Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Another twenty-two years,” I said.

  Suddenly the U.S.S. Cypher stopped and hovered several hundred feet above the ground. Then it shot away to the west in a straight line and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  I stood a moment, looking out across a countryside lit by moonlight and listening to the crickets. The rolling grape vineyards lay in serene repose beneath the shadowed slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The peace and normalcy of country woodland became overwhelming real to me. Now, after what I had experienced tonight, it was the ordinary that seemed extraordinary, the normal that seemed almost beyond belief. Could I depend upon this normalcy continuing? Could I believe Mr. Czito’s words that all was now well?

  I walked back to the cottage, pondering it all, and got to the back porch and went in through the door that led to my bedroom.

  The cottage was dark, but I could hear Bess breathing heavily in the adjacent room. I carefully slipped off my clothes, pulled back the covers on my bed, and lay down. In a few moments of time I had no way of measuring, I drifted off to sleep.

  Morning came. The light of the sun did not awaken me, for only a dull gray light shone through the window curtains. My bedroom was still dark. A faint light from a lamp in Bess’ room shined through the door next to my bed. The lamp light did not awaken me; I was awakened by the sound of Bess moving about in the adjacent room. I got out of bed and peered around through the open door.

  Bess was fully dressed, and she was packing.

  “You’re up very early,” I said.

  She turned about, looked at me, and then turned back around and continued packing.

  “You were out late,” Bess said. “Heard you pacing on the porch, then I dropped off.”

  “Had a hard time sleeping,” I said.

  “Don’t want to miss the train,” Bess said.

  “No,” I said. “Can’t miss that train. I’ll get dressed.”

  I dressed quickly, and then went in to where Bess was packing.

  “We shouldn’t have brought all these things,” Bess said. “We didn’t need them.”

  “Well,” I said, “you never know when you might need something.”

  “No,” Bess said, “you just can’t let go of anything.”

  “I know,” I said. “Guess it comes from when I was a boy. We never had anything. And whenever we got a little something, we had to leave it behind when we moved.”

  “You’re not a boy now,” Bess said.

  “No,” I said, “but I still don’t like losing things.”

  I put my arms around Bess.

  “I find something good,” I said, “I want to hang on to it. Sometimes I don’t know how good something is that I’ve got.”

  Bess turned around and looked at me. Her glance was cold.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Bess said, and she turned back around to the suitcase.

  “Want me to help you?” I asked.

  “No,” Bess said. “I’ll go faster with you out of the way. Why don’t you just go for a walk?”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go for a walk.”

  “A short walk,” Bess said. “Five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” I said.

  I went out the back door of my room, and stepped on to the porch. I looked about. The sky was overcast and only dimly lit by the hidden sun. I stepped off the porch and walked down by the big carriage house and on down and around the corner of the blacksmith’s barn.

  I looked out to the open meadow where Charmian and I had run hand and hand the night before. I stopped before a patch of cactus I had not noticed earlier; they were big ‘elephant ears.’ I looked down at the cactus a moment, and then back across the meadow and up to the horse barns. I decided that I would go see that the horses were all right. I walked across the meadow. When I almost got up to the horse barns, I heard the footfalls of someone running toward me in the grass. I turned around.

  It was Charmian.

  She stopped in front of me.

  “Magic Man,” she said. “Mrs. Houdini said that you’d probably be out here somewhere.”

  “Mrs.—?” I started to ask. “You talked to Bess?”

  “Don’t worry,” Charmian said. “I didn’t say a thing about last night. But I think she knows— or at least suspects. She’s a very smart lady.”

  “Listen—“ I started to say.

  “No,” Charmian said. “Don’t say anything. You said it all last night, and it was all true. I have been running— and lying to myself. I love Jack, but I hate what he’s doing to himself.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should get back.”

  “Yes,” Charmian said. “You should get back.”

  “I think Bess and I will leave early,” I said. “If you could get Sekine to bring around the car, I’d appreciate it. Say goodbye to Jack for me.”

  I started off across the meadow.

  “Hey, Magic Man,” Charmian said.

  I stopped and turned back around.

  “They say you can get out of anything,” Charmian said. “Guess you proved that here, eh?”

  I smiled faintly, and then turned back around and started forward again across the meadow. I had taken only a half a dozen steps when a gigantic bolt of lightning exploded up from the ground in front of me about twenty feet away. A gigantic ‘boom’ shook the air and the ground with a vibration so strong that I felt it in my legs and chest. I immediately heard the horses in the barn behind me whinny and kick in their stalls.

  Before I could even turn, another lightning bolt exploded in front of me— and then another. And at that same moment a wind like a cyclone came hurtling toward us from Sonoma Mountain.

  I spun about to Charmian and held out my hand.

  “Come on!” I shouted. “Let’s get back to the house!”

  Charmian took my hand and we started off in a run toward the cottage. Just as we got to the center of the meadow, the ground in front of us began wavering and disappearing, opening up a dark chasm in our path.

  Charmian screamed.

  I grabbed Charmian by the shoulders, shook her, spun her about, and, gripping her arm, started us off in a run back toward the barns, but then in that direction too the ground began shifting and distorting— and then melting away into nothing. We stopped at the precipice of what had become a cliff and looked down.

  “No!” Charmian screamed.

  Below us we could see layer upon layer of earth strata diminishing off into blackness. Far at the bottom a row of twinkling lights lit up a structure of what looked like gigantic red metallic rods lying parallel with each other— something like a mammoth xylophone buried deep in the earth. A strange sound vibrated up from the depths that yawned below us.

  I pulled Charmian back, and shouted, “This way!”

  We carefully made our way along what had become the pinnacle of a mesa jutting out of a canyon. I spied a bridge of land leading back to the cottage. The entire meadow was wavering and shifting like a heat mirage— and disappearing into nothingness. The whole hill above us where the cottage stood wavered and shimmered and flashed white at intervals.

  “What’s happening to everything?” Charmian screamed.

  “I don’t know!” I shouted back. “Stay calm!”

  “The world’s melting!” Charmian screamed.

  I grabbed Charmian’s shoulders and shook them again.

  “Calm down!” I shouted. “Follow me!”

  I took Charmian by the hand and started along the land bridge leading back to the cottage. But then the top of our mesa began shrinking rapidly away— the land bridge disappeared before us— and we were trapped on all sides on the top of that pinnacle of earth. In a moment even our little pinnacle would waver away into nothingness, and we would fall into the chasm below— or be swallowed up into the nothingness that the meadow was becoming.

  Horrific peals of thunder cracked against our ears. I looked across the pasture to Sonoma Mountain, and saw that a gigantic electrical storm was raging over the rid
ge; great flashes of light illuminated the whole of the gray sky. And suddenly in that gray sky I saw the long silhouette of an airship loom into view. The airship slowed and floated directly above us. I wondered: Could this be the U.S.S. Cypher?

  Just as I had that thought, a beam of white light shone down upon us from the airship, and I could feel a magnetic force run through my body— a sensation familiar to me— the sensation of being immersed in an anti-gravity field.

  Charmian let out a scream and threw her arms around me, and we both began lifting up from our pinnacle of ground that was on the verge of completely disappearing.

  “Don’t let go, Magic Man!” Charmian shouted. “Don’t let go!”

  Charmian and I held on to each other as the beam of light kept drawing us up into the air. We drew ever closer to the dark surface of the airship. I could now see an opening in the ship’s belly. The beam of light was coming out of that. We flew up toward the opening. I studied the bottom of the ship— and suddenly recognized that this was not the Cypher.

  The beam brought us up through the opening in the ship, we came through it and were drawn into an interior chamber and floated there mid-air, and then were lowered upon a circular platform. The moment our feet touched the platform, the beam of light cut off, our bodies took on their normal weight, and we staggered forward to keep from pitching over. We got our balance, and stood upon the platform, dazed.

  Then we slowly turned about, looking over the chamber. We stopped when we had made a half-turn. Several men stood before us, watching us. They were not crew members of the U.S.S. Cypher.

  They were Martians.

  INTERLOGUE TWO

  Outside In

  “String me up as high as you can. If I drop

  I want to be sure it’s going to be the finish.

  I’d rather have a lily in my hand than go

  through life crippled and a burden to others.”

  Houdini

  May 22nd, 1943

  A cabin somewhere near Pikes Peak

  “Now this is getting’ good,” the old man said, leaning forward in his chair. “This is one helluva yarn. I’d rather read this than a comic book any day— wouldn’t you?”

  The blank-faced man blinked once.

  “And it’s as far-fetched and crazy as they come,” the old man continued. “That’s why I like it. I like to read all this crazy stuff. You know what I think is the craziest, most far-fetched part? That bit with Charmian and Houdini up at the lake where he tells her under the moonlight, ‘I cannot betray my wife.’”

  The old man broke into laughter and slapped his knee.

  “That’s the most far-fetched thing I’ve ever read in my life!” the old man cried. “Forget the dinosaurs! I’ll buy the dinosaurs! Sure! There’s a time machine under the mountain! That explains everything! It does for me. No problem. Dinosaurs are no problem a-tall with a time machine. And sure! The earth opens up and disappears under everybody’s feet. I can accept that possibility. Time machine’s gone haywire. Everybody knows that sort of thing happens when a time machine goes haywire. But a healthy grown man in the prime of life on a moonlit mountain with a beautiful woman who’s crawling all over him says, ‘I cannot betray my wife’? Yah-ha-ha-ha-ha! He says this with a straight face, and then gets up on his horse and rides away. Rides away from that boathouse with the bedroll. Do you buy that? Come on! Now, I’ll admit, maybe I’ve been up here alone on this mountain by myself too long, but I just cannot believe a healthy grown man would do such a thing when nobody was looking. It goes against everything I know about human nature. It’s just not possible. Who does Houdini think he’s foolin’? ‘I cannot betray my wife!’ That’s rich!”

  The old man broke into such laughter that tears came to his eyes. He brought out a handkerchief, took off his glasses, and wiped his face as his mirth slowly simmered down.

  “Oh, boy!” the old man said. “This is some story. You know, this is the craziest damn thing I’ve ever come across in my fairly long life! I’m reading parts of this and it makes me want to jump— jump right out of my skin!

  ‘Cause I know that part of it is true! How do I know? ‘Cause some of this stuff has happened to me. I have to tell you, some of this very stuff has happened to me— like people disappearing before your eyes. I believe it. I believe it ‘cause I’ve seen people disappear right before my eyes. I have! Do you believe I’ve seen such things?”

  The blank-faced man blinked once.

  “You do,” the old man said.

  The blank faced man slowly nodded.

  “Why don’t you try talking again?” the old man asked. “The more you try to use your voice the more you’ll actually be able to use it.”

  The blank-faced man opened his mouth. His lower lip trembled. His tongue curled in his mouth.

  “Yaaaah,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Good!” the old man said. “I like the sound of that— the way you said that. Hold on. Let me look down your throat.”

  The old man brought out a small flash-light, switched it on, and played its beam down into the blank-faced man’s mouth.

  “Say that again,” the old man said.

  “Yaaaah,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Very good,” the old man said, switching off the flash-light and putting it away. “Those tissues down there look very good. You’re going to get your voice back completely, but you’ve got to get started on those tongue exercises. We’ll start on them tomorrow morning. I’m going to get you talking again. No more of this eye-blinking and head nodding. We’re both sick of it, aren’t we?”

  The blank-faced man nodded and blinked his eyes once, and then added: “Yaaaaah.”

  “I think I’ve read enough now,” the old man said. “I’ve got chores to tend to, and you should rest. This last treatment was pretty comprehensive. Your body needs the rest. Sleep is the great healer.”

  The old man went over and pressed on a panel in the wall, and the large portion of the cabin wall slid back revealing his ‘recess room.’ He placed the Houdini journal on a small shelf in the ‘recess room.’ On this shelf also lay Mark Twain’s watch fob and manuscript. The old man carefully positioned the Houdini journal on the shelf, and then went over and closed the wall back up again by pressing on the other hidden panel.

  “Don’t want to lose that book,” the old man said. “That’s our Saturday afternoon picture show. Can’t lose our picture show. Oh, well, you get some rest. I’ll see you later.”

  The old man went out of the cabin and shut the door behind him. The blank-faced man listened to the footsteps of the old man diminish away down the path to the stone pyramid. Even after the old-man had been gone for some time, the blank-faced man lay very still.

  Then suddenly the blank-faced man bolted upright from the bed and stood straight up on his feet. He looked around the room, slowly moving his head to the right and left. He raised his arms and bent them at the elbow and opened and closed his hands— making fists and then stretching his fingers wide apart. He bent down and touched his toes with his finger-tips. Then he sprung to the floor, and, with his body stretched out, he did ten push-ups in rapid succession. Then he sprung to his feet again and began running in place.

  The blank-faced man was in much better physical condition than the old man realized, and this was exactly the way the blank-faced man wanted things to be. He had no intention of letting the old man know how much he was recovering— not until the blank-faced man learned much more about the old man.

  Today was the first day since the blank-faced man’s recovery that he had been presented with an opportunity to explore the cabin. In the last week the old man had been in and out of the cabin throughout each day, never venturing far from the cabin door. Mostly he had sat and read the Houdini journal. But now the blank-faced man sensed that the old man would be gone for some time. So now he went over to the chest of drawers and began going through them. He found nothing but old clothes. He pushed the drawers shut, and then peered around t
o the back of the chest of drawers, to the space between the chest of drawers and the wall of the cabin itself. Several weeks earlier while pretending to be asleep he had watched the old man place a flat cardboard box back there in that space. Ever since then he had wondered what was in the box. Now he reached down and touched the box, pulled on it, and slid it out from behind the chest of drawers. He brought the box to the bed and lay it down upon the covers.

  The box had a flap at one end, and was not sealed. So the blank-faced man pulled back the flap and reached inside the box. His fingers touched something that felt like an album. His fingers pulled and the object came out. It was a scrapbook.

  The blank-faced man opened the scrapbook, looked down, and stood very still.

  The first page of the scrapbook was filled with newspaper articles about Harry Houdini. The articles dated from 1923 to 1924 and were clipped from newspapers published in a number of American cities. Each article had letters in it underlined in pencil. The underlined letters were scattered about the text in an apparently random manner. But the blank-faced man realized what he was looking at: a skip code embedded in the text of each article. Was this code the work of the newspaper reporters or the newspaper editors? Or had these writers and editors been influenced unconsciously to embed this code in their text? And if they had been, what was the source and mechanism of their influence?

  As these questions passed through the blank-faced man’s mind, he turned the page of the scrapbook. On the next page he found a series of photographs of Houdini walking in a park with a woman. Who was the woman? The blank-faced man racked his memory. Could this woman be Charmian London? Could that park be Central Park in New York? He looked closer at one of the photographs. No, he realized, these photographs had not been taken in Central Park— but Washington Square in Greenwich Village. He recognized the corner of the memorial arch in the background of one the photographs. How had these photographs been taken? And who had taken them?

  The blank-faced man turned more pages of the scrapbook. Every page was filled with news articles about Houdini, some from America, some from England and Germany. All of the articles had certain letters underlined in pencil. The blank-faced man did not have time to try to put the letters together to read a message, and he realized that the letters put together side-by-side might not form a readable text, but could only be the first stage in a complex cipher. He kept turning the pages. At the bottom of the last page a note was scrawled across the margins of one of the articles. The note was written in the same pencil marking that underlined all the letters of the articles. The note read: “Eddy: I’m on to their game. Now we can play too. Use key I gave you to complete cipher in the Photostats of these articles. Show results to Lovecraft and report back. H H.”