Return of the Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror

by Tim Curran

  “No way out. Not for you,” he tells them as he smashes his hand against the ignition. And all the way down, Anatoly is laughing.

  CHIMERA

  Sam Gafford

  “… and reports continue to come into the WCVB newsroom regarding outbreaks of random violence connected with mental health facilities. The CDC has become involved in the investigation to determine if the instances are a result of bacterial or pharmacological origin. Now here’s Kelly Shapiro to give us a sneak peak of what’s happening on today’s edition of MASSACHUSETTS MORNING!”

  “Shut that fucking thing off,” Lt. Jeff Byers said as he poured himself another cup of coffee. The morning was supposed to be his quiet time, when he got himself mentally ready for work. As a cop, he never knew what he might run into on the streets that day, so those few minutes of peace and quiet had become precious to him.

  “I’m watching it,” said his wife, Teri, who was spread prone over the couch. Once, Teri had been a real bombshell, a beautiful blonde with big eyes and a shape to match. But time had not been kind to Teri, and the years had left their mark on her face and figure. Her hair was brittle now, with no luster or shine. Her robe was open and she was naked under it, but only out of indifference, not from any sense of seduction or sexuality.

  Jeff slapped her hard in the back of her head and she quickly shut off the television.

  “When the hell is that piece of shit son of yours going to get out of bed?”

  Teri kept her head facing forward, not daring to make eye-contact. “He’ll be up in a little while,” she said. “He’s going to the university for those tests today.”

  Shaking his head, Jeff put his coffee down and started heading upstairs. “‘Tests’, my ass. Just another fucking excuse not to do anything.”

  Afraid to move, Teri hoped that her son heard Jeff stomping up the stairs soon enough to get out of bed and out of the way of his stepfather. She couldn’t risk moving, so just closed her robe and withdrew inside herself, wondering if she dared to turn on the television again.

  Upstairs, Jeff walked down the hallway to his stepson’s room and, not bothering to knock, threw the door open. The boy, William, was still asleep. If an art director had been asked to create a typical twenty-year-old goth-metalhead’s bedroom, they would have created William’s room. There were posters on the wall of bands with strange, foreign names. The window shades and curtains were tightly closed. A television in the corner droned on with music videos that few people would have recognized. William was lying face down on the unmade bed, on top of the covers. He wore all black, as usual, and his hair was dyed into a spikey, dark tangle. He had a nose ring and multiple earrings, along with weird tattoos that looked incomprehensible but had a sinister pattern. On his left arm was what looked like some sort of humanoid octopus with tentacles that wrapped around a circle with a symbol inside it like a cross between a hieroglyphic and a Japanese kanji. Basically, it was as if William and this room had been created for the sole purpose of pissing Jeff off and it worked very well.

  Jeff grabbed William by the hair and threw him out of bed. “Time to get up, spaz,” he said, “go out and do something for a change.”

  William lay in a pile of discarded snack bags and dirty clothes. He had knocked over an ashtray and the contents had spilled onto the carpeting, already making an invincible stain. “Fuck you, asshole!” he shouted.

  Downstairs, Teri cringed as she listened.

  Because of his training, Jeff knew just where to hit to not leave a visible mark and, because he had spent a lifetime hitting smaller people, enjoyed it as well. A quick punch to the side made William curl up like an armadillo but Jeff grabbed the boy’s face and held it to his.

  “I’m not telling you again, fucker. I want you out of my house. Gone. I don’t give a fuck where you go but you’d better be out of here by the weekend or me and a couple of my pals will take you out by the river and settle this.”

  He shoved the boy back down and turned to leave when William asked, “Don’t you ever get tired of being a stereotype, Jeff?”

  The man snorted a laugh. “We all are, kid. Ain’t nothing new in Arkham anymore.”

  “Dr. Madison, should our viewers be alarmed by this increase in violence?” the perky blonde newscaster asked one of the smaller talking heads on the screen.

  “No, not at all; our evidence shows that only those with serious and previous psychiatric disorders are affected. This is nothing more than a case of ‘mob mentality’ and will pass soon enough.”

  Slowly, the sleep subjects were waking up.

  One by one, they sat up in their beds, and attendants busily detached the monitor sensors and brought them cups of water. There were five subjects this time; the empty sixth bed was a painful sore that no one wanted to notice or admit was even there. Three women and two men sat there with body language that suggested a long, agonizing struggle instead of a simple night’s sleep.

  “There’re more spikes,” said Elaine Andrews to Dr. Munroe, head of the sleep lab at Miskatonic University. Munroe was a small man with crinkly hair that had begun to bald enough that he had finally started paying attention to male-hair-growth commercials on late-night television. He’d never been married and his glasses were thick. More than once, he had noticed the supple, full figure of his student assistant, Ms. Andrews, and at night, would fantasize about violating her in obscene ways. She, for her part, pitied Dr. Munroe when she thought of him at all.

  “I can see that,” Dr. Munroe said, looking at the brainwave printouts. Each subject had been closely monitored all night and their sleep patterns recorded. Not for the first time since he had started this study into ‘night terrors,’ Munroe noticed something that bothered him. “Look at this,” Dr. Munroe said, taking the opportunity to lean over Elaine so he could smell her red hair.

  “What am I looking at?” she asked.

  “Here,” Dr. Munroe pointed to two of the patterns. “Right near the beginning of REM sleep. See how these two are virtually identical? It’s as if their brains are synchronized. Then, they’re joined by a third. Finally, all five are sharing the same pattern, leading to this.” He pointed at the graph which showed a huge spike in all five patterns. “They all spike together here and then break apart again. Then there’s nothing for the rest of the night.”

  Dr. Munroe looked out of the observation window at the subjects as they were beginning to move about and head towards the restrooms. “Did you notice anything unusual last night? While they were sleeping?”

  Elaine shook her head. “No; nothing, doctor. They tossed and turned like they always do. There was some whimpering but nothing major. No anguish patterns.”

  He looked at the spike on the printouts. It had to have been some sort of night terror—but were they all having the same one?

  “I want to see the post-sleep interviews as quickly as possible. Oh, and remember that we have a new subject coming in today. William Byers. He’s a replacement for … well, you know.”

  Elaine nodded her head. Together they watched the subjects shuffle out of the room like zombies mumbling for ‘coffee’ instead of ‘brains.’

  “Breaking news out of our foreign affiliates. An earthquake measuring a record 7.8 on the Richter scale was recorded this morning in the South Pacific Ocean. Tsunami alerts are being issued and initial reports state that a large new land mass has been sighted roughly 100 nautical miles from the island of Ponape. We will report any updates as they are received and now we return to ‘The Maury Povich Show’ currently in progress.”

  “Where were you last night?” Teri asked her son without taking her attention away from the television where a large woman was breathlessly anticipating the results of a DNA paternity test.

  “Just out,” William answered, eating dry cereal from a bowl.

  She shrugged. “Fine. I don’t want to know. Then I won’t have to lie when the police come.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘Dad’?”

  Teri smashed her c
igarette out in the overloaded ashtray and lit another. “Son of a bitch isn’t your dad. Don’t call him that.”

  For the longest time, William had fantasized about rescuing his mother and taking her away from Jeff and this place. But now, standing there with a bowl of cereal that was dry because there was no milk in the house, he looked at her and felt, not for the first time, that maybe this was all she had deserved after all.

  He’d never known his ‘real’ dad. William wasn’t even sure if the man in the faded photo that his mother had shown him was really his dad or just someone Teri had screwed once. At the time, Jeff had seemed just as good a choice as any of the other men. At least he had a good job and a house and a car—but that ended up being all he had going for him. It hadn’t taken long for a harsher side of Jeff to become visible until eventually that was the only side visible at all.

  As the woman on the television jumped up and screamed at the results she didn’t want to hear, Teri picked up the remote and idly flipped through the channels. She slowed as she got to the news channels and stopped on Fox News where there was a fierce debate about the state of mental health in America and a never-ending ticker of bad-news headlines passing by on the bottom of the screen while stock prices filled a banner along the top. “Cult massacre in Oklahoma elementary school,” read one headline, only to be replaced by “Widespread rioting in European cities,” “Oil rig explosion in Gulf of Mexico death toll reaches 100,” and more painful news.

  “Whole world’s going to shit,” said Teri.

  “Who cares?” replied William. He put the empty bowl in the sink already full of dirty dishes. He looked back at his mother, trying to summon up any sort of emotion about her, anything at all beyond a pervasive indifference, but could find nothing.

  “I’m going out,” William said as he put on his jacket and opened the door.

  Some sort of noise came from his mother, but he couldn’t decipher it, so he just left.

  “You see, when three or more planets come together in a straight-line configuration, it’s called a ‘Syzygy’ and that is what we are experiencing now.” The well-dressed scientist appeared very calm as he spoke to the television newswoman, who could have been a model.

  “And you believe that this is responsible for the outbreaks of violent behavior we’ve been witnessing across the planet the last few days?”

  “Most certainly. Ancient civilizations knew the impact of this planetary alignment on tides, earthquakes and especially people. It was said that it would drive people mad through their dreams.”

  “What the fuck is this?” Jeff said as they stood deep in the Arkham woods, past the Aylesbury Pike where no axe had ever cut, and looked at something that shouldn’t have been there.

  A body had been burned and displayed in a way no one had ever seen before. It was a woman, or had been once, but age and ethnicity were impossible to determine now, as the skin was black and charred. Sticks had been inserted into her back to give the impression of spreading wings and she had been lifted into place and fixed to a tree by a large spike through her abdomen. Her arms were outspread, as if in supplication, and her legs positioned to look as if she were taking off or landing.

  The crime-scene techs were staying back while Jeff and his partner, Mason Turner, inspected the body. “Who the hell found this?” Jeff asked.

  “Some old fart called it in,” Mason answered. “Said he was out walking his dog.”

  Looking upward, Jeff could barely see the tops of the trees. There was an odd, almost circular break in the branches near the top that was like an eye looking downward. He shook his head and went back to the body.

  “Who’d be walking a dog through this mess?” he asked, more to hear himself speak than in anticipation of an answer.

  “The old reservoir is just over the hill that way,” Mason pointed off in the distance. “Says he cuts through here every day and walks around the lake with his dog.”

  Jeff nodded. “So that means this wasn’t here yesterday or else he’s the one who put her here. Fuck. I hate this shit. This is like something out of a TV show or something.”

  Turning around, Jeff put on his expensive sunglasses despite the interior gloom of the forest. “All right, they can take the pictures and cut her down now. Probably have to do dental records and check missing persons. I can just tell that this is going to be a pain in my ass.”

  Mason looked at the corpse as if he were searching for a hidden message or encrypted code in the blackened flesh and wooden wings. “But what does it mean, Jeff? It’s got to mean something.”

  The detective looked at him and spit on the ground. “Shit don’t mean nothing, Mason. Just some mean-ass fuckers is all. Every killer isn’t Hannibal Lecter. Sometimes it’s just some jackoff playing with himself. C’mon, let’s get out of here. I hate the fucking woods.”

  “We’re getting the first pictures of the new island that was created by today’s earthquake in the South Pacific and, although grainy, they appear to show ruins and monoliths possibly indicating an ancient civilization. Dr. Thompson, could we be looking at the remains of Atlantis?”

  The professor of Archeology glared at the newswoman with open contempt. “No,” he said, “don’t be absurd. We’ve no idea what this could be.”

  “William,” Dr. Munroe asked, “do you know why you’re here?” They were sitting in Dr. Munroe’s office in the Miskatonic University Medical School. It was a typical office, filled with mahogany bookcases and comfortable leather furniture. It could have been a psychiatrist’s office on a movie set.

  The boy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yeah, I guess. I was told you would pay me to sleep or something.”

  The man in the lab coat smiled slightly. “Well, that’s part of it. You do realize that your psychiatrist recommended you for this program?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know why, or what we do here?”

  He shrugged.

  “I see,” said Dr. Munroe. “Basically, I am conducting a sleep study to show the effects of ‘night terrors’ on adults. I understand that this is something that you’ve had some experience with?”

  He nodded.

  After a moment where no response was given, Dr. Munroe spoke up again. “Could you tell me about it?”

  He shrugged again. “No big deal. I’ve had nightmares all my life. Makes it tough to sleep sometimes.”

  “What kind of nightmares?”

  He shuffled in his seat and wouldn’t make eye contact. “Sometimes, I get attacked by these things. They’re dark figures with wings and tails but no faces. They chase me and then grab me and fly through the air. Sometimes they’ll toss me around. Then there are other dreams where I am running over a bunch of old rocks and there’s some huge thing coming after me. I can hear it coming and this … this thing is like the size of a mountain and it’s looking for me. Right before it finds me, I turn around and see it and that’s when I wake up screaming.”

  Munroe nodded and made a few notes. “And you’ve been on medication for these nightmares?”

  “Yeh,” William said, “but it doesn’t help much. Some nights it’s better. Some nights it’s worse.”

  “How have they been lately?”

  “Worse than ever.”

  The doctor leaned forward and tried to make eye contact with the youth. “William, I’d like you to join our study. I believe we can help you and you can help us.”

  “How?”

  The leather chair creaked as Dr. Munroe sat back, still trying to keep William’s attention. “We’re trying to chart how the brain reacts during night terrors. My theory is that we can identify the period of REM sleep in which it occurs and, with medication, prevent it from occurring. Our work here can be of great help to others in the future.”

  William finally asked the only question he cared about. “Does it pay?”

  Munroe sighed. “Yes, William. $25 a night. So are you in?”

  Finally, William showed signs of life and nodded ‘yes
.’

  “Fine,” Dr. Munroe said, “Let’s get your paperwork started.”

  William was quickly passed off to attendants who took his personal information, his vital statistics and had him sign the waiver exempting Munroe and the Miskatonic University from any liability. Now William was a member of the ‘Dream Team’.

  “We now join the press conference by the Chief of Police for Oklahoma City who is addressing yesterday’s cult massacre at the Oklahoma City Municipal High School.”

  The impeccably dressed man in uniform walked up to the microphone while a line of officials stood stoically behind him. “Yesterday at approximately 1:35 pm, five assailants entered the U.S. Grant High School on S. Pennsylvania Avenue. They began shooting almost immediately. The students of four classes were herded into the gymnasium which was then barricaded. There were a total of fifty-six students and six teachers and teacher assistants confined in that room. The five assailants then began a systematic, well-planned program of ritual executions. When police responded to the alarms and were finally able to gain entrance into the gymnasium, everyone was dead including the assailants, who killed themselves at the end.”

  The room was silent.

  “Investigation at this point has been unable to determine any connection between the assailants or any known terrorist or cult groups. The five men range in age from 19 to 54 and have been positively identified. We are not releasing their identities at this time but we have conducted search warrants on their places of residence and are currently evaluating evidence that has been seized from these locations. We will continue to pursue all avenues of investigation in this matter. Thank you.”

  Jeff hated his partner. Mason was the kind of officer who had gotten degrees from college and spent time going to classes and reading textbooks and probably marched in peace rallies if they still had those types of things. Jeff had come up through the ranks, starting as a beat cop over in North Arkham where the rich and privileged were afraid to go. There had always been the attraction to police work for Jeff. Not because he had the desire to protect the innocent or to make sure that justice was served. No; he wanted to be a cop because it was a way to beat others legally. With a badge, he could punish people as much as he liked, and with impunity. That he was actually a pretty good cop was simply a happy accident.