What the Hell Did I Just Read

  On another day, that’d have been cause to punch the wall and scream the c-word over and over, to sneer to himself and tell Amy about the time he had sneaked into the bathroom at night and put his own bodily fluids in his wife’s face cream. The uncertainty was what made it terrifying—if the outbursts had been constant, she could have started to brace herself in advance, to turn it into some kind of routine. Instead, the periods of peace would last just long enough that the explosions would be jarring again when they came.

  To this day, she gets this little thrill of fear up her spine when she passes a bread aisle. Every. Single. Time.

  Amy was getting that sick feeling today, the sense that she was going to have to play referee in a fight that was just around the corner. But even that wasn’t right—a referee at least has rules to fall back on. This was more like throwing yourself between two speeding trucks in hopes your squishy organs will be enough to blunt the impact. They don’t make movies or video games about that person, do they? The nervous, muttering thing tasked with convincing the knight and the dragon that there’s more than just the one kind of courage?

  She reached up between the front seats and squeezed David’s hand.

  Me

  Academic, man of the cloth, author, adventurer, and reality show host Dr. Albert Marconi’s most recent book mentions me several times and each time makes me look like an asshole. So, he’s good with research. He does specials for the Discovery Channel about strange phenomena and his production company has sent crews to Undisclosed at least half a dozen times. But Marconi himself has only shown up once in person and in general, he only returns our calls when our situation sounds like something he could parlay into another book. Kind of like a doctor who’ll only take your appointment if your symptoms sound like some kind of horrific undiscovered tropical disease that he can name after himself.

  We were back at Fort Beanie Wienie, and Amy was dicking around with Skype (if you’re reading this in the future and Skype is no longer a thing, it was just a piece of video-calling software people used back then. Or back now. Whatever).

  I said to John, “You stuck the fuckroach in the mail? There was no concern that the thing would brainwash every postal employee who came within a hundred feet of it between here and wherever the hell Marconi is?”

  “The memory is still fuzzy, but when I was on the Sauce, I think I figured out a precaution. I don’t remember what exactly it was, but I know it involved throwing a handful of sulfur inside the container, surrounding the interior with small mirrors, and then wrapping the whole thing in a dozen layers of aluminum foil. I also had thrown a couple of Oreos in with the creature but I can’t remember if that was part of the precautions or if I just wanted to give it something to eat during the trip.”

  Marconi appeared on Amy’s laptop screen. A man in his sixties with a neat white beard, wearing a cream-colored suit. He was sitting at a desk and, as I always did in situations like this, I wondered if he was pantless and only threw on the top part for the camera. It looked like he was in a cramped office, with various framed certificates on the wall behind him. I wondered how long he had spent framing up the shot to get those in there. Or, maybe he was just the type of guy where you could point the camera in any direction nearby and find a cluster of accolades.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “And lady. It is a pleasure to see you again.” Now there’s a fucking lie. “I’m speaking to you from the road, we are en route. I have the specimen safely behind foil once more, and inside of a locked safe for which only I have the combination. Keeping it contained has been an adventure, to put it mildly. One assistant became convinced that we had locked her house cat inside the safe, and became so hysterical she had to be restrained and sedated. As camouflage goes, it is impressive, to say the least.”

  I said, “You say you’re on the way, I take it you’re bringing a camera crew?” I knew Agent Tasker would be very annoyed by that.

  Instead of answering, he said, “Tell me of how you encountered the specimen, from the beginning.”

  We quickly told him all of the stuff that’s in the story you’ve heard up to now, minus the parts about my depression, and John’s implausible cock boasts. Marconi listened to our tale and said, “Fascinating.”

  John said, “Chastity—the second mother we dealt with—says there’s a parasite that tricks ants into thinking they’re fruit. They’ll actually volunteer to be eaten. She thinks it’s like that.”

  Marconi nodded. “A more appropriate example in this case may be a certain species of fruit fly, whose female has evolved to look exactly like an army ant grub. It will land itself right among a pile of the ant’s larvae and the ants will unknowingly feed, clean, and protect it as one of their own. And, while I do want to be cautious about drawing too close a parallel—these organisms are not of our world, after all—what we have encountered here very much appears to be a hive, in that we have multiple organisms working in conjunction, each of which appears to be very specialized.”

  I said, “Okay. So whatever’s in the mine, that’s like the queen?” I was really just waiting for him to get around to the part where he tells us what magic is required to slay it, but Marconi likes to hear himself explain things.

  “Let us for the moment speculate that the specimen you sent me is what in a hive we would call a worker. Let us further speculate that what is inside that coal mine is in fact a queen. So, the queen reaches the point in its life cycle when it lays its larvae. But, for some reason, its larvae need human hosts to survive—presumably for food, but that is just a presumption at this stage. So, the workers’ only job is to obtain those human hosts, by any means necessary. It would appear to my eyes that these workers went into the world with the intention of duping humans into adopting larvae as their own.”

  “By imitating human children.”

  “By imitating human children who are in need of rescue. Note how far it went to present the supposed children’s situation as dire.”

  I said, “Okay. So, Maggie went missing and then—”

  “Maggie did not go missing. There was no Maggie. The queen laid a larva in that pond near the mine and the worker swarm went about convincing some humans to come retrieve it. Maggie never existed before that moment—the entire story, including memories of the kidnapping, was a brain imprint created after the fact.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Right. Okay. So ‘Maggie’ was found at Mine’s Eye, but ‘Mikey’ just turned up in my apartment somehow.”

  “After you went to the mine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You must have brought it back with you, unknowingly.”

  “What, like, stuck to my shoe or something? These things are huge.”

  “But invisible, if they choose to be. And that one was destroyed, you say?”

  We all glanced at each other.

  John said, “Uh … maybe? Last time we saw it, some guys at a motel were shooting it with shotguns. That should do it, right?”

  Marconi said, “They were shooting at the larva, or the worker swarm that accompanied it?”

  We didn’t answer. Marconi read our faces.

  “Let us assume, then, that that specimen is also still loose out in the world. But let’s be clear—hive-based organisms reproduce by volume. It is in fact the single reason they are successful. In this case, the queen presumably needs to continue to draw people to the mine. So, now ten more ‘children’ have gone missing, in the minds of the townspeople. Do we need to guess where the clues are going to lead the manhunt?”

  I said, “Holy shit, that’s a convoluted reproduction process right there.”

  “Have you seen what the human reproduction process is like, Mr. Wong? Here’s a hint—the automobile you drive was almost certainly designed with reproduction in mind.”

  Well not my car, but point taken.

  Amy said, “So, we have to keep everyone away from the mine.”

  I said, “Hell, they’re probably already out there. Everybody knows where Mag
gie was found, it was in the papers. You’ll have the bikers out there, even the cops have to at least make a show of it.”

  John said, “Oh, and before we go any further, we need to name the creature in the mine, the queen. It’s Amy’s turn. I think she referred to it as the Creature with a Thousand Butts earlier, so is that what we’re going with?”

  I said, “She didn’t, and that takes too long to say.”

  Amy said, “Millibutt.”

  John said, “Done. Also, where does Nymph fit into all this?”

  Marconi shrugged. “There likely was never such a man, or being. Just a manifestation of the swarm.”

  I said, “But why?”

  Amy said it before Marconi could. “To give us something to save the kids from. We each saw the villain we needed to overcome.”

  There was some sadness in Amy’s statement that I didn’t fully understand.

  “So,” John said, “we go into the mine and fight the main boss. What can we expect to find in there?”

  I said, “And before you say it, yeah, we know to expect the unexpected or whatever. But let’s make some educated guesses.”

  Marconi nodded. “Well, there are no uninitiated in this conversation, correct? Behind the veil of this world is a realm beyond the physical. The undying entities that dwell there do not have a shape or a size, but can only be measured in terms of their ability to exert will. I have reason to believe that the physical offspring we’re encountering are one entity’s way of inserting itself from that dimension into ours.”

  I said, “Sure, so it’s an evil spirit or whatever. I guess that means it’s not flammable?”

  “Ask yourself how such entities would do battle with each other. The question is not merely academic within my school of thought—we believe we will find ourselves in just such a battle in the moment after death. Will versus will. Imagine a mortal body as an egg. When broken, what emerges might be a soaring bird or a runny yolk.”

  “And here I thought it was just a monster that wanted to eat us.”

  “In a sense, it is. Such a being would grow by subduing the will of others to its own ends. In our mythology, devils are always about possession and temptation—chewing up a human will until only a hollow puppet remains. You can decide for yourself at what point we can separate the symbolism from the reality.”

  John nodded, knowingly. “Exactly. It’s just like those haunted puppets in your junk room, Dave.”

  Marconi said, “Not in the least. To give you just a hint of the complexity of the task at hand, you will note that I have carefully avoided uttering the true name of the entity. It wants to be spoken of. I would suggest you do the same if and when you repeat this story to others.”

  I was getting lost again. “But how do we kill what we can’t even—”

  I was abruptly cut off by the sound of shattering glass.

  19. THE CREW ENCOUNTER SOME ADDITIONAL COMPLICATIONS

  John

  A nearby window exploded and a man came swinging in on a rope. John recognized the blond beard on sight. He was pretty sure that they’d left the front door of Fort Beanie Wienie unlocked, but Ted owned line and a grappling hook and by god, he was going to use them. He’d also brought reinforcements: a second window birthed a burly man in camouflage who had rappelled down from the opposite side.

  “GET THE FUCK DOWN! ALL OF YOU!” suggested Ted.

  John, Dave, and Amy all got the fuck down, hands over their heads. On the laptop, John could faintly hear Marconi say, “I suppose that concludes the call.”

  That night in the parking lot of the Flytrap, Ted had given Dave twenty-four hours to resolve the whole disappearing kids deal and John had to admit that not only had the deadline long passed, but that the situation was now actually quite a bit worse.

  The two men unslung assault rifles and took up positions opposite their prone captives.

  Ted screamed, “WHERE ARE THEY?”

  Dave said, “Where are the what?”

  “The kids! You’ve either got ’em here, or somewhere else.”

  “Okay, as implausible as it was to accuse us of simultaneously kidnapping the two kids before, this is just weird. We snatched ten children and made them vanish into thin air? What, did we show up with a panel truck and just load the little bastards in there while nobody was watching? In a building inhabited by heavily armed biker types?”

  “No. See, I think you’ve got capabilities. And I think you use those capabilities for shit like this.”

  John said, “We found Maggie. Why would we take kids just to release them again?”

  “Exactly so you can do that. In a couple days, you were gonna go to some locked room you’ve got ’em in, let them out in front of a bunch of TV cameras, and get called heroes. Probably think you’ll be drowning in pussy.”

  Amy said, “I think you’re a good person, but there is just … so much going on here that you don’t understand.”

  “Well, by all means, miss, educate me.”

  “You don’t want to hear it.”

  “Try me.”

  Dave said, “Have you noticed anything weird about Maggie?”

  “Don’t turn this shit back on her. You want to guess what alarm system the motel was using? You want to guess what happened the moment the kids were taken?”

  John was about to say that was ridiculous, but stopped himself. That was weird. Both John and Dave looked at Amy, and she didn’t look back.

  Dave said, “We’re being framed by whatever is behind this! That’s just part of it!”

  Amy said, “If you want to search this place for the kids, go right ahead. We’ll wait right here on the floor. Okay?”

  Dave said, “Just watch out, there’s artwork out there that will reveal the modern world to be an edifice of lies.”

  Still, John was pretty sure that Dave had the same thought he did, which was, But what if they do find the kids here?

  Before he could even finish the thought, there was a loud metallic BANG from below them, on the first floor.

  Everyone froze, listening.

  BANG.

  Ted and his partner raced for the stairwell. John scrambled to his feet and ran after them. Behind him, Dave and Amy had a hushed argument he couldn’t quite hear.

  At the bottom, John was met gun-first by Ted’s comrade, who’d been stationed there specifically to make sure the three of them didn’t try to take out Ted from behind. The guy shouted something about how John wasn’t to take another step if he didn’t want to see his intestines go bouncing down the stairs like a Slinky.

  From where John was standing, he could just see Ted edge toward a rolling metal door, on which was spray-painted an Uncle Sam next to a word balloon that said, I AM FULL OF LIES!

  There was a BANG and the door shook.

  Ted said, “HELLO? Can you hear me?”

  If he got an answer from the other side of the door, John couldn’t hear it.

  The door shook again.

  “We’re here to help you! Back away!”

  The latch on the floor was held closed by a wad of rusty brown chain and a heavy padlock—it looked like no one had touched it in a decade. Ted switched to his shotgun, blew the chain apart, then reached down and yanked up the door. His companion turned to train his gun on the opening, glancing back at John to make sure he wasn’t going to try to take advantage.

  If John could have frozen time in that moment and taken the rest of the day to think about it, he still wasn’t sure he’d ever have successfully guessed what was on the other side of that door. Was it the supposedly missing kids? Mikey? Diogee? Nymph? Some other kind of imitation victim that would turn Ted against them, like his wife? A doppelganger of Ted himself? A stray cat that just got trapped inside the room somehow? Dennis Rodman?

  The door rolled up to reveal a dark room. Some old cans of paint, a few dusty blue barrels of floor wax …

  John had seen just the hint of a pale shape when Ted’s friend said, “Oh, SHIT!” and started firing.
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  Out from the shadows popped a pair of white leathery wings stuck to a sinewy grasshopper body. The creature the locals had dubbed BATMANTIS???

  The monster launched itself forward and swiped a claw at Ted. He jumped back and found he was now holding half of a shotgun—the rest was clattering to the floor, the creature having effortlessly snipped metal and plastic cleanly in two.

  Gunfire and shouts. Both men were backpedaling quickly, but with purpose—creating distance, getting out of their enemy’s attack range. The BATMANTIS??? absorbed a dozen rifle rounds and then leaped forward again, swiping with a crooked limb and sending Ted’s partner crashing into a wall. It then quickly skittered away, clumsily, like its legs kept getting caught on one another.

  Instead of running for the main exit, which was about twenty feet away, the thing crashed directly into the wall, mashing itself into it, like it didn’t understand how walls worked. As Ted continued to shoot it in the back, the BATMANTIS??? kept pressing itself into the wall, misshapen feet scraping the floor …

  And then it was gone. Right in front of them, the thing had dissolved through the wall like a handful of pudding slapped through a screen door. There was a muffled shriek from the other side, like the beast had injured itself in the process.

  Ted flew toward the main exit. John followed. The moment they were outside, the BATMANTIS??? jumped into the sky, flapped its wings, and was airborne. Ted fired into the sky with his assault rifle. Not in a blind rage or confused panic—he was taking careful, aimed shots, intending to bring down his prey. Once more, Ted fell right into professional soldier mode—he could take time to be amazed by what he saw later, after the job was done.