by Jon Sauve
It ended there. The ship couldn’t tell where the signal came from.
“Russ, Carlene,” Max said. “Focus on the task at hand. I’ll work on this and tell you what I have found upon your return. I’m going to leave the feed going, but I won’t be responding unless an emergency arises.”
“Aye, sir, understood,” Russ said.
The room was empty. Carlene looked ready to run back to the ship, if she could. Maybe she was even thinking of hijacking it and getting back to Triple P as soon as possible. When she caught Russ looking, though, she snapped back into her dutiful self.
“Alright,” she said. “Upstairs, first?”
Russ nodded. He let her go first, in case she fell; the stairs here had even more holes than they had in De Acosta’s house. There was a little more light, however. The roof was almost completely gone.
“Don’t look up unless you wanna be sick,” Russ advised.
“Yeah, thanks.” Carlene used her hands on the walls to guide her. “Listen, captain, if there’s something up here worse than teeth and Russ faints, is that an emergency situation?”
There was no reply. Russ just smiled at her back. She was as human as the rest of them, but her motivation would have driven her through a lake of rotting guts, let alone a few human teeth.
“If I do faint,” he said, “you’d catch me, right?”
He though he heard a laugh. “Watch your step here,” she said, climbing over a hole that had taken out three whole stairs.
Russ paused at the edge of the gap and trained his light down. He was looking directly onto the stairs that led to the basement. They were located differently than in De Acosta’s house.
“Shortcut,” he said.
Carlene kept on going. In fact, it looked like she started moving faster. Paying him back for earlier. Russ detached from the floor and pulled himself along on the banister, drifting across the gap and up the stairs with barely any effort. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
She was at the top of the stairs. He expected her to turn and give him a victorious smile, but she stood completely still, staring forward.
“See something?” he asked.
Carlene took a short step backward, putting out her hand to touch the banister.
Russ reached the summit. The starlight flooded through an empty bassinet, standing crooked on its three intact legs. The covers were torn, drifting above like a tattered flag.
“Bassinet,” he said. “Just an empty bassinet. You alright, Carlene?”
“Yeah… Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just…”
Russ nodded and went to the bassinet. It was nailed to the floor at its three points.
“Like pulling a toothpick out of a sandwich,” he said, wrenching the nails free. “Hey, Carlene, what’s your favorite kind of sandwich?”
She didn’t say anything.
“There was never any baby, alright?” Russ tried. “Just made up stories, like captain said. Here we go.”
He shoved the bassinet violently into the next room. It slammed against the window sill, then went twirling out into space.
“Okay, Carlene, that thing’s gone.”
“It’s not a thing,” came the reply, amidst crackling static.
Russ looked behind him. Carlene was gone.
Max was at crew quarters, about to wake Augie the gentle way, when the alarm sounded. He ran back, coming into the cockpit just as Russ sounded off over the radio.
“Emergency conditions reached,” he was saying. “Where’d she go? Captain, can you see Carlene?”
Max sat down. Carlene’s camera was out, as Augie’s had done when his suit failed. The radio signal to her suit was dead, but he was still getting an emergency beacon off her.
“I don’t know, Russ,” he said. “I can’t tell a thing. Her suit’s going the way Augie’s did. Find her, find her now!”
Russ turned down the hall. At the last room on the left, on the floor just outside, a shadow was cast across the floor. He moved toward it, as fast as his boots would allow.
Inside, a mannequin stood with its arms stretched toward him. A bright light surrounded it, blurring out its edges. Russ’s face shield tinted, and he could now see Carlene behind the mannequin. She was sitting on the sill of a window, grasping for its edges. Her shield had gone full-tint, and he couldn’t see her face.
Russ made to move around the mannequin.
“You found her,” Max said. “Get her out of that window.”
The stars glinted over Carlene’s head, and the nothingness past the edge of the stretch yawned below.
The interference came again, the crackling and the static, the ghostly words.
“She did it,” they said. “It was her. I know it was, Karl.”
One of Carlene’s hands gave way. Russ knocked the mannequin over, and it hovered away vertically across the floor, like a dancer. He grabbed her just as her other hand slipped. Her boots weren’t touching, and there should be no resistance to his pulling, but she seemed to weigh two or three hundred pounds as he hauled her back in.
Finally, her boots touched and she was back to ground. Her face shield abruptly cleared and the terror on her face showed through. Her light dimmed.
“Carlene, come in,” Max said.
Russ could see her breathing hard inside her helmet. Finally she licked her lips, reactivated her radio, and said, “I hear you. I hear you, captain.”
“Carlene.” Max hesitated. “Russ, Carlene.”
“We’re here,” Russ said. “Carlene, what happened?”
She licked her lips again. “I… I don’t know. I was standing at the top of… at the top of the stairs behind you and it was like… a current wafting up behind me. It took me right off the floor. I tried yelling for you, but my radio went out. It just kept carrying me… all the way in here, and it tried to take me out the window…”
Russ looked at the mannequin. It had reoriented itself to face him again, its arms reaching. There was damage to the mouth area that he hadn’t noticed before. It made the thing look like it was screaming.
“Carlene, Russ,” said the captain. “This is far more serious than I thought. I no longer believe we are fit for this mission. I’m going to talk to HQ and request a replacement mission with a larger crew.”
“What?” Carlene said.
“Something just tried to kill you, Carlene. There’s something more to this place than old houses. Leena and Augie heard the alarm, and they’re on their way out to retrieve you.”
“No, captain, no. I’m fine. It was just… Damned if I know what it was, but we’re not here to be safe. We’re here to discover something. I don’t care what happens, this is ours. I know you’re not a coward, Max.”
She said it all with a bit of sweat on her face, but otherwise nothing of her experience made itself evident.
“Captain,” Russ said. “I’m with Carlene. We’re a 9-class scouting vessel for a science research facility. Zero liability. We do what we do for the sake of knowledge. I say we keep on.”
Carlene nodded at him.
There were several moments of pure silence.
“Broadcast. Suited and ready, captain,” said Augie’s voice.
“I hear you,” said Max. “Do you still have your tools?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Good. Rescue aborted. Proceed to your original objective. Russ, if you allow your shipmate outside your field of vision again, you’re off my crew. Carlene, that goes for you too.”
They both confirmed, and went back into the hall.
Augie knew the way. Leena stuck close behind him out of her fear, but he knew she wished he was Russ. He could feel some sort of contempt coming off her.
The balloons were still floating the way he’d left them. While passing into the next room, Augie’s eye caught something shoved between the sink and the wall. He pointed it out to Leena, and he knew the captain was watching.
After an unsuccessful attempt to get his arm into the crevice, he looked at Leena an
d said, “Can you fit your arm in there?”
She didn’t say anything, but he got out of her way. After a moment of straining, the shoulder of her suit bulging against the counter, she drew out the object. It was fitted with a strap. Four lenses, two large and two small, connected by flared tubes.
“Scoping object,” Max said.
“They’re binoculars, sir,” Augie replied. On a whim, he looked back into the crevice. “Still something back there.”
Leena let the binoculars go and reached back in. She barely managed to pinch the corner of the note between her fingers. Like everything else they’d found, the writing was still legible.
“If you would be so kind, Leena,” Max said.
She cleared her throat, and her speech was rushed.
“It says, ‘I want to get this down right now, in case something happens to me. There’s no fixing this. No matter how many times I go through it, I just can’t find a way to put things back. Everything’s out of its natural order, now.
‘I like to watch them. I watch them from my bedroom. I can get a good view of the street. I saw Fortuna when she didn’t think anyone could see her. I saw Karl and Tertia at their most intimate. Something’s about to happen, and it won’t end good for me.
I’ve already taken the week off work. I turn 33 today. Maybe I’ll have that party, but no one gets to come over. Afterward, I’m going to lock myself in the basement and wait for everything to blow over.’”
Leena’s voice slowed noticeably toward the end. Augie shivered.
“In the basement,” he said. “Captain, are you thinking what I am?”
“I wouldn’t know how you think, Augie,” was the reply. “But we all know something is in that basement. No more tarrying; if you see something else, leave it for later.”
Leena stood up with a smile, dusting her gloves off. “Let’s go, short stuff.”
She led the way, at least until she started going the wrong way, then he moved in front of her. The basement stairs seemed darker than before, but maybe he’d just bumped the brightness dial for his light.
The tool on his belt was something used on Triple P by maintenance personnel to open jammed or powerless doors. He stuck it up to the knob, and hit a switch. There was a powerful vibration, one that caused splinters of wood to break away from the door. Augie felt a click, and the door opened by an inch.
“Leena,” Augie said, recalling something. A memory, or a dream. “Grab my shoulder. Don’t let go.”
She did so, and again he could feel the reluctance.
When Augie stepped into the basement, the lights went out and Leena’s hand left his shoulder. As he felt the air go out of his lungs, he was unsure whether she had gone or he himself had ceased to exist.
Max leaned forward, staring at the screens.
“Leena,” Augie’s voice said. “Touch my shoulder. Don’t let go.”
The door opened. The basement was very dark; the cone of Augie’s suit light made little imprint in it. There was a loud static burst over the radio, and Max sat back. The screens went out, and the alarm blared.
“Russ,” the captain said. In the background of the transmission, the alarm could be heard; in Max’s voice, cold fear. “It’s happening again.”
Russ and Carlene were in the first room on the right of the upstairs, searching through a pile of ragged clothing and bed covers. When he heard the captain, Russ turned around to see if Carlene was still there. She was, her hands frozen in the middle of turning a shirt inside-out.
“Augie and Leena,” Russ said. “Move, Carlene, move!”
The boots allowed them to move at a top speed of around four miles per hour. At the stairs, Russ again purposefully detached himself and pulled himself down. He gained some speed that way. Carlene hooked herself to him and tucked into a ball so she didn’t get bumped around.
At the bottom they reattached and quickly made their way into the street. Inside the Apollonia, the top of Max’s head was just barely visible as he bent low to watch the screens.
“In the basement,” Max said. “They were just entering the basement when they-”
There was a pop, and the captain’s voice went away.
“Come in, captain,” Russ said. “Testing, testing.”
“I hear you, sorry,” said Max. “Leena’s back, but she’s not moving. I’m just looking at the floor. Vitals good. I’ll start a beacon.”
In a moment, a beeping sounded in Russ’s helmet, the frequency of the beeps increasing slightly as they approached the house.
Several things were different, Russ saw, when they entered. The table was overturned, floating several inches off the floor. The balloons were trapped underneath it. The bottle he had found in the fireplace had shattered, and chunks of it were all around. His light caught small specks of glass.
“Watch it,” he said. “Try not to get any of that stuff in your suit.”
“I think I still have some teeth stuck in a few places,” Carlene said.
Russ led the way, finding a path as best he could and swatting the glass away with the thick back-side of his gloves. Carlene followed, her light casting faint shadows through the field of dust.
She hadn’t been in this house, but she knew the way from watching at the ship. She took up the front, and paused at the top of the stairs. Her light revealed neither Leena nor Augie. The door was half open, moving a millimeter at a time toward closure. Carlene took a step down.
“Movement on Leena,” Max said. “I can hear her breathing.”
Russ’s beacon was going off steadily enough that it almost seemed a solid scream of sound. If Carlene hadn’t already set the pace as fast as either of them dared to go, he would have pulled her out of the way and went past.
“She’s down there, I can see the door… I can see you coming.”
Carlene held the door aside. The beacon stopped.
Leena was splayed flat, barely holding her head up to look at them.
“Broadcast me, captain,” Russ said. “Leena, can you hear me?”
“I can,” Leena said. “I can. I’m… still here. Am I still here, can you see me?”
Russ crouched down to touch her arm. “Of course I can. You’re still here, in the basement. Captain, how’s she looking?”
“Leena herself is fine. Her suit is not. Boots are out. You’ll have to link to her and haul her in.”
“Augie,” Carlene said.
“Augie,” Max repeated. “I know I said not to split up, but one of you will have to bring in Leena.”
Russ looked to Carlene. “Do it. Leena can keep an eye on you, you on Leena. And captain can watch you from the cockpit. I’ll get Augie.”
Carlene nodded. “Understood. Leena, did you see where Augie went?”
“No, I… No. Please, get me out of here, please.”
“Let’s go,” said Russ. He went past them, detaching from the floor and pulling his way up the steps. He didn’t bother reattaching at the top; he wound his way toward the room with the desk, but Augie wasn’t there. He came down briefly to help Leena through the front doorway, then returned.
Upstairs. Russ went up, hand over hand, drifting and pulling. His feet snapped onto the landing, and he straightened up.
Three rooms. Russ made a quick guess and opted for the bedroom on the right. He stepped in, then stopped.
Augie was by the window, staring out into the street. His feet were off the floor. A pair of binoculars was suspended by his right hand. Russ went to him and grabbed hold of his shoulder. The suit crumpled under his grip as he turned it around.
The helmet was empty. Russ let go and felt himself being strangled. A light shined in from outside, casting Augie’s derelict suit in a silhouette. Carlene was out in the street, seeing if she could get a glimpse of them through the window. For a moment the new brightness hid the fact that Russ’s own light had gone out.
Propelled backwards by his fear, he also failed to notice, until it was too late, that a strange current had gathered
around him and was pulling him away.
“Help, help!” he cried, scrambling against the pull to reach purchase of some kind. He went out through the door, his fingers sliding past the frame. “Not me, not me, not me… Captain! CAPTAIN!”
Someone answered, but it wasn’t Leena, or Carlene, or Max.
“You,” it said. It sounded like Augie, his voice nearly lost in static. “It wasn’t… It wasn’t you…”
Russ grabbed the banister as the force shoved him down the steps. It tore from the wall, sending up bits of dry plaster and wood like a slow-motion explosion with no sound.
Down into the hall, into the living area, through the kitchen. He went into the street then, and no amount of grabbing could snatch him from this fate.
The women were gone by then. Carlene must have double-timed it back to the airlock.
Russ was pulled away from the ship, further down the street. Max appeared in the cockpit, but for all he could do, he might as well have been on the moon.
Looking backward as the stars and the emptiness came closer, Russ had a momentary fear that he was about to be thrown over. But he suddenly veered off to his right, so hard his head hit the side of the helmet. His heels bounced off the steps of the third house on the left, and he vanished into its darkness.
For a time he was lost. Had his face shield tinted, the way Carlene’s had? Was the house even darker than the last?
Time passed. He didn’t feel as though he were moving any longer, but there was no real way to tell.
His back struck something, a wall, and he realized he was drifting free. He had been released. He tried his light, but it was still out. His air was still flowing, and the environmental systems were fully operational.
“Apollonia,” he said. “Come in, Apollonia. Come in!”
No answer. He reached out. His hand found the frame of a doorway, and he pulled himself through it, aiming downwards. Putting his hands out, he waited until he felt them skim the floor, then crawled along it.
With some traction now, he was able to turn in a circle. There was no light whatsoever, not even the glint of a star. It must be his face shield, then.
