The Fiddle is the Devils Instrument Read online

  And we would celebrate, the world all over. Muslim and Jew, Christian and Atheist, every race and every people, united by an event so stupendous, so rare, that it might never come again. Not, at least, while mankind still exercised dominion over the earth.

  Scientists couldn’t even say how long this before-unimagined eclipse would last. Only that it would cover the sun completely for at least a few hours, maybe as long as a day.

  And so events were planned. Twilight festivals to embrace the coming dark. We walked into that stygian night with arms wide open. We came to embrace the void. We did not fear the dark, not this time, not anymore.

  What madness took hold of us? What fiendish power corrupted our minds? I suppose we will never know, though I have my suppositions. I will always believe that that black orb cast down more than darkness on the surface of the earth, even before they came.

  Were there some who dissented? I’m sure there were many. But there was only one in our town. One man who did not fall under Tyche’s sway. Only one who called what was coming by its own name.

  I knew Bill Atwood for nearly a decade. That he taught astronomy and physics at the local college belied his immense stature in the world of academia. At least, the stature he had once maintained. Before he came to our little town in the shadow of the Rockies, he had been a professor of some renown at a prestigious school back East. A scandal had led to his fall from grace and departure from Massachusetts, something about bizarre and controversial views that did not comport with the standard model of the universe or the accepted story of human history, views that he was not shy about sharing. I had heard the end came when his obsession turned to violence and he assaulted the Dean of Sciences at his former employer. That incident had led to his journey west, led him to a place where a struggling college was willing to look the other way in order to hire a man of his expertise. And yet, despite his reputation, I had never personally heard Professor Atwood express any unorthodox views. Not until the coming of Nemesis.

  For that is its name, Nemesis. Atwood told me as much. Atwood knew the truth. If only we had listened. But what difference would it have made? Who can stand in the face of such darkness?

  I saw him that day, the last day I guess anyone saw him. He was coming out of the grocery store, his cart loaded down with canned food, bottled water, candles. These weren’t supplies for holding a celebration, but for surviving a siege.

  “Bill?” I said, and I was unable to mask the concern in my voice. When he looked up at me, in his eyes I saw a desperate man. He grasped my arm.

  “Howard,” he said. He was agitated. Nervous. Afraid. But more than that. He was terrified. “You’ve always been kind to me. Now I’m going to return the favor. Get out while you can. Find a place to hide.”

  “Professor,” I said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand. The festival…”

  “This is no time to celebrate!” he almost screamed. I glanced around nervously to see if others were watching. They were, and without approval. “Don’t you understand? It’s all been written. It’s all been predicted. They are coming. I tried to warn the others, but they wouldn’t listen. Not that it matters…” His speech trailed off, his eyes following. “There’s nothing that can stop them. Not then. And not now.

  “I have a storm shelter,” he said, looking back up at me. “It’s not much, but it might be enough. You can come with me. There is plenty of room.”

  “Thank you, but that’s alright, Professor,” I said, trying to humor him. Trying to be kind. He reached into his basket and pulled out a votive candle. “Take it,” he said. “A guard against the night.”

  “No, Professor, I can’t…”

  “Take it! In the end it probably won’t matter. But maybe it will buy you enough time.” He gestured at me with the glass-encased candle, and this time I didn’t protest. He nodded to me once more, and then he was gone, leaving me standing at the entrance of the Save ‘n Shop, candle in hand.

  I write by that candle now, though I know not for how much longer it will last. Just as I do not know for how long the darkness will hold sway. Too long, no doubt.

  The day of the festival was as clear and bright as any I could remember. A perfect blue sky spread above us, unblemished, but for the dark circle of night that seemed to grow larger with every second.

  It rolled through the void toward us, blocking out the sky with its great, dark mass. I stood at the base of College Hill while many more waited on its crown, staring up at that coming darkness.

  “It’s so awesome!” a little boy squealed.

  “Yeah, it sure is,” a man, his father I assumed, said in answer, cheerfully. And yet, the smallest doubt had crept into his voice. I felt it, too. For the first time, I wondered. But still I stood there, gazing up into the circle of night that slowly devoured the sky.

  It was noon when it reached the sun, which sat upon its throne at the apex of the blue dome above us, bathing us in its light as it had since when the earth was devoid of life. We gazed up as the edge of that flat circle of light clashed with the darkness of another. We watched as that greater darkness covered the lesser light. Watched as the sun vanished behind an impenetrable shroud.

  A shadow fell over us all. It crept over the town, fingers of night wrapping around homes and stores and schools. It marched up the hill, gaining strength as our star’s power diminished. I stared at the sun, a fading disk that no doubt seared the edge of my retina. But I could not look away, any more than a man can look away as the love of his life drives off into the distance, never to be seen again.

  I had to experience this, even if I didn’t understand. I had to watch, even if I didn’t see. I had to bear witness as the first chapter of Genesis was undone. As the second darkness fell upon the surface of the earth. As God said, “Let there be night.” But not God. Something else. Something else entirely.

  The end began with a sound. Though that’s not really the right word. It was more like a buzzing, something that was felt more than heard. A low, inaudible murmur, just beyond the range of man’s hearing.

  But then there was something that we did hear. A cry, a wail, a piteous howling, more desperate than any I’d ever heard before. It was the dogs, you see. It was as if every dog in town was suddenly struck by such pain or sorrow that they could not bear it but by calling out to the world in the only way they knew how.

  The sound unsettled the children. It unsettled the adults, too, but they tried to keep a brave face. Reassurances were given. Soothing words spoken that, to my ears at least, lacked conviction.

  It was after the howl of the dogs had ceased that we first saw it. The night was dark, and Nemesis was darker. And yet as that black mass hung in the sky, I began to believe that I could make out something curling off of the dead star’s surface. Smoke-like tendrils seemed to reach toward us. Tentacles of swirling mist drifted down from the beyond and spread across the sky. The noonday stars that had seemingly winked into existence as the sun’s rays faded were extinguished. And then something even stranger happened. The lights of the city—the street lamps, the storefronts, even the white Christmas bulbs that decorated the stage on College Hill—began to flicker and fade until, one by one, they all went out. The darkness that had covered the sky now covered the earth.

  Panic was in the air. The voice of the crowd gibbered and murmured as fear spread through us all. And yet still we clung to the belief that this was nothing unusual, and that even if it was, it too would pass in good time. That belief was broken when we heard the first scream.

  It seemed to fall down from the summit above to those of us who could get no closer than the base of College Hill. It was on that summit that the breath of Nemesis now alighted, where, as impossible as it seemed, the shimmering tendrils of darkness that drifted down from it now touched. I suppose when we heard the first cry that it should have snapped nerves already on edge, should have sent us screaming into the night. Instead it froze us in place and caused all of us to glance
toward our neighbors for assurances, even as they were hidden from our view.

  It was a scream like a whistle on a freight train passing through a town at rush hour. It never really stopped, only took a breath to reload. It seemed to grow closer, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw a man running toward us. He was the one screaming. The sound of it curved along the Doppler Effect as he ran to me and past me, his wail carrying into the night. Then there was movement. You could sense it as much as see it. The crowd at the top of the hill was frothing, bulging and contracting, pushing against itself, spilling down the slope.

  What was one scream became a thousand.

  The people around me began to run, picking up their children and going. But in the darkness they could not see. Many fell, never to rise again, crushed beneath the boots and heels and tennis shoes of their neighbors. I could not move, paralyzed by fear and wonder and even curiosity. I stood there as the wave of terrified men and women and children broke around me, surging down the hill and into town, fleeing without direction or thought, knowing, like a herd of hunted prey, that they must escape, must get away. I don’t know why I stayed. Perhaps because I sensed that something was coming, something I needed to see.

  And see it I did, though I can’t say even now exactly what it was. At first I saw only the carnage it wrought, as one might look upon a tree snapped by the wind. Bodies were ripped asunder before me, torn or sliced or twisted apart as if by impossibly powerful and unseen hands. I staggered back, until finally I was sprinting full speed after those who’d gone before.

  It was only when I chanced a glance over a shoulder that I saw one, and only then in the corner of my eye (I wonder now if we can see them otherwise, if perhaps to look upon them fully would break something in the mind). It was madness made reality, shadow given form, something made of nothing.

  A thing that walked when it should have crawled.

  How to describe what shouldn’t exist in a sane world? Even to try is to struggle against our rational boundaries. It was a creature made of sharp and impossible angles, a being of form unknown to man even in the worst nightmares of the insane. I watched as its scythe-like arms sliced through body and bone, as its titanic empty maw devoured the living and the dead. And it was not just one. It was legion.

  I ran on, but there was no escaping the things that came from the sky, no escaping Nemesis as it poured out its hate.

  I fled as my friends and neighbors were consumed by a dark fire that covered all. Somehow I found my way, stumbling through empty alleys and naked corridors, back here, to my home, to my study, to what may be the final source of light in all the world. The flickering flame of a candle, all that’s left to hold back the night.

  I know my time is short. As I’ve written this, the shrieks and screams and pleas for help and mercy that filled the streets beyond my door have fallen silent. And now they have come for me. They wait, just beyond the circle of the light, swirling, snarling, hating. Thirsting for my blood, my pain, my death. They creep forward as the light retreats, and my candle is all but gone. I will write until I can write no more. I hope that others survived this. I pray that someone will live to see a new day, that they will find this testament of one who did not believe.

  But if not, then if some other creature should come upon it and decipher the meaning of it, they will know that not all stars give life, and that not all life is meant to walk within the light.

  The candle flutters. I can sense them now. Hear them. I can feel their claws upon my back, taste the hate upon their breath, hear their frenzy for my doom.

  The light is fai

  THE SPACES BETWEEN SPACE

  I must tell you, gentlemen. Before we begin I want to be perfectly clear. I have no memory of how I came to be in the particle accelerator beneath the College, or whose blood it is that stains my clothes. Whether it’s Dr. Oxford’s, and where his body has gone if it is. I know only two things—Dr. Oxford is dead. And even the darkest of beings longs to return home.

  Dr. Oxford and I were friends, this is true. But I had not spoken with him in the better part of five years. I see your interested glances, but I can assure you that there were no ill feelings between us. It was simply that work had consumed both of our lives, and we had no time for friendships, no matter how good they may have once been.

  You ask me what happened to Dr. Oxford. You question me as if I should know. Given the circumstances I suppose that is not surprising. In truth, I do not know what happened that accursed night. But I know what I believe. And that, my friends, I will reveal to you now, though I am under no illusions. When you hear my story, you will likely think me mad. Oh, were it so! The madman has the comfort of living in a world of illusion. He need not fear the shadow, the thing that moves in the darkness. That fills the spaces between space. Lurking in the abyss and the void, in the dark places between the stars. No, to be mad would be comfort.

  If you are to know what took Dr. Oxford, then you must first know what he believed. Oh yes, I am sure you are aware of his reputation. I know that your research has told you many things. That Oxford was renowned in the field of astrophysics. That he had been asked to lead the Large Hadron Collider project and had accepted. That he was respected in all corners of science and that his theories were as praised as they are now mainstream. That is the Dr. Oxford that you know. It is not the one I knew. It is not the face that he revealed to his closest friends.

  No, Oxford believed other things.

  I suppose you have heard of what some call dark matter. No? Well, maybe that is not too surprising. I don’t want to bore you, gentlemen, so I’ll keep it short. The universe as we know it functions in a specific way. A regular way, a predictable way. It is because of that regularity that we can do things that generations before would have seen as no less than magic. Ah, but there is a problem with our theories. We know how the universe works, but we don’t know why. The fact is, there’s not enough of the everyday material in our familiar world to make it function as it does. That leaves us with only one conclusion. There must be something else. Something unusual, exotic. Something that we do not understand. We call that something dark matter. That is what fills those spaces between space. You see, the light could not be without the darkness. And reality as we know it could not be if the darkness ceased to exist.

  Most of my colleagues leave it there. This dark matter simply is, somewhere, somehow. It makes the planets move about the sun and the sun turn round the center of the galaxy and that is that. But Dr. Oxford had a theory.

  Ordinary matter, in what form does it exist? You see it every day. It is the rocks and the trees, the dirt beneath your feet and the air that you breathe. It is the sun that shines in the sky and the planets that whirl around it. It is the cock that crows in the morning, and the birds that sing at night. It is you and it is me.

  Dr. Oxford simply asked the obvious question. If ordinary matter does not exist in some undifferentiated mass, why should dark matter?

  I can see that even you recognize the implications of that suggestion. Another universe, not one theoretical or hypothetical, not some alternate dimension better suited for fiction than reality. No, one here, just beyond our vision, hiding in the darkness. And why not? Why not dark stars and dark worlds? Why not…dark life?

  Your skepticism does not surprise me. Man sees the world and he believes that what he sees is all that can be. And if you had told someone five hundred years ago that on every surface live millions of beings, so small the eye cannot see them, he would have called you mad. And yet today we accept that simple truth without question. And why? Because now we can see it, of course. And once we see, we believe. We are all like Thomas of old—ever doubting. Dr. Oxford knew that others would react just as you have. That they would laugh at him. That he would lose all that he had built, all that he had created.

  And so he decided to help them see.

  That is why he took the position with the LHC. During the day, he followed the prog
ram’s specifications, performing the experiments as they were laid out. Searching for certain particles that are important to science but matter not one whit to the rest of the world. But at night he pursued his true goal. Then he sought a breakthrough that would change the way we view not only ourselves, not only our world, but everything that is. He sought to see what is beyond. To see the substance of shadow. And gentlemen, I tell you now, I believe he did see.

  He called me yesterday, three days after the massacre. I had seen the news. How could one miss it? The heart of the Collider itself had been smashed. Six scientists were found slain in the control room. I knew most of them. They had been handpicked by Oxford, his true believers. But Oxford was not among them; he had disappeared completely.

  Details were scarce at first. We knew that they had died but not how. Then the rumors started. Wild. Fantastic. Insane. As rumors often are, more diabolical with every telling. But what scared me the most was that I knew there must be truth there. A kernel of fact. And if even part of what people said was true, then it was too horrible to imagine. Bodies ripped to shreds, some so mangled that they could only be identified by the badges they wore.

  The police said Oxford had gone crazy. That he had murdered his six colleagues. In a way, that would almost be comforting to believe. But how could you? Forget that Oxford was my friend. Forget that I could never believe him capable of murder. Look at the facts; it was a physical impossibility. How could one man, not frail but old nonetheless, kill six young and healthy men and women? How could he even begin to do the things that were claimed? To literally obliterate the bodies? To turn them into pulp and blood and bone. No, it could not be him. And that was the worst thought of all. Then I received the phone call.

  It was Oxford, and there was fear in his voice. He had come to Boston, but how he had gotten to this city was a mystery to me. I knew that the authorities were looking for him. There was no way he could have boarded an international flight without being detected. But he was here, and he wanted to meet. It was that palpable fear that seemed to drip off of every word that convinced me. I suggested several places, but he accepted none.