Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (13 page)

"Jessica?" he mumbled, getting to his feet. Soldiers approached from the direction of the city, their weapons ready. At least he knew who'd saved him. "Jessica!"

"I'm here," she yelled and he stumbled after her voice. He dropped to his knees beside her and laughed.

"You've been busy," he said, indicating the corpses around her.

"Yeah."

A shadow enveloped them and Jake looked to see a soldier—with more bars on his sleeve—blocking the sun. "We need to get back to the city," he said. "These things hit every post we set. They're—"

"Testing us," Jake finished. "Trying to find our weakness."

"Yes," the soldier said. "But we also know what they're after."

"What?" Jake asked.

"Food."

"They want our food? Did they get into the city?"

The soldier smirked. "No. We
are
the food."

Jake said nothing.

"Get her up and let's move."

Jake reached down and hauled Jessica to her feet. He let go and she staggered, whimpering, and he had to catch her before she fell.

"What's wrong with her?" the soldier asked.

"I don't know," Jake said.

"The last one bit me," Jessica whispered, staring at Jake. "Please, Jake. Please."

"You'll be fine," Jake said. "The doctors—"

A gunshot deafened him. He flinched away from the offending noise, yelling at the sudden ringing that seemed to be everywhere. He pressed his hands against the side of his head, blocking his ears. Jessica dropped, her life ended, all thoughts and prayers little more than a stain on the cityscape.

"You didn't have to shoot her!" Jake exploded, spittle flecking his lips. His ears still rang, and things sounded like they were at the other end of a tunnel. And he could think. "Look around you, man. These things aren't people nor did they ever used to be."

"I never thought they were," the soldier shouted back. "Werewolves belong in the Brittanica and in the superstitions of the gaffers, but that doesn't change our orders, which are to put down anyone who's been bitten. The scientists and doctors don't know what diseases these things carry and we don't have the meds to deal with any outbreaks."

"How the hell are they ever going to know unless they treat a bite?"

"That's not our concern. Take a moment, if you need it, but leave the body and get her weapon," the soldier said before moving away.

Jake bent over and retrieved Jessica's gun as howling, carried by the wind over the burnt out buildings, broke out in the distance. It wouldn't be long until those things were back. Jake took out his lighter.

With Love
.

He met Jessica's empty gaze and said, "You asked why I carried this. It's because without love, we don't have peace, only fear. We've always killed what frightens us—" Howling, closer this time, momentarily halted his speech. "You hear that? The earth has moved on, Jessica, but we certainly have not. This lighter is a reminder that we can."

He turned from Jessica's corpse and, slinging the rifle over his shoulder, caught up with the retreating soldiers, the howling at his back a reminder that not every species deserves the chance to do so.

ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE

TO REMIND ME

Gary A. Braunbeck

Gary A. Braunbeck is a prolific author who writes mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream literature. He is the author of 19 books; his fiction has been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Russian and German. Nearly 200 of his short stories have appeared in various publications.
His fiction has received several awards, including the Bram Stoker Award
™
for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction in 2003 for "Duty" and in 2005 for "We Now Pause for Station Identification"; his collection
Destinations Unknown
won a
Bram Stoker Award
™
in 2006. His novella "Kiss of the Mudman" received the International Horror Guild Award for Long Fiction in 2005.

“Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened…”

--T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”

“The carpeting’s the wrong color.”

Cindy Harris looked away from the television and said, “What?”

Her husband, Randy, pointed to the television.

“The carpeting’s supposed to be light blue.  Look at it.  It’s
green
, fer chrissakes.”

“So what’s the big deal?”

Randy looked at her with that impatient, condescending expression that told Cindy he expected her to already know the answer.  That expression was one of the few things about her husband that Cindy genuinely disliked.  She could feel his defensiveness rising and wondered if he’d been forgetting to take his Zoloft lately.

“The big deal,” he said, “is that I remember the way my folks argued about the color. 
Dad
wanted green, but Mom insisted on light blue, and like every other time they had an argument, Mom won out.”

Cindy watched him fiddle with the controls on the remote, then flip down the little door at the bottom of the set and start messing with the controls there. 

Sighing, Cindy said, “Maybe something went wrong with the transfer.  C’mon, Randy.  Those home movies were pretty old, y’know?  Maybe we waited too long to have them put on DVD.  That old eight millimeter film stock, maybe it started to go bad and this was the best they could do.  Most of them have turned out fine up until now.”

Randy stopped fiddling with the controls, looked at the picture once more, and then turned toward her, his face losing color.

“What is it?” asked Cindy.

“I, uh…nothing.  Nothing.”  He rose to his feet, walked across the room, and began heading up stairs.  “I gotta make a call.  Back in a minute.”

“Hold on,” said Cindy, grabbing hold of his elbow.  “What’s
wrong
, honey?  This isn’t worth getting upset about.”

He tried smiling at her but didn’t quite pull it off.  “I just remembered something—I mean, I
think
I remembered something.”

“Plan on letting me in on it?”

His face softened, but remained slightly pale.  “Please let me make the call and then I promise I’ll tell you all about it.”  Kissing her cheek, he gently pulled her hand from his elbow and went up to his office, closing the door behind him.

Putting her impatience on hold, Cindy went back to the sofa, sat down, and turned up the volume.  Randy never talked much about his childhood—something that annoyed Cindy at times but which she respected, nonetheless—so maybe she could use this as a chance to get a glimpse of him as a child.

She watched for several minutes as Lawrence, Randy’s father, finished setting up a plastic racing track in the middle of the room (with a running and very funny commentary), plugged in the power supply, and then put a small HO-scale car on the track and gave it a test run.

“Think he’ll like it?” asked Lawrence.

“Oh, he’ll just
flip
,” said the voice of Virginia, Randy’s mother, who was holding the camera.  Lawrence grinned, obviously proud of himself for having assembled this without bloodshed, and then came the sound of a door opening.  Virginia whipped around with the camera, the image blurring for a moment, and came to a stop on the face of a little boy who looked about nine years old.  His face was flushed from the cold outside, and he was having trouble unwrapping the heavy wool scarf from around his neck.

“What’s goin’ on?” asked the little boy Randy had once been.  “How come Daddy’s home from work so early?”

He finished with the scarf, hung it on the hall tree by the door, and then pulled down his hood to reveal his face, his bangs a little too long and little too shaggy.

“Daddy’s got an early Christmas present for you.”

The little boy stared at the camera for a few moments, and then his face came alive with realization and a smile that could have been seen for miles in the dark.  “The race car set came?”  And with a speed and agility that is the special province of nine-year-old boys, rocketed past the camera and into the living room, where his shouts of delight filled the air.

“Turn it off,” said Randy from behind her.

Cindy turned, smiling, and waved him away.  “Oh, get over yourself.  Why didn’t you ever tell me you were into racing when you were a kid?  God, Randy, you were
adorable
.”

He said nothing as he reached down, pulled the remote from her hand, and turned off the DVD player.  The screen turned a bright shade of blue when the picture vanished.

Cindy turned all the way around, kneeling on the sofa so she could better face him.  “What did you do
that
for?”

“Something’s wrong.”

“I knew that already.  Did you make your call?”

“Yes.”

“Going to let me in on it now?”

Randy nodded, came around, and sat down beside her.  Cindy readjusted her position and took hold of his hand.

Randy said, “Just listen to me for a minute, okay?  Don’t...don’t say anything or ask any questions, just listen.”

Feeling anxious—God, his face was so
pale
—Cindy nodded her agreement.

Randy hit the remote, returning to the race track scene, then hit the
Pause
button and pointed to the screen.

“I called Mom just to make sure,” he said.  “The carpeting was light blue, not green like this.  But that’s not...not why I called her.

“Cindy, look at me.  How long have you known me?  Ten years, right?  We’ve been married for six years—and by the way, I’ve loved every minute of it, if I haven’t told you lately.  The thing is, have I ever struck you as someone who’s absent-minded or forgetful?”

“No.”

“Have you ever thought of me as being unstable in any way?  The anti-depression medication aside, I mean.”

“Of course not.”

He stared at her with an intensity that made Cindy uncomfortable. 
He hasn’t been taking his meds
, she thought. 
That has to be it.

He started the DVD once again.  “Look at the screen, Cindy.  Tell me what you see.”

“Randy, you’re making me nervous.”

“
Please?
”

“Okay, babe, okay.”  She faced the television.  I see you and your dad playing with an electric racing car set on the floor of your folks’ old living room.”

“Look closer.”

It wasn’t until the little boy on the screen ran over to hug his mother—forcing her to set down the still-running camera—that Cindy realized what was wrong.

“What the--?”

“See it now, do you?” asked Randy.

She did.  In the bottom right-hand corner of the screen:  a small readout giving the time and the date.

3:42 p.m.  12/16/68.

“That’s from a
video
camera,” she said, looking at him.  “Did they even have video cameras in 1968?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Randy.  “We never owned anything like that when I was a kid.  In 1968, Dad was in the middle of a seven-month layoff from the plant.  We had a very...inexpensive Christmas that year.  It was nice, Mom had been saving money so we’d have a good dinner, but as far as presents went...I got a couple of Aurora monster model kits and some new shoes, that’s it.”

Cindy looked back at the scene on the television, then to her husband once again.  “Okay, maybe I’m a little slow here today, baby, but are you telling me—“

“—that we didn’t own a home movie camera, video cameras weren’t available to the public, and what you’re looking at”—He pointed to the happy scene unfolding in all its glory—“
never happened.
  Yeah, I
wanted
an HO race set, but that was out of the question.”  He looked back at the screen, and when he spoke again, his voice quavered.  “This never happened, Cindy.  That’s why I called Mom—I wanted to make sure I wasn’t misremembering things.  I wasn’t.  The carpeting was light blue, we never owned a home movie camera, and I never got a racing set.”

He rubbed his eyes and shook his head.  “The thing is, while I was growing up, I used to
pretend
that I
did
get one, y’know?  I mean, you do that when you’re a kid, you imagine things that didn’t happen actually did.”

Cindy nodded.  “I did that all the time.  I still do.”

Randy smiled at her, touching her cheek.  “When I used to play that scene out in my head, it looked just like
that
.”  He nodded toward the television.

“Except the carpeting was the right color?” asked Cindy.

“Bingo.”

For a minute they both sat watching silently as the scene played out, culminating in Randy beating the pants off his father in the Big Championship Race.

The scene quickly blacked out and a notice reading
End Of Tape
appeared in the middle of the screen.

Randy stopped the DVD player once again and began rummaging around on the coffee table.

“What’re you looking for?” asked Cindy.

“The invoice, the list that came with the discs.”

“I put on my desk.  Hang on.”  She went into her office and retrieved the paperwork, and came back to find randy on the floor with all of the discs spread out in front of him (still in their protective sleeves, thank God).

Holding up the papers, Cindy asked, “What are we looking for?”

Randy smiled at her.  “You know, you probably don’t notice how you always do that.”

“Do what?”

“That ‘we’ business.  Five minutes ago, this was
my
problem, then I tell you about it and suddenly it’s
our
problem.  Not ‘me’ but ‘we’.”

“Don’t be silly, baby—
of course
it’s our problem.  What bothers you, bothers me.”

He blew her a kiss, then pointed with his thumb at the television.  “This is Disc #3.  What’s the list say is on it?”

Cindy found the invoice for #3 and read aloud:  “Disc #3.  Transfers of home movies, Reels 1 – 5, labeled ‘Prom’, ‘Cindy’s College Graduation’, ‘First Day on the Job’, ‘Mom and Dad’s 40
th
Anniversary Party’ and ‘Our Wedding Rehearsal.’”  She lowered the paper and stared at her husband.  “They mislabeled, that’s all.”

“Did they?”  Randy picked up the remote, pressed
Previous
, and a moment later the screen showed Cindy, ten years younger and damn near in tears, receive her college diploma.  Then he hit the
Next
button not once but twice, and there was Cindy, laughing and waving at the camera as her mother videotaped her walking into the high school on her first day as the newest History teacher.  Randy then hit
Previous
once, and there was his father, setting up the HO track in the middle of the living room that had the wrong color—

--both Cindy and Randy started—

--the living room that now had the
correct
light-blue color of carpeting.

Randy’s hand began shaking.  “Jesus Christ, honey, what the hell is going on?”  He looked at her with an expression of confusion and helplessness that damn near broke her in half.

This time it was Cindy who turned off the disc, but she also ejected the damned thing and turned off the player.  “I don’t know, baby, but don’t...don’t let it get to you like this, okay?  Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”  Even to her own ears it sounded like a desperate, empty promise, something to say to Make It All Go Away For Right Now.

But Randy was having none of it.  He pointed to the discs spread out in front of him.  “There are eight discs here, Cindy,
eight
.  We were charged for seven.”  He picked up the eighth disc; both the protective sleeve and label on the disc were blank.

“Randy, you need to calm down, baby, okay?  I’ll tell you what—let’s get something to eat, let’s go out for a bit, and then we’ll come back and watch all of these from start to finish, okay?  Maybe one of us will see something that’ll help us figure out how...how...”