The Thing Between

This story was written several years ago for a class project. The assignment said that it had to have sci-fi elements and was required to include a new year celebration. Enjoy.

There was a smudge on my watch face, blood, I wiped it off and read the time. Eleven-forty-two; the enforcers of The Order will be here soon. It was his own fault really, the old fool; I warned him that if he went through with his insane plan that I would have to do something about it, but he did not listen.

I needed a smoke; the synthotine might calm my nerves. What I really needed was a real cigarette, yeah, a menthol, I could imagine the smooth feeling of the cooling smoke from back in the day when I got my hands on a whole carton of smuggled menthols. Unfortunately, cigarettes had been banned for almost twenty years, citing health concerns, just about everything was banned in the 40’s: smoking, drinking, eating meat; even guns were taken away when The Order came to power.

I took one of my syntharettes out of its package and lit it, the smoke was the same but I never got that same feeling from these that I got from the real thing. Smoke curled around my hand as I looked down on my father’s body on the floor. He was face down in a pool of his own blood; it was amazing that it was starting to congeal already.

Why had he done it? I told him that I would have to stop him if he ever got his infernal machine to work again. It was his obsession for these last fifteen years, he was a man obsessed, but who could blame him, it had worked for a very brief time.

June thirteenth, 2049; that was the day that it had worked, a Sunday of all days. I was seventeen at the time, The Order had been in control of the world for just five or so years but everything was different than it was before. There were only approved broadcasts on TV, unapproved books were banned, I was never bored though because I was helping my father with his work.

One of the Templars with The Order was paying my father to build his machine, Wilcox, Brother Wilcox was his name. He was my father’s patron after his lab at Miskatonic University was closed down a year earlier. I did not understand the more scientific bits of his work, all the calculations and such were lost on me, but I did understand that his machine would make a bridge that would allow us to go into other dimensions and come back again.

The other scientists at the university had thought him a fool until one day he managed to send a probe through a very small hole he created in the veil. The data it sent back was confusing, even to him, but it proved that all his theories were sound. It really shut a lot of people up.

Back to my story though, on that Sunday in June we were in his lab, which was in our garage. He had just finished fine tuning the thing again and was ready for another test run, he hit the big red button and the thing made its usual grinding racket. It was so loud that I had to cover my ears, it made a bright light from between the two pylons that made me have to look away, the ground shook beneath our feet, this was all normal.

This time things became abnormal, suddenly the shaking stopped and all was still. That’s when my memory gets a little fuzzy and I could swear that the lights dimmed. The air turned stale and had a bad smell all of the sudden and when I looked at the machine; in the place of the light between the pylons was a dark void, only it was not a void, it was like a door into another room; a room filled with black smoke.

Then the voice came, well, it was not really a voice so much as a distant chanting, but I still had my hands over my ears, it was strange that the tones entered my head without going through my ears. It repeated over and over again, Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

It was deafening, these words that skipped my ears, maddening more like it. The smoke between the pylons seemed to shift and I could swear that I saw a pair of glowing purple eyes in the murk. They were strange eyes though, as if they were the eyes of a massive thing far away and getting closer. The chanting was louder and louder, so intense; the thing moved closer every moment, the eyes got bigger and bigger till one mammoth eye peered right through the opening – right at me.

It was a mercy that the machine suddenly threw off a spark and the darkness between the pylons blinked closed. It was gone and so was the sound in my head and so was that, that, THAT!

My father was never the same, he had seen and heard everything that I had and, perhaps worse, his sensors and cameras had picked up a lot of data and images of the thing moving in the darkness. Brother Wilcox and others from The Order came and were astonished, they had increased his funding, and they were pushing very hard for him to make the link again.

I begged him not to, as his only daughter, but he did not listen. He worked night and day and ran dozens of new trials but could not get the same result again. He rarely rested, he almost never ate, and when I asked him to stop he insisted that his work demanded sacrifices and kept on working.

That was fourteen years and a few months ago.

I glanced at my watch, eleven-fifty-three; what was taking them so long to get here? Tonight my father had finally finished a new calculation, something to do with the alignment of the planets and the stars having something to do with the equation. He punched in the new numbers and hit the big red button and he succeeded.

The smoggy darkness re-appeared between the pylons, and the voice again filled my head; Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Father went to the com-link right away and notified Brother Wilcox, and it was at that moment that I cut his throat with a knife from the kitchen, his blood sprayed across the screen.

Brother Wilcox yelled something at me but his words were lost against that damnable chant, loud, so loud! I smashed the com console with the butt of the carving knife in my hand.

My father was trying to crawl away; I jumped on top of him and stabbed him again, and again, and again. That chanting, making my skin crawl, and that thing; I could feel it peering into my soul! I smashed my knife against the machine; I pulled cables and shattered circuit boards. The darkness began to blink out and the voice faded.

I took all my father’s notes in one big arm load and threw them through the pylons into its world. I laughed as the machine died, I laughed for a good long time.

Just as my watch read eleven-fifty-seven, the door exploded inwards. The enforcers flooded the room and placed me under arrest, I did not resist them.

They sounded an all clear and Brother Wilcox came in and spoke to me. I no longer heard him, all I could hear was the echoes of the chant in my mind, all I could feel was my father’s blood as it dried all over my body.

I understood him when he asked me the question why. I smirked and told Brother Wilcox: “My father always said that his work demanded sacrifice.” He motioned for them to take me away.

I saw bright fireworks lighting up the sky in the distance, it was midnight. I wished myself a happy new year as they pushed me into a waiting vehicle.

They would not understand, but the world was able to enjoy January 1st, 2064 because my father was dead and his machine with him.

Now I sit in a dungeon, I know that they will never let me see the light of another day, smell another rose, or run on the sand of a beach ever again. I pray that they never figure out how to fix my father’s machine, if they ever do, who knows what madness they will unleash onto the world.

I know that soon I will be executed for crimes against The Order. I welcome the finality of death; death will hopefully quiet the never ending and never silent chanting in my mind like distant drums. If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the being that in their own callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!

I could sure go for a menthol cigarette right about now though.