The Creator

by Neil Carstairs

‘No problem,’ Ben said, ‘as long as you don’t shake my hand again.’

  She gave him another of her cool stares before she said, ‘Pussy.’

  The elevator door opened and Ben couldn’t reply because an armed guard was waiting for them. ‘Go ahead, Ma’am.’ The guard nodded Kramer and Ben through.

  When they were out of the guard’s earshot Ben said, ‘Pussy?’

  Kramer stopped walking. They stood outside a door that had the name Dawson stencilled onto it. Before she knocked Kramer said, ‘Yeah, I gave you the light version.’

  She left Ben wondering whether she was telling the truth when Dawson called them into his office. He saw a grizzled, thickset five-nine man with short greying hair and shrewd eyes that studied him from the moment he entered. ‘Thanks for coming over, Ben.’ They shook hands. ‘General Hugo Dawson, US Army, Retired.’

  ‘Retired?’ Ben frowned.

  ‘All these six months but it seems I can’t get away, can I Captain?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Kramer said from over by a straight-backed chair to Ben’s left.

  Dawson pointed Ben to another chair in front of the General’s desk. Ben sat as the General walked around the Spartan office. There were family photographs on the wall. Dawson with his grown-up family and what looked like two grandchildren.

  ‘I thought I was getting out, but I soon got hauled back in.’ Dawson sat down. ‘What do you think of Kenyon?’

  ‘It’s an interesting place, not easy to spot from the air with so few buildings.’

  ‘Just the way the planners wanted it. This is back in the fifties. They took a wartime training base, effectively closed it down but actually sent it underground. Kenyon was hidden from prying eyes because it was intended to be a marshalling point.’

  ‘Marshalling for what?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Marshalling for when the balloon went up. This was the Cold War, Ben, with ballistic missiles and the like threatening to rain down on us. At the first sign of an attack, the air force would take to the sky, but what if their home airbase was nuked, and their alternate, and their second alternate. Aircraft needed somewhere that the enemy had no idea about, to land and stay hidden. Kenyon was the place, nothing much here except secure hangars and fuel. No special weapons. It was just somewhere to bolt to. Its position would be transmitted to pilots on the day. Thankfully it was never needed and basically stayed mothballed until Homeland Security came calling.’

  ‘So this is an HS operation?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Sort of.’ Dawson opened a file. ‘It’s kind of buried in their budget. Most of the staff are like me, retired Army. Only Captain Kramer and her team are current service personnel. Then we have the civilians, but we’ll come onto them soon enough.’

  The General looked down at the file. Ben glanced at Kramer and got a cool, unsmiling look back. From behind his desk, Dawson said, ‘You’ve got a good background,’ he said, studying the file. ‘Excellent qualifications, and I see you rate as an expert with firearms. That’s an interesting quality for someone who sits at a desk.’ Ben didn’t answer. If Dawson had his file he would know why. Dawson looked up. ‘Did you ever try out for field work?’

  ‘No. I came in as an analyst; that’s where I’ve stayed.’

  ‘A desk jockey.’ Dawson directed his comment towards Kramer.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the Captain said. ‘But he does have useful skills.’

  ‘We’ve been reading the papers you have issued over the last twelve months,’ Dawson said to Ben. ‘They make interesting reading.’

  So that’s why I’m here, Ben thought before he said, ‘I thought the circulation was limited.’

  ‘We have high-level access to every agency in the country.’ Dawson told him by way of explanation. ‘Your current research overlaps with ours.’

  ‘The Appearances?’ Ben asked, giving it the name the Agency had coined.

  ‘If you want to call it that.’ Dawson sat back, gesturing to Ben to allow him to continue.

  ‘Some of us do. It’s as good a name as any.’

  ‘And the papers you have written have covered a wide range of possible explanations?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure I’d say that,’ Ben said. ‘I was tasked with considering any possible solution to the question of how and where these people disappeared to.’

  Dawson shuffled at the file. ‘Time travel?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, but discounted.’

  ‘Teleportation?’

  ‘A possibility.’

  ‘Wormholes?’

  ‘Well, that’s the one I keep coming back to. It’s theoretical but I can’t explain how it can be done without some kind of power surge or drop showing up somewhere in the world.’

  ‘Which is why you asked for the spy satellites to watch for any indicators?’

  ‘Yes, three of them, the best this country has ever launched but even last night they did not pick up any tell-tale signs even though it happened again.’

  Dawson nodded. ‘Afghanistan,’ he said.

  ‘Is that where it was?’ Ben shrugged. ‘I didn’t have much time to study it before I came here.’

  ‘What else could it be?’ Dawson asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Ben glanced at Kramer, he got the feeling the conversation was heading into the territory belonging to this team.

  ‘Speculate, throw out some suggestions you haven’t written up yet.’

  ‘Extra-terrestrial aliens,’ Ben said. ‘People from a parallel universe.’

  ‘Good, I like that you’re not tied down to rational thought.’

  ‘No,’ Ben said with a smile.

  ‘Is that because of your sister?’ Dawson asked quickly.

  ‘Chrissie?’ Ben frowned. ‘What about her?’

  ‘When you had your security checks done she was flagged as a possible weak point for you.’

  Ben sat up a little straighter. ‘I wouldn’t say that. She’s the only family I’ve got.’

  ‘Her…beliefs…are a little, shall we say, oddball.’

  Ben gave himself a few seconds to calm his emotions. ‘She’s genuine in what she thinks. So are the people she meets and works with.’

  ‘Captain?’ Dawson said. ‘The envelope.’

  Kramer went to a filing cabinet and returned with a manila envelope which she gave to Dawson. Ben eyed the General warily as Dawson slipped out dozen or so glossy photographs. Ben tried to see what they pictured but Dawson kept them angled to hide from his sight.

  ‘Do you believe the way your sister does?’

  ‘No,’ Ben said softly. Kramer sat in her chair, her face unreadable.

  ‘But do you believe she could be right?’

  ‘I’ve…seen some things that defy explanation when I’ve gone to spiritual fairs with her,’ Ben said.

  Dawson’s face tightened into a brief, tight smile. He held out the photographs. ‘Be advised. These aren’t nice.’

  Ben was expecting shots of Chrissie, he thought that this was some sort of test to expose him and get him kicked out of the Agency. He was wrong.

  He saw images of a village. Rural Africa. Probably North Africa. Day time, the sky blue and the ground a dusty red. The houses were red stone or dried earth. There were people dying in the photographs.

  The third image made bile rise in Ben’s throat. He looked at Dawson, then at Kramer. ‘Is this real?’ he finally found his voice.

  ‘It is,’ Dawson said quietly.

  There was a creature in the photograph, hunchbacked, skin suffused by red boils that leaked a yellow slime as it ate a child. The next image was worse. Ben laid the photos face down on his lap. Dawson looked almost sorry he’d had to show them to Ben. ‘Where? How?’ Ben heard the break in his voice.

  ‘Mauritania. They were taken by a French freelance photojournalist. There are more. He kept taking pictures until that thing caught him and ate him alive.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Ben whispered.

  ‘This is above Top Secret, Ben. Captain Kramer was part of the team that was
inserted into Mauritania. They recovered the memory card from the camera. No one in the world knows about this. As far as anyone is aware the village was attacked and its inhabitants butchered by elements of an Islamic terror group called Ansar al-Sharia.’

  Ben turned the photographs over again. He looked through them all this time. Analyse the imagery, he told himself. Try to forget what he was actually looking at. The final image showed one creature coming for the photographer, a fang-lined mouth opening, the silvery spill of drool caught in high definition.

  ‘There was more than one of them,’ Dawson said. ‘If you look at picture seven you’ll see in the background another coming out of the doorway of one of the huts. It’s carrying a child.’

  Ben felt a chill when he shuffled the pack and studied the seventh photograph. ‘I can’t believe it’s real,’ he said, looking up at Kramer.

  ‘Oh, it’s real alright. The team we sent in lost five men fighting them, including the Commanding Officer. Captain Kramer is temporary C.O. I’ve recommended her for permanent appointment.’

  ‘What are they?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Monsters,’ Kramer said; her New England accent flat and hard.

  Ben sighed, looked again at one of the images. ‘How many were there?’ he asked.

  ‘Twelve,’ Kramer’s voice seemed to come from a dark place.

  Ben stared at her, open-mouthed, ‘Twelve?’

  Dawson said, ‘We want you on the team, Ben. We need someone open-minded enough to look at this evidence and analyse it.’

  ‘I…’ Ben couldn’t find any words.

  Dawson let the silence lengthen until he said, ‘Go tell the C-21 crew they are free to leave, Captain.’

  As Kramer left the office Ben’s eyes instinctively followed her. As the door closed behind the captain, Ben heard Dawson say. ‘Don’t go there.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ben didn’t need to ask what Dawson meant.

  ‘She’ll chew you up and spit you out.’

  Ben smiled. ‘Sounds like fun,’ he said.

  Dawson grinned. ‘When you’re older you’ll understand, but that’s only if you survive long enough.’

  The door opened and Kramer came back in. ‘Flight’s leaving now. I can take Mr Scarrett to his room and then get things ready for the evening briefing.’

  ‘Sounds good.’ Dawson stretched back in his chair. ‘A few ground rules, Ben. We operate strict security protocols. Internet access opens for four hours a day. Two in the morning and two in the afternoon. We monitor all phone calls. You understand the need for security, as such I don’t need to explain that you do not tell anyone who you are currently working for or what the project is. Any questions?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, freshen yourself up. I’ll introduce you to the civilians at the evening briefing.’

  Chapter 3

  Ben eyed the room Kramer had brought him to and said, ‘You could have got me one with a view.’

  ‘They were all taken,’ Kramer replied with the glimmer of a smile.

  Ben threw his bag onto the bed. The springs creaked like they were as old as the base itself. The room was little more than a cell and it seemed like the air inside it hadn’t moved in a generation. A single bed occupied one side, a chest of drawers the other with a narrow wardrobe across one-half of the wall opposite the doorway Ben stood in. The walls were painted a mid-green colour and the tiled floor a speckled grey with an off-white ceiling to set them both off. Depressing came to Ben’s mind. There were no windows because they were five levels underground. He looked around and said, ‘What did the last prisoner die from?’

  ‘Insolence,’ Kramer said in a deadpan voice.

  ‘Can you die from that?’ Ben asked in surprise.

  ‘You can when I’m around.’ Did she have a hint of a smile? Maybe not on her lips but in her eyes? Ben hoped so; otherwise she was one frightening chick.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘Who are these civilians Dawson keeps talking about?’

  ‘You’ll get to meet them later, Mr Scarrett.’

  ‘Why don’t you drop the Mister?’ Ben said. ‘Call me Ben.’

  She gave him another of her looks, the one that made Ben feel like a plant withering under a hot sun. ‘I’ll just call you Scarrett.’

  ‘Fine, you won’t mind if I call you Kramer then?’ Ben leant against the green wall.

  ‘Suits me.’ She stepped back out into the corridor, holding the door open with one foot. ‘I’ll come and get you at eighteen hundred.’

  Ben looked at his watch, he had just over an hour, and then around his room. ‘So where do I freshen up?’

  ‘Facilities are down there, third door on the left.’

  Ben didn’t ask about them being shared because Kramer was already striding away, her boots echoing off the tiled floor. He watched until she disappeared around a corner of the corridor before re-entering his room. It didn’t take long to unpack. He ventured down to the washroom and found it neat and clean. After he freshened up Ben returned to his room and lay down on his bed.

  The images he had seen in the photographs still made his stomach turn just thinking about them. If he’d been anywhere else in the world, like a coffee shop or a friend’s house, he would have sworn they were stills from a movie. A gruesome movie for sure. One would that would get banned in most civilised countries. But not real life. No way.

  So what were they?

  Kramer called them monsters. Pus ridden, hunch-backed, scaly creatures with mouths like a Great White shark and a taste for human flesh. Calling them monsters hit the mark.

  Ben closed his eye. He saw the child being eaten in his head and turned onto his side, facing a wall that some serviceman back in the Second World War had stared at. That guy had faced monsters as well, but in his case the human kind. Mass murdering humans dressed up as Nazis. So what was the connection between the Appearances and the Monsters?

  That’s why you’re here. Analyse.

  He needed to speak to Kramer about what exactly had happened in Mauritania, and in the normal course of things that wouldn’t have been a bad thing. She was blonde, attractive and wore a uniform which usually rated pretty high in Ben’s opinion, but she also had a handshake to avoid and a tongue sharper than a knife. Ben rolled onto his back with a sigh, pushing the dual images of a child eating monster and a pretty army captain out of his head. He would need to call his sister. There were times when she got very clingy because of the work he did. It wasn’t that Chrissie disapproved of his employers, it was more she saw danger in every shadow.

  Ben sighed again. He couldn’t blame Chrissie, it was what it was and she believed in a spirit world that could protect people as much as it could do harm to them. They’d had plenty of debates over the years, usually ending with Ben half surrendering because Chrissie got too emotional for him and he didn’t want it ending in tears.

  ‘Spirit Shield,’ Ben said into the silence of the room, and then wondered if it was bugged. He wouldn’t put it past Homeland Security to spy on the people who worked for them so he added. ‘Just kidding.’

  ***

  Ben stood outside his room when Kramer came for him. He heard the sound of her steps before she came into view. She didn’t even break stride as she passed him, forcing Ben into a little jogging run to catch up as she headed down towards a double elevator tucked into a recess that Ben hadn’t spotted. ‘Can I ask a question?’ Ben said as they waited for the doors to open.

  ‘You can, no guarantee of an answer.’ Kramer gave him a sideways glance.

  ‘Are we Homeland Security or something else?’

  ‘Something else.’

  ‘Which is called?’

  ‘Directorate of Special Investigations.’

  The doors opened. Kramer went in first and Ben joined her, leaning against the side wall so he could look at her profile.

  ‘Do I have to ask permission to make a call?’

  ‘To your sister?’ Kramer saw Ben’s frown and added. ‘We do deep back
ground checks. You always stay in touch if your work takes you out of the office.’

  ‘Is that illegal?’

  ‘No.’ For the first time, Kramer almost looked human. ‘You must be very close.’

  ‘We are.’

  The elevator doors opened to a corridor filled with noise as people filed towards a briefing room. Kramer looked like she wanted to say something else about Chrissie when Dawson crossed their field of vision and he called her to him. Ben followed, feeling a little awkward. Deep background checks went with the territory of intelligence agencies, but knowing he kept in regular touch with his sister was a bit more than background; it was surveillance.

  Ben followed the flow into the briefing room. Kramer had finished with the General and came over to lead Ben to a side office. ‘Briefing starts in a few minutes. You can call your sister using the phone in here.’

  Kramer did the decent thing and closed the door behind Ben. He sat on the edge of an office desk and dialled Chrissie’s number. She answered, sounding out of breath, after half a dozen rings. ‘Been running a marathon?’ Ben asked without introduction.

  ‘Ben!’ he could almost hear her smile down the phone. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Can’t say. But I’m safe and sound.’

  ‘Really? You’re not just saying that?’

  ‘No, honestly Chrissie, I’m fine. I’m still in the country, but that’s all I can say.’

  He heard her sigh. ‘Sometimes you people make up such stupid rules. Secret this and secret that. It wouldn’t surprise me if half the government didn’t know what the other half did.’

  ‘You could well be right,’ Ben laughed. ‘So why were you out of breath?’

  ‘I’ve just had a shower. I’m out tonight at a séance, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I forgot.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t forgotten that I promised you a Spirit Shield.’

  ‘Chrissie, there’s no need.’ Ben looked up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how deep underground he was. ‘I’m in one of the safest places I could be.’

  ‘You are now, but you might not be tomorrow.’ His sister’s voice switched into lecturing mode. ‘You will have your shield.’