The Nightmare Frontier

by Stephen Mark Rainey

  He’d let the herd’s law get too deep inside him.

  Joshua found himself wishing Levi wouldn’t stay gone so long. That little girl couldn’t go but so far, and they’d catch her soon enough. Despite his family’s good relationship with their new neighbors, Joshua didn’t feel all that comfortable being so close to any of them.

  The Lumera lay in a dimly glowing coil near Granddaddy’s feet, the little blue specks in its deep eyeholes following Joshua’s every move. Its cold gaze set his nerves on edge, even though it didn’t have license to do anything to him. If something went wrong, all Granddaddy had to do was wake up and wish it away, and it’d be gone, just like that. That wouldn’t work much longer, though, so they’d told him, and he wondered what Granddaddy had in mind to do when he couldn’t get rid of them so easily.

  “You needn’t worry about such things,” the voice in his head said. “You are our hosts, and we are in your debt.”

  It wasn’t really a voice. It was more like thinking—where he didn’t hear the words but knew what his brain was telling him. Them ones talked that way. Best he could tell, Lumeras didn’t really read minds, but they could pick up impressions, the way a hound could smell fear on a person.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I reckon y’all understand that it feels funny bein’ trustin’ to somebody so different and all. Ain’t much used to that.”

  “We understand,” the Lumera told him. “Your grandfather explains your world to us very well. He is kind and patient with us, and we are pleased to have made his acquaintance. He loves you, so we do as well.”

  “Y’all know about love and feelings and such?”

  “Our feelings are not so different than yours. At first, we were surprised that the long-sealed door to your world had opened again, and so we, too, were distrusting. But your grandfather came and explored our world, and proved himself a friend to us. Not all who have come have been so amiable.”

  “Y’all know people like us?”

  “Over the ages, others of your kind have come to us—in what you call dreams. Long ago, certain of them came exploring, and we gave them a means to cross between worlds as they desired. However, unlike your grandfather, they were not truly friends of ours. Thus, we sealed the door, to keep your kind away. Now the door has reopened, and your grandfather has made us understand that some, such as your family, are unlike the multitudes of evil ones who dominate your world. We have decided to offer him—and you—a place such as ours, but upon your own land. It is our gift.”

  “I reckon that’s kind of you.”

  “For granting us an outpost such as this, it is just.”

  “Granddaddy says that, to us, y’all are a dream, and we’re like a dream to y’all. His gem there makes it so that y’all ain’t just a dream anymore.”

  “That is a concise explanation.”

  Joshua glanced at his granddaddy, who looked too much like a dead man laid back in his big easy chair but for his chest heaving slowly up and down. His hands lay folded in his lap, his fingers closed around the gleaming, sapphire-like jewel he called the Zeus Jon Mott, or something such. Every now and then, the egg-shaped stone grew bright, and Granddaddy would shift a little in his chair, his brow arching down over his clenched eyes. He hadn’t woke up now since he’d sent Mr. Mike away, and his color wasn’t looking so good. The brighter that rock got, the paler the old man got—almost like it was taking something out of him.

  That jewel was burning like an electric bulb now, causing Granddaddy’s hands to glow warm orange. Behind the Lumera, the tangle of barbed cords that covered the walls like wild, twisted vines began to rustle and writhe. They had appeared as if by magic earlier in the evening, and Levi had told him they would help him guard against intruders. But they worried him, too, cause as far as he was concerned, they looked too damn nasty to be inside his own house.

  The downstairs door slammed, and he felt a little measure of relief mixed with a new anxiety. Levi was home at last.

  “Thanks for telling me what you told me,” Joshua said to the cold blue eyes in their dark cavities. “I reckon my brother’s come back.”

  “We will have more opportunities to converse in the future.”

  “Yeah…okay.”

  The Lumera’s body stopped glowing and became an ugly slab of gray, wormlike flesh. Joshua heard Levi’s distinctive, heavy tread on the stairs, and a moment later, he appeared in the door.

  “Granddaddy doin’ all right?”

  “He just sleepin’, like always.”

  “Ain’t nobody come to the house, have they?”

  “Hell no, ain’t nobody come to the house. Why you think that?”

  “I ain’t thinkin’ it,” He said, without further comment, but gave Joshua a blistering glance. Then he leaned down to study Granddaddy’s closed eyes. “He ain’t come out of it, has he?”

  “Naw, not at all.”

  Levi glared at his brother. “I want that girl, bro. And I want her tonight.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Hey. You’d like to get out of here, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, yeah…”

  “Awright. I guess we gonna leave Malachi with Granddaddy and you gonna come with me.”

  Joshua dropped his jaw. “You gonna trust Malachi by hisself with Granddaddy…and them ones?”

  “For what we gonna do, I need you more’n Malachi. And Granddaddy…he been doin’ okay all this time, ain’t he?”

  “Well, yeah, if just sleepin’s okay.”

  Levi leaned close to him. “I’m going for Debra Harrington, and I’m aiming to fix that man with her. I ain’t leaving him for them ones. It’s you and me for him. All right?”

  He nodded, his pulse beginning to pick up. “Hell yeah, that’s all right. How you gonna find them?”

  “You know how them ones kinda talk in your head, right?”

  “Sorta.”

  “They gonna lead me exactly where I want to go. I been makin’ some arrangements.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Levi went out the door, and returned a minute or so later with Malachi in tow. The boy looked curiously at the Lumera and then said to Joshua, “That one done growed some, ain’t it?”

  He glanced at the creature and realized Malachi was right. “Yeah, yeah, kinda looks like it, don’t it? Hadn’t rightly noticed it before.”

  “Malachi,” Levi said. “I’m gonna leave you in charge for while. Whatcha think?”

  “Alone?”

  “You and Granddaddy.” He swung his head toward the Lumera. “And that one. You gonna have your shotgun, but you don’t have to worry about nobody getting in here. Them vine-things’ll rip apart anyone comes in here that ain’t s’posed to, I guarantee you that.”

  Malachi looked nervously at the coiled things creeping like deadly ivy upon the wall. “I don’t much like them yonder. How do I know they ain’t gonna mistake me for a stranger or something?”

  “Don’t be stupid. You know them ones ain’t gonna hurt any of us, right? Granddaddy says so.”

  “I reckon,” Malachi said, glancing again at the dull, dead-looking Lumera. “That thing asleep or something?”

  “Dunno, but don’t you worry none. Get the shotgun and sit up here with your Granddaddy. We’ll be back after while. And be ready to have some company. You gonna like ’em.”

  Malachi nodded. “Awright.”

  As they turned to leave the room, Levi took hold of Joshua’s shoulder and said softly, “Take your knife. You may get to do some carving tonight.”

  Joshua felt his fingers tingling, the way they did when he anticipated getting to thin the herd. “You gonna let me do it, aren’t ya?”

  Levi looked at him and grinned. “I’m gonna let you do it all you want to, bro. I’ll be havin’ plenty else to take care of. Plenty else, yes sir.”

  Chapter 17

  “You know where the place is, don’t you, Debra?” Carolyn asked.

  “Yes,” she said with a nod, “as long as we
can still get there by road.”

  The McAllisters had all but dragged Copeland and Debra to their SUV with instructions to seek sanctuary in Carolyn’s late parents’ mountain cabin. “If there’s anyplace they won’t find you, that’s it,” McAllister told them. “It’s been empty for a couple of years now. You get your asses up there, in our vehicle, and maybe there’s a chance you’ll get past them. We’ll load up all the supplies we can in my truck and meet you there. But you get going. Go now.”

  At the best of times, Copeland hated being a passenger, but he reluctantly yielded the keys to Debra, since she knew the treacherous mountain roads far better than he. Besides, if—God forbid—the Lumeras attacked them on the road, he preferred to be able to wield his heavier firepower against them. In addition to the rifles they already carried, McAllister had given them both handguns with plenty of ammunition; a Ruger 9mm for him and Smith & Wesson snub-nose .38 for her. He doubted the smaller arms would so much as dent a Lumera, but they would make a meaningful impact on any human assailant.

  He could not forget, though, that the Lumeras might have subtracted the Barrows from the equation by now. That possibility worried him perhaps more than the alternative.

  He gave McAllister a long look as he settled into the passenger seat of the Durango. “I don’t like this, Candle. If they come in numbers, you won’t stand a chance of getting away alive.”

  “There’s nothing up at the cabin to speak of. No food, no firewood, no power. The water’s turned off, but you can turn it on at the back of the house. We’ll bring everything we can manage in the truck. It’ll be enough for us to hang on for a while. But you need to get this head start. You stay here, and I wager we’ll all end up dead.”

  “Hurry yourself,” Debra said to him. “If they converge here…I can’t stand to think about what will happen.”

  “Don’t you worry about us. Just go. Go!”

  Debra started the engine, threw the vehicle into reverse, and pulled into the yard to go around her father’s car. McAllister waved after them, calling, “We’ll be up there in a little while. We’ll see you.”

  Copeland waved back, but his entire body throbbed with the dark certainty that he would never see his old friend again. “Where the hell are we going now?” he asked, as Debra turned the Durango onto the road, heading north.

  “About five miles up the road. Before they died, Carolyn’s mom and dad lived at the top of Mount Hemlock. It’s just a little place, and there aren’t any close neighbors. I guess you’d say it’s pretty well concealed—for whatever that’s worth.”

  “That’s the northeast ridge, isn’t it? That’s closer to town than we are now.”

  “The terrain’s more rugged, though, so it’s less accessible. We don’t exactly have many choices for shelter, Russ.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, reluctantly. He glanced at the black, starless sky. “Can you drive without headlights? If those things see as well as they seem to, our lights will be a dead giveaway—especially if there aren’t any other cars on the road.”

  She nodded, slowed the vehicle, and flicked off the lights. The sudden darkness appeared complete for several seconds, until the dim gray pavement gradually re-materialized ahead of them. She maintained a steady twenty miles per hour, which felt too fast, but by now his faith in her was complete. Once they passed the turnoff that led to town—the way they had originally come—the road ascended steadily, curving treacherously through dense woodland, where houses were virtually nonexistent. A few lights dotted the woods here and there, but they passed no other cars and saw no one on foot. This place was already the end of the world, he thought; civilization could disappear altogether, and nobody here would notice any difference. He liked fleeing to a totally deserted place only slightly more than one filled with people.

  The road wound steadily upward, carrying them a couple of thousand feet above the town, the lights of which occasionally sparkled through the trees on the left. They came to a long, frighteningly dark passage between the towering trees, at the end of which he could see a patch of midnight blue sky, and as the Durango advanced toward it, a little alarm began to clang in his head, steadily intensifying.

  “Slow down,” he said. “Something up ahead.”

  She complied without question, and as the vehicle crept forward, he saw that, to the right of the road, a thick gray mist was oozing from the trees, swirling over the road like something alive. She hit the brakes and the tires screeched on the pavement.

  “What the hell?”

  “That’s what I saw out on 201 today.”

  By an unspoken signal, they both opened their doors and slid out, as silently as possible, into the unnaturally frigid night, Copeland with his rifle in hand. As soon as they began to steal toward the opening in the foliage, he felt exposed and vulnerable, and that sensation of being trapped inside a terrible dream once again overwhelmed him. His feet moved automatically as his mind retreated to some place of perceived safety, just outside his body. He vaguely registered Debra’s hand closing on his arm, and he took some comfort in her nearness. If it weren’t for her steadying presence, he thought, he might be reduced to cowering impotence in the face of this unimaginable, unpredictable power. But a look at her face told him she felt the same way—that at this moment, only together could they hold onto their wits.

  As they stepped out from beneath the trees, Copeland nearly reeled at the sight of the vista that had opened before them, for now they had an unobstructed view down either slope, and he sincerely wished that they did not. Debra’s iron grip on his triceps did nothing diminish the sense of unreality that swept over him in a nauseating wave.

  The land to the right of the road dropped off into a vast ocean of swirling, roiling mist, amid which he could discern shifting but clearly malevolent faces with deep, cavernous eye sockets, too like those of the Lumeras to be figments of his imagination. At the extreme range of his vision, he thought he saw mammoth, humped, black shapes leaping above the mist and quickly disappearing, but none remained in view long enough for him to determine whether they were real or illusory products of the rolling gray sea.

  If any doubts lingered that Major Martin had spoken a bitter but absolute truth, they now dissolved in the endless vapor, which had swallowed an entire world but for this one tiny, doomed corner.

  To the left and below, the lights of Silver Ridge glowed like the smoldering embers of a gigantic bonfire. Above the town, thousands of glimmering fireflies traced erratic patterns against the black backdrop, some brilliant gold, some fiery red, some electric blue. Periodically, one of the fireballs would dive into the geometric patterns of light and create wildly flashing strobe effects; Copeland fancied he could hear the distant, haunting sound of screaming as the Lumeras, with apparent randomness, cruelly obliterated any gatherings of the town’s citizens that suited their whim.

  Several clouds of the fireflies had come together and were slowly making their way southward—the direction from which Copeland and Debra had just come.

  Far in the distance, looming above the horizon, the tall, fire-crowned spire gazed down on the town like a monolithic sovereign, its black surfaces glittering with the reflected light of countless swirling fireballs. It appeared fixed and unwavering, as solid as the mountains it overlooked.

  Had it already anchored itself in this world?

  Did the Barrows have any clue what was happening here? Was this what old Amos had truly intended to bring forth from the world of dreams?

  Copeland’s eyes followed the winding road, which dipped below the ridge’s summit and veered to the left, where it disappeared into a vast bulwark of towering pines. “Does that road look normal to you?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  “How far is the cabin from here?”

  “Less than a mile. It should be, anyway.”

  “Do we keep going?”

  She pointed to the pulsating congeries of gold and sapphire light that appeared to be drifting in the direction of
the McAllisters’ home. “We can’t go back.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  They returned to the SUV, instinctively treading softly, each sensing that the faintest noise might draw unwelcome attention to them. When she turned the key and the engine rumbled smoothly to life, he flinched, half-expecting the sky to brighten suddenly and reveal murderous invaders bearing down on them at frightful speed. But as they started rolling, nothing appeared in their path, and he actually felt a small measure of relief once they reached the concealing darkness of the trees.

  After a long silence, Debra glanced at him, her features barely visible. “We don’t have much hope of surviving, do we?”

  “As far as we know, they still want you alive.”

  She slowly lowered one hand to the .38 on the seat beside her. “They will never have me alive. Never.”

  His heart sank, but he nodded. “I understand. But we’re going to take as many of them out as we can before we ever go down. You got that?”

  She smiled humorlessly. “It’s the only way.”

  “I never thought I would, in this lifetime, ever intend to commit murder. But so help me…if I so much as catch a glimpse of any of the Barrows, I will kill them.”

  “Self-defense isn’t murder,” Debra said. “They’re a clear and present threat.”

  “I suppose from a legal standpoint, it doesn’t really matter any more. Wherever we are, the law no longer exists.”

  “If you’re concerned, I don’t have a moral issue with killing them. Except…”

  “What?”

  “What about the boy?”

  He hesitated, his already-shaken convictions taking another turn. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “He’s already willingly used you so his father could get to you. As far as we know, he’s as much a part of this as the others.”

  “He’s only fifteen. Given his background, is he responsible?”

  “Maybe more importantly, if they were to come after you, would he be a willing participant? Would that make a difference to you?”