Chervotochina (2)

 

Vyazniki

Vyaznikovsky District

2015

 

Mirsky winced. The vodka lit his throat. The sofa swallowed him. A circle of lamplight pooled on his hotel room ceiling.

He balanced the laptop on his knees. He drained the glass and refilled. He lit a cigarette. He pulled the images up. Eyelid skin. Miniscule tattoos.

Rescale. Zoom. Enhance. Sharpen.

Numbers. Crisp. Clear.

Four eyelids. Four sets of identical numbers:

52.8736° N, 149.3658° E. 14-10-15 22:08

Coordinates. A date. A time. He almost spat his shot. He grabbed a post-it note. He scribbled. He stuck the numbers into a search engine. He hit return.

The Sea of Okhotsk.

He zoomed in. A specific area. Specific parameters.

Sakhalin Island to the west. Kamchatka Peninsula to the east. A lonely stretch of sea.

He tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. Theories rushed. They grew legs.

Deposits. Trades. Trafficking. Theories expanded and became bullshit. Too little data. Too much weirdness. Too much drink.

Too much time. Too much time by himself. 

He shook his head. He drained a shot. Theories drained with it.

Four old men. Four old men. It was too specific. Too odd. It obliterated too many possibilities.

He hit the search engine. The Sea of Okhotsk. Specific coordinates. Specific parameters. He scrolled. 

Basic info: geography. Oil and gas exploration. Notable seaports.

He refilled. He drank. He refilled. He scrolled. He got into the doldrums. Random search engine connections. Weird sites. Weird headers. Magnetic fields. Magnetic anomalies. The Sea of Okhotsk. He enjoyed it. He enjoyed the weirdness. He gave it no creedence. Drink. Distract. 

He hit a weird blog. Basic. WordPress. Down the rabbit hole. Follow the rabbit: 52.8736° N, 149.3658° E > The Sea of Okhotsk > Magnetic fields > Magnetic anomalies > The research of Mikhail Skvortsoff. 1872 - 1926. 

Wild stuff. Crazy wild. Looping radio signals. Invisible magnetic fields. Portholes - alternate planes of existence - visible and accessible once every ten years.

Forced labour camps. Magnetic energy harvesting. Shady syndicates. High security. Bounty hunters. Metal fucking men...

He spluttered. He laughed. He downed his glass. Drops spilled over his chin. He closed the tabs and slid the laptop onto the table. He curled up. In his dreams he saw strange worlds. Prisoners. Black seas. Men with metal eyes.

 

-

1925

 

Kovalenko scraped at steel. An industrial rumble filled the air. He palmed along the walls. Bodies were crushed against him. He heard whimpers. Prayers. Hands groped. Nails scratched. He felt the mass of people move. They shuffled down the tunnel. They emerged through a metal doorway. They spilled into a carpeted room. Men collapsed. Men sunk to their knees. Kovalenko swayed. His head spun. Dots flared in his vision.

A white room. A cream carpet. White wallpaper. Three old men sat in faded leather chairs. They wore sharp suits. They smoked. They read. They looked up briefly at the queue of bedraggled figures. They rustled their papers and returned to reading.

Kovalenko blinked. A fellow prisoner leaned against him. Two men in suits flanked the entrance they had stumbled from. Strong. Tall. Weird skin: strange shimmers in the flesh. Glistening nodules. Silverish. Metallic.

One of the tall men paced over to a second door across the room. He punched a button on the wall. Panels slid open. A freight elevator creaked up. The doors opened vertically. The second tall man cracked a whip. He drove the prisoners into the elevator. Kovalenko lurched along. He saw an old man look up from his paper, squint at them, and sneeze.

*

The elevator descended.

The doors slid open. The prisoners bundled out.

A sprawling mine. Stark rock faces. Stalactites. Carts. Tracks. 

Emaciated prisoners swung pickaxes. Suited men lashed them.

Kovalenko felt a whip snap across his back. Tears stung his eyes. He limped into the mine. Blood and pus pooled in his boots. 

A vast silver shell rose in the centre of the mine shaft. It stood smooth and ovular; distinct and separate from the jagged rocks.

Prisoners were strapped to beams spanning its exterior. Harnesses dug into their skin. They pulled as one. They heaved. They sweated and bled. The great shell rotated slowly. Red lights flared within it.

 

Vyazniki

Vyaznikovsky District

2015

 

Mirsky eased the car seat down low. He popped the dashboard and yanked his hipflask out. The street was dark and quiet. Streetlights leaked yellow puddles over the pavements. 

He drank. He coughed. He'd left the lab half an hour ago. The hospital entrance was bright across the road. He hadn't found the energy to move yet. His hotel room was a tip. Bottles littered the floor. Round-the-clock top-ups. Every drink prompted waves of tiredness.

He closed his eyes and nestled into the head-rest. Shedrin had run more tests. More weird shit. Mercury poisoning in all the victims. Theories mushroomed again. Army tests. Secret testing sites. Drink. Let them fester and spread.

He rubbed his red eyes. He pulled the chair up.

Stop.

Plug the drain. Plug the draining reality.

Hit it rationally. Hit it reasonably. Break from the booze. Break from the wild leaps.

It was easy to say after a day of drinking. A month. He knew that. He slid the hip flask back into the compartment. A light winked on over the hospital steps. He saw Shedrin emerge and clip down to the pavement.

Mirsky sniffed. He lit a cigarette and cracked a window. He saw another man cross the street. A suited man. Sharp threads: a fucking pocket square.

Shedrin made for his car. The suited man blocked him. Mirsky perked. He tapped his fag out the window. He saw Shedrin gesture. Try to pass. The suited man stepped forward. He clamped his hand over Shedrin's face.

Mirsky dropped the cigarette. He coughed smoke. He saw the suited man's hand melt. It fucking melted. Dark streams. Silver trails. Liquid metal. 

It spread over Shedrin's face and neck. Mirsky saw bubbles. Smoke. Dripping flesh.

He cracked the door. He pounded down the street.

Shedrin's body dropped. His face bubbled. Bone glinted. The suited man turned. Mirsky palmed his holster.

He shot. The man stepped towards him. Mirsky heard a sharp, metallic ting. He saw the ricochet. The man raised his left hand. Metal slide-rules punched across the road.

Mirsky felt hot pain in his shoulder. His legs buckled. He shot again. A metal ting. The ricochet punctured the hospital door. Glass spidered and shattered. 

The suited man paced through patches of streetlight. The slide-rules snapped back into his cuticles. Mirsky scrabbled. Pain shot down his arm. He rolled round and bolted. He hit the car. He yanked the door and bundled in.

The windscreen exploded. He ducked. Slide-rules retracted. Mirsky joggled the key. The suited man closed in. He raised his hand. Mirsky floored it.

 

-

2015

 

The waiting room. Cream carpet. White wallpaper.

Three prisoners knelt on the floor. There were three bodies by the elevator. Blood pooled around them.

The operations team rustled their papers. They were all so old. Everyone was old. Except those that were created. Built. Security devices.

One of the kneeling men wept. The security agent placed his hand on the man's head. 

'Three men,' he said. His voice was soft. It had an odd ringing quality, as if on the verge of feedback. 'Three escapees. We know how. I would like you to tell me.'

The prisoner sobbed. Snot ran from his nose.

'The device. The second wormhole. The artificial wormhole. People know about it. They talk. They know that you... they know you travel outside the designated opening times. They know there's another way.'

The agent worried the man's hair with his fingertips. White hair. They were all old. It was disgusting. Coffin-dodgers sustained by magnetic field enhancements. Worked until they were shrivelled husks. No fresh blood. No new workers. It was harder and harder. He nodded at the bodies by the elevator. Metallic streaks shimmered on his face.

'They have information,' he whispered. 'A failsafe. We got it from the first batch. Coordinates. Dates. Times. We understand they have hidden this information. Where?'

The prisoner drooled. The agent knelt. He moved his hand to the prisoner's cheek.

'You understand we take security breaches very seriously?' He said. 

The prisoner nodded. The hand pressed to his cheek began to melt. Silver drips bled down his chin. Skin blistered and popped. Smoke sifted. The prisoner gurgled and wailed.

'Behind their eyes... '

The agent pulled his hand away. It solidified and snapped back into shape. The prisoner slumped. Chunks of flesh peeled from his cheek. His companions shook. The agent straightened his tie and rose.

'What does that mean?'

'Behind their left eyes... I don't know... I don't know! I heard... I just heard 'behind their - '

The agent clasped the man's head. There was a soft hissing sound. A wet thunk. The prisoner fell forward. Five little blood-rivers ran from his crown.

 

Moscow

2015

 

Mirsky's hands shook. Twenty-four hours off it.

Wild stuff. Crazy wild. Follow the rabbit:

The Sea of Okhotsk > Magnetic fields > Magnetic anomalies > The research of Mikhail Skvortsoff. 1872 - 1926. 

Mikhail Skvortsoff. 

Wild becomes gospel. Crazy becomes certitude. Still: keep it on the down-low. Stay off the radar. Could be the cracks starting to show. Could be the mind unravelling. Track back. Trace the madness. Eyelid tattoos:

Coordinates: 52.8736° N, 149.3658° E. - The Sea of Okhotsk. Some lonely stretch.

A date: 14-10-15

A time: 22:08

Five day's time. Five days. 

Vyazniki to Moscow. The drive took five and a half hours.

Twenty-four hours off it. Push for the clear head. Too scary. Too scary without adding the devil's juice. He sweated. He'd hacked up yellow bile. He'd managed to nibble some toast. 

He sunk diazepam and felt the wooze. He scratched at the shoulder dressing under his shirt. Five clean puncture wounds. Covert treatment - hit up the contacts. Tetanus shots. Magnesium poisoning - intravenous calcium gluconate. Magnesium poisoning - mindfuck. Suited man / pocket square / slide-rules - mindfuck. 

Keep it on the down-low. Push for the clear head. Can't discuss this case with vodka oozing out your pores. Instant loony-bin transfer.

He hit Revolution Square. The twin spires of the Resurrection Gate punctured the skyline. He bypassed the metro station; the colonnades and bronze sculptures. He wound through crowds to the red-brick standout. He hit City Hall. 

Public records. Mikhail Skvortsoff. Born 1872. Died 1926. He trawled archives. He tracked the family tree. 

Separated. One daughter. Sonia. He tracked. A granddaughter. Sofya.

Sofya Skvortsoff.

He hit the phone book. He ran up a list of possibilities. He hit the white pages. He ran up a list of addresses. He sunk five coffees to offset the diazepam. He left wired and woozy. Facial tics and tremors.

He lit a cigarette and cracked a window. He toured. He rapped on doors. He flashed his badge. He got rebuffed. Confused looks. Worried looks. He scored out names. He toured. The third-to-last door was answered by a waifish woman. Wiry hair. Nests of wrinkles around the edges of her lips. He knew before she nodded.

*

She made him tea. The living room was stuffy. Dusty cabinets. Dusty shelves. Faded green colours.

The cup rattled in his hands. Her eyes burrowed into him.

'I found some information... some information on your grandfather's research. Online. It's very... there's some... far-reaching theories.'

He sipped. His shoulder ached. He looked up. Her face softened. He coughed.

'Some might say... '

He stopped. He reached for words. Decorum. Sofya laughed. She lit a cigarette.

'Tin-foil hat territory,' she breathed. 'My understanding is that my grandfather was a troubled man. A heavy drinker. A heavy smoker.'

Mirsky nodded. His eye twitched.

'I have his work. His papers. I've read them. It's science fiction. Vodka-fuelled ravings. He spent his life tracing the output of a single radio station. A repeated string of numbers - admittedly weird. He believed... he believed in the energy potential of the Russian Artic Seas. He believed - based on the research of other fanatics before him - that there were... anomalies. Significant magnetic anomalies.'

She paused. She drew on her cigarette.

'Basically, he reckoned this radio station was used to monitor a wormhole in the sea. Used to monitor... magnetic fluctuations, whatever... '

She scratched her cheek.

'That's me. It's depressing me repeating this. I'll fetch the papers. You can look for yourself.'

*

She returned bearing stacks of bundled sheets. Mirsky untied them. He spread them out.

'You look pretty beat up,' she said. 'Want a proper drink?'

Mirsky glanced up. He shook his head. She tilted her own.

'And you're telling me this is actually of interest to you? It bears some significance to something, in some way?'

Mirsky clucked his tongue.

'Possibly. In some roundabout way... I can't really - it's complicated. It's a matter of gathering information.'

Sofya frowned. He flipped through the papers. He read.

A wormhole. A wormhole created by invisible magnetic fields. Convergence in the dimensions. Click - 'significant magnetic anomalies.' Accessible/visible once every ten years. 

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. His tin-foil-hat-ometer tingled. His shoulder twinged. He caught a flash: metal slide-rules retracting. He shivered. He forced himself to read on.

Gulag prisoners disappearing. Groups of convicts vanishing in ten-year cycles. Peaks during Stalin's reign. Warped theories mushrooming: forced-labour camps through the wormhole. Magnetic energy harvesting. Magnetic energy harvesting on another plane of existence. Gargantuan ravings. Superlative lunacy. A conceptualised totalitarian regime, hidden from the world. 

Mirsky sighed and sat back. He looked at the cup of tea. His lip curled.

Sofya laughed.

'Told you,' she said.

*

Mirsky shrugged his jacket on. She came into the hall carrying a large cardboard box. He stuffed the files into his briefcase.

'This might be of interest to you,' she muttered.

Mirsky took the box. He lowered it to the floor and lifted the flaps.

'Did you get to the bit about the security agents?' She smiled.

Mirsky flinched. He saw the hospital entrance. The suited man. He heaved an ancient Gatling gun from the box. Faded copper plates. Brass handle. Crank shaft. Weird adaptations. He turned it over in his hands. Sofya leaned against the wall. 

'My grandfather... evidently, my grandfather actually built this, if you can believe that. He built this because he was afraid they were coming for him. He was afraid he was too close.'

She dragged her palm across her forehead.

'Nitric and hydrochloric acid chambers. Thought it would save him. Don't spend too much time by yourself, Mirsky.'

Mirsky blinked. He eased the Gatling back into the box. She bent down and shoved it towards him.

'Take it,' she said. 'It shouldn't even be here. It depresses me, this stuff. It's sad. It's sad to think that people can get like this. Life's not so dull. It's not so dull that you have to lose yourself to this type of... '

She tailed off. Mirsky wedged his briefcase under his armpit. He lifted the box. She opened the door for him.

'Thank you,' he wheezed. 'You've been very helpful.'

It felt odd to speak like that. He tried a smile. It didn't work. He backed off down the garden path.

'You're weird,' she laughed.

He tried the smile again. The door closed. 

 

(3): https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/chervotochina-3