Haunted Worlds

by Jeffrey Thomas

  The sky was overcast, as though a milky cataract lay over it. Because it picked up the glow of the red sun, the sky’s color was a uniform pale orange. And that sun—it was at least five times the size it should be. That is, if it was even the sun he had once known. He recalled the term “red giant,” but if he had somehow leaped billions of years into the future and his own sun was approaching that phase, shouldn’t his world be much hotter than he remembered it—not cool, as it was presently? Could the swollen, inflamed aspect of this star—whether familiar or alien—only be a trick of the atmosphere, magnifying its appearance?

  The giant red circle gave the impression more of a flat disk than a sphere, like a trepanned wound in the sky, welling with blood. Its fire was so dull, it didn’t sting his eyes to gaze directly at it. Below, the sea-or-lake presented an inverted reflection of this scarlet sun and the surrounding orange sky, its water stirring languidly, drowsily, as subdued as the molten disk.

  Feeling estranged from the concept of time, he didn’t know as yet whether the sun was rising, like a great hot air balloon, or setting under its own weight, to drown in the body of water.

  And yet this titan sun was not what filled him with wonder mixed with terror.

  A multitude of objects was suspended in the sky, like a bucketful of pebbles tossed up and caught in a still photograph before they could fall back to the ground. These many objects were people. People, floating high above him, directly overhead, and extending far out above the water until they were mere gnat-like dots against the orange sky. Hundreds of them . . . no, thousands of them.

  They were not drifting, borne along on a current; they did not turn or twirl as if dangling from strings. The people sprinkled throughout the air were as fixed as insects in amber. Every body was suspended face downward, arms and legs somewhat bent, as if they had been flash-frozen solid while crawling on hands and knees. And each person wore an identical white robe, with a cowl pulled up over their head, throwing the face into shadow. They were all barefoot. The deep hoods and loose robes made it hard to distinguish which might be men, which might be women. Smaller, children-sized figures of varying age were included in the throng.

  Because he couldn’t see the faces, even of those hanging directly above him, he couldn’t tell if these individuals were alive and in some sort of suspended animation or dead. Their flesh might be putrefying for all he knew, or even long mummified, though he doubted that from the looks of their feet—the hands being hidden in the baggy, too-long sleeves of their robes. Their naked feet ranged in shades of pigmentation, indicating a mix of races, but none of them looked to be in a state of decay. And the white robes were pristine, not stained with purge fluids.

  Even if they weren’t decaying or desiccated, he still had the sense that these people had been in this state for countless years, even eons, accounting for the abandoned appearance of the edifice he had found himself in, since surely these were the people who had built and utilized it. What calamity had befallen them? Or had they aspired to their present condition, given themselves over to it? Perhaps they had been halted, mid-rapture, on their ascension to some brand of heaven . . . or because they were corporeal, this was the limit of their ascension. It could be that inside their quiet shells these beings knew bliss.

  Then again, they might be trapped against their will, silently raging to be free.

  They might even be conscious of him. Their eyes—were they open? He stared hard at the figures directly above him, stepped further away from the building to get a better look. He saw the dull red blaze of the sun reflected wetly inside the cowl of one of them, like twin embers. Yes, the eyes of this one, at least, were frozen open.

  Now that he had stepped away from the building, he moved closer to the edge of the cliff where the stone stairs zigzagged down its face, then turned to look back to get a clearer sense of the structure’s layout. It loomed tall and wide, running far off in either direction, but it was mostly just an unembellished block of pale stone. In fact, one might even believe it was carved from a single gargantuan rock—or had been shaped from the summit of this steep hill—for no individual blocks composed its walls. A castle or fortress, utilitarian in the extreme? Yet there were no crenellated battlements atop it, and no windows. He could say nothing of its other sides, but on this face he saw only one aperture: the doorway he had stepped through.

  Maybe it was a great mausoleum for a dead king. Or a dead god.

  Or maybe it was a kind of gateway.

  The word mall came to him: a sprawling construction where many wares could be purchased. The building reminded him of that, but completely hollowed out, an empty skull, the last of its material goods sold long ago. Objects that had proved their ultimate insignificance by having since crumbled to dust. Were the people in the air the past consumers, now risen literally and figuratively above the need for material comforts?

  The only important thing was that right now the building promised shelter if need be. He felt he could return inside and spend the night there, but he dreaded its complete darkness. Better to sleep on the floor close to the doorway and hope for a little light from the stars, or the moon . . . if those heavenly bodies could cut through the solid overcast. Currently, though, he was curious as to what else might lie in the vicinity, and he decided to venture forth a bit—though not so far that he couldn’t easily return to the structure when the sun fell. He hoped it was dawn, and not dusk, so he’d have more time in which to explore.

  Since the building dominated the top of the hill, and he spied no further entrances along this face—which seemed to extend unto infinity in either direction—he chose to descend the stone staircase to the edge of the lake-or-sea. This he began doing, picking his way very carefully lest his foot catch in the long tangles of grass, or in case one of the gusts that buffeted him from time to time, coming off that body of water, caused him to lose his footing, tumble the rest of the way down, and break his neck in the process. These surges of wind would stir the robes of all the suspended people, causing them to rustle and snap like myriad hanging flags.

  The last steps were fully smothered under the long matted grass, so he switched over to the face of the hill itself and made it down to the shore intact. He was grateful to be at this level, because it put the dangling people that much higher above him than they had been when he’d stood atop the cliff. But now, which direction to take? He looked up and down the shoreline and in either direction saw nothing of note as of yet. Just the thin, pebbled strip of shore, where a line of dead plant matter had washed up over many years, humped and slimy like an immense, decaying worm strung along the surf. The surf itself, as he had noted earlier, was lazy, dreamlike, as if its low rolling waves were composed of a liquid heavier than water. Would an ocean be this tranquil? A lake, then?

  Arbitrarily, he decided to take the left-hand direction.

  He walked for a fair distance, until he noticed that the sun had without a doubt lowered in the sky. The end of the day, then, not the beginning. He felt a bit anxious about being caught out here without shelter when night fell, these people all hanging over his head.

  And the people were just as evenly distributed across the sky here as they had been back at the cliff. They receded in every direction, silhouetted like black stars against the sky, which was deepening from a pale to a pumpkin orange. Did they fill the lowest stratum of the atmosphere around the entire globe? Maybe not just thousands but millions, billions of them?

  Having confirmed it was sunset, he had just decided to make his way back toward the titan structure surmounting the hill when he noticed something a little further ahead, where the terrain had started to become more even. Set back from the water, almost lost in a congregation of those stubby black trees, was that a small white building of some type?

  He quickened his pace to reach it, hoping to find it abandoned, hoping to find it an alternative source of shelter in which to spend the night. And sure enough, it was a small structure: a house or cottage, its walls b
uilt from mortared stones, worn by water, smooth and white as skulls. The roof shingles were black, maybe coated with tar to keep out water, unless that was simply the color of the wood, judging from the trees the cottage hunkered within. There were no windows, and the structure was so small it might actually be more shed than cottage. There was only a door, again made from thick planks of black wood. Having reached the door, he put his hand on its rusted metal handle, and it squealed open on ancient hinges. Unlocked. He had tensed up inside, fearing someone might be within, but he hadn’t really expected it. It would seem all the occupants of this world were lodged in the air.

  It was too much to expect there would be food and water within; he’d have to deal with those issues tomorrow. He assumed this place was as long abandoned as the fortress building. He was relieved just to have a more confined shelter in which to pass the night.

  He was just about to step inside when from behind him came a thunderous sound. It was like the mournful lowing of a cow that had fallen into a deep pit, magnified to a near deafening level. He whirled around, heart paralyzed, as the sound kept rumbling on like an avalanche. Far out in the water he saw a tremendous shape break its orange surface—a vast black mass that seemed to roll over ponderously until it started sinking away again. If it was a whale, then like the inflamed red sun it appeared much larger than any whale he had ever known about. Just as the huge creature was beginning to submerge, the lowing sound somehow trailed away into a mechanical buzz-saw noise like the drone of a cicada. This buzzing vibrated inside his head just as the deeper tone had done. But when the leviathan had fully slipped back underwater, the cicada sound turned muffled, receded, vanished. The air and water were still once more.

  He ducked into the cottage and slammed its door. How could he know whether or not that beast was amphibious and might make its way to shore?

  He would have been in total darkness, except that he had noticed there was a narrow window in the wooden door, covered on the inside by a movable panel. He slid this open to let in the red-orange glow of sundown. Enough light entered through the slit that he could see a heavy plank leaning against the inner stone wall. He retrieved this and set it into its waiting brackets, barring shut the little building’s heavy wooden door against the night.

  0. Moonrise

  Before the sun descended below the line of the horizon altogether, submerging itself as the leviathan had done, its lurid light allowed him to assess the interior of the cottage. There was no bed, no other furniture than a crude but sturdy table in the center of the single room, with two chairs made of the same charred-looking black wood. A few wooden shelves were mounted on the walls, but they were barren. A hunter’s or fisherman’s cabin, used only occasionally? There was a small fireplace, but its hearth too was empty. He could rectify that tomorrow, collect branches to burn to keep warm and over which to cook food, if he could find anything edible. He might sample the water to see if it was salty, though he was reluctant to drink even fresh water with monsters dwelling beneath its surface.

  Almost in a corner of the floor, to the right of the fireplace opening, he discovered a trapdoor of black wood, held shut with an iron bolt. Hoping to uncover some supplies stashed away, he pulled the rusted bolt aside with a fair degree of effort. Taking hold of the iron ring in the center of the trapdoor, he hauled it open. Immediately he leaned back on his heels, away from the smell that puffed up at him on long bottled-up air. Musty, moldy, it reminded him of the atmosphere inside the fortress building, but more concentrated.

  It was a well of inky darkness. Without a lantern or candle to see by, all he could discern were the top few corroded iron rungs of a ladder set into the side of a shaft of unknown depth.

  He shut the trapdoor again and, though it was an effort, shoved the bolt back in place. Who could say what might come up through that shaft from the darkness otherwise?

  He returned his attention to the room he found himself in.

  The floor was gritty with dirt that had blown under the door, the table top a little less coated, so he swept this with the sleeve of his shirt, deciding to use the table as his bed. But after his apparent sleep inside the fortress building—and he had no idea how long that sleep had been—he found he wasn’t tired enough to shut his eyes just yet. Instead, he paced the cabin, around and around the table, careful not to trip over the slightly raised edge of the trapdoor, trying to focus his thoughts . . . thinking about ways he might gather food, ways he might fashion a club or spear from stones lashed to tree branches . . . frequently pausing to peek outside through the door slot, as the upper curve of the sun was swallowed by water turned black as outer space.

  The sky itself retained the faintest milky glow, however, as if the unbroken cloud cover emitted its own luminosity, and against this he could just barely make out the forms of the nearest of the white-robed people. He heard the distant fluttering of their garments, like wind in a ship’s sails.

  Now that he was no longer moving, exploring, the scope of the desolation he had encountered settled on him with the unfelt but crushing weight of the cosmos, and he experienced a deep loneliness. How much more bearable his disorienting and frightening situation would be with just one person beside him! A woman, with whom he could talk and share decisions, who could offer him comfort just as he would offer her protection. He required no other person than that. Then he might feel more than merely contented; he might even feel happy. Just the woman he loved and himself, with no other person who might intrude on their relationship, no one to lure her away into betrayal, no one to compel her to break their bond, break his heart, break his mind into shards.

  Ah, but it was only a fantasy, he knew. He was damned to be alone. Utterly and eternally alone.

  Upon his latest peek through the slot in the door, he saw two things had changed out there. For one, the sky’s pale glow had begun to take on a subtle greenish hue, as if the painter’s blank canvas of cloud cover were reflecting and diffusing a light source that was thus far out of his view. And the other new development was that all the people who had been hanging in the air were slowly floating feet first down toward the earth.

  His first impulse was to slam the door panel shut, to block out the uncanny sight, but at the same time he was mesmerized and felt he needed to see what this development would lead to.

  Then he shuddered hard in response to another thunderous blast of noise, such as he had heard earlier. Again, outlined against the faintly green sky, he saw that the same vast creature—or one of its kind—had broken the surface of the water, just as the feet of the lowering people were about to touch the drowsy, slow-motion waves.

  Most of the robed figures who descended toward the water penetrated it and, without resisting, calmly slipped below the surface out of view. But those who came down upon the exposed portion of the enormous animal as it rolled over immediately went on all fours, as if to catch hold. They bent their heads so low, he had the impression they were touching their foreheads to the creature’s body out of reverence. Might they even worship the thing?

  It hardly seemed possible, but as the leviathan continued rolling over and submerging anew, its lamenting cry grew even deeper, more profound, rattling each nerve in his body like a sapling violently shaken in angry fists. Again, this heavy bass moan morphed somehow into a cicada sound, which was like a chainsaw cutting through the side of his skull, but thankfully this was drowned out as the great beast slid completely beneath the surface. With it vanished those several dozen robed figures who had managed to cling to its body, like remoras riding on a shark.

  Yet many other of the hooded figures had alighted on dry land—the shore and further inland—and he saw them start wandering around aimlessly, stiffly, cowls concealing their features, long sleeves concealing their hands as their arms hung limp at their sides. They didn’t bump into one another, but neither did any of them converse with or in any way acknowledge anyone else.

  Some had landed close to the cottage and turned slowly to face in its d
irection, as dreamy in their movements as sleepwalkers. Seeing this, he ducked down below the level of the slot in the door and reached up to slide its panel shut as quietly as he could manage.

  Enveloped in total darkness, he could hear the movement of bodies close outside, shuffling across the pebbly sand, rustling through tall beach grass, seemingly even brushing against the stones that composed this little building. He hoped these beings were so accustomed to this shed-or-cottage being abandoned that they wouldn’t try to gain entry to it. (For, in their numbers, how could they not force their way inside eventually if they desired to do so?) He prayed that they had not been conscious of him before the sun had sunk and they had become active, despite their apparently open eyes.

  Time went on . . . maybe several hours, as he sat on the floor with his back propped against the door. Now, finally, he was growing tired, exhausted by the enormity of all he had experienced since awakening. Deciding that in his current situation he was no more at risk asleep than awake, he rose, approached the table, and stretched out upon it with his head resting on his bent arm.

  For a while he couldn’t sleep, too unsettled by the sounds of moving bodies outside, in effect surrounding the little cottage. At last, though, exhaustion won out. He dreamed.

  In his dream, he was in a comfortable little house, lounging in bed watching TV. TV . . . ah, yes . . . the dream reminded him of the existence (long past?) of television, but he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing on its screen, which fizzed with a veil of static, behind which dark figures jerked erratically, perhaps in some kind of experimental dance performance.

  Somewhere beyond his bedroom, an electronic bell rang. With a sigh of lazy irritation, he swung his legs to the floor and left the bedroom, walking through the weirdly familiar house toward its front door. Impatiently, the bell rang again. He sighed again.