A Weaving of Ancient Evil

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  Whitney stood in the room they had turned into a makeshift morgue; where five bodies, covered by sheets, were lying on trestle tables. In the corner a portable refrigeration unit throbbed noisily, bringing the temperature down icily. Whitney wasn’t dressed for the cold and he shivered in his light cotton shirt and summer trousers. He rubbed his palms together quickly, letting friction warm them, then approached the first table.

  The centre had limited medical facilities, and certainly no qualified pathologist, so the post mortems would have to wait. Unreasonably, he conceded, he blamed Frank Moreland for the deaths of the four psychics, and Chad Harley. He hated himself for it, but Whitney was already thinking about scapegoats and damage limitation, when the questions were asked, as they would be, about what had happened and who was to blame.

  He lifted the corner of one of the sheets on one of the tables. There were no identification tags, so he didn’t know who was under it, but he could guess by the size of the body that it was male. A terrible odour assailed his nostrils and he gagged; the smell of charred meat and the stench of death. He felt his stomach lurch and he let the sheet drop without having looked at the body. To his credit his guilt made him look, and he fought down a wave of nausea that was making his head spin, and yanked the sheet aside. He looked own only briefly but that was enough. Vomit rushed up from his stomach and into his mouth and he barely had time to turn away from the burned body before it burst through his lips in a spray, adding its own stench to the one pervading the room.

  He staggered from the room, and down the corridor. His throat hurt from retching, and his legs trembled from the shock of what he’d seen under the sheet. He found himself outside another door, and he turned the handle and went in. He found himself in the centre’s chapel; a much larger room than the makeshift morgue but somehow just as oppressive. The thought entered his head that he had been intending to come here all along and the visit to the morgue was merely a detour. Whitney wasn’t religious; a childhood being dragged along to evangelical meetings by a fanatical father had exorcised any spiritual leanings he might have had or developed. The chapel wasn’t elaborate, and Whitney knew from the complaints of Reverend Flint, the priest from Shawville who travelled in once a week to give blessings that it wasn’t well attended.

  Whitney walked to the front row of chairs and sat facing the altar, nervously glancing behind him to ensure he had closed the door. He didn’t want anyone to find him in here, believing it would be seen as a mark of weakness. He didn’t feel weak, but he was confused, and scared. For all his protestations of atheism he could clearly recall words regularly used by the travelling evangelists, ‘And the sinner shall be punished by the fires of Hell for all eternity.’

  When the full extent of the tragedy that had struck them was realised it had awoken fears that had lain dormant ever since he had taken responsibility for this project. The fear that they were tampering with the unknown, perhaps the unknowable, and by interfering with such forces they might be altering the very laws of nature. He couldn’t dislodge from his thoughts the idea that had confronted him as soon as he had learned the extent of what had happened; they had affronted God. By experimenting with the mind, and all the unknown powers that it contained, had they tried to play god themselves? Had they invoked some kind of judgement upon themselves?

  The logical side of his brain denied this possibility; but in the chapel, in the quiet, as he sat alone, he clasped his hands together, prayed to a God he wasn’t even sure he believed in, and asked for forgiveness.

  Zoë arrived to a lab of laughter. Chris Fields was at the centre of a group of white coats and hilarity. “…And the mule says to the zebra, ‘That might be a fancy pair of pyjamas but are you sure that’s where to stick the carrot?’ “ The group roared with laughter, although to Zoë it sounded false. Fields looked around at the faces; this was what he fed on, the adoration from the audience.

  To say the least there had been some explaining to do when Fields, closely followed by Julia Lopez, arrived at the gates, in separate cabs, and asked to be admitted. Fields’ celebrity status helped them gain access, but both had to undergo extensive vetting before they were permitted to leave the interrogation room they were initially confined to. Now they had been allocated a bungalow each amongst the staff section, and had been asked to attend a meeting where the next step could be decided.

  Frank Moreland was still lying comatose, with minimal bodily responses, although Fields and Julia both claimed to have been ‘called’ here by him. Both had discovered they could talk, or at least communicate in a rudimentary fashion, through their minds.

  Whitney came in just as Zoë was recapping what the position was. She nodded to Whitney and waited to see if he wanted to take over from her, but he seemed distracted, so she continued.

  “What we need to know, so far as I’m concerned, is why Frank Moreland is in a catatonic state, and what we can do about it.”

  Fields, was lighting up his third cigarette, ignoring the annoyed stares and muttering around him. “I’d like to know why I’m here.”

  Whitney had taken an instant dislike to Fields, and was unconcerned that it seemed to be mutual. “You came here of your own free will; presumably you can leave any time you want.”

  Julia wanted to avoid a confrontation; because she was frightened by what she had found when she arrived. Dead people were not what she was expecting. “Mr Fields, and I can leave, with your permission, of course, but that’s missing the point – what brought us here in the first place?” She looked harshly at Fields, “And don’t say two cabs.”

  “Lady, you’ve seen my act.”

  Zoë smiled. “Actually I have, in L.A. a couple of years ago. You were good.”

  Fields blew a circle of smoke into the air. “Better now.”

  Whitney clapped his hands. “When we’ve finished with the banter. May I remind everyone that we have five deaths, and one man in a coma? It’s answers we need, serious ones, not smart ones.”

  Before anyone got a chance for any kind of answer a guard knocked on the door and opened it. “There’re two more at the gate, asking to be let in.”

  Whitney and Zoë looked at one another.

  “One of them says his name is Moreland,” the guard said.

  When Robert and Daniel were finally admitted they were put into a holding room while various calls were made to verify identities. The police in Boston were able to confirm both men seemed to be who they said they were, but also to confirm that the girlfriend of one had been reported as missing, and the wife of the other, both women sisters, was not at home.

  “Well,” Whitney said, blowing his cheeks out. “It seems the police would like to have a few words with both of you when they catch up with you.”

  Robert was so focussed that he dismissed the threat of police questioning with a wave of his hand. If he didn’t stay focussed the pain of losing Rebecca would overwhelm him. His emotions were barely held in check, his every thought involved her; his every feeling was raw and tender. Only the focus of finding Michael and dealing with him was holding him together.

  Zoë ran through what stage they had reached, and wanted to know if Robert knew why Fields and Julia were here.

  Daniel couldn’t help notice how strained Zoë seemed. He had no way of knowing how she normally behaved but clearly she was currently under a great stress and was battling to control it. He was numb from the shock of Imogen’s death, feeling as if he had been awake for a week and had lost all ability to think, or feel. He had read that it was quite a common phenomena after a funeral for the grieving widow or widower to feel incredibly aroused and even on several accounts for them to have sex with someone, usually a friend or relative, on the day of the funeral itself. He looked at Zoë and couldn’t prevent himself thinking of her body, the way she pronounced certain words, and the way her hair fell across her shoulders.

  “I’m here because Frank is my brother, and I think…let’s just say, I think I know what has attacked him.”
Robert was saying.

  “And what had attacked him, attacked the others?” Whitney asked.

  Robert ignored the question as best as he could. There was not an answer he could give that would be understood or accepted. “If Frank has sent out a message, telepathically I mean, to Fields and Lopez, as well as to me, then he must believe it needs our combined powers to combat whatever it is he’s trapped.”

  “Trapped?” Zoë hadn’t realised that was what they were discussing.

  “You told me about the experiment, the responses you were getting. I think something attacked Frank, and the others…” He looked at Whitney. “And by sheer force of will Frank was able to contain it, within his mind. But the stamina needed to do that has left him…well, you know what condition he’s in. He can’t hold out indefinitely which is why he’s called for reinforcements.”

  Robert had been allowed to see Frank alone. The others were relaxing somewhere. After a series of tests on all of them Robert was worried; Julia had been openly relieved that what she had endured for years could finally be given a label. She was though vulnerable at present; unable to focus her power easily, though when she did the results were strong. Fields on the other hand was like a tornado, his powers wild and random, never allowing any consistency to develop. His results were actually better than Robert’s on an individual level but they were too variable for Robert to be confident about them.

  Frank was weakening by the hour. Still catatonic the charts showed slow but steady decline in all his bodily functions. Robert placed his hand over his brothers; it was cool, cold almost, the pulse slowed to nearly zero.

  Wait, Frank tries to move his hand…Robert’s fingers are taken in a weak grasp…they lay within Frank’s palm…Frank squeezes Robert’s hand.

  Like a lightning bolt through his brain Robert feels Franks chaotic thoughts trying to contact him. He probes Frank’s mind.

  There are only remnants of what once was there. Confusion and darkness hide merely the essence of the man that he used to know. What dominated was the evil that had attacked him, and Robert was scared to approach it.

  ‘I am hungry, Robert.’

  Robert extracted himself from Frank’s mind. The body remained still but all of a sudden Frank’s eyes opened; bright shining blue. Robert pushed himself away from the table, but the room had changed.

  The ceiling was damp, covered in mould, breaking off in places, and falling to the floor. Green slime dripped from the walls, running in rivulets like mutated rain on a windowpane. The carpet had rotted, in places bare wooden boards showed, pitted and scarred with infestation. What carpet remained was wet, soaked through with a foul green liquid, the stench of which was overpowering. It was the smell of dank, secret places, of hidden tombs, of desecrated mausoleums; the odour of corrupt corpses, putrescent flesh torn from rank, stinking graves. Frank’s divan had decomposed, fallen like a fetid creature racked with a most terrible disease. Maggots crawled over the chairs; spiders spun their webs in dark corners of the room, hooking tiny insects on unseen gossamer threads. The floor was covered with worms; sightless they raised their wriggling bodies into the air as if sniffing for scent, then crawled over themselves in a seething mass; more flopped from the corners of tables, into the waiting sea below.

  The door had shut silently behind him and Robert realised he was trapped. The room was closing in on him, a coffin forming around him. Insects dropped onto his shoulders, and as he brushed them away so worms crawled over his shoes, and as he kicked out at them, so a swarm of flies buzzed around his head. He concentrated his mind, overcoming his tiredness and his despair. He sent his mind spinning around the room, touching all the repulsive manifestations, wiping them away, sweeping the room clean.

  There was silence, as the room fell back to normal. The carpets were clean, the divan was neat, and the walls white, and Frank lay motionless. The room began to vibrate.

  Glass on the TV monitor cracked; equipment on the walls began to shift, slowly at first, then faster, until much of it fell to the floor. The covers over Frank were ripped off, and hurled in tatters about the room. There was fierce wind in the room, knocking over the chairs, chasing paper through the air, tossing wires and pieces of equipment around as if by a crazed juggler. Shadows stirred and shifted, and Robert thought he could see creatures of the night crawling in frightful pleasure towards him. As the wind grew fiercer, his clothes whipped around like lunatics feeling from the moon, and he was forced back against the door; his back felt the hard wood press into him and he felt the comforting solid feel of the smooth surface. Something grabbed hold of his jacket. He turned his head around; the handle of the door had transformed into a claw-like growth that was gripping his jacket. He tried to pull free but the flowing fingers were on tight. He struggled out of the jacket and ran to the centre of the room.

  The walls were moving; the plaster shifting in and out with steady rhythm, as though it was breathing. The floor was rippling, making it difficult to stand upright; the floor was shifting like the bed of the sea, shifting with the tide. He kept moving around, hoping to stay safe by movement. The ceiling cracked open and two hugely bloated black lips protruded, swollen and ugly; a snake tongue flicked out and he dived to the floor to avoid it. The ceiling retracted and he looked up into a starless night sky, velvet infinity black. Robert felt himself drawn to it; actually felt his feet leave the floor as he began to drift upwards, towards the lavish nothingness of the void.

  “No!”

  He screamed, a combination of voice and mind, the verbal and the imagined merged into one burst and the room reverted to normal. Before he could stand from where he had fallen a warm wind rushed over him, he heard a heartless chuckle, and the door opened and slammed shut. The room was silent.

  Frank Moreland knew this was the end; his strength had been taken in capturing and holding Michael at bay, and in sending out his cries for help.

  The black cloud filled his head, and there was no room left for Frank’s thoughts. His head ached with the pain of his efforts and from the constant battering from Michael’s power. Frank had always known his brothers were stronger than him, which was one of the reasons he found it so hard to live with his powers.

  The heat bore down on him as he lay in the pit, curled like a torn piece of rope. A guard had just thrown a bucket of foul smelling liquid down on him, and he was trying to breathe without swallowing any of it. His head ached from the relentless glare of the midday sun, and somewhere in the distance a man was screaming. Then they came for him.

  The top of the pit crowded with grinning yellow faces and at first he welcomed the way they blocked out the sun. Then he remembered the hut; he kicked and shouted as they dragged him from the pit, rifle butts and boots cracking ribs. Anything was better than being shown the inside of that hut. They spat on him as they pulled him through the dust; the two men holding his feet deliberately moving apart as they pulled him, so that the pain was unbearable. Another guard prodded his groin with the bayonet fixed to his rifle and they all laughed.

  The bamboo hut was getting nearer and he was getting hysterical. They opened the door and pushed him inside. Somewhere in a corner a man whimpered, another cried like a baby, one babbled like a madman. Slowly Frank’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and he realised he was inside a torture chamber. An arm lay discarded on a table, the fingers reaching into the air as if groping for hope. One man in the tatters of a military uniform was pinned to the wall with bayonets through his hands and feet; his penis and testicles burned black by fire. Another was trussed up in a tiny cage hung from the ceiling; his eyes keep open by sliver of bamboo under the eyelids. On the floor in the corner a naked soldier was covered in black ants; they were eating the sweet syrup that covered his body.

  Light flooded the room as the door opened and a tall white-faced man entered. The guards stood and bowed, but the man ignored them, turning instead to Frank. The twin blue eyes mocked him now as they had when they were boys growing up in such different directi
ons. It was Michael and for a moment Frank felt relief but then he remembered.

  A gun was held loosely in Michael’s fingers.

  “You were never going to amount to anything, Frank, we all knew that.”

  He raised the gun, pressed it into Frank’s forehead and fired.

  Robert saw the blood spurt from Frank’s nose, mouth and ears, and knew that he had succumbed to Michael’s strength. The warm wind had left the room, and Robert and Frank were alone for a few moments.

  Robert closed the staring eyes, and tried to say some words that might comfort his brother on his final journey. In death Frank looked at ease, and Robert said a prayer of thanks to him for holding Michael for so long. He only hoped that with Julia and Fields, he would be able to stop the creature that Michael had become.

  Julia lay in the bathtub, eyes closed, her mind relaxing after the numerous tests she had been subjected to. She had spent the afternoon with Chris Fields, but left as he poured his fifth Jack Daniels, deciding he was best laying his own ghosts to rest.

  She moved her legs and felt the sensation of the warm water against her skin. She had filled the bath with scented oil and the velvet smoothness caressed her throat and chin. Starting to become drowsy, eyelids heavy, tension flowing from her body. Her limbs heavy too, muscles melting in the womblike softness of the sensual water. Was the water getting warmer?

  She opened her eyes to see if the hot tap was still on, but it was closed. The room was full of steam, filling the entire room, clouding the mirror, obscuring the window. She could barely make out the end of the bath, the thick fog shrouding trails of grey movement.

  The water in the bath was still getting warmer, starting to get uncomfortable. She knelt up in the bath and felt for the taps, but both were shut off and wouldn’t turn. She tried to stand – maybe if she opened the window or the door the steam would evaporate – it was so thick, a sea mist rolling drunkenly and threateningly over and around her. She had trouble standing; her feet kept slipping on the bottom of the bath, as though it was covered in grease. The water was getting too hot now, starting to burn her legs. She crouched at the side of the bath, trying to raise herself up by the edges, but they were slippery as well, and her hands kept slipping. Every time she tried to stand her feet or her hands slid off the sides of the bath and she fell back into the water.