To all outward appearances Cody was his normal self again the next morning. He did not bring up the events of the night before, and Kelli, clearly relieved, chose not to either. Perhaps she thought he would forget all about the inanity of inimical forces that resided in innocuous bonsai trees. Perhaps she thought he had done so already, now that some of the shock of his colleague’s unexpected passing had faded a little. In any event, she spoke only of ordinary, everyday inconsequentialties as they joined the flow of traffic that led toward the university.
She was delighted that he no longer would be working late, though out of consideration for the deceased chemist she concealed that much of her feelings. Not unexpectedly, the campus paper headlined the incident. Watching her husband surreptitiously for any hint of retrogression as he perused the article over coffee and Danish in the faculty cafeteria, she was gratified to see that he hardly reacted at all. They parted with smiles.
Cody watched her go. Smiling he was, but also worried to death. He, and only he, knew that unimaginable horrors lurked throughout the campus as well as in the world outside. If he brought the subject up again without having incontrovertible proof of what he had seen, she would surely follow through on her threat to demand professional therapy for him. Her good and loving intentions would only cause him more distress. He had to find another chemist to work with, preferably off-campus. The potion had to be remade so that she could sample it for herself. It was the only way he knew to incontestably prove to her the truth of his assertions.
It meant that he could not yell at her to take care. Insist that she avoid touching any tree, or bush, or flower, that she keep to the concrete walkways and avoid the grass, that she not make contact with wood or stone, and she might be tempted, out of love of course, to send more than verbal therapy winging his way. Sedated, he would not be able to pursue his studies. Worse, it would make him an easy target for the same forces that had destroyed Harry Keeler.
He headed for his first class, careful to avoid touching anything growing, taking an extra couple of minutes so he could avoid the decorative flagstone walkway that led to the building’s main entrance. Concrete was safe, evidently too extensively blended an amalgam of ingredients to provide a comfortable home for the repulsive beings he had seen.
It was a bright, beautiful winter morning, comfortably cool while most of the rest of the country was freezing. He would have relished it, luxuriated in it, acknowledging the smiles and waves of students and faculty he knew, if not for one thing. He could still see that which he could not put a name to.
They were not everywhere, but neither were they uncommon. As he proceeded toward his teaching assignment like a scout making his way through enemy territory, he observed the creatures as closely as he dared, studying and learning. There was nothing else he could do. And while he beheld them, he was acutely conscious of the fact that they, in turn, were watching him. With malice in mind. Well, let them glower, whatever they were. He had yet to encounter one that was capable of leaving its lair, and he would be careful not to give the least of them any opportunity to slip a hook, sucker, tentacle, or probe into his flesh.
Others, strolling blind and innocent on a clear, cool desert morning, were not so fortunate.
It was agony to be able to witness their activities and not do anything about them. Were they immortal, with their twisting, curling little malevolent probes? Or after penetrating and entering a human host, did they perish when the human died? If they were not everlasting, then unless they were a recently arrived phenomena, that meant they had to reproduce and multiply somehow. Unless they were incredibly long-lived, the latter must be the case, because their history stretched back at least as far as the Chachapoyan culture.
What must have been the reaction, he wondered, of the Chachapoyan shaman who had first concocted and then partaken of the potion that enabled a human to see otherwise invisible, undetectable monstrosities? He must have been an astonishing individual indeed not to have gone mad on the spot. Or perhaps it was not so very remarkable. Ancient peoples were closer to the inexplicable, to the spirit world, to phenomena that contemporary man dismissed as imaginary when he was unable to reduce to the coldness of a mathematical formula what he had experienced but could not explain. Cody wished he could have known that long-dead, perceptive, and incalculably brave avatar.
Now the knowledge had been passed down to him, and a large part of him wished circumstances had decreed otherwise.
Would the effects of the potion ever wear off, or had ingesting it permanently altered his perception? Certainly his new vision was, if anything, sharper than ever today. Drifting restlessly toward his first lecture, he watched tendrils and tentacles, appendages and creepers sprout from landscaping boulders and barrel cacti, from small shade trees and the granite-faced walls of the physics building. Tenacious pebbles put forth tiny feelers while dozens of identical small stones remained unpolluted by inimical protrusions. The same was true of growing things. A cluster of dangerous-looking prickly-pear thrust only flat green, thorn-laden pads sunward, while a shaded rose bush lush with pink blossoms was lined with small, snapping gray mouths like fanged oysters. Even the little stream that ran through the campus pushed questing, intangible stingers upward, ethereal snags that weaved lazily back and forth in the current of a raging incorporeal river.
Much as he might want to, if only for sanity’s sake, he could not keep from making observations and drawing conclusions. His scientific training would not let him do otherwise, would not let him conveniently ignore the inimical phenomena all around him. The preliminary theory that had been percolating in his brain ever since he’d perceived the first of the apparitions drew supporting evidence from each new, unsettling encounter.
The creatures abided only in natural objects. That much was clear. Decorative rocks regardless of size, composition, or shape; plants ranging from small old-woman cacti to bordering oleander to tall shade trees; the stream that ran into the nearby Salt River, and any insignificantly altered derivatives thereof seemed to provide suitable shelter for them. Not one synthetic or rigorously blended material put forth questing, probing feelers. Anything made of refined metal or plastic was notably sterile. A wooden beam or panel might harbor its clandestine anomaly, but a pile of sawdust would not. He still wasn’t comfortable with wallboard or pressboard, or even plywood with its multiple laminated layers.
Could the creatures travel from one habitation to another? So far he had seen no evidence of that. He felt a little better. If they were restricted to their own exclusive stone or tree or watercourse, it suggested that uncorrupted objects such as furniture that did not already harbor something malicious within their wooden superstructure would be safe to sit or lie upon.
As he walked, he passed a sea of translucent, wormlike creepers writhing and convulsing from beneath a lawn in the strengthening light of morning. Having always thought that nightmares properly belonged to the night, it was stomach-churning to see them active and alert by day. None of the sightless, insouciant students, workers, or teachers he encountered reacted when they passed within reach of and through the ocean of unfriendly probes. But if actual, physical contact was made . . .
A girl of about twenty sat down on a flat-topped whitish boulder in the shade of the library annex. When he saw what was about to happen, Cody prepared to give a warning shout. What he would have shouted, what words he could possibly have employed, remained a matter for personal conjecture, since he was too late.
What looked like a pair of greenish, disembodied, broken-jointed hands emerged from either side of the boulder, grasped the girl around the waist, and vanished into her flanks. Simultaneously aghast and fascinated, Cody stopped to observe. For several moments following the incursion, nothing happened. The student set her books down next to the rock, opened a large, hand-embroidered bag that hailed from somewhere in Central America, and pulled out a text. Opening it on her lap, she began to read. Aware that he had halted and was now blocking the intermittent flow of student traffic, Cody moved off to one side—careful to remain on the concrete sidewalk and avoid the nearby lawn.
Several minutes more passed. Abruptly, the expression on the girl’s face warped. Putting one hand to her belly, she just managed to turn away from where she had set down her purse before she threw up in a succession of violent heaves. Several other students rushed to see if they could help.
Was that the end of it? Cody wondered. What would happen now? Would she continue to throw up all day, or all week? As her friends steadied her next to the rock, something crawled out of her left thigh. None of them saw it, none reacted to its emergence. Only Coshocton Westcott was so cursed.
Looking like a wad of discarded, colorless jelly, the lump lay quivering on the ground. One anxious, oblivious student stepped directly on and through it. The imperceptible obscenity continued to lie where it had burst forth into the world. And then it came apart, splitting into half a dozen smaller redactions of itself. Humping off in different directions, one by one they vanished into, and presumably took up residence within, an equal number of untenanted rocks. The concerned students continued to attend to the sick girl, who was recovering rapidly.
Despite the intensifying heat of the sun, Cody felt a deep chill. The answer to one of the innumerable questions that had begun to torment him had just been answered: The creatures were indeed capable of, and probably reliant upon, a form of reproduction.
But what did they get from their human hosts? The girl was smiling now, albeit wanly. She had not lost weight and was suffering no further visible ill effects. All of the discomfort, however fleeting, had been internal. Even if Cody had enjoyed access to the training and equipment necessary to begin testing her, or any other victim of the unnamed organisms, he would hardly have known where to begin. He resumed walking toward the General Sciences building and the lecture hall he would be using for his first class.
Rather than being an isolated incident, the encounter with the girl was only one of many he observed that day. A young couple, married graduate students from the look of them, were leaning up against a rock wall when a dozen or more thin, glistening ropes emerged from the bare stone. One by one they slithered into various parts of both unsuspecting, unreacting young bodies, entering via ear and arm, buttock or ankle. As soon as the last of them had taken up residence within the host pair, the man and woman fell to arguing. Softly at first, then with vehemence. Soon both were gesticulating angrily. The woman slapped her partner, hard, catching him square across the face. Responding, he reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders and began to shake her violently. Noticing that others were now turning in the direction of the altercation, they stepped back from one another and strode off, still arguing furiously, spewing insults and imprecations they were likely to regret later—when it would be too late to take them back.
From their shoulders and ribs, thighs and feet, intangible tentacles coiled outward. They were swelling, even as a horrified, stunned Cody watched, engorging themselves with whatever it was they were taking from their combative, belligerent, abstracted hosts. The louder and more public the argument became, the greater the bloat of the invisible parasites.
What were they feeding on? Cody brooded. Not blood, not flesh. That much was apparent. What then? Some sort of invisible fluid that humans were entirely unaware of? Violent psychic emanations? A soupcon of the electrical impulses that raced through specific portions of the brain when it was adversely stimulated? What was the connection between the unfortunate girl who had suddenly and violently heaved her guts and this abruptly bellicose couple? Were chosen, unwary hosts only temporarily impaired or did some kind of imperceptible permanent damage result? If he had any hope of descrying the answers to such questions, in addition to a chemist he would now need the help of a physiologist, a couple of doctors, and maybe a psychic or two. For the moment, though, every gathering mystery devolved solely upon him. He was the one, the only one among thousands, perhaps millions, who could See.
Sitting on a lawn, indifferent to the tiny malicious cilia that were probing his backside and legs, a gardener on break was eating an apple. Suddenly he threw down the half-eaten fruit and climbed to his feet. Hands jammed in pockets, he stomped off toward the main maintenance area, his expression drawn, his lips working as he spoke only to himself. Like glistening grains of rice, a handful of lawn cilia had penetrated his clothing. What would be their effect on their new host? Cody mused. A snappish attitude toward friends and co-workers, a long-term headache, or worse?
How deeply could the rarefied organisms affect people? Could they induce road rage in susceptible drivers? What about inspiring someone to commit robbery, or persist in child-beating, or attempt suicide? Was there a particular variety of the parasitoids potent enough to persuade one human to murder another? Or conversely, to offer up a victim? If a host died, did the parasite within derive pleasure, or some perverse kind of nourishment from the experience? He could see, but he was observing the organisms from a state of near-total ignorance, and the subjects of his scrutiny did not lend themselves to detailed examination under controlled laboratory conditions. From the standpoint of a would-be researcher into the vicious, malevolent phenomena, he was virtually helpless.
If he could not manipulate his surroundings for purposes of study, could he perhaps affect events? That, at least, was something he could test. He was determined to do so, even if it exposed him to additional danger. Standing idly by, watching quietly and doing nothing while knowing he was the only sighted individual in the country of the blind, was driving him crazy. If he could not dissect, could not measure, could not record, then maybe he could at least interfere.
The opportunity to do so presented itself following his last afternoon class, as he was on his way to the library to check out a tome needed for the paper he was ostensibly preparing to submit to Archaeology News and Reviews. He did not have to meet Kelli for the drive home for another couple of hours yet. She still had an undergraduate class and a follow-up seminar to teach.
The man with the van was unloading cases of canned soda, undoubtedly to stock one of the ubiquitous, coin-operated vending machines that populated the campus. Wheeling his hand truck like a skilled dancer leading his partner, he paused a moment outside a building to wipe sweat from his brow. Standing behind the hand truck, handkerchief in hand, he noticed the bed of blooming pansies nestled up against the walkway, and bent to examine them. Maybe he was drawn by their fragrance, or maybe he just liked flowers. He could not see and had no way of knowing that something brooding deep within the colorful blossoms was about to take a malicious liking to him.
Divining what was about to happen, Cody changed course and rushed toward the delivery man, shouting as he ran. Fingertips pausing a few inches from the pansies, the campus visitor looked up and straightened. Beneath his hands, a pellucid set of multiple jaws strained impotently.
“Something I can do for you?” The almost-victim’s tone was curious, but not agitated.
Breathing hard, Cody slowed to a halt, careful to keep his feet away from the flower bed. “Ummm-no, nothing. I thought you were someone else. Sorry.” He indicated the building. “Delivering’s easier this time of year, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, summer’s a bitch.” Flowers forgotten, the visitor gripped the handles of the hand truck, pressed them down to a comfortable angle for walking, then pushed up the access ramp and into the building.
Had he saved the man a headache? Cody wondered. Or perhaps prevented a fatal auto accident later in the day? How much of common human misery could be attributed to the chancre of invisible, malignant, ever hungry, invisible monstrosities that only he could see? The responsibility for thwarting them, for interfering with their infectious activities, was overwhelming. It was far too much for one individual, especially one as ignorant as Cody felt himself to be. And no one would believe him, would understand what he was doing or why. No one, except perhaps, one day soon, his wife. If he was fortunate, and if he could somehow come up with proof of what he was seeing.
It would take time, he knew. Kelli was not the kind of person to be easily persuaded of the unthinkable. But he would convince her, somehow. He would have to. Otherwise, as witness to his eccentric behavior, she might from the best of intentions have him locked up. He could not allow that to happen. Not when he was the only one who could See. Not when he was the only one who could help.
It felt good to have saved the nameless delivery man from infection. With luck, before the day was done he would be able to perform the same good deed for a few others. None would ever know that their lives had been affected. None would realize that a stranger had saved them from physical or mental distress, or worse. But he would know. He would know, and that would be satisfaction enough.
The creatures would know, too, he realized. Could they do anything about it? He had yet to encounter any evidence that they could affect or influence a human without benefit of direct physical contact. So he would be very careful where he stepped and what he touched, and gauge his life according to his new knowledge. He would continue to study them, and learn about them, and with luck, he would find a way to frustrate them on an ever-increasing scale. The weight of his new obligation was one he accepted without real enthusiasm, and then only because morally he felt he had no choice.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent in effecting minor salvations. He was convinced he personally prevented at least two auto accidents; one minor, the other with the potential to result in serious injury or even death. In both instances an assortment of spectacularly hideous alien apparitions visible and audible only to his chemically altered perception fumed powerlessly at him, threatening with tentacles and teeth, with razor-edged suckers and wet, unclean fumy lips. He found that he could swing a hand through them with little effect, as if he were swatting at soap bubbles, so long as he did not make contact with their assorted abodes. At such moments disgusting protuberances beckoned him closer, inviting the contact he prudently refused. Even at a distance of half an inch, they were powerless to affect him. Make contact with their stable habitats, however, and he knew he would be instantly infected.
Unlike Kelli, he had no classes scheduled that afternoon. Instead of retiring to his cramped, paper-filled office to peruse student assignments or work on his professional papers, curiosity took him off-campus. Even though the fall semester was in full cry, the main drag of Mill Avenue was aswarm with students and wannabes. The used bookstores were busy, the multitude of trendy coffee shops and juice bars and small restaurants frenetic, the theme stores alive with shoppers, browsers, and unobtrusive security staff.
Many of the larger stores, both new and old, were made of brick, with concrete or carpeted floors that lay flush against cement sidewalks. Visitors to such establishments were safe from the depredations of the creatures. One small bagel and coffee shop whose floor was laid with decorative slate was not so secure. Blurred cilia and indistinct spikes thrust upward, probing for visiting victims. For the endemic monstrosities it was a veritable feeding ground.
Most of the decorative trees that lined the street were uninhabited, but some put forth branches and shoots that were not part of the tree itself. Everywhere across the country, Cody mused, one city after another was adding the same kind of elaborate landscaping to otherwise sterile downtown areas. He found himself wondering how much of that was due to an honest human desire to be surrounded by greenery, and how much might have been influenced by the creatures in order to provide themselves with places to live in the middle of an otherwise inhospitable artificial urban environment.
A fresh-faced young girl, probably no more than a sophomore, was preparing to chain her bike to a small sidewalk tree. From within its trunk, long, thin ropelike structures glimmering with slime emerged to reach for her. Hurrying forward, Cody put a hand on her shoulder just in time to prevent her from wrapping the chain around and making contact with the slender trunk.
“Hey, watch it!” Startled, she swung her own arm, casting off his grip. Invisible to her but all too tangible to the archaeologist, anxious threads thrashed the still air.
“Sorry.” Cody raised both palms toward her in a pacifying gesture. “I’m Professor Westcott, from the archaeology department.” He nodded in the direction of the steel grate that was bolted to the sidewalk outside the nearest store. “You’re supposed to use the bike racks.”
“Yeah, okay.” Irritated, she swung the bike around and wheeled it toward the rack. “You don’t have to get touchy-feely about it.”
What had he saved her from? he wondered as he watched her padlock the security chain to bike and rack. A bad menstrual period? Temporary mental breakdown? Riding her bike into the path of an oncoming bus? Taking a knife to some baffled boyfriend? Turning back to the tree, he felt nothing as furious streamers of resentful, malignant plasm flailed at his face. Unless he touched the tree, they could do nothing. A pair of tiny, pupilless eyes popped out of the trunk and slid along the length of one pseudopod until they hung from the very end, gazing at him. Feeling quite invulnerable, he met the malevolent stare evenly.
“You can’t touch me, can you? You can’t do a damn thing unless I make contact. For all your ability to influence others, you can’t lay a single one of your repulsive little tendrils on me. You can’t—”
Something struck him in the back, between his shoulders. As he lurched forward, the bundle of ropelike structures emanating from the tree parted to receive him. Only by twisting violently and throwing himself to the side did he just barely succeed in stumbling past the tree instead of slamming into it, and into that which dwelled within.
Eyes wide, fear accelerating his heartbeat, he regained his footing and turned, to find himself gazing into the face of an equally frightened young man. He wore thick-lensed glasses and shouldered a book-laden backpack.
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, mister! You okay?”
“Yeah.” Regaining his composure, Cody ignored the straining, imperceptible appendages that were ineffectively stroking his shirt.
“I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Smiling hesitantly, uncertain if his apology was sufficient, the student hurried off up the street and disappeared into the crowd.
Cody stepped away from the possessed tree. He had been standing there, too close really, contemplating the awfulness of the would-be parasite within the wood, and the preoccupied kid had walked into him. An accident. Or—was it? He wanted to confront the young man, to ask him some pointed questions, but he was already lost to sight, swallowed up by the milling throng on Mill Avenue. Sure it was an accident. It had to be.
He took his revenge for the near disaster by traversing the busiest portion of the street several times. By four-thirty he had lost track of how many minor and major brutal incursions he had prevented. More than he expected, less than he had feared. In every instance the creatures railed furiously at his interference. In addition to his immunity to their influence, he began to feel a sense of real accomplishment, that he was doing something tangible to help people. His intervention constituted a kind of temporary inoculation against the effects of the unnamed depravities. He was acutely aware that the creatures were conscious of his hindering, but the more often he interposed himself between them and their intended victims without suffering any untoward consequences himself, the more secure in his activities he became. It was clear that they could do nothing, and he was careful not to allow anyone else close enough to nudge or bump him into a host tree or rock.
Cody Westcott had discovered the secret of why bad things happen to good people—and the ancient instigators of those bad things were not at all happy about it.
Was it that same knowledge that had allowed the mysterious Chachapoyans to maintain their little civilization against the depredations of far more militant empires like the Chimu and the Moche? If that was the case, then how had they allowed themselves to be overcome by the Incas? Chachapoyan ruins such as Apachetarimac and Cuelap, Gran Vilaya and others showed no signs of military devastation. Instead of overwhelming the Chachapoyans’ seemingly impregnable fortresses, had the Incas simply outsmarted them? Had they somehow made use of the same secret knowledge Cody was now privy to in order to conquer not only the Chachapoyans, but every other civilization that lay between Colombia and Tierra del Fuego? If they had utilized the creatures, or been utilized by them, it would explain a great deal.
If that was the case, he ruminated as he wandered back toward the campus to rendezvous with Kelli for the ride home, then how had they eventually been overcome by Pizarro and his small party of conquistadors? Perhaps the creatures had grown bored with their contented Indian hosts and their stable empire. If they thrived in the presence of human grief, what more amenable to their dark, esoteric condition than a nice, massacre-filled war with its aftermath of slavery and oppression?
In his mind’s eye Cody saw the Spanish Inquisition pronouncing judgment on generations of poor Andean Indios as well as their own kind, serpentine tendrils and teeth and ichorous suckers fluttering from the foreheads of parasitized judges and prosecutors. He began to feel that there was more, much more, at stake in his discovery than the realization that something inimical and invisible to the mass of mankind might be responsible for migraine headaches, upset stomachs, and the occasional inexplicable auto accident.
So engrossed was he in this rapidly expanding exegesis that he almost started across the decomposed granite landscaping that fronted the main administration building by using the stepping stones arranged there. These were fashioned from natural flagstone, not a composite material, and they were waiting for him. At the last instant he moved his right leg sideways instead of forward, bringing it down on the crushed rock. It crunched harmlessly underfoot. A ten-inch wide, fanged mouth surmounted by a single feral, catlike eye appeared in the center of the stepping stone where he had nearly placed his foot. It snapped impotently at his ankles as he strode carefully past. Perhaps a fifth of the stepping stones harbored similar sinister orifices.
Too close, he told himself. Cogitate all you want, but never, ever, lose sight of the world around you lest you bump into an object that is home to something hungry and unforgiving. Once the least of the now alerted horrors got its hooks, or whatever, into him, he knew it would never let go. Gifted with a singular perception that was denied to the rest of humankind, he had become a threat to every previously ignored and discounted being that fed off the raw, ragged emotions of the planet’s dominant species. The reality of that dominance, he reflected as he made his way toward the central quad, was now something very much in doubt. If it ever had been a reality.
With a start, he realized he did not even have a name for what he was fighting.
Two weeks and a day later, he had visitors.