by Peter Idone
The screen returned to gray static, but only momentarily. The man in the lab coat was back, but now he wasn’t wearing goggles. His head was turned upward, as though gaping at something high above, and his face twisted in an expression of distress. “Where’s the chair? They took the fucking chair!” And then the monitor blanked out.
“That was creepy,” Natalie said.
“Who was that?”
“Siebert, I think.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure it was.”
“I didn’t think any power was left entering the building.”
“There isn’t.”
“There has to be, Natalie, or how else would that thing operate.”
“It’s a ghost transmission.”
“You draw that conclusion because Creech said this place was haunted? Come on. Somebody knows we’re here and is fucking with our heads. I don’t know how that screen is powered, but that image is being broadcast or it’s recorded. We probably activated a battery backup on-switch when we entered the building.”
“I really don’t think so. Our presence tripped something, but it wasn’t a switch or anything electronic. Something a lot more involved, resolute, is at work here.”
Logan wasn’t about to get into an argument over the topic. If Natalie wanted to define the wayward transmission in a paranormal context, that was her concern. There were far more worrisome things to consider at the moment, and for Logan, getting out of the exclusion zone was the main priority. “I think we should get moving, Natalie. Staying in one place for too long isn’t going to help us.”
“I want to wait for a little while longer to see if Siebert returns. Maybe there’s more he has to say. Something important that we need to hear. I wish I had recorded what we just witnessed.”
“Fine, you do that. I’m going upstairs to scope out the situation. I want to see what Creech is up to. It’s been too quiet up there.”
“No. Stay with me, Joe.”
There was still that edge of anxiety in her voice. “You can’t have it both ways. Either stay and watch TV, or come with me. At some point soon we have to get a move on.”
“Fine, do what you want. I’ll be up soon.” She climbed on top of the workbench to get a closer look at the monitor. He could see her fingers working around the edges of the panel and the screen itself. “It seems welded in place,” she said. It looked as if she were attempting to pry the thing from the wall.
Logan went back upstairs. “Creech?” There was no reply. He hadn’t turned on his flashlight, but he could make out details of the large room. The door was half open, and a diffuse light spilled in. He drew the Ruger from his coat pocket, kept it close to his side, and stepped over to the door. He looked out. It was snowing, and quite heavily at that, a dense, wet snow with large flakes that reminded him of an airborne invasion. The surroundings were lit up eerily by the whiteness, as though he were looking at an old black-and-white photograph.
“Fuck,” Logan hissed. Creech was standing in the gravel road surrounded by a squad of Tacticals. Their voices, hurried and excited, bombarded the glow boy with questions. Logan couldn’t hear what Creech said, but his voice sounded even, calm. Basically, the gist of the conversation, from what Logan could make out, was that the armored patrol vehicle had died on them. All systems onboard went dead and the engine wouldn’t turn over. An outside influence was responsible. Something “very bright and ominous” had attacked them, and the squad sounded noticeably freaked. They were heading back to base, wherever base was, and Creech was going with them, although it sounded as though he were trying to weasel out of this command.
Suddenly, Natalie was standing beside him. “What have you got there?” she asked, her eyes open so wide it seemed as though they were about to spring out of her head. “Is that a gun? Are you fucking crazy? Do you plan to shoot it out with the Tacticals?”
“Relax, will you. I brought it along for an edge. I’ll ditch it if we get cornered.”
“A fucking gun! I don’t believe it. They’ll smoke the shit out of us if they see you waving that thing around.”
“Stop being an asshole and shut up. I’m trying to hear.”
“What’s Creech doing?”
Logan didn’t answer. There seemed to be a bit of a scuffle as Creech was being shoved around by the Tactical squad leader. “We’re getting out of here, all of us together, and that most definitely fucking includes you,” the Tactical leader screamed at Creech and added, “Something’s out there. It’s big and not very friendly. We can come back for the vehicle at first light.”
Creech was placed at the head of the line as the five-man squad, weapons at the ready, started up the road. Logan closed the door more, leaving only a crack. “We’ll wait here for a little while and then go back the way we came. Agreed? I think I can find our way back to that section of fence.”
“No. We have to make it to the Romantic’s Garden near the main house and wait for Creech. “
“Why? There’s trouble in that direction,” he said, nodding toward where Creech was being led by the Tactical squad.
“I think there’s more trouble in the direction from where we just came. Creech is going to lead us out when the time comes. He knows what he’s doing. We can’t leave by the same way we came in.”
“Why?”
“We just can’t, OK? It isn’t safe. Do you think you can calm the fuck down and live with that?”
Logan had to stifle a laugh so as not to antagonize Natalie. “I think we both can. Some night, huh?”
“Yes it has been, but a little unsuccessful wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know. We’ve seen an Ouroboros, a ghost transmission, and who knows what on the way out of here.” He looked at his watch and grew concerned. “What time do you have?”
Natalie checked her own watch, igniting the digital display. “It stopped. I have ten thirty. What about you?”
“Ten thirty-one. What do you make of that?”
“Either an electromagnetic distortion or time displacement. Both our watches can’t be on the fritz for no reason.”
She’d been hanging around Glass for far too long, Logan thought, amused. Aloud, he said, “We’ve been doing a lot of walking around and it’s been slow going. It’s probably around two a.m. or after.”
“Ten thirty is the time we set out, I think. When we hooked up with Creech at the fence line.”
“Don’t read too much into it. Probably electromagnetic interference, like you said.” They stood in silence by the door, listening. After a decent interval, Logan felt that enough time had elapsed and it was safe to leave. He opened the door only wide enough for them to slip through. He closed it farther but did not shut it.
At the fence he pulled back the cut section and allowed Natalie to scuttle through. He followed, getting snagged on the severed links. He needed a little help. “Hey, Natalie.”
When she didn’t answer, he had to work out the problem for himself. Once free he found her standing in the woods a few yards from the pump house, staring in the direction from where they had come. What he saw made his guts churn. A pale, greenish-yellow light illuminated the distance. Shafts of light shone between the trees and undergrowth. The shadows of vegetation blocking the brightly colored beams stood out in crisp, black detail. The shadows moved as the light swept back and forth. Where the light originated and what was its source were impossible to discern. The unnatural colored light encompassed the entire breadth of the perimeter from where they had just traveled. There was no getting around, nor did Logan want to attempt it. “Is it my imagination, or is it coming closer?” he asked.
“I think it is,” Natalie said numbly. Hurriedly, she took up her digital camera and squeaked off a number of pictures. She examined her handiwork on the LCD screen. “Let’s follow Creech and that squad,” she said. “We can follow their footprints in the snow.”
“And go where? Think, Natalie. The Tacticals are eventually going to us
e this road to check out what this thing, this light is.”
She hustled the camera back under her parka and brought out the map. Logan joined her with his flashlight. She traced a finger over where the road led, back toward the estate house, then pointed to the spot on the map that indicated the Romantic’s Garden. “We’ll stay in the woods and head for the garden. We can hide out there until Creech comes for us.”
“That might take all night and most of the day tomorrow. You realize that.”
“Then we will have to find some way to keep warm. Let’s go. Whatever is out there is really freaking me out.”
They walked deeper into the woods, but followed the same direction Creech and the Tacticals had taken via the gravel road. The snowfall had gotten heavier, and the temperature seemed to have plunged even more. Maybe it felt that way because they’d been outside for so long, Logan thought. He wondered if it was a convergence unique to Pine Haven, a barometric anomaly exclusive to this particular area and its entire alleged, strange goings-on. Not so alleged, he thought, when taking into consideration the green light, which, although still visible as a diffuse nimbus, wasn’t following them.
The dormant groundcover eventually receded, and they were able to quicken their pace. They had entered a nearly symmetrical layout of pine trees, very old and many standing thirty to forty feet tall. Snow accumulation on the ground was much less here because the wide boughs captured the bulk of the snowfall. What was more of a relief to Logan was that they were no longer two dark shapes contrasting against the white snow. Out in the open, they were easy targets. On the other hand, the Tacticals could be easily seen without night-vision equipment and would be watching for some bizarre light show in the distance, not a couple of trespassers tramping around in the woods. There was always the possibility that small patrols might be fanning out and taking up defensive positions, but he couldn’t allow that to worry him now. Something else was beginning to irk him: a noise he had become aware of since leaving the pump house.
He shrugged it off at first, but the sound had become too persistent. He could not tell what it was exactly, or from where it originated. At first he thought the noise was traffic from the interstate, the whooshing sound cars and trucks make when slicing through the air at fifty miles an hour, but it wasn’t. It would be far too much traffic at this late hour. Then he thought it was some type of machinery or engine powering something on the estate grounds, but it had too organic a sound.
“Do you hear something strange” he asked Natalie.
“Yeah, like voices. Animals. Some kind of animal laughing or cackling. Do you hear it too?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s steady. Unrelenting.”
“Unrelenting. That about sums it up. Are you scared?”
“Anticipatory. Shush.” Logan stood motionless and Natalie did the same. He believed he saw something move up ahead to their left. He couldn’t gauge the distance with any degree of accuracy.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.” He lifted the NV binoculars to his eyes, but he could see very little because a dense graininess occluded the image. He could see the dark tree trunks and carpet of pine needles more easily without the enhanced optics than with them. And that was when he noticed it, a marking on the trunk of a pine tree, in chem-glow, a bright, almost sickening chartreuse. It was one of Creech’s runes: the merkstave, or inverted algiz symbol, which signified warning, danger. How far did this boundary extend? he wondered. And was there indeed any truth as to why the symbol had been painted at this particular spot?
Within seconds they both discovered just how accurate the placement of the rune symbol was. Suddenly there was a howl that began low but steadily increased in pitch until it became a long, agonizing shriek. No human being or animal could make a sound like that. Logan’s flesh crawled and he felt his nipples become erect. He sensed a presence, close, but he did not see anything; neither did Natalie, but the potent fear and anxiety emanated from her as it did from him. She reached out and touched his arm. “Let’s find another way around,” she said.
From behind them came a sudden loud thrashing, a stomping that shook them to the core. There was no turning back or going left or right. Natalie stifled a yelp and ran ahead. Logan fumbled for his gun and turned on his flashlight, not caring about being discovered and expecting to illuminate some manifestation of his most frightful nightmares. But there was nothing other than trees and outcroppings of dead fern. He followed after Natalie as she darted around and through the stand of pines, her speed and coordination governed by a burst of adrenaline. It seemed as though they ran for several minutes not caring how much noise they made in the process, but eventually their pace slowed and the terrible sense of oppression dissipated. The shift in sensation was as definitive as a sudden change of temperature or the difference between night and day.
They had stopped running almost simultaneously, but they didn’t stop moving. They kept walking at an even, careful pace, allowing breath and heart rate to subside. “I can’t hear anything,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Neither can I. It must have passed.” He was too tired to give words to what they had just experienced. In fact he was overcome by a boundless sense of fatigue.
As though experiencing this same condition herself, Natalie stopped and sat down on the ground, cushioned by the dense layer of pine needles and fern.
Logan joined her. “Get out the map and let’s figure a way out of here.”
“But the Romantic’s Garden. Creech said…”
“I don’t care what Creech says anymore, Natalie. It’s only you and me now. He’s not to be trusted or relied on from this point forward. It’s unlikely he’ll get out from under the Tacticals anytime soon. We’re on our own. We have to make it to the nearest perimeter and cut through the fence, even if it sets off an alarm, but we got to get out of here! Now!”
“Keep your voice down for fuck sakes, Joe, you’re in hyper drive.” Growling with annoyance, she dug into the cargo pocket of her trousers and brought out the map. As she unfolded it, her movements seemed half-hearted.
He realized he was in the middle of a panic attack. There were forces at play in this environment that were not natural, at least nothing like he had ever encountered before. “For a minute there I thought I was about to get squashed like a bug.”
“I think the worst has passed. Let’s take a few minutes and catch our breath and have a rest.” She slid off her daypack and removed the water bottle from the netted side pocket. She took long draughts and passed the bottle to him. He drank sparingly, allowing the cold water to slide slowly down his aching throat. As he passed the bottle back to Natalie, he became aware of how easy it was to see in the dark. Actually there was no difficulty in making out the details of their surroundings at all. The sky was dark gray, and the snow had begun to taper off. There was an aura of light at their back, in the distance, and it wasn’t due to some strange phenomenon. These were powerful floodlights in use.
He crept closer to the edge of the pine stand, to where the landscape opened up onto an enormous field or meadow. It had to be eighty, a hundred acres in size. He remained close behind the wide trunk of a tree to maintain cover. Natalie came up beside him. They were standing near the rear of the estate house, which was to their left about fifteen hundred feet away, Logan guessed. The Gothic-like granite structure with sloping slate roof and tall chimneys appeared to have sustained some damage. He looked through the binoculars and could see blackened scorch marks around a number of tall window sockets that were now bricked over. A section of roofing had been damaged as well, and the slate tiles replaced with some material, most likely sheets of wood or metal.
But the mansion didn’t interest him, and neither did the fact that they were in such close proximity to it. What did capture his interest was the field itself. Long mounds of earth ran in equidistant rows, as if some giant cultivator had plowed the earth. What had not been covered with earth consisted of trenches that had bee
n dug out and lined with plastic. Lying haphazardly in the trenches were drums similar to fifty-gallon oil barrels, yellow and white with printing and symbol markings. Snow had accumulated on the flat sections of ground, but the mounds were devoid of snow; they emitted too much heat. This was the temporary burial site for the low-level radioactive waste from the Triumph generating station. Every used tool, overall, work glove, piping fixture, even the waxing discs used to clean and polish the floors at the nuclear plant, had all picked up traces or more of radioactivity and had to be removed and kept isolated from the typical waste stream that an ailing civilization produces. How low a level was the radiation emitted from this junked equipment was anyone’s guess. It all depended on what were the allowable limits that were fashionable at the time.
At the far edge of the field, he could see a collection of backhoes, large forklifts on stout wheels, and several trucks. There was some kind of gantry or crane apparatus that stood farther back; perhaps this was for lifting heavier equipment that had become toxic and needed to be buried deeper. Positioned closer to the mansion, located somewhere in or at the edge of the parking lot, were two aluminum-sided trailers. These were probably the offices or sleeping quarters for the tech crews and security personnel.
Natalie had gotten her camera out and fiddled with the controls. She got up and walked closer to the edge of the field.
“Natalie, what do you think you’re doing? Get back here or they’ll see us.”
“Just a little closer. I want to bring something back with me after all this effort.”