by Anthology
Hrano picked a random point on the planet and issued his final order. Computer, plot a collision course.
At that moment, they attacked.
His craft shuddered violently. The brilliant blue planet and the gray satellite orbiting it turned black. His canopy was no longer a window to the cosmos. All he saw now was oblivion.
Struggling to understand what was happening, he countermanded his previous order and instructed the craft to orbit the planet.
Computer, status report.
The quantum computer’s response was a choking gurgle. Energy drain. Light and heat loss. Guidance system failure in five minutes. Life support failure in six minutes.
Hrano needed to think fast.
Computer, calculate a reentry vector.
***
Both man and machine climbed the steep mountain’s rocky crags. The moon’s waning crescent shined on a crystal-clear night. A biting wind swirled down from the peak, overwhelming Benedict with a bone-cold chill.
Reaching the summit, the sentinel turned to Benedict. “You must follow my instructions for this attempt at communication to succeed.”
Benedict nodded.
A small, rectangular indentation appeared on the sentinel’s previously smooth left arm. A rod extended out of the groove. The sentinel grabbed the object and handed it to Benedict.
“You will need this artifact to protect me. I do not think they can harm you, but they will destroy me if you fail to act.”
“Who?”
“Chaos. They are what lie in the darkness. They rule by ruin and delight in decadence. They are the ancient enemy, as old as the cosmos itself, seeking to impose their own entropic order on the universe.”
“Are they a threat to my kind?”
“Perhaps,” it answered cryptically. “Though your race is still too primitive for them to harm. It is only when you become capable of reaching the stars that they will become a significant threat.”
“How can I defeat them?”
“You cannot. They are entities that can neither be created nor destroyed. But you can keep them at bay with this rod. Just point it in their direction. Remain ever vigilant. Just protect me long enough so I can complete my final act.”
“Wait. Your final act?”
“Yes. Your stories about Constantine and Christ have inspired me. I shall sacrifice myself so that another may live.”
“No!” Benedict screamed as the sentinel rested its back on the ground. It extended its arms at right angles to its torso, forming a cross.
“And if I fail?” Benedict asked in anguish.
“Have faith.”
The sentinel’s metallic skin became translucent and radiated a brilliant white light.
***
Hrano’s quantum computer was down to its last two minutes of power. Blackness choked his vision. Space’s bitter chill leached into his bones, as his craft traded heat for the computational energy required for navigation.
Then, as suddenly as the attack had begun, a funnel of darkness swirled away from his vessel and spiraled toward the blue orb below. His vision restored, Hrano saw a radiant white light on the surface, shaped like a massive cruciform.
Computer, head toward that beacon. The ship hurled toward the surface, chasing the darkness.
***
The burst of light transformed night into day, nearly blinding Benedict. Monks from the abbey below added to the commotion as they sought to determine its source. The townspeople opened their doors and windows to watch the miracle on the mountaintop.
As he held vigil over the sentinel, a swirling black mass descended upon the mountain like a phantom locust swarm.
Benedict reeled from the massless forms confronting him. The dark ethereal entities expanded and thinned in an apparent attempt to douse the sentinel’s light. Benedict sprung into action, aiming the sentinel’s rod at the infernal cloud.
The wraiths shrank from the ancient weapon’s rays of white light. Yet they persevered, rending into smaller pieces like ghostly shards of shattered crystal suspended in air.
The black shards coalesced around the signal, forming a speckled dome above Benedict. They floated, pregnant with malevolence then attacked.
He waved the rod in one direction after another. Yet some of the dark droplets struck home. After each successful strike, the dazzling light faded ever so slightly and the sentinel howled.
***
The friction from Zada’s atmosphere buffeted Hrano’s craft during its rapid descent. As his craft sped through wispy clouds illuminated by the immense cruciform, a solitary peninsula stood juxtaposed against a dark blue sea.
***
The shards of darkness were too numerous. The sentinel’s light was faltering. Soon it would fade forever.
Yet Benedict fought on, despite the seeming futility. He also prayed for God’s deliverance.
He struggled until he collapsed and lost consciousness.
***
Benedict woke floating above his Italian homeland.
Is this Heaven? he wondered.
Not Heaven as you understand it, but a heaven nonetheless, a thought answered.
“Where am I? What happened to my friend?” he asked.
A voice behind him answered, “You’re on a ship that sails amongst the stars.”
When he looked over his shoulder, he thought he was in Hell. The creature behind him had a red scaly face. It was tall, slender and had two spindly arms. Its skull was much larger and angular than a human’s. Its jaundiced serpentine eyes unnerved him, but its ram-like horns disturbed him more. Benedict was certain he was in a demon’s presence, so he prayed.
The being reassured him, “Fear not. I’m an ally. You saved the last remaining link to my long-dead race. Without you, I would never have found the sentinel, and my people’s fate would have forever been a mystery.”
“The sentinel was your friend?”
“I never knew it, but it served my people for millions of years. It also awaited my return, for I am the last. When I die, my race dies with me.”
“What’s your name?” Benedict asked, his voice wavering.
“I am Hrano Hro-san of Rada, the planet your stargazers call Mars.”
“I’m Benedict, and I’m sorry I couldn’t save the sentinel.”
Hrano shook his head. “You did everything you could. It expended its remaining promethium to send the signal. You defended the sentinel long enough for that signal to reach me. For that, I owe you my life.”
“How did you survive for so long?”
Hrano was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure. The sentinel’s neural networks suggested a vortex opened in space-time, sending me millions of years into the future.”
“Neural networks? Space-time?”
“Neural networks constitute the sentinel’s mind. My people constructed the sentinels so we could access a sentinel’s memories. This one’s memories described a rift that opened and transported me far forward in time.”
“I see,” Benedict said.
“While I was away, the Koronians destroyed my civilization by preventing my people from using technology. My race had become so dependent on it, that most starved when it stopped working. In a final desperate act, my race had scattered the sentinels throughout the solar system to save our culture.”
“Koronians?”
“Koronians are the wraiths that attacked the sentinel. They feed on antimatter.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’ve likely retreated to the shadows. They won’t bother your kind until long after you develop trans-atmospheric flight and reach the stars.”
“What will you do now?”
“The sentinel’s memories suggest your civilization is undergoing significant instability. I hope to pass the lessons of my race on to your species, though I must do so from the shadows. You see, the sentinels once appeared as I do. Humans destroyed many of them out of fear.
“Since I’m made of flesh, I cannot alter my
appearance as your sentinel did, so I must remain hidden. Only you can know of my existence.”
Benedict contemplated Hrano’s words. “I accept your offer. Please, take me home.”
***
Hrano and Benedict carved a tomb for the sentinel into the walls of the Subiaco cave.
“I wish I’d known this sentinel. It’s done so much for both our peoples,” Hrano said.
“I will sorely miss it.” Benedict bowed his head in prayer and then looked up at Hrano. “What will become of your spacecraft?”
“It’s no longer of use to me. It lacks the power to leave your world, so I will likely jettison it.”
Benedict scratched his forehead. “Just how much energy does it have left?”
Hrano crossed his arms. “Roughly enough promethium for several hundred more flights within Earth’s atmosphere. Why?”
“Do you have enough to revive the sentinel?”
Hrano’s eyes brightened. “You’re a wise man. I’m just ashamed I didn’t come up with the idea myself.”
***
Later that evening, Hrano extracted a hand-sized reddish metal bar from his spacecraft. He opened the sentinel’s chest compartment and replaced a dull pink bar with fresh promethium.
Benedict whispered fervent prayers for Hrano’s success.
Hrano stepped back from the tomb and waited in silence with Benedict.
The sentinel opened its eyes. “Benedict. It is good to see you again. What took you so long?”
Hrano and Benedict exchanged incredulous glances.
“Your Christ sacrificed himself and then rose from the dead, did he not?” the sentinel asked.
“Yes,” Benedict said.
“My survival required that I direct Hrano’s ship to me by exhausting my promethium reserves and forcing myself into hibernation. That ship had enough promethium to power ten sentinels. I calculated that one or both of you would reach that solution with a ninety-two point one five percent probability.”
Hrano and Benedict burst into laughter.
***
Over the next several decades, Benedict built a network of monasteries that helped shepherd Western culture through the Dark Ages. The Radan and the sentinel counseled Benedict and his successors into the Age of Enlightenment.
Three centuries after the Enlightenment, humanity walked across the moon’s surface and planned a manned voyage to Mars powered by the first antimatter drives.
Unbeknownst to humanity, dark and ravenous forces gathered in space’s cold abyss.
Chandler's Hollow(Short story)
by Sean Patrick Hazlett
Originally published by Perihelion Science Fiction
“The demons come at night to eat souls,” Lily said.
The child’s dull jaundiced eyes, greasy blonde hair, and rotten teeth betrayed a neglect bordering on cruelty. She rocked on a rickety swing suspended from rusty chains. The chains dangled from a decayed wooden frame in the weed-infested backyard of an old, broken down log cabin. White oak, ash, and walnut trees swayed and creaked in the chill morning autumn breeze, shedding a riot of burgundy, gold, and russet leaves.
Something about Chandler’s Hollow was off. It was as if the people here were out of time, belonging neither to the past, present, nor future.
“Have you told your mother?” Jenna said, scratching her head. Wisps of her curly brown hair fluttered to the earth.
“Momma sees them too. They sound like cadas in the night.”
“Cadas? Do you mean cicadas?”
It was tough to understand Lily’s accent. It sounded Amish, but different. More archaic.
“Yeah, cicadas. But they are bigger than you and me.”
A stringy matron with straw-colored hair shambled out of the hovel and approached Jenna. The woman was pretty enough to win a Meth America pageant.
“Who’s your friend?” the woman asked Lily.
“This is Miss Williams, momma.”
Lily’s mother rested her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m Daisy. Is Lily telling you about the brood?”
“The brood? No, she was talking about demons,” Jenna said.
“They are the same thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve heard the stories. Our world is not what it seems. It changes. We feed this change by casting off what we are.”
An odd response. Jenna dismissed it as backwoods banter. “How long have you lived here?”
“Long as I can remember. My mother passed this house to me. And her mother passed it to her,” Daisy said.
“Is Lily’s father around? I’d love to speak to him if he’s available.”
“Father? She has no father. I’ve never been with a man. One month my moon blood stopped. Nine months later, Lily was born. Same as my mother and her mother’s mother.”
Jenna stifled a laugh. She knew rural America had its share of yokels, but these folks were nuts. She decided not to press the issue. She needed the material for her article.
“Can you tell me anything about the cult house rumored to be out here?” Jenna said.
The two clammed up. It was as if Jenna had flipped a switch. One moment Lily and Daisy were lucid; the next, wallflowers.
“Can you at least tell me where to find it?”
Their eyes bored into Jenna’s as though Daisy and Lily were one person. In unison, they said, “The shed will find you.”
***
Professor Wendell Winthrop Chilcott hunkered behind a beige oaken desk in an office teeming with walls of warped books. Wearing his velvet smoking jacket, pleated pants and bright burgundy bowtie, he was a fossil of a man. It was as if he were preserved in formaldehyde at the turn of the nineteenth century and only recently revived. His wispy white hair was combed over his glistening bald pate. The room reeked of mildew and mundungus.
“So, you’re the reporter with an itch for seventeenth century deeds,” he said, his fleshy jowls rippling like a rooster’s wattles. He chomped on a corncob pipe.
“I am,” Jenna said.
“Out of academic curiosity, what led you to the world’s foremost historian on seventeenth century American legal history?” Chilcott said in a lilting American patrician accent reminiscent of William F. Buckley.
“Well, Professor Chilcott, I’m trying to understand the transfer of properties in Chandler’s Hollow. After scanning sales histories on Zillow and Redfin, I’ve discovered a cluster of parcels that hasn’t changed hands in at least ten years.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“I’ll get to that, Professor.”
“Well, you’d best make your point. I’m not getting any younger, and I have a class in thirty minutes.”
“I searched both the New Castle and Delaware County Departments of Records. The only deeds for these plots stretch back to the mid-seventeenth century.”
Chilcott nodded, smiling. He belched laughter. The fat on his bulbous midsection undulated in waves. “For whom do you work?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Jenna flinched, then hesitated. If she told him the truth, he’d probably end the interview.
“You work for a tabloid, don’t you?”
“Well, that depends on…”
He cut her off. “Oh, you most certainly work for one. I won’t say another word until you agree not to quote me as a source in whatever cretinous rag you call a newspaper. I have a reputation to uphold.”
“I promise.”
Jenna’s New York Times article had cast a long shadow. Securing a position at The Weekly World Journal had been her only option. Between her Harvard undergraduate degree and graduate studies at Columbia’s School of Journalism, she’d amassed over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt. In this economy, she was just happy to have a job.
Chilcott gazed at her. His fingers formed a wrinkled steeple. “It wasn’t always called Chandler’s Hollow, you know. German colonists first settled the area in the mid-seventeenth century. Outcast from the Swedish
settlement of Fort Christina, they’d been among the first Europeans to set foot in the Delaware River Valley.
“To the colonists’ chagrin, Lenape tribes had already populated the region. It didn’t help that the Lenape had a matrilineal society where hereditary title passed from mothers to daughters. It was a cultural arrangement that baffled most Europeans. The only area the Lenape left unclaimed was Chandler’s Hollow. They’d avoided it because they believed it was cursed.”
“How do you know that?”
“Delaware’s only cave is in Chandler’s Hollow. In that cave, there are ten-thousand-year-old wall paintings advising people to avoid the area.
“Of course, the Germans ignored the Lenape warning, and built a ring of homes and mills. At the center of the hollow, the colonists erected a structure that conspiracy theorists call the ‘shed’ or the ‘cult house’, depending on which quack you interview. Many of these structures still stand today.
“After the community’s establishment, no one heard anything from the colonists again. But over the years, people have reported sightings of oddly-dressed women on those properties, but never men.” Chilcott crossed his arms against his chest, looking at Jenna expectantly.
“Can you elaborate on these sightings?” she said.
He glowered. “If you want to hear about that nonsense, you’d best meet with Doctor Eli Rosen while you’re still at Princeton. He works in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. One of the last quacks on campus who was associated with the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, he fancies himself an Assistant Professor of Quantum Parapsychology.”
“Quantum what?”
He rolled his eyes and then sneered. “Good day, Miss Williams.”
***
Disappointed she hadn’t been able to connect with Rosen the day prior, Jenna entered Nick De Genova’s office the next morning to give him an update on her story. It was an assignment that Jenna had only taken on reluctantly, but for some reason it now resonated with her.
“You had a visitor,” he said in a thick Philly accent, frowning. He ran his ringed fingers through slick coal black hair that seemed unnatural for his age.