James Axler - Red Equinox

Everyone needs a hand to guide, an arm to support.

A light in the darkness and a best friend.

This one, as before and for always, with all of my loving, is for Liz.

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

That small rain down can rain?

Doc Tanner was truly happy. The assorted horrors that had blighted his mind and brought him teetering to the far edge of madness had faded away from him like the dew in the morning.

Oh, if my love were in my arms,

And I in my bed again.

It was a fine summer afternoon in Omaha, Nebraska, in the year 1896.

He was twenty-eight years old and had been married for just a few weeks over five years.

"Such happiness, Emily," he said in his rich, deep voice, smiling at her.

His wife smiled back and reached out to him, squeezing his hand between her fingers. She wore a dress of flowered gingham, with a bonnet trimmed in white lace. Her high button boots had picked up shreds of dry grass and seed from the meadow where they'd come for their picnic.

The children played on a patterned blanket close by. Two-year-old Rachel, toddling bravely on stumpy little legs, laughed as she vainly reached out to capture a bright butterfly. Her baby brother, Jolyon, approaching his first birthday, was content to lie on his back and kick his bare feet at the soaring golden ball that floated in the perfect blue sky. An angled parasol protected his sensitive skin from the direct heat.

Oh, if my love were in my arms,

And I in my bed again.

Emily had a beautiful voice, a trained contralto that thrilled the air.

The remains of their meal lay spread over the damask cloth: some slices of honey-roasted ham; three different jars of pickles; half a new-baked loaf, and some butter wrapped in damp muslin to help keep it cool; a bowl of lettuce and tomatoes, wilting a little now; and a crock containing several different cheeses.

"You always like cheese, don't you, dearest?" Doc said. "I mean that you used to like it, didn't you?"

Emily turned to him, her smile sliding away into bewilderment. In the distance Doc could hear the faint sound of rumbling thunder. Clouds were gathering along the horizon of the prairie, threatening a storm. The horse that stood patiently in the shade of a clump of live oaks, freed from the traces of the wagon, whickered softly.

"Why do you say that I used to like it, my darling? I still do. Most truly."

Doc blinked. For a moment his vision blurred and he shook his head. His wife's face, better known even than his own, seemed to shimmer as though a fog had dropped between them.

"Emily..." he began, but a clap of thunder drowned out his words. The clouds were coming swiftly toward them, changing color from white to leaden gray to a peculiar pinkish-purple hue. They resembled a livid bruise, he thought.

"The children, beloved," Emily said. Yes, it was Emily. It was her.

"Indeed. Let us take them to the carriage and get shelter from the storm."

"I'll gather everything up. Ready for next time." She looked at him, and it was as though a great dagger of smooth ice had been thrust into his heart. "Because there will never be another time, Theo, my dear."

"I know that. By the three!.. I fear that I disremember what."

All around him, the grass was growing, sprouting faster, so that baby Jolyon had already vanished. And Rachel's head barely showed above the waving tips.

"Oh, help me, Papa, for I am frightened," she cried in a lisping, squeaky voice.

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

That small rain down can rain?

But the voice wasn't that of Emily. It was a different, younger voice. Doc knew that he recognized it.

"Quickly, my dearest!"

"Help me with the children, Emily. I can't see them. The grass is so long that they have simply vanished from sight."

Smoke.

Now he could smell smoke.

Behind him the horse whinnied and tossed its head, snapping the bridle and galloping away, eyes rolling, hooves pounding like thunder.

"Emily! Emily!"

Doc dropped to his knees, fumbling in the grass, feeling it moving over his skin like sentient human hair. He couldn't feel the children, but he could hear them, giggling together, their bubbling laughter seeming to come from all around.

The smell of smoke was growing ever stronger, and now he could actually hear the crackling of flames.

His wife was no longer to be seen. Through the mounting horror, Doc remained calm. He stood on the tips of his toes to try to spot Rachel and Jolyon, but now the grass was as high as his shoulders. The grove of live oaks had gone, and in their place stood a mound of earth, with a circle of stone pillars at its heart. And there stood...

"Emily!" he shouted, voice cracking. He started to run toward her, recognizing the mane of golden hair that hung to her waist, the bright crimson skirt, halfway up her long thighs, the high scarlet boots and the sound of tiny spurs, like silver bells, tinkling as she walked.

Flames, dazzling yellow and orange, were swooping across the skyline, exploding through the tops of the grass.

The wagon, horse, children... all were gone. All that was left was Emily.

"Emily?" Doc called. "Emily!"

"Lori," Doc said. "Oh, if my love were in my arms." He reached out as he stumbled toward her.

The tall teenager turned at his shout, beginning the familiar, gentle smile that had brought him such happiness for so many months. They were nearly close enough to touch.

Smoke billowed into Doc's face, blinding him and making him cough, but he felt his arms close around Lori.

Emily.

Lori.

He opened his eyes again, his ears filling with the roar of the fire, his skin scorching, his clothes beginning to smolder from the heat.

Doc experienced the illusion that his body was shrinking, becoming brittle and frail. His bones were layered in dust, his skin tight and dry.

He was holding Emily, Lori, Emily, Lori, closely to him. Doc began to smile reassuringly at her, but the smile died, stillborn. His mouth filled with bile as bitter as wormwood and he began to scream.

Doc held a log of charred, blackened wood, shaped like a human being, smoking, with parts of the flesh still glowing like tiny rubies. The scorched ends of whitened bone protruded here and there through the roasted meat. A stubble of hair remained on the seared skull, like a cornfield after the fires of autumn have cleansed it. There were no eyes in the bubbling sockets, and the mouth was a sighing cave of agonizing death.

"My love is in my arms," a voice whispered in Doc's ear.

He dropped the corpse, stepping back from it, and saw that it still lived. The burned branches of arms and legs still moved in feeble, uncoordinated motion, like a willow near a shaded pool as the breeze touches it.

"Die," Doc begged.

But it wouldn't.

It was even struggling to rise, fingerless hands reaching plaintively toward him in a mockery of prayer.

"For the love of God, Montresor," Doc moaned, waving helplessly at the creature with his swordstick, the silver lion's head gripped firmly in his gnarled fist.

The mouth opened. "And I in my bed again," it croaked.

Doc Tanner began to scream, and the noise woke the other five people who lay sprawled around the mat-trans chamber.

Ryan Cawdor opened his eye.

The walls of the gateway they'd jumped from had been dull gray armaglass. That redoubt had been situated in the quake-torn remnants of what had once been known, nearly a hundred years ago, as California, way back before the Great Madness when the skies grew dark and a civilization died. A world had almost died, as well. The surface of the earth was now dotted with no more than small, inbred, isolated settlements, often with a high rate of bizarre mutations.