Vermont James And The Silvered Sight
“I have to kill these monkeys and take their bones to my mother,” Vermont said, shooting me a look, but I ignored both it and the spoken statement. It was hard to tell with him, and I’d learned not to ask too many questions. To the side of the trail we were breaking, a scared simian shot up a tree.
Pushing a low-hanging vine aside, he spoke again, voice low and soft. “That’s me talking, kid. Mom’s an anthropologist and the monkeys I’m seeing in here are sick. Killing them would be a service, and she could use the bones for study.”
I let out a deep breath I’d been holding. It’d been two years as a lab assistant and three more as a fieldworker before James had let me in on his little secret – and the reason he sounded batshit insane half of the time. Tall and muscular, the Doctor was one of the most respected archeologists in the business, aside from being quite the sex symbol. Trouble was, he was nuts.
“I see,” I said, shooting him a smile. The trouble was that half the time even the “normal” stuff he said was off-base, but I’d learned to deal with it.
The jungle in front of us thinned slightly and took on a downslope – we were getting closer, and I could feel James’ tension skyrocket. The man was cool as ice in the lab, but once he was out in the field he was easy to read.
“Silvered color,” he mumbled, “slightly oblong, with a 45 degree pitch…” I let him talk. This was how the Doctor worked, and why grad students wanted in on his next adventure. Most of them didn’t last more than a month, thanks to James’ high standards and their own fear of the crazy the man brought along.
It wasn’t obvious, not at first - a few words here, a strange glance there, and then a full-on whack attack that had most of his help screaming into the hallways, asking for a new advisor or a program change.
I smiled, remembering the first thing he’d ever said to me. “Ever played hockey with a Mongoose? I have. Had a hell of a backhand.” I’d heard the stories about the good doctor so I laughed it off as a story to tell friends, but it just got weirder from there.
“Hand cream – slippery devil water for your digits. A creamy sin of delight.”
“Look at that cat. Seems like it would be tasty. Hollandaise, though, no barbeque.”
And those were the fairly tame ones.
James was brilliant – two of his last three expeditions had resulted in a stunning finds. He’d never assaulted a student, never become violent or said a foul word to anyone in his care, but that didn’t stop the student body from talking, the rumors from flying.
He ate babies, of course, along with seducing undergrads and then stealing their babies for sustenance. He was in league with the devil, who pointed him in the direction of the next big dig. He was crazy, he was sick, he was rational and the rest of the world was just nuts around him.
He had a symbiont
The last was nonsense; but turned out to be the absolute truth, at least if I could believe the grainy X-ray he’d shown me once it became apparent I wasn’t going to go anywhere. He was suave, charismatic and apparently desperate to have someone else understand just how hard his life was.
He wasn’t whiny – just alone.
I ducked as a gust of wind shook a nearby tree and sent a vine swinging for my face. James’ oddities aside, I had better pay attention to what lay in front of me or I was going to be more of a liability than a help.
“There!” James’ voice was tense, excited. “Look!”
I squinted; the downslope had quickly become a valley, ringed at the bottom with a stand of hardwood trees. The clearing they formed was level and unmarred, not a blade of grass growing through the packed dirt surface. In the center was a cylindrical object, fifteen feet long, silvery, and glowing softy.
Drawing in a sharp breath, I glanced at James. “What the hell? How could aerial recon have missed this?”
“They didn’t,” he breathed, “the thing was waiting for me. Did you know I have human skulls in my bathtub?”
I nodded; the crazy was enough to confirm that this whole thing was tied together, and I followed as James made his way down the slope, easily dodging rocks and vines while I struggled for footing.
“Doctor!” I called out as a large root hidden behind a moss-covered rock tripped me up and I went down, but he ignored me, surging forward to come right up to the edge of the silver shape.
“This is it, Don,” he called, not bothering to see if I was there to hear him, “this is it, finally! This is it!”
I stood, brushing myself off as he extended a hand to the object, palm out. He should know better – “look, don’t touch” was the mantra he had drilled into my head, but he was too caught up to care.
“Vermont!” I called. Who knows what was going to happen when he put his hand to that thing? “Vermont, don’t!” He was beyond listening; whatever was in him or he thought was in him had a grip on him now, and he wasn’t about to back off.
His hand met the unbroken surface and the silver shape began to hum, and then raised itself several feet off of the ground. Arching back, Vermont screamed, but I had to put it in the class of ecstasy, rather than pain, though as it went on I found myself more than a little uncomfortable.
“Combining the two particulate states of matter results in large oxen ready for intercourse!” James screamed, and I dashed forward as I found my balance – things were taking a turn for the worse.
I tackled him, my heavy frame slamming into his lithe one, and we rolled together to the ground. When I got my bearings again, I found him standing over me, eyes glossed over by searing white and a snarl on his face.
Behind us, the hovering silver cylinder began to howl.
- D
No comments:
Post a Comment