by Brian Harmon
He wouldn’t blame it. He’d be depressed, too, if he were as ugly as this thing. Now that he was finally seeing it in the light, it was undoubtedly inhuman. In addition to the strange proportions of its body, it was the pallid gray color of an old corpse. It was hairless. Its flesh was leathery and wrinkled. And its face, like its long limbs and short trunk, wasn’t quite right. Its nose was small and pointed and its mouth looked too big for its head. And there was something odd about its eyes, too, but he couldn’t quite make it out from this angle.
But the most disturbing thing about this creature, by far, was that it was naked. Not because he’d never seen a naked monster before. Hardly any of the things he’d encountered in his weird travels were clothed. (That would probably be a whole new level of weird.) It was because this thing really needed some pants. Its privates were as oversized as its hands and feet and mouth, and just as droopy as the rest of it.
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
What were these things? How did they get here? And why were they here?
Isabelle was right. Nothing happened to him by chance. This thing had to be related to Hector somehow. Whatever happened in the past was starting up again in the present.
But he didn’t have time to ponder it now. The creature was shuffling its way around the furnace. They had to move.
He pressed his finger to his lips again and gestured for Karen to follow him around the opposite side. They’d keep the furnace between them. Then they’d make a run for it.
The key was going to be not bolting too soon. Let the ugly thing get all the way around the furnace. If it saw them, it might give chase, and knowing his luck, it would prove to have the sprinting ability of an Olympic gold medalist.
Karen took his hand and squeezed. He didn’t like the way hers felt. Sweaty. Tense. She’d never admit it, especially after he warned her about tagging along, but she was terrified. And he didn’t like to see his wife afraid. She’d always been a rock to him, an anchor, always keeping him grounded, even when his world was otherwise falling apart.
All they had to do was sneak out of here without being seen. And they were already halfway around the furnace.
He nudged her toward the door as he peered between the ducts again, his index finger still raised. “Wait for it,” the gesture said.
The creature was moving toward the storeroom stairs. If they hadn’t come back up when they did, they would’ve been trapped down there with nowhere to hide. The thought made him feel sick to his stomach.
He took a step back from the furnace and turned to Karen, nodding.
She’d already crept most of the way across the room. At his urging, she turned to leave. But just as she approached the doorway, a second creature stumbled down the steps and into view right in front of her.
Clamping her hand over her mouth to hold back a scream, she quickly turned and pressed her back against the wall to the left of the doorway.
Eric froze for a moment in panic, unable to do anything, unable to even think. Both doors were now blocked. Karen was dangerously close to the creature. And he was standing out in plain sight like an idiot.
The creature turned the corner, its head drooping in the same, forlorn manner as the first one. The thing’s zombie posture was the only thing that prevented it from seeing him as he finally broke his paralysis and ducked behind the water heater.
There was a small recess in the wall here, a space between the water heater and the pipes. It wasn’t much cover. If the thing were to look right at him, he was sure the shadows wouldn’t be deep enough to protect him. But it was better than Karen’s cover. The only thing between her and it as it shuffled into the room was a single drain pipe. And that was going to do little to hide her lovely, buxom form.
She stood staring back at him, her eyes huge, one hand still pressed to her mouth, the other to the wall beside her.
The creature stood there a moment, dreadfully close to her. Any second now it would turn its gruesome head and see her.
Eric’s heart was racing. He wished he had something to defend her with. A gun would be ideal. But of course he’d never purchased a gun. He wasn’t comfortable with the idea of owning one. He had no interest in hunting, so what was the point? But right now, not buying one seemed like the stupidest thing he’d ever done.
He glanced around, desperate. There must be something. A loose pipe. A chunk of concrete. Anything!
The creature lumbered forward again, apparently oblivious.
Relief washed over him, but only for a moment. He still had to somehow avoid being seen now.
It was getting closer.
He pressed himself against the wall and drew up his knees, attempting to make himself as small as possible.
Something poked him in the back.
The creature stopped in the middle of the room. Its ugly head turned toward him. It seemed to be looking right at him.
Eric held his breath.
The only sound was the pounding of his pulse in his ears.
He couldn’t let it end like this. Not here. Not now. Not in front of his wife.
But then it turned its head toward the lit doorway behind the furnace and shuffled on.
He dared to let go of the breath he was holding and watched it amble off. Then he met Karen’s eyes. All the words in the world wouldn’t have been sufficient to sum up the silent message that passed between them.
She lowered her hand from her mouth and clasped it over her heart. Then she carefully peered around the corner, making sure that a third one wasn’t on its way down the steps.
Eric rose to his knees and peered around the water heater. The second creature was still moving toward the doorway, still seemingly oblivious of their presence.
Relaxing a little more, he turned to see what had jabbed him in the back a moment before.
There was a wide crack in the corner of the concrete wall. Something was sticking out of it, all but invisible in the gloomy shadows. He found that he knew what it was even before he reached out and took hold of it.
It was an old liquor bottle.
Hector’s next message.
Karen gestured for him to hurry, but he didn’t dare risk clinking the glass too loudly against the stone. He slowly wriggled it free from the gap and very carefully freed it from its hiding place.
The weight of the situation didn’t go unappreciated. This bottle had been here for fifty-four years. Countless people must’ve walked right by it. At some point, the water heater was replaced. There must’ve been men working right here, within arms-length of it. And yet it sat waiting all this time for him.
Again, he felt an overwhelming certainty that he wasn’t in control of his own life, as if he were bound to some higher calling. He’d never believed in destiny, and yet here he was again…
For some, the idea of being called upon to fulfill a grand destiny might seem like a dream, but he’d never wanted anything like that. He was just an English teacher. That was all he’d ever wanted.
The bottle came out of the crack with a loud “clink” that made him wince. He glanced toward the back of the room again. The creature was out of sight now, but its shadow was still on the wall. And the shadow had stopped.
Was it just mindlessly standing there again, stupidly staring off into space? Or had it heard the noise?
He decided not to stick around to find out.
As quietly as he could manage, he crept across the open floor to where Karen was still gesturing urgently for him to follow and together they fled up the stairs and out into the hall.
“Where did the second one come from?” she whispered, not daring to raise her voice for fear of drawing out more of them.
“No idea. But I found this, so let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What about Spooky?”
“Like I told you, Spooky can take care of himself. He’s probably already gone.”
He could tell Karen didn’t like the idea of leaving without the cat, but she liked the idea of sticking
around and bumping into more of those awful creatures even less.
They paused at the junction between the two hallways and considered their options. To the left was the way they came. It was a long, empty hallway, with no telling how many of those awful creatures lurking unseen in all the rooms between here and the door by where they were parked. If there were two of them, there could be a dozen. Or a hundred.
Alternately, they could go straight ahead. There was a door. But they had no way of knowing if it was locked. They hadn’t tried it. Given the kind of luck he generally had, it was easy for Eric to imagine that the door not only wouldn’t open, but would make a terrible racket when they tried it, after witch they’d be set upon by dozens of ugly, naked and freakishly endowed monsters.
Finally, there was the kitchen exit, and he wasn’t terribly keen on going back into a dark room after the fright they’d just had, even for a moment. His morbid imagination was more than happy to suggest that there was now an entire nest of those things hiding in there, just waiting to attack anyone who set foot through that door. Plus, that would be the farthest possible point from where they’d parked.
He chose to try his luck with the door straight ahead.
His uncommon luck was holding out. The door was unlocked. They stepped out into the bright sunlight and ran across the lawn to the parked PT Cruiser.
“That was freaking awful!” gasped Karen when she was safely inside the vehicle and the door locked behind her.
Eric locked his door and started the engine. “Welcome to my world.”
“Is that what it’s always like?”
“No. It’s usually worse. Most of the time, the monsters actually chase me.”
He circled around in the grass, not even bothering with reverse. He had what he came for. Now all he wanted was to get far away from this place as quickly as possible.
“Eric!”
He looked over at her, startled, and followed her gaze to the building. There, in one of the darkened windows, a figure stood watching them.
He cursed and sped away.
It wasn’t one of the creatures. He could make out the basic features of its face, the shape of its hair, the collar of its shirt. It was a man.
Someone else had been inside the building with them.
Chapter Nine
“What were those things?” asked Karen as she plugged Eric’s cell phone into the travel charger and then dropped it into the cup holder. They were back on Main Street now, with no destination, only driving away from the Goss Building.
Eric shook his head. He’d seen so many incredible things in the past couple years that he’d be hard pressed to find anything he wouldn’t believe. Ghastly, murderous spirits lurking in unseen ruins in the middle of unsuspecting neighborhoods. Invisible, psychic parasites preying on the sick in hospitals. Evil people with dreadful powers and sinister agendas. But it couldn’t be a coincidence that those things were haunting the very place he’d needed to go. Something was going on in Creek Bend. And if it was anything like his previous experiences, there was someone with unusual talents at work behind the scenes. “Projections, maybe?”
IT’S DEFINITELY POSSIBLE, agreed Isabelle.
Projections were physical manifestations of certain people’s twisted imaginations. Or at least that was how Eric described them. He’d met at least two people in his travels who could conjure them, both of them heavy on the crazy. Projections seemed to generally be harmless, as they tended to pop like balloons when struck with any amount of force. But in some cases, they could be made much stronger, which could make them far more dangerous to face. Even the unstoppable golems he encountered in his first outing might’ve been an advanced form of a projection. The man who created them claimed he was able to do it by channeling his very soul into them.
But projections and golems had always had some sort of purpose, whether it was to ambush trespassers or stalk unwitting prey, and they’d always been good at their jobs. These things had seemed…well…stupid.
COULD BE AN AMATEUR PROJECTOR. SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE HANG OF IT YET
That was possible, he supposed. He was by no means an expert on the subject. Maybe after you learned to create them, you had to learn to train them.
Or maybe the projector, himself, was simply an idiot.
OR THEY COULD BE FROM ANOTHER WORLD
“Another portal or rift or something,” he agreed.
LIKE AT HEDGE LAKE
“And in the fissure.”
EXACTLY
He knew there were other worlds out there. A great many of them, in fact. At least some of them, and quite possibly the vast majority of them, for all he knew, were inhospitable nightmare realms full of awful, unimaginable horrors. There existed fissures, portals and gateways through which these horrors sometimes passed.
“Whatever they are, I’m sure they’re dangerous.”
I AGREE
“And they aren’t there by chance.” He recalled the mysterious figure he’d seen watching them from the window as they drove away. Who was he? How was he connected to all this? Was he responsible for those creatures? And did he have something to do with the gray agents in Hector’s time?
Whoever the man was, he’d clearly seen them. He knew what they looked like. He knew what their vehicle looked like. And worst of all, he knew they were snooping around.
What did that mean for them? What were they getting themselves into? What was he getting Karen into?
That was the worst part. He never should’ve let her come with him. He was putting her in danger. She hadn’t given him a choice, of course, but that didn’t matter. He should’ve put his foot down. He should’ve insisted she stay home. What was the worst that could’ve happened? She’d be pissed off at him? It wouldn’t be the first time. And at least she’d be safe.
But it was too late now. It couldn’t be undone. The best thing he could do now was focus on the task at hand. And at least they found what they were looking for.
He looked over at her. She was holding the bottle in front of her face, peering through the glass, trying to make out something of the message within. Like the last one, it had been plugged with wax. The easiest way to get to the message within was to break the bottle. They were going to have to stop somewhere before they could read it.
“It’s driving me nuts,” she said. “I want to know what he found in that place.” She looked up at him, her eyes bright with wonder. “Do you think he had to hide from those things, too?”
“I hope not. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Those things were creepy.”
“They were! They were revolting! Oh my god…did you see their…” She gestured at her crotch.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”
“So gross!” She looked out the window and twirled a lock of her hair.
“Pretty nasty,” he agreed. He wasn’t sure if any of the other monsters he’d encountered had been…what was the best term? Anatomically correct? He didn’t think they were. He’d never looked real hard, of course, but he’d certainly never noticed a monster’s junk before.
Maybe it meant they weren’t actually projections. After all, if they were only projections, why would they need them? Unless the projector intended for them to be that way…which might have been the most unsettling idea he’d had yet.
“I mean…do you think there’re, like, girl ones, too?” asked Karen. “I mean, there must be, right? I mean why even have that otherwise?”
Eric shrugged. He didn’t know. And he didn’t care to know. He didn’t even want to think about it. It was bad enough that he kept running into all these monsters. He didn’t want to know about their sex lives. (He’d once been told more than he ever wanted to hear about the unromantic mating habits of corn creeps…and that was more information than he cared to have in a lifetime.) “Why don’t we concentrate on getting that bottle open?”
Karen looked down at the bottle again. “How’re we going to break it?”
Eric checked his mirr
ors. He’d half-expected to find someone following them, but there was no one back there. “Just like we did the last one. We just need to find somewhere to park. Out of sight, preferably.”
She glanced over at him, concerned. “Do you think the person in that building is going to be looking for us?”
“I don’t know. But it never hurts to be careful.”
She didn’t like that answer. She looked back at the road behind them and chewed her lower lip, nervous. “Where should we go?”
“Somewhere fairly quiet, but not necessarily abandoned, either.”
“The high school?”
He nodded. That might be perfect.
Karen pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling Holly,” she decided. “Maybe she can tell us what to do.”
“I think that’s a good idea at this point.”
Holly Shorring was a close friend to both of them. She was also a witch. Eric first met her last July in rural Illinois, when one of her sisters, Delphinium Thorngood, sought his help defeating a mysterious “magic man” who was systematically hunting down and murdering members of their coven. He was able to stop the killer, although at a tragic price, and when it was all over, Delphinium sent Holly home with him, insisting that she would be his magical guide from that day on.
That was eleven months ago, and she was now like family. On an average day, there was nothing about her that was particularly extraordinary, except perhaps for her peculiar way of making everyone who met her find her adorable. But if the situation should require it, she was fully capable of wielding a number of powerful spells. One of her most useful talents was glimpsing the future through a form of divination that involved nothing more than hot water and candlelight. It was useful for getting glimpses of the ever-changing future, but the downside was that the information gleaned from it usually came in garbled riddles.
Karen explained what was going on to her as Eric drove to the high school and found a parking spot at the back of the lot. When she was done with the call, she said, “She was at the store, but she’s heading home now. She’ll call us as soon as she has something.”
