Isaac cocked his head strangely.
The action reminded Doc Martin of a curious puppy hearing a strange noise for the very first time.
“Isaac,” she said again. “Isaac, are you still there?”
He remained silent, and Doc Martin couldn’t help but turn around to check on the still-swaying mass of life behind her. She could swear that she felt every single right eye of the snakelike abomination staring at her.
Waiting—for some yet-to-be-given command.
Isaac was still staring at her with his two horrible eyes. The fact that he hadn’t yet attacked her gave her some hope that maybe the young man that she knew was still in there somewhere.
“Isaac, can you tell me what happened?” she asked.
Again he cocked his head, and she watched as his mouth started to move and his hands twitched at his sides.
Doc Martin imagined the inside of the young man’s skull; the strange alien growth having formed alongside and connecting to the brain, tendrils flowing down to enshroud the eyes.
Change the eyes . . .
She remembered the right eyes of some of the animals she’d examined at the hospital. They were like the aperture of a lens—like looking into a camera.
Was that what Isaac’s eyes had become, she wondered. Cameras looking at our world in service of the force that was trying to invade?
She found herself moving toward the youth.
Isaac went rigid at her approach, stepping quickly back. The mass of life looming behind her surged forward as if sensing a threat.
Her hands instinctively went up, and she stepped back a few inches.
The mass moved back as well.
Doc Martin could feel Isaac’s altered gaze upon her, and, as much as it freaked her out to do so, she looked into the silvery orbs, imagining what might be looking back.
“What am I talking to?” she asked, the young man’s head again moving oddly from side to side, his mouth moving like he was attempting to speak.
Learning to speak?
The thought chilled her to the core.
“I . . . I’m not talking to Isaac . . . am I?” she said, feeling both stupid and terrified.
Isaac—or whatever it was—studied her face, her mouth, her lips, leaning in toward her, close enough that she could see the organic mechanism of the eyes moving as they attempted to focus.
Doc Martin had no idea what to do. She was completely at the mercy of the events unfolding in front of her and felt her anger begin to grow again, fed by a nearly overwhelming anxiety.
“What the hell is going on?” she blurted out, the words bubbling up and out of her like lava. “What do you want?”
Isaac’s head snapped back, as if sensing her hostility. She quickly glanced at the snakelike organism that continued to stand guard behind her.
But it just swayed ever so gently. She looked back to Isaac, waiting for something . . . anything . . . to happen. It was excruciating.
Finally, without a word, Isaac simply turned away from her and walked swiftly up the road. She watched him, noticing his movements. There was no doubt he was being controlled by something, and it was growing accustomed to the body it was using.
Should I follow? Or should I just stand here like an idiot, terrified out of my freaking mind?
She glanced back at the snake of animal life still swaying behind her and took a step toward where Isaac had gone. The snake did not move. She took another step, and still there was no outward sign of aggression. Taking a deep breath, she followed Isaac up the road.
There was a slight incline to the dirt road, and she felt the muscles and tendons in her legs straining with exertion as she came over the rise, exiting from the path to a wide open area with a spectacular view of the Atlantic from the cliffs beyond it.
She’d never been to this part of the island, there really had never been a need, but she remembered a town meeting. She’d been there to do her yearly pitch for vaccinations and spaying and neutering, but recalled that there had been a proposal submitted by one of the larger telecommunication companies about putting a cell tower on one of the island’s high points.
There had been some grumblings, she vaguely remembered, but not too long ago she heard that it had gone through. The tower was going to be built.
And from what she saw, it had been.
She watched Isaac’s back as he walked across the open area to where a white metal maintenance shack, surrounded by a chain-link fence, had been erected, and beside that the cell tower itself.
But something didn’t appear right. Something was odd.
Doc Martin stopped because she couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing. Around the base of the tower, snuggled up close, were these . . . things.
Her brain attempted to define them in the most normal way possible: A tarp had blown in and gotten caught against the base of the cell tower.
No, it wasn’t that.
She started to walk again, more cautiously, but the closer she got the more confused she became.
A parachute fluttering in the breeze coming in off the water? Some sort of sea foam brought up from the shore below the cliff by the wind?
Nonsense, not even close.
Isaac had reached the base of the tower and stood very close to the things. She wanted to call out to him, to tell him to get away from whatever the hell they were, but she doubted he would have listened.
No more than ten feet away now, she decided they looked like jellyfish. Pale fleshy sacks of skin with streaks of pulsating colors emanating from within.
She knew what they were likely to be now and was surprised that it took her brain that long to get there. It just went to show how one’s mind would avoid the complexities of the impossible, just to find a more plausible answer.
These things lying at the base of the cell tower were somehow connected to Isaac’s bad radio . . . they might have been the bad radio for all she knew.
They were awful-looking, and to see them this close, she instantly knew that they were not of this planet.
She saw that the tendrils of various sizes and thicknesses that originated from the strange organisms’ bodies were wrapped about the cell tower, like creeping vines moving upward, spreading out to entwine the entire structure.
Becoming part of it. Transforming something so mundane and commonplace in this day and age into something . . .
Different.
She stopped a few feet from the organisms. Isaac—or whatever it was that was in control—was just standing there, his expression blank as he stared at the alien life-forms swelling and vibrating with disturbing life.
“Why?” Doc Martin asked, not expecting an answer but feeling the need to ask.
Isaac’s head slowly swiveled to look in her direction.
She looked at him, the silvery eyes in his head still incredibly disturbing to look at. She then pointed to the things.
“Why?” she asked again. “What is this for . . . what’s its purpose?”
Isaac’s eyes just seemed to stare through her, the lenslike quality of the orbs moving in and out as if attempting to focus on her—on her question.
She didn’t think that he understood, but she was wrong.
“The beginning . . . ,” Isaac said, his voice sounding strange, a vibrating quality making it sound as though he were speaking through the blades of a spinning fan.
“The beginning,” Doc Martin repeated. “The beginning of what?”
And he told her, the finality of the words chilling her blood to ice.
“Of the end.”