Department Zero

by Paul Crilley

  There are other creatures—things that look like werewolves leaping through the air and savaging anything in their path. Others, covered in tentacles that writhe in the air. Still others that look like blobs of shapeless slime and even some kind of monstrous birds—crosses between beetles and pterodactyls.

  Graves is accompanied by three others. A tall girl wearing eighties clothing, the woman with auburn hair, and what looks very much like a sullen goth chick. The sullen goth chick has two swords in her hands, and she’s whirling through the air, the blades invisible as they cut through the creatures trying to break the line the four of them are attempting to hold.

  The army of attacking creatures is led by a woman with long gray hair. She stands toward the back of the battle, watching it all unfold with glittering eyes and calling out orders to her troops.

  I hesitate; then I scoop up Crew Cut’s gun and step into the rip. (In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not really one for thinking things through.) It feels like my skin is being sucked off the back of my body, like I’m leaving it behind me as I walk. Or like I’m stepping through an invisible spiderweb. There’s heavy resistance as I enter, but I push against it, forcing myself through the opening.

  But it’s not an instant transition. Not like it looks from outside. I’m in a sort of no-man’s-land of psychedelic trippiness. A long tunnel with violet-and-blue lights warping around me. Black shadows tinged with red reach out as I take step after step. I hear distant chittering, and I feel impossibly tiny, a speck of nothingness in a cosmic play. The violet light glints on primeval skin half-glimpsed from the corner of my eye. The skin is dark gray, almost black, and it looks like a shark’s. Ancient stars glitter around me, constellations I’ve never seen before.

  I quicken my pace, feeling a primitive panic rising up in me, a desire to run from the night, from the unfathomable depths of the icy ocean. I break into a jog, and the pulling sensation increases slightly before suddenly snapping away.

  And I’m through the other end of the tunnel.

  The chaos of battle surrounds me. Gunfire, screams, shouts, and commands.

  Graves and the others are being pushed back, struggling to hold the line. I can see they’re not going to last. And there are too many weird-ass creatures between them and the gray-haired woman calling the shots. They’ll never get to her. Not before they’re overrun.

  I suddenly realize that nobody’s even noticed me. The battle is taking place in some massive warehouse, and I’ve arrived against the rear wall.

  Behind enemy lines, so to speak.

  Like, all the way behind enemy lines.

  Look, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most intelligent person out there. And I might not always be aware of the nuances of life in all its many guises. But the ugly, creepy monsters here kinda look to me like they’re the bad guys. And yeah, I know I shouldn’t judge by appearances and all that, but come on. Creepy thin woman with gray hair? Orc-looking army riding scorpion creatures? Werewolves? Tentacled beasties? And again, sure, Graves and his crew are human, so I might be a bit biased toward them, but I’m going to make a leap of logic and assume they’re the good guys in this scenario. Hey, I might be wrong, and if I am I’ll hold my hands up before I die and say, “My bad.” But you have to make a snap judgment in a situation like this, you know?

  I raise the gun to shoulder level, aiming it at the woman. I have a clear line of sight. The gun shudders, leans in toward me so that it’s actually sticking to my skin. It’s warm and moist.

  I try to ignore it as I recall my firearms training. Deep breath. Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it—

  The gun licks me.

  I cry out in horror, and my finger convulses on the trigger. The woman whirls around and spots me. The bullet—or whatever it is that the gun fires—misses her entirely.

  She shouts a warning.

  Instantly, the battle stops.

  Silence falls. I take a nervous breath and turn slowly.

  Every creature and person in the warehouse is staring at me.

  Graves and the three women are exchanging confused glances, but everyone else just looks like they want to kill me.

  I raise my hand in the air and give a small wave, trying not to gaze into the yellow, red, and demonic eyes glaring into my very soul.

  Then I turn and run.

  Back through the massive rip in the air. Along the weird tunnel. I look over my shoulder, see Graves and the other three coming after me, now wearing those weird skull masks. And behind them, the first of the weird creatures, one that looks like it’s made from oil that shifts and reforms into different figures.

  I put everything I have into running. I can see LA up ahead, as if through an irregularly shaped window. The fading light as night draws in (God, but this has been a long day), the concrete overpass. Safety. Normalcy.

  I leap through, land heavily on the asphalt, and roll over, coming to my feet as Graves and the others burst through with me. They all whip off their masks, turn expectantly to me.

  I stare behind them, at the oil-thing coming through the tunnel. “Close that!” I shout.

  Graves sighs with exasperation, steps forward, and touches something on my chin. I feel the sucking of released pressure, and the mask falls away from my face.

  The rip in the air instantly winks out of existence.

  I sag with relief. Then everything that’s happened to me tonight catches up in one huge tidal wave of adrenaline. I run to the side of the street and throw up in the scrub.

  Twice in one day. Nice.

  Once I’m done I turn back to see them all staring at the body of Crew Cut Dude. I hesitate, wondering if I should just make a run for it.

  Graves looks at me. “What happened?”

  Should I lie? Say the beetle-armor monster took him out? But shit, why should I? It wasn’t my fault. The guy appeared from nowhere. With a gun. How was I supposed to know?

  “I . . . kinda shot him. A bit.”

  Graves raises an eyebrow. “You shot him?”

  “Yes.”

  “A bit?”

  “Well . . . a lot. He . . . materialized in thin air. Right in front of me. The goddamn spider wall was closing in. I’d just shot a talking monkey with an old man’s face. I was on edge.”

  “You were on edge?” repeats Graves. “That’s the excuse you give for murdering one of my top operatives? You were on edge?”

  “Come on, man. I’ve had a rough day. Look, I’m sure I’ll feel terrible about it tomorrow. I’ll probably have to go for counseling. I’ll drink myself to sleep every night to try and forget the look on his face when he died. And you know what? That’s something I have to deal with. That’s my burden for what I’ve done. For the life I’ve taken. So I don’t need you on my back as well.”

  Graves studies me curiously. “You really mean all that?”

  “No,” I say. “The guy was an asshole. I’m sorry I killed him, but he shoulda known goddamn better than to sneak up on someone with a gun. Especially wearing that creepy-ass mask.”

  Graves sighs. He looks around at the deserted road, squints at the puddle on the ground. “And that?”

  “Some kind of monster. Black armor. Like a beetle.”

  Graves looks at the woman with auburn hair. “What do you think?”

  She turns to me. “White head? Like a tick?”

  I nod.

  “A Dimensional Shambler.”

  “A what?”

  “A Dimensional Shambler,” says Graves. “One of Lovecraft’s, I think.”

  I think about this. “Lovecraft? As in, H. P. Lovecraft?”

  “The very same.”

  “The novelist? The guy who made things up for a living?”

  “No. The guy who subconsciously tapped into an entire multiverse and channeled that into his writing. Now,” says Graves, glancing briefly up at the evening sky. “What did you take?”

  “Huh?”

  “From the crime scene. This morning. These creatures
wouldn’t have been after you unless you took something. What was it?”

  “I didn’t take a thing,” I protest. “I’m not a thief.”

  “No. Just a murderer,” says the goth girl.

  “Look, you must have taken something,” presses Graves. “You might not even know it was important. I’d be very surprised if you did, actually.”

  “Why? Because I’m just a stupid crime scene cleaner?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Bite me, you piece of—” I freeze. Back at the apartment. When Jorge hugged me. What was it he said? That he’d taken something? Then I’d felt his hand brush my side when he hugged me, but the whole spider-on-the-back thing had distracted me.

  Jorge had put something in my pocket.

  “The bastard!”

  I feel through my jeans pockets until I find an unfamiliar object, small and round. Hard. Like a marble.

  I fish it out. “The bastard was trying to get them to come after me! I can’t believe him! What a shit. What a . . .”

  I’m aware that the other four are staring at me with wide eyes and very serious looks on their faces.

  “What?”

  “That,” says Graves, pointing. “That is what they were after.”

  “Why?” I study the little ball. I can see colors swirling around inside. Purples and greens. And . . . are those numbers? I squint at them, but the numbers fade away, replaced by the swirling gases, like a nebula. “Just looks like a marble.”

  “Yes, well, I seriously doubt that’s what it is. Please. Hand it over.”

  I shrug. “Take it,” I say, and toss the marble to Graves.

  Even as I do so I realize it’s a bad move. I see Graves’s eyes widen as he lunges forward to catch the tiny glass ball. I watch him trip over the gun I’d dropped. Watch him fall flat on his face.

  Watch the ball hit the ground and shatter into dust.

  We all stare at the ground. I swallow nervously.

  “Uh . . . you got a spare?”

  They all shift their gazes to me.

  “No? Well . . . at least the bad guys won’t get their hands on it now?”

  Graves pushes himself to his feet. I get the feeling he’s trying very hard to calm himself down. Very hard indeed.

  He smiles. That’s even worse, to be honest. It’s like when I was a kid and my old man would speak in a really soft voice. That’s when you knew you were in deep shit.

  “You have just done something potentially very, very stupid. Lots of people were willing to break a lot of very important laws to get the item you just destroyed.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault. You should have caught it!”

  “Of course. You’re right. Not your fault. I mean, how were you to know?”

  “Well . . . yeah. How was I to know?”

  “Exactly. So no matter what happens next, if you wake up one morning in your sweat-stained bedsheets, surrounded by empty beer bottles, and see reality unraveling around you . . . If you step out of your tiny, disgusting apartment and witness an invasion of gods know what rising up from the depth of the oceans . . . If some kind of tentacled monsters arrive here from the many-angled worlds and start plucking you stupid people up into the sky and sucking your insides out, just know, in those split seconds before you are turned inside out and devoured, that you weren’t to know. Okay then? Good.”

  Graves stares at me a moment longer, then leans over Crew Cut and places the mask on his face. He nods at the others, and they reattach their own masks, all subtly different from one another, and they wink out of existence.

  Chapter Four

  I t’s kind of hard to just go back to your normal life after you’ve seen what I’ve seen.

  Everything—the slightest echo at night, the glimpse of a spider in the bathroom, a weird sound when I’m out driving—reminds me that there’s a hidden world out there I know nothing about. A dangerous world out to hurt me. Out to hurt those I love.

  Basically, in the weeks since that . . . eventful day, I’ve become a bit of a mess. Looking over my shoulder all the time. Staring at people, wondering if they’re really human or puppets controlled by arachnids hidden beneath their clothes. Peering out behind the curtains at my apartment, wondering where all the monsters are hiding. And I’m telling you now, I’m not just being paranoid. I’m sure someone’s following me. There’s an old Cadillac driven by a young woman with purple hair, and I’m convinced I’ve seen her a few times over the past couple of weeks. So far, she hasn’t transformed into a wall of beetles or anything like that, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

  I lost my job. Not just me. The whole business closed down. Jorge’s old man went to pieces when he found out his son had died. I was cleared of any wrongdoing, which was something at least. I was at Jorge’s apartment. No arguing with that. Too many people saw me. But I came up with a story about Jorge calling me in a panic, saying someone was trying to kill him. I’d shot over to my buddy’s house to help out, found him lying there cut in half, saw someone run, and gave chase.

  It got pretty unpleasant in the interview room, but call records to my phone and the timing of my arrival all bore the story out, so the cops had to let me go. Much to their collective disgust.

  So that was that. I’d caught a glimpse behind the curtain of life, was held in custody for three days, lost my job, and developed some kind of low-level PTSD thing where I’m paranoid and terrified and angry and depressed all at once.

  “So yeah,” I say, waving my beer at the drunk guy sitting next to me. “That’s been my life the last few weeks. How about you?”

  A cockroach scuttles across the bar top. I squeal in fright, then slam my hand down so hard the bug’s guts squirt out the sides.

  “Can’t be too careful,” I say to my new best friend as I wipe my hand on a napkin. “Could be part of the creepy-crawly wall. You know, the one I told you about?”

  The drunk carefully takes his beer and slides off the stool, moving along the bar to sit with a sixty-year-old hooker wearing fishnets and a push-up bra.

  “Suit yourself,” I mutter.

  Because that’s the thing. I can’t talk to a shrink about this, can I? Who would believe me? I sometimes don’t believe me, and I was there.

  I mean, what if it didn’t happen? What if it was some kind of psychotic break?

  Nah. It happened. I don’t have that kind of imagination. Not to make up stuff like that.

  “Hey. How’s it hanging?”

  Ooh. A new friend. Someone else for me to bore with my stories of a reality gone bad.

  I turn in my chair . . .

  . . . and find myself face-to-face with Havelock Graves.

  I stare at him. He’s smiling smugly at me.

  I punch him.

  He falls back off the stool with a shout of surprise. Hits the floor hard. I leap onto him like a bad wrestler, pin him down, and roughly prod his face.

  “You bastard! Do you have any idea what I’ve been through the past few weeks?”

  I pull his hair a bit, then release it. I should be punching him or something; that’s how pissed off I am. (I was never much of a fighter.) I bunch my fist, but before I can hit him he gets a shot in first, striking the side of my head.

  We both cry out in pain. He shoves me off, and we roll over. I clamber to my feet, holding my skull. “What the hell? Why’d you punch me in the head?”

  Graves is cradling his hand. “I miscalculated. I meant to break your nose.”

  “Oh, that’s very nice, that is. First you mess with my whole perception of reality, then you want to break my nose? Your social skills leave a lot to be desired, asshole.”

  “You hit me first!”

  I glare at him, then stagger over to a booth and slide in. The three other people present (my new best friend, the geriatric hooker, and the bartender, a young guy called Todd who’s in a rock band or something) studiously ignore us. It’s the kind of bar where this kind of thing happens many times before lunch.


  Graves sits down opposite me. I stare at him, shake my head.

  “You ruined my life, you know that?”

  “That had nothing to do with me. You turned up at the wrong crime scene, and your partner stole something that didn’t belong to him.”

  “Yeah, well he’s dead, so I’m blaming you instead.”

  “Whatever makes you feel better.”

  I lean forward. “You don’t understand.” I glance surreptitiously around. “Everything’s changed. I can’t sleep. I’m convinced I’m going to turn around and see these . . . things coming after me. I sit outside my ex-wife’s house all night.”

  “Hey, now. You can’t pin your stalking on me.”

  “I’m not stalking. I’m watching. Protecting my kid. In case any of those . . . things turn up.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Then how does it work?” I shout. “Because I don’t know!”

  “Do you want to know?” he says softly.

  I blink.

  “I mean, really want to know? Because . . . that’s actually why I’m here. To offer you a job.”

  “A . . . job?”

  “At the Company. Well, the ICD.”

  “Which is?”

  “The Interstitial Crime Department.”

  “You’re speaking words, but I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “It’s very hard to explain. It’s like . . . explaining the concept of time travel to an ant.”

  “You can time travel?”

  “What? No. I . . .” Graves sighs. “The ICD is like your FBI, right? We look into crimes, but on a cosmic scale.”

  I shake my head. “Not following.”

  Graves sighs in frustration. “Are you familiar with the multiverse theory? That there are an infinite number of universes out there, some with only minor differences. Some with major differences. Like, there could be a dimension identical to this one, except all humans have nine fingers and toes. Or . . . or where dogs can speak. Or where the Nazis won the war. Or where humankind all has telepathy. Or a world totally different, where magic works and orcs and ogres exist. Where you can live out your Lord of the Rings fantasy. Or another universe where you can travel the stars in solar-powered sail barges, coasting solar gases through the infinite voids of space.”