"Potemkin Village"

There’s an old saying which states: "Rome was not built in a day."  Well, maybe the forces of creation and destruction don’t share the same constraints, because the entire town of Covington, Rhode Island was completely wiped out in just as much time.  At least that's the way it seems.  Every man, woman and child simply disappeared overnight.  Everyone . . . except for me . . .
           
I doubt that anyone else will ever read these words.  Indeed, if fate is so kind as to deliver this account into the hands of another human being, they will likely believe it to be the work of a madman.  After having experienced the things I have since the . . . "Event" first occurred; I have developed my own misgivings with regard to my mental state.  Regardless, I must make some record of what has happened here to prove that all of this is real, to myself if to no one else.
           
My name is Edward Anderson, and to the best of my knowledge I am the last remaining person in this town.  Perhaps I am the last one left in the entire country, or even the world -- no!  Such thoughts are too terrible to entertain; there must be others out there somewhere beyond this madness,but I am getting ahead of myself.  I must start with my earliest memories since the "Event," even if that means having to relive this whole damn nightmare all over again.
           
I awoke on Monday, May 19, 2003 -- it almost feels silly to write the year, but I know it may be quite some time before this record is found, if ever.  Initially nothing seemed amiss; a person's daily routine has a habit of blinding them to things which are out of the ordinary, as I've found.  I had showered, made breakfast for myself, and finished half the meal before I finally noticed it.
           
My eyes must have passed over the window a half dozen times before my conscious mind realized that something was odd.  The usual view of the old Victorian-style houses across the street had been replaced with a solid field of dull grey.  At first glance it seemed that someone had draped a heavy cloth over the window, or simply painted over it, for all the uniformity of the image with which I was presented.
           
Getting up to take a closer look did little to resolve the matter.  Initially, it appeared as if the house had just been plucked from its cozy little street in Covington, and dropped into some featureless limbo. Although this thought was soon dispelled.  I found that if I looked very, very hard, I could just make out the vague outlines of the other houses in the haze.  The town was -- and still is shrouded in fog, the thickest I have ever seen.
           
I didn't exactly relish the idea of having to drive to work through fog, the consistency of pea soup; so I turned on the television in hopes of finding a weather report with news of when the strange conditions might end. However, where there should have been the channel four morning news, there was only static.  I tried channel nine, and got the same results.  Channel after channel clicked by, each reduced to a blizzard of electric snow.
           
While it was not until some time later that I realized it, that should not have been possible.  Perhaps static would show up on the local channels if they were down, but it just didn't work that way for those I received via satellite.  Normally when one of those channels isn't working, there’s just a black screen with a message saying that the signal could not be acquired, along with a technical support number to call.  But there was nothing but static: a swirling chaotic mess.
           
Confused, I turned on the radio.  The radio . . . I would have smashed it into a thousand pieces, had I not been afraid that they would hear me, and realize that there was still someone left.  I know I'm getting ahead of myself again, but my God!  The sounds that came out of that box!  Yet that did not happen until more time had passed, and I must keep things as much in order as possible to keep from seeming like a raving lunatic.
           
At the time, I was greeted by nothing but white noise.  There was no change across the dial.  AM, FM, it made no difference.  It was at this point that I began to get worried.
           
Shutting off the hissing box I picked up the phone, and was actually surprised to hear a dial tone.  With everything else on the fritz, I half expected the phone to be dead as well.  After searching through my list of numbers, I found the one for my friend Alex from work.  I wanted to find out if everyone in town was having the sorts of problems I was, or if it was my own personal bad luck.
           
The phone on the other end of the line rang three times before there was an answer.  It was just the machine, and I hung up without leaving a message.  While it was still early, seven o'clock or so, I figured Alex might have left for work already to try and make it through the fog safely.  Even so, this did not change the fact that I wanted to find out how many people were in the same mess that I was with their appliances..
           
So I called Sam, my friend from down the street.  Again, I was greeted by a machine.  Elaine, John, Anna: none of them answered.  Poor souls, all certainly dead by now.  However, at the time I merely thought that there was something wrong with my phone after all. Maybe it never caused an audible ring at the other end, but as more and more calls went unanswered; I had began to get scared.  Maybe nobody was home because there had been some sort of emergency while I had been asleep, although I would have thought there would have been sirens going off or something.
           
With that thought in mind, I decided to call the police.  The phone at the station rang once, twice, three times, and it just kept going.  I hung up and called again, but nothing changed.I didn't know what to make of all that had happened.  Lost, I tried the television and radio again, futilely hoping they would suddenly just start working again.  Taking one more look out the window, I resolved to venture out and find some answers.

I had just put on my shoes and coat, and was about to leave when I heard the noise.  The sound was quiet, but I found that I could hear it quite clearly.  Up until that moment I hadn't realized how still everything had been.  It came from outside, and at first I thought it was someone passing by on the sidewalk.  Grateful for the opportunity to talk to someone about the strange events of that morning, I was prepared to throw open the door and call out to them.  Thankfully something held me back.
           
There was a strange quality to the noise.  It seemed too irregular to be the sound of someone walking.  How could I describe it?  It was sort of a short series of clicks, a long scraping noise, and then a brief pause before it repeated.  My hand hung mere inches away from the door handle, frozen in place as I listened with a growing sense of unease.  As I strained to fathom what could be producing such an odd sound, my mind was suddenly flooded with images of things large and inhuman dragging themselves along, with their shells scraping against the concrete of the sidewalk.  A hundred misshapen beasts paraded themselves through my thoughts as a wave of utter horror washed over me.
           
"Click-click-scrape."
           
"Click-click-scra-aape."
           
The sound grew ever louder, until at last it seemed to be right outside the door.  In the grip of a fear I had never before known, I tore myself away from the vicinity of the sound and bolted up the stairs. I am unsure of what happened next exactly.  The next thing I remembered was finding myself curled up in a ball in a corner of my bedroom, still trembling from the strange experience.  I must have been there for a long time, because I remember being quite hungry when I came to.  Gradually regaining my wits, I pulled myself together and went back downstairs.

Seeking food, and perhaps the small comfort of doing something normal, I walked to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich.  Whatever it was that had been outside earlier had apparently passed by without incident.  As I ate I tried to come to terms with what had happened.  My imagination had never flown off the handle like that before, yet this time it had done so with such ease.  It was almost as if some sixth sense had been desperately trying to keep me from opening the door.  I honestly didn't know what to make of it; I didn't really know what to make of anything at the time.
           
Finishing the sandwich, I endeavored to keep myself busy.  Although I knew it would be pointless, I tried the TV again, and again I was met with 79 channels of static.  I tried each one, hoping that maybe something somewhere would be getting through.  With that avenue exhausted, I turned once more to the radio. Slowly I turned the dial, making the needle creep through the frequencies filled with nothing but dead static.  Disheartened, I left the machine on some random station and sat down to ponder what to do next.  All too soon, my train of thought was sent careening off its tracks.
           
Sitting at the kitchen table, I slowly became aware of a change taking place in the radio signal.  It was subtle, and had not the world around me still been blanketed in the same unnatural silence as before, I probably would not have noticed it at all.  Oh, how I wish that had been so, although I suppose it would not have truly changed much in the end.  Curious, I turned up the volume in order to make out the new sound.
           
Even doing so, the change was difficult to make out at first, and fear of losing the signal entirely prevented me from adjusting the tuning knob.  After several minutes of listening, the new sounds became clear enough.  I . . . I don't know if you could really call it a voice or not, but it was definitely too regular to be white noise, too well ordered to be purely animal in origin. As strange as I know that idea must seem, but the words -- the noises were not made by any human tongue.  I know that for certain.  They were deep, wet, guttural intonations that no human being could ever have pronounced.  The fact that the sounds always remained just barely audible above the static further added to their mysterious nature.
           
I sat transfixed, wondering if this whole thing was some sort of trick, like a modern day War of the Worlds. Still, the thing on the radio was too convincing, too real, too frighteningly alien to be something perpetrated by even the most ambitious imitator of H.G. Wells. As the improbability of it all ran through my head, the sounds on the radio took on a slightly different tone, insofar as such was possible considering their freakish nature.  I didn't know how, and I didn't know why, but somehow it seemed like the . . . words were being directed at me.  The feeling grew in me as the horrible thing muttered away in its impossible language.
           
Fear once again had hold of me.  I almost screamed at the phantasmal speaker to demand to know what it wanted from me, when another feeling gripped me.  Suddenly, I was sure I was being watched.  Forcing myself to move, I walked to a window and looked out.
           
I peered hard into the swirling fog, which even now still shrouds this town.  It was then that the frightful stillness truly became noticeable.  The thing on the radio had become silent, and the white noise seemed deafening in the calm.  Outside, the only feature which caught my attention was the old oak tree in the yard: it was not moving.  There was no wind.  The fog was churning all by itself.  Beyond that I could make out nothing else.Yet I could not shake the feeling that I was being observed.  Spider eyes, doll eyes, eyes that never blink.  While I was blind, something out there was seeing me as clearly as if it were a bright summer's day, burning into me with its lidless gaze.
           
Trembling, I hurried to pull the drapes shut.  Moving from window to window I closed off all view of the outside world, all the while fearing that it was already too late, that the things out there were already coming for me. I turned then to the radio, half expecting my actions to have elicited a response from the monstrous. Thankfully, it did not resume its vocation while I watched, and I refused to wait for it to do so.  Unplugging the machine, I raised it over my head, preparing to dash it onto the tiled floor.  Yet fear kept me from continuing; I was afraid that the things outside would take the clamor as a sign of distress and move in for the kill.
           
Setting the radio down on the kitchen table, I fell into a chair and sat there for some time in despair.  This could not be happening, and yet it was -- it is.  I wouldn't have been overly surprised if the unholy voice had begun to speak through the powerless device, or if some hideous beast had broken down the door to carry me off to my grisly fate.
           
Surprisingly, the horrors kept themselves at bay, and I found myself under siege in my own house.  So, I have been left alone with my thoughts, with my fear, for what now?  A week?  Two weeks?  I can't tell anymore!  It never gets dark, or light for that matter.  Every time I dare to look outside, the landscape is always covered in the same blanket of dull, desolate grey.  What light there is seems to come from everywhere, or maybe from nowhere at all.  I don't know!
           
The clocks haven't worked since the "Event" occurred either.  Digital and gear-driven, they all stopped at 7:06.  I took one apart, and for the life of me I don't know why it isn't running. I knew I couldn't be stuck at one point in time, because things have been happening, and things require time to happen!

Oh, and what horrible, unthinkable things they have been.  The sounds started . . . I suppose I can call it the same "day" that the thing spoke over the radio.  Such ghastly, unnatural cries and ululations they are, that I could not begin to describe them to one who was fortunate enough not to have already heard them.  Nor, would I wish to try.  After I first began to hear them, I could not bring myself to sleep for what must have been days, until I eventually passed out from exhaustion.

Occasionally I would bring myself to look out the windows in an effort to determine from where the otherworldly calls originated.  Those times when I was successful brought newfound terror to my increasingly tortured existence.  While the ethereal fog was as thick as ever, I could sometimes just make out the shape of . . . one of them out there.
           
The larger ones were naturally the easiest to spy: great hulking things, pulling themselves along on a disturbing number of limbs.  Others were smaller, faster, but no less unsettling.  These darted through the fog far too quickly for me to discern anything save their relative size.  Large, small, scuttling, slithering, loping, floating -- for God's sake, I swear some of them hovered above the ground, and not from any wings that I could see.  For all their diversity in form and locomotion, the beasts that had come to rule Covington never once sparked any sense of familiarity.  These were beings completely apart from this world, or at least they should have been.  They are quite simply wrong . . and perhaps it is only the fog, or the stress, or the fear, but I swear that the surrounding buildings are no longer . . . right either.  They seem distorted somehow, as if their angles are all wrong.  From certain windows they almost seem to . . . to bend into themselves . . . I have lost my mind, haven't I?

Well, I do not need to be sane to know one thing for certain: I am almost out of food.  Soon I will have no choice but to venture outside and to try to escape from this damned pit of madness.  I will try to make a break for the garage, and hope to God that the car will start.  If it doesn't . . . now more than ever I wish I owned a gun, although I doubt that such a thing would protect me for long against some of the horrors I have seen.
           
I will not be taking this notebook with me.  If I somehow manage to get free from this hell, if indeed such is even possible at all, then I will not need this record.  If I have to, I will give a fresh account of the "Event" which claimed Covington, Rhode Island.  Let them lock me up in an insane asylum, with guards and padded rooms.  Maybe, just maybe I could be safe there, even if I cannot be called sane.

©2008 J. Asher Henry