by J L Aarne
Kat had the good grace to look a little bit ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just freaking out, Wyatt, you don’t know how… Mom is always so mellow and calm and… I always talk to her about stuff like this and she always makes me feel better, but I can’t do that this time because it’s her this time.”
It’s her this time instead of you, that was what she really meant, but Wyatt let it go. He didn’t want to fight with her. It hadn’t been all that long ago that he and Kat had been close. So close that he would have gone right to her and told her all about Silas and the black-eyed children and Not Ned and maybe even about the serpent, knowing she wouldn’t believe him, but compelled to tell her because she was his best friend and she would listen even if she did think he was a lunatic. Now he couldn’t imagine doing such a thing and that wasn’t all because he wanted to keep her safe. Part of it was because he was sick and tired of being looked at the way he knew she would look at him if he told her. She might not say it, but she would think it, and he would read it in her eyes and wish he had kept it to himself. So, he was skipping that part, which meant lying to her sometimes, but it also meant not fighting with her if he could avoid it.
“Okay, look, why don’t I make us some lunch and we can talk or whatever you want to do. Just sit if that’s what you want,” Wyatt said. Kat had already turned the bottle of whiskey back up to drink and didn’t seem interested in lunch.
“Don’t you work today?” she asked when she lowered the bottle again. “Why are you still here?”
“Because I’m working a night shift,” Wyatt said. “I don’t have to be there until four.”
“Oh. That’s new,” Kat said. She walked by him out of the kitchen and flopped down in the easy chair in the living room. “Wyatt?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that a sword?”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
“A real sword?”
“I think so.”
“Cool. Why do you have a sword?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Kat thought about that for a minute before she sat forward to pick up the remote control and turn on the TV.
“Kat, you know Mom’s fine, right?” Wyatt said.
She shrugged. “Probably,” she said.
She didn’t want to talk to him about it anymore.
Wyatt felt useless because he had completely failed at reassuring her and it didn’t seem to be what she wanted from him anyway. Kat was letting it drop because she didn’t want to fight either, but he still sensed resentment coming off her. He was bad at comforting people, likely because he had almost never been asked to do it, and she didn’t want to be comforted as much as she seemed to want to be mad at him.
He knew that he could be wrong too. Their mother might not be fine because the thing pretending to be her husband might decide at any moment to stop pretending.
Except, once he had a chance to calm down and analyze what had happened, it hadn’t seemed that way when Wyatt had talked to it. It was unsettling, and Wyatt was angry and scared because of what it had done, but it hadn’t threatened him. The closest to threatened he had felt had been at their family dinner and that had only been a feeling. It had never spoken a threat to him or his family aloud. It had never tried to hurt him, which it could have done many times. It knew that he was aware of what it was, but it still hadn’t harmed his mother or even fled and left his father’s skin behind. What it had done was ask him not to tell Lorrie.
Which was all very interesting, but it left him with something of a dilemma.
“So, what was Dad like when you saw him?” Kat asked.
“Weird,” Wyatt said honestly. “He was weird at dinner that night too. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can kinda get why Mom’s upset about it. Maybe…”
“Maybe the stroke fried his brain after all?” Kat suggested.
It was the simplest explanation.
“Maybe.”
“The doctors don’t think so. He’s supposed to go back to work in a day or two.”
Wyatt frowned at that, but as far as he knew, the fleshgaits didn’t take over children. That might be because children weren’t big enough, or there was something else about their undeveloped bodies and minds that made them incompatible with the parasitic creatures. Or they could take over children and he just hadn’t seen it yet. He would have to add that to the growing mental list of things to ask Silas about when he saw him again.
Wyatt left Kat staring at the TV and went to make lunch.
Wyatt opened a can of raviolis and divided it between them. They ate and watched The Doctors on TV, hardly speaking. Usually The Doctors was a show that was gross enough that they would have laughed about it because they were eating Chef Boyardee while a woman was having her hemorrhoids fixed, and another woman was having over a hundred spontaneous orgasms a day, and a man had to have his teeth surgically repaired because he had tried to fix them himself at home with superglue. It was not typically a show to watch while eating, which made it something the two of them should have found hilarious while eating.
After lunch, Kat left, and Wyatt turned off the TV, feeling sad. That thing that had been cracking between them seemed broken, and he was starting think it wasn’t something they were going to be able to fix anytime soon.
Wyatt had been thinking he would ask the gnomes where Silas lived because they knew him, but it wasn’t dark enough before he left for work to find any. They weren’t out yet. Unlike the black-eyed children, the light hurt them.
If only garden supply stores knew that, it might have put an end to creepy lawn gnome statuary, Wyatt reflected. He had always hated those statues and figurines. Their smiles were sinister, and he was convinced that their cute, rosy cheeks were a lie. They were worse than clowns and almost as terrifying as ventriloquist dummies.
The night shift at the diner was completely different from the day shift. Wyatt’s first night shift, he had finished all his work, and there had been times when he had been bored with nothing to do and few or no customers at all. After that, he started making up things to do to keep himself busy, but even then he had a lot of time on his hands. There were night people who came into the diner all hours of the night for breakfast or late dinner or just to hang out, used the Wi-Fi and drank a lot of coffee. There were truckers who wandered in looking shell-shocked and exhausted for coffee and sometimes a meal before returning to their truck to sleep. He observed them with curiosity, and some of them asked who he was because they were used to Jimmy or Becca, who usually worked the nights.
Becca was nice and pretty in a recovering meth user sort of way, and she was the one who had agreed to trade shifts with Wyatt so he could work nights. Some of the truckers looked disappointed when he told them she had switched to days, but most of the regular customers didn’t even seem to notice.
Something that Wyatt had not expected (and in hindsight he realized he should have) were the creatures that came to the Hilltop Diner after dark. He served fish and chips to a man-shaped creature wearing a black hoodie who did not appear to have a face in the deep darkness of his hood. He rang up a lady with snakes twisting through her thin blond hair for the soup and salad bar and brought her hot water and a selection of tea. He told a guy with scales along his neck and face that he had to go outside to smoke his cigarette. That guy didn’t leave him a tip.
They looked like average people to everyone else, Wyatt soon realized when no one seemed to care about or even notice the snakes or the scales except for him.
The only one who noticed Wyatt back was a tall, thin man named Peter who always sat alone at the end of the bar farthest from the door and never ate anything, but drank cup after cup of coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Peter wore a black trench coat and Wyatt suspected from the first time he saw him that he was hiding wings beneath it.
Peter never talked to anyone, not even to Wyatt after the first couple of times he ordered coffee, but one night when he was the only p
erson in the diner, Wyatt asked him if he knew Silas.
He had been trying to get in touch with Silas again for weeks, but he didn’t know how. He went for walks around the neighborhood, hoping to jog his memory and remember the address. He had walked through the apartment calling for gnomes, searched under the sofa, in the cupboards and closets, but he hadn’t seen them since Carl had asked him about Tallie. He started leaving out cream for them, but he was sure the cats were the only ones drinking it.
He asked Peter if he knew Silas on a whim and did not really expect a helpful answer.
“Silas who?” Peter asked. His voice was soft and low. It was a voice that required silence to be heard.
Wyatt stopped wiping down the bar and leaned on his elbows in front of Peter. “You know who,” he said.
Peter stirred his spoon in his cup and smiled faintly. “I knew you were one of them,” he said. “Not like him. You’re one of the twitchy ones.”
Wyatt was only a little offended by this and only because he had been thinking he was doing so much better. He didn’t think of himself as twitchy. Of course, he didn’t think of himself as neurotic either, which Kat assured him he still very much was.
“I see you for what you really are, if that’s what you mean,” Wyatt said.
Peter’s smile widened, and he looked up at Wyatt with lifted brows. “The one-eyed man sees the world differently, too,” he said. “What do you want Silas for?”
“He told me to find him when I was ready,” Wyatt said with a shrug. “So, I need to find him.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Are you ready?”
“I guess so. I don’t exactly know what that means, but I still need to find him.” Wyatt noticed Peter’s cup was only about half full and got the pot and refilled it. “So, do you know where he is?”
Instead of answering him, Peter stirred cream and sugar into his coffee and said, “Your kind are disappearing like ships in the Bermuda Triangle these days, you know. I’d be extremely careful if I were you.”
“What do you mean, disappearing?” Wyatt asked.
Peter tasted his coffee, wasn’t satisfied with it and picked up the sugar again. “Some are dead, but most have just disappeared,” he said, making a gesture with his hand to demonstrate floating away. “If you don’t know what ‘disappeared’ means, then I’m sure Silas won’t have any use for you, ready or not.”
“I know what it means,” Wyatt said, irritated. “What do you mean by it?”
“I mean gone,” Peter said. “All across the world, just gone. It’s been in the news here and there, but the day-walkers will never figure it out. It all looks like random murders, kidnappings and disappearances to them.”
Wyatt decided Peter wasn’t going to tell him where to find Silas and stood up from the bar, thinking he would go searching for gnomes again after he got off work. Hopefully they made an appearance before it was too late; he had started feeling like he was running out of time. It had something to do with the way the serpent called to him when he closed his eyes to sleep. His dreams about that dark place where his feet slipped on the shale rocks and molted snake skin and the Midgard Serpent opened its glowing eyes to look at him were becoming more vivid and more frequent.
In half of the dreams he was drowning. He woke up from them with a painful urge to get in his car and drive to the ocean.
“You feel it,” Peter said, watching him with more interest. “Its why creatures that never come to the city are now flooding into it. Of course, you feel it too.”
“Why?” Wyatt asked. “Why do I? I’m not like them. I’m not like you.”
“Sure, you are,” Peter said. “If you weren’t just a little bit like me, you’d look down at the end of the bar and see some guy, probably homeless, probably a little nuts, but still an ordinary guy sitting here drinking coffee. Except that’s not what you see, or we wouldn’t be talking.”
“Okay, so I feel it,” Wyatt said. “So, what?”
“So, you probably need to find Silas,” Peter said. He looked amused and Wyatt suspected he was laughing at him. “Silas lives in the apartment above the Blue Crane Dojo.”
“I think I know where that is,” Wyatt said. If it was the place he was thinking of, it wasn’t even a mile from his apartment building. He had probably walked right by it a dozen times. “All right. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Peter said. He shifted his attention away from Wyatt to the wall behind him and sipped his coffee. “Now, go away.”
Chapter 15
From the Journal of John B. Bledsoe, 1610
September 1, 1610
Mr. Warwick and his hunting party returned today. They brought meat, which people were excited about as we have all grown tired of eating rabbits and dried fish. It will be good to have a taste of fresh venison. Even dried venison will make for a nice change.
Unfortunately, a man from their party was lost. Killed by Indians, Mr. Warwick says, which is a believable story because the native savages in this place have attacked the town in the past. Where once they were friendly to the colonists who came before us, they now regard us as enemies. I believe this is a consequence of the long drought and the bad winter, and quite possibly because of the wendigo they say our people became. Wendigo who still inhabit the forests nearby if they have not been killed.
I do not believe Mr. Warwick’s man was killed by Indians though. His name was Thomas Kingsley and he was one of ours, and I believe something else in the woods killed him, just as I believe the hunting party was not hunting deer, elk and bear for an entire fortnight. Like Mr. Warwick, Mr. Kingsley was a warrior, so it may be assumed that he died in battle; he died protecting and defending the people of this town from monsters. A thing few will ever know.
I wonder if Mr. Warwick disbelieved my stories as much as he let on. I suspect he believed them a little or Mr. Kingsley would not have died.
God bless you, Mr. Thomas Kingsley. Rest well, your fight is over.
September 3, 1610
There was an earthquake in the early, still dark morning hours of yesterday. No one is dead because of it, thankfully, but there is much to be repaired. Young Mr. Elbert and I have been kept busy. Damage to people’s homes has been minor owing to their simple, sturdy construction. Some daubing will have to be replaced and roofs will need to be rethatched, but mostly people are scared.
It was a frightening thing. The world rumbled and rattled like the hand of a great child had picked it up and shook it, determined to throw us all off. My wife said later that she felt something more while it was happening. A voice, like the one we have both had dreams of—the voice of the great wyrm in the earth—filled her brain with its demand for freedom. She confessed to me that she experienced a sensation of longing for this demonic dream-creature. That she felt a desire to do what it asked. I did not feel anything of the kind and, though I do not wish to doubt her, I do. She was extremely afraid, as was I, as were we all, and I think in such times it can be difficult to know one’s own mind. I do not like to use dismissive, vague words like ‘hysterical’, but under the circumstances, I believe she can be forgiven for a little hysteria and I can be forgiven for thinking it.
I have believed in many unbelievable things in my life and we are living in strange, remarkable times, but if I allow myself to believe that my dreams and hers are true, that there is a monstrous wyrm living in the center of the earth who is the king of all evil things, then there is no hope. We are doomed if we believe in this monster.
September 4, 1610
Finally, I have been able to see Mr. Warwick and tell him everything. I began with events that occurred just before his hunting party left, but things have become more and more dangerous and bizarre since then. The black-eyed children have been especially aggressive and their visits to demand entrance into our homes more frequent. Mr. Elbert has become so terrified of them that he has been staying with myself and Mrs. Bledsoe for the past week. People are on edge and i
t is as though we are all waiting expectantly for disaster. There has been some lessening of this tension after the earthquake, but only a small fraction less. Some, mostly the daylight people, either believe that the earthquake was the thing that was coming, or they hope it was. That would mean that the danger they have been dreading has passed.
I explained these things to Mr. Warwick and, though I have heard and experienced myself his impatient nature and quick temper, he listened and did not interrupt me except to ask an occasional question.
However, it was when I described Mr. Jonathan Foster’s alarming behavior with his horse that Mr. Warwick appeared to become truly uneasy. When I began to tell about my recurring dreams of the wyrm, I could see him become afraid and that gave me pause. I do not know Mr. Warwick well, but he is known to be a strong, arrogant, steady individual. He is not liked by many, but he is respected by most and even feared by some. He has never struck me as a man to display such fear over a thing like the tales of another man’s dreams.
He ordered his wife from the room. She is a pretty girl, but a savage I’ve heard the men say Mr. Warwick got from her father for two horses and four blankets; she does not speak or understand the English language. Still, he told her to leave and she did.
When she was gone, I asked, “Do you believe me?”
“I do,” he said. He sat forward with an earnest expression on his face. “There is a serpent—a wyrm—like the one you describe. It has been… quiet for a long time. Hundreds of years. It stirs now and that is why we are seeing these creatures here. These black-eyed children and whatever has possessed Mr. Foster. Do you believe me?”
“I do not know,” I told him honestly. “How can you know this?”
“I know,” was all he said. He sat back and visibly tried to compose himself. “You cannot tell anyone else about this. About any of it, but especially not about your dreams. Do you understand?”
“But why? Should they not know? Should we not warn them?” I asked. “If what you say is true, we are all in danger. Not only us, but…”