The Nightmare Frontier

by Stephen Mark Rainey

  “Do you need help?”

  “Me and my boy are trying to get to Elkins, and we can’t get no good directions from these people. I was hoping maybe you could do better.”

  “Maybe I can. You take a right out of here. Go about a mile and get on 201 South. Then it’s about fifteen miles to U.S. 250 West, and that takes you straight there.”

  “That’s just what the fellow down at the gas station and that woman over there at the register said. But we already done that and ended up on some back road that damn near took us over the edge of a cliff.”

  Copeland frowned thoughtfully. Perhaps the man had happened upon the old dolomite quarry, except that it was five miles in the other direction. “I’m sure they have maps here. Maybe a map would help.”

  “I got one. And it don’t show this town but for a little black dot in a big green blob.”

  He chuckled. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Well, I wish I could be more help.”

  “Oy,” the man grumbled with a vexed shake of his head. “Thanks anyway.” He ambled toward the front of the store, striking the floor with the tip of his cane a bit harder than necessary.

  Copeland couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man, though he didn’t think such a frail old thing ought to be behind a wheel, especially on these treacherous mountain roads. If the rest of the world were lucky, his son would be driving.

  Paper towels. Lynette had wanted some paper towels. He had already passed by the paper goods, his mind on other things, so he headed back that way, going over his mental list in case anything else had slipped his mind.

  As he strolled by the checkout aisles, it occurred to him that an inordinate number of people were waiting in line—damn near as bad as the Dominick’s back home.

  No wonder. Only one lane was open.

  The middle-aged woman at the register was saying to an irate-looking young man, “Sorry, I’m the only one here. Our other two checkers didn’t show up this morning. It’s not like them at all.”

  Copeland had just grabbed a couple of rolls of paper towels when a little vibration began at the back of his neck. The kind of thing that happened when something was wrong that he couldn’t quite pinpoint—such as when enough separate, seemingly insignificant events converged to create a single, remarkable one.

  But what?

  He stood in line for ten minutes, barely containing his impatience, his discomfort exacerbated by a squalling child in the arms of an utterly oblivious woman in front of him. One more reminder to thank God that he and the lunatic Megan had never considered having children.

  When he had finally finished with the store and returned to his car, he found himself inexplicably dwelling on the old man’s inability to make his way to U.S. 250—a procedure that required a single right turn onto 201, which was reasonably well-marked, and staying on it for a quarter hour. On a whim, rather than returning directly to Lynette’s, he headed toward the highway instead. When he came to the turn, there was the sign, plain as day, identifying the road as West Virginia Highway 201. Hardly perplexing so far.

  Just for good measure, he turned right, away from town—the way he had come in other day. Unsure why any of this particularly mattered to him, he took special note of the intersections he passed, none of which seemed problematic. The old man had just gotten confused; nothing difficult to understand about that, either. Still, he drove for another five miles before deciding to turn back toward Lynette’s; she would be waiting for her groceries and probably already wondering what was keeping him.

  Seeing an opening on the right where he could turn around, he pulled in and found himself face to face with The Chicken House. Though it was almost the dinner hour, there was only a single car parked in the lot. Well, maybe those yellow corn-fed birds weren’t all they were cracked up to be. As he swung around and started to pull back out onto the highway, he looked left, looked right…and kept looking, suddenly doubting his eyesight.

  His fingers tightened on the wheel as an electric thrill of terror and disbelief arced down his spine. Where moments ago a long, curving stretch of highway had descended into a thickly wooded vale, now a vast open space had opened in the earth, filled with pale, slowly swirling mist, tendrils of which began to worm slowly up the road like the questing arms of a monstrous sea anemone.

  Beyond the great miasma, something very tall and very dark rose into the sky, but he could not make out any details through the ghostly veil. One trembling hand reached for the door handle, found it, and tugged; his body weight forced the door open, and he slid out of the seat, clutching the doorframe in case his knees gave way beneath him.

  When he swiveled his head to peer back at the fog-choked emptiness, it had vanished.

  Highway 201 had reappeared, snaking into a valley of oaks and hickories as it had for countless years. No trace of mist crept along the road, and only a distant, tree-crowned mountaintop rose above the landscape like an ancient, green-robed monarch.

  He took a few halting steps onto the cracked asphalt of the highway and stood there, dumbfounded, heedless of any vehicles that might bear down on him, thinking he now knew why young Zack Baird’s eyes had been frozen wide with shock.

  After a full five minutes of nothing happening, he began to breathe a little easier. But in that time, not one car had passed in either direction.

  The lost old man. The grocery checkers who had not shown up for work. Debra swearing she had seen a building that could not possibly exist.

  It was one thing to doubt his own perceptions. It was another to know that others had borne witness to something incredible, even if they did not realize it.

  As surely as he was standing here, that something had killed his nephew and driven another young boy out of his mind.

  This had to be a hell of a lot bigger than the Barrows.

  He turned and walked back toward the Chicken House, bypassed his car, and pushed his way in through the glass front door of the little building. It was hot inside, and the odor of grease hung like a dirty fog in the air. The half-dozen tables were all empty, and no one stood behind the counter.

  “Hello! Anyone here?”

  After a moment, an elderly man wearing a white apron ambled out to the register, the eyes behind his thick glasses not on Copeland but on the window.

  “Sorry,” the old fellow rasped. “Didn’t want to stand out front, not the way things are going around here.”

  Copeland leaned close to the man’s face. “What do you mean by that?”

  The man pointed out the window. “That fog that keeps coming around every so often. When it does, the road goes dead for a pretty good while. You the first person to come round in ’bout an hour or so.”

  “When did it start?”

  “Late this morning. At first, I thought it was just some weather. Then I saw them trees didn’t seem to be where they was supposed to be anymore. That, sir, just ain’t right. And then my help didn’t show up, which got me a bit worried.”

  “Have you seen anyone drive in or out of that fog?”

  “A few went in earlier today. Then it’s like they just not there anymore. And not one thing’s come out. Mind you, it ain’t always there. But it seems to be happening more often now than at first.”

  “Have you called anyone? The sheriff? Family?”

  “Can’t. The phone’s out.”

  Copeland started to reach for his cell, but then he remembered that, since there was no service out here, he hadn’t bothered to bring it with him. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said softly, turning to peer out the window at the road. “But I think it might be better if you closed up and went home.”

  “Thought of that too, ’cept I live down down yonder,” he said, pointing southward, “and I ain’t much liking the idea of heading straight into something I don’t know nothing about.”

  “Why don’t you head back into town? I don’t think I’d stay here if I were you.”

  “Don’t know where I’d go.”

  “Maybe the s
heriff’s office for starters?” he said, painfully aware that Mr. Grayson would be about as receptive as a brick to such an outrageous story. Who could blame him? Regardless, this had to be turned over to some authority, and around here, Sheriff Grayson was it. “At best, this road’s got to be closed.”

  “That where you going?”

  He thought for a minute. Sheriff Grayson would have a harder time discounting the statements of two witnesses than one, but having earned the sheriff’s disdain during their previous encounter, he doubted his chances of making a convincing case. No…there was a better way. He knew a few influential people in Washington who trusted his judgment, and they were in strategic positions to get things moving officially—as if he had any idea of what to get moving.

  “No,” he said at last. “I know some government people who will want to hear what I have to tell them.”

  The old man seemed to consider the idea for a time. Then he opened the register, took out the cash drawer, turned, and disappeared into the back. When he finally reappeared, he said, “Okay, I’m officially closed.”

  “What’s your name?” Copeland asked as they headed out to the parking lot.

  “Billy Hart,” the man said, pausing to lock the door behind him. “Been running this place for the last twenty-some years, and I ain’t never seen anything so peculiar in all my life.”

  “I don’t imagine anyone has,” Copeland said softly. “Russ Copeland. Pleased to meet you.”

  “You’re not local.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, good luck, Mr. Copeland. Hope you can get through to your people.”

  “Yeah. So do I.”

  As he got behind the wheel, Copeland’s hands trembled, his mind’s eye fixed on that misty chasm, which had appeared where every logical circuit in his brain assured him none could exist. It was too absurd to accept. Still, he wasn’t ready to write off his own sanity quite yet. Something in the air, maybe; a chemical or biological agent capable of inducing hallucinations.

  What other explanation could there be?

  But Rodney had not been killed by any hallucination.

  As he turned north on the highway, he kept his eye on the rearview mirror, half dreading, half hoping to actually witness a transition, something that might offer a clue as to what was really happening.

  His gut told him he needed to get back to Lynette.

  When they reached the business district, having encountered no other traffic, Hart turned off toward the sheriff’s office, and Copeland continued on to Lynette’s house, more than recklessly disregarding the 25 mile per hour speed limit. Strange old bird, he thought; Hart seemed to take what he had seen in stride, despite being so close to the event. He might actually make the more credible witness, since he seemed lucid enough and was probably less prone to impatience with a Doubting Thomas, which the sheriff was bound to be.

  A new thought now occurred to him. He had assumed that this phenomenon was confined to the Silver Ridge locale; but what if it was not? All the more reason to contact someone outside the area. Ed Stratton at Homeland Security? Why not? Might as well start at the top.

  Once he pulled into Lynette’s driveway, the first thing he did was walk around the house to observe the distant ridge where he had seen the strange light, his intuition suggesting that if these phenomena were related, then manifestations in one place might be reflected in another. At present, nothing seemed amiss. The late afternoon sun burnished the tree-crowned hillsides with gold, and a few birds sang longingly to each other in the nearby woods.

  The fact that everything seemed perfectly normal troubled him all the more.

  “Looking for something?”

  The voice felt like a velvet glove on his tense nerves, and he turned to see Debra and Lynette coming around the house to greet him. Debra’s brown eyes were curious, her face a shade paler than usual. But she gave him a tiny smile.

  “I think I just found it.”

  “We saw you pull in. You look like you’ve seen worse than a ghost.”

  What should he say? Debra was the one person who might understand, but it seemed unfair to add to Lynette’s burdens. On the other hand, keeping her in the dark was neither fair nor practical. If he intended to report his experiences to Ed Stratton or anyone else, he might better get some practice explaining it.

  He finally said, “Whatever happened to Rodney appears to be the tip of an iceberg. And the berg is getting bigger.”

  Debra’s eyes narrowed. “As I was just telling Lynette…a quarter of the school was absent today. No notes, no calls from parents. And Dad couldn’t reach a one of them by phone.”

  “Damnation. Well. You recall what you saw yesterday, out by the Barrows’?”

  “No way I could forget that.”

  “I just saw something very similar.” He described his vision of the fog-shrouded chasm, and the fact that Billy Hart had also witnessed it. As she listened, Debra stared broodingly at the distant sunset.

  “You didn’t believe me yesterday. What do you think now?”

  “There’s more. Something’s happening to people. At first, I didn’t put it all together. But that lost old man at Cooper’s, the missing employees there and at the Chicken House, hardly any cars on the road—and all those kids out of school. No way it could all be coincidence.”

  “God forbid anyone else should end up like Rodney,” Lynette whispered.

  Debra nodded, her face losing another shade. “Or Zack Baird, for that matter.”

  “Assuming old Mr. Hart made his report to the sheriff, I shouldn’t be surprised if we hear from him again.” He looked at Lynette. “Sorry to bear more bad tidings. I know you don’t need any more stress.”

  “But there is more.” Her eyelids fluttered with apprehension. “You knew I had sleepwalked the other night. I had pretty much written it off as nerves…anxiety…something.”

  “What?”

  She turned to Debra. “I saw a thing just like what you described. Out by the ridge—last night, after Russ had come to get me. When I got back inside, I looked out the window, and there it was, just for a few seconds—this tall tower that looked like it was made of stone. It had a kind of glow about it.”

  “And then?”

  “Then…just like you said. It suddenly wasn’t there anymore. What was I supposed to think? I couldn’t believe I had dreamed it. Now I’m not so sure I was dreaming when I heard Rodney calling me, either.”

  For a minute or so, no one spoke. Finally, Debra heaved a sigh and looked at Copeland. “So what do you do when you’ve run out of logical explanations?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never run out of them before.”

  “Logical or not,” Lynette said, “there must be a reason for what’s happening. Rodney died for some reason. And I want to know what it is.”

  “Lynette, you know I work with people in the government. I’m going to make a few calls this evening. Not they’ll have any immediate answers, but I’m far more inclined to put the ball in their court before looking to the sheriff for a solution.”

  “Wise choice.”

  Satisfied that, for the moment, the world wasn’t coming apart beneath their feet, they started walking toward the front of the house, though Copeland continuously glanced back at the ridge. Just as they reached the front yard, he detected a faint vibration at the back of his ear, and when he halted and listened, he recognized it as the distant sound of music.

  It was a chorus of voices rising in a dark melody, slow and lyrical, reminiscent of Bach, perhaps, though he did not recognize the piece. Then a chorus of heavy baritones and tremulous sopranos joined in like the voices of restless spirits, rising harmoniously to weave a haunting, melancholy dirge. A deep, unidentified thudding sound punctuated the rhythm.

  “Is that coming from the church?”

  Lynette nodded. “I think so. You can sometimes hear the music when conditions are right. But there’s no service tonight, not that I’m aware of.”

  �
�It sounds rather odd.”

  Debra cocked her head and listened. “Yes, the rhythm is peculiar. The time signatures keep changing. Listen—that’s 11/8…now 6/8…now 7/4.”

  Copeland raised an eyebrow. “You’re very well-versed in music.”

  “I used to sing in the church choir.”

  Lynette kept staring into the distance beyond Debra’s house. “If the choir was doing a program—or even practicing for one—I’d know about it. How very odd.”

  “On the current order of magnitude, I’m not sure I’d rate it all that highly,” he said.

  However, as they made their way to the front yard, Copeland noticed that music began to assume a completely different character. The choir’s voices rose in sharp dissonance, the rhythm faltered, and the devastated melody become a cacophony of long, frenzied, nonsensical cries that pealed raucously and endlessly to the heavens. Then another, heavy, unidentifiable sound—almost like the rumble of an approaching train—gradually began to join the chorale.

  He knew then that he had spoken too soon, for this perverse chorus sounded positively unearthly.

  Very definitely on par with the rest of these recent bizarre events.

  Chapter 9

  The dark-toned choral music that drifted from the church took Loretta Gleasman by surprise because, as far as she knew, the building was empty. Earlier, Reverend Lee and Irma Rodgers, the church secretary, had been there to do whatever it was that church staffers did, but they had left at least two hours ago. Loretta gently set the chicken she was stuffing down on the counter and went to the window, which overlooked the lonely white building across Cheat Mountain Road. No cars visible in the parking lot, the doors and windows all closed. The odd-sounding anthem couldn’t be a recording, she thought; it was too full, too resonant to be anything but live singers. Whatever they were singing, it wasn’t the usual church music. In fact, the words weren’t even English—just disjointed strings of guttural, barely human-sounding barks and moans that made no sense to her.

  Behind the litany of nonsense, some kind of heavy percussion rose like a sporadic pounding of thunder, powerful enough to rattle the windowpanes. Loretta heard all kinds of noise when the choir practiced on Thursday nights, but never anything like this. It had better not become commonplace, she thought, or she would have to speak to the reverend. Church or no church, they had no right to disturb the neighborhood’s peace. Since she’d turned forty, unpleasant rackets set her nerves on edge far more quickly than in the old days, and the last thing she needed was a church choir competing with hip-hop cruisers for the royal crown of obnoxiousness.