CHAPTER SIX
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The thick darkness clutched the night tightly and the two men tried to furtively peer through the window's half opened blind. "A room," Phillips was tentative, looked up towards Allen and paused, "Possibly a laboratory."
The room lay in the bowels of the building, in a depth of existence civilized men seldom contemplate and never confront. Phillips and Allen descended into this world with a reluctant step whose pace against the damp stairs served to remind them of their intrusion. Through the corners of darkness they stalked the door, coming upon it and violently suppressing the fear that throbbed in their minds as they both, hand over hand, grabbed the doorlatch. Slowly, cautiously, without betraying their presence, they turned it.
"Come in, Gentlemen."
They hung at the entrance pondering their retreat. The door let out a howl as they pushed it from their bodies. He was turned away from them laboring over an intangible. Phillips tasted the acrid air, smelled the burning electrical charges and felt his system revile at their presence. Allen craned his neck towards a table of brewing beakers and he surveyed them attempting to glean information about their host.
"Wh . . . who are you?"
"What is it you're doing here?"
The man continued his operation without acknowledging their questions or presence. Phillips and Allen began to doubt their senses, neither was certain the voice that had greeted their arrival belonged to this small man feverishly working over his experiment. They wondered if he was capable of speech, capable of any human response. The tension in the air beagn to open up realms of thought heretofore closed to their consciousness. Before they could query aloud as to what kind of mutant was before them, he spoke again, "You may be seated."
Angry at such casual acceptance of their powerlessness but not daring to anger, they reluctantly seated themselves. Again they demanded he identify hemself.
"All will become clear to you shortly, but first," He turned towards them revealing a face that was not unpleasant but held within its countenance a penetrating darkness, "A demonstration."
He worked stoop-shouldered, moving through each pattern of knobs, his face a possessed fire of energy. The static in the air grew intense and the dim-toned hum louder with each turn of a dial. Phillips managed to glimpse Allen whose face wore a despaerate mask that he knew reflected his own.
Their tormentor completed his cycles and waited until he received a preternatural sparek of inspiration that swept his hand across a final dial. Allen and Phillips braced themselves but the room remained unchanged. Minutes passed. Nothing ceased, nothing began. Until the stillness snapped. The lights blinked, then dimmed altogether. A burst of energy was heard, then seen as a sizzling multi-colored ray.
"Well, what do you think?"
Neither Allen nor Phillips knew.
"Let me explain. I'm Dr. Driver, head of reasearch. Maybe you recall my last contribution to the network, the decibel booster used during commercial breaks. I'm aware of your difficulties and I think you've just seen the solution to your problems."
"I'm not certain I follow you, Dr. Driver."
The Doctor at once became animated and strode towards his console. "Another demonstration?" Phillips did not have the taste for another display of the ray.
The Doctor only turned a fiendish grin towards Phillips's adamant refusal, "My research began several years ago as an outcrop of the decibel project. It became apparent to me that our plicy of continued visual bombardment coupled with the criminal audacity of our advertisements has a serious flaw in it, saturation does not lead to direct consumption. I have come to realize we must go beyond subliminal suggestion, beyond image making to . . . " The puse was amaddening roar. "To Goosebraining."
Allen looked at Phillips and could not redirct his eyes towards Dr. Driver even though he addressed him. "And that is the beqam of light we witnessed?" It was all he could do to throw his voice clear of his throat.
"Precisely! Ah, but you still do not see the connection>" A clod deathly stare fell upon Driver, a look Phillips and Allen apprehended. "The potential, gentlemen, is enough to give a body fits," the Doctor gushed. "A ray that eliminates the uncertainty of television. It acts directly on the viewer's libido. If we show a woman waxing a floor with new Shinola, I guarantee the viewer is not going to feel satisfied till he washes his floor."
Suddenly the possibilities began to grope through Allen's mind, "We could make a fortune . . . using the ray judisciously and responsibly, of course."
"There is one obstacle, however."
Allen lowered his spirits.
"I have not as yet experimented on a human subject," the Doctor raised his eyebrows expectantly.
"That is a problem, isn't it Phillips?"
"Uh . . . yes."
"I'm glad you agree, the Doctor and all of us will be grateful for your assistance."
"That's mad." Phillips had begun to rise, but at Driver's command the chair shackled his wrists and ankles. "You're mad. Mad, do you hear?"
Doctor Driver pivoted the ray towards Phillips's white terrified person while Allen attempted to console the now hysterical Phillips. Over Phillips's violent protesttations, his chair was wheeled in front of a television screen. Not before the set turned on and his eyes glassed over with the characteristics of a T.V. viewer on and his eyes glassed over with the characteristics of a T.V. viewer did the bracelets loosen and Phillips become calm. Phillips began to rub his armpits, ruffle and groom his hair, hold his clothes from his body turning up his nose, and he began to scratch incessantly. Phillips did not doubt that he had just crawled out from the cesspool of mankind and was reeking with every foulness the race produced.
Allen began to sense an aberration in the expected pattern. The more he watched, the more he became convinced something was amiss. At last, aboandoning deference to the Doctor's experience and Phillips's fine work, he blurted out, "where's the ray, Driver? I don't see any ray."
The Doctor didn't respond to Allen's question, he stood entranced marvelling Phillips's performance. "It works. It works magnificently." To sanctify the Doctor's words, Phillips continued to respond to the stimuli the set offered.
Allen was still straining to be heard above the din when Driver turned off the set and the volume in Allen's voice surprised even himself. "The ray. Where is the ray?"
"It's in the broadcast. Beautiful, isn't it?"
Allen could not calculate the full power of the new device fast enough.
Phillips had stood silent until he finally blurted out, "I have a craving to ingest large amounts of detergent and this vague longing to . . . to take a shampoo girl and . . . run my fingers through her hair."
Allen began to come alive with excitement, "Doctor, you've made an important contribution towards the public's right to observe. How about joining us in town for a drink, a drink to the Goosebrain Syndrome. The beer's on me."
"A full-bodied beer with natural malt and finest barley," Phillips piped in.
The road to town was unlit and the rocks flanked the sides as ghastly shadows. The broken white line ran just ahead of their sweeping headlights and they let it lead them into town.
The village was ponderous in its greyness, the streets ran into desolation. They pulled their auto onto the cobblestones in front of a small cafe. Across the street, a shade was drawn tight. A child's face was seen in a doorway and whisked inside by an unseen hand. The dingy cafe, shut tight, did not look inviting.
"Maybe they're closed."
"I saw a movement behind the curtain."
A tiny bell on the top of the door announced their entry. The three sensed the uneasiness even before the nervous man with scared yellow eyes shuffled out of the kitchen.
"Wh-what do you want? I'm sorry, the kitchen's closed."
"We'd just like a couple of drinks."
Not here. Please. Please go. My family. Understand, this is all we have. It's our home."
"You must be mistaking us for someone else. We're not here to harm you."
The man continued to tremble.
"Don't you know who we are?"
"Here, take a beer, a sandwhich, anything you want. It's all on the house. Just leave, please leave," he pleaded from his sallow face.
"Don't you know who we are?"
Broken glass shattered the heavy night air followed by the proprietor screaming, "I know who you are and damn it, they know who you are!"
"Our car. They're stoning our car."
"How can they?"
"They don't know we're in the entertainment business. I've got to tell them."
"Go ahead, they probably can't wait to hang you!"
Outside, the metal on the car was stretching into twisted shapes from the barrage of rocks. Allen brought his hand to his neck, "They may not listen to reason."
Allen, Phillips, and Driver looked at the man's family huddling around him and they looked towards the street where the only visible sign of their presence was torturously being torn to pieces. They looked questioning at one another. Their conclusion to make a timely exit was punctuated by a large object slamming against the front door. More than just the windows were quaking when Driver asked, "Is there a back way out of here?"
The man led them into a back alley, watched them depart, locked the door, and hurried back to his family. The alley the three stumbled through was dark, dank, and littered with the smells and debris of the castoffs of a neighborhood. They picked their way cautiously to the street until one of them could roll his head around the corner.
"It looks clear."
"Do we dare head for the car?"
"We don't know if it's still in condition to be driven. Maybe we should . . . "
A scream tore the souls from the night mist. It was Phillips who burst away from the trail of his own voice and dissipated into the grey village. Allen and Driver were quick to find their own paths after they too witnessed the apparition. Its eyes were deep, sunken into its atrophied face but popping from their sockets in a stare originating from the dark heart of mankind. Yet, the eyes never focused, it looked but did not see.
Phillips had fled down the street where he ducked into a doorway that led to a dwelling closed tight. He shut his eyes and leaned against the wall, sucking deep lungfuls of air. As his breathing subsided, his panic to well up, he slowly came to the realization that he was not alone. He eased his eyelids open and caught two visages bearing down on him. He found the street with the impulse of the shock and churned his feet down the cobblestone, passing beneath a streetlight and continuing around a corner, picking up even more speed as he moved past three more countenances, wide-eyed and staring. When his body could no longer sustain the ordeal, he collapsed on the curb with his head in his hands. His face and limbs felt heavy and burdened by his loneness. He was lost, perhaps he felt, irretreivably. He contemplated calling out for Allen or Driver but as he lowered his jaw, he found his voice-box locked in a losing battle with his nerve. As four more beings wafted along a cross street not thirty yards from him, he thanked his weakling vocal chords that they had not cried out. Phillips replaced the refuge of the curb with the center of the street, maintaining a constant vigil in all directions as he carefully laid his footsteps on the pavement. He stealthed along the street until he was once again routed into a trembling run by five gaseous faces carrying ten eyeballs suspended in their sockets.
When Allen tore out of the alley, he raced for an open door and though he felt his movements locked in time, he reached his destination and dove inside for sanctuary.
"We've got one of them."
The door slammed shut and a dead bolt was thrown against his escape.
Allen felt his arms locked behind him in classic Greco-Roman style. A chair was thrown under him and he took it as an invitation to be seated. He sat facing several high intensity lamps, his body held in place by arms much stronger than his. He took the opportunity to identify himself, "I'm Mr. Allen from the network . . . "
""Well, what are we going to do with him?"
"Maybe you're familiar with some of my work?"
"I don't know yet. Let me think."
"I don't know if you're aware of it or not but . . . "
"We could ransom him, though I'm not sure he'd be worth any real money."
" . . . we've been responsible for several of your favorite . . . " Disbelief struck Allen, it was not his whose voice began to falter, but someone else in a bad dream. He found it difficult to comprehend the terrible meaning of the voices around him.
"Make it the reruns. Sitcom. We'll put him under fast and hold him till we get back."
The lights dimmed and before him droned a television set. He fought to keep his eyes averted but his head was held fast. And then he ceased to resist. He didn't feel his limbs eerily unbound. Nor did he sense his captors deadly movements into another part of the dreaded house. He did, however, remain rivetted to the picture tube, his brain only partially sending signals to his body. Those messages that did escape were doomed to be lost or short-circuited somewhere in the vast complexities of his muscular-vascular system. He may have stayed frozen in time, a victim of the fiendish devices of his captors, was it not for a stroke of fortune. The set was tuned to a program depicting a man in remarkably similar circumstances, circumstances that were evidently not lost on his captors during the first airing. However, they failed to calculate the potency of the plot or the receptance of poor Allen steadfastly fixed before the television. The empathy proved too great. When the hero burst his chains, Allen unflexed his arms and when the hero rose to terminate the diabolical machine controlling his mind, Allen got up and turned off the T.V.. The spell was broken. Dazed, but regaining his damaged senses, Allen stumbled through the door into the dark restless night.
Driver had made it to the car and was busy trying to turn the engine over. He worked quietly, jumping erratically at real and imagined noises, doubting the protection accorded by the engine grease he smeared over his face.
Passing voices sent him scurrying headfirst below the dashboard to the floor. He was only momentarily relieved when they passed and left him unscathed. His vulnerability was made unbearably clear by the onslaught that began to poour upon his ears and nerves.
"Three men lose their jobs after habitual absenteeism. It is alleged they were dead. Film at 11."
Summoning his courage, Driver, though his teeth chattered unceasingly, managed to continue his work.
"Coming soon to your home. See the three buffoons ripped apart before your very eyes."
His shaking becoming uncontrollabel and unable to complete the last step of his repairs without assistance, the Doctor began to mumble. "I am forsaken. I am forsaken." The thumping of footsteps brought Driver's head out of his hands.
Allen was almost upon him when he looked up. "Start the car. Man the wheel. Good God, man, make those tires peel."
Driver sprang to his feet, placed one end of a wrench on the battery pole, the other on a cable, and the middle in Allen's hand, told him to hold it, and jumped behind the steering column.
The key turned, the sparks soared, Allen jumped, shaking his hand and cursing. "I'm shocked!"
"I'm shocked too, that's the worst language I've ever heard. Now try it again."
Allen dutifully complied and the automobile dutifully fired.
"It startted, let's go."
"What about Phillips?"
"Phillips who?"
But from the corner came Phillips, his tie and coat screaming down the street followed closely by fifty or sixty wide-eyed nightmares.
Driver found the accelerator and Allen pulled Phillips through the window on the run.
Phillips was wide-eyed, terrified, his skin translucent. Neither Allen nor Driver were convinced that Phillips had not been transformed into one of their pursuers. Anxious minutes nervously moved by until finally, Phillips spoke. "It was . . . was . . . horrible."
Driver wound the car and its contents up the lone road. The night held terrors that imprisoned the thoughts of each man but none sought the comfort of conversation, communing instead with the still, pitch, moonless air.
Driver pumped the brake pedal and the auto idled before the iron gates. They waited patiently as the large camera scanned for information to render judgement on their plea for entry back into the estate.