+3+: Enough. A cup of red rust skin tschambucco, taken immediately before and during the song. I didn’t have time to distill it properly, but I purged the majority within an hour.
+7+: you will live
+8+: As 7 says.
+7+: you honor me
+4+: Call for 2 or 1 as you prefer. Have them tend to your health and your well-being for the night. Come see me when you’re able, and we will talk.
+8+: 9 sends her gratitude.
+3+: Ever our praises.
+9+: And abundance.
The screen went dark.
Dr. Ashland smiled.
She had liked the detective, truly, but her love of the Goddess was everything.
Clinton J. Boomer, known to his friends as Booms, resides in the quaint, leafy, idyllic paradise of Appleton, Wisconsin. He began writing before the time of his own recollection, dictating stories to his ever-patient mother about fire monsters and ice monsters throwing children into garbage cans. Boomer is a writer, filmmaker, and bartender. His short comedic films, D&D PHB PSAs, have over 3,500 subscribers on YouTube and have been viewed more than a million and a half times. He is—above all—a dad, a game-designer, a reader, and a recovering lifelong bachelor. His debut novel, The Hole Behind Midnight, was released in 2011 and is available from Broken Eye Books. Daniel O’Brien, columnist for Cracked.com and contributor to the New York Times bestseller You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News called it “Raymond Chandler meets Douglas Adams by way of a fantasy nerd’s fever dream. And it’s AWESOME.”
A Pathway for the Broken
Damien Angelica Walters
When the doctor tells Dale to hold still, he complies. The prick of a needle comes next, and a cold snake slithers into his veins. There’s something in the needle, something in the cold, but he can’t remember the name. Robots, he remembers asking, and the answer was no. But the details are gone in the black space where things fall in. Sometimes, they creep back out. More and more, once in the dark, they stay there—bears hibernating in a cave through an endless winter.
He shifts on the table, the paper sheet beneath him crinkling. Cold air rushes out of the overhead vent, sending goosebumps dancing down his arms. Underneath the thin, scratchy blanket, he’s wearing only socks, boxer shorts, and a knee-length hospital gown.
The doctor (and come to think of it, Dale can’t remember his name either: maybe Roman or Rodan?) pats his shoulder. “Are you doing okay, Mr. Donovan?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good. I’m going to spread on the gel now, but we’ve warmed it up for you a bit, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”
Despite his words, the gel is still cool on Dale’s freshly shaved scalp, not that he had a lot of hair to begin with.
“Now for the transducer. Hold very still, please.”
Once the helmet is fitted into place, the doctor pats his shoulder again. “Now, I need you to lie still while we start the ultrasound to wake up the nanoparticles. You might feel a little dizzy, but if it gets to be too much, wave your right hand.”
“Gotcha.”
The helmet begins to hum. Dale closes his eyes, imagining tiny street cleaning machines in his brain, brushes whirring as they clear the blocked pathways. His jaw clenches. What if they clean too much away? They’re supposed to die once the whole thing’s done—he remembers that much—but what if they stay behind and keep cleaning until nothing’s left of him at all?
A metallic taste floods his mouth, and he fights the urge to spit. Stay still, he reminds himself. He has to stay still. For a moment, he can’t remember why he’s here, and the sense that something isn’t right hovers in a bestial shadow, but it’s only a quick flicker of dark, and his cheeks turn warm. Of course, he knows why. Alzheimer’s is why. If he doesn’t have this procedure, the disease will keep eating his memories until nothing is left. Then his body will shut down, and he’ll die. But he’ll be dead where it counts long before then.
The hum grows louder, but Dale hears it inside his head, not from the helmet. He can’t remember how long the doctor said the whole thing would take and hopes his daughter is still waiting outside.
The world goes grey and swimmy. Cold sweat makes the cheap fabric gown stick to his back. Beneath the hum, there’s a pulse, but he doesn’t think it’s his own. It’s too slow, too heavy, too big.
“Doing okay?” the doctor asks.
“Sure thing, doc,” he manages.
The black space kicks out his name—Dr. Rollin, like a ball down a hill. And there’s a storm rolling in his head, dark clouds roiling on the surface of his thoughts. No rain, no hail, but the pressure is growing. The pulse throbs, dwarfing his own skittering heartbeat. He wants to raise his hand, wants to tell Dr. Rollin that he’s had enough, but he can’t make his hand move, can’t get the signal through the storm.
The crash of striking waves sends a low moan shuddering through his lips. The chaos builds and builds until it’s all he hears, all he knows. Something else slips through: the sound of thunderous footsteps moving closer. Then the storm breaks, the clouds scatter, everything falls silent, and the black hole is gone. All the words he thought he’d forgotten, all those he forgot he’d forgotten, surge back in. So many words he’s afraid his brain isn’t big enough to hold them all.
Tears catch in his throat and burn in his eyes. Like the words, there are too many to hold back.
“Tell me about the beach in Maine again.”
Dale smiles at his daughter curled up on one end of the small sofa. His room in the research hospital resembles a small studio apartment, but the smell is all hospital—antiseptic, floral deodorizer, and a ghost of urine—and the furniture is hard where it should be soft and mushy where it should be firm. At least the window has a view of the trees behind the hospital instead of the parking lot.
He takes a sip of coffee. Grimaces. They probably haven’t changed the grounds in days. “Kiddo, I haven’t forgotten since yesterday, the last time I told you.”
“I know,” Kerry says. “I just like hearing you tell the story. You know it’s my favorite.”
She isn’t lying, but the story is a test, much like the poking and prodding and the endless questions from Dr. Rollin. Two months ago, Dale tried to tell it, and Kerry ended up in tears while he sat awash in frustration and embarrassment. It wasn’t that he couldn’t recall the memory, because he could, but the word rock was lost in the dark and wouldn’t come out. Hard to recount their last family vacation before Kerry’s mother passed away, hard to tell the funniest part of the story, when you couldn’t remember the word for what made your young daughter so angry because beaches were supposed to have sand.
He starts to protest again, but guilt lingers bitter on his tongue at the strain around Kerry’s eyes and mouth. If she had a sibling, she wouldn’t have to shoulder the burden on her own.
Dale starts the story again, not stumbling over any words at all. Halfway through, a nurse pokes her head into the room but leaves without saying anything.
The frequent checks to see if everything’s okay are a small annoyance. Do they think he’s going to wander off? He didn’t do that before they cured him. Ah, well, a few more weeks and then he can go home.
He’s watching a cardinal flit from branch to branch when he hears a low hum. He holds his hand beneath the vent, but there’s no air rushing out. The television is off, the handset of the phone is on the receiver, and the call button for the nurse isn’t lit. He cracks his door. The hallway holds the usual noise: voices, rubber soles tapping on tile, the distant ding of an elevator. There’s nothing amiss in the bathroom either. Still, the hum persists. Although it’s rhythmic, it doesn’t sound mechanical. He scratches behind one ear, the stubble of his hair bristling against his fingertips.
It almost feels as though it’s in his head, which doesn’t make a lick of sense, and there’s something else there, too. He scrunches his nose. Squints. Too faint for him to be sure, but it makes him think of breaking waves and maybe footsteps. Whi
ch makes even less sense.
Kerry bustles into the room with an extra-large cup of non-hospital coffee. Dale thinks of asking her if she hears anything strange, but the last thing he needs is to give her something else to worry about. And anyway, after a few sips of coffee, the hum disappears.
Dale steps from the elevator and follows the signs until he finds the entrance to the courtyard. Benches sit here and there, and pebbled pathways wind around small trees and flowers in planters. In the center, a seahorse-shaped fountain spits a narrow stream into a pond. The bottom glitters with copper in spite of the Please Don’t Throw Coins in the Water sign.
The air smells clean and clear; it’s easy to pretend he’s in his own backyard. He clasps his hands behind his back and walks the path, the sun warm on his face.
Someone’s humming, but it isn’t a song he recognizes. It doesn’t seem a song at all but a voice vibrating through his mind. A voice unlike any he’s ever heard before. His arms go all over goosebumps, his steps slow, and somewhere, waves strike a rocky shore and footsteps trudge through the water.
The hum—the voice—intensifies, burrowing deep with the sensation of biting down on aluminum foil. His heart races, and he thinks he should call for a nurse because something is moving through the waves, coming closer, and it’s something wrong—
“Dad?”
Dale jumps and steps back, away from the edge of the pond. “Hi, kiddo,” he says, his voice a sandpaper rasp.
Kerry frowns, reaching for his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I am,” he says, pushing his lips into what he hopes is a believable smile. His knees and back are stiff. His head is foggy, as though it’s been stuffed with cotton batting, and even if he drank all the water in the pond, it wouldn’t be enough to banish the desert in his mouth.
“I got scared when you weren’t in your room, and the nurse told me you were coming down here a few hours ago. Have you been down here the whole time?”
A few hours? That isn’t possible. He just came downstairs. He hasn’t even walked the entire path yet. But Kerry’s face still wears a frown, so he says, “Guess I lost track of time enjoying the fresh air. I’m sick to death of staying cooped up in that room.”
“And you were talking to yourself like you used to do when you worked on your car.”
“I was? What was I saying?”
“Something about the water, I think. It didn’t make much sense to me. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He waves one hand. “I’m right as rain, kiddo. A little woolgathering now and again is good for the soul.”
“Well, if you’re finished, how about we go back upstairs?”
Kerry doesn’t wait for an answer before she loops her arm through his.
Unease rests heavy in his belly, but even though his knees creak, he keeps his steps even and sure.
“Everything looks good thus far, Mr. Donovan,” Dr. Rollin says. “Very good. I predict tomorrow’s MRI will confirm that as well. Have you had any problems, or do you have any concerns?”
“I don’t know if it’s a problem, but I’ve heard a humming sound a few times.”
Dr. Rollin’s brow creases. “A humming?”
“It wasn’t that bad or anything,” Dale says, fighting the urge to wipe his damp palms on his pants. “It was mostly annoying. Kinda sounded like it did when the machine was on my head. But the second time it happened, it wasn’t as bad. Honestly, my ears aren’t what they used to be. I probably just heard something wrong.”
Dr. Rollin writes on his notepad, considers Dale with a long look. “If you hear it again, please, let me know.”
“I will.”
“Anything else?”
Dale thinks of his lost hours, shrugs the thoughts away. He was daydreaming, that was all. Got lost in his own head for a bit, but it didn’t mean anything was wrong. “Nope, everything’s good,” he says, the lie sliding evenly off his tongue.
The nurse insists he ride in a wheelchair to the MRI suite, two floors down, and Dale doesn’t bother to argue the point. He keeps quiet when he changes into the gown and climbs onto the table. The machine whirs and taps, too loud to sleep through, even with earplugs, so he stares at the shadows on his eyelids instead. Somewhere along the way after what seems hours, the hum creeps through the gaps in the machinery’s noise. Or maybe it was there the whole time, too low for Dale to hear.
The hum twists into a barrage of incomprehensible words laced with rage and malevolence. Dale struggles to get away, dimly aware his body isn’t moving at all. Why isn’t anyone helping him? Don’t they hear it?
On an unseen shore, waves crash and break. The heavy footsteps approach. A jolt races through his body, and his mouth goes thick with the taste of stone and salt. He catches a glimpse of some unimaginable darkness, a vast space unfolding as a monstrous shape emerges.
Dale feels it moving closer and closer, and then, he feels nothing at all.
Awareness bleeds back in slowly. Movement, voices, bright lights, a dull throb behind his temples, an IV in his arm.
“What happened? Please, just tell me what happened,” Kerry says, her voice high and thin.
The dulcet tones of a nurse: “We aren’t sure yet, Ms. Donovan. Please, we need you to calm down.”
“I’m okay,” Dale whispers.
“Calm down? How am I supposed to do that? Did you see what happened?”
“Ms. Donovan—”
“I’m okay,” Dale says as loud as he can.
“Dad?” Kerry bursts into tears.
Dr. Rollin leans over, his eyes serious. “You gave us a bit of a scare there. How are you feeling?”
“A little tired but okay. What happened?”
“You had a seizure.”
“A seizure? Like with epilepsy?”
“Similar, yes, but don’t worry, we’re going to determine why and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
While he drones on about medication and possible underlying conditions, Dale closes his eyes. Hears the echo of a voice. Remembers a darkness and something within.
He swallows hard against the fear that it’s still there, waiting.
Dale traces circles on a notepad. Scattered on the sofa cushion beside him are torn-off sheets of paper, lists of words he remembers. A fool’s exercise—how would he remember what he doesn’t remember?—but the lists are comforting nonetheless.
The hum, deep inside his mind, is low, almost a suggestion rather than a hum itself, but he feels its presence. At least, he thinks he does, but his mind could be lying. It has a history of faulty behavior, so how can he fully trust it now?
Although Dr. Rollin hasn’t admitted it, Dale knows the treatment didn’t work the way it was supposed to. Something went wrong. He sees it in the doctor’s eyes and in Kerry’s eyes, too. They’ve drawn more blood and run more tests in the past three days than he can count. Dr. Rollin said they want to do another MRI, but only after they’ve ruled everything else out. What “everything else” means, Dale has no idea.
In spite of all the words he remembers, he’s afraid the Alzheimer’s is back and they don’t want to tell him. But something isn’t right. He can’t remember if this is the same not-right he felt before the doctors put a diagnosis and a name to the feeling. He doesn’t think so, but he’d rather hear the truth.
He tosses the notebook aside, gathers the loose pages. On a few, while his handwriting is unmistakable, the words are illegible scrawls—not words at all. For a fleeting moment, he almost understands them, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He fights tears and wins; fights his fear and loses.
He tears the papers—even his lists—into shreds and flushes them down the toilet, wishing he never agreed to any of this in the first place.
“I have good news and bad news,” Dr. Rollin says, his hands folded atop his desk.
Kerry leans forward in her chair. The office is smaller than Dale remembers, feels like it’s growing even smaller. He doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t wa
nt to hear the bad news, doesn’t care about the good news either. He wants to go home and sleep in his own bed, sit in his own back yard, and drink his own damned coffee.
“All your bloodwork has come back fine. We can’t find anything that would account for the seizure.”
“So I’m okay?”
Dr. Rollin clears his throat. “I mentioned the other day that I wanted to run another MRI. When the radiologist went over the results of the previous one, she found an anomaly.”
“What kind of anomaly?” Kerry asks.
“We’ve ruled out a tumor of any kind, and while we’re not one hundred percent certain, we suspect it’s either a bit of plaque we missed,” he clears his throat again, “or, possibly, one of the nanoparticles.”
“You said they were designed to die after the ultrasound was shut off and that they’d be flushed away,” Kerry says.
“Yes, that’s how they’re designed to work. Dale, I’ve consulted with a few other doctors and we suspect that hum you reported hearing is indicative of a malfunctioning nanoparticle.”
“Hum? What hum? Dad, you didn’t tell me about that.”
He gives her arm a gentle squeeze. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. So, Doc, if one of those things is still hanging around, what do we do now?”
“We’d like to run the ultrasound therapy again. We think, if one of the nanoparticles was left behind, it’s our best shot at getting rid of it.”
“Wait,” Kerry says. “You said everything went fine. Now you’re saying something went wrong, but you want to do the whole thing again?”
“Kiddo, it’s okay.”
“No, Dad, it’s not okay. What happens if you just leave it where it is?”
Dr. Rollin steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “It could potentially lead to more seizure activity or even a stroke. I don’t think that’s likely, but it’s—”
“Fine.” Dale meets Dr. Rollin’s gaze. “Let’s do it again.”
Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity Page 9
