What Fears Become Part 10

"The time lock, boy. The locks clicked open and the fish are free. Fish from a time before man was man. Before civilization started weighing us down. I know it's true. The truth's been in me all the time. It's in us all."

"It's like time travel," the young man said. "From the past to the future, they've come all that way."

"Yes, yes, that's it...Why, if they can come to our world, why can't we go to theirs? Release that spirit inside of us, tune into their time?"

"Now, wait a minute..."

"My G.o.d, that's it! They're pure, boy, pure. Clean and free of civilization's trappings. That must be it! They're pure and we're not. We're weighted down with technology. These clothes. That car."

The old man started removing his clothes.

"Hey!" the young man said. "You'll freeze."

"If you're pure, if you're completely pure," the old man mumbled, "that's it...yeah, that's the key."

"You've gone crazy."

"I won't look at the car," the old man yelled, running across the sand, trailing the last of his clothes behind him. He bounced about the desert like a jackrabbit.

"G.o.d, G.o.d, nothing is happening, nothing," he moaned. "This isn't my world. I'm of that world. I want to float free in the belly of the sea, away from can openers and cars and -"

The young man called the old man's name. The old man did not seem to hear.

"I want to leave here!" the old man yelled. Suddenly he was springing about again. "The teeth!" he yelled. "It's the teeth. Dentist, science, foo!" He punched a hand into his mouth, plucked the teeth free, tossed them over his shoulder.

Even as the teeth fell, the old man rose. He began to stroke. To swim up and up and up, moving like a pale, pink seal among the fish.

In the light of the moon the young man could see the pooched jaws of the old man, holding the last of the future's air. Up went the old man, up, up, up, swimming strong in the longlost waters of a time gone by.

The young man began to strip off his own clothes. Maybe he could nab him, pull him down, put the clothes on him. Something...G.o.d, something...But, what if he couldn't come back? And there were the fillings in his teeth, the metal rod in his back from a motorcycle accident. No, unlike the old man, this was his world and he was tied to it. There was nothing he could do.

A great shadow weaved in front of the moon, made a wriggling slat of darkness that caused the young man to let go of his shirt b.u.t.tons and look up.

A black rocket of a shape moved through the invisible sea: a shark, the granddaddy of all sharks, the seed for all of man's fears of the deeps.

And it caught the old man in its mouth, began swimming upward toward the golden light of the moon. The old man dangled from the creature's mouth like a ragged rat from a house cat's jaws. Blood blossomed out of him, coiled darkly in the invisible sea.

The young man trembled. "Oh G.o.d," he said once.

Then along came that thick dark cloud, rolling across the face of the moon. Momentary darkness.

And when the cloud pa.s.sed there was light once again, and an empty sky.

No fish.

No shark.

And no old man.

Just the night, the moon, and the stars.

About Joe R. Lansdale.

Joe R. Lansdale is the multi-award-winning author of thirty novels and over two hundred short stories, articles and essays. He has written screenplays, teleplays, comic book scripts, and occasionally teaches creative writing and screenplay writing at Stephen F. Austin State University. He has received The Edgar Award, The Grinzani Prize for Literature, seven Bram Stoker Awards, and many others.

His stories Bubba Ho-Tep and Incident On and Off a Mountain Road were both filmed. He is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan, and has been in the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame four times. He lives in East Texas with his wife, Karen.

http://www.joerlansdale.com.

METHODS OF DIVORCE..

by Philip Roberts.

Before the darkness nearly tore away the front of their car and sent both Steven and Candice Lane tumbling into the high weeds along the side of the road, the two had been arguing.

Steve had been in the middle of shouting something when the shriek of metal cut his words off just a split second before the windshield splintered and nearly tore inward. Steve realized that his hands were gone from the wheel as he brought them up to protect his face.

When the car came to a halt, Steve could hear Candice beside him, hyperventilating, her fingers held tightly over her eyes. She looked old and tired to him, all the years they'd trudged through together suddenly acc.u.mulated in her face, in her skin, and in her very being. Steve wondered why he was thinking such thoughts now, when he had just been in a car accident.

But then reality returned. The true Candice, who he suddenly realized was the false Candice, took her hands off of her eyes.

"My G.o.d, what did you do?" Candice shrieked.

I'm fine, thank you, Steve thought, even though he didn't bother to ask Candice if she was all right or to answer her question.

He couldn't get the seatbelt unlocked, so he opened the console and retrieved a knife, cutting cleanly through the tight material. He handed the knife to Candice in the darkness rather than bother to cut hers as well, and did his best to push open the bent driver's side door.

The moon provided the light he needed to see the damage. He could hear Candice as she struggled to get her door open, but Steve's attention was focused on the amount of destruction to the front of his car.

There was no blood visible within the tangle of metal, and no sign of the animal he must have hit. Even on the road, he could see no carca.s.s, or any streaks of blood to mark where the animal might have been flung.

"There's a house over there," Candice called out to him, and Steve's gaze shifted toward the faint lights in the distance, further in the field, where a lone house stood.

Immediately a slight chill ran through him. "We get smashed by something almost directly in front of what looks to be the only house around for miles," Steve said.

"Well, in case you forgot," Candice hissed at him, her face flushing red, visible even in the dim moonlight, "you were the one who said we shouldn't take our cell phones along. You wouldn't even let me take my Blackberry or my laptop! A quiet night with just the two of us to patch things up, get over all our problems. That's what you said, Mr. Big Ideas. So now what's your next big idea, huh? What are we supposed to do? Stand here all night and hope another car comes by?"

"I'm just saying..." He trailed off because it didn't matter what he was saying. From behind him, from the other side of the road, he heard the sound of something moving.

Steve saw the faint rustling in the gra.s.s, saw the light wash over a very large form, hunched but still appearing to walk on two legs. And ever so briefly its head turned toward him, light reflecting in two ma.s.sive eyes embedded into a grotesque face, mouth starting to split open to reveal an abyss that somehow became even darker than the night surrounding it.

Oh my G.o.d, Steve thought. Was that what I hit? Did I mangle it? It must be hurt; I have to help it.

And then he went into action. Steve ran past the vehicle and through the field, chasing the creature that was running away. Candice, who hadn't managed to get sight of the monstrosity, lingered for just a second before following after him. Steven only knew she was following because of her cry of surprise and by the soft crackling of her feet stamping down on the gra.s.s.

He hadn't run this fast or this hard in twenty years, and already his side was burning, his lungs rubbing like sandpaper. He could feel sweat soaking into his shirt.

And then he lost sight of the creature, and a helpless sense of panic and anger overcame him. There was nowhere else to go but to the house. It was the only house around for miles.

"What...did you...see?" Candice cried out through gasps for air as she caught up to him.

Steve didn't answer. They soon realized that it wasn't a house, but a barn that loomed ahead of them, nearly in front of them, and they came to a stop.

They stared at the large barn. The house was a little farther past, and much smaller than the larger structure before them. Inside the barn, a lone light shined through a window on the second floor.

"Anyone there?" Steve called.

Candice interrupted him. Tears sent streaks of make-up down her face. "Please tell me what you saw."

But he ignored her because both of them heard the movement, and both of them saw the hulking shape come from out of the tree-line. This thing, just like the other one Steve had seen, stood on two feet, but it was so hunched over that its ma.s.sive upper body hung down to its knees, making it appear as though it walked on all fours.

And that was when Steve realized it wasn't the impact of his car that made the creature look this way.

Two large eyes watched them, and then the thing's mouth pulled open to reveal a void darker than anything Steve had ever seen. One ma.s.sive claw-like hand slapped the ground and sent dirt spraying up into the air as the creature lumbered toward them.

"Oh my G.o.d!" Candice screamed, and Steve rushed to the barn, not even taking the time to make sure his wife was following. As soon as he was through the door, he glanced over his shoulder to see the creature reaching the barn as well.

Its arm stretched through the door a second before Steven could slam it shut, but the wood was thick, and a faint, oddly subdued howl wailed into the night before the creature's arm pulled back and the door closed completely.

The moment Steve turned, a slap caught him across the face.

He stared into Candice's wet, bloodshot eyes. "You didn't even look back to see if I was behind you before you slammed that door shut!" she screamed.

There was no surprise at her accusation, and Steve's attention was already turning to the surroundings. He saw that they were in an old, wooden room.

Very little light managed to make it into the small room, though to their right they could see a hallway that led into the rest of the barn. Outside, something scratched the wood, and then hammered a muscular hand against it.

"It's going to get in and kill us," Candice whispered.

"I'm not going to die that way," Steve said as he moved down the hall.

The hallway curved to the right, and opened into a much larger room that had at one point been filled with hay, he figured, but times had changed and given it a new purpose. Now the centerpiece of this room appeared to be the platform ten feet up from the ground, acting as a loft. And above that platform a single light bulb burned with life. So this was the light they had seen from the outside.

And then the pounding at the door grew louder. A deep, low wail made Steve shiver. How many of those things were out there now?

And then, through the attempts by the creatures to get in, Steve heard another sound. It was the sound of a person breathing heavily. He ran toward the ladder that connected the first floor to the loft, Candice still trailing behind him.

His arms felt weak and distant, with barely enough strength to pull himself up the ladder, but finally his head peeked over the edge and he could see a man laying on the floor of the loft, his chest covered in blood, and a gun gripped firmly in his hand. His eyes were closed, but his chest kept rising and falling, the movements ragged.

Steve pulled himself completely onto the platform and saw there was no hay up here anymore either, but a bare, wooden floor. Black, circular shapes were painted on the floor, and contained several lines drawn out from the epicenter.

When his attention turned back to the stranger, Steve saw the man watching him, and the gun was now pointed at him. With a surprising instinct for survival, Steve lunged at the stranger and attempted to pull the gun out of his hand, but not before it discharged. Steve heard both the shot and Candice's scream at the same time. Pain stabbed through his arm. He fell on top of the wounded man and managed to deflect another shot before it could get him, this second bullet digging harmlessly into the ceiling.

And then he used what little strength he had left to yank the gun out of the stranger's hand. Steve rose, clutching the gun, his chest heaving with exhaustion.

In the glow of the light bulb, he could see that the man who had nearly killed him was older than himself by a good ten years, the man's hair already graying, and a bundle of wrinkles playing around the edges of his eyes. More wrinkles lined the middle of the man's forehead, and his teeth were dark and rotting. Judging from his clothes, the stranger looked more like a farmer than anything else.

"Why'd you try to kill me?" Steve demanded.

"I thought you were, you know..." the man trailed off, then refocused his gaze and asked, "Who are you?" His right hand clutched tightly at a cloth that he held against his wounded chest.

"We had an accident on the road," Steve explained, and noticed Candice step up beside him. For the first time he realized the bullet that had clipped him might've hit her, but he saw no wound. He repeated, "Why did you try to kill me?"

The stranger's eyes shifted to the floor, and his left hand was shaking as it rose to point at the markings. "Need blood to seal it," the man said. "Couldn't be my blood to seal it, because my blood opened it."

"Seal what? And what are those things outside?"

"They are what you think they are. They'll keep coming out of the rift if no one seals it back up. I shouldn't have done it. Shouldn't have opened the rift. Now it's too late. They're here, and more will always keep coming."

Steve moved past the man and toward the window in the side of the barn to see the outpouring of shapes running from the dark house beyond. But he could also see humans strewn near the door of the house, most of them torn to nothing, wet redness splashed along the porch.

"Whose blood, then?" he asked, finding his normally practical logic momentarily thrown away in the face of the impossible.

"Life's blood," the man whispered. His breathing was becoming shallow. Candice knelt beside him, and extended a shaking hand toward his wound.

"That gash is deep," she said, speaking to Steve. "He's going to bleed to death unless we can get an ambulance." Then she added, "There won't be any ambulance, will there? No help is going to come."

Steve fell to his knees in front of the man whose eyes began to grow distant. "Are you telling me that one of us has to bleed in order to stop this?"

"Not just bleed," the man rasped, "but one of you has to die. And it has to happen here in this barn."

"You can't be serious!" Candice blurted.

The man managed a weak nod before his eyes closed. His chest kept moving, but Steve had a feeling the man wasn't about to wake up again. Outside, the cracking sounds grew louder, the claws digging into the wood.

"Do you believe it?" Steve asked his wife.

"You're asking me?" Candice said, her own eyes fixed on the still-moving chest of the stranger. "I guess a life and death situation is finally enough to get my opinion requested."

"If you believe it's true, then one of us has to die, and I figured you might want to have a say in that one."

She stood up and stared at him, but her face contained no hostility, no malice, and from what Steve could tell, no fear of any kind. Candice had always been able to grab onto a form of faith Steve himself couldn't help but deny, and he had to admit a certain envious feeling at seeing her so composed.

"It seems we only have two real options here," she said. "If we believe him, then one of us dies. If we choose not to believe him, then we wait for those things to get in and kill us anyway. I don't think either one of us really has a say in the matter, Steve."

Perhaps her choice of words was meant as a jab at him, or perhaps he was too nervous and paranoid to think of anything else, but her final statement just briefly made him snap his head toward the ground in an effort to drive away the fury at his inability to control the situation.

"So, what are we going to do?" Candice asked, still composed, still accepting whatever fate had in store while Steve himself tried not to vomit.

A much louder crack shook through the barn. Steve stared down below at the creature's claws moving through a hole in the barn's wall below.

And then the answer came to him. They had to try to seal it, and he could decide who died.