9 Tales Told in the Dark 21

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  “Come in, boy. It’s time we tell the truth.”

  Mychael stepped inside the wheelhouse of the Sweet Maria and saw it, as if for the first time. The glow of the arc-sodium spotlights on the deck and the eldritch glow of the monitor threw the room into stark relief. The haze of cigarette smoke made it all seem as if it were happening in the depths of the Bering Sea itself.

  The angles of the room seemed subtly different to Mychael. The sharp edges of the table were rounded; the rounded edges of the captain’s chair were sharply pointed. The floor felt soft and spongy beneath his feet. Strange symbols and words in an unrecognizable language adorned the walls. Their mellow glow caused Mychael to squint. Looking at them too long made his head ache.

  The wound from the crossdagger, which was aching before he entered the room, flared to a roar as the door shut softly behind him.

  Captain Jack Ryland had his back turned to Mychael, but it was clear that he was undergoing a major physical transformation. His left shoulder slumped noticeably. There was movement on the left side of his face, sensed but just out of sight. When his hand came up to bring the ubiquitous cigarette to his mouth Mychael noticed it was oddly shaped, almost mashed.

  “Almost there, boy. It really is time to own up to what you have.” The sound of his voice was that of a man speaking through a mouthful of thick fluid.

  “Afraid I’m not sure what you mean, Captain Jack.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, boy. You and I both know better. I know that you have it. No matter how far out over The Drop we get it still feels like it’s right on top of me. That blade is calling to me, boy…and the reason I feel it so keenly, do ya’ understand, is that it’s right here on this boat!” There was avarice in his voice, naked and unashamed.

  Mychael stepped around to the side of the captain’s chair to get a better look at him. As he reached the side of the desk, Captain Jack turned his head and looked directly at Mychael.

  His eyes had changed. The sclera was an ancient yellow while the irises were still the same faded gray, but the pupils were the true horror: they were a starburst shape of purest black. Instead of one side of his face drooping, it was now the whole face in unison. Mychael thought of candle wax in extreme temperatures. It made the captain’s eyes all the more hideously alive and greedy.

  “Do I scare you, boy?” he chuckled, “Do I look like something you would find at the bottom of the sea? It’s funny, but it’s not far from the truth. I think my people are calling me back. It’s like a fishhook, only in my guts instead of in my mouth. Do you know the feeling?”

  Mychael did.

  “I can see it in your eyes, boy. No need to lie. Just give me what I came out here to get. All the crab is nice for the boys out there, but I don’t think they’re going to make the return trip anyways. They will demand a sacrifice. Tasty deckhands will do. The Old Ones aren’t picky.” One eye continued to glare at Mychael while the other rolled horribly and continuously.

  “No disrespect, Captain Jack, but I can’t do that. Those men don’t deserve that. They’ve got families and lives to go back to. Why don’t you just jump in the sea and leave this ship to us?” Mychael could hardly believe the words that were coming out of his own mouth.

  Captain Jack’s laugh was a clotted chortle.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it too. I know you do. I’ve seen you staring out at the waves. I’ve seen you pacing more and more the closer we got to The Drop. You know we’re here, and you know it’s time.”

  It was Mychael’s turn to laugh. “Yes sir, Captain Jack. I feel it too. This is the last stop. I’ve prayed for Father to roam free. In my dreams, He answered me. Look on the starboard side, Captain.”

  Captain Jack turned his ruined visage to starboard and the whirlpool that was forming there. Sea foam churned white and furious at the edges of a dark hole that opened onto a city of living death. The maelstrom grew wider and deeper and began to glow with the green light that had haunted Mychael’s dreams.

  “I can see it, boy! It’s laid bare for us all to see! Now is the time! Quick, boy…give me the-“

  The sound died as Mychael reached around and buried the crossdagger in Captain Jack Ryland’s throat. Captain Jack stared in disbelief at the oversized handle protruding from under his chin. Mychael grasped the handle again and jerked it hard to the left and the right, producing a gristly sound like a man trying to cut through a poorly cooked steak. Arterial blood splashed across the console of the tracker.

  Captain Jack fell forward from his chair to the floor with a wet splash and the clank of the thick golden blade striking the wooden planks.

  Father’s many hungry, tentacled arms emerged from the center of the maelstrom. Beneath the bulk of his bloated body, the city of Mychael’s dreams could be seen in murky repose.

  Mychael picked up the body of Captain Jack and hauled it to the side door that looked out over the starboard railing. All was roaring waves and screaming wind as Mychael picked up the lifeless body of the legendary Captain Jack Ryland and tossed it over the side and into the gargantuan maelstrom below. A wet roar emerged from the deep and a lone tentacle, fat with greenish suckers, snaked and curled its way up into the wheelhouse.

  Mychael stood frozen while the tentacle wrapped itself around his right leg and squeezed with sobering strength.

  “Father, get what you came for and leave. We just want to fish these seas with your blessing.”

  The tentacle squeezed once more, tight enough for Mychael to feel the bones underneath straining to stay whole. Then it released. Almost tenderly, it closed around the bloody crossdagger still held in Mychael’s shaking hand. It slithered back to the side door, stopping to spin once and lap up all of Captain Jack’s blood that had pooled on the mat at the foot of the chair with a greedy slurping sound.

  The green light flared, and then dimmed as the last fat tentacle returned to the sea. The maelstrom subsided into a minor vortex, then into a simple whirlpool. Within moments, the Bering Sea was calm once again.

  Mychael sat down in the vacant captain’s chair and lit up a smoke. He thumbed the button on the intercom and called for Rodney to come up into the wheelhouse.

  He stared at the Bering Sea over The Drop. He heard the door open and then close quietly. Rodney stood at his left side, waiting for him to speak.

  “Can you help me, Rodney? I don’t quite know how to drive this beast back to Dutch Harbor. Come to think of it, I don’t know how to do much of anything that Captain Jack did up here. Can you teach me?”

  Rodney exhaled loudly. “Mnoga?” he asked.

  Mychael smiled a weary smile. “Call it what you will, Rodney. The Drop asked for a sacrifice and we obliged. Now we have safe passage and full tanks, and we can continue to pull gold from the bottom of this part of the Bering Sea. Didn’t your Grandda fish The Drop even though he knew the risk?”

  “He did.” Rodney’s face was stony.

  “Will you?”

  Rodney stared at Mychael for a long time before answering.

  “Aye, aye, Captain Mike. Now move out of the way, bruddah, so I can teach you how to drive this fucking beast.”

  THE END

  www.getonmydamnlevel.com

  NATURAL ORDER by Steven D. Hamilton

  At that moment, he didn’t care about the diet Julie had foisted upon him a month before. Stuffing his face with the theme park’s crappy ‘Fun Fries’ was easily the high point of the day’s trip. Julie and Katy had dragged him around all morning: he’d gone through turnstiles leading to rides that turned his stomach, pushed past mouth breathing tourists to press face to glass at the animal enclosures, held Katy high above his head to allow her to glimpse the robot wrestling match. Tim could still remember when you’d have to spend hours traveling between zoos, amusement parks, and future zones to see all they’d seen before lunch. He wasn’t one to complain much about anything beyond there not being enough beer in the fridge on Saturdays and the wallscreen not working when the game was on; however, h
e did feel some sort of vague angst at the coming-together of so much disparate experience, the ease with which his daughter could take in everything at once, the lack of specificity regarding the ways she spent her time – that and boys, keep boys the hell away from her until she was married.

  Tim could feel their eyes on him as he stuffed the fries into his mouth, stopping only for breath. They would just have to wait, the waterpark or whatever else they wanted to see could wait just one minute for him to finish his snack. “Dad, c’mon, please, can we go?” Katy whined from somewhere by his navel. He waved her off, moving his hand as if swatting a fly near her face, “Ah, shut up would ya,” he said, winking at Julie, confirming his lack of seriousness. He shoved the last of the fries into his mouth, “Fiiiiine, let’s go then. Guy can’t even stop to eat around here.” His daughter and wife moved off, leading the way through the crowds.

  The next hours were spent with the girls leering and laughing at all manner of exhibits – genetically engineered, impossibly cute kittens, vibrating trampolines sending Katy to absurd heights, zero-g playrooms – and then a full thirty minutes where Tim stood outside of the changing rooms waiting for Katy and Julie to get into their bathing suits for the water slide that they only went down once. After wishing he were dead at the humor-generator comedy show he put his foot down and said that it was time to leave. “Dad, we’ve almost seen the whole park, just one more exhibit.” Tim looked to Julie, exasperated, and then back down at his daughter, “I know we’ve seen the whole park, excuse me, almost the whole park, and that’s why it’s time to go.” Katy pouted, put her lower lip over her top one, scrunched her face in a mock-up of sadness. Tim knew that she knew it would work. He told himself he allowed her to get away with this sort of thing, but at the same time, in perhaps a deeper part of himself, he knew that he couldn’t really control his acquiescence. “Fine, we’ll finish out the park.” Katy squealed and did a jig before hugging Tim, who couldn’t suppress a smile.

  They walked along another path that wound its way through a quad of AstroTurf and imported palm trees. Following signs, Tim didn’t bother to read they ended up at a large enclosure. A row of visitors stood at the railing looking down onto the plasticized interior, a faux-street scene, complete with sidewalks and storefronts. The visitors glanced and passed, their eyes having the same look as just about everyone at these sorts of things. Katy and Julie approached the railing and watched. Tim came up next to them, already bringing a sigh into existence. Inside were ten or so objects moving about, seemingly conducting daily activities. There was a car, its headlights roving eyes, its front grill a mouth that moved with its speech. A mailbox that flapped its slot was in conversation with a girl’s bicycle. The sigh caught in Tim’s throat.

  “Let’s go, Dad.”

  “Wait. Julie, what is this? Are they animatronic?” Somehow he knew the answer was no; he saw the complexity, the purpose with which the objects conversed, the tasks they went about striving for, the progressive ease with which they navigated their surroundings.

  “No, they’re like real, they’re like animals.”

  “How have I not heard of this, how isn’t this on the news?”

  “They’re called anthros, they’ve been around like forever,” said Katy, “I asked you for one for Christmas last year...can we go, I’m hungry.”

  Tim felt some confusion that he couldn’t voice or even cohere into a question, something like the nonsense he’d had to listen to back in college in any of the mandatory humanities courses that they’d, thank god, gotten rid of for good country-wide the year after he’d graduated.

  “We’re not leaving, why aren’t you amazed by this?”

  “It’s just a thing, honey, it’s just a new thing, please don’t go crazy for this.”

  “Go crazy, what the – dear, I just don’t see why everyone isn’t going ape for this...wait, when have I ever gone crazy, I hate when you use that word.”

  “The roof. When you swore the plastics couldn’t hold up like the old stuff, and...”

  “My school project, the thing with the 3d printer.”

  “Oh shut it, you two, always ganging up on me. Just give me a minute.” And he waved both of them away with a flutter of the hand, and a wink at his wife.

  For ten more minutes, he stared into the enclosure, watching what were supposed to be inanimate objects exhibit all the forms of existence he considered distinctly human. There’s no way they think, he thought, they’re simply trained, or on a schedule or something, a product of their code. Just as they were leaving, he watched the bicycle help a slow-moving bucket cross the street safely. He knew he would have to think about this when he got home, would have to do some research into this whole thing.

  And think he did. The car ride home saw him being mostly ignored or shushed as he asked all sorts of questions about the anthros. He was ultimately shut down by both Julie and Katy putting their earbuds in. Fine, he thought; I’ll show them, he thought, certain to get to the bottom of it. He decided to sleep on it but was kept up until late in the night by his racing thoughts.

  When he did get to sleep, he dreamed of two giant conveyor belts. Along one moved the innards of cars, the frames and motors and axles, all perfectly fitted together by machine arms for their communal purpose. The other conveyor belt had no machines fitting together the parts; it simply had large overhead tubes that spit out at intervals something like a wet, fallen blanket, its color a dull metallic skin-tone. Tim approached the slow moving belt and touched one of these blanket-things. It was warm to the touch and he recoiled at its foreign skin. He waited until the next one came along and then roughly grabbed it and tugged it off the line, not without some effort. It slapped wetly on the floor and from inside its folds came a stifled groan. Dream-Tim had the sensation that inside the wrinkles and folds of the blanket-thing there was something he needed to save, perhaps a child buried among that machine-skin, maybe a small, weak animal. He pulled the mass into an open space of floor and made an effort to pull it wide, getting a firm hold at what could perhaps be an end and stretching it out. When he was done, he saw what he had known; it was as if someone had skinned a car, a mechano-flesh thing, complete with headlight and windshield facades, just so much painted skin without meaning, simple images covering messy innards. The car-skin breathed faintly in his hands, warm and wet, and moving just barely. He stood up and looked over at the inanimate cars on the other conveyor belt and then looked down at what was in front of him and saw something he could not name. He knew it was going to speak, was preparing to communicate. He woke screaming.

  The next day he spent out in the garage on the old-style desktop that he’d had the neighbor kid repair for him a hundred times over. He soon found that the secret to the anthropomorphic objects was closely guarded, or at least heavily obscured. There were articles online explaining aspects of the objects’ existences in jargon-heavy terms that he had difficulty understanding. Things like ‘noumenal installers’ and PDK. The acronym meant nothing to him and after looking it up he learned that it stood for ‘Personality Development Kit’ which was an offshoot of the SDK’s that companies provided for programmers to use their source-code to build new applications. He looked to the articles written for laymen, which were even less helpful. They were full of vague terms that made it unclear whether the ‘anthros’ were a form of Artificial Intelligence or were somehow instilled with something ‘human-like’ during part of the process. The latter articles reminded Tim of the sort of stuff that he’d had to sort through to figure out how his wrist-chip worked. The writers would gloss over the details, the inner workings, the mechanical and magical complexity, and would inevitably end with some dismissive declaration of purpose: “All you need to know is that it will let you conduct commercial interactions without the need for a credit or debit card,” or so-and-so “has developed a technology that will change your way of life, to not get on board is to fall behind.”

  Around lunchtime, Katy came out and asked if he would t
ake her to get food. He waved his hand in her direction as if swatting a fly. She ‘hmmph’ed and stomped out, not bothering to try making cute faces at him. It was after noon by this point so he felt justified in cracking open a beer. He drank and cast his search-net wider, spending the next hour trying to read through the wiki on Object-Oriented Philosophy. Then Graham Harman, Wittgenstein, Nick Land, message boards discussing favorite stuffed animals coming to life, some animated movies from years back about toasters and toys. None of it helped him – the philosophers might as well have been speaking another language and so much of the rest was simply fluff. He found it astounding, as he gulped his fifth beer, that there was no simple breakdown of what exactly was going on with the anthros, some justification for their existence, some debate as to the ethics, anything. Around dinnertime, Julie came out to ask if he was coming in to eat. “No, hon, gotta figure all this out.” She rolled her eyes and he smacked her bottom. She laughed and he winked.

  Thirty minutes later, he came across a Japanese folktale about a woman whose hair became sentient after existing for 100 years. Tsukumogami they called it. Near as he could tell, its purpose was to teach people not to hoard their tools – it was often tools coming to life after years upon years of toil, gaining consciousness to berate their owners for mistreatment. In one of those sort of fits that one has when drunk – those prolonged moments of inebriated inspiration, the single-minded drive that will soon deflate – Tim took to looking around the garage for anything that might possibly be old enough to have become sentient. He threw open toolboxes, tossed around forty year old drills, knocked over boxes of twenty-two year old rivets. Then he remembered his father’s hammer. He scrabbled around under workbenches he’d hardly ever used until he came up with a wood-handled claw hammer, its head rusted and dusty. He tried to read the dents and nail-scars for some signs of life, felt the worn wood under his fingers for a pulse.