by Al Halsey
“I can stop you,” Michael said. The revolver boomed and her chest erupted. She spun and sprawled on the bones.
The monster moaned, a deep howl of resignation, and began to collapse into the well. The thing folded into itself, and with a slimy slop and slurp noise it pulled itself down the shaft. I stumbled forward and inspected the wound in Sheila’s chest. She cried quietly from the pain as the hole bubbled when she breathed.
“It wasn’t personal,” she coughed. Blood dripped from her teeth stained crimson.
I grabbed her by the throat and lifted her to the edge of the pit. Oily flesh undulated in the hole a few feet below us, and dozens of eyes focused on us as I held her. The circular mouth reappeared and pursed for its unholy carnivorous kiss.
“Ladies get swallowed,” I whispered and dropped her over the edge. “Not spit out.”
She fell and the mouth caught her. Sheila clawed at the edge of the well, but the mouth bit her in half. There was a brief inhuman shriek as it halved her messily, then the black mass enveloped her and slid down the shaft out of sight.
I stumbled backwards and Michael caught me and kept me from a tumble on the floor. He steadied me while I caught my breath.
“The girl who disappeared was my sister,” he said. “These murderers had it coming. I’ve waited a long time for this day. Their insane cult has taken many innocent lives.”
“So you used me as bait?” I said. “I could have been killed.”
“Yup,” he whispered before we left the chamber and Priest River behind forever.
“Some of ‘em have queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes that never seem to shut…” H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth
“Mists of the Miskatonic”
Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth
In a small, windowless interrogation room under a non-descript building in downtown Seattle, Jaelle Mircea sat at a stainless steel table. Her day had been interrupted by men with badges and big guns. They had hauled her somewhere underground for reasons she did not understand.
Jaelle was in preparations for a three o’clock reading when men in dark suits entered her shop. It was the first time she could ever remember anyone with a badge at her home storefront in rural Woodinville, Washington. The lead officer flashed some type of credentials, and claimed he was Homeland Security. Why in the world Homeland Security would want anything to do with her was incomprehensible.
They handcuffed her like a common criminal without any explanation, and then put her in the back of a black SUV. Through tinted windows she watched them haul box after box from her house. They even cleaned out the fridge. After an hour, she doubted anything was left.
Then, the convoy of black SUVs snaked their way south on the 405, then west on the 520 to where they turned south on the 5. Jaelle watched cars pass the convoy. Nameless, faceless people who probably wondered what dangerous criminal was concealed behind dark glass.
The tiny woman questioned repeatedly why she was under arrest, and insisted on a call to an attorney. The men were stoic. They never talked directly to her, and every time she would ask a question the two in the front of the vehicle would just look straight ahead. The lack of information terrified her.
It took a few more turns to an entrance to an underground parking lot. In all of her years of living in the Puget Sound, she could never recall seeing the building. Through an armed checkpoint they drove, and then into a non-descript elevator with horrible music they marched her.
The elevator indicated they were three levels below the garage, but she found that hard to believe. Did buildings in Seattle go that far underground?
The implacable men escorted her through sterile corridors and through steel doors to a small room. Now she sat at a cold table. The room was painted in some institutional cream color, like vanilla ice cream mixed with a hint of dog poop. The only sound was the low hum of a circulation fan that originated from the vent above the table. The air was turgid, old, like it had been recycled too many times through dusty vents. A small camera was in the upper corner of the room. A single crimson light flashed repeatedly on the case of the device. A large mirror was inset to her left: she could not guess if it was north, south, east or west since she had lost her bearings.
After what seemed like hours, Jaelle heard something in the door click. The handle rattled and two men in dark suits entered. Both were over six feet, slim and muscular. The one man had short black hair parted on the right side, the other was shaved bald. The black haired man had pleasant green eyes and a confident aspect. The bald one had an odd look about him, and his eyes pierced her.
The dark haired man pulled a wallet from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. He held it in front of her face. “Namir Walden, Federal Bureau of Investigation. My associate is Agent Eugene Marsh, Homeland Security.”
Jaelle tensed as she started to feel the walls close in. “Why have I been arrested? I don’t understand what I am doing here? None of your agents were willing to answer any of my questions. None spoke with me other than to ask me if I had something sharp in my pockets, when they frisked me. What is this about?”
“Miss Mircea, you are not under arrest,” Marsh said. His voice grated like it was dry. “If you were under arrest you would have been read your rights. We just wanted to ask a few questions about your business, and your writing. If you are honest, this will go easier on you. And us.”
“If I’m not under arrest, why did they put me in cuffs and loot my house? My business is legit, I pay my taxes, and my city business license is current. What is this about?” she said angrily.
Walden shot a glance at Marsh who continued to stare at her. “Most fortune tellers are phonies, Miss Mircea. Here, behind closed doors, why don’t you admit to us you just bilk the naïve from their welfare checks?” the FBI agent growled.
“Homeland Security and the FBI are arresting people they think are phony palm readers? This ranks right up there with government money to study shrimp on treadmills and bridges to nowhere. I can’t believe you are serious,” Jaelle said angrily. “I want out of here.”
She stood, straightened her blouse and stepped towards the door. Namir was on his feet and grabbed her arm.
“Sit down, Miss Mircea. Let’s not make this unpleasant for all of us,” the agent directed.
“You’re hurting my arm,” she cried.
“The more hostile and uncooperative you become, the longer this will take,” Walden said calmly. “Just sit. Don’t make us cuff you again.”
She jerked away from the FBI agent and sat.
“Fine. I would like a glass of water and will need a bathroom break in a little while,” she demanded.
“We can do that,” The FBI agent agreed. “See? We can make this work. You cooperate: this will be quick and painless. You hungry?”
“God, no!” she shrieked. “I’ve been on the verge of puking this whole time. I haven’t even gotten a traffic ticket for years. I’ve never been arrested in my whole life!”
“So you admit you are a phony, then?” Marsh asked. “We don’t care that you are. It’s a simple question. Your secret is safe with us. Not even a Freedom of Information request would find the file we create today.”
She stared at Marsh as he stared back. “No. I have the gift. My mother had it, and her mother, and so on back to the old country.”
“The old country. Romania, according to our records. Your Grandmother came from Europe right before World War II started. A gypsy,” he said. “Mircea is a Romanian name.”
“Grandfather died and was burnt in the ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was not a good time for gypsies.”
“A gypsy fortune-teller. That’s almost a stereotype,” Walden said.
The door clicked again and a smartly-dressed woman in a black skirt and jacket entered the room. She set a cold bottle of water on the table and a stack of folders and files between the agents. Walden glanced up at her and smiled almost imperceptibly, but Marsh sta
red straight ahead. The woman left the room and Marsh picked up the top folder from the pile.
“Please, drink,” the FBI agent said. “So you’re saying you can actually read people’s futures? That you have psychic powers?”
Jaelle drank the water. It was cool and wet her dry mouth. “That sounds so phony. Psychic powers. Yes, I have the gift. I already told you that. That’s what we call it.”
“You want us to believe you can really read palms? Tea leaves? Animal entrails?” Walden snickered. “Like Professor Xavier?”
“Palmistry, tasseomancy, extispicy are the technical terms. I do some palmistry, but mostly I do cold readings, clairvoyance, and crystallomancy. I am very good at what I do, Agent Walden. Many satisfied customers, and they refer many of their friends. There are many phonies in this business: not me,” Jaelle said firmly. “Now tell me what you want.”
“If you are really psychic, you could probably tell us,” Marsh said quietly. He pulled another folder from the stack and set it on the table. “Do you know who this person is?”
Jaelle looked at the black and white picture of a man with dark hair. “No.”
“His name is Vincent Ramirez. Are you sure you don’t know who he is?”
“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” the fortuneteller said.
“His sister is Ileana Ramirez, her maiden name. Her married name is Ileana Roberts.” The FBI agent opened a new folder and laid out a picture of Ileana.
Jaelle bristled. “Of course I know Ileana. She is a regular customer of mine.”
“Vincent not only owns several guns, he is a lifetime member of the NRA. Subscribes to Guns and Ammo. None of this bothers you?”
“Why should it?” she spat. “Unless he wants a reading, I don’t care what he does as long as he doesn’t hurt anybody.”
Marsh stared at her and laid down another folder. “Does this person look familiar to you?”
“Yes. That is Beth Holland. I have done some crystallomancy for her. Is she an NRA member also?” Jaelle said sarcastically.
“Worse. Tea Party member,” he said. “Listens to Glenn Beck.”
Jaelle eye’s widened. “That is so horrible,” she whispered. “Beck is so fat. Do you have any more of my clients in that stack? Do they listen to fat guys on the radio, also?”
“You don’t seem to be taking this very serious. You are surrounded by people who could be extremists in troubled times,” Marsh retorted. “We have not even begun to talk about you.”
“If you know what magazines people subscribe to, then you should know I have no interest in politics. On any side. Last president I voted for was Clinton.” She took a drink and put the picture back in the folder. “Unless Hillary runs, I doubt I will ever vote again.”
“So you have all these psychic powers. Why don’t you use them to win the lottery? Bet on horse races?” the FBI agent asked.
“That is not how it works,” she stated.
“Let us cut to it then,” Marsh said angrily and pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of the stack. “You are wasting time. You know what this is?”
“Yes.”
“You a fiction writer, maybe?” he said. “Aspire to be the next King? Barker? This is an odd story.”
“I am not so pathetic as to be a writer. I work for a living. If you say it is an odd story, it is whatever you say it is,” she said, emotionlessly.
“Is it fiction?” he asked.
She stared at the mirror. “It’s not fiction.”
Marsh cleared his throat, opened the notebook and read the title. “Aegyptus. Did you write this?”
“Yes, I did. Is that illegal?” she asked.
Eugene Marsh slowly stared at the words in the notebook, and then closed it. “It all sounds pretty fantastic to me. Works of fiction like this can cause a lot of trouble for the United States, internationally. It takes years for us to strategically and diplomatically recover from things that stir passions in foreign countries. You remember a book called The Satanic Verses? That stirred things up in the Middle East for years. Rushdie is still in hiding.”
Jaelle bristled. “These things are not written for publication. They are not fiction. I have dreams. Vivid dreams. I am there, record it…”
“A long-lost band of extinct crocodile men, that live under the sands in Egypt is not only preposterous, it has never been proven scientifically,” Marsh interrupted. “The Muslim Brotherhood talked about dynamiting the pyramids. This type of story could inflame them again if they were ever to come back to power. Do you remember when the Taliban blew up the statues of Buddha at Bamiyan? Back in 2001, they brought a lorry load of dynamite from Kabul, drilled holes in the statues and destroyed them. Those statues had stood for 1700 years. Gone overnight, because of inflamed religious fanaticism. Your stories are dangerous. Worse than dangerous.”
“They are not stories. They happened,” she growled. “I was there.”
“So you claim your writings are actually a different time and place? That you are chronicling the events?” Marsh said sarcastically. “How come they are in different tenses? Sometimes first person, sometimes third?”
“I see other realities, other threads of time, and write them how I seen them. Sometimes it is in different perspectives. Time does not move in a linear fashion, Agent Marsh. It is much like a stream, with eddies and currents. The hydraulics, if you will, of reality push and pull at these events, and I see them very clearly. They are not just dreams, but visions, prophecies of potential realities. Like a puzzle with a million pieces, and the picture changes,” she said. “Dark things lurk at the edges of reality, Agent Marsh. Things beyond imagination. The Elder Gods look at this tiny island of sanity with avarice. They so want to pull it into their sea of chaos. When you look at the night sky, it seems so peaceful, all those stars. If we only knew what skulks in the vacuum of space.”
“I see,” he said.
The fortuneteller sighed, and looked at the stack of documents. “Are you going to question me about every vision I’ve had?”
“We might,” Walden said. He opened another spiral-ring notebook read the title. “Comes Together. Did you write this one also?”
“Of course,” she said.
“The FBI is not portrayed in a positive light in this story. Government cover up, oppression of indigenous people. At some point it feels like sedition,” Walden said. “Almost treason. If you had set out to write a work of fiction designed to create doubt in the minds of citizens, I don’t think you could have done any better. It’s almost un-American.”
Jaelle stared. “Treason for a work of fiction? Almost treason is like almost pregnant. You don’t believe in my gift anyway, so good luck convicting me in a court of law.”
“Treason for writing and distributing seditious materials designed to undermine and overthrow the United States Government. Materials that, if distributed, could foment unrest in the places like the Middle East. The Patriot Act allows us to detain you indefinitely, without trial. I don’t think you realize how tenuous your position is. While the climate at Guantanamo Bay is tropical, I think you would have a hard time fitting in.”
“I can’t believe this,” the fortuneteller said.
“Your vision. Story. Has the government covering up the end of the world. The FBI engaging in the attempted murder of local law enforcement. The Catholic Church, even. You can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” Walden leaned back and chortled. “You are about out of time. Say hello to the boys at Gitmo for me when you get there.”
“The flow of reality is dictated by forces beyond our imaginations, Agent Walden. Their appetite for destruction knows no bounds. The membrane between our flimsy reality, and the untold terrors lurking in the dark, show themselves to the sensitive. Whether you believe it or not, or are willing to believe it or not is irrelevant. I can’t explain why the Nameless City or its half-dead denizens have not been found by modern archeologists. I can’t explain how we survived the end of 2012, when all the ancient prophecies
said we wouldn’t. Why when Hitler tried to scour the Jews and the Gypsies from Europe, my Grandmother was lucky enough to stow away on a crowded boat that landed at Ellis Island. Was it divine intervention, or some other force at work we don’t understand? Is it just freak luck based on the fleeting decisions of mortals? What I do know is I see the possibilities in my dreams, and I write them in these notebooks,” she said. “My gift is real, just like the cascade of realities that I see. Why one comes to pass and one other doesn’t, I can’t explain. That is a gift I do not possess. When the child floats that stick down the stream, the currents tug at it. It can only go one way, even though there are a thousand possibilities.”
“Miskatonic University is in Arkham, Massachusetts. Essex County, near the Miskatonic River. The librarian I talked to on the phone said that they had never heard of a book called The Necronomicon,” Walden said. “Maybe your book is lost to time. Lost in the mists of the Miskatonic.”
“What if we put your powers to the test,” Marsh croaked as he pulled a crystal from his pocket. He stared at Jaelle. “See if you can do an accurate reading on Agent Walden here. Prove to us you have the gift and we will let you go.”
“I’m not a clown,” she said to Marsh. “I don’t perform just for your amusement.”
He continued to ogle as he opened another notebook and read the title. “Red Ruins. Looks like your writing again.”
“It is,” she said.
“I am amazed you have any visions of Americans on Mars. Given the state of NASA, shrinking budgets, unclear mission focus, lack of support, I find this last story most preposterous,” Walden stated emotionlessly. “NASA’s mission is to trump phony global warming data and build self-esteem for third world countries. We don’t even have working shuttle programs. You could take the A and S out of NASA and it would make more sense right now.”