Jacob woke to the sound of his alarm and lay in bed for a moment, awake yet not able to bring himself to get up. After a few minutes, he finally dragged himself to his feet, walked over to his buzzing phone and turned the alarm off. With a yawn, he did his morning stretches and got dressed, then stumbled downstairs.
His mother was waiting downstairs at the dining room table, drinking a cup of coffee, while his sister Erika was staring at her phone, ignoring her oatmeal which was getting cold.
“You know,” Jacob remarked to his sister as he grabbed a bowl out of the cupboard, “you’d probably enjoy your food more if you didn’t let it get cold while you scroll through social media.” He ignored his sister rolling her eyes at him.
“Good morning, sweetie, how did you sleep?” his mother asked.
“Oh yeah, things are better,” Jacob answered. “The Insomnia meds are working pretty well.”
“Oh, that’s good,” his mother smiled. “Just remember what the doctor said about keeping your stress down.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jacob assured distractedly while he poured cereal into his bowl. “So where’s dad? Did he have to work Saturday again?”
“Unfortunately yes,” Jacob’s mother sighed. “You know how things are at his job lately.”
“But,” Erika interjected, worried, “he’ll be back for when Uncle Carl gets released, right?”
“Oh, yes” their mother assured. “He was quite clear that would not be a problem. He will be picking Carl up on the way home from work. Which reminds me, your father will not be able to pick up Lily from her playdate with the Emerson kids. I will need both of you to go get her.”
“But mom” Erika protested, “I was going to spend the afternoon with Sam and Nadira.”
“Well, it is only fifteen minutes to walk to the Emerson,” their mother countered. “You and Jacob can easily make it there, get the snacks and get back. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can hang out with your friends.”
“Mom, I can probably handle it myself…” Jacob began to offer, but his mother cut him off.
“It will be easier if you go together,” his mother cut him off. Jacob however, could tell the real reason, the reason his mother left unspoken because she could not bring herself to say it out loud.
She was thinking about the people who had been disappearing lately. Always people by themselves, out walking, and then disappearing. The ones who were found… well, suffice it to say that the condition in which their bodies were found was nightmare material. Their mother probably thought that if both of them went together, they’d be safe. She couldn’t go herself, with how much her injury had limited her mobility.
“You know,” their mother said, reconsidering, “if you really do not feel comfortable, then I can try to pick her up myself. The doctor said that if I kept up with my physiotherapy I should be able to drive before long…”
“No, it’s ok,” Jacob interjected. “We’ll be right back, no problem. Come on, let’s go get out little sister,” he added to Erika, who sighed but got up without further complaint.
Jacob headed out and walked towards the store at a leisurely pace, his sister walking alongside him. They walked in silence for a time, Jacob attempting to focus on the fall leaves, in their brilliant shades of red, orange and yellow, but his mind was elsewhere. He knew that his sister’s was as well.
“Uncle Carl’s finally getting out,” Erika said at last. “Two years of visiting him in prison, and he’s finally getting released early for good behaviour.”
“Well, he was a model inmate,” Jacob reflected. He did not say anything more, as he was thinking back on that day.
“I’m glad Uncle Carl killed him,” Erika spat with sudden venom in her voice. “That creep deserved everything that happened to him and more. It’s a bad fucking joke that they made Uncle Carl do jail time when he should’ve gotten a medal.”
Jacob did not say anything in response to this. He had suffered as much as his sister at the hands of the man Uncle Carl had killed, as much as anyone other than their mother, and he was not sorry that the man in question was dead, but he knew it would have been possible for their uncle to have handled the situation without killing anybody. And if he had done so, they would not have been separated for two years.
It was as these thoughts were running through his head that Jacob felt a familiar chill run up his spine, a chill he had not felt in years. Spinning around, Jacob saw a small red car driving up the street in their direction. It was moving at a slow, constant speed as it moved past them and further down the street. Jacob tried to look inside, but the windows were heavily tinted and he could see nothing.
Shocked, Jacob turned around to face his sister, who had gone as pale as he suspected he was himself. “Wha… what was… was that…” he began.
“No,” Erika cut him off, beginning to regain her composure. “It must just have been the same make and model of car. Cars are mass-produced, after all. Anyways, John Reinhardt is dead. There’s no way that he could be following us around. And besides, his car didn’t have tinted windows.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Jacob agreed, calming himself down and reassuring himself that there was no way. Obviously a similar car had just driven past them and he had been spooked by bad memories from his past. Just calm down, he told himself, taking deep breaths like his therapist had taught him to do. It’s over, he’s gone, he can’t hurt you or any of your family anymore.
After he had calmed himself down, Jacob began walking again. His sister looked at him with concern, but he assured her that he was all right.
Suddenly, the same car drove past them again, heading in the same direction. Jacob watched it drive past him, alarmed, and looked at his sister, who, much like him, seemed to be struggling to fight off a panic attack.
“That can’t be,” he muttered. “No, that first car wouldn’t have had time to go around the block and come back at us anyways. It must have been a different car.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Erika agreed with a nervous laugh. “Two different cars of the same make and model. It’s weird but far from impossible. After all, there’s a lot of cars on the road.”
These last words of Erika’s made Jacob pause. Looking around, he noticed that there were no vehicles moving. There were plenty parked, either in driveways or on the side of the road, but nowhere that Jacob looked could he see a single car, truck, van, bicycle or other vehicle moving, or any people at all other than himself and his sister. Looking at the houses on both sides of the road, he similarly could see no sign of activity inside any of them. Some lights were on, but nobody moving about, or sitting, or standing, nothing. Had it been late at night, he might have been able to rationalize the situation to himself, but it was nearly noon on a Saturday. This could not be explained so easily.
“Erika,” Jacob asked, unable to hide the nervous quaver in his voice. “Do you notice anything… different? You know, out of place.”
From her facial expression, it seemed pretty clear that she knew exactly what her brother meant. For a moment, Erika seemed confused about what to do, or perhaps overwhelmed by the situation. Finally she said, “let’s just get Lily and get home.” Then she began walking off in the direction of the store as quickly as possible, almost running.
Feeling that there was no other option, Jacob began to follow his sister, cursing under his breath. They had made it to the end of the street, when all of a sudden the same red car with tinted windows came roaring around into their view. It turned to speed directly at them, then swerved away to continue driving down the street at the last second.
As a shocked Jacob turned to see the car speeding away, he heard his sister yell, “shit!” behind him.
“What is it?” Jacob asked.
“No fucking signal,” Erika replied, showing him the display screen on her phone, which indeed indicated that there was no signal.
“Okay, we need to get home right now,” Jacob insisted. “We’ll call the Emersons and tell them they need to drive Lily home. They’ll know not to make her walk by herself.”
Erika nodded in silent agreement and the pair turned back towards home, but before they could take more than a few steps, the red car with the tinted windows came up from behind and pulled out in front of them before coming to a stop.
Without a word, the pair turned and ran to the nearest house. They rapidly began pounding on the front door, but nobody answered. Desperately, Jacob tried to turn the doorknob but it would not move. It was not as if it were locked, and the knob turned a few degrees before stopping, but rather the knob would not turn at all, as if it and the door were a single solid object, and the doorknob was only a prop, never meant to be used for opening anything.
Jacob began moving towards one of the windows, hoping to see if maybe he could signal to someone inside of the house, when his sister screamed and pointed behind them. Turning, Jacob saw that the red car was facing in their direction and had moved halfway up the front yard towards them. More terrifyingly, two other cars, identical to the first down to the last detail, had also appeared, and all three were moving slowly in the direction of the two adolescents, cutting off any hope of retreat. A low rumbling, sounding similar to a cross between the sound of a car engine revving and the cruel laughter of an all-too familiar deceased individual.
Looking around desperately, Jacob suddenly pointed to the left corner of the house. “There,” he whispered to his sister. “We can go through there and get into the back yard. It should be too narrow for those things.”
Erika did not bother to say anything in reply to this. She simply grabbed her brother’s left hand and the pair began running in this direction, when suddenly a fourth vehicle appeared, impossibly moving through a space too small for it to fit and closing in on them.
Erika began crying and buried her face in her brother’s chest, not wanting to see what was about to happen. Jacob wrapped his arms around his sister in a futile effort to comfort her and closed his own eyes, waiting for the end.
Suddenly there was a loud crack, and the strange revving laughter was replaced with a sound akin to tearing metal. Looking in the direction of the noise, Jacob and Erika saw that a long metal pole covered in strange markings was sticking out of the roof of one of the cars. The markings were glowing a bright red and the vehicle, or whatever it was, was smoking and seemed to be bulging and at the same time becoming strangely insubstantial.
The other cars began backing away when suddenly the sound of two shotgun blasts could be heard and the front windshield of another of them was blown out, revealing a solid blackness inside, from which tendrils began to emerge and curl around the strange thing. The remaining two cars, or whatever they really were, immediately began to speed away, one of them reversing back around the building and the other racing away down the street.
The siblings began to breathe a little easier as they saw this immediate threat disappear. Then a massive, dark-cloaked figure dropped from the roof of the building, landing on the front lawn about two metres in front of them. For a moment, this figure faced away from the pair, before turning in their direction. At the sight, they began to wonder if they were really saved after all.
The creature was perhaps two and a half metres tall, grey in colour, though its body sometime obscured by a sort of black mist which covered its torso, legs and neck, though sometimes offering glimpses of the heavily muscled flesh beneath. The black cloak seemed less an item of clothing than an extension of its body, covered on the inside with red eyes which looked about and blinked like any ordinary eyes. Its head was entirely devoid of hair and had two sets of solid yellow eyes and a mouth filled with sharp silver teeth. Three sets of arms grew from its torso. The bottom pair consisted of an arm on the right which ended in something resembling the barrel and muzzle of a shotgun and an arm on the right which ended in a large, spiked metal ball, like the head of a mace. The middle pair consisted of a right arm with no elbow joint, just a straight cylinder of flesh, unusually long even for its size, and with some sort of opening at the end, and a large, thick left arm that looked more normal than most, though with a sharp, silver-coloured point emerging from the wrist. The top pair of arms consisted of a heavily muscled limb ending in a normal-looking hand holding a long spear covered in strange runes and a left arm which neither of them could see properly, obscured as it was behind a large, oval-shaped spear, similar to that carried by ancient Greek hoplites. The front of the shield was covered in a black background with a clawed red hand in the centre and a yellow eye in the middle of the palm.
The creature opened its mouth as it stared at the terrified young people. “Go,” it finally said, seeming to have some difficulty with the word. “Out… here.” Using its spear point, it gestured in the direction from which they had come.
The two did not hesitate to follow the commands of their monstrous rescuer, hurrying back in the direction from which they had come.
“Hurry,” the voice called out from behind them “Not… much time.”
With these words ringing in their ears, Jacob and Erika ran even faster. They ran back the way they came. At least, they tried to do so. Somehow, even though they took every turn right, the further they went, the less it seemed like the way home or, indeed, anywhere familiar.
“Fuck,” Erika cursed. “What is happening?”
“Do you think,” Jacob mused, “maybe, we got turned around and are in the wrong part of town?”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Erika shot back. “Don’t you get it. Wherever we are, it sure as fuck is not our town.”
“Well then, what is this,” Jacob replied. “An alternative dimension, a virtual reality simulation, he…”
He was stopped in the middle of his rebuttal by the sound of something driving towards him. They both wheeled about, expecting to see another one of the red cars which had been tormenting them. What they saw instead was a blue minivan, with clear windows through which they could see a terrified young woman behind the wheel, being rapidly pursued by one of the red cars with tinted windows.
As the two vehicles sped past the siblings, it seemed to split into two. It was difficult to describe, but seemed as if, suddenly, the red car both came to an instant stop and kept driving, so that there were now two of them instead of just one.
While the red car which had kept driving continued pursing the minivan as it had been doing, the one which had stopped in the road turned around to face Jacob and Erika. It then sped towards the two, who immediately started running in the same direction as the minivan had gone.
The red car, however, slowed down, match the pace of the siblings. Then, as yet another shock to the two who had already seen so much, it began to change shape, morphing into the shape of a man whom they knew all to well.
“Don’t think you can escape from me,” John Reinhardt called after the fleeing pair. “Especially not here. Your idiot uncle may have put a bullet in my head and kept me from your cheating bitch of a mother, but you two at least, I will have. And running will not save you. This whole world is mine. It is me. And the longer I have guests,” he added and, at this moment, the front doors of every house on the street opened and identical copies of the same man stepped out. “The stronger I become,” they all said in unison.
As Jacob and Erika continued running, their hope rapidly draining away, the dozens of identical copies of the man who had stalked and terrorized their family for years began to cruelly laugh, but did not pursue. Jacob had no doubt that it was because they realized that, wherever their quarry attempted to run, whatever they attempted to do to get away, it would not save them.
As the two rounded the corner, leaving the laughter behind them, it began to fade into the distance, but they knew that they had not escaped. Not nearly.
Suddenly, however, the cruel laughter of their tormentor cut out, and Jacob stopped, looking behind them but seeing nothing. He simultaneously heard both loud cursing from the direction of the previous laughter and his sister calling to him, “look!”
Staring in the direction in which his sister had pointed, Jacob saw that, where there had previously been simply more of the same identical houses and streets, was now a low green hill, with trees and park benches all about and what seemed to be a grey bus on top.
“It just appeared out of nowhere,” Erika commented, seeming, at this point, to be not even very surprised. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Jacob replied. “But it seems like its appearance pissed of Reinhardt, so I like it.”
At that moment, the loud roar of an engine could be heard and a dozen of the identical red cars which had been tormenting the pair suddenly whipped around the corner from which they had come and began speeding in their direction.
“Run,” Jacob yelled, grabbing his sister’s arm and sprinting in the direction of the hill which had just appeared.
“Should we?” Erika asked nervously as she struggled to keep up.
“Do we have a choice?” Jacob shot back, and she voiced no further objection.
As the siblings bolted in the direction of the hill as fast as they could, the sound of pursuit rapidly approaching from behind, he noticed out of the corner of his eye the blue minivan from earlier speeding in the direction of the hill from another street. He also noticed the strange six-armed creature rushing in their direction from yet another street, firing something from some of its arms at the cars chasing them and seemingly attempting to frantically waive the pair down with its remaining arms.
Nevertheless they kept running to their objective, throwing themselves onto the grass at the base of the hill only just ahead of the leading pursuer. Even as he landed on the grass, Jacob heard the sound of a vehicle collision right behind him and turned his head in that direction. He saw the ruined remains of a small red car, looking as if it had struck headfirst into a wall when it had reached the edge of the greenery. Before his very eyes, it became shapeless and faded into nothing, as its remaining companions scattered before the onslaught of the six-armed creature.
As Jacob and Erika got to their feet, they saw this strange creature beckoning to them. “Come,” it said. “Before… too late.”
Jacob ignored the entreaties of this inhuman stranger and began moving towards the top of the hill.
“Wait,” Erika called after him. “Maybe we should think about this. I mean, it did protect us from those things. Perhaps it’s on our side.”
“This hill protected us as well,” Jacob countered. “Those cars or whatever they are can’t come here and,” he added, a note of suspicion entering his voice, “that things can’t either.”
“No,” the creature protested. “Hill dangerous, bad. That’s why… not go there.” It reached out one of its more normal looking arms to Erika, but Jacob grabbed her right arm and pulled her out of its reach.
Turning around as he pulled his sister after him, Jacob noticed the mysterious creature hesitantly take a step, and then two, onto the green covering the hill, before reaching out to them. This caused Jacob to hesitate, wondering if after all he should go with the creature.
Before he could do so, however, he felt a powerful tugging, as though a hook had been put in his chest and was being pulled upwards. Jacob and Erica began walking up the hill, directed by this unseen force, the compulsion growing ever stronger the higher they rose.
Cresting the hill, the pair noticed a clear area of green grass, with the grey bus and the blue minivan which they had noticed earlier across from one another. The woman who had been in the minivan was now outside, looking very uncertain and worried, much like how the siblings themselves felt. Jacob noticed, looking at the bus, that it had tinted windows much like the red cars which had been tormenting him and his sister. On the side of the bus was a strange symbol resembling two spirals, one clockwise and one counter clockwise, placed one on top of the other.
Suddenly, the door of the bus opened and a man stepped out. Tall, with jet black hair and pale skin, not pale in the sense of being a Caucasian person, or pale like an albino, but pale like somebody who had never been exposed to direct sunlight in his life. The man wore a grey suit with a badge on the left side of his chest, a badge bearing a symbol like the one on the side of the bus.
“Welcome, new arrivals,” the man greeted these three people who had come to the top of the hill. He had a strange, slight accent that Jacob could not place. “I greet you as you come to Oranath, to the great harvester. As you accompany us in our journey, may great understanding come to you and may you share in the joys and tribulations of our Lord and Master.”
“What do…” Jacob began, but the woman from the minivan cut him.
“Matthews,” she said, appearing shocked and disbelieving. “I thought you died. They told me you died.”
“I do sincerely apologize for that, Evelyn,” the strange man stated to her with a bow. “But you see, I did not die, rather I escaped. I escaped the bondage of life and found freedom with Oranath. And now you are free as well. You are all free,” he added, motioning to Jacob and Erica.
“But what if we don’t want to go with you?” Erica asked defiantly.
“Oh,” the man said, an almost pitying tone in his voice, “you made that decision when you ascended this hill. You passed the test when you were not cast out or killed. Now, you belong to Oranath, and you shall accompany Oranath.
“You should not be sad or fearful about this,” he added, seeing the expressions on the faces of the people before him. “Today is the day of your liberation. You are soon to be freed from the stresses and pains, the enslavement and obligations and responsibilities of daily life. All that you need to do now is to exist, to dwell in the glory of Oranath with all of the other disciples.”
As he said these words, two other men and a woman stepped off of the bus, each of them wearing grey uniforms like that of Matthews. One of the men was taller even than the first man to have stepped off, with dark brown skin and of average build. He might easily have passed unnoticed in Jacob and Erica’s hometown. The woman was of average height, with skin pale like the first man to step off the bus, heavily built with short-cut brown hair. The last of these figures was the strangest in appearance. While his height and build were unremarkable, his dark green skin, his red eyes and his vibrant purple hair, looking not as if it had been dyed but as if that was its natural colour, certainly were peculiar.
None of these three who had just stepped off of the bus, however, took any note of Jacob or Erica or the other woman, whose name was apparently Evelyn. The green-skinned man simply walked over to the driver’s side door and unlocked the remaining doors of the car, giving instructions to the other two in some strange language, whereupon all three immediately began taking what seemed to be bags of groceries and other items from within.
“Hey,” the woman who not long before had been driving this very vehicle objected. “That’s mine.” While she was clearly upset about this, her tone seemed less angry and more hesitating and nervous, as if she was afraid to object to the theft.
“You misunderstand the situation, my dear,” Matthews reassured her. “Nothing is being stolen from you. Indeed, you are coming with us, just like your provisions. As I said before, none of you should see this as an abduction, but as a liberation from the pains and stresses of your life. You are better off now and you would have been if that deluded six-armed fool had succeeded in bringing you back to your bondage and infinitely better off than you would have been if the shape-changers had caught you. Now come.”
Compelled by some unseen force to act whether they liked it or not, Jacob, Erica and Evelyn began walking in the direction of the bus’s door, following the four individuals who had emerged. Staring back down the hill for the last time, Jacob saw the six-armed monster staring up the hill in his direction while the red cars milled about, their movements suggesting great frustration. He noticed that, as their numbers seemed to increase, they became bolder, approaching closer and closer to the monster, who ultimately turned and fled, pursued by the ever-growing horde.
This was the last Jacob saw of them as his view was cut off by the opening doors of the grey bus. As he ascended the steps, he could see the driver, a short, humanoid creature with mottled grey skin and glowing green eyes who seemed to be fused to the driver’s seat and the steering wheel, or perhaps growing out of them.
Ushered along by Matthews, Jacob and Erica saw row upon row of bus seats filled with passengers. Many looked recognizably human, people of all ages, genders and ethnicities, some pale like Matthews. Others looked much stranger. There were green-skinned, red-eyed people like the one they had seen stepping off the bus earlier, grey-skinned people like the one in the driver’s seat, red and pink-skinned people with horns like demons and all manner of others.
As they got to what seemed to be the back of the bus, with no available seats in sight, the group came to a door at the end, with two doors also on the sides, seemingly indicating washrooms. “All washrooms are gender neutral and single-occupancy,” Matthews said while indicating each of these side doors to confirm what Jacob had thought.
He then gestured that the three new arrivals should follow him through the door. On the other side was a windowless space with a staircase and another door at the far end, lit only by glowing white spots covering the walls, resembling stars. The three people who had followed Matthews off the bus passed through the door at the far end. Evelyn made as if to follow, but Matthews gestured for her to stop.
“No,” he said. “You are all to be placed on Level 5, Section 7. Come this way,” he gestured while ascending the stairs. Unable to do anything else and knowing that there was no point trying to fight, the three followed, up to a second level, then a third, then a fourth, before coming to a stop on the fifth level. As they passed through this door, Jacob noted that the stairs kept ascending and that he could not discern the top.
Passing into what was presumably Level 5, Section 2, he saw that it was much the same as where they had entered. Rows of bus seats filled with passengers, many human, some apparently not, at the end two restrooms and an exit door. They then passed through into a third Section, and a fourth, and a fifth.
While things continued to look much the same, Jacob noticed that there was something which did seem different. He had noticed, starting at the third Section, something strange. It was as if there was something almost organic about the interior, as through the floor, seats, walls, ceiling, windows etc. were living tissue that resembled. By the fifth Section, he could hear it more clearly, a faint sound as if of some giant creature inhaling and exhaling.
“What is this?” he asked. “What’s happening?
“Oh, yes,” Matthews said. “The further in we travel, the more this body sheds the illusion and resembles its true form. If you’re unsettled by this then don’t worry too much, it will still look mostly like the interior of a bus when you get to the area where you’ll be staying.
Passing from there through the sixth Section, they arrived at Level 5, Section 7, where Matthews had informed them they would be staying. Jacob noticed the organic look to the place, as though they were looking at skin, rather than metal, plastic and glass. He also noticed that there were some empty seats here, unlike in the first areas where they had been. Matthews quickly ushered the siblings to a pair of empty seats right beside one another and led the other woman further down the aisle. The seats felt warm and like skin, and the siblings could feel something like a faint pulse at they sat down.
“What’s going to happen to us,” Erica whispered to Jacob.
“I… I don’t know,” Jacob admitted. “I just don’t know what is going to happen.”
“Where are we?” Erica asked. “Nothing makes sense here. I mean, the view out the windows is exactly the same as when we first walked in here. It’s like we didn’t move at all. It’s like we’re in the same spot.”
As she stopped for a moment, Jacob noticed that she was right. The view from the window next to them and, indeed, from all of the other windows, was the exact same view of the hill that they had when they first stepped onto this so-called bus, despite all of the distance they had supposedly travelled while inside. Looking closer, though, he noticed something else strange. It was as if he was staring not through a window but rather at a screen, like a very high-definition television screen. Touching this, he found that he could move it aside like a curtain and immediately wished that he had not done so.
Beyond the window was a horrific parody of the cosmos. Planets broken asunder, remade and broken again, stars constantly throwing off vast flares and massive gouts of flame which stretched across galaxies yet never lost their mass, nebulae formed into the shapes of tortured bodies and screaming faces, black holes which seemed to reach out tendrils of darkness to seize celestial bodies and drag them into themselves. A thousand other horrors also showed themselves, a universe of madness and terror forcing itself upon Jacob’s mind, until he forced himself to conceal the window yet again.
“Excuse me,” an angry voice said, and Jacob turned to see a middle-aged woman across the aisle from them. “Could you please not do that? I’m trying to rest.”
“S-sorry,” Jacob muttered, to shocked to say anything, his mind struggling to grasp what he had just seen. Sitting back, stunned, he noticed his sister crying softly, whether from all that had just happened, or from the horrors just witnessed outside, or from knowing they would probably never see their family or friends again, or from some combination of this. He put his arms around his sister, feeling the tears begin to well up himself, wondering what fate had in store for him.
As Jacob did this, there came a sound, as of a mix between the roar of a giant beast and a mighty engine starting up. Then there came a sensation of movement. The sound of breathing and the pulsing sensation which he felt from the seat increased, and they were off.