Resonator: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond

by Christine Morgan

  He was terrified but lucid. He remembered everything. He knew where he was and what gripped him. “I know all the places I am, at this moment. So many places. I’m spread so thin. And I know its name. It’s bigger than the world. I know its name,” he said. He spoke the name, then, and the ears of everyone in the room began to bleed, though none of us noticed at the time. He asked that his parents be looked after and he wept, quietly, for everything he’d lost.

  Declan Reese warned us, then, of the things he had seen on his short flight. He warned us of what was out there and what was to come. In that soft, small voice, he prophesied and raged. He begged for the cavern to be destroyed, even as he laughed at the idea that it would make any difference.

  Then, moments before he fell back into unconsciousness, he sighed. He sighed and spoke my name. He wanted to thank me. In spite of the horror of it, he wanted to thank me for putting him up there, in the DreadMoth.

  “It’s the view,” he said. “I can see forever. Everything. Goddamnit, but you can’t beat this view.”

  He thanked me. I heard his sanity crack open as he did, heard that joyful flying boy inside him wail and plummet into the dark. I couldn’t stand it. I quit that day. I’m only here to pay my respects.

  They’ll watch the thing on their cameras, waiting for movement, their palms hovering over the red button set to trigger whatever tiny stinging weapon they’ve put down there, collapsing the cavern. The focus of the project has shifted, I’ve been told, but they won’t shut it down. So much still to learn, right?

  Fools. It knows we’re here. We can be seen now: moths, flapping blindly around a light we can’t understand.

  They’re sealing the silo today. One hundred fifty thousand tons of concrete.

  It won’t be enough.

  DERESONATOR

  Leeman Kessler

  It’s not really a crime to take advantage of the gullible is it? I mean really? I didn’t go out of my way to hurt people. If I hadn’t found these folks, someone else would have and their money would be just as gone. A fool and his money and all that. I got to them first is all, offered them a glimpse, a taste of what’s out there. Am I really a monster for trying to make a little money on the side, to recoup the losses I’ve accrued as part of this enterprise? How was I supposed to know? How could anyone know it would end the way it did?

  Okay, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let me try to go back a bit. You need to know about the Machine.

  The Machine had been in our family for years and everyone knew about it in that not quite sure what to make of it way. Seldom talked about, like Aunt Carolyn’s drinking habit. You know the deal. As kids we were full of questions but they were always redirected or shrugged off by long-suffering adults who knew better than to ask. As we grew up we realized that no-one knew what to do with it or wished to talk about it and so it drifted into pseudo-memory.

  I wouldn’t even have thought of it if my aunt and uncle had been better about checking the batteries in their carbon monoxide detector. After the funeral, we were summoned to go through and pick over what all they left behind, before the estate sale managed the rest. We’re something of a family of hoarders, never wanting to let go of things if we don’t have to, and so we descended en masse. A tragic death is no excuse to let strangers poke and touch our things, after all; there are standards to be maintained.

  It was eerie walking through that musty house that felt barely lived in despite being only recently and permanently abandoned by its two occupants. It had been in the family for over a century and had accumulated quite a collection of curios, collectibles, and other euphemisms for ancient junk. My sisters and cousins were all upstairs politely fighting over furniture and clothes when I decided to go wandering through my uncle’s study. Before my current business, I used to make a handy bundle selling first editions and other rare books as well as convincing folks of the value of less than rare titles. A decent if tricky trade that requires a discerning eye and a lax moral code which I come by honestly.

  Meandering through the study, I found most of the books to be dog-eared and thumbed through all to hell, and uninspiring from a sales point of view besides. Pound for pound, I probably would have gotten a better price for the curtains, truth be told.

  Turning on my heels, I was about to make my way out when I noticed my uncle’s old rolltop desk, scratched and nicked and also unlikely to demand much of a price, but a potential treasure chest of half-forgotten secrets. I never pass by a rolltop desk without giving it a once over.

  The drawers were locked but I keep handy tools for such eventualities, and it wasn’t like the old thing wasn’t already dreadfully abused. After jimmying and prying, I was rewarded with piles of yellowed papers and old bills. Nothing of particular note jumped out at me until I caught sight of a date and noticed the age of these papers. They were from before my uncle’s time, some going back to the 1910s. This encouraged me to dig deeper and that’s when I found the book.

  It was buried beneath some old newspaper at the bottom of the lower drawer. I took it to be another book of accounts, as the first few pages seemed to be numbers and lines all tallied up. When I flipped past them, however, I saw a hasty sketch of something every member of my family would recognize: The Machine.

  I began to read more slowly and it dawned on me that I was holding the key to understanding the enigmatic monstrosity. Here was the original thought experiment that inspired old Crawford to build the thing that now sat, untouched and broken, in the attic upstairs. I pocketed the book and made my way to find the rest of the family, squabbling demurely over chairs in the dining room.

  The Machine became mine with very little convincing on my part. Ever since it had been built and subsequently ruined shortly after, it had just sat up there. None of the family members knew what to do with it and yet no one wanted to get rid of it. Doing so would be an insult to the great patriarch’s memory, and so, like every other piece of embarrassing family business, it was simply left alone.

  My grandmother, oddly calm at the sudden loss of her son, was the only one to object to my suggested claim, on the grounds that she didn’t trust me not to sell it for scrap. I had to swear up and down that I wouldn’t, that my interests were purely in preserving and restoring this piece of the family legacy. Her dry, pinched lips and steely squint let me know she still didn’t trust me, but after securing enough promises in front of unsmiling witnesses that it would not leave the family, she acquiesced, and with her blessing, I was given leave to begin the arduous task of taking apart, boxing up, and shipping the thing to my storage container.

  The next months were a blur of activity as I pored over both the pieces of the Machine and Crawford’s cramped handwriting. His whole theory was about awakening dormant sensory organs, pineal glands and the like. A little research on my part proved the claims to be pure quackery, but there was something to the device, I knew it. I can smell opportunity without the need of some Victorian occult biology to explain it, and so I began to work.

  The machine was ungainly. I realized that the bulk of it was unnecessary. The larger components were largely for power and computational purposes like those giant room-sized computers they used to feed cards into. The critical parts at the core, the ones that seemed designed to actually produce Crawford’s “awakening” effect were rather small and miraculously intact. The gunshot that had rendered the Machine useless had only disrupted the clumsy framework, not the delicate, filigreed mechanism of the core.

  You’re aware we got to the Moon with less computational power than a ten dollar digital watch? My first project was to shrink the whole thing down. I made sure to stash all the tubes and baroque brass so my grandmother wouldn’t curse me throughout eternity, but soon enough I had the heart of the device powered and operating using a rather pedestrian laptop and some lithium batteries. It lacked the old world charm but more than made up for it in functionality.

  The memory of the first time I switched it on is etched into my br
ain. I had Crawford’s excited illustrations and hastily scrawled notes, so when the floating, fluttering creatures came into my view, I only fell out of my chair and didn’t pass out entirely.

  They were everywhere, swimming on invisible currents, passing through objects without a by your leave. I don’t know how long I sat there watching the terrible panorama. It’s not possible to accurately describe just what I saw, but at some point I noted that it felt like swimming in a Petri dish, held captive beneath a microscope. That’s when inspiration struck.

  Here’s the thing: people are already convinced of what they believe and just want confirmation. That’s it. Once you understand that, it becomes a matter of figuring out how to sell that confirmation. Sure, I could have tried to hand this over to some university or the government but what would I get out of that? A bit of time on the talk show circuits, maybe a book, who knows? Truth was, it would have been taken out of my hands by folks who know better what questions to ask. This was too big. I wouldn’t get to be Einstein or Edison. I’d be the poor sap who discovered fire and probably got shoved in it for his troubles.

  So yeah, I didn’t go public. I went into business.

  Somehow I managed to ignore the fluttering things long enough to design and build the Deresonator, although it wasn’t exactly as it would later be advertised. You see, once you flip the switch on in your brain or your soul or whatever Crawford’s Machine did to you, you can’t flip it off. I was seeing these things everywhere. When I ate, when I tried to sleep, in the bathroom. It was maddening. The human brain isn’t prepared for that.

  So, with the help of the book, I figured out just what signals Crawford’s machine was sending out and I inverted them, essentially making a kind of white noise emitter to counteract the effect. This was originally for my own peace of mind but it fed right into the thoughts I was having about how to monetize this thing.

  Hypochondriacs –I’m sorry, folks suffering from Health Anxiety Disorder– are a cash cow. They’re better than alcoholics or gambling addicts. Usually they come from higher income brackets, have an innate distrust of established authority, and are wildly swayed by folks with no credentials but a kind face and a willingness to listen to their woes and tell them that yes, they are right to be so worried.

  It’s also criminally easy to find them. They love to congregate online, share symptoms, and complain about not being taken seriously. When I finally had my office and my business cards, I harvested their names and emails and phone numbers and I set to work.

  Lisa Maple was not my first client. You might think so based on what happened, but she wasn’t. No, the first person to respond to my mail outs was a short fellow named Aaron Marcus. I got his contact information through an online naturopathic group. Classic case. Vague symptoms, constantly changing doctors, feeling belittled and unheard.

  Well, Mr. Marcus certainly found his sympathetic ear when he came in. Right before he arrived, I debated between a suit and lab coat, trying to decide which approach to take before finally opting for the suit. Make this seem more like therapy and less like a rectal exam. You have to cater to the client’s expectations. Some people want to see the white uniform so they feel like they’re not being sold car insurance so I kept both handy depending on the read I get prior to our first session.

  First I had him talk about his problems and what all he had tried. I nodded and smiled all the while, occasionally jotting down a note as the sob story went on and on. When he was done, I leaned over, my brows furrowed in concern and sympathy for this poor man who no one would really listen to, and I touched his arm.

  “I hear you,” I said. “And I can help.”

  Then came the flim flam...

  “Mr. Marcus, how much do you know about illness and germ theory? Do you know how hard it was for people to believe the likes of van Leeuwenhoek and Pasteur? As ridiculed as they were then, think of how far we came once we accepted their work. Now, what if I told you they only had part of the picture and we are on the cusp of an equally miraculous discovery?”

  Eyes wide, Mr. Marcus nodded with great excitement and without realizing it, he stood up and walked with me into the back room.

  It was modeled to look like a dentist’s or an optometrist’s office. Sterile and plain. Familiar, but just discomforting enough to keep the client on edge. There was a chair in the room that housed the newly built Machine, its Edwardian spideriness hidden from view. Inviting him to sit, I told him to relax, to open his mind, and then I turned it on.

  His screams were profound and understandable but I kept near him, talking him through the experience as he saw the creatures flitting through the air, their cilia and organic dendrites brushing against him, unfelt but seen. Oh, so very seen. Here before him was the cause of every unexplained pain and twinge or bout of fatigue or anxiety. He wasn’t crazy, he was just blind, and now I had opened his eyes. Then came the reveal.

  “You can make them go away.”

  I held out the Deresonator to him, the size of a cellphone and just as unobtrusive. He took it in his palm, unsure of what to do, so I pushed the button for him, and as suddenly as they appeared, they all went away.

  And here is where the lie came. I admit it, I lied. Truth in advertising is as realistic as honesty in parenting; we all know it but for the sake of society, we pretend otherwise. I told him as I told all the others that the Deresonator sent out a field that made the things go away. “Think of it as a cosmic citronella candle on your person all the time, keeping you safe,” I said.

  Well, once he had seen the disease, he had to have the cure and the sale was made. Okay, I’ll confess that I also lied about the creatures somehow being responsible for his ailments but who knows what they do? It’s a working hypothesis and really what I was selling was peace of mind. As someone who had seen the things, I knew all too well how much it was worth to be rid of them.

  You can judge me all you want but I didn’t invent this scam. We’ve been making up problems and selling people the solution for millennia. You’ve got your handful of religions that called it sin and had their ready-made salvation for you. The Scientologists perfected the sales pitch with their engrams and their thetans and no end of fancy gadgets. Even Lysol knows how to cash in on mysophobia in a major way. The trick, as all good salesmen know, is to get the client to keep coming back.

  You see, I constructed the Deresonator to be my own personal antidote to the truth lying just beneath the surface of my eyeballs but it wasn’t until later that I realized it would be the major money maker. My first thought had been to charge folks to see the bugs in the first place, but that’s not a sustainable business model. Truth seldom is.

  But show them the bugs for free and then hold out the cure? That’s ready money right there. And like the good folks who sell printers and razors, I knew the real money would be in refills. Costly refills. So that’s what I did. I sold Deresonators, and with them, temporary peace of mind.

  Mr. Marcus left with his little pocket sized device and walked out a new man, assured that all his woes were behind him. Soon enough, as his tiny friend’s rather unique battery wore down and the bugs began to return, he came back with wads of cash and fear in his eye, and with a sympathetic smile, I made them go away again. Thus, a booming business began.

  Miss Maple was probably my tenth customer. She came to me after being referred by a Chelsea Darling who I had helped about a month prior and man, was she a mess. I had a feeling she would be trouble but I also couldn’t help but notice how well she dressed. If she ran in the same circles as Miss Darling, then she could be an absolute whale and was I right.

  Unlike the others, she was reticent to talk about her issues. All she said was, “You can make them go away?” I wondered if Miss Darling had done most of my sales pitch for me. Licking my lips, I assured her that yes, I could. Escorting her into the room and placing her gingerly in the chair, I turned on the device.

  Her response was unlike any of the others. Instead of screaming or fainting o
r begging for me to make them go away, her only response was to widen her eyes ever so slightly. “I’ve never seen them awake,” she whispered and I even saw her reach out a hand as if she wanted to stroke one of the creatures.

  I kept my own Deresonator on at all times, a prototype without the built-in faulty battery life plus an emergency back up, so I never saw what my clients did when their vision was opened to the creatures. Still, I remembered their terrible undulations and flickering, unearthly forms well enough to be amazed at her almost calm recognition of them.

  She turned back to me as if remembering I was still in the room and said, “You can make them go away? Forever?” Still put off by her calm demeanour and trying to remember my script, I told her that the Deresonator did keep them at bay but that like anything it would wear out with time and need replacing. She nodded and handed me her heavy black credit card. I completed the transaction and with that she walked out with the device, a look of absolute serenity on her face.

  Now, aside from my own personal device, the Deresonators have a built in lifespan of about six to nine months. Enough time for folks to feel good about their purchase but not enough time to keep me out of business. It doesn’t shut down right away either, just begins to fade so the illusion of the creatures’ absence peters out gradually. Generally speaking, my clients come back sooner rather than later, only too happy to have me swap out the device with a “new and improved” version and off they go, feeling safe and secure in a cold and dangerous world. Some try to brave it out longer in an exercise in frugality but not that many, and those seldom hold out for long.

  Miss Maple came back in less than a month. “They’re back.”

  Confused, I replaced her unit, thinking I must have produced a lousy model but sure enough, she returned again and again. Nothing I gave her worked longer than a month or two at a time. She was growing frantic and I was getting concerned. On her fifth return, she wouldn’t stop screaming.