A Matter of Time

by Brian Harmon

  The trail of blood vanished beneath it.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Eric hesitated as he reached for the door handle. For a few short seconds, he considered where he was, what he was doing. A blood-stained corridor in the basement of an abandoned psychiatric hospital that only a few people could even see. The unearthly sounds of unthinkable creatures locked in cells on either side of him. Letters written twenty years before he was even born.

  Not for the first time, he wondered if maybe he’d actually gone crazy a long time ago and all of this was only in his head. Wasn’t that the simpler explanation? Didn’t that make more sense than murderous agents of a mysterious, nameless organization? Didn’t that make more sense than fissures between worlds and witches and time-traveling letters?

  He stared at his hand as he held it there, almost touching the handle. The bandage had begun to come loose. He could see the wound underneath. A bloody reminder of the stark reality of all this insanity.

  He could stand here and consider the alternatives. He could consider not opening this door and just turning away. He could wash his hands of this entire mess and go home. Except he knew he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. Because what if Holly was right? What if the whole city was in danger? What if he really was the only one who could prevent everyone in Creek Bend from burning?

  Because Holly was rarely wrong.

  He opened the door.

  The room on the other side was big and dark. The light from his cell phone barely pierced it.

  He stepped inside and let the door slowly swing closed behind him.

  He didn’t need it to be open. It was dark out there, too. And now all those strange noises were muffled. Within this fresh silence were new sounds. They were faint. But they were distinct. Scraping. Slapping. Squelching. Wet sounds that sent his imagination into a frenzy of possibilities, each one more horrifying than the last.

  And there was a stench in this room, too, far heavier than anywhere else he’d been today. It was the smell of the dead wendigo’s blood, but also a heavier smell of death. Older death. Rot and decay. Something in this room had been dead a while. Maybe lots of somethings.

  He shined his light onto the floor, onto that bloody smear, and followed it deeper into the room. It led him to a large, solid gate set into a wall of iron bars, like an enormous jail cell, stretching as far as his light would reach in either direction. The gate was locked with a heavy padlock, impenetrable, and the bloody trail passed directly beneath it and continued on out of sight on the other side.

  What was this place? Where was he?

  And what was making that horrible noise?

  He stepped up to the bars, examining them. They were three inches in diameter, set deep into the concrete and into a massive, steel beam overhead. It was braced twice across the middle. It looked like it was designed to contain elephants rather than psychiatric patients.

  Was this a part of the original plans? Or had someone added it to help contain the sort of monstrosities that currently lurked in those cells?

  He reached out between the bars, holding his cell phone as far into that unreachable space as his arm would allow, trying to see what was out there. And he thought that he almost could see it. There was a shape looming there in the shadows. It was moving. Blackness writhing in blackness. Some…thing…hidden in the gloom, the source of the increasingly dreadful noises. He tried to reach a little farther, tried to make his light reach the mysterious form, but he was at his limit. His shoulder was already crammed against the bars.

  Again, he found himself at that part of the movie where the hapless explorer did something stupid, like reaching inside a massive, mysterious cage in hopes of getting a better look at what was there. This was the part where the monster, unseen in the impenetrable darkness, probably rolled its many, bulging eyes at the sheer idiocy of the moron in question and then promptly tore his arm out of its socket and ate it.

  But this wasn’t a movie. Stupidity was not always so promptly rewarded. So Eric withdrew his hand and merely stood there, listening to that queer squelching sound and wondering what it was that he could not quite see.

  Maybe he’d never know. And maybe that would be for the best. He’d have to settle for exploring the rest the room on this side of the bars.

  But even as he stood there, contemplating whether to go right or left, he heard a new noise in the silence. A loud motor roared to life somewhere nearby.

  A generator.

  He turned and listened.

  A light switched on in another room off to his left, illuminating an empty doorway.

  Then several sets of bright lamps began to cycle on behind him, flooding the enormous room with light.

  Maybe the generator and lights were powering on automatically, set to a timer of some sort, but Eric knew it was far more likely that someone was here. He should run and hide, get out sight. But instead, he found himself at the mercy of his curiosity. He turned to see what was behind the bars.

  The trail of blood did, in fact, lead to a dead wendigo. Or at least part of a dead wendigo. A large creature, at least as big as a full-grown buffalo, was looming over the monster’s remains, tearing at the corpse and shoveling huge chunks of it into its enormous, gaping mouth.

  The beast itself had a massive, slug-like body, sort of like Jabba the Hut, from Star Wars, if Jabba had been designed by Lucifer, himself. Its face—if that’s what that thing was—seemed to take up its entire chest, with a mouth the size of a manhole cover. Two long, spindly arms tipped with huge, knife-like claws were hacking and sawing at the corpse, slowly dismembering it. The scraping sound he’d heard was those claws carving flesh from bone. The squelching was the sound of partially severed limbs being torn from the body. The slapping was the sound of flesh striking the concrete floor as the carcass was brutally dismembered. As he watched, those alien arms stuffed an entire lower leg into that huge, gaping mouth, bones and all. It didn’t seem to have any teeth. Instead, its mouth was lined with little, crab-like pincers that funneled the dismembered limb down its massive gullet. Above the mouth, the top of the creature’s head was thrust outward, over its prey. It had the vague shape of a man’s upper torso, but without any arms or neck or mouth. Four oozing gashes—nostrils, he realized—stretched the length of the displaced torso’s belly to where its mouth should’ve been, and two huge, bulging eyes stared down at the carcass it was slowly devouring.

  Eric stared at this monstrosity, terrified. He’d seen a lot of horrifying things, but this was by far the most disturbing. At least a dozen fat little legs were sprawled out beneath the thing, seemingly useless beneath its massive bulk, and its short, stubby tail was oozing something slimy and foul.

  Whatever it was, he couldn’t imagine the horrors of hell being any worse. Nothing could be more terrifying than this.

  But he was wrong about that.

  One more set of powerful lamps powered on. These were mounted on the wall directly behind the creature. As soon as they came on, Eric realized that the flesh surrounding the beast’s belly was nearly transparent. With the aid of the bright light, he could see the open cavity within, with its pile of dismembered wendigo parts. And there was something else in there, too. Some man-sized thing was writhing within, protruding from the denser mass of guts behind the belly. He could see its wasted silhouette clearly. Its skeletal arms were clawing at the severed limbs and at its own face.

  Was that a person in there? Had it swallowed someone alive?

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said a familiar voice.

  Eric turned to find Mistress Janet walking toward him from the room where the first lights came on.

  “In a disgusting sort of way,” she clarified. She walked up to the bars beside him and looked through them at the monster, a strange sort of admiration on her fair face. “It chops its prey into large chunks and swallows them whole. But it does all its actual eating inside. It has a second head and torso in its belly that devours anything it tosses in there.”
r />   He stared at the strange creature, still horrified. She was right, he realized. That thing inside its belly wasn’t writhing in agony. It was tearing at the wendigo flesh and stuffing chunks into its mouth. As he watched, it lifted an arm and tore a bite out of it as if it were a drumstick.

  “It’ll eat until it devours every scrap of meat and then it’ll regurgitate the bones and other waste back out.”

  Eric decided he didn’t want to stick around to witness that part.

  “It’s clever, when you think about it. What better way to make sure you don’t have to share your meal?”

  He supposed that was true. “Where did it come from?”

  “Another world,” she replied.

  “Like the wendigoes?”

  Without taking her eyes off the monster, she smiled. “So you know about wendigoes, too.”

  “I know a little bit,” he replied. He didn’t intend to tell her that it was her partner—sorry, associate—who educated him on the matter.

  “I’m not sure where the wendigoes come from. But it’s not the same place as the other things. They just sort of bleed through whenever we peer into other worlds. They’re kind of like vermin. Useless.” She nodded toward the gruesome scene before them. “Although they are useful as fodder.”

  He supposed that was one way to make the best of a bad situation.

  “All the creatures we’ve collected are fascinating in their own way, but this one’s my favorite. It doesn’t seem all that special when you look at it from the outside, but when you peer inside, you find it has a secret.” She turned and faced him. “It’s a lot like you.”

  Eric turned his attention to her as well. He took a step back. “Me?”

  “You kept telling me that you didn’t have any power.”

  “I don’t.”

  She smiled. “So you keep saying. But I knew better. I’ve known since I first arrived in this town. You can’t hide it from me.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say, so he remained quiet.

  “Just like I knew you’d find your way out of that basement. I knew you’d come looking for me. I knew you’d find me. But I never dreamed you could harness magical energy.”

  This surprised him. “Magical energy?”

  “You can drop the act. I was there. I went back to drop off a present for you. A little surprise for when you found your way out of the basement.”

  He didn’t want any presents of any kind from this insane woman. Knowing her, it was a bomb.

  “But you were already gone when I got there. I saw the damage. I know a magic blast when I see it.” She gave him a hungry sort of smile. “I had no idea you had that sort of power in you.” She took a step toward him. “I have to have it.”

  Eric took another step backward. She thought he blew the basement door apart? It only made sense. If she knew what damage from a witch’s thrust looked like, and she still had no idea that Holly was there, it only left one possibility. But it still seemed absurd to him to think that anyone could believe he of all people could produce a thrust. He was no witch.

  It was good that this woman still didn’t know about Holly, especially since she couldn’t currently defend herself. But now she thought he had her powers. And she intended to take them from him. She was going to be more determined than ever to get it.

  And what would she do if she learned the truth? Would she go searching for Holly?

  Quickly, he changed the subject. “How did you do all this?” he asked.

  She looked him up and down, studying him. She didn’t look like she was interested in talking about that, but she relented and replied, “I didn’t, honestly. When I arrived here three days ago, my associates had been conducting research in this building for almost six months.”

  Eric was surprised. More associates? Other agents had been in Creek Bend for that long? He found it horrifying to think that they were so close that whole time and he had no idea. “What kind of research?”

  “Alternate realities. Parallel universes. Pocket dimensions. That sort of thing. This city sits on a sort of multidimensional crossroads. It’s ideal for all manner of trans-dimensional experimentation.”

  Was that true? If so, it made sense that all these agents chose this city to conduct so many of their schemes. But he continued to play dumb. “Sounds like science fiction to me.”

  “It probably does,” she agreed. She continued moving toward him. He continued backing away. “It’s all very complicated.”

  “I bet it is. Where’re these associates you mentioned? The ones who’ve been here for six months.”

  She stopped walking and crossed her arms in front of her, pushing up her breasts in the process, showing off her ample cleavage again. “I fed them to my friend over there.” She glanced over at the monster behind the bars. Then she looked back at Eric and lifted one perfectly manicured hand to her mouth in an expression of feigned shock. “Oopsie!”

  “You killed them?”

  “They were brilliant, but they were useless. They had no real power.” She looked up at the ceiling, thoughtful. “Except for one. He had a little power.” She bit her lip again and turned her eyes back to Eric. “He was fun for a few minutes.”

  He didn’t want to hear any more about that. “So you’re doing all this on your own now?”

  “I’m a very talented woman,” she informed him. She reached out and took hold of his shirt, pulling him toward her. “I can do all sorts of things.”

  “Including opening portals to other worlds?”

  She smiled. “Not just other worlds.” She leaned into him, pressing those heavy breasts against him. “To heaven and hell. To the beginning and end of time.” She pressed her cheek to his and whispered into his ear, “When I’m done, we can look the gods right in their eyes.”

  Again with the gods. Mistress Janet had an unhealthy obsession.

  She pulled away again. “And with you by my side,” she continued, “we can do anything.”

  “‘We’?” said Eric.

  “Isn’t that why you’re here? To accept my job offer.”

  He took another step backward, away from her wandering hands. “I told you I wanted to sleep on it.”

  “But you went to all the trouble of finding me. You tracked me down to a place most men don’t have the power to even see, in spite of the fact that you told me you didn’t know about such places.”

  He didn’t have a reply to that. She was catching him in one lie after another. He’d make a lousy secret agent.

  She crossed her arms in front of her again, lifting her breasts, and drummed her long fingernails contemplatively on her chin. “You haven’t been honest with me, Funnyman.”

  Thinking fast, he replied, “I haven’t. Maybe I don’t trust you yet. Maybe I want to know more about this secret job of yours before I share anything with you.”

  She smiled again. “Fair enough. I can’t blame you for being cautious. Or impatient.” She took another step toward him, closing the space between them. She reached out and caressed his cheek. “I’m impatient, too. All that power…” She didn’t look him in the eyes. Her gaze kept fixing on his lips. She yearned to kiss him again. He could see it there on her face. She licked her lips. “I can’t remember the last time I wanted something so badly…”

  It didn’t go unnoticed by Eric that she said something and not someone.

  It wasn’t him she wanted. How could it be? She didn’t even know him. She didn’t care to know him. All she wanted was the power she believed was inside him.

  She leaned in to kiss him and he pulled away again. “How do I know I won’t end up like that wendigo over there when you’re done with me?”

  For a moment, she stared at him, her hand still in the air where his cheek was a moment ago. Then she composed herself, crossed her arms again and smiled. “Don’t be silly. You’re not like them. I told you, those men were useless. Most of them had no power at all. Even the one who happened to have a little glimmer of something inside him was useles
s. Men with fleeting powers like that are fun to play with, but they’re disposable. A man like you, though…a man with real power…you don’t throw him away. A man like you belongs on my arm forever.” She closed her eyes and uncrossed her arms. She ran her hands down the sides of her body, over her shapely hips and sighed deeply. “We’ll share each other’s power for the rest of our lives. We’ll be one. And together, we’ll grow more powerful than either of us could ever dream of becoming on our own.” She closed her fists around the fabric of her skirt and lifted it a little. She was shifting her weight from side to side now, pressing her thighs together as if barely containing herself. “We’ll be gods together. King and queen of Olympus, with the entire world bowing before us.” She let go of her skirt before she’d hiked it high enough to show him anything, thankfully, and then slid her hands back up her body again as she opened her eyes and fixed him with an intense gaze. “And we’ll only get stronger. We’ll find every man and woman on earth with power inside them and we’ll take it from them. We’ll share it with each other. We’ll be the perfect couple. People will worship us. And we’ll live forever.”

  Wow. Just… Wow.

  This bitch was inventing whole new levels of psycho.

  So they were going to hook up and that was somehow magically going to let them combine their “powers” to make them godlike? Then they were going to hook up with other people with powers? What, like illicit, parasitic affairs? Freaky, vampire ménages à trois? Then kill these people and hook up with each other again to make them both even more godlike? And this was supposed to make them prom king and queen of the world?

  And it would also make them immortal? Why the hell would he want to be immortal? That just sounded exhausting.

  She gave him that mischievous smile again and tugged at the top button on her blouse. “We belong together, Funnyman. You’ll see.”

  “Maybe,” he replied. Aloud. Not a fucking chance, was what he was thinking. “But I need to be sure.”

  She bit her lip again. He usually found that sexy as hell. When Karen did it, it was intoxicating, but this woman managed to make it look obscene.