The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Cartoon Network, Sunrise, and Bandai Visual. Additional plot, settings and characters are © by Chaosium.

THE BIG O:

ACT 31

DREAMS DARK AND DEADLY

Chapter Eight: Off the Road

"Don't move," a harsh whisper hissed in her ear. Dorothy complied, mindful of the metal object at her throat. Was it a knife? A taser? Some other weapon or tool? Suddenly a damp cloth was pressed over her nose and mouth. "Breathe deep," the voice in her ear growled.

Her hand seized her assailant's wrist and the man cried out in surprise. She pulled him over her shoulder and he tumbled onto the damp shore. A box cutter fell out of his hand as he landed on his back. He was dressed in lower class clothing, trousers, shoes, shirt and jacket. His felt cap had fallen off his head, exposing a ski mask.

Dorothy kicked the box cutter away as the man rolled to his feet. He was a squat fireplug of a man and when he crouched he wasn't much taller than Dorothy. He pulled a small device out of his pocket and pressed a button. A strange high pitched sound assailed Dorothy's ears as she stared at the masked man.

"Ph-nglui mglw'hoi bu wgah'nagl fhtagn," the squat ski masked man croaked as he gestured like a stage magician. The words were strange as if they were never meant to be pronounced by humans. "That's it," he whispered tersely, "Relax girl, relax… clear your head and let your only thoughts be my will…" Dorothy stood up straight and looked at him blankly. The masked man chuckled to himself as he slipped the little gadget into his jacket pocket. "That's right my lovely, you're in my power now. Help me with the body here. We must move it to where it can't be seen." He bent over the corpse and seized a leg but Dorothy reached in his pocket and extracted the tiny device. "What are you doing?" He snarled, fear in his voice. "Give it back to me! Ugh!"

Without a word, Dorothy pushed him backwards and examined the tiny machine. It bore a striking resemblance to the remote control Roger used to activate the armor when he parked the car. It was just a flat plastic box with a button on it. "What is this?" she asked. "What is its function?"

"Give it back to me!" the squat ski masked man whined. "You're in my power! Give it back to me or I'll break your neck—agh!" He made another lunge at her, but the girl effortlessly pushed him away. This time he fell over backwards and rolled once before finding himself lying on his back. He staggered to his feet and backed away. "An android!" he cried. "It's the only way you could be so strong!"

"Yes," she acknowledged without nodding or using any body language. She drew her attention away from the sonic device and surveyed him coolly. "Is this supposed to override my control functions? I can assure you, you're using the wrong hardware."

"Get away from me!" he said as he staggered backwards and fumbled with his oversized wristwatch. "Androids can't harm humans!"

"Why do you say that?" Dorothy asked him.

Her attention was seized by the sound of tires screeching followed by the sound of glass breaking and a metal impact in the distance. She jerked her head in the direction of the sound and took her eyes off her attacker.

The masked man spoke into his watch. "Chorazin! Rgahq mauq hy'gm!" he cried.

A high pitched sound beyond the range of human hearing filled the area, but it was a different frequency and didn't come from the device in Dorothy's hand. It seemed to originate from empty space not ten feet to her left. A shaggy wrinkled vaguely humanoid form faded into view from ghostly nothingness. Its rugose, dead-eyed rudiment of a head swayed drunkenly from side to side. Its forepaws were extended, with talons spread wide and its whole body was taught with murderous malignity despite its utter lack of facial description. It lurched towards her, its wide and squishy foot pressing into the soft turf…


"Doctor Weemes," Roger addressed the bespectacled therapist in his office in the lab building. "If I'm reading the degrees on your wall correctly you're a medical doctor as well as a psychiatrist, aren't you?"

"Why yes, I am," Weemes assured him. "Why do you ask? Are you feeling well, Mister Smith?"

"I'm fine," Roger assured him, "but there's someone in the woods I think you should see. Can you do an autopsy…?"

"An autopsy?" Weemes asked incredulously. "Why? Has somebody died?"

The sound of brakes squealing and a car crashing in the distance made Roger glance at the window. "A car accident?" Weemes gasped in disbelief. "Out here? It has to be a member of the Institute!"

"Let's find out," Roger grunted. "Grab your medical bag or a first aid kit and meet me at my car!"


Roger had the car started when Weemes jogged out and joined him. Soon the two of them were driving over the bridge and out the main gate heading back to town. Going by car was almost unnecessary though, for they soon spied a small car that had gone off the road and into a tree. Roger stopped the car and the two of them got out and dashed over to the vehicle.

"Oh my God!" Weemes cried as he saw the crumpled form of Institute's secretary in the driver's seat. "Rita!"

"Is she alive?" Roger asked as he paused to examine the tire tracks. The car had skidded off the road as if the driver had hit the brake suddenly. Why had she done that? There was nothing in the road.

"I'm losing her!" Weemes cried. "Come on Rita don't—!" He grew quiet. "We were too late," he said quietly. "She's dead."

"Did she say anything before she died?" Roger asked before he could stop himself.

"Only that she saw a monster!"


Dorothy dashed through the woods at a speed impossible for a human. The distorted creature didn't look particularly fast and it… was ahead of her! How did it get ahead of her? Dorothy was running too fast to change direction so she settled for jumping over it in one terrific bound. Its limbs didn't bend the way a human's would and it reached out for her with unnaturally long arms but fortunately its reflexes didn't seem better than an average human's. Dorothy managed to evade its grasp despite the fact that its arms were long enough to seize her at the altitude she had attained.

She continued to run through the forest and was trying to make it back to the lodge when her leg was seized by a massive taloned hand at the end of a long hairy arm. The thing was lying down in the tall grass waiting for her. As it dragged her towards it Dorothy realized that its hand had two thumbs, one on each side of its misshapen paw! When its wrinkly neckless empty eyed head came into view Dorothy kicked at it with all her might. Her eyes widened as her foot pushed into its squishy head as if it didn't have a skull. The thing let go of her and she rolled to her feet and continued running. The entire time the creature had made no sound.


Roger Smith and Carl Weemes were a grim pair as they drove back to Dinosaur Lodge with the remains of Rita Maeter wrapped in a blanket in the trunk. As they drove up they saw the young housekeeper Ellen Cody walk out to the porch to meet them. "Mister Smith! Doctor Weemes!" the girl said as she trotted over to them while Roger parked the car. "This way! The others are waiting for you in the conference room."

"Thank you Ellen," Weemes said stiffly. "Get me a drink will you? Something to settle my nerves," he added as he and Roger got out of the car.

"Yes of course Doctor," Ellen nodded.

Before entering the lodge, Roger paused to pull a tiny one-button remote control out of his pocket. A jack lifted the long black Cadillac up as ebony armor plating came out of hidden panels to cover the car entirely. Roger turned and entered the lodge leaving a speechless Ellen Cody on the porch.

"Ah... Roger Smith!" Torrance Dandridge snorted as Roger and the shaken doctor entered the first floor conference room. "There you are! Did you have to take Carl on a joyride while I've been trying to round everybody up for this meeting? I've had the devil of a time…"

"Let him be Torrance," Marina Ivanovna interrupted as Roger and Weemes sat down at the long table. "From the looks on their faces something horrible has happened. Are you all right? You two look like you've seen a ghost!"

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Roger coughed, "but we have. Rita Maeter's car went off the road. I'm afraid she's dead."

"Dead?" Dandridge gasped in disbelief. "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," Weemes gulped. "She died shortly after we got there. There was nothing we could do."

The young handyman Harry Jones chose that moment to enter. "I can't find Burton Fielding anywhere," he reported. "I can't find Gilbert Manes either."

"Now where is that man?" Dandridge grumbled. "He's never around when I need him! And as for Manes, where the devil could a chef go at this hour?"

"I wasn't aware that being a chef meant you had impaired mobility," Roger shrugged. "What about Joe Schienfeld?"

"I thought he went back to Paradigm City," Doctor Ivanovna said. "I don't see his car out front."

"Never mind him," Dandridge grunted. "Roger Smith had something to announce. He says that he found a dead body."

"Poor Rita," Ivanovna moaned.

"Actually I meant another dead body," Roger clarified.

"What?" Marina Ivanovna gasped. "Did she hit someone?"

"No, while we were having breakfast Dorothy was taking a walk and stumbled upon a corpse that had washed up on the shore of the lake," Roger continued. "She told me and I notified Doctor Dandridge. I was about to ask Doctor Weemes if he could do an autopsy when we heard Miss Maeter's car go off the road."

"I sent her into town to fetch the constable," Dandridge explained. "And now you tell me she's dead too! This can't be happening."

"I know. It's unbelievable!" Carl Weemes stammered. Ellen Cody entered with a drink that she gave to the grateful Weemes. "Thank you my dear," he sighed before he took a sip.

"Doctor Weemes, you said that before she died, she said that she saw a monster," Roger turned his attention to the shaken doctor. "What do you suppose she meant by that?"

"I-I don't know," Weems gulped. "You don't suppose that some prankster was in a costume perhaps?"

"It must have been some bizarre joke," Dandridge shook his head. "We all know that monsters don't exist."


Despite her best efforts, the shambling creature always seemed to be between Dorothy and the lodge. She was being herded away from the lodge and was forced to flee deeper into the wilderness. It was the same creature that somehow got ahead of her. Before she buried her foot in its head, the creature didn't have a bruise. Incredibly, one slowly shambling monster was able to cut ahead of her every time. She was being surrounded by one creature!


"If someone jumped in the road wearing a costume that someone could have been trying to prevent Rita Maeter from reaching Electric City," Roger told the assembled scientists. "Doctor Dandridge, you said that you sent Miss Maeter to fetch the constable. Could it be that somebody didn't want police poking around here?"

"My god!" Dandridge gasped. "Are you trying to tell me that she was murdered?"

"From the sounds of things we could all be under siege," said a quiet elegant voice. The dandyish Lawrence Winthrop was casually leaning in the doorway listening to them. "Forgive me for being late everyone but I don't move as fast as I used to," the old man said as he strode into the room and took as seat at the conference table. "I didn't catch the entire conversation but do I understand that someone ran Miss Maeter off the road?"

"Hard to say," Roger shrugged. "From the skid marks and her last words it looks like she swerved to avoid hitting something or somebody and went off the road and into a tree."

"So now we've got two dead bodies," Dandridge snorted in disgust. "Harry, go get a stretcher. I'll go to the lab building and see how low I can put the thermostat. We'll see if we can clear a space in Burton's lab to put the bodies. That is unless you think they'd be better off in the infirmary?"

"What?" Weemes gasped in surprise. "Yes, yes of course. After we get poor Rita out of Smith's car we can go out to the woods and find that poor devil that Smith found. I should think he would be getting pretty ripe by now."

"Poor Dorothy, I left her in the woods guarding a corpse," Roger shook his head. "She's probably wondering what happened to me."


It wasn't long before Dorothy found herself forced back to the shoreline. In desperation she dove into the lake. Despite her torn clothing her flesh was still watertight and she didn't have to breathe. The creature chasing her was strong and resilient, but it appeared organic and hopefully couldn't function underwater. She didn't try to swim but simply let her weight drag her down.


Later Roger Smith and Harry Jones stood by the shoreline, a hospital stretcher laying the grass behind them. Carl Weemes scratched his head and looked at Roger. "You say that you found a dead body here? A second one?"

"Technically it's the first one," Roger grunted as he glanced around irritably. "It was right here, half buried in the silt, as if it washed up or it wasn't buried deep enough. You can see the depression where it's been dug up. There's fresh footprints around here too, a good one right here. I don't know what this is."

Weemes and Jones looked at where Roger was pointing. A clearing in the vegetation had exposed the wide track of a six toed creature whose foot was as wide as two hand lengths. Its toes were clawed like a bear's. Its foot had sunk deep into the marshy ground, indicating that the creature had been quite heavy.

"It must be some kind of hoax," Weemes's offered. "Someone is trying to confuse us…" His voice trailed off as he looked around. "But where is Miss Wayneright?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Roger said.


Roger returned to the lodge to change into a black tee shirt, black denim pants, hiking boots and a brown leather jacket. He then took a long hike into the woods. He crouched and examined broken branches, bent twigs and crushed grass blades, but the truth of the matter was that he was a big city boy and not an expert tracker who camped out in the wilderness and shot his own food. He had followed what he thought was Dorothy's tracks off the trail and into the woods and was now almost completely lost. He would have stayed lost too if he hadn't found tracks that even a city slicker like himself couldn't miss.

A vehicle's tracks. Car tracks to be precise. Someone had taken a car off the road and into the woods. He followed the tracks to an upgrade and finally found the road. Okay, so he wasn't completely lost. Now that he found the road he could get back to the lodge before he starved to death.

He backtracked downhill in order to find out where the car was going. A few hundred yards brought him to a blue sedan that he recognized as Joe Schienfeld's. So he hadn't returned home to Paradigm City after all. Someone had tried to cover the car with tree branches but in reality it was the darkness in the shade of the forest that really hid it. If the sun had been shining on it, the car would have been visible for miles.

Roger circled the car in a vain attempt to look for footprints but the ground was too hard to reveal anything definite. Finally he pulled the tree branches off the car so he could examine it. The driver's seat still smelled of cigar smoke; if there was any doubt to the ownership of the car it was gone now. Joe Schienfeld could smoke like a chimney and Roger couldn't remember a time he had seen the music agent without his cigar. Roger moved to the trunk of the car and opened it with his stiletto-style lockpick.

The young investigator gasped and staggered backwards from the open car trunk before his face frowned in steely resignation. Lying in the trunk of his own car was Joe Schienfeld. He was almost in a fetal position staring at nothing in particular and was so still that he didn't even bother with breathing. Roger didn't think that breathing was part of Joe Schienfeld's agenda anymore, because plump balding middle-aged man in the cheap suit was as dead as Gregory Stoker's career.


On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Roger's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:

Next: Red Handed