Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling Read online

  The tiniest bit of panic crept over Horace, followed quickly by quite a bit more. His knees trembled, his eyes widened, and his bladder emptied.

  “Is He not glorious!” cried Brother Fiffthithimithiff.

  Glorious was not an adjective Horace would have chosen to use at that particular moment. Horrifying worked better. As did Monstrous. Repugnant. Soul-Crushing. Inexplicably-abhorrent. Mind-numbingly vomitous.

  “Now hold on, young man,” said Lady Gaithwaite, struggling to shrink the reality of the moment into bite-sized chunks. “Are you saying this vast, glassy surface surrounding us- the one that resembles more than anything a gigantic eyeball- is in fact, a gigantic eyeball?”

  “If you value your lives, you will join me on the Holy Pupil and grovel in supplication,” said Brother Fiffthithimithiff, awkwardly hoisting himself over the side of the capsized vessel and climbing down to the non-watery surface below.

  The passengers, however, paid him no heed.

  “That’s an eyeball?” asked Lady Gaithwaite to anyone who would listen. “An eyeball?”

  “It would appear so,” said Horace.

  “Oh, that Reggie had survived to see this. He would have been thrilled.”

  “I’ve no doubt,” agreed Horace.

  “I’m bored,” mumbled Peggy to no one’s surprise. Horace and Lady Gaithwaite chose to ignore the dim girl and shuffle a few feet further down the tilted deck.

  “What on Earth did you see in her?” asked Lady Gaithwaite as they walked.

  “Effortless sexual gratification,” answered Horace. He received a knowing nod in return.

  “Oh Mighty G’Wyb’leh!” shouted Brother Fiffthithimithiff from the surface of the eyeball. “Regale me with your ancient wisdom! I am yours to command! Your fervent servant! What be thy bidding?”

  Horace wasn’t sure what sort of bidding a giant eyeball might have, nor for that matter how it might make such bidding known. He reached up and absently scratched his chin. “We do seem to be in a slight pickle,” he announced.

  “Rubbish,” admonished Lady Gaithwaite. “Being surrounded by Nazis and out of ammo during the first battle of El Alamein was a pickle. This is child’s play.”

  “I like to play,” said Miss Balderheim, whom neither Horace nor Lady Gaithwaite had noticed cross over to them.

  “I suppose in a pinch, we could simply walk back to shore,” suggested Horace.

  “Across the eyeball?” asked Lady Gaithwaite.

  “I don’t see why not,” answered Horace. “It’s an eyeball, after all. Hardly the most dangerous element of human anatomy.”

  “If his eyeball is that enormous, doesn’t it stand to reason the rest of him is equally huge?”

  “No,” said Horace, taking in a deep and self-satisfied breath. “I believe this Gweebly character consists of nothing more than an abnormally immense eyeball.”

  “Would you stake your reputation on that deduction?” asked Lady Gaithwaite.

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far. But my life, certainly.”

  This seemed to satisfy the elderly woman, who- with a final glance back at her quite dead husband- grabbed hold of the railing and proceeded to climb down to the surface of the eyeball with surprising agility. Horace followed Lady Gaithwaite, neglecting to usher his date to do the same. Thus Miss Balderheim remained aboard the marooned craft, smiling blankly at the sky.

  Horace found the experience of standing upon the surface of a monstrous eyeball a bit of a let down. He had rather expected to encounter a flooring far more solid than what met his feet as he dropped the final few inches to what, for lack of a better term, could be called the ground.

  “I say,” he said. “It’s quite a bit more squishy than I would have suspected.”

  “Of course it is,” chided Lady Gaithwaite. “It’s an eyeball.”

  The knowledge that Lady Gaithwaite had, at some point in her past, discerned the proper surface tension of a human eyeball impressed Horace greatly, and his estimation of the woman rose accordingly. He took a few unsteady steps towards the prone form of Brother Fiffthithimithiff, who was busy mumbling unintelligible syllables while communing with his God.

  “Excuse me, Brother Fiffff… Let’s just call you Brother F, shall we?” asked Horace, loathe to interrupt what appeared to be a truly solemn religious prayer but equally loathe to remain atop a hideously abominable eyeball a second longer than necessary. “Not to be rude, but could you kindly point us in the direction of our original point of departure? The Lady Gaithwaite and I would like to return to our vehicles and call it a night.”

  Rather than lift his head up to answer, Brother Fiffthithimithiff mumbled something directly down into the stygian depths of G’Wyb’leh. Horace looked at Lady Gaithwaite and shrugged.

  “Honestly, Brother Fiffthithimithiff. The customer service for this tour has been abysmal,” snapped Lady Gaithwaite. “Now I’m very wealthy. Actually, I’m incredibly wealthy now that poor Reggie has passed on. And I demand you see to my needs at once!”

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff again mumbled into the eyeball, this time with a bit more fervent passion. It was still disappointingly unintelligible, however.

  “I must tell you that I find your behavior to be quite rude, and I shall speak of it to the proper authorities,” continued Lady Gaithwaite. “Now, would you be so kind as to pause your inhuman, paganistic, unabashedly horrifying communion with the unspeakable fiend you have summoned from dimensions apart from ours and point us towards our cars?”

  This time Brother Fiffthithimithiff’s mumbled answer sounded to Horace as if it included an inappropriate amount of laughter.

  “Well, I never!” huffed Lady Gaithwaite, turning her nose up and crossing her arms. “Have you ever been confronted with such indignity?”

  Horace did not answer her, however, because his attention was grasped by the large, dark, blackness rolling towards them from beneath the surface of the eyeball.

  “Well that’s certainly ominous,” he remarked.

  “Is that a pupil?” asked Lady Gaithwaite. “Is this demon god horror thing actually looking at us?”

  “G’Wyb’leh judges you unclean!” screamed Brother Fiffthithimithiff in a shockingly moist tone. He rose from the surface and turned to Horace and Lady Gaithwaite, his face a melted mass of flesh and pus where it had been pressed up against the eyeball.

  “Good Heavens, man!” cried a shocked Horace, trying desperately not to vomit at the sight.

  “G’Wyb’leh shall devour the world!” continued Brother Fiffthithimithiff through drooping lips. “Rejoice!”

  The massive pupil centered itself beneath the feet of the three scrawny humans. Horace could not resist staring down into a darkness almost material. The black of the pupil burned him from within, and he felt himself withering under the unholy gaze.

  “Oh, now this is really too much!” said Lady Gaithwaite as the sponge-like surface beneath her feet began to bubble and froth. “How does an eyeball devour anything?”

  She was answered not by Brother Fiffthithimithiff, but by G’Wyb’leh himself (or herself, though truth be told it was a bit difficult for Horace to discern the eyeball’s gender). A vast, repugnant, grotesque appendage reached out from within the impossible darkness below, rising into the air with a howl of horror. As Brother Fiffthithimithiff exalted in ecstasy, the wide, flat, slightly-red horror wrapped itself around Lady Gaithwaite and pulled her, screaming in terror, down into the eyeball itself.

  “The feeding begins!” cheered Brother Fiffthithimithiff.

  “A tongue? Seriously?” asked Horace. “How in the world does an eyeball have a tongue?”

  “G’Wyb’leh is not of the world! G’Wyb’leh is of G’Wyb’leh!”

  Oh Bloody Hell, thought Horace. He realized none too soon that the elder demon writhing literally beneath his feet was going to wreck havoc upon the entire Earth unless somebody did something. Since Sir Reginald was currently dead, Peggy Baldenheim was about as useful as a jar of pi
ckles, and Lady Gaithwaite was currently enduring centuries of unmitigated agony within the cornea of an inter-dimensional horror, Horace supposed it fell to him to save the world. As usual.

  “Now look here, Brother F!” he declared, placing his fists on his hips and striking a defiant pose. “I’m terribly sorry, but I simply can’t allow you to bring forth an apocalyptic terror that shall consume all mankind. I’m afraid I’m going to have to put a stop to this at once!”

  “Nothing can stop G’Wyb’leh!” said Brother Fiffthithimithiff, though by this time most of his lower lip had melted into a puddle at his feet, so that it came out sounding more like “Nohee caa shoo G’Weela.” Horace, however, was fairly confident as to his translation.

  “I’m warning both you and your rather immense deity,” said Horace, choosing the perfect time to wag a finger at the smearing blob of humanity that was Brother Fiffthithimithiff, “I have powerful friends. I may not be as rich as Lord and Lady Gaithwaite were, but I do have a goodly sum of money and people listen to me. I can have a regiment of riflemen out to this lake in a jiff, and they are crack shots, I promise you.”

  “You cannoo haarr G’Weeellleuea!”

  Horace chose to interpret that as “You cannot harm G’Wyb’leh” and responded accordingly. “I have no intention of harming your abomination. I shall simply stand by while 100 of the finest crack shots in the land pepper your oddly-shaped leviathan with bullet holes!”

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff laughed, his body shaking with mirth and dropping bits of flesh onto the surface of the eyeball where they sizzled like recently-flipped pancakes. It was a truly disturbing sight. “No poa en errr caa haarr G’eeeggega.”

  Horace cocked his head a moment to better decipher Brother Fiffthithimithiff’s words. “Sorry, missed that. Try again?”

  “No paa en err caa-”

  “No what?”

  “Paa-aa.”

  “Pow-wow?”

  “PAA-EH!”

  “Oh! Power! No power on Earth can harm Gweeby. Is that it?” asked Horace excitedly, oblivious to the bubbling and frothing taking place directly under his feet.

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff nodded enthusiastically and gave a hearty thumbs up.

  And Horace got an idea.

  “Peggy! Oh, Peggy, are you still up there, darling?” he called.

  Back on the craft, Miss Peggy Balderheim heard her name being called. So she turned away from staring up blankly at the sky and looked down at Horace with a smile.

  “Lovely girl!” called Horace. “Might you come down here a moment? I’d like a word.”

  “OK!” replied Peggy with a friendly wave.

  “Whaa aarr yuu doii?” asked Brother Fiffthithimithiff.

  “One moment,” replied Horace, stepping away from the broiling surface beneath him just as the unholy tongue launched itself once again into the air with a roar. Horace ducked to the side as the repulsive appendage flailed about a moment in the air, spraying ick and goo in every direction. Horace was momentarily upset to notice a little bit of Lady Gaithwaite’s plastic-like face still attached to the surface of the tongue, but he shrugged the feeling aside and dove out of reach of the demonic muscle, which- failing to seize its prey- slunk slobberingly back into the pupil from whence it came.

  “Nasty thing,” muttered Horace to himself.

  “Hi,” said Peggy Balderheim, startling Horace with the way she’d managed to appear next to him without his noticing.

  “Ah. Yes. Peggy. Thank you,” began Horace, standing up and dusting himself off as best he could under the circumstances. “Am I correct in recalling that you claim your stiletto heels are coated in a layer of meteorite dust?”

  “I paid extra,” she said.

  “Right. Would you be so kind as to stomp firmly down onto the stomach-churning truth below our feet with said heel? Vigorously, if you please.”

  Peggy frowned. “Like a dance?”

  “Yes! Quite! A dance where we stomp our heels.” Horace proceeded to stomp his heel against the disturbingly pliant surface of the eyeball in demonstration. “Like so.”

  “Fun!” Peggy raised her luscious leg high and brought it down with a firm and insistent stomp. The result was exactly what Horace had hoped.

  “Oops!” cried Miss Bladerheim. “I popped it.”

  And so she had. The meteorite dust-covered heel had gone right through the optical membrane, piercing into the flesh of the horror at their feet.

  “Noooooooooo!” screamed Brother Fiffthithimithiff.

  At once, a spurt of inky black foam erupted into the sky, coating Peggy head to toe both on the way up and back on the way down. The poor girl screamed in terror and agony as the innards of G’Wyb’leh ruined her dress and dissolved her flesh.

  Despite every rule of chivalry urging Horace to grab his date and pull her out from the shower of abominable death raining upon her, he chose to neglect his good breeding and instead back away in fear for his life.

  “Waaa haaa yuuu duuu?” cried Brother Fiffthithimithiff, leaping into the inky black jet of Hell, shoving the deep-fried Miss Balderheim out of the way and thrusting his gooey fingers into the rip of G’Wyb’leh’s eyeball. The effect was much like trying to plug a hole in a crumbling dam. Even as the acidic black gore dissolved the very finger attempting to save its life, additional holes sprouted in the vicinity, including one directly beneath Brother Fiffthithimithiff, which thrust its deadly goop clean through the balding, drooping, melting man’s stomach.

  Taking a few more steps away from the ongoing carnage, Horace nodded to himself for a job well done. True, the deaths of Lord and Lady Gaithwaite were unfortunate, but they were old, and therefore not a true loss. He did regret that his blind date with Peggy Balderheim would not be ending with a proper shag, however on the bright side, he was spared what would have obviously been a painful attempt at post-coital conversation.

  As more and more ruptures in the lens of the gigantic eyeball churned forth and the behemoth that was G’Wyb’leh sagged its way to oblivion, Horace turned and walked with some haste towards what appeared to be the nearest shoreline. He might not make landfall anywhere near either his car, or a proper dining establishment where he could calm his nerves with a sifter of acceptable cognac. However, he felt that, as moderately wealthy as he was, if he simply kept walking, someone would find him.

  MUSIC HATH CHARMS

  Mark Orr

  “As we learned in the last class,” Dr. Ottermole began, “musical tastes tend to form between the ages of ten and sixteen. This is not to say that music experienced earlier has no effect on later tastes, nor that most of us stop expanding our musical horizons after sixteen. But the core of what we prefer is what we hear in those magical years. That’s the heart of our musical nostalgia, that pain for the past we all feel as we age.”

  He waved a large, strong-looking yet graceful hand at the chart of the human brain on the wall behind him. Those who met Dr. Ottermole casually often remembered nothing about him except those hands. Even long-time friends remarked among themselves that they were perfectly ordinary in repose, and yet so memorable in action. His brother, who was an old movie buff, often called them ‘The Hands of Orlock.’ Very few people got the joke.

  “We know that those areas of the brain most susceptible to music’s charms don’t fully develop until the tenth year, and their growth concludes at about sixteen. Newly experienced music can build new connections after that, but the structures themselves are quite complete.”

  He smiled around the room. “This reality may, on the surface, appear to have more cultural applications than neurological. We can surmise, based on this knowledge, that a die-hard country music fan was probably exposed primarily to that genre of music in the formative years. Jazz fans who reject all other forms, or classical music devotees who refuse to acknowledge that other genres even exist may also fall into this category. I can only assume Mr. Franklin’s inability to express himself except in rap rhythms is symptomatic of the same phe
nomenon.”

  Even Mr. Franklin chuckled at that. Final grades would go out soon, and even a bad joke deserved acknowledgment.

  “And yet,” Dr. Ottermole continued, “I have also heard Mr. Franklin’s angelic voice expressing itself in other ways. I have not attended church in many years, but when I happened upon Mr. Franklin and some friends engaged in an a capella rendition of several old gospel tunes the other day, I was almost tempted to drop into the chapel for a quick fix of religion. Almost.”

  More chuckles.

  “Nearly all of us, if pushed to the wall, will admit to enjoying more than one type of music. We may not seek it out as assiduously as our favorite, but when we come across it, we tap our toes and hum along, if the tune or the rhythms or some other aspect of the music find connectivity here,” he said as he tapped a spot on the chart at the lower rear of the frontal lobe, “in the nucleus accumbens, and here in the hippocampus, and here in the amygdala as well.”

  His fingertip moved to the back of the chart. “And in the cerebellum, the home of the rhythms we utilize not only in locomotion but in musical expression and enjoyment. As these structures process the sounds, comparing them to sounds from our formative years for pleasurable correlations, even a type of music foreign to our experience might reveal itself to be soothing to our savage breast, and so become part of our internal repertoire. We learn to enjoy new music because of what we like about the old.”

  Ottermole moved around to the front of his desk and half-sat on the corner, those remarkable hands folded benignly over one knee. “But what about those who cling to only a very narrow sub-genre, and utterly reject every other form of music? What if our subject, or our patient, can only abide something called Death Metal?” Ottermole smiled. “I’ve forced myself to listen to some of this music.” Two long fingers from each hand executed a ballet on each side of his head as they formed quotation marks around the last word. “Frankly, it seems indistinguishable to me from a dozen different barely tolerable sub-genres, or from the noise a barrel full of stray cats and scrap iron might make while rolling down a hill. Despite my expressed opinion, there is a certain regular patient of mine currently housed in the Fossil Lake State Mental Health Institute who becomes enraged if forced to listen to any other kind of heavy metal music. Or, indeed, any music except this so-called Death Metal.” He adjusted his glasses and looked around the room. “Have we any metal-heads in class today?”