The Time Eater Read online

  She hesitated, gave me a look of suspicion, then went back into the hall, closing the door.

  “You wanna talk about Celeste?” he snapped. “You think you know so goddamn much? It was your idea, remember? That night, I mean.”

  Before I could answer him, he said, “That night ruined me, man. Fucking ruined me.” He laughed. “I have it figured out now. Some of it, anyway. You’d be surprised—hell, you’d be proud.”

  There was a long pause. I felt the room—the ceiling, the walls, the heaps of clothing—draw nearer to us. Dusk was fast approaching, seeping through the curtains, transforming the room into an eerie underwater dream.

  “There is only the horror of that night,” he said, “that thing in the sky… you remember, don’t you, Roger? The way the sky opened up and all those—”

  “—patterns and shapes,” I finished.

  His grin widened. “Now you’re remembering.”

  His eyes suddenly shifted to the closet door by the bookcase. It was partially open.

  “Go on,” he said, “look in that closet. Celeste is in there.” He paused. “Go on and see for yourself. She’s fucking in there, man.”

  He’s out of his damn mind, I thought, stunned. It’s fever sickness, dementia, all of the above.

  But I was already rising, moving through the gloom, moving on hollow legs up to the closet door.

  “Open it!” he hissed.

  I recoiled, shrinking into myself, but my left hand extended and closed around the cold bronze handle. I took a deep breath, turned. My fear blossomed. I felt tangles of arms spreading around my torso, down my legs, across my back. I was in total darkness. The room had ceased to exist.

  My fear propelled me into the slightly darker notch where the closet had been.

  It’s exactly like that night! It’s happening again. For God’s sake, why? Why now?

  I was remembering that which dwelled behind the flimsy veil of reality, watching, leering, waiting, the thing we’d summoned during the ritual years ago.

  I groped the air, swimming in an ocean of ichor. The floor fell away and I floated on a wave of something etheric, halfway between delusion and lucidity.

  My hands bumped against a cold, hollow object, like an empty tree trunk or a vacated insect carapace. I took hold, squeezed it, but could not see. Not until a fanning ray of light came dancing out of the dark, illuminating the closet, the claustrophobically close walls, and the corpse, that which could not, should not, be there, but was there.

  Celeste slumped in the corner, head down, eyes closed, her hair tangled. Her body appeared deflated, the skin soft and wrinkly. For a moment I was transported to the past, recalling what it was like to be sitting in class with her, to resent her. How I would feel whenever she talked about James, how I came under the impression she was stealing him away from me, that it was her fault our friendship had dissolved.

  She’s dead. James killed her.

  Suddenly the soft wrinkly corpse lurched and flung itself off the wall. I screamed, then screamed again, retreating a couple of steps. Celeste lifted her head, opened her eyes and yes, they were as I remembered—hazel-colored, angled slightly down so she resembled a Siamese cat. Her mouth popped open and what I saw in there behind the gums and rotting teeth was madness.

  It was inside of her. The thing from the sky, the thing from that night.

  The Time Eater…

  The trio of words knocked the breath from me. Peering into Celeste’s mouth was like peering up at the sky when it opened that night. I saw stars, planets, comets, suns, rolling and diving aimlessly. That incomprehensible thing dwelling behind the universe, sucking planets and stars into its gigantic black hole.

  The vision seemed to pulse as the maddening image poured out of Celeste’s rotting mouth, and then she was on her feet, thump-thumping across the carpet, arms raised.

  I stumbled back, knocking against the closet door. The vision spilling from her mouth burned my retinas and I went partially blind. I retained enough sense, enough coordination, to thrust my balled fist into the dead woman’s chest, sending her back toward the closet’s rear wall. I curled my fingers around the edge of the door, hurtling it closed.

  James’s spectral laughter invaded my ears. Celeste rejected her imprisonment, beating ferociously at the door, and I was forced to apply all my weight to keep her from escaping.

  Then a harsh glaring light spilled into the room. James’s laughter was cut off mid-trill as he plopped onto the bed. The violence behind the closet door ceased.

  Cautiously I stepped away, wondering if there had ever been someone banging on it.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Annabelle asked.

  Chapter Three

  We were downstairs in the kitchen, the two of us, eating a dinner of carrots, beef roast, and peas. We drank ginger ale. Her kitchen, like the rest of her house, exuded good taste. Oak cabinets, purple and black marble countertops, a stainless steel sink with double basins; a window over the sink, partly concealed by reddish curtains, enabled the night to enter the room.

  “He isn’t well,” she said. “He’s sick and it’s getting to him mentally.”

  “Will you tell me his diagnosis?”

  “It’s a brain tumor. The doctors don’t feel confident a surgeon can reach it.”

  I cringed.

  She glanced at the ceiling. “Sometimes I think I hear noises coming from his room. But then I check on him and he’s fast asleep.” She looked back at me, forking a carrot into her mouth. “Never had it happen while company was over.”

  I gave a brisk nod, mostly a formality, but also a behavioral pattern I picked up during my marriage with Jenny. Jenny had demanded I respond to everything she said, no matter how arbitrary. I’d gotten in the habit of nodding whenever she spoke to avoid a shouting match.

  And now you’re doing it with Annabelle.

  Shut up.

  Jenny also got me in the habit of analyzing everything psychologically, drawing clinical conclusions from body language, behavior, and actions, connecting the dots and reacting accordingly. We spent so much time together talking about it that I’d eventually picked up some of what she did for a living. It was both a blessing and a curse. I didn’t necessarily want to psychoanalyze interactions with Annabelle at this point… but I couldn’t help it.

  My thoughts wandered from Jenny to James, to the upstairs bedroom, and Celeste in the closet. Had I imagined it? No, Annabelle heard the banging too. Yet it had stopped the moment she opened the door.

  We finished our meal in silence. I sipped the ginger ale to clear my head.

  “You talked to him?” she asked.

  “We talked.”

  She emptied her glass in a single gulp, stood from the table, and went to put her dishes in the sink. She kept her back to me, rinsing a plate. She wore tight blue jeans and I found myself staring at her ass.

  What’s wrong with you, I thought, catching myself. You remember what happened with Jenny? You haven’t dealt with that wound yet and here you are eager to carve another one.

  I’m not eager, I told myself. Believe me.

  I found myself carrying the plate over and placing it in the sink, standing very close to Annabelle, smelling the fragrance of whatever beauty products she used, the lilac and passion fruit in her hair.

  I remembered it then. The thing behind the veil of reality that I first saw that night twenty years ago with James. The thing in Celeste’s cadaverous mouth, sucking everything into its vast black hole—planets, stars, meteors, quasars—the Time Eater, consuming time itself, consuming everything…

  I noticed Annabelle crying. Water was washing over the plate and down the drain, but she had stopped moving.

  I turned the water off, placing my hand on her shoulder. The instant I did, it was like another shockwave passed through us. I almost jumped from the intensity.

  “Sometimes I think I’m the one who’s crazy,” she said, sobbing. “You don’t know what it’s like being here with him
. I thought it would be a good thing, you know?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She displayed that hawk’s sharpness. “It’s not pleasant, not at all. James has gone mad—or I have—but either way the things happening around here are crazy. I can’t stand it.”

  She looked at me, and when she did I almost cried myself, even though I had no reason to. “It’s why I brought you here,” she said. “If you must know, that’s why. It’s all linked to you for some reason. And now you’re going to help me figure this out.”

  I started to speak, but she brushed past me across the kitchen, stopping under the archway leading to the living room. “There’s a spare room across from James’s. The bed has fresh sheets and there’s a bathroom in there. My bedroom is at the end of the hall. Good night, Roger. See you in the morning.”

  I stood alone in the kitchen under the feebly glowing lights.

  * * *

  Green, glimmering grass, the sun high overhead. Surrounded by the looming library building with its Classical architecture, the redbrick hall with its antique clock tower, brick walkways, trees, lampposts, and a small brick circle with a statue of William Oxley Thompson in the center clutching a diploma—the end-goal of all the students on campus—dressed in his collegiate robes.

  Jesus. Ohio State. Nothing’s changed, it’s exactly as I remember it.

  I stood getting reacquainted as the sun began to move in an arc across the sky. So fast that a huge shadow passed along the grass, the courtyard, the buildings. I glanced up in time to see it vanish over the horizon. Then the world went dark. The campus lamps flickered on.

  I saw myself. Not me now; me twenty years ago. A junior. There was James. Also young, standing next to me in the courtyard near the statue of the former president of Ohio State, the glare of the lamps silhouetting us against the brick and stone.

  It took me a moment to understand that this was the night when everything began to fall apart, when James and I stopped being friends, when we decided to go our separate ways.

  The night we experienced it.

  I approached them and saw, yes, they had begun. The younger me was opening the blasphemous book, the large leather tome with brass clasps and a symbol on the front. Seeing it reminded me of the bookshop I had frequented, all my lonely hours in the library, my incessant occult investigations searching for the information to satisfy my soul—eventually coming here, to this book, this night, and this heinous ritual we performed. The summoning of the Time Eater.

  They had drawn the red circle on the bricks at their feet, the two college kids who looked just about as scared as anyone. They stepped inside it, held hands and closed their eyes. The younger me started reciting from the book.

  I watched.

  The air became gossamer, revealing holes that were all around, turning the night into cheesecloth. The lamplight shone through these holes, illuminating the horrid black thing on the other side, something that slept, waited, contemplated—dreamed.

  Even in my incorporeal state, I could hardly grasp the idea of that entity. It defied all my powers of perception and intellect. Seeing it wiped reality away, for somehow the thing was able to expose the illusion of physical matter, like some horrid, undeniable truth from which there was no escape—

  —that all was a dream.

  The world fell away, dropping like shelves of snow during an avalanche. It was as if a great wind had blown apart an arrangement of stacked playing cards. The buildings reeled back into the void, the grass uprooted and fired through the air like green bullets, the trees melted as if by intense heat, folding in on themselves and vanishing. The lamps bent inward, toppling over in consecutive order, spiraling up and pinwheeling away.

  Reality shook, swayed, pitched, the holes growing, bleeding into one another, until there was nothing but holes, a swimming wave of evaporation. This wave swept all physical matter into its gulf.

  The only remaining solidity was the piece of brick walkway enclosed within the red circle, on which the two college students stood, their eyes shut tight, their hands clasped together as they held on for dear life.

  The shapeless form shifted behind the veil. Stars and planets twinkled in the darkness, infinitely stretching wide, and soon they began to glide toward the entity, as if sucked inward by its vacuum.

  The Time Eater…

  * * *

  I awoke to a bloodcurdling scream I thought was my own. I was gasping and covered in sweat, sitting upright in a foreign bed, in a foreign room, tangled up in strange bed sheets. The window at the opposite end was flung wide, letting darkness and a high wind into the room. The shutters beat against the outside of the house. I could hear the sound of traffic, and some asshole shouting at the top of his lungs—

  —and that scream. It echoed through the materials from which the house was built. I closed my mouth, hoping to silence it, but it went on and on. I soon realized it was coming from inside the house.

  From James’s bedroom.

  * * *

  When it finally stopped I waited to see if Annabelle would assist, but I heard nothing. I remembered her saying she’d stopped going to him whenever he screamed. That it only made her more upset.

  I got up to close the window, then reclined in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Once or twice I thought I saw the wooden beams melt away. There was daylight before I managed to fall asleep again.

  * * *

  I stumbled into the bathroom sometime the next morning. It felt like I had slept for hours, but the clock on the wall said it was only 9:30. I unpacked my toiletries and went to work, taking a nice hot shower. I dressed and headed toward the stairs, casting a sidelong glance at the closed door of James’s room.

  The house seemed deserted. I couldn’t find Annabelle, but there was a glass of orange juice and a plate of eggs on the kitchen table. I ate the meal in silence, my mind running through the events of the previous day.

  While I was washing my glass and plate, I heard the front door open and close. I turned and there she was, entering the kitchen. She looked as gorgeous as ever, having applied her makeup to perfection. Her face resembled a Grecian sculpture, but a furrowed brow belied her soft appearance.

  “Morning,” I said.

  She glanced at her wristwatch. “Almost noon. Did you sleep?”

  I nodded… then shook my head.

  “The screaming?”

  I nodded again.

  She came and joined me by the sink. “Happens almost every night. Any idea why?”

  “Nightmares from his illness, maybe? Fear of death?” I met her gaze, hoping this would satisfy her, but she clearly wanted more. I was not up to the task of explaining it.

  She went to the table and sat down. “The police called.”

  A knot formed in my stomach. I kept seeing Celeste’s reanimated corpse slumped in the closet. Kept remembering the way everything had shifted, shrank down, just like it had that night on the Ohio State campus.

  “Oh?” I said, taking the chair across from her.

  She knows, she knows, she knows—

  “Celeste is missing.”

  The knot tightened. “Missing?”

  A flicker of suspicion passed in Annabelle’s eyes. “Yes, missing,” she said, her voice adamant.

  “How can she be missing? You said she was getting half of James’s estate. And where were you this morning? I woke up and the house was deserted.”

  She squinted slyly. “I left you breakfast.”

  I smiled. “That’s right, thank you. I don’t mean to be rude. I was frightened when I woke up. James sounded like he was being murdered last night. I almost went to him.”

  “Good thing you didn’t. There’s no talking to him when he’s like that.”

  “Tell me about Celeste.”

  She sighed. “The policewoman called here early, around 7:30. Said she wanted to ask James some questions about his ex-wife’s disappearance. She’d already spoken to the hospital and they told her where he was. I said I had no idea what
she was talking about. But she wanted to know if he’s responsive. And so I lied. I told her that he seldom spoke now and when he did it was gibberish. Then she asked about me. If I was able to come to the station and answer some questions. After I finished feeding James breakfast, I went.”

  “What did they want to know?”

  “The usual. Last time I’d seen Celeste. Last time James had seen her. If she had tried to contact either of us.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I told the truth. I said I hadn’t spoken to the bitch. As for James, he wouldn’t even know if he was in the same room with her.”

  That isn’t true and you know it. Was she covering for him? I didn’t want to believe Celeste was missing. If I did it meant that what I had seen the day before was real.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “They were reluctant about divulging details to me, but I was insistent and managed to get some information. She’s been missing a week. The last time she was seen was leaving her health club late last Saturday. She’d been doing laps in the pool. The kid at the front desk claims she was perfectly all right when she left.”

  “Has she remarried? Does she have kids?”

  “She’s got kids, yes, two of them. But they’re not actually hers. Stepchildren. She married a doctor several years after the divorce. Kids came from a previous marriage. They’re also divorced, so she probably lives alone, I’d imagine. But I believe she stays in contact with the step-kids.”

  I recreated my memories of a young Celeste. Sometimes the three of us—Celeste, James, and I—would have lunch in the food court together, but that hadn’t lasted long. Her face already began fading from my mind by the time I left college, like the memory of a dream—her name and presence there, but her face obscure. Once she and James started palling around, he dove into her completely, seeking refuge from the ritual, the Time Eater, me and my occult activities, and all the rest. The happy couple departed Ohio State with degrees in hand and faded from my life like an old Polaroid.