I put the fears away, there were many possible explanations, it could be any one of them, and I needed sleep. And the nightmares came and knelt at the foot of my bed and laughed, for the stars were not right.
I awoke at the cackling of a murder of crows, the damned black vermin had returned. Tabitha lay sprawled across the bed, a light snore escaping her once beautiful lips. Looking to the window, I saw the morning carrion birds spread across the ground, bunched and jostling here and there over a form of curiously familiar color. My instinct prickled as dread reared up again at so eerie a collection beside the trees.
Stepping outside, I threw a stone at the nearest crow. It hopped a few paces farther away, and the others answered indignant at my presence, as if I was to attempt to steal their hard-won prize.
Then I saw.
Pale legs stretched out frozen and still upon the merciless ground. Blonde hair wafted over the unholy soil and I knew those lips, those scars, that once beautiful face of Tabitha, my wife.
This could not be, she was asleep in bed, but her she lay before me, dead.
I gasped and vomited. Rushing back inside the house, I raced up the stairs and threw back the door. Tabitha was spread across the bed, her sleeping breast heaving.
Outside, the crows picked at the corpse and in a moment of panic, I made my decision.
Taking a shovel, I hurried and dug a pit there on the edge of the vile wood, and I cast this impostor’s warm corpse into it.
I will make no venture of explanation for the cursed midnight hour that cast this insanity at my feet, but I will hide it and forget the whole thing in time, once the blank stare of this false Tabitha’s eyes exit my horrified memory. They did not flicker, I remind myself as I cast the dirt into the grave, I did not see them flicker, nor the mouth open ever so briefly. I did not see them flicker.
This was the proper thing to do, you bury a dead body, especially that of an abomination from some witch-haunted wood, it is what anyone of you would have done in my place.
I had just finished placing the last shovel full of dirt upon my own new mound when the real Tabitha stepped from the door, still clutching her silken bedding. I peered into her eyes, never noticing before how black they were, like dark windows of some awful abode.
She asked, “What are you doing?”
Only the carrion birds know and I shall not answer for them.
Gods In Darkness
I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men. — Isaac Newton
They felt a brief hard drop before the Promethean Titan snatched the three men from the grip of Gaia’s pull and hurled them blindingly aloft.
The static voice of ground control crackled one last time. “Owl Eight, you are a go. This final transmission is coming to you. And fade to black.”
“You got it,” answered Captain Cormac ‘Jack-Hammer’ Ross.
The B-52 Stratofortress that had carried them seven and a half miles up, disappeared in an unfamiliar haze, far below and behind. They would continue the two hundred odd miles up on their own, in an experimental vomit comet; a modified three seater X-20 DynaSoar space plane that did not officially exist. Despite the sound dampening insulation, the roar of the second stage Titan booster rattled teeth for another two minutes as they blasted higher into the east to gain orbital push.
Azure skies bruised quickly to navy then fathomless black, as stars were suddenly kindled as if from a million pilgrim’s candles as silence took them.
“We won’t hear anything outside of this cockpit again until re-entry,” said Captain Ross, over their private intercom. His voice was grim and deep as belied a hulking man who barely dodged the maximum height requirements of the Air Force test pilots. He had piercing gray eyes and a face that seemed incapable of smiling. A scar from Korea arced down his forehead, across his right eye and ended on his lantern jaw. No amount of medals could take away the sinister look and make him presentable for the polished public expectations, and as such he was never invited to be a part of the standard astronaut program. He wasn’t promotional material the colonel had said; but there was still a place with the classified and secret side of the space race, the Crypto-Cosmic side.
“Take us to the appointed Lagrange point,” ordered the mysterious passenger. A slight man with dark deep set eyes, he had a confident air enshrouding him and though clearly not military, he commanded like a Field Marshal.
“You got it.”
“How many times have you been in orbit Captain Ross?” asked the passenger with an air of indifference. What looked like three strangely colored and ornately engraved medals clanked together over his tight-fitting space suit.
Cormac shrugged, careless if the rear passenger could even see his response at the helm. The very notion that a relatively untrained person could tag along, flaunting what appeared to be contraband weight blatantly around his neck, grated at him. But the sole order of the mission did specify following the directions of the as yet unnamed person.
“Captain ‘Jack-Hammer’ Ross! He has been up, what seven times now?” answered the Co-pilot Major James Driscoll.
A blue-eyed California native, Driscoll was a respected test pilot in his own right. He had been too young for Korea but there was no good reason he had not been a part of the officially recognized space program. In contrast to Cormac, Driscoll would have been a NASA publicist’s dream candidate, but now that both he and Cormac were on the Crypto-Cosmic side, all histories and records had been sanitized and sterilized.
For this “lost” aspect, each were perfect for the Crypto-Cosmic program in that neither had families. The successful and handsome Driscoll, an Irish-Catholic teetotaler, had climbed through the ranks very well for his age but he was unmarried as well as being an orphan.
No one in the program knew of any family for Cormac either, rumor said he was from Montana, but he was certainly no teetotaler.
“Eight times. He has been in orbit eight times,” corrected the passenger.
“Then why’d you ask?” rumbled Cormac.
“I am making conversation. I know a good deal about both of you already, yet you know nothing of me.”
Driscoll asked, “What do you know? Sir?”
“I am not a sir Major Driscoll. I am not military. But understand that I know enough classified material to have specifically requested both of you for this most unusual, yet supremely important mission.”
“You can tell us your name,” said Cormac, as he adjusted the yaw control of the X-20. “You have sway enough to make this operation happen, whoever you are.”
“And with full-black radio silence, no less. Somebody trusts you,” added Driscoll.
“I hope that does not make you nervous, but we cannot afford to have anyone overhear us. And someone is always listening.”
“The Cordiglia brothers?”
“Possibly, but more importantly the Soviet’s and what is left of Das Reich.”
Cormac grunted at that.
“My name for now is A. H. Ryman. And I do have extreme influence at the J.P.L. and with General Manning. We would not be having this conversation otherwise.”
“So, do we call you A. H. or Ryman?”
“Ryman is fine. How much farther to the Lagrange point?”
Cormac glanced over the controls and calculated. “We’re around halfway, but I can’t promise a time frame just yet. Have some debris I need to get around. The lower Detritosphere is getting especially bad.”
“Is that the official Crypto-Cosmic term for the low earth orbit region?”
“It is.”
Letting the aft winglet give a tiny burst, the X-20 rolled around the oncoming twisted carcass of a shredded capsule. A portion of the booster held together by the barest skin of metal lingered alongside. A single insulated wire, like an umbilicus linked the dead ships together in cruel mockery of life.
“One of ours?” asked Driscoll.
“You could say it was mine,” said Cormac.
A red
star resembling nothing so much as a cheese grater identified the victim.
Ryman chuckled. “Why would you say that?”
“I made that. At this orbit, it’s gotta be one of the Voskhod’s I dumped a load of ball bearings on last month.”
“Only one?”
“If you’ve read the classified reports Ryman, you know how many I’ve encountered.”
“Encountered is not really the right word, is it? Perhaps annihilated is better.”
“It’s my job.”
“Of course, it is. That is why I selected both of you. You follow orders.”
Driscoll responded, “Be that as it may Mr. Ryman, I haven’t fought the Red’s like the ‘Jack-Hammer’ has.”
“No one has. But we all have our talents. Mark my words, you have an important future before you, Major Driscoll. But I must admit I would like to hear more from Captain Ross about encountering Cosmonaut’s.”
Cormac grumbled. “You said you’ve read the files. We would like to know what the mission is. General Manning said we would be debriefed in orbit. You just want to look around up here? It’s no Sunday in the park.”
“I am quite aware that space is an intrinsically hostile environment.”
“Are you?” pressed Cormac, unstrapping his shoulder harness and turning in his seat to look Ryman in the eye. “This isn’t some pleasure cruise favor for a―whatever the hell you are.”
“I am a senior jet propulsion engineer, an Advanced-Laboratory chemist, and most importantly, a Meta-physicist or Mancer if you will, at the absolute peak of my field.”
“Whatever. It is burning cold out there and the universe doesn’t care that you have dirt on Manning or that the J.P.L. owes you a real big favor, the universe will kill you in an instant all the same. So, let’s cut the chit chat and do the work. Tell me why I’m up here.”
Driscoll gulped. “You have dirt on Manning?”
Ryman laughed without mirth before answering. “Quite. General Manning has a penchant for the asphyxiation of young homeless prostitutes. All the pretty young things that have taken Kerouac, Cassidy and Ginsberg into their naive little hearts.”
“Who?”
“I would not expect you to know Major Driscoll.”
“Damn beatniks,” muttered Cormac.
Again Driscoll balked at Ryman’s revelations. “How could General Manning do that? How do you know all this?”
“Let us just say that I am not without sin. And if you had any idea of the former gatherings at ‘the Parsonage’ which was the Agape Lodge, you would not need to ask.”
“Lodge? Like the Freemason’s?”
“You delight me Major Driscoll. Your fraternal order is similar yet different. I am the current, yet disputed, Outer Head of the Order of the O.T.O. Lodge. Which is centered around Thelema or more plainly, following the Whole of the Law.”
“Whole of the law? Good, I was afraid you might be weirdoes.”
Cormac looked at Driscoll and rolled his eyes.
“And as far as you need to be concerned Major Driscoll, I am the J.P.L. these days, if only from the shadows.”
“You?” said Driscoll, shaking his head within his stationary helm. “Jet Propulsion Labs are a conglomeration beyond any one man.”
Ryman answered, “And you forget that the J.P.L. was Jack Parson’s Lab before that. I should know, I was his unspoken right hand. I was there when the mercury fulminate explosion took his life. You remember that, do you not Captain?”
Cormac shook his head. “Nope. I was in Korea, shooting down Chi-Com’s.”
“Your services were greatly appreciated then, as they are now.”
Driscoll broke in, “What does Jack Parsons have to do with anything now?”
“Not a thing, I simply walk the same path he did.”
“Will someone just tell me what the hell I’m doing here,” said Cormac. “What is the mission?”
“Patience. Get us to the Lagrange point and all will be revealed.”
The curtain of darkness flexed larger as the earth shrunk. The stars cast cold light from the distant reaches as Cormac continued his hawk-like ascent to a higher orbit. He occasionally swung the X-20 wide of various cascading jetsam. Some of the floating debris was ice covered and alien; catching light like a swarm of fireflies, it went in every possible direction contrasting to the usual human expectation of earthbound flotsam caught in a single flowing current.
“This is my third mission,” said Driscoll, “and you never get used to it.”
“To what?” asked Ryman.
“The sheer beauty of the earth. Right down there, the Bahama’s. Turquoise perfection. Clouds sprinkled like newly fallen snow. And in a few minutes, the Straits of Gibraltar like only God can see them.”
“A god. Indeed.”
“Just wait until we get to the night side,” said Driscoll. “All the city lights almost make it seem like it’s all a kingdom in some fairy tale.”
Both astronauts noticed that Ryman displayed no interest in seeing the truly rare vista. It was as if the very idea were beneath him and somehow vulgar. He instead watched them piloting the X-20 over and under the clouds of stardust.
Farther on, they saw a gray suited body rolling toward them in the ether. CCCP was emblazoned across the top of the figures helmet. The mirror like faceplate hid the certain death mask behind. A six-foot tether dangled uselessly from the body harness.
“Friend of yours?” asked Ryman, with an edge begging for something more.
“Probably,” said Driscoll, “the Ruskies started calling Captain Ross the Rezuhin, on their private channels.”
“I do not speak Russian.”
“It means ‘Cutter’. There is no one they fear more.”
“What do they do when you cut them loose?”
“Well they don’t take it kindly,” snarled Cormac.
“I mean what is the reaction when they have lost the encounter?”
“Every single time, the stupid bastards start flapping their arms trying to swim through space. It’s pathetic,” said Cormac, stifling a chuckle. “Fear makes everyone forget their training.”
“This is what I hoped we could talk about. Hearing it firsthand is so much better than reading a sterile military report. Tell me more.”
Composing himself back to the humorless edge, Cormac said, “It’s simple. Once they are out of reach of their own ship with a cut line, that’s it. Ten feet away from your capsule, might as well be ten miles. You can’t swim through space and you can’t get back with nothing in the vacuum of space to push against.”
“What do they do when they realize it is hopeless?”
“They die.” Cormac furrowed his brow, answering, “I once saw a cosmonaut accept his fate and cut his own airline, rather than drift for hours in hopeless despair.”
“Brutal work. Yet you never used a gun?”
“Not up here with the weight requirements. In theory, I was never supposed to get out and space walk. Offensively we are only supposed to outmaneuver the Red’s and drop ball bearings in their path. Their capsules can’t turn and get out of the way. They become what you saw back there. That was actually the biggest piece of one I’ve ever seen. Must have only winged him.”
Cormac went to rub his chin out of habit and hit the smooth face plate and put his hand down before continuing. “But the Soviets send more men up on virtual suicide missions than you could ever shake a stick at. I had to get out and start cutting tethers when they got outside first and started messing with our satellites.”
“How many cosmonauts have you killed?”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t always know how many they have inside their capsules.”
“But outside, face to face, cutting them loose?”
Cormac paused a moment. He considered himself a soldier, perhaps even a knight errant, doing what needed to be done as he understood it, but Ryman’s prying bordered on sick fascination, too eager even for scholarly interest. Besides after being debriefed a
dozen times, the egg-heads had put together an Ultra-classified space combat manual, why didn’t Ryman just read that? Unless he wanted to hear about death from the dealer himself. “Twelve.”
“A noble lot indeed,” said Ryman.
“But you asked about guns and I told you about weight requirements, so I have to ask about yours.”
Driscoll nudged Cormac for asking, but Ryman grinned.
“You noticed these,” he said, jingling the three talismans.
Driscoll scrutinized them. “They don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. I almost wondered if you received the Bronze in the Olympics, but those aren’t bronze.”
“No. They are most certainly not medals,” Ryman sneered. “Do not trouble yourself over our weight requirements Captain Ross. We still have your standard offensive cargo should the need arise, though it is a good twenty pounds lighter.”
“Twenty pounds?”
“I assure you Captain Ross, my contraband, as you so colorfully refer to it, is not more than twenty pounds. Perhaps no more than ten.”
“What else you got?”
“Reading material. A training manual you might say.”
“You are two hundred miles above the earth for a very limited time frame. What the hell are you gonna read?”
“As I said, do not trouble yourself with worry over this minor change in your standard operating procedure. We are indeed under your weight ratios for our fuel and mission parameters. Besides,” he paused a good long while, “I know very well that despite your self-righteous indignation, you personally eliminated three ball bearings to effectively counter your own contraband.”
Driscoll turned to Cormac in disbelief. “What is he talking about? Tell me you didn’t bring anything you weren’t supposed to.”
At the Highways of Madness Page 13