When the planet-thing heaved itself again, emerging higher over the surface and revealing itself, Luka screeched and lunged to his feet, racing off into the night. His scream lingered behind him along the docks. Ivan took one last look at the thing coming forth from the sea, now rumbling the ground beneath Anadyr, and banished it willfully from his thoughts. He jumped to his feet, pocketed his pipe, and went after his friend.
TWO
California, USA
Summer, Saturday
August 26, 2023
3:30:01 PM
Three harrowing years of emptiness, sorrow, and darkness; of despair, confusion, and grief. The worst part was the not-knowing, his body never found, the case still open, some motives such as kidnapping having been considered, but Bethany felt certain the police had given up Jeremy to the sea; body or no body. Even though they did her a small favor by keeping the case open, stoking her hopes like a dying fire, she knew they had stopped looking.
The sea dipped and swelled along the horizon. Several larger, seemingly unmoving ships were farther out. A smattering of clouds painted the sky, in which dove a concentric circle of seagulls. The sun was enthroned even higher, blazing gold over the waters and sand.
She remembered the day it happened as though it were yesterday. She had only flipped onto her stomach for a second, wanting to tan her back, and had accidentally fallen asleep for an hour or so. She had known Jeremy was off playing along the beach, which was nothing new; they came here all the time and he knew the rules: never go past his ankles when she wasn’t watching.
How, then, could he have drowned?
She returned at least once a month, hoping to dislodge some new evidence or some fossilized answer to her question, standing on the beach among the scattered swimmers and sunbathers.
Ocean, what happened to my son?
The ocean never replied, only bubbled and sloshed primordially, like the internal acidic fluids of some ancient god. The waves crashed and roared as the surf ate away the sand and the ropey, slimy seaweed crawled forth, and the terrible birds that circled overhead cried out.
Goddamn you, ocean, she thought fiercely, tears coming to her eyes. Goddamn you straight to Hell.
Something happened; a tick, a little switch in the air, all but imperceptible, but she definitely felt it. The sunrays fizzled then went behind a cloud; the temperature dropped a couple of degrees and a cold breeze blew against her. Even the trees darkened, the sand too, everything around her, dimming, as if in holy anticipation.
The answer was coming.
THREE
Anadyr, Russia
Late Winter, Monday
March 13, 2023
6:45:01 AM
In the morning Ivan and Luka, at the behest of the old priest, timidly emerged from their nest of rags and crept steadfastly through the pews, away from the altar, and out the front door of the church.
Daylight but the clouds still clung to the sky, halving the sunlight, giving the world a dim gray hue. The streets were deserted. But further on, past the network of rooftops, hundreds of people could be seen gathered along the docks. Beyond them, rising from the water, stood the giant cosmic man.
Together with the priest, they moved away from the onion domes of the wooden Orthodox Church and down to the rows of slumping houses. The priest said the demon (his own word) had appeared on the horizon that morning, standing perfectly still and firm, casting its judgmental eye upon the town. Everyone in Anadyr had gathered for a mass prayer on the docks. Good thing the two men had spent the night in the church—the priest said—drunk though they’d been, for expelling the demon and returning God’s favor would require every praying mouth available.
Ivan and Luka followed the priest down to the congregation already engaged in prayer on the docks. Their heads swam with the effects of the vodka and the fear they had experienced the night before. When the priest urged them into the crowd, admonishing them to pray to their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so that He might absolve them of their horrible fate, they did so without a fight.
Then the priest, looking austere in his black vestments and clerical collar, mounted an old wooden crate and began preaching in Russian, emphatic tones reaching out across the water. He instructed them all to get down on their knees. He himself genuflected on the crate, as the solemn sounds of worship fanned out over the Anadyr rooftops.
The cosmic man perched nearby, a titan commanding both sky and sea, seemingly unaffected by the desperate prayers; then suddenly his mountainous body cracked into lurid life and he came straight for them.
FOUR
California, USA
Summer, Saturday
August 26, 2023
4:15:01 PM
There were thirty or forty people spread along the beach going about their business. Only Bethany was aware of the mounting tension, the building charge, which led her to speculate as to whether or not this was happening in reaction to her. The curse she had uttered, mentally, at the ocean. The disappearance of her son, her reason for being here in the first place. The answer she sought, the ache she felt in her soul every time she heard his name…
Jeremy…
Tears came now, streaming gracefully from her almond eyes. She wiped at them with her hand, as the cool breeze became cooler, tugging on her blond hair and white summer dress.
The world continued to darken, but she stood firm, rooted to the sand, determined to face this thing (whatever it was). She would do anything to bring her son back.
What caught her attention first was the sudden disappearance of the large ships which, up until now, had drifted lazily on the horizon. Now they were gone; not gone in the sense they had moved out of sight, but gone in the blink of an eye, as if something underneath had suctioned them down.
She strained to get a better look, blinking both eyes, wiping the lingering tears away. Yes, they were gone, and another thing: the ocean out there seemed to be cleaving, or collapsing in on itself, creating the appearance of a growing chasm or depression. And still the beach-goers felt nothing, while even the wheeling birds had gone for cover in the trees, and the clouds, almost seeming to evacuate the sky, had clustered about the sun.
Her focus shifted back to the far-out sea waters, dividing as Moses had parted the Red Sea, and she had a thought: Something’s coming.
The next moment it came. The waters sunk entirely, giving birth to a colossally massive structure, brownish or fleshy in appearance, which she first believed to be an animal, then a building or even a surfacing submarine, but which finally revealed itself to be none of those. What was emerging grand and terrible from the sea was a structure much like the peak of a mountain, covered in rocks, perhaps a rock itself, but no: she had the distinct impression that it was a thing covered in rocks, and yet underneath was something else, some other, more vastly terrifying, sea creature.
She caught her breath. Her heart clenched. She experienced the fleeting, ghostly craving for a cigarette, and she had not smoked in years.
The rock pillar grew until it stood straight up in the sky, miles up, like a giant building, making her think of the beanstalk from the popular fairy tale. This was a being of rocks, made of them, sheathed in them, in those darkest and slimiest from the ocean depths. It dripped sprays of water, was tethered and strangled by aquatic plant life, clad in barnacles, shells and coral and spiny things clustered all over it. Bethany even thought she saw starfish and other sucker creatures clinging to it, although it was hard to tell at this distance. But she could see that fish and jellies and even some lobster-things were forced out of the water and expelled as it made its way higher.
Then another equally fantastic pillar of rocky flesh shot up several hundred feet into the sky, sending a resounding boom through the earth which shook the beach sands and even the leaves of the trees. Bethany felt the vibrations in her teeth.
This, the other beach-goers could not ignore; they stopped whatever they were doing and turned to gaze out into the ocean. Screams of shock ter
minated in stifled gasps; myriad cries of What the fuck… the hell… in the name of heaven? But the commotion quickly died away to the awesome vision of the twin pillars of deep ocean stone, shedding fish and plant life like an old skin, towering from the waters into the cloudless blue. The awesome scale of it had them all paralyzed, as if made of stone themselves, like statues carved from—yet still attached to—the white beach sands.
At that moment the pillars revealed their true nature—that they were gigantic legs—legs of some colossal man, who now heaved himself up from the slumberous depths of the sea. The rocky legs straightened, locking the knees, and up from the rear came the massive torso, arms, and head, emerging like an entire mountain, spilling thousands of gallons of seawater to either side, creating waterfalls. Another tremendous boom rumbled through the beach, and this time the ground shook as though wracked by an earthquake.
When the colossal man was fully erected, he stood miles high, his upper body almost level with the sun, covered in scales, barnacles, fish, and aquatic plant life. He was a massive titan, the stuff of myths and legends. The cosmic man, Bethany thought.
Though he appeared predominantly humanoid, there were aspects involved in his makeup that were utterly foreign and incomprehensible. No normal head rested on his rock shoulders, but an entire shrunken and reddish planet, a displaced part of the solar system; what Bethany thought of as the planet Jupiter in miniature.
She had some difficultly comprehending this. Lightning flashed through her head, but she endured the physical pain, blazing her sight straight into the murky distance, toward the gaseous white, orange, brown, and red churning sphere. The surface of it swirled like a great colorful soup, as the massive sphere revolved atop the cosmic man’s rock-covered neck.
Some of the beach-goers scrambled back toward the rows of parked cars, caught in the shadow of the colossal man, whose massive presence blotted out the sun. Bethany happened to glance at their fleeing faces and caught sight of the panic and horror in their eyes: the look of dazed children suddenly confronted with new and terrifying visions of reality.
Those who didn’t escape with engines roaring and tires screeching remained on the beach staring at the cosmic man as though under a spell, and Bethany rejoined her gaze to theirs, so that one intense beam of focused human attention was trained on him.
He began to move forward, gliding with supernatural ease through the sea, waters parting before him, his gigantic knees never bending. The sky darkened and everything within the vicinity of the cosmic man vanished—first clouds, then birds, rocks, trees—evaporating into a shimmering emptiness of golden stardust.
Bethany thought of her son, hands steepled before her chest. I’ll always love you, Jeremy, she thought, with a sudden certainty that the cosmic man was somehow responsible for her son’s disappearance three years ago.
Then his enormous hands passed over the beach as though blessing it. She closed her eyes and imagined Jeremy there, standing beside her hugging her leg. In her mind she bent down into the embrace, crying and crying, for she missed him so.
From within to without, strands of matter which she had foolishly considered to belong to her—her body, her individuality, her being, her persona—but which truly belonged to the vacuum, were unspun, creating within her a feeling like plummeting through the sky. Her stomach heaved, and she grew numb, then fuzzed out, then at the precise moment she could stand it no longer, this feeling burst. Here she felt release, dissemination, acceptance. Felt home. The little golden dots appeared before her eyes, an instant before she was scatter-blasted through them.
FIVE
Anadyr, Russia
Late Winter, Monday
March 13, 2023
11:50:01 AM
He shook the ground beneath the docks, rattling the boards. He sent up fissures into the winding streets, splitting the asphalt. Several appeared under houses and buildings, sinking them into the cracks. The telephone poles toppled over. The statue of Lenin fell from its pedestal.
The gathering began to scream. A few lurched to their feet to go racing up the street. But the priest shouted at them to keep praying. While many abandoned the docks in search of higher ground, still others remained; heads bowed, hands clasped, eyes shut against the horror.
The frigid waters, shedding ice planks, dove to either side, sweeping over the land in huge waves; the cosmic man, rigid, approached without moving his limbs, his strange titanic body full of signs and symbols. Whatever came into his presence, or fell under his gaze, was wiped out of existence. Within the residual voids, there swirled a shimmering array of star-lights.
The frozen tundra farther ashore, the cold snowy steppes, the ice shelves and glaciers—all of it winked out like that (finger-snap) and was replaced by softly fluttering lights.
When he reached the docks, towering overhead now, lost among the clouds, the moored ships, the fisheries, and some of the closer bluish-red buildings evaporated. The crowd broke into a run, Ivan and Luka among them. Screams filled the air. The priest, erected on his wooden crate, shouted after them—but the next instant he was obliterated by the cosmic man.
The giant raised its strange, rock-like arms over the city, hands reaching ashore for miles. Those lingering along the docks: gone instantly. Also those fleeing, including Ivan and Luka—gone—followed by the others, and then the buildings making up Anadyr, all the snowy peaks, plateaus, ice-cold estuaries spreading like veins farther inland—everything in the vicinity of a hundred miles—gone—transformed into emptiness and whirling lights.
The cosmic man lingered in the hazy darkness then lowered his arms to his sides. He turned, a slow grinding motion, like a mountain moving, and headed toward the frigid, tossing seas. Slowly he sank below the water until nothing remained but a rippling current of bubbles along the surface, traveling in a diagonal line eastward and southbound, heading in the direction of the Western United States.
SIX
California, USA
Summer, Saturday
August 26, 2023
??:??:?? PM
The cosmic man—after finishing what he’d set out to do along the western coast—turned in the water and headed now farther south, toward Mexico, Peru, and Chile. There was much work yet to be done on this planet. His mission was to level the civilizations which, with time, had become a plague, an infestation, to the living organism of the Earth. The interstellar cosmic councils who looked on from space had grown increasingly uneasy, watching as their beloved experiment—the human beings who were developing on this planet—turned in the wrong direction. And so they had awoken the cosmic man who slumbered in the Earth. This cosmic man, they knew, would do what it was originally installed to do—destroy all life forms on the planet in case of emergency. The human experiment, they had concluded, was a failure.
But the cosmic councils, unaccepting of defeat or futility, had sent another experiment, one better designed and better grown than the human model, which they hoped would resume stewardship of the Earth once the humans receded. They salvaged the good part of the human genome, the emotional heart genes, and combined them with the qualities and characteristics of the planet’s aquatic life in order to temper the egoistic tendencies of the human genome.
Thus, as a new morning dawned upon the last day of destruction wrought by the cosmic man, two squat figures appearing both human and aquatic, with chests and torsos as well as fins and gills, emerged from the lapping salt and foam of the California sea. One male, and the other female, neither any bigger than a human child, the one—the male—carrying a thrumming stone bearing a symbol in the center, something like the letter D written calligraphically. To the cosmic councils watching from their starry perch, this was an excellent sign, for that symbol on the rock represented to all interstellar beings the genetic code of the second species that would inherit the Earth, following the disappearance of the humans. They would soon be able to welcome another, more worthy nation into the ceremonies of their cosmic confederation.
THE LAKE
Chris Evans has heard the rumor of the two dead girls. But he thinks it’s only a superstition. He’s fished this section of Lake Erie since he was a boy, since the 1970s when water deterioration was so bad it spawned an article in Time Magazine and the subsequent Clean Water Act of 1972.
His father used to bring him here at dawn, when the sky was lit up with pink and the waters swirled a dark, uninviting gray. They’d sit in his dented boat and wait patiently for fish to bite. A peaceful experience, a time for father and son to be alone.
But now Chris is sitting alone on the lake in the middle of the night. In the same boat, the one his father bequeathed to him; a beer cooler at his feet, the sprawling tackle box on the bench. His pole leaning out and a Styrofoam cup filled with dirt on his lap.
It’s the smell that gets him, that earthy fresh aroma. Nothing fuels nostalgia like soil and worms and fat grubs.
When the pair of luminescent shapes first appeared over the water, he’d assumed it was a trick of light. But that was more than three hours ago. They’ve moved over time, drifting slowly across the lake, going up and down the shoreline.
When they passed before the boat, Chris forced himself to watch. He studied their golden faces, their long flowing hair, their tiny bodies wrapped in grass and reeds. They glanced at him, each girl putting a finger to her lips, then continued on.
At the moment they’re at the other end, but he still sees them. The night sky is reflected in the water, so they resemble two planets orbiting the stars. They’re absolutely silent, and aside from their luminescent auras, they’re undetectable.
Aberrations of Reality Page 21
