Leviathan

CHAPTER NINE

In the apartment above the clinic, Katie was lost in her thoughts; in a place dark and dank, loaded with hundreds of metal barrels, corroded with age, their toxic contents seeping into the groundwater, invading the ecosystem of the Maine town.

The microwave oven began to beep, and she pulled herself from the disturbing reverie to answer its insistent toll. She took the steaming mug of chicken soup from inside and sat at the little kitchenette. Her stomach felt queasy with nerves, but she knew she should eat something before her late night maneuvers.

In between spoonfuls, Katie pulled a yellow legal pad over and reviewed the list of things she would need to gather before tonight. She tapped the first item on the pad with her finger. “Flashlight,” she said thoughtfully. “I saw one around here somewhere.”

She got up from the chair and approached some boxes that had been neatly stacked by the doorway to Kevin’s bedroom. How long had he been here and still hadn’t completely unpacked? Katie moved some of the boxes and found the flashlight, pointed it into the room, and turned it on. Its beam cut through the encroaching shadows that accumulated with the coming of dusk.

“Guess that’s a check,” she said, returning to the table and setting the flashlight beside the pad. She was just about to sit, when she heard a faint knock on the door. She glanced at the clock. She was expecting Aaron, but it was only just seven. Maybe he’d come early to try to talk her out of her planned adventure. “A little early, aren’t you…,” she began, stopping when she saw that it wasn’t Aaron on the doorstep.

Blithe’s chief of police stood stiffly in the doorway and stared.

“Can I help you with something, Chief?” Katie asked.

It was almost as if she’d woken him up. He kind of twitched, then politely removed his hat. “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” he said, “but I’ve got some news about Dr. Wessell.”

Katie felt her heart sink, as though the floor beneath her suddenly gave way and she was falling into a bottomless chasm. “What is it?” she asked in a breathless whisper, stepping aside to invite the sheriff inside.

He stepped in, and she closed the door behind him. The silence in the room became almost deafening, and Chief Dexter nervously coughed into his hand.

“Can I get you something?” she asked as she walked farther into the kitchen, trying to delay the inevitable.

“A glass of water would be fine,” he answered.

She took a glass from a cabinet and began to run the water. “You have to run it for a minute,” she said offhandedly, putting her hand beneath the stream. “Takes a while to get cold.”

He nodded, self-consciously turning his hat in his hands.

She handed him the glass, then leaned back against the sink and folded her arms across her chest. “Is it bad?” finally she asked.

Chief Dexter was taking a drink from his glass when he shuddered violently, as if wracked by an Arctic chill. The glass tumbled from his hand and smashed upon the floor.

“Chief?” Katie asked, moving toward him.

His eyes were closed, but he raised a hand to reassure her. “Dr. Wessell,” he began, his voice sounding strange … raspy, “he discovered some things about our town—things that should have remained secret.”

Katie was kneeling on the kitchen floor, carefully picking up the pieces of broken glass, when the implications of the police officer’s words began to sink in. “What exactly are you suggesting, Chief?” she asked, slowly climbing to her feet, the palm of one of her hands piled with shards of glass. “Did someone do something to Kevin?”

She was startled by the man’s response. Chief Dexter chuckled, and it was one of the most unpleasant sounds she’d ever heard—like his throat was clogged with fluid—and it must have been a trick of the light, but something seemed to be wrong with his eyes. “He serves the whole—as do we all,” he said dreamily, and began to sway from side to side.

Katie was suddenly afraid—very very afraid. Something wasn’t right with the man; something wasn’t right with the whole damn town. “I think you had better leave now,” she said in her calmest voice. He serves the whole, she thought. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

“Get out,” she said, turning her back on him defiantly and walking to the trash can beside the sink to dispose of the glass in her hand. She didn’t want him to know that he’d spooked her. Never show fear; it was something she’d learned in her work with animals. Even still, she kept an especially large shard of glass in her hand—just in case she needed to defend herself, but as she turned she saw that he was walking toward the door.

“Can’t have people poking around,” he said in that wet, gravelly voice as he reached the door and opened it. “Not when we’re so close to being free.”

Katie had no idea what the man was taking about and was ready to rush the door and lock it behind him. But the chief just opened the door and stepped back inside, as if waiting for somebody to join him.

This is it, she thought, and dove across the room for the phone. She would try the state police. Their number was on the yellow legal pad she left on the kitchen table. Katie squeezed the razor sharp piece of glass in her hand as she moved in what seemed like slow motion across the kitchen, the pain of the shard digging into her flesh keeping her focused.

From the corner of her eye she saw the policeman begin to crouch. Was he going for his gun? Katie reached out for the handset. Just a bit farther.

She collided with the circular kitchen table, almost dislocating her hip, and was reaching for the phone when she heard the noise. Not the sound of a gunshot—but the sound of a cough, a violent hacking sound.

Her hand was on the receiver when she felt it hit her neck, something that made her skin burn as if splashed with acid. Reflexively her hand went to her neck, and she pulled the object from her flesh. It reminded her of a sea urchin, black and glistening, its circular shape covered in sharp spines—but where did it come from? She could feel the numbness spreading from her neck to her body with incredible speed.

Katie looked toward the sheriff by the open door just as he let loose with another of the powerful coughs. A spray of projectiles spewed from his mouth to decorate her body, and she realized with increasing horror that she could not feel a thing. She held up her hand, the one holding the piece of shattered glass, and watched, almost amused as the blood continued to flow from the cuts, running down her arm to spatter upon the floor.

She felt as though she were in a dream, the world around her suddenly not making sense. Katie glanced down at the urchins attached to her flesh. They must be coated in some kind of poison, she gathered as she toppled to the floor, banging her head on the edge of the table.

Katie lay facing the open door. The sheriff still stood beside it. She wanted to scream, but all she could do was lie there and watch him as he stood, like a doorman, waiting for someone to arrive.

She heard the sounds of claws scrabbling on the wooden steps outside. It didn’t sound like a person at all, she mused, but like an animal having some difficulty making it up the steps.

“We’re so very close,” Chief Dexter said, looking toward the door with anticipation. “Nothing must prevent the whole from being free.”

Again there was the comment about the whole, and she wrestled with the meaning as she fought to keep the numbed lids over her eyes from sliding closed. She had to see what was coming up the steps, had to see what the sheriff so eagerly awaited.

It made its appearance, lurching across the doorframe and into the apartment with great difficulty. Katie knew that she had lost the ability to scream some time ago, but it didn’t prevent her from trying, as a monstrosity very similar to the ones dead in the basement freezer came toward her. It was the most horrible thing she’d seen in her life, a thing of nightmare; its body made up of attributes of many other animals, but having no identity of its own. A beaver, a snake, an octopus, a crane, and even a fish: All were represented in the horrific mass that shambled across the kitchen floor. The monster had a great deal of difficulty with the tile floor; one of its back limbs, a clawed flipper, sliding across the smooth surface not allowing it purchase. It smelled of low tide, and she silently wished that her sense of smell had been numbed as well.

Blithe’s chief of police knelt beside the abomination. “To keep the secret,” he said in a soft gurgle, “you must serve the whole.” He reached down and began to stroke the fur, scales, and feathers that grew from the body of the grunting beast. “You must be made part of the whole.”

Katie was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of dread as her eyes grew unbearably heavy and began to close. She saw the animal begin to shiver, its twisted mouth opening as if it was having trouble breathing. Then, mercifully, her eyes shut upon the nightmarish visage before her. Katie listened to the wheezing and grunting beast, the smell of the tide washing over her as it gasped for breath.

And then she heard a sound that at first she could not identify. It was a sharp sound, one that would have made her flinch if she hadn’t been under the effects of a toxin—a ripping sound—followed by the sound of something spilling—something splashing onto the floor.

“Part of the whole,” she heard Dexter say softly in the darkness, as the sound of something on many legs skittered across the tiled floor toward her.

As she slipped further, deeper into oblivion, she felt it touch her.

“Dear God,” echoed her last thought as she surrendered to the poisons coursing through her veins. “It’s crawling into my mouth.”

Aaron had no idea what he would find, as he cautiously climbed the wooden steps that led to Kevin Wessell’s apartment. He’d called both the clinic and the apartment, but Katie hadn’t answered at either place. That awful feeling of dread, which he had become a little too familiar with of late, churned in the pit of his stomach.

The thing living inside Mrs. Provost had continued to rant about something called Leviathan and how the whole would soon be free. He had no idea what it was talking about, and finally locked the woman in the basement. There really wasn’t much of a choice, he had to find Gabriel and Camael, and make sure that Katie was all right.

The apartment door was unlocked, and he opened it into the kitchen, knocking lightly as he stuck his head inside. “Katie?” he called out. The lights were on, and everything seemed normal until he noticed the splatters of blood on the floor near the kitchen table. There was another puddle of something on the floor near the bloodstains, and he knelt down beside it. It was clear, gelatinous, and he touched it with the tips of his fingers, bringing it to his nose. It smelled strong, reminding him of Lynn Beach during low tide: a kind of nasty, rotten-egg stink.

Aaron wiped the slimy substance on his pant leg and explored the kitchen further. He found the legal pad with Katie’s list and the flashlight on the table. She must have been getting ready to go to the abandoned boat factory.

The factory.

He took the flashlight from the table and tested it. The factory seemed as good a place as any to continue the search for his missing friends. He doubted it was anything as simple as a toxic spill cover-up—the thing living inside Mrs. Provost had told him that much. Of course, that’s just the way things were lately: Nothing was normal—or easy.

Aaron headed into the night, taking the flashlight with him. He and Katie had discussed how to get to the factory earlier in the day, and he thought he could find his way. Keeping mostly to the shadows, he proceeded through the winding side street to the docks. The going was creepy. There wasn’t a sign of life anywhere; every house he passed was shrouded in darkness. He began to wonder how many citizens of Blithe had one of those things, like the one in Mrs. Provost, living inside of them. He shuddered, an uncomfortable tightness forming in his throat.

It wasn’t long before he could hear the sound of the ocean and smell the tang of the salt air. Aaron crept from the wooded area and down a sandy embankment to a lonely stretch of road ending in a high, chain-link fence. He could just about make out the shape of the factory beyond it.

A light approached from the opposite direction, and Aaron ducked for cover, watching the road from behind a sprawling patch of wild-flowers and tall grass. The Ford pickup truck slowed as it approached the fence, and Aaron watched the driver slowly climb out. With a key from his pocket, he unlocked a padlock and chain, pushing open the fence to allow the vehicle entrance. Though it was dark, Aaron could see that the back of the truck was filled with people: young and old; men, women, and children—some even dressed in their pajamas and bathrobes. With a chilling resonance, his questions about the townsfolk became horribly clear.

The driver locked the chain again after driving through, then continued on toward the factory. Its headlights illuminated the parking area, and Aaron noticed that the lot was nearly full.

Must be the night shift, he thought as he emerged from hiding, hugged the shadows, and squeezed himself between the gates and onto the property. Using the parked cars as cover, Aaron made his way closer to the factory. Some cars had been parked at the front of the sprawling building, their lights on and pointed toward the structure for illumination. He ducked lower as a police patrol car slowly came around the corner. Peeking out over the hood of a powder blue Volvo, Aaron saw that the car was driven by Chief Dexter, and waited until the policeman had driven around the building before attempting to get any closer.

Aaron watched the group that had been in the back of the pickup stiffly walk from the parking lot toward the factory. A small town with a secret, mysterious disappearances, the locals acting strangely; if he wasn’t currently living it, he’d think he had become trapped in a bad sci-fi movie. They entered the building through a large, rust-stained metal door, and Aaron could hear the staccato rattle of what could only be a jackhammer.

He didn’t want to chance being noticed, so he avoided the main entrance and sought another, less obvious way into the factory. He stayed close to the building’s side, the shadows thrown by the rundown structure serving well to hide him. He was exceptionally cautious of Chief Dexter’s patrol, remaining perfectly still in the darkness and holding his breath whenever the squad car passed.

He found what seemed to be an old emergency exit and tried to open it. No good; it was locked from the other side. “Damnit,” he hissed. He looked around for something he could use to force the door, but there was nothing. Besides, he didn’t want to attract any attention. He needed to get inside. C’mon, Aaron. Think.

And then it dawned on him. It was a wild idea, but the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that it just might work. Aaron closed his eyes and thought of a weapon—a weapon of fire. It was a different experience than the other times that he had summoned a fiery blade; he was not being attacked in any way, so he wondered if it would even work. The blade of light, brought forth from his recent nightmare, immediately surged into his head, as if eager to be used yet again, but he deemed it too large and unwieldy for the more delicate task he had in mind. Aaron pictured a dagger with a long, thin blade, and he opened his eyes to see it begin to form in his hand.

“Would you look at that,” he whispered as the knife took shape. Maybe he wasn’t such a lost cause after all, he mused as he brought the glowing manifestation of his power to the door and ran the orange blade between the jamb and the door itself. There was the slightest bit of resistance as the knife dissolved the locking mechanism, the pungent aroma of melting metal wafting up into the air on tufts of oily smoke.

He gave the door a sharp tug, and it opened enough for him to slip inside. It was cool, damp, and completely void of light. Aaron wished the tool of fire away and turned on the flashlight he had stuck in his back pocket. He was in a cinderblock hallway that appeared to be used for storage; every piece of old equipment, desks, chairs, and just general crap were piled inside. Silently, he scrambled over the piles of junk, heading for a doorway on the other side, listening intently for sounds of activity outside.

Aaron got to the other side and proceeded down a shorter hallway. The sounds of machinery were louder now; the whine of gas-powered generators, the roar of heavy machinery, the beep-beep-beep of vehicles backing up. He quickened his pace, then stopped in the shadows of another doorway, staring in awe. If this had once been a factory, a place where people had come to work, to make things—sailboats, in fact—it certainly wasn’t anymore. Inside the factory, in the middle of the sprawling structure, was an enormous hole.

Aaron skulked closer, using piles of dirt and rock that had been stacked in huge mounds around the dig as cover, and peered over the lip of the hole. The citizens of Blithe were working deep inside, using all kinds of construction equipment to make the opening even bigger. He actually recognized people from the town: the Mainiac with his dirty Red Sox cap, and an older woman who had been in the veterinarian’s office with a sick parakeet. The people down below moved around like ants, using picks, shovels, and jackhammers, chopping and digging in areas too small for the bigger machinery, while others carted away wheelbarrows loaded with the rubble of their labors.

This is way too much, he thought. He wanted nothing more than to find Gabriel and Camael and get the hell outta Dodge, but he couldn’t do that; he couldn’t leave Katie, and he couldn’t leave the town in the thrall of Leviathan—whatever the heck that was. He wished his mentor was there; he could have a used a little guidance from the angel warrior.

He recalled something that Katie had mentioned about underground caves and tunnels beneath the factory and wondered if they were the reason for this frantic activity. As if compelled, he moved cautiously closer, descending some makeshift stairs that took him deeper into the hole. There were lights strung along the walls, about every five feet or so, and the shadows cast by the workers, as they tirelessly toiled, were eerily disturbing—the distorted versions of themselves upon the tunnel wall more a reflection of the twisted horrors that lived inside them.

At the foot of the stairs he found an entrance to a tunnel, whose edges were not jagged and rough like those hewn with the tools and machines. Flashlight in hand, and making sure that he was not being watched, Aaron darted through the opening and began a descent farther beneath the earth. The walls of the winding passage were strangely smooth, as if polished—maybe by the flow of the ocean at one time, he thought as he placed his hand against the cool rock. It still felt wet, cold, as if the sea had left the essence of itself behind. There was a downward pitch to the tunnel floor, and Aaron nervously wondered how many feet beneath the surface he had traveled. This thought was quickly discarded when the angry sound of something squealing wafted up from the passage ahead.

It was an animal frantically calling for help, and Aaron slowly, carefully, made his way down the declining passageway. He came to a sudden, sharp bend and warily peered around it. The tunnel split, one path veering off to the left, winding down even farther into the darkness, the other ending in a chamber from where he was sure the sounds of distress had come. The animal’s squeals of protest became even more frantic and Aaron was drawn closer to its plight.

He cautiously peeked into the chamber and found a makeshift veterinary office. A table, probably from the factory’s cafeteria, had been set up as an examination table in the center of the room, and a man, his clothing caked with dirt, was in the process of pulling a large cat from one of many pet carriers stacked around the cave. The carriers held all manner of four-legged creatures—cats, dogs, rabbits—and Aaron checked them all for a sign of Gabriel. But his best friend was not among those imprisoned.

The filthy man had the yowling, long-haired cat by the scruff of its neck and brought it to the table. The other animals had begun to yelp and whine, knowing something bad was about to happen. The man strapped the squirming feline to the table and began to examine it, roughly checking its ears, eyes, and then inside its hissing mouth. Could this be the missing Kevin Wessell? Aaron wondered as the man left the cat and moved out of his line of vision.

A strange mewling cry, the likes of which Aaron had never heard before, filled the cave. The man returned to the examination table, his arms full, and Aaron had to blink twice before his mind could adjust to what he saw. It was one of the … things that Katie had shown him in the basement freezer—only this one was alive, cradled gently in the man’s arms. The animals in the chamber howled and clawed at the walls of their cages. The cat thrashed against its restraints and spat as the man set the abomination down next to it. The twisted animal looked as though it might have, at one time, been a dog—a terrier of some kind, maybe—but now it was horribly more than that.

The man had begun to pet the awful beast, his filth-encrusted hand stroking the beast repeatedly from the top of its misshapen head to the patch of bare, pink flesh in the small of its back. His attention to the animal was growing rougher, more frantic, when Aaron noticed the bulbous growth forming within the barren swath of skin.

The cacophony of animal wails was almost deafening, and Aaron wanted to look away. The poor beasts knew what was about to happen, and it brought them to the brink of madness. The angelic nature residing within him suddenly began to stir; it, too, sensed the potential for danger here, and was attempting to assert itself.

The swollen mass on the creature’s back had more than doubled in size and was pulsing with a life all its own. The monstrous animal panted with exertion as the tumor continued to grow, and the man looked on with a dull expression of disinterest, as if he saw things like this every day.

Suddenly the flesh of the beast’s back exploded with a faint pop, and a geyser of fluid shot into the air. What Aaron saw next chilled him to the bone. As the fluid drained from the ruptured growth, something emerged from the hollow of the wound. It was spiderlike, crablike. He’d never seen anything quite like it, but was certain that this was what had been lurking in the back of Mrs. Provost’s throat. It was black and glistening, the chitinous shell that covered its body catching the light of the Coleman lanterns placed around the cavern. The creature crawled from the open wound of the animal’s back and scrambled onto the tabletop.

The caged animals barked, howled, and screeched in protest as the spidery thing approached the restrained feline. Aaron could understand their intensifying terror, but had to ignore their frantic cries, for there was nothing he could do. The cat didn’t have a chance. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, he watched the multilimbed life-form throw itself at the cat’s face and force its way into the panicked animal’s mouth, disappearing down its throat. The cat thrashed and coughed, but in a matter of seconds the panic halted, and the cat relaxed, lying perfectly still, its large, bushy tail languidly waving in the air. He could have sworn he heard it purring.

His mind raced as he wrestled with what he should do, but the decision was put on hold when he heard the sound of his name being whispered.

“Aaron,” the voice hissed in the tunnel behind him, and he backed away from the cavern and turned the corner to see Katie coming closer. His finger immediately went to his lips, urging her to be silent.

She smiled at him strangely, and he felt the hair at the back of his neck suddenly stand on end. Something wasn’t right, and he found the sword of light suddenly in his hands—just as her throat bulged and a spray of the grapelike objects spewed from her open mouth. He swatted them away and watched with unease as Katie recoiled violently from the blade’s light. The idea of one of those spidery things crawling inside her mouth made him feel sick to his stomach, but he stood his ground, sword aloft, waiting for the next attack.

There was movement in the tunnel behind her, and the people of Blithe moved through in a wave, pushing past Katie to get at him. The angelic essence inside him roared to be free, but he could not unleash that kind of power against these people—they weren’t responsible for their actions.

Aaron waved the blade in front of them, hoping to drive them back, hoping to buy himself enough time to flee deeper into the tunnel system—but there were too many, and they were much too fast. The citizens of Blithe were upon him. He had no room to maneuver, no room to block the spiny objects that erupted from their mouths. And the power that resided at his core bellowed its frustration as a rain of projectiles pierced his flesh, clinging to his cheek, his neck, and the backs of his hands—and the numbing effects of the toxin began to course through his blood.

“I will not hurt them,” he said stubbornly to the angry power, and the residents of Blithe swarmed upon him, bringing him down to the tunnel floor.

And the power that was his birthright resigned itself to its fate, and allowed the darkness of unconsciousness to enfold them in its welcoming embrace.