NOTE: The Fading is the third installment in a five part series of fiction based on The Nearside Project. Taken as a whole, these five stories are known as The Thirteenth Hour.
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“Chaos must have passed in front of God’s eyes
in just this way before the creation.”
Nikos Kazantzakis (1961)
Earth9, 23rd August, 1993.
It was a hot sticky night in the mid-west, the mosquitoes were busy spiking Jock’s tee-shirt, trying their damnedest to get at the blood that lay beyond. His sweat ran in a multitude of trickles, collecting in the small of his back, serving to accentuate his feelings of anticipation. He was certain he was onto something, all his careful planning was coming to fruition. He felt the by now familiar churning feeling in his gut. Although it was very faint he was certain that he was drawing close. He’d been travelling now for over two days systematically checking every building with a factor of thirteen along Blue Springs, Kansas City, Missouri. He finally revelled in the implication of his nausea.
Jock was a reporter for an underground group of what were termed ‘Nearsiders’, they called themselves G.A.N.T. (Group Against Nearsiders Threat). He gathered information on the Nearside and posted reports to the journal for all and sundry concerned to read. As the journal was electronic the information would appear on the Internet - a new fledgling information superhighway. Of course the government were attempting to trace where the information was coming from but they hadn’t copped onto the fact that it was posted through electronic ‘broken rooms’ in the information superhighway itself and of course, this made the bulletins impossible to trace.
Before him lay a house that could only be described as big- he wasn’t sure how big, though only big houses had driveways to these proportions. Its number was 169 …so it was true! The Nearside also operated in factors of thirteen! Glancing around for watchers he moved silently across the heavy air. When he was certain of his solitude he approached the closed gate, he’d had too many close shaves with government agents in the past, although they were not onto him - yet. Walking along the ten foot wall he searched for his path to reveal itself, it was as though he was being beckoned by some supernatural will, the Nearside had a way of working its puppets.
Following the wall he arrived at a corner and proceeded up off the footpath into dense undergrowth. The scent of leaves brushed his face and soon the smell of rotting humus surrounded him. Bushes pressed closer, he cursed as every twig snapped beneath his feet, the arms of undergrowth scraped at his face, pulling him back. It was as though nature herself was willing him to remain, to go no nearer. As he proceeded deeper into the undergrowth nature gave up and the boughs began to thicken, the space between them widening.
Above him the tendrils of the evergreen bush were stretching upwards they seemed to reach almost to the top of the wall. A three foot gap between the bush and the edge of the wall presented itself to him invitingly. It was as though the bush shunned the wall. To the rational mind in the interests of security they had been cut back by a more mundane power. He shook his head and focused upon the task ahead, feeling the kick of adrenaline. Before he could think about it anymore he was looking over the wall from his new vantage point.
The branch swayed uneasily under his weight as he prepared to jump the gap to the wall. Kicking downwards, the branch yielded beneath him, he failed to gain any height, although he made it to the wall …just. The air hissed from his lungs as the wall lunged toward his chin. His arms were firmly braced on the wall, his hands trapped between his chin and the wall. He slowly eased himself up, and a blast of musty air assailed his senses as he regarded the darkness before him. Waiting for a moment to catch his breath he strained himself to view the other side. There were some trees before him. As he began to breathe easier, he considered with relief that he would at least have cover to aid in his initial reconnaissance of the house.
Bracing himself with the same gritty determination that had saw him through college into the football team, and subsequently into University, he closed his eyes and jumped. Later he was to reflect on these events wandering if it was closing his eyes or actually jumping that was the mistake. Before the ground met him in a manner that suggested that it was only five feet down he was almost encased in thorns. His attempted roll stopped abruptly as the thorns began to tear every piece of clothing he had. Cursing he painfully stood up, half of the undergrowth decided to follow him. Gathering his fury he surged out of the undergrowth and into the relative safety of the trees, relative because in the process of doing so he almost left himself blind. The branches tore at his face and he quickly realised that the trees he was entering were evergreens.
The reconnaissance mission wasn’t to take as long as he imagined, the house appeared to be empty, although the alarm indicator light was clearly visible. Noting the tugging at his stomach lining he was certain that there must be a broken room here, not only this but the tugging had an urgency, time was short. He casually picked up a moss covered brick and moved to the front of the house. Like most houses in this part of the country it was almost entirely made of wood, the only bricked area being the lower five feet of each wall. He walked to the nearest window, noted where the latch was and then smashed it unceremoniously. At once he was assailed by the combined noise of the alarm and the strong scent of lavender. Hurriedly he opened the window and hoisted himself inside.
He didn’t have time to adjust, although in retrospect he ought to have at least allowed his eyes grow accustomed to the darker interior of the house. Moving quickly forward he stumbled into a chair, the scraping noise of its legs across the wooden floor upsetting the by now familiar rhythm of the alarm. He paused for some time, closing his eyes, taking a deep breath he gathered his composure. He guessed that he had about ten minutes before the security company arrived. Gingerly he picked his way around the shadows in his path and moved to the door, turning the handle in anticipation he shoved his shoulder into the door. To his horror the door did not consent to open.
His composure disintegrated, in panic he made his way back to the window and jumped into the facade. Rushing to the front door, he brought the full force of the brick in his hand to bear on the small pane of glass. He withdrew a pace and fed his arm through the gap, into the blackness, he found the latch. The door opened abruptly inwards, tripping on the threshold he was dragged inwards by the force of his own weight, he winced in pain as shards of glass bit into his arm.
Removing his arm from the door he rounded on the hallway, quickly taking in his surroundings he looked for the area with the greatest concentration of doors. A wide stairwell spun upwards to his left, with the hallway continuing toward the back of the house. Without hesitating he grabbed the first door handle, it moved as expected, catching his breath, he pushed, the door grinned back at him. Slamming his fist into the door in frustration, he then proceeded to frantically check each door along the hall. He couldn’t imagine that he could be so stupid, the doors were all locked.
The blood rose to his head, beginning to feel dizzy he wiped the now frothing sweat from his brow and tried the final door in the corridor, it remained frozen in its frame. He screamed in anger at his failure and beat his fist in fury against the door’s solid surface. Spinning around he was up the stairs in a flash, a light to his left caught his eye as he ran past the front door. Surely a car couldn’t be here so soon it had only been about four minutes!
Reaching the top of the stairs the nausea swept over him, he collapsed to his knees. Something moved over his flesh its tendrils taunted the sweat on his brow, curled around his ears and it seemed, enveloped him in a frame of terror. He opened his mouth trying to scream but the thing, whatever it was entered and froze his vocal cords, he felt it probe his being, licking his emotions, taunting everything he was, as if it was searching for something.
Suddenly he could see himself, he was suspended in space, only able to watch helplessly as everything that appeared to make him human was slowly teased away. When the last shred of humanity was torn from his figure a primordial scream escaped his throat. With the fury of a whirlwind he exploded into the corridor on all fours and dived through a simmering in the crackling air.