by A. R. Wise
“I can help,” said Desmond, although he wasn’t sure how. “Let me help you.”
“No you can’t,” said Jeremy. “None of the daddies can.”
Desmond was going to chase the boy as Jeremy ran, but then he heard a grinding, metallic sound behind him. He turned and discovered that Main Street no longer drew a line through downtown Widowsfield, but now it went straight through knots of black wires that feigned shapes similar to the buildings that had once been there. The cords moved, like earthworms bought at a bait shop and stuffed into a cup for a fishing trip. Then, between the wires, white globes began to emerge. The balls spun, revealing pupils that stared at Desmond.
He was too terrified to move, and only managed to take meager steps backward, as if hypnotized by what he saw. A flash of lightning crackled above, green and powerful, and caused the hair on Desmond’s neck and arms to stand straight.
The grinding of metal got louder, and then the steady cadence of a hammer’s strike, one each second, came closer, like the pounding of an approaching soldier’s boots. Desmond finally tried to flee, but found that his feet were caught in a web of wires beneath him. He sunk into the road as the wires moved to let him fall. He cried out, and grasped at the cords, but they slithered through his grip, growing thinner or wider as needed.
“Suffer not the aged men,” said a deep voice amid the clamor of the chaos. “For their fear has dulled with time.”
“Where’s my boy?” screamed Desmond as the wires drew tighter around him, constricting him until they caused pain. “Where’s Raymond.”
“Suffer not the mothers, for they have no fear for self.”
“Give me my boy!” Desmond’s voice croaked as the cords drew tighter. He was being pulled further down, and the wires grasped him like arms, dragging him into their depths and tightening around his limbs. Once his chest sank into the mire, he felt the bones in his legs begin to twist. The pain was excruciating, and he screamed in agony as the twisting cords pulled his flesh off his bones. The cords’ black color was now tinted red with his blood, and the grinding never ceased.
“Suffer the children, for they know not yet of fear.”
Desmond was crushed in the grip of Widowsfield. His skin, meat, and bones were grinded within the churn of wire, swallowed into the black as the world around him came alive. The Watchers preferred the sacrifice of children above all else, but every creature’s suffering brought them pleasure. The Watchers cursed the living, and wanted nothing more than to give them something to fear. The Watchers had existed as envious creatures, forced to gaze upon the lives of those oblivious to the eyes that studied them. However, The Watcher in Widowsfield had been given a sacrifice, but now his grip had loosened. Hundreds of souls had slipped through his web, which only made him hold tighter to the ones that were left.
The survivors of Widowsfield would learn the true extent of suffering. He would mold a world devoted to ruining them in every way he could conceive.
“No one mourns for the ones lost here.”
Inside Cada E.I.B.’s Compound
March 13th, 2012
3:45 AM
“We found him.” Rachel had called Alma and spoke with a mix of satisfaction and weariness. Stephen and Rachel had been calling various hotels around the area, pretending to be dispatchers from a police station who were hunting for a suspected kidnapper. They used Helen’s description of the car that Michael had stolen, as well as a description of Michael, to see if he’d checked in. They also suggested that the man they were looking for might be traveling with an emaciated man, most likely confined to a wheelchair or otherwise barely mobile.
“That’s great,” said Alma on the other line.
Rachel gave her the address of the hotel in Branson, and explained that she’d told the concierge not to alert the guest, and that they’d be sending a squad car over. Alma was concerned that the hotel might call the police to make sure it wasn’t a prank.
“I doubt it,” said Rachel. “The kid sounded pretty scared. Just hurry up and get there.”
“We’re not too far,” said Alma. “Thanks for the help, but we need something else from you too.”
“Sure, what is it?” asked Rachel.
“Can you check into the rumors about a Greek ship being in Widowsfield in 1996?”
“Hold on,” said Rachel. “You should check with Stephen. He knows more about that stuff.” She handed the phone to her husband, who was standing beside her in the cramped room where they’d formerly been tied down to gurneys. “She’s asking about a Greek boat.”
Stephen frowned and shrugged, but took the phone anyhow. “Hey Alma, what’s up?”
He heard Alma giving the name of the hotel to someone else in the van, and then she returned her attention to the phone. “Stephen, I need you to check into something for me.”
“What is it?”
“I remember getting a call a few years back from a conspiracy theorist that wanted to ask me questions about Widowsfield. He was talking about a Greek boat, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. I used to get a hundred calls from goofballs like him, talking about Bigfoot and aliens and that sort of stuff. But now I think the boat theory might have some weight to it. In the dream, or whatever it was, I saw a boat out in the Jackson Reservoir. We think that’s where this all started. Something happened on that boat that caused everything.”
“I can look into it,” said Stephen. “I never ran across anything about a ship before you brought it up the other day, but I’ll search around for whatever I can find.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Hey,” said Stephen before Alma could hang up. “What are you guys planning on doing once you find your dad?”
She didn’t answer immediately, and then gave a tired chuckle. “I don’t really know.”
“He’s dangerous,” said Stephen. “You guys need to be careful.”
“We will be. You too,” said Alma.
Stephen was surprised and asked, “What do we need to be careful about?”
“Well, for starters, you’re still in Widowsfield,” said Alma. “And second, that guy that Paul shot in the foot is still wandering around there somewhere.”
“Oh yeah,” said Stephen. “I forgot about that guy. One of the nurses was going to go look for him. I guess he left a trail of blood.”
“Just be careful,” said Alma. “I’ll call back after we find my brother.”
Stephen said goodbye, and then walked warily over to one of the doors to their room. The door he was beside led to the hallway, and another door was connected to the sleepers’ room beside them. He locked the door to the hall, and then went to do the same at the other side of the room.
“What’s wrong?” asked Rachel.
“Nothing,” said Stephen, trying to persuade his wife that he wasn’t concerned when he plainly was.
“Why are you locking the doors?”
Stephen paused at the second door. The upper half of the door consisted of a large reinforced window, with black, crisscrossed wire within the glass. Beyond the door he could see the writhing bodies of the women that had woken up, but the male sleepers still lay silent and were staring at the ceiling. Helen was busy assisting the female sleepers, attempting to sedate them as they continued to cause themselves harm.
There was no lock on the door that led to the sleepers’ room, so Stephen pushed one of the gurneys in front of it before locking its wheels.
“Stephen, what’s wrong?” Rachel was concerned by her husband’s behavior.
“Nothing, I just think we need to be careful. I don’t know if we should trust that nurse, and Paul said there’s a guy named Oliver running around.”
“Do you know what Alma was talking about?” asked Rachel. “About a boat in the reservoir?”
Stephen shook his head. “No, but we can look around online and see what we can find.”
Rachel let Stephen sit in front of the laptop, and shadowed him as he began perusing his usual conspiracy sites. He’d alwa
ys had a fascination with the conspiracy community, while Rachel had been the one to often discount the bizarre theories he uncovered. Now, after everything she’d experienced in Widowsfield, she was willing to reconsider her prejudice about the conspiracies Stephen often babbled on about.
Rachel yawned, her weariness finally catching up with her as Stephen searched various sites.
“If you’re sleepy, I’ve got my energy pills. There should be some in that box where they put our stuff.”
“The diet pills?” asked Rachel. “Are you still taking those?”
Stephen nodded and answered with an unconcerned, “Uh-huh.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Stephen as if annoyed. “I like them.”
“But you don’t need them. You’re already skinny.”
“I take them for the energy,” said Stephen, his frustration with the debate growing. “Look, you can take one if you want, or don’t. I don’t care. I was just trying to help.”
“Geeze, calm down,” said Rachel. “I wasn’t trying to start a fight. I just didn’t know you were still taking that stuff. You should quit.”
Stephen groaned and then said, “Do you have to lecture me about that now? Who gives a shit? It’s not like they’re illegal or anything. Don’t we have bigger things to worry about right now?”
“Fine, fine,” said Rachel as she put her hands up in defeat. “I’m sorry.” She was too tired to argue any longer, but she decided against looking for the pills out of spite. Instead, she crawled back up onto one of the gurneys to lie down while waiting for Stephen to find something. After several minutes of silence, she closed her eyes and felt herself nearly drifting to sleep. Despite how bizarre and terrifying the day had been, she was still exhausted. Her lack of sleep caused her to feel like she was lying on a boat, with the waves gently rolling beneath her. However, the fact that the gurney was on wheels kept her in constant fear that the illusion of movement was real, and that the bed was rolling. That kept her from falling all the way to sleep, and she jolted up in fear several times after feeling like the bed was about to roll out from beneath her.
After the third time she jolted awake, she cursed and said, “Have you found anything yet?”
Stephen was reading an article online, and held up his finger to tell her to give him a minute. After a little while longer, he said, “That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?” asked Rachel.
“That can’t be a coincidence.”
“What can’t be?” asked Rachel, feeling as if her husband was purposefully ignoring her.
“It looks like people have been finding evidence of ships being built all over the place. Usually at abandoned military sites. They’re not finding the actual ships, but… here, look.” He moved aside so that Rachel could see the computer screen.
She sat up carefully, still unsettled by the gurney’s mobility, and looked at the picture that Stephen had found. It looked like a patch of dry earth but there was a clear indentation in the ground that resembled the shape of a battleship. It also appeared as if there were dirt roads leading to the area, as well as a large square that might’ve once been a building. Everything that had been built there was now gone, but the footprint hadn’t been erased.
“What am I looking at?”
“This is a picture someone found using Google Earth. This one’s at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. And there are others, all similar, as if someone built a huge ship out in the middle of nowhere and then disassembled it.”
“Is that what happened here?” asked Rachel.
“I don’t know,” said Stephen as he studied the picture. “Maybe.”
“But I thought Alma said the ship had been in the reservoir. Why are the others on dry land?”
“I don’t know,” said Stephen. “I’m not sure it’s even related, but it’s still weird. The official explanation for this one is that they were digging up dirt to build a berm to protect people from missile tests, but why did they dig it in the exact shape of a battleship?”
“Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense,” said Rachel. “Have any of the sites mentioned them being Greek boats?”
“No, not that I’ve found.”
“Do you think we should call Alma?”
Stephen shook his head. “No, not yet. There’s not much to tell her. I’ll keep looking for something else.”
After a moment’s contemplation, Rachel said, “I can’t help but feel like we’re being really stupid here.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked around the room and shook her head. “Don’t you think we should’ve called the cops by now?”
“Absolutely not,” said Stephen with conviction. “They’re not going to take our side. I promise you that.”
“But there’s a room full of prisoners over there,” she pointed to the sleepers’ room. “And they did something to us too. Back at home, when I was beating Alma at Scrabble the other night, you said that this Cada E.I.B. company brokered weapons between the US and other countries. Right?”
“Yeah,” said Stephen.
“Well, maybe that’s all this is. Maybe they developed some nerve toxin that screws with your head, and gives you nightmares.”
“I don’t think they manufactured weapons,” said Stephen. “From what I read, they just brokered deals between countries.”
“Well, they’re also in the business of hiding hundreds of victims,” said Rachel. “So I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that maybe they’re doing more than just brokering deals.”
“Yeah, you might be right,” said Stephen. “But there’s still no way I’m calling the cops.”
“Why the hell not?” asked Rachel.
“Because this shit’s been going on here for sixteen years, and no one’s done anything about it as of yet. I know it’s crazy to think that the entire police force all around this area is in on it, but it’s also crazy to think that none of them ever investigated everything that happened here in ’96. Every resident of this town vanished, and I never saw anything about a massive investigation. That’s not the sort of thing that should happen without a lot of people asking a bunch of questions, but here in Widowsfield it was just swept under the carpet with some bullshit excuse about the people here being in a meth ring. Someone up high in the chain of command of the police had to have been in on keeping this quiet.”
“Maybe the FBI or the military took over the investigation,” said Rachel.
“Yeah, maybe. And maybe if we call the cops now, they’ll hang up with us and then get right on the phone with the FBI or the military to let them know that people are snooping around in the town again. Fuck that. We’ll deal with this ourselves.”
Rachel laughed, and then she saw that Stephen wasn’t joking and she started to laugh harder. “We’re going to deal with it ourselves? What are you talking about? What are we going to do?”
Stephen smirked and gave his wife a demeaning look of disapproval. “How can you claim to be a reporter and still have no concept of the weapon we’ve got on our side?”
“What are you talking about?”
Stephen pointed over to the box that had their belongings in it. “My camera is in that box. They already erased the footage I had of Widowsfield from before, but the camera still works.” Then he pointed at the computer that Helen had provided them with. “And we’ve got a computer right here.”
“You want to broadcast what’s happening here?” asked Rachel as his plan dawned on her.
He nodded in satisfaction. “Damn straight.”
Rachel’s expression turned from intrigued to concerned. “Don’t you think they’d find out and come shut us down immediately?”
“We don’t have to do it live.”
“But then how can we be sure the info gets out?” asked Rachel. “What if someone gets to us first?”
“We can do it in segments, and then put them on our site with a delay on publishing,” said Stephen. “It’s not hard to d
o that. We can start by recording that horror-show in the next room, and upload the video with it set to publish a couple nights from now, like on the 15th. Then, as long as we get out of this alive, we can stop the video from publishing and figure out how we want to handle everything. But, if something does end up happening to us, then at least we know that the information will get out. And if we end up unconscious and strapped to a gurney again, if the video gets out then we’ll have a shot at someone coming to rescue us.”
Rachel grinned and said, “Stephen Knight, I was wrong about you.”
“What about?”
“You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Ha ha,” said Stephen with a sideways grin. “You should get your makeup and do yourself up. You’ve still got bedhead.”
Rachel grimaced as she patted her hair down. “Are we doing this now?”
“Might as well,” said Stephen. “Who knows what this place has in store for us next.”
CHAPTER 9 – The Right Door
Philadelphia
June 15th, 1943
Lyle felt the immediate surge of electricity after Vess turned the CORD on. The ample hair on Lyle’s arms stood up as blue arcs of electricity crackled across the silver rings of both pillars. Then the machine began to make a grinding sound as the rings spun, controlled by a motor hidden within the pillar. Each ring spun opposite its neighbors, and lightning streaked between them with more intensity as the machine sped up.
“Holy hell!” Lyle had to shout over the crackling bursts.
Vess was grinning as if he couldn’t help himself. He pointed at the pillars and screamed, “Watch it. Watch the electricity. It should change color.”
Lyle stared at the machine, but had to shield his eyes from the intensity of the light. The walls of the massive bay of the USS Eldridge flashed blue as the electricity intensified, but then Lyle saw that the color was changing. Slowly, the hue turned green.
Then Vess pulled several of the levers on the control panel of the CORD. When he did, the electricity died, and the rings began to slow down. The explosive noise calmed as Vess cheered.