Silent Hill: The Dream Machine
by Elliot Bowers
…
Chapter 2
…
It had been an awful night…the worst kind of nightmares. Though she did not exactly remember what the nightmare had been about, she just remembered it having a girl's beautiful and sad singing heard through the wind. The wind had been blowing through a ruined, night-covered land with fallen buildings: the ruins being obliterated by legless, hairy creatures armed with rusted hammers. It was absolutely horrid. She would not have wanted to be in such a place.
After a hot shower and dressing herself, an outfit of blue jeans and buttoned-down shirt, she intended to fill another place once occupied by the previous inhabitant of this house. She inhabited his house, drove his car, used his space. Now she would work his job: as a janitor at the town's primary children's school. People would probably think her a stranger on sight…unless they understood that she was a replacement.
Yes, she was a replacement; that was the safe way of thinking of her. She stepped in where another person stepped out. And as a replacement, she was going to fulfill his job though she did not need the money. Selling that torc gave her enough cash to live off of for several years to come. Still, someone had to do Arnie's job, to do what Arnie had done. Selena felt obligated to fill that roles in reality left open when he had to leave when she stepped in. It was not as if it was the end of the world if she did not, but she felt she had to do this, drive over to Arnie's place of work and work his job.
…
Twenty minutes of driving this car, she was almost there. She soon found that Pleasant River Elementary School: Arnie's place of work: was not far from the house. Morning traffic was somewhat thick, plenty of cars on the roads, but she dealt with it. She noticed that this area was more heavily forested, more greenery and trees. Selena had the idea that suburban schools tended to be hidden away behind trees, fences and greenery for the sake of symbolism. Schools seemed to shelter children away from the reality around them: the world of adults.
If this was anything like the town she had come from, the children would need that sheltering. It, the world of adults, is a world of cruel and greedy people out to seek money and power simply for the sake of greed. Children themselves became adults when they realized that the "adults" in charge of the world were actually no better than terrible children themselves: that the men who run the world are just as cruel, selfish and narrow-minded as the worst-behaving brats a person could know. Adults would do anything and everything they could to get power: even if it meant unleashing forces beyond their control. And if they did not get their way, they were willing to destroy the world in an angry temper-tantrum of nuclear weapons, lab-bred plagues and deadly chemicals. Which, of course, would leave room for whatever creatures there would be to take over after humanity was gone.
Selena slowed and turned this car to the right. This brought her to the road that cut through the patch of forest in getting to the elementary school itself. Staff parking was to the right. There so happened to have been a conspicuously open parking space waiting for this car, too. Filling a role, that is what she was doing now. As she drove closer to the school, she thought about how to make a start.
She parked the car in the side-lot for faculty. This done, she glanced up in the rear-view mirror. She didn't wear makeup beyond just a little lipstick; there was no problem there. Her hair was fine: her straight dark hair never needing to be brushed often. It was a good thing, how her hair tended to behave itself. As for her improvised janitorial outfit of jeans and buttoned blue shirt, practical shoes, it would have to do. She got out of the car and walked around towards the front of the building.
…
Inside, it was much as she expected it to be: other than some differences in wall-colors and materials. There was a wide-open space with halls to the left and right. Ahead was the office, plainly labeled "Administration." The school children were not yet here; it was still quiet enough to hear typing and talking coming from the office. Now, she would see just how the school's staff would react to her arrival: either with confusion or acceptance.
Cl-click… She opened the door and entered the administrative office: which had a somewhat lower ceiling than the outside hall. Two female secretaries in frumpish clothes: one skeletally thin and the other matronly plump: were sitting back to back at two desks, chattering away to each other and typing on electric typewriters. That would be paperwork; no administrative office anywhere would be complete without it. They stopped talking and typing to look over at who just walk in. She had best talk…
Good morning…!" she said. "I am Selena Millieux, the replacement. It is I who will do whatever it was that he once did. My experience regarding this sort of labor is rather limited to voluntary functions. However, it should be well within my capabilities. Do I check in here before getting to work, to begin?"
The plump secretary frowned. "Hmm… Your name is Se-lena… Me-you?" She barely managed to properly pronounce Selena's surname. "Haven't heard of you before. We know that something happened to Arnie… Lord knows what. About you, let me check the records to see if you're really in the system." She wheeled her chair over to the filing cabinet to the right of the desk. "Hmm… That's an 'M,' right? Can't tell with these foreign names sometimes." She opened the second to last filing cabinet and worked her big fingers through the files. "Huh? Oh… Why is it spelled 'Millie-Lex' or something? It's M, i, l, l, i, e, u, x… Is that your name? Don't remember putting you on the payroll, but here it is."
"I was something of a last-minute replacement," said Selena. "Not that I had at all known the previous janitor, but it just may be that there was a connection between him and I. Call it fate, or the hand of God, if you will..." As much as she hated to openly talk of religion, she felt she had to do so now in order to explain things.
While the thin secretary looked on sympathetically, the chubby one looked through the folder: as if she could find Selena's deepest and most sinister secrets in there. "Well, if you say so… Everything looks okay. You'll have the same hours and pay as Arnie. The only female janitor in this school's history… Hmmph, that's funny! Says here you have the same SIN as Arnie."
This time, it was Selena's turn to take on confusion. Everyone had sins. What did this have to do with this conversation. "The same…sin? We are all sinners of varying sorts. Yet for me to be a person so similar…" She saw the secretary angrily shake her head.
"No, not that sin! I mean S…I…N! Social Identification Number! Sweetie, you must be a foreigner, not knowing what a sin is? How long have you been in this country? You speak pretty good, but you've got that accent. I can tell you weren't born here…"
"I have not been here especially long," responded Selena. "I was, in fact, born somewhere else. Coming here was something done more out of survival and necessity than whim." And what I'm saying to you, she thought to herself, is more true than you would want to know.
"Were things that hard where you came from? Aww… I've heard things were tough in a lot of places," chimed in the other secretary, the skinny woman. "There are countries in the world where people starve to death, and lots of pollution. What about those ethnic conflicts with warlords, too…! Were you from one of those countries?"
"One could put it that way," said Selena, thinking about the last moments she spent in the other world. If one thought of the object of worship as being a warlord and the fact that no one needed to eat anymore there, then that was the truth. It was as much the truth as coming from 'another country.'"
…
Done in the office, she walked out of the office and gently closed the door behind her: standing in the open space at the front of the school. Now where could the janitorial supplies be…? As a child, she had been a student of a school such as this. If this was just another incarnation of the elementary school she had come from, the janitorial office should be somewhere along the halls right of the entrance. Meaning she would have to turn left. If not, she could just keep walking until she saw it.
So, seek she did: walking through the especially quiet halls, closed doors to the left and right. There was just the ever-so-slight low thrumming of machinery somewhere in this building. It must be the boiler-room machinery at work. Odd, it sounded a bit like the heavy generators she had heard a lifetime ago. Since when do boilers and generators sound the same? Perhaps she could ask the others of the janitorial staff.
There was a thick wooden door marked Janitor: different from most all the other doors in this building, the doors that led to classrooms. She turned the heavy metal handle of the thick wooden door and walked in: entering a hard-floored, industrial-style space the size of a small recreation room. There were three desks at the right, three lockers behind themNext to that was bolted a cabinet marked cleaning supplies. Along the left wall were industrial mops, floor buffers, brooms and a few kinds of brass-colored machinery she had never seen before.
One of the odd-looking cleaning machines along the left wall had the radiation insignia on them. Now this caught Selena's attention. She bent over to look at it: hands on knees and eyes looking. It, the machine, was a square metal cylinder on four wheels: its case made out of a dull and brassy sort of metal. The circular radiation insignia was carved and painted into the top of the machine's casing, next to the control panel with a thick knob atop it. Why would something like this be in a janitor's office? For that matter, what were those other odd-looking, gold-colored machines for?
There was the sound of thick-soled footsteps and chuckling coming from just outside the hall, walking in. Selena quickly stood up straight and turned. In walked two large, thick-armed men in buttoned blue shirts, jeans and thick work-shoes. They had brooms with them and were talking about animals or something: but both of them came to a sudden stop when they saw Selena. Their eyes quickly went up and down her body, making her feel self-conscious.
The janitor on the right broke the silence: breaking out in a big grin that seemed to spread his otherwise narrow face. "Hey-hey…! Good morning, lady. You've got to be Arnie's replacement." He walked on over, making an effort to keep eye contact. "My name's Smith, been working here since forever." He held out one of his thick hands. Selena shook it. "And he's Karl…"
"That's with a 'K,' not a 'C,'" explained the other janitor. He also stepped forward to shake hands. Selena did so, feeling vaguely uncomfortable with this custom. "You'll have to excuse Smith. He's a pretty forthright kind of guy."
"Oh, and sorry about gawking you like that," said Smith. "It's just that we didn't expect mean old Arnie's replacement to be… Well, you know." He shrugged, putting on a sheepish grin and gestured in her general direction with both hands.
"My presence brings about discomfort," she said, putting one leg in front of the other and crossing her arms across her midsection. Taking this pose was less obvious than, say…stooping over and crossing her arms across her body. Despite being fully clothed, she felt somewhat naked; the attention given her by Smith had made her more self-conscious. "All the same, I have the sincere hope that you two can maintain a semblance of professionalism in my presence. To hear such words upon our first meeting brings about rather negative connotations."
The janitor on the left clapped a hand on his buddy's shoulder. "What Smith's trying to say is that we don't usually get females working here. What the school district usually does is put women in secretarial or teaching assistant kind of jobs. That, or you work in the administrative office. Yeah, big dumb What's-Her-Name oughta be our assistant to scrub the bathroom floors, not working in the principal's office! At least the vice principal would probably want you close. After all, he's a guy. I've got a daughter who's probably about your age. She tells me and my wife about problems all the time."
Selena frowned. Was this how things were in this world? It probably meant that the vice principal would probably only be interested in one thing. That one thing was what often seemed to come to mind whenever she first dealt with men. Maybe that was why women were usually seen as smarter; it came from less time thinking about sex. Men seemed to be thinking about sex most all the time, and so all women had to do was think about something other than sex most of the day.
Now here was a man whose attention was suddenly distracted by her body. Wearing loose, ugly jeans with frumpish tops would never help; she'd still walk around with her face and neck exposed. Her religion actually encouraged the wearing of clothes that clung to the body or exposed skin, but she never really took to the practice. She found that it made men's eyes stay in places they didn't belong.
The one named Karl shook his head. "We've got to apologize ahead of time. We don't mean to pry. It's just that you're a really pretty lady. There are only two male teachers here, and one of them lost his wife to a truck accident six years ago… Been dating random women ever since. Careful he doesn't sweep you up easily, too."
Smith snickered, tilted back his head and guffawed. "Hah-h-h! Sweep! A janitor getting swept! That'll be the day!" Still smiling, he added, "Yeah, and speaking of work… I guess this means that: since you're Arnie's replacement… You're in charge of us! Wait 'till my wife gets word of this."
"See this real wooden desk?" asked Karl. He walked behind it and pulled out the chair. "It's your desk, now." He gestured towards drawers built into the desk: to the right of where the chair went under the desk. "There's plenty of paper for making notes and memoranda for us, your loyal subjects. Of course, since you're in charge, you'll have to write up the S forms for when we need to request cleaning supplies and equipment. Or even those darned expensive repairs. Janitorial equipment doesn't come cheap, especially some of the equipment we have to use! Animal cleanup requires technical knowledge, if you know what I mean." He stared.
The tone of voice from that last statement gave Selena a slight shiver. Suddenly, the thin material of her long-sleeved shirt wasn't enough. This room suddenly seemed colder though it was next door to the hot boiler room itself. "What do you mean by that?" she asked. Meaning, just perhaps there were animals in this world as well.
I thought Arnie would've let you know or somethin'?" asked Smith. "You mean you don't know about the animals? Geez… You've really got to know about the animal problem if you're going to be head of this school's janitorial staff. Dealing with animals on this property is our responsibility. People used to think we just mop floors and scrub walls. Truth is, in this town, we do a Hell of a lot more than that… Behind the scenes… You know? Nah, you don't know. Not yet." He walked towards the door. "Follow me. We got time before the kids come in. We'll have to show you what we caught this morning: something that snuck out of the boy's bathroom. Nasty thing probably crawled outta the toilet!"
…
Selena followed the two janitors through the school's southern hall: then out through a set of wooden doors. It was still a vaguely gray-colored day outside. "Come on. The shed's over here," said Smith. They were over by a small shed on the grass just outside the school's rear entrance, Karl and Smith going in first.
She went into the little industrial-style building, expected to find a shed full of lawn-care and landscaping equipment. Her expectations were only half-correct. There was landscaping equipment in here. Except, along the right side of the little room, there were six large cages made of brass: the bars of the cages attached to small pipes, connecting them to large machines set in a corner. This machinery gave off a low and oddly soothing hum. But oddest and unnerving was one of the things in the right-most cage.
At the least, it was an animal. It resembled a brown, flattened football made of brown leather, with five little legs attached and its head tucked in. She couldn't see the body moving with breath. Maybe the thing didn't breathe? Or it was asleep, and she couldn't see its leathery body moving. As for what it was, Selena had never heard of such a thing before.
While Karl turned a small valve on the machinery in the corner, Smith walked on over to the cage with the thing in it. "Thisis an animal. I don't mean those cuddly things that you bring home from the pet-shop, or the furry things in the petting-zoo… I don't even mean those things ever seen in any darned zoo you'd find on this planet!"
Karl stood up, no longer kneeling by the machines over there. "Yeah, they're from somewhere elsealright…" He peered at Selena's face. "I have the impression that you're not exactly a local, either. Ever see any of these things from where you come from?"
"Indeed…" said Selena, pierced by Karl's gaze. She stepped over to the cage with the animal within it. The leathery, circle-bodied creature untucked its little head. This revealed a little head topped with brown hair and a little human face: its eyelids flickering. She thought to herself, Oh my, what is this? She put a hand to her throat, feeling her own pulse racing as she took slow steps away from the cage. She had seen that face before, a long time ago. "No… Please no…"
"Hey, girl! The thing can't be that ugly-looking!" said Smith, stepping closer to Selena. He expected her to swoon and faint. She didn't. She was a strong-spirited person and able to withstand sight of this. "I though you said 'Indeed,' when we asked if you saw this kinda animal before. Now you act like they're a big shock. If you're gonna be Arnie's replacement, you've gotta deal with this…and more! What the Hell's goin' on with you, girl? You can't take being around an animal?"
Bristling under the remarks, Selena righted herself. She rubbed her palms on the hips of her jeans. "I do apologize for my rather unsightly reaction. Yet the fact that this town has an infestation is unsettling. I did not expect this."
Well, here it is!" exclaimed Smith, gesturing towards the cage. "It's here. It's not a phony. And it's just one kind of trouble keep getting around here. We give these things to the Animal Control people for more pay: which makes this part of our job extra-profitable."
You didn't react as badly as some people would, seeing an animal like thisfor the first time," began Karl. "Didn't faint, either. And since you already know what we're saying, I think you could be a lot more useful to us after all. That is, 'til the male faculty and administration see you and want to put you in a desk job."
…
2.
…
School busses: great big sun-colored vehicles with diesel engines and smoky exhausts: were already driving over to the front of the school. It was nearly time for the day to begin. There would soon be noise and activity enough. And just maybe, the children would be too distracted to notice them.
They, the municipal Animal Control personnel, drove up in an unmarked white van. Though the tires were thoroughly covered with reddish mud, the body of the vehicle itself remained glisteningly white. Yes, it was white, pure white: its surface not even marked by logos. The van was unmarked with any official town logo or color because even the knowledge that Animal Control was in a neighborhood was enough to make for a panic; problems with certain kinds of animals was that much trouble.
So this white van drove around to the location of today's business: the back of the school. Parked next to the shed, the two Animal Control personnel climbed out of the van. One was a tall and serious-looking man of dark hair and gaunt face. The other was a blonde woman lacking in height. Both wore white coveralls and beige workshirts. Both wore similarly flat expressions as they walked around to the back of the van and opened it up. The blonde-haired woman then watched as part of the van's rear lowered a wheeled golden cage to the ground: This was a hydraulic lift built into the van's cargo area.
The cage lowered to the ground, they began to take it towards the shed. Both knew what they would find in the shed without having to be told. And this cage was more than adequate to deal with whatever the school's janitors had caught with their own equipment. The janitors had adequate equipment. Yet it was not as advanced as the kind used by Animal Control.
…
"Praised be!" exclaimed Smith, taking his feet off of his desk. "They're here!" The intercom speaker mounted high on the janitorial office-wall had requested the presence of the janitorial personnel at the landscaping shed…at the rear of this building. That could only mean that the Animal Control personnel had come to handle business. "Let's go, Selena… Karl… Let's see that creepy equipment of theirs in action."
Karl shook his head. "You've got to forgive the man, Selena. He gets pretty excited about people from the Animal Control department. Since the Animal Control people have to deal with animals more often than we do, they get better equipment."
"When you speak of the equipment, you refer to the brass cages in the landscape equipment storage shed?" asked Selena as Smith grabbed something from one of the closets and walked towards the door. Selena herself stood up out of her chair at the center desk. "They seem like especially elaborate cages already. Can there be anything even more sophisticated in caging animals?"
vSmith stood with the door open. "Come on/ We can't keep those people waiting forever. Karl, you know how they get. They always act as if they have sticks stuck in uncomfortable places… Yeah, that kind of attitude. So let's… go!"
"Quit knocking their attitude! You'd act the same way if you had to deal with animals as long as they do," countered Karl. But he did get up and walk towards the door as well. "Ah well… This should at least be a little interesting: though I'd rather be mopping up some kid's throw-up. The Animal Control personnel managed to help us out in making some of our own stuff, so a little more tech knowledge can't hurt. Coming?"
"Very well…" said Selena. There was a slight quivering in her voice, coming through her words. The thought of Animal Control personnel somehow made her nervous. She did not and could not understand why. After all, anyone who acted to eliminate the animal problem should be a friend of hers. It was simply unfortunate that such professionals did not exist in her old town.
…
Selena thought that they were mannequins first. They were man and woman, plastic-skinned realistic dolls dressed in white coveralls and gold-colored sweaters. Their bodies and eyes were stock-still: not even their clothes moving in the breezy chill of the cold wind. For what reason would one put mannequins here, of all places? And why pose them standing before golden cages?
Only when their heads turned to look here did she realize that those two were actually people. They had to be the ones sent by the Animal Control department, not mannequins. Smith was the first to walk over to them, walking over to the man of the team. "Hiya, guy!" he cheered as he shook hands. The Animal Control professional returned the handshake in a basic, stiff kind of way: merely imitating and matching Smith's gesture. This caused a sleeve of the man's arm to come up, giving Selena a glimpse of a golden wristband.. "Still stiff as ever, I see. Heh-heh-heh…" He glanced at the blonde woman. "Your girlfriend seems just about as cheerful as you are…as usual."
"Smith, could you let up a little?" admonished Karl. "These two are Animal Control professionals. They're professionals. They can't exactly have the kind of relationship you're always thinking about. Besides… You're making a bad impression in front of our new boss!"
Their new boss…would be Selena. She did begin to feel stirrings of indignation at some of Smith's somewhat raunchy, misogynist behavior. "I choose to tolerate the various faults of your behavior… Only to an extent, however," she said, beginning to take hold the edges of her new authority. "Only to that vague extent. Your behavior is understandable within the realm of Arnie's command. Yet not within mine."
Smith raised both hands. "Jeez… Okay, okay! Since everybody's on my case, I'll back down. No more talk of nooky or any of that. Politics!" He looked at the blonde woman in white coveralls. "Looks like I've gotta put up an apology to you, too. No offense, okay? Just trying to get you two to loosen up a little."
The blonde female in white coveralls tilted her head to the left for a moment: as if analyzing Smith. Her lips quivered for a second as if she was having difficulty thinking up words to say. Then came her words. "You have presented what has the sound of an apology. It meets the criteria of tolerance."
"Okay!" responded Smith. "We can work with that! Yeah, at least you didn't ask for me to wave burnt meat in the air or fetch some mistletoe to get your forgiveness." This time, both of those two people in white coveralls glared at him.. "Ouch, the burning stare! Looks like I hit a nerve. Don't you two ever loosen up? All I'm trying to do is… Hey!" Selena stepped forward.
"Do listen to me," she said, standing right in front of Smith. "Do you realize what these two are? Do you seek to impress them…or me with an overly confident attitude? You have not been yet in my charge for an hour, and I have already seen a variety of faults within your behavior!" She turned to face the Animal Control personnel. "On behalf of this man, I apologize and summon the notion of 'business before pleasure.' That is, to say if we are to consider any social pleasantries. Clearly, you two have come for the purpose of Animal Control, and we shall see to it before you are delayed further. What is it that you require of myself at this time?"
"You must open the way into the place of metal," explained the woman in white coveralls, her voice still flat. "We cannot go where we are not invited. It is one of the regulations put on us by authority." She paused. "We are not…independent."
There was something familiar in what the woman in white coveralls had just said. It gave Selena the idea that there was more to these "Animal Control" personnel than just their job title. And the stiff, almost soulless ways they moved and spoke, there was something vaguely inhuman about it. "I understand," she said.
"Your obeisance is accepted and noted," answered the male in white coveralls. His voice was just as flat and austere. "Data regarding local patterns of behavior often reveals questionable efficiency. This is a favorable change."
Nodding once to acknowledge the statement, Selena went to the door of the storage shed and opened it. The two then wheeled in the gold-barred cage of theirs. Selena noticed that the metal-top of the cage was not plain metal; she saw that the top was actually inlaid with thousands of square and straight lines: almost like ancient carvings or electrical machinery. She remembered being told that the Animal Control personnel having more elaborate equipment for dealing with animals.
Inside the storage shed, those two went to work. The blonde woman in white coveralls opened the top of the cage: the top opening like two doors. This, while the man in the matching uniform walked over to the janitor's cage that had the small animal in it.
"Gra-a-a-gh! Oblamah… Satya-a-agraha!" squealed the little leathery bodied animal, it's little human-like head going back and forth. It also began to struggle with its five little legs, squirming and kicking, but the man's two-handed grip was as firm as an electromechanical vice. Soon enough, the turtle-sized creature calmed and weakened to the point of lethargy as it was being held by the man in white coveralls.
It became much calmer when lowered within the golden cage, closing its eyes and slumping: the little limbs going still as its little face relaxed into something like sleep. The woman in white coveralls closed the lid. A click meant that the cage had locked itself.
…
The unmarked white van left with its load of animals some minutes ago, leaving Selena and the two men to return to the janitorial office. Now they were back here again. Smith put his hands in his pockets and shuddered. "I go out of my way to be polite every time they show up. But what do they do? They give me the cold shoulder. Especially the blonde girl… Those big blue eyes of hers might as well be ice lakes! Now that's rude. You can't expect a man to be all nice-nice to people who act like secret agents from the government…or cyborg-robots! Those two really give me the creeps, you know? I just don't get 'm!"
"I can understand their feelings and behavior," explained Selena, sitting with her legs crossed, hands atop a knee. "If it was within their abilities to summon forth warmer feelings towards humanity, such would have been done. The expressions exuded from their being is reflexive of their nature." She gave a slight shrug. "That is, of course, given how nature is a rather arbitrary distinction at times. More subject to analog interpretations rather than digital."
"Nature? Hah!" exclaimed Smith. He took some kind of brassy, book-sized device out of a closet and brought it over to his desk: which was next to Selena's. He sat on top of his desk, put his feet in the chair and leaned over to get a cleaning cloth out of a drawer. This cloth he spread on the desktop next to himself. "Those two don't act naturally, that's for sure. I've seen more soul in trees than those two! I mean, a man can talk to a tree. Talking to those two is like trying to hug a streetlamp after the end of the world…." At this point, Smith had opened up the case of the device and began putting thick-looking cogs on the cloth atop the desktop. "But about talking to trees… It's okay as long as trees don't answer back. Right, Karl?"
If Karl only looked vaguely uncomfortable before from the morning encounter with the Animal Control personnel, now he looked tortured. He answered, "Maybe we can get inspiration from being around trees, in forests. Trees don't have to talk to be heard, you know."
Smith took another thick-looking cog out of the device he was disassembling, set it atop the cloth next to the other parts he was taking from the device. "That's right! Trees don't talk," he said, staring at the part he was working on. "They don't talk in multiple languages. They don't tell about what goes on in the woods. And they sure as Hell don't bleed every morning when the last night's fog gets too bad!" He stopped working on the machine and looked at Selena. "Don't you agree?"
That depends on the severity of the contamination," she blurted. Karl looked at Selena. Smith paused in cleaning the parts of the brassy device, his smirk frozen on his face. "I mean to say, it depends on one's situation. A person in the grip of drugs or sickness would be under deliria enough to believe that such things were happening."
Smith shook his head. Hey-hey! Is that the same thing as saying that it could or couldn't be real? You've seen that animal we've caught and let get taken away. Now, people from most anywhere else in the world would say that the animal couldn't be real. You saw it. Karl saw it. The principal saw it, too. How many people would it take to see something before it's real, huh?"
"We're doing our job," said Karl. "Things aren't getting that bad. We don't have the best and most-advanced cleaning equipment. Still, we can do a competent job. If things were getting to the point of trouble, we'd get new help from somewhere. Right, Smith?"
At this point, Smith returned his eye-focus to the disassembly of the machine he was holding. "Funny you should mention 'new help,'" he said. "Don't know exactly where the new help came from, but it looks like this town may need it sooner than we'd hope. The new help seems experienced in dealing with the sort of stuff we janitors have to deal with. At least the principal ought to be happy." He reached down and took another tool out of a desk drawer. "Speak of the devil…"
A second after Smith said that, the elementary school vice-principal walked into this place. He was a balding sort of man with a slight pot-belly covered over with his buttoned blue shirt: his leather belt holding up his beige slacks. He looked at Selena before saying anything…stared at her. It was that before he actually said anything.
…
3.
…
In the forest, a soft and ghostly mass of wafting fog drifted its way among the trees: covering the ground as it went around and between the trunks of the trees all around. There were patches of hairy mold on many of these trees: the patches of silky mold that resembled scalps of human hair. These hairy molds became slick with a colored, viscous substance oozed from these patches and from cracks in the rest of the trees. It was a thick, oily substance with a dark color to it.
These trees were contaminated. Infected was a word some others would think of upon seeing this: a consideration from the ignorant. Yet infection was a word for viruses and bacteria. This was nothing of that sort. That which contaminated the trees was not anything like that. For what contaminated these trees could not be treated with chemicals recognized by any biologist.
A long-lost nation of people, had they still been alive, would have understood this contamination. Yet those people were long gone and lost to any historian's records. Their existence obliterated from time and space. What remained was something else…
The fog, it made the contaminated trees bleed blood. Dark crimson liquid seeped from cracks in the tree trunks as the fog irritated the wounds. A person could almost imagine these tall trees of the forest moaning in pain and agony: trapped in their inner worlds of pain and suffering as the fog irritated the hairy mold that grew on their trunks. If the trees could scream with voices, they would.
Fwoo-o-sh… A lonely shrub among the went up in flames: catching fire for no immediately obvious reason. Then six little men in red coveralls climbed up out of the ground. These men were laughably short: barely four feet in height: but they were seriously strong. Their thick, meaty arms rippled with strength as their chests stretched the fronts of their coveralls. They dug their bare feet into the ground as they lifted their burden: an engine-block set in a thick metal platform. Handles on the sides of the platform provided for grips.
The six little men proceeded to carry this engine block towards an especially large tree: which was already thoroughly covered with the dark hairy mold. As the engine block gave off waves of heat from the severity of the radiation, the side of the tree trunk facing this direction seemed to melt into a pile of blood. This made for an opening into the tree, an opening full of black darkness… It was into this darkness that the six men in red coveralls carried the engine block…
As they walked in, blood from the tree…seeped into the brown-black of the dirt. It seemed and melted as shrubs above-ground continued to burn with bright flames. Now even the roots were on fire, even underground…
…
In another place, the land all around was hard-packed and cracked: the sky above a sheer and starless darkness. A burning bus made for flickering illumination, the incandescent flames roaring out the broken windows and lighting up the nearby ground. The black rubber wheels had been turned incorrectly. Now they were burning just as fiercely as the rest of the bus, burning and melting. Slumped against the sides of this ill-fated vehicle were figures in space-suits: white silvery suits complete with white gloves and bubble-helmets. They were obviously dead, lying still as their shiny plastic helmets reflecting the flames that burned at their backs.
Animals were walking counter-clockwise around the burning bus. But the term walking was to be used loosely. Some of them were on two legs, others on six legs. Some of them merely slid along the ground on hard shiny bellies as they breathed through slits in their ribcages. The animals that managed to walk upright would occasionally make gestures towards the burning bus and the dead figures in space-suits.
This continued on for some time. The huge bonfire of a bus continued its burning as the wilting rubber of its melting tires continued to sink. And these animals continued their slow counter-clockwise walking around. This burning bus was now theirs. The same was true for the dead figures in the space-suits.
One of these figures actually twitched. Its left arm jerked, wriggled in spasms as it heard the chanting of the upright animals. Death was a lie. Being killed was a falsehood. This was the place where time did not matter, where nothing was wrong and anything was as right as you wanted it to be.
Only when the figure in the space-suit realized this truth was it able to get up and walk again. Yes, death is a lie. Death is a lie told to keep the world in order and under control. But that sort of order did not exist here! No, this is somewhere else, and nobody had to be dead if they didn't want to be. Let others believe in the lie of death; there is no such thing other than the falsehood told others!
The animals stopped walking and looked on as the figure in the space suit staggered away from the burning bus. Soon enough, the other space-suited figures also stood up and began to follow. Their staggering steps brought them away from the bus. The animals approached the figures and fell on them with slow-moving mouths as if: almost reverently: biting away the material of the suit. This was done by the light of the burning bus, the flames going up toward the blackness of the sky above this desert wasteland: the darkness above being darker than the depths of a universe…
…
In another place, perhaps another time, Samuel Longhorn was doing something else. He was staring at the top of…his grand desk.He was sitting at the desk in his study-room as he went over his notes: using the notes to substantiate his written analysis of his most recent findings in the forest. Only, for a moment, he had been…distracted by haphazard thoughts. Such thoughts wandered along lines of maybe and what if as his eyes looked into the shiny polished woodBetween the information he noted in the woods and the photographs of the girl, a great deal of what-if an maybe kinds of thought went through his mind.
Fire, indeed, he thought to himself. He read from the small field notebook atop his desk, the one with notes from his latest excursion into the forest. Compared to what information he had obtained in earlier weeks, there seemed to be a kind of pattern emerging… The behavior of the animals was becoming slightly more sporadic and seemingly more haphazard. Before, they were a great deal more organized about the way they behaved: much as birds build nests from organized patterns of woven twigs, or how wolves hunt in packs. On that, Samuel wondered if the comparison could even beginto be correct. The animals, they were so incredibly distorted that, maybe, they did not really have a pattern of behavior.Just perhaps he could call on a biologist-friend at the nearest university. Yes, perhaps he would. There were only certain kinds of people interested in this kind of biology. And then the biologist would try to come up with a scientific-sounding explanation for the appearances of the particular animals of this town. It would also go a ways towards explaining certain species of fauna found in places like the Himalayas and certain bodies of water in Scotland. Perhaps the same could be true for Ireland.
Hmmph… As for Celtic connections, Samuel thought about the young woman and the torc she had brought with her. The torc itself was safely in storage within one of his hardier workshops: one of several workshop-laboratories within this mansion. There, it was stored in a sealed fault lined with brass and lead. The lead was a precaution against possible radiation outbursts, and the brass shielded against the other kinds of eminations. He found that he had to take precautions like this in dealing with anomalous objects that appeared in this town.
Except, this time, the "anomalous object" had appeared with the new girl in his town. There was a manila folder at the far left side of this grand desk containing several typewritten sheets of paper about the girl, as well as a few high-resolution photographs taken of her. It seemed that her Social Identification Number, her real-estate deeds, everything on record, all investigations of her name turned up documentation that perfectly matched those of someone who had disappeared. Beyond that, there was no information about her: about her family, what schools she had attended in her life, or even where she had been born. A call to her place of work revealed that the girl had a "foreign" accent. Even then, there were no immigration records on her. She may as well have been born in another world!
He reached over to the manila folder and opened it. He had already read the documents, the scant little information it contained about this girl named "Selena Millieux." There were photographs of her walking along a street in the downtown area. She was an especially pretty girl, even if her clothing was more befitting a school-age troublemaker than such a beauty as herself: dressed in jeans that fit oh-so-nicely, calf-length boots for footwear and a leather jacket that covered a white top. Her dark hair was a contrast to the pale skin of her face. Other photographs managed to get closer images of her face and neck: which was obscured by her shoulder-length hairstyle in other photographs. In looking onto the eyes of the girl, he tried to classify her.
Staring at her reaffirmed the idea that she was certainly not from Pleasant River…or anywhere else in this world. She certainly looked human enough, beautifully so. Her face and figure would have placed her in any number of fashion adverts or potential spots for movies. (She was probably mistaken for a celebrity of some sort at times.) But her eyes… Even through the photograph, he saw that there was something vaguely odd and…wrong about her She was beautiful, exotically so: much deserving of the idea that she was a celebrity. Still, there was something in her eyes.
She's the one. He knew it… No, he felt it. He had been waiting for a girl like her to come along. She would be the one to make absolute sense of it all, to solve the riddles. Her coming along was a blessing. The notion made him smile. Now after years of investigation, analysis and study, he could truly begin his plans.
…
4.
…
For the most part, the janitorial staff of the elementary school stayed in the room to tinker with equipment and do some reading. There was little maintenance or cleaning that could be done while school was in session, with children and teachers all occupying the classrooms. Karl was sitting on a stool in a corner next to some equipment, the day's newspaper open. Smith was at his desk and tinkering with a metal electromechanical device roughly the size of an adult's head. The top was off, some kind of technical manual was opened at the side, and he was using small wrenches to make minor adjustments.
This left Selena to do some investigating of her own. She had opened the metal locker that once belonged to Arnie. Now it was hers, to do what she pleased to it. Why not find out what was within it? So she twisted the thick metal latch and opened the thing. Inside was the most organized mess she had ever remembered seeing. It was just so full of…stuff
This locker was actually a series of shelves behind a door: each shelf crammed full of something. And on the locker door itself was a life-sized poster of a young woman in a white gown. The woman was not scantily clad, nor was the gown especially erotic… At least Selena did not think so. The woman in the poster seemed more a comforting figure than an obscenely arousing one: beautiful rather than "sexy."
The contents of the locker were interesting. On the top shelf of the closet, there were dismembered parts of mutilated machinery: so many parts that they seemed ready to fall out of the closet itself. They were blocks and parts, wires loose and workings exposed. The next shelf below that was a row of thick books about physics and religion: books crammed next to each other. Hmm, an odd combination…
However, none of the religious texts were especially and explicitly about her religion. She took out the one that seemed closest to her particular direction of worship and closed the locker as so she could lean against the door. The least she could do was read some of the introductory chapter. Smith said that much of the day would pass slowly, giving plenty of time for leisurely waiting. That is, unless a "kid lost his lunch" or "made a mess."
Standing here, she began looking into the text. Now this was odd… The introduction of the book claimed that other means of worship were either hypocritical or incorrect. That the worship of this particular deity was the way to "paradise on Earth." It had already been proven, claimed the text, that those to subscribe to this faith and worship according to the noted tenements actually experienced miracles. This was so as other religions could only cite weak and ineffective incidents as "miracles."
"For goodness' sakes…!" exclaimed Karl, all full annoyance. The outburst was loud enough for Selena to quickly look over in his direction. He was now staring over here. "Oh, you've got to excuse me about that," he said as he folded close the newspaper. "That book you've got? I don't see how anyone can read it without becoming sick and disgusted. The things in there… If Arnie wasn't a janitor, the teachers would've had him burned alive for even owning some of that stuff, let alone reading it!"
"Hell yeah!" chimed in Smith, still at his desk. He was now putting some parts into the machine being tinkered with. "I don't care what people read in their spare time so long as it doesn't cause trouble. But those teachers…! Girl, you wouldn't believe how hot they got when they saw Arnie with one of the books in that closet right there. They were so hot and mad that I could almost smell their heads burning up, with steam coming out their ears."
"So you'd best be careful about where you show those particular books," added Karl. "The teachers can't stand any kind of twisted, wrong-headed ideology that distracts people from reality. They say that those essays are more like drugs than wisdom. At least, that's what they say."
Click… "Gotcha!" cheered Smith at his desk. He had snapped close the hemispherical lid on the machine after having succeeded at doing something. Selena saw him take a small vial of something out of a desk-drawer and carefully pour it into a slit in the metal before he turned knobs on the left and right. "Hmm… Maybe this thing will work again."
Selena gasped as a headache suddenly stabbed through her head! "Ahh-h-h…" She would have screamed, had she the strength. The sound instead came out as a weak sigh as pain gripped her entire body, filling her head. She carefully…closed…the book and squinted her eyes, tilting her head to the left. Everything here took on a blurred and…darker look. It was as if the room was being painfully stretched by inches as the box blazed with a dazzlingly white florescence. Not only that, but the pain seemed to penetrate down into her abdomen, further into her.
Everything had become sick, dark and insane all at once. As the room seemed to grow darker and the blazing device glowed more brightly, she sank to her knees clutched her pain-filled head… What did she have to do to stop the pain! Someone was shouting something in a distorted, high-pitched voice. Soon after, the machine stopped blazing with light… She thought the pain was filling the world. It was filling her world, her body and head seeming to be nothing but suffering! And the pain…faded…from her body and head.
She realized that she was now crouching on the floor and nearly sprawled out sideways. The pain must have been so intense that she lost sense of herself, lost herself. "But how is it that…?" she asked aloud. Regaining her composure and picking up the book, she carefully stood again and almost expected the Hellish pain to return.
Karl was standing over by Smith's desk, the device turned off in Smith's lap as he now sat with chair facing these lockers. Both janitors looked at her with mouths agape and eyes wide open. "Hey, sorry about that. You hear me? I'm sorry!" blurted Smith. "This machine was supposed to be a source squelcher. Against mysterious strangers and stuff."
"Yet in this case," began Selena, "it had nearly squelched me! If you are to begin tinkering with hazardous paraphernalia, the very least you could have done was make others aware of it. And how is it that one could work around such things without even wearing the correct pendant?"
"Pendant? What do you mean by that? Anyway… I said I was sorry, okay?" said Smith. "Geez, you make it sound like I've stabbed you in the stomach or something! Truth is, we ain't ever heard of this thing affecting humans before. Nobody ever complained in all the times I've done had to fix it or work on it. Makes me think there's something wrong with you instead of something wrong with the machine."
Karl cut in. "Cool it, Smith!" He put his right hand on one of Smith's shoulders. "Maybe that's why she's Arnie's replacement. Right?" Something in his tone of voice suggested caution and underlying meanings probably discussed elsewhere.
The meanings must have meant something to Smith: who now suddenly looked stock-still with respect. "You're right. Now I've really gotta apologize, Selena. It was stupid and foolish on my part to recalibrate this particular device with you in range. I just failed to think that you'd be affected. This machine is safe for normal people, though… Thought you were normal for a while. Hmmph, I guess I was wrong."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Selena. The book held in her left hand, she her other hand on her right hip: a pose of challenge as she glared at Smith. "From the very moment I have arrived, I have been confronted with repeated incidents in which people have treated me with a vague air of derision and carelessness. And how is it that you come to call me girl? Only women reserve the right to use such a noun with each other! Granted, my age has not yet touched three decades. Yet I am a woman, not a mere child! How is it that you persist in your behavior? Where I came from, women are given the utmost respect!"
"Hmmph," went Smith. He looked down at the machine in his lap. The janitor's fingers lightly played over the knobs of the machine, then he felt Karl's grip on one of his shoulders. "Respect? Hah! Sounds like worship to me. Look, I apologized, alright? And that's all you'll get out of me. Why? Because this man's been a janitor for just about as long as you've lived your current life. There have been too many times where people like you have caused the rest of us all kinds of trouble, headaches and nightmares. Before people like you came along, things were peachy. Peachy, I tell you!
"Before people like you came along, we didn't have any problems with wrong-looking animals coming out of woodlands to cause us trouble. We didn't have weird people with funny eyes loping around town and talking weird stuff. And we didn't have dark-painted trucks on the road to scare the be-Jesus out of folks! I won't even start to talk about those darned lights in the sky or how we can't even listen to the radio on the way to work some days. You wanna talk respect? You'd best talk about how people like you came and brought all this trouble with you! At least Arnie was responsible for what he did…because he wasn't one of your kind."
"I shall not take responsibility for such claims," said Selena, her voice more calm. She now had the confirmed notion that she was not the only one to make it across to this town. "My appearance is not at all linked to the miscellaneous incidents that afflict the townspeople. You claim me to be a bearer of ill-tidings. Yet I have done no such thing as you believe. Simply because…"
Cl-click! The door opened. In walked a familiar-looking, big chubby man in slacks and buttoned shirt: the vice principal, a worried look on his big face. Smith sometimes wondered why fancy pants were still called slacks when people like him were so darned fat that they made them look more like stockings. Maybe that would make them tights? Nah-h-h, that would be something that girls… Sorry. It would be something that women wore.
"It's the bus again!" he said as he walked into the center of this industrial-style office, glancing at the two male janitors before looking at Selena: staring at her. "It showed up at the front entrance before quickly driving away. Some of the teachers and children saw it, but it went away before too many could panic." He looked at Smith. "I thought you had the right kind of equipment to keep that from happening?"
"The truth is, we don't," answered Karl, gesturing to the device in Smith's lap. "We do what we can…with what we have. It's not enough. We'll need a bigger janitorial budget and for the police to convince Animal Control to give us more support."
"Are you serious?" asked the principal, looking around. "It took years to convince the Animal Control people to trust us with what they've given you already. And what they don't give you, it had costs an awful lot to have the university build for you. If we did give you any more equipment, how could I justify it to everyone on my staff? It's bad enough that we're close to having to cut the budget."
"Why don't you try cutting those huge salaries of yours?" asked Karl. "You, the principal… All the administrators already make six times the money that teachers do: and you're all rich! If you took a pay cut as so you only made twice as much as teachers or even us, then we'd be able to pay for equipment improvements and supplies that would keep things like that from happening all the time. Isn't it bad enough that animals are starting to show up during the daytime, when there are lots of children? They haven't attacked a child yet, but they just might one of these days."
"I'll bring it up at the upcoming Board meeting," said the vice principal to Karl, his eyes lingering on Selena. "But right now, I want you to do your job. Who else is going to keep the school safe? I can't call the police to deal with certain kinds of problems." He finally stopped staring at Selena and turned to look at Karl. "What if I told the police that you were causing problems? Since you and the police just love to cooperate in dealing with the town's legendary problems, they'll be glad to agree that you need some quiet time in a quiet, isolated place…"
"I see that you're a popular one, Smith," said Selena, that book she was reading now held behind her slim back. "Very well… Let us see to the maintenance of the grounds." She quickly put the book in the locker and closed it. "Come along, one and all. This will be an exquisite opportunity to present to me what you have in place to act as deterrents."