Comet

It was nearly ten when the comet first appeared across the western horizon. The channels broke the news like wildfire. For once, the Desanges did not have to rely on the network coverage as they could easily view the spectacle from the balcony terrace. It had a bluish hue and was surrounded by an orange smoldering ring that culminated in a tail.

The sun was low in the east, shining bleakly through the foray of heavy clouds, even though the west side was clear. Hand in hand, Alan and Zara Desange stared, their hearts alight with excitement and an indeterminable sense of peace. Not the kind where the world is a better place but the kind that alcohol brings, the kind that pushes all your worries into a void. A soft warmth emanating from their hearts and culminating at their interlocked hands.

Zara’s phone had been ringing for nearly five minutes and finally Alan nudged her to answer it although he would have liked to spend a few more minutes with her. He almost knew who the call was from. His wife worked for the regional branch of NASA in San Francisco. The comet was their business and they were the ones who had to provide the answer to the awed or the hysterical public. Most people thought he was joking when he mentioned his wife was working in a psychologist capacity for NASA.

His hypothesis turned out to be true when she returned. Her face was slightly grim. With anticipation and perhaps fear, thought Alan.

‘It was the office. They’re calling everyone in.’, she said as she approached.

‘I assume they weren’t expecting it’, he said, not taking his eyes of the colored orb.

‘Nope’, she replied definitively. They stood for a moment more before she said apologetically. ‘I’m sorry honey. I have to go’

‘Yeah, Yeah, it’s not a problem. Go on. Do your job and make me proud’. He gave a soft smile.

Zara was in her Prius ten minutes later and speeding along the interstate towards her destination. The comet appeared to be cutting an exactly horizontal path through the horizon, like a halo, neither dipping nor rising. Somehow the clouds always cleared away before it approached. The region around it was completely devoid of white puffs while the rest was literally blanketed in white.

The call had been from Gary Paulson, the Chief Medical officer of the regional section. He was also the head of logistics. His main job was Pilot evaluation; determining their mental health status and their fitness level for a particular mission. He always had the final say in that. A calm person by nature, which is why his call bothered Zara so much. He had sounded on edge, as if on the tip of hysteria. She even thought his voice broke a few times. Something was up.

The traffic looked calmer than usual. A slow repetition of a continuous slog; similar vehicles passing by over and over. Like a programming loop repeating itself at a fixed interval. It was rather bizarre. In one case, she was almost sure she had passed the same vehicle with the same occupants three times.

When she reached her destination, she was met with a huge swarm of people gathered in front of the main entrance to the building. It wasn’t the general public. She recognized familiar faces and realized it was the entire staff of the building gathered around the humungous, iron-wrought gates that were now firmly closed upon them.

‘What the hell’s going on?’

Katie, her redhead friend, who was a floating head amongst the teeming sea of spectators, saw her, extricated herself from the mass and came jogging over to her side.

‘You won’t believe this.’, Her voice was brimming with excitement and her eyes were gleaming. Zara had rarely seen her so animated.

‘Believe what?’

‘We were in the large auditorium, being briefed, you know, on that’, she pointed at the comet in the sky, ‘They had just informed us that the nearest weather satellite, had gone completely haywire, that the comet was interfering with the electronics. And other satellites in the vicinity were malfunctioning too. Then they showed us that they had actually picked up a transmission from it’

‘From what?’ asked Zara.

‘From the comet’

‘Picked up… a transmission. From a comet?’, she asked, seriously doubting Katie’s mental stability.

‘They said they were receiving continuous signals from a certain source that they were able to determine was the comet’s surface; communication like, you know. Alien Transmission, they said.’ ‘But how could they possibly know that it was from – ‘

‘I know right!’, she nearly barked. ‘It was totally ludicrous. But he was going to explain. Gary, I mean. He was showing us the data on the big screen. But then, out of nowhere, Theon Rainfield barges into the hall. You won’t believe his face. I mean, he looked, like, completely deranged.’ Katie Emphasized this by holding her hands aloft at the sides of her head as though mimicking electrocution.

Theon was the head of the whole unit. He was rarely seen around here and only visited on special occasions. A head-strong but painfully meticulous person when encountered, so it was a blessing that he was mostly absent.

‘What did he say?’ ,

‘He screamed at us. Told us to get the hell out. All of us. Then he walked over to Gary and said something to him quietly in his ear. It was almost like he was threatening him while we are all filing out. They were in there for nearly half an hour, while we waited outside, before Gary walked out alone and told us all to go home. I mean, like, What the hell?’

‘Just like that?’

‘Yep. Head on home. By the time he told us this, his face was really ashen. Like someone had punched him in the gut. He was agitated. We could tell’

The crowd was slowly thinning as people were finally getting over the shock and getting in their vehicles to depart for home. They had apparently stayed for a while in the hope that this was all some big misunderstanding.

‘How come everybody got here so soon?’

‘What do you mean?’, asked Katie.

‘I mean, I got the call just forty minutes ago and got here as fast as I could.’

‘How come? I got the call at nearly ten. And everybody was here within the hour so…’

‘Well so did I and its barely – ‘. Zara glanced at her watch and stopped mid sentence. ‘Hang-on. This can’t be right.’

‘What?’

‘What time is it with you? My watch is broken I think’.

‘It’s – uhm – two-thirty-three’

‘WHAT? That’s impossible’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was hardly ten-thirty when I got the call and I left almost immediately’.

Katie smiled roguishly. ‘Go home sweetie. You don’t seem right’

‘Stop it’, Zara threatened her.

Katie snickered manically, hugged her and then jogged off to her car. Zara stood rooted to the spot for a few minutes while the throng thinned out and eventually she was only one of a just a half dozen people left ambling about the vast courtyard and the parking space. The building was magnificent in many aspects yet today it just looked foreboding; tall and menacing. It almost seemed ancient.

Eventually, she couldn’t think of a good enough reason to stay anymore and headed towards her Prius. The sun was beginning to lower down in the west and she still couldn’t fathom how so much time had gone by. She must have read the time wrong at home. That seemed like the only plausible explanation.

She was heading along the highway, when she suddenly became aware of something even more bizarre than the inexplicable time loss she had experienced. She could see a looming structure in the distance that she couldn’t recognize but was sure that it did not belong in this part of the world let alone in this moment in history. She could see faded, stone cold, grey walls, pointy turrets and great towers, stretching up into the abyss. What was a eighteenth century, Celtic castle doing in this landscape. She had never seen it before. It didn’t make sense.

A little less dramatic but no less baffling was another phenomenon which was also apparent to her. There was something wrong with the road she was travelling on. It was not the fresh, smooth as a tongue, concrete she had travelled on earlier or travelled on every other day to work. It was cracked and jagged beyond recognition. She could even see green forcing up out of the cracks; weeds and shrubs crawling out like an alien invasion of a once sophisticated.

And then she noticed that she was completely alone. There were no other vehicles, no passersby. Was she drunk? Had she gotten so inebriated that she couldn’t even distinguish reality from an odd, although uniquely vivid, dream.

The year of our Lord, 1764.

Jonah Williams, the duke of Yorkshire, noted it down in his ledger for it was the happiest day of his life. Although the day was dank and the chill was beginning to creep up on him. But it didn’t matter. Even the peculiar constellation in the sky couldn’t deter him from his happiness. If anything, it only energized him.

The Lord has chosen to mark the day of this union with a sign. We are indeed blessed, he thought.

She was in the carriage in front of his, drawn by four black beauties. He could picture her in that beautiful dress that he had specifically chosen for her. Her face had become radiant with joy the moment he had presented it to her. He did hope that the cold didn’t bother her. The horses’ breath was sending out misty steam into the air. It was growing colder.

The convoy for the marriage procession was very large. He couldn’t even see the tail end. They had moved on from the muddy earth and were now on hard ground, for he could hear the clattering of the hooves. He wouldn’t dare open his door in this bitter frost.

Then he heard a few raucous calls up ahead and with a sudden jolt, the coach suddenly halted.

He waited a few moments before the one of his guards came up to his side and opened his door.

‘What is the matter, Eustace?’

The guard looked rather clueless about what to say. He stared at the duke for a few moments before hesitantly responding.

‘Sire, there seems to be a certain problem with the path up ahead.’

‘What do you mean?’, asked Jonah impatiently.

He could see the guards hand stretched tightly across his spear, his knuckles stark white.

‘Sire, begging your pardon, but you should see this for yourself.

Apparently Jonah had no choice. He stepped out into the mist. It took him a moment to grasp his atmosphere and then he gasped in shock. What he was seeing was beyond terrifying.

‘Where in the world are we?’

What he saw were towering structures, taller than any castle he had ever seen, just erupting out of the bare desolation, like behemoth creatures. Up ahead was the road that led up to a bridge. Except it wasn’t the road he was supposed to be on and this bridge was unlike anything he had ever seen. This road was like a sheet; dark grey bordered by yellow lines with white lines running along its center.

He started to move ahead. Eustace along with a group accompanied him.

As he was passing his wife’s carriage, he signaled to Eustace.

‘Post a half a dozen men here. Do not let her out of your sight. The rest of you, come with me.’

He also took out his pistol from the holster in his belt. As they proceeded to the front of the convoy, more things became apparent. It was a baffling spectacle.

The bridge was like a gateway to heaven itself. There was not a single bridge but a myriad. Like countless snakes intersecting one another, up ahead he saw many crisscrossing ones, shrouded by the mist. Some running deep below the ground and others on top.

Then he heard a strange noise. A whirring. The horses started whinnying and stamping their feet.

‘What devilry is this? ON GUARD MEN !’ He could see lights. Strange beams project from the mist. The noise was growing louder.

The monster suddenly broke free of the fog. A silver metallic formation on small wheels. Jonah and his guards, all nearly jumped out of their skins. They recoiled in horror and crouched down holding their weapons aloft as the beast approached. Some cried out in alarm and other dived to their sides. Jonah held his ground, pointed his pistol at it and fired off. To their relief, it evaded them. It’s wheels turned just before collision. There was terrible screech and before they knew it, it had whizzed past them at great speed.

They watched astounded, as it blended into the thick mist. Before he knew it, Jonah was running in the same direction, to his wife’s carriage, for she was the one thing that mattered.

Zara was in a trance. As soon as she had passed the fantastic parade or whatever the hell it was, she screeched her car to a halt and bolted out onto the cold pavement and fell onto her knees, gasping. She could hardly see ten yards in any direction.

Was there a carnival in town? Some civil war re-enactment? Nineteenth century pageant walk? What the hell was going on?

Her hands were going numb because of the extreme cold and her heart was hammering inside her ribcage. She let the cold wash over her. It somehow made her calm enough to let a small sane thought form amidst the chaos.

Getting back inside the car, she revved up the engine and raced ahead. She had to get home.

Very soon she was able to determine her location. She could finally breath. It was only a ten minutes ride left. She was well above the speed limit, but she didn’t care. And besides there was nobody around to hit. Not unless some fancy Englishman ghost appeared out of nowhere. In that case, she wasn’t planning on being much considerate anyway.

The sight of her home was like the most welcome thing she could ever lay eyes upon in her current predicament. She pulled into her driveway and ran inside without locking up.

The front door was open.

‘Alan’, she called softly. Her voice didn’t allow her to scream. Her throat was nearly jammed.

She called once again, without reply. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining room although the dirty plates were still on the table, stained with egg whites. She did remember cleaning them and putting them away, though she didn’t care much for that now. She started to head upstairs and paused near the top.

She could hear voices. Multiple voices. One was definitely Alan’s. The second, a woman’s, she couldn’t determine; although it was strangely familiar. She proceeded on tiptoe and peaked into the bedroom. There was no one although the sheets were ruffled. On the other side of the room, the door to the balcony was open. She headed towards it stealthily and saw two people on the balcony staring up into the cloudy sky, at the comet, which was right where it had been this morning. Their hands were interlocked. It was Alan and… her.

She was looking at herself. It took less than a second for her to realize this.

But no, this couldn’t be her. She had to wait for the woman to turn around. It was probably some kind of prank that her husband had cooked up.

The phone on the nightstand started ringing. Her phone.

She waited behind the door, peering through the crack, waiting for her them to turn around. She waited nearly five minutes before Alan sort of nudged the woman and then she turned around.

Zara gasped silently. It couldn’t be. She pressed herself against the wall behind the door and held her breath as the other entered and went towards her phone. She reached towards it but it went silent before she could answer it.

‘Damn’,

Zara heard her curse and then a few seconds later, heard the bathroom door close. Zara peeked out cautiously and saw the coast was clear. She was in the bathroom.

Zara sat on the bed, picked up her phone and checked the call history. Gary Paulson was the last missed call. She put the phone down, opened the lowest drawer on the nightstand and picked up the hammer lying inside. It was heavy. She felt the cold, dented metal surface in her palm. An indeterminable sense of rage had filled her up; replacing the previous cold, constricted feeling in her chest. She gripped it more tightly, walked to the bathroom door and rapped softly.

‘Just a sec’, came the response from inside. It sounded as if her mouth was full of toothpaste.

There was lot of gurgling and flushing. Almost a minute passed and then the door opened.

It was like staring into a mirror, except Zara was sure that her expression wasn’t as terrified as her counterpart. The stare lasted a few seconds before she brought down the hammer with brute force on her head. It lodged inside the skull with a sickening splat as blood oozed out and pink brain matter appeared amidst the mass of hair.

She let go of the hammer and the other toppled inside the bathroom along with it. She closed the door as quietly as she could.

The phone rang.

She walked to it, picked it up, glanced at the caller ID and answered.

‘Gary, Hi’, she answered in a cheerful tone.

The voice at the other end was muffled and sounded distressed.

‘Listen Zara. It’s urgent. Its emergency protocol. You need to come in…’

Five minutes later, she went out on to the balcony.

‘It was the office. They’re calling everyone in’

Credit: Salman Khattak