69: A Short Novel of Cosmic Horror Read online

  It came to eat, she told herself. It came to feast.

  The thing glowed, a bright golden color. Her grandfather's image began to warp and twist, as did the world around it. She didn't know what was happening to her, but at the same time—she knew all too well.

  No, she thought. This can't be happening to me.

  The world was bleeding away from her. Her vision ran like thin paint. She reached behind her, to where she'd tucked the scissors she'd stolen from Kim Charon's desk, even though she was adamant about not bringing weapons, told the others to—under no circumstances—even think about bringing a weapon along, that weapons would only aggravate The Field. She was glad she had disobeyed her own command and brought along the scissors anyway, though she didn't know how useful they'd be in her fading state. She wasn't even sure she could use them, given how much the world was pulling itself apart before her very eyes.

  Freeing the scissors from her belt, she immediately stabbed upward, near the direction she'd last seen her grandfather's glimmering eyes.

  She felt the shears get stuck in something, and then a shrieking outburst stabbed her eardrums, temporarily deafening her. Something wet splattered on her hand, splashed against her cheeks, and even though the world looked like a kaleidoscope of melting rainbows, she knew what she'd felt was the thing's blood.

  The Field's blood.

  It bleeds, she thought. The goddamn thing bleeds.

  She blinked and daylight flooded her eyes, driving her back, forcing her to bury her face in the crook of her arm.

  She heard Barnes shouting. “No! No, don't do it! Please! God, no.”

  She uncovered her eyes and couldn't believe what she was seeing. It was Phelps. She was elevated, hanging in the sky, her limbs stretched tight in each direction, making her look like a human five-pointed star. She was crying blood; a red stream leaked from each eye, falling off her chin and puddling on the earthy surface below.

  Amanda saw Phelps's mouth move, a weak attempt to communicate with them.

  “Barnes! She's trying to talk!” Amanda shouted, and he stopped waving his arms and jumping up, trying to grab for her feet and pull her back down. It seemed the more he reached and protested her ascension, the higher she drifted away from them.

  Looking up at her, he backed away.

  “I...” Phelps said, the bloody tears falling more steadily now, red rivers of her eternal despair. “I... was... I was wrong.”

  And with that, she was quartered, each of her limbs ripped from their sockets by some malicious, invisible force, horses that simply weren't there. Blood spouted from where her arms and legs used to be, crimson geysers that arced into the air, rained down and watered the dead straw grass. She hung in limbo, all five pieces of her neither rising nor falling, and then, seconds later, she fell, all five pieces at once, to the blood-soaked earth.

  Amanda screamed until her voice gave out.

  Barnes folded forward and threw up.

  Neither had time to grieve their loss; in the distance, near the edge of the forest, something large and ivory-white, a grotesque, hairless biped with spindly arms and legs, parted the trees and entered the field, its new domain, mouth hanging open—impossibly wide—and hungry for the meal it was currently being presented. White tusks, the length of the average human forearm, protruded from beneath its fat, whiskered upper lip.

  Amanda screamed with the realization that The Field wasn't protecting them from the shape in the woods; it was preparing them for it.

  A hand clapped over her mouth, and the dead, icy touch of the strange flesh sent shivers up and down her entire body.

  21

  Barnes couldn't decide where to focus his attention. Straight ahead, this monstrous creature that shouldn't exist in the real world was lumbering toward them, its lengthy arms whipping about wildly as it moved clumsily through the tall grass. Not fast enough for something clearly hungry, but not slow either. It looked like a primate of sorts, only about twelve feet tall with eyes that were hardly human—animalistic orbs that glowed like hot ember—and long white tusks that belonged on a walrus and not this humanoid being. Its whiskered maw opened and closed, flashing deadly rows of serrated teeth.

  He turned to his right to see Amanda struggling. Another being, one as oddly shaped as the thing from the forest, was positioned behind her, putting what looked like its hand over her mouth. The thing stood on two legs, its entire body covered in roots and caked in mud, twigs stuck out of the thing's back and chest. He knew the thing had once appeared as Brian, had granted him illusions of his death, the men that had so viciously slain him. The thing behind her was The Field. And, it was nothing like Phelps had imagined. It was not a relatively benign being that fed off a few people to keep them safe—no, it fed on people because that was what it did. Like all beings, this thing needed to eat and did so with gluttonous intent.

  As for the thing in the forest closing the distance between them and it, Barnes didn't know what the fuck that terrible creature was, only that it was ugly and solely directed its attention on Phelps's mutilated remains.

  The Field killed Phelps, Barnes thought, and this thing is cleaning up after it. Sloppy seconds.

  Barnes ignored the bone-white creature with gangly features and faced the monster at Amanda's back. She'd driven a pair of scissors into its face, and the thing hadn't enough common sense to remove the shears from its muddy flesh. The scissors remained stuck where a mouth should have been. It bled mud from the injury, the syrupy brown substance leaking onto Amanda's head, showering her with an earthly filth.

  Barnes searched the immediate area for a weapon and found nothing. He cursed Amanda for not letting him bring something along, anything he could have used for protection. She had gone with her instincts and had brought something for herself, and if she was willing to risk their lives for a pair of scissors, then why not go all out? Why not bring something bigger, more useful, why not let all of them carry?

  Because... she had wanted to hide from it... The Field... she didn't want it to know... she didn't want us to know... for it to read her intent in our thoughts.

  And apparently it hadn’t, otherwise the all-powerful entity wouldn't have let her get close enough to harm it.

  How'd she do it? How'd she hide from it?

  He scanned the ground again. No available weapons of any kind. No branches he could substitute as a baseball bat. No sharp pieces of stone he could use as a makeshift knife. All he had was himself. His hands, his feet. His brain.

  As the creature continued to hold onto Amanda's head, stealing the memories directly from the source, he noticed the tree—which had been naked and prepped for winter—had begun to bud, springing leaves of the greenish variety.

  Whatever it was doing to Amanda, whatever it had done to them, the tree was reaping the benefits.

  Maybe that's the thing's heart. Maybe that's its life source.

  He didn't have anything else to go on, and the bone-white creature from the forest had already reached the outskirts of the flattened grass. Just as it entered the circle, making for Phelps's bloody, wrecked remains, Barnes decided he'd charge the earthly beast, grab the scissors from its head, and take to the tree. Do as much damage as he could before the thing opted to defend itself.

  If he got that far. He half expected the monster (monsters) not to let him within ten steps of the blooming tree, but he had to try.

  As the bone-white monstrosity hunched down on all fours and began feeding on Phelps's left arm, wedging flesh and bone between its pointy teeth and biting down, Barnes made his move. He sprinted toward Amanda and the thing that powered The Field, the thing responsible for the horrors at Spring Lakes.

  He ran, and the thing turned on him.

  Bellowed out.

  Defended itself.

  Her head felt like a melting rainbow; her memories were colors and they were all bleeding together, dripping on the ground before her. She saw each one pass through her before the thing that currently feasted on her lured
the moments away. Her past was there, laid out before her, and then it wasn’t. They'd become lost. Well, maybe not lost; lost implied she no longer knew where they were—but she knew. They belonged to The Field now, this thing that fed upon their lives, their memories, the good and the bad, and used their experiences to grow richer and prosper, to live another day or week or year or millennia so it could one day feed again.

  It let her remember that.

  Phelps had been gravely wrong about The Field. It wasn't protecting them. It was protecting itself.

  “I'd have let you wander through the forest infinitely, but something tells me you three weren't going to give up searching for me. You'd hunt me until you found me; you'd bring more distractions and weapons, and that would bring more attention to me, and I can't be bothered with that kind of a nuisance. I've got a good thing going here. Much easier to dispatch you. Leave no trace of you for your friends to discover. But, first, allow me to drink and eat, dine upon your pasts.”

  From Amanda's mind, The Field stole another moment. This one of her fifth birthday party. Her parents had gotten her a pink Power Wheels Jeep. She had driven it around the driveway while the entire party clapped and laughed and cheered her on. Her grandfather had been there, laughing and clapping and cheering, had done all three with the biggest smile plastered to his face. Seeing it now made her want to retch, and she felt her gorge rise.

  “Yes, that's it. Let me take your sicknesses and leave you with nothing. Your memories are cancer to you, aren't they? So tasty this disease, so delectable. I'll eat and drink them all from you, relieve you of their burden. Leave you with nothing. Your head will become a husk, a black starless expanse in your mind where no memories will grow. I will own your memories and I will own you.”

  “The sixty-niners...” Amanda was able to say, but that was about it. She still wanted to know how they fit into this puzzle. She had so many questions to ask The Field before it drained her, but she lacked the voice and energy to do so. It was hard to speak with your memories being sucked from your brain like a glass of milk through a straw.

  “The sixty-niners give me power. There is power in numbers. Each universe has its own number, a common denominator of all things—some places it's seven, others it's nineteen or eleven. But here it's sixty-nine. It's not so often I feed on sixty-nine. They aren't too common at Spring Lakes. They are somewhat of a rarity, but I do come across them. Imagine my surprise when I discovered multiple humans age sixty-nine living no less than a mile from my den, a place I've lived for eternities. Their essence would procure my existence for a very long time. With their memories, I could go on hibernating for another eternity or two.”

  “What... are you... come from?” It ached to get the words out. A vacuum-like suck pulled on her brain, and she saw memories flash before her like a movie montage in fast motion.

  The Field giggled in her ear. “You humans are so obsessed with labels and information, wanting to know each and every thing. An infinite quest for knowledge. And that's the funny thing, isn't it? Because I'm a thing that has no name, has no label. I am what I am, and I don't seek anything beyond that. I feed, eat and drink, and that's my existence and there is no reason to investigate further. I come from the Dark Place where all things are born. You call me The Field and so that's what I am. I am The Field. This is my lair. A place of residence. Just like Spring Lakes is for some folk, this is where I sleep and prey on the minds of those around me, those sixty-nine. It's rare I feed outside those parameters, but I'll make special exceptions to protect myself, to ensure my survival. Like from you and your friends. Ensure you won't come back with more people, more disturbances. Trouble I do not need.”

  Amanda's eyes drifted toward the thing that had pushed its way into the circle. A bone-white being that looked vaguely human, though its arms and legs were much too long and lacked muscle tone. Its limbs were oddly malformed, bent in all the wrong places, like a piece of plastic that had been warped by overexposure to an intense flame. Its skin was wrapped tightly to its skull, its powdery-white flesh smooth and wrinkle-free. Its cranium contained the blackest eyes she'd ever seen. Its jaw hung agape, the lower portion dropping an unrealistic distance, making it seem like the thing's face was made of rubber or some latex special effect. Its mouth was riddled with darkness, which was contrasted by the sharp ivory teeth that lined its gums both top and bottom. The teeth were also misshapen, curved at awkward angles and anatomically inefficient. She wondered how the thing could eat like that, but as it moved closer to the remains of Phelps's body, she figured she was destined to find out.

  “Another creature from the Dark Place. I think it followed me here.”

  She didn't care about the creature, didn't care about The Field anymore. She cared about getting out of this thing alive, with or without her memories intact. Half of them The Field could keep; she didn't need them or want them. But the other half—like the images of the fig tree she'd already forgotten and left behind—she'd like to keep, hold onto them, remember them when she needed to, when she needed to remind herself of who she was and where she'd come from. Sometimes, memories are all we know about ourselves. Sometimes, the memories make us.

  She turned away from the bone-white creature as it picked up one of Phelps's arms and began to gnaw on the flesh and muscle like a chicken wing. She saw Barnes approaching her, fast, a look of pure terror chiseled on his face.

  She heard The Field let loose a terrible sound, a high-pitched whine that echoed across the tall grass, cut through the woods and beyond. Birds took flight into the sun-soaked sky. The wind shifted, temporarily numbing the scents of blood and certain death. The trees swayed like drunken soldiers finally home after a long assignment.

  Amanda closed her eyes, believed those were the last sights and sounds of a world she no longer cared anything about. She prayed for a quick end.

  22

  The look The Field directed at Barnes caused him to skid to a stop, made him rethink his strategy. There was no way he could get to the scissors without the thing taking a swipe at him. Even though the muddy, earthly creature was currently invested in the things Amanda Guerrero kept locked inside her mind, it wouldn't take much effort to turn and focus on him. And that was the last thing Barnes needed. He had wanted to surprise the thing, but The Field, seemingly aware of everything happening around it, had reacted in a way that had surprised him.

  Barnes backed away, enough for The Field to continue its concentration on Amanda and her memory bank. As it withdrew from her, Barnes looked around once more, refusing to watch the other thing eat what was left of Phelps. He heard it munching on her meat and bones, the sounds of her remains squishing and crunching between its teeth, and that was enough to turn his stomach sideways, upside down—he surely didn't need the image to go along with it, though, as it stood, if he failed here today, maybe The Field would steal that image, relieve him of the burden of carrying around his last memory of Phelps and what her mistake had cost her.

  Barnes spotted something he hadn't before. Something he'd seen when they had first arrived, the first time, but somehow had overlooked when he'd gone searching for a weapon only moments ago.

  The stones.

  Five of them, laid out in star-like fashion, each one representing a point.

  How'd I miss that? It wasn't there before, seconds ago, he was sure of it. Or maybe it was and The Field, with its tricks and sensory magic, hadn't allowed him to see it. Maybe it had projected an image before him, rolled out a barren landscape like the background of a stage play, one without anything that could be used against it. But now, now that the thing was so entangled in feeding off Amanda's mind, maybe it had let its guard down some. Maybe he wasn't supposed to see those stones. Or, maybe if he bent down to pick up one, they'd slip right through his hand like an apparition. A ghost of what used to be there. Maybe there were no stones at all.

  Barnes did bend down. He took one of the stones, about the size of a softball, and held it firmly with both hands.r />
  All right, you son of a bitch, he thought, turning to the thing that had come from the earth, that had been born in this very field. He didn't know how old The Field was, only that it had been here long before mankind had been a twinkle in the universe's eye. He didn't know how he knew that or if it was true, but he couldn't ignore the suspicion that had been planted in his head by some unknown force. What they were dealing with, this cosmic entity, was as old as time itself. Maybe older.

  Barnes charged forward, stone in hand, ready to strike.

  It saw him coming again, but, this time, Barnes didn't hold back. He didn't allow it the chance of belting out another shrill noise; instead, he took the rock, leaped forward, and smashed The Field in the face. It knocked the thing back, separating it from its meal. The second its touch left Amanda's head, Barnes grabbed her by her wrist and pulled her away. He stepped in front of her to shield her from another attack, but The Field was still recovering from the blow to its head.

  “Stay back,” Barnes said, addressing both parties. The other living thing, the one resting in Barnes's periphery, was content on staying put, snacking on the bones of their co-worker, grinding her skeleton between its teeth. As it munched, it made noises, grunts and grumbles, suggesting it was very comfortable in its current position, and that it required no further sustenance, which didn't exactly bring Barnes any comfort. Knowing the thing was here was enough to keep him on guard.

  “Are you okay?” Barnes whispered over his shoulder.

  Amanda didn't respond. Not right away. But after a brief moment of her looking around, examining the field (and The Field) as if it were the first time she'd seen it, she shook her head and said, “Yes. Yes, I'm fine.” Her voice was heavy with uncertainty.

  “Good,” he said, ignoring the possibility that she was lying. Barnes marched forward, figuring he could unpack everything else later. “I could use your help.”