Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One

by M. Scott Carter

  I exist high up in the corners, and sometimes in the dark wall spaces, which I do not care for. I have no legs or arms, nor any visible torso, but I know I exist.

  What I am I do not know.

  People cannot see me, whatever there may be of me. I watch them eating dinner, talking in the television room or in the bedrooms. Sometimes they cry and I try to turn away as a great sadness overcomes me.

  On random days, the doorbell rings and the acute tone triggers a release of emotion from me like a fresh galaxy setting itself upon a foreign night sky. I do not hear the doorbell as others do, but rather become entranced by it for minutes, focusing with whatever is left of me on the fading timbre as if in a seizure. Only when it marches into the ether do I regain my ability to see and hear the words of the family.

  The rooms are decorated with bright, note-attached flowers. One of the rooms is kept shut, but a single light is left on. People sometimes open the door and stare in with long, tired faces, then turn in anguish. I feel cold when this happens, and the sensation triggers a movement to another room. I cannot control this. I cannot control anything.

  The new moon brings darkness, inducing a reduction in my activity. I dream, or at least, experience what I think are dreams. Maybe this is all I dream. I wish I knew; I wish there was a semblance of certainty in any of this. Instead, I feel as if I’m in a floating house with no sense of time. These people before me taunt me in their unawareness of my existence, and I long for company even though I am inches from this family and their visitors. It is these dreamlike periods during the new moon that cause me to question everything as I lie frozen between the walls of the house, watching the occasional mouse or squirrel scurry past. Sometimes they pause and give notice to my obscure form, holding their twitching snouts in the air, wrinkling the skin around their mouths and tweaking their reaching, feeling whiskers. These rodent visits are a highlight. Unfortunately there are lowlights too, like the rare, horrible, formless energies that I can sense with every fiber of my consciousness. They move through the dark wall spaces and into the yard. Most of these entities pay me no mind, moving on like agitated bull moose through windblown aspen to parts of the world where I do not exist and, I gather, few things exist.

  As the visible moon grows each evening, inch by inch revealing a piece of ghostly pie and flooding the rooms with persistent, organic light, my activity increases and once again I find myself stuck in the ceiling corners, never knowing which room I will appear in, and eating the words — always eating the words. I find the words of the young to be powerful, and when they play games on the television and shout, I feel energy grow inside me. I watch with increasing intensity and with what I suspect is an open, blue-lipped mouth not unlike that of a perch preparing to nibble at a worm. It is these younger ones I’m most connected to. One is a boy, the other a girl. The older woman I am also close to - her eyes bring comfort, while the eyes of the younger forms challenge me and fill me with excitement.

  I wish I could say the same of the older man. Although I do feel connected to him, this connection is twisted and perverted, like an anchor line left in rough seas for far too long. This brings confusion, shame and pain, and I do not like the electric look in the man’s eyes. I can sense he is hiding something. Looking into those eyes and the narrow, defined face causes me to hear vague, hollow winds and feel icy daggers of exploded frozen planets jab at what is left of my consciousness.

  The evenings are when I swallow the most words, for the family sit around the table and eat their meal and discusses the day. I watch from the corner—which one I do not know, for I’m always in different corners and cannot control this. I prefer not to see the man’s eyes, and relish the evenings when I’m in a corner from which I can only see the back of his balding head. Their words rise to me in tangled patterns like vines and rampant vegetation, and when they near my perch-like mouth they become independent and enter in order. When the talking is fast, my mouth remains open to allow for the train of them. The words from the children run colorful in bright, big letters. I need to open my mouth wider for these. The words from the older woman come in brown and grey, smaller than the children’s but still providing energy. The words from the older man come in black and are shrunken. I try to avoid these as much as possible but sometimes cannot, as they slip into and are hidden among the large, bright words of the children. Upon swallowing the poisonous words of the older man, I feel my energy deflate; I have learned to avoid them as best I can within my limited abilities.

  How long I’ve been here I cannot say. I’m now in the dining room with the family spread out before me. Unfortunately, I can see the man’s eyes tonight and I try to look away, but my restricted movement keeps me focused at an angle from the corner I am set in. The man sits at the head of the table, brandishing shiny silverware as the older woman brings him a plate of tender meat, the blood of it leaking out when she presses down upon it with the cutlery. How I know these things I can only guess, but I do know them, as if from a distant memory. I remember plates, meat, milk, freshly blown balloons that stole my breath and the bright, wild eyes of people I was close to. I remember lush, green plants and forests of wonder, rivers meandering through grassy meadows and the darting, anxious flight of songbirds ahead of storm fronts which chilled the air and sent the people scurrying into wooden structures, peering out with curious and frightened eyes. These things I know. And as the family eats before me, the words come from the younger ones with a force I have never seen before. I open my mouth and swallow each word. I can feel my energy increasing, and whatever I am is bursting with vitality.

  As usual, a certain word triggers silence from the family, bowed heads, and the momentary cessation of feeding.

  Except for the man. He continues to eat, paying no mind to the glum silence. He speaks and his black, shriveled words float up to me. I am barely able to turn away from the poisonous offering as it glides past me and goes through the thin wall, into the dark recesses where I pause during the new moon.

  When the silence passes, the young ones speak with smiles and laughter and the colorful words flow to me in a train, and as I swallow these offerings I feel something inside me click and grow. Streaming brightness enters my consciousness and pushes on me. Memories follow this light and filter in as on a thousand lanes of highway; each lane filled with a story or remembrance. I am overwhelmed, and I continue to swallow the words of the young and the occasional words of the older woman. They keep speaking and the words keep coming… I am full of light and energy, beyond description. I can hear strange, choral singing far off, and this singing grows louder and closer with each new word. My God, the energy…what is happening to me? More words in reds, blues and greens! The children smile and laugh and jostle in their seats, cutlery held high in the air, reflecting the moonlight. They are beautiful. In the endless highways of memories I see them holding hands with a little girl.

  There are puppies and flowers.

  There are blue lakes with tall pines and the effortless flight of eagles.

  There is laughter. I see the older woman holding the girl and feeding her fresh blueberries, which tumbled out of a wooden bucket.

  What am I?

  I see the little girl under an enchanting tree set indoors and strung with dreamy, multicolored lights and dangling candy canes. The older woman is smiling and the younger ones are buried behind crumpled and torn paper.

  The energy is relentless, electrifying my consciousness and giving me shocking, unfamiliar sensations. The memories are incessant, and I now wish to turn them off, for I can no longer absorb them. Please stop… please make it stop! I’m terrified as I look down upon the family. A rushing, uncontrollable force grabs and shakes me, and for the first time in this indescribable existence I hear myself make a noise. I feel a great, vaporous gush of air from somewhere below, and from my perch-like mouth a scream bellows out and pierces every tangible object in the home, including the people who look around in shock at the commotion.

  T
he boy drops the silverware and gets up to run.

  The woman holds her hands to her chest and forehead, gasping.

  The girl’s eyes turn red and moist.

  The man looks to the ceiling, petrified.

  For just this once, I, the watcher in the corner said a word instead of eating it. Like a rush of vomit, I cannot control it: “Father murdered me! He did it, he did it, he did it, he did it!”

  ENGAGING THE IDRL

  by Davin Ireland

  I

  The desert here is pink and rocky and shrouded in darkness for much of the day. The excavation site is slashed with grey spills of rubble that could be collapsed towers or random seams of granite. To the east, great clouds of mortar dust boil across the plains, scouring the arid landscape, depriving it of fresh growth. Only the Idrl remain. Oblivious to the wind, seemingly blind to the desolation, they drift through the emptying topography like azure phantoms, the robes that stain their hides a deep, lustrous blue snapping petulantly in the breeze. They refuse to talk to us or communicate in any way, for they consider our troops to be an army of occupation.

  Our generals are therefore left to draw their own conclusions about what went on before mankind arrived on Serpia Dornem.

  Grue says he knows. After listening to his story, I am inclined to agree with him. The Idrl did not build these ruined cities. Nor did they occupy them. They are instead a separate nomad species, periodically emerging from hibernation to roam the land and take whatever sustenance their dying world has to offer. The mysterious Constructor Race, however, strove for greater things.

  II

  A transport carrier arrived unannounced this morning. Its harried crew whisked us away to a salt flat fifteen hundred clicks east of base camp, and dumped us there to await further instruction. None came, and when the adverse weather conditions disrupted our communications equipment, some of the younger men grew visibly anxious. Grue himself appeared towards the end of afternoon, tiny reconnaissance craft bobbing and groaning against increasingly heavy turbulence. The perpetual scream of mortar dust had whipped itself into a sandstorm of vicious proportions, yet the latest intelligence took precedence over all.

  “We depart at eighteen-hundred hours,” the corporal announced, and took shelter on the leeward side of the craft. He would say no more and prohibited further discussion between the men. Forty minutes later we took to the skies.

  “Right beneath us,” Grue cried above the shriek of the engines. We had been in the air for maybe a half hour at the time. “Tell me what you make of that.”

  I looked down. The pink and grey shelf of desert that followed us everywhere we went had suddenly vanished, only to be replaced by what turned out to be forty-thousand square kilometres of unfettered parking space - an asphalted lot of such grotesque proportions that it extended all the way to the horizon in three different directions. And not a motor vehicle in sight.

  Who were the Constructor Race, I ask myself. What made them do this? Precious little evidence remains beyond the cities themselves, and these have been stripped, razed, and abandoned in a way that suggests the destruction was thorough and wholly intentional. By the look of it, the only exception is a parking facility identical in character and composition to anything one might have found outside a conventional strip mall circa 2010. With the exception of size, of course. This thing dwarfs anything Earth had to offer by several orders of magnitude.

  Tomorrow we will learn more. For the remainder of this evening, we’ll kick our heels and wait for the survey team to complete its remote sweep from orbit. Naturally, the Idrl sense that moves are afoot. They have ceased roaming the sterile plains and watch us cautiously from a distance. The calm dignity these beings exude stands in stark contrast to their magnificent trailing robes, which ripple and flutter incessantly on the gritty air currents. A displaced show of emotion, perhaps? We may never know. Meanwhile, certain members of the unit already exhibit the first signs of battle fatigue, though we have fought no war.

  III

  Tang and Spritzwater, two of my best men, are refusing to go on. They shed their laser carbines shortly after dawn this morning, and now stand with their backs to the spent orb that is this system’s sun, shadows trailing before them like tired ghosts. They say there is something wrong with Serpia Dornem. They say the planet is haunted. I am beginning to believe them. When we performed a perimeter sweep at 2300 hours last night, rocks, pinkish sand, and lazily flipping dust devils were about the extent of it. As the false dawn coloured the sky, a monstrous city loomed in the east.

  My men blame the natives. Even those of us who retain a degree of objectivity are becoming unnerved by their austere presence, which grows by the hour. During breakfast I counted eleven Idrl gathered about a cluster of the spiny-leaved plants that cling in the cracks between the parched rocks. By first inspection their number had swollen to seventeen. They filter down from the arid hills to the south - gaunt, weary faces expressionless, yet eloquent as pantomime masks. This is not uncommon for a race subjected to prolonged oppression. A spectacle is unfolding here, and the spectacle is us. We have found the one city the Constructor Race overlooked - or perhaps it has found us - and now we must investigate.

  Later.

  The nearer we get, the greater the extent of the challenge. In the swirling wastelands between base camp and city, we spied a dead tree. It stood naked and branchless in the wind, sand-blasted for what may have been centuries on end, the very last of its kind. Oloman was dispatched to investigate, and returned minutes later in a state of high agitation.

  “You have to look at this,” he said, tugging at my sleeve. “You have to see this right away.”

  We deviated from our game plan just long enough to verify the lieutenant’s claims, which were irrational in the extreme but perfectly justified. The tree was not a tree at all, but a roadsign: a rusting iron pole pointing the way to a city with an eerily prophetic name. Venice Falls. The words were still legible despite the corrosive effects of the wind. There could be no mistake. Out here in a region of the galaxy visited by no human, there exists an urban settlement large enough to accommodate the entire population of New York City.

  And it has an English name.

  The Idrl appear unmoved by our discovery. They form a serene gathering in contrast to our wind-choked huddle, steadfastly refusing any attempt at dialogue, even though the surreal possibility exists that we may actually speak the same language. Nye has tried to tempt them with extra clothing and with food, but all is ignored. Even when an older female, badly undernourished and clearly hypothermic, allowed her eye to wander in the direction of the rehydration kit, her fellow tribal members closed ranks about her. We have not seen her since.

  IV

  Much as I suspected but dared not mention for fear of spooking the men further, this metropolis is a full-scale reproduction of an Earth city circa 2010, faithful in every detail except one: there are no people here. None except us, that is. We wander the empty streets in aimless fascination, weapons drawn but pointed at the ground. Sand dunes clog the intersections, erosion blights the shop fronts; but any wear and tear is incidental, a tawdry gift of the elements. I stare at the red-brick apartment buildings that line the sprawling avenues, at the reproduction brownstones with their salt-stained walls, at the magnificent steel and glass towers that pierce the gloomy sky - and wonder again who the Constructor Race were and why they should have built this place.

  Were they intending to populate it with immigrants from our own planet? To forcibly humanise the Idrl for their own ends? To create a holiday resort? Such notions strike me as absurd. The dying sun, the alkaline soil - a bleaker aspect is difficult to imagine. And yet they must have had a reason for such folly. Acquiring enough knowledge to make a balanced judgement on the subject would take decades of investigation, and we only have weeks at best. In the meantime, the men are determined to make a start. Without my consent, Oloman used the butt of his carbine to smash a movie theatre window and thus gain acces
s to the sealed lobby. Inside, our torches revealed plush red carpets, a ticket booth, even a hot dog stand advertising various brands of popcorn and ice cream. None of the food offered was actually available, but that didn’t detract from the authenticity of the moment. It seemed so real that I half expected an usher in a velvet suit to emerge from a side door and escort us to our seats.

  But not everyone shared my enthusiasm.

  “It doesn’t smell right,” Oloman complained, “like fresh paint and new carpets shut in for thirty thousand years.”

  “And no movies,” agreed Nye. “Look at the poster frames - they’re all empty.”

  It was a pattern that was to be repeated throughout the city. Bars with no liquor, trash barrels without garbage, corporations bereft of employees. And beneath it all, lurking at the very edges of perception, the unshakeable conviction that we were being watched.

  “Of course we are,” I declared in exasperation. “The Idrl are everywhere. The fact that they choose not to show themselves doesn’t mean they’re not around.”

  But my words failed to allay the unit’s increasing sense of unease, and in the end we retreated with weapons raised and hearts aflutter. Venice Falls was an unsettling place.

  V

  Tang and Spritzwater are gone. We arrived back at base camp an hour ago to discover the radio damaged beyond repair and half our stock of rations missing. This is not the work of the Idrl. If the men are to believe that, however, we must locate and capture the deserters before the spiral of suspicion and paranoia becomes too great. Already some of them are starting to question my authority.