Nightmare Sky: Stories of Astronomical Horror

FOREWORD

FOREWORD

ALAN BAXTER

Awesome (adjective) – extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring awe—an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear.

That last one. The fear part. For me, nothing invokes reverence and fear like space. The beauty and wonder of the cosmos is undeniable, but the simply inconceivable size of it all terrifies me. Weirdly though, it simultaneously creates a kind of peace, because it reminds me we are less than dust motes. We are nothing. That in itself should be terrifying too, but maybe it’s the horror writer in me who finds it strangely comforting. In the grand scheme of all things, we really don’t matter. The earth won’t notice when we’re gone, other than it’ll feel a lot better to have shaken us off. The universe? It already cares less about us than we care for the little guys we can’t see living in our eyebrows (I’m not kidding – look up Demodex.)

The point is that space has this ability, perhaps more than anything else with the possible exception of the deep ocean, to fill us with both wonder and fear. To make us feel part of something magnificent and make us feel truly insignificant.

The thing about people though, is that we don’t like feeling insignificant, so we insert ourselves into things. We try to mold things around us and make them ours, like dogs pissing on lampposts. But in the long run, that too is destined to fail. Entropy is the only certainty in the ever-expanding universe. (I know, there is a theory that it expands and collapses over and over again, but in our tiny blink-of-an-eye existence, that’s kind of irrelevant.)

This whole situation creates a kind of dichotomy where we have to find personal peace with being awestruck at the fantastic thing of which we’re a part while also reminded of our own inconsequentiality, and when we try to address that irrelevance, we are destined to fail. That’s where the real fear comes in, I think.

So as we’ve always done, we fight our fears with our imagination. If anything is perhaps bigger than the universe itself, it’s humanity’s ability to imagine. The mind is a truly endless landscape, not beholden to physics, and arguably the best part of the mind is the dark places it can go. If we see a shadow, we tend to imagine something in it, unseen, patient, waiting…

The dark matter of our minds gives rise to some of our most powerful imaginings. Like space itself, the gaps between the matter—wide open, black and effectively endless, but not empty—are terrifying. Dark matter and dark energy are components of our existence that we’re only just beginning to comprehend. I often think that what we may learn about those things might drive us deeper into insanity. I’d like to think they’ll open panoramas of understanding, but I’m a horror writer, remember?

It’s hard to go past that H.P. Lovecraft quote: We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

I’m hoping for the opposite, of course, while very much aware of the possibility that Lovecraft is right on that front. But I think we should voyage far. As far as we can. Of course, the more we explore, the more answers we get from science, the more prepared we are for what we might discover. Whatever it is, it’ll be awesome.

Meanwhile, the gaps in our knowledge are populated by our imagination. And as space is teeming with dark energy, so too is our imagination, waiting to be unlocked. We confront many unknown possibilities through the telling of stories, and this book is full of them.

The stories in here are awesome in the more modern sense. They’ll create their own vibrations of reverence and fear in your heart. Stories about people hungry for knowledge of the infinite, while it is hungry in its turn to swallow us whole, without even noticing. We don’t stand a chance in the long run, but that only makes whatever fleeting impact we do make all the more important. Whatever we learn, whatever we create, might resonate for a while. And in the face of eternal entropy, what greater pursuit is there than to make an impact, to make a difference, even for just a little while?

Like this book. It will make a difference.

Alan Baxter

NSW, Australia 2022

STARGAZER

STARGAZER

TIFFANY MICHELLE BROWN

I didn’t see it when you first caught my eye and I swiped right on your profile, but how can anyone discern something so intimate through the veil of technology? It wasn’t until we were seated in the hipster bar, the soles of our shoes sticking to the gummy floor, some Top 40 hit pulsing over the speakers, that I understood. That I saw what you possessed.

It’s the reflection of the flame in her eyes, I tried to reason. But even with that logical explanation batting around in my brain, I had to lean closer. Further inspect the situation. I feigned complete interest in what you were saying—something about a dog park nearby, or maybe a dog bakery?—and shuffled forward in the cushy banquette.

Now I could see it clearly—an explosion of energy and matter nestled within your right eye. Gently revolving like that restaurant in Seattle where you spin and spin, but the movement is so slight, it’s easy to forget you’re going in circles. What I’d mistaken as reflected candlelight was, in fact, a smattering of stars burning against a backdrop of darkness. They winked at me. Danced brazenly in the cosmos within you.

There were swirls of color, blues and purples and reds I’d never beheld. Gaseous plumes that painted space with the deftness of a seasoned artist. I imagined throwing myself into the endlessness within your eye, no spacesuit, no oxygen, letting the galaxy do what it would with my corporeal self. It would be worth it, no matter the outcome.

You were mid-sentence when I reached across the table and held your chin in my palm. Your eyes widened, and that small movement gave me an even greater glimpse of the space-scape I’d discovered.

Your eyes, I said, are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. 

We’d set up our second date before the fedora-clad waiter returned to ask about a second round.

For a handful of days after our first meeting, my memories were enough to tide me over. I’d remember the slow carousel of light and color that bloomed in your eye and completely lose track of time.

Once, I came back from the cosmos to discover I’d completely ignored three full episodes of the true crime documentary I’d begun watching. The TV remote was clenched in my hand, and there was drool on my chin.

Another time, a custodian at my workplace tapped me on my shoulder and asked if I wouldn’t mind handing them the wastebasket lodged between my legs and my computer tower. It was 7:48 PM, well past the time I should have clocked out for the day.

My shower water ran cold. I burned meals in my oven. I traded sleep for journeys into the unknown. And while I lost time and my routine, my galactic meditations made me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. Something infinitely more important than my day-to-day. 

Toward the end of the week, it became more difficult to conjure up the images. They lacked wonder and vivaciousness. My existence began to feel…mundane. Trivial. Woefully colorless and uninspired. That night in the bar, I’d seen something beyond myself, and now everything else paled in comparison.

I called you, tried to keep my voice casual, asked if you’d like to go to dinner. Yes, we had plans that coming weekend, but I just really wanted to see you.

You couldn’t do dinner, but you could do a drink. Same place as before, 9:00 PM?

I showered, shaved, ironed my shirt, even spritzed on some cologne, because I would not show up on the doorstep of the universe looking shabby and ungrateful.

Have you ever fucked under the stars? Experienced the wonder and awe of gazing up at the night sky while reveling in the pleasures of flesh and heat and connection?

When you took me to bed after our fifth date, I was giddy to discover you craved eye contact. You held my face between your smooth palms, your eyes wide and focused. With every pump of my hips, I felt something building, something greater than earthly pleasure. It was a connection to the great unknown. This feeling that if only I could get closer, all the secrets of existence would open up to me.

When I came, I pressed my forehead to yours, and I was damn near blinded by the light in your eye. When I could take no more, I rolled off of you and stared up, expecting to see the shitty popcorn ceiling of your apartment. Instead, the night sky greeted me. Pulsing. Twinkling. Beckoning. It was as if some power greater than us had removed your upstairs neighbors, the roof, the whole damn building. The cosmos opened up to me, shining light and power and wonder on our bodies.

Your voice brought me back to earth, and my skin quickly grew cold.  

I really appreciate that you like eye contact, you said, kissing my jawline, hooking a thigh over my stomach.

I turned my head to meet your gaze. I like looking at you. 

You leaned in to kiss me, but you didn’t close your eyes until the very last second, granting me the opportunity to stargaze.

We started seeing each other every other day or so, and let me tell you, I’d never felt more alive. Spending time with you. Gazing into infinity. Feeling the energy of your swirling galaxy fill me up with meaning and celestial promise.

My productivity had gone to shit, but I’d come to terms with the fact that my life had changed forever. I’d shed my old ways. What is it all worth in the end anyway—the toiling away in corporate America; the celebration of things so inconsequential as birthdays and national holidays? It all seemed so foolish to me, this inflated sense of self-importance. I’d discovered the truth, that we’d all return to the sky eventually. After we left our bodies, we’d become dust. Starlight.

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait for death. I had you.

I didn’t know I’d been let go from my job until I showed up the day after I was fired, and Mary from HR called security to escort me from the building. Messages from friends accumulated in my voicemail inbox asking where I’d been, and would I like to meet at the court down the street to play some two-on-two this weekend? I stopped paying my bills, because I realized money was a social construct.

I put all of my energy into planning dates. Seeing you. Touching you. Holding you close. Getting lost in the primordial revolution that had brought me into the light.

I can’t, you said, and the stars in your eyes flickered and dimmed. It was the first time I’d seen the brilliance within you diminish, and I couldn’t understand why. I’d done everything right. I made coq au vin, curated a romantic playlist, bought a new suit, spent my savings on a diamond.

I couldn’t breathe. I was free falling through space with nowhere to land. Though I could still see your eyes, that swirling promise of infinity, there was now an invisible barricade between us, pushing me away. Grounding me in this bullshit earthly existence.

But why? I asked.

It’s only been two months. You looked down at the napkin in your lap. I do care for you, but...

Your hesitation was frustrating. Didn’t you feel the connection between us? It was your gravitational pull that had snagged me after all.

Look at me.

You did, but I could tell by your expression that I had raised my voice. Your brows knit together, and your shoulders rose ever so slightly. I made sure my next sentence was made of silk. You are all I’ve ever needed.

Your body tensed, and the atmosphere in the dining room changed. Discomfort bloomed in the air, and you looked like a wild animal. Hunted. Desperate for shelter.

I’m just a little overwhelmed. You dabbed the corners of your mouth with your napkin and scooted your chair back. Dinner was beautiful, but I’m rather tired. Can we meet in the morning for a coffee before work?

I snapped the ring box closed and set it on the table between us. You didn’t take it. But I convinced myself it wasn’t over. I’d see you again. I’d convince you of the cosmic connection between us.

At the door, you paused and looked up at me, and I fell right in. I needed one last sip of stardust. I grabbed your neck and pulled you close. Your reaction was immediate. You began pushing, clawing, crying, and all of your wild actions made it that much harder for me to stargaze. Couldn’t you see that I simply needed some intimacy to help me sleep that night?  

I’m not entirely sure what happened next. My memory is inky black. Perhaps you tripped. Perhaps I hit you. Perhaps destiny intervened and struck you down.

I remember the sound of your skull hitting tile. The otherworldly crack. Quick as a snap of the fingers. Heavy and final.

Your blood fanned out beneath you, dyeing your hair crimson. You twitched a few times, little electric pulses that reminded me of how the stars in your eyes would flare when you were happy.

Your eyes. Oh God, your eye!

My knees hit the floor, and I scrambled over to you. I knew in that instant that if you left this earthly realm, your galaxy would be snuffed out, too. I would never see it again, not until my own death. But then, had that ascension ever truly been a promise?

The stars were still there, blinking, but slowly, like a bulb about to extinguish. I couldn’t let them go out.

I ran back to the dinner table and grabbed a soup spoon still coated in lobster bisque. I made my sacrifice first, using the scooping motions I’d developed at my first job as a teenager at a local ice cream parlor. Gore dripped down my hand as my eye socket gave way. I screamed until my throat was raw, but when my eyeball plopped onto the floor, I no longer felt pain, only purpose.

I rushed to your body, hoping that I wasn’t too late. The galaxy stopped spinning, but I could see the divine luminescence still pulsed, slowly and erratically. I didn’t have much time. I scooped and pried. The organ was slick between my fingers when it finally popped out, and I knew I couldn’t let it escape. Couldn’t let it fall. It had but one destination.

Fitting your eye into my socket wasn’t easy given the difference in our facial structures, but I managed it without breaking anything. I figure it’ll take some time for your galaxy to recognize a new host. To bloom once again into its magnificence, its unending splendor.

So now I stand here in the bathroom, waiting for the light to come back in your eye, so I can stargaze once more.

INFINITE FOCUS

INFINITE FOCUS

DINO PARENTI

Chile, 2021

Three thousand feet above the Chilean Andes, the lava dome of Mt. Hudson threatened menace, even sheathed by snow. A glimmering, gestating cyst awaiting the tiniest poke to explode it, and an effervescent finger whisked the anxieties in my belly.

Thirty-years later, and I’m still ambivalent about the volcano that killed Mother.

Because she chose to stay.

The pilot dropped the helicopter for a closer look, and after hugging the western face for a few minutes, he garbled into my headset to check my right. There it rose at the end of a promontory with all the gravity of the mythical: the Bianchi-Santos Observatory.

It had only operated for six months before the ‘91 eruption closed it indefinitely. At the time, it housed the most advanced telescope in the world: Deep-Space Infrared 1, or DESI for short. The first telescope to employ AI technology, designed to seek-and-study independently. And Mother—the Santos of Bianchi-Santos—had been her creator.

Fifteen minutes later we hovered over a small village hubbed by a Catholic church. The pilot asked if I was sure I wanted to land there.

As sure as you want to get paid, I replied.

No sooner did my feet hit dirt that the pilot hauled ass out of there. I made a mental note to complain to the travel service as soon as I got back.

Through a tree line still astir by blade wash, my guide emerged. We’d emailed on several occasions while preparing for the trip, and he wore the same red St. Louis Cardinals cap in the one picture he shared of himself standing before the church.

He considered me through a flat smile, ivory cross jutting from his chest like a cracked rib. "Soy Ignacio," he said, keeping his distance.

I’m Olivia Santos. Nice to meet in person, at last.

His head tilted as if to smell the air. "We go. Get dark…soon."

We started down the main cobblestone street. The town droned with morning ritual, people ferrying food, water, and wares along narrow byways. Kids gamboled with stray dogs and kicked around frayed soccer balls. The mustiness of livestock clutched to breezes like lukewarm salutations.

I snapped some shots with my phone, hoping they wouldn’t mind my intrusion, but no one seemed fazed.

Out of nowhere, a small, hunched old man appeared, nattering behind us. His eyes were filmed over white, but he stomped about as if his vision still functioned perfectly. Around his neck hung a cross twice the size of Ignacio’s. I assumed him the church’s head priest, raining holy hell upon Ignacio, no doubt about me.

"Vamos," Ignacio said, waving off the gesticulating priest.

We started up the foothills, the priest following awhile in our wake, stabbing fingers at the mountain, beseeching in tears to heed his warnings. How I imagined Mother’s colleagues did as they begged her to leave the erupting mountain.

Portland, 2018

What first stood out about the letter was the postmark: Tokyo.

I knew nobody from there.

Then I read the name, printed small and lightly as if by pencil.

Akio Hashimoto, PhD.

Even being November, with all the windows open in my little bungalow, the air constricted like an Atlanta August. Because I remembered him. Remembered what he’d said at the press conference upon escaping the eruption Mother hadn’t.

Dr. Santos had ample opportunity to get away, but insisted on staying with the array.

For nearly thirty-years I’d speculate what was so strong, so compelling that Mother chose certain death rather than flee. She studied her ass off to become an astronomer, but how she still loved her mysteries, the unexplained, sometimes even the irrational—the latter growing as she aged. I often wondered how much my father leaving abruptly after I was born had to do with that. How much I did. Mother never said it aloud, but I always sensed she never wanted children. That I’d been unplanned and unasked-for. The sense of chore-needing-done bristled in all our interactions. A methodical, tight-lipped exasperation.

I opened Dr. Hashimoto’s letter.

Chile, 2021

We trekked nearly two hours, the sun dipping behind the volcano’s lava dome, plummeting the temperature a fast twenty-degrees.

Ignacio and I spoke little throughout, especially after I’d asked why the priest had been so angry. Through his pell-mell English, I gathered that after the ‘91 eruption destroyed their village, no one was allowed to ascend Mt. Hudson, especially to the observatory.

God’s punishment for man’s overreach? I ventured. In hindsight, it came out haughtier than I’d intended.

No, no, said Ignacio. "Es embrujado."

Haunted.

"Sometimes, the telescopio…it still move."