Brian Lumley - Psychomech 03, page 7
It was a trap, but Stone fell into it anyway. 'Whose fucking dream was it?' he snapped.
Gorvitch nodded knowingly. 'It's very important to you, isn't it? Very well, go on. I'm sorry I needled you.'
Stone fought down his anger, his impatience. 'Well, that was the first dream,' he said after a moment. 'Nothing much happened, it didn't frighten me.'
'But the next one did?'
'Not much, only the setting. We were in a graveyard, and-'
'We?'
Stone sighed. 'My mother, Richard Garrison, and me.'
'You were physically there? You were with them?'
'I sort of ... looked on, from outside, but I felt I was with them. Anyway, we stood by a grave. There was a headstone. It had a name inscribed but I couldn't read it. The funny thing was, there was no sadness. Someone, something, was dead ... but nobody cried. That's all there was to it.'
'Nothing more? And yet it stayed in your mind. You remembered it. Are you sure that's all there was to it?'
Stone frowned, concentrated. 'The sun was warm,' he said, 'the world seemed to be okay. All the graves were well-tended and the place looked very tidy. But - ' he shrugged, 'No, that's it.'
'But there were more dreams,' Gorvitch made it a statement.
Stone nodded silently. The whisperers in his head were on the move again, sneaking up on him. An awful lot of them. They were trying to draw his attention with their as yet distant, meaningless jabbering. If he let himself listen to them it was all over, his cover blown. Rational thought would be impossible. He would be reduced to gibbering.
'The third dream,' he quickly went on, 'was sort of sad. We were in the graveyard again, but the day was overcast - like today. While we stood there a mist rolled up. My father - Richard Garrison, anyway - kissed my mother, left us standing there, turned and walked off into the mist. He turned and waved, once. Then he was gone. His golden glow was swallowed up. I knew he was gone for good. My mother knew, too, but she wasn't sad. And she wasn't frightened any more. She looked sort of dazed, but not sad or frightened. Then she turned up the collar of her coat, turned from the grave and walked to the gates of the graveyard. The gates were of wrought iron with spikes. The perimeter was of spiked iron railings mounted on a low brick wall. The mist rolled like a sullen, shallow ocean, knee-deep and opaque. At the gates, someone was waiting for her . . .'
'Yes?'
'It was my ... father? It was Phillip Stone.'
'I see,' said Gorvitch. 'And you were there?'
'I seemed to be, but... he didn't see me. They walked away together.'
'Hmm! I shall give all this a lot of very careful thought,' the psychiatrist mused, ' - when I have the time. Meanwhile -'
'Meanwhile, there's the last dream,' Stone hurriedly interrupted. 'The last of that sequence, anyway. The dream that frightened me.'
Gorvitch nodded. 'Go on,' he said.
Their walking had taken them close to the security fence. Stone was very much aware of that tall, tight-mesh wire screen standing between himself and the freedom of the world outside. He was aware, too, of the guard in the tower, the dull glint of metal in the shadows beneath the tower's hood. He felt trapped, a rabbit caught in a cruel snare. If he couldn't suppress it, a rabbit's squeal might rise unbidden in his throat, shrill and impotent.
'I feel. . . caged,' he said. These shackles . . .'
If Gorvitch was surprised at Stone's frankness, it hardly showed. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'The Gibbering takes on very violent forms. And as we both know, it can come very quickly. There have been terrible crimes, murders. They get worse every day. Soon, perhaps, when there is trust and -'
'Soon!' Stone cut in, scowling. 'Perhaps! Trust! You're a psychiatrist - doesn't it strike you as reasonable that when you shackle a man's body you might also shackle his mind? I can't think straight trussed up like this!' In his temper he lashed out with his foot at nothing. The link between his feet was stretched to its full. He stumbled, came close to falling against the wire mesh of the fence.
'Careful!' Gorvitch harshly warned, catching his shoulder and steadying him.
Stone glanced at him questioningly, stared for a moment at the fence, then turned his eyes back to the psychiatrist and glared accusingly. 'So much for trust!' he spat the words out. 'You've had them put a current through it. The fence is electrified!'
He was right, and Gorvitch silently cursed himself for a fool. He should have ensured that their walking kept them away from the fence, which under normal circumstances would only be switched on in the event of an attempted breakout, a fire, or some other potential disaster which might cause or make necessary a hasty, mass evacuation. On this occasion he had had it done purely as a matter of
prudence, almost on afterthought. Prudent on the one hand, but imprudent on the other. It had probably lost him a lot of ground.
Now, seeing his patient's anger, he calmly advised: 'Richard, I really think it's time we were getting back. This won't do at all. I really can't have you getting yourself all worked up, you know. Come on, we'll - '
'Wait!' Stone implored, his voice almost a moan of disappointment. Wait you bastard, you bastard, you bastard! Look at me, look at me! Oh, listen to me! Heed me!
Gorvitch sighed, turned and looked at him.
Stone's pleading was silent; his eyes did it for him. Those strange, molten eyes.
'Well?' said Gorvitch.
'I ... I'm sorry,' Stone gulped out the word. 'It's just that I feel like an animal in here - in there!' he nodded towards the hospital building. 'A little longer? Please? I was telling you about my dreams.'
Gorvitch considered it. Nothing but a ruse to gain Stone a little more time out in the open, of course. The man had good as admitted that. But what harm in it? In any case, Gorvitch could not deny those eyes. They tugged at him. 'Very well,' he heard himself saying. 'But just a little longer.'
'The fourth dream, was the one that frightened me - at its end, anyway,' Stone began. 'I was alone this time, walking. I walked through the world, but it was a different world now. It was night - it always seemed to be night in that changed world. The fields were withered, the forests black and frightening. If there were people, they were hiding. When there were birds, they were carrion-eaters. The oceans were oily, sluggish, poisoned . . .' He paused, partly to draw breath, for he had been speaking very rapidly, and partly to scan the abyss of his mind for signs of invasion. The enemy army was there and he knew it, but for the moment its hordes lay low.
Vigilant, Stone told himself. Be vigilant!
'You were frightened at "what had become of your world?' Gorvitch questioned.
Stone shook his head. 'Puzzled, saddened, yes - but not really frightened. Not yet. Then I came to the graveyard.'
'Ah!' Gorvitch was keenly interested. He moved closer.
Stone shuddered. Just over the inner horizons of his mind the legions of chaos were massed as never before. Any time now they would come rushing to the attack, he knew. Out of the corner of his eyes he looked longingly beyond the tightly criss-crossed lattice of the fence . . .
'Yes?' said Gorvitch.
Stone looked at him, blinked his eyes. They were playing tricks with him: everything he saw seemed etched in monochrome. Grey sky, black tower, trees, wires of the fence - the psychiatrist's face milky, and the gaps between the trees showing a milky countryside beyond - the grass a lake of milk at his feet. A negative photograph. It was his eyes, yes . . . and it was his mind. All in his mind. The lull before the psychic storm.
Speak! he shouted inside. He's waiting for you to say something!
'I ... I went in through the leaning, rusty, spiked iron gates and clambered over the tumbled tombstones to the one grave I knew. All the other graves were rank with weeds, overgrown, their headstones shattered. Only the one grave was in half-decent order. Its plot was a neat rectangle of moist, dark earth. It stood out in the darkness, seemed to gather the starlight to it. Its headstone was gleaming white.'
Listening, Gorvitch studied his patient's eyes. Like Stone's description of his dream-father's eyes, they seemed fashioned of gold now. Golden amoebas that pulsed in his face. Fascinating^eyes. Hypnotic, almost. . .
The two men continued their slow walk, parallel with and close to the fence. The tower was much closer now, half-camouflaged by the boughs of a great pine growing on the other side. The free side. Stone glanced once more at the watchtower, the fence, the tree whose branches came close to the tower's high, hooded platform. His mind photographed the scene, memorized it. It was an option, a way, an escape route. But it had a guardian.
He shook his head, tried to clear his mind. His thinking was growing misty - and under cover of the mist, across the battleground of his sanity, an army silently advanced. Its weapon was its voice, but for now its breath was bated, even its breathing stilled in these final seconds.
'About the grave?' Gorvitch heard himself say. He stared into Stone's eyes, felt himself sucked at as by a whirlpool.
Stone felt something unfolding inside himself. A power! Words were on his lips before he could fathom their meaning: 'Show me the key,' he breathed the words in astonishment. 'The key to these shackles.'
'The grave,' said Gorvitch, reaching into a pocket of his jacket.
'Yes, the grave. I stood beside it, stared down at its dark soil. It began to rain, huge black raindrops that turned the soil to mud, the dark earth of the grave to quagmire. I stood there, soaked to the skin, waiting.'
'Waiting?' Gorvitch held up the key.
'For the undead!' Stone half-turned towards the tower, placing himself between Gorvitch and the unseen guard. He forced his hands to one side across the small of his back, offered up the manacles to Gorvitch. All the time, looking back over his shoulder, he held the psychiatrist's eyes with his own.
Gorvitch stood as if frozen.
Do it! Do it! DO IT!
Still the psychiatrist stood, immobile.
And it was then, at that precise moment, that the barbarian mind-horde chose to attack! Their weapon was unleashed! It came crashing into Stone's mind like a battering-ram; the full, unbridled, mindless multitude
Voice of The Gibbering! His defences buckled. His mind began to cave in.
'What?' said Gorvitch. 'What?' He saw the key in his. trembling hand, wondered how it had got there.
'Dr! Dr Gorvitch!' the guard called down from where he leaned over the platform's timber parapet. 'They're calling for you! It's come again, The Gibbering! I just got it from Security, through my helmet. The hospital's . . . leaping] Every single one of them is - '
'Gibbering!' Stone screamed.
Gorvitch stumbled back from him, the key still clutched in his hand.
Stone's face melted into a mad mask. His eyes were volcanic blowholes in pulsating lava. He swayed to and fro through fantastic angles, somehow remaining upright.
The guard in his tower aimed his rifle at Stone, trying to fix him in the sights.
Stop The Gibbering! Stop it, or at least deflect it! But how? How?
Stone stumbled, swayed towards the fence. He half-fell, half-threw himself against it - too late, he knew, for he was exposed now, his deception discovered. But at least this way there would be peace, a quick release from the torturing hordes who even now tore his mind out by its roots.
The fence seemed to grab at him, hugged him in electric arms. For a single instant as he vibrated, Stone's mind became crystal clear. All of his objectives stood out in stark silhouette against a background of exploding fire:
Key and manacles. Tower and tree and guard. Flight!
Then he was thrown back, hurled down.
In the tower the guard's finger tightened on the trigger of his rifle - which promptly burst into flames! Before he could think to drop it, he felt himself dragged across the parapet. Impossibly, he fell with more than the normal speed of a falling body. He crashed down across the wire fence, his torso almost severed before the mesh tore loose from its fixtures and wrapped round him in a crackling tangle of sparks. He hit the ground that way: blood and sparks and gouting flame from his rifle and uniform. The fence was down.
Gorvitch was witness to all of this, understood none of it. He saw Stone's form writhing and kicking spastically where it had been thrown. 'What?' he uselessly mouthed. And yet again 'What?'
The key was wrenched from his hand, whisked away by invisible fingers. It flew unerringly to Stone's manacles, first the wrists, then the feet. A moment later, the manacles fell away.
Gorvitch saw Stone stand up. No - he saw him stood up! - as if some giant's hand had stilled his writhing, smoothed him flat, lifted him upright through ninety degrees. The psychiatrist reached out his trembling hands towards Stone. 'No, no,' he babbled. 'Don't go! You have the answer . . .'
The guard's blazing rifle and uniform had set fire to several tufts of grass. Flames were already licking at one of the tower's legs. Smoke coiled skyward. Stone walked - no, drifted - through the smoke, across the fallen fence.
'No, no!' Gorvitch broke into a stumbling run.
Stone's body was limp. His arms and hands dangled, his feet hung downwards, skimming the burning grass with inches to spare. His body seemed unconscious or dead, but something held his head erect - and his eyes were hideously alive! Almost mechanically, his head turned; his eyes shot warning golden beams at Gorvitch, who at once stumbled to a halt.
Stone drifted out through the gap and was soon lost in smoke and trees and distance.
Gorvitch went down on his knees, his head bowed. "The answer!' he wailed.
Great blowflies, coming from nowhere, buzzed around his bowed head and tried to find a way in. Almost unconsciously, as a reflex action, he swatted at them to ward them off. They weren't there but he swatted anyway. . .
Chapter Six
The day had been a busy one at PSISAC.
Fridays usually were busy, when management and staff alike all hustled to get things tidied away and business settled in preparation for the long three-day weekend. But today had been special. The routine gossip and petty feuds of the offices and shop-floors - almost integral to the nervous system of any large industrial body or workforce -had been completely overshadowed by events of far greater magnitude, which might well have spelled disaster and utter chaos.
There had been two occurrences which at first had seemed linked, or at least to have their roots in the same dark earth, but as it later turned out this was not the case. At least, that was the verdict later passed down from head office.
The first of these had taken place in the late morning, just before lunch, and had involved storekeeper-foreman Andrew McClaren. This was the lesser of the two incidents: McClaren, a taciturn, middle-aged Scot who had been with the firm for years, had apparently suffered some sort of breakdown and been rushed off to the works Medical and First-Aid Centre.
Later in the afternoon, however, he had put in a brief appearance, pale and obviously shaken by his experience but otherwise little the worse for wear. One of PSISAC's younger executives, a firm favourite with J. C. Craig, had then driven him home in a company car. Rumours that he had suffered a mild initial attack of The Gibbering were firmly suppressed. He had been pushing himself a little too hard, that was all; his high blood-pressure was playing him up again.
While McClaren ostensibly was being dealt with at First-Aid, the second occurrence had taken place, and it had been of a far more serious nature.
Gordon Belcher, a burly young mechanic's labourer from Works Maintenance, had downed tools, shouldered the heavy body and bit of a large pneumatic drill in for repairs, and proceeded with it to PSISAC's power plant. Ignoring 'Authorized Personnel Only' signs, he had caved-in the security door at the foot of the huge circular tower which housed PSISAC's Number One converter, climbed the spiralling perimeter staircase to the monitoring area and approached the safety-rail overlooking the core and flux-field generator.
There an angry white-smocked senior technician had bluntly questioned Belcher's business in the place, only to be ignored and shoved roughly out of the way. When the astounded technician had tackled him again, grabbing his arm, Belcher had carefully put down his drill and bit, bunched up the other's lapels in one hand and drawn him very close. Only then, gazing up into Belcher's vacant, bloodshot eyes, had Senior Tech John Ganley taken note of the labourer's mental condition: the fact that he was 'not himself. The man's face had been a quaking mass of flesh; beneath the grime and a beading of sweat, insistent tics had tugged the corners of his mouth into grotesque, meaningless smiles and grimaces.
With his free hand Belcher had pointed to his own head, informing, 'It's not in here,' in the patient, confidential tone of a grandfather instructing a very small child. 'Not in here at all!' Then he had tightened his hold on Ganley, whispering: 'I thought it was in my head, but it's not - it's thereV And with his face going through a fresh bout of hideous twitching, he had jerked his thumb towards the security-rail. 'It's down there - down belowl'
'Down below' was the massive, inches thick, synthetic crystal inspection portal, beneath which PSISAC's main microwave converter turned satellite-beamed energy into countless megawatts of electricity. The sheer power of the flux about the central core of the converter was staggering. It was neither nuclear nor plasma energy but the next best thing - better, in that the level of radiation was low and never so scornful of human life - arid it powered all of PSISAC and half of Oxfordshire besides. And for reasons known only to himself or not at all, Gordon Belcher had set himself against it.
In a man of Belcher's size, a man of his enormous strength and limited sensibilities, a bad attack of The Gibbering could lead to just one thing - mindless violence!
Senior Tech John Ganley saw this now, saw the very plague itself writhing on Belcher's idiot face. He had time to yell for help - just one wild shriek - before the madman hit him and sent him skidding across the ceramic floor-tiles to come up against the curving steel wall. The single blow had broken his jaw and knocked him unconscious; but his cry for help had brought three other technicians running from the monitoring- and control-room.
