been in a cemetery, I would have seen a ghost skating on the moon-iced grass between tombstones. If I had been in the Northwest woods, I would have seen Big Foot shagging among the trees. If I had been in front of any garage door, I would have seen the face of Jesus or the Holy Virgin in a weather stain, warning of the Apocalypse. I was in the bowels of Wyvern, however, and unable to see any damn thing at all, so I could only feel , and what I felt was a presence, an aura, like a pressure, hovering, looming, what a medium or a psychic would call an entity , a spiritual force that could not be denied, chilling my blood and marrow.
I was in face-to-face confrontation with it. My nose was only inches from its nose, assuming it had a nose. I couldn't smell its breath, which was a good thing, as its breath must smell like rotting meat, burning sulfur, and swine manure.
Obviously, my nuclear imagination was nearing meltdown.
I told myself that this was no more real than my feverish vision of a gigantic spider in the elevator shaft.
Bobby Halloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus.
Currently, I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cartwheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.
I was ashamed to realize that I didn't have the guts to switch on the flashlight. I was constrained by a fear of what might be eye-to-eye with me.
Though part of me wanted to believe I was suffering a runaway chain reaction of imagination, and though I probably was just jerking my own chain, there was good reason to be afraid. Those aforementioned experiments in genetic engineering—some designed by my mother, who had been a theoretical geneticist—had ultimately not been controllable. In spite of a high degree of biological security, a designer strain of retrovirus had gotten out of the lab. Thanks to the remarkable talents of this new bug, the residents of Moonlight Bay and, to a lesser extent, people and animals in the wider world beyond—have been … changing.
So far, the changes have been disturbing, sometimes terrifying, but, with a few notable exceptions, they have been subtle enough that authorities have successfully concealed the truth about the catastrophe.
Even in Moonlight Bay, at most a few hundred people know what is happening.
I myself learned only a month before this April night, upon the death of my father, who knew all the dreadful details, and who revealed things to me that I now wish I didn't know. The rest of the townspeople live in happy ignorance, but they may not be out of the loop much longer, because the mutations may not remain subtle.
This was the thought that had paralyzed me when, if instinct could be trusted, I found myself facing some presence in the blind-dark passageway.
Now my heart was racing.
I was disgusted. If I didn't get control of myself, I would have to spend the rest of my life sleeping under my bed, just to be sure the boogeyman couldn't slip beneath the box springs while I was dreaming.
Holding the unlit flashlight in a tight circlet of thumb and forefinger, with my other three fingers extended, intending to prove to myself that this superstitious dread enjoyed no basis in fact, I reached into the tomb perfect darkness. And touched a face.
4
The side of a nose. The corner of a mouth. My little finger slid across a rubbery lip, wet teeth.
I cried out and recoiled. As I stumbled backward, I managed to click on the flashlight.
Although the beam was pointed at the floor, the backsplash of light revealed the entity before me. It had no fangs, no eyes full of crackling hellfire, but it was composed of a substance more solid than ectoplasm. It wore chinos, what appeared to be a yellow polo-style shirt, and a pecan brown sports jacket. Indeed, it wasn't something from beyond the grave but something from the Sears men's department.
He
I was in face-to-face confrontation with it. My nose was only inches from its nose, assuming it had a nose. I couldn't smell its breath, which was a good thing, as its breath must smell like rotting meat, burning sulfur, and swine manure.
Obviously, my nuclear imagination was nearing meltdown.
I told myself that this was no more real than my feverish vision of a gigantic spider in the elevator shaft.
Bobby Halloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus.
Currently, I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cartwheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.
I was ashamed to realize that I didn't have the guts to switch on the flashlight. I was constrained by a fear of what might be eye-to-eye with me.
Though part of me wanted to believe I was suffering a runaway chain reaction of imagination, and though I probably was just jerking my own chain, there was good reason to be afraid. Those aforementioned experiments in genetic engineering—some designed by my mother, who had been a theoretical geneticist—had ultimately not been controllable. In spite of a high degree of biological security, a designer strain of retrovirus had gotten out of the lab. Thanks to the remarkable talents of this new bug, the residents of Moonlight Bay and, to a lesser extent, people and animals in the wider world beyond—have been … changing.
So far, the changes have been disturbing, sometimes terrifying, but, with a few notable exceptions, they have been subtle enough that authorities have successfully concealed the truth about the catastrophe.
Even in Moonlight Bay, at most a few hundred people know what is happening.
I myself learned only a month before this April night, upon the death of my father, who knew all the dreadful details, and who revealed things to me that I now wish I didn't know. The rest of the townspeople live in happy ignorance, but they may not be out of the loop much longer, because the mutations may not remain subtle.
This was the thought that had paralyzed me when, if instinct could be trusted, I found myself facing some presence in the blind-dark passageway.
Now my heart was racing.
I was disgusted. If I didn't get control of myself, I would have to spend the rest of my life sleeping under my bed, just to be sure the boogeyman couldn't slip beneath the box springs while I was dreaming.
Holding the unlit flashlight in a tight circlet of thumb and forefinger, with my other three fingers extended, intending to prove to myself that this superstitious dread enjoyed no basis in fact, I reached into the tomb perfect darkness. And touched a face.
4
The side of a nose. The corner of a mouth. My little finger slid across a rubbery lip, wet teeth.
I cried out and recoiled. As I stumbled backward, I managed to click on the flashlight.
Although the beam was pointed at the floor, the backsplash of light revealed the entity before me. It had no fangs, no eyes full of crackling hellfire, but it was composed of a substance more solid than ectoplasm. It wore chinos, what appeared to be a yellow polo-style shirt, and a pecan brown sports jacket. Indeed, it wasn't something from beyond the grave but something from the Sears men's department.
He
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