The door began to close and, no matter how much he strained at it, he was unable to stop it from shutting completely and he could do nothing but watch the events in the hallway beyond through the small window.
The plasma had caught her by the ankle. Oily colours flowed across her body, the protoplasm gripping her tight.
She struggled hard to no avail.
Their eyes met, just once. Her mouth opened as if she was trying to speak, and that was when the swirling blob engulfed her head and the noises from her throat ceased to sound human.
The protoplasm surged again, and suddenly the window of the cab was coated with slime.
The cop gagged and fought hard to keep down the bile as a human foot, still trailing bloody threads behind it, floated across his view.
She was the second victim.
***
The cop spent the next fifteen minutes persuading his superiors that there was a problem in the tower block. In that time the plasma ate the little old lady in number 621 who played her radio too loud, the three kids jamming on electric guitars in 437 and the family in 223 who had been watching the latest Disney animation on their 60 inch TV screen.
By the time the cop’s backup team arrived it had already filled the whole of the ground floor public area. The cop made sure he was first back through the door, but what met him made his step back immediately.
The floor was covered by a shimmering rainbow blob nearly four feet thick. There were things embedded in it – blood and hair and bones and eyes, all jumbled like a manic jigsaw, fused and running in to one another as if assembled by a demented sculptor. And in the middle of the floor something rose up out of the mass, a forearm stripped to the bone, skeletal fingers reaching for the roof. On each fingertip a grey, opaque eyeball stared blindly out at him.
That wasn’t the worst thing though. The worst thing was the way the bones of the wrist cracked and groaned as the hand turned, the fingers flexing and bending as all five eyes rolled in bony sockets and stared straight at him. The mocking cacophony of high fluting crashed discordantly over him.
He raised his gun and fired.
The noise echoed loudly in the hallway.
The plasma surged again, enfolding the cop until he fell into it, like a drowning man going down for the last time. The plasma rolled forward forcing its way out onto the sidewalk beyond.
The backup team saw what happened to the cop. They started in with their own weapons.
The air filled with the noise of gunfire.
The plasma surged and took them.
Sirens blared as the squad cars of more backup teams arrived in the street.
The plasma surged and took them too.
***
The Mayor got involved ten minutes later. Assembled in his room were the chief of police, the Mayor’s press officer and the chief of the fire service.
“So what is it doing now?” the Mayor asked.
“Still growing,” the chief of police answered. “And still feeding.” The policeman was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.
“How many casualties?” the Mayor whispered.
“Too many to count,” the press officer said. “It has covered three blocks… and we don’t know if anybody is still alive in the area.”
“That’s it,” the Mayor said. “Call in the National Guard… and somebody close that window!”
Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.
***
People screamed.
The plasma surged.
It took thirty minutes to muster the National Guard. In that time, the plasma spread by five blocks in every direction.
If there was a noise, it consumed whatever made it. Trucks, people, dogs and subway cars, all fell under the surging protoplasm, and all served to feed its exponential growth.
The National Guard brought in jeeps.
The plasma ate them.
They brought in choppers.
The plasma ate them… protoplasmic tendrils shooting skyward to suck the machines out of the air.
The Guard used bazookas.
The plasma surged, and suddenly, the Guard were gone.
The city was full of noise.
The plasma fed.
***
The President got involved twenty minutes later. Assembled in his room were the chief of staff, the head of Homeland Security and the Director of the FBI.
“So what is it doing now?” the President asked.
“Still growing,” the head of Homeland Security answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.
“How many casualties?” the President whispered.
“Too many to count,” the chief of staff said. “It has taken most New York State… and we don’t know if anybody is still alive in the area. It will be here in minutes.”
“That’s it,” the President said. “Call in the Air Force. We’re going to nuke it… and somebody shut that window!”
Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.
***
The plasma lay along the eastern seaboard covering most of New York and New Jersey.
Flocks of birds cawed and fluttered.
The plasma ate them.
Three passenger jets inward bound from Europe passed overhead at thirty thousand feet.
The plasma threw up tendrils and ate them.
The bomber carrying the nuke came in at over a thousand miles per hour.
The plasma ate it.
The nuke exploded creating a fireball of white heat and radiation at more than a million degrees centigrade.
The plasma ate it, surged, and headed for Canada.
***
The President of the European Union got involved an hour later. Assembled in his room were the heads of the UK, France and Germany. The President of Russia was on a TV screen, linked in by satellite.
“So what is it doing now?” the President of the EU asked.
“Still growing,” the Russian President answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.
“How many casualties?” the President whispered.
“Too many to count,” the Prime Minister of the UK said. “It has covered most of North America and is heading South and East fast… and we don’t know if anybody is still alive anywhere. It will be here in minutes.”
“We only have one option,” the President said. `We hit it with every missile NATO and Russia have, and hope for the best. And somebody close that window!”
Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.
***
Over a thousand nuclear weapons were launched in the next fifteen minutes… enough firepower to start, or finish, a global war, enough mega-tonnage to destroy every city on the planet.
The plasma ate them all and surged.
***
The last human beings on the planet got involved an hour later. Assembled in a lab at the South Pole were scientists from the US, Brazil, France and Germany.
“So what is it doing now?” the Brazilian asked.
“Still growing,” the head scientist answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.
“Is there anybody left?” someone whispered.
“I doubt it,” the Frenchman said. “The last we heard it had covered the rest of the planet and was heading south fast.”
“We only have one option,” the head scientist said. `We keep quiet, and hope it passes.”
The crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.
The scientists sat in silence, barely breathing.
Their generator kicked in noisily.
The plasma surged.
–
–
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries, the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others.
His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies. His current best seller is The Invasion, a sci-fi alien invasion tale with mass carnage, plucky survivors, and last minute rescues. It has been as high as #2 in the Kindle science fiction charts (and #4 in Kindle horror ). Click here to view and buy William Meikle’s books at Amazon.com.
Illustration by mimulux.
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NOTE: Images contained in this Lovecraft eZine are Copyright ©2006-2012 art-by-mimulux. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.
The Brown Tower
by John Prescott
One really doesn’t know what to do with one’s self during the winter in a small southern town. Most of the trees are still green, the seasons are all but nonexistent except for the lingering humid airs of summer, which can be akin to a twenty four hour sauna, and it can be brutal, deadly in fact if one is not careful. Snow is an occasional gift every three to four years, but is never around longer than a day.
An occasional flower may try to get an early start in the New Year, but more times than not it will only get batted down by the short two week span of Jack Frost’s chilling breath that billows across the land, leaving them dead or wilting in the cool air of January.
The typical winter months here in the south are cold, however, it’s a different kind of cold than the standard fare. The high humid air mixes with the low cool air making an outside stroll during the daylight hours almost unbearable. The humidity seeps into the bones causing them to ache like rotting teeth, and the inhabitants who suffer from severe arthritis often find themselves thinking of suicide to ease the pain from their screaming inflamed joints. But life moves on as it always does. Time stops for no one.
The town, streets, and parks are like a ghost town during this time. If one stared long enough, one might even see ghosts walking down the streets reminding the town’s inhabitants of more pleasant days. Even the animals are scarce, all warm and in their elusive hiding places waiting for the first mild renewing winds of spring.
But there is something special about a small southern town that can’t be explained. It may let you leave, but its strong unseen and cancerous pull it sends out to you once you are away is strong; so strong that many that leave find their way back after ten or fifteen years, finishing their lives where they began. It is magical in a way and many fall doomed under its spell.
It was during this time in the quaint town of Brayton that two old friends, Lane McKenzie and Mark Stillwater, drove across the only bridge in town, succumbed to the small town’s spell. They joked and commented on the weather, which was a bleak overcast gray devoid of any such thing as sunlight. Lane’s sputtering slapstick of a car was having trouble climbing the steep incline of the bridge when he looked over his shoulder through the dirty glass and saw the tower.
“I wonder what’s up there,” Lane said and pushed the accelerator pedal to its max.
Mark moved in his seat, drank a little from his coke can and eased forward to get a better view of the monument. “I have always wanted to check that place out. I think it’s been here since the town was founded, or that’s what my grandpa told me. I asked him about it a couple times when I was still in grade school.”
That was all that was needed to break the monotony of a cold bleak winter’s day in Brayton. Lane’s eyes widened a bit at the news from Mark. “Really, what did he say?”
Mark sat back in his seat, lit a cigarette and said nothing for a few moments as he thought back to the conversations between him and his grandfather. Lane stopped the car at the top of the bridge, its idling sounded like a metal trash can being shaken with small stones inside. Mark didn’t notice. Lane thought they were safe. It was past five o’clock and the day was coming to a close. The businesses rolled up the carpets, the streets and roads deserted. It was a ghost town; a small southern town in the grips of winter. The world would succumb to darkness soon marking the end of another day.
“I think,” Mark hesitated, “…yeah, I think we were beside a fire the first time grandpa told me about the tower. I remember his face. It was dark that night, but the flames from the fire lit his face up like a pumpkin on Halloween.”
“What did he say?” Lane asked as he eased the car forward, going slow so he could hear what Mark had to say.
“What he said bothered me. It was the way his voice sounded when he told me about it. It was whiskey laden, but an odd comfort was in his voice. Now that I remember back on it, there might have had a tinge of fear, too.”
Lane looked over at Mark. His eyes were deep in thought; like a child lost in wonderment. Lane waited patiently for the rest.
“He said bad things happened there one year. Things he wouldn’t mention. Things the whole town tried to forget about. Grandpa said he tried to erase it from his memory, but it wouldn’t go away. It was stuck in his mind and held there by some odd sense of gloom. He said Frankie Guuznelle died there in the fall of ’33. I remember him saying others died there too, but he couldn’t remember their names. ‘They were lost to me and forgotten,’ he said.” Mark went silent. Lane looked on, even more intrigued by the story.
Mark went on to continue, “’I remember now’, he said, ‘it happened at night; a cold winter’s night when no one in their right mind would have been out and about. I was working when I heard the news that Frankie had died and then had to take a break when I found out where he was. Most say it was just bad luck and slight miss-step, but I think we all knew better. If we did we didn’t say anything about it to each other. The whole town including myself hushed it up and swept it under the rug like most small towns do. But we knew it was always there, always in our memory in the dark empty spaces of our minds; haunting us, giving us nightmares. We could see it in our eyes when we passed each other during the day. We made no mention of it. It was unspoken and just understood.’
Grandpa wouldn’t say anything else about that night or about Frankie and what actually happened to him. He just sat there staring at the fire mumbling unheard words as the fire and stars danced across his thinking eyes.”
“So you never found out,” Lane asked as they reached the bottom of the bridge.
“I tried to,” Mark said. Lane could see he was deep in thought, “but I came up with nothing. Grandpa was right. No one I asked would tell me anything about it.” Mark shrugged then looked out the window to the empty road before them. “I guess word got around that I was asking things I shouldn’t be asking. Most stopped me before I even began the question and hurried me off telling me to think of brighter things and not dwell on the past.
The only other time I got any sort of information out of grandpa was about three years later when a ride like this one sparked the interest in me again. When I went to see him he was half asleep in his chair, caught in the tugs and onset of an afternoon nap. I asked him again hoping to catch him off-guard about the tower and he replied with heavy breaths and half closed eyes, ‘was the Billingstein’s fault, all of it,’ he said, ‘bunch of back-wood heathens who started the rumors. They were the ones who built the tower and cursed it; cursed it with something terrible; something unseen and not of this world. Most called them witches, but I always thought they were something darker, more evil – an inbred lot that could only get up to no good business at all. Went out on their property one time with some locals, and didn’t like what I saw. Strange shaped rocks dotted their dead waste fields and the woods, if one could call half dead trees woods. It gave me nightmares and ill thoughts when I was alone in the dark waiting for sleep to come for over a year after visiting the place.’ Then h
e fell silent for a moment before continuing. ‘It all started because of money, don’t it always, though?’ He snorted coming fully awake and I could see fear etched in his face and his eyes went wide with alarm realizing he was telling me things he had never intended for me to hear. That was all I got out of him that day and from that day on he would shush me whenever I talked or questioned him about it. I begged him to tell me more that day, the only way a young boy can, I promised him anything and everything, but he wouldn’t budge. He shooed me away from him after that telling me it was his nap time and to not bother him about it again. I did as I was told and went outside to play. The tower was forgotten in short time. At my age a young boy’s attention span lasts about as long as two steps outside the door to the world beyond. As time wore on I eventually forgot completely about the tower until today, when you mentioned it,” Mark said, and threw his cigarette out the cracked window noticing that the car had been stopped.
“Well, we are going to find out if anything is in that tower,” Lane said, and turned off the motor of his car.
Mark looked out his side window to see where they were and didn’t realize that during his story Lane had turned left off the bridge and drove towards the object of their conversation. He looked through the front windshield and there it stood before them, the brown tower. They had arrived.
Mark’s door creaked when he shut it. He walked to the front of the car where Lane was now leaning against the hood. Mark joined him and looked up.
The tower greeted them both with unpleasant feelings. It was tall, about two hundred feet in height. It reached high into the sky daring and defying anything to harm it. Two lone windows were at the top and set on opposite sides. They were small and didn’t appear to let any light enter their square openings. The roof was made of dark gray slate and was cracked in several places. The tower itself appeared to have been made out of old hand-mixed concrete. Even at this distance the rough sides could be seen. Years of rain water stained the tower giving it its brown color. Darker stains rain down the length of the tower at odd places and looked like old blood. Mark shuddered at the sight. No vines or creeping sumac climbed its rough uneven surface. It wasn’t allowed.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011 Page 2
