by Jay Brushett
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STEVE HAD TRAILED JIMMY and the others, had watched them try, and fail, to find the orb. They were loud and clumsy, easy to track. Brad, by contrast, was quick, quiet and focused, stopping for nothing. The boy was a little demon, flitting through the night’s shadows.
A little before midnight Jimmy and his cohorts drove away from the abandoned building. Steve had watched them go from the shadow of a stand of trees nearby. Now he was home again, and he had a plan.
After the last time the boy got away, a couple nights previous, Steve made sure the small sphere was secure. He had locked it in a metal toolbox inside his equally locked shed.
He went there and retrieved it before entering the house.
As soon as he opened the front door to the house Steve could hear the knock, squeak, knock rhythm of the chair. That sound meant that things were as they should be — the boy was secure, tied to the chair. He teetered back and forth, trying to get free.
Tonight he wouldn’t have to keep trying.
Steve entered the kitchen, crossed to the counter and laid the swirling white orb on it. Then he loosened the boy’s bonds. Brad immediately jumped up and snatched the small object from the countertop.
He stood there then, still and quiet, like a statue. It was so odd, so artificial that it made Steve shudder. It had to be possession, what else could explain how it made his stomach twist and churn? It wasn’t natural.
It was easy to call the boy a thing at times like this, to forget that it had been his brother. And yet, at other times, during the day, he was still Brad, little Bradley, his baby brother. At those times he was a catatonic kind of Brad, but still Brad. He loved him, had loved him, he corrected himself. This was not Brad. Brad was dead. It was dressed in Brad’s old clothes, now a bit worn to be sure, and wore an old pair of Brad’s sneakers, but it wasn’t him. Brad was dead.
The thing that wore his brother’s face moved then. It walked down the hallway toward the front door, opened it and was off, up the path.
Steve, clutching a flashlight and a length of thick rope, was close on its heels.
Chapter 5
IT HAD TAKEN WELL over an hour for the boy to find the place in the woods for which he had been searching.
Steve was sweating from places he didn’t know he could and his chest burned from the exertion. But he had managed to keep up with the boy, or at least keep him in sight long enough to keep tracking him.
Steve had buried it so long ago. And, with the development that was happening, he couldn’t be sure exactly where it had been.
But now here they were. Again.
Steve cast around with the beam of the flashlight, getting his bearings.
Yesterday here would have been only another spot in the forest, but no longer. Upended trees lay a few metres ahead, along with disturbed boulders and mounds of tossed black earth. Parked in that mess of cleared forest were also three pieces of heavy equipment: a bulldozer and two backhoes.
Where Brad had stopped, where he was now on his stomach on the damp ground, there were still trees and rocks in the proper arrangement. Tomorrow, later today, Steve realized, this place too would be cleared.
At first, he had tried to stop the development. And then he had welcomed it. He had hoped that the object would get scooped up, unseen, inside a mound of dirt and carted away in the back of a dump truck. Or, worst case, it would be found and sent away, to some university or such. Either way it would have been gone, to some place far, far away.
Maybe Brad would have stopped searching then.
But now things had changed. Now there was no time to lose. Tonight was all he had to find the object again.
God damn. God forgive me. Steve thought. He had forgotten his shovel. Of all the stupid things — he had been in such a hurry to get the small sphere from the shed. And it had mesmerized him for a moment then, the swirling, shifting shapes beneath its surface. Why did it have that effect on him?
So he needed a shovel.
He could go back and get it, would have to. But what about the boy? He didn’t want to leave the boy unattended and untethered.
Steve looked around and found two large rocks. They were very distinctive, with long sharp edges. He propped the flashlight on a boulder so that its light cast across the open space. Then he picked the two rocks up and made his way to where the boy lay sprawled on the ground.
It was as if the thing knew it couldn’t get to the object by hand, that it knew all it could do was to lay there. Like in the kitchen back at his house, Steve found it very disconcerting. People weren’t supposed to act like that. And it was more proof that the thing wasn’t human, not anymore.
Steve looked at the rocks in his hands and then at the head of the boy. That head, so small and fragile.
He shook his own head, forcing the thoughts away. No, he couldn’t do that, he had promised.
He lay the rocks on the ground next to the boy, as he had intended. Then he pulled the boy up, wrapping his arms around its chest and dragged it back toward a large tree. It struggled but didn’t cry out. It kept clutching the small, shimmering orb in its hand.
Steve held the boy against the trunk of the tree with one hand while he fetched the rope, slung over his shoulder, with the other. At least he had remembered that.
The boy was struggling now, squirming, but didn’t make a sound. It needed to get back to the spot on the ground, as pointless as that was. Steve held it firm against the tree as he looped the rope, again and again, around its chest. When he was sure the bonds were secure, he stepped back and surveyed the job. It was hard to do so in the shadows cast by the flashlight, but he did the best he could. It would hold.
He went back to the two rocks and moved them onto the very centre of where Brad — the boy, the thing, he corrected himself — had laid. Good, X marks the spot, he thought.
Next, he still needed a shovel. A thought occurred to him. Steve glanced toward the heavy equipment parked beyond the last stands of trees. Perhaps the crews clearing the forest had left one with their equipment.
Retrieving the flashlight, he made his way to the parked bulldozer and walked around it. No luck. He hoisted himself up, over the large metal belt, then across it and climbed up to the open cab with its driver’s seat and controls. Nothing.
He repeated the process with the two backhoes. Finally, on his walk around the second one, he found two shovels and a pickaxe. Some workers had left them, propped against the thick, segmented metal belt. He took the stronger looking of the two shovels.
Then, as he was making his way back, through the soft earth and shattered tree roots, he heard something. He couldn’t be sure what it was at first but as he got closer to the edge of the forest he knew it was Brad. It was Brad’s voice at least, though it was speaking things that Brad never had before.
“The Process must finish,” Brad said as Steve laid the shovel next to the two rocks. The boy still clutched the little white orb in his hand, the tendons on the back showing through in the cast shadows. “It has travelled through The Black. From The Blue. To The Blue Green. It must finish!”
“Shut up!” Steve yelled.
The boy was calling out now, almost yelling, and he was getting louder with each passing minute. Steve wasn’t too worried, there weren’t any houses nearby and, as he had noticed at the backhoe, it didn’t carry very far. But still, it was disconcerting.
Steve propped the flashlight on the boulder again, so he could see where he was digging and keep an eye on the boy. He took a pair of leather work gloves from the back pocket of his jeans and put them on.
Shit, it’s all fuckin’ weird, Steve thought as he retrieved the shovel, moved the two rocks, and started to dig. He felt a twinge in his back almost immediately. “Christ!” he called out at the pain, then added, “God forgive me.” It was going to be a long night.
“They are the Ko Nos Ah of The Blue,” Brad shouted, almost screaming now. “They wan
t us to know them, to hear them. They are alone in The Black. They are alone. We are alone. In The Black, so vast, all are alone.”
The boy was louder now.
Black and blue, yes, Steve would know those colours tomorrow. First, pushing through the branches and the roots and the rocks. Now the digging. He forced himself to carry on through the burning in his muscles and the pain searing across his lower back.
The boy was getting louder still. Too loud.
Steve sighed, shoved the shovel into the dirt so it stood upright and stepped out of the deepening hole. He walked toward the boy, tearing a long strip off his t-shirt as he went.
“I wish I could say it’s nice to hear your voice but,” Steve said, “I gotta say, I liked you better mute.”
Steve twisted the strip of cloth again and again into a tight, thick band. He forced it into the boy’s open mouth and tied it at the back of his head, gagging him. It still tried to scream but only crumpled moans came out.
“Better,” Steve said, walking back to the hole, back to the shovel. “Much better.”
He lifted another load of dirt out of the hole, gritting his teeth at the pain in his back. It was going to be a long night indeed.
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NOVEMBER 12, 2002
George is starting to lose it. Every year, when it starts getting cold, he gets a bit cranky. He knows he’s going to have to be out there all winter, every night, again.
He doesn’t bother bringing up about lugging the thing back here anymore, he knows I won’t budge on that. No, I won’t have that piece of Hell corrupting all of us. No sir, with God as my witness.
Well, anyway, if there’s a big storm or if it dips down too cold he does use the ropes. He can deal with it for a while he says. But he loves Bradley. Though I know my Bradley is dead. It’s a demon that shares our house. An eternal, unchanging demon that is stealing our lives.
But, anyway, this year is different.
I hope he never reads this but, God help me, he’s losing it. His mind’s going. He says he can’t take another winter of THIS. And, of course, I know exactly what THIS is. And I can’t blame him.
His back is worse than ever. He even has trouble getting up from sitting now. And he has the arthritis in his hands and feet. He’s stiff and sore all the time. And being out there every night is doing something to his mind.
Sometimes, especially lately, he talks about seeing what the big deal is with the glowing ball. He says it’s enchanting or something. Something about it makes him want to touch it, hold it. But, I tell him, look what it did to our son. And that usually stops him cold. He knows it’s true.
Anyway, he goes out there with the boy, but it’s like he’s alone. It’s like having a dog that never gets trained. How long will this go on?
As long as it does. That’s what George says to me.
But what can we do?
We go on like everything is normal. Because it is.
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JIMMY DROVE THEM IN his rental car, having drunk less than half of his beer. The fries had been much more enticing. He felt more energized now and they were going to need it. The shovels they had retrieved from Rhonda’s were in the trunk, ready for action. The three of them would make short work of whatever hole needed to be dug, or at least that was his hope.
They had to find where to dig first, of course. That was the hard part. Based on what Rhonda’s brother had said they were taking a different tack this time. They were starting at the old Tucker place and working their way in, across the cleared part of the forest.
Jimmy parked the car at the end of a cul-de-sac. A dirt road started there — more a track if you could even call it that, navigable only with heavy equipment. It led into a no-mans-land of heaped earth, overturned tree trunks, boulders and tangled roots. They couldn’t see the end of the cleared land in the headlights.
It was possible that the probe lay somewhere underneath all that rubble. Jimmy supposed it was also possible that the probe had been destroyed, shattered by some metal blade. But that seemed very unlikely, having survived the rigours of deep space. Or maybe it was sitting there, churned up from beneath the earth, waiting for them to retrieve it.
It was the best-case scenario and, he figured, the most unlikely.
They retrieved the shovels — being as quiet as possible, not wanting to wake any of the locals — and set off down the rough track. They made their way with caution at first, picking their steps in the feeble moonlight. They waited until they were out of sight of the houses before they turned on their flashlights.
The track and the cleared land around it went on and on, and it was hard going with huge bumps and deep potholes. Even with flashlight beams shining they had to be careful of roots and sharp sticks protruding from the ground. But after half an hour or so they could see the outline of trees, black against the almost black sky.
They stopped to rest and get their bearings next to a backhoe parked there for the night. It was near the end of the track, near where the trees started.
A minute earlier Larry had thought he heard a noise, a sort of whine, off in the distance. Rhonda had said she heard something too, but it might have been the wind.
Now they knew it wasn’t wind, they all heard it. It was a high-pitched voice screaming. It was saying something, though the exact words didn’t carry to them.
“What the hell?” Rhonda asked.
“That voice…,” Jimmy said. He knew it somehow, but he hadn’t heard it in twenty-five years, and never had heard it in such anguish.
“C’mon!” Larry called.
He took off across the churned forest debris toward the trees, toward the sound. His flashlight beam bounced as he ran but he kept it pointed at the ground in front of him. Jimmy and Rhonda followed close behind.
The yelling stopped.
Larry brought up solid and Jimmy almost collided with him.
They looked at each other, their features stark, shadowed in the flashlight beams.
Jimmy shrugged and pointed. Keep going? They all nodded, being quiet by some unspoken understanding and agreement.
As they neared the first of the still-standing trees they could see a weak light shining there. They went straight for it, Jimmy in the lead.
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THE SHOVEL MADE A clang as it collided with something in the hole. It wasn’t a metallic sound, nor the sound rock would make, but it had definitely hit something hard.
Steve laid the shovel aside. Fetching the flashlight, he re-positioned it so it pointed into the depths of the hole. He bent down and started digging with his gloved hands. The soil there was loose and light. That was good.
Then he saw it, a sliver of it, poking through the black, wet earth.
It wasn’t white and it wasn’t glowing. Yet it was both of these things too. Something swirled around inside it, or on the surface of it, Steve wasn’t sure which.
It was beautiful.
He shook his head. He was being taken by it, lulled by it. No, it wouldn’t sway him. He wasn’t weak. Not like them. He would be strong.
Determined, he went back to his digging, revealing more and more of the shifting surface of the object.
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THE CALL HAD WORKED, finally. The Selected was nearby.
It could feel The Selected, could sense The Marker that it had injected many, many cycles before.
And the darkness was subsiding, the heaviness lifting.
It was fulfilling its purpose.
The Process would soon be complete.
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NOVEMBER 24, 2002
George is going to miss church today. He didn’t come home this morning at the usual time.
So I sent Steven out, had to rouse the poor boy from his warm
bed, to look for them.
He came back a short while later. Brad was with him. Steven tugged him, blank as ever, along.
But George wasn’t with them.
Steven said he had seen no sign of him. He had found Brad wandering around near the playground, on his way back he figured. Alone.
Well, I don’t know what to do. George kept everything running like normal.
What will happen now?
Where is he?
Steven will help out now, I know he will. But I can’t let him go all alone, no I’ll have to go with him.
Or we’ll use the ropes again. At least for this winter. It’s not really my son anyway. So who cares if he struggles a bit? It’s not hurting him.
Why couldn’t the boy have died completely, instead of leaving it half done?
Anyway, I sent Steven back to get the two sleeping bags. It’s still early. The neighbours shouldn’t see. And Jessie Smith has been dead for five years so no worries about her taking her walk.
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JIMMY REACHED THE TREES first.
He paused there. The light that had been shining ahead had disappeared. He swung his flashlight around, trying to check the scene. Then Jimmy saw him.
Brad.
He was still as Jimmy remembered him. Though he couldn’t remember Brad ever being tied to a tree and gagged.
Tossing his shovel aside, Jimmy raced forward to help his friend. To help him, as he hadn’t been able to save him before.
Hurrying in the darkness he didn’t see Steve, hunched over in the shadows of the hole the man had dug.
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