*Free Fiction* The Refracted Man

A mysterious and evocative scene from "The Refracted Man," a short story by Mark French, showcasing eerie tentacles emerging from the misty darkness of a forest path.

The Refracted Man

Somewhere in Europe, 1944 

The blur of the passing landscape mirrored his thoughts as Henry Womack scanned the horizon for monstrosities. He stared until his forehead pounded. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, shut his eyes against the world, and rubbed his neck with the back of his hand, wincing as he ran over the large bandage covering a shaving cut. He carefully took a leather bound journal from his luggage. For no other reason but to keep his hands busy he started to write. 

I know I shouldn’t be writing this. But it’s the only way I can ignore my headache. Daryl says it’ll go away in time. That it’s a result of being exposed to the doorways. I suppose I should still refer to her as Dr. Brennan, she said we shouldn’t get too familiar. We both agreed to a relationship of convenience, though I would be remiss if I didn't mention feeling hope for a future with her. Perhaps when the war is over. . . 

I’m struggling with what I’ve been sent to do. How does one  reconcile being the harbinger of death for an entire world, when you have only explored less than 2% of that world? Could we be making a mistake? They say there are horrors beyond imagination here. If they were to get through the doorway, then it could significantly turn the tide of war, I thank God we found the bunker and decided to close the doors, who knows what the Nazi’s were planning to do with them. 

But ending a whole world simply to destroy something that could be. I don’t know. I  appreciate now how those poor lads in Bomber Command felt. 

If you find this and are seeking refuge. Go beneath the pier at Southend-on-the-sea. There is a doorway. Find Dr. Daryl Brennan. She is a kind woman. 

The train slowed. Henry slid the journal between the seats and stood. 

He was almost to the massive stone station when a strong gust of wind sent his hat pinwheeling down the crowded  platform. Henry watched it bounce through a sea of legs. 

“Shit,” he whispered sharply as he switched his cumbersome suitcase to his left hand. His pulse raced. He searched the crowd to see if anyone noticed. They had strange eyes and a waxen paleness only made his pulse quicken. 

Don’t look at them for too long. He thought. Forget the hat. Focus on the mission He lingered, chewing on his bottom lip, before abandoning the hat and heading inside. 

The booming chatter sliced through his head like a knife. Henry squinted, whisked through the throng as if moving through a brick and mortar beast’s intestine. A massive iron clock dominated one wall. Henry glanced at it, checking his wrist watch in contrast. He searched as a drowning man would for a life preserver, but the crowd  continued to bump and jostle. Henry clutched his suitcase in both hands., blinking the sting of sweat from his eyes. He was terrified the device would explode prematurely. 

Someone shouted. The crowd swallowed the noise before it could register. It came again, closer this time. More eyes lifted from newspapers to find the source of the disturbance. At the third bellow Henry registered what was being said: 

“Hat. Sir, your hat,” 

Henry spun. His white shirt stuck to him in a sopping wet clump; His red necktie swayed like a pendulum. His heart slammed against his ribcage. The air was stale with the reek of stress. It caught in his throat and he began to cough. 

A man raced forward. His eyes found Henry’s and he closed the distance, clutching a brown Fedora. 

Don’t run. His thoughts warned. If you run you’re dead. 

  Back in the bunker, Daryl had said something similar. They were stuffed in her cramped office. Daryl’s bangs clung to her forehead. She was searching her file-strewn desk for a bobby pin. Henry spied a few and handed them to her, smiling over his tea. Her sigh of gratitude speeding his heart.   

“They’ll kill you. You’ll become a statistic on the evening news, if they even broadcast it there.” 

Now, under the threat of becoming one of those statistics, Henry balked. 

The man’s gaze faltered, then returned to Henry with an almost avian curiosity. He held Henry’s hat clutched in his slender fingers like a mouse in an owl’s talon. Henry’s eyes were fixed not on the hat, but the stranger’s bone white complexion. It was a trait shared by most people moving through the station, as if they hadn’t seen the sun in months. The only ones with any bit of colour were the men and women in the odd coloured uniforms. 

Managing a crooked smile, Henry plucked the hat from the man’s possession. He nodded sharply. 

“I appreciate it, sir. Forgive me, this heat it-” Henry swept a hand in front of him as if highlighting the near panic pace of the crowd was explanation enough. He shifted the suitcase to his free hand.  

The man’s green eyes lingered on him for a moment longer before he nodded himself. “Think nothing of it, glad I could help. Good day.” 

“Good day.” Henry repeated as he brushed past the man. While the man spoke, Henry finally saw the sign directing him to the lockers. He shifted the suitcase once more and quickened his step. Anxious to be relieved of his burden.  

The locker room was an oasis of silence. Henry stepped gingerly to the back of the room. He picked a locker and opened the door. He slipped the device from his suitcase. It was an ugly thing, a rainbow of wires tied into cold metal. Daryl told him it had come from one of the other doors. Garrett had found it during one of the Vanguard operations, that it made him Major, a waste of stripes if you asked Henry. The device was decades ahead of the destructive force of atomics only barely discovered in Henry’s reality. He was sure it would do the job, but was it a job he wanted to follow through with? How many of the people rushing through the station deserved to die? Any of them? Henry saw one man’s kindness already. 

Yet he had a mission. If some should die so more could live would that balance the scales when his end came? Henry couldn’t say, but he couldn’t return without following through. At best he would be arrested. At worst he’d be shot on sight. Henry keyed in enough time to take the train back to Southend-on-the-sea. His thumb hovered over the green button. Sweat stung his eyes. 

He jumped as a hand fell on his shoulder like an executioner’s blade. . 

Henry snapped his neck around to follow a crimson red cuff up a navy blue sleeve, finally staring into the face of a chubby man wearing wire framed glasses. His pointed nose had a jagged scar on the bridge that suggested it had been broken at least once in the past. 

“Is this the one you were referencing us to?” The chubby man asked. The man who retrieved Henry’s hat stood at the doorway, blocked by another guard. His eyes locked on the mezzanine while he chewed his index finger nail to the quick. He stretched his porcelain white neck to see over the guard’s shoulder. When his eyes met Henry's they snapped back to the floor, he began chewing on another nail. He nodded. 

“The memories of the ancient ones are of length. Your service will ensure your blood is unspilled this offering.” The man detaining Henry spoke in a strange high pitch.  

The other  man’s chest deflated like a punctured balloon. He smiled sadly. “What about my family?” He asked. But the other solder was already ushering him back toward the mass of people. 

“I’m sorry this is happening,” the soldier muttered. 

“Come along.” The man balled Henry’s jacket in one pudgy fist and hauled him to his feet.  Henry protested. The man wore a revolver on his belt. He popped the snap, eyeing Henry wearily. It was all the response he gave. 

They led Henry through the station. He stuck to his cover story. Imploring anyone for help. All eyes looked away. Somewhere a baby erupted into shrill cries that were cut short.  

He was taken to the basement. They passed a  tapestry that sharpened the edges of Henry’s headache to look at. A circle of people gathered around an animal awash in blood.  It wasn’t a gryphon, but it wasn’t a squid. Was it somehow both? He tried to look again but the soldier behind him ushered Henry forward.  

Inside, a metal table dominated the dimly lit room. The essence of spilled blood hung in the air, just beneath the reek of bleach.  A steel grate set into the floor seemed to leer at him with dozens of black eyes. There were leather restraints on the wall. 

“I am hopeful we need not those,” the bespectacled man said, following Henry’s gaze. 

He sat across from Henry. A signet ring on his pinky finger tapped lightly on the metal table top. “My designation is Special Constable Huak, the man at the door is Serviceman Leek.” Huak spoke with an almost reigned air, as if he’d been through this speech ad nauseam.  

Henry regarded Leek, twisting in his chair. Leek nodded to him, his mouth a tight line, his eyes an odd violet.  

“And who is your commanding officer S.C Huak?” Henry went on the offensive. “I’d rather like to chat with him about the way you treat travellers here. I don’t know what that young man upstairs told you, but I paid for that locker.” Henry leaned forward. Leek took a step forward, his eyes wide. “This is illegal detainment you know, what right have you got to place me in here? I’m bound to miss my train because of you lot.”    

Huak regarded him with pale, powder blue eyes. His jowly cheeks were covered with a fine white scruff and his eyes were rimmed with the tell tale bags of lost sleep. He continued speaking to Henry in that same sing-song timber. His fingers counting off each point as he made it. 

“This world is not where you are of. You’ve arrived only now to see it die. Your ruse as a traveller is a fabrication and an insult.” 

Henry snorted. He looked around the room as if to find someone to share the joke with. “Right. I’m from Mars. Slow patrol day? What is this, initiation for the new guy?” Henry cocked his head in Leek’s direction. “If you can’t tell me what I'm being charged with, you can’t hold me here. I know my rights.” Henry crossed one leg over the other and smirked at Huak. 

“You lost any such benefits when you invaded my world.” 

“What are you talking about?” Henry barked at the man across from him. Huak looked at him over his glasses and counted off three more facts.  

“We are knowing what you are. We are knowing what you mean to accomplish, what we know not is why you are doing it.” 

Silence stretched between them. Above the interrogation a train rumbled to a stop. Henry heard a soft shuffling beyond the grate at his feet. Was that a growl? He knew he couldn’t tell them everything about Operation Flashbomb, but he needed to keep this Special Constable talking. If he could twist Huak’s words against him, then he could get free and finish the mission. 

How many innocent people will die? His thoughts asked again. Henry had no answer for it. 

”If you must know,” Henry started, his cover story well rehearsed. “I am on my way to Oxford to attend a conference on the possibility of universes parallel to this one.” 

“I am understanding, and have you seen such things?” Huak’s eyebrows shot upward. He leaned back, arms crossed, features contorted into a mask of mocking. 

“There are parallels to this universe. And within them armies are at the ready. They will use violence, especially if provoked.” Henry relaxed his jaw. He focused on his breath. Threatening his captors was a mistake, but Huak’s arrogance was infuriating. Henry’s head was swimming from his backward way of speaking, and the reek of aftershave that seeped from him  and permeated the room. 

Huak spread his hands wide as his eyes roamed the small room. “But provocation is nil here. Your alternate universe is a warmonger. It is apparent.” He said. The brass buttons on his double breasted tunic gleaming in the cold electric light. The same light illuminated a large metal door behind Huak. A  porthole dominated the upper half  and a massie crank the lower. It looked like it would be more suited to a bank vault than an interrogation room. The air around it seemed to bend and ripple. Henry’s stomach knotted. He unclenched his jaw again.

“The beasts of this– of our world, should they make it through these doorways, are a direct threat to the parallel reality. And as such this parallel reality has proactively decided to close the door from this side. You know as much which is why you are patrolling the train station, but perhaps your time would be better invested in stopping one of their operatives rather than an innocent traveller.”   

Henry spoke slowly. Huak matched his tone and pace with his reply, leaning forward, the air fouled by the earthen and spice-like reek of him. His eyes blazed like a hellish inferno.  

“You know nothing of my world. I’ve borne witness to mass casualty events that rival your worlds Nazi camps, Mr. Womack. This ruse now becomes tedium. Your guttural, grunting language is an unwelcome contortion to my tongue,” He said. “And so perhaps the restraints we will need. Serviceman Leek was a doctor before the draft. He can close any wounds made. You referenced them as beasts, and I would expect that you could think them only as such, but you miss their holy prowess, and your blood will slate them in the name of my salvation for days.” 

“Surgeon.” Leek interrupted.  

“Eh?” Huak looked up. His eyes searched Leek’s for a moment, his face flushed as crimson as his tunic cuff. 

“Surgeon,” Leek repeated. His eyes were locked on Henry’s. “The Ancient Ones demand blood. We used blood of the infirmed at first, I could not live with it. So the devotion of my life practice being the cure-all of disease. We have defied death, but have spawned a secretive police force like Huak. A draft is enacted to choose those to be given. And so we run.” Leek pointed above them where Henry heard another train rumble away.  

“They will not escape. Even if they reached the opposite poles of the planet.” 

Huak slammed his hand on the table, standing ramrod straight. Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke in a language that twisted Henry’s temples to hear, his headache amplifying with each foreign syllable. 

Something heavy pounded against the metal door. Condensation exploded across the porthole glass in a great gust of breath. A wailing cry called out; Henry’s mind bent further. 

Another train left the station. Brick dust from above pooled on the table. 

“He berates me for insubordination.” Leek translated. “He threatens lethality. My end is assured as it is. If I am to die then I am with confidence that my last act is one of mercy.” 

Huak continued his tirade. Gesturing sharply at Henry and the grate at his feet. Sweat rolled down his face in rivulets that darkened the fabric at his throat. The reek from his body was now almost an entity itself in the room.  Leek continued to translate. 

“He decides the clean death of a bullet is not an accommodation afforded to us. He wishes instead to give the Ancient One our bones and flesh in addition to our blood.” 

Huak kicked his chair aside and stormed over to the metal door. He unsealed the door. Henry’s ears popped. The darkness within was an impenetrable curtain. 

An abomination emerged. The creature writhed and shifted as if its body were spilled ink sliding to fill any space it encountered. Henry could only process small aspects of the creature, as if his mind refused the concept of the entire being as a whole. Two coal black eyes on either side of its bulbous head swam with intelligence as they shifted from one corner to the other seeking its next meal. Its head shook in an oddly canine way, as  if it were tracking a scent. It shook like this several more times before moving into the room fully, throwing ropes of translucent saliva from its lower mandible as it did.

Henry froze. Huak looked on with an almost ecstatic euphoria. The creature raised a massive arm, one eye fixed on Henry, before cocking its head once more and inhaling. The Ancient One turned and swung its arm in a wide arc, lopping Huak’s head from his shoulders. It bellowed. Screaming victoriously as blood painted the room. The lower mandibles separated as its long arms grasped Huak by the shoulders. Its jaw opened wide enough to accommodate his bulk and the creature lunged forward into the blood rocketing from his severed artery. The thing paused only to bellow again, its eyes twitched independently, tracking the remaining men in the room. Henry felt like he had a saw blade cutting through his head. He finally broke eye contact and bolted from the chair. He ran squarely into Leek who was struggling to open the blood soaked doorknob. Henry grabbed him and spun Leek around, placing him between the Ancient One and himself.  When he caught sight of Leek’s wide eyed panic, Henry hesitated. He thought of what Daryl told him, that it was not only for the good of Britain, but the world at war if he did this. They didn’t need any other forces of evil attacking. But this wasn’t a force of evil, Leek was a man, just as Henry was. Moreover he was a surgeon who had conquered death and disease. The contributions Leek could make in Henry’s world were immeasurable. 

His eyes flicked to the creature as a rough snapping sound filled the room. The iron stench of blood intensified. Henry couldn’t tell what part of Huak the thing had just snapped off with its crushing jaws, but he didn’t want to stay and find out. He opened the door and dragged Leek through.  

The darkness beneath the station was frigid. Leek led Henry through a tunnel toward stairs that ascended into the merciful light of late afternoon. Behind them the Ancient One bellowed once more. Henry shut his eyes against the pain and took the stairs two at a time, running headlong for the door. 

Instead of running through it, Leek veered to his left. Henry halted at the exit. He had enough time to register that they were just beyond the locker room, and that Leek had dashed inside, before the surgeon emerged once more, cradling the bomb in his arms. Henry met Leeks eyes, they were pained. 

“A mercy.” Leek said. His finger jabbed the green button. 

Leek used his clearance to board a train. Neither one of them spoke of replacing the bomb. Henry listened mostly, clarifying when he needed to. 

Leek’s  world was one of conscription and slavery. Every three months a small sacrifice was needed. Without it the world would plunge into darkness as the Ancient Ones consumed all. In the beginning there was a lottery, but those chosen would flee. Most of civilisation moved in darkness. Only when the sacrifice was near did they risk mobbing major points of transit.  

It took most of the train ride for Henry to convince Leek to leave. He finally agreed, asking only one question. 

“Are they  existing in your world?” 

Henry shook his head, and both of them stepped off the train. 

Under the boardwalk they stood facing a rock wall.. A smell like burnt hair and ozone hung in the air. Leek tensed. Colours appeared to fade and sharpen in an odd pulsating movement. Bits of rubbish in the sand skittered as if caught in a wind. Reality seemed to twist and reshape as they approached the aquamarine iridescence humming from a swirling mass. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” Henry said. “It doesn’t feel like anything at all.” Leek clutched Henry’s hand, took a deep breath, and nodded. They stepped through the doorway. 

The familiar smell of black coffee and stale cigarette smoke drifted into Henry’s nostrils. He heard shouts of protest. Chair legs scraped across concrete. Weapons were cocked and he heard that blowhard Garret barking orders. Henry held his hands up to prove he was no threat.  His vision cleared and in the dull green light thrown by the radar screen he saw a wall of soldiers aiming at him. 

The crowd parted for a reed thin woman in a lab coat and army issue slacks. She held a small side arm but was graciously pointing it at the floor. Their eyes met. Henry smiled. He involuntarily stepped forward, relief blooming in his chest at the sight of Daryl. His misstep caused more shouts from Major Garrett and a few of the soldiers stepped forward. Their strained expression bouncing from their brother-in-arms to their commanding officer. 

Dr. Daryl Brennan shouted to be heard over the roar of bravado and hum of electronics. She commanded the men to hold fire, her authority over riding all, just as the tide erased footprints in wet sand. 

She stood before Henry, an unlit cigarette behind her ear. Her blue eyes were a pendulum between Henry and Leek. Henry chanced a glance at his companion and saw Leek had adopted the same surrendering stance he had, his eyes locked on Henry. In front of him Daryl whispered a demand softly.  

“What did you do?” she asked, unable to take her eyes from Leek now. Henry knew she was taking in the odd uniform, the eyes that seemed too close together, the sharp avian-like features. The room was silent. All eyes were trained on the stranger. 

Henry cleared his throat, looking at Daryl. He spoke loud enough for the room to hear. 

“I saw– horrors I’ll never be able to forget.” His mind replayed Huak’s beheading and Henry shivered as a patch of goosebumps rolled through him. “I saw a world apart. Men, women and children fleeing for their lives against an inevitable death, but this man.” Henry stepped aside and gestured at Leek “was a prisoner of sorts. He’s not a threat. He’s an educated man. A surgeon. He’s–well to be blunt his may be the hands that cure cancer, polio, any number of things. His is an untapped knowledge that we can use for the greater good.” 

Brennan looked at Leek, squinting. “Untapped knowledge.” she whispered. Her eyes searched the maps scattered about the walls; she watched the other doorways for movement. She looked back at Henry as a master would look upon a pupil who had completed a brilliant sonata after months of tutoring. 

Daryl closed her eyes for a few moments. When she opened them again any sign of adoration was replaced with a coldness that wrenched Henry’s heart, though he couldn’t say why. 

“Well done Captain Womack. I’ll see to it you are decorated highly for this. You’ll be promoted, obviously.” She stated. 

 Confusion knit Henry’s brows together. “That’s generous ma’am, truly, but this goes beyond medals and merit. We’re talking about saving hundreds of lives here. Maybe thousands.” 

“Maybe millions.” Leek added, his features crushed in concentration as he tried to follow the conversation.  

Brennan turned and hunched behind a hulking mental console that was the epicentre of the room. She tapped a few keys, and checked the monitors over another man’s shoulder. She muttered something Henry strained to hear. The man’s attention snapped to her. He considered what she said and nodded, his beret bobbing up and down. 

She looked up as if startled from thought,  rose to her full height, and took the cigarette from behind her ear. Garrett, ever the kiss ass, produced a battered lighter but she waved him off as if warding a fly away from a picnic. She produced a matchbox and struck one, holding it to the end of her cigarette. The burnt husk tumbled to the floor as she took a drag.  Brennan then snatched the cigarette from her mouth between her index and middle finger, turning to motion to the two identical doorways behind her. Areas of Russia and Germany were mapped out beside them. A kaleidoscope of colours dotted them in the form of push pinned points of interest. 

She looked back at Henry.

“We’ve got two more doors down the hall, and one that we haven’t even sent a vanguard into. You're talking about curing disease, yet we haven't even won the war, and how would you propose I explain to the masses how–” She stabbed her smouldering cigarette toward Leek. “That came to be. Do you have any idea the sheer and utter terror that would rip through the general public?” 

“Dr. Brennan see reason–” Henry started. He took a step forward. Soldiers who he’d called friends raised their guns toward him again. Some of them passed confused glances back and forth. What was going on here?  

“I need bodies, Captain. We’ve got enough doctors.” Brennan said. She cut off Henry’s protest before he could get it out. “I’ll hear no more Womack, that’s the end of it unless you’d like to continue the conversation as a Lieutenant.” Her cigarette smouldered as smoke pooled at the ceiling.  “Your friend here may not make a good physician, but he’ll make a damn fine vanguard. His knowledge of the other side will aid the both of you immeasurably during your next foray.” 

“Our next?” Henry looked to Leek for clarity, but saw only mounting horror painted across the face of his companion. Realisation hit as Henry took in what Dr. Brennan was proposing. 

“Daryl. You aren’t hearing me.” He spoke slowly, measuring his words. “We aren’t going back. Demote me if you must, discharge me from the whole unit for all I care,  but I’m leaving here with Serviceman Leek. Making up a cover story will be the easiest part of this whole endeavour.”  

“The only place you’ll go from here is a court martial for insubordination, lieutenant.” Brennan’s words were a chilling reflection of those used by Huak. He turned. The doorway behind them thrummed with macabre power. They couldn't go back. He stared forward, meeting the eyes of his fellow soldiers. None of them held a solution.  

“Run,” Leek muttered. He wore the same pained expression he had in the locker room. 

Henry looked at Daryl. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. He knew what he had to do, and it broke his heart. Henry bolted to his left, dekeing around Garrett who let out a shocked grunt. Beyond him Henry saw the stairs ascending to the metal doors leading outside. 

Henry could almost feel the fresh air on his face. He was going to make it.     

The gunshot was deafening. 

A searing bolt of pain ripped through his chest. He turned, eyes wide, to look at Brennan. The smoke from her pistol joined that from her cigarette. 

Her next shot dropped him in place, lifeless. 

Leek recoiled, screaming in frustration. As if the gunshot was the catalyst that snapped the men to action, Leek was seized and searched. He fought like the devil. He wrenched his hands free from grasping fingers and landed a few good punches before he felt the bite of a tranquilliser in his neck, just beneath his jaw. As he blacked out he heard the vicious doctor shout above the crowd. 

“Get him to processing and fit him for the tweed. If Dean and Watson pull the same shit Womack did drop them and whatever they bring back on sight. I’ll be in my office sorting through the mess of  applicant files.” 

Leek was dragged through the dim light of the bunker to a small room with a chair surrounded by sterile equipment. The stench of antiseptic followed him into darkness.  

* * *

Outside his window was a whiteout. Arnold Leek strained, his hand shading the glare as he tried to catch a glimpse of anything through the blizzard. He marvelled again at how familiar this reality seemed to his own. He rubbed the back of his hand idly against his neck wincing as his hand ran across the bandaged shaving cut on his neck. After more fruitless searching he straightened in his seat and tried to keep his mind from wandering. He loosened his tie, tightened it again. He scratched his tweed-clad leg Finally to quiet his mind he gingerly extracted a leather bound journal from his luggage and began writing. 

Dr. Brennan would be furious if she found this, but  I’m hoping the writing will ease the headache. The doctor says they should stop, or at least become less frequent, the more missions I complete.

I am having second thoughts.  It’s as if the boldness I felt in the bunker has melted away now that I’m through the doorway. Alone, I feel the gravity of my situation a little more, I know setting off the device is for the greater good, but what of any innocent people that may be caught in the crosshairs? I wish I could be sure. I am going to destroy hundred, maybe thousands– 

“Maybe millions.” Leek muttered. He closed the journal and slipped it between the seats. 

The train began to slow. He stood up and carefully grabbed his suitcase. He lowered his eyes, afraid to stare. Within minutes of arriving he was off the train and blending into the mass of bodies hustling toward the station.

#freefiction #horrorfiction #howtowrite #Lovecraftinspired