Awaken to a Nightmare © Brian Barnett The room was sweltering. Glenn Curry awoke, sweaty and irritated. He looked over to his alarm clock. He only had twenty more minutes before he needed to get up and face the day. He groaned and peeled himself out of his sweat-saturated sheets. He felt the heat seeping through the window sill. He knew that something had to be wrong. He slowly opened the mini blinds to witness an unfathomable scene that left him breathless.
Nearly everything in the valley had been melted or burned to cinders. The valley's orange glow was dimmed from the buildup of ashes and soot that clung to the window.
Only a few neighboring houses on the hillside survived. Downtown Frankfort, as he knew it, was nothing more than a lake of fire. Occasional belches sent pillars of flames several feet into the air from the boiling river.
Glenn's eyes took in the chaotic panorama of the molten sea, yet his mind squeamishly attempted to reject it. He could only vacantly stare out his window, emotionlessly stunned. He leaned away from the window and its unbearable heat. Sweat trailed down his forehead, snapping him from his malaise.
Black plumes of smoke bellowed from burning houses and melting cars. The plumes reached to the sky and met with a seemingly endless low-lying black cloud. It was illuminated with a dull orange flickering glow from the fiery lake below.
Glenn focused on the cloud and noticed that it was moving very slowly. There were patches that swelled and collapsed, like a rolling, oily sea. The cloud, as a whole, seemed to be rotating. Glenn leaned to see the center of the spiraling cloud, but he could not from his vantage point.
He ran to the living room and finally saw it from his bay window. The cloud was much like the destruction. There was no end to it. It seemed to spread far beyond the horizon. As far as he could see, there was nothing but black.
There seemed to be an eye to the cloud a few miles away. It ascended upward, like an inverse cyclone. Under the eye stood an ebony tower, which Glenn initially did not see amongst the confusion.
He reeled back from the window, instantly nauseous. Reality had not struck him completely until he saw Geraldine Barnes' car floating by in a stream of lava. The slow-flowing torrent slowly consumed it as it steadily sank into its molten depths.
Then he saw smoke pouring from what remained of Mr. Anderson's house at the base of the hill. Glenn's memory fluttered with a fleeting image of cookouts and borrowed lawn mowers - things that could never happen again. He shook away an image of what he thought Mr. Anderson's last moments may have been like. His stomach turned.
Glenn's mind swirled and he felt weak kneed. When he went to bed the night before, everything was normal. Now, outside his window, his hometown is an apocalyptic landscape. What could have caused all of this?
His eyes slid over again to the tower in the distance. It was an unsettling image, and no doubt the epicenter of the chaos. Spires projected from its various ledges, reaching toward the eye of the maelstrom.
Inexplicably Glenn began to giggle. “Nobody could have built that overnight!” He screamed through the window as if to taunt the tower into proving its existence. He continued to giggle as a dead bird landed in the yard. There were dozens of them. Again harsh reality had made itself known to him.
He looked up at the churning clouds. He suddenly realized there was no wind or any noise. There was a slight tinge of sulfur in the air, and the heat was exhausting, but the air was absolutely still. Strange, he thought.
A jolt ran through him. He pulled away from staring at the churning cloud and ran to the kitchen where he kept his bin of old newspapers. He poured it onto the table and sifted through them. He picked them up and tossed them to the side, one after another.
Finally, he found what he was looking for. The headline read: Brown Professor Disappears with Artifact .
The headline reminded Glenn of the series of articles that had been written on Jesse Gaines, Fort Hill, Professors Korsakov and Morris, and that book.
Jesse Gaines was the local historian. Mostly, he just specialized in Frankfort's history. He was scheduled to be at Fort Hill to guide a tour. He found something odd protruding from the ground, so he dug it up. It turned out to be a strange looking box.
The box was made from a decorative hardwood that was etched with symbols. He promptly took it downtown to the Paul Sawyier Library. After he studied the box for a day, he realized it was far beyond his scope of knowledge of artifacts.
He called on his friend, Professor Vladimir Korsakov. Korsakov was a history professor at Kentucky State University. He was the foremost expert on historical artifacts in the state.
The finding was quite an event for the city. Tourism to the library and Fort Hill multiplied. The State Journal ran several follow-up stories and interviewed Professor Korsakov regularly. He continued to update his findings until the origin of the box finally confounded him.
What he did know was that the book was bound in an odd sort of leather and the pages were a sort of vellum he had never seen. Both the box and the book were excellently preserved despite appearing to be at least several centuries old.
Professor Korsakov decided to call in a language expert. He called Professor Edgar Morris from Brown University. He was widely considered the foremost expert of ancient languages in the world. Korsakov and Morris were colleagues and had worked together several times before.
Professor Morris was obliged to Korsakov for calling him and reveled in the opportunity to study the book.
Once Professor Morris arrived, he reserved a private room at the library. He pleaded with the public not to disturb him. On occasion, Professor Korsakov acted as a media liaison to quell the curious public so that they would stop gathering outside Professor Morris' room.
Professor Morris took painstakingly detailed notes from the manuscript. The language was apparently like none that even he had ever seen. The State Journal ran a print on some samples of the text from the book. The characters were crude, yet the calligraphy was written gracefully in perfect block paragraphs.
Glenn remembered that many people were unnerved by the article. It was like looking at an alien language. The strange writing coupled with Professor Morris' lack of knowledge of its origin, worried some people. Worry slowly began to spread throughout Frankfort.
The State Journal ran several letters to the editor ranging from speculation to the fantastic. Some thought the box was planted as a hoax to boost tourism, whereas others thought an alien race had landed and infiltrated the country.
An odd series of events followed in the weeks after Professor Morris' arrival. He became very reclusive and Professor Korsakov became more guarded toward the media. Often he was visibly nervous at the presence of the public and eventually stopped coming to the library all together.
Rumors began to circulate around Frankfort that the book was evil. Some people were convinced that Professor Morris was acting like a man possessed. Then things started getting really strange.
Within two weeks after Professor Korsakov's last library visit, he was found dead. He was found on the floral clock behind the capitol building. He had symbols carved into his flesh. His eyes were missing and all his orifices were scorched. The State Journal's report read that his body smelled strongly of sulfur.
The medical examiners had complained of the smell and stated that his body was unusually warm for a cadaver. He was stored in the State Crime Lab. The next day, the examiners were to conduct a follow-up examination.
Supposedly, if rumors were to be believed, when the cooler was opened the next day, ash and seared bone fragments were all that remained of Professor Korsakov. The cooler walls were scorched and there were several claw marks in the interior. The back of the cooler was said to have a hole torn into it.
None of these reports could be verified. The examiners were taken in for questioning. Ever since, they had not elaborated on the claims, instead they chose to be silent. The crime lab was taped off for several days and access was not allowed to anyone except for Federal investigators.
Once again, rumors spread through Frankfort. Imps and demons swirled through the sidewalks off of people's tongues. Word of the end of days spread quickly that way.
There were demonstrators with sandwich boards on Broadway claiming that “The end is near” and other similar statements. Some of the demonstrators made very convincing points. They would draw parallels between their bibles and the current events that were happening in the world.
The rumors and related hullabaloo frightened many into to churches. Glenn thought it was funny how people would beg for forgiveness when they thought the end was imminent. Just yesterday, he was given a pocket-sized bible by an elderly lady when he left the Coffeetree Café. The café is gone now, Glenn realized sharply. It had been drowned in a sea of fire.
No, Glenn never bought into the hysteria, though he was tempted after Professor Morris' disappearance. Glenn caught a glimpse of him one day, a few days before he disappeared. He looked pale and he was badly disheveled. His eyes shifted constantly when he left his private room. His appearance alone nearly convinced Glenn that the book was evil.
Glenn saw something flutter beyond the living room's bay window. He dropped the newspapers and cautiously approached the window. Out of the clouds, a horde of flying creatures descended. Ordinarily such a sight would have sent Glenn into a frenzied panic. Considering the circumstances of his day, he was only temporarily taken aback.
They were graceful in flight. Some perched upon the tower and its spires. Others began flying overhead and circled like buzzards. Glenn realized they were most likely searching for food, so he closed the curtains partially.
With each revolution of flight over the few remaining houses, they dipped lower and lower. Eventually he was able to see their disgusting visages with more clarity. Their skin was leathery, with no feathers or hair. They had no eyes and their mouths were not elongated like beaks. Instead, they had lipless mouths with sharp, jagged teeth that jutted outward in various angles.
Glenn heard glass breaking next door. He hoped vehemently that the Bateman's were out of town. He heard a car door and an engine rev. A twinge of hope bit Glenn. Perhaps there were some roads that were still accessible. With a terrible screech, one of the creatures flew over the valley. It had Ned Bateman by his leg. Glenn's faint glimmer of hope faded instantly.
Ned struggled to free himself which attracted another creature. It caught him around his torso with its long talons. It attempted to pull him from the other creature's grasp. The two creatures struggled with Ned until he was torn in half. One of them dropped Ned's lower half into the fire lake below. Glenn hoped that Mrs. Bateman was not watching.
A different sort of creature descended partially from the void above the tower. There were dozens of massive red and black splotched tentacles flailing violently through the air. One of them snatched a flying creature from the sky and crushed it. The creature seemed to dissolve slowly into the behemoth's flesh.
A deafening bellow blasted from the sky. It reverberated hard enough to shake some of the breath from Glenn. The sound could not be described beyond comparing it to a foghorn. The behemoth must have been unimaginably huge.
Moments later, Glenn's bedroom window shattered. One of the flying creatures must have entered the house, Glenn surmised. He had a gun, but he mindlessly left it in the hall closet. A second crash behind Glenn sent glass raining down on his back. The heat intensified without the window to buffer it. Talons dung into his shoulder and ripped him from the house.
With an amazing thrust, Glenn was a mile above his house in the clutches of the disgusting beast. He was dropped temporarily, but then caught again by yet another flying creature. He could not help but wonder if the flaming river would have been a better fate.
He saw that he was being carried toward the tower. Dread enveloped him. On one of the ledges sat a white-haired man. His features were sunken in and his eyes appeared to be emanating black smoke. Glenn knew immediately that it was Professor Morris. He had figured out the ancient text and the power must have consumed him.
Glenn assumed that he must have summoned the creatures that murdered Professor Korsakov. He must have created the rift that connected this world with whatever was on the other side of that vortex. He was probably nothing more now, than an entranced text reader to spread their power. The power of the book did not consume him as much as the book itself did, Glenn concluded.
Glenn was able to get a fleeting glimpse into the inner-walls of the maelstrom. Unimaginable monstrous beasts writhed and raged. A prism of impossible colors flickered beyond them. Endless nightmares on the doorstep of reality, ready to destroy us all.
The flying creature bit through Glenn's ribs. Searing pain coursed through his body before numbness set in. He was thankful that his last moments were to be easy compared to some. He saw that rows and rows of bizarre humanoid cephalopods and ravenous beasts began storming from the portal. The end was near indeed.
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