Authors: Nicholas Grabowsky
Tags: #Fantasy, #Horror, #Paranormal, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Suspense, #General
“I’m not so certain of that,” Bari announced to Her Highness, “of any of that. In fact, I believe everything you’re about is full of shit. And you’re about to see what I mean. Are you ready? All right, then. There’s something further I’d like to show you....”
***
Within the instant of the next heartbeat, they and the terrace and the entire diner’s side outskirts along down the embankment and the expanse beyond were engulfed by a tidal wave immersion of bright light, its beams trickling off in stardust fragments upon every object of substance its light revealed, like pixie dust trails, like an onslaught of luminous fairies cast down from heaven in a pitcher’s throw from a gargantuan stellar god.
The splendid aurora caught Salvatia and Scratch both likewise off guard like two deer in the middle of a peaceful night’s highway startled by a sixteen-wheeler’s high beams.
Bari remained calm and passive; Melony was too intensely preoccupied by her own pain to take notice.
From out of the tomb-like hush of the moment proceeding the advent of light there emerged an invasion of dozens of little people, spilling over from every direction of the encompassing railing and into the patio, dozens and then dozens more; it was a pandemonium of fetal-like, bare-skinned humanoids of varying shapes and sizes and statures, albeit not a one of them stood taller than four feet in height, no shorter than two.
Resembling naked children they flooded the terrace, encircling the tables, alien grey entities sexless but for undeterminable organs at their groins which for some could have been unmistakably female if they’d only hold still for a view. Their eyes were bulbous and teardrop-shaped and fathomless, double in proportionate size to any Everborn regressed so far as Scratch or Andrew. The dimensions of their heads were expanded, hairless and well-rounded, sleek and smooth, their stunted mouths near-lipless like those of their Everborn counterparts.
Beyond about all two hundred of them and beyond the diner terrace rested a spectacular vision, a colossal cylindrical metallic dome covering the expanse of terrain in the chasm of the diner’s rear canyon. Corralled between the foot of the terrace embankment and the forest of trees to its rear, the space craft, as it was, brilliant in all its glory, stood situated upon four extended metal landing legs embedded into the earth below it. The untarnished silver of its surface reflected all its surroundings the way a carnival funhouse mirror would, yet it was this reflective dome which emitted the bright light consuming all.
“It’s the Watchers....they’ve found us!” Scratch observed, enlightened and very much afraid.
“You’re right about that,” Bari acknowledged. Then, to Salvatia, she said, “I do apologize, but your blessed sisters could not make it this evening. What, with the Watchers here and all, and with what was coming down, they made an about-face and dispersed, leaving your stupid ass here to fend for yourself....”
“You adulterous whore!” Salvatia roared. “You set me up!”
“You set
yourself
up,” said Bari. “Don’t worry, it was all meant to be.”
Salvatia struggled for another word but could not find one, nor could she conceive one thought to give rise to another, as a congress of Watchers surrounded her and subdued her. By the very touch of their multitude of tenuous hands and outstretched fingers upon the now-coppery flesh of her upper torso, Salvatia grew rapidly pacified as though subjected to the tranquility of an anesthetic secreted into her system by some magical means.
The Watchers closed in about her, embracing her, violating the decreasing tempest of invisible air currents below her waist with their intrusive bodies and hands. Collectively, the foray reached their hands beneath her, into the air currents and up into her, inside of her, fingers probing and digging upwards behind her veil of coppery flesh and within the region of her abdomen. They found a stable hold just then, gripping, and altogether in one forceful downward tug brought forth two human feet, then legs, like magicians pulling a rabbit out of an overturned hat.
The currents of Salvatia’s lower torso ceased in their movement, disappeared. The body of a young woman, naked and newborn baby pink plunged onto the concrete ground. The entirety of what had been Salvatia’s freshly-converted Watchmaid skin, long black hair and hollowed eye sockets, fell to the floor in a mound alone like a latex body suit, vacated and spiritless, never again to do any harm.
The human young woman that had been Salvatia, sprawled face-up upon the terrace floor, opened her frail brown eyes to the beings assembling above her.
And she let out a piercing scream.
One by one, the beings surrounding her took hold of her, lifting her body up above their heads. She did not fight against them; perhaps she was incapable. Perhaps, in the turmoil of a rebirth into her old self of centuries past, she did not want to fight.
And yet, she continued to scream. Even as the Watchers carried her, past the tables, up, over the railing and down the embankment, hen screams echoed into the night and for all eternity.
The majority of Watchers did not retreat, however, for Salvatia’s demise was not all that they had come for; if they’d come for anything else, by the looks of their collaborated advance, they’d come for Scratch next.
Scratch, looking about and realizing he was doomed as they diligently closed in on him, brought his gaze upon Bari. “What is to become of me? Am I still to be reborn?”
“You were never to be reborn,” Bari told him. Then, on second thought, she decided to elaborate. “If you posses any soul at all, perhaps the essence within you, in which dwelt some degree of good, will survive.”
“You go to hell!” Scratch cursed her. “We’re
all
screwed!
You’re
a
Magdalene
now and my brother is dead, and Camelia’s Ralston is dead, and so is Polito and his
very
estranged wife soon, it appears.”
“Simon BoLeve, you
misunderstand,”
Bari corrected. “Misunderstand
what
? That we’re all screwed??” “No. You misunderstand, for one thing, that I had a nice opportunity to converse with this wonderful clan of Watchers here before Ralston had fallen into my lap and they told me to trust them. They told me all I had to do was to allow you to take my beloved Andrew’s life and all would be fine. I do trust them, because...well, they’re
Watchers
for godsakes, the
Master Magicians themselves!”
“But....”
“Oh, and
look
,” Bari said with enthusiasm to prove her point.
And Scratch dared to look.
Before the Watchers could overtake him, he chanced to gaze over the railing and down the embankment. Other Watchers were already at work with Andrew’s severed head, bringing it up carefully as others upon the terrace orchestrated the removal of Erlandson’s body. Over the railing the body went, ever so carefully, until the body and the head were reunited and tended to by the several dozen Watchers encircling about them like bees.
In the distance from this, Scratch spied Ralston walking towards the ship, flanked by many of these Watchers and shouldered upright by several as he went, as though he’d suffered a mere minor injury.
To Scratch’s left, another group of Watchers proceeded towards Max Polito’s body, to his right they dealt with the ufologist’s wife.
“You see, Simon,” Bari uttered explanatory parting words to him, “the Watchers here have been after Salvatia for centuries, but the only way for them to take her down was to get her into an enchanted location such as this diner and then for her to become physical enough to be overcome. It was all too easy, as soon as they let me in on the whole scheme. And, by the way, if they can revive Max Polito from death to life, they will surely do likewise with my Andrew. And don’t forget: Max Polito and Ralston Cooper are destined to live, for it is
their
book that predetermined this
all
.”
“Hi, how are you?” said one Watcher to Simon BoLeve, an arm outstretched for a handshake. “Not so sure that’s the appropriate question, on second thought. My name is George. Would you come with us, please, right this way.”
“We’re here to fix things,” said another shorter Watcher, in a matter-of-fact fashion.
“I was an Everborn until I became a Watcher again about ninety-seven years ago,” said another, reaching out to help usher Simon along. “An unfortunate accident, really, involving a mob riot and some hairless ostriches. Oh, humanity!”
“It’s okay, Henry, you’re not a part of humanity,” George hushed him.
And with one touch of his hand, Simon succumbed to him and the other Watchers about him, and they together directed him out of the diner terrace and towards their ship in the canyon.
The remaining Watchers approached Bari, finally, alone.
“You’re certain this will turn out all right?” Bari asked one of them.
“Don‘t worry, dear Watchmaid, we‘ve got it covered from here on out. Oh, and thank you....” replied a Watcher directly before her as the others encircled her, crowding about and pressing against her; to her astonishment, she could tell her skin was ever so slowly becoming a coppertone brass once again, and it occurred to her that she would endure, at least until her beloved Everborn’s next life’s end.
“Follow me now.” Another Watcher spoke.
And Bari followed.
EPILOGUE
Max & the Watcher, In Parting
It was supposed to happen this way, all of it, after all.
It was supposed to happen this way, because the story is now told.
I scooted myself away from the desk, or, rather, wobbled my chair from leg to leg backwards across the carpet until I was at a reasonable distance from the desk to flex my hands and fingers. I stretched my arms. I wondered how instant it was, the transmission of this manuscript I was now completing to the hands of Andrew Erlandson back in time to the previous August. Then I realized it was as instant as yesterday; as instant, perhaps, as a lifetime.
I wondered how different the story would be if the story itself had not been an influence on its events, and had neither I nor the Watcher collaborated to tell it and transmit it through time, where would circumstances take us?
This thought gave rise to another: in many ways, a book has already been written for all of us. It’s just that it’s not every day you’re going to come across a copy.
I looked over my shoulder and I saw the Watcher sitting upright in his robe with legs crossed Indian-style upon the center of the bed nearest me.
He smiled upon me wearily, languidly, but he was very much pleased.
Our task was at an end, and, for both of us, it had been a long night.
“I suppose it’s about time I rid myself of the addiction to these wretched things,” the Watcher then remarked, and exhaled his last breath of cigarette smoke, crushed the butt into an ashtray memorial graveyard of the last of his mortal vices.
I sighed, and thought to myself the same thing, although many more questions plagued my mind aside from this resolution.
I wondered,
but what now?
My quest for knowledge was essentially at an end, or at least to the extent of my career, and although my life had apparently ended months ago, it had begun anew last night.
And then again, just this morning.
There came a knock at the motel room door.
“Go ahead,” the Watcher said, “open it. Dawn has come, you know. For all of us.”
I stood from my chair and without hesitation abandoned the typewriter for the door. My expectations fluctuated between a number of possibilities as to who I might find once I opened the door. In my lifetime, if you count the moment of my birth up until now, I’d opened a
boulevard
of doors, so to speak.
This would be no different, the opening of this one, than any other. And just as exciting.
I opened the motel room door to the outside dawn which blinded me at first, being that my eyes had been accustomed to only a mild degree of light amidst a night time of what seemed like ages.
And before me I beheld my wife. She carried in her arms a newborn son wrapped in several layers of knitted blanket.
She was happy to see me.
The infant gazed up, upon me, and chuckled for innocent unprovoked reasons that I will never know.
And I knew, looking upon them both, that this was another beginning set about by an end.
“Follow me now,” Melony said to me, “there’s something further I’d like to show you....”
About the Author
Nicholas Grabowsky’s
novels of horror/fantasy, both as himself, as Nicholas Randers, and as Marsena Shane, have generated worldwide acclaim for over two decades and praised by many of today’s most popular horror gurus in the literary world. He began his career in traditional publishing houses with brisk sellers in mass market paperback horror, and the last ten years have seen him hailed by many as a mentor and advocate to the smaller presses, which has become to him a passion.