “Come now—”

  The loremaster slammed his fist on his desk. “It’s true! It’s the only truth we have now! We are dupes! We are fools! And thanks to this stranger who met your grandfather, at last we know it. Which leaves me in a very awkward position.”

  Ernst frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, as loremaster I must pass this on to our brothers.”

  Alarm bells rang in Ernst’s brain. “Pass what on?”

  Slootjes had a strange look in his eyes. “Your grandfather’s fate and the doubts he had about the Order’s mission. I confess to having had my own doubts deep down over the years, but this confirms them.”

  “Let’s not do anything rash. I’ll call a Council meeting to discuss—”

  “Discuss? Discuss? The Council is peopled with dolts! Nothing but gullible dolts who believe every lie the One feeds them!”

  “You shouldn’t talk about the One that way. If he hears—”

  “And where is the One? Has anyone heard from him lately? He’s dropped out of sight. Maybe he’s in hiding. Maybe even he’s afraid of what the Change will bring!”

  Good question. Where was the One? Two months had passed since Ernst’s last contact with him. Maybe the stars had to align or the spheres of the multiverse had to rotate into a certain configuration. Who could say? The convergence of the signals indicated that the Change was about to begin.

  Of all living members of the Order, none had provided the One more personal service toward bringing the Change than he, Ernst Drexler. He and the upper echelons of the Order expected to be rewarded in the world that followed the Change. As for the fate of brothers like the loremaster and the rank-and-file members, Ernst was not so sure.

  But the One’s silence these past months as everything came to a head…Ernst found it not only puzzling, but deeply disturbing.

  “Please be calm, Saar—”

  “The time for calm is long gone! I’m going to gather my notes and,, first thing tomorrow, I’m going to send out a worldwide email blast to the membership. Everyone should be prepared for betrayal. I may have been fooled like the rest of the Order, but now that I know the truth, I will not betray my trust, I will not betray my brothers.”

  “Listen to me—”

  “You want me to cover it up? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? How typical of an actuator. The Order above everything. Septimus über alles and to hell with the members!”

  He was working himself into a froth of anger.

  “I want you to think this through.”

  “The time for believing in lies is done. The time for truth is at hand.” He strode to the door and yanked it open. Pointing to the stairwell outside, he cried, “The archives are my domain and you are no longer welcome here, Actuator Drexler. Out!”

  “But—”

  “OUT!”

  At a loss as to how to defuse the situation, Ernst stepped into hall. After the door slammed behind him, he heard the lock turn.

  Slootjes had gone mad. Mad with fear? Mad with hate? Ernst couldn’t say. But whatever the cause, Ernst could not let him send out that email tomorrow. A loremaster, however, answered only to the Council itself. Ernst would have to alert them.

  HARI

  Hari hated hotel beds and this had to be the most uncomfortable pillow ever. But when she banged her fist against it to soften it up, she heard a voice nearby say, “Ow!”

  She opened her eyes and realized her head was on someone’s lap. And through that someone’s jeans she could feel an erection pressing against the back of her head.

  “Whoa!” she said, jerking upright to face Donny. The foil blanket fluttered around them. It all came back in a rush. “How did that happen?”

  “You conked out,” Donny said.

  “And landed on you?”

  “It was sort of a slow-motion fall.”

  She looked around. Nothing had changed: the green aurorae still flickered in a starless sky. How long had she been out? The reflective blanket, augmented by intermittent blasts from the Tahoe’s heater, had been keeping them comfortable. Too comfortable, apparently. Sleep deprivation had caught up to her.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  He waved his hands. “I’m a firm believer in catching as many winks as you can whenever you can. And besides, I kind of liked it.”

  She gave the bulge under his fly zipper a quick pat. “‘Kind of’?”

  “Do not do that!” he said, pressing his knees together.

  “I’m not a cougar, and are you really that horny?”

  “Only when you’re around.”

  She had to laugh. “I know it’s dark but did you happen to see my eyes roll?”

  “No, but I heard them.”

  Hari couldn’t say exactly why—not even approximately why—but his perfect quip seemed to flip a Why not? switch in her and she gave in to an insane impulse.

  “Oh, hell,” she said and leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

  He responded and soon their tongues were dueling and their hands were roving and she was rubbing that bulging fly and his fingers had just closed around one of her breasts when something went thump! against the passenger side of the car.

  The heat growing within Hari flash-froze to ice.

  “What was that?” she said. “There’s not supposed to be anything moving out there.”

  “Tell me about it. Maybe it was just the car settling or—”

  Hari suppressed a scream when she saw the slim black tendril sliding up the rear window.

  “Where’d that come from?” she whispered.

  “Oh, shit!” Donny said, also keeping his voice low. He pressed the side of his face against the passenger window for a better look. “Oh, shit!”

  “What-what-what?” She didn’t want to know but she had to know. “What is it?”

  “It looks like a giant clump of crude oil that’s washed up from a tanker spill, except it’s moving…oozing out pseudopods like an amoeba.”

  What?

  “This isn’t a time for jokes, Donny.”

  “Who’s joking? It’s partially under the car and it’s big, Hari. Yo
u can probably see it on your side too.”

  Hari hesitated, then peeked out her window.

  Donny’s description had been right on the money: an amorphous flattened blob with a glossy tarry surface reflecting the aurora. It moved like an amoeba, extending pseudopods then flowing into them. Here and there a black, antennalike tendril jutted from its surface and undulated in the air. One of these had struck the rear window.

  A dozen feet beyond this one she spotted another dark shape slithering along the ground.

  “I see it,” she said. “And it’s not alone. But where do they come from? The ground is solid, no nooks or crannies or crevices. Where were they hiding?”

  Donny said, “Better question: How many are there?”

  “One way to find out.”

  As Hari reached for the steering column, Donny said, “Maybe we ought to—”

  She turned on the headlights.

  “—think about that—oh, Christ!”

  As before, the beams lit up the ranks of semi-trailers. But unlike before, they had glistening ebony creatures crawling over them.

  Whatever they were, the plateau appeared to be home to hundreds of these things.

  “Are they eating the food?” Donny said.

  “The containers inside the trailer I checked showed no damage. Either they can’t get in or they don’t eat human food—if you can call freeze-dried scrambled eggs and beef Stroganoff human food.”

  The oil clumps had all been in motion when she’d turned on the lights, but now they froze in place. Even their antenna-tendrils had stopped waving.

  “What happened?” Donny said. “Did you scare them?”

  “Maybe I should turn the lights off.”

  “No, wait. They’re moving again.”

  Yes, moving again…the ones climbing the semis reversed direction and oozed toward the ground. And those on the ground…

  “Christ, they’re heading this way!” He began hammering the steering wheel. “Turn off the lights, turn off the lights!”

  Hari was already there. Darkness returned as the headlights died, but green flashes from the aurora-strewn sky reflected off the surfaces of the clumps.

  “They’re still headed this way,” Hari whispered, her mouth going dry. “Why? What do they want?”

  “Maybe you triggered some phototropic response.”

  “But the lights are out.”

  “Maybe it’s sound…or heat.” The survival blanket had bunched up during their clinch. He spread it over them again and said, “Get back under here.”

  Huddling under the blanket made no difference—the things kept coming. Soon they surrounded the Tahoe, reaching up and slapping the fenders and hood and windows with their tendrils.

  And then they started crawling onto the vehicle, one after another, slithering up the sides, blocking the auroral light and engulfing the Tahoe in squirming darkness.

  “I don’t think it’s light or heat,” Donny said. “It’s us they want.”

  Hari jabbed the door-lock button and said, “They can’t get in, can they?”

  “I think we’re safe.”

  “What’ll happen if we start the engine?”

  “Let’s not find out.”

  “We have to get them off us, Donny. How will we know when the passage reopens? And how will we reach it when it does?”

  “Maybe they’ll get frustrated and go away. Did you happen to notice what time it was?”

  Hari hadn’t, so she turned the key. The dashboard lit up and the clock read 11:46.

  Donny groaned. “Six hours left.”

  In the wash from the dashboard lights Hari noticed a number of pale spots on the windshield. She turned on the courtesy lights. Yes…about a dozen pale, dime-sized circles on the glass.

  “What’s happening here?”

  Donny leaned closer. “Almost looks like etching—oh, shit. They’re etching the glass!”

  “How? Don’t you need acid or something to do that?”

  “Yeah. Hydrofluoric acid. They look like they’re secreting it.”

  “To etch the glass?” Even as she said it, Hari knew that wasn’t right, that the reason had to be more sinister.

  “No.” Donny’s voice quavered. “To burn through it.”

  WEDNESDAY—MAY 17

  BARBARA

  1

  Someone was shaking my shoulder.

  “Wake up, Mother. We don’t want to be late.”

  I opened my eyes, blinked a few times, and Ellie came into focus, leaning over me where I must have dozed off on the living room couch. She wore the same clothes as when she’d entered the passage on Monday and—I blinked again—no spider legs in sight.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked again. No…no spider legs.

  Had I dreamed all that? I couldn’t believe my mind capable of concocting such a scenario, even in a nightmare, yet here she was, looking like her old self.

  No, not her old-old self. This was the pre-passage Ellie, with the stranger who called me “Mother” looking out through her eyes.

  “Ellie…you’re all right?”

  “As well as can be expected. But come on—rise and shine or we’ll be late.”

  “Late for what?”

  “Something momentous: the sunrise.”

  “That happens every day.”

  “Not like this, it doesn’t. It’s scheduled to rise at five twenty-one.”

  “Good Lord, what time is it now?”

  “Three-thirty. We have trains to catch if we’re going to reach Coney Island in time.”

  I rose from the couch and stretched. My back ached from sleeping in an odd position.

  “Why Coney Island? That’s a long way.”

  I’d never been there but remembered it lay at the far end of Brooklyn.

  “Because standing on a shore and watching the sun rise over the water will allow us to appreciate the full impact.”

  “Ellie, you’re not making any sense.”

  “Everything will make sense when we’re there, Mother. But we can’t dilly-dally. The trains are few and far between at this hour. Grab a coat because it’s chilly before dawn. And bring your phone because we’ll want to watch the time. I’ll get Blanky.”

  “Blanky?”

  She turned away and I saw her back. No spider legs, but…

  “Oh, God! Oh, dear God!”

  My knees gave way and I dropped back onto the couch. Her back was a seething, wriggling black mass of those little…things. They clung to her and to each other, bulking from the base of her neck to her waist.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “What?”

  I pointed. “Those…those…” Words failed me.

  “Oh, the kiddlies are coming along. They need to get out for a while.”

  2

  For a child—okay, teenager—who’d been to New York only a couple of times, and had never been on the subway, Ellie possessed an uncanny knowledge of its workings. I didn’t ask her how. I knew she’d say she’d learned all about it during her coma.

  She’d tied Blanky around her neck where it hung over her back like a cape, mercifully concealing her horrid “kiddlies” from me and the few other people scattered on the streets at this hour. As she led me to the Lexington Line station at Seventy-seventh Street, I’d glance at her and catch faint flashes or ghost images of spindly spider legs arching from her back, but they’d be gone before I could focus. Also…Blanky…at times Blanky flickered and transformed into a long, flowing, high-collared red cape like a Disney princess might wear, and then reverted to ratty old Blanky again.

  “Where are the…extra legs?” I said.

  “Here and not here. Tucked elsewhere. Don’t want to attract too much attention, do we?”

  Part of me wanted to run—screamed to run from her—but another part, the mother part, couldn’t leave. This was my child, my baby, and I had to stick by her in this time of trial. She’d changed for the worse—no, I shouldn’t say worse. She hadn’t done anything bad, hadn’t h
urt anyone. She’d changed to the strange, the uncanny, the bizarre, the frightening. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t change back to who she’d been, and I had to be there when she did. Because she’d need me. She didn’t seem to need me now, but she’d need me then.

  Down in the subway station, after what seemed like a long wait, we caught the six train downtown. We shared our car with a couple of drowsy drunks and a homeless woman stretched out on a bench surrounded by the plastic bags she’d filled with her earthy possessions. I hadn’t noticed at the apartment or on the street, but here under the fluorescents of the subway car, Ellie looked pale and drawn. Her cheeks were sunken.

  “When did you last eat?” I said.

  A wan smile. “Been a while.”

  But was it more than simply not eating?

  “Those…things…they aren’t biting you, are they?”

  I imagined them sucking her blood like ticks.

  “No. They’d never bite me. And they know not to bite you either.”

  “Well, you need to eat,” I said. “At the next stop we’ll get out and find an all-night coffee shop and get some nourishment into you.”

  She gave her head an emphatic shake. “No, Mother. This is a big day. I have to stay on schedule.”

  “For the sunrise? It will happen whether you’re watching or not.”

  “Sunrise isn’t the first stop on the schedule.”

  “What is?”

  “All in good time, Mother.”

  At Bleeker Street we switched to the D train and continued to the end of the line at Coney Island. Once the D left Manhattan, it stopped being “sub” and traveled on elevated tracks.

  After an uneventful trip on two largely uninhabited trains, we reached the end of the line at Coney Island. Ellie led us down to street level where we found ourselves in a rough, seedy neighborhood.

  “I don’t like it here,” I said.

  “It’s necessary,” she said. She was in enigmatic mode now. “What time on your phone?”

  I checked. “Four fifty-seven.”

  “Good. We have time.”