But nobody was paying him any attention on that subject anymore. They had all pretty much written off his skepticism as fear. He could not accept such a thing, could not live with the idea of such a thing, hence it did not exist. Simple. George figured it was the same sort of self-denial you had back in the world concerning UFOs or aliens… the very idea of such things existing was too much for the human mind, so it denied and ridiculed. Sort of a psychological self-preservation so you could sleep at night and not lose your mind wondering when the little green men might come for you.
Crycek said, “Greenberg talks about that, too, in his letter. How that Lancet might be the focal point of this thing.”
Which, Cushing said to them, had to make you wonder about that ship and what it was exactly. According to Greenberg it was a cursed vessel, but a place of revelations, too. The keys to deliverance and also maybe the hopping off point of something incalculably dangerous.
“Was it it, though?” Menhaus asked. “What is this thing?”
But nobody was even going to hazard a guess on that one. They had ideas in their heads, but they wouldn’t speak of them. Not just yet. Maybe it was some sort of alien ghost and maybe it was the very thing that had inspired the idea of Satan on earth… and a thousand other worlds.
“Listen now,” George said to them. “Right now, it doesn’t matter what it is. I’ve felt it and so have all of you. It’s out there and that’s enough. I don’t know how many times out there in that goddamn fog I felt like I was being watched, felt like something was getting close. I saw things, too. Things that couldn’t be. I think the Fog-Devil is responsible for a lot of that.”
“I think I’ll take a walk until story-time is over,” Saks said, getting up. “You run out of ideas, there’s the one about the guy with the hook-hand out in lover’s lane.”
“Sit down, Saks,” George said.
“What?”
“Sit… down.”
“Fuck you think you are, bossing me around?”
George was up on his feet now and so was Fabrini. “I think I’m the guy that’s gonna put you on your ass and make you listen whether you fucking like it or not.”
“Think you’re up to the job?”
“Maybe not. But I’ll bet Fabrini is.”
Saks sat down. “All right, all right, go ahead. Tell me your fucking spook stories. Hey, Elizabeth? You got any popcorn?”
But if he thought it was some big joke, the cocky grin on his face didn’t last too long. Not when George brought out the VHF radio from the lifeboat and set it on the table in front of him. His grin faded and his eyes widened. The blood drained from his ruddy, unshaven face drop by drop.
“This is bullshit,” he managed with little conviction. “Fucking parlor games.”
“Let’s see,” George said. “Let’s see what’s out there…”
Elizabeth helped Aunt Else up. Aunt Else had dozed off now and Elizabeth woke her and helped her to the doorway leading to the cabins. But in the doorway, Elizabeth paused. “You… all of you… you better think about what it is you’re doing, what you might be invoking out there…”
Then she left on that ominous note.
George started up the VHF and the air in the cabin was heavy, leaden, so thick you could barely pull it into your lungs. The VHF whined for a moment or two, then there was static, rising and falling as before. A snowstorm of static that reminded George of distant, windy places, stormy and blowing places where there was no escape, but only waiting, solemn and grim waiting. Like maybe outposts on hostile worlds or lonely bases coveted by Antarctic maelstroms. Just that static rising and falling like it was breathing. But the bad thing was, he was almost certain that it was louder than it had been before
…more palpable, cognizant.
“Sounds…” Menhaus began, his voice full of dryness. “… sounds like wind blowing through an empty house…”
George was thinking that, too. A lonely, loathsome sound of dead places. An eerie sound of wind blown through hollow gourds and catacombs. You kept listening, though, listening to that rushing, angry field of static, you started hearing other things, sensing other things.
“Makes my fucking skin crawl,” Menhaus admitted.
George was with him on that. For his skin was crawling. The static was the sound of voids and distance, black fathomless zones and dead moons. The noise a haunted house would make when no one was there to listen to it. Just that thrumming, listening static that was not entirely lifeless, but not living either. Sterile, unborn, thinking about birth. It got right inside your head and made something in you flinch and curl-up. George knew if he was stuck in a room by himself listening to it for any length of time, he would have put a gun in his mouth.
“Okay,” Cushing finally said, almost startled by the sound of his own voice. “Broadcast, George. Put your voice out there…”
But George hesitated. The idea of his voice being sucked into that storm of skeletal, dead air was almost too much for him. Like maybe, whatever was out there making that noise, would reach out through the receiver and pull him in.
The static suddenly changed in pitch or something out there did. There came a muted beeping like a Morse Code key being frantically tapped. At first he thought he was imagining it and then he was certain he was: because there was a voice out there speaking, but lost in that field of static. Gradually, it became clearer and it was a man’s voice, garbled and lost, but you could hear it, all right. A high-pitched, almost whimpering sort of voice. “… out there, out there… out there, out there…” Then it faded, echoing in the static, coming right back again like it had bounced off something. “out there… please, please, please… don’t come after us.. . don’t follow us… dear God don’t follow us…” And then it dropped back down into the static again and everybody in the cabin found their lungs and started to breathe again. And this time another broadcast came up, but just for a second or two. A woman’s voice now, desperate and insane-sounding, whispering over the mic: “… help us… help us… help us… help us…” Yes, just a whisper like she was afraid someone or something might be listening to her.
“Turn it off,” Saks said, breathing hard. “Turn that shit off.”
But George didn’t. He clicked on the mic, said, “This is an SOS… this is an SOS… this is an SOS…”
Then he clicked it back off and the effect was immediate. The static got louder, became something akin to the buzz of hornets and there was that weird, echoing ping buried in it, coming and going and sounding very much like the pinging of a sonar unit, only oddly hollow and alien-sounding.
Cushing nodded and George shut it off, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Now,” Cushing said. “What you’re hearing out there… that noise… it’s not of natural origin and we all know it. The only time that buzzing or pinging rises up is when you put your voice out there. Something, something out there reacts to it.”
Pollard was shaking. “Those people… those poor, lost people…”
“Those people are long dead,” Cushing told him. “Those are just echoes of old broadcasts I’m willing to bet, but in this place, somehow they keep repeating.”
He let everybody relax a moment before he went on and by then Elizabeth was back. She sat over on the settee by Crycek and Pollard. She didn’t say a word. She looked disturbed by what they were talking about, but wouldn’t say so.
“All right,” Cushing said. “Greenberg knew this thing existed, he felt it the same way we’ve all been feeling it out there. Though he doesn’t say so, I think we can read between the lines and say that this thing… the Fog-Devil… it got his friends when they were at the Lancet. Greenberg said he thought the Fog-Devil was cyclic, meaning that it went through periods of dormancy and gradually cycled itself back up from time to time. And I’m guessing that we just happened to drop into this place about the time it’s ready to wake back up.”
Fabrini stood up. “That’s right. That’s absolutely right. I mean, think about it… why aren’t there more people here? Christ, should be lots of people here. We survived and they should have, too. Where are they? What happened to them?”