The Nightmare Frontier

by Stephen Mark Rainey

  Corky, a calico of exceeding girth who enjoyed nothing better than yowling about his empty stomach, cast a thoughtful eye at the chicken as Loretta went to the sink to wash the grease from her hands. “This has nothing to do with you, so just take yourself right out of the kitchen,” she said sternly, and he gave her one of his most potent condescending scowls. She picked up the baking tray, carried it to the oven, cat close at her heels, and promptly placed dinner out of harm’s way. Corky gazed at her, still perturbed, but kept his yowling to himself, which was rare for a thwarted cat. “Don’t fret; I’ll feed you before Daddy gets home. And he’s a soft touch, so you can con him for more.”

  Denied the prospect of an early dinner, Corky’s attention turned to the window, which he regarded pensively for a full minute. Then his eyes widened, his ears flattened, and he turned and raced out of the kitchen.

  “That’s what I say too,” Loretta grumbled. She went to the little den and flipped on the television, but the persistent low thumping of percussion overpowered the voice of the broadly smiling weather woman on channel 6. A few bands of distortion rolled up the screen, and for a startling moment, the wailing chant actually seemed to be coming from the TV speakers. Well, so much for that. She turned off the box, went straight out the front door, and headed across Cheat Mountain Road (without bothering to look both ways, which out here was a waste of energy). The music was unnaturally loud, the number of voices prodigious. Without a single car in the church lot, how on earth had the performers gotten here? Some of the members who lived nearby often walked to services, but no way could all these singers have hoofed it unless they had met at a nearby house first. But why? Some kind of special event?

  As she made her way toward the building’s main entrance, she paused and grimaced as something swept briefly over her body: a noisome breeze, a disagreeable tingle of electricity. The sensation passed, but a feeling of clamminess lingered, not unlike the chicken grease she had washed off before leaving. Shuddering, she went up the short flight of steps to the door, now strangely nervous, half-afraid she had made a mistake leaving her home. But why? The singing was weird, but it was just music.

  Very loud, very bizarre, very spooky music.

  She tried the door, and, sure enough, it was unlocked. Pushing her way into the narthex, she stepped into a thick sea of gloom, as if a thunderhead had gathered inside the building. Here, the throbbing music assailed her nerves like a battering ram, and its tempo began to increase as she took a few steps toward the darkened sanctuary. She could tell before she passed through the looming archway that something here was very, very wrong.

  There were no singers inside the chamber.

  No choir in the loft beyond the empty pulpit. No parishioners in the pews on either side of the crimson-carpeted aisle. No trace of the mouths issuing these swirling vocal strains, which plainly originated in the shadowy spaces around her. It must be a recording, she thought, yet the sheer power of the melancholy harmonies and sinister-sounding drumbeats solidly refuted the notion. Her legs quivered as she took a few more steps down the aisle, her disbelieving eyes roving, her mind aching to latch onto some logical explanation. But every line she cast in search of one came back empty.

  Somehow, the late afternoon sunlight failed to penetrate the stained-glass windows; all were black as pitch and peered down at her like huge, vacant eyes. She had never been in the sanctuary when it wasn’t full of people, and now it seemed a starkly different place: huge, overpowering, as forbidding as a vast, subterranean chamber in which unseen eyes studied her with palpably hostile intent. Yet curiosity—or something—rooted her there, as if she anticipated the commencement of some spectacle she didn’t dare miss.

  A hint of a deep chugging sound, in counterpoint to the rhythm of the chorale, broke through her hypnosis and drew her attention to something that was just beginning to take form on the ivory-hued wall high above the choir loft: a huge shadow, distinct and well defined, yet totally unrecognizable—uncast by any light source she could discern. A slowly shifting black spider with long, crooked legs, becoming more and more solid with every passing second, as if materializing out of the bare plaster. The discordant locomotive sound intensified, a ghostly train inexorably closing on her.

  Loretta had stopped walking when the chugging sound began, and now she shifted into reverse, still just shy of panic. This was an event, inexplicable and frightening—but something surely profound, perhaps even an act of God. This was his house, after all. Still, as the huge, awful-looking shape on the wall continued to expand and solidify, she could never in this lifetime accept it as anything even remotely divine.

  As the otherworldly wailing and the unmusical chugging built toward a chaotic crescendo, the sanctuary fell suddenly, shockingly silent. A sharp ringing lingered in her ears like a needle in her auditory canal, and for several seconds she felt dizzy. Some moments later, she realized that the shape on the wall had vanished.

  Late afternoon sunlight now warmed the colorful stained-glass windows, transforming the great chamber into an ordinary, welcoming place of worship. Then, somewhere nearby, a door creaked sharply, and Loretta felt a thrill of terror more intense than during the height of the spectacular phenomenon. When slow footsteps began to echo through the great hall, panic at last exerted its hold, and she turned and bolted for the exit, her every instinct warning her to flee now or die. She shoved her way through the double wooden doors, sprinted across the parking lot, and into the road, too terrified even to think of pausing for traffic.

  She did not feel the jarring thud of impact with the grille of the oncoming vehicle. Her body sailed into the air and slammed to the pavement like a slab of old meat tossed by a careless butcher. Consciousness remained just long enough for her to realize that neither of her erratically jerking arms had any business bending in so many directions.

  The driver of the ancient, rust-coated Chevy 4x4 slid out of the cab with an annoyed frown, and his small black eyes briefly regarded the broken body. Then, with a dismissive snort, he turned and strode toward the front door of the church, unwilling to abide even a brief diversion from the business that had brought him here in the first place.

  Chapter 10

  After dialing a half-dozen numbers with no result, Copeland had about decided he would be better off pouring himself a double shot of scotch, joining Lynette and Debra on the screened porch, and drowning everything in his mind even remotely related to current events in Silver Ridge. The dial tone sounded normal, but each time he entered a number, the receiver went dead. Under normal circumstances, his cell was useless until he got closer to Elkins, and he had no intention of going out to that dark road. Putting away the phone in disgust, he plugged in his laptop, started the dialer, and waited to see if he could reach the Internet.

  No such luck.

  With no usable phone connection, no cable, no DSL, his computer might as well be a fencepost. He closed the laptop, went downstairs to the living room, and flipped on the television. The network news came on, but the picture appeared snowy and the sound came out garbled—which for all he knew might be normal here, since Lynette had no direct TV connection. He had to wonder how Rodney had ever entertained himself without 300 channels of crap to choose from. He tried the available six and found similar reception on each, but as near as he could tell, the news from the outside world revolved only around commonplace events. He was just about to shut off the tube when a new, flickering image on the screen captured his attention and actually caused him to gasp.

  The sound from the speakers rose to a shrill, unintelligible muddle of noise, which infuriated him now because, right before his eyes, he saw the unbelievable, monolithic tower he had earlier encountered out on the highway. Though warped, the image of the gigantic stone construct stood out unmistakably against a garish backdrop of arcing lightning and scrolling color bars, its upper reaches twisting and writhing serpent-like in the grip of video distortion. In the foreground, a strange shape appeared to be crawling across a wil
dly shifting landscape toward the camera—something pale and shimmering, moving with an undulating, worm-like rhythm, vaguely suggestive of a limbless man. Copeland involuntarily drew back, a cold, sick feeling in his stomach. Then the picture faded completely, becoming only a swirling, crackling field of colorful video snow, and with a frustrated curse, he switched off the television.

  His regular daily routine involved extensive communication, electronic or otherwise, and here he was, essentially cut off from everything and everyone beyond the town limits. Since afternoon, a low, simmering fear had begun to erode even his firmest bulwarks of denial, and now, after this disturbing image, his nerves felt raw. The increasingly dramatic evidence of an insidious deliberation behind all that was happening clashed at every point with his natural inclination to believe in a logical, however improbable, explanation. Yet his initial hypothesis of a widespread hallucinogenic agent now struck him as more outlandish than accepting these events at face value.

  Until now, the only things that truly frightened him were serious illness, homelessness, and terrorism—not necessarily in that order. In the course of two days, all that had changed.

  With hands on the verge of trembling, he poured himself a scotch from the decanter on Lynette’s sideboard, went to the kitchen for some ice, and made his way to the screened porch where Debra and his sister sat in tense silence, their eyes on the distant ridge to the northwest. A bloody sun had settled above the long, wooded hump, lending it the appearance of a huge, charred animal carcass. Both women appeared mesmerized by the hazy, haunted-looking vista, and Copeland’s thoughts turned to that debased family whose domain lay beyond it—whose role in all that was happening he still firmly believed to be significant. Debra must know more about Levi Barrow’s interest in her than she let on, he thought. As the object of his unwanted attention, she likely faced the gravest personal danger of all.

  “Lynette, is the picture on your television usually half-scrambled?”

  She shook her head without looking at him. “No. It’s quite clear. Why?”

  He nodded to himself, unsurprised. “I’ve seen that tower again,” he said, and both women’s attention now turned to him. He described the scene on the television. “The odd thing was that it didn’t look like a story on the news. It seemed more like a closed-circuit image.”

  Lynette shuddered visibly. “I had thought it was a nightmare. I wish to God it was.”

  Before he could say anything else, the rumble of tires on the road drew their eyes to the front of the house; a moment later, a white Buick LeSabre cruised slowly into view, obviously intending to stop. At first, Copeland did not recognize the driver, but then he realized it was Debra’s father, Glenn Martin. The Buick went past Lynette’s house and pulled into the driveway next door.

  Debra rose from her seat and gave Lynette a gentle pat on the shoulder. “I’ll come back in a little while,” she said. “I doubt Dad will be here very long.” As she left, she turned briefly and gave Copeland a warm smile. Suddenly, nothing seemed quite as bleak as it had moments before.

  “I’m worried about her,” Lynette said, somewhat to his surprise. “She doesn’t let on, but with everything that’s happening here, it’s Levi Barrow she’s most afraid of.”

  He nodded. “I’m sure there’s more to his interest in her than getting bent out of shape over his kid.”

  “That’s just his excuse. He’s stalking her, Russ. The other day was not the first time he’s come around. But if she goes to the sheriff, he’ll find a way to make it appear her fault.”

  “As witnesses, we could make that difficult for him.”

  Lynette shook her head. “It wouldn’t make any difference. But there is one other possibility. Her father. The Barrows apparently hold him in some regard.”

  Copeland raised an eyebrow. “Why would that be?”

  “Years ago, Major Martin and Levi’s father served together in the army. There is some tie between them.”

  “Major Martin, is it?”

  “Everyone’s called him that for years. It fits.”

  “Well, in my book, stalking a man’s daughter is no great gesture of respect. If you’re saying that we should alert him to what’s going on, I agree with you. You work with him; how well do you know him?”

  “Pretty well. He’s soft-spoken, but very firm. I know for a fact he’s not the kind of man to take an offense lying down.”

  “Well, there you are. You want me to try to catch him on his way out? Or would that upset Debra?”

  “She’d never talk to him about it on her own, and she might shoot me for going behind her back. But I’m worried, Russ. I consider her safety the most important thing.” She went silent for a moment. “Our relationship can be patched, if it comes down to it. The alternative might not be so easy.”

  “I have less to lose, relationship-wise, than you do. If she’s going to be angry, let her be angry with me. I can talk to him.”

  She half snickered. “Very noble of you, dear brother, but I know them both much better than you. No, I’ll talk to him in my own way. Besides, given how you feel about her, I would hate to see a blowout between you so early in the game.”

  “What do you know how I feel? I’ve known the woman for two days.”

  “You have that same look in your eyes you had when you were fifteen. Amy Carlisle, wasn’t it? And when you first met your ex, Megan. You’re hardly a closed book, Mr. Copeland.”

  He couldn’t keep from chuckling, but then he said in a somber tone, “All that’s well and good, but compared to what we’ve all seen in the last 24 hours, I’m not sure our personal feelings mean very much. Who knows what’s going to happen by tomorrow? And I can’t even make a phone call out of town.”

  “You’re right, of course,” she said with a sigh, her eyes turning briefly inward to focus on the memories of her son. “But whatever’s happening, it can’t put a stop to our lives. We can’t just throw up our hands and surrender to something we don’t understand. At least Levi Barrow I understand. He’s an immoral, potentially violent, dangerously clever piece of walking garbage. Lord forgive me, but if he were to get run over by truck, I’d give the driver a hug.”

  “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “As long as I’m here, he will live to regret any trouble he causes. But let me tell you—and not because of Levi Barrow—I’m on the verge of getting us in the car and seeing what happens on the road. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that.”

  For the first time, Lynette’s eyes widened with obvious fear. “No. Don’t you even think of that. After what you said you saw out there…and what I know I saw…it sounds like suicide.”

  “We have no way of knowing that.”

  “Russ, for now, we’re all still here. If anything, I think we should try to get people in town together, to find out what others have seen, what they might know. We could get the people at the church together. In times of trouble, they are the ones I want on my side. It would at least be a step. A better one than some ill-conceived attempt to run away.”

  Copeland pondered the idea and found himself liking it. “All right. I’m inclined to agree with you. Anyway, I would never run out on you. You know that.”

  She nodded. “As a community, we might be able to keep something like what happened…to Rodney…from happening to anyone else.”

  “A worthy goal,” he said. Then, as he downed the last of his scotch, he heard a car engine start; a moment later, Glenn Martin’s Buick backed out of Debra’s driveway and turned in the direction of town. It had just passed beyond the neighboring trees when Copeland heard a low, clattering rumble, which gradually grew louder. After a few seconds, a familiar-looking, rusted red Chevy pickup drove past, evidently in slow pursuit of Major Martin.

  “Jesus Christ,” Copeland muttered. Without another word, he set his glass down on the table next to Lynette and rushed outside, heading for Debra’s house. When he reached her door, he knocked sharply, then slowly pushed it open and called her name.
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  She did not answer, so he stepped inside, briefly listening to the hollow silence of her house, taking in its sweet, cedar-like smell, its warm, distinctly feminine ambiance. To the right, an archway opened to a cozy living room; to the left, another arch revealed a quaintly furnished dining room, its dark, hardwood table and china cabinet abundantly arrayed with silver. A beige carpeted stairway led to the second floor, and he started up, guessing he would find her in an upstairs bedroom. Halfway up, he called, “Debra?”

  He finally heard a movement—a low creak of springs—and what sounded like a little sigh. Finally, her voice drifted down the upstairs hall: “Is that you, Russ?”

  “Yes. Are you all right?”

  At the top of the stairs, through an open door, he saw her framed against the dimly glowing sheer drapes of the window, sitting desultorily on her bed. “I’m all right.”

  “Sorry for barging in, but…I had to talk to you.”

  She looked up as he stepped inside, and her eyes were red. “What’s the matter?”

  “As your father left, Levi Barrow came down the road, apparently following him. Debra, I know that he’s stalking you. Tell me what you know about that man.”

  She turned her eyes to the ceiling, obviously distraught. “God. Dad came here afraid for me.”

  “Because of Levi?”

  She nodded. “He even said I should come back and stay with him and Mom, but I didn’t want to go. What was I thinking? I should have considered the possibility that they could be in danger.” She reached for the phone on the nightstand at the head of the bed, put it to her ear, and then held it out to Russ. “The phone is dead. I should have just listened to Dad.” She disgustedly dropped the receiver back into its cradle.