Kzine Issue 19

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  “That’s because you’ve just come out of the water. Come outside, you’ll dry off in seconds.”

  Amanda stayed where she was. When Reggie rose up on his knees, she opened her eyes sluggishly.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “Nothing, I’m just tired.”

  Reggie grinned. “You need to be fitter than this girl, if you’re going to keep up with me. Get up lazy bones.”

  When she still didn’t move, Reggie placed his foot against her side and pushed her over onto her front. At first he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing as he looked down at her naked back. The skin of Amanda’s shoulders and upper back was as pale and unmarked as newly laid snow, but a large patch of her lower back was grey and scaly. Her skin’s bumpy texture, Reggie realised after a disturbing few seconds, was due to the fact that something was attached to it.

  “What… what the hell’s that?” Reggie bent and touched the grey patch, his fingertips brushing against its rough surface. “Uhg…” he said. The grey patch was a rough oval in shape. Its scaly texture reminded him of the skin of a lizard. When he touched it again the thing’s surface rippled.

  And then a pair of white eyes opened within it.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Reggie stumbled backwards, almost slipping and falling back in the pool. “There’s something stuck to your back.”

  “What is it?” Amanda tried to push herself up, but her thin, trembling arms seemed unable to support her weight. “Reggie,” she cried. “I feel all weak.”

  Reggie forced himself to kneel next to her again. The thing’s white, sightless eyes were slowly covered by grey, scaly eyelids which then slid slowly back up, gradually revealing the stark white orbs again.

  It’s looking at me.

  Reggie shivered with utter revulsion.

  “Get it off!” Amanda felt at her back. “Reggie get it off me!”

  I can’t. I can’t touch it!

  Reggie’s fingers hovered closer to the thing, finally touching it at its upper edge. He tried to jab the thing off, but it seemed to be stuck fast. He jabbed harder and Amanda cried out.

  “Oh god it hurts! It hurts!”

  Reggie tried to insert both sets of his fingers underneath the thing, but it was as if it had somehow become a part of Amanda’s body. When he pulled at it Amanda shrieked with pain.

  “Get it off me!”

  What the hell was he supposed to do? The creature had attached itself to her like some kind of parasite.

  “Get it off meeeeeee!”

  “I need a knife!” said Reggie.

  “Reggie get it off me!”

  “I need a knife Amanda!”

  “In the kitchen drawer! In the kitchen!”

  “Just wait here! I’ll come right back!”

  Reggie raced out of the cave and dashed stark naked across the garden, towards the villa. As he approached the house he tried to work out which room was likely to be the kitchen. He ran halfway around the house, frantically searching for a door, found a set of French windows and went in through them into what appeared to be a living room. His bare feet thudded across the carpet, out into a hallway. Confronted by an external door he turned and tried another direction, charging through the endless maze of rooms until he stumbled into the huge kitchen. Cutlery rattled loudly as he flung open drawers. He pulled out a blunt and a sharp knife, then his eyes alighted on a long window shelf and he saw the line of tiny plastic tubes.

  Mark’s cigarette lighters!

  Burn the thing off!

  Grabbing one of these as well Reggie went through the kitchen’s back door, and found himself at the front of the garden. He sprinted across the lawn. How long had he been? Five minutes? Surely not as long as that.

  Inside the cave, Amanda was lying exactly where he had left her.

  “I’m here, don’t worry.” He knelt beside her.

  Amanda’s eyes were closed. Reggie saw with alarm that her face had swollen up, her cheeks were puffy and red.

  “Amanda!” He shook her, and her eyes flickered open.

  “Reggie,” she murmured weakly.

  “Oh god.” He bent around to her back. With a trembling hand he held the lighter’s naked flame against the creature’s scaly skin.

  Come off you bastard!

  The creature’s jelly like eyes stared at him, and then its armoured eyelids crawled back over the white orbs. With a cry of rage Reggie dropped the lighter, and stabbed the blade of the sharp knife into the thing’s surface. When this too had no effect, he tried inserting the knife’s blade between the thing’s edge and Amanda’s back.

  Reggie gasped. An inch or so above the grey patch there was a lump under Amanda’s skin, as if an object was underneath her flesh, stretching the skin tightly around it. Further up her back he saw another one, and yet another one on her shoulder. As he watched, the lumps seemed to move, causing the skin of her back to undulate.

  “Reggie…” Amanda gasped weakly. Her hand moved feebly against the rock floor. Reggie looked at her face again, and saw that it had swollen up even more in the few seconds he’d been kneeling behind her.

  “Oh god!”

  Dropping the knives, Reggie dived for his discarded trousers, desperately searching in the pockets for his mobile phone.

  “I’m calling a doctor.”

  The phone gave him no signal. Reggie swore until he realised he needed to go outside the cave. He tried to dial 113, his giant fingers seeming incapable of pressing the phone’s tiny keys.

  “I need someone who speaks English. Please, please I need an ambulance!”

  He stuttered the villa’s address into the phone.

  “Forty minutes! No you need to get here quicker than that!”

  “It’ll be as quick as possible sir,” the slow Italian voice told him.

  Reggie squeezed the phone in his hands, feeling the world spinning around him.

  Sealed up for millions of years he heard Mark’s ghostly voice in his head. There could be things down there that no one’s ever seen.

  Reggie staggered against the entrance to the cave.

  What if Amanda died? There would be a police investigation. They’d want to know how it had become attached to Amanda’s back. Why had she been swimming naked in the pool? Why had Reggie been with her? In the pool where her husband’s body was shortly going to be discovered?

  Leave her. The ghostly voice spoke in his mind again. Leave her to die. No one will ever know you were here.

  Reggie stood up and went back inside the cave. Amanda lay motionless on the floor, but her eyes seemed to be open.

  “Mand,” Reggie bent to her. “They’re com…”

  Amanda’s face had become a bulging mask. Her cheeks were the size of tennis balls, the skin straining so much Reggie could see the tiny veins inside pulling apart. Her forehead was massively swollen. Her eyes were huge in their sockets, bulging outwards like huge white golf balls.

  “Amanda…” He waved a hand in front of her, but there was no reaction in her sightless eyes.

  All over Amanda’s body her skin was bulging and trembling. One of her cheeks suddenly split open. Bright red blood gouted over her face, the ruptured cheek rippling as something forced its way out. Reggie was frozen as he watched the pale thing, a huge, thick, fleshy, blood covered worm, crawling over Amanda’s face.

  Reggie was sick.

  A lump burst on Amanda’s leg and then another huge white worm appeared, wriggling rapidly along her thigh. Another one crawled out of her back, and then another one burst out of her forehead. The lips of Amanda’s swollen mouth were trembling, and for a horror filled second Reggie thought she was trying to speak.

  And then a massive worm crawled out of her mouth.

  Reggie screamed. He snatched up his trousers and raced out of the cave, his feet pounding the ground until he collided with the villa’s French windows. Screaming incomprehensibly he wrestled with the doors and fell inside, kneeling on the floor and vomiting onto
the carpet. He stood up, staggered weakly into the hallway and then fell against the wall, blackness seeping into the corners of his vision as he lost his grip on reality.

  The sunlit hall of the villa swam in and out of focus. He lay on the floor, his head resting on his arm. Somewhere, in the corners of his whispering consciousness, he was aware of a sound, very faint, touching his mind for a second. Then again. And again. Becoming progressively louder.

  A squeaking sound.

  Reggie opened his eyes. His trousers lay against his naked legs. Weakly, he dragged them on, then tried to stand upright.

  The sound came again. It was coming from the living room, just ahead of him.

  Reggie clutched himself, his whole body trembling violently. He had to get out of here. Get to his car.

  Squeak. Squeak.

  What was making that sound?

  Reggie stepped into the living room. He looked around, ready to bolt to the French windows. There was the long patterned sofa by the huge, open fireplace. Amanda’s collection of decorative plates, newly arranged above the mantlepiece. He looked over at the wall that contained the French windows and found himself staring into Mark’s face.

  A spike of ice drove into Reggie’s stomach. He yelled, clutching onto the door as his legs threatened to give way again.

  It was Mark. Mark’s face. Mark’s face was on the wall, looking at Reggie.

  The white oval of flesh was crawling slowly up the wall, its edges rippling as it moved. Reggie simply couldn’t accept what he was seeing. It was Mark’s face. His long red-lipped mouth, his narrow chin, his elongated nose, the deep crease lines along his forehead, and on either side of his nose his large, deep brown eyes. Mark’s face in every detail, except for his tanned skin. This apparition’s flesh was deathly white.

  Reggie watched the grinning face crawl slowly up the wall, its features bunching and straightening as it moved. When it reached the top of the wall, the thing’s fleshy edge curved forward onto the ceiling, and then the face was wriggling along the patterned ceiling above him. Reggie backed away, unable to take his eyes from the impossible thing.

  Squeak! Squeak!

  The sound came again, but it wasn’t coming from the ceiling. Reggie’s head snapped back to the window, and he saw Mark’s face pressed against the outside of the glass. The red mouth was huge, massively swollen as it stretched over the glass, the nose was pressed flat so that the thing seemed to be both snarling and laughing as it wriggled upwards, leaving a gigantic, face shaped smear behind it.

  Reggie shrieked, the sound ripping out of his throat as his body shriveled. He felt the world darken again, wonderful oblivion threatening to engulf him. Then something made him look up, and he saw that the smiling face on the ceiling was directly above him. Its edges were rippling as it prepared to let go.

  Reggie stumbled away just as the thing plopped onto the carpet next to him. It scuttled towards him, its mouth grinning, its brown eyes moving crazily in their jelly like surround. Reggie stumbled through the French windows, out into the garden. Things moved on all sides of him, shapes wriggling through the grass, white nightmares crawling over the sides of the house. Mark’s face crawled over the walls, it grinned down at him from the roof and the windows, it snarled at him from hedges and trees.

  There were hundreds of them!

  The worms! They had all somehow grown into these apparitions! The entire garden was alive with white, wriggling faces.

  Reggie couldn’t think. He had lost the power to comprehend. He simply ran, cursing and crying, leaping out of the way of the fleshy creatures, until he reached the villa’s rear gate. He bounded over the gate in a single leap and kept going, sprinting on his bare feet through the woods.

  How can they look like Mark’s face?

  Reggie’s mind could barely touch the horror of it.

  The thing on Amanda’s back… It laid them inside her!

  His feet pounded bare earth. A memory shivered through him. Looking into the pool, thinking he saw Mark’s ghostly face floating up through the water. Had that been real? Had that been some creature swimming in the pool? Something that had nested and lived and grown inside Mark’s dead face? A father creature, who had then impregnated the female?

  He didn’t even realise that he was screaming continuously until he felt the pain in his raw throat, and then he almost collided with the people who had stepped out in front of him.

  Reggie fell to his knees. It was the teenage couple he’d passed on his way to the villa. They must have heard his cries. He tried to speak, clutching at the boy’s legs. The girl’s hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up at the long haired boy, and saw Mark’s face.

  The wriggling oval of white flesh was wrapped tightly over the boy’s own face. Strands of the boy’s thick, blond hair hung in front of Mark’s brown eyes. Mark’s mouth was stretched into a long, wide grin, his nose trembling slightly as if it was breathing. The boy staggered away, his bare legs slipping out of Reggie’s grasp. He fell to his knees, hands clawing into the dirt, his weak cries muffled by the flesh mask over his face.

  The girl’s hand fell from Reggie’s shoulder. Her body, which was leaning against a tree trunk, began to slide slowly to the ground. Mark’s face grimaced at Reggie from beneath the frame of the girl’s dark hair. The girl’s head fell back against the tree. Her throat was massively swollen, her bare arms and the front of her body were covered with moving lumps.

  Reggie could hear things moving all around him. He looked to his right, and saw Mark’s face grinning at him from where it was suspended on a tree trunk. Beneath the tree, Mark’s face crawled towards him through the undergrowth. Reggie saw that the thick tree was covered with the wriggling ovals. Looking up, he saw them hanging from the branches. He whipped his head around at a rustling sound and saw more of the things coming towards him through the dirt of the forest floor.

  They were everywhere!

  The girl’s body spasmed. Reggie looked back at her just in time to see her throat burst open, and a thick white worm come wriggling out. He staggered to his feet, almost unable to breath. He ran through the trees, aware now of the moving white patches on all sides of him. He could see thousands of them. How could there be so many of them?

  It was impossible!

  He ran blindly out of the trees, racing up the hill until he saw the shape of his car at the side of the road. He tore at his pockets and drew out the bulk of his car keys. He had to get to Chiesiola! He’d seen a police station when he’d driven through before. He almost drove the car off the road, glancing repeatedly at the clusters of trees on his right, narrowly avoiding driving into them until the road finally curved into the town. People were running through the streets of the busy town centre. He drove straight to the building marked POLIZIA.

  Somebody staggered against the car’s bonnet. Reggie looked through the windscreen into Mark’s face. The stumbling figures on either side of the car all grinned at him with Mark’s mouth. Mark’s face crawled over the wall of the police station, it stared at him from inside the windows, it laughed and gibbered at him from every building on every street.

  “NOOOOOO!”

  Reggie started the car, the tyres screeching as he swerved through the streets, driving past men with Mark’s face, women with Mark’s face, little tiny children with Mark’s face, dogs with Mark’s face, babies in prams with Mark’s face. He drove, his foot pressed against the pedal, until he left all the buildings behind him, and still he drove and drove along the open road until the car’s engine cut out. He sat, beating and yelling at the steering wheel, until he suddenly clutched the door handle.

  Through the windows he could see trees, mountains, in the distance he could see the sea. But no faces. There were no white wriggling things. Everything was clear and pure as it should be.

  He’d outrun it.

  Reggie climbed out of the car, marveling at the sight of the unblemished world around him, thinking that he’d never seen anything so beautiful, so wonderful, so
utterly right.

  Then he looked down.

  He was on top of a very high, steep hill, and the entire world below him was a carpet of undulating white. The entire near distance, every tiny town and village, every cluster of trees, every winding road was alive with wriggling white, as if he was looking at a tiny, model landscape covered with crawling maggots.

  Everywhere. Millions upon millions of them.

  Reggie denied it. He knew no creature on earth could reproduce so fast.

  No creature on earth.

  No creature that has ever existed…

  Until now.

  The word ‘mutation’ beat in his mind. A creature that modeled itself to the DNA of its host organism. Creatures hidden from the world since prehistoric times, existing only in an underwater environment, a sealed world where it was impossible for them to evolve. Until, after millions of years, an alien organism was finally thrown into their pool.

  A dead man. A creature that had lived and breathed on land. When the father of these things absorbed Mark’s DNA it became a mutation, something that had never existed before. And when the mother creature attached itself to Amanda it gave birth to a brand new species, an impossible mutation, a blending together of evolution from two alien worlds separated by sixty five million years. DNA gone mad. A creature that could reproduce at a super accelerated rate.

  The world moved on all sides of him, the landscape writhing and undulating in the corners of his eyes. He turned, watching the ever expanding white blanket move outwards to the horizon, and to the sea.

  He screamed against the roof of the car.

  “I’m sorry!” he screamed and screamed at the world, his voice echoing across the mountains. “I’m sorry!”

  He sank against the side of the car. To his right a gigantic mass of undulating white reached around the top of a mountain and blotted out the sun.

  NIGHT ENCOUNTER

  by Douglas Kolacki

  “Excuse me? Sir?”

  Hal Dumey turns. A clean-cut man stands beside him, holding a badge. Behind the man stands his twin, the only difference being a mustache and three more inches of height. The two look like Mormon missionaries wearing uniforms.