“Okay, we’re off.” Zoë nodded to Chad, and the tracers on the EEG immediately scratched into life, indicating that Frank was already experiencing an out of body as an energy force had left his body.
Chad made a note on the pad in front of him. “Strain gauges show a fractional difference in pressure inside the box. The pressure rising at point two per ten seconds, with constant weight increase over the scale. An energy mass measurable in weight and pressure has entered the box.”
Zoë glanced above their heads to the metal box. As always she was fascinated by her work.
“Blue tiger.” Frank’s voice seemingly disembodied, as if speaking through a tannoy system, and partly slurred as if in a dream, carried over the lab speakers.
A lab assistant checked the printout from the box. “Blue tiger image, right first time.”
“Yellow butterfly.”
“Red dog.”
Each time the assistant confirmed the answers as correct.
The readings went on for three quarters of an hour. Some responses came within seconds and others needed a couple of minutes.
“Green ship.”
“Blue ship, with blue people in a blue sky.”
Chad touched Zoë’s hand on the desk to indicate the computer screen. The EEG was showing more violent patterns.
“Nothing to worry about. “ Zoë said. “As the length of time increases so Frank’s mind gets tired and so the brain impulses register higher readings.”
Then the strain gauges they were monitoring took a huge dip, showing a greater weight had entered the metal box.
Frank’s voice came over the speakers, sounding tired. “Green man…no, it’s not a man…it’s, well it seems like a man but the edges keep blurring. I can’t seem to get this one.”
The microphone began to crackle and Frank’s voice was obscured as a whistle like amplifier feedback shrilled through the lab. Chad adjusted the controls, but Frank’s voice was still obscured, this time by a sound like someone breathing.
Zoë and Chad looked at each other but neither spoke.
“We still have visual, but we’ve lost sound for the moment,” one of the assistants reported. “Wait a minute, this can’t be right.”
Zoë took the readings from him. The strain gauges were showing a massive weight entering the box. Chad checked the EEG machine. “The patterns are longer, very erratic. I think we ought…”
A deep bass roar rang out over the microphone, the snorting of an enraged bull, the fury of a nightmare. Everyone in the lab froze, and the roar echoed into silence.
In his room Frank was shaking in a frenzy of energy, tearing at the electrodes attached to his head, blood pouring from his nostrils.
Outside in the cool night air, Robert Moreland felt slightly more comfortable. He had left the crowded ballroom as Rebecca had gone in search of help. Though he couldn’t explain it to her, even after all these years, there was no help for him, he just needed to isolate himself so he could verify the source of the energy surge he had experienced.
In a small way everybody he had ever met exuded a small power surge, just like an increase in electrical current, at various times. At job interviews when they were lying for instance, was a typical example of how he used his knowledge every day. Because he was sensitive to it, as were his two brothers, he could tune into the variances in energy that people secreted with ease. Where he ran into trouble was when the surge was so great, the energy force so huge that it threatened to overload his ability to assimilate the information. Then he needed to be alone, to let his mind open and receive.
‘Sugar and spice, just like you.’
The words were into his head before he knew it.
He was sitting on a low wall that contained an ornamental pond. A splash in the water drew his attention and a huge bullfrog had his head above the surface.
‘Eat, drink and be merry.’
Suddenly the glass doors back into the house slammed shut, and the sounds of the party inside dimmed. In fact they lights had dimmed as well, and the room that just a few moments ago had been alive with music and dancing was now in virtual darkness.
A pain lanced through his eyes, stabbing at the front of his brain. He felt a sharp jolt in his left arm, and it jerked slightly before the pain subsided. He closed his eyes and his mind searched out Imogen, but he couldn’t find her. Then he tried for Rebecca, but ominously he couldn’t immediately locate her either. Something was there, something large, but it kept eluding him, other shapes clouding his view, distracting his thoughts.
Then pain, he could feel pain, though not his own. An animal smell all around him, and moans, but not of pain, cries of pleasure. He was getting an erection; there was the musky smell of sex, of arousal.
He tried to send his mind through the house but he met resistance. It felt familiar, but stayed at the edge of his probing, so that he was aware of an immense power but couldn’t locate it.
Opening his eyes he pulled at the handles of the glass doors to the ballroom and wasn’t surprised to find they opened easily. The doors opened and he crept into the house. The first thing that struck him was the musty smell, as though the house had been shut up for years, with no one living in it. Yet only ten minutes ago he had been in the house, together with dozens of other people.
There was dull light coming through grimy windows set in the ceiling, pale spotlights illuminating dust sheeted furniture, shapeless objects like sleeping ghosts. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, but it was dust covered, spider webs hanging from it.
Music, he could hear music, a piano playing ‘Moonlight’.
‘Hello, Robert.’
The words were in his mind before he could register an intrusion. He knew the voice but tantalisingly the recognition of it eluded him for the moment. He was still struggling to concentrate. He spun round and faced a figure in shadow from the long window to his left; a man, walking slowly forwards, out of the shadow and into the pools of light.
The man was strikingly handsome, black hair swept grandly back from a high unlined forehead, thick, possibly artificially shaped eyebrows, aquiline nose, sculpted cheekbones, lips red, full, and almost feminine. Immaculately dressed in black tuxedo, white frilled shirt, black velvet bow tie. On one wrist a heavy gold bracelet, on the fingers several rings encrusted with stones that caught the occasional shaft of moonlight. As the hand lifted to shade the eyes Robert saw them for the first time; they were blue, startlingly blue, completely at odds with the black hair and skin tones. They heightened the impression that he had been constructed from the best features of several men available to a master sculptor.
Robert knew that wasn’t the case, in fact he knew just where the man had originated. He had shared the same birth. This was his brother, Michael.
The blue eyes flicked over Robert, as if sensing prey. As their eyes met Robert felt a pulse through his body, but at the same time he knew it was reciprocated as the supremely confident blue eyes registered momentary doubt as their gaze locked.
“Robert, quite a surprise.”
“Not a pleasant one I can assure you.” Robert had not seen Michael in almost eleven years. He had looked completely different then, but the wearing of masks to cloak his true self was nothing new.
‘…be nice, a pleasure in fact, if you could join Mr Prince at his home…just an informal gathering for a few friends. Please bring Mrs Moreland.’
The words were spoken into Robert’s mind in an exact duplication of the telephone call he had taken at the office when the invitation to the party had been received from his potential new client.
Michael smiled and spread the beautifully manicured hands, palms upwards. “There is no new client. Do you forgive my little deceit?”
Robert was terrified, but couldn’t show it, neither as an outward display, nor as any internal emotion.
“Where is Rebecca?”
The question hung like the bond that had once joined them at birth, sibling closeness linked from the womb by the
ir separate umbilical cords, and when severed it would rupture and wither like their relationship had done. Robert gathered his strength for the answer. Whether or not his brother gave a true answer Robert would not let the reply wound him. He would be strong and resist the challenge that he knew was coming.
Michael deliberately looked around the room, letting his gaze rest on the dust and neglect, before he murmured, “Great fuck.”
The pain registered in Robert’s chest rather than his brain, and that took him by surprise. He dropped to his knees and Michael moved towards him, seizing the advantage.
“She’s dead, Robert. Gone to her own hell. But at least she’s with that frigid sister of hers. Imogen wasn’t as much fun, but then you probably tried her at some time.”
‘He is no longer Michael Moreland.’
Robert’s head felt enlarged, and his brother seemed a long way away, as if he was looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope. His features began to distort, become hazy, like a face vaguely remembered from memory. Robert tried breathing deeply but that made his head spin, his thoughts revolving like carousel horses. His hands were sweating, his arms and legs starting to tremble. A piano began to play, notes discordant, keys cracked, hollow, echoes from fists pounding on the keyboard.
There was an explosion in his head and the noise of a party crowded in like a tidal wave, greatly amplified and distorted, pools and eddies of music and voices, waves of sound leaving ripples reverberating through his mind. He could hear the piano rising above the swell, harsh and booming, crashing out minor chords and rumbling bass lines that mad the floor vibrate.
People and faces drifted in and out of focus with the rise and fall of the tide. He saw Rebecca in the centre of the room dancing with a man who appeared to have no face, no arms, no legs, just an amorphous mass, pressed into her and gripping her. Rebecca called out for help, and the mass drifted away to be replaced by a tall thin man with a blank expanse of crumpled parchment like white sheeting where his face should have been. Rebecca’s eyes were wild, her hair loose and tumbling to her shoulders. The man pulled down the top of her dress to expose her breasts, and he gripped one breast with a hand that was monstrously claw like and squeezed, digging into the soft flesh with long thorned nails until bright beads of blood stained the creamy white skin. Rebecca was screaming with pain, but something else as well, something that made Robert want to retch.
In one corner of the room a fire had started and thick black smoke was billowing across the floor. It rolled, a living thing, absorbing everything in its path, leaving a trail of blackened wasted destruction in its wake. Robert pushed himself back against the wall as the oily cloud drew nearer. It paused in front of him like a dog sniffing a bitch, and Robert could almost taste the foul stench emanating from it, his nostrils filling with the sickening smell of burnt flesh, of decaying corpses, of death and disease. He opened his mouth to scream but the smoke cloud leapt in triumph and was upon him, rolling down his throat, setting his lungs ablaze as he tried to breathe.
Small living things were attaching themselves to him, crawling down inside his clothes, scuttling over his face, suffocating him. He closed his eyes tightly, thinking that when he opened them the smoke would be gone. He opened his eyes but the blue staring eyes were still there, mocking him.
‘How does it feel to lose to the brother who sold his soul to the Devil?’
The figure of his brother, with all its artificially created features, had gone, and the reality of what Michael had become was now inside him, hiding in the black cloud within him. Robert tried to concentrate on the presence in his mind. It was there, dark and brooding, waiting to pounce, wearing Robert down. Robert concentrated fiercely, pushing the darkness away, and slowly it receded, and the dark place in his mind became lighter. Gradually it began to clear, and he exerted his will until he could feel a tearing in his head. The pain grew until he thought he would black out, and then suddenly he heard a low moan, and the echoes of a silent scream in his head.
The figure that had been the host to Michael Moreland began to shimmer in front of Robert, began to take on tangible form again as if a shadow was playing onto a screen. Robert probed forward with his strength of mind and felt shock waves. He fixed the blue eyes with his, pushing deeply, increasing the tempo until he sent a single flash of energy into the brain. The impact registered as a tightening of the skin on the flawless face.
‘You don’t want to see what I have become, brother.’
Robert turned his eyes away and in the doorway was Imogen. She was naked, smiling, warm and friendly and she was inviting him to join her, beckoning to him slowly and seductively.
‘You want her, Robert; you always have. From the moment you first saw her. How old was she then?’
“Go to hell.”
‘Yours or mine, Robert? I assure you mine is much more pleasant than any you can imagine.’
Imogen was coming towards him, her breasts were slippery with oil and she caressed them as she moved, rubbing the nipples with her fingers. Her pubic mound was shaved, the darkly shadowed entrance inviting him away from the terrors.
Robert breathed deeply, gathering his strength, and probed Imogen’s mind. There was nothing there, she was an illusion, but then he felt something move inside the brain. He forced a surge of power into the head and saw the features of the face change. The hair turned red, the face twisted into a faded beauty, and the woman dropped to all fours and growled. Behind her were three more figures, memories of women, all crouched ready to pounce.
Robert kept his mind active, sending out a defensive shield around his mind. He knew with numbing certainty that his life was in mortal danger, and this was the most dangerous moment. He could not allow himself any weakness, no thoughts of Rebecca, or of Imogen.
Two of the women started to squabble, the black haired one and the blonde. They threw themselves at one another like cats, claws raking through skin, teeth tearing at flesh.
‘I think they need a diversion.’
Robert watched as two figures were flung on top of the women, knocking the black haired one to the ground. The four women surrounded the two; Robert clenched his fists as he recognised a bloodied and beaten Rebecca and Imogen. For a moment the two sisters cowered terrified on the floor, and then the women were upon them. The red headed one sank her teeth into Imogen’s throat and hot blood pumped out, causing her to tear at the face with a frenzied lust. Rebecca’s arm was torn from its socket as two of the women pulled and gnawed at it, the ripped flesh falling to the floor as the bones were shredded. The soft flesh was quickly devoured, the white bones shattered, until all that was left were pools of blood, and pieces of flesh like seaweed on a shore.
Robert turned to Michael but for a moment Michael was absorbed in his illusion. The stench of the slaughterhouse was in Robert’s senses, slime dripping from the walls, yet the façade was fading, leaving the reality.
Plaster on the ceiling started to flake away, falling around them. The floor was splintering, mould coating it in places. Robert looked about him. The walls were cracked, and where the double doors had been was now a blank wall. The room was sealed.
The blue eyes blinked and Robert felt the shock waves piercing his skull. He set up a force against the intruder, pushing back with his own powers, making the other retreat. When his head had cleared a little he sent a pulse into Michael’s brain, trying to hurt as much as he could. The unexpected thrust was causing confusion, and he was able to probe deeply. There were dark crawling creatures hiding in the shadows, tortured broken people crying out for mercy, and in the black corners huge inhuman shapes, writhing out of gaping holes, scrabbling towards the light.
‘You won’t like the new me, brother Robert.’
Frank Moreland was trapped inside the RIG box. While his body was haemorrhaging, his mind was fighting a battle against an intruder who was struggling to take him over.
A blinding light had entered the box, entered his brain. At first it had appeared as tw
o blue lights, like car headlights bearing down on him, but then the light filled the box so that he had to shrink away from it. The light shone into every corner so that there were no shadows to hide in, nowhere to run, and for Frank Moreland that was his ultimate nightmare.
His mind pulled away from the burning light, and instinctively sought refuge back in his body. The way back was barred by a wall of flame, a barrier of fire that licked around his body, driving his mind away, keeping him from safety.
‘Green man…no, it’s not a man…it’s, well it seems like a man but the edges keep blurring. I can’t seem to get this one.’
There were flickering images in his mind’s eye, white noise on a TV screen, strobe light movements with the jerkiness of dreams, puppets being roughly manipulated. The presence in the box was greedy, trying to force him out, pushing him further away from his body.
A tunnel formed in front of him and he ran to it, anywhere he could run, away from the burning fire. He ran into the tunnel and felt its welcome cool caress, and its darkness. The tunnel stretched far ahead of him, the walls wet with moisture, sticky, thick like blood.
Then he fell, and as he struggled to his feet he realised he was in a pit, with mocking ochre faces grinning down at him. There was screaming, and they were dragging him out of the pit, kicking him, prodding him with the bayonets on their rifles. The bamboo hut was getting nearer.
He broke free from them and ran; back down the tunnel, bouncing off the sides.
‘I assure you my hell is much more pleasant than any you can imagine.’
He fell again, tired and uncertain, and when he got up he could see that he was somewhere different. A vast plain, in virtual darkness except for a canopy of stars hanging in the sky like a huge crystal chandelier; the plain seemed to be empty. Then he saw, in the far distance, what appeared to be a giant cloud of dust rising up from the ground, but then he realised it wasn’t dust but thick black smoke that rolled like a living entity, roaring into the air as if sniffing for prey. Tiny figures on the horizon ran from the smoke cloud but it engulfed them, burning them and playing with them, before spitting them out.
A Weaving of Ancient Evil Page 24
