Unholy Dimensions

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “What’s the military presence for, then?”

  “What do you think, Pal? To make sure that thing never does come through to this dimension, or any other. Because that’s what it wants. Some day we might know enough about it to send a weapon through, to kill it. But we can’t risk that now. We can’t risk tearing the hole wider. We can’t risk making that thing angry. Some day we might learn how to mend the veil. But for right now, we’re just here to learn. And to be on guard.” Bell moved to the door. “I have another meeting now, with Dr. Locklin. But we’ll talk again.”

  “Wait,” Pal said. “The other things I remember...the other scraps. They weren’t dreams, either?”

  “No,” said Bell.

  “The city beneath the sea?”

  “They aren’t dreams,” Bell said, and turned and left the room.

  -3-

  Dr. Locklin. Did Bell know about him and Dr. Locklin? That once, Dr. Locklin was to have been another Dr. Sexton? After marrying Pal Sexton?

  Sexton had learned that five years ago, biologist Juliana Lynch had married fellow researcher Peter Locklin. He had seen Juliana twice since his return. He knew Peter was still with the project, but he had stayed out of Pal’s way thus far, either out of respect or guilt or fear.

  Juliana had come to see him the second day of his return. She had been so concerned, so gentle. So polite. It had all been unbearable. The others had already prepared him for it, because he had asked for her right away upon his return. He had been warned, but it didn’t help much...

  She had been polite. He had been cold. An hour after she left him, alone in his infirmary bed and hooked up to a ring of cruelly voyeuristic scanners, he finally and without warning broke into wrenching sobs of self-pity and an almost unfathomable emptiness. But he made himself stop after less than a minute. He must hold on to what was left of himself.

  He had been gone three years before she married, he reminded himself so as not to hate her. And yet, it all seemed like yesterday to him, the two ends of his memory spliced together to hide the gaping chasm where all the rest had been uprooted.

  During those years, he’d learned that one of his cousins had been killed in a hovercar accident. It was a good thing Pal hadn’t owned a dog, he joked to himself humorlessly. Finding out that Spot was dead would probably unhinge his mind altogether.

  As with the premature graying of his hair, only where Juliana was concerned did the yawn of the missing years come home to him – cut through his numb daze with real pain. He knew there was desperate, impotent emotion that wanted to howl out in fury and anguish from the depths of that canyon where his life had been severed. But he kept the howl inside him, like a raging demon locked behind a door.

  He couldn’t wait until they were done with him here. They had mapped his brain, taken what they needed. Hadn’t the meeting with this John Bell had a feeling of finality, been a kind of dismissal? In any case, he had no desire to resume his researches here on R’lyeh. He did not want to have to see Jule again. Did not want to see the churning dark ocean under that heavy purple sky again...

  “They have a resemblance to plankton,” Bell said, watching the monitor. Across the large screen moved two distinct animal forms. One floated, drifted with little lazy spurts. The other slithered, wriggled with rippling cilia. They were translucent, grayish. The cilia glittered silvery in the microscope’s light. “Are they single-celled?”

  “Plankton aren’t single-celled,” Juliana Locklin chuckled softly. “You’re thinking of protozoa...”

  Bell turned to face her. He said nothing.

  Juliana flushed. “No, they aren’t single-celled,” she answered, her tone growing more austere. “Superficially, they put me in mind of Earth’s nematodes, which also come in diverse forms...they’re a group of microscopic worms. Some favor a marine environment, while others dwell in soil or can...infest other animals as a parasite.”

  Bell nodded grimly. Not for the first time, he took in Dr. Locklin’s prettiness. It disturbed him that he could be distracted by something so trivial as one woman’s prettiness when matters of cosmic importance weighed on his shoulders -- it was further reminder of how very small humans were. But it didn’t help that the doctor reminded him of his ex-wife; both had a kind of mysterious sadness in their nearly-black eyes. Bell hoped for her husband’s sake that this woman was more loyal than his wife had been...and then he thought of Pal Sexton, with an illogical little stirring of resentment for the doctor’s husband.

  Juliana Locklin was a small, slender woman, with almost child-like features, very white skin and very dark eyes and hair -- which was a crazy mass of curls badly bound up in a frazzled burst of ponytail. It seemed to express her very personality. She was British. So was her husband, who was blond (artificially, Bell believed), good-looking in a boyish way, a little beefy, wearing a thin platinum beard. Bell addressed the both of them...

  “Do these two forms represent two sexes?”

  “We can’t determine that from scanning,” answered Mrs. Locklin, her accent both mannered yet darkly smoky. “And we’ve witnessed no mating or reproducing.”

  “Are we looking at full-grown creatures here, or a larval stage of something?”

  “We haven’t determined that yet, either. All I can say is that these animals are not native to R’lyeh. At least, not R’lyeh in this dimension.”

  “When Pal collapsed on that beach,” Peter Locklin continued for his wife, “he was carrying thousands of these things in his tissues, in his blood. It took us five teleportation sessions to filter them all out of his system.”

  “Can they be killed?”

  “Yes. The filtering process killed most of them -- though it should have worked on the first try. We’ve also destroyed them with very intense heat, various toxins. They have a high tolerance to cold; they can be frozen, but revive when unfrozen.”

  “Are you absolutely certain that Sexton isn’t carrying any more of these things?”

  Something in John Bell’s eyes must have made Juliana afraid, because her voice was shaky when she said, “Are you thinking of tossing Pal into an incinerator, Agent Bell?”

  He said nothing. He looked again at the monitor. “Ever since I was told about this situation, I’ve been afraid that the Spawn would come through as titans. An army of giants. But this is what they intended instead. To hijack their way here...to hide and stowaway.” He faced Peter Locklin. “You’ve learned all you need to know about them for now. I want the rest of them destroyed.”

  “What? But we have them securely...”

  “We can’t take foolish risks.”

  “They’re an unknown species!”

  “And they’ll stay that way, if I say so. I’m not here to argue with you, doctor, but to order you. You can replay your vids, study your scans. But I want you to destroy every last crawling speck of these things. Today.”

  The two doctors Locklin exchanged looks, but neither protested further.

  Pal and Juliana sat at what had once been their usual table in the spacious cafeteria, one wall of which was nothing but windows looking out upon the mindless churning sea. The primitive crab-like flying things that dipped at the waves screeched like tortured gulls.

  Had she selected their favorite table on purpose? Subconsciously? Or had it become hers and Peter’s table, now?

  She drank tea, he a large flavored coffee. They obviously didn’t feel comfortable eating in front of each other, although it was lunch time. And what Juliana had to admit to him would not have gone along well with eating. Before this, Pal Sexton had not been aware of the parasites that had been carried in, and filtered from, his body.

  She launched into it with little small talk, as if the small talk might be harder for her than this revelation.

  Pal did not berate her for keeping it from him. But he asked, “Do the others know you’re telling me this?”

  “Yes. I had permission. I volunteered to be the one. Otherwise, Bell would have done it, and I find him to be a b
it of a fucker.”

  “Well, he realizes how dangerous this thing is. It obviously has to do with what happened on Earth while I was gone...these beings that almost got through, and all the people they destroyed.”

  “He believes they’re the creatures that the Coleopteroids and some other races have worshiped for generations, as gods. They actually have tried to call these entities through...”

  “I saw one of them,” he breathed, dropping his gaze to his coffee.

  “I know.”

  “They are like gods.”

  Juliana flinched as one of the flying crabs swooped down at the window but pulled up to avoid a collision at the last moment, fluttering up out of sight. “We need to find out why you were there all that time. Whether you were alone, or whether...”

  “They had me. I know it. All that time.”

  “If that’s so – why eight years? What would they have been doing for so long?”

  “Planting those things inside me. And then maybe waiting for conditions to be right to return me...the right alignment of our respective dimensions.”

  “Why not let you return in the pod?”

  “Maybe it was damaged. Or maybe the parasites wouldn’t make it through that way. Or maybe they wanted to hang onto it, in case they could ever make use of it in coming through themselves, some day – if coming through inside my body hadn’t worked.”

  “Peter’s destroying the last of the specimens right now, under Mr. Bell’s very watchful and distrusting eye. While they were both thus engaged, I thought it would be a good time to talk.”

  “Thanks for telling me everything,” he muttered.

  “I wish we could have told you everything sooner, but...”

  “I understand.”

  “You are very understanding, aren’t you?” Jule, as he’d always called her, said in a lower voice. Did he dare interpret sadness in it?

  “One has to accept what one can’t change.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the ballsy young scientist I used to know.” She tried a smile.

  “Yeah. Well.”

  She sipped her tea. He stole a glance back at her as she was looking out to sea. Time had been good to her. Much of her doll-like, childish beauty had taken on a becoming, more mature quality. Her endearing awkwardness had become grace. Her slim tendoned neck, pointed nose, slightly thrust jaw in profile were elegant, agonized him. This subtle yet profound transformation intimidated him. He hoped it was her natural evolution, and that Peter couldn’t be credited with it. Might he even believe that mourning might be partly responsible?

  Still watching the ocean, she said, “You were gone two years, Pal. We all thought you were dead, long ago. Then...Peter and I gradually drew closer. And a year later, whilst on Earth for a bit, we married...” She turned back to him.

  “I told you,” he said blandly, “I understand.”

  “I...,” she began.

  A klaxon whooped to life. Emergency lamps up near the ceiling spun, swirling red beacons of light.

  “What is it?” Pal said, as both he and Juliana bolted up from the table.

  She unclipped a device from the belt of her skirt, thumbed keys, studied a readout. “Oh dear Lord...”

  “What?”

  “It’s something with the specimens...”

  -4-

  Pal nearly had to trot to match Jule’s brisk, clacking walk as she sought to contact her husband on her remote phone. “He isn’t answering,” she husked, and suddenly broke into a run down the corridor. Pal tore around a corner to keep up with her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled. “If containment’s been breached you could get infected with them!”

  “I have to do what I can!”

  A young tech ran past them in the opposite direction. Pal called, “Hey!” over his shoulder, to find out what the tech might know, but the man vanished around the bend in the corridor behind them, and Pal couldn’t afford to go back after him – he had to remain with the madly racing Juliana. Pal put on a burst of speed to catch up with her. She was afraid for her husband, he knew. And he was afraid for her.

  As they turned another bend in the corridor, they heard the crackle and patter of gunfire somewhere ahead, and both faltered clumsily to a stop, Juliana unconsciously gripping Pal’s arm.

  One of the soldiers in the military security unit that had been assigned to the base in Pal’s absence appeared around the corner, and leveled his multi-barreled killing engine at them. Juliana gave an involuntary cry, and Pal took an involuntary step toward him as if he had a chance of opposing the man, but the soldier recognized them as allies and his voice came over a microphone from the beetle-like helmet he had donned.

  “Get out!” he boomed at them. “Hurry...back off...go!” He waved his arm violently, glanced over his shoulder down the branch of corridor from which he had just emerged. They couldn’t see what he saw, but whatever it was, it inspired the black-garbed warrior to fall into a crouch, swivel his weapon around, and open fire. Hot gas flashed blue from several muzzles and the air rattled.

  “Let’s go!” Pal shouted, seizing Jule’s wrist and pulling her away. She didn’t resist, however.

  The lights went out in the corridor.

  It took only a fraction of a second for the emergency power to kick in, and a series of small pale lights dimly illuminated the hallway, but it was still as if they had plunged into a cavern lit only by a fungous glow. As he and Juliana retreated, Pal tossed a look back at the soldier, whose gun still sputtered.

  He saw the soldier leap forward into the air, out of view. It was an unnatural movement. It was more as if something had seized him around the throat and forcibly jerked him off his feet, but it was too gloomy and quick to see for sure.

  But there was no mistaking the rustling, hissing sound of some great mass squeezing its bulk through the narrow corridor, just around that bend. Coming this way...

  “In here!” Juliana said, falling against a door. She, too, knew that they were in the path of something terrible, that they might not be able to outrun it. She opened the door to a botany lab, and Pal crowded in after her. They shut the door as quietly as their nerves would allow, and sealed it closed with a keypad. But a long, large window in the lab faced directly out into the corridor, and the two of them ducked down below it so as to be out of sight to whatever might come.

  In the half-dark, they squatted low to the ground, their panting and throbbing blood nearly deafening them to the whispery sliding sound of approach. Whatever it was, it came slowly, but it came. Pal looked at Jule, saw her watching his face with dark eyes bulging wide. They didn’t dare speak. Then, a faint shuffling sound became audible to them. But to Pal, it had more the sound of a bipedal creature – a man – dragging its feet than of the great bulk he vaguely envisioned. Gingerly, he turned to the window and poked his head up slightly. Juliana did the same.

  Indeed, it was a human figure they saw shuffling down the hallway. A man, staggering along as if he’d been wounded, or walked in his sleep. At first Pal thought it might be the soldier, having lost his helmet, but this man wore a white smock...and as he came further into the pallid light, Pal recognized him a split second after Juliana did.

  “Peter!” she gasped, springing to her feet. She darted to the door.

  “Wait,” Pal hissed, taking hold of her shoulders from behind, grabbing fistfuls of her own smock to restrain her. She tore out of it altogether, reached her hand to the keypad. “Look, look!” he insisted, still clutching at her.

  She shot a look out the window, and stopped fighting him. Peter saw them through the window, bluish light glowing on his face. And bluish light glistened on a long boneless limb like a cable, which trailed from the back of his head, across the floor, and out of their sight. This slender limb was striped in alternating bands of black and silver. Though they couldn’t see where it ended, it was apparent that its tip was buried in the scientist’s nape.

  “Peter!” Juliana screamed.
<
br />   And Peter responded to her call, his eyes on them through the glass but as empty as those of a manikin. He moved out of view, but they heard the chirp of the code he was entering on the keypad. He was trying to unlock the door.

  “This way,” Pal said, and taking her hand, drew Juliana toward the back of the botany lab. With a reluctant sob, she followed. They passed between great burbling tanks in which aquatic plants swayed dreamily. The outpost addressed many areas of research, from the botanical to the biological to the geological, in addition to its experiments with crossing dimensions. Its focus had been more on R’lyeh itself, since Pal’s disappearance and the reluctance to send another subject beyond the veil. Through an open doorway, they burst into a large nursery area. In long elevated trays, dune grasses like glassy rods sparkled with the bluish glow of the emergency lights. A white, spherical species of fungus grew in other trays, the largest specimen being too fat for a person to get their arms around. These looked like the tops of huge skulls, rising from the fetid soil of their graves.

  Behind them they heard the crash and clatter of a tray of tools, knocked to the floor. Peter had got in. And they heard his voice moan sepulchrally, “Juliana...”

  Pal and Jule had reached another door at the back of the nursery, one they knew would take them out into the labyrinth of corridors again. But Juliana threw a look back toward the botany lab and pleaded, “Pal...please...we can’t leave him that way.” She looked at Pal directly, her eyes so tragic in their anguish that their touch agonized him. “We can’t leave him like that, Pal.”

  He understood. But he dreaded her words. Would she subconsciously hate him hereafter, for doing her this mercy? He felt guilt that he should be worrying about his own considerations when she was in such pain, when this other poor man was as good as dead. If not dead already. He broke his eyes from her, glanced around desperately for something to use.

  “Juliana,” they heard his nearing voice. “Julianeh-ya-ya-ya-yahaah...”

  They saw him walking toward them through the rows of glowing grass. And beyond him, they heard a large aquarium tank burst, its water gush out across the floor, as the thing that used Peter oozed its great body into the botany lab.