by Steve Wands
The sky continued to darken, but in an unfamiliar fashion. It darkened from the corners of the wavy horizon and up toward the center of the sky. The moon seemed to grow with the oncoming darkness, almost pulsating. The moon grew to a size that should have been impossible, like the moons often depicted on comic book covers to backlight a central figure, but this wasn’t printed on a pulpy piece of paper. Everything was changing color, becoming bluer, greyer, and duller. The huge moon did not create any extra light, and it seemed to have no effect on the changing colors.
The howling he heard earlier grew louder and more raucous. It sounded violent, unnatural. Grady grew nervous and began to jog back toward home. When he turned back, the landscape had changed; there were cliffs and trees popping out at random, a mist was rolling in and there were sand dunes of a deep red and bright orange variety. A loud, window-rattling wind joined the howls and created an ominous soundtrack to the nightmare Grady found himself in. Grady picked up his jog and turned it into a run. He heard the fluttering of wings. He ran harder and the fluttering gained on him. He was soon running with a swarm of bats. They didn’t attack him or bite him and the bats quickly passed him by. He didn’t stop running, if anything, he picked it up another notch. He was terrified and needed to be home in the comforting proximity of his frozen parents.
The wind continued to pick up, blowing the mist closer in, now blanketing the street. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to see the street at all, and with the gaps, that could be lethal. He ran up a sand dune that was covering a car and jumped down on the little platform of a hood that was still visible. His home was in sight, now. The sun was extinct. The sky was oozing black, dripping night over the twitching stars. Howling was carried on the hectic winds. The sounds filled the air; it was a symphony.
Grady’s foot landed into what should have been his lawn, but when he looked down, the blades of grass looked like long maggots or sun-bleached earthworms swaying back and forth. Grady dry heaved and continued to do so until he was inside and behind the closed door to his home. He calmed his breathing but his heart was still pounding in his chest. His head rested against the door. His eyes were closed, and the hair on his arms was standing at full attention. The howling grew more hectic. Grady gathered his nerves and forced himself to go near the bay window in the living room. His shaky hand reached for the soft white curtains draped in front of the windows. He pulled it to the side and moved his head closer allowing him to peer out the window. The mist had choked the street and must have been about four feet high. It looked more like wet cotton than any mist Grady had ever seen. He could see the silhouettes of bats as they erratically flew in and out of the shape of the moon. The wind shook the windows and did its best attempt to push the house on its side.
Diluted shapes could be seen in the mist. They were huge, bulking, humanoid forms moving in a way that could’ve been a march, but it was more like a football team getting rowdy before a big game. Large disproportionate arms hung nearly to the street. Bulbous calves disappeared into the cover of mist. Grady couldn’t be certain from the distance, but he thought he could see tufts of hair on the beasts. The howling certainly came from these creatures. He left the window and ran to the light switch. He ran through the house and turned off every light he could find. Some of the lights didn’t follow a reality Grady grasped and therefore could not be turned off by any of the switches. Grady slowly crept back to his post at the window. As he did, he could see the creatures moving through the mist.
His assumptions had been correct. He did see hair, and as his jaw moved closer to the floor, he realized that what he was seeing was indeed a pack, and a large one at that, of werewolves. Grady pulled the curtain closed and crawled over to his family. He sat between his parents and could feel his sister staring at him. He refused to look at anything other than the ground. He stared so intently at the carpet that his eyes began to make patterns out of the fabric. After a few minutes the howling grew faint as the creatures continued onward. Another set of minutes ticked—not that Grady could tell—he hadn’t seen a working clock since all this began. They either spun out of control or barely at all. Digital clocks blinked random times and often only partial numbers.
“Help me,” a voice called. The voice seemed to have no point of origin. It was as if the voice was in his head.
“Help me,” the voice called again. It sounded familiar but distorted.
He could feel his sister’s eyes again, but they hadn’t moved. He heard—no, felt the voice again. It was clear now—the voice did belong to his sister. He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her right in the eyes. He had never been the serious type. He was always a clown. He was in his mid twenties and didn’t want to keep a job. He made every excuse in the world to do as little as possible. He still lived at home and his mother had still been doing his laundry, at least until recently. The look he gave his sister was the most serious thing he’d ever done. It was gravely serious.
“Help you how? Talk to me. Please, Lucy, c’mon.”
“Fix the world,” she said.
The whisper hit his mind like a sledgehammer. The impact of those three little words knocked him to the ground. He sat, staring at her. He tried to talk to her, tried to get answers but he couldn’t hear her anymore and maybe she couldn’t hear him. He was lost before, now he was utterly and profoundly lost with the added weight of the world on his shoulders.
Lucy was only seven but she was sharp as a dagger. She didn’t waste time talking nonsense like most kids her age. In many ways she was everything her brother wasn’t. She needed her big brothers help, but this wasn’t fixing a bike seat or gluing one of her toys back together. She asked him to help her by fixing the world. He couldn’t even wrap his mind around the concept let alone figure out what to do or where to start. It’s not like there’s a manual on world repair. Was it the world that was broken? Was it reality? Was it time? Either way, Grady was certain of only one thing; he didn’t know what to do.
Grady left Lucy and returned to the window. His thoughts were lead weights. Outside the window the sand dunes now towered over the homes. Hanging from these massive dunes were spiders the size of dogs and hairier too. How their webs were able to stick to the sand without being pulled down by the weight of these beasts didn’t matter, this world worked differently now. Beyond the sand dunes were what looked like mountains made out of glass. They were stunning and even beautiful. It was quite possibly the only peaceful thing about the nightmarish landscape. The phone rang and Grady jumped at the sound, hitting his forehead on the windowpane. It continued to ring till he picked it up.
“Hello,” he squeaked out.
“Hello,” echoed back a voice more alluring than his.
“W-who is this?” Grady asked.
“I can see you on my television. I’ve been calling numbers for days trying to find yours. I did it!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I have numbers in my head, phone numbers and addresses, I don’t know how or why—but they’re in there,” answered the woman’s soft voice.
“Uh, okay—you’re still not making any sense,” he said slowly.
“I’m coming over,” she said with a snap.
Before Grady could say anything, the woman on the phone began crawling out of the television. As she did this, the television emitted loud static noises and it sounded like it was rapidly changing channels. She crawled through feet first, her legs hung out from the television screen with a pair of beat up black chucks leading the way. Her jeans were of the designer faded variety and led to a slim and almost curvy figure. She now stood in front of the television wearing a black t-shirt with a red hooded sweatshirt over it. Her eyes were big and blue and hiding behind a thick pair of framed glasses. Her hair was blonde and messy, she looked nervous and tired but managed to smile and wave her hand. She was cute and despite Grady’s usual carefree composure, his expression let her know it. It had been days since he’d seen anyone moving let alone a girl and
a cute one at that. He raised his hand in a half wave. The fact that a girl just climbed through his television didn’t bother him at all, with what he’d seen over the last hour or so it was a welcomed visit.
“Uh, hello,” he stumbled out.
“Hi,” she said as her eyes fixated on his family.
“I’d introduce you, but they aren’t talking to me,” Grady smiled.
She giggled and blushed, his sense of humor still worked even if the rest of the world didn’t. She crossed the distance between Grady and herself and held out her hand.
“My name’s Kara,” she said.
“Grady, nice to see—meet you,” he blushed.
“You too.”
“So, what the hell were you talking about?”
They started talking, and did so for hours, exchanging accounts of what the past few days had been like. She explained to him that her head was full of numbers; phone numbers and addresses were the only ones she could decipher—the rest just seemed to be gibberish. She told him how she discovered her television could be used as a portal. If they had this conversation days earlier–it would’ve been in a sanitarium. Grady told her about the werewolves and spiders and she hit him back with the creatures that came out of the lake. They both encountered the sand dunes and the gaps. Their conversation was cut short by a loud thunderous noise that made the ground tremble. The noise reminded Grady of a subway but amplified a hundred fold. The few lights that were on, flickered, as did the television. Picture frames fell, the house rattled and the noise subsided. They both stared at the door waiting for it to burst open. A minute passed and they hadn’t moved. A quick, polite knock-knock-knock stirred Grady to his feet. He slowly approached the window, peeking from the behind the curtain, he gasped. Outside was a huge train made of what looked like dinosaur bones and leather, at the door was the conductor. The conductor was oddly tall, lanky, and thin. At first glance he appeared to be normal but on closer inspection he looked more like a mummy, almost a skeleton if it weren’t for the dried up flesh that clung to his old bones. Knock-knock-knock.
“What do you want?” Grady yelled from the window.
The conductor slowly turned his head—not his body, and looked at Grady. He had black holes for eyes and no mouth. The conductor lifted his arm and pointed a long bony finger at the enormous train that took up the street and sidewalk, still his body didn’t move—only the appendage necessary to interact. Grady’s head pounded as Lucy’s voice reverberated in his mind, “go,” she said. Grady looked at Kara as if she was going along with him, her eyes gave him an answer before he asked the question.
“Call me if you ever come back,” she said as she crawled back into the television.
He nodded and opened the door, the conductor towered over him but stepped aside still pointing at the train. Grady cautiously stepped out and headed toward the massive vessel. It was disgusting and creepy, it’s leathery surface looked slick under the night sky. The conductor stood behind him, practically on top of him. Grady noticed he smelled like old books—really old books. He pointed at a set of stairs that led onto the train car. He looked back at his home and regretfully boarded the beast of a train. Once on board he took in his surroundings, the interior was vastly different; it was reminiscent of a very elegant parlor from the eighteenth century. The people and creatures on board were very much an amalgamation of animals—familiar and alien—and humanoid, some with very nonhuman attributes. One creature had a mouth that went down the middle of its head like a zipper and beady little eyes like marbles toward the lower end of its mouth. It was wearing some sort of suit and smoking a pipe that looked like a bone, the smoke was yellow and glittery. Another creature—it had to be female—looked burnt, the blackened and blistered kind of burnt. An older fellow toward the back of the train car stood out like a fly in a bowl of broth. He had white hair, a monocle and was wearing a bright shirt with palm trees on it. The man looked like he was going on vacation to Monster Island. Grady stopped staring and found a seat. The train started moving and was surprisingly smooth and quiet, the little noise it did make was a pulsating heartbeat-like sound. Chug-chug-chug-chug. Grady looked out the window to his right, which was not visible from outside, it bothered him not understanding how this world worked, or didn’t work. He watched the sand dunes rise and fall as the train gathered speed. He would catch a glimpse of a half buried car or home. He watched as a group of spiders skittered away from the approaching train. His eyelids began to flutter, and though he tried to fight it, they eventually closed and Grady fell asleep.
The conductor was lurching over Grady, his long boney hand was wrapped around his shoulder and the mouth-less man was shaking him awake. Grady opened his eyes and jumped, forcing his body into his seat to create as much distance as possible. The conductor raised his hands up slowly, making it as clear as he could, that he meant no harm. Grady relaxed and realized that the train was empty and had come to a stop. He looked back at the man with no mouth, unsure of where to look he looked into the blackened holes he had for eyes expecting some sort of gesture and receiving none. The conductor led Grady off the train. The tall man pointed to a woman, a woman much like himself, holes for eyes and lack of a mouth. The woman was holding a piece of torn board, maybe cardboard, maybe not, with Grady’s name on it. It was written in what looked liked red chalk by the quavering hand of a child unsure of his or her letterforms. Grady uneasily walked over to her. The woman moved her arm and hand in a follow me movement that was unnaturally stiff. She then turned and headed toward a long corridor.
It was dark and moist, silent and seemingly empty. Grady wondered where the people from the train had gone. The walls of the corridor, upon closer examination, looked as if they were made of skeletal remains and golden semi-transparent wax. He could clearly make out skulls and ribs, a few spines and then bones that didn’t look human at all. He saw a large jaw with pointed teeth, skulls that could’ve belonged to wolves or cattle and plenty of remains that he couldn’t link to anything he’d ever seen before. Fear stuck him in his stomach like a fistful needles, his palms were sweaty and his heart raced. They came to the end of the corridor. There stood a large set of double doors, deep red and at least twelve feet high, the kind of doors you’d see in a fantasy painting of a castle. The woman’s long bony hand wrapped on the door knock-knock-knock, the sound echoed past them and ran down the corridor. A moment passed and then the doors parted and opened inward. A man that could’ve been Vincent Price smiled from behind the door, he had a smoky beard and penetrating eyes. Though he had the appearance of age he also carried himself with the strength of youth. He stood straight and looked built of sturdy stock, he could’ve been a lumberjack but his glasses told Grady otherwise.
“Ah, you must be Grady! Come in, come in,” said the man.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Grady asked him.
“Nothing more than speculation. As for why you’re here I called for you,” the man said as he led him into the room.
“And why is that?”
“A trade, a proposition, an opportunity—if you will.”
“I don’t have anything to trade,” Grady said.
“Quite the contrary, Grady, I lost my apprentice, you lost your family—I can give you back your sister in exchange for you taking the place of my apprentice.”
“You have my sister?”
“No, not quite. Her soul, her essence is stuck in the Soul Garden.”
“What the fuck is that? What are you talking about?”
“Please, Grady, calm down. This is not my doing it is simply what happened. It’s no one’s fault, except for maybe God or the Devil. By chance, while searching for my apprentice, I came across your sister, she said you would help her.”
“So, you’re using her as some sort of bait to get me to help you, is that it?” Grady grew angered.
“Not at all young man! To free your sister is not something I can do alone, only blood can free blood. I am however offering you my services in
exchange for yours, you would never make it there alive on your own.”
“Take me there. Please.”
“You’d sign your life away so easily, without so much as a question about what you’d have to do for me?”
“It doesn’t matter, I’d do anything for my little sister.”
“Ever kill anything, Grady?”
“No.”
“Good, there’s nothing like some on the job training!”
The man, who later introduced himself to Grady as being George Waggner, grabbed a backpack from a workbench that was several feet from the door. He tossed it to Grady who barely caught it. He grabbed a similar one from underneath the table and slung it over his shoulder. They walked out of the room and down the corridor, the woman with holes for eyes followed behind. They boarded the train and the conductor was there to greet them. Waggner led the way toward the rear of the train, passing car upon car of interesting passengers. He opened the door to a private room and put his bag down, Grady followed behind him and did the same. They sat, Waggner looked at Grady and Grady looked back and forth from his gaze to the window and beyond. Grady felt awkward by Waggner’s direct and dissecting stare. Waggner picked up on this in an instant but continued the game for his own jollies. After he bored himself of watching Grady squirm, he opened his pack and began explaining its contents, which were identical to those in Grady’s. He showed him a set of silver daggers and knives of varying lengths, he explained how to use each one and that they were only to be used on werewolves. He then pulled out a round stone, roughly the size of his palm, and told him “this stone can suck the moisture from any water-based creatures, wet-devils and such—dries ‘em right up, just stay away from anything much bigger than yourself.” Grady took his own rock out of the bag and held it in his hand. It was gritty and felt like chalk. Waggner did this till the pack yielded dirt and lint. He explained the weaponry for Stone Beasts, Bloodsuckers, Mind-eaters, Leekers and the rest of the creatures they could possibly run into on their trek.