by L. Brown
Screeching erupted, knocked him back, then came the claws and merciless flap. Shocked by the dumpster, its monster within, Garth dove to the floor and waited to die. But when that didn’t happen, he peeked up, followed the screech to the murder of crows wheeling and scolding under a magnificent arch, a portion of station still untagged.
Buoyed by it, Garth wondered if he, too, could somehow survive. No chance, his default response, but that’s when he heard it, the beautiful noise of turbine and chop.
Swooping toward the old train station, that heap of unlit brick, Lt Kyce looked for signs of activity, a shadow stirring the dark.
“How about it, Sarge,” said Kyce. “Got a light?”
Answering with his thumb, Sergeant Hruska toggled the searchlight to On, and as thirty-million candlepower bathed Michigan Central Station, he looked for trespassing life.
“Anything?” asked Kyce.
“Nothing,” answered Hruska, now glancing at his infrared screen. “At least nothing that shows, so — maybe Halloween’s come early, maybe we’re chasing goblins and—?”
His comment unfinished, Hruska stared at his screen.
“Something?” asked Kyce.
Hruska said nothing, just leaned closer in, then Kyce did the same. Dangerous, both fliers staring at the FLIR, but neither could help it because neither could believe, yet there it was: invisible to the eye, but not to heat, a thermal apparition filled the screen, a massive craft shaped like a wishbone and skewed like an asymmetrical Y.
“Here!” screamed Garth, now rushing outside. “Down here!” But as he waved to the helicopter, he squinted, perplexed, as its searchlight refracted through a layer of haze, diffused as if penetrating antique glass. Not just haze, something was there, a Y-shaped mass both large and moving, rumbling on down.
Wanting to run, just blindly flee, Garth could only stand there, stunned and aghast, as a mechanical appendage swung from the haze and into plain sight. A reticulating truss of pivot and twist, the mechanism resembled a great armored claw. Which now opened, with unmitigated dread, to a darkness slivered with red and swirled with mist.
Then the mist parted and Garth nearly dropped, for something within was now coming out.
Garth backpedaled into a wall. Splayed under a window, crows flushing out in full-throated caw, he watched the specter of unnumbered dreams emerge from the mist, the Wraith in chains had arrived.
And held, in its grasp, a long, crooked stick.
All focus on the infra-red screen, Lt. Kyce stared transfixed. “Sarge?”
Hruska didn’t respond. Completely confounded, he had no words, not until the thing in chains raised its faceless gaze and looked, seemingly, right through their screen.
“Go,” Hruska rasped.
“Huh?”
“Go, just—?” Every sense tingling, Hruska watched the screen surge in brilliance, a bedazzlement of burn. “Go!” he cried, but it was already too late, and as the FLIR shattered, so so did the instruments, every electronic gage and display. Kyce applied his controls, but collective and throttle seemed lashed to lead, and with radio feedback piercing his ears and the rhythm of the rotor now drunkenly slow, the helicopter shuddered, then slid toward the river, toward waves no longer a rapture, but simply cold black.
Not surprised, not in the least, the fade of the helicopter only confirmed what Garth had somehow always known, he would face the Wraith alone. And if he never before imagined the where or when, the place and time had finally come.
Departing the appendage, that hanging, mechanical claw, the Wraith descended in smooth, gliding strides; and walked, by all appearance, as if on air.
The totality of allowable madness finally exceeded, Garth cracked his paralysis with a staggering rise. He lurched through the glassless window, toppled back inside, but as he stumbled through the near-blinding dark, his retreat went nowhere, was simply a series of trips and turns and pin-balling off walls. Then without apparent cause, it started again, that awful clawing infesting his back. Stronger now, so much worse, but when he slapped at the pain, he found a lump not just larger, but inches higher up; it had moved?! But most nightmarish of all, when he touched that eggish growth under the nape of his neck, it seemed, freakishly, to flinch.
Assuming some gorging, sub-dermal tick, he hit it, punched it, tried to squish it flat. Yet horrifically, impossibly, the growth fought back, that unthinking lump pricked and clawed with verminal squirm.
Shrieking now, becoming unhinged, Garth fled the Wraith while thrashing through the dark and trying, bare handed, to rip out the lump. But the agony only increased, dumbed every sense until, rolling his boot on a spray can, he fell onto glass, a broken bottle of Strohs.
Stunned a moment, he wondered which would hurt worse, death by Wraith or lump. A senseless question, but moreso the why, because of all the people in the world, of all the lives it could have stalked, why me? No answer came, not even a guess, but when the clawing resumed and footsteps rose, Garth ceased to think and just crawled. Tried to crawl, but with pain from the lump searing the sinews and scorching every nerve, Garth collapsed, could no longer move.
Yet the lump still moved and so did the Wraith. Its footsteps grew, reverberated off walls, and by the pace, the being sounded rushed, an executioner late for its task. But then Garth wondered why he heard it at all, for if the Wraith could walk on air, did it really need to run down the hall?
Irrelevant, the answer. Footsteps closed fast, charged from a corridor directly ahead, and though Garth again struggled to move, the pain bound him, racked his limbs. Nothing remained but to lay there and wait, just watch the being pound from the dark on ragged gray boots with hobnail soles.
Dreading it, the sight of the living Wraith, Garth lifted his gaze because he had to, because he needed to know what came for his life. Yet instead of glowing chains, he saw a long coat; and instead of the stick, he perceived two knives, one curved and the other straight. But when the knives sparked, when a high-voltage crack lashed the nape of his neck and hot steel blades dug into his flesh, Garth perceived only pain. And then, mercifully, nothing at all.
“Garth!” yelled Father Nkomo. Gripping the old train station’s perimeter fence, he surveyed the ruin, every desolate floor. He didn’t know if Garth had run this far, but after glimpsing the helicopter searchlight, he assumed the usual, the freshman worst case. “Answer me, are you here?”
About to give up, the priest discerned movement, a man in a long coat and hobnail boots now sprinted out. And lugged, by all appearance, a listless form that looked like Garth.
“Stop!” shouted Nkomo, already climbing the fence. “Leave him, let him go!”
But when he looked again, they were gone. No long coat and no more Garth, nothing remained except the train station grounds, a patchwork of turf and tar and — now visible from Nkomo’s perch, a dark haze above, a rumbling mist shaking his grip off the fence.
Nkomo tumbled to the other side, but snagging his cassock, he landed headfirst.
Staggered by it, the priest in a daze now heard sounds out of place, the slam of a hatch and a deep, swelling roar. And where he’d last seen Garth and the man, a howl of thrust scorched the turf, a blast of power launching — nothing, he never saw a thing.
Groggy now, sensing the blood moisten his head, Nkomo also sensed more. An unsettling presence, it turned him to the station, to a gothic arch ghosted with indigo glow. A glow that reminded, at least to a priest steeped in Milton and Faust, of not just some play of light, but something malevolent and real; an arrival, in Michigan Central Station, from the abyss.
Chapter 6
Revelations
Garth shivered.
Glazed in frozen sweat, a literal crust of fright, he felt trapped, a swimmer under ice. He wanted to surface, see where he was, but whatever this place, he sensed only dread. Better to remain unconscious, don’t move at all, but the scratch in his throat made him desperate for air, and in a spasm of cough, Garth awoke.
Smoke stung his
eyes, the greasy dark swirls clouded the view. But the view lacked light and color and looked only bleak, nothing appeared but smoke and stone, rough rock walls surrounding all ’round. Cognition returning, Garth entertained his first addled thought.
I’m in a cave?
A cold cave, by his continual shake. And by the ache of his jaw, he’d been shivering a while, so as he drew up his legs and cradled his arms, he tried to reboot, remember what happened and bridge back to now. But he recalled only bits, recollections of crushing acceleration and a deep thrumming roar. And though flashes of a cramped interior now also came back — some kind of craft? — another memory swamped them all, the arrival of the Wraith.
Garth rocked upright, then nearly fell. Shaky and dazed, roiled by fear, he bundled recollections into an unassailable fact, I’m in the cave of the Wraith.
Garth coughed again. Fanning away smoke, he noted it originated from ahead, from behind a bend in the cave. Suspecting the Wraith awaited, kindled a fire to heat some inquisitional tool, Garth looked for an exit, but the only way out was ahead. Warring against fear, against the side of himself that so often won, he eased to the bend in the cave, then peeked out.
No Wraith and no tool, Garth saw only a few licks of flame. Smoky and unattended, the weak fire also crackled, reminded of bacon in a pan. Yet it wasn’t bacon he smelled, but — fish? Hard to explain, the fire heated no fin or fillet, but at least it made light, and that’s how Garth saw it, an old burlap sack. What it held, he couldn’t tell, and despite further squint, he saw nothing else. Then looking back at the fire, he noticed something odd, for though he assumed it burned coal or wood, the flame instead sprung from — horseshoes? Not exactly, but that was their shape; though as for their texture, the objects appeared less like iron and more like bone.
A windy moan made Garth duck. Stirring the cave from somewhere ahead, its rise and fall seemed to whisper come out.
The fire burned warm, the wind blew cold, but sensing danger, the imminent arrival of the Wraith, Garth crept ahead. A few steps led to the next bend, where, peeking once more, he glimpsed a snow-dusted wall lit with color, muted blues and greens.
Startled by it, he wondered at the source. But to find it, he had to move, so inching ahead, Garth snuck toward the light.
Then stopped at the tracks, at booted snow prints studded with spikes. The sight took him back to the train station floor, to boots charging up on hobnail soles. But when he recalled what happened next, the two sparking knives gouging his flesh, he grimaced, then touched the nape of his neck.
Horribly sore, the nape of his neck, but amazingly, though he felt a scab? No more lump. Dizzy with questions and ricocheting thoughts, Garth lunged toward the illuminated rock. Another two steps and he rounded another bend, but moving too fast, he slipped on snow and slid from the cave, then skidded downhill to the wind-whipped edge of the world.
Eight-thousand feet high, boot heels planted and fingers splayed, Garth teetered on a cliff. Snowy peaks glimmered under a dazzle of stars, a galactic scatter lensed through polar blues and neon greens reminding, it seemed, of the Northern Lights. But he’d only seen pictures, nothing like this, so — where was this? No roads or town, civilization gone, Garth anchored his mind to one immovable fact: not Detroit.
Inexplicable, this place. And now, so was the hum.
Just noticed, the subtle electrical sound turned Garth around, tugged his gaze to a place near the cave. A large glass cylinder stood on a rock, and not only did it hum, it glowed, emitted a soft azure light. Reminding of a pre-transistor time, it resembled an oversized vacuum tube.
Strange. Likely very strange, that humming, glowing device, but given recent events, the coming of the Wraith and his sitting on a cliff, Garth ignored, just wondered how to regain the cave. But before he could budge, he felt a pull, some surreal tug.
A force like gravity, yet it pulled all wrong, for instead of down, it pulled across, tugged him toward the cliff on the right. He dug in his heels and clawed the snow, but it had no effect, the invisible force pulled Garth to the icy brink.
Precarious defined, another inch and he’d start his last trip, an eight-thousand-foot fall. Yet besides the fear, he also felt rage, a furious burn at the manifest unfairness of dying in ignorance, of not knowing why he was here or for what end.
He had to do something, do it right now, so springing back and twisting, he leapt three feet back. Not an escape, but better than the brink, and from his new perch, he also glimpsed a path, those hobnail tracks led down through snow drifts and passed an outcrop of rock.
Desperate for solidity, for something to seize, Garth didn’t just question if he could reach the outcrop, he had no choice. Whatever life’s point, it wasn’t just to fall off a cliff, so tensing and coiling and visualizing success, he sprang for his handhold, that last-chance rock.
And fell short. Maybe from fatigue, maybe from the relentless tug still pulling behind, but just like everything else in life, it wasn’t the why that mattered, just the result. And though Garth fought his slide, he barely slowed, and with a disbelieving gasp, he finally, pointlessly fell.
Eight-thousand feet high, now slightly less, Garth hurtled toward his freefalling death.
But just like his leap for the rock, he again fell short, and seven feet later, he crashed. Punch-drunk stunned, he marveled at the mind, its ability to trick every sense into believing he’d just hit invisible ground. But when the nerves in his face registered the feel of cold steel, when he now opened his eyes and discerned the ghostly outline of a fall-stopping ramp, he wondered, finally, if he already had died.
But if so, why the pain in his mouth, did the dead still suffer from split lower lips?
Garth had no answer, but he did have the ramp. And though he couldn’t quite see it, if he squinted just right, he could discern its glinting outline. Not wanting to move, yet having no choice, he turned his head and followed the glint to the barely visible profile of — a craft?
Recalling the haze, the rumbling mass obscured within, Garth surmised he sprawled on a walkway, some near-invisible bridge between a high mountain cave and a hovering craft. Yet something didn’t fit, didn’t jibe with his memory of that ship in the haze, for not only did this vessel appear much too small, its V-shape symmetry clashed with his recollection of the asymmetrical Y. So, the Wraith had two ships? More to the point, where was the Wraith?
Not waiting to find out, Garth crawled the ramp toward the cliff, toward a path not previously seen. But as he moved, he felt it again, the unnatural pull that made him look back.
Best guess — and it was hard to tell, every edge of the craft had the visual footprint of silk — the tug came from a large pair of crescents, rotating shapes turning one-inside-the-next. Engines? Whatever their function, they spawned a force like gravity, a palpable, varying pull.
Clenching the ramp with fingers nearly froze, Garth waited for the force to fade. Sensing its minimum, he lunged off the walkway and back to the cliff, then followed the snow trail up to the cave. Tempted to veer off, to follow the boot tracks back downhill, he decided to delay a moment, restore his frostbit hands.
Out of the wind and into the cave, Garth stumbled toward the fire. But not only did it now burn hotter and higher, the blaze silhouetted a shape, a profile huddled beside.
Hulkish in a greatcoat, the broad-shouldered being held a creation bent like a Z, a possible weapon cradled by an abomination of hands. Too many fingers, every one blighted and unnaturally long, the hands scared not just by appearance, but by what they implied, an unhuman hypothesis confirmed by its face. Not by what showed, the visage scared by what was obscured, by flesh hidden under soiled strips of mummy-like cloth crisscrossing its chin, cheek, and jowl. Yet the real horror lived in its eye, in the yellow-orange orb plucked, by the look, from an owl.
Fantastically grotesque, the hulkish being mesmerized. But when Garth heard scraping, heavy footsteps on rock, he turned from the hulk to what came behind.
Veiled by
smoke, a shadow interrupted the blues and greens at the cave’s entry, the snow dusted wall. The shadow loomed large, had twice the girth of a normal man, and its stagger suggested something either old or tired; or, perhaps, just straining under a load, a mass it now tossed off.
A long-clawed carnivore crashed before Garth. Big and white and hopefully dead, six-hundred pounds of — polar bear? — sprawled where it fell. Yet even more shocking than a steaming heap of ursus maritimus was the one who tossed it; and as his form parted the smoke, Garth first glimpsed the boots, the ragged gray leather on hobnail soles, and then the coat, a long, tattered hide stained, here and there, with blood. Fresh blood, by the look, and hopefully bear. But Garth assumed nothing, just waited for the rest, for the reveal of the shadow now flashed by fire.
Neither a Wraith in chains nor another owl-eyed hulk, this slayer of the bear had the fingers and hands of a man. But more than that, Garth couldn’t tell, because before he could discern his face, he noticed something nestled between the man’s shoulder and neck.
A creature, by the look, likely a cat; but when the man double-tapped its head, the thing uncoiled four squid-like tentacles from the man’s arms and legs. Then tilting back, the cat-headed thing withdrew its teeth, two needle-like fangs, from the man’s — spine?
Already unsteady, Garth backed into a wall. Enough insanity, he couldn’t take more, but when the fire popped and threw a bright light, he wondered if it had only begun. No longer shadowed, the face of the man in the hobnail boots reminded of porcelain first shattered, then randomly fit, every square inch seemed split by crack and sealed with scar.
“Bah vahn!” he shouted, this Man of Scars. Then drawing two knives, the same straight and curved, he dropped to a knee.
And Owl-eye stood.
“Savakerrva,” the Man of Scars rasped; and hoisting his knives like an X, he crackled faint sparks from one blade tip to the next.
