Aberrant Weather

Standing up, I took three deep breaths and stepped forward. I took another step and then another. The last 10 steps were at a run, in spite of the wet and slick ground. I lept into the circle, feeling myself dissipate as I came into contact with the blue current.

Slowly, I came back to myself. I again stood on stone blocks, the size of city streets, all jigsawed together as if they were aligned by a world-spanning child who had assembled a puzzle. The air felt and smelled ionized and there were constructs made of indeterminably sized cubes dotting the horizon.

What would Father Montgomery call it? Epistemology? Well, it was useless in that place. Knowledge just appeared in my mind, unbidden. There was no need for learning. I knew that those sparks of light in the distance were universes being born. I somehow knew that if I focused, I could see deeper into anything here, but if wanted to remain sane, I shouldn't.

For me, the most important knowledge was an atavistic understanding that the building-sized floating slugs were starving, zephyr shaped parasites that desperately wanted to get to our world to feed. I ignored them, I ignored the bourgeoning universes and the deeper levels to everything around me. I focused on finding Parsons.

Unfortunately, my deciding to ignore everything except my goal of finding the mad man didn't translate into others ignoring me. Louder than ever, I heard the messages sent by the slugs to their Alpha. Cold, alien and ancient, they communicated in numbers, figures and formula, somehow bending them into a language one in which I was now fluent, through no will of my own.

Each time I returned, I had a greater understanding of them and this place, and every time I returned, they had a greater understanding of me. I felt their attention and the ghastly hunger that possessed them. If they ever made it to our reality, they would psychically feast on the life they found there, and Earth would become a dead husk.

They were slowly dying, as they floated in the sky, hundreds of yards long, slowly undulating and propelling themselves to and fro, almost asleep, conserving energy and dreaming of feasting. The stronger amongst them communicated to their Alpha by a means I couldn't understand. Information just radiated from them.

They told the creature that I was here, that I had returned and that I was the woman from the land that was promised.

While some of the others slept, dreaming the dreams of madness, the Alpha would maintain his strength by stealing bits of their vitality. With that energy, it worked. It pounded, it pried, it pulled at the hopefully impenetrable barrier between our realms.

I felt the weight of eons crest across my soul as the tiniest portion of its awareness began to focus on me. Time was running out, for them and for me. I had to get moving.

Choosing a direction at random, I moved forward. It was impossible to gauge how much ground I covered, but I eventually came across an elevated pool of liquid that was 104 feet in diameter and three feet, four inches in height. The sides were interlocking stones that had an elegant filigree-like script running through them. There was a non-sensory stench of Parsons to it, and I peered in.

It was like looking at an image projected on water. A blue surface was mostly covered by roiling masses of whites and greys. Streaks of light shot through the whites and greys and as they slowly parted in one section, I saw a military-looking ship. I realized I was looking at the Atlantic Ocean from above.

Tilting my head, my perspective shifted, and I could see gathering isolated masses all along the seaboard. Looking back towards the ship, I saw it slipping under the darkening clouds, lightning striking the water again and again and again, all just narrowly missing the vessel.

My pulse was racing, and my heart was in my throat. The men on that ship were someone's child, someone's husband and someone's brother. They were a spec in a roiling ocean and were sliding under the shadow of hell in the form of winds, rain and lightning.

Instinctively, I reached forward and... the clouds near the ship parted. Concentrating, I repeated my actions. The clouds started to dissipate. It was an exhausting act of will, but I kept repeating myself. I pulled apart every storm mass and shredded them like a dog with a flimsy bone.

When I was done, I waited to see if the storms would reform. They didn't. Instead, the pool grew opaque and faded to black. As I rose to try and find Parsons, I noticed new images forming on the liquid.

I saw my arms pulling Jennifer off of a creature that literally had its hand in her chest. The creature had eyes like fishbowls, and in those fishbowls flopped amoeba like creatures. Other than that, the thing appeared humanoid. It wore a white suit, had pallid skin and oily black hair. The me in the image pulled out an old-timey revolver that was covered in runes and fired at the creature.

Silvery bullets flew towards their target, each with a wispy, smoky tendril connected to the other me. Somehow, I knew that the bullets were forged from my own soul.

The image faded and was replaced with a handsome young black man asleep in a bed. The same image-me put a plastic bottle and sandwich on a desk near him, bent over and kissed his forehead. I could feel the maternal love radiating from that me towards the man.

Another fading, and another image. A young girl who looked much like I did at her age, stood looking up at a woman with sharpened teeth and nails who lounged on an obsidian throne. There was cold amusement in the woman's eyes, but the girl gazed on without fear.

The image faded and something started to replace it. "No!" Shaking my head, I stumbled from the pool. Fascinating and compelling as the images were, I had to find Parsons.

Looking up, I saw at least five of the gargantuan slugs banking in my direction. The closest was 4,872 feet away, drifting with purpose in the featureless sky. Somehow, where distance seemed indeterminable, I could tell exactly how far they were from me.

Moving again at what I thought was a random direction, I saw movement on the horizon. As I grew closer, I heard a scraping sound. Time lost all meaning and it could have taken me five minutes or five days to get close enough to determine what was happening.

Parsons was in front of me and he was facing the horizon. Like a conductor, he would lift his hands and move them to direct an unseen orchestra. His left hand rose and swept in front of his body. In concert with his hand's movement, a block of stone rose and slid to the right. He'd repeat the process with his other hand and block moved from that side, he'd slowly move both hands together and the blocks would join seamlessly.

He was creating a wall of some sort and I didn't know why or what to do. All I knew was that if Parsons wanted it created, I wanted it stopped. Looking at him, I could tell he was much more powerful than I. His grip on sanity was also much more tenuous.

Looking up and over my shoulder, I saw the slugs moving in our direction.

From my previous two visits there, I knew my visa was temporary. I was likely to soon be expelled. I hoped that the same held true for him. Remembering how it felt to be pushed from this place, and concerned about the parasites, I started studying Parsons. I was able to make out small, almost invisible, links that anchored him in place.

As he worked on his construction, I worked on untethering him. We both operated in silence, and he hadn't noticed me yet. When I was here last, the Alpha expedited my departure by cutting lose those tethers. It cut what bound my arm to this realm and my arm fell to the floor, it cut what bound my leg to this realm and that also fell to the ground.

It was as if my limbs were incidental. There was no pain, no discomfort and I was able to proceed with what I was doing until a tipping point was reached. When enough of what constituted me in this place fell, I was pushed out and back into my reality. I was trying to replicate that with Parsons.

His wall had an archway in the center and was nearing completion. There was an indented oval, 10-feet-high and five-feet-wide in wall. Raising his right hand, he extended the index finger and wrote in the air. Red glowing runes appeared around the oval as if cut into the stone with lava.

Something wrong, something other lurked behind that wall and I worked as fast as I could. I saw him shifting his feet in annoyance and knew he was feeling the effects of his lessening physical stability.

The madman lifted both hands to his right and pantomimed prying something open. As he tilted his body to the left, I was able to see his face and the blood slowly seeping from his nose. Grimacing, he appeared to pull at nothing.

The slugs were nearly overhead at this point and radiating information to the Alpha, to me and to anyone else who could understand their language.

"Hunger"

"Weak"

"Paradise creature"

The creature they referred to was me, the paradise was our reality and Earth. More knowledge that just appeared. Under their attention, I felt the first sensations of the odd uncoupling that would send me home.

I began to hear a grating sound and a thin line grew surrounding the oval. Slowly, the area in the oval began to shift, as if it was a door that was opening. Kneeling, I summoned everything I had and increased my speed. As the door slowly swung open, I saw a 9-feet-tall blonde woman who was surrounded by a lightly glowing nimbus. She wore a diaphanous gown that waved as if blown by a breeze I couldn't feel. She had her arms outstretched towards the door and Parsons.

Her voice had an eerie echo and seemed to be accompanied by a rushing wind. "My consort, you have come for me. You have called."

Behind her, I could make out an inky blackness that was broken by pinpoints of light, like stars. If lines were drawn between the lights, the image would form the outline of a hand that I knew instinctively was larger than what would fit in my imaginings. The hand was reaching towards her and I could feel her desperation to avoid its grasp.

The chattering of the slugs grew in intensity.

"Fear"

"Annihilation"

"Escape"

"Flee"

Much faster than any other time I'd ever seen them, they began to shift and move, away this time and not towards me. I wasn't sure if they were fleeing the Woman or the Hand.

Her odd, sweeping voice called out again. "Open the door, my beloved. Finish your efforts and let us be together."

Parsons leg fell to the floor. Whatever passed for his corporeal existence here was falling apart, much like mine had before I had been expelled the last time. Ignoring gravity, he stayed upright, still struggling with the unseen burden. His other foot fell to the side and the calf and knee soon followed.

Following his actions and trying to understand what he was doing, I reached for the door and started pushing it closed. His strength waning, he turned towards me, hatred in his eyes.

"No! NO!"

Hair blowing in the same unfelt breeze, the woman looked over her shoulder at the approaching hand and shifted her gaze to me. I could feel her presence riffle through my very existence, sorting through my mind and soul like a filing cabinet.

Her alien, loudly whispering voice called to me, promising beautiful lies. "Cynthia, I will grant you everything. Everything, my daughter. I will give you Finn. You will be together, always and forever."

Tears streaming down my face, I answered. "Don't you mention his name, you miserable cunt!" My anger tapped into a bottomless well of strength and I slammed the door shut. I could hear her wailing from behind the door until it ended abruptly in silence.

More and more of Parsons fell to the ground until he simply disappeared. Gazing at the parasites in the sky, I noticed geometric patterns in what I thought was their near random meanderings. Slowly falling apart, I soon followed Patterson, hoping I would never have to return to this den of madness.

Awakening on my hands and knees on the cement platform, I looked up to see Parsons on his knees to my right and George standing in front of him. The rain had stopped and the clouds were dissipating. Shifting to my right, I vomited, losing everything in my stomach.

Parsons lower face was covered with blood that was still dripping from his nose. He looked half dead, but his eyes had an odd frightening glint. Coughing, he spat some blood and looked up at George with a smirking half smile.

"Hello, spy. Here to witness the birth of a new world? I looked, I saw, I learned, unlike your coward bitch." He turned and glared at me. How did he even know I was there? "I don't have power, I AM power!"

As they conversed, I noticed a small blob of what looked to be liquid obsidian on the cement between Parsons and me. As I stared at it, the blob seemed to contract, gain a uniform shape, extend eight legs from its center and skitter off the platform and into the trees.

While I couldn't find the strength to move, Parsons rose to his feet.

"I will extend you the age-old offer, spy. Serve me or die. I know everything now. I will open a better door and pull her through. I will..."

Pulling out the same engraved, rune covered gun I saw in the vision at the pool, George interrupted the mad-man.

"How did you live this long without learning to shut the fuck up?"

I wasn't sure if it was a final remnant of my time in that in-between place, but I could have sworn I saw a faint blue glow surround the weapon as George pulled the trigger. The mad-man's head exploded into fragments and Jack Parsons died, decades after the world thought he had.

Exhausted, ill and smiling, I looked to my handsome George, the sun peeking out behind him, and knew that I was safe. Collapsing to the cement, I passed out.

George remained in Montauk for two weeks, checking on me frequently. Sometimes I recognized him, sometimes I didn't. I was told later that I often called him Finn and talked about his yacht. Duhnagaham was the next of my friends to leave. He had stayed another month.

Piotr stayed until ordered home by his religious supervisors. He prayed over me constantly, working his prayer rope endlessly.

Birgette and Alistair moved into my home on a more permanent basis. I slipped in and out of lucidity, and what most helped me to reconnect with my sanity were the words of a child. Alistair would sit with me, hour after hour. He would talk endlessly.

He made up little stories, he'd talk about the neighbor's pets, the fish in the Atlantic and birds with whom he was friends. He was convinced that we were connected, and he expanded that to how everyone was connected. Alistair used a child's vocabulary to discuss the deep truths of which he was convinced.

As I began to find myself again, we discussed God's love and what God wanted from me. It wasn't as odd as it may seem. His thoughts were all broad strokes, but he had an odd certainty to him. Many children talk about God and have uncomplicated views on the subject. Few had Alistair's certitude.

Day by day, I grew stronger, more centered and closer to who I had been. A strange four-year-old boy of odd parentage was my lighthouse, guiding my journey and lighting my way home.

After two years went by, I was strong enough to be on my own. They returned to France and came back every three or four months. A couple of years later they slowed down to visiting once or twice a year.

I eventually knew I was going to be okay, but I also knew that I was more damaged than ever and that I'd likely not survive another visit to that in-between place. Nightmares abounded, phantom knockings heard in the middle of the night kept me awake and my obsession with numbers grew deeper.

As their visits grew more infrequent, I knew that I needed something or someone to pour my love into. Someone to anchor me to reality, to sanity and normalcy.

Father Montgomery had been visiting me weekly and he began bringing me to Little Flower Orphanage more frequently. Walking through their door with the priest on a cool September afternoon, I found my anchor.

He was a frightened gap-toothed boy hiding behind the skirts of a nun, clutching her hand. I could feel his staring at me. Walking over to him, I squatted down so we were closer in height and I stuck out my hand.

"Hi. I'm Cynthia." I offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

The nun gently bumped him out of his nervous hesitation with her knee. Remembering his manners, he shook my hand.

"Hi. I'm Pete."

Unlike Alistair, there was no air of unreality to Pete. He was normal, with all, both good and bad, that being normal entailed. I had found the boy who would help me remain who I was. A boy who needed me as much as I needed him.

If you're looking for strong stories by excellent writers, mark August 19th on your calendar. QHML1 is curating a story event that will be bringing in some top-quality talent.

With thanks to blackrandl1958 for the continued generous donation of time and expertise. Her editing always makes my scribblings much more readable. If you find errors, it's because I continuously tinker, right up until publishing. Any mistakes are my own.

As always, I appreciate the people that are kind enough to read my stories in a much rawer form. Steve M and Stev2244 can always be relied on to help smooth out any rough spots.

The support of the Left Foot, Right Foot Society is continuous, noted and appreciated.