Never Fear

by Heather Graham

He reached for the man’s other arm, blood dripping from his fingers. Thinking he might make a giraffe this time--the kiddies loved giraffes…his own limbs suddenly began to feel heavy.

  “More!” the voice shouted again. “We need to shut him down! We need to shut him down now!”

  Blackness began to fill his vision and he tottered sideways.

  “In the chair! Put him in the chair!”

  The last thing Devon Marler remembered was falling backward. He landed hard in the chair and a moment later, he knew nothing more.

  ***

  Dr. Henry Staum looked at the man, watching in amazement as the features of the horrible monster from just moments ago began changing back to those of his troubled patient. Behind him, one of his assistants was busy trying to staunch the flow of blood from the noseless technician, who was still wailing pitiably. Another lab tech was looking helplessly at the horribly broken arm, snapped in over a dozen places.

  One of the senior doctors on the project stepped next to him, his eyes riveted on the now peacefully sleeping subject. “That wasn’t a man, Henry,” the doctor said softly, his voice almost a whisper. “That was something else. This is a catastrophic failure!”

  “On the contrary, I think it was an astounding success, Joseph,” Staum said calmly, his eyes still fastened on the sleeping patient. Devon Marler was himself again. The only difference from the man he had originally put under was that the man in the chair was now spattered with blood and bits of flesh that hung from his now-normal fingers.

  “Success?” the other doctor exclaimed loudly. Dr. Joseph Hiroto was a Japanese national, one of the very few people entrusted to work at this level on Staum’s project. Hiroto had been with Staum from nearly the beginning, but even though he had knowledge of almost everything to do with the project, he had always thought there was more to it. Staum’s uncanny calm only confirmed that for him. “This was supposed to turn him into a representation of the criminal that had abducted him, Henry! It was supposed to help him face his fear! You turned him into a monster!”

  “He was turned into what he fears, Joseph,” Staum assured him. “Nothing more. The procedure worked perfectly.”

  “I’ve seen his file, Henry,” Hiroto went on angrily. “I’ve studied the police reports and everything we know about what happened. Arthur Dade was a man, just a man! He was a serial killer, a sick and twisted psychopath that hunted children, but he was still a man! He was shot to death by police after stabbing nine-year-old Devon Marler in the head, injuring him badly enough that Marler died on the way to the hospital and had to be resuscitated. There was nothing monstrous about the man beyond his actions.”

  “And you don’t think that makes a man into a monster?”

  “Did that look human to you?” Hiroto exclaimed. “That wasn’t a man acting monstrously. That was a monster! That was a nightmare brought to life! This isn’t what we were charged with accomplishing, Henry!”

  “Now you listen to me, Joseph,” Staum said, his own eyes blazing with anger. Grabbing the man by the arm, he steered him away from the carnage on the floor, his voice lowering. “You are as much a part of this project as I am and you know, as well as I do, that they want the monster in Devon Marler’s head. They couldn’t care less about Arthur Dade, the serial killer. They want Arthur Dade, the clown monster as seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old child!”

  “And you condone this…this abomination?”

  “What Mr. Marler projected is so much more than we could have ever hoped for,” Staum answered. “Don’t you see? We created something based on a dream, based on what his mind projected. Do you have any idea how deeply seated coulrophobia is in a person, particularly someone like Devon Marler? He created that monster, Joseph. We merely pulled it out of his head.”

  “But why?” Hiroto asked helplessly. “Why create something so horrible?”

  “To heal him.”

  “By turning him into a monster?”

  “I see only a man seated before you who is sound asleep,” Staum said calmly, nodding his head in the direction of the slumbering patient. The tragedy on the floor behind him was already forgotten, the success of the experiment beyond even his highest expectations. The general would be extremely pleased. “The man inside Mr. Marler’s head was more terrifying than we had originally believed,” he went on, “but it was a man none-the-less. We simply saw Devon Marler become that which has plagued him for years.”

  “This is wrong,” Hiroto said, his voice cracking. “I can’t be a part of this.”

  “You already are, Joseph,” Staum warned him, “and you’re long past the point of turning back.”

  Dr. Hiroto stared at his associate, hating what had just happened; hating Henry Staum for what he created. “Be honest with me, Henry,” he finally said after a long pause. “Through all your sessions with Mr. Marler, did you ever expect this?”

  “No, I expected something a little less Hollywood, if you want the truth,” Staum replied with a shrug. “But regardless of what Mr. Marler metamorphosed into, the test was a success. It works, Joseph. The project works. We should be celebrating, not pouting.”

  “At the expense of that?” Hiroto said acidly, pointing back at the grievously wounded tech.

  “Unfortunate, to be sure,” Staum said without a trace of concern. “But nothing more than an accident.”

  “Is that what you’ll tell them? That it was just an accident?”

  “I’ll tell them the truth, Joseph,” Staum answered, then turned his eyes toward the observation window in the far wall. “Is there anyone else in the observation room?”

  “No,” Hiroto sighed, shaking his head. “It’s just the five of us. When the project…when Marler went off the rails, standard safety protocol shut down all communication in and out of the lab and locked down the floor. We’re quietly waiting for you to make the call and stand down the emergency.”

  “Excellent,” Staum said, pulling out his cell phone. “I’ll inform the general.” He turned toward the door, only to have Hiroto grab him by the arm and spin him back around.

  “Henry, what are you doing?” Hiroto snapped. “We need to get Selken to the hospital! You need to give the all-clear so we can get him out. You can call the general later.”

  Staum glared at Hiroto, his gaze icy hard. It was enough for his partner to release his arm. “Stabilize Selken as best you can for the moment,” Staum finally said, his voice betraying no emotion. “I will have a team on site in ten minutes to deal with what happened and take charge of our injured associate.” He started to walk toward the door, but paused to look back. “Oh, and you might want to strap Mr. Marler back into his chair, too,” he said coldly, holding up the remote with his other hand. “It would be terrible if he were to suddenly revert to his maniacal state.” Leaving the threat unspoken, Staum exited the room, leaving Hiroto to quickly comply and do his best to calm his colleagues from the nightmare that had come to life.

  ***

  Devon Marler sighed, stretched, and opened his eyes. Outside, the birds were singing and he took a deep breath, breathing in the spring air. The clock on the wall said it was nearly 9:00. Shocked, he quickly sat up and rolled his legs off the bed, planting his feet on the carpet. How had he slept so long? He hadn’t slept past a quarter-to-five in years, ever since the nightmares began coming back.

  The nightmares! A happy thought assailed him and he smiled. He didn’t have a nightmare last night!

  “Honey!” he shouted, standing up and running to the mirror. The handsome image of Devon Marler stared back at him, a lopsided grin on his face. His eyes still looked hollow, but not nearly as bad as before. He actually looked rested for once. Even better, he felt rested for the first time in months.

  “Honey!” he shouted again, throwing open the bedroom door and hurrying into the hall. His wife did not answer his call. Puzzled, he poked his head into Bree’s room. Her crib was empty. He checked the other rooms and then hurried downstairs. Chelle and Bree were nowhere to b
e found. He walked outside, looking around. The sun was out and the air was warm, but they weren’t in the yard, either. But the car was still in the driveway.

  Puzzled, he walked back in the house and into the kitchen. That’s when he saw it. Fear growing coldly within his belly, he looked at the basement door. Four long gashes were clearly visible in the wood, as if someone or something had dragged sharpened knives across the wood. Knives.

  Or fingernails.

  His heart beating hard in his chest, he slowly pushed open the door and looked down into the blackness of the basement. Reaching for the wall, he switched on the light. The basement light flared to life for a moment and then with the pop of a burning filament, it went out.

  That’s when he heard it. Something was moving in the darkness. Something was down there.

  Grabbing a flashlight from the kitchen junk drawer, he switched it on and began descending the wooden steps, each step an eternity of growing fear. He heard nothing more. Step by agonizing step, he reached the bottom and walked slowly into the main room, sweeping the light back and forth. He didn’t have to search long.

  Chelle was lying in the middle of the main room, her eyes open and unseeing. Her nose was missing, just a ragged and bloody hole in her face. Her arms and legs were mangled, broken and twisted into macabre shapes.

  The sound came again, a horrible bubbling noise as the creature slid out of the darkness. The hellish clown stared at him through gleaming black orbs and cocked its ghastly head. Its forked tongue slid between a mouthful of jagged teeth as it rasped, “Welcome back to the circus, Devon. Do you like balloon animals?”

  Devon Marler began to scream.

  ***

  Thirteen weeks later, Dr. Henry Staum ushered the five military men down the long, antiseptic hall, going through not one, but two handprint and voiceprint activated steel doors. Inwardly, he was excited, although he kept his exterior cool and icy, matching that of the men that had paid him a lot of money to complete the project. This was the big reveal; the day he could show them what he had created; the day he would cement his legacy as the world’s foremost researcher into nanite weapon technology. What the military did with it after today, he didn’t care. This was the pinnacle. He was done. And he longed to leave it far behind.

  They stepped into a room with a long glass plate comprising one wall. Large video monitors were on the walls next to it, each with in-wall control panels. Looking beyond the huge window into the next room, the men had to pause to let their eyes adjust. There were no direct lights, the only illumination provided by the soft white disks imbedded in the steel walls beyond the viewing window.

  “Why is it so dark?” one of the visitors asked, a two star general by the stars on his army uniform.

  “The subject is light sensitive,” Staum explained, knowing the question would be among the first. “Full sunlight or direct artificial light will drive the biological process into dormancy.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, we can talk with the man he once was under current illumination,” Staum answered. “Full darkness allows the matrix to manifest fully and that person then vanishes into the creature. The matrix takes over and it becomes that which I created.”

  “Can light harm it?”

  “Not that I have discovered. It only allows the subject to revert to his human form for a brief time.”

  “Let’s see it,” another man said, as he stepped forward. There were four stars on the shoulder of his uniform. He was General McCalister, the lead man on the project, who had recruited Staum and had helped the doctor over the years to get to the point they were at today. His vision of the perfect weapon was about to be revealed.

  “You’ll have to look closely,” Staum said, shaking his head. “If I increase the strength of light in the room, he’ll become more of the human part of him. This intensity is actually the optimal setting for viewing. It keeps him between metamorphosis…and in doing so, manageable.”

  They all stepped closer to the viewing window, looking inward. The room was completely bare and fairly dark, but not enough that they couldn’t see the patient. The subject was in the center of the room, slumped in a ragged heap--if it could even be referred to as human anymore. A number of smaller misshapen lumps of what appeared to be organic material were scattered around it.

  “What’s his story?” another man asked. He was the only one of the group not wearing a military uniform. Instead, he was in a black suit and immaculate tie. If the other men’s countenances were cold, his was downright glacier-like. Staum didn’t know his name, but he had met him several times over the years as the project progressed. A high-ranking member of a government black ops agency, Staum didn’t like him at all.

  “The subject’s name is Devon Marler,” he explained, addressing the group with his back to the viewing window. “Over the years, as we moved into VR testing of phobias with nearly a hundred possible test subjects, Mr. Marler was eventually chosen to be ground zero for the transformation phase.”

  “What was he afraid of?”

  “He had coulrophobia,” the doctor answered. “He had a particularly terrifying fear of clowns, due to his encounter as a child with Arthur Dade, the serial killer. We treated him with Virtual Reality to help bring his phobia into focus, before we moved on to the final phase to give birth to that fear.”

  “I’ve read your lab reports,” the man went on, stepping up to the glass and peering closer at the thing within. “Am I to understand that he actually became a monster during the test?”

  “After his release from our facility, Mr. Marler was arrested for the murder of his wife and the disappearance of his six-month-old daughter,” Staum replied. “When he was arrested in his home with the body of his wife by his side, his mind had broken. He ranted to police unceasingly about a clown being the murderer. Considering the man’s childhood abduction, where he had nearly become Arthur Dade’s eleventh victim, the conventional thought was that he had become that which he had feared and killed his wife.”

  “Do you consider the project a failure then?”

  “Not in the least,” Staum replied haughtily. “While the death of Mr. Marler’s wife is unfortunate, the final goal wasn’t to see if we could actually cure Mr. Marler. It was to see if we could birth the monster that was in his head. We did that.”

  “And this thing still resides within him?”

  “See for yourself.” Staum indicated the room beyond the glass. “Devon,” Staum said a little louder, looking at the heap of biological mass on the floor.

  The thing moved at his voice, but didn’t look up.

  “Devon,” he repeated. “Can you hear me?”

  “Cir…cus,” the thing said, its face hidden under an arm, its voice gravelly and difficult to understand. “Time…to go…to…”

  “Devon,” Staum said a bit more forcefully.

  This time, the creature raised its head. Over the weeks, Henry Staum had stopped being outwardly shocked and horrified at the transformation, although he could never suppress the involuntary shudder that ran through him every time he looked upon his creation. Devon Marler was a hideous mutation, caught somewhere between the man he once was and the monster that had resided in his head. The five men in the room with Staum, however, were obviously not familiar with this level of horror, and four of them took involuntary steps back, amid shocked gasps.

  The fifth, the man in the suit, stepped closer, his eyes riveted on the creature in the room. “Absolutely fascinating,” he said. “I assume the secrecy on the project is fully intact? Your colleagues are accounted for?”

  “Yes,” Staum replied cryptically. What he left unspoken at the moment was that only Hiroto was still alive, and he was currently undergoing his own personal metamorphosis. He would shortly have to explain that, though, and he hoped that the group saw it as an added benefit.

  “And the press surrounding Mr. Marler? I’m certain murdering his wife was high profile.”

  “Naturally, we took
control of him immediately after his arrest. All references to him and what happened in that house were purged from public record and those first responders have been…reassigned,” Staum said smugly. “The details of the murder have never been released and, despite the few persistent rumors still circulating, Devon Marler has already been largely forgotten by the short-attention-span crowd over the past three months.”

  “Excellent,” the man said, then shifted his questioning. “Tell me, doctor, what happens if you shut the lights off?”

  “As I said, he will fully manifest,” Staum said hesitantly.

  “Can we see it?”

  “I would not recommend it,” Staum said, and his voice involuntarily rose an octave. This was the one thing he did not want to happen. Not yet anyway. At least not while he was still here.

  “Why not?”

  “Because fully manifested, Devon Marler displays traits we cannot even begin to document yet. He…or it, becomes quite large and is extremely strong.”

  “How is that a threat to any of us?”

  “This glass wall you are looking through is eight inches of hardened plasteel,” Staum said. “It’s the strongest transparent substance known to man.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I was getting to that,” Staum answered coolly. “This is the second plasteel wall we’ve installed. Marler broke through the first one during a full-dark test. Several of my employees were…injured in that event.”

  The black-suited man turned and cast a wary glance at the doctor, before looking back to Marler. “You mentioned traits, doctor,” he went on. “What other traits does the subject show?”

  “Besides taking on the full appearance of Mr. Marler’s fear, it has the ability to…well, how should I put this…”

  “Please don’t mince words, doctor. Tell me what it does.”

  “It has the ability to infect others,” Staum shrugged. “It’s almost as if it is trying to propagate itself.”