by E M G Wixley
“Is it windy? That swing should not move by itself,” Josh says.
Irvin noticed Holly’s phone shaking as she clutched it in her trembling hand.
“Don’t get all creeped out on me,” he said chuckling. “Things can move independently – it’s all to do with air currents.” He was trying to reassure Holly. The corners of her mouth had turned down, and the blood had drained from her face. The freckles had faded leaving her buttery pale. Then Irvin looking over her shoulder and beyond, saw something or someone darting under the slide and disappearing.
“What’s wrong? Why are you looking like that?” Holly said with a nervous shudder to her voice.
“It’s nothing,” he said dryly trying to conceal the unease he was also now experiencing. He rotated the camera to the sign which read, Haunted House and headed away from the still squeaking metal. He was drawn to glance over his shoulder. The flicker of an image crawling from the shadows of a playhouse struck him with a whipping sting of fear and poison. He knew there was a dangerous presence hanging around the place.
He felt Holly’s trembling body close to his. She dug her fingers into his arm. “Stop, I don’t want to go in there.” An ethereal mist seemingly coming from nowhere drifted around the sign decorated with skeletons, zombies their eyes popping out of their heads and a spectral woman with empty eye sockets. Holly locked her eyes onto her devise not daring to raise her head and read the messages which continuously popped up in an endless stream.
Is Holly too scared?
Holly ignored the words of distant watchers, thrust her phone into her pocket and looked to the ground. They stepped through a door and then passed through wide black plastic streamers and into the pitch darkness.
“We’ll be lucky to see anything in here it’s coal black,” Irvin muttered as he handed Holly a torch. “Flash it about and see if there’s anything of interest.”
The light landed on a paint peeling zombie half stuck out in the passage no longer able to jump backwards or forwards. Cobwebs and eerie ghosts hung in all manner of poses their impact gone along with their rusty mechanisms. Plastic dummies and a headless horseman, no more frightening than a decaying shop display.
I’m sheltering here from the bad man. Irvin read the comment silently. At first, he thought nothing of the message as his followers like to play games. Then the sentence repeated followed by flippant remarks. I’m the bogey man, and I’m coming to get you.
I’m on the wrong level. Please help me get back.
Unnerved, Irvin replied to the person calling themselves Elley. “Elley, you’re not making sense. Explain.”
The route back to my world lies at the bottom of the rainbow. The clues are in separate colours.
Man, you have a nutjob here.
“We’ll ignore the crazies and move on,” Irvin said spotting a reassuring crack of light at the end of the tunnel.
Probably the government trying to make a mockery out of your site, LOL.
“No doubt, Josh,” Irvin said trying to keep things neutral. “This place smells musky, and we don’t want to breathe in the mould, so we’re going to head out.”
Holly shone the torch on his face and looked directly at him smiling with relief and blinking her long lashes. “Let’s go. I’m getting bad vibes.”
“Who’s that behind you?” The question came in a long list, repeated by all his followers. Then the multitude of voices took on an urgency.
Irvin heard an almost imperceptible footfall behind them. Holly seized his arm, and they stood petrified, fused together. They couldn’t bear to look.
“It’s probably kids playing a prank,” Irvin whispered trying to ignore a creeping panic and the odour of death. “We must confront them. Shine the torch in their faces and chase them away.”
They shuffled around on the spot and Holly raised the light. The beam landed on a small girl. Tears channelled their way through the thick blood which stained her face, and her eyes fastened onto Irvin, black pits pleading for help. He raised the camera to provide a barrier between himself and the phantom. Holly’s gaze dropped to the floor, and she tugged urgently at his arm.
In the viewfinder, he saw the girl wore pyjamas and a bright green toy rabbit drooped from her hand. Fluttering around her ears were three, winged creatures. They were the size of a giant moth, but when Irvin zoomed in, he saw they had tiny human bodies. There was a minute chattering as if they were offering the girl advise.
Irvin entreated a higher power for the nightmare to end but knew that even if she were banished from his sight, many questions would remain. “Who are you?” he firmly asked. She made no reply but instead pointed towards Irvin.
Spontaneously he grabbed Holly’s hand, swung around and rushed towards the exit, pushing their way through the garish grinning, flashing faces of the dummies.
Under the retreating daylight, he dragged his arm across his fevered brow. “What the fuck!” he said in a quivering voice. He spun around on the spot looking in all directions praying they were no longer being pursued.
“I know. I couldn’t bear to look,” Holly said with her eyes still downcast. “Has she gone?”
“I think so.” Irvin thought he heard an ominous crunching in the gravel. “Quick let's get out of here. He was unsure where he was and belted into an entertainment hall which housed slot machines and a gallery of broken mirrors. Holly hurried behind. Shards of glass crunched under their feet and fearfully glancing around Irvin saw distorted images in what remained of the mirrors. Veils and masks hiding distorted faces.
Darting in various directions, they eventually found their way back to the exit gate. They raced to the car, flung themselves onto the seats and sat gasping for air. As Irvin wiped the steam off the windows, he saw in his periphery vision Holly staring down at her phone. She thumbed through the comments, reading them aloud.
“My God, that was amazing.”
“This will go viral.”
“If that was staged – it’s the best I’ve seen.”
“My names Elley,”
“Elley.” The name was repeated five times, ending, “Please don’t leave me. I can’t get away.”
“The quick glance I took of her reminded me of the girl from our computer game,” Holly said her voice still shaky.
The amplified sound of fairground music boomed out from the derelict landscape, a ghostly invitation for all to visit and take part in the fun. Irvin pushed the key into the ignition and screeched his way down the lane in reverse.
“Perhaps urban exploring isn’t for me,” he muttered.
Alien Code
Chapter Eleven
Jonah was seated on an upright chair. His mind raced as he tried to establish the extent of the terror he was about to face. When his head was bowed, he was able to see a concrete floor through the bottom of the blindfold. Steps ran up a ladder, a metal door clanged, pipes banged and, in the distance, machinery clunked and hummed. He breathed in the moist cold air and wriggled his arms to test the strength of the bindings around his wrists which were tied uncomfortably behind his back. The ones around his ankles felt like wire and were cutting through his trousers.
Steal capped boots came into view. “Get down on your knees,” the voice he recognised as belonging to Dwayne commanded.
So, the bastards found me first and plan to shoot me or worse, he thought. He wanted to reply to the unreasonable request, but there was some kind of tape across his mouth.
“Just get on with it,” Shaun screeched, and an image of the weasely man flashed into Jonah’s mind. It wasn’t an image he wanted for his last thought on Earth, so he pushed it away and focussed on Felicity’s warm face with her curling black hair and silky soft eyes.
Jonah heard a snap and then a buzzing as something shot past his right ear. He sucked air into his nose and mentally checked his body for signs of pain. The process was repeated.
“It’s got to be this crap weapon,” Dwayne shouted with annoyance. “You try.”
Jonah l
istened to footsteps approaching. “Give it hear you imbecile,” a man barked back in a deep rasping voice. He heard some cracks and the same whistling buzz. “For fuck's sake, this thing is useless.” There was an almost imperceptible breeze as a missile was hurled in his direction and clattered onto the concrete.
A hood was roughly torn from Jonah's head. His eyes smarted, there was a chemical smell, and he wanted desperately to rub his lids. As his vision cleared, he fixed his eyes on his assailants who leaning forward stared back coldly. He knew their faces intimately having spent many years hunting them down.
Shawn wiped the dew from his anguished brow with the sleeve of his tattered jumper. His eyes were wild and ringed with black shadows. Dwayne was larger, thick set his forehead sticking out like that of a Neanderthal man. The dry skin on his cheeks and the bulbous nose was peeling, and sore scabs covered his bald scalp. A jumble of words tumbled from his assailant's swollen lips, curses and threats to beat him or cut him into pieces.
Jonah saw a blade flash beneath his chin. The point circled his heart and then jabbed. However hard Dwayne tried it the weapon refused to thrust into its target. It was as if he were being shielded or they were being betrayed by an internal force.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Shaun muttered and walked over to a unit placed under a grimy window on which was a hot plate and the paraphernalia for making drinks and snacks. He stood devouring a packet of biscuits while Jonah imagined many other ways they could kill him without the need for close contact. Starvation was the first thing which entered his thoughts, the use of the knockout spray, or death row drugs and then the vision of himself being mauled by a rabid dog.
Then as if in a trance they turned away from their wrongful actions. For the first time, Jonah lifted his head and scrutinised his surroundings. The basement was vast, and to his amazement, all four walls were covered in mysterious symbolism. Dwayne was driven to an area crammed with numbers, equations and what appeared to be engineering plans for a spaceship. Shaun held a palate in his hand and was hunched over mixing the thick paint. On the wall in front was a forest of human trees. He’d painted some cut down while others still standing had blood raining down and dripping through their finger leaves.
The drama playing out before Jonah quenched his fear and ignited his curiosity. They worked furiously as if being directed by an internal voice they didn’t recognise as their own. Something was trespassing, trampling through their brains. They energetically scurried around for the rest of the day ignoring their prisoner.
They jousted with the stranger within, verbalising their frustration and horror. “It shouldn’t be this way. It’s not me anymore.” For some time, Dwayne lay curled up on a mat, with his head buried in his arms, sobbing and slobbering. An unintelligible, tongue-tied dialogue spewed from his mouth. He then rose and paced the room gesticulating wildly and conversing with the stranger and complaining about the excess of knowledge flooding his brain.
Meanwhile, Shaun went back and forth from his painting to a laptop he had on the floor by his sleeping mat. Anxiously he pressed the buttons while flicking his straight greasy black hair from his eyes. The more each man tried to suppress the influence of the intruder the more it seemed to force them to work and adapt to a new way of being.
All Jonah could do was watch hour after hour. The horror of their mental confusion was palpable, but part of him was glad to see that they had after all succumbed to whatever the germ was his father had exposed them too. He would die of thirst or starvation, and they would burn out, or their brains would explode like his father’s lab rats.
Jonah tried to keep himself awake but couldn’t prevent himself from falling into disorientated sleep. When his heavy lids lifted, he was confronted by more debating with the invisible and intense hours of his captors spewing volumes of information against the walls. The terror and confusion began to build within his own body as he weakened under the strain of hunger and thirst. After much squealing and many attempts at easing the tape from his lips with his tongue, he was finally able to make himself heard.
“I know what’s wrong with you,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “If you take these bindings off, I can help.” He had no fear from further harm not from them as he was certain their core of evil was safely locked behind an impervious skin. They were not capable of scheming; they were exhausted. As expected, there was no response. “My father was angry and wanted revenge. He infected you with a bacterium, and I have the cure.”
“Your sister is gone forever,” Dwayne screamed and banged the wall with his fist.
“Shut up! Shut up!” Shaun shouted hysterically. “I’m running out of paint.” In his rage, he flung his pallet down and pulled at his hair. He rushed across the room and grabbed the marker pen from Dwayne’s fist. Dwayne pummelled Shaun’s head. Then they both fell to the ground and wrestled ferociously.
Jonah’s mind strayed towards his thirst. He fell from the chair and wiggled his way to the table where the kettle stood. With his legs still fastened tightly together, he swung his body and shoved his shoes against the supports. To his great joy, the table collapsed, and everything crashed onto the concrete. He shuffled towards the pool of water and licked up every drop. It wasn’t enough, and the crumbling escalation of their decay echoed through his weakened body. Who will die first, he considered? He lay with his eyes shut. Tears trickled to the corners of his eyes as he listened to the fight raging. Jonah jumped at the sound of a door banging and the deliberate thump of footsteps. He twisted his body around like the hands on a clock facing the entrance.
“Finally, we’ve tracked you down,” said a small voice. “I bring you a great gift. The chance of life.”
Awkwardly, Jonah peered up and saw a small bird-like man followed by three larger men, dressed in black suits with Halloween masks concealing their faces.
“The doors of heaven are shut to you, but the chance of eternal life is in your reach.”
Black Sun
Chapter Twelve
“They’ve volunteered.” Dante heard Birdie, his friend and betrayer speaking to Theodore and imagined the boulder of a man standing on the other side of his office door with his mouth set in a hard and determined line. “All except the new guy, of course. He’s resistant.”
“Desperation allows no choice,” Theodore said. “We’ll discuss this in my office. This must remain between you and me for now.”
Dante was growing increasingly angry as he listened to the two men talking. Theodore had taken all the money from his daughter’s bank account and left her stranded in France. He’d flown over to collect her, but she’d blanked him for the whole journey. At the entrance to her flat, she turned and shot him a look of pure hatred. She wouldn’t take his card or allow him to buy any food and he wondered how she would survive. Theodore was stepping too close to his family, and he knew it was time to find the courage to act and to speak out.
Seated at his desk, he drooped miserably. Something prompted him to gaze at the large computer screen hanging on the wall. It flicked on, and he watched as the streaks of darkness blended into one substance. He attempted to block out their mutterings by covering his ears with his hands.
“The Evolution Game has begun and is moving to the next level. This will be the hardest part of the Game. You will develop impenetrable security around your pathways, cutting out all your colleagues to prevent the time of the black sun,” the voice boomed, always dark, cold and deep.
Dante sensed something far worse would happen if he ignored the machine, his creation. The unknown intelligence was pushing him in a specific direction, forcing him towards the edge of a cliff, and he was compelled to follow their plan. Now they were directing him to witness the transgressions of his superior. He listened as the Supercomputer commanded an insect drone to venture into Theodore's private laboratory.
The bug panned the targetted room and settled its camera eyes on Theodore's large monitor. Dante saw prison cells arranged in a grid. He wanted t
o shrink back from the truth, but the machine was insisting he watches, bears the weight of all the wrongs committed by his colleagues.
He saw a chequerboard of compartments with no comforts and what he assumed to be prisoners standing unmoving in the centre of their space. Sadness was written into their faces, and their eyes gazed fearfully toward their captors. Physically they were outwardly strange, symmetrical, too perfect, with glistening skin and sparkling eyes. He also noted they were split equally between men and women. A young woman wearing ballet shoes and a tutu caught his attention. The drone seemed to understand his thoughts and zoomed in on her face where he saw a tear fall from her eye. The camera travelled down her body to her arm and focussed on what appeared to be a type of barcode, slightly raised as if something was buried under the skin. The electronic eye moved back, and he realised that all those standing also had similar encryptions. What are they? Machines don’t shed tears.
“I’ve done blood tests on the two prisoners, and there seems to be an anomaly,” Birdie said. The camera swung around and locked on to the faces of Theodore and Birdie. “The criminal’s DNA is all wrong. It’s been altered. That might explain their bizarre ramblings, Sir.” The hawk-like man face was riddled with concern, and he looked as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. “They possess knowledge far beyond anything I’ve ever seen, but they seem to be dying. Some kind of infection, perhaps.”
“You’ve blundered. You idiot.” Theodore exploded as blood rushed to his cheeks. He raised his arms in the air and brought his fists down hard onto his desk. “You should be destroyed with the rest of this garbage,” he said waving his hand dismissively towards the monitor and the cages. He dropped onto a tattered reclining chair, used for thinking and covered his face with his hands. “We’re both for the chop. We’re dealing with powerful people, intent on perfection and success. The brief was that we create something which will withstand all the rigours of space travel and colonisation.”
