Distant Worlds Volume 1 Page 8

  “Oh, my God, you’re not even dressed! Don’t tell me you forgot about our lunch date!”

  “No, no, of course not. I guess I just lost track of time.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “What was that?” She tried to peek over Doug’s shoulder.

  “Listen, sweetie, it’s been kind of a rough morning. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to lunch.”

  Gina quickly forgot the odd noise coming from the bedroom when she heard those words.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “There it was again,” she said. “Is that your dog?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with him lately. I think he might have caught rabies or something. He was getting so wound up I had to lock him in the closet.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Jesus, he sounds like he’s about to break the door down,” Gina said as she strode into the apartment. Doug caught her by the arm.

  “It’ll be fine. I called animal control and they’re on their way over.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Listen, honey, why don’t you just have a seat for a minute? I’ll call a cab to take you back home.”

  “Might as well if you’re going to be stuck here all day.” Gina pressed her body against him and kissed him deeply. “Of course, I could keep you company.”

  Just then, Doug heard footsteps outside the open door and he looked over to see Chrissy standing there with an armload of his clothes. Her face was stark white and her eyes wide.

  “Who the hell is this, Doug?” she said after a moment of awkward silence.

  Gina pushed herself away from him.

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Chrissy threw his clothes aside, strode into the room, and slapped him.

  “You lying bastard!”

  “Chrissy, I can explain…”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “You’d better start explaining yourself to me!” Gina said.

  Knock! Knock!

  The two women fell silent when they looked back to the door and saw a pale man wearing a denim jacket standing in the doorway. Doug felt his heart skip a beat when he recognized the stranger as the man from the car outside.

  “Sorry to interrupt, ladies, but I need a moment of Mr. Colworth’s time.”

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

  Gina and Chrissy recoiled as Doug shouted but the stranger gave no sign of surprise.

  “No need for that, Mr. Colworth,” he said. “I’ve got someone here that would like a word with you.”

  “Oh, I see how this works, you screwed it up the first time so now you’ve come back to finish the job?”

  The man chuckled.

  “Not sure what you’re talking about, Mr. Colworth. I’m just doing the job I’ve been paid to do.”

  He turned his head and beckoned to someone out of sight. A skinny, red headed woman with glasses and freckles stepped into the doorway beside him.

  “Beth.” It was the only word he could muster.

  “Oh, God,” Gina said.

  “You’re his wife, aren’t you?” Chrissy asked.

  The woman nodded.

  “Listen, Beth, I can explain all of this.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump! CRACK!

  Everyone turned towards the bedroom at the sound of the splintering wood.

  “Oh, no,” Doug whispered.

  “What was that?” Chrissy asked.

  “Must be that dog of his,” the man in the doorway said. “Mr. Colworth said it was becoming rabid, I believe.”

  “Yeah, I had to lock it in the closet until animal control…”

  Thump! Thump! Thump! CRACK!

  Doug looked at the man in the doorway, shocked that he already knew his explanation of the sounds. The man smiled.

  “Miss Morgan, Miss Bertrand, you’d best be on your way. Mrs. Patrick and I will be in touch.”

  The two women, despite their anger, appeared to need little persuasion to leave the apartment and its peculiar sounds behind. When they were gone, Beth and her companion stepped inside. He closed and bolted the door.

  “Ten years, Doug,” Beth said. “I gave you everything I had. But it just wasn’t enough for you, was it?”

  “Beth, it’s not how it looks! I swear I can explain…”

  Thump! Thump! Thump! CRACK!

  “Better watch those promises, Mr. Patrick.”

  “Hey, this isn’t any of your business, so shut up!”

  “Actually, it is his business,” Beth said. “Mr. Gaines makes a living digging up people’s secrets. Has an interesting way of doing it, too. Every lie you tell brings him closer to you. And if he doesn’t find you…well, you’ve seen what can happen.”

  “This is insane,” Doug said.

  “Not as insane as you living two completely different lives in the same city. I have to admit, you covered your tracks well. The first three investigators I hired couldn’t come up with anything. That’s when I found Mr. Gaines.”

  “Beth, please! You don’t understand what you’re doing! You should have seen what that damned thing did to my dog!”

  Doug pulled up the bed sheets to reveal the blood-stained carpet.

  “Please!” Doug fell to his knees. “I’ll do anything you want, just make it go away!”

  “Alright,” Beth said. She smiled. “You only have to do one little thing to make everything right again.”

  “Just tell me and I’ll do it! I swear!”

  Beth knelt down in front of him and placed her hand on his cheek.

  “I want you to tell me that you love me. And I want you to mean it.”

  Doug swallowed hard.

  “Beth, I love you.”

  Thump! Thump! CRACK!

  “Not quite, sweetie,” Beth said, smiling. “Try again.”

  “I do love you, Beth!”

  Thump! CRACK!

  “Make me believe it, Doug.” Her smile took on a sinister quality.

  “Please, Beth! I love you! I love you so much! I love you more than anything in the world!”

  CRACK! CRASH!

  Doug turned his head quickly enough to catch a glimpse of the thing as it burst out of the closet, flinging the dresser across the room with ease. It was several times larger than it had been in the morning, his every lie adding to its horrific girth of fangs and tongues. There was no waste or hesitation in its movements; it lunged straight for him.

  The next few seconds passed like years for Doug Patrick/Colworth. First he tried to get up, pushing his wife aside and lunging for the door. But her sprawling legs tripped him and his face struck the blood-encrusted carpet. Then something cold and slimy wrapped around his leg and he felt a pain more intense than anything he’d imagined possible. He rolled onto his back and his mind reeled at the sight of the grotesque mound of pulsating flesh, gaping mouths, and eager tendrils before it crashed down on top of him.

  And then with a single word from Mr. Gaines, the monstrosity was gone. It left no trace of its presence…or of Doug’s.

  Beth got to her feet and glanced around the apartment. She pulled her wedding ring off her finger and slipped it into her pocket.

  “My apologies about the dog, Mrs. Patrick.”

  “Don’t be. It was his.”

  The Keeper

  Originally published in The Realm Beyond #4 (Fortress Publishing, 2013)

  Along with “The Tree”, this was one of the first stories I wrote after completing graduate school. I hadn’t written any fiction during my graduate studies, so stories like this one helped me to get my fledgling writing career back on track. “The Keeper” isn’t an especially complicated story, but it was a challenge to write due to its parallel plot structure and steadily rising tension. This was one of the first stories that I remember working hard to edit for pacing. The original draft was much longer and overflowing with unnecessary information. I’m not sure w
here the original idea of the psychic archeologist came from, but it proved to be a fun concept to play with. The basic premise, of course, owes quite a bit to classic Lovecraft.

  The excavation site covered more than a square mile, but only a few of the ancient city’s landmarks had been chipped out of the massive ice sheet. Standing in the shadow of a broken spire, Professor Miles Gordon examined the surrounding ruins carefully. He had seen the oldest remnants of human civilization on more than one occasion. This, however, was something else, something without precedent.

  He stood in the shadow of an immense, broken spire that stretched some two hundred feet above the site, but had once been far taller. One hundred feet wide at the base, the area around it was littered with chunks of worked stone that once made up its upper portion. The spire stood at the epicenter of the city; hundreds of smaller, domed structures lined the roads that radiated out from its foundations.

  Gordon turned around and walked back to the tent where the research team was hard at work analyzing artifacts and samples gathered from the ruins.

  The keeper was lost. The pristine streets were every bit as resplendent as the day they were constructed, but they remained empty. That, the keeper knew, was somehow its fault. Once it had known exactly what it was meant to do, but now a pallid haze obscured its real purpose.

  A sudden shift in the air caught its attention. Something was different.

  Slowly, the keeper walked towards the tower.

  “So you’re saying that when he touches the artifact, he can witness anything that occurred at any moment in its history?”

  Kristen did not look up from the artifacts laid out on the table. Professor Evans’s questions were wearing on her patience.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “Psychic archaeology isn’t like reading layers of topsoil and deciding what warrants a closer look. The psychic can only experience moments that leave a strong emotional residue.”

  Evans muttered something under his breath as Gordon approached them.

  “What do you have for me, Kristen?”

  “The pick of the litter,” she said, “or so Dr. Evans tells us.”

  She gestured to the three objects on the table. The first was a metal diadem set with colorful gemstones. Beside it rested an ornate brooch wrought from a similar material. The third object was a long, sharpened item that resembled a blade. Its surface was rough and jagged, but cut with unnatural precision as if each tiny imperfection served a predetermined purpose. The artifact was one foot long and black as tar.

  “These were all recovered from the chamber underneath the spire,” Kristen said. “Dr. Evans thinks that when the glacier shifted and cracked the spire, air and moisture probably got inside the chamber and caused the items inside to deteriorate.”

  Gordon nodded.

  “Unfortunate.”

  The tower vaulted towards the heavens and glowed with a power drawn from the essence of the stars. How much time had gone by since it stood in the tower’s shadow, the keeper did not know.

  Again the unfamiliar sensation swept across the keeper’s senses. For the first time in its memory, the keeper knew it was not alone.

  Gordon sat down at the table, his eyes fixed upon the artifacts. Kristen took a seat next to him, laid out a digital recorder, and opened her notebook.

  “You’re ready to begin?” Evans asked.

  “Yes,” Gordon said. “I’ll attempt to make a connection with the artifacts. If I’m successful, I’ll describe the mental images I experience. The recorder captures my description and Kristen will make additional notes regarding my physical reactions and any additional anomalies.”

  “Additional anomalies?”

  “Some objects contain unusually powerful psychic impressions,” Kristen said. “When someone makes contact with them, they can produce a variety of psychic reactions.”

  “What kind of reactions?”

  Kristen shrugged.

  “Telekinetic disturbances, telepathic images, astral projections, electromagnetic fluctuations; all sorts of weird stuff. It’s not very common, but we try to be ready to catch anything that happens.”

  “I see,” Evans said. “Well, I guess it’s time to see if flying you out here was worth the trouble.”

  Kristen ignored him as she switched the recorder on. She noted of the date, time, and artifacts laid out for examination.

  “Ready when you are, Professor,” Kristen said.

  Gordon closed his eyes and reached for the diadem.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’m making contact with the first item.”

  A brilliant pillar of light plunged down from the sky and struck the ground with such force that the earth itself seemed to buckle beneath the keeper’s feet. The thundering of the impact was followed by a steady hum that flooded the city streets as the keeper searched for where the light had touched down.

  There!

  It was far away, but the keeper did not think about the distance as it bounded down the street. It knew only that it must reach the light, that the answers it sought could be found there.

  At first, Gordon thought he was hovering above the magnificent city. It sprawled out below him like a shimmering rainbow, its brightly colored buildings refracting the beams of sunlight back into the sky. His field of vision shifted downward and he realized that he stood on a balcony atop the spire in the center of the city. Far below him, he saw a line of people moving slowly towards the base of the immense structure and disappearing inside.

  The hands gripping the balcony’s railing were covered in scales rather than skin and each finger was punctuated with a finely chiseled claw. When the hands moved, the colorful scales glistened like the city far below. Finely woven sleeves concealed the creature’s arms, and he could not see more of its body.

  After regarding the denizens below for some time, Gordon’s perspective shifted rapidly. The creature was moving. It made its way around the balcony, circling the narrow peak of the spire until it stopped on the opposite side and stared out over the horizon.

  In the distance, far beyond the outer wall of the city, he could see what he first believed were white-capped mountains. But it was not a mountain range: it was a towering wall of ice. The massive glacier would eventually bury the city beneath millions of tons of frozen water, shielding it from the eyes of man for tens of thousands of years.

  It was the doom of a species; there would be no escape from the slow, grinding ice that crept towards the city. Why, then, did Gordon feel a sense of hope rather than despair? What did this inhuman creature know that he did not?

  A sheet of clouds drifted over the city and obscured the sunlight. Snow began to fall and Gordon’s vision faded.

  Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the tower of light retreated into the sky and the city fell silent once more.

  The keeper stopped running and dropped to its knees in frustration. It had not been fast enough. The distance was too great. Had the light held for but a few moments longer, the keeper surely would have reached it...

  Kneeling there in the empty street, the keeper felt the numbing tendrils of amnesia wrapping around its mind. It lurched to its feet and clung to the image of the light.

  It must not forget.

  “Unbelievable!”

  Kristen could only smile at Evans as she handed a bottle of water to Gordon, who had been in contact with the first artifact for well over two hours. The psychic quickly drained the bottle.

  “This is incredible,” Evans said. “A pre-human civilization! We’ve been staring at the evidence all this time, things like the carbon dating and the ice flows, but nobody was ready to believe that this place could really be that old!”

  Kristen was in the middle of switching out recorders when she stopped and put her hand on Gordon’s shoulder.

  “Are you okay, Professor? You look a little pale.”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said. “I’ve just never experienced an impression so vivid before. Even the strongest marks fade over time
, but this one was still so powerful…”

  “Do you want to take a break?”

  “No!” Gordon said. “I’ll be okay. Are you ready for the next artifact?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s not waste any more time,” Gordon said, reaching for the metal brooch.

  Again the light streaked down from the heavens and the city shook as it crashed against the ground.

  It was closer this time, much closer.

  The keeper had purpose once more and it did not intend to let another opportunity slip away.

  It took several minutes for Gordon to adjust to the darkness.

  When his vision cleared, he gazed down a long set of steps and realized that the brooch’s wearer was descending. The stairs led down into a massive chamber that seemed as large as the city itself. Hundreds of luminous stones imbedded into the walls and ceiling provided a dim light and Gordon saw thousands of narrow domes lining the floor and the lower portions of the walls.

  The brooch’s wearer stepped closer to one of the nearby domes and knelt beside it. A scaly hand reached out to brush a thin layer of condensation from the dome and Gordon gazed into the slumbering face of the reptilian creature inside. The face was almost human, but the skull was longer and he noted the tips of its long teeth poking out from the closed mouth. A warm, tender sensation swept through him as he regarded the creature.

  But then the feeling vanished, replaced by something colder as Gordon’s field of vision swung back towards the stairs. His guide ascended the steps and picked up something that looked like a long, black dagger. It then turned towards a raised slab of stone covered with a clear, leathery canopy.

  As the creature moved towards the slab, the psychic memory weakened and Gordon’s vision dimmed.

  The keeper shrieked as the light retreated into the heavens and the door of the house it so brightly illuminated slammed shut.

  It had been so close this time.

  The keeper’s senses and muscles wound themselves tightly as it stood in the middle of the street and waited.

  Kristen jotted a few extra observations into her notes as Gordon and Evans excitedly traded theories. She was worried about Gordon. He’d never pushed himself so hard or connected with such powerful psychic impressions. It had been more than four hours since they’d started and he gave no indication that he was going to stop now.