The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller

by Smitherd, Luke

“Nope,” he said, without turning round, “that’s yours too.” This seemed less of a joke, and I wondered if I’d gotten the whole thing wrong.

  “How’s that then?” I asked with false jollity.

  “Tell you what,” said Paul, putting his hands in his pockets and striding ahead, still facing forwards, “you get the beers in like a good lad, without any fuss, and we won’t have to have a little chat about you kicking me in the balls. How’s that sound?”

  I stopped dead for a moment, and wondered if my heart might just have done the same.

  “Fine,” I said softly, and began following again, now maintaining a slight distance between us until we were at the pub.

  ***

  The shouting has started on TV. I know, even without looking, what’s happening. They’ve arrived. Now it really starts. And I’ve just been proved totally right.

  I’ll carry on in a second, there’s something I have to do first.

  Right, back. I don’t know how much time I have now. Where was I?

  ***

  “Okay,” said Paul with a sigh, gently flattening his hands on the table, “I’m forty-three, married, no kids, benefits officer for the council, been having horrific bouts of nausea since yesterday that seem to have something to do with you, and the guy I saw when I shook your hand has the same face that was in my dreams last night. Not really happy about any of that, apart from the married part. But you’re going to explain all of it now anyway, aren’t you, so it shouldn’t be a problem, should it?” He raised his eyebrows and his glass at the same time, not taking his eyes off me as he drank.

  We were sitting in the sort of pub I didn’t like; one room, one bar, tiled floor. I like a cosy pub, built like a rabbit warren, a place you can sink into. This was too bright, with too little upholstery and upkeep. At least it was quiet; the Stone Man effect was destroying bar takings and attendance as well as property. A cheap radio was playing music, perched on a shelf, which helped; otherwise, the aging barman and the two equally silent drinkers perched on barstools would have been privy to our conversation. Even if we lowered our voices, sitting as we were by the window, I think the things about to be discussed would have, even if overhead slightly, drawn further attention.

  “I’m afraid that’s not really the case, Paul,” I replied, trying a thin smile. “I have some ideas, and some personal experience of what I think is at least the source of what’s happening to us, but in terms of concrete facts … I only have speculation. Let’s just put our stories together before we do anything, just so we don’t screw anything up that could have been avoided.” I sipped at my own pint, feeling nervous. I’d only met Paul about four minutes ago, and already things didn’t seem to be going well. He drummed his fingers, examining them.

  “O-kay…” he said, quietly, before continuing, “well I think you should probably go first, as you’ve just heard the main beef of what I have to tell you. That’s everything I know in a nutshell, and it sounds like you have a bit more on this than I do. So off you go.” It wasn’t a request.

  So I told Paul everything I’d been through since the Stone Man’s arrival (omitting the part about Shaun’s wife) and the varying theories I’d had along the way. This part was immensely frustrating for me, as even though we both seemed to be feeling the more intense pull now, it was Paul that turned out to have the most to learn here. He was the one with the reason to be sitting here learning new things, and not me, which was extremely disappointing; all I was doing was repeating old hat. If what he’d just said was right, then I really had already heard his most relevant info, which wasn’t much. I began to wish we’d just set off to the find the blonde-haired guy straightaway and not bothered exchanging stories first. We could have found out along the way, I realised; both how and where we fit and into the Stone Man’s origins and purpose. I’ve never been the patient type, to be honest, and was annoyed with myself for suggesting taking time out. I hadn’t been thinking straight when the pub idea came to me, shocked and wanting to get on this guy’s good side. We should have just talked on the move.

  By the time I’d finished, Paul’s shoulders and general body language had softened slightly, hopefully because he’d seen that I was someone just like him; someone who just happened to be involved, and who was trying to find answers. I wasn’t the cause of it, and I wasn’t a threat. Hopefully, he now saw me as an ally.

  “Well, I didn’t have any of that business, the passing out and the fits and what have you,” he said, rubbing at his cheek thoughtfully, “but I had seen that bugger before, the one in the room. Seen him a few times, since yesterday.”

  “Seen him how?” I asked, suddenly intrigued, despite my annoyance that he hadn’t mentioned this before. Did he not think this was important information?

  “Almost like …” Paul’s sentence trailed off, trying to think how to describe it. He stared at the ceiling, thick neck straightened out as he found the words. “You know when you think you’ve seen something out of the corner of your eye, and you turn to look and it isn’t there? Like that. I’d be washing a cup at the sink or something, and then it’d be like … like his face was in the cup, not looking at me or anything, but just there. Then it’d be gone, but it had been there enough for me to know I’d seen it. Or that I was going crazy and thought I’d seen it. But either way it was there.”

  “Did you tell anyone? Your wife?”

  “Nope. I was really worried about it, and wanted to see if, I dunno, if it passed or something. I had … well, there’s a reason I was worried about it.” He shifted in his chair uneasily, and stared at the backs of the guys sitting at the bar for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was softer, and he talked to the table, not to me. It was unusual, seeing him suddenly uneasy. I already had the impression that Paul was not someone who was easily made nervous or shy. Not because of his size, either, although that probably didn’t hurt. He had … charisma, presence, call it what you will, and it clearly stemmed from an innate, easy confidence. I envied that, but also knew that I was about to hear a weakness. This would clearly be the reason he didn’t mention seeing the face before.

  “About two years ago, I was involved in an accident,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault, but that doesn’t matter when you’re being cut out of your car and you realise you can’t see. The vision came back eventually, obviously, but not for some time afterwards, along with certain motor functions, memories, and feeling down the left-hand side of my body. Face is still totally numb on this side,” he said, and pulled on his cheek to prove it. “There was brain damage, anyway. They said I was lucky to be alive, all that jazz, and that I should keep a close eye on myself. They said … if I experienced episodes later … blackouts, dizziness … hallucinations. They said that might mean that there had been further, unforeseen complications. And when you start seeing blonde-haired, middle-aged men staring at you from the bottom of your pint pot, you also start seeing yourself drooling down your shirt whilst you shit your pants and wait for the nurse to come and change your bloody nappy.”

  Paul swigged from his pint and plonked it back on the table, mouth set in a grim pout. I thought his eyes might have been a little more shiny than they were a moment ago, but I didn’t want to stare. I waited for him to continue.

  “I didn’t want to say anything to Holly. She’d been through hell before, and I wanted to see if the, you know, visions … if they carried on. To be more sure. I was absolutely fucking shitting myself, truth be told. Having to work my way back once before, getting back to being myself after the accident …” He lifted a hand and stared off into space, then snorted briefly, a humourless laugh. “And it wasn’t all that at all, was it? It was all …” He snorted again, and this time there were definitely tears in his eyes. He curled his lip, wiped a hand across his eyes, and let out a theatrical sigh. “It was nothing to do with that. Fuck it, fuck it … anyway, you were seeing them too. And it all looks, according to you, like something to do with that stony bugger smashing its way across the country. And t
hat Blondie has something to do with it. But where the hell do you and me fit into all that?”

  “Well, I’ve got a theory about that, too,” I said, staring into my glass and swilling its contents around the bottom. “We’re obviously picking up something, a signal of some sort, I think that’s clear enough, right?” Paul nodded. “Now, whatever form that signal takes, whichever way it goes in terms of source to target or vice versa, it’s leading the statue to ‘Blondie’ as you put it, because it’s leading us, too. Your accident, what it did to your brain, I think … I think whichever knock it’s taken has tuned it in to the right frequency, although being so close to the target here in Sheffield probably helped as well. And again, whether it’s me to you or you to me, I think being locked into it and nearby to one another somehow made us aware of each other. We picked up the glitch, and followed that too. You didn’t have the signal like I did, you were just catching part of it—and I think I might be the only one who can, alone at least—but you caught me, and then we came together. We’re like … bits of a circuit, parts of a system that works better together. When we touched, we closed that circuit, and now it’s like adding extra aerials to a receiver. It’s stronger, clearer. To me, at least. You can feel it now too, can’t you? A different pull to the one before?”

  “Hell, yes,” said Paul, emphatically. “It’s in my goddamn fillings. They feel like they’re vibrating. Weird thing is, I can kind of feel it in the numb side, too.” He held his jaw, seemingly unaware that he was doing it.

  “And when did you pick up the feeling? The one that took you to me?” I asked.

  “Hmm … about an hour or two ago, maybe?” he said, shrugging.

  “Which would have been roughly about the time I arrived in Sheffield, or at least got close enough for you to pick me up.” I spread my hands, and sat back in my chair, giving him a moment to digest it all. Paul pursed his lips, and nodded gently. He then drained his pint, and sat staring at me in silence, his expression curiously blank. This went on for a while, and I began to feel rather awkward, until eventually the penny dropped and I went to the bar. When I came back with two more pints, Paul grinned and slapped me gently on the arm.

  “Okay, you’re off the hook. Except you’ll be driving shortly, so I’ll have yours,” he said, sweeping the other pint across the table towards him. I didn’t protest; he had a point. We had a journey ahead of us, and even as short as it was likely to be, the last thing I wanted was to miss an event of world importance (and the story of my career) because of getting breathalysed by the cops. “So,” continued Paul, mood now considerably lighter, “the million dollar question. What the fuck is it?” I didn’t have to ask what he was referring to. I shrugged again.

  “Who knows, is the only response at this stage. Maybe Blondie is the creator? It’s connected to him in some way. Maybe he’s a military guy or something, and it’s an escaped experiment.” I felt stupid as soon as I said it, but to my small delight Paul merely nodded sagely, considering it as an option.

  “Mmm, could be, could be. Maybe, y’know …” He stopped, and pointed upwards, raising his eyebrows. “Looks pretty much beyond anything we could possibly make.”

  I had to agree on the latter part, at least. As outlandish as the idea was, I struggled to see the Stone Man, or the statue as I was calling it then, being made in a lab with even the most advanced of mankind’s technology. The best we could do at the time was that Asimo robot, the one that everybody went crazy over because it could run up some stairs. A technical marvel, absolutely no doubt, but the fact that it took our absolute best tech to create a humanoid figure, one capable of handling the hundreds of tiny factors and constant calculations that went into something as simple as walking? Knowing that made it very hard to imagine a human creating the same that could not only smash through entire buildings as if they weren’t there, but that could anchor itself to the ground in such an inexplicable way that it could resist the pull of four military grade helicopters.

  “Also possible,” I said, “but we could sit here all day and speculate, and we won’t know anything for definite. We’ve got some time before our stony friend hits town at least, but the more we have, the better. Have they started evacuating any areas yet?”

  “Kind of. The government is talking about working on the basis that it’s not going to stop, and is just gonna stay in the same line as it goes across the country. The initial, wait-and-clear-each-area-as-it-approaches, dumb-arse tactic isn’t working, that’s for sure. There’s been too many deaths, apparently. People panicking, people not getting the message in time, and worst of all a combination of the two … panicking when it’s too late. Over ninety deaths so far. The home secretary’s all over the news, trying to justify the initial plan, how they’d wanted to avoid panic and hysteria until they knew more about it. To be fair, I kind of feel sorry for the fella.” Paul swigged his pint wistfully. “I can understand why they kept the path officially secret for now, even though home-created versions are all over the Internet from people who’ve pieced it together. Problem is, they all contradict each other so much that no one can trust them. But imagine you’re the government and you release the official path to the public, and everyone on the line panics at once and gets out of Dodge. Roads are blocked, the country grinds to a halt, and the emergency services can’t get to where they need to be to save the lives of the people who either got caught in the chaos, or stuck inside a building when that stone thing obliterates it. Damned if he tells everyone at once, damned if he tries to take the steady approach. Anyway, they haven’t released the official one yet, so they’re advising people to stay at home and wait for further instructions. It’s a few hours from us, at least.”

  “Right, so there’s nowhere around here that we can’t go to yet, at least, and that’s good,” I said, feeling hopeful. “You up for a little journey then? How far from here do you live?”

  “About a twenty-minute walk. Should still leave us plenty of time. Where’s the bike, Easy Rider?” Paul said with a friendly grin. I smiled back, despite the playful jibe.

  “Chained up at the train station,” I said, “Should be fine where it is, barring a parking ticket, and I’m not going to worry about that. Finish up and let’s go.” Paul nodded, and drained the rest of his pint in one go as he stood. The other one stayed on the table, untouched. He looked at it, and sighed.

  “Waste,” he said, and then looked at me thoughtfully. “Come here a sec?” he said, beckoning me forward. He then held out his hand. I did the same. Our fingers touched. Nothing.

  “Just checking,” he said, and we left.

  ***

  We got back to Paul’s house (a terraced three-bedroom affair that they’d made very nice inside from the little that I saw) and picked up his keys. I was briefly introduced to his wife Holly as a mate from work; Paul was going to help me with some DIY apparently, and I watched as Paul effortlessly spun a casual series of lies that would nicely cover our absence until the early hours of the morning if needed (something about a home cinema installation, and that we might reward ourselves afterwards by utilising said home cinema with some beers) that she accepted easily and without question, to my great relief. Holly was busy herself anyway; tonight, as luck would have it, was one of her friends’ hen nights, and she had a little black dress to customise in the next two hours or risk being ‘the odd one out’. We left her sitting in their living room, surrounded by small plastic tubs containing sequins, iron-on letters, and glitter. On the coffee table was a box of drinking straws shaped like penises.

  “Have fun, love,” said Paul, bending to kiss her, and I watched her return it in a brief but loving way. He flicked one of the curlers in her hair with a smile, and she slapped his hand away and pinched his arm.

  “Don’t you try to sabotage me, Paul Winter,” she said, threatening him with a sewing needle. “I’m going to look ridiculous enough in all this as it is.”

  “Yes, and then what would the men of Sheffield think of you then?” replie
d Paul, holding his hands to his cheeks in mock terror. “Who will buy you lambrinis and pinch your arse and hump against you on the dance floor? The horror—” He cut off mid-sentence as a plastic bottle of fabric glue bounced off his chest, and he skipped away towards the door, chuckling to himself.

  “Don’t wait up,” hissed Holly, gesturing him away with her free hand. He blew her a raspberry and she blew one back, then smiled and shook her head as we left.

  “This is us,” said Paul, as he headed towards a blue Ford Focus parked just outside on the street. He stopped and looked back at the house as I made my way around to the driver side. “She’s a great girl, Andy,” he said wistfully, still looking at his front door. “I don’t like lying, but …” he shrugged, and turned to me. I nodded. What else could he do, for now at least? Time was of the essence, and we couldn’t afford to delay whilst we explained the impossible-to-believe situation to her.

  Once we were seated in the Focus and belted in, I started the engine; other than its quiet hum, silence now descended. The car smelled reasonably new, and it was clean. Paul had clearly looked after it. I pulled out into the street, and Paul didn’t need to ask if I was heading in the right direction. We were both running on the same internal Sat-Nav, and we could both feel it. Houses went by, and even though the pull seemed to be directional on an as-the-crow-flies basis, I took lefts and rights through the streets on instinct. Paul only had to correct me twice, knowing that certain roads would be dead ends.

  It was strange, those first few minutes. If you’d asked me (and Paul would say the same, I’m sure) I’d have told you that we were about half an hour’s drive away from our destination. We both knew it, and though that alone was a concept utterly mind-blowing in itself, talking about it seemed incredibly awkward, to me at least. I assume Paul felt the same, as he didn’t make any attempt to make conversation either. We were strangers, after all, bound only by something entirely beyond our comprehension, and whilst one might think that bond would make any social barriers more insignificant, small talk seemed flippant, and talking about what we were actually doing seemed taboo. It was insane, this mission, with only the knowledge that we weren’t alone stopping us from thinking we had lost our minds. We’d seemed to have made a silent agreement that we’d just get on with it and see what happened next.