by Chris Capps
"We're leaving?" Mark asked, his eyes blazing with life.
"You're damn right we're leaving. I've got one hell of a report to file. What are you boys doing out here?"
"We're," Mark said breathless, his voice distant and hopeful, "We're going home."
"You okay, fella?" Mr. Hades said, "You act like you know me."
"That night," Mark said, reaching out as Mike lowered the rifle in shock, "You tried to get me to come with you. My wife. She was in labor. She was giving birth to my daughter Delia. We didn't make the rendezvous, and we had to stay behind. We were trapped in this horrible purgatory, left with nothing but our own loss. But I knew. I could hear you talking to me."
"What's he talking about?" Hades asked, peering over Mark's shoulder back at Mike, "And who are you?"
"I'm Mike McCarthy," Mike said uncertainly, "But I don't know what's going on."
"Well that makes two of us," Hades said, "But we need to get out of here. There's something wrong with that island. There's a woman who can make copies of herself. And more, there's some kind of tree with bottles and watches. These bottles." He produced a bottle of Diazepam from his coat pocket, and pulled the sleeve of his coat up his arm, "These watches. All the same. I examined them."
Mark appeared to be losing his patience. The grin he had plastered across his face had twisted into a rapidly breathing grimace. He slapped the bottle of Diazepam from Hades' hand and grabbed the lapels of his coat, pulling him in close. Through teeth he said,
"How do we open the tunnel up?"
"Get your hands off me!" Hades shouted, pushing Mark away. In the movement, the glasses slipped off his nose and dropped wet into the mud, "What are you talking about? The damn tunnel's still open! They have no reason to shut it yet. I'm two days ahead of schedule!"
"Two days ahead of schedule," Mike said, "Wait... what year is it?"
"Last time I checked it was still 1972, smart guy," Hades said. Mark's reaction was swift. He once again lunged forward, grabbing Hades by the collar,
"You said you'd take me home! You said we could get back!"
"You crazy son of a bitch, I recognized you from your file. I've never talked to you a day in my life!"
"You visited me at the hospital the night Delia was born! You said to come looking for you!"
"Mark!" Mike shouted, grabbing Mark's shoulder roughly, "That was ten years ago! Don't you understand? He's just a copy!"
"No," Mark said dragging Hades by the coat to the dock, "We're going home! We're going to go see Delia!"
"Your daughter's dead, Mark!" Mike shouted as the pair struggled their way up onto the docks, "You can't see her!"
Behind him, Mike heard a mournful bleating sound as something jointed and naked slowly twitched its way down the rocky path toward him. It had a voice, nearly human. But it was nearly human in the same way a goat's cry might be compared to a man's.
It bleated at him, screeching as it galloped from the fog on four thin and broken limbs. Its face was pale, neck craned to the side as if in supplication as twin bulbous eyes stared from the bald deformed head. It was staring at Mike, freezing him. He had forgotten all about the rifle he was holding. It just loped and trotted up, occasionally rising up on its hind legs with great difficulty. Long fingered hands gripped the columns beside the dock where the two men were struggling. Hades was screaming,
"Take us home! Take us back!"
But then Mr. Hades stopped struggling. He was staring over Mark's shoulder back at the thing that clung to the wood of the docks. The look of terror on his face was the last thing Mike saw before the two of them cascaded against one another into the lake. The creature on all fours slapped wet hands and feet across the dock over to the white bubbling foam where they continued their struggle.
"Bring me back my daughter!" Mark shrieked, mouth filling with water as he held Mr. Hades's face beneath the waves, "Bring us home!"
A hand pulled out of the water, gripping Mark by the hair and dragging him down. And the creature watched. Its head twitched, cocked to one side and then the other as the thrashing waters grew still. And then, as Mike watched the foaming waves rippling out from them go dead and vanish, the creature craned its neck back toward him with a gentle curious hum. Its eyes were alight with anticipation, a bizarre innocence. It cooed and slapped one of its hands down into the water against one of the bodies, and it pulled.
Mr. Hades lifted out of the water onto the dock with a single pull, and he splayed out, lifeless hands and feet soaked and dripping. The creature pulled the coat off first, then proceeded to take the rest. Suit jacket, shirt, pants, shoes. And Mike watched as broken and twisted fingers stripped away each item before dragging them back a few feet from the body. And then this monster, limbs jointed in unfamiliar places, began to dress itself. Somehow this was the grizzliest sight of all to Mike, and he had to look away for a time. He just stared in shock back the way he had come, the same way as Mark Newmann and this new monster.
The creature couldn't quite get the shoes on. After tossing them into the water, it let out a short burst of sound. It slid its hands and feet across the wood, slipping in suit and coat over to where Mr. Hades' glasses had fallen. It picked them up, wiping the mud from the lenses with its backwards fingers and it put them on, smiling benignly back at Mike, walking into his field of vision and meeting his gaze. The glasses made the creature's eyes look even bigger. Its cracked and lipless turtle smile summoned another gravelly hum and it reached out a hand, smacking its mouth open and shut.
"You're the same guy," Mike said, causing the deformed neck to crane and the head to tilt to the side, breath escaping from tiny cauterized holes where once a nose might have been, "Same prescription glasses."
This oddly formed Hades reached out a hand toward Mike, the bizarre texture of its fingers wrapping around the younger McCarthy's palm as it hummed and pointed.
"You know the way back to town?" Mike asked.
It hummed serenely. And then Mike McCarthy and the misshapen Mr. Hades stepped back into the fog, never to visit the island again.
***
Jessica and Doctor Rosario shared the ride in the Sherriff's patrol car over to KOIF in silence. On the way there, she looked out the window and saw several men patrolling out along the perimeter of the elder McCarthy estate, each one holding a rifle in his hand. As their car passed, a dozen rifles rose from the improvised battlements around the old residential distillery and pointed toward them. But as they kept moving, the trigger fingers eased and the guards continued their casual patrol. Strange as it was to see the McCarthy estate turned into a fortress, neither Jessica nor Sam said anything.
They pulled up to the lot beside KOIF and stepped out of the car. Sam got out first, looking over the hood back at Jessica as she stumbled on her way up. She didn't look good. She had been dragged through a lot in these past 72 hours.
"You've been stabbed, smashed into a steering wheel, and nearly suffocated with gasoline. Are you going to be okay?"
"Don't forget kicked and smashed with a rifle butt," Jessica said with a sideways grin, "Do I look like I'm going down any time soon?"
Rosario rapped his knuckles on the hood of the car and smiled. Rind had never gone through that much in his whole career, let alone in three days. Maybe she'd turn out to be an okay Sherriff after all. They couldn't very well re-hire the next Rind that showed up. Not after everything that had happened.
Together they walked around the windowless building up to the front where Deputy Frankie was taking a long solemn drag on a cigarette. He seemed surprised to see Jessica and Rosario walking up the pavement. He dropped the cigarette, standing tall and blocking their path.
"Look," he said, "I don't care if Rind fired me. You need me around here."
"I don't know how he escaped," Jessica said, "And I don't know what he told you. But you're not fired. Not yet, anyway. We'll need all the help we can get on this one."
"Rind's dead," Rosario said, "Molly killed him."
&nbs
p; Jessica turned, looking back over her shoulder back at Rosario as they shared a glance.
"That true?" Frankie asked, shocked, "Did she get him?"
"Yeah," Jessica said turning back toward Frankie, "A couple times. How are things in there?"
"We stopped broadcasting for a bit," Frankie said, flicking his cigarette butt into the street, "The station's still running, but we're silent right now. We don't want to make this place a target."
"We need to bring everyone who can move here," Jessica said, "I need a patrol to help me clean this place up and take back our town."
Inside they found Pop Thomas sleeping in his chair, his headphones draped low across his dull almond beard. He looked up when they came in, startled for a moment. Raising his hand to his head, he sighed,
"Alright. I'll sign off. No one's showing up to replace me anyway."
"This is Sherriff Jessica Myers," Jessica said, leaning her head in close to the microphone, "Sherriff Rind and Mayor Sugarhill have been killed. I want everyone who has a gun and the means to travel to come to the radio station. I don't care how you get here, just get here. Stick together. Stay in groups. If Molly attacks, show her what we're made of. I don't want anyone telling me we've lost this war. Not yet. Not by a long shot. If you have friends who've fled into the woods, get them back. I know that means a lot of you, but spare who you can and come to KOIF. When we have enough firepower, we're going to clean house."
She switched off her microphone, turning to Rosario and Frankie.
"She's exterminating us. She's not fighting us in the open. She wants us on the run because she knows she can't beat us fair and square. That's why she killed off our fire department. That's why she attacked the warehouse."
Suddenly, KOIF's wooden hula girl lamp, the one they had inherited from the redundant air station, fizzled and went out. The bank of lights on the radio station's broadcasting board likewise dimmed and died. Even the gentle whir of the air conditioner in the transmitting room shut down.
"That's why she cut the power to the radio station," Rosario said.
"We've got a generator," Pop Thomas said rising with a lethargic groan to his feet and dusting a small dune of cracker crumbs from his chest, "But it's on the roof. Frankie, you know how to fire it up, right?"
"Maybe," Frankie said.
"You go up there, Pop," Jessica said, "Climb up there and fire it up or so help me you'll be digging ditches for the rest of your radio career."
Pop snorted, waving his hands wildly as he trudged down the hallway toward the roof access ladder in the break room and started his ascent. As he reached the hatch, the droning sound of a helicopter spilled down to the studio.
"God no," Jessica breathed as she raced back to the break room and quickly climbed hand over hand up the ladder. Pop Thomas was already standing on the roof, staring up with his hand uselessly draped over his eyes. He was staring up toward the shadow blinking and descending toward the fenced in yard around the tower. Running to edge of the building, Jessica pulled her pistol and pointed it down at the helicopter and the shapes that emerged from it, steadying her breath as shadows waved with arms over head up at her.
"Hey!" she heard a familiar voice say. It was Felix McCarthy. But the girl was with them. Molly Nayfack was emerging from the helicopter behind him. And there was Chance Cooper. She pulled the hammer back on her pistol, staring as they ran toward the back door of the radio station beneath her, and Felix looked up. He was shouting something,
"Don't shoot!" Jessica nervously eased her trigger finger away, putting the pistol back in its holster.
"When I get back, have that generator running," she said as she dropped down the hatch into the brake room.
"Yeah, yeah," Pop said, waving a hand as he flipped open the steel cover and picked up a jerry can of diesel, "And you go find out what that's all about."
Jessica descended the ladder and met the group from the helicopter as they entered the brick radio station. Felix was holding something in his hand. A red leather book.
"What's that?" Jessica asked.
"This is her bible," Mike said gripping it in his hand as Chance and Molly filed past, "Her deepest dreams, her most fantastic fears. It's all in this thing."
"Has she seen it?" Jessica asked, staring down the hallway at Molly as she sat on an overstuffed couch. Felix held his breath,
"No. Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Deputy Myers," Felix said, "Back at the island the Icarin said some things to Molly. They were nonsense to the rest of us. Nothing. But when Molly heard them, she started acting strange. Something seemed... wrong. Like she could die just from the words."
"And?" Jessica asked. The two of them shared a long silence, staring at one another, both realizing the weight of their options.
"These things were given to her in rituals, carefully designed by the Icarin. Her dreams run deep in her. If she gets the wrong bit, we don't know what will happen."
"So make sure she doesn't hear anything too awful. If she doesn't use this book and tell the Mollys to leave us alone, we'll all die. Her included. They'll string her up and eat her, or else try to find out what made her different. Those things out there are cold and calculating."
Felix held the book loosely in his hand, his thumb pressed white against the cover. He walked down the hall away from Jessica to where Molly was sitting, her fingers nervously gripping the ends of her skirt, twisting the fabric in her hands.
"Molly," Felix said, "You know how powerful these dreams are."
She nodded, eyes tracing up to where Felix opened the first page. It was nothing. Her name was scrawled in neat letters across its top.
"I won't read it," Molly said, "I'll stop eventually. Someone needs to read it to me."
"I'll do it," Felix said.
"No," Molly said, "I don't want to hear these things in your voice. But I want you there. Have the doctor do it."
Fifteen minutes later the three of them were sitting in the radio station's old abandoned office. Molly was sitting on the couch next to Felix as Rosario stared down at the red book from a creaking wooden office chair. He placed a finger square on the cover, looking up at the other two.
"The door's locked so we're alone now. I want you to know I'm not going to continue if she shows any signs of flagging."
"You'll have to," Molly said, "She said so little to me at the docks, and even that has been ballooning in my mind ever since. Those words you hold are everything in me. Everything to take me to the edge of the darkness and push me through."
"Will we be affected?" Rosario asked, "It won't do you any good if we're incapacitated too."
"No," Molly said, "I can't imagine you would. This is from me. It's just for me."
Rosario cleared his throat opening the first page and scanned it, donning his thin pair of glasses. Felix, sitting next to Molly on the office's couch, said,
"Are you sure about this?"
"It's my responsibility," Molly said, "This is all because of me. If what I hear changes me, drives me to violence, I don't want you to think twice about..."
But she trailed off. It was clear what she was going to say. If she turned violent, she didn't want to be responsible for any more death. The symbols, powerful as they may be, may drive her away from reason. They could cause her to lose the very essence of her humanity. Her eyes met with Felix's. They stared long into one another. Felix leaned forward, his hand caressing Molly's face. Their faces drew near. But he felt a hand on his lips. She shook her head.
"You only get one first kiss," Molly said, "And then you remember it forever. I don't want to relive this moment in my mind, pollute it with all of this death."
"We don't know that this will work," Rosario said from across the room, "You're different from the others. They're violent murderers. Maybe you just came out differently from them. Maybe none of this will work on you. Maybe you're special."
"Read the book," Molly said, breathing heavily, "Just please let's get this over with.
"
Sam Rosario started reading. Molly leaned to the side, picking up Felix's arm and wrapping it around her like a blanket. She listened to the beat of his heart as the words started to spill into her. The first few pages weren't what she had been expecting. They were carefully worded definitions of the Icarin's gibberish and titles. Much of it Felix recognized from his conversation with the Icarin.
And then Rosario said a strange word.
Parugola.
And she was breathing water. Parugola, the unremembered word that had always dwelled behind the teeth of monsters in her dreams. Parugola. Parugola. The visions flooded her. She was standing in front of a mirror with a dwarf's sink at her knees staring in at herself. Sexless beings were in the shower behind her, their bodies twisting beneath a faucet of hot rain. Faceless heads tried desperately to talk to one another as the long slender strands of grain popped up from between the floor tiles and grew. The drain bit into itself, teeth grinding and drinking the water that spilled across the floor.
She moved to her Grandmother's house, a thick layer of ash mounded up on the couch where her mother and father always sat. Where the television had been there was nothing but a mirror where she cast no reflection. At the front door a man knocked. A man with a robe and a face - not a mask - twisted impossibly around itself in six layered grins.
An angel pulled her up. Soon it was rowing her in a boat across a tremendous lake as she bailed bucket after bucket of water out.
"Where are we going?"
"Shh," it said, "You're okay."
A clockwork fox, the tinkerticking toy she had been given as a child watched from a tiny throne as she stood across from a goat tethered by its four limbs to the corners of a massive frame. The angel was there holding a stone in its hand. It pointed at the goat, and Molly picked up another and hurled it. She had no face. But she could hear the goat call her name. The stone burst its chest, revealing a deflated hollow shell in its center.
She stood in a field of wheat, watching a meaty hook headed torso spin arms like a windmill, blowing a deadly breeze across the grains and pressing them against one another, each one slithering and bellowing with those lascivious hissing moans that wheat makes. And she fell inward, collapsed and disappeared into the hole that opened up in her heart. She disappeared. The mosquitoes had legs like trees, stomping and chattering to one another as their needle-like trunks slid through mud, drinking anthills.
