314 Book 3 (Widowsfield Trilogy)

by A. R. Wise

  “Not me,” said Ben. “I won’t lie to you.”

  Alma looked out the window, but could see her brother’s reflection staring back at her. She closed her eyes, and started to hum a quiet tune.

  CHAPTER 16 – Back Again

  Widowsfield

  March 14th, 1996

  3:14

  Vess cut the CORD.

  The Eldridge had been towed out to the middle of the reservoir, and Lyle had been put inside of Tesla’s machine. Vess started powering the machine fourteen minutes earlier, at 3:00, and precisely at 3:14 he flipped the switch on the stopgap that would allow the radiation to be introduced. This was different than it had been when he performed the experiment over a half century earlier, but he was more confident than ever that he could replicate the results.

  Vess had spent every day since that first experiment determined to find his way back to the doorway he’d opened once before. Einstein’s reports about how the Eldridge had disappeared, along with the corpses that had been fused to the ship’s walls, convinced Vess that the experiment had been a success, but Groves hadn’t shared his enthusiasm. Major Leslie Groves halted the CORD project a few months later, explaining that it was too dangerous to continue without further study. Whatever he’d seen that day had frightened him, and Oppenheimer’s success in New Mexico with the Manhattan Project drew all the funds that Groves had been splitting amongst the various endeavors. The CORD project was left to die, but Vess was determined to do whatever he needed to resurrect it.

  Albert Einstein had been the one that was able to draw interest from fellow scientists around the world about what had come to be known as the Philadelphia Experiment. After the development of the atomic bomb, it became clear to the scientific community that their work could become more than the arbiter of war; it became the harbinger of it. Nations clamored to match the might of the United States, and that led to the dawn of a terrifying age. War profiteering had begun. The desire to crush Hitler’s ambition with atomic might had seemed noble once, but the folly of their ambition became all too clear as more and more nations declared their intention to follow suit.

  The final insult that had driven Einstein and his fellow scientists to form The Accord had been the revelation that German scientists were being given amnesty after the end of the war. The monsters that had slaughtered millions were pardoned so that they could bring their secrets to the United States. Any former belief they’d shared about America’s honor had been dashed. A growing sense of unease began to grow among the scientists about how their discoveries had been handed over to a corrupt nation of power-hungry capitalists. Now that money could be made by waging war, there would be no end to death and destruction.

  In 1961, Eisenhower voiced his concern about the military-industrial complex, but The Accord had been conscious of it for over a decade already. The march to war, that carrion call of irrationally angry old men in suits, would bleat on until the last soldier found his grave. That was why, after their first meeting, The Accord decided to revisit the experiment that promised to let man know God. Tesla’s machine was unearthed, and Vess found himself connected to the most powerful minds of the age. At the time, The Accord was just a fledgling of what it would become, but their collected intelligence and wisdom allowed them to quickly gain power and funding.

  However, as with many enterprises, what had started with the best of intentions got warped by the lure of money. The high-minded elite among The Accord began to die off, and the younger generation that replaced them wasn’t saddled with the fear instilled by witnessing a World War. Soon, The Accord found themselves embroiled in the very military-industrial complex that their forefathers had fought against. They reasoned this by explaining that they weren’t designing new weapons, but simply shuffling them around to different countries. They convinced themselves that brokering weapon contracts between countries didn’t go against the wishes of The Accord’s founders.

  The first couple decades of continued research on the CORD project had met with little to no results. They were never able to recreate the events of that summer day in Philadelphia, and funding for the project was all but cut. Vess was given a salary that allowed him to focus his time on research, but little funding was provided for the experiments themselves. It wasn’t until his lack of aging became apparent that The Accord took greater notice of him again.

  Einstein and several of the founders of The Accord had since passed, and the younger generation was intent on focusing their efforts on discoveries that would not only be seen as revolutionary, but could literally alter the human experience. Their goal was to exceed what any scientist had done before them, and to make The Accord as powerful as a nation. It was an ambitious goal, but the arms race that dominated headlines through the post-war era convinced them that mankind was destined to eradicate itself without proper guidance. The Accord hoped to use science as a method of stripping the power away from the politicians and corporate warriors, and usher the world into an era of science and reason.

  At first, The Accord hoped to capitalize upon what Vess’s decelerated aging had revealed, and they focused their efforts on studying the enzyme, telomerase, that was abundant in Vess. This proved fruitless though, and despite heavy supplementation, none of the subjects in their studies showed signs of anti-aging effects that came close to duplicating what had occurred in Vess and Lyle. Chagrined, The Accord refused to abandon their interest in Vess. Shortly after, he was allowed to continue with his CORD experiments.

  Unfortunately, the early results had been similar to what had happened when they first tried to recreate the experiment. The CORD never resulted in any contact with any other dimension, but Vess had amassed a slew of theories during the time The Accord had paid him to study Tesla’s notes. This led him to eventually propose that harmonic resonance might have something to do with their lack of success. In each of their attempts to recreate the experiment, they’d done so in a closed facility and not within the bowels of a ship at sea.

  Vess’s lack of results made it difficult to garner unanimous support from all members of The Accord, and he was forced to be patient as the group funded various other experiments. Brokering weapons deals had become the group’s primary focus, and had made the members of The Accord extremely wealthy. Cada E.I.B., which had originally been meant only as a revenue generating arm of The Accord, now dominated the majority of their time. Knowing this, Vess capitalized upon The Accord’s ties to military interests, and resubmitted his proposal about the CORD project, but with a different focus. He used Einstein and Groves’ own notes on what they witnessed during the original experiment to suggest that the CORD might be able to provide battleships with a cloaking mechanism. This, of course, put the project back at the top of their pile.

  Securing an appropriate ship was a challenge, but The Accord funded the purchase of a battleship similar to the Eldridge. The Eldridge herself was unavailable, having been sold to Greece years earlier. Vess had been forced to accept a variety of petty alterations, but when the experiment failed he insisted that they allow him to proceed without their interference. They’d agreed, although he was still required to submit his plans to them so that they could pass it on to the project lead.

  Vess had been keeping track of the Eldridge, and learned that Greece had decommissioned the ship and were planning on scrapping it. Vess influenced The Accord into having Cada E.I.B. make a bid for the ship. Greece officials had initially been leery of dealing with the brokerage, but Cada E.I.B. had a good relationship with a variety of countries. Greece agreed, and the Eldridge was bought back at an extremely reasonable price. The ship was torn apart, and the pieces shipped to a small town in Missouri.

  That was how the Widowsfield project had begun. Now, after decades of preparation and failed attempts, Vess would regain the knowledge he’d lost. Those forgotten minutes, after the initial experiment had succeeded, had plagued Vess through the half-century since it occurred.

  He watched the arcs of blue lightning t
hat zapped along the circulating rings as they began to turn green. The sight ignited his memory and he cried out, “Yes, this is how it was. This is right!”

  The electricity caused the hair on his arms to stand up, and he saw the dance of shadows flicker on the walls around him. Within the CORD he heard Lyle shriek. The man hadn’t spoken in decades, but Vess heard the distinct wail as the psychic was tortured within.

  Vess raised his arms, and wobbled on his decrepit knees. He laughed as the CORD came alive. He knew that he was moments away from learning the truth that had been stolen from him so many years earlier.

  The shadows that were cast upon the walls stopped dancing in accordance to the light emitted from the machine. Instead, the shadows now seemed to writhe on their own, independent of any source. Vess remembered that this had happened also, and he watched as the shadows changed their shape, quickly revealing themselves to be ropes, or tentacles. The shadows undulated and spun, and Vess cried out in excitement at the sight.

  An unnerving, metallic grinding overwhelmed him, erasing the zapping noise caused by the CORD. Vess covered his ears, but it did little to stop the pervasive sound.

  The tentacles massed, a swirl of shadows that seemed to be growing behind the confines of the wall itself. Vess watched as the shadows gave birth to black wires that whipped out at the ground, lashing like the feelers of some deep-sea life form. They clawed at the floor, and were strong enough to dig into the steel. The wires pulled themselves forward, and the further they came forth from the wall the thicker their bases became. Then, from within the black, stepped a human figure. Vess recognized that the shape was an amalgamation of the various cords that had spun together to form the mere shape of a man, and that it wasn’t in truth a human at all. The corded man stepped forward, though his legs were constantly affixed to the shadows on the floor as the cords stretched to allow his movement.

  The grinding and clanging of metal grew louder, but it was apparent that the noise was forming a purposeful rhythm. The noise altered until Vess recognized that a voice was breaking through, like a note of music discerned from radio static.

  “You remember,” said the demon, but it was as much a command as it was a question.

  Vess did. Now, as he stood before the creature he’d unleashed once before, he remembered everything.

  Vess collapsed to his knees as sorrow overwhelmed him. He muttered, “What have I done?”

  The creature approached, its wired hand a mockery of compassion as he reached out like the Madonna hoping to grace the devout. “I’ve been waiting in these walls for you, Vess.”

  “Why couldn’t you have just let me die?” asked Vess as he stared down at the ground. The creature had been waiting in the walls of the ship, which was why they’d never been successful in any previous attempt to activate the CORD. Now that his memory had been returned, Vess remembered what it was the creature had asked for.

  “Did you bring us a new sacrifice?” asked The Watcher in the Walls as his cords snaked a circle around the man that had been tasked with supplying a sacrifice.

  The CORD’s door banged open, and white smoke poured out from it. From within the fog stepped a skeletal man, adorned with the flesh of the victim he’d shredded within. He was tall and thin, and the cords of black wire that covered the ground rose up his legs like vines along the trunk of a tree.

  Vess was about to speak, but then he saw that the fog that shrouded The Skeleton Man had begun to flow toward the side of the CORD. Vess had no recollection of something like this occurring during the first experiment, and then he saw the source of the aberration. The fog was flowing into the stopgap mechanism. The white cloud was disappearing within the orange box as if it were water falling down a drain.

  The Skeleton Man pointed to the box and said, “There. He gave us a way out. I can hear the screams of children from out there.”

  The black cords followed the fog, and they searched the stopgap with interest, as if each wire was a sentient creature. Then the cords plunged into the box, disappearing within it without causing any visible damage to the mechanism itself.

  “Good,” said The Watcher. “All I hoped for was another man inside your monster.” The Watcher’s wires tapped against the side of the CORD before retreating back to the stopgap. “But you’ve given us so much more than that.” The Watcher and The Skeleton Man approached the orange box.

  “Wait,” said Vess. “Where are you going?”

  “We’re following the cord you left for us,” said The Watcher. “We’ll find plenty of souls to torture out there. But don’t worry, Vess, I’ll make sure you suffer too.”

  The black wires shot forth from beneath The Watcher, and they pierced Vess like the tips of a hundred needles. He felt the cords sliding within him, wrapping around his bones and tearing through his organs. Every nerve ending in his body exploded in agony as the cords tore him apart, but he wasn’t allowed the release of death. Instead, The Watcher and The Skeleton Man savored his pain. Together, they would explore the extent of human suffering. Vess would escape their hell, but his memory of the event would be stolen. All he would be left with was a desire to continue his experiments. He would obsess about the moments that were lost to him, and would work hard to recreate it. The Watcher in the Walls had found a way to collect human souls, and he didn’t want that door to close.

  Widowsfield

  March 13th, 2012

  Shortly after 5:30 AM

  The horizon bore no hint of sunrise. Daylight savings time had started the previous Sunday, which meant that the sun wouldn’t rise until around 7:30. The birds hadn’t even begun to stir when Jacker crested the hill that preceded their final descent into Widowsfield.

  Alma experienced the familiar, dreaded lurch of her stomach as they headed down the hill. This was the sensation that had plagued her for so many years. She’d assumed it was because the feeling reminded her of traveling to this cursed town with her father, but now she considered a new possibility. Perhaps the reason she hated the sensation was because she was repressing a memory of being driven over a cliff by her mother.

  She continued to hum as they passed through the dark woods where she’d once seen the hands of demons reaching out from the mist. Alma closed her eyes and tried to imagine happier times, but the first thought that entered her mind was of the woman that Paul had spoken with outside of his apartment a few nights earlier. Now the bitch had a name: Lacey.

  Alma wished she wasn’t the jealous type, and that seeing the woman that had been living with Paul wouldn’t fill her with self-doubt, but Alma had spent the majority of her life being an introverted, quiet, plain-looking girl. She’d suffered the vicious mocks of prettier girls throughout high school, and had torn more than a few pictures of llamas off of her locker. She could still hear their jeers, “How’s it going, Llama Harper?”

  Lacey, was young, buxom, and the type of girl you’d expect to see on the arm of a man like Paul. Alma had only seen her for a moment, smoking on the corner outside of the tattoo parlor, but knew instantly that the girl was a welcome member of that crowd. Where Alma always struggled to fit in with Paul’s rough-and-tumble group of friends, she had no doubt that Lacey was the life of the party. Alma couldn’t help but imagine Paul and Lacey together, laughing and drinking with their friends at the parlor. If things did work out between Paul and herself, Alma dreaded the thought of returning to the parlor where she’d struggled to fit in before. Now, after they’d gotten to know and love Lacey, Alma would be an outcast.

  Alma had no way of knowing if any of this was true. She’d only caught a glimpse of the woman that she was now obsessing over, but that didn’t change how she felt. It was petty, pathetic, and reprehensible of her to feel the way she did, and she reminded herself of that over and over in an attempt to move on. It didn’t work.

  She wondered if perhaps, after this nightmare in Widowsfield was over, she should break things off with Paul. After all, their past together had proven that they were more likely t
o break up eventually than stay together anyhow. Why should she steal him away from Lacey, from a chance at happiness? Was her love for him just an example of her own greed and possessiveness? She remembered how painful it had been to see that his apartment was clean after so much time apart, as if she felt like he should be broken without her. That’s not the sort of thing a loving person feels. Is it?

  Alma wiped away her tears and then reached instinctually to her pocket to hold onto the teddy bear keychain that Paul had given her on their first date. She panicked when she discovered it was missing, but then remembered that she’d given it to Rosemary.

  They were past the woods, and Widowsfield stretched out before them. The long road led to the gate that was still left open after they’d left earlier in the night. As they approached, Alma was reminded of a gaping maw, as if the road was leading them down the gullet of a patient beast whose skin was made of the crisscrossed wire of the fence. It was a fitting thought.

  “Last place on Earth I want to be right now,” said Jacker as they drove past the gate and back into the town they all wanted to flee.

  “Amen, brother,” said Paul.

  Michael gurgled beneath his gag, and rustled in his seat.

  “How are you feeling, Rosemary?” asked Jacker as he reached out and set his hand on the black woman’s shoulder. He shook her when she didn’t respond. “Rosemary?” he asked again, more concerned this time.

  “I’m alive,” said Rosemary, although her voice was weak. “I don’t think I’ll be strong enough to walk when we get there.”

  “It’s okay,” said Alma. “We’ll go in and bring out a stretcher or a wheelchair. We’ll get the nurses to come and help.”

  Rosemary nodded, and started to thank Alma, but her voice trailed off into a murmur. The only word that came forth was the name of the nurse at the facility, “Helen.”

  “Jacker, hurry,” said Alma as she scooted forward in her seat.