Terrors

by Richard A. Lupoff

Elizabeth Akeley led the way through the wooded area, retracing the steps of her previous visit to the wooden shack.

  Noyes found it more and more difficult to continue. With each pace he felt drained of energy and will. Once he halted and was about to sit down for a rest but Akeley grasped his hand and pulled him along.

  When they emerged from the copse the dome-topped hill stood directly behind them, the rundown shack directly ahead.

  Ezra and Elizabeth crossed the narrow grassy patch between the sycamore copse and the ramshackle cabin. Ezra found a space where the glass had fallen away and there was a small opening in the omnipresent cobwebs. He peered in, then lifted his camera and poked its lens through the opening. He shot a picture.

  “Don’t know what I got, but maybe I got something,” he said.

  Elizabeth Akeley pulled the door open. She stepped inside the cabin, closely followed by young Noyes.

  The room, Ezra could see, was far larger than he’d estimated. Although the shack contained but a single room, that was astonishingly deep, its far corners utterly lost in shadow. Near to him were a rocking chair, a battered overstuffed couch and a dust-laden wooden table of a type often found in old New England homes.

  Ezra later reported hearing odd sounds during these minutes. There was a strange buzzing sound. He couldn’t tell whether it was organic—a sound such as a flight of hornets might have made, or such as might have been made by a single insect magnified to a shocking gigantism—or whether the sound was artificial, as if an electrical generator were running slightly out of adjustment.

  The modulation was its oddest characteristic. Not only did the volume rise and fall, but the pitch, and in some odd way, the very tonal quality of the buzzing, kept changing. “It was as if something was trying to talk to me. To us. To Miss Akeley and me. I could almost understand it, but not quite.”

  Noyes stood, paralyzed, until he heard Elizabeth Akeley scream. Then he whirled, turning his back to the table from whence the buzzing sounds were coming. He saw Elizabeth standing before the rocking chair, her hands to her face.

  The chair was rocking slowly, gently. The cabin was almost pitch black, its only illumination coming from an array of unfamiliar machinery set up on the long wooden table. Ezra could see now that a figure was seated, apparently unmoving, in the rocker.

  It spoke.

  “Elizabeth, my darling, you have come,” the figure said. “Now we shall be together. We shall know the love of the body as we have known the love of the mind and of the soul.”

  Strangely, Noyes later stated, although the voice in which the figure spoke was that of Marc Feinman, the accent and intonation were those of a typical New England old-timer. Noyes testified also that his powers of observation played a strange trick on him at this moment. Although the man sitting in the chair was undoubtedly Marc Feinman—the clothing he wore, even to the sporting cap pulled low over his eyes, as if he were driving his Ferrari in bright sunlight—what Ezra noticed most particularly was a tiny red-and-black smudge on Feinman’s jacket.

  “It looked like a squashed lady bug,” the youth stated later.

  From somewhere in the darker corners of the cabin there came a strange rustling sound, like that of great leathery wings opening and folding again.

  Noyes shot a quick series of pictures, one of the figure in the rocking chair, one of the table with the unusual mechanical equipment on it, and one of the darker corners of the cabin, hoping vaguely that he would get some results. The rocking chair tilted slowly backward, slowly forward. The man sitting in it finally said to Ezra, “You’ll never get anything from there. You’d better get over to the other end of the shack and make your pictures.”

  As if hypnotized, Noyes walked toward the rear of the cabin. He stated later that as he passed a certain point, it was as if he had penetrated a curtain of total darkness. He tried to turn and look back at the others, but could not move. He tried to call out but could not speak. He was completely conscious, but seemingly had plunged into a state of total paralysis and of sensory deprivation.

  What transpired behind him, in the front end of the cabin, he could not tell. When he recovered from his paralysis and loss of sensory inputs, it was to find himself alone at the rear of the shack. It was daylight outside and sunshine was pushing through the grimy windows and open door of the shanty. He turned around and found himself facing two figures. A third was at his side.

  “Ezra!” The third figure said.

  “Mr. Whiteside.” Noyes responded.

  “Well, I’m glad to see that you two are all right,” a voice came to them from the other end of the cabin. It was the old New England twang that Ezra had heard from the man in the rocking chair, and the speaker was, indeed, Marc Feinman. He stood, wooden-faced, his back to the doorway. Elizabeth Akeley, her features similarly expressionless, stood at his side. Feinman’s sporting cap was pulled down almost to the line of his eyebrows. Akeley’s bangs dangled over her forehead.

  Noyes claimed later that he thought he could see signs of a fresh red scar running across Akeley’s forehead beneath the bangs. He claimed also that a corner of red was visible at the edge of the visor of Feinman’s cap. But of course this is unverified.

  “We’re going now,” Feinman said in his strange New England twang. “We’ll take my car. You two go home in the other.”

  “But—but, Radiant Mother,” Whiteside began.

  “Elizabeth is very tired,” Feinman said nasally. “You’ll have to excuse her. I’m taking her away for a while.”

  He started out the door, guiding Elizabeth by the elbow. She walked strangely, yet not as if she were tired, ill, or even injured. Rather, she had the tentative, uncertain movements that are associated with an amputee first learning to maneuver on prosthetic devices.

  They left the cabin and walked to the Ferrari. Feinman opened the door on the passenger side and guided Akeley into the car. Then he circled the vehicle, climbed in and seated himself at the wheel. Strangely, he sat for a long time staring at the controls of the sports car, as if he were unfamiliar with its type.

  Vernon Whiteside and Ezra Noyes followed the others from the cabin. Both were still confused from their strange experience of paralysis and sensory deprivation; both stated later that they felt only half-awake, half-hypnotized. “Else,” agent Whiteside later deposed, “I’d have stopped ’em for sure. Warrant or no warrant, I had probable cause that something fishy was going on, and I’d have grabbed the keys out of that Ferrari, done anything it took to keep those two there. But I could hardly move, I could hardly even think.

  “I did manage to reach into that car and grab out my machine. My microcassette recorder. Then I looked at my little bug-mike and saw that it was squashed, like somebody’d just squeezed it between his thumb and his finger, only he must have been made out of iron ’cause those bug-mikes are ruggedized. They can take a wallop with a sledgehammer and not even know it. So who squashed my little bug?

  “Then Feinman finally got his car started and they pulled away. I looked at the Noyes kid and he looked at me, and we headed for his Nash wagon and we went back to his house. Nearly cracked up half a dozen times on the way home, he drove like a drunk. When we got to his place we both passed out for twelve hours while Feinman and Akeley were going God-knows-where in that Ferrari.

  “Soon as I got myself back together I phoned in to Agency field HQ and came on in.”

  When agent Whiteside reported to Agency field HQ he turned over the microcassette which he and Feinman had made at the shack. Excerpts from the tape follow.

  (Whiteside’s Channel)

  (All voices mixed): Yeah, this is the place all right … I’ll—got it open, okay … Sheesh, it’s dark in here. How’d she see anything? Well … (Buzzing sound) What’s that? What’s that? Here, I’ll shine my—what the hell? It looks like … Shining cylinder. No, two of ’em. Two of ’em. What the hell, some kind of futuristic espresso machines. What the hell….

  (Buzzing sound becomes very loud, do
minates tape. Then volume drops and a rustling is heard.)

  Voice #3 (Vernon Whiteside): Here, lend me that thing a minute. No, I just gotta see what’s over there. Okay, you stay here a minute, I gotta see what’s….

  (Sound of walking. Buzzing continues in background but fades, rustling sound increases.)

  Voice #3: Jesus God! That can’t be! No, no, that can’t be! It’s too….

  (Sound of thump, as if microphone were being struck and then crushed between superhard metallic surfaces. Remainder of Whiteside channel is silent.)

  (Feinman Channel)

  (Early portion identical to Whiteside channel; excerpts begin following end of recording on Whiteside channel.)

  Voice #1 (Marc Feinman): Vernon? Vernon? What –

  Voice #6 (Henry Wentworth Akeley): He is unharmed.

  Voice #1: Who’s that?

  Voice #6: I am Henry Wentworth Akeley.

  Voice #1: Lizzy’s great-grandfather.

  Voice #6: Precisely. And you are Mr. Feinman?

  Voice #1: Where are you, Akeley?

  Voice #6: I am here.

  Voice #1: Where? I don’t see … what happened to Whiteside? What’s going on here? I don’t like what’s going on here.

  Voice #6: Please, Mr. Feinman, try to remain calm.

  Voice #1: Where are you, Akeley? For the last time….

  Voice #6: Please, Mr. Feinman, I must ask you to calm yourself. (Rustling sound) Ah, that’s better. Now, Mr. Feinman, do you not see certain objects on the table? Good. Now, Mr. Feinman, you are an intelligent and courageous young man. I understand that your interests are wide and your thirst for knowledge great. I offer you a grand opportunity. One which was offered to me half a century ago. I tried to decline at that time. My hand was forced. I never regretted having … let us say, gone where I have gone. But I must now return to earthly flesh, and as my own integument is long destroyed, I have need of another.

  Voice #1: What—where—what are you talking about? If this is some kind of….

  (Loud sound of rustling, sound of thumping and struggle, incoherent gasps and gurgles, loud breathing, moans.)

  (At this point the same sound that ended the Whiteside segment of the tape is heard. Remainder of Feinman channel is blank.)

  When agent Whiteside and young Ezra Noyes woke from their exhausted sleep, Whiteside identified himself as a representative of the Agency. He obtained the film from young Noyes’s camera. It was promptly developed at the nearest Agency facility. The film was subsequently returned to Noyes and the four usable photographs, in fuzzily screened and mimeographed form, appeared in the Vermont UFO Intelligencer.

  A description of the four photographs follows:

  Frame 1: (Shot through window of the wooden shack) A dingy room containing a rocking chair and a large wooden table.

  Frame 2: (Shot inside room) A rocking chair. In the chair is sitting a man identified as Marc Feinman. Feinman’s sporting cap is pulled down covering his forehead. His eyes are barely visible and seem to have a glazed appearance, but this may be due to the unusual lighting conditions. A mark on his forehead seems to be visible at the edge of the cap, but is insufficiently distinct for verification.

  Frame 3: (Shot inside room) Large wooden table holding unusual mechanical apparatus. There are numerous electrical devices, power units, what appears to be a cooling unit, photoelectric cells, items which appear to be microphones, and two medium-sized metallic cylinders estimated to contain sufficient space for a human brain, along with compact life-support paraphernalia.

  Frame 4: (Shot inside room) This was obviously Noyes’s final frame, taken as he headed toward the darkened rear area of the cabin. The rough wooden flooring before the camera is clearly visible. From it there seems to rise a curtain or wall of sheer blackness. This is not a black substance of any sort, but a curtain or mass of sheer negation. All attempts at analysis by Agency photoanalysts have failed completely.

  Elizabeth Akeley and Marc Feinman were located at—of all places—Niagara Falls, New York. They had booked a honeymoon cottage and were actually located by representatives of the Agency returning in traditional yellow slickers from a romantic cruise on the craft Maid of the Mist.

  Asked to submit voluntarily to Agency interrogation, Feinman refused. Akeley, at Feinman’s prompting, simply shook her head negatively. “But I’ll tell you what,” Feinman said in a marked New England twang, “I’ll make out a written statement for you if you’ll settle for that.”

  Representatives of the Agency considered this offer unsatisfactory, but having no grounds for holding Feinman or Akeley and being particularly sensitive to criticism of the Agency for alleged intrusion upon the religious freedoms of unorthodox cults, the representatives of the Agency were constrained to accept Feinman’s offer.

  The deposition provided by Feinman—and co-sworn by Akeley—represented a vague and rambling narrative of no value. Its concluding paragraph follows.

  All we want is to be left alone. We love each other. We’re here now and we’re happy here. What came before is over. That’s somebody else’s concern now. Let them go. Let them see. Let them learn. Vega, Aldebaran, Ophiuchi, the Crab Nebula. Let them see. Let them learn. Someday we may wish to go back. We will have a way to summon those Ones. When we summon those Ones they will respond.

  A final effort by representatives of the Agency was made, in an additional visit to the abandoned shack by the sycamore copse off the Passumpsic-Lyndonville road. A squad of agents wearing regulation black outfits were guided by Vernon Whiteside. An additional agent remained at the Noyes home to assure noninterference by Ezra Noyes.

  Whiteside guided his fellow agents to the sycamore copse. Several agents remarked at the warmth and debilitating feeling they experienced as they passed through the copse. In addition, an abnormal number of small cadavers—of squirrels, chipmunks, one gray fox, a skunk, and several whippoorwills—were noted, lying beneath the trees.

  The shack contained an aged wooden rocking chair, a battered overstuffed couch, and a large wooden table. Whatever might have previously stood upon the table had been removed.

  There was no evidence of the so-called wall or curtain of darkness. The rear of the shack was vacant.

  In the months since the incidents above reported, two additional developments have taken place, note of which is appropriate herein.

  First, Marc Feinman and Elizabeth Akeley returned to San Diego in Feinman’s Ferrari Boxer. There, they took up residence at the Pleasant Street location. Feinman vacated the Upas Street apartment; he returned to his work with the computer firm. Inquiries placed with his employers indicate that he appeared, upon returning, to be absent-minded and disoriented, and unexpectedly to require briefings in computer technology and programming concepts with which he had previously been thoroughly familiar.

  Feinman explained this curious lapse by stating that he had experienced a head injury while vacationing in Vermont, and still suffered from occasional lapses of memory. He showed a vivid but rapidly fading scar on his forehead as evidence of the injury. His work performance quickly returned to its previous high standard. “Marc’s as smart as the brightest prof you ever studied under,” his supervisor stated to the Agency. “But that Vermont trip made some impression on him! He picked up this funny New England twang in his speech, and it just won’t go away.”

  Elizabeth Akeley went into seclusion. Feinman announced that they had been married, and that Elizabeth was, at least temporarily, abandoning her position as Radiant Mother of the Spiritual Light Church, although remaining a faithful member of the Church. In Feinman’s company she regularly attends Sunday worship services, but seldom speaks.

  The second item of note is of questionable relevance and significance, but is included here as a matter of completing the appropriate documentation. Vermont Forestry Service officers have reported that a new variety of sycamore tree has appeared in the Windham County-Caledonia County section of the state. The new sycamores are lush and extremely h
ardy. They seem to generate a peculiarly warm atmosphere, and are not congenial to small forest animals. Forestry officers who have investigated report a strange sense of lassitude when standing beneath these trees, and one officer has apparently been lost while exploring a stand of the trees near the town of Passumpsic.

  Forestry Service agents are maintaining a constant watch on the spread of the new variety of sycamores.

  Lights! Camera!! Shub-niggurath!!!

  One of the most glamorous towns in Starrett is called—now don’t be surprised—Hollywood. You’ll remember that there was the first Hollywoodland, later shortened to Hollywood, back on earth. Later came the famous Hollywood-on-the-Moon, where they were able to get such fabulous scenic and lighting effect and where the light gravity made it easy to use heavy equipment.

  In time the builders and managers of Starrett, that giant tin-can world that plies its wares in the interstellar deeps, deemed it wise to carry on the tradition. Hence, Starrett’s own Hollywood-between-the-Stars.

  You’ve probably heard about Starrett, but just in case you haven’t here’s how that artificial world survives. It’s so big there’s a complete eco-system (and a complete economy!) inside Starrett’s massive shell. Thus, as Starrett travels from star to star and visits planet after planet, it functions something like a high-tech gypsy camp.

  The space-folk who live in Starrett buy at this world and sell at that. They sometimes carry passengers between remote solar systems. They provide varied forms of entertainment for the mud-hoppers (a.k.a. rubes) who shuttle up from planetside for a special treat.

  And they produce some of the biggest money-making shows in the known galaxy.

  Even if you’re thoroughly familiar with Starrett, it’s less than likely that you’ve ever heard of Dinganzicht, another artificial space-habitat that didn’t travel as widely as Starrett. Not by a long-shot. In fact, Dinganzicht hardly traveled at all, except in the somewhat diffuse astronomical sense. That is, Dinganzicht was associated with the trinary star system Fornax 1382. As Fornax 1382 moved relative to other nearby objects (and, in the ultimate view, as the universe continued to expand) Dinganzicht moved along with it. But that doesn’t mean much on the local scale.