69: A Short Novel of Cosmic Horror Read online

  “Christ, Barnes.”

  “They followed him. Chased him most likely, again, according to the autopsy. His body was found in a local park, near the restrooms. He'd been beaten beyond recognition. His face was so swollen you couldn't even tell he had eyes. Looked like a pufferfish, ballooned so tightly his skin actually split in places. They said his lungs filled with his own blood, and technically, the cause of death was drowning. There was severe head trauma, his brain was badly bruised. If he hadn't drowned in his own blood, he probably would have been a vegetable for the rest of his life. It's likely he passed out before he died, so I guess I can take comfort in that.”

  A gang of tears leaked steadily from his eyes.

  Amanda turned her head, disgusted.

  “And the bastards,” Barnes continued, his voice straining through the words, “the fuckers who killed him for no other reason than being different, took a knife and carved three letters into his neck.” He tapped the biohazard bag, his finger resting on the white ribbon inside. “F-A-G.”

  Amanda had trouble swallowing. “Jesus Christ, Barnes. That's one of the most horrific things I've ever heard. I'm...” A wave of sadness tripped her up, made her temporarily lose her words. “I'm so goddamn sorry that happened to you.”

  He didn't react. Just stared down at the word written on the paper, the three letters left for him, only him. “I bet it would say something different for everyone.”

  “Kim Charon claims it's blank. She's pointed it out several times already.”

  “Well, either she's lying or whatever put this in the back of Renteria's throat meant to send us a message, and not her. Now that I mention it, it does feel like it's fucking with us more so than Kim and her lawyers.”

  “I still feel like she knows more than she's letting on.”

  “Same.”

  There was a brief pause while the two of them stared at the bar top, got lost in the shiny coating that displayed their dark reflections.

  “How is any of this possible?”

  “You saw what happened in the field, Amanda. I don't think we're dealing with things that are possible. I think we're dealing with something that's beyond our comprehension of reality.”

  “What did you see? Out there, in the field?”

  His eyes darted. Then he squinted as if it was hard to remember, as if the details were parts of a dream and, as time dragged on, the aspects of the sequence grew murkier and murkier.

  “I saw... I saw him. Brian. Or at least something that looked like Brian. He was off. It's hard to describe, but his arms were longer. Bent awkwardly. Uneven. His flesh was loose, like a baggy pair of jeans.”

  “Misshapen head?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like something imitating what a person should look like, as though they didn't have enough information to go on.”

  “Yeah, like that. Like a sculpture and the artist had only seen the subject a handful of times and went off its memory. Or maybe not at all. Like the artist had only heard what the subject looked like and had never actually seen it.”

  Amanda felt herself trembling. She looked down at her hand, found it shaking against the bar top. A cold, hollow sensation rummaged through her. Her skin was hard, and the back of her neck tingled, icy fingers dancing across her flesh. “What the hell was that thing, Barnes? What does 'everything is sixty-nine' mean?”

  “I don't know. But I think we should find out.”

  She nodded. He didn't delve into the quandary of sixty-nine and what that number could possibly mean to the thing in the field, but Amanda knew Barnes had heard it speak those same words. Everything is sixty-nine. She could see it in his eyes. The field had given him a similar experience—maybe not the same exact one, but something close.

  Whatever the thing was, it could clearly see inside their heads, the stuff that was buried there.

  “I think we should too.”

  Barnes had stopped the tears. A smile somehow found its way onto his face, and he even let out a small laugh. “Got a text from Cohen on the way here. Plane emergency landed in Baltimore. Something with the landing gear. Everyone's safe, but you have to wonder.”

  Amanda nodded, already knowing the scoop. Cohen had texted her when he had landed at Baltimore-Washington International a half hour ago. “Sixty-nine.”

  “Yep. Sixty-fucking-nine.”

  Her eyes fell to his drink. “Wish you hadn’t destroyed your sobriety, Barnes. Goddamn you.”

  Casually, he slid the glass in front of her. “Go ahead. Have a sip.”

  She didn't at first, but his eyes insisted.

  “Go ahead,” he encouraged. “One sip.”

  She did. It tasted like Cherry Coke sans a single drop of alcohol.

  His smile broadened. “If I didn't drink when someone murdered my boyfriend, my future husband, in cold blood, then I'm sure as fuck not going to let whatever's happening at Spring Lakes break me.”

  She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, squeezing him as if she never meant to let go.

  He hugged her back.

  They stayed that way and cried into each other's shoulders for a few minutes before paying their tab. Before heading back to Spring Lakes. Where all hell was threatening to break loose.

  13

  No one enjoyed the look that had sprouted on Kim Charon's face, not even her two lawyers. They were back in her office, telling her their plan, their reasons behind heading back into the woods, and the woman wasn't having any of it.

  “Maybe I'm not following,” Kim said, curling her upper lip. “You want to head back into the woods because you think there's a man out there, and that he is responsible for the sixty-niners—your word—and their current medical condition?”

  Barnes reacted first. “I think we're beyond a logical medical diagnosis. Whatever equipment our co-workers are eventually going to bring, if and when they get here, isn't going to tell us shit.”

  Kim looked as if he'd slapped her.

  Before she could respond, Amanda opened her mouth. “What Barnes is trying to say, is that we've all seen the evidence. The video, the mysterious piece of paper that came out of Mr. Renteria's mouth.”

  “The one that's blank? That could have been staged there?” Kim leaned back and folded her arms, turned her head to the side and sighed dramatically. “This is getting tiresome, Mrs. Guerrero.”

  “I understand that, I really do. But that piece of paper... well, it wasn't blank. Not for us.” She motioned to Barnes and Phelps. “We all saw something written there, something meaningful to us. Something that brought back a painful memory. I don't know why the paper was blank to you and your lawyers. I don't know why we are the only ones who can see it. But I can assure you the answers are out there, in the field.”

  Kim wasn't buying it. She only stared at them, a feral look capturing her eyes.

  “We're not lying to you,” Amanda added. “We're not trying to deceive you. We're telling the truth. Whatever is happening in your facility...”

  “Is what? Supernatural? Is that what you're telling me?”

  Amanda shook her head. “No, I don't know. We don't know that, not for certain. But there is something out there in the woods. Something...”

  Awful. Heinous. Something evil. Something that existed long before man, something that would live on long after our existence.

  She cleared her throat. “Whatever is out there,” Amanda said, tapping the table with her finger, “is responsible for what we've seen here today.”

  “It told us 'everything is sixty-nine',” Phelps said, speaking for what felt like the first time since their return from the woods. “It actually told us that.”

  “And what the hell does that mean? It told you that?” Kim's face wrinkled in several unflattering places. Her eyes were wide, stretched to their limit. “How does a field tell you things?”

  “There was a man out there,” Amanda said. “At least we think he was a man. It's possible it was just an illusion, the field p
rojecting an image to make us... to make it seem more... acceptable. More real.”

  Kim leaned forward and folded her hands on the table. “What the hell are you people talking about? This is lunacy. Have you all lost your goddamn minds?”

  “I know it sounds nuts—hell, it sounds nuts to us and we've experienced it. But the field—”

  “The field that doesn't exist? The one you can't find anymore?”

  Amanda watched Hatterman and Hart turn sideways, cup their hands over their mouths, concealing their cynical smiles.

  Barnes laughed. “Because it didn't want to be found.”

  Now the woman turned her head, stared at him, as if he'd offended her in some way.

  “Because we had the cops with us. I'm sure of that now. There was no way we could have gotten turned around. No, for whatever reason, it didn't want to be found. It... it tricked us.”

  “The field tricked you?” Now Kim wore a big smile. Her eyes were still stretched with amazement, but it was the smile that really wrenched Amanda's nerves. The woman was less pissed off about their failures and more entertained by the story they'd come up with. “Let me get this straight—the field has the power to make you see whatever it wants? It can just... disappear? Poof. Like that?”

  Yes, it can, Amanda wanted to respond, but she couldn't find the courage to speak those words aloud. Admitting the thing had that much ability, that much influence over reality, frightened her to no end.

  “What other magical powers does this field have?” Kim rested her chin in her hands, pretending she actually cared what they were going to say. When they didn't answer, realizing she was playing with them now, having a little fun for her troubles, she reached into her desk drawer and retrieved a small phonebook. “Tell you what. I can call the local psychiatric facility and tell them the three of you will be dropping by. I'm sure they'd love to hear all about this magical field.”

  Amanda reached out, put her hand over Kim's, preventing her from opening the book. “You don't have to make any phone calls. We'll leave if that's what you want. We'll go peacefully, without protest. You'll never hear from us ever again.”

  “What I want is for you three to figure out exactly what the fuck is happening to my clients. It's been over three hours and you haven't produced a single goddamn thing that makes any fucking sense. Not even a plausible guess.”

  “I told you I thought the disease was neurological.”

  “That was before you started blathering about magical fields and scary woodland creatures.”

  “I never used the word 'creature', okay?”

  Kim squinted. “Listen to me and listen to me goddamn good. If you don't get your shit together and do your goddamn jobs, not only am I going to make it my life's mission to see you three fired from the CDC, but I'm also going to press charges.”

  “Charges for what exactly?” Barnes asked calmly. He seemed more amused than confrontational.

  “For... endangering our clients and the people who work here. You might even see me in court after all of this is over.”

  Her lawyers perked up, suddenly gathering themselves and standing still, displaying the professionalism they hadn't shown since Amanda had started talking about the field and whatever might be metaphysically stalking the grounds of Spring Lakes.

  Barnes, rolling his eyes, stood up. “Listen to me now, you callous cunt.” Kim recoiled as if he'd thrown a punch. Her mouth dropped open. Before she could utter a response, Barnes continued. “We've done nothing but try to help since we've arrived. This, this sixty-nine business is beyond us. Okay? It's beyond any rational explanation, any scientific analysis. What you have out there is a whole new ballgame. Something this world has never seen before, and it cannot be explained through numbers and reports and results pulled from a fucking lab. There aren't any cures, no vaccines, nothing. There is—”

  “We don't actually know that yet,” Phelps said, cutting him off. “It's possible that we could have overlooked this whole thing. Could be a virus. We might not have found it because we don't know what antibodies to look for.”

  Silence descended on the room like a plague.

  “Finally,” Kim said after it was time for the awkward break to end. “Finally, someone says something sensible.”

  “We might have been so thrown off by the blood work, how all the results were aligned, that we didn't even consider a viral sickness.”

  “No one else has...” Amanda started but trailed off when she saw the way Phelps was staring at her. She shot her a quick shut-the-hell-up glance. Phelps's eyes narrowed subtly, making sure not to give Kim any ideas. Amanda turned her own gaze back on the woman behind the desk. “I mean, we could always look into that, even if that seems entirely unlikely.”

  Kim agreed, nodding vigorously. “I think that's a swell idea. Now, why don't the three of you get to work? You've wasted enough of my time already.”

  14

  “She's not going to help us,” Barnes said, smoking, taking long drags from his borrowed cigarette. “We're on our own.”

  “It's almost better that way,” Amanda said, gazing at the entrance into the woods, the narrow path that hardly looked like one unless you were right next to it. She knew her mind had been altered by her experience inside the woods, but she thought she heard someone whispering in her ear. Someone calling to her from a distance. She did her best to block out the faint white noise, the constant chatter of some unknown identity. “We wouldn't want anyone else ending up like Cunningham, would we?”

  “That bitch maybe,” Barnes said, smiling behind a thin veil of smoke, jerking his thumb toward Kim's office.

  She was jealous that Barnes had gotten to call her a “cunt” before she could. Still, it had been satisfying all the same. Amanda couldn't help but smirk when she recalled the woman's reaction, how she jumped in her seat. “In all seriousness, I think it's better if we go it alone. I think... I get the sense that's what it wants. I mean, no one else can see what's written on the paper except for us.”

  “Unless they're lying,” Phelps added.

  “Right. There's that.”

  “Can we talk about it for a moment?” Phelps's cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth, plumes of smoke shrouding the air in front of her. “What do you guys think it is?”

  Barnes shook his head. “I have no idea. But did you feel weird when we got close to it? There was this sense... this presence.”

  “I felt it, too,” Amanda said, her mouth going dry the second she thought about that moment, the confrontation in the field. Standing before the thing as it poorly imitated her grandfather, the way her skin rippled with gooseflesh. “It was like, whatever it was, had gotten inside my brain. I could feel it rooting around in there. Probing. Digging up the past as if it were literally something buried in a field. Digging deep. Unearthing all these things. Drawing it out of the darkness.”

  Barnes nodded. “Yep. Pretty much how I felt. Like it had violated my memories, accessed my brain and turned my thoughts into its weapon. And you know what? It fucking worked.” He shivered despite the warm conditions, the summery way the sun touched their skin.

  Phelps also caught a case of the chills. “It's fucking evil, whatever it is.”

  Amanda couldn't disagree. She'd felt the thing from the field inside her, rummaging around her memories, consuming them like... like...

  The idea hit her, fast and suddenly, and when the notion fully formed, she almost screamed.

  “Guys,” she said, turning toward the door. “What if it's, whatever it is, let's just call it The Field—what if The Field is inside the sixty-niners?”

  “How do you mean?” Barnes asked, casting his cigarette into the parking lot. “Inside them how?”

  Amanda faced Spring Lakes’ entrance, staring down the empty hall. “What if it's using them for something. Like, feeding off their minds. Drawing things from us. Using them to get to us.”

  Phelps paced the handicap ramp. “How does that make sense?”

&
nbsp; Amanda shrugged. “The paper. The notes to us. It came from them. Well, it came from Mr. Renteria. Then Mrs. Finch. She was out there. In the field. Praying to it. Wasn't she? That's what she was doing, I think.”

  A moment passed, the idea of the woman kneeling before The Field, praying to it, filled their thoughts, polluted their minds, and crowded them with an undeniable terror, the kind that runs through the bloodstream, infecting all parts of the body with a cold numbing sensation, one that makes you check to see if your body is still intact.

  Amanda twisted toward them. “We have to stop it. The Field. We have to head back there and figure out what it wants, how to stop it.” She breathed slowly, her heart racing along with her thoughts. “We stop The Field, we help them,” she added, nodding toward the facility and the victims within.

  “But how do we stop it?” Barnes asked. “How do you stop something that... that isn't? That isn't a real thing. That has the power to use our memories against us?”

  “I have no idea. But like finding the cure to any disease,” she said, turning to the door and taking the first step inside, “we have to experiment.”

  Amanda sat across from one of the sixty-niners; a woman named Helen Grace. She was frozen with her back arched forward, looking over a deck of cards spread out in a game of Solitaire. Her stare was focused on the game, one hand holding the two of clubs, while the other had been placed on the table, using her arm to support the rest of her body. Her face had been fixed in a startled expression, as if she'd felt whatever had infiltrated her before it had taken over and was completely confused by the sudden intrusion. The way her lips were pursed suggested she might have felt some pain before going stiff.

  Amanda shone the light in her eyes and gauged their reaction. The brightness did nothing to move them, and the woman remained in her ever-still pose.