Except it wasn’t the handwritten script of some long dead hand. Arrayed before him was a mind-numbing range of symbols, odd geometric shapes juxtaposed with curling lines. His tongue dried out as he drew shallow breaths through his open mouth. The symbols seemed to dance and writhe before him. He’d never seen this foreign alphabet before, yet they seemed to whisper to him. He couldn’t make out what they said, but they hinted at some grotesque shape, amorphous, yet many legged, curling and chittering beyond the range of his sight.
It took a supreme act of will for Joe to close the document. He wiped his brow with his sleeve, unsurprised to see a damp spot left by his sweat. The light winked out from behind the screen, leaving nothing but his pale, staring visage, looking back at him in that dull black mirror. He left the empty book next to the screen and left his office for home. It was time to call it a night.
Joe opened his eyes. He was sitting, cross-legged on the ground. Kim stood over him, her pudgy fingers locked under his chin. Her small fingernails dug into the flesh of his neck, feeling a little more like chitinous points than Joe cared to admit.
“Joseph. You let her in.”
Joe couldn’t speak. There was a gag in his mouth, a slippery rope or something similar, pulled taut. The air was thick with some metallic tang. Joe tasted blood in his mouth; the rope was coated in it. Blood. That was the smell. The room smelled of blood.
“Gordon found her first. Of all the places. Trapped in a book. A book! She was practically a god. Thousands of years old …”
Joe’s torso ached terribly. Breathing came hard. His lungs struggled, fighting against a tight cage of bone and tendon. His hands were trapped, bound by the same slimy rope that gagged him. Kim leaned in, her pink fringe dangling from her scalp, brushing Joe’s eyes. He blinked.
“Forgotten for years. The old man found her first. But his mind was too weak, too feeble for what she needed. We are different. Young, strong. Fertile minds. We will add our songs to hers, we nurse her young. We nurse them here.” She tapped her skull with her free hand, hard enough to produce dull thumps.
Joe began to cough and retch, the gag in his mouth smothering him. He clenched his jaws, his teeth sawing at that spongy, cursed thing.
“Look at you,” she said, her face near enough for him to smell her stale breath over the reek of the blood. Her eyes were glazed, unfocused, looking straight through him. She flexed her fingers, the points of her fingernails breaking the skin on his neck, eliciting a snort of pain from Joe. “Weak, unworthy.” She snorted, standing up and rubbing her hand on her thigh, as though to scrape away something dirty.
He finally managed to spit the gag from his mouth. He felt the rope hit his lap with a dull, wet smack. He looked down. Down at the gaping hole in his torso, the squirming purplish mass of intestines spilling out onto his lap. He raised his wrists, saw the loops of gut wrapped around them. Before he opened his mouth to scream, he followed the trail of his insides spread across the floor. There in that chaos, those heaving loops and whorls, he saw the letters of the book, pulsing with an obscene life as his last meal made its way through his guts.
Joe kicked off the sheets, a sodden, sour smelling mess. He rubbed at the gummy corners of his eyes with one hand, whilst the other kneaded the ample flesh around his midsection, squeezing it hard enough to hurt. He hadn’t seen Kim in over a week. Why the unsettling dream then? The light streaming through the window told him that he had overslept. He was going to be late.
He got into his office a little past ten o’clock. He settled down into his chair again and arched his back, the pops in his spine gave him no satisfaction. A cup of coffee sat on his desk, the white steam curling above the dark brown fluid. He began his daily ritual, hoping that the smooth flow of routine would soothe his mind.
Empty inbox. Nothing except another reminder from IT to clear his emails. Odd. He hadn’t received anything since Alan’s mail. They were being over enthusiastic again. Still troubled by his dream, he searched for the offending message. The events of the day before must have spooked him, enough to bring on that nightmare, dredged out of the depths of his subconscious.
He paused, his finger almost clicking his mouse. The file sat there, a smug little paperclip at the bottom of the email. Joe could almost see the symbols in front of him again, hear that mad chittering at the edge of his hearing. Something was out of place. It took him a while to get it. The email from IT. The inbox. The attachment. The attachment had grown. It was bigger than it was when Alan sent it to him. Impossible.
He opened the digital edition again, to see what he already knew. The number of pages had increased. The book was growing. He scrolled through the document. The symbols came to life, crawling up the screen like a horde of many-legged insects. The undulating wave gave him a sudden bout of nausea. He got to the end of the book. He didn’t have to look closely to find that the familiar sequence of loops and whorls from his dream at the end of the book.
He picked up his phone and got his assistant.
“Could you get me Kim on the line?”
He brought his coffee to his lips. There was silence. He lowered the cup.
“Did you hear me? I asked you to help me call Kim.”
“Oh … Mr. Robinson … hasn’t anyone told you yet? Miss Echols is gone. It was in the news yesterday. Someone found her two days ago.”
He hissed as the hot coffee sloshed over the rim, burning his fingers and splashing onto the table. The cup went back on the table.
“They don’t think she was murdered. Folks on the news said there was a huge mess in the apartment. She’d taken a knife to herself. All the doors and windows were locked from the inside.”
His assistant was babbling. Joe lowered his scalded finger down to the table, swirling it around in the puddle of coffee without looking.
“So nobody got in and out for a few days.” She spoke faster and faster, the words rushing out, nearly incoherent. “They say her dog must have been starving, to do what it did to her body …”
Two days. She’d been dead two days. His assistant was still going on about it but it was just a wave of noise. He put the phone back down without saying a word, gulped down a deep rattling breath to calm himself. He swallowed a little cry as he saw the twisting symbols he had sketched out in coffee across his table. Joe gathered up his coat. He was going to speak to Alan again.
There was no answer from behind the cheap plywood door. Joe tried the office line and Alan’s mobile. Nothing there, either. The door still wasn’t locked.
The scene beyond the door was exactly the same as before. Mountains of books, blocking Joe from looking further into the room; the harsh fluorescent light from the hallway cowering by the threshold, seemingly too afraid to venture deeper into the room. The light switch still wasn’t working. This was a mistake. He turned to leave.
“Joe. Hey buddy.”
Joe froze. There was that same breathy, unearthly quality to Alan’s voice. Alan gave a little hiccupping giggle.
“Hey man, come in, don’t be shy.”
Joe stepped across the threshold. The room seemed cooler than the corridor outside.
“Close the door. It’ll be easier for us to talk.”
“Your lights are out, Al. I can’t see a thing.”
“I see all I need to see. It’ll be better for you this way.”
Last chance. Make a break for the door, Joe thought. Head straight back to the office, burn the book, remove all traces of the digital edition from his computer and forget that any of this ever happened.
The click of the door shutting had a certain finality to it, as though he’d closed off more than the rest of the hustle and bustle of the university. Maybe he’d left the last vestiges of normality outside. Only madness remained.
“You’re doing fine there, buddy. Just take two steps forward. Good. Now another three steps to your right. Mind the books. We can talk now.”
Joe swept his hands in front of him. The center of the office’d been clea
red of furniture. He wandered forward, shuffling his feet across the floor, the hiss of sole against carpet very loud. His probing fingers met the wall.
“Why did you send me the book, Al?”
“Because only you could have done what I wasn’t allowed to. That was the point. The person that you are. Timid. Think you’re in control. Little man in big shoes.”
“I need to know what the symbols mean. What are they doing to me?”
There was a pause. The room went silent. Joe took a single deep breath and held it there. Held it till his lungs seemed fit to burst and the blood pounded in his ears. There was no other sound in the room.
“You read it.”
“Yes.
“Then it is over. I failed.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
Alan snorted. “Nothing special. Do what she wouldn’t let me. Follow your routine. Hide in your little shell, department head. Never open attachments. File them away. Delete her.”
“Who are you talking about? Kim told me about her.”
“Kim told you nothing. She’s the one that was in the book. The one that’s living in your computer now.”
“How can a person live in book?”
“Not a person. Gordon found her first. In some musty old tome. She isn’t human. Something else. Something worse. You know what I think? I think she’s more like a virus. Do you know how viruses work?”
“Like germs and shit?”
“More than that, buddy. We don’t know whether they’re alive or not. Just some DNA in a little package. Pure information, man. Genetic information that gets into a cell. Changes behavior. Makes the cell birth more viruses. That’s what I think she is. She’s in my head now. In all our heads. That’s what they did. Found a way to reduce something to its essence. An idea. An idea reduced into writing. The book wasn’t full when the professor found it. She’s changing me. I can hear her. And there’s something more. I think she’s growing. Pages keep getting added. Even while we were converting it, pages kept filling up.”
Alan’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. Joe ran his fingers up the wall. They came away wet and gummy. He knew what coated the wall without having to smell his fingers.
“What happens in the end?”
“I don’t know. My journey is already over.”
Joe found his way around the room, blind. His fingers using the wall as a guide. His foot thumped against something heavy. He knelt down.
“Why the lights, then?”
Joe touched something slick and clammy. When he found fingers at the end of it, he jerked his hand back.
“The lights are already on, Joe. You see what I see. We’re all together in her now. We bleed into each other. I am done. It’s up to you now. I’ll see you soon.”
Joe winced as the world went white. colors and lines slowly came back into focus. The walls were covered, floor to ceiling, in those twisting, obscene symbols. Some were still dripping. The smell of blood was overwhelming. Along with the symbols came that mad scrabbling whisper, something in those letters was alive. That terrible unliving intelligence. He put his hands over his ears. It didn’t work. The sounds were coming from inside. She’s inside you now, he heard Alan say again.
Joe had to look away from the walls. When he saw what was lying on the floor, he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.
Alan was sprawled on the floor. Joe couldn’t help but stare at the man’s lips, hoping to see some signs of life from those purplish flaps. Alan must have been dead for some time. Long gashes criss-crossed his arms, the oldest already scabbing over. Joe knew how Alan found the blood to write on the walls.
You see what I see, Alan said. It was dark for Alan. Impenetrably dark because Alan couldn’t bear to look at those writhing letters either. Joe knew why he saw nothing. Because Alan saw nothing. Because Alan lay there, face up, jaw slacked in a never-ending scream, weeping tears of blood from empty eye sockets that stared at the ceiling.
It was late when the police finished up with Joe. He’d left out all the details about the symbols and the damnable digital edition on his computer. He had other plans for that book. He could feel her there, coiled at the back of his brain. The symbols were starting to crop up everywhere he looked. Closing his eyes didn’t help. He could see them seared into the back of his eyelids, hear the drone of those incomprehensible sounds over the background noise of the busy city at night.
He found his office unlocked. When he entered, he found out why. The last of her children was waiting for him.
“Gordon.”
The small man was in Joe’s chair, facing away from the door. The light gleamed off his scalp, visible through his thinning hair. All Joe could see was the top of Gordon’s head and his forearm on the armrest of the chair. There was a sheen of fresh blood coating that pale forearm. Under that wash of crimson, darker lines and curves were etched deep into Gordon’s skin.
Gordon grunted as he spun around to face Joe. Joe’s back hit the door as he took an involuntary step. Every visible inch of the man’s skin was covered in lines of bloody script. The stains on his t-shirt and trousers told Joe that the carvings weren’t limited to exposed skin. Light glinted off the smile of the straight razor that Gordon was tapping on the armrest. The low whispering started up again. Joe shook his head, trying to clear it.
“What are you doing here, Gordon?”
The door only opened inward. Joe would have to step closer to Gordon if he wanted to escape.
“You’ve been to see Alan.”
“Alan’s dead.”
“He’s part of her now. None of her children truly die. But he was a bad child wasn’t he?” Gordon fixed his beady eyes on Joe. “You’re going to try to do it, aren’t you?”
Joe stood, transfixed by the rhythmic movement of the razor. The symbols on Gordon’s skin seemed to squirm and flow, scurrying up his sleeves and out again like a horde of insects. When Gordon spoke, the crazed whispers rose to a crescendo, buttressing his words. Except was it really Gordon speaking? Was it her speaking through Gordon?
“I need her out of my head. I can still do it. I can save us both.”
The springs in the chair complained as Gordon pushed himself up. The edge of the razor bobbed and weaved in the air in front of Joe.
“How little you understand. Afraid to be part of something greater than yourself for once.”
The blade drew near.
“I add my words to her song. It wasn’t enough to use a paper and pen. I tried. Oh no. Not enough at all. This is better. Our flesh sings with her. And you would try to end all of this.”
He was getting too close. Joe had to make a break for it. A moment’s hesitation and all was nearly lost. The little snake of a man saw Joe tense up, and that was all the invitation he needed. He sprang across the room, barrelling into Joe. They went over, a tangle of limbs and snarling curses. Gordon was the more nimble of the two and got the upper hand quickly. Joe wound up on his back, Gordon straddled him, drawing wide arcs of pain with the razor as Joe shielded his face with his arms.
“Foolish,” the small man hissed. “Think you understand her glory. Imagine her. Imagine her birthing a thousand young. Not from the weakness of the flesh, diseased and rotting its way slowly back to the ground.” Gordon paused, his forehead beaded with a constellation of drops of sweat, a thick rope of drool suspended from his jaw. The symbols on his flesh swam and sang. He leaned down, looming over Joe, tapping his temple with the dull side of the razor. “We will bear her children from here. Our minds will be her womb. You see the words now, don’t you? You only see what she wants you to see. Soon. Let me help you on your way.”
Gordon pressed his palm down, pinning Joe’s forearms against his chest. His other arm lowered the razor. When the silver edge bit into the thick flesh on Joe’s belly, he began to howl and thrash. He bucked like a branded bull. There was one thing Gordon hadn’t counted on; Joe must have had a hundred pounds on that pot-bellied little mon
key. The smaller man wobbled, flailing helplessly before finally pitching over. His skull hit the edge of Joe’s desk with a fleshy thunk. Whatever manic strength possessing him obviously did not render him immune to pain. Gordon curled up into a ball, mewling and whining while he clutched his gushing scalp. Joe struggled to his feet. He took a short run up and swung the full weight of his leg into Gordon’s midsection. He felt the air rush out of the other man as his foot made solid contact. The voices at the edge of his hearing surged forward. No longer whispers but the full deafening screech of an insane choir.
He could run, he thought. Get out. Save himself. But not yet. There was something else to be done. He flicked the razor under a bookshelf with his toe and staggered over to his computer. Do what Alan asked him to do. Make it all stop. Make the pain stop.
He punched in his password. His inbox sat before him. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, leaving a smear of blood across his face. He watched as a letter ‘Q’ lengthened, sprouted spindly legs and scuttled across the screen. The soft plastic bulged obscenely with its progress. All around it, letters were melting. The lines of text losing their veneer of familiarity.
He was losing it. He squeezed his eyes shut and raked his fingernails down the long deep cuts on his forearm, hoping that the pain would bring him some focus.
He squinted, the lines of the screen blurring and swimming. There. There it was, he moved his fingers in a familiar dance across the keyboard. The screen slowly came back into focus. The inhuman chorus fading back to silence. Had he won? Gordon groaned. No time. He snagged his mobile phone off the table and quickly left his office, dialing for the police as he went.
The little man got to his feet. That bastard had done a real number on him. He had no idea why she had called him here. He didn’t know how badly he’d been hurt. She had some plan, some greater design. He felt the symbols on his body shift and twist. Sometimes, he could almost see her shape, that long sinuous, many-legged horror; he imagined her curled around his brainstem, her sharp appendages stroking his thoughts like the gentle fingers of a lover.
Dark Horizons Page 9