Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (24 page)

"Can I help you?" The woman said with a large fang-filled mouth that looked as though it might be capable of devouring John’s head in a single bite. As he looked with stunned immobility at the massive maw, he saw long thick streams of some type of reddish goo-like drool dripping down from the fangs. The creature’s tongue rolled out over its teeth and John could see some sort of vile insectile creatures attached like barnacles to the organ. These tiny bugs seemed to be eating the flesh of the tongue and burrowing under its skin.

As he quickly pulled his gaze away and unwillingly scanned the rest of the crowd John observed that every one of the gawking spectators was more repugnant than the last. He had no idea what in hell was going on with the world around him, he only knew he had to get home to his apartment so he could hide out from these despicable beasts and try to figure out what was happening.

John staggered to his feet and keeping his eyes cast downward while groping the sides of the buildings he made his way as quickly as possible back to his apartment, tears streaming down his face and babbling like a crazy man. He thanked the heavens that he didn’t meet up with any other of the horrid creatures and was pleased to find that Nancy or the horrifying thing she had become was no longer outside waiting for him.

He pushed his way through the front door and into his apartment, being sure to secure every one of his locks and deadbolts. John suddenly recalled the insects devouring the flesh of that woman’s tongue and felt his stomach heave. Fortunately, he made it into his bathroom just in time and fell to his knees at the toilet, vomiting and heaving like he had never done before. Sometime later when his gut was thoroughly emptied and after the retching and dry heaving subsided, John slowly tried to stand hanging onto the sink for support. He needed to brush his teeth and run a cold wash cloth over his sweating face.

John stood at the sink, his weak arms barely supporting him as he leaned on them, hovering over the wash basin as his eyes stared down into the bowl. What had happened out there to everyone? Why had they all changed and look so hideous? Then the realization hit him like a baseball bat to the face.

He had done it! He had actually seen the human soul. That would explain everything! But if he had in fact seen what he thought he saw, why had the souls looked so incredibly horrifying and evil. Then he came to an unpleasant realization. The toddler, barely two years old had a soul that had not yet been corrupted by the world around her. That was why she still looked relatively human. John could tell that she was just starting to change however, likely from being negatively influenced by her environment. And the older kids, the six and eight-year olds, looked progressively worse. He deduced that must be because their souls were becoming degraded more and more each day. Then the kids’ mother, and the taxi driver and the rest of the crowd; their souls had all obviously become corrupted to the point of no return.

And then there was Nancy. The lovely neighbor he thought so fondly of. She seemed like such a sweet and wonderful person on the outside, how could her soul be so horribly vile and revolting? Then he thought, "Perhaps the world we live in tarnishes all of our souls, and we in turn contribute to ruining the pure souls of others, including our own innocent little ones."

John realized that perhaps the human soul, even the soul existing inside the best of humans, was likely a horrifying slobbering beast struggling to get out and wreak havoc. Perhaps it was some genetically evolved force which formed back in the time of our origins before we became what we now think of as civilized human beings. This thing, this soul which was responsible for giving us the intellect and cunning to survive and rise to the top of the food chain, still lives inside each of us. But we all unconsciously do what we must to keep the beast at bay; force it to be locked down deep inside of us with the hopes it might never get out. He then knew this soul, this beast within, was never meant to be seen by any man.

Then another thought struck him. There was a mirror on the vanity above the sink. John slowly raised his eyes upward to look at his own soul; he simply had to know. The last thing John could clearly recall was hearing his own bellowing screams of anguish.

*****

The patron hurried out of the liquor store, trying to avoid getting too wet in the steady downpour. He didn’t see John squatting on the sidewalk as he ran buy and accidently bumped into him, knocking his wrap-around sunglasses to the ground.

"Oh man. I’m terribly sorry." The man said as he saw the beggar on the ground groping haphazardly for his fallen sunglasses. "I was in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention. Here, pal, let me get those for you." The patron reached down and picked up the sunglasses then handed them back to John who turned his face up toward the man.

"Oh my God!" The man shouted, shocked by what he saw looking out from beneath the shade of the hood. The man on the ground stared up at him from two hollowed out sockets where his eyes should have been. At the tops and bottoms of the gaping holes were deep scarred furrows and the man instantly realized why. "Dear Jesus man… did you… Oh my God you did… you clawed out your own eyes!"

John put on his glasses, lowered his head and returned to incoherent mumbling as the shocked man stumbled away into the night. No one would have been able to make out what John was repeating but it they could understand him they might recall the phrase as part of a bible verse; perhaps one they had heard in church as a child. What John mumbled was "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out."

Harlan Ellison
®

Harlan Ellison
®
is a legend in th
e field of speculative fiction.
With a career spanning five decades, Ellison has published more than 1,700 short stories and articles, written or edited more than 75 books, written classic episodes for such series as
Star Trek
and
The Outer Limits
, and won numerous Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker Awards
™
.  This story originally appeared in the 1978 collection
Strange Wine
.

"I remember well the time when the thought of the eye
made me cold all over."

Charles Darwin, 1860

"Hey, Berne. Over there. Way back in that booth...see her?"

"Not now. I'm tired. I'm relaxing."

"Jizzus, Berne, take a look at her."

"Grebbie, if you don't synch-out and let me get doused, I swear I'll bounce a shot thimble off your skull."

"Okay, have it like you want it. But they're gray-blue."

"What?"

"Forget it, Berne. You said forget it, so forget it."

"Turn around here, man."

"I'm drinking."

"Listen, snipe, we been out all day looking..."

"Then when I tell you something from now on, you gonna
hear
me?"

"I'm sorry, Grebbie. Now come on, man, which one is she?"

"Over there. Pin her?"

"The plaid jumper?"

"No, the one way back in the dark in that booth behind the plaid. She's wearing a kaftan...wait'll the lights come around again...
there!
Y'pin her? Gray-blue, just like the Doc said he wanted."

"Grebbie, you are one beautiful pronger."

"Yeah, huh?"

"Now, just turn around and stop staring at her before she sees you. We'll get her."

"How, Berne? This joint's full up."

"She's gotta move out sometime. She'll go away."

"And we'll be right on her, right, Berne?"

"Grebbie, have another punchup and let me drink."

"Jizzus, man, we're gonna be livin' crystalfine when we get back to the Doc."

"Grebbie!"

"Okay, Berne, okay. Jizzus, she's got beautiful eyes."

*****

From extreme long shot, establishing; booming down to tight closeup, it looked like this:

Viewed through the fisheye-lens of a Long Drive vessel's stateroom iris, as the ship sank to Earth, the area surround the pits and pads and terminal structures of PIX--the Polar Interstellar Exchange port authority terminus--was a doughnut-shaped crazy quilt of rampaging colors. In the doughnut hole center was PIX, slate-gray alloys macroscopically homogenized to ignore the onslaughts of deranged Arctic weather. Around the port was a nomansland of eggshell-white plasteel with shock fibers woven into its surface. Nothing could pass across that dead area without permission. A million flickers of beckoning light erupted every second from the colorful doughnut, as if silent Circes called unendingly for visitors to come find their sources. Down, down, the ship would come and settle into its pit, and the view in the iris would vanish. Then tourists would leave the Long Driver through underground slidewalk tunnels that would carry them into the port authority for clearance and medical checks and baggage inspection.

Tram carts would carry the cleared tourists and returning Long Drive crews through underground egress passages to the outlets beyond the nomansland. Security turned to them, their wit and protective devices built into their clothing the only barriers between them and what lay aboveground, they would be shunted into cages and whisked to the surface.

Then the view reappeared. The doughnut-shaped area around the safe port structures lay sprawled before the newly arrived visitors and returnees from space. Without form or design, the area was scatter-packed with a thousand shops and arcades, hostelries and dives, pleasure palaces and food emporiums. As though they had been wind-thrown anemophilously, each structure grew up side by side with its neighbors. Dark and twisting alleyways careened through one section to the next. Spitalfields in London and Greenwich Village in old New York--before the Crunch--had grown up this way, like a jungle of hungry plants. And every open doorway had its barker, calling and gesturing, luring the visitors into the maw of unexpected experiences. Demander circuits flashed lights directly into the eyes of passersby, operating off retinal-heat-seeking mechanisms. Psychosound loops kept up an unceasing subliminal howling, each message strive to cap those filling the air around it, struggling to capture the attention of tourists with fat credit accounts. Beneath the ground, machinery labored mightily, the occasional squeal of plasteel signifying that even at top-point efficiency the guts of the area could not keep up with the demands of its economy. Crowds flowed in definite patterns, first this way, then that way, following the tidal pulls of a momentarily overriding loop, a barker's spiel filling an eye-of-the-hurricane silence, a strobing demander sudden reacting to an overload of power.

The crowd contained prongers, coshmen, fagin brats, pleasure pals, dealers, pickpockets, hustlers, waltzers, pseudo-marks, gophers, rowdy-dowdy hijackers, horses, hot slough workers, whores, steerers, blousers of all ages, sheiks, shake artists, kiters, floaters, aliens from three hundred different federations, assassins and, of course, innocent johns, marks, hoosiers, kadodies, and tourists ripe for shucking.

Following one such tidal flow of crowd life, down an alley identified on a wall as Poke Way, the view would narrow down to a circular doorway in a green one-story building. The sign would screen THE ELEGANT. Tightening the angle of observation, moving inside, the place could be seen to be a hard-drinking bar.

At the counter, as the sightline tracked around the murky bar, one could observe two men hunched over their thimbles, drinking steadily and paying attention to nothing but what their credit cards could buy, dumbwaitered up through the counter to their waiting hands. To an experienced visitor to the area, they would be clearly identifiable as "butt'n'ben" prongers: adepts at locating and furnishing to various Knox Shops whatever human parts were currently in demand.

Tracking further right, into the darkness of the private booths, the view would reveal (in the moments when the revolving overhead globes shone into those black spaces) an extremely attractive, but weary-looking, young woman with gray-blue eyes. Moving in for a tight closeup, the view would hold that breathtaking face for long moments, then move in and in on the eyes...those remarkable eyes.

All this, all these sights, in the area called WorldsEnd.

*****

Verna tried to erase the memory with the oblivion of drink. Drugs made her sick to her stomach and never accomplished what they were supposed to do. But chigger, and rum and bowl could do it...if she downed them in sufficient quantities. thus far, the level had not been even remotely approached. The alien, and what she had had to do to service him, were still fresh in her mind. Right near the surface, like scum. Since she had left the safe house and gone on her own, it had been one disaster after another. And tonight, the slug thing from...

She could not remember the name of the world it called its home. Where it lived in a pool of liquid, in a state of what passed for grace only to those who raised other life forms for food.

She punched up another bowl and then some bread, to dip in the heavy liquor. Her stomach was sending her messages of pain.

There had to be a way out. Out of WorldsEnd, out of the trade, out of the poverty and pain that characterized this planet for all but the wealthiest and most powerful. She looked into the bowl and saw it as no one else in The Elegant could have seen it.

The brown, souplike liquor, thick and dotted with lighter lumps of amber. She saw it as a whirlpool, spinning down to a finite point of silver radiance that spun on its own axis, whirling and whirling: a mad eye. A funnel of living brilliance flickering with chill heat that ran back against the spun, surging toward the top of the bowl and forming a barely visible surface tension of coruscating light, a thousand-colored dome of light.

She dipped the bread into the funnel and watched it tear apart like the finest lace. She brought it up, soaking, and ripped off a piece with her fine, white, even teeth--thinking of tearing the flesh of her mother. Sydni, her mother, who had gifted her with this curse, these eyes. This terrible curse that prevented her from seeing the world as it was, as it might have been, as it might be; seeing the world through eyes of wonder that had become horror before she turned five years old. Sydni, who had been in the trade before her, and her mother before
her
; Sydni, who had borne her through the activities of one nameless father after another. And one of them had carried the genes that had produced the eyes. Forever eyes.

She tried desperately to get drunk, but it wouldn't happen. More bread, another bowl, another chigger and rum--and nothing happened. But she sat in the booth, determined not to go back into the alleys. The alien might be looking for her, might still demand its credits' worth of sex and awfulness, might try once again to force her to drink the drink it called "mooshsquash." The chill that came over her made her shiver; brain movies with forever eyes were vivid and always fresh, always now, never memories, always happening
then
.

She cursed her mother and thought the night would probably never end.

An old woman, a very old woman, a woman older than anyone born on the day she had been born, nodded her head to her dressers. They began covering her terrible nakedness with expensive fabrics. She had blue hair. She did not speak to them.

*****

Now that he had overcome the problems of pulse pressure on the association fibers of the posterior lobe of the brain, he was certain the transplanted mutations would be able to mold the unconscious cerebral image of the seen world into the conscious percept. He would make no guarantees for the ability of the recipient to cope with the flux of the external world in all its complexity--infinitely more complicated as "seen" through the mutated transplant eyes--but he knew that his customers would hardly be deterred by a lack of such guarantees. They were standing in line. Once he had said, "The unaided human eye under the best possible viewing conditions can distinguish ten million different color surfaces; with transplants the eye will perceive ten
billion
different color surfaces; or more," then, once he had said it, then he had them hooked. They...
she
...would pay anything. And anything was how much he would demand. Anything to get off this damned planet, away from the rot that was all expansion had left of Earth.

There was a freehold waiting for him on one of the ease-colonies of Kendo IV. He would take passage and arrive like a prince from a foreign land. He would spin out the remaining years of his life with pleasure and comfort and respect. He would no longer be a Knoxdoctor, forced to accept ghoulish assignments at inflated prices, and then compelled to turn over the credits to the police and the sterngangs that demanded "protection" credit.

He needed only one more. A fresh pair for that blue haired old harridan. One more job, and then release from this incarceration of fear and desperation and filth. A pair of gray-blue eyes. Then freedom, in the easy-colony.

It was cold in Dr. Breame's Knox Shop. The tiny vats of nutrients demanded drastically lowered temperatures. Even in the insulated coverall he wore, Dr. Breame felt the cold.

But it was always warm on Kendo IV.

And there were no prongers like Grebbie and Berne on Kendo IV. No strange men and women and children with eyes that glowed. No still-warm bodies brought in off the alleys, to be hacked and butchered. No vats with cold flesh floating in nutrient. No filth, no disgrace, no payoffs, no fear.

He listened to the silence of the operating room.

It seemed to be filled with something other than mere absence of sound. Something deeper. A silence that held within its ordered confines a world of subtle murmurings.

He turned, staring at the storage vats in the ice cabinet. through the nearly transparent film of frost on the see-through door he could discern the parts idly floating in their nutrients. The mouths, the filaments of nerve bundles, the hands still clutching for life. There were sounds coming from the vats.

He had heard them before.

All the voiceless voices of the dead.

The toothless mouths calling his name:
Breame, come here, Breame, step up to us, look at us, we have things to tell you: the dreams you helped end, the wishes unanswered, the lives cut off like these hands. Let us touch you, Dr. Breame.

He nibbled at his lower lip, willing the voices to silence. and they went quiet, stopped their senseless pleading. Senseless, because very soon Grebbie and Berne would come, and they would surely bring with them a man or a woman or a child with glowing blue-gray eyes, and then he would call the woman with blue hair and she would come to his Knox Shop, and he would operate, and then take passage.