“No,” I said aloud, but the only sound that emerged was an angry, whistling wind. “No!” I screamed and the wind grew louder and angrier.
I closed my three eyes, willed myself to calm down. Silently, I recited the words my “witch” acquaintance had taught me and waited. I saw eight bizarre sigils composed of flame burning in the blackness around me. Each sigil represented a different concept. I cannot reproduce these sigils (though I have tried many times, I assure you), but I can replicate on the page their exact positions in the air as they danced and twirled and fell inside the darkness behind my eyes:
breeze
moonlight
obelisk
arches
bars
ripple
melt
vanish
Abruptly, the cavernous chamber drifted away. I now stood in a featureless gray void filled with fleeting images of my past…and what appeared to be a simulacrum of myself. Dr. Margaret Keil looked very surprised as she looked at me and said, How did you—?
If possible, I would have grinned. Instead I said, “I presume you’re uncomfortable?” then wrapped my tentacles around the doctor’s throat. My own throat.
The doctor fell to her knees; she grasped hold of the tentacles and tried to pry them loose, but this was impossible.
You know you cannot kill me in here, the doctor said. You will kill yourself too.
“I’m not going to do it.”
Behind the doctor — in this immaterial plane composed of nothing more than memories — a door appeared out of nowhere. It was thin, rectangular, and covered in peeling white paint. It looked exactly like the door to the tiny closet beneath the stairway.
The one little Maggie escaped into on her seventh birthday.
The door swung open as if propelled by an invisible force. It hadn’t been opened in over thirty-six years. A foul, musty odor emerged from the blackness. I pushed the doctor into the blackness, and the door shut behind us.
The room was much bigger than it appeared on the outside. I could not tell where the walls began, but it seemed as if we were surrounded by a vastness not dissimilar to the cyclopean chamber I had just escaped.
Something laughed at us. Something human. A man?
I withdrew my newly acquired tentacles and backed away from the doctor. Where are we? the doctor said, and for the first time I heard fear in its ancient voice.
I felt the fear as well. I had been feeling it for most of my life.
The man stepped out of the darkness. He was smiling. He had long sandy-blond hair that was thinning on top, a tangled beard, and bloodshot eyes. He was amped up, maybe on some form of speed? I was surprised at how small he was, only 5’5. He wore a ripped white t-shirt, baggy blue jeans, and a pair of combat boots. His shirt and pants were spattered in blood. My mother’s blood.
He cackled, blurting out gibberish half-remembered from an old Christian hymn, and revealed the bloody hunting knife he had been holding behind his back. He motioned with his fingers as if beckoning the doctor forward.
The doctor didn’t move. What are you? the Yithian asked the blood-drenched man. In all their exhaustive studies, had the “Great Race” never encountered anything as irrational as this?
The cackling man didn’t respond, not vocally. He swung his blade, puncturing the doctor through the soft spot in her throat. Blood gushed. The doctor fell to her knees. Gurgling sounds, not unlike the demonic piping that emerged now from my antennae, erupted from the new hole in the doctor’s flesh. The doctor grabbed her own neck, as if trying to keep the red sap inside. The man giggled and the blade swung again, down into the base of her neck, severing her spinal cord. The doctor fell into a pool of her own blood.
Then the man turned toward me. He looked down at me, as if I was very small. He said, “Now just close your eyes and enjoy it, little girl.”
Little? Girl? I thought, Can’t he see me for what I really am?
I was Dr. Margaret Keil, but I was also something more.
The mad piping and the whistling wind drowned out the man’s final screams, followed by the battering down of that pitiful, insignificant closet door…
I awoke facedown on the floor of my office. The sound of metal pounding on wood filled my head. I groaned as I pushed myself up. My blouse hung off my body in tatters. My skirt was much the same, stained in fresh blood. The office was a mess. My desk was on its back, the couch toppled over on its side, the window smashed and devoid of glass. Pieces of paper and random trash lay scattered across the filthy carpet, which was covered in a rubbery gray substance that had the scent of musty fungus. In the midst of this chaos Sean lay prostrate in the center of the pentagram. The smaller pentagram on his bare chest had smeared, dripping messy red tendrils down his torso as if it were an unfinished scrap of graffiti spray painted by a group of amateur taggers. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
I crawled toward him, ignoring the pounding at the door. I cradled his head in my lap. “Sean? Can you hear me?”
The boy’s eyes fluttered open. “Where am I?”
I laughed as tears trickled down my cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”
The door to my office burst inward. In the doorway stood two police officers with their guns drawn. Behind them I could see Mr. Willeford staring at me with an expression of mounting horror.
“What the hell’s been happening in here?” he asked.
I cleared my throat and put on a decidedly professional air. “Mr. Willeford,” I said, “I’m happy to announce we’ve accomplished a major breakthrough far sooner than previously anticipated. I’ll be waiving the fee on this one. No need to thank me. By the way, any of you gentlemen can feel free to help us to our feet when you’re ready.”
I tried to appear calm, but somewhere in the depths of my mind was the sound of a madman choking on his own blood in a room too small to die in…and far too small to live in. I can still hear it sometimes, even to this day, despite the fact that many weeks have passed since that fateful afternoon.
I must admit, Dr. Peaslee, it’s not always an unpleasant sound.
Of course, I plan to translate these experiences into a far more organized and objective report, one I hope to present to your esteemed colleagues at your exclusive conference next year.
As always, I appreciate your support in these matters. Needless to say, Sean does as well.
It will no doubt be…interesting…to hear the reaction of our peers when I present my findings to them next fall.
At long last, perhaps your grandfather’s name can be restored to the exalted heights it so richly deserves after all these decades of shameful neglect.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr. Margaret Keil, Ph.D.
The Beast Comes to Brooklyn GORDON LINZNER
“Hands off!” Professor Wolfgang Bauer snarled at the young man who’d been reaching for a package that had almost slipped from the academic’s arms.
The would-be Samaritan was a boy, really, in his late teens at most. He blanched at the rebuke and scurried backwards.
Seeing the youngster’s shock, Bauer relented. “Nein, danke,” he added in a less hostile tone. “I can carry these on my own. Your concern is appreciated.” The professor raised his leather travel bag with his left hand, while tightening his grip on the heavy package in his right so that his knuckles whitened.