69: A Short Novel of Cosmic Horror Read online

  Phelps wrapped an inflatable cuff around the woman's arm and took her blood pressure.

  “Normal?” Amanda asked.

  She nodded. “One-twenty over eighty. Precise.”

  Amanda didn't exactly like that reading—it was too perfect. Like the thing that had frozen her knew what the perfect score was and had made it so. Just like the blood work. “All right. When Renteria moved, what were we doing?”

  Barnes stepped next to Helen, directing his flashlight into the sixty-nine-year-old's right ear. “We tampered with him.”

  “That's right. We were testing his brain, stimulating him, seeing how he interacted when we introduced electrical impulses.”

  “Do you think it's an electrical thing?” asked Phelps.

  “I have no idea. But I'd like to introduce this.” She held up a syringe loaded with clear fluid.

  “Is that a flu shot?”

  “Yes. Yes, that's exactly what it is.”

  “And what do you think that'll do?”

  Barnes clicked off his flashlight. “She's hoping that introducing a live strain of something, a foreign antibody, will affect this woman's body the same as when we fucked with Renteria's brainwaves.” Barnes flashed a knowing smile. “Am I right?”

  Amanda snapped her fingers. “You got it. Who wants to do the honors?”

  There were no takers.

  “All right, guess I'm doing this myself.”

  Phelps began to pace back and forth. “Not so sure I'm on board with this.”

  “What's not to like?” She dipped the needle into the old woman's arm and emptied the vaccine into her vein. Once finished, she retracted the needle and threw away the syringe in the garbage.

  They waited.

  For five minutes.

  They studied the woman. Phelps continued to monitor her blood pressure while Barnes continued to look inside her ears, nose, and throat. Neither reported any significant changes; in fact, there were no changes at all. Helen Grace continued to look normal, despite the fact she was paralyzed, unable to move a single muscle.

  “How long do we wait?” Phelps asked.

  “A few more minutes,” Amanda answered. “Let it work.”

  “A flu shot could take hours to register,” Barnes said. “Takes weeks to become effective.”

  Amanda wagged her finger. “It'll take weeks for antibodies to form, sure, but we're not trying to protect Mrs. Grace from the fucking flu—we're trying to see what happens when her immune system responds to a foreign substance. That should be almost instant.”

  Phelps nodded. “If this thing is controlling her body...”

  Barnes's eyes lit up. “Then it's in control of her immune system too.”

  “It's why I think it reacted when we sent the electrical pulses into Renteria's brain. It doesn't want to be disturbed. The system will fight off any interference.”

  “Like the field.”

  Amanda closed her eyes, nodded. “Like the fucking field.”

  “None of this explains sixty-nine,” Phelps said. “Why is it only affecting those sixty-nine years of age? There has to be a reason for it.”

  Amanda shrugged. “Maybe because the number holds some significance to this thing. It's important to it. There's meaning behind the number, to The Field anyway. For whatever reason, it selected them.” Amanda noticed Barnes and Phelps staring at her. “Just a guess, I mean.”

  Yes, it was a guess, but it seemed like she knew things. And how did she know them? She had no clue. In the back of her mind, she wondered if stumbling upon the field, letting it touch her, had something to do with the knowledge. The idea showered her with chills. Her spine danced as the prickly, cold sensation ran down it.

  They waited some more. Nothing happened. The woman continued to stay frozen, looking down at the card game she might never finish, her eyes glued to the table. Amanda pitied her, felt bad about being able to do nothing to help her. To save her. Ultimately the woman would probably die here, like this, incapacitated for all eternity. She wondered what it was going to take to remove them from the premises, the sixty-niners, what kind of machinery it would take to lift them. If several nurses and security guards couldn't get it done, what would it take?

  Feels like they're full of lead, Amanda had read in one of the statements they'd made everyone fill out. Weighed as much as an elephant and then some.

  She shook her head. It was no use thinking about these things now, not when there was still more work to do. More experiments to conduct, more tests to run. She'd run them all until she got the thing to wake again, to react to something. She wanted to see how it behaved when prodded. The thought of riling up this thing, rousing it from whatever dream-filled world it currently inhabited, filled her with a sense of peace. She wanted nothing more than to ruffle its feathers. Dig under its skin as it had dug into her mind, messed around in there.

  Evil, Phelps had called it. Amanda couldn't disagree, not after it had shown her those things in the field, not when it had come to her under the guise of the vilest human being she'd ever encountered.

  (touch it)

  (go ahead, it's fun)

  (it's a game)

  (you like games, don't you)

  (touch it, tug it)

  She needed more coffee. Standing up, she took a deep breath, and looked at Helen Grace one last time, hoping to see the slightest difference in her stature. But there was none. The expressionless masks worn on her employees' faces told her that.

  “What do you want us to do, boss?” Barnes asked.

  She put her hands on her hips, surveyed the small living quarters. She checked the door to see if Kim Charon and her two lapdogs were pacing the hallway, listening in on their conversations, trying to squirrel away all the information they could for later, when it was time to file their lawsuit against the CDC. That was what it would come down to, Amanda was sure of it. “I'd say raid the van for more vaccines. I'd like to introduce as many outside influences as possible. Something live, maybe.”

  Phelps perked up. “I think I have a measles vaccination in the van.”

  Amanda snapped her fingers. “Perfect. Grab it and let's—”

  Helen lifted her head back from the card game and her spine straightened out, a fluid, yet somewhat robotic movement that caused all three of them to back away. Her entire body began shaking, quivering as if she'd stepped out of a hot shower and into a freezer. Her head twitched, snapping in different directions. Eyes rolling back, Helen opened her mouth and let go of an inhuman cry, something that sounded off like a foghorn.

  The three CDC employees jumped back, covering their ears. When the sound stopped—after ten long seconds—they rushed forward, coming to the woman's side. Still shaking involuntarily, she flung out her hand, striking Phelps across the chest with enough force to knock her off her feet. She fell to the ground, her head slamming against the dorm's carpeted floor. The cushiony surface saved her from serious injury, but she was still slow to react. Barnes immediately went to her aid while Amanda concentrated on the woman.

  Helen stood, her body continuing to quake. She'd seemed to gain control over her head because it stopped trembling, and, instead, it moved back and forth at odd angles, smoothly. As if someone who'd never had control over the muscles and nerves in their neck might look around.

  The sight of Helen Grace, her inhuman white eyes, was enough to drive Amanda back to the far wall. She stood there, quivering with fear, as the thing tried to walk toward her. Awkwardly, the legs moved, its toes bending inward like an infant attempting its first steps. It made for her, but then fell flat on its face.

  The thought of stepping on the back Helen Grace's head, crushing her skull and the thing that had laid claim to her brain, was strong. She pictured herself doing it, ending the woman's life right then and there, but then thought about how crazy that was. How she'd never convince a jury of what had happened at Spring Lakes.

  An earthly smell permeated the air, a wet-dirt perfume that seemed to emanate from He
len's body.

  Amanda kept against the wall, watching the thing from the field pick itself off the floor. It failed, unable to coordinate such a maneuver, and, instead of doing so, it picked up Helen's head, directing its milky eyes at Amanda.

  “Fu-ool,” it rasped, sounding like a bucket of rattlesnakes. “Fu-ind me. Fu-ind me. Juh-oin me. I ue-eet. You-eer. Druh-eams.”

  Amanda couldn't stop herself. She lashed out, kicking the woman across her face. The kick, one she hadn't used since she was eight and had loved to play soccer, landed flush. The impact drove the woman's head sideways, and she heard a loud crack rip through the room. Her first thought was that she'd broken the woman's neck. Images of a women's prison suddenly came forth, Orange is the New Black minus all the cute laughs and life lessons and dramatic storylines. Just pure hell. That was what she was thinking when Helen swung her head back toward her, those white eyes almost glowing in the dim light of the room.

  The lights flickered, the bulb buzzing behind the lampshade, threatening them with more darkness.

  The thing inside Helen howled with laughter, a barbaric noise that grated on Amanda's ears.

  “Fu-ool. Fu-ool. Fuuuuuuuu-oooooooool.”

  And then Helen's head fell to the carpet, the white veil in her eyes shrinking, retreating to wherever it had come from. The lights stopped flickering. That fusty odor died at once. The room stood still, along with the entire world. No one breathed.

  Barnes and Phelps looked up at Amanda from the floor. She finally took a breath, gasped for fresh air. She was unable to speak.

  Down the hall, they heard footsteps. Fast. As if a herd was galloping toward them. A thunderous collection of feet stampeding the carpet.

  And then, someone, Kim, she discovered, asked, “What the hell is going on in there?”

  15

  Phelps was a researcher. She couldn't help it; it was in her blood. She'd come from a long line of academic scholars, doctors and professors. Her mother had gone to Yale, where she'd met her father, and the two had gone on to work for private organizations in the medical field, working on cancer research, as well as other deadly diseases. Phelps's path led her to the CDC, where she'd been working for two years now, straight out of college. Research had been a part of her life for as long as she could read and write. School had always been her top priority, taking precedence over things like family and friends. She never had much in the way of friends, a few study buddies that had come and gone over the years. Research had always been (and always would be) her BFF.

  Phelps found herself scouring the Internet in a cramped back office. Under ordinary circumstances she might have headed down to the local library, conducted her research there in the blissful silence, the smell of old, worn books always adding to the rush of a good study session, but there was no time for that. The computer in the back office was all she had now, and Amanda and Barnes had decided it was probably best if they left for The Field within the hour. Which left her little time to dig into a few relevant topics.

  Sixty-nine.

  “What are you looking for?” Amanda had asked when Phelps had first settled in back there, sat down with a giant cup of Starbucks and began her work. “What do you think you'll find?”

  “We need to figure out what we're dealing with,” she had told her. “If we go back to The Field without any knowledge of who or what is out there, our chances of defeating it—if that's what we plan to do—are zero.”

  Amanda had told her she was right, that it was impossible to conquer something that they knew virtually nothing about, though, she had also expressed her doubt in the Internet and its ability to inform them of whatever existed out there beyond the trees. And, although, she had offered no other advice in the way of where to start, she had patted Phelps on the shoulder, and told her to hurry up because time was short and she didn't know how much longer they had until Kim would flip and attempt to shut this whole thing down. She'd left her to it after that, headed back out into the hall to make her rounds and check on the sixty-niners, and to, hopefully, quell the growing doubt that resided within their not-so-hospitable host.

  So, Phelps did what she'd always done best and combed the Internet for information, shuffling through countless pages of research. She started small, typing things like “LONG TERM PARALYSIS” along with the other symptoms their patients were exhibiting and came up pretty empty. There was nothing on the Internet that explained what was happening at Spring Lakes, but it wasn't like she had expected to find another case of it out there. She'd have heard of it, or, at the very least, Amanda would have. But still, it was worth investing five minutes, hoping somebody out there had experienced a similar event. Nothing came up, so she moved on to the next topic of interest.

  The number.

  Sixty-nine.

  She keyed in “The significance of 69” and the search engine pulled 207 million results. After training her mind to skip all the dirty stuff, she came across a few tidbits that weren't very useful, but stuff that was interesting. 69, on some new age spiritualist's numerology site, meant quite a few things, some of which resonated—it was said to be connected with family, health, happiness, and compassion. If you kept seeing the number sixty-nine in your life, that meant good things were to come. Phelps got a laugh out of that, considering where the number had brought her and her team, and immediately closed the page, taking her research elsewhere. She scanned through message boards frequented by those who claimed to have seen the number everywhere, and what it could possibly mean in the scope of the great universe. There were hundreds of replies, some of them offering messages of encouragement, telling the original poster that something good awaited them on the horizon, that the yin-and-yang parallel of the number signified some great cosmic shift and fortunes were headed their way. Others chimed in to tell the poster she was probably horny and needed some action, that pent-up sexual frustration was her reason for seeing the number everywhere.

  After about twenty minutes of clicking through blog posts and message boards, Phelps leaned back in her seat, took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She stretched, put her glasses back on, took a few sips of her cooling coffee, and went back to work.

  Sixty-nine wasn't getting her anywhere, though she did find the bits about the symmetrical aspects of the number interesting. Like the symbols from most major religions (crosses, stars, moons), sixty-nine was similar in that regard. There was power in symmetry, some believed, a magic bond between the sequence and the unearthly realm beyond our own comprehension.

  Next, she scouted the local history, researching the area around Spring Lake, New Jersey. She searched for strange sightings in the neighborhood, even the surrounding towns, keeping an eye out for any peculiar happenings, especially in wooded areas. One whacko had written a blog dedicated to the Jersey Devil and claimed to have seen sightings all throughout the state, including one in Spring Lake, five miles from where the assisted living facility was located. Phelps didn't give the story much of a chance, writing it off as fiction almost immediately, and although the Jersey Devil being their culprit made a grand story, it wasn't one she'd explore. Though, The Field had given off devilish vibes.

  This is a devil of a different sort, she thought, closing the page.

  Phelps wasn't a believer of religious ideologies, theories on heaven or hell, even though she found the topic interesting and found it made for good conversation especially since she'd always taken the scientific approach to life's most popular unanswered questions. But even she could admit there were things out there that science couldn't fully explain. That there were gaps between what could be proven and what could not.

  Like, The Field.

  Yes, like that. A field that had shown her things, things she was pretty sure she'd buried deep inside the catacombs of her mind.

  A cold sensation tickled the back of her neck when she thought back to what she'd seen out there moving among the trees.

  (our secret)

  No, don't think about it. Thinking about
it gives the thing power. It wants us to visit the past. Live there.

  She'd overheard Barnes and Amanda talking about the paper they'd found in Renteria's throat, said it had shown them different words. When it had been her turn to peek, her heart nearly stopped. She didn't dare let her eyes linger over the words.

  (our secret)

  (tell no one)

  (cough-cough)

  (trust you)

  She couldn't keep out the thoughts. The tight office faded, giving way to that hospital room. Her grandmother lay on the bed, struggling for breath. They'd already excised one lung and were fixing to take thirty-three percent of the second, where the cancer had grabbed hold and refused to let go. Phelps's parents were still debating whether to put the eighty-two-year-old through the process again; in fact, they'd gone off to the cafeteria to discuss exactly that. Left Phelps alone with the old woman, to watch over her, to keep her company. She hadn't felt uncomfortable with the task until she had woken up.

  And started talking.

  “Hey, Grandmother,” she said, brushing white curls of hair off her forehead. “How are you feeling?”

  Her grandmother smiled. “Fine, sweetheart. Just fine.” She coughed, a chest-rattling outburst that caused immediate concern. Phelps supposed the cough was normal, normal for her, but still—the way her chest crackled sped up Phelps's heart rate.

  “What were you dreaming about?” Phelps asked her, funny because when she was a little girl and woke up from naps, her grandmother would always ask her that very question.

  “Oh, the boys again. Always the boys.”

  Phelps smiled this time, thinking of her father and her uncle, what they must have been like when they were younger. The stories she'd heard. “Pop and Uncle Marty must have been quite the handful.”

  Grandmother grinned, and for some reason, the way her lips spread apart sent a chill down Phelps's back. “No, not them. Not my boys. The other boys.”

  Immediately, Phelps felt uneasy. Invisible spiders crawled across her shoulders. She had no idea what the old woman was talking about, but the tone of her voice warned her—whatever it was, she didn't want to hear it.