Anomaly Flats (3 page)

Chapter 4

The second-story hallway of the Roach Motel was tidy, and clean, and utterly disturbing. Mallory couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about the hall seemed off somehow. Maybe it was the flickering lights casting harsh, wavering shadows that stretched across the walls. Maybe it was the two orderly rows of doors, standing strong and solid, like silent sentinels.  Maybe it was the fact that there was nothing but emptiness behind those doors, and she was alone in a new and unsettling house in a new and unsettling town.

“Or maybe it’s the fact that the carpet is ugly as shit,” she muttered aloud.

It was dark brown, which was the main source of awfulness. But it wasn’t the
only
source. Mustard-yellow paisley dotted the brown plush runner, and threads of pale pink were inexplicably woven in throughout the pattern. The flickering lamps did all they could to hide the awful thing in shadows, but Mallory couldn’t help but think that the flames might be of better use setting fire to the whole carpet and ridding the world of its hideousness altogether.

Room 205 was located halfway down the hall, on the left. There was nothing particularly notable about the door; it was solid, surely, with a small brass number plate. It held only one keyhole.

“Of course,” Mallory sighed, staring miserably at the seven keys in her hand. “Because why not?”

She picked out the right key on the third try, an old-fashioned thing with rectangular teeth and a bow that was molded into a flourishing brass wreath. It fit snugly in the lock, and it took a bit of coaxing, but soon the key turned, and Mallory opened the door to her room. It was modest, but it appeared comfortable enough. It contained a four-poster bed that looked as if it should be draped with some sort of linen, but instead, the posts stood empty and naked. That was fine with Mallory; she was prone to claustrophobia anyway. There was also a nightstand, a dresser, and an armchair that looked stiff and uncomfortable. It sat next to a window with plain lace curtains overlooking the unremarkable side yard of the house.

Mallory breathed a sigh of relief. After the day she’d had, she’d half-expected the room to be coated in moss or writhing with worms. Instead, it appeared recently cleaned and properly made up, and that was somehow refreshing.

She set the keys on the dresser, tossed the backpack onto the bed, and did a quick search of the room, hoping to find a safe. “No such luck.” She picked up the backpack and tucked it under the bed. “You stay down there,” she warned, “or we’re going to have problems.”

Exhaustion crept in on her, so she tested the bed. The springs creaked a bit when she sat down, but the mattress was firm, and it would serve for a decent night’s sleep. “One night,” she reminded the flower-patterned wallpaper. “I’ll be fine here for one night.”

Even though she had no pajamas to change into, she decided to freshen up before bed. She grabbed the ring of keys and started for the door, heading for the washroom.

That was when she saw them—the seven individual locks.

Mallory frowned. “Now where did you come from?” she asked. She opened the door and inspected the other side. Seven separate locks now ran in a vertical line above the handle. Mallory shook her head and sighed. “I’m losing my mind.”

It wasn’t really all that surprising, under the circumstances.

She stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. Then she locked just the one lock—the one nearest the handle, the one made to fit the old-fashioned key…and she wasn’t entirely sure even
that
one was necessary, considering that it was just her and Old Lady Roach in the house. If her bag went missing while she was out, there wouldn’t be any great mystery as to who was responsible.

She swung the keys on the ring as she trod down the awful carpet, whistling a tuneless little nothing and making a mental list of the things she’d do when she finally reached Lenore’s place.

A bath first, with bubbles.
Fancy
bubbles. The fanciest bubbles Canada’s got. And a bottle of something expensive. Champagne, probably. Or Scotch. Or Champagne
and
Scotch. A bottle in each hand. Yep. Then, a feast. Not a dinner; a fucking
feast
. The main course should be something endangered. Bluefin tuna or a Bengal tiger. A Bluefin tuna stuffed
inside
a Bengal tiger. And roasted over rain forest wood. After that—

Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud
WHUMP!
from the door to her right.

Mallory jumped and threw herself back against the wall. She gasped, clutching at her heart. “Hello?” she said, but her voice caught in her throat, and the word died as soon as it left her lips. She summoned her courage and said, louder, “Hello?”

She crept closer to the door. She could hear nothing but the buzzing in her own ears.
Must’ve been a tree or something. Outside.
She eyed the door suspiciously. Room 210. “There’s no one else here,” she reminded herself. “Just Mrs. Cockroach and me.” She placed her palms against the door, leaned forward, and pressed her ear to the wood.

WHUMP!

Something slammed into the door from the inside, rattling the thing in its frame.

Mallory screamed. She sprinted to the washroom and slammed the door behind her. She turned the lock and leaned back against the wood, shaking and panting and wiping sweat from her palms. “Holy hell,” she whispered, trying to catch her breath. “Come on, Mallory. Get a grip.” So Mrs. Roach had lied about the hotel’s occupancy. So what? It was weird, but it wasn’t a big deal. “I’m just going to murder her, is all.”

She shook out her hands and stepped up to the pedestal sink. The mirror hanging above it was a simple oval, big enough for her to get a full view of herself. “Woof,” she sighed, dragging her hands through her hair and pulling at the dark circles under her eyes.

“Life on the road does
not
agree with you,” said mirror Mallory.

“Shut up,” said Mallory.

She noticed a bump on her forehead, just above her right eye…but she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten it. “Stress is eating my brain,” she decided. She touched it gingerly. It only hurt a little, and it didn’t look particularly irritated. She counted that as a win. Then she turned on the sink tap, and brown water spurted out of the faucet.

She sighed again.

She waited for the pipes to clear, rolling a rubber band from her wrist and tying her hair back, inspecting for grays along the way. There were more today than yesterday—no doubt about it
.
She grunted and closed her eyes, then leaned over and splashed a handful of water over her face.

Tap water had never felt so good.

With the first splash, she forgot all about how a sky full of twinkling stars almost became an accessory to her death. With the second, the memory of waffles and mass poultrycide melted completely from her brain. With the third, even the thoughts of a door with seven locks and a mysterious thumping from a room that was supposed to be empty seemed to drift off into the ether. After a few more rinses, she was just Mallory—driven, lovable, crazy old Mallory, out in the world, just a step or two removed from her regularly-scheduled life.

Then she opened her eyes and saw a cockroach squirming out of the drain, and that pretty much ended the fantasy.

Mallory jumped with a cry of disgust and instinctively pulled the stopper closed. She pulled hard; the metal plug slammed down against the drain, slicing the cockroach in half.

“Oh, God, I’m gonna puke.” She threw a hand over her mouth, hurried over to the toilet, and threw open the lid. But the vomit didn’t come. It seemed to lodge itself somewhere in the upper parts of her soul, her nausea burning through her chest and souring the further reaches of her stomach instead. “Well, I just want to die,” she decided.

The water was still running. As she reached over and turned off the faucet, some part of her—some sick, twisted, sociopathic part—wanted to see the half-roach drifting in the pool of water, if for no other reason than to lord her dominance over the recently-murdered pest. A nuclear blast couldn’t kill a cockroach, but Mallory Jenkins could. There was a special sort of pride in that.

She steeled her roiling insides and took a deep breath. Then she turned and looked down at the half-roach as triumphantly as she could. Her glory was slightly dampened by the fact that the half-roach was still moving. No…not just moving;
squirming
. It writhed through the bowl of steaming water, curling and uncurling and thrashing softly in the depths. Mallory’s eyes grew wide with fascinated horror as she drew nearer the disgusting scene to get a better look. With her chin just a few inches from the surface of the water, she realized that the thing she’d sliced in the sink wasn’t a cockroach at all.

It was something else entirely.

It was small, and black, and shaped almost like a cone. It seemed smooth and slippery, except for the underside, which was pocked with tiny circles that seemed to be able to grip the smooth, sloping sides of the sink bowl. It looked like the arm of a small, black starfish.

“Not an arm,” she whispered, peering down into the water. “A tentacle.”

And even severed from its host, the slimy little thing was still alive.

Mallory threw open the door and half-ran, half-stumbled back to her room. She plied the lock with shaking hands, threw herself inside, slammed the door shut, and managed to lock all seven locks in what was probably record time, under the circumstances. Then she gripped the doorknob and gave it a good twist. Thankfully, it held fast, as if cemented in place. She pulled and shook and heaved at the door, but it staunchly refused to budge. There were seven large, metal bolts holding the thing in place. It would take a hell of a lot more than a thump of a tentacle to burst through the damn thing. Even so, she decided not to take any chances. She rummaged through the dresser until she found the piece of white chalk resting atop a handwritten note on Roach Motel stationery. The small, tight scrawl at the top of the page read, “Elder Futhark Protection Symbols.” Mallory didn’t typically go in for the occult…but she didn’t typically go in for tentacles slithering out of sink drains, either. She sketched the provided runes onto the door, three concentric circles of esoteric nonsense just below the peephole.

She backed away, chalk in hand, and considered her work. “Just one night,” she reminded herself, her voice trembling. “You can survive anything for one night.”

She closed the curtains and was about to climb into bed when she noticed something she hadn’t before: a bottle of wine stood innocently on the nightstand, though Mallory was certain it hadn’t been there when she’d arrived. She picked it up and inspected the label. It boasted an illustration of a silver flying saucer sucking up an oversized bunch of grapes in its tractor beam. “Neptune Norton,” Mallory read. “U.F.O. Vineyards.” According to the fine print, U.F.O. stood for Unidentified Fermented Object. The bottle was tied off around the neck with a small tag that read,
Welcome to Anomaly Flats. Enjoy a little local flavor
. It claimed to have a surprisingly high alcohol content—18%, which Mallory decided might be just enough. She peeked beneath the bed to make sure the backpack was still safe and sound, then she climbed into bed, fully clothed, and screwed off the cap. She propped herself up on the pillows, clutched the blanket to her chest, and took a few slugs of Neptune Norton straight from the bottle. It tasted like cherries and plums and oak and tar, and it made the tips of her ears tingle with warmth.
That’ll do
, she thought
.

Between the exhaustion of the day and the wine in her hand, it wasn’t long before a bone-weary sleepiness crept in on her. She scooted down into the sheets and lay back against the pillows. She tried her best to block out the last 24 hours and to focus on the next: waking up, checking out, getting her car fixed, leaving Anomaly Flats, and chalking it all up to a particularly lucid fever dream.

Yes,
she decided,
tomorrow will definitely be better.

Chapter 5

Mallory awoke with a start.

Watery sunlight filtered in through the curtains, and despite the extremely convincing nightmare she’d just woken up from, when she looked under the sheets, all her various parts and pieces were accounted for, and she was one whole Mallory.

She glanced over at the nightstand and, with no surprise at all, saw that only a few inches of Neptune Norton remained in the bottle. She yawned, and she stretched, and she said, “Ah, what the hell,” as she picked up the bottle and finished it off.

She groaned her way out of bed and rubbed some life into her cheeks. Between the wine and the sleep, her breath was a horror. But she hadn’t packed a toothbrush (“Because who has time for necessities, dummy?” she chided herself), and even if she had packed one, returning to the washroom was completely out of the question. The world would just have to deal.

She grabbed her backpack from under the bed and unzipped it to make sure she hadn’t been robbed by phantoms in the night. Everything was accounted for. She closed it back up, slung it over her shoulder, and grabbed the ring of keys. As she made her way to the door, she noticed that the entire first circle of Elder Futhark runes and part of the second had faded into a smear of chalk dust, as if something had been rubbing away at them with its sleeve while she slept. “Good riddance,” she muttered, emboldened by the daylight, or maybe the alcohol. She smeared the rest of the runes with her hand, unlocked the seven locks, stepped into the hall, and ambled down the stairs. She didn’t bother to close the door behind her.

“Sleep well?” Mrs. Roach asked, standing stiff as a board behind the counter. She wore the same crepe dress, and her hair was still pulled back tightly. Mallory wondered if she’d moved so much as a finger through the night.

“Eventually,” Mallory said. “You have squids in your drains.”

The old woman snorted. “Squids, yet. They’re not squids, girlie. They’re something else entirely. And they keep the rats away.”

“Well, one of them lost a finger.”

“It will grow back.”

Mallory shook her head, bewildered. Morning wine or no morning wine, this was too much. “You have something with
tentacles
living in your
plumbing
, and you’re totally fine with it?” she demanded.

Mrs. Roach narrowed her eyes at her guest. “There are worse things in the world than tentacles.”

“No—there aren’t…that’s the point! There is nothing worse than a mutant squid living in your walls!”

The old woman smirked. “You must not be from Missouri.”

“I
am
from Missouri,” Mallory said stubbornly, “the part of Missouri where weird-ass shit comes in the cable package and not in through your front door.” She slammed her backpack down on the counter and pulled out her wallet. “How much?”

“Will you be staying another night?”

Mallory stared at her. “Are you kidding me? I’d rather eat your hemlock.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” the old woman said, her papery voice rustling across the desk. “Your bill is thirty dollars.”

“Any breakfast recommendations?” she muttered, pulling a few bills from her wallet and tossing them down, along with the keys.

“Try the Nite-Owl Diner.”

Mallory shook her head. “Hilarious. What else you got?”

“The Nite-Owl is the only breakfast establishment in town.”

“How is that even possible?” Mallory balked.

The old woman shrugged. “There used to be a restaurant called the Blue Bottle, a few years back. It imploded.”

“It
imploded
?”

“Yes…sucked itself into a tight little ball of drywall and metal.”

Mallory squinted. “An entire building did that?”

“The town council warned them not to build a restaurant on a gravitational deviation. Too bad, too…the Blue Bottle served eggs—
proper
eggs, mind you, not the abominations that we do not speak of.”

Gravitational deviation…
Mallory shook her head. “And there’s nothing else?”

“There’s a Chick-fil-A in town, out on Route 83. It doesn’t open until 10:00.”

Mallory started. “You have a Chick-fil-A?”

It was the old woman’s turn to squint. “Yes. Out on Route 83. But it doesn’t open until 10:00.”

“Right.” She sighed and stuffed her wallet back into the bag. “Well, thanks for the hospitality.” She threw the backpack over her shoulder and headed for the door. “Oh,” she added dryly, “the guest in 210 has violent tendencies. You might want to have housekeeping check for incidentals.”

The old woman cocked her head at an odd angle. “There are no other guests,” she said, following Mallory to the door and latching it shut behind her. Mallory could just hear Mrs. Roach’s final words through the glass: “No one else has been here for years.”

No one but the tentacle monsters,
Mallory thought.

She groaned as she rounded the corner of Aberration Lane and saw the sign for the Nite-Owl Diner again. She considered skipping breakfast altogether, but the early morning wine wasn’t exactly sitting well in her stomach, and she had almost two hours to kill before she could get her car to the mechanic. The waffle from the night before couldn’t tide her over forever.
You survived the night,
she thought, continuing toward the diner.
You can survive a few more hours.

A metallic screech pierced the air. Mallory screamed and leapt at the sound. Above her, fixed to a tall wooden pole, was an old loudspeaker. It was shaped like a bullhorn and had once been mint green, but now it was mostly brown with rust. Mallory clutched her heart, which thumped heavily in her chest as the speaker squeaked and crackled to life.

“Attention, Anomaly Flats
.” A sharp, female voice crackled through the speaker. “
Today’s Air Quality Index color is periwinkle. Be advised that breathing may cause irregular life conditions. All citizens breathe at their own risk. The Walmart is having a sale on canned tuna this week, three cans for $2.49. The Walmart would like to remind you that the canned tuna is in Aisle 3, not in aisle 8, and it is perfectly safe there. Attention, Anomaly Flats: Do not go into aisle 8 in the Walmart. Do not go into the Walmart. Do not ever go into the Walmart.”

The voice cut out, and after a few last squeaks and pops, the speaker went dead. Mallory stared at it, her mouth hanging open. Finally she sighed, shook her head, and headed down the block. “I’ve
got
to get out of here,” she mumbled.

On the way to the Nite-Owl, she passed her poor, broken-down Impala on the side of the street.

It was even more broken now than it had been when she’d left it.

“Oh, no no no no! What the
fuck
?!” Her hands flew to the front passenger door, which now bore a deep, crumpled gash that started below the mirror and continued almost all the way to the handle of the back door. The silver paint had been scraped and ground away. “What the
fuuuck?
” Mallory cried again for emphasis as she ran her hands along the gash. “Were you attacked by a bear?!” Her face burned red with anger. She didn’t know which inbred, meth-head, hillbilly kid in this upside-down town had done this to her car, but she sure as shit was going to find out.

She burst into the diner so hard, the door slammed against the wall and rattled the windows.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” Trudy beamed from behind the register. “Welcome back, honey. What’ll it be today?”

“Did you see who did it?” Mallory seethed through clenched teeth.

Trudy frowned. “See who did what?” She set a cup and saucer on the counter and trotted off to fetch the coffee.

“Some asshole kid smashed up the side of my car!”

Trudy chuckled a bit. “Oh, I doubt that very much.”

“See for yourself.” Mallory pointed a vicious finger out the window toward her car.

Trudy returned to the counter with a pot of coffee, craning her neck to get a good view. She nodded slowly. “That’s a dinger, all right. Caffeinated okay? We don’t brew the unleaded ‘til about 10 or 11 most days.”

Mallory was in no mood for coffee talk. “A dinger? A fucking
dinger
? It’s practically a
trench
! I’m going to find the kid who did it and run him over like a dog,” she growled. “Once the fucking car is fixed.”

Trudy paused, coffee pot in hand, as if she wasn’t quite sure Mallory needed an extra jolt of caffeine today. “You run over dogs?”

Mallory collapsed onto the stool and buried her face in her hands. “It’s a figure of speech,” she said.

Trudy planted her free hand on her hip. “I’ve never heard it.” She poured the coffee. “You take it slow with this, hear?”

Mallory rubbed her hands down her face and slapped some life into her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “It’s…been a long 24 hours.”

“Seems like it,” Trudy agreed. “I don’t know how your car got scratched, but I can promise you it weren’t no kids.”

“Oh yeah? And how do you know that?”

“’Cause there
ain’t
no kids in Anomaly Flats. We haven’t had any births in almost thirty years.”

Mallory started. “How is that possible? Don’t people—you know…” She made a strange looping gesture with her hand. It wasn’t biologically accurate, but the point was clear enough.

“Course we do. But everyone in Anomaly Flats is sterile.”

Mallory choked on her coffee, and a fine brown splatter of thick globs shot onto the counter. She wiped her mouth with her arm. “
Everyone
?”

Trudy smiled as she grabbed a towel and mopped up the coffee. “Oh, don’t worry, hon, it’s all voluntary.” She thought for a minute, then asked, “Do you
not
want to be sterilized?”

“No!”

“Hmm...” She picked up Mallory’s coffee cup and dumped its contents into the sink. “Better wait for the decaf, then.” She picked up a menu and slid it beneath Mallory’s downcast eyes. “Now, what’ll it be for breakfast, sweetie?”

Mallory glanced up at the waitress. “Are you serious?”

“Well, sure. Ain’t you gonna eat?”

“Sure, Trudy. I’ll have the country fried steak and eggs over easy, with a side of hash browns and a bowl of fruit.”

Trudy frowned. “We don’t serve eggs. Not since—”

“I know, I know. Not since ’93.” Mallory laid her palms flat on the counter and resisted the urge to ball them into fists and smash them straight through something. “Guess I’ll just have the waffles, then.”

“Good choice,” Trudy winked. She whirled away and handed the order through the kitchen window, leaving Mallory alone at the counter to die a little more inside with each passing second.

X

“I have to get out of this town,” Mallory said to Rufus, the mechanic. “Do you think you can fix it?”

Rufus was a tall man, lean and wiry, and his age was impossible to determine. He was completely bald; he had no hair on his head, or on his arms, or anywhere else Mallory could see. He had smooth ridges where his eyebrows should have been, and it creeped Mallory right the hell out. He pulled the lever on the antique tow truck and lowered the Impala down to the asphalt. The mechanism whined. “I can fix it,” he replied. His voice was deep and hollow, a voice that would have been right at home in a cartoon about bored ghosts.

“You haven’t even looked at it yet…are you sure?”

Rufus nodded. “I’m sure.”

Mallory breathed a sigh of hopeful relief.

A little line of drool spilled over Rufus’ jaw and dribbled down onto the parking lot below. If it bothered him, he didn’t show it. “Your alternator’s out.”

Mallory looked disgustedly at the stream of spittle as it continued flowing from Rufus’ mouth. “Umm…oh. Good. Wait—
is
that good?”

Rufus shook his head. “No. It’s bad.” The tow truck’s high-pitched whirring stopped, and the Impala settled on the parking lot as he went to work unhitching the car.

“But how do you know it’s the alternator if you haven’t looked?” Mallory prodded.

“It’s always the alternator.”

“Always?”

“Yup.” Rufus drooled on the bumper, but was polite enough to wipe away the little puddle of spit with the hem of his shirt.

Mallory waited for more information, but none seemed poised to sally forth. “And…why is that?”

Rufus opened the car’s door to pop the hood. “Magnetic fields.” Mallory cringed at the thought of his drool pooling on the floorboard. He circled back and opened the hood, then went into the tow truck and came out with a little yellow box with a circular dial. Two cords snaked out of the bottom, one black and one red.

“Magnetic fields,” Mallory repeated. It became abundantly clear that the mechanic wasn’t going to give up any information without a fight. “You
have
them? Or you
need
them?”

Rufus tucked himself into the engine and started clipping the little red and black cords to a big block next to the battery. “We have them. Strong. Way too strong for computers.” He fiddled with the yellow box for a few seconds before unclipping the cords and closing the hood of the car. “Yep…it’s the alternator,” he confirmed.

Mallory stuck her hands in her pockets to avoid having them splashed as he swung his head around. “Okay. So how long will it take?”

Rufus rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. His hand came away wet. “Shouldn’t be more than two or three days.”

Mallory started. “Two or three
days?
No, no, no, no, no…I have to get out of here
now—
like,
today
!” She noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and considered flirting her way to faster service. But historically speaking, her attempts to come across as coquettish and sexy usually ended up with her tripping and falling, and that was unlikely to help. So instead, she clasped her hands beneath her chin and said, as sweetly as she could, “Please can you fix it faster than that?”

Rufus shook his head. “Takes a while to build one. Two, three days.”

“
Build
one?” Mallory was no mechanic, but she was a reasonably good Capitalist. “Couldn’t you just buy one?”

Rufus slurped at the drool spilling out through his bottom teeth. “No one delivers out here. Got to make one.”

“Come on,” Mallory said. “No one?”

“No one.”

“Surely
someone
does. You get mail, right? And UPS? And FedEx?”

Rufus tilted his head to let a small lake of spittle run out the side of his mouth. “You-pee-what?”

“UPS! I love logistics! What can brown do for you! Ultimate Package Service! UPS!”

Rufus shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“But you get mail at least,” she insisted.

Rufus shrugged. “Nope.”

“What do you mean, ‘Nope’? You don’t get
mail?
”

“Not since the 90s.” He scratched his ear. “We
do
get messages by government-sponsored drone.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You have government drones?”

Rufus nodded. “For messages.”

“How do
they
not get their alternators scrambled?”

“Don’t know,” Rufus shrugged. “Part of what makes the government so terrifying.”

Mallory’s brain felt like it was developing a stutter. “This is ludicrous,” she said. “No outside mail or deliveries since the 90s? How do you
get
things?”

“We don’t get things,” he said, stowing the little yellow box back inside the tow truck. “We make them.”

Mallory shook her head and started pacing the parking lot. “Insane,” she grumbled. “Buy an alternator online—Amazon Prime or Google Express! Have
them
send it by drone!”

Rufus whipped a greasy handkerchief from behind the seat of the truck and used it to wipe off his hands. It caked his hands with more dirt than it removed. “What’s that?” he asked.