69: A Short Novel of Cosmic Horror Page 4

  Phelps tensed. Lowered her head. She wasn't a big fan of confrontation and tried to avoid these situations at all costs.

  “I think it would be better if you did your jobs,” the director said venomously, as she turned back toward the rest of the room.

  Phelps watched Amanda's cheeks blossom with anger. She stepped in front of her boss, before she could open her mouth, and spoke for her. “Mrs. Charon. Please. There's no need to behave this way. I assure you we're doing everything we can—”

  “Everything you can?” The woman huffed, folded her arms. “I don't think—”

  It was Barnes's turn to chime in. “Look,” he said, putting up his hands, facing a palm to each side of the room. “Arguing about this is pointless and counterproductive. We're going to figure this thing out. More CDC officials are on their way up from Atlanta.” He checked his watch. “They're flying into a private airport in a couple hours. We'll continue to monitor vitals and issue blood work and saliva samples every hour to make sure nothing changes. You,” he said to Kim, “do your best to keep the other guests safe and comfortable until their transportation arrives. That's your job right now.”

  The woman looked as if she wanted to protest some more, then—wisely—thought better of it.

  “In the meantime,” Barnes said, turning to the computer where Phelps had sat back down. “Open up Matrix X,” he told her.

  “Matrix X?” Kim asked, sounding concerned. “What is that?”

  “It's a computer program,” Phelps said, surprised by the sound of her own voice. She was usually quiet when things were tense, but she felt like she needed to take some of the heat off her co-workers. Focus the attention on herself for a moment, even though the spotlight, having all the eyes on her, was probably her least favorite thing in the world. “It allows us to interact with and stimulate brainwaves by using the scanner helmet.”

  “Interact?” She demanded clarification, and Phelps wasn't sure how to elaborate on the intricacies of the program without blowing the woman's mind.

  “Yes,” said Barnes, gnawing on the round end of his pen. “We can send little electrical impulses to each one of the electrodes, give them a little poke. To see how they respond to stimulation.”

  Hart raised a finger and opened his mouth. “And what will that accomplish precisely?”

  Seeming to have cooled off, Amanda was the first to respond. “We can see if the brain will respond or if it's damaged in any way. I mean, on the surface everything looks good. These are healthy signals coming from Mr.... uh...”

  “Renteria,” Kim said. Her eyebrows remained bent, and Phelps wondered if they were permanently fixed that way.

  “Yes. Mr. Renteria, of course.” She cleared her throat. Something about the man, his name, had caught Amanda by surprise, but Phelps hadn’t thought much of it. “Mr. Renteria's brain looks very healthy, especially in his current state of—for the lack of a more medically accurate term—temporary rigor mortis.”

  Kim Charon seemed satisfied by this answer, and so did her weaselly-looking lawyers. The creases in their foreheads smoothed out over the next few minutes, while Barnes went on to explain the program with a little more detail, throwing in some technical jargon just to confuse them. Phelps got a small kick out of it, despite the growing sensation in the pit of her stomach. No one asked another question about Matrix X, and the director and her two lawyers didn't object to further testing.

  The lingering uneasiness prowled Phelps's nerves, her mind. There was a sense that something bad was waiting for them up ahead, along the path. She wanted to purge those feelings, those harrowing thoughts, trim the sense of impending doom from her mind.

  But she didn't know how.

  Instead, she opened Matrix X and got to work.

  6

  Amanda really wished Kim and her lawyers had left the room to attend to the needs of the others, had actually fucking listened to her instructions, but the trio hung around, stalking their every move. If she didn't know any better, she'd guess they knew something about what had happened here and didn't want the truth uncovered. They watched over them like a teenager would their parents going through their underwear drawer, knowing damn well they'd discover a secret stash of dirty magazines and marijuana paraphernalia.

  She locked those thoughts away and looked over Phelps's shoulder, directing her finger at the screen. “Try this one.”

  Phelps clicked away. On screen, a small dot lit up orange, which meant the cluster of electrodes in that region gave off a tiny electrical impulse, stimulating an entire quadrant of Renteria's brain.

  “Let's see how Mr. Renteria's sensory strip responds,” Amanda announced to the room, feeling the need to narrate every step.

  They waited thirty seconds. Then, the little on-screen dot that had been orange turned green, letting them know the brain had received the input and had responded accordingly. Normal. This was the expected result from an ordinary, properly functioning brain.

  “Okay.” Amanda stood up straight. “Success.”

  “He's okay then?” Kim took a break from chewing on her fingernails to pose the question.

  “The sensory strip is aware of exterior input. A little slow to react, but that's fine.”

  “Slow?”

  “Took about thirty seconds to respond. But we have brain activity, a fair amount of it, so that's a win.” Amanda pointed to another spot on the monitor. “Let's test the cerebellum.”

  Phelps did as she was instructed, clicking on the back portion of the brain. Tiny lights buzzed with an orange glow, brightening the screen.

  They waited.

  Longer this time.

  Amanda checked her watch. Forty-five seconds. Fifty. Fifty-five. She glanced around nervously, surveying the others. Barnes paced in the background, near the man's closet. Kim continued to gnaw away on her fingernails. The lawyers looked on, beads of sweat forming on what could pass as a hairline. She could feel their collective stares penetrating her, attempting to steal her thoughts. As if they thought she was hiding something.

  A minute twenty. A minute thirty.

  No response.

  “I don't understand,” Kim said. “The other responded just fine. What's wrong with his cere-bella?”

  “Cerebellum,” she corrected. “And just because it's not responding to our input, doesn't mean—”

  The screen lit up, the entire cluster of electrodes reporting a vibrant green signal.

  “There.” She was about to comment on their success when the rest of the screen brightened with dots, all of them green and glowing. The entire map brightened like a string of Christmas lights. Every single electrode pulsed with life, going from bright to brighter, then back to bright again. Over and over, the sensors repeated the process, filling the map with activity that Amanda had never seen before. They were all responding, even though Phelps hadn't touched a thing.

  “I didn't do it,” Phelps said, rolling her chair away from the computer.

  “What is it?” Kim squawked.

  Amanda leaned in, her brow bending. “Not sure...”

  On screen, the seconds between the firefly-like pulsing shortened. In no time at all they were flashing like strobe lights in a nightclub, all of them in sync, feeding off each other's pace. The collection of bright lights gave Amanda an instant headache, forcing her eyes shut.

  “What is it?” the intolerable woman asked again, the anger in her voice no longer concealed. Her vocal pitch hit Amanda's ears like some unpleasant, discordant clatter. “I demand to know—”

  Amanda drowned out whatever came next. The lights had carried her away into a trance. All the blinking, the persistent glow of the lively electrodes had stolen her away from the room. Her concentration had led her to the flickering orbs, dozens of them. It was as if they had spoken to her. Whispers filled her ears. Voices somewhere in the distance. Perhaps miles away. Perhaps... farther. Perhaps everywhere around her, all at once. In her head. A cacophony of songs, a choir of unseen members filling the
silence she had created, seeking solace.

  Not whispers. Not voices. Not songs.

  One voice. A single mouth moving in the dark.

  (touch it)

  Familiar voices now. Sound. She could smell the past, permeating the air around her, the darkness her mind currently inhabited. Faint, but present.

  (present, the voice says, it's a present, open it up)

  The monitor disappeared. The whole room faded into a long black hallway. Everything around her wore dark shadows, everything except the old man sitting in the chair.

  He wasn't paralyzed anymore.

  (open it, zip-zip)

  (touch it)

  (tickle it)

  His gaze was on her, though his eyes were different. Gone. Replaced by something cloudy, a white murky glaze. Something swirled within them, dark, as if someone had injected ink into his eyeballs. The dark tendrils twisted and coiled, moving about in serpentine patterns, tainting the pure white as it roamed. Before long, everything inside the man's eyes was black. Soulless. Obsidian oceans. Movement beneath. Things swam there. Terrible things.

  (it's just a game)

  (go ahead)

  Mr. Renteria was smiling. Though it wasn't Renteria. Not anymore. Amanda didn't know what it was, but, whatever the man had become, it surely wasn't human.

  It's his smile, she thought, watching the ends of his lips curl in a way that hardened her flesh, caused bumps to ripple down the length of her arms. The hairs on her neck became erect, sending chills from her shoulders to her lower half, so low even her toes caught the bitter sensation.

  Yes, it was his smile. But something else, too. The way his arms looked, how they appeared longer than they should. They hung lower, the end of his fingertips ending somewhere around his ankles. His head was angled crookedly, like it had been broken at some point in his life and never healed correctly. Or at all. His cranium was malformed as well, dented in odd places. He was a hideous sight, and, for the life of her, she couldn't remember if he'd looked that way twenty seconds ago, before the room had cozied with the shadows.

  Before his eyes had gone black.

  Amanda wanted to speak, but her voice failed her.

  “Go ahead,” Renteria said, though the voice did not belong to him. “Touch it. I won't tell. Neither will you. It'll be our little secret.”

  She wanted to cry as she had on the day her grandfather had spoken those same exact words in that same exact voice. Not the same tone or inflection, but that same damn voice.

  She choked out a word, assumed it was “No” because that was what she wanted to say.

  “It's okay,” he promised, just as he had long ago.

  She was somewhere else now. The shadows had given away to an enclosed porch. Outside the screen walls lay an endless desert. Not how she remembered it, but close enough. Whenever she dreamed of this place, there were houses bordering her grandfather's property, houses with neighbors, just like there had been in real life. But there might as well have been nothing back there, nothing but an infinite stretch of dirt and sand and clay earth, because no one had come to her rescue then, and no one would come to her rescue now.

  Her grandfather stood, locked the door. She wondered where her parents were. The store? A movie? Out to dinner? She wondered if they cared. Fuck, if they knew. She'd never know. Not even when she'd broken her promise.

  (tell no one)

  (our secret)

  That smile on his lips, that sick curvature shaping the lower half of his face. The way his lips pushed his mustache around made it come alive like some fuzzy, gray caterpillar. Dark lines appeared on his cheeks, drawing shadows across his skin. They matched the darkness that fell around her.

  She hated him then, hated him now.

  Then came the finger, the one he placed over his lips. Next his hands went to his belt. After he loosened the buckle and slipped the leather through the metal loop, he grabbed his zipper. Pulled down. Freed himself. He cupped his genitals, held them like a small kitten. Like something gentle. Something pure and innocent, not to be harmed. Mishandled. Next, he let them go, releasing them like a bird to the wind.

  (touch it)

  The lights went out.

  Darkness all around them.

  Amanda felt herself shrink back into reality.

  “What the hell just happened?” she heard Kim ask, and, as much as her voice eroded her patience, she was glad to have heard it. Because there were certainly worse voices out there, speaking in the dark. Whispering. Waiting.

  (touch it, taste it)

  Sick panic stirred within her.

  A second later the emergency lights kicked on, washing the room in frail light, which seemed bright compared to the impenetrable dark from moments ago. Renteria now stood before them, his head angled back, gazing up at the ceiling as if a bright, endless starscape hovered above them, revealing a beautiful scene that no one could resist.

  But Amanda saw nothing but painted plaster that was peeling in the corners.

  “Mr. Renteria?” Kim called to him. “Mr. Renteria, can you hear me?”

  Amanda shushed her. Kim scowled, a series of spasms afflicting her upper lip.

  Renteria continued to hold the ceiling in high regard. Barnes stepped away from his position behind the computer and walked over to him, cautiously, as if the man could spring forth at any second, seize him by the neck and wring him dead.

  After examining the still frozen man, Barnes directed the flashlight at his eyes. “The same,” he said, squinting, examining the pupils, on the lookout for any changes.

  Amanda, her face strained with discontent, sidled up next to him. She gave Renteria her own once over, also failing to recognize any changes, other than the obvious—the man was standing now instead of sitting. He had moved. He had stood right up.

  He'd done so in the dark, and that got her mind working in several directions, scattering her thoughts like a handful of marbles hitting the hardwood floor. After she had compiled the information at hand, compartmentalized and broken down everything, what she'd witnessed and tested, she had come to the stunning realization that they knew no more about the mysterious disease than when they'd arrived. None of it made any sense. The strange paralysis, the unusual brain functions. None of the symptoms the patients had exhibited lined up with anything she'd seen before, or had even heard of. This was new territory, whatever it was, and Amanda was certain she didn't want any part of whatever this disease (if that's what it was) offered.

  And then there was the vision.

  Yes, don't forget about that.

  It had felt so real. Like she'd literally been transported into the past, twenty-seven years ago, and she could still smell the cigarillo smoke that had been baked into the furniture on her grandfather's porch. The scent sickened her, churned whatever was left in her stomach. She felt dirty. Filthy. Like something contaminated her, a greasy membrane that no soap could absolve. She felt...

  ...broken.

  Among other things, she felt broken. Like a piece of her was missing. No, not missing.

  Stolen.

  He took something from me.

  Yes. He had. A piece that would continue to stay missing, something she could never get back. It was lost, that piece of her. Hidden, and never to be found. Gone forever.

  “Amanda,” Barnes said, snapping her out of another haunted stupor. “Look at this.”

  He angled the flashlight so the beam of light shot down Renteria's throat. His mouth was center stage in the dim room. She stood on her toes and peeked inside, waiting for Barnes to point out what he'd seen in—what appeared to be—the mouth of an ordinary old man. Silver fillings sparkled under the tunnel of bright light.

  “What is it?” she asked, sharpening her vision, trying to lock onto whatever it was Barnes intended to show her.

  “There.” He nodded as if that somehow clarified the mystery object's position.

  She looked into the hollow of Renteria's throat, and, in the back, tucked off to the right, s
andwiched between a fold of muscle and the man's tonsil, was something white.

  “Tonsil stone?” she asked. The small object, no bigger than a shriveled pea, was mostly white but also yellow. The man's breath was atrocious, and she figured if they were to dig around long enough, they'd discover more pressing issues than tonsil stones.

  “Don't know. Maybe. Looks... bigger.” With his free hand, he snapped his fingers. “I need tweezers. Now. Phelps or anyone.”

  Phelps hopped off her seat without hesitation and darted toward the door. It was almost as if she wanted a reprieve from the situation, or more specifically—away from Kim Charon and her two lackeys. As if the room had held her prisoner and Barnes's request was the key that unlocked her restraints. Maybe she'd seen something in the darkness too, Amanda thought.

  Maybe they all had.

  Phelps returned in record time. She handed Barnes the tweezers, and Barnes inserted the metal instrument into the old man's mouth. Amanda caught Kim opening her own mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to object to the intrusion, but her jaw closed under the advisement of no one. Amanda wanted to tell the woman to keep her fucking mask on but decided against it. She'd warned them enough. Whatever they did was now at their own risk.

  Barnes locked onto the small object, and it moved very unlike a tonsil stone. It was more delicate than a packed nugget of solid bacteria. It moved like...

  Paper?

  It did. Like wet newspaper, only it didn't break apart and held together through the entire extraction. After he had removed the small piece of paper, Barnes let it dangle before everyone in the room, let it hang there as proof, proof that what they'd seen was real.

  Amanda took her gloved hand and held it out, breathing heavily into the paper dome that covered her mouth. Barnes dropped the paper, about the size of a fortune cookie ribbon, on her palm.

  She immediately flattened it out with her other finger and silently read the words printed there.

  Her heart skidded, stopped, and began beating again, only more furiously this go around. Shivers fell upon her like rainfall, pounding all parts of her body at once.