The Nightmare Frontier

by Stephen Mark Rainey

  “I suppose our escort left them no doubt as to our coming.”

  Copeland shrugged. “Maybe. For all we know, the Lumeras have their own reasons. Maybe they don’t involve the Barrows at all.”

  McAllister gave him a doubtful glance. “Well, there’s a hopeful spin for you.” He stopped the truck beside the road, not far from the spot where Copeland had hidden his car on his first trip here. A quick inspection of their surroundings revealed that their attendant Lumeras had vanished; in fact, only a few small, distant fireflies continued to swirl around the onyx tower, which they could again see looming vast and ominous above the landscape.

  Copeland had just hopped out of the truck when a low, heavy thrum seemed to creep through the earth, vibrating faintly beneath his feet. It came again a moment later, and again after that, becoming a slow, rhythmic pulse just at the edge of his hearing.

  “Almost like a heartbeat,” Carolyn said, gazing thoughtfully at the tower’s apex. “Maybe that thing’s actually alive.”

  “Then it needs to die,” McAllister said, his voice a little weaker than usual.

  Copeland started across the broad, dark field of tall grass that extended to the Barrow’s front yard, his companions close behind him. Nothing moved anywhere near the house, and they saw no telltale, glowing embers either within or without. Copeland soon made out the shape of Levi’s pickup parked in the driveway—so there was no question where they would find Debra. As they drew nearer to the house, they fanned out, moving slowly, guns at the ready, McAllister making his way toward the backyard, Carolyn pressing herself close to the house near the ground-floor window, and Copeland creeping toward the front. He glanced back toward McAllister, who sent him a thumbs-up, indicating the yard was clear.

  But Carolyn held up a hand, and she whispered to him, “I hear something. Music, it sounds like.”

  Copeland halted and stood listening; at first, he detected only the low, distant whisper of the wind and the steady thrumming beneath his feet. Gradually, though, he became aware of a delicate chiming sound, which reminded him of the church bells he had heard from his window on his first morning at Lynette’s. The chimes rose and fell with an odd, wandering cadence, now and again joined by other tones ringing in gentle harmony. The music grew steadily louder, and the bell-like sounds gave way to soft, feminine voices; then, like the voice of some great beast, a dark, baritone chorus rose to underscore the sopranos, blending in a kind of dissonant, empyreal fugue. It came not from the house but somewhere beyond it.

  The same unearthly music he had heard at Lynette’s house the day before.

  No telling what it meant, he thought, and he didn’t have the time or inclination to speculate. They had to get inside, and quickly; doing it quietly, however, seemed unlikely. Still, he didn’t want to betray their presence until the very last second. Where would Levi have taken Debra? Most likely to an upstairs room—perhaps his bedroom. The most direct way was through the front door, so he took a few steps forward, crouching to remain beneath the view of anyone spying from the window. He turned to Carolyn and motioned for her to join him; in turn, she gestured to her husband at the edge of the backyard.

  During the brief moment he was facing away from the front door, he realized he felt a presence near him. Turning quickly, raising his rifle as he did, he found a dark silhouette standing directly in front of him—and his heart skipped a beat. Then a solid blow knocked the Remington out of his hands, setting him partially off balance. Though he recovered quickly, as his right hand went to draw the Ruger from his belt, a powerful hand immediately intercepted it, and something hit him in the face like the engine of a freight train. He staggered as new agony exploded through his skull, and an iron hand clutched his throat, dragged him forward, and propelled him through the front door, which now gaped wide like the maw of a ravenous monster. He heard Carolyn cry, “Russ!” but then the door slammed shut behind him, echoing in his brain like a violent thunderclap.

  He found himself sprawled on the ratty carpet of the Barrows’ living room, stars reeling madly before his eyes. Painfully drawing himself to a sitting position, he saw Levi standing at the front door, a crooked smile etched on his craggy face, his head cocked in an attitude of listening. Outside, both the McAllisters called his name, and he heard several sharp blows on the wooden door.

  Levi glared at Copeland. “Since you’re here and my brother ain’t, I gotta expect he’s dead. And since you weren’t in no position to do it yourself, I gotta conclude it was them what killed him.”

  For a second, silence fell beyond the door, and Levi deftly sidestepped just before a portion of the door around the knob exploded inward with a deafening boom. Copeland felt a thrill of hope as the door burst open to reveal McAllister standing on the stoop, pumping his shotgun in preparation to fire again. But in the brief second before Levi kicked the ruined wooden slab shut, Copeland saw a brilliant orange glow rising behind his friend, transforming his body into a featureless, backlit silhouette. Now, from beyond the door, a duet of heart-rending screams rose as the Lumeras fell upon the McAllisters. On and on the screams went, gradually diminishing in volume as the monsters dragged away their prey, apparently still struggling.

  A moment later, the screams went abruptly silent, only to be replaced by the excited, insect-like chattering of a horde of Lumeras.

  Copeland’s heart nearly burst, and as his watering eyes rolled toward Levi, he felt the last threads holding onto his sanity snapping. A sudden rush of adrenaline propelled him forward, and before he realized what he was doing, he found his body flying through the air, catching Levi unprepared and bulldozing him to the floor, his fists pummeling the other’s face, the dull, gratifying crunch of his knuckles meeting bone all that registered in his ears. He brought one arm down on Levi’s adam’s apple, pinning his head to the floor, his other hand coming down with murderous force, smashing the fallen man’s nose, sending blood spurting from his nostrils. Levi shook his head wildly, choking on his own blood, snorting and huffing as he writhed desperately, trying to dislodge his attacker. One of his hands managed to slither toward Copeland’s face, and with a frantic effort, he ripped the bandage from his wound and backhanded Copeland across the cheek.

  The pain that arced through his skull, down his neck, and into his back nearly knocked him senseless. His arm involuntarily drew from Levi’s neck and went to cover his face. With a sudden thrust of his head, Levi’s forehead met Copeland’s chin, snapping his head backward and offering Levi just enough leverage to throw him off. Through his pain, Copeland realized that his adversary was free, and he scrambled backward just in time to avoid the fist that would have shattered his adam’s apple. Righting himself quickly, he lowered his head and, with all his weight behind him, rammed it into Levi’s gut, driving the air out of his lungs with an explosive “gaah!” Levi flew backward and crashed to the floor, shaking the foundations of the house, struggling frantically to draw even a whiff of air into his lungs. Once again, Copeland fell upon him, his hands encircling his throat and squeezing it viciously. Levi’s eyes rolled back in his head as consciousness began to fade, and Copeland knew he had him.

  Then he felt a dull thud at the back of his head—barely sufficient to register, or so he thought, until he realized his body was being dragged backward. His hands left Levi’s throat and flailed madly as he went sailing through the air, and then he crashed in an agonized heap at the bottom of the stairs. The room went spinning wildly, and all he could do was try to catch his breath and somehow hold onto consciousness. He vaguely heard a shuffling sound as Levi pulled himself to his feet with assistance from another figure, which seemed to have magically appeared in the room.

  “You hurt my daddy, you sumbitch,” a low, quavering voice said. “You gonna die now. You got that, you sumbitch? You gonna die.”

  Instead of slowing, the room whirled even faster, and the light grew steadily dimmer. He glimpsed Levi’s hate-filled eyes glaring down at him, and then everything melted into a meaningle
ss chiaroscuro of gray and black. He realized his head was sinking to the floor, and when his cheek hit the foul-smelling carpet, he swore he heard a violent rattling, as if something inside his skull had been jarred loose.

  The world began to fade to black, but not before he heard Levi say, “Naw, Malachi, he ain’t gonna die. Not yet. But he’s gonna wish he was dead. Yessir, he’s gonna wish he’d kill him right here and now.”

  Chapter 21

  “Mr. Copeland?”

  The voice was low and masculine, gentle in tone, so unlike the voices he had been hearing in the moments before he lost consciousness. Hearing seemed to be his only functioning sense, for he could see and feel nothing. He was fairly certain he was lying on his back, but he couldn’t tell whether the surface beneath him was a soft bed or a concrete floor. He felt his eyelids creak open, but he perceived only a dull, formless light somewhere nearby; no recognizable objects or shapes. Gradually, he became aware of the pain in his body—primarily in his face. With a supreme effort, he willed one of his fingers to move; he thought he might have succeeded.

  “Don’t make any sudden movements, Mr. Copeland. Your body’s suffered a pretty fair trauma. It’s gonna take a little time for you to recover.”

  The voice sounded concerned, reassuring. Was the nightmare finally over? Everything that had happened up to the point that he blacked out seemed to be coming back to him, perhaps too vivdly. He remembered Debra’s abduction and the McAllisters coming to his rescue—only to be taken by the alien things in league with the Barrows. He had fought with Levi and nearly killed him, but someone arrived on the scene to save him.

  The boy, Malachi.

  Copeland opened his mouth and exhaled, testing the air as it passed over his vocal cords. “Where am I?” he managed to whisper.

  “Don’t you fret, now. Things’ll be made clear to you directly. In the meantime, just rest, and don’t pain yourself needlessly. Save your strength.”

  He shifted slightly, and now he could discern a hard, unyielding surface behind his back. Damn, he thought, his spirit plummeting. So much for being back in a safe, warm bed. He drew a deep breath, and with supreme effort, raised his upper body, propping himself on his elbows. He immediately heard a strange, hollow rustling noise and glimpsed a spontaneous, rapid movement—not in any one place, but seemingly all around him.

  Slowly, his eyes began to take in his surroundings. He lay on the floor of a good-sized room, facing a familiar figure seated in a broad, nearly collapsing wing chair. The last time Copeland had seen him, the chair’s grotesque occupant had been asleep. And before, the walls of the master bedroom had not been completely covered by writhing, metallic-looking vines covered with long, razor-sharp barbs. The alien vegetation—the only term Copeland could think to apply to it—rustled and shifted nervously, as if cognizant of an unfriendly presence. The seated man’s huge, football-shaped head cocked slightly as tiny pig eyes beneath a bony brow studied him intently.

  After a time, the lips of the repulsively wide mouth parted, and a paradoxically soft voice came out. “Hello. I’m Amos Barrow.”

  “So, awake at last,” he replied in a measured tone, managing to pull himself to a sitting position. “And from the look of your bedroom, I suppose that means there’s no sending your ‘new neighbors’ back where they came from.”

  “An interesting point,” the eldest Barrow said. “In fact, you bringing it up is the reason you’re still alive. I want to talk to you.”

  “Well, I guess I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Not right away, nope. I guess you know that my grandson—my surviving grandson,” he added sharply, “has taken a shine to a young lady of your acquaintance. We had us a nice little talk with her, but we didn’t quite get the answers we’re looking for. Maybe you can do better.”

  At the mention of Debra, new apprehension clutched his chest. He stared spitefully at Amos for a long moment and said, “Even if I could, I don’t know that I’d be inclined to offer you a thing.”

  “Mr. Copeland, I’ve been something of a businessman all my life. Yeah, not the kind you’d be used to dealing with, but I know business. And I expect we might be able to come to an arrangement, if you willing to be reasonable.”

  “Forgive me,” Copeland said softly, “but nothing I’ve seen would give me reason to believe that any of you are ‘reasonable.’”

  “Let’s not be judgmental,” Amos said in a paternalistic voice. “About every soul in this town has been judgmental for as long as the Barrow family has lived here—since long before my day. And that particular failing is pretty much why things have come to what they come to.” He stared thoughtfully at Copeland for a minute before continuing, his tiny eyes revealing a surprising depth of intellect behind them. “Some years ago, I lost my boy in a war that he didn’t have no business fighting in. But he went, and…well, that was that. Anyway, we come to find that a comrade of his weren’t like these people we’d known all our lives. This man was thoughtful…and generous. He knew he couldn’t put right what caused me to lose my son, but he wanted to settle up whatever way he could. Least, that’s how it seemed, and for a long time, he was a real help to this family. Even got us through some difficult times. In the end, though, turned out he weren’t no different than them others. Maybe even worse, cause he came with false pretenses. Or let’s put it this way: I like to think he started out right-headed, but then something went wrong. Whatever it was, we believed in him, and then we was betrayed. You knew old Major Martin, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Tell me about how well you knew him.”

  “Well, what can I say? Only in passing, really. I barely got to spend any time at all with him before he…before you…”

  “Now, now, Mr. Copeland. I know that he must’ve shared some of his secrets with you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have known nothing about us. Or our new neighbors.”

  “All he did was fill in some blanks. Most of what Debra and I learned, we discovered on our own.”

  “Yeah, I’m told you got into this house a while ago. Damn stupid, Mr. Copeland, but I gotta admire your drive. Anyway. It’s them blanks you mention that I’m most interested in. I want to know just how much you know. You may have something that’ll help and you don’t even realize it. If we talk about it like reasonable people, maybe…like I said…we can come to an arrangement.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as maybe you won’t have to die like your friends out there—them ones that killed my grandson.” Amos now leaned forward, his jaw working furiously back and forth, one eye gleaming dangerously. “Levi said it weren’t you, which is the only reason you still here to be talking to me. It was them that killed my Joshua, weren’t it?”

  Copeland stared fixedly at the other, unwilling to allow his simmering dread to get the better of him. He finally nodded. “Yeah. But I’ll tell you this: if I’d had the chance…I would have killed him. I’d have killed Levi, too. You know that, don’t you?”

  For the first time, Amos looked as if he might rise from his chair and attack him, and Copeland knew there was no way he could fend off even the old man. But Amos’s red-hot eyes slowly cooled, and he relaxed, taking a few deep, noisy breaths. “Looking at you, I reckon you got reason to be angry. What you don’t understand, Mr. Copeland, is that you got yourself into this mess. You blaming the wrong people.”

  “Let me tell you something,” he said sharply, infused with a new, angry fire. “The reason I’m here is because your ‘new neighbors’ killed an innocent boy—my nephew. God knows how many others. People who’ve never done a damned thing to you. Don’t tell me about who’s to blame for any of this.” He spat on the floor. Then he said softly. “You know what, you big, fat piece of shit? Let’s forget about any arrangements. Just do what you have to. You’re going to get yours anyway.”

  Amos’s face no longer betrayed the slightest hint of emotion. “If you refuse, you know you got nothing to look forward to but a lot of suffering, r
ight? You in a completely different world now. The Lumeras don’t just kill you, Copeland. They slowly consume you, all the way down to your soul. You’ll still be screaming long after me and the rest of the world have all passed on.” He smiled sardonically and leaned forward slightly. “Is that what you want?”

  “Guess what, Amos. I’m afraid that’s what you have to look forward to. Do you think you are the master of this world? Why would creatures like those even consider sharing power with you? They only let you live as long as you suit their purpose. You’re awake, but they haven’t vanished. That means you can’t get rid of them now. What happens when they decide they don’t need you anymore?”

  “Is this what Major Martin told you?”

  Reluctantly, he nodded. “It was his belief.”

  Amos grinned broadly. “Of course he would tell you that. He wanted the power all along, but it was too late. He handed us the only means to open the door to the dream worlds, and when he discovered what he had given away, he tried to take it back—and he failed. He was simply a bitter old man.”

  “Then why are you so curious about what he might have told me?”

  “Because I want to know if there’s an…” The huge figure fell silent suddenly and gave Copeland a thoughtful stare. “No, sir. I don’t believe we’ll be coming to any arrangement.”

  “What were you about to say? Are you admitting there’s something you don’t know? You see, Amos, you are vulnerable. Now let me tell you something. If you know any way to send those things back where they came from, you’d better do it now. Because they’re not going to let you to be part of their world for long. They’re going to eat you alive.”

  “Your conclusions are amusing. Mr. Copeland, Let me show you just how wrong you are.”