The Dunfield Terror

by William Meikle

  It was not to be. At first I thought that the blowing snow had obscured my sight, but as I closed in there was no doubt about it—the theater was gone. Where it had stood was just anther area of melted and hardened material—wood, glass, roof slate and piping all welded hard together. The saving grace was that the place would have been empty of people—but the largest building in town had gone completely—and without anybody noticing.

  How much more of my town had gone the same way?

  I almost lost control of the sled on the steep incline down to the car park that led onto the old quayside—but I had to go and check down there—I needed to know just how much of our history was being stripped from us.

  At least the post office was still intact, although there was no sign of life there either, which gave me pause for thought—old Mrs. Malloy liked to keep the place open on stormy nights, dispensing coffee and a shoulder to cry on for anyone who needed it. She’d been my teacher back in the day, her foghorn voice doing much to keep unruly kids in line during days when the sun called louder than lessons. She hadn’t been among the crowd who headed out from the church hall—I’d have heard her if she’d been there. It looked like I had someone else to go and check on.

  First I went all the way down to the end of the quay. The old town hall to my right and the gift shop and coffee bar at the far end of the quay were reassuring, looming shadows on the trip down—the fog hadn’t taken them.

  Not yet, a voice whispered in my head, but I pushed it away—that was something I’d been thinking about all too often later—if I survived the night. I didn’t need it in my head now.

  I stopped on the quayside under the coffee bar’s porch, sheltered from the elements by the bulk of the bar itself and the fact it was down in a hollow on the shore. I was closer to the water than I’d liked, but at least I’d see anything coming from that direction. I shut off the engine and sat there, listening to the storm whistle and rage. The sea in the old harbor danced in the wind, all the time lashed by sheets of snow that caught in eddy points among the cliffs to the east and swirled like dervishes.

  It was all strangely beautiful, but I knew only too well how deadly it could be to get lost in its charms. I thought about having a smoke, but I had no time to waste. I kicked the sled into gear and headed back off the quay and off along the shore road, once again heading toward the old part of town on the peninsula.

  If anything, it was even quieter down here. The streetlights were few and far between, and the houses sat back off the road in larger gardens. There had been no plowing since my run-through earlier and the snow was piled high—six-foot drifts and more in places. I saw no sign of life until I got to the old Village Inn. Someone had tried to leave—and they hadn’t made it. I saw the remains of at least three bodies on the ground outside the main door—they had been caught, like flies on sticky paper, caught and stretched and violated until there were barely recognizable as human at all. The snow was stained red around where they lay—I didn’t go too close. There was little point in checking for life signs in bodies that had been so brutally torn and abused.

  I realized as I turned away that my fear had gone, all drained away by too much repetition, too much exposure to the horror. It was anger I felt now, a rage that was getting stronger by the second—I needed a reckoning. Something was going to pay for what it had done—what it was still doing—to my town.

  * * *

  Old Mrs. Malloy’s place was one of the most exposed properties on the peninsula, perched high on an outcrop looking straight out over the expanse of the bay. I almost didn’t make it up the road that led to the property—the outcrop was exposed to the full brunt of the storm. Wind tore at my clothing, tugging and pushing and rocking the Skidoo violently from side to side. The only saving grace was that the snow wasn’t drifting up here, but was getting blown straight off without being allowed a purchase. I brought the sled to a halt on an almost clear patch by the old lady’s front porch.

  The house was an older property—no vinyl siding here, just good sturdy wood. It had stood up to worse storms than this one and I fervently hoped it would see many more to come. There was a light on above the main door. That gave me hope. I leaned heavily on the doorbell, unable to hear if it was working above the howl of the wind.

  No one came.

  I bent and peered through the letterbox.

  “Mrs. Malloy? Are you okay?”

  This time it wasn’t anything I wanted to hear—it was muffled, and at first I wasn’t certain that it wasn’t just the wind whistling, then it came again, and I was sure—it was a woman—Mrs. Malloy. She was wailing for help as loud as she’d ever berated any schoolboy. I put my good shoulder into the door and knocked it off its hinges as I went to her aid.

  I’d been wrong about the old house standing up to anything that was thrown at it. As at the Connors earlier, the damage had been done at the rear of the house, where the screaming was coming from. I followed the noise. The back wall of the kitchen had flowed and collapsed before hardening—I’d seen something similar in a poster on a student’s bedroom wall way back when—some Spanish artist. This looked similar—but I don’t think Mrs. Malloy ever modeled for Dalí.

  She had become intimately acquainted with her refrigerator—her lower body from the hips down was encased in stainless steel, plastic, milk cartons and food containers, all fused and amalgamated with ruined flesh. The floor was awash with orange juice, broken eggs and blood.

  But the old lady was still very much alive, and still screaming. She didn’t stop when she saw me in the doorway.

  “Help me,” she yelled. “Please, help me.”

  I walked gingerly over to the fused mess. I didn’t want to look—but I had to, just to check if my suspicions were true. Unfortunately they were—the only way Mrs. Malloy was going to be moved was if we took the full refrigerator with her. I honestly did not know how she could possibly still be alive without having gone completely mad—she was obviously made of stern stuff.

  And she proved it by grabbing my hand, tight.

  “Well, Francis,” she said, using my Sunday name that only she and my mum ever called me by. “If you’re not going to get me out of this fucking fridge, you could at least get me a smoke and a drink.”

  * * *

  The incongruity of sitting on a chair in a devastated kitchen handing a cigarette and a full glass of vodka to a woman embedded in a fridge was not lost on either of us.

  Mrs. Malloy tried to laugh but had to stop when she brought up blood.

  “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” she said, sucked on the smoke and coughed again, spattering blood among the spilled eggs and juice. “These things are going to kill me one of these days.”

  “Don’t talk,” I said, and that got another laugh.

  “What, and break the habit of a lifetime?” She downed the vodka in one. “I’m going to need more, Francis. I don’t think I need to worry about getting drunk, do you?”

  I poured her another full glass. She made short work of it.

  “Well, at least I’ll go with a smile on my face now,” she said.

  “We should try something…” I started before she interrupted.

  “I’m done trying, Francis. I’ve been screaming my head off and squirming like a scalded cat for an hour—I’m done. Just stay with me—it won’t be long now. Tell me how things are out there.”

  I took her hand, but I didn’t tell her what I’d seen that night—she didn’t need that hurt, she had enough of her own to deal with. She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t know I was lying when I told her things weren’t too bad, but she didn’t push it. I guess, at the end, she was indeed done.

  I was still holding her hand when she finally passed.

  I went out to the Skidoo, having to wipe tears from my eyes before I noticed that the sky had lightened somewhat.

  Dawn was coming.

  14

  From the journal of Duncan Campbell, 24th July 1955

>   Third time’s a charm, or so they say.

  I was all packed and ready to go this morning, determined that I was indeed done with Muir and his experiments. If I’d been awake ten minutes earlier and slipped out then, I might be well on my way back home by now. Instead, I’m still here, in the room at the Village Inn, scribbling away in this journal in the hope I might make some sense of what has happened and what we must do tomorrow.

  As I have said, I did not manage to slip out. Muir banged on my door again, just past six thirty this morning. I opened the door, fully intending to walk past him and down the stairs. That was until I looked in his eyes.

  “For pity’s sake, man, what is the matter now?”

  He herded me back into the room and closed the door, as if worried that someone might see.

  “You can’t go, Duncan,” he said.

  “Give me one good reason not to,” I replied.

  “I need you,” he said quietly.

  “You need your head examined, that’s what you need,” I said.

  He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and undid the cuff of his shirt.

  “No, I really need you,” he said. He rolled up his sleeve. The arm he exposed wasn’t just an arm. “I guess we didn’t get out of that shed fast enough.”

  I saw tendons and flesh through a hand-sized piece of glass that seemed to have taken the place of his skin along the inside of his forearm. It looked almost opaque, and grooved, as if it had melted then reformed. There was a soft, translucent appearance to the flesh beneath the glass that I did not like the look of at all.

  “And there’s these,” he said, lifting his shirt up to expose his midriff. A double row of penny-sized octopus-like suckers ran in long columns from his nipples down to his navel, red and moist, like obscene mouths. He lowered his shirt quickly, as if embarrassed, but it would never hide the memory of it, which I feared was now seared in my brain forever more. It took me several seconds to notice that Muir was still talking.

  “I need to get back out to that wreck, Duncan. I need to bring up my original kit from down there—or as much as can be salvaged anyway—and figure out what we did wrong last year—it’s the only chance I’ve got of reversing the bally thing. Remember how we kept the phenomenon at bay for a while at the end there on the deck? That’s part of what we need to do now. I need to stabilize the field, then reverse its effects—and we should be quick about it.”

  I had scarcely heard him, my mind still full of the sight of those wet suckers, pulsing in time with his breathing, every bit as much part of him as his eyes or his fingers.

  How is such a thing even possible?

  “Duncan?” he said, softly, almost a whimper. “Please? You’re the only one who understands.”

  I was very far from understanding, but Muir was in so much pain—emotional even more so than physical—that I could not refuse him. Within the hour we were back in the creel boat, heading once more for Dunfield Bay and the wreck site.

  * * *

  The weather had taken a turn for the worse. Fine cold drizzle accompanied us all the way out of the bay and along the shore toward the Tern Rock and beyond. Even Indian Head Rock seemed morose and sullen as we passed it.

  We had the sea mostly to ourselves apart from some gulls overhead and a pod of boisterous porpoises some distance to the east of us. I chain-smoked cigarettes while Muir took the wheel, and I tried not to think too much of the glass panel in his arm, or the wet suckers at his belly. Thankfully he kept his shirt on during the trip, and when we eventually arrived above the wreck, I averted my eyes as he stripped down to his trunks, snorkel and mask combination. He dropped a long, thin rope over the side, tying it on to the hull.

  “I’ll tug twice if there’s something to bring up,” he said, and I nodded.

  “Be careful,” I replied. “And be quick. If anything swims up that isn’t you, I’ll be off and away before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’”

  “I’m taking precautions,” Muir replied. “I’ve got this.”

  I had to turn toward him to see what he meant. He had a knife strapped to his ankle—but that wasn’t what drew my gaze. I couldn’t help but stare at his arm. The flesh beneath the glass panel didn’t look like sinew and muscle much anymore—it seemed somehow thinner, more fluid, and got me thinking of the amorphous tissue in the guts of the first fish samples we had taken.

  Muir saw me looking, and must have seen the worry in my gaze.

  “Whatever is happening, the effect seems to be accelerating. We need to work quick, Duncan,” he said, rather sharply. I dragged my gaze from the arm—the suckers, though grotesque, did not frighten me nearly so much as what I’d seen beneath that glass panel. But I steadied myself, and gave Muir a mock salute.

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n,” I replied, and with a smile he went over the side and down to the depths.

  * * *

  The quiet sea no longer felt like a tranquil place to be—I lit a fresh smoke from the butt of the last, and stood there looking down into the dark waters. With the sun behind clouds and a light breeze disturbing the water, there was no way to see into the depths, no way to know what Muir might be up to. The rope hung straight, stiff and unmoving where it hung off the hull, and no matter how much I willed it to move, it stayed resolutely still. Time passed—too much time. Muir didn’t come up for air and the sea refused to give up its secrets.

  I had almost finished the cigarette when the surface finally broke with a soft splash. Muir bobbed up some ten feet way, sucked gratefully on fresh air, then gave me the thumbs-up.

  “I found it. It’s almost all still there, Duncan,” he said. “I had to hack away a bit at some kelp—but it’s kept remarkably well—it must be the cold water. There will be stuff to haul up any minute now.”

  And with that he dived again—but not before I’d caught fresh sight of the suckers on his belly—a deeper red now, larger and pulsing, eagerly, as if taking in strength from their time in the water.

  I almost jumped a foot a minute later when the rope tugged hard, twice, at the hull, rocking the boat rather violently. I bent and started to haul it up—whatever Muir had tied on down there, it was heavy, and seemed most reluctant to come back to the surface. It took almost all my energy to drag it from the depths, and by the time I could see it just below the surface, my hands were numb, cold and raw from the friction of the wet rope. Thankfully Muir came up with it, and between the two of us we were able to heave a slimy mass of chrome, metal and wiring up on deck.

  Muir looked like the cat that had got the cream.

  “That’s most of it—back in a jiffy,” he said, and went down again.

  If Muir thought the stuff was remarkably well-preserved, I’d have hated to see anything he considered ruined. To me it looked like a pile of partially rusted, weed-covered junk of little more use than a long-discarded bicycle—which, in truth, it rather resembled. I bent to part a thicker piece of weed to get a closer look. Something scuttled away and off over the hull to go back into the water with a soft plop. I didn’t get too close a look at it, but I was sure I saw a pincer—and tentacles. It reminded me all too clearly of the strange octopus hybrid Muir had kept in the shed. If there were more of those things in the depths, I was even more resolved than ever that Muir was not going to get me to go into the water.

  The rope tugged at the hull, and once again I was forced to haul. Thankfully it was a far lighter load this time, and I was able to bring it up with relative ease, although my poor hands felt more raw and sore by the time I dragged a mess of coils and wiring aboard to dump it alongside the other material already there.

  The deck had become rather cramped, with all the coils, chrome and cabling. I did not see how Muir could possibly know what it all was, but when he dragged himself aboard, he pronounced himself happy with the haul.

  “It’s all here, Duncan,” he said. “At least enough of it to make it work. I can hook it up to the boat’s battery—there’ll be enough juice to provide a stable field. Then
it’s going to be a matter of trying to find the proper vibratory matrix that will dampen the field boundary oscillation and let me either reverse—or at least halt—the physical changes that it has wrought.”

  Of course that all sounded like gobbledygook to me—and on top of that, Muir was talking about the grotesque changes in his body as if they were no more than a scientific curiosity to be studied. I did not—could not—share his detachment, for the physical changes he so casually dismissed were right before my eyes. He still had not put on a shirt, and the suckers looked larger now, red and glistening with water droplets—moist, more like wet mouths than ever.

  Muir saw me looking.

  “Cover that up, would you, there’s a good chap,” I said.

  He did as he was asked quickly enough, but not before I had another look through the glass panel embedded in his arm. Whatever was inside there now, it was not human—and it was not flesh. It danced and writhed in a mass of the now-familiar rainbow colors. I did not get a close enough look at it to be sure, but far from resembling blood, bone and tissue, there seemed to be nothing in there but dry, swirling dust and ash.

  * * *

  I took the wheel on the way back to Trinity—Muir was too busy inspecting and cleaning—or attempting to clean—the stuff he’d brought up from the wreck.

  As I smoked another of what were already too many cigarettes, I remembered the scuttling thing that had escaped back over the hull.

  “So if this stuff was still down there and retrievable—did you see anything else?”

  I had started by thinking about tentacles and claws—but was also thinking of the men we’d lost that night—and now I felt as if we’d just desecrated a war grave.