The Dunfield Terror

by William Meikle

  I helped Muir lug the contents of the truck through to the back of the inn. We left it on the porch while we had a rest and a smoke, but Muir was clearly itching to get back to his work.

  “The locals won’t stand for it, you know,” I said, trying to keep my tone light and non-adversarial. “They want you to stop—and I’m pretty sure they’re serious in that request.”

  “Stop? Nonsense,” Muir replied. “As I said—we are close to understanding the phenomenon and when we do, it will make us famous. It is historical work on par with any done this century—perhaps even more so, for we are dealing with the very nature of existence itself. How can I stop now when I am so close?”

  “Nevertheless—we are guests here, Muir,” I replied. “It would be extremely ill-mannered to ignore their concerns.”

  “Bugger manners,” he replied. “This is no time for outmoded methods of thought. Come, man, let me convince you further—let me show you wonders.”

  I know I might have protested harder and longer, and I might have done more to persuade him of the error of his ways. But Muir was as much a force of nature as the very things he was attempting to control in the shed, and I have never been able to refuse him once he gets his dander up.

  And this afternoon, his dander was at a high point. I followed him over and into the shed.

  * * *

  There was something inside I had not been able to see from the window. A black, almost oily egg hung in the air above the work shelf. It gave off a distinct hum—the same as I’d felt in my gut and jaw earlier, stronger here than outside, and an accompanying vibration that made me more than slightly nauseated.

  Muir had a look of relief on his face.

  “It has stabilized,” he said, and smiled, but I wasn’t falling for it this time.

  “So let’s say I believe you, and it is indeed stable,” I said. “In that case, what’s got you so worried?”

  He sucked on a pen as if pretending it were a cigarette.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said eventually. “It might be nothing. It was something I saw when the field collapsed yesterday.”

  “Just tell me,” I said, cold terror gripping me again. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hear his reply.

  “It was just when the field went,” he said. He couldn’t look at me. “And only for an instant. But when the field collapsed, I thought I saw the egg burst. It opened out—a fine, rainbow-infused fog. It seemed to swell and diminish, twice, as if breathing, and when I looked back, it was gone.”

  “Fog?”

  “Probably an effect of the field itself—you know, like the patterns you can make with magnets and iron filings?” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself rather than me.

  “A burst bubble,” I whispered. “A fractured universe, if your theory is indeed correct. Anything at all could have happened. We’re damned lucky to still be here, aren’t we?”

  He nodded, and looked pale. He pointed at the floating egg again.

  “But look, it’s stable now.” It sounded like a plea. I didn’t listen to him. I was thinking, of vast empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then more still until they filled everything with rainbow color, expanding through the solar system, the quadrant, the galaxy and out, never stopping, into the infinite blackness beyond, engulfing everything in their path and humming along as they ravaged.

  “Shut it off,” I said. “Do it now, before it’s too late.”

  He looked at me as if I was insane.

  “But we’ve done it, Duncan. This is ‘fortune and glory’ stuff, right here; this is our place in the history books.”

  “Bugger the books. I’ll just be happy to have some more history. Shut it down.”

  He finally turned to the contraption. This time I was looking at the egg as he tried to manage the shutdown.

  It was indeed too late.

  * * *

  Two eggs now hung on the shelf side by side, just touching, each as black as the other, twin bubbles of space-time only held in check by Muir’s incomprehensible boundary field. I was suddenly all too aware how fragile that field had been the day before. The hum throbbed louder. The eggs pulsed in synchronized agreement.

  “Do something, Muir.”

  “I’m trying,” he said, pulling out copper wire and untwisting valves to no apparent effect. The throb from the field went up a notch until it felt like being inside a vast kettledrum beaten by a manic giant.

  This time it was Muir who didn’t see, but I saw only too well. The valves screamed in the hurt of overexertion; the lights flickered, threatened to go out completely. I couldn’t take my eyes off the eggs. An area of misty fog coalesced around them, spreading over the dark eggs. Two things happened almost simultaneously, and even later I wasn’t sure which came first; Muir shouted “I’ve got it,” and fog breathed then winked out of existence. The black eggs went with it.

  The remaining valves whined. The noise of their effort faded back down to the almost comforting drone I was more accustomed to. Muir looked up, his fear and excitement vying for supremacy. In him, the excitement seemed to be winning—not so much in my case.

  “That’s it. We’re done,” I said, and went in search of a smoke. The hybrid beast in the tank slithered and beat its claw excitedly against the glass tank as I left.

  * * *

  Muir came out onto the porch seconds after I’d got a smoke lit. He took the cigarette from me, sucked down a deep one, then flicked the butt away with his forefinger and thumb. We didn’t speak—I had no idea what I was going to say, but Muir had questions of his own for me.

  “You saw it this time, didn’t you?”

  “The fog? Yes, I saw it.”

  “The fog? Yes, that’s about right. I thought it was more smoke-like myself, but I’ll go with fog.” He laughed.

  “This is no joking matter, Muir. What the hell just happened?”

  “Hell might be an appropriate word,” he replied. “There are stories in many cultures of precisely this kind of phenomenon; they tell of a supernatural beast that controls the gateways—of perception—of reality—call it what you will. The dweller on the threshold—you might have heard of it?”

  “You’ve lost me, old man.”

  “Think of it this way. Suppose there’s a natural protective mechanism in the fabric of each universe, something that stops one bleeding into another—a unifying force ensuring that the glue sticks the whole thing together without the bubbles bursting?”

  “And you think that’s what I saw?”

  He nodded.

  “And if I’m right, we can keep experimenting. If we make a mistake, your fog will stop us from doing any real damage.”

  I saw in his eyes that he was dead serious.

  “No, Muir. I said it, and I meant it, I’m done here.”

  I thought he might plead with me, even beg, but he just went quiet—in a way, that was much worse.

  * * *

  I stuck to my guns for most of the afternoon. I sat in the shade of the porch, sipping beer and smoking a pipe while Muir huffed and puffed, got sweaty and swore a lot, attempting to transfer his new supplies over to the shed. Several of the locals joined me in watching the sport, but no one raised a hand to help and Muir was getting rather tetchy by the time he had everything transported and stowed to his liking.

  He didn’t even look at me as he went into the shed and closed the door firmly enough for a waft of dust and splinters to fall lazily to the ground from its surface.

  After that there was nothing to see—but plenty to hear as the garden filled with sounds of sawing and hammering, then more sinisterly a rising hum and vibration. Blue light flashed, brighter than the sun—it seemed Muir had succeeded in hooking up his new battery.

  “I’m warning you,” the innkeeper said at my back. “I’ll be over there with my shotgun at the first sign of anything hinky.”

  Hinky was the least of my worries—I was thinking again
of those hanging eggs, the fog that had enveloped them, and Muir’s attempt at an explanation. One universe was just fine for me—I didn’t need to get close to any more.

  I had thought I would be content to stick with my resolution to leave Muir to it, but the rising hum had become insistent, the blue flashes more frequent and the overall sense that something was about to happen was almost palpable. I could not in all honesty leave my countryman to face a possible imminent danger all alone. With more bravado than I felt, I knocked out the pipe, downed the last dregs of the beer, and went to watch Muir play God.

  * * *

  He had indeed made his contraption larger—it now filled the whole long shelf in the shed, wood and corrugated iron, valves and batteries all connected with many yards of copper wire, all blue haze, all dancing.

  The vibration was loud even above the high whining of the valves. I saw why as soon as I looked up above the shelf.

  Four eggs hung in a tight group, pulsing in time with the magnetic throb. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surface; blues and greens and shimmering silvers that were now all too familiar.

  “Shut that bloody thing off,” I shouted. Muir ignored me. All his attention was on those four eggs—four universes, if he was to be believed, maybe even infinite in their own way. The enormity of what we were doing had finally hit me, and I was struck immobile, only able to look on as each of the eggs trembled and calved.

  In the blink of an eye there were eight.

  The crystal valves howled in anguish. I was vaguely aware of Muir attempting to connect yet another battery to the system, but I was past caring, lost in contemplation of the beauty in front of me.

  Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.

  “We need more juice,” Muir shouted, as he connected the new battery into the series. The hum went up another level. The eggs calved again.

  Thirty-two now, and they had started to fill the shed with dancing aurora of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the vibration and the whine of the valves, everything careening along in a big happy dance.

  “Duncan!” Muir shouted. “I need you.”

  I kept ignoring him.

  Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light.

  The colors filled the shed, spilled out across the shelf, crept among the sample jars, danced in my eyes, in my head, all through my body. I gave myself to it, willingly.

  And I would be gone yet if I hadn’t felt a flicker of memory.

  It only came when it was needed the most.

  I managed to turn toward Muir.

  “Shut it down,” I said. “That’s what’s causing the problem.”

  Once again he looked at me as if I was insane.

  “The gatekeeper will come when we most need it,” I said, having to shout to be heard above the growing din. “The Dweller is the glue—let it come. It will hold everything together—it will stop these universes expanding into ours.”

  I saw comprehension hit him. He pulled all the wires out from the where they were attached to the batteries. The drone faded to a whisper, the drumbeat slowing and diminishing, leaving us in almost complete silence.

  A hundred and twenty-eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six. The shed was filling fast.

  The structure shook and quaked, fine dust falling all around us.

  “Something’s happening,” Muir whispered.

  It started with a flicker in the corner of the shed, but grew and thickened and spread until a glowing fog enfolded what I guessed to be a thousand and twenty-four eggs. A crack ran through the wall to my left, and two of the sample jars on the far side of the shed toppled with a crash.

  The hybrid. I forgot about the hybrid.

  I looked down to the long glass tank. The beast was still there, slithering and squirming. The four beady eyes were watching the calving of the eggs with what looked to me like anticipation.

  The fog breathed in, breathed out, twice. There was a sudden burst of color; red, blue and shimmering silver filled my head.

  I blinked, looked back, and the eggs were gone as quickly as they had come—there was only the empty containment chamber. But the damage had been done. The crack in the wall widened. A portion of the roof collapsed, fell to the floor and immediately disintegrated into dust. Muir and I looked at each other, then made for the door.

  We only just made it in time. The whole shed was coming down around us. We burst through the door together, reducing it completely to dust and splinters in the process. We emerged into sunlight, blinking, as the shed caved in on itself at our back.

  A pall of dust rose up from the ruined building, and was taken away by the wind. I might have been the only one that noticed, but before it dispersed it seemed to thicken and lighten, almost glowing. A thick fog hung above the garden for a long second, breathed, twice, then it was gone.

  * * *

  The locals burned what was left of the shed, much to Muir’s disgust, but I could hardly blame them after they got a look at the writhing thing that crawled in the ruins of the fish tank. Once it had raised that huge claw and clacked it in the innkeeper’s direction, its fate was sealed. And I don’t care what universe you come from—a double-barreled shotgun at close range is going to slow you down a tad.

  They burned everything—samples, batteries, valves and wood. The fire burned until after sundown, and I watched it closely—there may have been a hint of a rainbow aura—but only a hint, and there was no recurrence of the fog.

  I had the innkeeper sell me a bottle of Scotch and I returned to my room, where I have been writing this memoir while making what I see are serious inroads on the contents of said bottle. Muir has been at the door twice but I do not wish to speak to him now—maybe not for a long time to come.

  This time, I really am done with this place.

  13

  Present day

  I don’t remember much about the short drive on the Skidoo back to the depot. At least the wind was mostly at my back and kept the snow out of my face—my instincts did the rest, keeping me on the right track and stopping me from collapsing into a quivering heap of misery by the roadside.

  Old Pat took one look at me when I entered the depot and went straight for the booze again, pouring me a large measure in a coffee mug.

  “That bad?” he asked as I downed the contents in one gulp that did a lot to put fire back in my belly.

  “Worse,” I replied, and he must have seen it in my eyes, for he didn’t press me.

  George looked up from where he was sitting by the radio set.

  “The good news is that it’s been quiet here,” he said. “The bad news is it’s been quiet here. We don’t have any idea if everybody’s okay or if they’re…”

  He didn’t continue—he didn’t have to, we all knew what he meant.

  Pat offered me more liquor but I shook my head, despite it shouting loud at me.

  “I need to get back out there,” I said. “I need to check on folks.”

  “And what will you do?” Pat said softly. “What can you do?”

  I had no answer to that—all I knew was that I couldn’t just sit on my hind end and wait. I checked the clock, and was surprised to find it was nearly five in the morning.

  “It’ll be light in a couple of hours,” I said. “I don’t think it’s ever been seen in daylight, has it?”

  “Son,” Pat replied. “With that fucker, I don’t think we can take anything for granted.”

  “What the hell have we done to deserve this?” I said. It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but old Pat took it seriously.

  “There’s no rhyme or reason to it, lad—never has been over the years. But it has never taken folks like this before—something must have changed. I suspect somebody’s going to have to go over to the wreck at some point soon and see what’s what. I vote it’s not me.”

  I had a smoke before I headed back out to the Skidoo—I had to clear a couple of inches of fresh snow from the saddle b
efore climbing on—the storm wasn’t showing signs of slowing down anytime soon. Pat and George stood in the doorway, looking as glum as if they were at my funeral.

  “I’ll do a quick turn round the town,” I shouted. “Back in twenty.”

  They looked as if they believed it almost as much as I did.

  I kicked the sled into gear and pulled out of the depot into the white hell that waited.

  * * *

  I’ve said before, I love the solitude of being out on the road during a storm—but that was when I was in the relative warmth of the cabin of the plow. Things were a bit different on the Skidoo—the weather blew raw in my face, wind buffeting and pushing, threatening at any moment to discard me by the roadside. Despite extra padding and gloves, I still felt cold bite deep in my bones. Even twenty minutes out in these conditions was going to be pushing it.

  The town was quiet, despite the storm raging through it, as if waiting in anticipation for what might get thrown at it next. I saw no signs of life on the short portion of the trip that took me first to the church hall.

  Nobody else had turned up since my last visit, and I didn’t hang around—it reminded me too much that everyone who had been here so short a time ago was now gone. I promised myself that the fog wouldn’t take another soul that night—although I had no idea how I was going to keep it.

  I turned away from the church and went down into town, riding the drifts as if they were waves. I passed the bank and went down the slope toward the theater on the old dockside, knowing that they had an overhung carport where I might at least get some respite from the wind.