by Josh Shiben
Chapter 9
The Marked Ones
Roger stared down the hallway at the sobbing woman. Somewhere in the other room, the baby cried, though neither parent moved to comfort it.
She was standing several feet away, and the hallway was narrow. No room to move laterally – he’d have to come at her straight ahead. He tried to stall for time. “Listen… you don’t have to-”
“Shut up,” she snapped, raising the pistol in her shaking hand. “I found them. All of them.” Ah, so she’d found the remains. He’d thought they had been hidden far enough away to keep her prying eyes from finding them, but he had known that this was a possibility. She was a clever woman. He was ready for it. If he could just get a few steps closer he just might be able to reach her.
“Susanne, my dad was-”
“No. It was you. How could you?” He hated her. Why did she have to be so stupid? Why couldn’t she understand that none of them had any choice in the matter?
“I was born for it. Just like my father was. And just like my son is.” At the mention of Steven, her eyes turned away for a second, and he inched closer.
She looked back at Rodger, her face twisted into a snarl of hate. “No. Not Steven. You’re not poisoning him.”
“It’s too late. It’s already written. Don’t you see?” He took another slow step forward. Almost there. Just one more moment of hesitation. She was just beyond an arm’s length, now. But if he lunged…
“All I see is a man who is never seeing my son again.” She steadied the weapon and eyed him coldly. “You’re a monster.” She was not about to let him get any closer. This was it.
Roger lunged, his large hand finding a fistful of his wife’s hair.
She screamed.
He heard the shot ring out in the hallway, booming like thunder in the tight corridor.
A blow slammed into his chest as he fell atop her, knocking the wind from his lungs as his massive frame pinned Susanne to the floor. “You stupid bitch,” he whispered through gritted teeth as his hands found her throat. “You can’t stop it. You can’t fight the inevitable.” She clawed at his face, her fingers raking at his cheeks, gouging at his eyes. “It’s written in the strings of time.” It was more of a snarl than a statement, the hate of it tangible on his breath. It tasted like blood. He coughed red onto her face, as her eyes bulged and her lips turned blue.
Eventually, she stopped thrashing, and he collapsed onto her. He couldn’t breathe. Blood poured from his mouth, and Roger felt cold. The bullet wound was fatal. He needed no more information than the numbness rapidly seeping into his fingers. The floor was red and sticky, and as he watched it flowed freely from his chest. Had he done this before? It all felt so familiar. He watched as the red stain on the hardwood floors grew rapidly outward from their tangled mess of limbs.
He let a ragged breath and tried to relax. The collection and fortune would be protected as per the stipulations in his will. It was already taken care of. The remains were hidden far enough away that if discovered, they would never be traced back to him by any rational investigation. There would be rumors, of course, but those would be forgotten in time. The baby screamed in its crib two rooms away, and Roger Weder closed his eyes, comforted that Gregori’s line would endure.
The home was probably once quite nice, Burfict noted as he walked up the stoop. Now tall weeds worked their way up from the remains of dead grass and broken sidewalk. The roof was dilapidated, and probably needed replacement a year or so ago, and what paint was left on the window panes peeled. Cardboard filled the windows, even where the glass was complete, blotting out any sign of habitation or light from inside. Attached to the door were several notices from utility companies, preserved by virtue of being under the overhanging stoop. Burfict stepped up onto the stoop and prepared to knock, before the noting the door was slightly ajar. It yawned open ever so slightly, allowing a glimpse into the darkness within. Cool air wafted outward into the warm evening, carrying with it the scent of weathered paper and rotten food.
From deep in the recesses of the house echoed “Come in, Detective. I’ve been expecting you.” The voice sounded frayed and worn, ragged at the edges like jagged metal. It was little more than a croak. Inside, the clicking of a typewriter could be heard chattering like the teeth of a freezing man. Burfict pushed his head into the house and frowned. Everywhere papers were piled from floor to ceiling, stacked neatly atop boxes. A narrow path through the paper wound from the foyer, through the living room and into the rooms beyond creating a deep chasm in the stacks. Burfict followed the path into the building, letting it lead him into a small, dimly lit kitchen. Sitting at the circular oak table was the husk of a man staring at an old-fashioned typewriter. His clothes were unwashed rags, and his skin hung loosely on his skeletal frame. Large, sunken eyes peered at his document in the soft glow of an oil-lamp, as he tapped on the letters rapidly with long, yellowed fingernails.
The man smelled like he hadn’t bathed in months - it briefly reminded Burfict of a trip to visit his father in the hospital, when he had seen a patient with terrible bed sores. The rotten smell was similar, but this man also had the acrid aroma of urine to mask the scent. Burfict stood regarding him silently, trying not to retch at the odor coming off of him.
He felt his mind reach out to the man, only to find it strangely rebuffed, as if he had struck a solid wall. It was a surprising sensation – one he had never felt anything like before. “You’re just in time. I’m almost finished,” muttered the man. He gestured out towards the stacks of paper in the other room. “My treatise on Shub-Niggurath.”
Burfict looked at the reams of paper filling the house. “This is all one document?”
“It’s my masterpiece. I need to explain her. And time is short, isn’t it?”
“Why not use a computer? Save some space?”
“Has to be on a typewriter, I’m afraid. No electricity. Fuckers shut it off.” He waved a bony hand in the air, as if the gesture conveyed meaning. Burfict thought back to the aged looking papers on the door, and looked at the reams of paper in the living room. The power had been off for a long time. The watery eyes turned towards Burfict, looking up at him from the skeletal face, and paused for a moment while they studied him. Finally, the cracked lips parted, and the man whispered to Burfict. “I know it. I can see it in your face. You’re marked like me.”
“Marked?”
“We dream things. Things of the future. I dreamt you. I dreamt this very moment. We are Marked Ones, in tune to the vibrations of the reality and time.”
Burfict was shocked – never before had he met someone else who carried a similar burden. “You dream things too?”
“Only brief snippets. Not like you. I’ve never met another Marked One like you. Someone special marked you. You glow like a beacon. The rest of us…” he trailed off and shrugged, the threadbare rags on his shoulders threatening to fall apart from the slight movement.
“Who marked us? Why?”
Again, Phillip Kindred shrugged. “I don’t know. Whoever made us, I suppose. You wouldn’t happen to be related to any madmen, would you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Well, none that you know of. Your grandfather was adopted, you know.”
Burfict stood, his mouth agape. “What are you talking about? No he wasn’t.”
Kindred turned to him with a wry smile. “Trust me. He was, when his parents met their rather…. Unfortunate ends.”
“How would you know? Who told you that?”
“Do you know how many nights I’ve dreamt this moment, David? I’ve lived this moment a thousand times. I could be sleeping right now for all I know.”
“So you know all about me? You know why I’m here?”
“I just know the questions and the answers we’re about to speak. We’re scripted, you see. You. I. Everybody. I know the script of this moment. The rest is not really my area of expertise.”
“What is your expertise?”
“Shub-Niggurath
. She of a Thousand Young. The Black Goat of the Woods. The Invader. She’s sending tremors through the web. Through space and time. Even now.” He paused and cocked his head as if listening to a far-off noise. “She’s close. You’ve seen the Goat, haven’t you, detective?”
“Only in a dream.”
Kindred’s eyes lit up and he sucked air through his teeth. “She’s here! The Goat has arisen! Then it really is Eschaton, isn’t it? The End Times.” He turned and started typing again, hammering into the keyboard in a blur. “I need to hurry,’ he murmured.
“Wait! What is she? I read your last paper, but couldn’t make any sense of it. What’s happening? How can I stop it?”
Kindred turned slowly, his face clenched in a look of irritation. “This.” He gestured about the room. “All of this. It’s all formed by strings. One-dimensional strings, vibrating. They form everything you can see and touch and taste. They form the very molecules that make you up. But they make more than that. They form the very dimensions in which these molecules exist. They are the X, Y and Z axes, and everything located in them. They are time. Past, present and future, all stretched out in four dimensions. They form even more than that – dimensions we can’t even sense. That’s what you and I see when we dream – the vibrations in the webs of these strings. You and I. The Marked Ones. We can feel them undulating. But Shub-Niggurath… She’s not made by these strings. She’s from something else. And somewhere in time and space, she is touching our world. Pressing up against the fabric of space-time. Vibrating the strings herself.”
“But that hasn’t happened yet, has it? She’s not here yet. Only the Goat. How would you know ahead of time?”
“Time is a dimension, just like up and down, or left and right. Tremors from the future can be felt in the past by those sensitive enough to feel it.”
“And the Black Goat of the Woods? What is she?”
Kindred smiled, revealing a mouth full of rotten, blackened teeth. “She’s nothing. Nothing real, that is. Shub-Niggurath isn’t made of the same stuff that we are. She doesn’t even exist here. She’s not written into the vibrating strings of the web, so she can’t be here. The Goat is her avatar. An impression of her. The interaction between the multi-dimensional reality created by the web of strings, and Shub-Niggurath. Think of the Goat as a faint hint of static electricity between two differently charged surfaces. Her form is what that manifests itself to us as, though we are ourselves merely manifestations of interwoven strings of energy.” He gestured out into the buried living room with a crooked finger. “It’s all there,” he said quietly. “But then, I guess you probably don’t have time to be reading that.”
“If Shub-Niggurath doesn’t exist here…” he was going slowly, trying to make sense of the matter. “Then how can she break into our world?”
“She would need something in common to bridge between the two worlds. Something native to both of them. A gate to translate herself through into matter. Our matter.”
“Can I stop her?”
Kindred only shrugged and turned back to his typewriter. “Not here, you can’t.”
