What the Hell Did I Just Read

We all glanced at each other, but short of trying to overpower the cops and steal their SUV, there weren’t a lot of options. His partner removed the handcuffs and we all stepped into the rain, took a few steps forward, and then were out of the rain.

  Amy said, “Weird.”

  “Hello,” said a stern-looking woman in a perfectly pressed navy pantsuit, striding toward us ahead of an even more stern-looking man with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. “My name is Agent Helen Tasker, my partner is Agent Albert Gibson.”

  Later, there would be some dispute between John, Amy, and me about what names the agent had given us. But Helen Tasker and Albert Gibson is what I heard.

  John said, “And you’re with…?”

  “Fish and Wildlife,” said the male—Gibson—with a sneer.

  I said, “So, are you the ones framing me on Nymph’s behalf, or are you also pursuing Nymph? Or are you just altogether clueless about what’s happening here? Honestly, from past experience with people like you, it could be any of the three.”

  The female agent—Tasker—said, “We are here to gather information, that’s all you need to know. Now, to prevent you from coordinating, I am going to interview you separately, and simultaneously.”

  Gibson walked over and opened the casket (or whatever it was—it was just a seven-foot-tall featureless box, with a door). The woman looked at me and said, “Mr. Wong, please step through the door, I will be right behind you.”

  I said, “We won’t both fit in there.”

  She didn’t answer. I stepped toward the door and, when I got close enough, heard moaning and wailing from the other side. A stench of disease and death wafted out. I felt my guts clench. Stepping through that door wouldn’t mean stepping inside the box. I would emerge … elsewhere.

  At this point, things again get a bit mixed up in my memory.

  John, Amy, and I all later agreed that each of us had stepped through the door of the black box and that each of us were questioned on the other side of it by the same female agent. But each of us remember being asked to go first, and none of us remember either of the other two being called. It’s like in the moment Tasker asked to speak to us, we simultaneously split into three separate timelines. If you understand how this sort of thing could work, please write down your explanation with as much clarity and detail as you can, then throw it in the trash because who gives a shit.

  I took a breath, steeled myself, and stepped through.

  I emerged on the other side and was no longer in that parking lot, or in Undisclosed. A stench hit me so hard that I thought my brain had shit my sinuses. I tried to breathe through my mouth but I swore I could taste it.

  I was standing over a dying man, lying on a filthy cot at my feet. Flies crawled over a row of yellowed teeth rotting behind cracked lips. His midsection was covered by a wadded-up sheet that was encrusted with dried diarrhea. Out from under the sheet were jutting pale white sticks that were his legs, the feet black as if from frostbite, and missing half their toes. On the ground around him was a scatter of discarded rags that were red with sprays of coughed-up blood.

  The man had just enough energy to turn his head toward me slightly and hiss the word “Water.”

  Next to him was another man in a similar condition. Next to him, a skeletal woman, who appeared to be dead. I was, it turned out, standing in between two rows of fifty or so such cots, each containing an afflicted victim. Beyond each row was another row just like it. The grass beneath my feet was well-manicured and oddly artificial—Astroturf. There were rows of seats looming over us—a football stadium. Between the cots I could make out a faded New England Patriots logo in the turf.

  I turned to find the door I’d stepped through but saw only agent Tasker. She said, “I’m sure this is a shock to you, but you understand we had to take precautions.”

  “Where are we, exactly? There’s no plague in our Boston, right? This is the future or something? An alternate timeline?”

  “What matters is that you cannot get back home until we reopen that door. To prevent your escape, we simply took you to a world into which you would presumably not wish to flee. You’re going to answer a few questions for us.”

  “And then what?”

  “That depends on your answers. But don’t bother lying, or I’ll know. In exchange, I will also not lie to you.”

  The dying man next to me hissed, “… water…”

  I said, “I assume we’re going someplace away from the, uh, pestilence? To conduct the interrogation? I’d prefer not to catch what these people have.”

  “In this world, you’re never away from it. Your friend asked who we work for, and I am sure you’re wondering the same.”

  I said, “Not really. People like you come to town, in your suits. You poke around, try to look smart, asking questions like you think you’re even capable of understanding the answers. Sometimes you act like you’re government, sometimes private, but I suspect none of you even know where your funding comes from. It doesn’t matter, it’s all the same. I’m guessing it always starts with some powerful people behind the scenes catching wind of what’s going on here and they come rolling in to … I don’t know. Try to take advantage of it, somehow? Try to harness the dark energies, to find a way to profit from them? Then it all falls apart and you pick up and leave, the rest of us go back to our weird little lives and try to muddle through. That cycle has probably been repeating itself since before this town was a town.”

  “Our organization is known as NON. Non-natural Organism Neutralization.”

  “Well, either way, one thing is always the same—you people never manage to improve the situation.”

  “Would you prefer we left it to amateurs like you? Your dossier says you were once seen punting a severed head across your yard, while naked.”

  “That was an isolated incident.”

  “You understand that scenarios like these cannot be left to play out on their own? Innocent children, taken in the night. The people are frightened. Understandably so. Panic is a self-sustaining chain reaction. Order must be restored.”

  “Hey, you want to fix this, go for it. I hereby defer to your judgment.”

  “Word around town is that you had something to do with it.”

  “The only word around this town is ‘meth’.”

  “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your history.”

  “You just told me you have a dossier, you probably know more about me than I do. I was drunk for so much of it.”

  “I want you to tell it.”

  Another man came shambling by, in filthy rags that might once have been white. I realized to my horror that he was a doctor. He looked like he’d died of exhaustion a week ago and his body just hadn’t gotten the message. He didn’t even glance at us as he passed. The man on the cot rolled his eyes toward him and rasped, “… water…” but the doctor ignored him.

  I said, “My history? Going back how far? To my birth?”

  “To the start of your career, in this field.”

  “I, uh, lived a normal life until high school. Got into some trouble, maimed a kid in a fight. You know, the usual stuff. Went to a party, there was a drug going around there. Everybody who took it had weird shit happen to them. All of them died but me and John. Now we can see monsters and it’s awful.”

  “And now you have gained some prominence, due to that. It is, as they say, your claim to fame. Now, eliminate that element—all of your supposed paranormal abilities and self-reported heroism—and just tell me about your life, as a man.”

  “Not much to tell.”

  “I know. Tell it anyway.”

  “Well … I worked in a video store for a while, out of college. Place went out of business, I’ve been in and out of work ever since.”

  “Amy supports you. Financially, I mean.”

  “We get by.”

  “Because Amy supports you.”

  “We help each other. What does this have to do with anything?”

  “She has
no family.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “Her parents were killed in a car accident.”

  “Yes. When she was thirteen or fourteen, around there.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “I wasn’t there. Why would she lie?”

  “Who’s saying she is?”

  The guy at my feet asked for water again. I turned away from him, and looked instead at the victim in the next row. He was moaning, and one hand was absently scratching at his belly. He had been at it for a while, it seemed, because he had scratched all the way through the skin, then through the fat, and then through the muscle, creating a ragged hole next to his navel. A loop of small intestine had flopped out, like a pale worm. Flies were swarming over it.

  I quickly turned away, focusing my gaze into the empty bleachers. My stomach was roiling from the stench, I swore it was seeping into my pores.

  Agent Tasker said, “That’s the same car accident in which she lost her hand.”

  “Yep. Can we please leave?”

  “Her older brother acted as her guardian after that.” She paused, but I said nothing, because it wasn’t a question. From somewhere a few cots away, a child started screeching. “And what became of him?”

  “You know what.”

  “Do I?”

  “He died under mysterious circumstances.”

  “But not mysterious to you. You were there.”

  “Oh, trust me. I’m just as confused as anyone. Is there a point to all this or are you just trying to piss me off?”

  “My point is, now all Amy has is you. The man who she believes protects her from the monsters.”

  “I don’t know what she believes, you’ll have to ask her.”

  “I am, as we speak. If I were to go back and have her tell the whole tale from her perspective, would she speak of the same monsters? How much of it did she actually witness? How much of what she saw was seen in moments of panic in the darkness? How much were her memories augmented by the detailed stories written down by her beloved David, the only one she has in the world? The man she believes protects her from the very monsters he describes in such vivid detail?”

  “Why are you obsessed with our relationship? How does that possibly matter, in this situation?”

  “It all matters. The universe is a series of fulcrums, upon which fate tilts this way and that. A random application for an art school is rejected, and a young Adolf Hitler changes careers.”

  “Are you saying Amy is the new Hitler, or I am? If it’s me, it just, you know, seems like a lot of work…”

  “Would you say her life was better before she met you, or after?”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  “Look past your defensiveness and try to grasp the context in which I am asking this. Imagine you were looking at this case from the outside, observing how the situation in Undisclosed has degraded over the last decade. If you could go back and pick one single person to eliminate from the equation in order to alleviate the maximum amount of suffering, who would it be?”

  “Are you going to kill me, Agent Tasker? Is that all this is, you did the math and decided that I’m the problem? Well, shit, who am I to argue?”

  “Even if that was my intention, I do not have the authority to do that.”

  “Okay, do you need me to sign something or do you have to get your supervisor…”

  “What I am saying is that the anomalous entity that exists in the Undisclosed coal mine is our concern, not yours. We will see to it that it is dealt with. If you want to slay the monster that stalks your town, well, there are numerous painless and quick methods. I have run the scenarios; I assure you that the outcomes are superior for virtually everyone involved. Especially Amy.”

  “Jesus Christ, lady. Did you just tell me to kill myself? It’s like if the guardian angel in It’s a Wonderful Life went up to George Bailey on that bridge and was like, ‘Do it, you pussy.’”

  “George Bailey is portrayed as the hero because he wanted to give cheap home loans to citizens who couldn’t afford them—the very practice that just caused a worldwide financial crisis in real life. We’d have been better off if he and everyone like him were, in fact, drowned in a river.”

  “Well, I think you and your organization would be better off if you all drowned on my balls. Fuck you, you want me dead, man up and do it yourself.”

  She glanced at her watch. “All right, we’re done here. Please step this way.”

  “We are? You didn’t even ask me about the case. Hey!”

  Amy

  “Hello,” said a stern-looking woman in a perfectly pressed navy pantsuit, striding across the parking lot next to an even more stern-looking man with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. “My name is Agent Emily Wyatt, my partner is Agent York Morgan. To prevent you from coordinating, we are going to interview you separately, and simultaneously.”

  The man opened the door to the device that to Amy looked like a big, black refrigerator from the future. The woman gestured to Amy and said, “Ms. Sullivan, please step through the door, I will be right behind you.”

  Amy did as asked and when she saw what lay beyond the door, she clapped her hand over her mouth and just stood there, in shock. Rows and rows of dying people, on stretchers, covered in rags.

  “Where are we? What’s wrong with these people?”

  Agent Wyatt shrugged. “It’s always an apocalypse somewhere. It’s a world into which you do not want to escape, that’s all you need to know.”

  “There’s a plague, or something? Is it worldwide?”

  “What you’re seeing here is the work of a perfect bioweapon, one that quickly got out of control.”

  “Perfect, meaning it killed everyone?”

  “Perfect, in the sense that it didn’t. A corpse requires no further care or resources, so inflicting quick death is not the most efficient way to cripple an enemy. Instead, they developed a pathogen that would incapacitate a person within hours, rendering them unable to fight or work, requiring around-the-clock care and leaving them in that state indefinitely. And I mean decades. Wracked with pain, muscles seizing, unable to do anything but lie there and writhe as they rot from the outside in, all while leaving the brain and vital organs fully functional … until someone finally comes along and puts them out of their misery. Using the enemy’s sympathy against them.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Ms. Sullivan, I need you to focus. Do you understand the gravity of the situation you and David have found yourselves in?”

  “Are you seriously asking me that? Do you have any idea what we’ve been through?”

  “Do you? What I’m asking, is David candid about what he does? About what he is?”

  Amy started to answer, but the man at her feet said, “Water,” and she turned to kneel down over him.

  She said, “Find some water.”

  “Ms. Sullivan, we’re not here to intervene in—”

  Amy got up and scanned the area around her, trying to find a nurse, or someone who looked like an authority figure. “Hey! Somebody! This man needs water!”

  “You’re looking at the final stages of a worldwide pandemic. The system has collapsed, supplies have dried up. These people have been abandoned here, in twenty years this version of earth will be ruled by cockroaches—yet another world in which the bugs have won. That’s not our concern today. Ms. Sullivan, I suspect that David has not been completely honest about—”

  “I’m not saying another word until you get this man some water.”

  The agent had a look like she was entertaining a series of murderous fantasies, but ultimately decided it was easier just to comply. She reopened the doorway—which appeared right there on the turf, standing freely—and yelled for someone to get her a bottle of water. A moment later, she handed Amy a bottle of Fiji Water—a ridiculous brand drank by rich people—and Amy trickled a little into the mouth of the dying man. He sputtered and coughed, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep, or passed out. No
“thank you,” no expression of relief. Just some dim awareness from deep down in the dark caverns of his misery that one part of him felt a little better.

  Amy looked up at Agent Wyatt and said, “Thank you.”

  She shrugged. “It hardly matters here.”

  “It all matters. You’re not the cops, so you know that what happened with those kids is the work of something bigger than me or David or some random creeper around town. So are you here to help us stop it, or to get in our way?”

  “You buy into David’s mythology? Monsters and ghosts and demons? And that you’re some kind of a select group of chosen ones who are humanity’s last hope?”

  “Ha, nobody has ever called us that. I just try to help whoever’s in front of me. That’s enough to keep me super busy.”

  “But you believe the kidnappings are the work of some kind of paranormal entity. A monster. One that only you can stop.”

  “You go read up on ‘monsters’ and you know what you find? Every culture has the same ones—even civilizations who never talked to each other. Every culture has demons and vampires and stories of people who turn into animals. They all just put their own little spin on it—in Europe it’s werewolves, in Asia it’s were-bears, in Central America they’re were-jaguars. But it’s all the same because it’s all for the same reason.”

  “Because they’re real, you mean?”

  “No, because it’s all just an excuse for people to kill each other. Your kid gets attacked by wolves, there’s no way to get revenge on the wolves, so you blame the village weirdo. ‘I saw that guy turn into a wolf!’ All the legends can be traced back to something like that—people needing a scapegoat. They’ve found old skeletons with stakes through their rib cages, where the villagers went crazy and stabbed some poor dude because they decided he was a vampire, when he was probably just an insomniac with anemia. Witches, they were just any elderly women in the village who never got married—the men decided they were old and ugly and worthless and so they blamed them for every disease and bad batch of crops. Just burned them alive, no family to come to their defense. They didn’t have witch hunts because they believed in witches. They believed in witches so they could have witch hunts.”