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PART 1:
COFFIN BIRTH
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Chapter 1
Colliding with empty space, they watched the cosmos split before them. Celestial bodies whorled and wilted, victims of a spacetime rent asymmetrical. From the newborn crack in creation, a malignant green light belched forth. With it came the multitudes…
Later, Commander Frank Gordon sat alone on the orbiter’s flight deck. Strapped into his commander’s seat, an internally lit control panel set before him, he stared into a vast expanse filled with unfamiliar constellations. There were no planets in sight, not even a sun. His mind was fuzzy. Time passed like bad stop motion animation: everything broken and jagged.
A howl drifted up from the below decks, leaving Gordon shivering violently. He had to check on the space shuttle’s crew, he knew, but the idea brought trepidation. Since learning of Kenneth Yamamoto’s fate—the grisly spectacle in the crew module’s mid deck sleeping area—Gordon had been unable to hold rational conversations with any of the dazed spacemen populating the orbiter, had feared them worse than the voices in his head and the torment panoramas flashing behind his eyelids.
Yamamoto, the shuttle’s payload commander, was a baby-faced Asian American with carefully parted hair. Loud and enthusiastic, he’d been the last person Gordon would have suspected of suicide. Yet it appeared that the man had used vise grip pliers to pull all the teeth from his mouth, and then gouge out his own eyeballs.
Reclining within a thin cotton sleeping bag, buckled securely into his designated metal cabinet, Kenneth still clutched the pliers. The tool was dull, yet he had managed to repeatedly penetrate his abdomen before bleeding to death.
Melanie Sarnoff, the flight engineer, had alerted Gordon to the situation. She’d discovered a handful of drifting teeth on the air circulation system’s filtering screen, which served as the orbiter’s unofficial lost and found section. Investigating the disturbance further, the bovine-faced gal had stumbled upon her friend as he gasped his last breath, mouth contorted into a hideous blood rictus.
Reporting the incident, Melanie had laughed hysterically. Eyes bulging within a face ravaged by adolescent acne remnants, dirty blonde hair pulled into the tightest ponytail Gordon had ever seen, the husky no-nonsense crewmember had looked deep into his eyes and remarked, They got him.
Gordon hadn’t asked whom she referred to. Their hideous whispers echoed in his skull, pleading for salvation, promising damnation. They remained just outside peripheral vision, visible only through shuttered eyelids. Their mouths were dark tunnels, their eyes angry cinders.
Insane laughter, interspersed with howls of soul-rending agony, reverberated throughout his skull, churning his memories into abstract puzzle pieces, which Gordon struggled to reassemble.
««—»»
Their logo patches read Conundrum, which the commander assumed was the shuttle’s name. A strange name, really. It hardly inspired the same sense of majesty as the Discovery, Challenger and Enterprise shuttles had. Of their mission, Gordon remembered little.
Sifting through broken memories, he recalled something about a mysterious transmission emanating from low earth orbit, in an area empty to all visualizations. Presumably, he and his crew had been sent to investigate the phenomenon, but he couldn’t recall any payloads being delivered or experiments being performed. Gordon was afraid to ask Peter Kent, the payload specialist, any details concerning their goals, fearing that the man would prove as addle-brained as himself.
One thing that he knew for certain was that they hadn’t launched from the Kennedy Space Center. Instead, Gordon recalled a clandestine site deep in the Chihuahaun Desert: a fenced-off area containing a launch pad scheduled for immediate demolition.
They’d blasted off with no media present. Instead of cheering crowds waving well wishes, their audience had been cacti and Creosote clusters, which could only look on indifferently.
And now communications were down—S-band and Ku-band alike—making it impossible to downlink or receive uplinked data. The Earth-based flight controllers would be no help to his crew now, and no one was currently piloting the ship. With no landmarks to follow, what was the point of a reaction control system?
Gordon rubbed his head, which he usually shaved daily, but was now covered in stubble. His thin lips compressed, threatening to disappear altogether. Reluctantly unstrapping himself from the commander’s seat, he swam without water resistance. Reaching the wall bars, he pulled himself to the ladder. Slowly, he descended, desperate to be anywhere else.
Upon reaching the mid deck, Gordon was shocked to see blood droplets floating in all directions, filling the galley to drastically restrict vision. Stray bits of cereal and partially chewed fruit chunks drifted amongst the plasma, debris that could become lodged in the orbiter’s highly sensitive equipment at any moment. He would need a vacuum from the starboard side storage lockers, to suck it all up post haste.
Climbing his way starboard, Gordon reached the waterless shower stall, where he encountered Steve Herman. Desperate for answers, the commander pulled down the stall’s privacy curtain, exposing the swarthy man’s depravities.
The mission specialist was naked, save for the Velcro-soled slippers anchoring him within the stall. His dark skin had gone grey; his unkempt hair desperately needed trimming. Blood droplets ascended from his wrists, which he continued to tear at with his teeth, apparently following Yamamoto’s example.
Noticing his superior, Herman paused his undertaking to exclaim, Hello, Commander Gordon. Nice night, isn’t it? An eternal night, you might say.
Herman, just what do you think you’re doing? Is my entire crew committing suicide? Snap out of it, man!
"No can do, boss. I’ve seen her…pulled aside that cold white mask to stare into those old dead eyes of hers. What I saw reflected in those orbs, no man should see."
Gordon let the comment slide, as he maneuvered close enough to grab his subordinate firmly by the shoulders. Do you remember what we were doing before the world disappeared?
he shouted. What were our objectives?
The mission specialist laughed faintly, consciousness ebbing in a crimson gush. "Don’t you get it? She brought us here…deep, deep into the Phantom Cabinet. She brought us here." Unleashing a prolonged sigh, Herman definitively closed his eyes.
Gordon released the man, needing to escape his morbid proximity, however briefly. Don’t worry, buddy,
he heard himself say. I’ll grab a medical kit, and we’ll get you stitched and bandaged up.
He had blood in his eyes now, and rubbed them to little effect.
There were medical kits in both the starboard side and port side storage lockers. While he was currently port side, Gordon was already heading starboard side for the vacuum, and so he continued in that direction, resolutely climbing the floor. He knew he’d be passing the sleeping area on the way, and shuddered at the implications.
Melanie and Fyodor Oborski—the international mission specialist—were there, keeping Kenneth’s corpse company. The large girl and the wisecracking Russian floated listlessly across the room, matching grey pants pulled around their ankles, along with their undergarments.
Fyodor panted in Melanie’s ear, awkwardly slipping it to her from behind. The girl stared with no situational awareness, anchoring herself by grasping Kenneth’s arm, protruding from its metal cabinet coffin.
Fyodor, stop that now!
the commander cried. Can’t you see that Melanie’s gone catatonic? What you’re doing is practically rape!
Fyodor’s bearded face twisted toward Gordon. Chill out, dude,
he said in a mock Californian accent. Don’t you know we’re dead now? Relax and enjoy it. Cut yourself a slice of this woman’s loaf, if you wanna. I’m almost done here.
Green light flashed, and the sleeping area became spirit-congested. The newcomers were of all ages, from infants to geriatrics, and from all eras. Some wore modern clothing, others vintage threads. Many wore apparel that Gordon had never glimpsed before: feather cloaks, foot-high shirt collars, dotted waistcoats and bloomer suits.
There were men with powdered wigs, and even a specter whose true form was hidden within a disconcerting crow costume: a long-beaked stitched leather mask topped by a black cordobés hat, with a dark voluminous robe engulfing all else. Waving a black baton to and fro, the crow-man silently admonished the gathering.
The visitors were somewhat translucent, insubstantial things through which the sane confines of the ship could still be glimpsed. Their facial expressions exhibited an admixture of fury, avarice, loathing and sorrow. Somehow, Fyodor and Melanie managed to ignore their newfound audience, even as the ghosts fondled their living flesh.
Spirits were all around him, so Gordon headed back the way he’d arrived. He no longer cared about the vacuum, and had forgotten Steve Herman’s gnawed-open wrists entirely. In fact, he scarcely discerned the pitiful mewling emanating from his own shock-slackened mouth. It was as if the antiseptic white walls of the orbiter were closing in on him, crushing Gordon between burgeoning jaws.
The spacecraft’s internal fluorescent floodlights buzzed into his skull, adding to the river of spectral whispers winding its way through Gordon’s psyche. The combination left him weaker than he’d ever been, weakness far beyond the loss of bone density and muscle mass associated with zero gravity life.
The equipment bay was on the lower deck. There, amid the electrical systems and life support equipment, Gordon discovered another crewmember: payload specialist Peter Kent. Kent had donned his bright orange Launch Entry Suit for some reason—including the parachute and all associated survival systems—everything but his helmet. He’d also built a floating fort, improvised from the trash and solid waste bags awaiting disposal back on Earth.
Commander Gordon, is that you?
Kent asked, his pale freckled face peering warily out the shelter, an amalgamation of nervous tics.
It’s me,
Gordon confirmed. Can I ask what you’re doing down here? You can’t be comfortable in that LES.
I’m hiding, sir. We’ve been infiltrated, and they can’t touch me through this gear. Watch out, commander, they’re all around you.
Pulling a helmet over his fire-red mane, Kent terminated the conversation.
A cold caress brushed Gordon’s cheek: mottled, bloated whiteness pawing vigorously, presumably attached to a drowning victim. Eyes squeezed closed, the commander let muscle memory pull him back toward the mid deck.
Only one crewmember remained unaccounted for: Hershel Stein, the shuttle’s pilot. If anyone could account for where they’d ended up, it was Stein. But the man hadn’t been at his pilot’s seat, or on any of the crew compartment’s three decks. He had to be spacewalking.
««—»»
Gordon passed through the first airlock door, and locked it securely behind him. Slowly, he donned his extravehicular mobility unit—hard upper torso, lower torso assembly, helmet, gloves, extravehicular visor assembly—every component of the bulky white encumbrance.
He spent a few hours breathing pure oxygen, draining nitrogen from his body tissue to prevent decompression sickness. Around him, ghosts flickered in and out of visibility, twisted-faced specters ravenous for life glow. Gordon ignored these apparitions the best that he could, closing his eyes and reciting old sitcom themes from memory, sweating profusely all the while.
Finally, enough time had passed for Gordon to pass through the second airlock door, into the open cosmos. Grimly, he tethered himself to the orbiter, noticing another safety tether already attached. Breathing canned oxygen, he pushed off from the spacecraft’s remote manipulator arm.
Nudging a small joystick, he worked the nitrogen jet thrusters of his propulsive backpack system. Reaching Stein, Gordon gently spun the pilot until they were drifting face-to-face. Hershel stared back without sight, his curly hair and proudly waxed mustache drained of all color. The Phantom Cabinet had claimed another victim.
««—»»
Gordon couldn’t bring himself to reenter the haunted crew module, overstuffed with poltergeists and insane crewmates. Instead, Space Shuttle Conundrum’s commander detached his safety tether, and let the orbiter fall away.
Soon, Gordon could no longer discern the spacecraft’s lifted body and backswept wings. Calmly sipping water from his in-suit drink bag, he succumbed to the void chill, adrift amongst the stars.
««—»»
The cold black cosmos turned an anemic green. Stars moved ever closer, resolving into the lost souls of the damned. As predatory spirits encircled him, crushing with undying hunger, Gordon considered the possibility that he’d died during liftoff. Perhaps everything he’d experienced since had been nothing more than Hell’s prelude.
— | — | —
Chapter 2
You’ll be just fine, dear.
Martha Stanton smiled up at her husband, squeezing his clammy hand. The delivery room’s soothing colors—tan and beige primarily—provided a modicum of comfort, as did the light jazz piped in over the Patientline, and all the Entonox she’d been inhaling. She was in the first stage of labor, and the delivery nurse buzzed constantly about, doling out ice chips and administering I.V. fluids.
Martha’s face was flushed and sweaty, her long black hair gone frizzy. She’d been nightmare-plagued for weeks, her unconscious mind conjuring a multitude of scenarios in which the birth turned tragic. Still, she handled the situation better than her husband—nervously bouncing on his tiptoes, appearing ready to faint at any moment. He put on a brave front, though, and for that she loved him.
Carter Stanton wore a tweed sweater and tan slacks, blotched with tension-induced perspiration. His wispy blonde hair thinned above black-framed glasses; wrinkles radiated from his eye corners. Scrutinizing her husband, Martha found it hard to believe that they’d only been a few years out of college. Carter already looked older than some of her professors had.
««—»»
Oceanside Memorial Medical Center was a sprawling medical complex located on the corner of Oceanside Boulevard and Rancho del Oro Road. To enter the building’s main entrance, one passed through a great grass courtyard, bordered by palm trees and manzanitas. The grassy expanse featured four large metal sculptures: malignantly abstract pieces that never failed to make Martha shudder.
When her amniotic water splashed their kitchen tile, Carter had whisked Martha to the hospital, before she’d even registered what happened. Little Douglas was on the way, and Martha had gone from a bundle of excitement to a quiet apprehensive mess in short succession. Concentrating on maintaining an even breathing rate, the mother-to-be waited as her contractions lengthened and grew closer together.
««—»»
Now she had her legs in stirrups, her head and back resting on a large white cushion. Her vulva and its surrounding area had been cleaned, and then left exposed for all to see.
The delivery nurse, a skinny little thing named Ashley, stood aside Martha, wearing a ridiculous scrub top crammed with images of rattles and teddy bears. The obstetrician, an elderly warhorse christened Dr. Kimple, hovered at the foot of the bed, her plain green scrubs infinitely more dignified in comparison. Carter stood in the background, a hospital gown over his apparel, shifting from foot to foot like he had to urinate. All three wore gloves, masks and hairnets, leaving them nearly indistinguishable from each other.
Martha’s legs trembled violently, as she experienced a succession of cold flashes. She’d thrown up once already; her stomach still heaved in turmoil. Her body ached with an intense expulsion urge, and bore down in the effort to do so.
It’s crowning,
proclaimed Dr. Kimple.
As her vaginal opening sought to stretch beyond its maximum circumference, Martha gave herself over to the burning sensation, wondering if she’d be sexually inoperable from that point onward.
She became aware of a fifth presence in the room, lurking at vision’s edge. Dim lighting left the intruder swimming in shadows; only its white porcelain mask was visible.
Slowly, the entity drew closer, until it loitered mere feet from Martha’s bed. The mask it wore was featureless, save for slight hollows to indicate eye space. Incredibly, the mask floated inches before the being’s face, sporadically shifting, offering brief glimpses of the shiny, suppurating visage of a recent burn victim.
The specter wore a woman’s form, one much abused. At some point, her body had undergone radical vivisection, leaving pieces of shredded small intestine floating before her like octopus tentacles. The entity’s skin was so welt and contusion-covered that race became irrelevant. With every fluctuation, the shifting shadows disclosed a fresh atrocity.
Get her away from me!
Martha screamed, thrashing in her stirrups. The simple act of respiration became a struggle, and she practically shattered Carter’s hand when he attempted a reassuring squeeze.
Keep pushing!
shouted Dr. Kimple.
Now the intruder was leaning over Martha, reaching out a hand absent two digits, still unperceived by the room’s other occupants. Her palm slid over Martha’s eyes, obscuring vision entirely. The mother-to-be struggled to pull the hand from her face, but the entity gripped like a steel vise.
What’s she doing?
asked Carter. She’s flailing her arms like someone’s attacking her.
Don’t worry,
chirped the delivery nurse. We’ve seen far worse here.
The hand withdrew, taking the delivery room with it. The freestanding cupboards had disappeared, as had the baby cot. Jazz music no longer played. All pain relieving medication had been purged from her body. Writhing in agony, Martha forgot to push, barely recalled she was in the birth process.
The hospital bed had transformed into a cold stone slab. The stirrups were gone. Instead, chains now bound Martha’s hands and feet, stretching her limbs to full length. She saw walls of soot-blackened stone, lit by strategically placed torches. An acrid urine stench filled the air. Sounds of squeaking and stealthy shuffling emanated from the floor, most likely rats.
She screamed for her husband, but he wasn’t there. Neither were the nurse and obstetrician, it seemed. Even the porcelain-masked entity had departed.
Finally, she heard a trod too heavy to belong to a rat. Struggling to peer past her grotesquely protruding belly, Martha beheld a strange figure approaching.
The newcomer wore a black hooded tunic, and thick leather strips around their feet and legs. Silently, they approached, with an esquire’s helmet—closed-visored steel devoid of grille slits—clasped in one hand.
Pausing their careful stride, the figure bent to snatch a critter from the floor: an ugly scarred creature the size of a full-grown cat, exposing canine teeth sharp as ice picks. The creature wasn’t a rat at all, it turned out, but a mixed fur ferret hissing its annoyance. Dropping the creature into the helmet, the visitor resumed their approach.
No, no, no…
Martha moaned, as the helmet was upended and set upon her exposed abdomen. Beneath it, the ferret moved furiously, its paws and matted fur like sandpaper against her stomach.
The mute stranger retrieved a flaming torch from its wrought iron holder, while Martha attempted to wriggle the helmet off her midsection. Her tired muscles could only tremble.
The torch was placed to the helmet. Soon, its blistering edges seared Martha’s epidermis. As the temperature rose, the imprisoned ferret began to panic. With teeth and claws it burrowed, tearing into Martha with reckless abandon.
She screamed until her vocal chords shredded, screamed for what felt like eons. She could feel the ferret inside of her now—all twenty-four inches of it—and knew that it was gorging on her unborn son.
««—»»
What’s wrong with her?
enquired Carter Stanton, as his wife continued to screech.
The delivery nurse had gone as white as her mask and hairnet, and could only shake her head in bewilderment.
She’s stopped pushing,
Dr. Kimple remarked tonelessly. The poor thing has exhausted herself. If your child is to live, we’ll need to perform an instrumental delivery.
The words meant little to Carter. Over his wife’s frenzied howls, he barely heard them. Numbly, he watched the obstetrician cut Martha’s perineum and apply forceps to the infant’s submerged head. Slowly, Dr. Kimple eased the baby out.
When his wife’s voice finally broke, Carter became aware of his newborn’s cries. Awestricken, he supervised the umbilical cord severance: one decisive snip. Then Dr. Kimble passed the boy, still covered in blood and amniotic fluid, into Martha’s outstretched hands.
««—»»
With the ferret having chewed its way out her body, the steel helmet was no longer needed. Martha could see her lower torso now: a shredded, blood-spurting mess.
The shackles were removed from her wrists, leaving her flailing uselessly at her tormentor. Laughing androgynously, the hooded figure offered her the ferret, red and slimy.
You killed my baby,
Martha rasped, even as she held the infant in question.
Little Douglas, eyes squeezed shut, wailed his contempt at the world outside the womb. For him, everything was too bright, too raucous and chaotic.
She’s hysterical,
exclaimed nurse Ashley. We better take the boy until she’s calmed down a little.
The ferret was in her hands now, chittering in amusement. Martha shook vehemently, squeezing its filthy neck. She squeezed until her hands ached, squeezed until she saw the light in its malignant rat-like eyes extinguished.
««—»»
They’d finally wrestled the newborn away from Martha, but it was too late. Baby Douglas had gone greyish, and hung limply in his father’s hands.
Attempts were made at resuscitation, but bag and mask ventilation proved ineffective. Martha’s violent outburst had damaged the two main arteries leading to poor Douglas’ brain, leaving the child brain dead.
Two hospital security officers stood in the back of the room now, carved monuments in tan polyester shirts, warily eyeing the madwoman. Shell-shocked, Carter clutched his dead son, as those assembled grimly awaited placental expulsion.
And then the lights went out.
««—»»
The backup generators kicked in almost immediately, returning illumination to Oceanside Memorial. Equipment sprang back into operation. Staff returned to their duties with scarcely a pause.
But something had changed in the hospital; the atmosphere felt charged, as if a thunderstorm was oncoming. Patients and caregivers recalled old nightmares with frightening clarity, as the temperature plummeted dozens of degrees.
Within the medical center’s well-scrubbed corridors, malevolence manifested, coalescing into a phantom throng. Wearing lamentations like badges, these spirits prowled for the living.
««—»»
Washing up after a tonsillectomy, surgeon Kevin Montclair glimpsed a stranger’s face in the mirror above the sink. A shotgun blast had obliterated the upper right quadrant of the apparition’s head. Bits of brain and bone rested upon its chambray shirt. As the specter drifted out from the
