Anomaly Flats (14 page)

“Who gives a shit if he got a jacket from menswear?”

“Science cares!”

There was a loud slam of hands against wood. When the mayor spoke again, her voice was louder, closer to the microphone: “What did you see in aisle 8?”

Subject R’s teeth chattered with the memory of the sub-zero temperatures. Speaking through the clattering took great effort. “C-C-C-Canned goods,” he finally managed. “So many…so many c-c-canned goods.”

“Good,” said the mayor. “That’s very good. What else did you see?”

“F-F-Fog. Mist. From the shelves. So thick…couldn’t see the Sun D-D-Drop.”

“According to the schematics, the soda is kept on the far wall after the end of the aisle,” Lewis explained to the mayor. “Okay, so. Cans, cold, and mist. This is all very good. Keep going. What else?”

“The beets. There was red.”

“The beets? The beets were red?” Lewis asked. There was a quiet shuffling sound, and then Lewis said, “The subject shook his head no.”

“Were the
cans
red?” the mayor asked.

“Red…
b-b-behind
the cans,” Subject R said. “Light…bright…”

“There was a red light coming from behind the cans,” Lewis said. Mallory could hear him scribbling notes on a pad of paper. “Good, good. Did you notice anything else?”

“B-B-Bugs. S-So many b-b-bugs. Bugs everywhere. Crawling on the cans. Dropping…Dropping from the ceiling. C-C-Crawling on my…skin. C-Crawling out…of the beets.”

“Ew,” Mallory said, disgusted. “No wonder they were on sale.” Lewis shushed her again and nodded at the recorder. His own recorded voice spoke next.

“What sort of bugs?”

“Centipedes…mostly. Beetles…and centipedes.”

“Good, good.” There was more scribbling. “What did you do? Did you kill any of the bugs?”

“No. Too many. Too…cold. I…grabbed a can. Of beets.” The subject began sobbing uncontrollably. “His voice,” the man choked out through his tears. “Filled me with…his voice.”

“Whose voice?” the mayor demanded. “What did it say?”

“It said…it said…‘Free me.’”

“Where was the voice coming from?” Lewis asked. “It came from behind the beets?”

“C-C-Came from…
everywhere
. Came from…aisle 8.”

“Do you know who it was?” Lewis asked. “Do you know who the voice belonged to?” A moment of silence, then, “The subject is nodding his head. Who was it? Who told you to free him?”

“It was…it was…an ancient…evil.”

There was a pause on the other end of the microphone, a shuffling of papers, and an uneasy clearing of throats. “An…ancient evil?” Lewis asked.

“It…wanted to be…free,” Subject R said, sounding resolute through his tears.

“How the
fuck
did an ancient evil get trapped behind the canned beets?” the mayor demanded, slapping her hands on the table.

“Marcy—” Lewis began.

“No! This is my town, and I want to know how an ancient evil got trapped behind the goddamn canned beets!”

“Not…just beets,” Subject R said. “Canned corn…canned green beans…canned corn beef hash…all…of aisle 8.”

“
This is unacceptable
!” the mayor screamed.

Recorded Lewis shushed her, then returned his focus to Subject R. “What happened next? After you touched the can of beets and the voice filled your head. What happened then?”

“I…dropped the beets. They…they were so cheap.” The subject lapsed into a fit of sobbing once more. “They were so cheap, but I…I left them behind.”

“Good,” Lewis said, his voice soothing. “Good. That was a good thing to do. We can get you canned beets at the Aldi.”

“Not as cheap,” the man pointed out through his sniffles.

“But still very inexpensive. And the town will pay the difference.” The mayor began to object, but something—probably Lewis—silenced her. “What happened after you put down the beets?”

“I…tried to walk…but the bugs…attacked by the bugs. They…chewed me from…the inside…out. Hollowed me out…crawled in through my mouth and…chewed me away.”

“Oh, that’s disgusting,” the mayor soured.

“Then what?” Lewis said, ignoring her.

“Tried…to run. But the floor…went down. Sucked me down. The evil said…‘Free me…I’ll make you richer than…Queen of England.’ But…I don’t…like foreigners. I…told him so. Then everything went…red. Pain in my head. Then black. Then I woke up…here. In this room.”

“Is there anything else? Can you remember anything else at all?”

Subject R paused. Then he said, “The devil lives in aisle 8.”

Lewis clicked off the recorder and set it on the plywood table. “
That’s
what we’re up against, Mallory.
That’s
what makes the clone so dangerous. If we don’t stop him, he’s going to release the ancient evil that lives behind the canned goods in aisle 8. And yes, I know how absurd that sounds, but it’s the truth, and it’s not a joke. If he succeeds, it will mean the unspeakable destruction of Anomaly Flats. And almost certainly beyond.”

“What unspeakable destruction?” Mallory asked. This whole thing, the very notion that an evil creature was locked up in the canned foods aisle of the Walmart, was beyond insane. But so was a creek filled with plasma, and so was a bed and breakfast that encouraged you lock the door with a chalk spell, and so was a cornfield that whispered you into insanity—and those were all plenty real, here in this place. Was an ancient evil any less likely? Mallory discovered she could actually wrap her head around it a bit, if she didn’t try too hard. “What would this evil thing do?”

Lewis gave her a grim frown. “Let me show you.” He hopped off his stool and retrieved a thin, blue binder from a pile of books and papers near the back corner of the barn. Then he flopped it down on the table and slid it in front of Mallory. “I have to warn you, it’s…not easy to look at.”

“What is it?” she asked, flipping open the cover. She gasped when she saw the image on the first page…then she scrunched up her face and brought her nose closer to the page, inspecting it closely with a sort of macabre pleasure. “What the hell
is
this?”

“They’re woodcuttings. Or mimeographs of woodcuttings, to be exact.”

The picture before Mallory showed a line of men, naked and in obvious anguish. Each man was bound by the wrists to a log that was suspended horizontally a few feet over the ground. They appeared to be perched atop long iron stakes stuck into the ground. As Mallory looked closer, she realized the men weren’t perched; they were
impaled
. They had been lowered down onto the iron poles from above.

“But…what is
this
?” Mallory repeated. She pointed down at the line of naked men, in case that helped clarify the question.

The scientist shifted uneasily on his stool. “That…ah…well…that is a group of men being impaled. Through the—” He cleared his throat uncomfortably and shifted again. “Through the rectum.”

“And what is this?” Mallory asked, pointing at the base of one of the poles. She was experiencing a grotesque wonder like nothing she’d ever known before. This woodcutting was thrilling and horrible and the living embodiment of everything she’d ever wanted to do to her own gallery of asshole exes. “What’s this down here?”

“That…ah…appears to be fire. The flames, you see, they, ah…they heat up the metal rods and…well…cauterize the…anus.” Lewis’ face burned a brighter shade of red than hot iron could ever hope to achieve. He untied his bow tie and loosened the collar of his shirt. Little beads of sweat bubbled up on his brow, and he wiped them away nervously.

“But…
why
?” Mallory asked, her eyes wide with wonder.

The scientist pointed to a dark figure standing alone near the top of the image. The resolution was terrible, but she could see clearly enough that the figure had only a smooth, white surface where his eyes, ears, and nose should be. “This is the ancient evil. As best we can tell, he has impaled these men for…” He cleared his throat once more. “…sport.”

“Where’s his face?” Mallory demanded.

“I don’t know why he’s pictured that way. But it’s the same on all the pages.” He scooted his stool closer to Mallory’s and began to leaf through the pages. There was a tableau of women being stewed alive in a large cauldron with feral badgers being dropped into the boiling soup; a depiction of several men wearing their own torso skin loosely around their waists like skirts; a scene with young children with feathers streaming out of their mouths marching along a river of fire holding decapitated heads atop little pikes. And on every page, the darkly-dressed figure looked on from afar, his face a smooth, white, impassive surface.

“How many of these things are there?” Mallory asked, amazed, flipping through the binder.

“Seventeen. They were unearthed by an archeologist working in Anomaly Flats in the ’60s. He found them inside a petrified bison carcass he dug up from the parking lot of the old Blockbuster south of town. It was pretty widely known that the Blockbuster was built on top of the ancient Anomalians’ sacrificial killing fields—”

“On top of
what
?” Mallory cried.

“—but this was something different,” Lewis said, ignoring her outburst. “The archeologist had found plenty of elk and raccoon and small bird skeletons, all with the traditional sacrificial intestines wrapped around their necks, but he’d never found a fully preserved carcass before, and
never
a bison. And certainly never a bison with a series of complex and horrible woodcuttings foretelling the grotesque and agonizing end of Anomaly Flats stuffed down its throat.” He took a breath. “They’re in the town archives now. In case you want a better look.”

Mallory found that she
did
want a better look; she’d never seen anything so grotesque in real life. But she sensed that her fascination with these torturous wood carvings might be looked upon as socially unacceptable, or at the very least socially concerning, so she said, “No, I think this is fine.” She flipped the page and examined a mimeograph of deer with their own heads replaced with the detached heads of humans. The men-deer were leaping through a field and munching on dandelions. “How do you know this is
the
ancient evil? And not just some William Blake knockoff?” Lewis gave her a surprised look, and Mallory rolled her eyes. “I’ve been to a museum, Lewis.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—just…look. Here.” He pointed to a block of text that ran along the bottom border of the mimeograph. It was printed in a language Mallory didn’t recognize, much less understand.

“What does it say?” she asked.

“It’s Coptic.” Lewis cleared his throat a little and said, “Should I assume you learned how to read it in a museum?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Lewis allowed himself a little, self-satisfied smile. “The Coptic language is sort of a mix of the Greek alphabet and the Egyptian Demotic. It came to prominence sometime after the first century C.E. It doesn’t translate perfectly, but this bit here says, roughly, ‘Welcome to Anomaly Flats: City of Evil.’ And there’s a year here, too: 2098.”

Mallory furrowed her eyebrows as hard as she possibly could as she looked at another one. “Welcome to Anomaly Flats,” she said, her tone flat and dry. “City of Evil. 2098.”

Lewis nodded. “Roughly.”

Mallory looked down at the paper. She looked back up at Lewis. She looked back down at the paper. Then she looked back up at Lewis. “Welcome to Anomaly Flats, City of Evil, 2098.”

“Yes.”

Mallory held her hands up in confusion. “Are these
postcards
?”

Lewis shrugged. “More or less. Someone—or some
thing
—not only predicted an evil future for Anomaly Flats, but started
marketing
for it! Isn’t that fascinating?”

“You know, you keep saying things are fascinating when they’re really just terrifying and horrific,” Mallory pointed out.

“Horrific things are almost always fascinating,” Lewis insisted. “And look here!” He stubbed his finger against the page, just below the man without a face. Mallory leaned down and squinted hard. There were small letters below him, too. “This appears to be a formal title. It translates into ‘Celestial Anathema,’ or ‘Abomination of the Heavens.’ He’s given the same title on every carving.”

“So this guy—this thing—he’s…what? A demon?”

“Or maybe even the great fallen one himself!” Lewis beamed, sounding entirely too excited, given the circumstances. “Not that that’s a good thing,” he said, catching himself. “But you have to admit, it
is
fas—”

“I know, I know. It’s fascinating.” Mallory flipped through the binder. “You know, the year 2098 isn’t
that
far away. In the big picture.”

“No, it’s not,” Lewis agreed. “We don’t know who made the carvings, so it’s hard to say why that particular year was chosen; if it’s a prophecy, or a guess, or arbitrary, or what. Regardless, this is the future under the reign of the ancient evil. Ultimately, the year is unimportant.”

Mallory screwed up her face in disgusted fascination as she turned the pages. Each engraving was more disturbing than the last. “This…I mean, this is pretty gross, Lewis.”

Lewis nodded his agreement. He pulled the binder back, closed it, and slid it across to the far end of the table. “I know. I wouldn’t have shown it to you, except I think it’s vital that you understand the gravity of the danger we’re in. We
have
to stop my clone, Mallory. We
have
to.”

Mallory sighed and rested her head in her hands. “I just want to get my bag and go to Canada,” she murmured.

Lewis raised an eyebrow. “What’s in Canada?” he asked.

“Lonely, muscular men in Mountie hats who are just aching for American women, if there’s any justice in the world.” She rubbed her eyes and shook some life into her brain. “This all seems very…strange. And awful. And maybe like you’re drawing a few too many conclusions based on these carvings.”

“How so?”

“Subject R said there was an ancient evil. You have these pictures that you think represent an evil. So, great. But who’s to say they’re
actually
related?”

“Subject R is, I’m afraid. I played you the second portion of the tape just now. Let me play you the beginning.” He picked up the recorder and rewound the tape until the machine clicked. “This is what we heard immediately after the subject was thrown from the Walmart; this is what he said to us as we approached.” He clicked the play button, and the speakers crackled to life once more. Mallory heard the same male voice from earlier, but now it was speaking gibberish. The sounds hurled out of his mouth as if he were spitting venom, snarling and growling and hissing as he spoke. It was the voice of a man perfectly enraged.

“What’s he saying?” Mallory whispered.

Lewis exhaled deeply. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “It’s Coptic. And I can translate it on paper okay, but I can’t speak it.” He clicked off the recorder and set it back down on the table. “The subject doesn’t remember any of that. And even before, when he
was
a surgeon, he certainly was not fluent in a language that’s been dead for centuries. The ancient evil touched him…even spoke for him, I’m guessing, for a little while, anyway. Then it left him broken beyond repair. A brilliant surgeon turned into a slow, mumbling halfwit who can’t even remember how to swallow.”

Mallory’s ears perked up. Her breath caught in her throat. “No…” she whispered, faltering.

Lewis gave a slow nod. “Subject R. One of the most intelligent minds Anomaly Flats had ever seen. He still lives here, all these years later. He’s not a surgeon anymore, but he does still get to work with his hands.”

“Rufus,” Mallory said. “The mechanic.”

She didn’t need to see Lewis’ nod to know that she was right. “Laid low by a sale on beets. That’s how the Walmart tries to lure us in…with especially good savings on our favorite canned goods. It worked with Rufus. It’s almost worked with several others.”

Mallory closed her eyes and shook her head. “Wait, so…
Walmart
is doing this? On purpose?”

Lewis shrugged. “My guess is, Walmart just wants to get rid of the ancient evil and will keep offering steep discounts until they can get someone to let it out of the canned goods aisle.”

“When all they had to do is wait for some idiot to come along and make an evil clone,” Mallory sighed.

Lewis took her hand in both of his own and gave it a good squeeze. “You see? This is why we need to stop him.”

“And how do we do that, exactly?”