Mycenea, N.M.

Episode 10: Palavers

The knocking grows more insistent. It mirrors the steady, rat-tat thumping of your heart against the inside of your ribs. This time they'll take you. This time, you're not coming back.

Take heart, traveller.

It's that little voice again--the one from the car. Except this time you're pretty sure it's just inside your own head. A desperate, forlorn little companion, living inside your gray matter. The same gray matter that everyone says doesn't work. Wires crossed. Gremlins on the wing.

"Who is it?" says Officer Jessels. He's standing in the hall, next to the Rockwell painting. When did he get there? The ceiling light seems to bleach your brain, blind you. The panic of it... the simple knowledge that there's nothing you can do. Pull a trigger, swing a fist, it won't matter.

The secret-keepers have arrived.

"Special delivery," croaks a voice from the porch. It's a leathery, stilted voice, like someone working a bellows in the best possible imitation of human speech.

What are they? Where do they come from? Irrelevant questions. Knowledge balks, in the face of your implacable pursuers. Your guardian devils. The things wearing suits.

"And what, may I ask," says Jessels, his west-coast speech sounding slow and drawling to your Yankee ears, "are you delivering?"

A pause. It seems the creature hadn't considered this--in some corner of its alien mind, it knows humans like packages, enjoy deliveries. But it hadn't thought about actually bringing anything to see the bluff through.

"Birthday present," it gurgles, and knocks again.

The cop glances at you. There's fear in his wide, wet eyes. Whatever he can see through the porch screen door, it's nothing pleasant. "I'll be right with you," he says, and stage-walks back into the kitchen.

"We've gotta go," he says, pulling the revolver at his side and checking the chambers. It's a fat, silver .44 with a scuffed barrel and the name MYRA scratched onto the trigger guard. You don't know who Myra is, and at the moment, you don't particularly care.

You sign at him, THEY FOLLOW. EVERYWHERE.

He tracks your hands with his eyes, and nods. "Not where you're going." He jerks his head at the back door. "Out back there's a pickup. Nearly rusted out, but the gas tank's full and the wheels turn. Here." He fishes a pair of keys out of his pocket. "You'll want to take the back roads out of town--towards the mountains."

You nod, but sign at him--WHY?

"There's a motel there. Bo Crusty's Motel. Just..." He swallows. "Most people in Mycenea are strange, but not bad. Bo, he's both. Don't sleep in the beds--and get your answers out of him. Somehow."

The hallway door creaks. It seems once again the not-men have lost their patience--lost their childlike ability to ape the rules of your world. You feel your stomach flip, and scramble for the backdoor. Whatever they've sent... whatever they built or engineered to come and find you, you don't want to see it. More importantly, you don't want it to see you.

The eyes. It's the eyes that are the worst--they can imitate many details but they can't do the eyes right. White orbs, red bulging sacks of meat or just sockets, empty sockets sometimes behind those dark sunglasses. But when they glow... when the spotlights from the other side come on, and the thing fixes you with its gaze, and you understand how small you are in the face of this endless, avenging force...

It's the worst feeling in the universe. Because try as you might, you can't look away.

And while you're frozen, trying to scream?

That's when they take pieces of you. Bit by bit.

Until there's nothing left.

The back door thumps in your wake as you skitter towards the pickup truck. It's older than the cruiser, which is pretty impressive, but after a few twists of the key the engine turns over. Roars to life. And carries you slowly, ponderously out of the backyard and onto the dusty road. Moving again--always moving, like a hobo without a sack or a train track to follow. Roads with no destinations.

Through the kitchen window see two silhoettes. One, the cop, his stout frame blocking the back door. And the second, the lumpen thing in the shape of a man, its broad-brimmed hat still on even while inside. No manners on those things... no manners at all.

As you roll into the dark, sans headlights and sans courage, a shot hammers out from the officer's kitchen.

You step on the gas.