Stranger Realms

by Jarred Martin

  And then the flame blew out and he saw no more. There was only darkness and the loathsome touch of their sharp, dainty hands as he was carried away. He didn’t know how long they dragged him through the dark void of their foul domain but they traveled far into the unending night. There was no light in the place they took him. The putrid air was so foul that it obliterated his other senses so that he didn’t even know if he was indoors or out; in an open space or secreted in some lightless pit dug deep into the earth. But in time his vision cruelly adjusted to the darkness, and he began first to make out vague shapes and then to see. And the things he saw were unspeakable. Things his mind could barley comprehend.

  They had affixed him to a wall with some thick paste excreted from their own mouths that dried to an incredible shell like concrete, and it held him firm. His place on the wall was one among several, though those around him were only dried husks and mummies with their torso's hanging in dry, regged tatters as if something, or some things, had burst through their midesections. The shapes of their withered faces were all wide-mouthed, screaming in eternal horror.

  There was somewhere down below him in the palpitating waves of roiling pale creatures, one more massive than anything he could have believed had ever walked the earth or swam its seas. He watched it from his place stuck in the wall. He watched it, a gargantuan segmented maggot, glistening with untold secretions, swollen with the larvae it was constantly sending out of one end in a slithering clutch of pearly nodes. The queen settled back on its oozing carapace and squeeze out tens of thousands, all teeming and wriggling in the gluey afterbirth of their mother. That massive thing, that gargantuan thing, gave birth several times a day, sending untold scores of quivering things spilling out of its body in a flood of jaundiced viscera.

  Sidney Rune retched suddenly, sending a spray of blood out of his mouth and dribbling down his chin. There was a simmering in his innards, like a pot of boiling rice. But it wasn't rice that was boiling inside of him, oh, no. He laughed until the raw chords in his throat could no longer produce a sound, and it turned into silent screaming, punctuated with more blood coming up through his mouth and drooling down the bottom of his face. He could feel them writhing inside. Soon, he thought. Soon they would come scattering out of him and into the light. They'd see the light and they'd scatter. He threw his head back and tried to laugh again, relinquishing his last bit of sanity, but there was no sound.

  When Your Sevens Come Up

  There are those who will never understand how a man can stake his last cent on a nine-to-one pony, or a jack of diamonds off the top of the deck, or a busted club boxer with two lead feet and a granite chin. Those same people would never realize that after the horses come over the line, after the cards are turned over, after the judges cards are announced, whether, at the end of it all, the gambler is up by a hundred thousand, or looking for a place to pawn his watch, it feels exactly the same. It feels numb, and it feels tedious, and it feels predictable. The gambler is only truly alive for that brief moment when the coin is in the air. Before it's head or tails; when it's only chaos and uncertainty and nothing is final and anything could be anything when the dust settles.

  The only thing real for the gambler is the sheer thrill of the bet. There is no winning. There is no losing. There is only the bet.

  Grier Norwood had lost it all. Well, a man like Grier could never really lose it all. He'd always have a hole to crawl back to, lick his wounds while he begged, or conned a few bucks to get himself back upright. And if worse came to worse, he wasn't exactly above honest work, though he avoided it when he could. It wasn't that he'd lost everything, but this time he'd lost more than he had, and that was a different thing altogether.

  A black town car stops at a dirt crossroads in the black of night. A door suddenly swings open. Grier Norwood tumbles out like a rag doll. He lies there for a second, staring up at the pitch sky while the engine idles. A hand, the owner unseen, reaches out and flicks Grier's hat out the door. It spins like a roulette wheel and lands on his disheveled body. The door slams shut and the town car speeds off into the night.

  Grier lay in the dirt. He gasped. He sucked air back into his lungs slowly, unable to take in as much as he wanted.

  They'd given him an earnest beating. Probably reenacting something they'd seen in a movie. He pulled his aching body up. The worst was over and the minor stuff was already starting to fade to a dull ache. He would be sore later. He'd taken enough beatings to know nobody would want to trade places with him come tomorrow morning. He pulled his hand to his chest, tried to flex his already swollen and purple-black fingers. It was broken. Maybe something symbolic about that. Something about his reach exceeding his grasp, or snatching at what didn't belong to him. Something about greed, anyway. Or maybe they did it simply because there were a lot of little bones in the hand that snapped like chicken wings and hurt like Christ crucified.

  He adjusted his hat and had a look around. He was standing dead center in a dirt crossroads. He didn't know how far they'd driven him, he'd had other things on his mind. If he had to guess he'd say far. He limped over to the road sign, a post with four arrows pointing down each road. The writing was faded, and it was too dark to make anything out. He tried to tear off a match from a book but fumbled at it one-handed until he gave up without striking.

  He looked down each road and saw only blackness, equally dark down each path. He didn't recognize the roads, but he knew he was halfway off queer street. He couldn't tell which way the car had come and gone; had no idea which road to take to get anywhere.

  He smiled, feeling a tingle of uncertainty, like he was waiting for a nine of clubs to come off the deck to complete a straight. He realized he was playing an all or nothing hand.

  He closed his eyes and listened. A faint breeze stirred. Grier closed his eyes for a moment and it was indistinguishable from the night. He tasted the faintest trace of sea salt on the air and suddenly he knew which way to go. He choose the path to the left.

  In the darkness he sensed that something considerable was up in the air, something beyond his reasoning. He knew only that what waited for him at the end of this road, at the village by the sea, was something irrevocable, a risk greater than any he had ever put on the line before.

  He journeyed through night under a moonless sky, and all was silent on the way to that seaside village, and he only realized he was close when he heard the distant roar of the sea spilling over the shore. He continued for some time and did not know how close he was to the town as he neared, because there was no light burning in the village as far as he could see. He stood and waited on the outskirts, and he listened, but the village was as dark, and still, and silent as the night that enveloped it.

  Although it was odd, and it gave him an eerie feeling, he supposed that a town so close to the sea would be dependent on its fishing to survive, and so none of its residents would be up yet, but they would wake soon, and he'd see about getting a room for a day or two until he could figure something out. Maybe trade room and board for whatever labor he could manage with his busted hand.

  There wasn't much risk trying to find hospitality in a small town, but he couldn't shake the troubling sight of the village shrouded in utter darkness. Not a single porch light burning. As if it was empty. Suddenly he was gripped by a powerful notion to turn back. Leave this place as quickly as he could and return to the crossroads. Choose another path, any path, so long as it led far away from this place.

  He resolved to carry on. After all, it was only dark, and he hadn't been afraid of the dark for a very long time.

  The village spread out below him and he looked down from his vantage on a hill above. Nothing stirred, not even a hint of a cricket chirping, and again he was taken with the notion that he was looking at a place long abandoned. There was a sign, and he strained to read it.

  Its lettering was not as faded as the sign at the crossroads. Songville was the name the carefully hand-painted lettering declared, and at last he knew what to c
all this black place.

  But no, he looked again. Not Songville, but Sangville, which was somehow sinister.

  He carried on down the hill to the village. To Sangville.

  He reached what must have been Sangville's main thoroughfare, which was an unpaved expanse lined with structures on either side. From what he could tell, if Sangville was abandoned, it could not have been for long because the buildings and businesses along the main street were in perfect order and too well-maintained for a ghost town. The sea was further down and sloped beyond the street where he imagined there would be docks with all manner of fishing boats with their masts bare and stuck up slender in the sky and rope and dinghys, and nets, though he could not see any of it.

  He walked along the thoroughfare, and suddenly something caught his eye. It was gone now, replaced by darkness, but he swore he'd seen the briefest spark of illumination from behind the plate window of one of the storefronts. It vanished as soon as he'd noticed it, as if . . . as if someone had just blown out a candle!

  He hurried over to the storefront, but found himself shuddering at the shop's particulars, which were spelled out plainly on the plate glass in curling letters: Seachnall Burials and Funerary Services.

  Most gamblers have peculiar superstitions. Grier Norwood would not stay in a roulette game where thirteen was bet, just like he wouldn't lay money down on a game of craps after someone had bet the don't pass line. And beyond that there were more obvious omens to avoid, such as willingly involving oneself in the business of death. And to that end, it did not matter if there were a dozen candles all burning on a birthday cake made just for him on the other side of that window, nothing short of being carted in as a patron would get him inside.

  But there was no candle burning. The only thing he saw in that black glass was a reflection of himself looking beaten and disheveled. He tried to straighten himself up and brush the dirt off his jacket with his one good hand, but it was no use. He'd just have to carry on looking like a vagrant who'd just wandered into town. Which he guessed, he was.

  Looking at himself, he was under the distinct impression that he was being watched, that someone on the other side of the darkened window was peering back at him. He left the storefront in a hurry.

  Further along he found what he'd been searching for. There was a plain, two-story hotel among the buildings on the thoroughfare, and it stood just as dark and silent as anything else he'd seen in Sangville. He found the door unlocked, and while some less intrepid might not, he entered. It was pitch black inside and he found a kerosene lamp. He though it would be too much of a disturbance to light anything more substantial, and he labored to strike a match. Once the lamp was lit he saw that he was in the hotel's expansive lobby. He rooted around and found some rags to wrap his hand and some ice for the swelling. After tying it off as best he could with one hand he stood resting by the reception desk with a glass of whiskey he'd gotten where he found the ice. Apparently prohibition hadn't caught on in this town.

  He looked around and saw that the lobby had been set up for a party or a reception of some kind. There were tables with cold sandwiches, hors d'oeuvres, an array of deserts, fresh fruit, and buckets of champagne on ice. He finished the whiskey and helped himself to a bottle of champagne, nearly breaking his hand all over again with the cork. There were balloons and streamers, and a bandstand set up with instruments. The place had all the makings for a hell of a party, it just seemed that no one had been invited.

  All of this was very strange, and Grier had another glass of champagne and a piece of cake while he thought it over. There was a banner above him which he read again and again, trying to make sense of. It said: 146th annual Sangville Visitant Festival!

  The festival had been held annually for one-hundred and forty-five years? They'd have had to begin it sometime around the Revolutionary War or thereabouts, he estimated. What made him uneasy was the term 'visitant.' surely they meant visitor, as the term visitant, as he knew it, would not be cause for celebration. But he thought if he waited there long enough, surely there would be someone along to explain it to him. They were expecting more than enough someones by the look of things. A whole town's worth of someones it seemed. He decided that it was good fortune to have arrived during a time of festivities, and thought that it might make it somewhat easier to ingratiate himself, seeing as how he was, in essence, a visitor.

  He waited for some time after this, but eventually the champagne began to make his eyes heavy. He thought he might fall asleep at the table, but he got up, and decided that if he was going to fall asleep, he'd do it in a bed. He went behind the desk and signed his name in the ledger, and conferred himself a room key. Then he went upstairs to the room he'd assigned himself, found the bed, and lay down on top of it and prepared for sleep.

  No sooner had he closed his eyes did he sense an illumination coming through the window that changed the tenor of the gloom so much that he was aware of it even without looking. He got up and went to the window, which overlooked the sea shore. Some distance out on the black and shifting waves, there was a bright glow of spectral light from some massive object bobbing on the waters. He supposed it was some kind of ship, but it was suffuse with a brilliant green light the likes of which he had never seen before. He guessed it might be some illusion, a trick of the light he could blame on the moon, but looking up, the sky was an endless patch of black devoid of moon or stars.

  He was more than a little uneasy seeing this. For some strange reason he thought of the peculiarly worded banner downstairs. The visitants. He shook off a sudden chill.

  Before he knew it, he was heading down the shore for a better look.

  As he went behind the hotel, he had a terrible feeling like he'd been he'd just hit on eighteen in a hand of blackjack. Something wasn't right, and he was pressing his luck. But like nights when he bet more and more, bigger and crazier to make up for his losses, he was helpless to stop himself, and could only sit back and wait for the inevitable moment when he'd be forced to leave the table.

  He was approaching the edge of a ridge above the shore that gave way to a sandy beach on its downslope and beyond that a large cove.

  He saw the ship far out on the cove, glowing a ghastly green. It was enormous, and ancient with three masts. The kind of thing they'd use for the set of an Errol Flynn picture. A pirate ship.

  Now he no longer had to wonder why the town was empty. All of its residents were on the beach, all three or four-hundred of them staring at the eerie ship out on the bay. All of their faces turned toward the dark water, all wearing the same anticipatory expression.

  Suddenly the night exploded as a massive bonfire ignited in a blaze several feet high and Grier could see in its wavering illumination a most disturbing sight: There were five pillars of wood set into the sand, and tied to each was a nude, writhing body, shrinking from the biting chill of the tide washing over their ankles. Five girls, not yet women, shivering with cold and fear, lashed to the pillars, turned toward the sea.

  Far across the water there was a hideous groaning of chains being set loose from a windlass as half-a-dozen smaller vessels were lowered over the gunwale. One by one, they touched down atop the black water, each containing a number of crewmen. They were too far away to distinguish clearly, but he was sure they all emitted the same green radiation as the boat. Grier was filled with dread as the six vessels began to row to shore.

  Seeing the boats near, the five girls began struggling against their restraints, each as pink and nude and helpless as a newborn rat. The multitude behind those girls took this all in with an air of reverence, and one portly fellow in a top hat, tuxedo, and sash turned to address them.

  “Citizens of Sangville, from a time only our long dead forefathers have know, we have had the privilege of being visited by these remarkable travelers. Though we know very little of where they come from, and more than we would like of where their journey takes them, we know, too, that they must be appeased, and never defied. And although what they dema
nd of us is considerable, we must remind ourselves that it is a burden we endure so that others may not. And so let us give freely, and with celebration, for what is taken shall be returned, so let us not weep for these lost daughters of Sangville, instead, let us celebrate their journey, as we celebrate their siblings' return. Citizens of Sangville, rejoice, for the visitants are neigh. Let us welcome them!”

  The portly man finished with a flourish and gestured to the vessels which by now had nearly reached the shore, and the entire village erupted with shouts and cheers.

  Grier crouched down and tried to make himself less conspicuous among the grass and sparse weeds atop the hill. He watched the creatures, for he could not think of these beings as remotely human, steer their crafts in from the surf. They were horrible things, mired in decomposing rags and seaweed that trailed from their limbs like damp moss. What skin he could see was mottled gray and glistened with damp pallor. Some were covered head to toe in the sodden tangles of limp weeds and others were rife with barnacles clinging to their blistered flesh. Their gaping mouths, lined with great gaps between their blackened teeth, dripped with slaver worked up in abject longing for the poor confined children. He shuddered, seeing every eye in their sunken sockets glowing the same shade of yellow, tried not to retch on the stench of rotting flesh and spoiled fish they trailed along with them. The first boat reached the shore and the onlookers burst into wild applause and cheers as the first of the creatures exited. As still more boats came ashore behind it and a slew of awful creatures leaped out onto the sand, Grier could see that the glowing spectral green passengers were not the only occupants aboard those vessels. There were, one in each boat save for the first, small figures obscured by dark hooded robes.