The Lurkers & Other Strange Tales

by Benedict, S. Lee

  “Who are you?” I say.

  “You can call me Mr. Template,” the man says, almost jovially. “I am the precursor to what all humanity will soon become.”

  All humanity? The realization of what this creature is saying hits me with the force of a six g space launch.

  “The Overmind,” I say. “He does not just want an army. He wants to enslave the human race.”

  “And when it is done,” says Mr. Template, “his victory over his enemies will be assured.”

  Template lunges at me. He is too powerful for me to resist, and I can do nothing as he sits atop me and pummels me with his steely fists. I sense no pain, as such, but I can feel my power draining as my systems fail, one by one. I fear this infernal machine-man will kill me before I am able to complete my mission.

  Finally, Mr. Template abruptly ceases his crippling attack. He knows I am barely able to move and now close to complete systems failure. My automaton is decimated. Soon, the generator will fail, and the power sustaining my electronic brain will be cut off.

  I, Dr. Sinjin Temple, will be lost forever. It really is quite a shame.

  Template is now at the observation window, looking out at the rows upon rows of death mechs. He seems to be pontificating about the glorious victory that his “master” will achieve when all humanity bows to his will. But I am not listening to him. In fact, my audio receptors are damaged, and his voice is terribly muffled. It is like trying to listen to someone speaking underwater.

  I look to Nakama. She is weeping in the corner, not five feet away from me.

  “Ritsuko,” I say, trying to whisper, hoping my voice will still be projected to her tympanic membrane.

  She looks up at me, tears staining her pretty face.

  I eject something from a concealed compartment, built into the automaton’s wrist, and it rolls across the floor toward her. It is a data-cyl, a small tube no bigger than her little finger, filled with a gelatinous liquid capable of storing digital information as chemical markers.

  “The kill switch,” I say. I look at her and then glance at the computer terminal, its data port still waiting for input.

  Template has apparently finished his oration and is now focusing his full attention back onto me. He crouches down next to me; his metal face is mere inches from my own.

  “You are about to be snuffed out of existence, Doctor,” he says with what seems to be both earnest sympathy and sinister derision. His tone sends something like a chill down my robotic vertebrae. “This is the second time I’ve had the pleasure of killing you today.”

  Nakama grabs the data-cyl and leaps for the computer terminal. Before Template can react, she inserts the tube into the extended data port and slams it down.

  “Good girl,” I say.

  Template screams. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He rushes over to Nakama and snatches her up like a rag doll. He lifts her by the throat and is choking her, but it is too late. The kill switch has been delivered. Even now, the techno-virus is coursing through the electronic veins of the Overmind and the entire NeXus mainframe, code being rewritten and corrupted.

  Template begins to convulse. I realize the techno-virus is degrading his system as well, since he shares a remote connection—or maybe it is some kind of hive-mind link; I would be fascinated if I were not dying—to the Overmind’s system. Template jerks violently and drops Nakama onto the floor. She is gasping for breath but still alive.

  The Overmind itself begins to spark and shake. The orb, its luminescent brain, has turned an intensely bright red color and is steadily fading in and out.

  Finally, Template’s body crumples to the floor with a loud thud. He spasms forcefully as he lies there, plasma-like fluid oozing from his metallic mouth.

  Then both the machine-man and his alien master die with one last, appreciable shudder.

  It is over.

  But so am I.

  As my generator fails, I see Nakama huddled against the wall near the computer terminal.

  “Thank you … Ritsuko,” I say. “Go …”

  I know these will be my last words. Nakama looks over at me through her pain and tears. I hope she is able to escape from here. I hope she can write her story, expose the truth. I wish I could be around for that, but …

  … the end is here.

  I have no more power.

  My badly damaged energy source fails, and my beautiful mind slips away.

  Forever.

  _off-line.

  TRAVELER

  1. Six Souls

  Nico Mauvais was a killer.

  Not the kind that murders in the heat of passion after the discovery of a spouse’s infidelity. Nor was he a garden-variety street thug, taking out rival gang members in a never-ending game of ludicrous one-upmanship. He wasn’t even a paid assassin, rubbing out inconvenient public officials for the highest bidder.

  No, Nico was the worst kind in the dark pantheon of villains who take the lives of others. He was a homicidal maniac, a serial killer, a predator.

  A specialist.

  Nico was a killer of children.

  He’d been terrorizing the sleepy midwestern community of Calamity Falls, Kansas for many weeks. Originally, he had no particular plan to come to Calamity Falls, but that was where he’d ended up, one hot afternoon in early June. A sign along the interstate between Topeka and Wichita had read: Calamity Falls, a quiet place to live, and something about the concept offended Nico’s sadistic sensibilities.

  He’d been driving through Kansas for a long time. Barren, boring Kansas.

  Then he saw that sign.

  He pulled to the side of the road and stared at the sign for a long time. Nico’s mind had been anything but a quiet place since he was a child. The Traveler inside him was constantly talking, always telling him what to do. The only way he could ever get the thing to shut up was to give in to its incessant demands. Not that Nico minded all that much. He rather enjoyed the work the Traveler always had for him. It was dirty work, sometimes messy, but it was also soothing. And it made the Traveler leave him alone.

  But when Nico wasn’t doing the work, his ride-along companion was constantly tormenting him, making him long for the next time he could get some peace and quiet.

  Calamity Falls, a quiet place to live, the sign read. It made him sick. Why should the people of this insignificant hamlet of the plains have quiet when he had so little?

  The Traveler nagged at him. Get yourself to town.

  “Yes,” said Nico.

  Get yourself to Calamity Falls, Nico, and make some noise.

  “I think I might just do that.”

  This pathetic little burg won’t know what hit it, Nico. When we’re done with it, there won’t be another moment of peace or quiet there for a long time.

  “A long time.”

  And so, six weeks and six little bodies later, Nico had single-handedly sent Calamity Falls into a panicked frenzy. The local police were baffled, and the team of FBI agents sent down from Kansas City turned up nothing.

  Nico had been careful; he’d left no evidence at any of the crime scenes. And even if he had, the Traveler would certainly protect him.

  It was sometime after midnight, and Nico was sitting under a solitary oak tree on a modest hill a mile outside the city limits. Not far from where he sat, an old, ill-kept cemetery and beyond that an even older Seventh-Day Adventist church, lay long abandoned. Nico’s Pontiac Grand Prix was hidden beneath an oily tarp behind the church.

  At the bottom of the hill were six little mounds of dirt; one mound in particular had been freshly turned. Nico had just put his sixth victim into the ground and was contemplating unlucky number seven.

  Nico was holding a plastic child’s toy in his hand, a red and gold comic book action hero. It had belonged to young Toby Keene, eleven, victim number six. Nico took it from the child’s backpack. The boy was carrying it on his way home from school, earlier that afternoon.

  Nico always kept something that be
longed to the kids he took. He’d come to find, over the years, that these objects of familiarity would serve to keep a victim just a bit calmer. It made the work fractionally more hassle-free.

  Nico never wasted any time completing the task once he took a child. Nico wasn’t interested in keeping his little passengers locked up for extended periods of time. Or engaging in other activities often associated with the kinds of people who stole children like he did. No, only the act of extinguishing their innocent little lives would serve to keep the Traveler quiet.

  Nico held the plastic toy in his palm and stroked it gently with the index finger of his other hand. He watched the futile red and blue lights of police vehicles racing through the streets of the Falls in the distance.

  The Traveler was making a quiet purring sound in the back of Nico’s brain, but his companion wouldn’t stay sated for long. Still, the town was too hot. Six was quite a body count. Maybe it was time to move on. Surely Nico had done enough damage in Calamity Falls to last a lifetime.

  What are you thinking, Nico? The Traveler was awake again.

  “I just thought that maybe it was about time to be getting on down the ol’ road.”

  We move along when I say it’s time to move along, said the Traveler. You understand me, Nico?

  Nico was rocking back and forth and rubbing the little comic book man faster.

  “Yeah, okay, I just thought—”

  I’ll do the thinking for both of us, you piece of filth! If it weren’t for me, you’d still be back in New Jersey with that pathetic, ugly mother of yours.

  The Traveler was screaming. It made Nico’s head feel like it was going to split in two.

  We stop when I say, and not a minute before!

  Nico conceded. “Yeah, okay, got it. I’ll find us a number seven.”

  He got up and placed the action figure onto one of the low hanging tree branches above him. He posed its articulated limbs just so, a heroic-looking stance with its tiny hands on its tiny hips. Nico smiled and stepped back to admire his work of art.

  The little hero wasn’t alone in the tree. Five other toys kept him company—a pink, stuffed bear (Jenny O’Hare, six years old), a miniature toy dump truck (Hunter Sturgess, 5 years old), a baby doll with yellow curls and a red dress (Stephie Jones, 4 years old), a battery-powered space ship with laser guns that would light up when you pushed a button on the back (Jared Parker, 8 years old), and a Barbie doll that was dressed to look like a Native American woman (Sarah Tillman, 9 years old).

  Nico’s smile faded as he examined the macabre display.

  “No, he’s right,” he said aloud. “You’re not done yet, not complete. There’s definitely room for one more.”

  And with that, Nico plodded off down the hill toward the abandoned church. He would get some sleep and, in the morning, start looking for number seven.

  Unlucky number seven.

  2. Redeemed

  Nico had fitful dreams. Which was strange. He usually slept soundly after putting a little one in the ground. But not tonight. Tonight, something was different. Something was off.

  He woke with a start and reached for the gun he’d stashed underneath the pew.

  It was the darkest part of the night. The church was pitch black, and Nico couldn’t see two inches in front of his face. Still, he had the distinct impression someone was in there with him.

  Nico lay still and listened. But all he could hear was the creaking caused by the blowing wind against the rotted paneling of the church. He poked his head above the back of the pew in front of him and peered into the blackness, toward the raised platform at the front of the sanctuary. He couldn’t see it but something was there. The Traveler could feel it.

  And then there was light. It started as a dull glow and then grew to the intensity of a bright halogen bulb. It made Nico’s eyes water, and he had to put his hand up until he adjusted to the sudden illumination.

  When he dropped his hand again, he was surprised to see the man sitting there, atop the old altar. He was dressed like a business man from the 1940s in a brown suit and tie. Nico couldn’t see the man’s eyes, though. They were hidden in the shadow of the fedora the stranger wore.

  Nico sucked in a breath and brought his gun to bear.

  Shoot, said the Traveler.

  Nico pulled the trigger; a loud pop echoed through the empty space of the church.

  The man didn’t fall, though. He didn’t move a muscle. Nico’s aim was good; he knew it was. He fired again. And again. Nothing.

  The stranger regarded him with an annoying smirk.

  Nico was about to squeeze the trigger a fourth time when the man spoke.

  “Oh, that’s about enough of that, I think.”

  Without warning, the magazine dropped out of Nico’s firearm. The slide clicked back and then popped free like it was loaded on a spring. It fell against the pew in front of him with a clatter.

  “What the—” said Nico.

  “Mr. Mauvais,” said the man. “I’m afraid your time has come to an end.”

  “Wha–who are you?” said Nico.

  “Not your concern,” said the man.

  “You can’t do this!” Nico’s voice sounded like a croak. Only, it wasn’t Nico’s voice. It was the Traveler, speaking with Nico’s mouth. It was the first time anything like that had happened, and it nearly gave Nico a heart attack, right then and there.

  The man on the altar smiled. “Who is that in there? Sounds like … Azazel? Moloch?”

  “You can’t do this!” said the Traveler again. “It is forbidden!”

  The man made a pssshht sound and hopped down from the altar. He stepped off the platform, the light following him as he went. Then he snapped his fingers as if a thought just occurred to him.

  “Sabnoch, then. I would recognize that defiant squawk of yours anywhere. So, is this where you’ve been hiding?”

  Nico rose and made his way to the aisle. It was as if his limbs were not precisely under his own control, and yet, he still felt like the decision to move had been his.

  “I know you, too, Ephraim,” said the Traveler. “And you are not to interfere.”

  The stranger spread his hands out in front of him. “And yet, here I am.”

  Nico ran. He made for the double doors at the back of the church. He slammed into them, but they held fast. Strange, as the doors hadn’t been locked before. Nico pushed again, but the doors wouldn’t budge.

  “We have unfinished business, Sabnoch,” said Ephraim. “Those souls aren’t yours to keep.”

  Nico spun around, and he growled at the man, spittle dribbling down his chin as he bared his teeth.

  “They are mine!” he said. “I have an agreement, a contract.”

  Ephraim made his way down the aisle toward Nico, taking his time. “A contract you’ve violated time and time again. Consider it revoked.”

  “How? How revoked?”

  The man regarded Nico with an incredulous look. “The innocents, Sabnoch. They were off limits, and you know it.”

  “Innocent? No one is innocent. Even those little ones would sin. Eventually.”

  “Your argument lacks weight,” said Ephraim. “Your time is up. Give up the souls or face the consequences. Now!”

  A bright light flashed in the stranger’s hand, and Nico saw a glowing blade appear there. The man held the sword out, its tip pointing straight at Nico’s face.

  The Traveler screamed, and Nico felt a violent spasm in the pit of his stomach. He keeled over and retched. A dark, viscous fluid forced its way up from his gut and gushed out his gaping mouth. He could feel it seeping out his nose, eyes, and ears as well. What was happening?

  After a few seconds, the vile substance seemed to have vacated him completely. It undulated in a dark pool on the wooden planks of the church, and Nico’s face hovered over it as he dry heaved.

  The bile-like stuff began to ripple, and an amorphous shape rose from within it.

  Nico pushed himself away in a hurry. He moved unti
l his back collided with the closed church doors. He then watched in terror as a blob-like mass formed in front of him. Tentacles sprouted from the dark shape. Some became legs that held the strange creature aloft, while others acted more like arms, flailing about and slamming against the pews. The thing just kept growing until the top of it reached the exposed rafters above.

  “Last chance, Sabnoch!” said Ephraim. “The souls. And not just these six. All of them.”

  The monster screamed, and Nico beheld the thing’s gaping maw, lined with thousands of spiked tusks. The beast was nearly all mouth. Nico couldn’t even detect any eyes.

  He pushed himself up and tried the church doors once again. They wouldn’t open. “What do I do, Traveler?”

  No reply.

  And then it occurred to Nico. The Traveler wasn’t just being quiet. It was gone. And Nico thought he knew where.

  The creature lunged at the stranger.

  It used its powerful appendages to maneuver itself forward with amazing speed. It crashed into the altar at the far end of the room, but Ephraim had already moved out of its way.

  He was standing with his back to Nico. Glowing arcs radiated from the man’s shoulder blades like fountains of gold. They vaguely resembled … wings?

  “So be it,” said Ephraim.

  In a blur of motion, he sped toward the Traveler and swung his gleaming blade in a downward, hacking motion.

  The creature dodged to the side, and the blade flashed as it cut cleanly through several of the whipping tentacles on the thing’s left side. A piercing shriek filled the little church, and the monster lunged upward. It smashed into the rafters and dislodged two of them completely. The roof at the front of the room buckled and threatened to collapse, but a single remaining support beam managed to keep it in place.

  The Traveler thrust an arm at its attacker, but Ephraim easily dodged. He laughed.