Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (14 page)

“...how an imagined memory of something that never happened could wind up on these things?”

She couldn’t think of anything to say.  Just blurting it out like that made it sound absurd.

“Okay,” she said.  “Screw it, then.  C’mon, sit down next to me and let’s watch it again.  Come on.”  She sat on the sofa and patted the spot next to her.  “Come on.  Let’s do this.  You and me.”

He sat beside her and took hold of her hand, and Cindy started the disc once more.

They watched Cindy receive her diploma, and then watched as she walked into her first day as a History teacher.

The race track film was gone.

Silently, anxiously, they started with the first disc and worked their way through all of the first seven.  There was nothing on any of the discs that wasn’t supposed to be.

Which left only the eighth, unmarked disc.

“Jesus,’ said Randy, looking at it as Cindy slipped it from its sleeve.  “Did we imagine it?”

“Baby, I’ve
never
believed in ‘shared hallucinations’ or whatever it is they’re called.”  She examined the last disc under the light as if she expected to find some kind of ancient sigil hidden in the reflection.  Looking up at her husband, she tried to smile and almost made it.  “I’m game if you are.”

Randy, silently, nodded his head, looking for all the world like a prisoner who’d just been told the hour of his execution was fast approaching.

Cindy slipped the disc into the player and sat very close to her husband as she hit the
Play
button.

The first sequence was the missing race track film, which the two of them watched as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if it were something from the past that Randy had shared with her many times over.  At one point, they both even laughed at something Randy’s father said as he was assembling the set.

Then came the film of Randy getting ready for his first Cub Scout meeting.

“I don’t remember this,” he said to her, gripping her hand tighter.

“But you
were
a Cub Scout, right?”

“...no...”

“Oh, God...”

And they watched.  They watched as Randy graduated all the way to Eagle Scout; they watched as Randy was lifted onto the shoulders of his football teammates after he’d tackled the quarterback of the opposing team, preventing the touchdown that would have lost Randy’s team the state championship (he’d never participated in sports, much to his father’s disappointment); they watched as Randy readied himself for his high school prom (to which he did not go because his father had died the previous week); they watched as Randy and his parents moved his belongings into his college dorm room (he’d done this alone); and they watched as Randy’s parents embraced both he and Cindy at their wedding.

“Looks like it would have been a nice life,” he whispered.

Cindy looked at him.  “What’s wrong with the one you have now?”

He turned toward her.  “Nothing, honey, nothing at all.  I love you, you know that, right?”

“Of course I do.”

He looked back at the screen.  “This is the past I
wish
I’d’ve had.  Look at all this.  It’s all so...
interesting
.  So happy and exciting.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the life you’ve had.  It’s been a good life—it’s
still
a good life, baby.”

He shook his head.  “Look at me, Cindy.  I’m a dull little man, and I know it, okay?  I don’t have any great sports stories to share with the guys I work with, I don’t have any great adventures to impress people with, and I sure as hell aren’t the most exciting man you could’ve picked for a husband.

“I used to resent the hell out of that, you know?  I hated Dad for dying like he did and leaving me to take care of Mom and the house.  I started college three years late because I had to get a job at the plant to help pay for everything. 
God
, I resented it!  I resented not having
that
life, the one on the screen.  I used to imagine...when I was really angry, I mean really,
really
angry, I used to imagine that—“

His words cut off when he looked back at the screen.

It was a film of a woman giving birth to a child that was obviously dead.  The woman insisted on holding the body, and as the camera came in for a close-up, Cindy saw that it was Randy’s mother.

A moment of blackness, and then came the image of a teenaged Randy, looking a decade older than his years, stabbing his parents in their sleep, their blood spattering the walls with every plunge of the knife.

Another moment of blackness, and there was Randy, in his twenties but looking much older, tying a naked and severely-beaten woman to a wooden chair.  The woman whimpered and screamed and begged him to stop, but Randy ignored her pleas as he turned away and began selecting tools from a table.

A final moment of blackness, and there was Randy, as he was now, sitting beside Cindy, as she was, the two of them staring at a screen that showed them sitting on a sofa facing a television screen that showed the two of them facing a television screen that showed the two of them facing a television screen...

Randy sat forward and buried his head in his hands.  “God, Cindy, the...
thoughts
I had when I was that angry.  That’s why I started seeing a psychiatrist—remember that I had to cancel our third date because I’d forgotten about the appointment?”

“I thought you were just trying to let me down easy,” she said.  She only now realized that she’d moved away from him, that the last series of images had turned her stomach.  How could
this
Randy, this man she loved, ever harbor thoughts so repulsive and violent?

Good God, did she know him at all?

He looked up and saw the expression on her face, saw that she’d moved away from him, and his face went blank.  “Just so you know, the girl in the chair was Tammy Wilson, who was the only girlfriend I had during college.  She cheated on me with at least three different guys, all of them jocks.”  He looked at the screen once more.  “I won’t lie to you, Cindy.  Thinking about doing that to her...it helped.  I’m not proud of those thoughts but I can’t very well deny having them, especially now, can I?

“And sometimes, honey, when you really disappoint me...I think about doing the same things to you.  And it makes me happy.  It makes me
feel good
....”

She pulled the remote from his hand and turned off the disc, which she then ejected, pulled from the player, and snapped in two.

“There,” she said to the empty sofa, and then felt herself starting to cry.  She quickly got hold of herself, sat down, pulled in a deep breath, and fingered the jagged scar that ran from her left temple to the side of her mouth, a souvenir from her own father—one of many that she carried all over her body.

Goddammit!
  She’d almost made it work this time, almost had the perfect husband, the perfect marriage, but Daddy’s influence always had a way of creeping back, one way or another.

She rubbed at the burn scars around her wrists, scars now faded with age but still pink enough to remind her of the ropes, of the chair, of Daddy’s tool kit.

She looked at the stack of DVDs with the transferred home movies of families she’d never met and would never know, and decided that she’d start looking for new memories tomorrow.  She was always alone in the lab—that was the best place for someone who looked like her, anyway.  History teachers with disfigured faces weren’t exactly in demand these days, and never had been.

There were always dozens, hundreds of home movies people wanted transferred to DVD.  So she’d say goodbye to Randy and hope that, tomorrow, she could find some new memories that she could hold on to, ones that Daddy couldn’t sneak in and ruin.

She turned off the television set and for a few moments just knelt there, staring at the slightly distorted reflection of her face.

“I’ll miss you, Randy,” she whispered.  “You were the best one yet.”

She placed her hand against the screen, imagining that the reflected hand was not hers, but that of a gentle and compassionate man who was reaching out through the glass to take hold of hers and whisper that she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world, and, oh, how he would lover her forever....

NEPTUNE DREAMS

Rose Blackthorn

Rose Blackthorn lives in the high mountain desert of Eastern Utah with her boyfriend and two dogs, Boo and Shadow. She spends her time writing, reading, beading and doing wire-work, and photographing the surrounding wilderness. She has published genre fiction online and in print with Necon E-Books, Stupefying Stories, and the anthologies
The Ghost IS the Machine
and
A Quick Bite of Flesh,
among others.
She is a member of the H
orror
W
riters
A
ssociation
, and suffers from an overactive imagination, but rather than complaining... she just goes with it.

Shy dreame
d
. She was floating unencumbered in her sleeping quarters, perhaps a foot or so above her bed. Deep in her own mind, she knew this wasn't real. Although the gravity on Galene Station was lower than on Earth, a person couldn't freely float. The other indication that she wasn't truly awake and aware was the large window directly before her. The sky outside was purest black with a scattering of diamond bright stars. Taking up the lower left corner of the window was the upper curve of a planet. Neptune was a vibrant blue with delicate broken rings that sparkled with errant flashes when light glinted off colliding chunks of ice.

In her dream, she floated closer to the window. She reached toward it, right hand flesh and bone, the left cold metal alloys with rubber-clad joints. She could hear a strange high-pitched hum, an almost sub-audible whine. There was the peripheral sensation of movement, as though something not quite seen flitted around her, but she couldn't take her eyes off the planet. She stretched forward, reaching toward the glass. Her hands, human and artificial, passed through the surface as though there was no barrier. The cold was immediate and intense. The water content of skin and muscles crystalized and expanded, the pain much worse than being burned. Her prosthetic hand was not affected by the cold, except in conducting the rapid drop in temperature up to her shoulder. She still floated forward, unable to arrest her advance. She took a deep breath, turned her head to see frost and vapor filling the room. Her lungs expanded to voice a last agonizing scream, as her face passed through the window into space.

The comm beside her bed chirped, and she jerked upright, her momentum carrying her off the mattress in the low gee. Before anything else, she turned toward the far wall. As always, it was just a solid wall with the narrow door leading to the bathroom and another leading out of her quarters onto the command ring of the space station.

"Damn," she whispered, closing her eyes.

The comm chirped again, more insistently. The gentle gravity had returned her back to her bed, and she leaned over, touching a button. "Acknowledge. Galene Station, this is Pilot Keir."

"This is Commander Argol, of the relay ship Astraios. We're readying for final approach."

"Confirmed, Commander." She stood, being careful not to exert too much effort. Moving smoothly, without lifting her feet much above the rubber-mat covered floor, she glided toward her bathroom. She would have to hurry to be dressed and at her station before the crew of the Astraios was ready to disembark.

*****

Commander James Argol released his safety harness and turned his chair. Beside him in the co-pilot's seat was Dennis Rocha, a man roughly half the Commander's age. While Argol had been off-Earth for the last twenty odd years, Rocha was relatively new to the far reaches of the solar system. He'd only been on duty at Calliope Station for a year.

"Double check the docking mechanisms, and be sure the airlock is secured," Argol said. "We'll be disembarking as soon as the Galene gives permission."

"Aye, sir," the younger man said with a grin and turned to his console.

"Nejem, you ready to earn your pay?" Argol called over the intercom.

"Ready and able," Inanna Nejem answered, her voice tinny coming over the speaker.

"Rocha will let you know when you can open the lock," the Commander said, and got to his feet. "I'll see you in cargo," he added over his shoulder to the co-pilot.

Argol stopped by his quarters, little more than a closet. As a relay freighter, all available space was set up for cargo. Right now what they carried was empty crates and unsealed containers. Galene Station, the only mining operation orbiting Neptune, was where they would pick up their cargo. Empties would be offloaded for Galene's use, and the Astraios' cargo area would be loaded with containers full of helium-3. These would be delivered to Calliope Station, a huge man-made city orbiting Jupiter. Some of the helium-3 would be used there, and some relayed farther on to Mars or Earth. The real priority this trip however, was five crates of diamonds. The liquid ammonia seas on Neptune had long been known to man, but only in the last century or so had it become clear that there were also liquid diamond lakes. Because of high temperatures beneath the heavy atmosphere, and the dense gravitational pressure, these lakes formed like small ponds within the larger ammonia oceans. Scientists had determined that solid diamonds, in clusters like small icebergs, floated on the surface of those lakes. It had only been a matter of time until engineers came up with a way to collect them.

Galene Station was equipped with several unmanned transports specifically designed to enter the upper reaches of Neptune's atmosphere, in order to siphon and store the valuable helium-3. Six months ago she'd also received two highly-insulated reinforced robot drones made explicitly for the purpose of traveling to the surface of Neptune, extracting the Neptunian minerals, and returning them to the station. They had performed exactly as designed, thus the crates full of raw diamonds.

Argol left his quarters and headed toward the airlock just in time to hear the whoosh of air as it opened. The temperature in Galene was a few degrees lower than in the relay ship, and Argol smiled at the cooling breeze. He stopped at the computer panel nearest the open lock, and contacted Galene's sole crewmember via the comm.

"Pilot Keir, permission to come aboard," he said.

After a momentary delay came the reply. "Permission granted."

"We have some supplies for you this time around, Keir," he added, glancing at the small stack of plastic crates filled with food and medicines for the station.

"I'll send down a 'bot-jack," was her terse reply.

"She's not much for company, is she?" Nejem asked, her dark almond-shaped eyes reflecting everything she saw. She stood ready to begin unloading their empty containers, petite and pixie-cute with her buzz-cut black hair spiked up in front. Looks were deceiving, however; she was more than just a pretty face, and her record was exemplary.

"You could say that," Argol said dryly.

"How long has she been alone out here?" the young woman asked curiously. She'd heard rumors about Keir, everyone out here working the gas giants had; but she'd never met anyone who actually knew Galene's pilot.

Argol shrugged, stepping aside when the station's 'bot-jack appeared to pick up the supply pallet. "Better part of ten years, I suppose."

"That's a long time to handle your own company," Nejem mused.

"I guess it depends on whether or not you can hold up your end of the conversation," Argol said. When the 'bot-jack rolled back out of the cargo hold, he followed it onto Galene Station.

*****

Shy checked system read-outs, sitting in the command chair on what amounted to the bridge of her own private space station. She reminded herself to relax, to take even breaths. She had never liked having strangers on Galene, not even for the few hours required for a relay ship to dock, load and leave. Now she had to remember that this was necessary.

Her full name was Cheyenne Raven Keir, a name that was simply too much for her. Cheyenne had been shortened to Shy when she was a child, and it had stuck as she'd always been a quiet, introverted girl. After the catastrophic fire that killed her entire family—parents, two brothers and her baby sister, and nearly killed her as well—her previous demeanor had been comparatively gregarious. Trapped under a collapsed and burning wall, rescued by pure chance when it was assumed there were no survivors, she had pulled through because of advanced medical care and a surprisingly strong will to live.

It had not been easy. Her family was poor, and there was no life insurance. Made a ward of the state her medical care was covered, but only to the bare minimum. Burns that had covered nearly seventy percent of her body were kept clean and she was carefully guarded from secondary infections, but there were no cosmetic skin grafts to ameliorate the severe scarring. Her left arm had been crushed as well as severely burned, so was amputated at the shoulder. When she was fitted for the bio-mechanical limb, again it had been the most basic model available. There were no funds available for an artificial skin covering to make the limb appear more natural. She had to settle for a serviceable metal alloy that only added to her aberrant appearance.

The one saving grace to it all, she would often think later in life, was her education. Before the fire she had gotten adequate grades, but nothing more. She had no time to study, for she was required to tend her younger siblings from the time she got home from school until they went to bed. After the fire, lying in the hospital, she had seen a world of knowledge open up before her in the bedside computer supplied for her schooling. She had no family, and no friends to take either her time or attention. Instead, she enrolled in every class she could get authorization for, and had excelled.

Because of her drive and aptitude, she had qualified for grants and scholarships that led to degrees in engineering, physics and astronomy. Beyond her native capability in these subjects lay an intense desire to be on her own. Her injuries and severe scarring caused most people to either stare rudely, or avert their eyes in a type of embarrassment. Both reactions caused her notable discomfort, and she had determined to find a way to avoid people as a matter of course. By the time Galene Station was ready to be launched, she had become the first choice to pilot it.

When Argol climbed onto the command ring, she turned to greet him. He was one of only a handful of people who neither stared with awkward sympathy nor refused to look her square in the face. Instead, he simply smiled and came to embrace her.

"How are you, Shy?" he asked, his breath warm on the unscarred right side of her face.

"I'm well, James. How was your flight?" She took a deep breath, enjoying his scent and the feel of his arms around her.

"Not bad." He stepped back, looking down at her as though to see if anything had changed. "You look thin. Do I need to requisition you more sweets?"

She laughed softly, shaking her head. "I'm working on keeping that girlish figure."

"Well," he said, taking a seat in the second chair at the console. "I brought you some, anyway." He held out a small paper box, and when she took it, added, "Open it."

She set the box on her knees, steadying it with her prosthetic hand while she lifted the lid with the other. Inside it was filled with a fluff of white tissue. When she unfolded the tissue she found perfectly ripe red strawberries dipped in chocolate.

"You said you missed them," Argol said when she was silent.

"I did," she agreed, and met his eyes. "How did you get these? They must have cost you a fortune."

"Someone on Calliope owed me a favor," he said gently. "They're growing hydroponic strawberries now, along with other fruits and vegetables. It was easier to get the strawberries than the chocolate."

"James, this is very sweet, but you didn't have to…"

He shook his head firmly, "I don't
have
to do anything, where it comes to you."

She thought about protesting again; instead, she gave him a bare nod and the thinnest curve of a smile. "Share them with me?"

He sat back, stretching his long legs before him. "I brought them for you."

"I'm not going to sit here and eat them while you watch," she retorted, and he grinned.

"It's been a long time since I've eaten strawberries with a lovely lady. Like a scene out of a space opera," he teased, but took one of the berries when she offered it, the delicate fruit held lightly between the dexterous fingers of her artificial hand.

As they ate, three berries to each of them, they talked. It had been six months since the last time he'd been on Galene. She might deny it, but she was thinner than the last time he'd seen her. There were shadows beneath her green eyes, and a worry line had appeared between her brows.

He looked the same as he had for the last ten years. Tall and lanky, with large graceful hands and an easy smile, chestnut brown hair that grew over his collar, and striking blue eyes almost the same azure as Neptune. He was twelve years older than Shy, and had led a very different life. He'd been born into an affluent family, and had never been denied anything he'd ever really wanted. His education had been expensive, and his swift promotion to Commander had been a source of pride to his parents. Their plans for him to move into politics and power had never been what he wanted. So to avoid the argument, he had escaped into space, and never returned to the planet of his birth.