The archaeological department at Dunham University was one of the best, and they had proven it a hundred times over. Not just with the bones of an occasional dinosaur or even with the displays of Egyptian artifacts they’d managed to beg, borrow, or steal over the years, but with every expedition they sent out, it seemed they came back with one success or another. Even with the ones they sent into areas that didn’t seem very likely.
The latest expedition had sent back seventeen crates of new materials and the guys at work in the building were carefully moving everything around and taking pictures. Some of the new treasures would be loaned out, to be sure, but others would go into the halls of the museum and be seen by God alone knew how many people. Carl got to see all of them. How much better could it get?
Carl didn’t have anything to do with the actual work of cataloguing and deciphering. He just watched them and basked in their enthusiasm. When they were done for the night, he’d clean up the mess, same as he always did. Custodian wasn’t for everyone, but he enjoyed the work. Also, he got to talk with people. He learned a lot from them.
He was getting up in years, but that didn’t mean he was willing to work just anywhere. His pension from the Harper Textile Plant was good enough to live on, if he had to, but he liked the work. It kept him out of the house and the challenges of his failing health weren’t enough to stop him from mopping a few floors. Retirement wasn’t really something that was in his genetic makeup. He preferred to stay busy and he liked learning about new ideas and ancient places.
He didn’t learn nearly as much in the public bathrooms, aside from the messages he scrubbed off the walls—he didn’t know who Lisa M. was, but apparently she was a kinky little thing and always willing to have a good time—and the phone numbers he painted over when some asshole decided they had to write notes in permanent marker. He did the toilets first. After that, the rest of the job was easy.
The iPod on his head was playing through the Motown greats. He was listening to Aretha Franklin demanding respect when he finally finished with the bathrooms and moved up to the new acquisitions areas. Carl made sure he was very careful when it came to dusting and cleaning the offices and examination rooms. Too many of the things in there were fragile and had survived too much for him to end their existence with a careless gesture. History had to be respected.
When he got to the offices of Dr. Chambers, he leaned back against the wall and stared at the latest additions for a few moments. He didn’t know all of the details, only that the acquisitions had come from somewhere near the Dead Sea. Miriam Chambers didn’t go on expeditions anymore, but as the head of the Archaeology Department, it was her job to examine everything that came back and catalogue the pieces. She was very excited about the latest finds, so excited, in fact, that when they’d come in, she’d started dancing. The only witness was Carl, and he promised to keep her secret, even if the promise was only made in jest. She wasn't a stodgy old fart and didn’t mind sharing her enthusiasm with the rest of the world. That was what made her the right person for the job as far as he was concerned.
Her office was well lit, and cluttered with the new stuff. Carl swept the floor carefully and paused often to look at the pieces. Most of them didn’t look like much, just clay jars and old carved images, but he knew that was because Dr. Chambers hadn’t started restoring anything yet, either.
Carl didn’t know too much about the Dead Sea, only that there’d been a lot of claims about old scrolls found in the area that were part of the Bible or some such. So far as he knew, no one had ever decided for once and for all if the papers were actually important or just old.
Carl set his broom against the wall and leaned in closer to look at some of the items on the table. One caught his eye; a small wooden bust that time had stolen most of the face from. He could see an eye clearly, and that was about all. The eye looked feminine, but it was hard to tell with some of the older stuff. Close to the base, he could see a split in the wood. There was something poking out of the broken seam, but he couldn’t quite tell what it was. Cloth, maybe.
How long could a piece of cloth hold together in the ground? He knew some of the mummies had linen wrapped on them, but it was normally old and brittle as a cobweb. He’d heard some of the doctors around the place talking about it taking days and even weeks to unwrap a mummy if they wanted to preserve everything properly.
A dizzy spell hit him as he looked at the small bust. Not a big one, but enough to warn him that he better stop leaning down the way he was.
Carl stepped back from the table when he almost lost his balance. He loved his job and didn’t feel much like joining the ranks of the unemployed, thanks just the same.
His foot hit the broom behind him, which promptly shot forward and down, smashing into the edge of the workspace and sliding along the side. Carl let out a gasp and reached for the descending wooden stick, but he wasn't fast enough. The handle caught the bust he’d been looking at and shot it across the table. It staggered and rolled and danced a merry little mocking jig before it finally fell toward the floor on the far side of the workspace.
In his youth, when he was a damned good runner, Carl could have saved the artifact. In his fading years, he knew he was screwed. He ran as fast as he could but heard the wooden sculpture strike the floor with a loud clatter.
By the time he reached the impact site, he knew he was too late. The bottom of the wooden image had broken loose and spilled out a dark blue bag. The air in the room, always kept dry to avoid allowing bacterial growth in the artifacts kept there, did nothing to help his situation. Even from a dozen feet away he saw the pale, gray cloud of dust rising from the bag and the tear along the side of it.
“Oh damn, oh hell, oh shit, oh damn!” Carl picked up the bag and carefully set it on the edge of the table, looking at the dusty substance that spilled from it. A fine powder, almost as light as the air around it, and every breeze lifted it into the dry atmosphere.
He placed the satchel down as carefully as a man might set a newborn baby in a crib to rest. That didn’t stop more of the powder from rising into the gentle air currents. After a frantic look around, he settled on an empty glass jar as the best possible receptacle and scooped what he could into the container.
He just managed to close the lid on the jar before the sneezing fit got him. The fine dust teased his sinuses and set him off and before it was done he was sweating and dizzy.
Worse still, he was seeing black spots in front of his eyes. The few times in the past when he’d blacked out had all started that way. Normally he woke up a few minutes after the black spots with his head ringing and a couple of people fretting over him. He guessed he should be glad no one tried to roll him instead.
Carl slumped back into the closest chair and looked at the mess he’d made. One antiquity broken, another hidden treasure scattered across the room. Oh, sure, he’d caught a lot of the powder, but even now the dust motes from inside of the pouch were twinkling in the light from the overheads, flashing and nearly as shiny as a million tiny stars whenever they turned the right way. His hands were covered with more of the stuff and he lifted his left palm up to his eyes until he could make out the details of the lost treasure he’d just spread across the room.
The powder was incredibly fine, and on one side seemed as reflective as a mirror, while the other was dark as pitch. The minuscule flakes looked like very expensive dust and nothing more. Maybe he wouldn’t lose his job over this after all. He’d captured a lot of it in the jar, hadn’t he?
Still, whatever the stuff was that was currently coating his hands, it was probably valuable. Why else would it have been buried inside of a wooden figure in the middle of nowhere for the last few hundred years or more?
He thought about that while he went back to the small-carved box it had come from and examined the piece. The bottom had cracked and fallen free and to make matters worse the face of the piece, no matter how badly damaged before, was now broken in three separate places.
&nbs
p; A thousand years on the planet and he’d fucked it up in no time at all. Carl lowered down to his knees as gently as he could and started gathering the fragments together. His job was a goner for sure, but he could at least try to make life a little easier for Dr. Chambers before he gathered his personal belongings together.
He closed his eyes for just a moment and felt a tremble run through his body.
In the dark times before the universe was complete, He walked among the forming stars and changed their courses to suit His needs. Creation was draining, but necessary. After an eternity of solitude He needed so much more.
Carl opened his eyes and shivered. Now he was having delusions. Still, he felt a little better and had a task to finish. Ten minutes later he’d managed as best he could, seeking and finding the smallest splinters and carefully placing them on the table. He wrote a note for the doctor explaining what had happened to the best of his ability and knowing no matter how many times he apologized, it wouldn’t be enough.
The dust had mostly settled by the time he was done, but the fine powder still lingered on his skin and worried his nose with almost every breath he took. Carl stood carefully and moved toward the door to the room. Any work he was doing was done for the night, at least as far as the new acquisitions were concerned. Somewhere down in the basement level, Arthur Dennison was probably wondering where he was. The security guard was a buddy, but after what he’d just done, Arthur wasn’t going to be happy. If it had been Danny Thompson working, Carl might have been worried. Danny was a little too gung ho. Odds were good that if Danny’d been on duty he’d have called the cops first and bothered with procedure later.
He closed the door carefully as he left and then cursed under his breath. The cleaning supplies and the cart he hauled them with were still inside and that would never do.
In time the lights of the stars alone were no longer enough of a distraction. He created worlds to orbit the suns in the heavens and then He granted life to some of the planets. When even that was no longer enough, He created other beings like Himself. Their forms were shaped by the very life forms that tread the worlds blessed with life and these Godlings were granted power over some of the worlds and some of the aspects of the worlds. Some were petty and destroyed their charges. Others aspired to lift them to greater heights. A few foolhardy children attempted to create Godlings of their own and were punished for their foolishness.
Carl shook his head and went back in a second time, moving slowly. Seemed like every time he blinked his mind decided to play tricks on him. His breaths felt labored and his skin chilled. The room was exactly as he’d left it, and he moved to gather his supplies.
The jar on the table shifted by itself. It slid close to half a foot across the surface of the work area, knocking aside a ceramic cup that went over the edge and shattered on the floor. Carl stepped over the broken clay fragments and grabbed for the jar, his hands carefully wrapping around the cool glass. The dust inside the container swirled, spinning along the inside like a wave of water. The force it moved with was unsettling.
Carl held on tightly and stepped away from the table, afraid of having anything else break. Deep inside the glass container he could see the pouch that had held the dust, now captured within the fluid grip of the gleaming powder that raged inside the container.
Carl shook his head. What he was seeing was impossible. The stuff seemed to have a mind of its own and he knew it couldn’t, because it had been sitting inside the same wooden edifice for longer than he’d been alive and if he had to place bets, it hadn’t moved in all of that time.
The damned dizziness came again, and he stepped away from the table even as he fought with the glass jar of sparkling dust. It seemed determined to break open and spill its contents and he couldn’t allow that to happen.
The jar jumped in his hands, bucked and struggled to get away from him. The sparkling powder didn’t just run in circles anymore, but seemed to beat at its glass prison like an angry fist. Carl bit back a frustrated yelp and squatted closer to the floor. If it was going to fall, he couldn’t stop it, but maybe he could prevent any breakage.
He’d barely set the container down before it bounced into the air and struck him across the jaw. The last time he could remember being hit that hard was when he was twenty or so and tried getting closer to Travis Hardy’s girlfriend. Travis had put a kibosh on that notion mighty fast. The stupid jar was doing a pretty good impersonation, too.
Carl stood up and started backing away. Whatever he had unleashed would just have to do its thing. He was too old to risk getting a broken jaw, especially seeing as he was about to be unemployed and everything.
The jar pulsed, that was the only way he could think of it. The sides of the glass container swelled and flexed before finally shattering.
The fine powder exploded into the room, filling spaces where no person had been able to reach for a very long time and covering almost everything with its substance.
Carl breathed in a gasp of air and drew the particulates deep into his lungs.
The universe was changing, and somewhere along the way, He’d lost control. There had been a time where His every thought was rewarded with action and the people on a thousand worlds were grateful to Him for their existence. These days they doubted His existence. Other godlings had come into favor and the prayers spoken in desperation were no longer aimed toward Him but to the very children He had created. He was old, and very tired.
And He was Angry. Pride is known not only to man, but to God as well. Did He not create the universe? Did He not give the people of countless worlds life and the ability to think? Upstarts! Imposters had taken His rightful place and destroyed the harmony He had created!
Some were still faithful. To them He granted one last wish, one last favor. To them he gave proof of his existence. The flesh of his body was withering, dying, but he could grant them power with that flesh if they were wise enough to use it. He shed his skin even as he prepared to shed the universe around him and made to the faithful an offering of the power it still held.
Carl sat down hard on the ground, biting his tongue from the impact. The images filling his head made little sense, but they held a reality that was unsettling. He could see the office, but at the same time he could see… what? The Universe?
His heart pounded in his chest, and as he slowly stood back up, the dust in the air around him slashed at the air like a hungry blade.
“What do you want from me?” He spoke the words through trembling lips.
If the dust wanted anything, it failed to clarify the matter. Instead the column of powder drove itself against him, shoving him back toward the office wall. Carl staggered and tried to keep his balance, but the only thing that stopped him from falling again was the force of the dust wave that pushed him. Impossible, that was the only word that worked for him. The dust had fit into a cheap specimen jar and now there was a tower of it looming over him and shoving him against the plaster wall and the small window that led to the outside.
More images assailed him, but now they made even less sense. He saw the cosmos, all of creation inside of his head and the information overload was incapacitating. He didn’t worry about the crushing weight that pinned him to the wall and window. He barely felt the pain of his bones bending to the force of the raging storm inside the room. He was lost in a sea of spectacular images and the emotions of something far beyond his kin.
The window shattered, spilling volumes of dust into the air and taking portions of Carl with it. His head smashed into the window frame and cracked open. His teeth were jammed into the wood hard enough to leave trenches where they struck. The dust kept spilling out, a tidal wave of glittering powder that both took Carl’s life and sanded away the features from his shattered head.
By the time Carl’s lifeless body slumped back into the room the dust had vacated the premises. Though the night was calm, a wind gathered and scattered the substance across the college campus and into the air around the town.
> * * *
A footnote on what I’ve been trying to accumulate. Almost nine months to the day after the last ever gathering of the Church of Answered Questions, Jack Chambers and Leigh Ann Wilmont Chambers gave birth to a beautiful young daughter named Faith. They were married exactly three days before the birth took place. It was a civil union performed by a justice of the peace.
That day saw several unusual events. First, there was the windstorm, a freak occurrence that hit Dunham like a tornado. The winds were estimated to reach over 175 miles per hour, cutting a deep gash across the map of the town.
The point of origin, as far as anyone could tell, was the history museum on Red Fern Avenue. From there the devastation wrecked fifteen houses, one shopping center, eighty-seven cars and a sanitation truck. The property damage levels were close to fifteen million dollars, though only one life was lost.
One meteorologist likened it to having someone trip a tornado as it was moving through town. The path started out with a very narrow point of origin and spread to cover two city blocks before it inexplicably narrowed down to a fine point again. The trees along the path were shorn of all foliage, the grass was stripped from the ground and at its worst, the force of the wind was strong enough to cut through asphalt and concrete.
The unexpected storm ended at the Dunham University Medical Hospital, and as far as anyone could figure out, judging by the minor structural damage to one window, the tail end of the windblast cut up the side of the building and broke one small pane of glass on the fourth floor.
Interesting point to note: the window ledge to Maternity Ward Room 7, one of the rooms where the actual birthing of children takes place. The room was occupied at the time.
Faith Elizabeth Chambers was born in that room at almost exactly the same time as the single pane of glass was damaged. Three separate sources claim to have heard the glass break. Aside from the small fragment of the safety glass that was found on the ground of the room, there was no indication of anything at all occurring by way of damage. No projectile or cause of the broken window was ever located, though one of the janitors pointed out that there was an unusually large amount of dust in the room when he cleaned up the mess.
Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction Page 36