by Tim Curran
“What the … Sarah?”
The wail came again, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end at the sound.
Lloyd bounded up the stairs, shoved the bedroom door open, and as the wail terminated, his blood ran cold at the sight of the woman issuing it.
Her jaw slack, eyes half-lidded, Sarah’s pallor was deathly white.
“Sarah!” he cried and rushed around the bed towards her.
Her body twitched weakly, her flesh feeling clammy to the touch as he took hold of her limp hand.
How can this be? She was restrained when the Program went full exposure.
“Sarah, Sarah?” He lifted her by her shoulders, staring into glazed eyes.
She sagged in his hands, unconscious, comatose, infected.
Now
What preparations to enter a world of chaos, a world of insanity? Lloyd fastened the buttons of his jacket up to his neck, took a deep breath, and stepped through the front door.
The street was empty. Not of detritus, for the flotsam and jetsam of humanity covered the length and breadth of it, but there were no people, just their bloodstains, their abandoned knives and clothing.
The early morning sky was dark, filled with black cinders of whatever conflagration had consumed the country overnight. If there were beings there, Cthulhu’s kin and followers, their flapping progress was camouflaged by the ashes of the past.
Lloyd took his usual route. Turning right, he passed neighbors’ houses, many with cracked windows and doors kicked through, and quickly reached the junction. The same evidence of carnage, and carnal rage, to his left and right, and, at the bottom of the street to his right, stood a flesh pylon, its tip moving, transmitting. His eyes lingered on the pylon for some seconds before he turned away and crossed the street.
More bloodstains, more vandalized houses, and before he reached the wasteground, he saw two more pylons there, flanking the path he was to take. Lloyd wanted to stop, turn back, but no; he had to see her, try and bargain for Sarah’s return.
He entered the familiar scenery, walking between the pylons while staring straight ahead, his handiwork feeling more of a bane now than something to be proud of. Noises ahead paused him in his tracks, and Lloyd flinched at the sight of things once human, now naked deformed travesties, crawling away to hide beneath dead bushes and sections of collapsed building.
I wonder, did they reach the pylons only to find them full? Lloyd sniggered then stopped, his mood souring as he thought of Sarah. He continued towards the point the change usually happened, eagerly anticipating the mist.
Where is it? As he walked, he feared he’d reach the fence forming the termination of the wasteground without the transition even happening.
A white wave rolled beneath his feet, and Lloyd froze mid-step.
I’m here, he thought, and turned on his heels, expecting to find a world shrouded in white. Instead, he found the mist only covered the ground, but still, there she was, the shifting, female figure, no longer silhouetted and fully visible in the half-light.
“Sarah?” he said, and took a stumbling, confused step forward.
Her body was in a constant, spasming state of motion. A mouth appeared in the right place, then three mismatched eyes, one overly large and bulging, another blood red, and the final one, Sarah’s. They resolved themselves on her forehead, and she spoke.
“We no longer need the bridge in your case,” she said in a voice not Sarah’s, but rather in the vibrating tone he knew from before.
“Sarah,” Lloyd repeated, and all strength leaving his body, he fell to his knees.
“It was always you?” he asked hesitantly, and his eyes filled with tears.
“We thought it better to use someone you know,” the Sarah-thing said. “We’re not completely heartless.” She stepped forward, breaching the gap between them.
“Not …” Lloyd sobbed, confused and frightened.
“Shush,” she continued, “Now that you’ve served your purpose as a human, it’s time you joined the Program.”
Crying quietly, he felt a shifting hand stroke his head.
“Pull yourself together. You have work to do.”
Lloyd raised his head. Sarah was Sarah again. With the knowledge that his mind had finally snapped, he nodded and said, “Promise me I’ll be in the same pylon as you.”
THE HIDDEN
Scott T. Goudsward
Thomas strolled behind the circle of chairs, hands clasped behind his back, brown eyes taking in everything and everyone. His steps were slow and deliberate to let the people gathered know he was there for them and standing behind them when they needed his strength and support. It was the close of the meeting. The group had been meeting there for years, in the basement of the museum. First as an AA group, then cancer survivors, and some twenty years later, still meeting. Different faces, different issues; everyone needed something.
The seated people took deep breaths and looked at each other, giving slight smiles and acknowledging head nods. The smell of dust, mold and burnt coffee hovered over the meeting place. Thomas had secured the room ages ago, and although the cast changed, he was constant. The current group was the last one he’d watch over.
And then there was Andrew.
Andrew was new to the group, not fully accepted or accepting. He stood in the corner, next to the stained six-foot once-white folding table and sighed. He kept a cigarette pinched between his fingers. His left eye twitched occasionally, out of nervousness or a physical thing, no one knew, or asked; it wasn’t their business. Thomas glanced over, made eye contact, watched as Andrew’s eye ticked, and he turned his gaze back to the group.
“Thank you all for coming,” Thomas said and sidled between two of the metal folding chairs in the circle. “We all appreciate your words and concerns.” He shook hands with each person in the circle, male or female. There were smiles and eye contact and that moment of physical contact for a show of strength. “Next week, there is no meeting here because, well, you all know why.”
Thomas gestured with his arms like a symphony conductor, and the gathered rose, folded their chairs and stacked them neatly under a window crowded with cobwebs. Soft whispers filled the hall. Andrew stood and watched as they took their coats from the rack, pulled packs of cigarettes from their pockets and checked their cell phones for missed calls and texts. They all filed softly from the room, the whispers falling as they passed him in the corner. When they had gone, Andrew cleared the table of cups, napkins, and plastic spoons. The sugar and creamer pods went into a box for the next group. Finally, he slid a tray of mostly untouched cookies into a plastic storage bag.
“Something bothering you tonight, Andrew?” Thomas smiled that charismatic smile which allowed him to make that walk around the ring of chairs week after week: strength, confidence, stability. Something that everyone in the group savored.
“Nothing more than usual.”
Thomas lifted the antiquated coffee-maker off the table and Andrew folded it and set it against the wall next to the chairs. Andrew stopped for a second to watch pairs of feet above on the street march back and forth through the dusty cobwebbed window. The window lined with webs reminded him of a giant monster’s eye from a dream.
“Not much time left,” Andrew said.
“Before?”
“Sunset.” Andrew pulled a coat from the rack and slid it over his arms. Through the material of his shirt sleeves, the dark lines of his tattoos that ran from shoulder to wrist showed for a moment. “See you later, Thomas.” Andrew placed the cigarette from his fingers in his mouth, and Thomas nodded in response. Then he pulled on his sweatshirt, covering his own array of dark green tattoos, obscured by the sheer shirt he wore.
Kathy stood in front of her metal monstrosity and smiled. She felt vibrant and excited from the meeting. The old barn she used for a workshop was alive with blaring music and strings of colored lights draped from the rafters. Up in the hayloft was a cot, small desk, and her laptop, for those long nights. Her
“art” didn’t pay the bills. Working at the auto-body shop downtown did.
She flipped up the visor and killed the flame on the welder. It looked ready to her, but the joints needed to be weight-tested and there was no one in town foolish enough to climb her sculpture, except for her. Kathy let the heavy gloves slide from her hands and land on the floor boards. Before the farm went bankrupt, the barn housed a dozen horses for breeding and training. The floor, once covered in hay and manure, was now saddled with plastic tarps. Burn scars like pock marks on a teenager’s face dotted the floor from fallen sparks.
To the naked, untrained eye, it looked like a mesh of metal, steps and rungs, and shelves, all from salvaged metal. To her it looked like the gleaming exoskeleton of what might be a massive bird. Interspersed through the form were small platforms and ladder-like rungs used for climbing and standing on when welding. She knew they’d hold her weight, but she needed someone heavier. The farm was a wreck; no one worked the fields or herded cattle anymore. The corral was overgrown and the duck pond long dry. No one bothered her; that’s why she had chosen this place.
Soon enough the barn would be full of people, gazing and gawking at her work. But first she needed to test the weight limits of the small platforms and add the leather. She carefully filled saddlebags with diving weights, slid the bags over her shoulders and climbed.
Ethel hummed while she rocked in her chair. Ella Fitzgerald crooned from a small radio on the table. Her fingers dexterously sewed at the tough green material in her lap. It was dark green and leathery, a mask for her grandson Andrew. The stitching was good and strong; it would last him a long time. As long as he needed it for.
Tony whistled at the girls walking down the street. One turned and smiled, the other flipped him off. He blew them a kiss and continued smoothing out the cement on the new sidewalk on his hands and knees with a flat trowel. His truck rumbled in the parking lot near him, churning the cement inside. There were wooden stakes driven into the corners of the molds and yellow safety tape woven between them. Still, some little asshole would scrape his initials in it, or some douchebag with a dog would leave prints in it. The back of his shirt rode up a little, exposing the bottom of some elaborate body art.
He stood to survey his work and smiled at the smooth cement. He had half a mind to put his own initials in the squares. It’s not like anyone would notice them. He walked into the parking lot and climbed into the cab, pulled a sandwich from his lunch cooler and took a bite. He checked his mirrors and watched the wrecker pull into the lot next to him. He smiled and swallowed the sandwich.
“What’s up, Rusty?”
“Nothing. What do you think?” Tony whistled at the fiberglass molds on the back on the platform of the truck, where wrecked cars normally sat. “You sure that shit is going to dry in time?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Rusty spat. “I have a schedule, unlike the rest of you lot.” Tony slid from the cab of the truck and went round the back. Rusty walked around to the front of the parking lot and watched the passing cars. Tony moved the cement chute to the first mold and, when it was in place, grabbed a spade from the truck and let the cement flow out into the molds.
“You sure you can get these off the back?”
“Less talking, more working.” He looked at his watch, then the flow of cement. “Thomas has been planning this a long time. It won’t be me to make him late.” Rusty looked towards the museum and the tall spires added on in the 1960s and smiled.
Mary slid her glasses higher on her nose and pushed her mousy hair behind her ear. She pushed the book cart through the library, over-reactive and cautious of every creak and minor squeal of the wheels on the carpet. She flashed false smiles at the people who looked up at her as she walked by. Unlike the others in the support group, she’d never gotten inked: her skin was too thin, the chance of infection was too high.
She maneuvered the cart round tables and through aisles without thinking, the pathway ingrained in her mind. She’d walked it too many times to be anything else but habit at this point. Mary stopped at the elevator and waited patiently for the car to arrive. She fixed her sweater and pushed up her glasses. She looked at the display to see where it was and absently ran her fingers along the spines of the books.
“Going upstairs?”
Mary gasped and stepped back putting a hand to her chest.
“Sorry, Lynne, didn’t see you coming. Guess I was someplace else.”
“It’s okay, sweetie. You didn’t take the keys for the Trustees room.” Mary smiled and took the offered keys as the elevator door opened. She stepped inside and let the glasses slide down her nose.
The second floor was mostly dark, underfunded and underused. She switched on the lights stepping from the elevator. Mary checked the security cameras: they were off, another causality of a crippling budget. When the elevator doors rolled shut, she pushed forward. The Trustees Room and Special Collections were only open a couple days during the week, when there were volunteers to man them.
She left the cart outside the door to the Trustees Room after unlocking the door. The books on the cart could wait. Even though she knew she was alone, Mary still locked the door. The room was a basic conference room: oval table, comfortable chairs—much more so than those the general public sat in. Glass display cases lined one wall, filled with artifacts from the city’s history. The other side was a wall of bookcases locked behind heavy-meshed metal doors. You could look through the gratings to see what the books were and that was about it without the keys. The same keys warming to Mary’s body temperature clenched tight in her hand.
She walked over to one of the locked doors and slid in the warm key.
Andrew stared at the street as he walked, keeping his twitchy eye hidden away from everyone, even though most everyone already knew about it. He turned into the small diner and took a booth near the window. Not much later a plate of French fries and a chocolate milkshake were set down in front of him.
“Having second thoughts?” Thomas asked, sliding into the booth across from him.
“I did get this giant tattoo on my arm. Can never wear short sleeve shirts at the office again.”
“I know there’s a lot to think about and a lot to worry about.”
“Only if you consider what we’re doing.”
Thomas slid his arms across the table, reaching for Andrew. Andrew pulled back, almost dumping the plate of fries.
“You’re part of us. We need you, we need your strength.”
“I know what I signed up for,” Andrew said. He stood, took a last drink of the chocolate shake, and headed for the door.
“We’ll see you at the barn, then.” Andrew nodded and walked out. Thomas watched him walking away through the diner window, then pulled out his cell phone and picked at the fries while waiting for an answer.
Kathy watched the lights of the wrecker as it pulled away from the barn. Rusty needed to park it someplace “out of the way,” which on the abandoned farm could be pretty much anywhere. Knowing him, he’d still find a way to block her in. The two molds were in place at the base of her “artwork.” She smiled, looking it over again, up and down. It had held her weight climbing up and down the structure several times.
This was her masterpiece. What she’d be remembered for. The work for the local galleries had been hard work. But this would raise her to the highest ranks of the best sculptors in the world, in history.
“So this is it?” Rusty said coming back in.
“That’s it.”
“Don’t look like much. Except maybe a scaffolding truck exploded.”
“Fuck you, Rusty.” Rusty laughed and rubbed her back. She stepped away grimacing.
“Still sore?”
“Yes, I just got that ink a few days ago.”
“Want me to rub some lotion on your back?” He winked at her and licked his lips.
“I’d rather roll in salt, thank you.” She sighed, looking at her creat
ion. “It won’t hurt much longer.”
“You know it’s your calling, don’t you?”
“Yes, Gram, I do.” Andrew took the mask from his grandmother.
“Try it on.”
“Really?”
“I want to take a picture,” she said. “You know how long I worked on that.” She looked at the mask in her grandson’s hands. “Your father used to sketch something like that. I bet I have his old books around here someplace.”
“Thomas said we can’t, not before the meeting tonight in the barn. It can only go on the head of the person it’s meant for.”
“Well, fine, then.”
Andrew leaned down and kissed his grandmother on the cheek.
“What was that for?”
“In case I never see you again.” He stopped on the way to the door and stuffed the heavy green mask in his coat. “The mask isn’t for me. It never was. Dad used to tell me about my destiny. And although I’m part of this lunatic scheme, I’m not the focal point.”
“There was no right time for this moment,” Thomas said walking around the barn. His flock gathered around him, save for one. “No solstice, no equinox, no harvest moon or harmonic convergence. I know in most things, in history books, in the movies and stories, there’s been an eclipse or a Hunters’ moon.” He raised his arms to those gathered. “The time is right. Right now.”
The barn doors opened and every head gathered turned to watch Andrew as he skulked in, eye twitching in overdrive. He smiled nervously at the group and joined in the circle. They parted as Thomas walked to Andrew and hugged him.
“Have to be honest, I was worried.”
“I think my Gram would be really disappointed if I didn’t come.” He reached into his coat and pulled out the mask, looked at it in his hands, green and leathery, and handed it over. “Kathy, mind if I get an overhead view?” She shook her head partially in disbelief; no one had thought Andrew would show up for this. They had all known his father as children, all respected him, and all mourned his death.