by Gary Fry
Then Meg paced backward, certain the figure beyond the door—a bulky, glutinous figure that crackled with subdued electricity, like sparks flying from water-doused gadgets—had been moving to the right…toward the rear of the building, where the bedroom would be located, presently occupied by two furtive paramours.
Roof tiles were scattered to and fro on the flagged path leading around the back. No regulated property owner would have left the cottage in such a shabby state of disrepair, and so Meg must assume the damage had been caused since its current tenant’s arrival: today.
“No, this night,” she said aloud, encouraging herself to reach the window she desired by remaining in touch with reality. Too often recently she’d lapsed into delusional speculation, and could now recall a montage of restless memories, all cavorting in her mind’s eye: miners stripped of their hands, and in some cases, their heads; the purple fingernails of the missing young woman who’d liked to dress as a goth; Meg’s husband taking advantage of his company, claiming back more money than he’d spent…These and other notions frightened Meg, but none prevented her from achieving her goal: tapping on the bedroom window and getting whatever lurked inside to betray its sordid self.
At last she’d reached the glass. Time dripped by while she hesitated, wondering what to do next. The window was curtained, and in the darkness formed by this felt material, Meg examined reflections of the moon and stars shining with inscrutable intensity. She recalled observations, recently communicated via the media, about evolutionary advantages; she pictured opposable thumbs and sharp vision, each newly fused to primordial limbs…And then she knocked at the windowpane.
Silence followed, broken only by wind howling and the distant sea breaking on rocks. A squidlike creature might rely on a coastal environment, Meg thought, but moments later, she noticed something flash briefly in the tiny gap between the twin halves of curtains.
Nobody could have just switched on a lamp in the room, because that would have made all the material shine with muted illumination. Whatever was at work inside must have a means of conveying light, but Meg knew her husband didn’t smoke and the woman she’d met yesterday wouldn’t either. She’d been beautiful, just as Harry was ruggedly attractive, and cigarettes always had a deleterious effect on that. Neither could have sparked up flames. The thing in the room must be creating this effect by some other conjuring means.
As Meg processed these intrusive thoughts, a wedge of the curtain was snatched back. A hand had performed the deed, she noticed; its fingers still gripped the neatly hemmed edge. This was a man’s grip—her husband’s, undoubtedly. The gold wedding ring she’d bought him in return for the chunky diamond she herself wore encircled the third finger.
“Harry,” Meg called, but her voice was stillborn in a gaping mouth.
She’d glimpsed what else was in the room beyond the windowpane.
Amanda’s head, looking out through the gap, was soon joined by that of Meg’s husband. The loving couple waited, gazing out with soulless, uncaring eyes…but then Meg realized why so little life was evident in their combined expressions. There was little life in them. They were dead. They’d been decapitated. The bloodied stumps of their necks had been penetrated by writhing tentacles.
This was proven a moment later when a third face joined the throng, floating in the center of the bedroom the way the man’s and woman’s was. The newcomer’s head belonged to the missing goth and was similarly supported by a squidlike limb; it was now the pale, painted instrument of a terrible alien intelligence.
Another hand joined in the activities of the one that had pulled back the curtains. This bore a delicate palm and purple fingernails—a lady’s appendage, without question, but far more manic than Meg had anticipated. Then other hands set to work, yanking aside the curtains, tossing up bedsheets, casting back a mattress. Soon the room was filled with chaos, as something unspeakably brutal, bearing as many limbs as a centipede, churned its jellylike mass back and forth, to and fro, hither and thither. More heads were hoisted, several withered to the bone. Some might even belong to the miners who’d first sustained the creature, and many of the additional hands that appeared almost certainly had: the flesh was all but gone, with just wasted tendons sustaining movement as their host and its innumerable tentacles sought fresh supplies of such guidance tools: human body parts, severed without consideration of their owners.
The thing beyond the window was squirming with light; it made a sound like an electrified fence breached by something wet and imperious, a fizzing, frantic hiss. It slivered and cavorted. Then what passed for its face arose, behind which a psyche must surely reside, however unearthly; this nodded with vibrating antennae, its garish mandibles yawning, before leading the beast away.
It went with a thunderously moist passage, leaving Meg to stand and stare. Kicking aside what remained of the two people from whom it had stolen its latest aides—from Harry, Meg’s husband, and Amanda, his foolish lover—Meg saw some of it hurry toward the doorway, the hall passage beyond, and then the attic above, where it would exit the broken roof and make its way back toward its makeshift habitat, the pitiably inadequate coastal area, perhaps a trillion miles from its true home.
It was ancient and possibly immortal, Meg understood that well, but she was unable to assess it in more visual detail, because that was when one or several of its bleeding hands relinquished the curtain, and the stretch of falling material shielded the monster from quotidian eyes.
Meg pictured her dead baby, lying in her arms at the hospital. She thought of Harry’s merciless employer, exploited by senior staff. She considered hideous entities from beyond the stars. Then, hearing the muffled progress of something that might even live forever, she slumped against the intact windowpane, and decided she never wanted to venture inside and observe what organic carnage the thing had left behind.
About the Author
Gary Fry lives in Dracula’s Whitby, literally around the corner from where Bram Stoker was staying when he was thinking about that character. Gary has a PhD in psychology, but his first love is literature. He is the author of many short story collections, several novellas and two novels, including The House of Canted Steps. He was the first author in PS Publishing’s Showcase series, and none other than Ramsey Campbell has described him as “a master.” His latest book is the short story collection Shades of Nothingness (PS Publishing). Gary warmly welcomes folk to his web presence: www.gary-fry.com.
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About the Author
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