Has The World Ended Yet?

by Peter Darbyshire

  I shouldn’t have lied. I don’t mean in those debriefings, when I said I didn’t know what happened. I mean I shouldn’t have lied about not knowing Providence. Then Smyth wouldn’t have let us come. Then Providence would still be alive, and I wouldn’t be what I am now.

  Then maybe the world wouldn’t be ending.

  But I did lie, and here we are, buried together.

  * * *

  THERE’S A moment of silence after the metal sounds. Then the pipes start to shake and rattle in place. I know what’s coming down them.

  Like that’ll stop the ghosts.

  I feel them stirring inside me now, restless to get out. The periods between them waking are growing shorter. Soon they won’t sleep at all.

  Soon they will be free.

  The water erupts from the pipes and pours into the room. Within seconds, it’s up to my ankles. There’s nowhere for it to escape. It’ll rise until it reaches the ceiling.

  And then you’ll turn the temperature down and freeze me, won’t you? You’ll turn the water to ice.

  You’ll freeze me like the ghosts had been frozen all those ages.

  * * *

  THE THING I didn’t tell you in the debriefings was I was the one who woke the ghosts.

  Providence and I found a tomb half-melted out of the ice. A stone building with a stone door. It was like the ancient crypts you see in cemeteries, once you looked past it not having any right angles or even straight edges. It was like something fluid that had been fixed in place by the ice. Or maybe just our lights.

  The soldiers forced open the door with a crowbar and scanned the inside with their guns, then nodded at us. So that tells you how much good they were.

  The tomb was empty except for the sarcophagus. Which resembled any sarcophagus I’d ever seen as much as the tomb resembled a human tomb. It was a rough oval shape, but there were stone outcroppings here and there in what seemed like random directions. As if it housed filaments, or maybe tentacles. Or who knew what?

  Except, of course, we all know what it housed now, thanks to the things that haunt our city. The things that live in the shadows. The things that spread the shadows.

  Providence and I decided it was a sarcophagus because that’s what we were looking for as archaeologists. And we were right. So we opened it like we’d opened so many similar resting places before.

  No.

  I opened it.

  I took the soldiers’ crowbar and levered it into a crack in the sarcophagus and popped the lid. It made a sound like the screaming of the pipes when you released the water.

  And the screaming went on as the ghosts came out.

  How can I explain them to you?

  Imagine the things that live in the darkest depths of the oceans, the things you can only glimpse in nightmares. Now put them in a partially thawed tomb in a city buried under the Antarctic ice. And try to imagine the way they felt waking after being trapped there for thousands of years.

  Maybe I was spared because I was the one who freed them. Maybe because they needed a host. I have no idea. But I wish they hadn’t spared me.

  Yes, I know what happened. They took the others. They took Providence and the soldiers. They went out into the Frozen City and took everyone. Nothing but screams escaped the shadows.

  And they hid them in me.

  Who knows why. Maybe the ghosts are feeding on them while resting in me, growing stronger.

  Maybe the ghosts turned Providence and the others into more ghosts.

  Maybe the ghosts saw how much I loved Providence.

  Maybe the ghosts saw how I would do anything to free her.

  * * *

  I GET INTO the coffin to stay dry a few minutes longer. I stare up at the blank stone ceiling overhead. The water splashes around the edges of the coffin.

  I know you’re trying to do the right thing.

  Just like I tried to do the right thing when I came back from the Frozen City.

  They sealed the tunnel with ice when I climbed back out of it, alone. They left the robots down there and watched the live feeds, but nothing else happened. The ghosts were gone. They were in me now.

  They put me on a plane back home. The plane had arrived filled with soldiers and left with me and no one else. Smyth and the others who had stayed in the base while we descended into the city flew out on a different plane. I was dangerous cargo now.

  I spent a month in quarantine. They studied me with X-rays and MRI scans and radiation meters and all sorts of things I didn’t understand. They didn’t know what they were looking for. So of course they didn’t find it.

  More men named Smyth interviewed me in a conference room with metal walls deep under the city. They asked the same questions over and over and recorded the answers on multiple recorders. They wanted to know what had happened to everyone who had disappeared. They wanted to know what had happened to Providence and the soldiers who had been with us.

  I told them I didn’t remember anything.

  I told them I didn’t remember anything because I didn’t want them to know what I had done to Providence.

  I told them I didn’t remember anything because I still didn’t understand what had happened.

  So I said nothing, and they let me go back to my job. The men named Smyth said they’d be in touch.

  I didn’t have any teaching duties, as I was officially on sabbatical now. I’d been expecting to be part of the exploration team of the Frozen City for months, if not years. I had nothing to do. I sat in the quiet of my office and tried to make sense of things.

  Instead, I heard the voices.

  At first I thought it was students playing some new instrument outside. They were always experimenting. One year it would be Japanese drums, the next it would be Mongolian battle horns.

  But the more I listened, the more I realized it wasn’t music. It was voices. It sounded like chanting, but chanting underwater. It took me days of listening to realize the chanting was coming from inside me. It followed me around, in my office, in my home, in the grocery store, fading in and out. No one else showed any signs of hearing it, and I worried I had caught some sort of illness from the Frozen City.

  I couldn’t sleep. The voices drove me into the night. I roamed the streets in my car, wondering what they were trying to tell me. Until I came across the men assaulting the woman.

  And that’s how I became a hero.

  I saw them dragging her off the street and into the dark parking lot behind a church. Three of them. I jumped out of the car and ran at them without a second thought, because I saw her face.

  Providence.

  I screamed at them to free her. Only it wasn’t a scream that came out. It was a ghost.

  The same chanting voice I’d been hearing for days rose up inside me. “Fhtagn ssw’nafh!” I cried. Or, more accurately, I burbled. For now I sounded like I was talking underwater. That may have had something to do with the ghost exiting my mouth.

  Even now, after so many of the ghosts have escaped into the world, I still find them hard to describe. This one was like a cross between a jellyfish and the remains of a man. It flopped onto the ground and shook for a moment, and we all stared at it. Me, the other men, the woman who I realized now wasn’t Providence at all. I’d never seen her before in my life.

  “Wgahst’nar phl’unk!” I said. I suddenly felt so empty I fell to my knees.

  And the ghost rose up and threw itself at them. The men screamed as it dragged them into the shadows behind the church. And then the screams turned into other sounds I still don’t know how to describe. But I don’t have to. You’ve heard them at night while you cower in your bedrooms.

  The woman screamed, too, but it left her alone. She ran off into the night, and the sounds in the shadows ceased. And then it was just me and the silence again.

  Only I wasn’t alone. I could feel the ghost in the shadows. Watching me. Waiting. For what, I didn’t know at the time. All I thought was that it was over. That whatever had crept into me in
the Frozen City had left me now. That it wasn’t my problem anymore.

  I threw myself back into my car and drove home as fast as I could. I locked myself in my bedroom and kept all the lights on. For the first time in days, I slept.

  I woke to a story in the newspaper about what had happened. The woman who wasn’t Providence had gone to the police. She said three men she didn’t know had grabbed her on the street when she was walking home after her shift at the bar. She said they’d been drinking in the bar all night. They were trying to drag her into an empty parking lot for God knows what when another man had shown up. She said he yelled at them and something came out of his mouth, something that took the other men into the shadows. She said she thought he was some sort of thing, because she saw tentacles waving from his face, and his hair was floating, like he was in the water. The police cautioned women about walking alone at night and taking drugs.

  I went in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, but I didn’t see any tentacles. My hair stayed matted to my head.

  I got in the shower to wash away the memories of the night before. And the voices started inside me again.

  * * *

  YOU KNOW the rest, of course. That woman was just the beginning. There were many more after her. Too many to just pass off as drug hallucinations or mental illness. You didn’t know what was going on. Neither did I.

  All I knew was the voices grew inside me with their strange chanting, night after night – “Urbl’phhar mypr’ttsh urbl’phhar” – until I couldn’t stand it any longer and went out into the dark to escape them.

  And every night they drove me to Providence.

  Providence being pulled into a van by two men in the parking lot of a grocery store, until I jumped out of my car and yelled at them. And a thing like a squid with crab legs slipped from my mouth and ran at them, wrapping both up in its tentacles and dragging them screaming into the van. It slammed the doors shut behind it and the woman who wasn’t Providence screamed even louder than the men and got into her own car and drove away, leaving the groceries lying on the ground around a trail of water and slime that led from me to the van.

  Providence being beaten by a man in a house as I drove past. I stopped and got out of the car and yelled at him and a thing like an eel made of a thousand other eels flew through the glass without breaking it, and the lights inside went out and the cries began.

  Providence being held hostage in a liquor store robbery. The man inside wore a stocking over his head as he held a gun to her cheek. The police turned to look at me as I hit the brakes on my car and jumped out, screaming. A scream that travelled through the air like a manta ray made of writhing shadows, a darkness that engulfed the man and took him into the back room, where he disappeared forever, just like all the others, as I got back in the car and drove away, leaving the woman who wasn’t Providence shaking with terror in my wake, the cops standing there not knowing what to do at all.

  After that, I started wearing a mask I bought in a gift shop. It was really just a white strip that covered my eyes. But it was enough for the media.

  Ghost, they called me. The first real superhero.

  * * *

  THE WATER is at the edge of the coffin now, so I close the lid. That won’t stop it from getting in, of course. But after decades of digging up the dead, I know there’s a custom to these things.

  I hope you’ve inscribed the proper warnings on the outside of this tomb. I’d add my own if I could. But, as we all know now, the warnings only work if the people who dig up the tomb can read them.

  And who knows what strange creatures will find us?

  “Pthhh’gatt mlew’hag,” I say, the words escaping me. The ghosts sense something happening. They sense another entombment. They want to get out.

  And I can’t stop them.

  I’ve never been able to stop them.

  And the truth is I’ve never really wanted to stop them.

  * * *

  I ROAMED THE night, fighting crime. Releasing the ghosts within me to take the criminals into the shadows. To make more shadows in the corners of the city.

  Like any hero, I even had a secret sanctuary. In the days, I visited Providence’s grave. Sometimes I brought her flowers. I sat on the grassy plot for hours at a time, listening to the music inside me. I felt most comfortable there when it rained.

  There had been a small funeral service for Providence after I returned from Antarctica. I signed off on the termination paperwork. Cause of death was listed as disappearance while on a freelance dig. Not connected to the university at all, so the department wasn’t liable. Everyone came out to the service. I was the only one who wept. Which is probably how someone put things together and started the rumours that brought Smyth back to me.

  Yes, I had the secret sanctuary, the tragic past, the mask. All the trappings of a superhero. I wasn’t really fighting crime, though. I wasn’t really a superhero.

  I was just looking for a way to free Providence.

  I knew that the women I kept seeing as Providence weren’t her. I knew it was just a trick of the ghosts to anger me, to make me release them. I figured the only way they could know about Providence and me was if they had her in there with them, trapped in me somehow.

  And I thought if I let enough of the ghosts out, maybe she could slip out, too. Maybe they’d free her, or maybe she could find a way to escape. Maybe we could be together again.

  So I started looking for crimes where maybe none existed.

  I drove down to the hooker stroll. I put on my mask and stood near a couple of sex workers on a corner. They looked at me but I shook my head, so they went back to waving at the passing cars. Every now and then one would slow, but it always sped up again when the driver saw me.

  I only had to wait a few minutes before a man got out of another car parked down the street and walked up to me. He told me to stop harassing his women. I told him I was just keeping an eye out for criminals. He told me to move along before there was a real crime. I told him I was here for the real crime. He lifted his shirt to show me a gun tucked into his pants. I opened my mouth and screamed ghosts. Two of them came out. One took him into an alley, the other went after the women. I didn’t care. They were criminals, too, in their own way.

  Neither of the ghosts were Providence.

  I stopped at a random bar. I put my wallet on the counter and pulled money out of it to pay for drinks. It was stuffed with twenties; I’d gone to the bank first. I made sure everyone could see my money. I got drunk and then I left. I heard men following me.

  I staggered into an alley and fumbled my mask on. When I turned to face them, they had knives in their hands. They dropped them at the sight of my mask and ran. They didn’t even make it to the street before the ghosts pulled them deeper into the alley.

  The ghosts weren’t Providence.

  Sometimes I didn’t even need a crime to release the ghosts. I was stopped at a red light when I was rear-ended by a taxi driver. He got out of his car saying something about the brakes. I got out of mine screaming, and the ghosts took him and slithered down a manhole with him. The ghosts weren’t Providence.

  The people in the back seat of the taxi filmed the whole thing and sold the film to the media. Luckily, I still had my mask on from when I’d gone after some street-corner drug dealers. But things changed after that.

  The next morning I woke up to a new headline: Superhero? Or supervillain? A photo of me with something unrecognizable emerging from my mouth. Something long and sinewy, and wet and serrated. My eyes were completely black. It was the first time I’d seen myself releasing a ghost.

  I didn’t recognize the man in the photo.

  * * *

  THE WATER seeps into the coffin now. Streams of it coming in through the cracks. My whole body shakes as I struggle to contain the ghosts. I can hear more metal sounds as you do whatever it is you’re doing with the pipes.

  Releasing the chemicals that will turn the water to ice?

  Releas
ing poison?

  Releasing something you’ve come up with to make the ghosts sleep?

  None of it will matter. The ghosts always wake in the end. The ghosts always escape.

  * * *

  YOU KNEW it was me when the city started to change, didn’t you? When the buildings began to cast dark shadows that didn’t move no matter the position of the sun.

  When the buildings began to twist upon themselves in impossible shapes.

  When the symbols started to appear in the sidewalks and on the walls.

  When the voices began to chant in the night, from the alleys and the sewers and the abandoned buildings.

  When people started to go missing in record numbers.

  That’s when Smyth came to visit me in my office. I was sitting there, listening to the songs inside me, when he walked in without knocking even though the door was locked. He looked at the glyphs I’d marked on the walls with a knife and my blood, and then he sat down in the chair where students had once sat.

  Where Providence had once sat.

  “You need to tell me what’s going on,” he said.

  “Ssshhllaat’in verden’tik,” I said.

  “Tell me what happened in the Frozen City.”

  “Ia ia ia ia.”

  He looked at my desk. At the photo of Providence surrounded by a ring of teeth and bits of bone and fingernails and other things. “You lied to us, and you’re the only one who came back.”

  I wanted to tell him I wasn’t sure I had come back. I wanted to tell him that even if I had, I thought I wasn’t the only one.

  “Fffhtg’pp,” I said instead, the voices welling up inside me.

  “We’re going to have to do something about this,” he said.

  “Myllrhet’et,” I laughed.

  After he left, I went down the hall to look at myself in the restroom mirror. My eyes were black, and my skin was writhing, flesh-coloured worms. The head of the department came in to the restroom but stopped when he saw me.

  “Ghost,” he said. “You’re the Ghost.”

  So I unleashed the ghosts on him.

  After all, whether I was a superhero or a supervillain, I had to protect my secret identity.