Mutator

by Gary Fry

  “Good God,” James felt genuinely shocked and unsettled by the news. He wondered what could have caused such damage? His mind working quickly, seeking commonplace solutions, he considered a fox…or maybe a rabid dog. Whatever the truth was, James could understand why the man had suspected Damian of committing the grisly attack. It was human nature to take against outsiders; when a person moved into a new area and an unpleasant event occurred soon after, James realized that most would entertain similar suspicions. After a long pause, he said, “Hey, look, I’m really sorry to hear this.”

  “Thanks,” the guy replied, but still sounded hesitant, as if he unconvinced that James hadn’t been involved in what had happened while his family had been sleeping. But instead of speaking again, he looked over one of James’s shoulder. Was he trying to spot Damian, expecting to see splatters of blood on the animal’s fur, a vindication of his original suspicion? But that wasn’t James’s impression at all. In any case, the dog had now ceased its racket and could be heard eating in the kitchen, his bowl moving on the tiled floor as he devoured meat and biscuits.

  And so was it the house the guy was observing, the place once occupied by a mysterious man?

  James felt a little uneasy as he spoke again. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.” He started shutting the door, indicating his need for privacy. Whatever sympathy and regret he felt concerning the episode, he wasn’t involved and shouldn’t be made to feel as if either he or his dog had been. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  “Yes, of course,” Barnes replied, stepping back from the property and already turning away. He continued gazing at the house. But as he finally strayed down the garden path, clearly failing to notice that hole in the lawn, James heard him mutter something that made James even more determined to figure out what the hell was going on in his new home.

  8

  After his neighbor had left, James returned to the cellar and began investigating that new room much more closely. The sotto voce comment the man had made while departing had troubled James, hastening his activities. While pacing back towards his own home, Barnes had muttered in that plummy voice, “Here we go again. I knew it would never end.”

  And what had he meant by this?

  James felt tired, unrest getting the better of his aged body. But as soon as he reentered the underground chamber, rushing along that short passageway with his flashlight splashing back and forth, he dropped to his haunches and started searching the ground. With thoughts about visiting Costa Rica now only a peripheral aspiration, he scrabbled around like a furtive insect, using the flashlight to pick out previously unexamined corners and spaces behind objects.

  Then, only minutes later, he spotted it: the streak of slime across the floor.

  Damian—still fearful about what he detected down here, using his superior sense of smell—had failed to join him and not for the first time in James’s later life. James relied on companionship from the six-year-old beagle and had done so ever since he’d been made an emeritus professor, his teaching duties had diminished, and he’d had time to share his life with another living creature. He enjoyed socializing with friends and debating with colleagues, but had always clung to his privacy and considered other people in his life as an undesirable prospect. Was this something to do with his childhood, maybe? Or possibly with another dimension of existence it might take years to unravel?

  Just then, he wished he’d been less independent and preoccupied by his work, seeking a family of his own, despite such a life inevitably involving duress, fragility and Lord knew what other tender sensibilities. Perhaps this was at the heart of his reticence: James might be too vulnerable in the world, too tuned in to all its pains and problems. Indeed, he soon found himself picturing the Barnes children’s mutilated rabbit and got busy again.

  He traced the passage of slime to a shadowy area beyond the desk, several feet from where he’d located the silver ball (which he’d left upstairs). His captivation and confusion after spotting the object had led him to overlook the glistening line of goo, which ran from the one side of the room to the wall farthest from the house, near a small body of woodland lurking over James’s garden fence. James hesitated, his thoughts racing around, but then resolved his unease, his mind feeling sharp and focused. Had whatever had emerged from the ball—a small worm with wings and angular limbs, prising itself from a tiny vessel summoned across an unfathomable distance—continued traveling in this new world, punching through the wall and plunging into soft soil, growing larger as it went?

  James found it hard to believe he was asking himself such a question, but then observed two things that justified it. In one corner of the room was a box with levers and buttons, almost identical to the one he’d seen upstairs in a notebook drawing, the intergalactic radio or weird magnet that defied time and space by issuing invisible output, reaching faraway places. The box looked lifeless, as if its powers had fled like a ghost from a machine. Tiny bulbs were screwed into its homemade framework, but no cables led away. Maybe it ran on batteries, or perhaps it was operated by nothing at all. And would that be surprising? James had already figured out that the previous homeowner must have been in possession of dark genius, achieving the impossible in a way that conventional science had yet to hint at. But exactly what had he done?

  James looked again at the streak of slime on the floor; it grew broader as it approached the wall, one inch becoming three and then five, like an inverted cone, widening rapidly. The hole in the wall, a maw full of shadow, was much wider than the silver ball from which its maker had clearly emerged, at least two feet in diameter. Droplets of silvery liquid dripped from its ragged rim, as if the creature from another place had only recently passed through, before charging quickly on. As James shuffled closer, that bestial aroma, rough and insulting, grew stronger, as if the animal had become more animal while passing into this part of the underground room. Whatever the truth was, the thing had fled the cellar, moving into another self-made tunnel and then heading God knew where.

  But that was when James, stooping towards the hole in the wall with quaking limbs, heard growling directly behind him.

  9

  He turned at once, the flashlight splashing, wariness turning to panic. But that was when he spotted the newcomer, shifting to and fro in its many thrown shadows. It was Damian, finally overcoming his reticence about being down here. If yesterday’s and today’s performance had involved some uncertainty among rage, the dog now revealed only anger. He hesitated, rocking back and forth on tensed haunches, ready to launch himself. Foam rose on his lips as he bolted, darting past the onlooking James and plunging directly into the hole in the wall, vanishing in darkness.

  “No, boy!” James protested, stooping to the enlarged cavity, while trying not to get any of that horrid, dripping slime on him. It might be toxic or corrosive, but what did that say about his dog’s chances? James looked into the hole, but saw nothing other than blackness, filling the void like thick oil. When Damian didn’t obey James’s command, James heard only the beagle’s scampering paws and a growl a good distance away. The sounds had too much room in which to reverberate, as if whatever had made the hole by expanding in the room had continued growing as it pushed forward great quantities of earth, bulldozing it away from its unstoppable path and then emerging…where? Just where was the thing headed?

  If the dog’s instincts, tracking the beast’s progress, had led it along the same route, Damian would reappear somewhere in the woods beyond James’s new property. Now this was decided, James quickly stood, wiped his face to eliminate the stench, and then, his aging limbs smarting with pain overruled by adrenalin and fear, he fled the room, determined to be present when his beagle finally emerged.

  10

  The sky had turned gray, like a bed of slate weighing down the hills and valleys that stretched to each hazy horizon. The countryside around James’s new home looked stately and arresting, like a picture-postcard depiction of the concept of bliss. He loved the green fields
, frequent copses, and dry-stone walls. He liked listening to sheep bleating, birds twittering in treetops, and cows groaning with bloated udders. When the wind blew hard, a smell of grass and heather filled the air with an extraordinary richness, prompting fine memories of his childhood, on the rare days he’d been transported from his city-based home. James adored every aspect of this new setting and hoped nothing would ever come between him and it.

  But here was certainly a first challenge, and he wondered, with stubborn unease, how it would all play out.

  As nobody else could be seen in the area—no respectful hikers, territorial farmers, or even members of the Barnes family—James exited his garden through the wooden gate and started jogging (insofar as his running-to-seed body permitted this) up the curb-less country lane towards the woodland flanking his property. A sharp scent of nettle and bramble hung in the air as a breeze disturbed foliage on both sides. Then, his breath coming in quick pants, he reached an opening where countless trees gathered, like sentinels guarding shadowy terrain. He entered at once, and the relative silence seemed to seal off the rest of the world, as if this place was padded and soundproofed, like the cell of a delusional patient, boasting imaginary trunks and snaking undergrowth. But James pushed aside any latent fears about old age and faltering mental ability, hurrying farther into the woodland.

  If his calculations were correct, the dog—as well as the terrible thing James had begun to intuit—had headed in this direction. Indeed, as James strode over innumerable creepers and knee-high grass, the near-silence was marred by Damian barking, the noise at first muffled, and then echoic, and finally as free as birds soaring overhead, their wings flapping manically. Looking ahead at a complex network of trees, James hurried in the direction of the beagle’s protests, his pulse throbbing in his ears. More interwoven strands underfoot tried tripping him, but he somehow remained upright. Moments later, his hands still clutching the notebook he’d been reading indoors, he came to an abrupt halt. He’d spotted Damian skittering back and forth in a small clearing, whirling on the spot. The dog was clearly trying to draw its master’s attention, and it wasn’t long before James obeyed this bestial command.

  And after approaching the beagle, he spotted the creature’s exit hole.

  It was enormous.

  Stepping cautiously closer, James observed the vast cavity, the way it was tilted at an angle, where the land descended to a lower plane and was bereft of the pervasive trees. Perhaps the thing from beneath the earth had attempted to rise elsewhere and had been stopped by roots, before finding this spot, where the only resistance was heavy soil, which, for any other form of animal life, would have been another insuperable barrier. But not for this thing…whatever it was. James didn’t wish to dwell on that issue, however; he found that he could only stand there, looking numbly at this opening in the planet.

  He himself could fit inside the massive rupture of earth from which Damian had emerged minutes earlier. It was about eight feet in diameter, and huge mounds of soil had been forced out of it, as if by a plow capable of excavating bulk several times its body weight. Just as in the underground room, slime dripped from the rim, gathering in small pools inside the pit’s yawning mouth. These had frothy edges, as if the goo was animated by toxic half-life. With sudden alarm, James noticed the dog’s fur also covered in this stuff. He summoned the beagle towards him, but then realized that the sticky substance on its back and legs couldn’t be harmful, because the dog remained as frisky as ever. When Damian arrived, rage reduced to an aggressive whimper, James ran hands along his spine, touching the moist slime, which glowed faintly in ineffectual daylight filleted by branches overhead. The stuff still felt hot, and after how long? When had his neighbor Barnes said his children’s rabbit had been murdered?

  James turned to observe the rest of the woodland, realizing that he had no exact time for this brutal act. It had been a nocturnal incident, but could have occurred at any point from midnight to dawn. But surely the most unsettling thought related to why such a large being—an exit hole eight feet wide implied something unnaturally huge—would seek such a small creature as its first form of sustenance. A rabbit was about a foot long and provided no more meat than might fill an average person. And so how could an obviously monstrous entity be satisfied with such a pitiful meal? More pertinently, how had the creature grown that big so quickly? It had emerged from a silver ball no more than inches in diameter and then forged a tunnel around two feet wide, before emerging in the wood after another frightening transformation.

  His mind blooming and buzzing, James stood and then, making sure the beagle remained closely beside him, edged forward, fondling the notebook—one of many he’d located—in his taut hands. Maybe he’d find some answers by reviewing more of this journal’s content. His legs shaking like stacks of jelly, he snapped open the book where he’d stopped reading earlier. But before addressing any new material, he noticed something else of destabilizing import.

  Directly up ahead was another streak of slime, this one consistent with the size of whatever had burst out of the ground yards behind him. It was outrageously large, about ten feet wide and denoting something even more bulky in comportment. But this wasn’t the only suggestive evidence. The lowest branches of countless nearby trees had been bent and shattered, some hanging down on tenuous tendrils of bark, and others completely detached, lying in showers of splinters. Whatever damage had been sustained, each mutilated limbs was smothered in more of that sticky-looking goo. On the ground, between great patches of slime—did the thing walk on heavy limbs with a long stride or rather sliver between airborne leaps?—dead leaves on the ground looked shriveled and dissolved, as if too much of that glistening substance had a delayed, deleterious effect. But what could have caused such corrosive damage?

  James was now finished reviewing the damage to his new environment. He cast down his eyes, scanning the latest journal he’d found in the underground room. Its drawings, which James assumed had been made by his home’s previous owner, revealed how quickly that insectlike worm with wings and maladroit legs could transform from an ineffectual wriggler emerging from a tiny spacecraft to a terrifying behemoth boasting enlarged features and dwarfing all adversaries. The notebook’s primitive artist, surely the same scientist who’d invented that strange box downstairs, had depicted this shocking difference in size with uncensored force. In one sketch, the creature was even about to devour a sticklike man with jaws that dripped copious slime; the small figure cringed and cowered, limbs rendered mobile by pencilled curls of movement. In the next drawing, he was reduced to bones as the immense creature struck down.

  This was too much for James, and all at once he wanted to return to simpler concerns, such as visiting a faraway country and learning about its unfamiliar customs. By contrast, assimilating the activities of the newly arrived creature felt mind-shattering, a stark violation of every rational belief he’d ever promulgated as a psychologist. He was scared, a state of mind that often accompanied the inability to come to terms with something unknown. He glanced away from the journal, just as logic summoned an important question.

  While pacing ahead with Damian tight to his heels, James wondered where the thing had gone next? He glanced at a spot where the slime came to an abrupt halt, about fifty yards from the new hole, amid shocked and twisted woodland. In one place, the glutinous mass was thick and moist, and in the next, gone altogether, as if the thing had mastered flight and left the earth entirely. But how could that be? James looked directly upwards, at a canopy of crisscrossing branches hanging low. If anything had taken wing from here, most of this makeshift ceiling would have suffered the same fate as tree limbs lower down. The entity couldn’t have fled that way; it didn’t make sense.

  James glanced elsewhere, outside the woodland, and then saw the Barnes’s property at a modest distance, its windows shielded by curtain and solemnly smoking chimneypots. If the creature had headed that way, to make a messy meal of the rabbit, how had it reached the garden
(presumably where the hutch was kept) without leaving traces of itself, yet more streaks of slime and snapped branches?

  Little of this stacked up in James’s mind; he’d either failed to make a crucial observation or was dealing with something whose behavior didn’t conform to conventional biological rules. But after noticing a small shelter formed by ragged rocks and unearthed tree roots, he realized one thing: nothing as big as the entity that had inscribed the ground behind him with such thunderous impact could hide in such a tiny place. It wasn’t even worth searching there.

  Retreating for home with his docile dog in tow, James remained mystified. He was still badly shaken and needed shelter, despite realizing that he still had much research to conduct.

  11

  James made the call as soon as he got back inside his property. He had the telephone number stored in a stack of documentation that had accompanied his move to the area, and in the absence of anyone else to tell him what he needed to know—he hadn’t thought that visiting the Barnes family was appropriate at this time—it was all he could think of trying.

  “Hello, Parkers,” said the young woman who answered his call. She had an upbeat disposition, quite a contrast to the most dominant person in James’s early life, his overly fussy, protective mother. He didn’t know why he’d just thought of her, but quickly dismissed the thought as an unwanted by-product of all his upheaval. Then he responded to the receptionist of the estate agency who’d handled the purchase of his new home.

  “Oh, hi there. I hope you’re well this morning.” He always greeted new acquaintances with an inquiry about their health; long experience had taught him that this established a bond from the outset. “I was wondering whether I could speak to your manager there – Mr. Jackson, I believe.”