A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  “No. That’s one thing I’m not. Trust me when I say that no hospital in the world can help me—because I’m not dying. And if you ever loved me, if you ever had any regard for who I am and what I want from my life, then you’ll put down that phone and walk out that door.”

  I stood there in the hot, humid squalor of that tiny room, receiver in hand, smelling the garbage, detecting the hint of another odor, a subtle sour foulness that underlay the others, and felt myself being torn apart by the choice that faced me.

  “Please, Mac,” he said. “You’re the only person in the world who’ll understand. Don’t hand me over to strangers.” He sobbed once. “I can’t fight you. I can only beg you. Please. Put down the phone and leave.”

  It was the sob that did it. I slammed the receiver onto its cradle.

  “Damn you!”

  “Two days, Mac. In two days I’ll be better. You wait and see.”

  “You’re damn right I’ll see—I’m staying here with you!”

  “No! You can’t! You have no right to intrude! This is my life! You’ve got to let me take it where I must! Now leave, Mac. Please.”

  He was right, of course. This was what we’d been all about when we’d been together. I had to back off. And it was killing me.

  “All right,” I said around the lump in my throat. “You win. See you in two days.”

  Without waiting for a reply. I opened the door and stepped out into the bright September sunlight.

  “Thanks, Mac,” he said. “I love you.”

  I didn’t want to hear that. I took one last look back as I pulled the door closed. He was still swaddled from his neck to the floor in the blankets, but in the last instant before the door shut him from view, I thought I saw something white and pointed, about the circumference of a garden hose, snake out on the carpet from under the blankets and then quickly pull back under cover.

  A rush of nausea slammed me against the outer wall of the motel as the door clicked closed. I leaned there, sick and dizzy, trying to catch my breath.

  A trick of the light. That was what I told myself as the vertigo faded. I’d been squinting in the brightness and the light had played a trick.

  Of course, I didn’t have to settle for merely telling myself. I could simply open the door and check it out. I actually reached for the knob, but couldn’t bring myself to turn it.

  Two days. Creighton had said two days. I’d find out then.

  But I didn’t last two days. I was unable to concentrate the following morning and wound up canceling all my appointments. I spent the entire day pacing my office or my living room; and when I wasn’t pacing, I was on the phone. I called the American Folklore Society and the New Jersey Historical Society. Not only had they not given Creighton the grants he’d told me about, they’d never heard of him.

  By nightfall I’d taken all I could. I began calling Creighton’s room. I got no answer. I tried a few more times, but when he still hadn’t picked up by eleven o’clock, I headed for the motel.

  I was almost relieved to see the Wrangler gone from the parking lot. Room five was still unlocked and still a garbage dump, which meant he was still renting it—or hadn’t been gone too long.

  What was he up to?

  I began to search the room. I found the book under the bed. It was huge, heavy, wrapped in plastic with a scrawled note taped to the front:

  Please return to Miskatonic U. archives

  I slipped it out of the plastic. It was leather-bound and handwritten in Latin. I could barely decipher the title—something like Lihen Damnatus. But inside the front cover were Creighton’s maps and a sheaf of notes in his back-slanted scrawl. The notes were in disarray and probably would have been disjointed even if arranged in proper order. But certain words and phrases kept recurring: nexus point and equinox and the lumens and the veil.

  It took me a while but eventually I got the drift of the jottings. Apparently a section of the book Creighton had stolen concerned “nexus points” around the globe where twice a year at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes “the veil” that obscures reality becomes detached for a short while, allowing an intrepid soul to peek under the hem and see the true nature of the world around us, the world we are not “allowed” to see. These “nexus points” are few and widely scattered. Of the four known, there’s one near each pole, one in Tibet, and one near the east coast of North America.

  I sighed. Crazy Creighton had really started living up to his name. It was sad. This was so unlike him. He’d been the ultimate cynic, and now he was risking his health and his freedom pursuing this mystical garbage.

  And what was even sadder was how he had lied to me. Obviously he hadn’t been searching for tales of the Jersey Devil—he’d been searching for one of these “nexus points.” And he was probably convinced he’d found one behind Razorback Hill. I pitied him. But I read on.

  According to the notes, these “nexus points” can be located by following “the lumens” to a place shunned equally by man, beast, and vegetation.

  Suddenly I was uneasy. “The lumens.” Could that refer to the pine lights? And the “bald spot” that Fred had showed us—that was certainly a place shunned by man, beast, and vegetation.

  I found a whole sheet filled with notes about the Razorback folk. The last paragraph was especially upsetting:

  The folks behind Razorback Hill aren’t deformed from inbreeding, although I’m sure that’s contributed its share. I believe they’re misshapen as a result of living near the nexus point for generations. The semi-annual lifting of the veil must have caused genetic damage over the years.

  I pulled out Creighton’s maps and unfolded them on the bed. I followed the lines he had drawn from Apple Pie Hill, from Gus’s firing place, and from our campsite. All three lines represented paths of pine lights, and all three intersected at a spot near the circle he had drawn and labeled as Razorback Hill. And right near the intersection of the pine light paths, almost on top of it, he had drawn another circle, a tiny one, penciled in the latitude and longitude, and labeled it Nexus!

  I was worried now. Even my own skepticism was beginning to waver. Everything was fitting too neatly. I looked at my watch. Eleven thirty-two. The date read “21.” September 21. When was the equinox? I grabbed the phone and called an old clam digger who’d been a client since I’d opened my office. He knew the answer right off:

  “The autumnal equinox. That’s September twenty-second. ‘Bout a half hour from now.”

  I dropped the phone and ran for my car. I knew exactly where to find Jon Creighton.

  9. The Hem of the Veil

  I raced down the Parkway to the Bass River exit and tried to find my way back to Gus Sooy’s place. What had been a difficult trip in the day proved to be several orders of magnitude more difficult in the dark. But I managed to find Gus’s red cedar. It was my plan to convince him to show me a short way to the far side of Razorback Hill, figuring the fact that Creighton was already there might make him more tractable. But when I rushed up to Gus Sooy’s clearing, I discovered that he wasn’t alone.

  The Razorback folk were there. All of them, from the looks of the crowd.

  I found Gus standing on his front step, a jug dangling from his hand. He was obviously shocked to see me, and was anything but hospitable.

  “What do you want?”

  Before I could answer, the Razorback folks recognized me and a small horde of them crowded around.

  “Why are they all here?” I asked Gus.

  “Just visiting,” he said casually, but did not look me in the eye.

  “It wouldn’t have anything to do with what’s happening at the bald spot on the other side of Razorback Hill, would it?”

  “Damn you! You’ve been snoopin’ around, haven’t you? You and your friend. They told me he was coming around, askin’ all sorts of questions. Where’s he now? Hidin’ in the bushes?”

  “He’s over there,” I said, pointing to the top of Razorback Hill. “And if my guess is correct, he’s standi
ng right in the middle of the bald spot.”

  Gus dropped his jug. It shattered on the boards of his front step.

  “Do you know what’ll happen to him?”

  “No,” I said. “Do you?” I looked around at the Razorback folk. “Do they?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows, leastmost them. But they’re scared. They come here twice a year, when that bald spot starts acting up.”

  “Have you ever seen what happens there?”

  “Once. Never want to see it again.”

  “Why haven’t you ever told anyone?”

  “What? And bring all sorts of pointyheads here to look and gawk and build and ruin the place. We’d all rather put up with the bald spot craziness twice a year than pointyhead craziness every day all year long.”

  I didn’t have time to get into Creighton’s theory that the bald spot was genetically damaging the Razorback folks. I had to find Creighton.

  “How do I get there? What’s the fastest way?”

  “You can’t—”

  “They got here!” I pointed to the Razorback folks.

  “All right!” he said with open hostility. “Suit yourself. There’s a trail behind my cabin here. Follow it over the left flank of the hill.”

  “And then?”

  “And then you won’t need any directions. You’ll know where to go.”

  His words had an ominous ring, but I couldn’t press him. I was being propelled by a sense of enormous urgency. Time was running out. Quickly. I already had my flashlight, so I hurried to the rear of his shanty and followed the trail.

  Gus was right. As I crossed the flank of the hill I saw flashes through the trees ahead, like lightning, as if a very tiny and very violent electrical storm had been brought to ground and anchored there. I increased my pace, running when the terrain would allow. The wind picked up as I neared the storm area, growing from a fitful breeze to a full-scale gale by the time I broke through the brush and stumbled into the clearing that surrounded the bald spot.

  Chaos. That’s the only way I can describe it. A nightmare of cascading lights and roaring wind. The pine lights—or lumens—were there, hundreds of them, all sizes, unaffected by the rushing vortex of air as they swirled about in wild arcs, each flaring brilliantly as it looped through the space above the bald spot. And the bald spot itself—it glowed with a faint purplish light that reached thirty or forty feet into the air before fading into the night.

  The stolen book, Creighton’s notes—they weren’t mystical madness. Something cataclysmic was happening here, something that defied all the laws of nature—if indeed those laws had any real meaning. Whether this was one of the nexus points he had described, a fleeting rent in the reality that surrounded us, only Creighton could say for sure right now.

  For I could see someone in the bald spot. I couldn’t make out his features from where I was, but I knew it was Jonathan Creighton.

  I dashed forward until I reached the edge but slowed to a halt in the sand before actually crossing into the glow. Creighton was there, on his knees, his hands and feet buried in the sand. He was staring about him, his expression an uneasy mix of fear and wonder. I shouted his name but he didn’t hear me above the roar of the wind. Twice he looked directly at me but despite my frantic shouting and waving, did not see me.

  I saw no other choice. I had to step onto the bald spot . . . the nexus point. It wasn’t easy. Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to run in the other direction, but I couldn’t leave him there like that. He looked helpless, trapped like an insect on flypaper. I had to help him.

  Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and stepped across—

  —and began to stumble forward. Up and down seemed to have a slightly different orientation here. I opened my eyes and dropped to my knees, nearly landing on Creighton. I looked around and froze.

  The Pine Barrens were gone. Night was gone. It seemed to be predawn or dusk here, but the wind still howled about us and the pine lights flashed around us, appearing and disappearing above as though passing through invisible walls. We were someplace . . . else: on a huge misty plain that seemed to stretch on forever, interrupted only by clumps of vegetation and huge fog banks, one of which was nearby on my left and seemed to go on and up forever. Off in the immeasurable distance, mountains the size of the moon reached up and disappeared into the haze of the purple sky. The horizon—or what I imagined to be the horizon—didn’t curve as it should. This place seemed so much bigger than the world—our world—that waited just a few feet away.

  “My God, Jon, where are we!”

  He started and turned his head. His hands and feet remained buried in the sand. His eyes went wide with shock at the sight of me.

  “No! You shouldn’t be here!”

  His voice was thicker and more distorted than yesterday. Oddly enough, his pale skin looked almost healthy in the mauve light.

  “Neither should you!”

  I heard something then. Above the shriek of the wind came another sound. A rumble like an avalanche. It came from somewhere within the fog bank to our left. There was something massive, something immense moving about in there, and the fog seemed to be drifting this way.

  “We’ve got to get out of here, Jon!”

  “No! I’m staying!”

  “No way! Come on!”

  He was wracked with infection and obviously deranged. I didn’t care what he said, I wasn’t going to let him risk his life in this place. I’d pull him out of here and let him think about it for six months. Then if he still wanted to try this, it would be his choice. But he wasn’t competent now.

  I looped my arms around his chest and tried to pull him to his feet.

  “Mac, please! Don’t!”

  His hands remained fixed in the sand. He must have been holding onto something. I grabbed his right elbow and yanked. He screamed as his hand pulled free of the sand. Then I screamed, too, and let him go and threw myself back on the sand away from him.

  Because his hand wasn’t a hand anymore.

  It was big and white and had these long, ropey, tapered, root-like projections, something like an eye on a potato when it sprouts after being left under the sink too long, only these things were moving, twisting and writhing like a handful of albino snakes.

  “Go, Mac!” he said in that distorted voice, and I could tell from his face and eyes that he hadn’t wanted me to see him like this. “You don’t belong here!”

  “And you do?”

  “Now I do!”

  I couldn’t bring myself to touch his hand, so I reached forward and grabbed some of his shirt. I pulled.

  “We can find doctors! They can fix you! You can—”

  “NO!”

  It was a shout and it was something else. Something long and white and hard as flexed muscle, much like the things protruding from his shirt sleeve, darted out of his mouth and slammed against my chest, bruising my breasts as it thrust me away. Then it whipped back into his mouth.

  I snapped then. I scrambled to my feet and blindly lurched away in the direction I’d come. Suddenly I was back in the Pine Barrens, in the cool night with the lights swirling madly above my head. I stumbled for the bushes, away from the nexus point, away from Jonathan Creighton.

  At the edge of the clearing, I forced myself to stop and look back. I saw Creighton. His awful transformed hand was raised. I knew he couldn’t see me, but it was almost as if he was waving good-bye. Then he lowered his hand and worked the tendrils back into the sand.

  The last thing I remember of that night is vomiting.

  10. Aftermath

  I awoke among the Razorback folk who’d found me the next morning and watched over me until I was conscious and lucid again. They offered me food but I couldn’t eat. I walked back up to the clearing, to the bald spot.

  It looked exactly as it had when Creighton and I had first seen it in August. No lights, no wind, no purple glow. Just bare sand.

  And no Jonathan Creighton.

  I could have convi
nced myself that last night had never happened if not for the swollen, tender, violet bruise on my chest. Would that I had. But as much as my mind shrank from it, I could not deny the truth. I’d seen the other side of the veil and my life would never be the same.

  I looked around and knew that everything I saw was a sham, an elaborate illusion. Why? Why was the veil there? To protect us from harm? Or to shield us from madness? The truth had brought me no peace. Who could find comfort in the knowledge that huge, immeasurable forces beyond our comprehension were out there, moving about us, beyond the reach of our senses?

  I wanted to run . . . but where?

  I ran home. I’ve been home for months now. Housebound. Moving beyond my door only for groceries. My accounting clients have all left me. I’m living on my savings, learning Latin, translating Jon’s stolen book. Was what I saw the true reality of our existence, or another dimension, or what? I don’t know. Creighton was right: Knowing that you don’t know is maddening. It consumes you.

  So I’m waiting for spring. Waiting for the vernal equinox. Maybe I’ll leave the house before then and hunt up some pine lights—or lumens, as the book calls them. Maybe I’ll touch one, maybe I won’t. Maybe when the equinox comes, I’ll return to Razorback Hill, to the bald spot. Maybe I’ll look for Jon. He may be there, he may not. I may cross into the bald spot, I may not. And if I do, I may not come back. Or I may.

  I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know anything anymore. I’ve come to the point now where I’m sure of only one thing: Nothing is sure anymore.

  At least on this side of the veil.

  MIDNIGHT MASS

  (the novella)

  I

  It had been almost a full minute since he’d slammed the brass knocker against the heavy oak door. That should have been proof enough. After all, wasn’t the knocker in the shape of a cross? But no, they had to squint through their peephole and peer through the sidelights that framed the door.

  Rabbi Zev Wolpin sighed and resigned himself to the scrutiny. He couldn’t blame people for being cautious, but this seemed a bit overly so. The sun was in the west and shining full on his back; he was all but silhouetted in it. What more did they want?