Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (20 page)

Dean Coxwell’s news was like a balm for his mind. Throughout the day the complaints he heard from his students were less troubling, his concern over Olivia’s far-fetched plans fading away. There was nothing in her head but desire to feel better, to be cured of whatever ailed her. After all, if she was planning to steal the crate’s contents for herself, surely she would have been more discreet about it. She would return everything soon, once she was able to study the discovery properly. And then, once she was well enough, the two of them would compare notes. Those images she’d shown him of the fossilized creatures—they seemed ripe with potential, far beyond anything Markowitz imagined. He had been looking for something that would help with the exploration of deep space, but instead may have found something that had
originated
in deep space. Randal wondered what that would have been like to witness—a blinding light hurtling through the sky like a falling god. It would have been fantastic if only he could have seen it for himself. The mere idea filled him with giddiness.

Dean Coxwell, without even trying, had liberated him. Randal felt like dancing.

He remained locked in his office after all classes had finished for the day. There was something about the studious quiet of the post-class evening that he loved, when the mediocre, uncaring students fled the campus and left only the most contemplative and busy in its halls, or curled in the deep leather chairs of the library. The buzz of life was felt, not heard, in the dusk of the school day, and Randal found himself whistling as he went through the drawers of his desk, removing anything that belonged to Markowitz and depositing it in a dented cardboard box. Perhaps he could send it all to Markowitz’s family.
Did
he have any family? Randal had no idea. It was funny—he had spent so long with the man, worshipping all he’d done, and yet Randal knew next to nothing about him. Even his journal was of no use. Randal reached over and picked up his saddle bag. The journal had almost nothing in it that was personal, and Markowitz knew that—

He paused. Checked the bag again. Started removing books and papers wondering where it was. Where was the journal? He kept checking the bag, then the floor around the bag, and behind the desk, in the drawers, on the floor. Where did the journal go? Where?

He asked, but he already knew the answer.

Sprinting to the door, he tried to work the stubborn lock with jittering hands.

It was a fight to get his coat on, sleeves folded inside out and collar half-raised. His car sputtered to life and carried him down Gordon Street, then right on Woolwich. He had not been inside Olivia’s student apartment before, but he knew where it was, having dropped her off in the evenings after work at the lab. The stairs to the third floor were utilitarian, made of solid concrete with steel railings. Randal’s shoes made the sound of a shovel into earth with each step he took upward, and it wasn’t long until, out of breath, he reached the fifth floor and stormed down its hallway.

He hammered Olivia’s door with his fist and waited. There were muted whispers from within. He pounded twice further, but no one answered.

“Olivia!” His voice was as stern as he could make it. “Olivia, it’s Randal. I need to speak to you. Immediately.”

There was an interminable pause, yet nothing happened.

“Olivia, I know you still have those samples, that you stole Markowitz’s journal from my bag. You weren’t ready yet to see what happened to the two of them, so I wanted to spare you that. But, Olivia, there is so much we can do with what they brought back. Let me show you what they found. You just need to open this door so I can—so
we
can bring everything back to the lab. We have to run tests, compare notes. We have to see what we’ve discovered. We could help change the world.”

Randal was panting, his fists throbbing from being clenched so long. Still nothing. Frustrated, he tried the door handle. It twisted easily, and the door swung open.

“Olivia? Are you here?”

He entered the apartment and immediately regretted it.

The last time Randal saw her, Olivia was in a horrible condition. Her apartment, though, was worse. It had the funk of not having been cleaned in weeks, and impossibly looked as though it might have been longer. Clothes were strewn across the floor, food rotted on unwashed dishes piled in the sink. Flies were everywhere, buzzing around his head. Every surface seemed covered in loose sheets of paper, most handwritten or torn from a multitude of different books. They covered the floor in some bizarre pattern. Randal held his breath and carefully stepped between them, doing his best to avoid touching anything. When he reached the other end of the living room, he forced opened a window so he could breathe, and through it noises from neighbors on the street carried in. It did nothing to alleviate the odor of sweat.

He was distracted by a long drawn-out moan, as though the walls were weakening around him. He turned, unsure if the sound was one of the voices coming in through the window, and waited. There was nothing for a long while, then the faintest huff of an exhale whispered across the room. Randal crept across the apartment toward the small bedroom. The distance seemed longer than he remembered, as though it were trying to inch away from him.

“Olivia?” he called out as he checked the apartment. The roll of blankets on the couch was just that, despite its human shape and unnatural warmth. The bathroom was empty of everything but filth, and Randal’s attempt to flush the rusty water resulted in a clog that rose precariously close to the edge before the sickly gulps of suction brought the water level down.

The bedroom door was not only closed, but locked. Randal rapped on it vigorously.

“Are you in there?” He tried the handle, but it didn’t budge. “Olivia, open the door.”

He heard the squeak of springs, a low moan. He knocked harder.

“Are you okay in there? Olivia!”

He knocked harder still. Tried the handle again. Her moans were louder.

“Olivia!”

He imagined her behind the locked door, moaning as she lay dying, and became worried. He couldn’t have that on his conscience. He knocked once more, then started ramming his shoulder into the wood. The frame bent, but did not give—not until Randal started kicking the door near the knob, trying to knock it loose. As he did, the moaning intensified.

It took five lengthy minutes for the door to fly open, and when it did he was hit with an odor unlike any he had ever known. It nearly knocked him over. When he regained his balance he leaned forward uncertainly to peer into the dim room.

The curtains were pulled close to keep out the dying afternoon light, and the mess of clothes and papers remained scattered across the floor. There was nowhere to walk without stepping on something, and in the middle of the chaos was a small double-sized bed with blankets twisted and bundled into a curled comma shape. The room smelled of unbathed Olivia, of rotten strawberries. Randal cupped his hand over his nose and mouth and stepped in farther.

On the bedside table, he saw something he immediately recognized: the large glass stone that Markowitz had sent to the lab. Encircling it, page after page of frantically scrawled notes in no discernible order. Some had small drawings on them, some strange patterns. Words were repeated, trailing across the page in a strange shapes. Just as in Markowitz’s journal.

Randal swallowed and stepped even closer. There were photographs of the stone at different distances, different angles, close-ups of its scratches, and those photos too were marked by circles and symbols and scrawled words. Whatever Olivia had discovered, she had bored fully into it, far more than Randal would have expected from someone looking to share a project. If only he hadn’t been so distracted by the lectures, by what Dean Coxwell had promised him, he might have been able to stop her. Randal’s eyes scanned some of the pages, but they made no sense, and his anger distracted him from what lay before him. It was no matter: she was caught, and he would do everything he could to make sure she was expelled not only from her position in the lab but possibly from the school. First, though, he would have to understand what she’d found. And the best method was to start gathering the work she’d left behind.

Randal grabbed handfuls of notes and shoved them indiscriminately into his pockets, wanting to collect all he could before she came home. He shuffled through the pile, and hidden at the bottom was a folder thick with page after page of Olivia’s scratched handwriting. He thumbed through them, but they looked like paranoid delusions. Still, he added them to the pile he intended to take with him. There were more documents lying on the bed, and when he turned to retrieve them he realized the bedding was too wet, too warm. It was then that Olivia’s sore-covered face emerged from amid the twisted sheets, and Randal leapt back, stifling a scream.

Olivia panted shallowly, hair plastered with sweat across her swollen face, and though her clouded eyes were cracked open, Randal could not be sure if she was asleep or awake.

She was far sicker than he’d understood, and the tale of Linden from Markowitz’s journal reared in his memory. He could no longer deny the connection, but how had she been infected? Randal slipped his hands in his pockets and stepped forward, the scientist within curious about the transformation, even while the man was repulsed. It was no longer her looks, nor the smell of rotting strawberries, that attracted his attention. It was the spread of the infection that he couldn’t stop watching.

“Olivia, are you okay?” He wanted to nudge her awake but was too afraid. The pages of notepaper pinned beneath her were soaked with sweat and stained a dark shade of red.

Olivia moaned, but he did not know if he reached her. She made no further indication beyond another heavy exhale. The glass rock glinted on the night stand. It was flecked with white, much like her pocked face.

“Olivia, where did you put everything you took from the lab?”

She moaned again. It was a good sign. Randal licked his lips.

“Olivia, can you hear me? We need everything Markowitz and Linden found, including the journal. Where did you put it?”

He held his breath, staring at her, waiting to see what she did. At first she rolled slightly, then went still. Randal wondered if she might be crying. Then the moans returned, and he could hear words forming in the noises she was making. Not clear words, not words that were anything more than mumbles, but words nonetheless. She was trying to speak. He pressed her.

“It’s Randal. I need to take the research, including your files,” he said. “I need everything. I need it all.”

Olivia’s pale white eyes fluttered open. Dim light reflected off their surface, making it appear as though something was moving across them.

“E’speriment,” she muttered in semi-consciousness. Randal stayed close, urging her on.

“Yes, the experiment. Where is everything?” He was studying her face closely, trying to piece together what she knew and what she might not have figured out yet. Her complexion had worsened considerably in the short time he was there, her face sprouting blemishes under her unsettled eyes. Beneath the swelling and the illness he could barely see the girl he’d wanted for so long and lost. He ran his hand across her brow, brushing some stray hairs back before he knew what he’d done. He almost didn’t notice how slick it left his fingertips.

Olivia’s head shook, her stomach creaking as it swallowed itself. She coughed effortlessly, then clicked her shriveled tongue. Randal wished he knew how to get what he wanted.

“Too much . . . everyone . . .” she managed in the grips of her delirium. “What . . .what did you . . . stop talking so I can sleep.”

“Olivia!” he said, hoping the sharpness would cut through her fevered thinking. Her eyelids pulled away, revealing the milky pupils that would not focus on him. She winced.

“It hurts. So much it hurts. Everything is so loud.”

He was not going to get the samples. She’d probably already ruined them. But he wouldn’t know for certain until he removed her from the apartment.

“Olivia, I’m going to get you help. I’m going to call an ambulance.” He fumbled his cell phone from his pocket. She breathed heavily. Heat radiated from her.

“Wait,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “Let me see it.” Randal waited, phone in hand, but instead of continuing she slumped onto the bed. He pocketed his phone and took her by her frail shoulders and shook her.

“Olivia! Wake up, goddamn it!”

One cloudy eye opened, then the other. They rolled slowly to look at him.

“I don’t want you,” she said, and Randal went cold. His nightmare becoming real. The sound of those three words from her fissured lips was worse than anything he’d witnessed so far.

“W—what?”

“Linden. Where are you, Linden?” The gravel of her voice gave it a strange otherworldly quality. He struggled for words.

“Olivia . . .” Several hundred questions raced through his head simultaneously. He wanted to reassure her. To smile, to touch her, but couldn’t. A voice in the back of his head asked why wasn’t he calling an ambulance.

She kicked the covers, struggling as though she’d been caught in a net. Strange sounds emerged—a concoction of grunts and a deep-throated gurgle. Her white eyes turned into her head and she kicked out. Randal took a step back and watched as she grabbed the sheets and blankets and wrenched them aside, throwing them across the room, revealing her sweating nakedness.

“Linden, I need you. I need you.”

Randal’s thoughts crashed into one another, a cascade of emotions and reactions to what he was witnessing. He sputtered at her announcement with disappointment and devastation, appalled and disgusted and angry and terrified. The gorge in his throat rose, and yet something else stirred in him at the sight of her nakedness, at the sudden smell of her sweating sex filling the room. He couldn’t think straight and tried closing his eyes, but it only made things worse. Olivia chanted.