Autumn in the Abyss Read online

  “Impossible,” he said, as an Arctic exhalation passed through his body.

  The copycat Krell laughed just as Krell had the first time, the sound of a muffler pitted with holes as it loomed over Campbell’s steaming remains, as well as over Vera, not a small man himself. It was sadistic, and, as with Krell, indicated no soul buried within. Only a black hole of nothing, thought Vera— you had succeeded you vicious fuck, can’t you see?— as he steadied himself and took aim at the large man, the monster wearing Krell’s face.

  Vera did not wait as Krell twin spewed, “Now the real misery begins, Detective Vera,” instead, he wailed— the most appropriate enunciation of events having transpired— and squeezed the trigger again and again and again, until the whole magazine had been lodged into the new monster’s head…

  …and the copycat Krell did not flinch, did not speak. He seemed stunted as though the pattern were broken, but there was also something more that Vera could not gauge. He stared at Vera as Vera stared back, two who had obviously witnessed so much more than most humans could even imagine. Vera’s gun-filled hand trembled as confusion laced knots in his forehead. His chest tightened.

  He lowered the gun, his arm straining with the effort of wanting so much to destroy another human for what he had done to so many, but not understanding how a face full of lead had failed to do the trick. Not understanding anything as tears of frustration and impotent rage rimmed his eyes.

  The new monster’s face swirled oddly as white water rapids, as if the bullets were only a discomfort— nothing more— and the features regained the Halloween mask that was Krell’s face.

  “What’s next?” he said, this new monster, the man like no other, not even Krell.

  The voice circled Krell’s with the intent of copying it, yet with the conclusion played out, he needed to use his own voice, his own words, which exacerbated its inflections. A copy, not the original. After all, how could anybody really follow Krell? Yet now, with this curious question.

  Vera slumped to the concrete floor, exhausted. The knees of his black slacks were mere inches from Stephanie Campbell’s pooling remains. He raised the emptied yet still hot barrel to his temple, pressed it there, and then dropped it down again. A perfect circle scorched his skin, a tracery of hair. Though he barely felt it, the corporeal remnants tinged his nostrils.

  “You die,” Vera said. “You have to die. You should be dead. That’s what’s next. How can this be?”

  Krell’s twin said again, “What’s next?” in Krell’s fading voice, as if the intonations were sculpted from uncertainty. It was the voice of the lost, the voice of a scared child.

  Vera took this in, understood he was witness to something so out of the ordinary as to cast all he thought he understood about the grim world he lived into the wind.

  He found the wherewithal to stand, regaining a semblance of composure. Frustration flushed from his system as bewilderment took hold and he asked, “What are you?”

  The moment hung slack, and then stretched out, awaiting an answer. An answer like none Vera could have foreseen.

  “I am nothing, in search of something. In search of… being. I… I and my others, fragments splintered off the deep shroud… out there.” It turned its gaze upward, to the spider web-laden metal of the ceiling.

  Vera understood it meant space, no matter its strange wording.

  “We fled to the farthest reaches of… infinity. We are connected by… thoughts.” The alien’s mouth continued to move, but no words were spoken, as if it still did not have the full understanding of what to say. “We hear each other’s thoughts. Our aim is to fit in. To… assimilate into the society of those whose planet we choose to… be on. To be. We find a random figure of the primary race of the planet we’ve chosen and follow it, learning the ways of the beings we wish to… live with. It takes time to get all the nuances… precise. From nothing to something takes time. I was still… still learning, when my mentor, the one I think of as Father Krell… never came back to his cabin not far from here. I had last seen him with the other one who had… opened herself. Watching from the shadows, as always, taking in the peculiar rituals of your kind, hearing Father Krell’s laughter, before being called to my others during a time of need by one. This distraction pulled me… away. When I got back to the cabin not far from here, I waited. Father Krell never… never came back. I…”

  Vera could see in its now soft, almost gentle eyes— the alien within peering out at him; alien, he thought: alien— the effort every word was for it, searching, hoping it found the right words to make sense.

  “After a year of your time, in conference with my others, we decided the only way to get back in touch with Father Krell was… was to follow his every step, to draw his… attention. I was learning so well, but I needed to learn… more.”

  Dear God, Dear God, Vera thought, as he fully grasped the impossible confession of misguided allegiance to a monster made of flesh. Flabbergasted and light-headed, his legs turned to jelly as he stood in the desolate factory, listening to an alien being, perhaps the first ever to communicate with humans, tell him it had come to earth simply to fit in, to be one of us, and as a mentor, as a fucking father figure, it had stumbled upon Krell as an example of how we humans were. Krell the Destroyer, Krell the Creator; Krell, the human waste, the human monster. Not human at all.

  Vera’s shoulders sagged as he stared up at the alien wearing Krell’s face.

  The alien stared back at him and tilted its head with the wide-eyed curiosity of a newborn. Except for the mature nature of Krell’s abhorrent undertaking, it seemed so young.

  Everything simmered, the chill autumn still drawing wisps of dying heat from the inside out mess that was Stephanie Campbell.

  “Krell… is a monster,” Vera said.

  “But he… he is human. He is like you, like—”

  “Krell is nothing like me.” Vera realized he would have to be specific. The alien, though able to copy what humans did, how we spoke— perhaps from television, perhaps only from Krell and his victims— really had no inherent understanding of what it was to be human, despite all the time with Krell; more so, because of all the wasted time with Krell.

  Vera tapped the empty gun against his hip, thinking.

  “Krell is the worst example of what it means to be human you could have found. There is right and wrong in this world. Good and bad.” He thought black and white, but knew otherwise.

  “What is right? What is wrong?” The inflections completely shifted away from Krell’s. In finally using its voice, it was finding its own rhythm. Too late, after all that has come to pass, but perhaps with a chance to actually grow now. But how? Into what? He could not take the alien to prison. It wouldn’t understand. It learned from the most despicable of teachers. Would it stay on earth, free to learn right, good, compassion, and love, as it would have if not for Krell? What exactly was next?

  “Right is positive, the way of good,” Vera said, and then stalled, turning to take in the warehouse, seeking answers in the deteriorating geometry. He wasn’t good at this at all. Then it came to him, a different way, a path less clear but more understandable for the alien, he hoped.

  “You have what you describe as a connection with your others, hearing thoughts…”

  “To my best expression… to my best understanding of what I know of your language, yes. We are connected.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Your kind, no matter trying to assimilate into different races, you are connected, working together for a common goal of understanding each race. That’s what most humans try to do, work together for the common, well, good. Something positive.”

  “I still do not understand positive. Right. Wrong.”

  Vera shuffled slightly, knowing he was failing to make a dent, yet also knowing the alien was a sponge, and, somehow, with it put properly, would understand right, wrong, good, bad, and so much more.

  “But you do understand connected, right? You are connected to those like you, as most p
eople are connected, working for a common purpose.”

  “Yes, a common purpose. We exchange information. We communicate in our way and work toward a common purpose.”

  Vera holstered his gun, his fingers achy from the tension. He held up his right hand. “This… this is the majority of humans.” He held up his left hand, with his thumb extended away from the rest of the fingers. “This is most humans… and this one finger, the thumb, is Krell.” He moved his hands together, intertwining the fingers, except for the one indicated as Krell. “Most of us want to work as one, in unison, in a way that is good, right, and positive for all humans. Except for Krell.” He wiggled the thumb.

  The alien peered sharply at the thumb. Something registered, but Vera could not be sure, so he said, “Does that make sense? Krell is not a part of the rest of us. Krell is outside of most of our thinking, how most humans are.” Simplification for the sake of teaching, as one would a child.

  “Father Krell is not… one of you, of humans?”

  No reason to defer from the bridge of understanding he was building between them. “No. He is a monster in human flesh.”

  “Krell is from out there”—signaling above again; space— “and not… here? Like me?”

  “No. Not like you, either. He is human, but the worst kind. Wrong. Bad. Evil.”

  “This… right and wrong, good and bad, this is all there is to being human? Working together or not working together?”

  “Not exactly, but they are major parts of the human puzzle,” he said, knowing this really would make no sense to the alien. “I mean, there’s more, there’s more. Compassion and empathy: caring for other people, not destroying them, as Krell had done. Generosity and good will: giving of oneself in a way to others for the betterment of others, perhaps even the specific happiness of one person. Love…” He paused, realizing this was as much for himself as it was for the alien. “Love… when you find one human who matters more than all the others. The one you are connected to the deepest. The one who makes the most sense to you…” A tear trickled down the side of his nose.

  “What is this?” the alien said, pointing to the tear. “So many of Father Krell’s… of those who spent time with Father Krell did this.”

  Great, thought Vera. Now he had crossed even deeper into the gray area.

  “It is a tear. Often humans express their hurt, their sorrow and pain, with tears, but sometimes… sometimes it’s more a longing, missing somebody. A different kind of hurt. Krell’s victims were not crying— that’s what it is called when we do this— out of longing, more so pain, hurt, the bad stuff. My tears are for missing the one I love.”

  “Missing the one you love? Is this a bad thing, too?”

  Vera thought, I’m not a poet, I’m just a damned worn out detective. How am I supposed to explain tears, and love? Empathy and passion? “It can be, but it’s different than that. I miss my wife, the one I am meant to be with. I miss her dearly. Love is the light within us all, and mine has been dim for too long. This ache… kind of lets me know I am still alive.”

  Vera dropped his head, stared at his shoes, knowing the sense of this was probably too much for the alien, when the alien said, “Why are you not with the one you love?”

  Because I am a weak man. Because I am a pathetic man touched by evil. Because of Krell, the one who has destroyed what mattered most to me.

  “Sometimes… sometimes the mere living is too much, and when you love somebody, you don’t want to drag them down with you. I want to give her everything she needs, but circumstances out of my control have narrowed the path to her, made me perhaps wary of even trying.”

  Vera thought himself an inadequate teacher, an inadequate human, trying but failing to express some tiny scrap of what it means to be human.

  What next?

  “Does any of this make sense to you?” he said, failure a lunatic crow cawing outside the factory.

  “No… Maybe. But from what you have told me, Father Krell has never… done… never expressed any of these things.” The pupils within the alien’s childlike gaze dilated. Vera registered this as somehow good. Heart on its sleeve, better yet, understanding in its eyes.

  Again, moments swelled unfilled, Vera sensing his efforts were for naught, when the alien said, “I think… I think I understand.”

  Vera wanted to smile, but the circumstances of where they were and what had happened there mere minutes ago, negated it; a nod of the head would have to do.

  The alien’s eyes seemed to come alive even more, as if it did really get it.

  “Take me to Krell.”

  “What?” All feigned progress crashed and burned in Vera’s mind. “Why would you want to see Krell?”

  “Because… because he wants something I can give him.”

  The words sank as a lead weight clipped off the fishing line.

  “Why would you want to give him anything? He’s a monster. Didn’t you understand anything I said? He’s…” Then Vera saw in the alien’s ever-transforming eyes: it knew exactly what it was saying. It understood on the simplest level, right and wrong. Good and bad. It knew exactly what it was suggesting. Now it was time for Vera to learn a thing or two.

  “What do you mean that you can give Krell exactly what he wants?” Vera had to be sure.

  “You know what he wants, Detective Vera,” the alien said, its voice growing more firm— wet concrete, hardening.

  “Yes, but… I want to know your interpretation.”

  “Interpretation?” Vera thought he’d lost the alien with a word out of its range, but the alien showed, with what must be its first ever conversation, that it was learning. “He wants to be nothing. I came from nothing. I have not succeeded in my quest to fit in and it’s time for me to go back from where I came. I can grant him his … wish. I can take him with me…”

  “You can do that?” Vera said, astonished at the possibility: to be nothing as the alien understood it, nothing being its true father.

  The alien quivered, its body melting and morphing from Krell’s large, imposing figure, to the size of a short man, its features swimming as when the bullets struck its face, but, now different, almost human.

  The hairs on Vera’s body came alive, the transformation radiating as waves of static electricity.

  The alien finally relaxed into a basic assimilation, one nobody would ever think out of place.

  Vera took a faltering step backward, discomfort tingling on his skin, when the alien said, “Some of what is human is… ingrained in me. My pure self is… blank and cold and… nothing. This was as far as I had gotten in my assimilation. Expanding to a larger size, large as Father Krell or you is not all that… pleasing. I have… I had so much more to learn. But I’ve squandered my existence trying to be something that should not be. Talking to you… I feel I have learned more in… our time… than in all the time with Father Krell. I have learned more about what it truly means to be human. As for your previous question, yes, I can do that. I have… I understand enough of what you have… taught me to know it would be the… right thing to do. It’s what I can give to you. It’s what I can give to humanity. It’s what I can give to Father”—pausing, cogs slipping into place— “to Krell.”

  Yes, the alien understood. What it would be doing in granting Krell his ideological quest in the crudest terms: the alien would be taking out the garbage.

  He was definitely not a poet.

  Vera moved around Stephanie Campbell’s cooling remains and extended his hand toward the alien. The alien looked at it curiously.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s my way of saying welcome to the human race. And thank you.”

  The alien extended its fingers and Vera gripped them, hard enough to leave an impression, but not hard enough to hurt. Vera smiled; the alien smiled back, wiggling its thumb before placing it in the grasp of the handshake.

  “Connected for the greater good,” the alien said.

  A few hours later, in a small room adjacent to K
rell’s cell in The Pit, branching out as one of five dark corridors reserved for the worst of the worst, Vera and the alien sat, waiting. Vera had stopped by his apartment, an out of the way drive, but necessary to get the alien some clothes. He figured a pair of Marina’s jeans and tennis shoes she’d left behind— left as a reminder of her, perhaps; as if he could ever forget her— and a too large white shirt and black blazer would have to do. I.D. for the alien would have to be Vera’s word to Calvin Decker, the warden at Stonewall, a friend he knew would trust him when it came to Krell, even if they had different perspectives.

  They sat in silence, not even the low hum of electricity daring to murmur here.

  Vera had been to many prisons, been subject to the architecture of despair as constant companion. It was woven into the flesh of the guilty, an invisible straightjacket that clung to their every thought, as well as embedded into the walls, infused into the air. Despair was the cornerstone of the fetid ambience. Within prisons, life was not lived, it was endured. Each man’s existence was defined by the terminal waiting. Trepidation kept the hackles on guard. No matter the warmth outside, the chill of dissolution snuggled into every cell, partner to misery, yet this was felt more intensely by an outsider than it was by those who walked the halls. The inmates bathed in this and let it wash over them, defiling perspectives and perceptions. Being ready for anything at any moment, finding pleasure in hollow couplings— willing or not— these were the things that drove them, that nudged them out of stiff cots and stiffer realities. Existence by rote, until a shiv or time or lethal injection or God squeezed the last breath out of them.

  But down here, literally underground, the windowless realm of The Pit served notice to those of exceptional malice toward their fellow man, their days were numbered. Even calling them days was perfunctory. Time did not matter here. It roosted on a line strung taut between days, between the indistinct emptiness of one minute to the next. The illusion of day to night that turning the lights off for twelve hours, then on, ever dimly for twelve was a nod to denial, to not wanting to see him and what he did— manifests nothing but the lie of normalcy for those who did not cater to the basic precepts of normalcy, and most certainly did not bow to the best intentions of humanity, even as the world turned and grew more weary with every rotation.