X's for Eyes

by Laird Barron

  “These aren’t dead ends. The tunnels make right angle turns,” Mac said in a numb tone. “Our corpses will lie around the corner. We died here.”

  Crabbe frowned in bewilderment. “I don’t take your meaning.”

  “Causality,” Dred said. “Sorry, Telly. Now you’re in the soup too.” Blackness crept steadily nearer. “Mac, we have to decide.”

  “Straight on. Has to be straight on.”

  “Fine. Forward march.”

  As they proceeded, Crabbe said, “The curtain might be a defense mechanism. An antipersonnel device.”

  “It’s alien, which means it could be incomprehensible to our intellect,” Mac said.

  “Well, the aliens have opposable thumbs,” Dred said, tapping the cuneiform. “So we’ve something in common.”

  “Sure, that would be nice. Except they could have used indigenous types for slave labor. Plenty of opposable thumbs among those lads, eh?”

  Eventually the passage made a ninety degree turn. Ten more paces and it turned again. Ten paces again in a different direction. Crabbe defaced ancient, likely priceless cuneiform with chalk arrows. The echoes of their movement floated around them, strangely distorted and lagging as if emanating from much farther off.

  “It’s a maze,” Crabbe said.

  Dred licked his lips. Chapped already. “Dr. Bole says time is a ring. Sifu Kung Fan says it’s a maze.”

  “Time is a contradiction of our senses,” Mac said. “They’re both correct.”

  “Don’t let Sifu hear you babble heresy.”

  The yellow light dimmed. Shadows fluttered. Bony hands emerged and clutched the edge of another blind corner—inhumanly large hands, pallid and veined with black, black nails grinding into plaster as if dragging a massive weight.

  “And here’s the Minotaur.” Dred unsheathed the kukri strapped to his hip.

  There were two Minotaur, in fact. The first heaved itself into view—an infantile giant hunched to accommodate the confines. Naked and gaunt, except for a bulbous skull and distended belly, knob-knees outthrust, snowshoe feet gray as marble, talons broken and oozing claret. Wet, lank hair obscured its features. Nonetheless, Dred recognized a mutant and corrupt incarnation of himself grown to the hideous dimensions of an emaciated grizzly bear reared on its hind legs. The creature paused to survey them with a crimson eye. Its companion emerged and there was a nightmare version of Mac, drooling and smirking through a jawful of needle fangs.

  The boys fled backward the way they’d come. A few steps only—they met the creeping wall of darkness head-on and it engulfed them.

  HERE COMES THE SUN

  Mac stepped across an improbable void (he beheld the arm of a spiral galaxy whirling beneath him!) and onto a high desert plain. A black sun dominated the horizon above a range of spiky peaks. The disc swallowed a third of the heavens. Lambent flame seethed along its rim. The remainder of the sky curved away, starless black streaked pink as the nipples of a burlesque queen he’d known.

  A breeze filled his nostrils with odors of ash as he walked toward the eclipsed sun. His feet hurt despite the conditioning exercises of the Mountain Leopard Temple. Mukluks weren’t designed for rocky terrain. His stomach hurt too. The chunk of Nancy’s data core crystal had burned through layers of clothes and fused with the flesh of his navel as though his belly button struggled to disgorge a misshapen seed. The crystal pulsed crimson and dripped blood through his shirt. He tugged at it gently. The corresponding bolt of agony indicated this was not a dream.

  He trudged past the petrified skeleton of a bison. Its familiarity nagged him. In another life the bison plodded past the boy’s picked bones. “I’ve been here. Again and again.”

  In a million other lives, said the black sun. It bulged with each word and emitted lances of fire as it spoke inside Mac’s brain. It sounded exactly the same as Big Black the fabulous crystal computer. I am curious if now of all moments is appropriate to entertain fantasies of dancing girls.

  “Beats me when there’d be a better time. Have you looked at this place lately?” The boy hoped the being couldn’t pick apart his thoughts or sense his terror.

  Vast ethereal visages tumbled across the sky as the black sun chuckled. Many light years stand between us, Macbeth Tooms. I peep at you through one lens of a magic lantern that magnifies a dead past. Be grateful for this disk you apprehend as an occulted star. Those who gaze upon my true form undergo startling transformation. By the way—does anyone ever call you four-eyes?

  Mac clenched his scarred fists involuntarily. “Once.” He exhaled. “Azathoth, is that you?”

  Azathoth? So insist fools and donners of tinfoil. There are better appellations. Emperor of Ice Cream. Old One. Eminence Grise. The celestial object that looms before you? It is my microphone. I reside far from this rural locale. Wouldn’t do to shred your sanity by revealing myself au naturale.

  “The Emperor of Ice Cream, you say? Have to admit, I could go for a gelato.”

  Call me Mr. Gray. It suits your uncouth charm.

  “Just don’t call me four-eyes or Beth, or I’ll have to cut you.”

  Such spunk. Are you not dreary, dutiful Galahad in this play? Isn’t your brother the smart aleck? The jester?

  “Normally, I think too much while my brother hardly thinks. As for my humor, this circumstance is passing absurd. I’d be a rube to take it soberly.” Mac noticed shadows detaching from the gloom on his periphery. The shadows glided low as wolves. Eyes glinted crimson as the pack spread in a crescent. He walked faster.

  It may be the finale of seem and there shall be no more double scoop cones of pistachio mint ice cream. You have observed your worst self. It has changed you irrevocably.

  Mac was assailed by an image of the horrible giants that crouched in the ziggurat maze. “Potentialities? Roads not traveled?”

  You can only hope. The black sun’s timbre shifted and became a perfect match for Dr. Bravery’s husky tones. Perhaps you’re wondering why I called you to this dead world.

  “Doesn’t require a sleuth, Emperor. Must be boring, trapped for eons. Pulling the wings from flies is probably all you have.”

  My boredom is unfathomable.

  “Sorry to hear it . . . From boring to annoying—where is my brother?”

  Alive and well. I sent him on. You and I need a few moments of privacy.

  “I’m all ears.”

  The structure you entered is a projector. You remember Tom, yes? He designed it. We should talk about him.

  “Tom, he’s a handy fellow. Gets around like the village bicycle.”

  My prodigal son in exile. He lost his country club privileges.

  “Tom’s not welcome on the property, eh? He mentioned something to that effect.” Mac glanced around. The shadow pack continued to pace him; forms yet indistinct, eyes a scatter of coals against the night.

  On his own awful little world he’s worshipped as a demigod. A black magician unrivaled in all history. On yours, his abilities are vastly diminished. Clever, though. His ziggurat is a machine quite similar in theory to the apparatus Arthur Navarro rigged to examine the NCY-93’s data cores. With a push from Black, Arthur’s impromptu device was capable of transferring complex patterns of electromagnetic energy. The soul, as you primates say. Tom’s projector is more powerful by orders of magnitude. It transfers body, brain, and spirit. The whole enchilada. In the good old days, these projectors were active on a thousand worlds in a thousand conjoined universes. A stream of delectable souls cycled through them and were remanded into my loving care.

  “Somebody’s been reading our mail.” Mac had scant insight into the psychology of alien gods who communicated through black suns. He was, however, perceptive enough to guess when someone, or something, as the case might be, intended to play him for a fool. First Labrador with his queer insight into every move Sword Enterprises made and now Mr. Gray’s complete knowledge of the disaster in the barn. He filed his suspicions away for further examination. “Hanging around in mortal form
with us “primates” has to be a real come-down for a god. There must be a reason he doesn’t use the projector to return to his “awful little world.” Or have I misunderstood the situation?”

  The conduit reflects true images of its occupants. Tom’s true image is an abomination. A glimpse of his reflection would obliterate him. He works through intermediaries, for safety and to test my resolve with provender. I have a meat tooth.

  “Intermediaries. As in cultists. They’ve infiltrated my family business and sought to kill me and my brother for NCY-93’s memory data.”

  Infiltrated? The black sun shook with laughter. Ahem. My gaze falls upon them at various, rigid intervals—certain phases of the moon, solar conjunctions, et cetera. Keyholes open between the material realms and the Great Dark and a brief exchange can occur. A dry hump, in human terms.

  Mac glanced at the crystal lodged in his gut. He realized it somehow reflected in the evil gaze of the following pack—it pulsed and so did their many sets of eyes. “In the interest of saving ourselves some pain, let me lay it on the table. I won’t help revive you.”

  Fear not. My revivification cannot be completed by mortal rituals or mortal bloodshed. Perhaps the stars themselves can affect my ascendance. Your own sun will have dwindled to a cinder.

  “Be that as it may, the cultists seem quite sure of their mission.”

  Tom is a bit of a false prophet. His favorite trick is to twist weak minds, to convince them he’s a herald for my numinous majesty rather than an exiled brat. These men wish to establish greater communion. Tom suggests I might be restored to full glory with the proper rituals and concomitant astronomical alignment. A damned lie, alas. Silly bastards will do anything to win favor with the unholiest of the unholy.

  “What’s the point in misleading his own followers? I don’t get the impression he cares for material wealth. He’s no evangelist.”

  Make no mistake, certain favored mortals know the truth and consider Tom and his servitors an enemy for my affection. As to why he mistreats his own followers so shabbily? Base lust, sad to say. Tom eats some and rapes the sanity from others. Their pitiful appeals to greater meaning delight him. Isn’t that the way of your kind, though? To attribute motives and pattern to the inscrutable and the ineffable?

  “He implanted a post hypnotic suggestion in my mind that permitted me to open the way.”

  Indeed, Tom sent you to me. He has an agenda.

  “I wonder what that could be.”

  His motive will become apparent. In the meantime, trust that I personally hold no malice for the people of the Earth. A teeny-tiny piece of me that sheared off during the trilobite era of your world’s prehistory can be malicious. My lesser self remains fast asleep and harmless for eternity—unless some idiot rouses it.

  “Swell,” Mac shook his head. “Sheared off when you tried to invade? What happened? Too much god to squeeze through the portal? Took it out on Tom when the door snapped shut? Pardon me if I withhold my trust regarding your intentions.”

  Oh, come now. Bygones should be bygones after a few hundred million years. Ruling over invertebrates did not excite me. I withdrew. My circumstances changed. You might say I went through a rough patch. Here we are.

  “We’re here because NCY-93 flew off course and fell into your clutches . . . ”

  There are no accidents. Think clearly. Think as a Tooms older than nine.

  “Oh. I’m an idiot.” Mac smiled bitterly. “The trip to photograph Pluto was a ruse. The malfunction of the drive also a ruse. The Great Dark was always the destination.” He understood with horrifying certainty that Granddad and Dad were fully aware of Mr. Gray. They’d designed a probe to travel into a parallel universe and gather unholy knowledge from a source of incalculable evil. He could imagine their smug grins as they anticipated the launch, and their resultant fury when the probe blew apart before escaping the Earth’s gravity. Which held true? The reality wherein Nancy crashed with a dire payload, or the reality wherein the probe exploded?

  Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. This you may have for free—whatever you suppose, you are only half right. However deep you think the rabbit hole descends, it goes deeper. The ground vibrated and cracked. In the near distance, a metal ziggurat rose from the dust. The structure appeared identical to the one frozen inside the Ugruk Glacier. A doorway spiraled open.

  This planet and its inhabitants slaked my desires in happier times. An advanced species lies buried beneath these wastes. I annihilated the last of them centuries ago. Their doors remain. Their projectors.

  “Your son designed this one as well, I suppose.”

  No, my daughter did. Hell of an inventor, that girl. Step through the membrane from this reality and be reunited with Drederick. Fix him in your mind. The cogs of the universe will slip and align.

  “Yes, and after the hugs and teary kisses?”

  Arthur Navarro is not lost to you. The Arthur who returned to your world was a candle flicker of himself. The best of his life force resides in the outermost reaches of my honeycomb prison.

  “Fine news, sir. Tell me the catch.”

  The catch is you and your devious kin will continue to dance for my amusement. Drederick is near the Lagerstätte, my web of death dreams. Go to him, together you’ll retrieve your friend and all will be well. Or you’ll die horribly. It’s always a tossup.

  “I’d dance a jig to see Arthur returned to the living. On the other hoof, this sure as heck sounds like a deal with the devil.”

  Naturally it is, you little shit. I advise you to run.

  The pack of shadows closed rapidly. These were not wolves. Each figure crawling in the dust was a contorted and ravening doppelganger of Mac himself. Some were wizened babies. Others were infantile ancients. All of them were starved. He ran.

  THE NIGHT JUNGLE

  Arthur whispered, This way. This way.

  Dred stepped through an infinity of dead stars. He opened his eyes and a night jungle stretched endlessly. The transition from arctic to tropical was dramatic. Ripe tropical heat smothered and leeched the boys’ strength. Tiny stinging flies swarmed from the reeds and crawled into their eyes and noses and feasted upon their sweat. Birds chattered. Great beasts coughed and growled in the undergrowth.

  Physics behaved strangely here—gravity pulled more strongly; Crabbe remarked it felt as if he slogged in boots filled with lead. A fishbowl effect created the illusion that everything, including their own bodies, elongated slightly. Around them, the shrouded landscape bent as if in the throes of a violent, soundless storm. It required some adjustment on the boys’ part.

  And what of Macbeth? Neither of them had mentioned Mac or his conspicuous absence. They’d emerged from the maze and called for him until their throats were raw. Soon after, screams had pealed from the jungle depths and discovering their source became the priority mission. Each scream flickered white as a lightning whipcrack against the underside of the black dome sky. Some emanated near at hand; others echoed far away. Dred and Crabbe stumbled in pursuit downstream along the dirt bank of a river. The flashes of light illuminated an impenetrable jungle inland and more of the same on the opposite bank.

  Whenever the lightning flared at a perfect angle, Dred glimpsed objects trapped in the sticky black sky—a deep space probe trailing frozen sparks; planets and asteroids, also snared and motionless; Mother in ceremonial raiment, great wings unfurled; and the snarling visages of Granddad, Dad, and Uncle Andronicus, enmeshed in the cosmic spider web.

  Dred and Crabbe crept along the river for hours or days. Impossible to tell with neither sun nor stars to guide them through darkness. The horizon, when it revealed itself, was outlined in seething crimson that brightened and ebbed. They marked the passage of time by the cycles of thirst, hunger, and exhaustion. Thirst was slaked at infrequent springs. Hunger was sated by a satchel of dates, jerky, and nuts Crabbe had tucked into his belt along with flint and tinder. Sleep proved most difficult and the boys did so in shifts lest some predator sn
eak upon them.

  A long while passed before Dred recognized the tormented cries. He stifled a sob of his own. Emotional weakness was hazardous to one’s health in the Tooms family. “It’s Arthur,” he said to Crabbe.

  “Yeah, I was afraid to admit it. What does it mean? I read about his funeral in the paper. Navarro is stone dead, right?”

  “As three-o’clock.” Dred didn’t say he’d thought until that very moment the screams were Mac’s and his emotion was acute relief. “Am I dreaming? Trapped inside my headset? I doubt my luck is that good. Could this be a land of eternal darkness? The River Styx leadin’ us toward Pluto himself?”

  “Ain’t there supposed to be a boatman? Angels? I don’t see any.”

  Dred shrugged. “There are loads of realities, one layered upon another. Frequencies. We might’ve landed in some ultimate future or on a planet orbitin’ a star so far beyond the rim of the universe physical law is trumped.” His Dreamtime programming was occasionally supplemented with lectures from Sword scientists. Doctors Navarro and Souza loved to hold forth regarding parallel dimensions, time paradoxes, astral projection, and quantum entanglement; to which Dred listened with half an ear. At the moment he regretted his years of insouciance.

  The pair rested next to a stream that flowed through tall grass and merged with the river. Such was their thirst they risked scooping handfuls of the warm, brackish water into their mouths.

  “I’ll be gone to hell if this ain’t swimmin’ with brain parasites,” Crabbe said, his face an off kilter smudge in the near darkness. He slurped another mouthful and wiped his hand on his shirt. It left a dark smear. “Thick as pea soup up there. Surely no jungle could flourish without sunlight.”

  “The wilderness feeds upon death,” Dred said, quoting Sifu Kung Fan. Another scream rolled across the land and the canopy rustled with disquieted animals. The obsidian sky reflected an anguished phantom visage that stretched and dissipated within moments.