69: A Short Novel of Cosmic Horror Read online

It took a few tries, but Barnes was finally able to convince the girls to keep moving. He didn't want to linger too long in one spot. One reason was that time was precious—though, he did have a sneaking suspicion that time worked differently in the woods and the closer they got to the field. He had gathered that much from their last excursion. The second (and more important) reason was that he didn't like how it felt when they weren't moving. Standing still, he could... feel things.

  It was hard to explain, and, even to himself, it sounded ludicrous. But it was kind of like being tickled, only the source of the tickling—the tickler, if you will—was coming from inside him. Inside his head. His brain. He felt it moving when they weren't, but, as they walked, he felt nothing. He liked feeling nothing. Nothing felt normal. Safe.

  After hiking about a mile and not coming upon the field, the place they'd been so sure was “just a little farther”, Barnes stopped and turned to them. “Something isn't right. We should have been there by now.”

  The girls swapped concerned glances.

  Amanda, whose face had dried, surveyed the trees, seemingly mindful of what her eyes might show her. “I don't get it. Why is it keeping us away?”

  Phelps shook her head. “It's not. I think it's feeding off us right now.”

  Barnes hated the way that sounded, though it would explain the tickling sensation that was patrolling his head. A cold trail ran down his spine. “I can feel something.”

  “In your head? Moving about?”

  He nodded.

  “That's how it starts, I think. First the feeling. Then... I don't know... you start... seeing things.”

  “Seeing things?” His arms hardened with tiny bumps.

  “Images. Things in your mind. Then...”

  “They become real,” Amanda finished for her. “That's the way it was with the fig tree.”

  Barnes shook his head. “No, that... that isn't possible.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up, Barnes. You know damn well it is. You saw what the field showed us, and you saw what the note showed you. Don't start playing the role of disbeliever, not now. It's too late for that shit.”

  Barnes hung his head. “I know... I wasn't. I'm just trying to convince myself that this isn't really happening, that none of this is. And maybe, if we believe it, maybe we can make it so. Maybe it will all go away.”

  The girls only stared at him.

  “Okay, fine. It was stupid. Stupid thinking.” He was sweating and it wasn't particularly hot outside.

  Amanda faced Phelps. “What did you see, Phelps?”

  Her eyes scanned the trees, and she squinted as if the thing she'd seen was still there, only hiding now. “I saw...”

  A beat of pure silence, and then came the subtle sound of leaves brushing against each other in the soft, late-afternoon breeze.

  “Go on, Phelps. Tell us.”

  “I saw... her.”

  “Who's her?” asked Barnes, ignoring the intrusive images that kept flashing before him. His dead lover lying in the grass outside of the public restroom, his face beaten bloody and unrecognizable, looking like a body mold from a low-budget horror movie. He blinked and Brian was gone, and three seconds later, Brian was back again, dead like always. “Phelps?”

  “Her... my grandmother... the boys...”

  Phelps turned and stared past them, down the path. As if there was something there. Barnes saw nothing but the bend in the path, the one that would lead them down another stretch of trees and memories, but no field. The Field, Barnes thought, was becoming something they'd seen once and weren't allowed to see again.

  “The boys she killed, I can see their faces,” Phelps said distantly and dream-like. It reminded Barnes of how Brian used to mumble-speak in his sleep, say things that made no sense, things he couldn't remember saying come morning. “They're right there,” she said, pointing to the path where Barnes, again, saw nothing but dirt and leaves and the promise of an exit from this awful place, this path that should not exist in nature. “They're right there and they're watching me. Smiling. Waving to me. They're waving me on, begging me to follow. They have things to show me, they say. They want to show me what she did to them. Those terrible things.” She smiled and the briefest of laughs escaped her lips. “I know what they want. I know what they're after.” She faced Barnes. “My sanity, what's left of it. But I won't go with them. We can't.”

  Barnes didn't see any boys, but he spotted a dark object hanging from one of the trees in the near distance, right about where the path took its bend. He began to walk toward it, but Phelps's voice stopped him.

  “You can't do anything to them, Barnes. They won't listen to you.”

  He continued despite her claim. He had almost told her he wasn't going after them but decided not to waste his breath or the seconds, not that time mattered here anyway. After three steps, he heard Phelps tell Amanda that one of the boys had had all his limbs removed, how her grandparents had stripped his meat down to the bone. How the authorities had never found his body, yet, she knew that to be true. Oh, the horrific stories their rotting corpses would have told; if they had found them; if she had told someone.

  Barnes walked toward the hanging object. As he got closer, he realized it wasn't a shadow and that it wasn't an object, not any old thing.

  It was a person.

  A human being.

  Not just any person, though.

  It was Brian.

  And he was alive. Hanging there. Alive and looking well.

  Well, not well. He looked like he had in the photos the cops showed him, when he'd been brought in to ID the body. His face was swollen and puffy like he'd been stung by a thousand hornets from hell. Barnes realized, above anything else, that he wasn't hanging from the tree—he was suspended in midair, floating between the branches and the ground, his arms and legs stretched as if he were a human five-pointed star. Barnes couldn't tell if Brian was smiling behind his bruised, inflated mask of a face, but he got the sense his lover was smiling, smiling as wide as the inflamed muscles and blood-swollen skin would allow.

  Hey there, stud, the thing said, not with its mouth—but directly into his ear. As if Brian were right behind him instead of standing on an invisible ledge. Brian was unusually still for such a position, and that freaked out Barnes even more than the sudden appearance of his dead partner. Above anything else he'd witnessed, it was the stillness that really shook him.

  Miss me?

  “You know I do. So fucking much. Every fucking day.”

  Want to kiss me?

  Barnes didn't answer that one. He knew the Brian staring down at him wasn't the one he'd kissed goodnight for four years, the one he'd cuddled to sleep every night.

  “I know what you are,” he told the thing. The Field. “I know exactly what you are.”

  I'm Brian. I'm... your love.

  “No. You're not. You're just a cheap imitation. Just a memory. And not even my memory can do Brian justice.”

  For a brief second, Brian wasn't the way he'd been after the murderers were done with him. He was normal. He was wearing khakis and a nice silk button-down. It was the same outfit he'd worn to their first date. There wasn't a stain on it, not a speck of blood. His face was lean, his skin smooth—not grotesquely ballooned as it'd been moments ago. He was just... Brian. The way Barnes wished to remember him.

  Tears tore down his face.

  I'm Brian, the thing said again.

  And Barnes wanted to believe him, he really did.

  “You're... nothing.”

  I'm Brian. I'm Brian. I'm Brian.

  “You're—”

  I'M BRIAN. I'M BRIAN. I'M BRIAN.

  Barnes dropped to his knees and covered his ears. The thing kept shouting, over and over, and his hands weren't enough to block out the noise. It was in his head. He could have stuffed his ears with cotton and still the sound would have come through. It was in him, a part of him, and there was nothing he could do except deal with the thing shouting his partner's name ove
r and over again, listen while the bullhorn went off inside his head, giving hell to his eardrums, making them vibrate, threatening him with permanent damage.

  He felt hands on him. Arms hooked under his shoulders, lifting him from the earth. Upon their touch, the screaming came to an abrupt halt. He looked around, frantically, and realized the rescue had come from Phelps and Amanda. They were gripping him tightly, holding onto him, as if he were saving them as well just by being there.

  Barnes pulled them closer, then faced the path Brian had been hovering above. Brian was gone now, not a shred of evidence that he'd been there remaining. But there was a new vision to behold, one that had been projected for his eyes only.

  Brian was on the ground in the center of the path, no more than twenty-five feet from where the trio stood on six weary legs. His face was battered, blown-up, fresh from the assault. His body was limp, lifeless. A man with a switchblade in his hand dropped to one knee beside him. The carver's friend, fellow murderer, stood next to him holding a bloody baseball bat, gripping the rubber end with both hands. A surprising amount of blood dribbled off the fat end of the bat, the sweet spot that had been cracked across Brian's face a half dozen times.

  Yeah, the man said, do that faggot up.

  The man with the knife began to carve.

  “It's not real,” Barnes told himself, but his senses were failing him. In addition to watching the heinous acts of the worst people this world had to offer, two monsters Barnes would gladly watch take the needle after a just sentence, he also smelled the wet grass of that particular night, the distant smell of exhaust that had been delivered by midnight winds. He could hear cars in the distance, the occasional horn blaring. The silence that never followed. He saw, heard, and smelled it all, and he firmly believed that, if he were to reach out, he'd be able to touch the swollen mask that had become Brian's face. “It's not real,” he convinced himself. “None of it is real.”

  “None of it is real,” Phelps mimicked, and he wondered if she was seeing her grandmother, and if Amanda was seeing her ghosts too. He suspected they were circling similar nightmares, trapped in whatever memorable horrors The Field wanted to show them. Their pasts; however it wanted to twist them, however it wanted to weaponize their recollections.

  “None of it is real,” Amanda said. “None of it is real.”

  “None of it is real,” Barnes said, closing his eyes to the surreal visions before him. The darkness welcomed him, and he was thankful for its presence.

  When he opened his eyes a moment later, the visions were gone. The path was as it had been—empty and inviting.

  In the distance, he saw an ominous gold glow radiating from somewhere just around the bend.

  “The Field,” Phelps said, and began running toward it.

  Amanda followed.

  And so did he.

  20

  Around the bend, the path gave way to The Field. It lay as it had before. The lengthy straw grass stood to their shoulders. Beyond it existed a wide circular flat spot, a place where Amanda imagined some extraterrestrial spaceship touching down. Near the back edge of the flattened earth, a naked tree of medium height stood, its lifeless branches swaying in the soft breeze that kicked across the field. And beyond the lone tree stood a wall of them, the very ones she'd seen bend when a great and terrible figure had pushed its way through the woods—the thing Phelps suggested was the real enemy here and not the field itself, though, after what she'd witnessed on the path, she couldn't fully buy into Phelps's hunch.

  Amanda pushed her way through the straw grass, releasing cottony dandelion spores airborne. She watched them glide through the air, floating like snow flurries on a dreary winter morning. Keeping her focus on the center of the field, the bald spot, she ignored everything else happening around her. She ignored the fact that the closer she got to the center, the funnier her head felt. As if someone had opened the top of her skull and was poking the jelly-like surface of her brain, prodding her dome like some archaic science experiment. She ignored that phantom sensation, and the...

  ...the presence.

  There was something out there in the field with them, and the woods beyond. While she hadn't committed to Phelps's theory in full, there was certainly something out there, clad in shadows. Stalking. Lurking. Biding its time, waiting for the precise moment to spring forth and pounce on its prey.

  And Amanda felt like prey. She was walking right into a trap. Yet, despite those feelings and premonitions of her demise, she continued on anyway, approaching the center of the clearing.

  The dead tree swayed in a violent gust.

  She dropped to her knees, waiting for The Field to show itself. Its true form.

  Behind her, Phelps and Barnes followed, planting their knees in the mud-soft earth.

  She blinked, and nighttime suddenly conquered the skies.

  Her grandfather appeared before her, standing, his arms open as if he were trying to hug all three of them at once. “You've come back to me...”

  “Yes,” she said. “To end this.”

  Her grandfather hissed with laughter, a hideous sound that reminded her of a slashed tire.

  “You cannot end what is endless, child.”

  “I know what you are,” she told The Field. “You're a vampire. You feed on these people. On their memories. Eating them one at a time. The sixty-niners; they're your food. They nourish you.”

  The thing seemed pleased by her assumptions. “You know nothing about me, child. The number of years I've existed are incalculable. I am all that exists here. I am The Field. I am Sixty-Nine.”

  “That means nothing to me.” She shook her head, staring into her grandfather's eyes. They were glowing, yellow, the eyes of a cat shrouded in darkness. “I came here... we came here... to reason with you. To beg you. To leave this place.”

  The thing dropped its smile, and she knew the answer without needing to hear its reply.

  “I will never leave this place,” it said, walking toward her. Its arms and legs moved without grace, like a child learning to find his feet. “I am this place. It is me and I am it.”

  Beyond the thing that could only be an illusion, that terrible featureless something moved in the woods, stirring amongst the trees. The treetops shimmied, shaking loose leaves over the ground below. The trunks arched, bending like fishing poles with sharks on the line. A gust of wind stormed across the field, nearly flattening the tall straw grass. The sky was dark and full of stars, bright spots living in an opaque world.

  “Please,” Amanda begged. “These people are innocent.”

  The thing laughed again, threw back its head. Its neck was abnormally long, and it had cocked its head so far back that Amanda thought its vertebrae would snap, its throat would split from the pressure. Somehow, probably the strange rules of this alternate world, the neck supported the weight of its bulbous head. Her grandfather's doppelganger righted itself, and then launched itself forward, hovering its face just over Amanda's head.

  Amanda recoiled, her grandfather's image—The Field's version of it—leering at her from this proximity was all too much. Its lip curled as it growled like a guard dog, and that little act of aggression made her wonder if The Field was a guard dog. And whatever it was guarding was only just beyond it, that thing that prowled near the edge of the woods under a twilight universe.

  Definitely two entities, she thought, wishing she could communicate with the others. She looked over her shoulder, saw Barnes and Phelps kneeling as they'd been before the sky had gone dark, only they were staring up at The Field with no eyes. They'd been snatched out of their sockets, replaced by two bleeding cavities, streaks of blood squirting down their faces. They didn't seem affected in the least, and they knelt in silence. Waiting. Watching. What the darkness had shown them, Amanda could only guess.

  She was alone here. With it, The Field. And she felt it feeding off this notion, this moment, this experience. She was in its lair, in its palace of comfort, inside its dark territory, isolated fro
m the others. Trapped. Forever bound to the thing's rotten whims. At its mercy, if it knew of such a word.

  “I like the way your memories taste,” it barked in her ear. She smelled something sweet, like dark licorice, only moldy. “So delicious and sweet. Like a... like a fig from the finest tree.”

  As it spoke, she tasted figs on her tongue; the sweet flavor, the crunch of the seeds between her teeth. She could smell her mother's baked treats, the pleasant aroma tantalizing her senses, freezing her skin. The gross licorice scent was gone, immediately forgotten. Then, a second later, it was all gone. Not just gone—but gone. From her memories. Extricated. The fresh-baked aromas, the images of her picking figs off the tree with her father beside her, pointing at every ripe fruit the branches offered. There was no more fig tree at all.

  It had never existed.

  A dark, blank block of space lived where the memories of those days had resided only moments ago.

  She couldn't recall the figs or the tree she'd plucked them from, and, after a few moments, she'd forgotten what she couldn't remember altogether. As if there was really nothing there to begin with. A void where those memories should have been. A cavity of no-end, where eternal moments should be alive.

  Surely there was something, she thought, but then began to doubt herself, doubted her own ability to access the past. Doubted her own brain and its ability to function properly. Was she losing it? Her mind?

  Yes, she thought so. Though, it could have been the creature's doing.

  She faced the smiling thing.

  “Delicious indeed.”

  “What... what did you do to me?”

  “Took a taste. Just a sample. And, oh my, how tasty. Your past is quite delectable. So good, I could eat your entire life in one bite.”

  She felt violated, and she didn't know exactly why. Her mind raced with all sorts of complex equations and conclusions, varying hypotheses on how this could happen to her, how she was able to see and feel what she was seeing and feeling. But in the end, she couldn't wrap her senses around it. The thing was inside her, sure, poking around, but what was it doing? What exactly had it come to do?