69: A Short Novel of Cosmic Horror

by Tim Meyer

  The closer she got to the old man, the more dread set in, perching on her flesh, digging in like a hawk's talons.

  Her mouth dried up. Words were hard to come by, and, although she knew the moment would pass and everything would be fine, that this weird bout of deja vu and the punch of memories that had kissed her brain would soon end, the thought of opening her mouth and articulating language made her want to puke.

  “Are you okay, Mrs. Guerero?” Kim asked, eyeing her suspiciously. Even the lawyers were inspecting her, noticing every new bead of sweat that dotted the skin above her eyebrows. “You look... sick.”

  She shook her head, letting the whole Mrs. thing slide. She was in no mood to correct the woman. “No, I'm fine,” she said, and miraculously the words came out sounding normal, her voice showing no inconsistencies. “Haven't eaten yet. Just hungry.” She swallowed. “Now, you say the old man moved?”

  “That's what one of the nurses said when she came in here to check on him. Carmel. Said the man's eyes moved and so did his jaw.”

  “Barnes,” Amanda said, turning to her subordinate, though she never thought of him as such. Only in jest. Otherwise, she treated him as her equal, much to the chagrin of her management team. “See if you can track down Nurse Carmel. Interview her. I want explicit details of what she saw. Document everything. Have her write a statement.”

  “Yes, boss.” He left the room at once.

  She hated when he called her boss, even if it was their little joke.

  Taking her flashlight and directing it at the old man's face, she tensed, expecting him to blink, expecting his leg to twitch, expecting his arm to shoot out and grab hold of her throat. None of those things happened as she shone the light in his eyes, letting the glow linger there for a solid twenty seconds. His pupils shriveled just like they had on the other patients. There was a coldness to the man's eyes, and she wondered if that was because they resembled her grandfather's so... so uncannily.

  Her grandfather.

  (go ahead, pequeña, touch it.)

  She shivered, a trail of cold fingers tapping along her spine. Spending a second in her childhood was enough to induce vomiting, despite there being nothing in her stomach to expunge. Shaking away those memories, she continued to examine Manuel's condition.

  “What do you think?” Kim asked.

  Amanda clicked off the flashlight. “He looks the same as the others. Nothing different about him. Nothing I can tell anyway.”

  “Do you think Carmel is making it up?”

  Amanda shrugged. “I mean, why would she? Is she the kind of person who'd lie about something like this?”

  Kim shook her head without hesitation. “She's one of the best staff members we have.”

  “Then... I dunno. Maybe it was a reflex or something. Some kind of involuntary reaction. These people are alive, as far as I can tell. There seems to be something happening up here, in their brains. They're reacting to light. Blood is pumping. Neurons are firing. Just guessing, but I'm pretty sure they've become prisoners inside their own bodies. Whatever it is, this parasite, it's attacking the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls movement. That said, a muscle will move and twitch—and that's normal. Happens to everyone on a daily basis—a muscle spasm here and there, though, because we're so active and concentrating on other things, we hardly notice it.”

  Kim tucked her hands in her pockets, shifting uncomfortably, as if her blue suit suddenly constricted around her body. Amanda understood the woman's on-edge reaction to everything that was happening. It couldn't have been easy for her, this situation. After all, as the director, she was responsible for everything that happened at Spring Lakes, and had the final say about how certain situations were handled.

  “I can have my assistant, Phelps, hook Mr. Renteria up to a brain monitor. I was going to start monitoring the patients in the common area, but we can start with Mr. Renteria here, in light of his... positive response. We'll use his results as a baseline when we examine the others.”

  Kim nodded in agreement. The lawyers did not protest, even though they looked like they wanted to rebuke everything. Amanda noticed that Hatterman's demeanor had changed, slightly. He almost looked as terrified as Kim, scared of what the brain monitor might reveal. For some reason, Amanda got the sense that Hatterman and Hart were already in defense mode, strategizing how they could spin the results so that none of the fault fell back on Spring Lakes. She also sensed that Kim cared less about her guests' wellbeing than she did about the potential hit to the facility's pocketbook, if they were to be found at fault and later sued by the guests' loved ones.

  Above all, the three of them were scared shitless. Amanda recognized the fear, as it was practically printed on their foreheads.

  Amanda was frightened too, though it had nothing to do with the patients and what was happening to them—her focus was currently on Mr. Renteria, Manuel, and the physical traits he shared with her long-dead (good riddance) abuelo. She did not show fear; inside, her stomach melted away, her bones felt like they'd liquified. Her limbs felt as if they were made of rubber, pliable extensions of her numb framework. A bitter taste claimed her mouth, an acidic hint of bile. She'd never experienced a panic attack before—had friends who claimed to have them regularly and took medication for it—but now, in Mr. Renteria's dorm, she assumed she was experiencing one.

  A full-blown panic attack.

  Her lungs felt nonexistent.

  She slipped the mask away from her mouth, letting it hang around her neck.

  A sharp, quick intake of air came from Kim's direction. Behind her mask, Amanda pictured her lips forming a giant zero.

  “I just... need some air,” Amanda explained, heading for the door.

  “Aren't you afraid you'll catch it, too!” Kim half-asked, half-yelled to her.

  Amanda didn't have time to explain how parasites worked, how they couldn't enter her body like an air particle. Besides, she wasn't wholly convinced of that theory. The range of possibilities were endless, and, for some unknown reason, she still hadn't abandoned her Exorcist hunch.

  As she made her way down the hall, toward the exit, she did feel something crawling around her insides, and she doubted the sickly feeling had anything to do with the minor panic attack.

  No, this was something else.

  Something bad.

  And it was happening to her, here, in this place.

  As she pushed through the exit and felt the warmth of the afternoon on her flesh, the fresh air zoom up her nostrils and inflate her lungs, the awfulness of what lived inside Spring Lakes bled away, as did the memories of the man who'd always haunt her.

  5

  Linda Phelps finished wrapping Manuel Renteria's head with what looked like a giant hairnet, only this hairnet contained dozens of tiny electrodes. Once the headpiece was secure, Phelps sat in front of her mobile computer monitor. She hesitated to flip on the switch, and instead turned to Barnes.

  “Shouldn't Amanda be here for this?” she asked, wincing as if the question had caused her pain. She pushed her glasses back up her nose and waited for Barnes to reply.

  “Amanda had to step out for a minute,” he told the room consisting of Phelps, Kim, and the lawyers. The nurses had been instructed to keep the non-infected comfortable until their loved ones came to pick them up, or until the buses showed to take them to the nearest medical facility. “She'll be right back. In the meantime, she's given us the go ahead.”

  Phelps faced the computer and did as Barnes told her. Flicking the switch from off to on, her heart skipped like a flat stone across a still pond. She didn't know why, not exactly. Their current situation was peculiar, sure, something she'd never come across in her ten years of further education, or on the other lone case she'd been sent to investigate to start her young career. Yes, she'd seen infectious diseases that rendered their victims stiff, incapacitated, on the verge of almost certain death, but those diseases usually carried physical symptoms—lesions, decay, bouts of vomiting, j
aundice. The guests of Spring Lakes exhibited none of those visible ailments, and, other than being frozen stiff and impossible to move, their bodies figuratively turning to stone—there was nothing abnormal about them, at least nothing evident given what the blood work and saliva samples stated. She'd seen the paperwork herself. Every single line was in range, down to the most trivial vitamin level. And not just in range, no. Perfect. Right on target. An archetype example of what a person should be. A flawless score.

  This, above the other symptoms, kept her on edge, prodded her nerves.

  This was only her second field case and it was already beginning to prove to be a problematic assignment. She wanted to be back home in her Atlanta apartment, curled up on her couch with Mr. Perkins, her one-year-old labradoodle, reading a book, probably the newest Karin Slaughter release. None of what had happened at Spring Lakes—what was continuing to happen—felt right. The feeling of impending doom snuck up on her, as if the bottom of the world was threatening to fall out from under them, like this facility and the grounds it had been built upon were about to slide into a massive sinkhole and disappear into the earth's endless dark chasm, never to be seen or heard from again.

  She shook her head, washing away the dismal thoughts that plagued her.

  “Phelps?” Barnes said, clearing his throat. When she didn't respond right away, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  She realized she hadn't flipped the switch after all. Her finger was still pressed on it, trembling. Every eye in the room latched onto her, and she instantly grew hot with embarrassment.

  “Would you... do you... need help?” Barnes offered her a smile. The others weren't smiling; they wore long faces, failing to shield their discontent. She could tell they didn't approve of Amanda's methods, that, if it were up to them, this whole operation would shut down faster than Kim could snap her fingers.

  But despite their looks of general disapproval, she could tell they were scared. Phelps knew they weren't, but for some reason, it felt like they were hiding something. Maybe that was her projecting, the freaky situation to blame for her wandering thoughts and absent-minded approach to the task at hand.

  Freaky.

  This whole thing is beyond freaky, she thought, and a walked-through-cobwebs feeling coated her neck and arms, trickled down her back.

  “No,” she finally said. “I'm fine.” But she wasn't, and she didn't know why.

  She flipped the switch. The screen lit up before her, alive with the map of the old man's brain. Each electrode pulsed on screen, burning with information. And that information told her everything inside Mr. Renteria's noggin was A-okay. There was no damage to any of the regions, especially to the man's cerebellum, the part of the brain Amanda had been most concerned about.

  Barnes pointed to the screen. The others leaned over, especially the two lawyers. Phelps felt their breath and the scent of their aftershave come crawling up her nose. It was a sour, almost ancient smell, one that reminded her of the barbershop her father used to take her to. From the corner of her eye, she saw one of them—Hatterman, she thought—peeking over her shoulder. He looked the same as his partner, only taller. They both wore the same glasses and, if Phelps had to wager, she'd bet the men were related somehow. Brothers or first cousins. Related for sure. Hatterman inspected the screen with such intensity that Phelps swore he knew what he was looking at.

  “What are we looking at?” Hatterman asked. A bead of sweat appeared near his temple and dribbled down his cheek.

  Barnes put his hand up and moved the man back a foot. “Some very expensive equipment. Prefer if you wouldn't breathe on it.”

  The lawyer didn't take too kindly to that and looked like he wanted to protest his removal. In the end, he kept his mouth shut. A glance from the shorter lawyer might have factored into that decision. Hart was the quieter of the two, and, judging from their brief interaction, the smarter of the two.

  “See this,” Barnes told them, pointing to the bright spots on the electronic 3-D rendered image of Renteria's brain. “This is what we're monitoring. These are integral portions of the brain used in all basic human function. We're simply monitoring to see if they're sending and receiving messages from other parts of the brain.”

  The lights took turns growing bright, then dimming. They glowed like fireflies on a summer night, coming and going naturally. Constantly changing. Constantly working. Constantly firing their ammunition off to each other, sharing responses and vital information, necessary tasks for basic cerebral function.

  There was nothing abnormal about the brain map. On the surface, Renteria's head seemed to be working the way it should.

  Another act that unnerved Phelps.

  What is wrong with them? she asked herself. What the hell is going on with these people?

  And furthermore, what was the significance of sixty-nine? It was the question she'd first asked herself when she'd heard the report, before Amanda Guerrero had asked her to come along. It seemed like an odd number. Why weren't sixty-eight-year-olds afflicted? Sixty-eight-and-a-half? Seventy? Phelps had overheard Kim talking to one of the lawyers earlier, telling him that a Patricia Devlin was six days shy of her sixty-ninth birthday, yet, she had awoken that morning feeling fine and frosty, the same as she had the day before. Even better. Her mood—not ordinarily chipper and often quite forgetful—was upbeat and positive, didn't even complain about how fluffy the pancakes were during breakfast. She had remembered everything that had happened the day before. Her nurses said it was the best behavior Patricia Devlin had exhibited in the last six months. She'd even remembered things that had happened eight months ago, and, as someone who was stricken with pre-Alzheimer's dementia, that was really good. She didn't drift or wander, as the residents of Spring Lakes were occasionally apt to. No, she was lucid, intelligent, and a real pleasure to be around.

  More evidence to throw on the weirdness pile.

  A chill cascaded down Phelps's back, causing her entire body to shake uncontrollably. A quick twitch, barely noticeable. No one in the room seemed to catch it, and, if they had, they didn't mention it.

  Maybe because they feel it too. The chill. It's in the air, clinging to us.

  Whatever was happening here was palpable. She felt it in every breath. Every moment. Every word spoken seemed to be coated with the disease, the thing that had come to take over Spring Lakes.

  The thing.

  What was it? She kept asking herself that, and still, her thoughts came up empty. She had nothing. Except for a map of Manuel Renteria's brain and all that showed was that the man's head was fine. Healthy. Firing on all cylinders.

  “So...” Kim Charon said, breaking the stretch of silence. It had gone on far too long, and even though she didn't care for the woman and her arrogance, Phelps was glad she had opened her mouth. “What the hell has happened to him?” Then she corrected herself: “Them.”

  “According to this,” Barnes said, motioning to the EEG machine, “everything looks fine.”

  “What do you mean it looks fine?”

  “It means...” said another voice, entering the room. It belonged to Amanda. She looked pale, as if she'd spent her entire break throwing up the sandwich she'd eaten during the flight. Even her lips looked gray, like a pair of dead worms that rested on the lower half of her face. “...it means that this man's brain is fully functioning.”

  “So... they're not sick?” Kim asked, sounding lost. In the woman's defense, none of this was making sense to her either.

  “No, they're sick. Just whatever it is isn't limiting their brain function. Which reduces the possibility of it being some brain-eating bacteria or MRSA.”

  “So, what does that mean for our guests?” Kim sounded more panicked than ever. Like she was about to start screaming, demanding answers, threatening people if results weren't soon delivered. The pitch of her voice had climbed with each word. “I mean, you're supposed to be figuring this out, aren't you? That's why you've come?”

  “We're trying,�
� Amanda said. Phelps got the sense she wanted to add the word bitch onto the end of her statement. That she showed some restraint actually impressed her, especially given Dr. Guerrero's well-documented and much-talked-about history of losing her temper. Whether it was true she had punched a colleague in the face during her first year at the CDC over a heated conversation about that year's particular influenza strain or just hearsay, she didn't know. Phelps suspected she wouldn't still have a job if that was the case, but who knew. The rumor remained unconfirmed, and Phelps was much too shy to ask the woman herself.

  “Well, try harder.” Kim flashed her pearly whites. “You've been here for two hours already and we have no more answers than when you waltzed in here so confidently. The only thing you've told me is how to run my business.”

  Now it was Amanda who bared her teeth. “I evacuated those who weren't infected for the public safety of the other guests, and your employees. That's standard operating procedure, Mrs. Charon.”

  “And what have you done about our safety?” With her finger, she gestured to those in the room.

  “No one is making you stay. You're free to leave with the others; in fact, I recommend it.” Her sardonic smile formed naturally.

  “I bet you'd like that, Mrs. Guerrero, I really do. But if you think for a second that I'm leaving you alone here, with my guests, making decisions about their well-being without me and my legal team's consent... then you have another thing coming.”

  “I think it would be better if you let us do our jobs. Interference will only add risk. Plus, as your legal team is already aware, I can file an emergency judgment. We have our own legal representatives in the area and their turnaround is super quick in emergency cases, such as this.”

  Kim looked to her legal team. Hatterman and Hart only raised their bushy eyebrows.