The man was short and round, with a faint sunburn on the top of his bald head. His coat still looked far too warm for June. It was long, almost dragging the floor, and an absurdly bright red. It was smooth and shiny, like leather, though worn and scuffed in places, with multiple pockets on both breasts and at both hips. By itself, it was ugly and completely out of season, but this man had enhanced the look with a khaki-colored belt with two pouches hanging from it, one on each side. He also appeared to be wearing some kind of jacket underneath the coat. A hood, several shades darker than the coat, and made of fleece, rather than leather, hung at the back of his neck. It, in combination with the belt, made the coat look more like a robe. His bald head completed the monk look, and all the pockets and pouches, along with the peculiar glasses he was wearing, made him look like a dorky steampunk cosplayer at a comic book convention.
The glasses themselves seemed to be a pair of small-lensed bifocals with the left eyepiece broken and replaced with a narrow shard of blue-tinted glass held in place with wire and solder. The eyes behind these spectacles were small, beady and suspicious. And they were looking right at him.
Surprised by the strange man’s abrupt appearance, Eric took a step back.
Steampunk Monk was holding a strange gadget in his hand. It looked like a simple, black box, with some kind of gauge on the top. He looked down at this device, studied it for a moment, then grunted and looked back up at him. “So you must be it.”
“Must I?” was all Eric could think to say.
He turned and began walking around, holding up his strange, little device, watching it. There didn’t appear to be any way to read it. There were no measurements. It was just a long, thin needle sticking up in the air, wavering left and right. An electromagnetic field detector of some sort? Like the ones they used on those ghost hunting shows? But homemade?
He stopped in front of a large painting of a tranquil pond. It was a beautiful image. Shades of swirling blue dotted with pink lily pads, surrounded by green and yellow grass under a full moon sky. But Eric was fairly sure there wasn’t a wall in his entire house that was big enough for it to hang on.
Rippling Pond was the title printed on the nameplate beneath it. Simple. To the point.
He looked up at the painting for a moment, as if admiring it, then turned and faced Eric again. “Why are you collecting psychic energy?”
This caught him by surprise. “I’m doing what now?”
The man stared at him, studying him.
Eric stared back. Particularly, he stared at those glasses, at the strange shard of glass that made up the left lens, the curious blue tint… He’d seen a shard like that before… Not the same shard. This one was longer and skinnier, triangular. But it was the very same color.
Steampunk Monk realized what he was staring at. He snatched the spectacles off his face and looked at them. Then he looked at Eric, a suspicious squint in his eyes. “Who are you?” he asked as he slipped them into one of his many pockets and replaced them with an ordinary pair of modern bifocals.
“Me?” asked Eric. “Nobody really.”
“You’re nobody,” he said, doubtful.
“Just an ordinary art lover.”
“An ordinary art lover.”
“Yep.”
“Who just happens to be storing psychic energy.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
He kept looking at him with those squinty, mistrusting eyes. For such a funny-looking little man, he didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.
“Just who are you?” demanded Eric. “What are you doing here? What’s with all the questions?”
Steampunk Monk gave him a rather obnoxious-looking smirk. “I’m just another ordinary art lover. Like you.”
“Right…” said Eric.
For a moment, the two of them stood facing each other, measuring each other up.
“You’ve seen things,” said Steampunk Monk. “Things that shouldn’t be.”
Eric took a step back, surprised. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.
“You’ve seen lots of things. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve walked outside the boundaries of this world. More than once, I’d say.”
“You’re still not making any sense,” he lied.
But the man in the strange, red costume ignored him. “I’d be very interested in talking about that.”
“If you’re asking me out on a date, I’m flattered, but I’m totally taken.”
He didn’t seem amused. He reached into one of his many pockets and withdrew a small squirt bottle filled with a clear, cloudy liquid.
“What’s that?” asked Eric, wary.
Later, it would occur to him that asking a man who was clearly either a lunatic or a villain what the mysterious object was that he’d just removed from his pocket was not nearly as intelligent as simply getting the hell out of range of said object. Because instead of explaining it to him, the strange man squirted it at him.
He didn’t have time to dodge it. All he managed to do was stumble backward a couple steps. The jet of liquid hit him square in the chest and immediately he was enveloped in a foul cloud of pungent fumes.
He coughed and choked. It burned his sinuses. It stung his eyes. It tasted like strong alcohol and rotten tomatoes. It numbed his tongue.
When he finally managed to look up at the steampunk monk again, he didn’t look quite so ridiculous anymore. In fact, he looked downright terrifying in his slick, blood-red coat with all its pockets and pouches.
Even more bewildering was that, behind the man, the Rippling Pond had come to life. It was literally rippling. The water was gently flowing. The lily pads were drifting back and forth in the breeze. There were clouds sailing across the sky and the grass was waving back and forth.
As he watched, mesmerized by the sight, Steampunk Monk took a step backward and vanished into the painting, swallowed by the blue swirls of the pond. Which was weird, of course, because that was only a painting. It wasn’t really a pond. Although you might be able to buy a real pond for the price of that painting…
He turned away and tried to clear his head. Everything was all wrong. Nothing made sense. To his right was a sandy beach and an endless ocean. He could hear the waves and taste the salty air. But when he turned to his left, he was in a vast meadow. He could feel the breeze and smell the wildflowers.
No. These were only paintings. Fine artwork by Julian Berchey. He remembered looking at them just a moment ago. He admired the beach. He liked the calming meadow. But his thoughts were obscured. A great cloud had descended upon his mind, strangling his thoughts.
He closed his eyes and tried to focus. What was in that squirt bottle? What was it doing to him?
He stumbled forward and opened his eyes again. Inexplicably, he was suddenly standing on a train track. A locomotive was barreling toward him. Its whistle blared. He dived out of the way just as it roared past him.
Paintings. They were only paintings.
But as he rose to his feet, he found himself in a dreary forest.
No… Only a painting of a forest…
But a painting was only a painting. It wasn’t everywhere. He was surrounded by forest. Everywhere he looked was trees. Even when he looked straight up, all he saw was branches.
(It’s all in your head…)
What was that? A noise? A snapping branch? Something else in the woods with him?
(There are no woods… It’s all in your head…)
Something was out there. Something was stalking him. Like in the woods at Hedge Lake. Something vile. Something dangerous.
He had to get out of there.
He turned around, searching, and spotted a door.
He didn’t care that forests weren’t supposed to have doors. That didn’t matter. All that mattered now was getting to that door. Because a door always led somewhere else. Even a door in a forest that shouldn’t be here.
He was surrounded. Strange creatures were converging on him, stalking him.
He ran for the door.
The forest gave way to a frozen field. The icy wind hit him in the face, stinging his skin, chilling him to the bone.
If he didn’t get to that door soon, he was going to freeze to death. Which was weird, being that it was June. Somewhere, deep down, he knew it wasn’t logical. But here, on the surface, where his thoughts were muddled, all he could see and feel was snow and ice. All he could hear was the howling wind. He shivered. His teeth chattered. His fingers and toes felt numb.
But the door was still there. Somehow, against all odds, he reached it. He ran through it.
On the other side was a vast, industrial labyrinth, filled with enormous machines that rumbled and shook and moved like agitated steel giants.
If he wasn’t careful, he’d be crushed by the enormous gears…
This wasn’t real. There was no industrial labyrinth. He was only thinking about those giant gears out front. He was projecting the things he’d seen onto his surroundings. He was inside the art gallery, probably making a fool out of himself right now.
Yet even as he thought this, he realized that he was running. He was fleeing blindly through corridors of the labyrinth, fleeing from something that was behind him, something that was dangerously close to catching him.
The whole world seemed to have become this vast machine, as if he’d suddenly been transported to a hellish, post-apocalyptic future. The very sky was black, and something was moving up there, something enormous and infinitely terrifying, a titan of metal flesh and pneumatic blood.
No… Not one… Many… Hundreds… Legions…
He followed a path between a river of toxic, bubbling waste and a wall of scrap metal until it took him to the mouth of a black cave. He’d be safe from the titans in there. They wouldn’t be able to reach him. But even as he ran inside, he realized that he now had to worry about other things. Little things.
They scurried around his feet. They nipped at his heels.
One of them bit the back of his hand. There was pain. He was bleeding.
He was suddenly convinced that he’d been poisoned. It would course through his bloodstream burning him from the inside out, shutting down his organs, paralyzing him.
Distracted, he tripped and fell. They were on him instantly. They were going to eat him alive!
He covered his head with his hands and curled himself into a ball on the ground.
But nothing was there.
He was alone.
He opened his eyes and cautiously looked around. This wasn’t a cave. Nor was it an industrial labyrinth.
It was a cornfield. The sky was blue, not black. There were no titans towering overhead. There were no tiny terrors snapping at his feet.
Slowly, he sat up. His head was killing him. He looked down at his injured hand. That was real. His hand was bleeding. But it wasn’t a bite mark. There weren’t any monsters in that dark cave because there were no dark caves in a corn field. He’d caught it on something. A barbwire fence, perhaps? A rusty gate.
He hoped he wasn’t overdue for a tetanus shot.
Wait…
He looked around at the towering stalks. How did he get into a cornfield? He was in the middle of Creek Bend, at Berchey’s Aberration Station.
Something moved in the corn, jarring him from his thoughts. He scrambled to his feet and scanned the area around him. The corn was too tall to see over. He could see nothing but green, leafy stalks. A strange sense of déjà vu flowed over him. He’d been here before…
Something moved behind him.
He turned.
Nothing.
He crept forward, peering between the stalks.
It was too quiet out here.
Was that a footstep behind him?
He turned and saw it there. Impossibly tall, green like the corn stalks. It had a great mass of insect-like eyes on the muscular bulge that was its head. Its mouth was a gaping, tooth-lined gash that ran all the way to its belly.
It was a corn creep.
And where there was one, there was a pack.
He did the only thing he could do: He ran.