Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology

by C. P. Dunphey

  “Ah, I think I understand,” she said. The balance of her questions delved into the boring, almost preposterous nature of obtaining funding and meeting government standards and regulations. He answered with politeness while avoiding yawning at the dullness of it all. He gave himself a figurative pat on the back.

  Half an hour later, she stood, saying, “Thank you for your time today, doctor. I think I have quite a bit to work with here.”

  He allowed himself a broader smile. “You’re quite welcome, Ms. Davis. You will be sending me a tear sheet, yes?”

  She blinked then said, “Yes. You’ll be getting a copy of the file I submit.”

  “Very good.” He left the Potomac, reaching into his pocket for his phone as he crossed the threshold.

  (“O Fortuna” Brilliant)

  As he pulled it out, his phone blasted out “Aragonaise.” It was Gorton.

  “I’m ready for our meeting.” When Emmanuel said nothing, he added, “You’re late.”

  “I had an interview. You’ll be pleased; it was with Quantum Field.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.” Hanging up, he marched through the lobby past Jamika to his car outside. By arrangement, Gorton kept his lab separate from Emmanuel’s, at a facility lying on the other side of the lake that served as a decorative hub in the Lanham Maryland industrial development EmmanuLabs occupied. While it took an extra fifteen minutes for them to meet whenever they needed to get together face-to-face, Emmanuel considered that inconvenience a small price to pay for the secrecy the distance offered.

  He dialed into a late Mozart symphony as he drove to Gorton’s lab. As he steered the Lexus around the tree-lined road surrounding the lake, listening to the majestic orchestrations that only a certifiable genius could create, he thought about his partner then cringed at the necessity of their deal. His disgust for Gorton was only matched by his contempt for his sanity. There was no doubt about it, Emmanuel thought, Neville Gorton was one crazy fuck. Unlucky for Emmanuel that Gorton’s brilliance in the field of biophysics was unmatched.

  A quarter hour later, he entered the lab. He walked straight to Gorton’s shop.

  He shook his head as he always did when he saw Gorton. The man had no taste in fashion or sense of style whatsoever. He wore a Promo Uomo that hung on him as pajamas might, the cheap fabric serving to make him seem out of place with the sophistication an advanced laboratory demanded. Its admiral blue color, coupled with his short haircut and wildly out-of-date quarter-inch wide moustache, gave him the appearance of a fugitive from a 60s spy television show and not one that did well in the ratings. A mere five-foot-five, he would never confuse anyone for a formidable specimen, but, one would think that he could at least dress well.

  “Neville, good morning,” he said.

  Gorton turned to see that he had entered then returned to his task. He seemed intent on studying the graphs his computer screen displayed. “Oh, hello, Greg. How are you?”

  “What does the current analysis indicate?”

  “Well, we’re making the progress we’d hoped for. It looks as though the math has been borne out. If everything else goes forward as swimmingly as these results, we should achieve actualization in the next few hours.”

  “You must be kidding,” Emmanuel couldn’t believe it: too good to be true.

  “No, have a look at the data,” he took a step back away from his bench. “Structural organization is there, once we begin the process we’ve outlined, it’ll only be a matter of time—and, I think short time—before we get the results we’re looking for.”

  Emmanuel took a step to look at the screen. He clicked through the graphs and spread sheets to examine the material; leaning over to study the results. At least, on the surface, it looked as though Gorton was correct. The results indicated that they were not only on the right path, they had been dead-on correct from the start. These findings would bear out his theories and, although Neville had no idea, augment the secret research he had been conducting on the side, without Gorton’s knowledge. A sudden irrational fear gripped his heart as he felt the urgent, eager need to leave Neville to pursue that hidden agenda.

  Stepping away from the terminal, he said, “This is excellent. Very good. Send this to me immediately.” He bent over the monitor as he typed for a few minutes. “But in the meantime, let’s get to it, shall we?”

  Gorton blinked. “What?”

  Emmanuel sighed. “Let’s conduct the trial.”

  “Now?”

  “Of course.”

  “It—it’s too early. I’ve only just confirmed the research.”

  Emmanuel shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He expected this resistance. His timetable, however, needed acceleration, especially if he wanted to meet Lambert’s schedule.

  “Nonsense. The work’s good. I’ve examined it myself. Put it together. Given that we’ve been making progress by building the equipment all along, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, right?”

  Gorton sputtered and coughed. Typical. “I—I think more like a half day.”

  “Fine. Get it done. Let me know when the test is ready.” He walked out of Gorton’s lab to call Lambert from the lawn out back.

  He sent a FaceTime request as his shoes touched the soft grass behind Gorton’s building. From here, across the lake, he could just see the EmmanuLabs building, its sharp gables and multi-colored brick edifice a source of pride to his sense of architectural taste. Standing on the back lawn, the ground sloping downward and away from him toward the edge of the lake, he admired the structure of the lab, even as he congratulated himself on the good sense to build it by the water. No other physics lab that he knew of had a grander location.

  His phone chimed. “Hello, Peter.”

  “What do you have for me?” Emmanuel let the rudeness stand. As always, he tolerated Lambert’s impoliteness, knowing that the man, steeped as he was in the application of theoretical physics, was incapable of mastering the art of tact or diplomacy.

  “We have the research completed.”

  Lambert raised an eyebrow. “Really?” He moved offscreen a moment. Emmanuel grimaced at seeing the movement, his irritation at the ubiquitous act ameliorated by the convenience of the communication. Lambert said, “This is far ahead of schedule.”

  “Not really. I’m sure you remember me telling you that we could easily meet the early ends of our date estimates.”

  “Yes, yes,” Lambert said, quickly moving onto other, less taxing matters. “When can I have the calculations?”

  Looking down at his phone, Emmanuel sent the email as he spoke. “I’m sending them to you now. We’ll be conducting the trial immediately. This afternoon, in fact.”

  “This afternoon,” Lambert said, the tone in his voice already disinterested, his focus on studying the data. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

  Emmanuel congratulated himself for not responding with “Of course I know what I’m doing.” Instead, he stuck to the point of the call. “Get back to me as soon as possible with your results. I want to act on this tonight.”

  “Tonight? Yeah, no. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “It will.” He smiled as he headed into a softer direction. “I know you can do it, Peter. Get me the calcs by eight, then I can use the data this evening.”

  Lambert said nothing. He loomed over Emmanuel’s phone like an image in a carny funhouse mirror, his face warped and distorted. “I’ll do the best I can.”

  “I know you will.” He disconnected.

  (“Appalachian Spring” Invigorating)

  Hours later, after Gorton had put together the equipment to move forward with the trial, Emmanuel sat in the lab, drumming his fingers on the metal table to his side.

  At the center of the arena-sized building stood a cube constructed of titanium and two-foot thick glass, its configuration and size resembling the sort of transportation device one might see in a horror mov
ie where atoms of humans and insects get exchanged in the kind of things-go-horribly-wrong plot so popular with screenwriters and filmgoers. Cables as thick as his arm and pipes wider than his thigh protruded from the block as steam rose from vents from all sides, the liquid nitrogen used to cool the chamber that housed the particles coalesced with the air in the lab.

  This portion of Gorton’s lab, about the size of a professional basketball gymnasium, was restricted to techs and those working on the project at hand. Only that handful knew the true purpose of the experiment: to prove the existence of the dark force.

  Emmanuel felt his pride swell as the squad of scientists bustled around him throughout the room. He stood at the threshold of perhaps the greatest breakthrough since Penzias and Wilson. He grinned at the thought of receiving a call from Stockholm.

  “We’re ready now, Dr. Emmanuel,” a tech said. He stood by where Emmanuel sat. Emmanuel tried to recall his name. Was it Oliver? Oscar?

  Standing, Emmanuel said, “Very well. Proceed.”

  “Osman?” Gorton called. The tech turned toward him. Gorton said, “I want you to finalize the checklist. Then proceed in twenty minutes.”

  “Right.” He scurried over to the far side of the lab to run the programs as instructed.

  Gorton approached Emmanuel. “Well, Greg, this is it. I think we’re about to see the fruition of that plan we started all those years ago.”

  Emmanuel thought only Gorton could ruin a moment like this with base sentimentality but then, thinking it further, he decided that most people would probably feel that same need to make a time like this sanctimonious. Emmanuel hated that kind of sensibility, he considered it soft thinking.

  “We’re ready to proceed,” Osman announced.

  Gorton said, “Very well.” He motioned for Emmanuel to join him behind the four-foot glass window in the next room. There, they could witness the operation in safety. Gorton leaned toward the PA mic to say, “Proceed when you’re ready.”

  The techs went about their assigned tasks, each following the protocols Emmanuel and Gorton had innovated. Emmanuel watched as the team went through the established guidelines with care. He smiled inside; it was not every day that one opens the door to a new science.

  Osman stood at the main console in the lab. As the project manager, his function was to scan the area for the emergence of new particles and the patterns of force as their appearance would prove the data. While some argument had gone forward on the safety of such a role, in the end, it was decided—by Emmanuel—the need surmounted the unproven low risk.

  Osman signaled the tech who responded with starting the centrifuge. A low hum filled the room as the particle beams came to life. Within minutes the hum grew to a roar, the floor vibrating as the machine awoke. Osman pressed the keys on his keyboard then looked to where Emmanuel and Gorton stood.

  “We should see results in the next few moments,” Gorton said.

  As if on cue, a field emerged. While Emmanuel watched on his monitor, the data showed a region of space move out of the centrifuge, growing into the lab where the console stood. Emmanuel looked to Gorton; this was not the result they expected.

  “Neville—”

  “I know.” He leaned toward the mic again. “William, get out of there.”

  Osman went to move but could not. For some reason, he could not make his feet work; they remained stuck to the lab floor. The field grew. It looked like a dark cloud of empty matter, a pocket of negative energy that spread as smoke might consume an atmosphere. Out of the console and into the room, Emmanuel could see the field emerge from the centrifuge, its black space seeping out of the mechanism and spreading throughout the lab. It touched Osman.

  Osman stood frozen as the field encompassed him. His face alarmed at the peril, his feet remained glued to the floor of the lab. Then he screamed in pain, Emmanuel had never heard such a cry, a bellow so blood-curdling, his own bowels loosened as he listened to it. Osman flayed his hands above his head in helplessness, his lower limbs unable to move. He opened his mouth wide, his jaw looking as if it dislocated to allow a leering gape. His tongue protruded like a vibrating node of flesh. Then his teeth slammed together cutting his tongue it into pieces.

  Emmanuel watched as Osman’s feet, then his legs, began to change, to transmute into a substance that somehow looked like stone and water. In some fantastic manner, Osman’s matter, the atomic structure of his being, was altering into another form altogether different than anything known.

  The change in his body marched upward, from his knees, up his thighs, to the core of his body. As Osman screamed over and over, the transformation progressed, making his appearance unimaginable: a rock in one second, fluid another.

  Then his whole form went up in a blaze of red. In what seemed as though he had turned to plasma, Osman became a pillar of liquid fire, as if a solar burst were conducting with the matter made of an ocean current. Emmanuel shook his head in disbelief, either his senses had deserted him or those same senses had no capacity to comprehend the events unfolding before him.

  Then Osman turned inside out.

  Slowly, without pause, the internal organs within his body exuded through his skin which cracked and split to accommodate the blood-splattering eruption. Emmanuel saw Osman’s guts, his liver and intestines protrude then explode from his form, the walls painted with the red gore of Osman’s everted body.

  At least the screaming has stopped, Emmanuel thought.

  Osman’s structure, in parts frozen as ice, in others burning and smoking, dispersed about the lab in an explosion that rocked the foundations of the building. For long moments, the walls trembled and the ceiling collapsed, dropping concrete and plaster to the floor as the structure quaked. Emmanuel and Gorton held on to the ledge of the window as it too shuddered against the earthquake that shook the lab building.

  Gorton yelled over the noise of the building tearing itself apart. “Shut it down!” he cried, “Shut it down!”

  A tech hurried to the console, standing over it in bewilderment. Looking from one monitor to the next, Emmanuel watched as he saw his goal. Seconds after typing into the keyboard, the tech stood to look over in Gorton’s direction.

  But the room continued to shake. Osman, now a mere smear of organic material that changed back and forth from water to fire then to stone and mist, had spread throughout the lab in a thin coating of matter, the color shifting from red to black to green then brown.

  Emmanuel stared at the carnage even as the quaking slowed. The thing that Osman had become was still alive. It still held consciousness, its eyes showing intelligence and awareness, even if an awareness couched in despair. The head that had grown to the size and shape of a watermelon moved about in anguish as the new being that was Osman looked from one person to the next in an effort to seek an end to its suffering. The plaintive expression on what had become his face at once pathetic and horrible.

  Then, in an instant, it melted. The whole of Osman’s form disintegrated into a pewter-colored pool of loathsome fluid that smelled of harsh chemicals and dead matter. Seconds later, it steamed into a billow of noxious vapor that burst into the room like a thundercloud, thrusting toward the ceiling then roiling through the space, the air near toxic with its stench.

  A tech reached for the exhaust vent. Switching it open, the vapor that once was Osman was sucked out of the lab, the cloud siphoned into the outside.

  Minutes later, as the last of the field and cloud exhausted into the atmosphere outside, Emmanuel took a deep breath. At least that was over, he thought. Gorton went about the effort to check on the techs, making sure no one else had been hurt, but, more importantly, determining that no one could wage a lawsuit as a result of what happened to Osman. Emmanuel commended himself on hiring only lab techs with little or no family, and all singles, none with spouses. Always thinking ahead.

  He leaned over the computer terminal before him to type. He sent the raw data from the experiment to his personal mainframe across the lake. Ther
e, he’d study the information to ascertain the error that caused Osman’s transmutation, although, he felt he already knew.

  He spoke into the mic, “Neville, I’m going back to my lab.” Gorton, intent on the mop up, merely gestured at the announcement, not even deigning to look up or acknowledge. Shrugging and with a wave of his hand that would do Elizabeth II proud, he turned to walk out of Gorton’s lab.

  (“Also Sprach Zarathustra” Stirring)

  As he stalked the hallway to his office, he slowed his pace so as not to appear too anxious. No need to tip my hand, he thought. Still, it took every mental restraint he could muster to slow his speed.

  Sitting at his large oak desk, he switched on then typed his passwords. As the system woke, he considered indulging in a whiskey to celebrate. This was, after all, the ultimate victory he had sought for the past five years. He deferred. Alcohol breathe, even during the Christmas holiday season, would seem very bad form indeed to the underlings in the lab.

  He spent another three hours reviewing the data from the lab experiment before he called Lambert. His thoughts returned to the bottle of Glenlivet in his drawer as he waited for the chemist to pick up. Lambert’s voicemail came on the line.

  After listening to it, he said, “I need you to call me now. I’m sending you Gorton’s results; they’re exactly what we were looking for, in line with what we anticipated. You know what this means. So, get on the process immediately, using what I’m sending you along with the other data. I want the device finalized immediately. I’ll be over there in an hour.”

  He pressed the red button on his phone to lean back in his armchair. Staring at the corner of his ceiling, he thought about where they were. It seemed too good to be true. They had achieved all the results they had projected, all the numbers had fallen into place with the calculations to an extraordinary degree, unprecedented in his career.