The wanderer walked down the moonlit street lined with naked trees, leaves crackling beneath his boots. He breathed deeply, letting the autumn chill fill his lungs. He marched in step to the cries of nocturnal insects and thought of nothing. The night was young and he had a long journey ahead of him. As he was about to discover, however, it was not a journey he would be starting just yet.
Doran saw the light from the car's headlights before he heard it. The trees danced and his shadow began to materialize and lengthen before him. As the vehicle grew close Doran squinted, waiting for it to pass. Instead, the pickup truck slowed as it approached, stopping just ahead of him. There was a mechanical whir as the driver rolled down his window.
"Are you the expert?"
Doran turned. "Who's asking?"
The interior lights switched on, revealing a man wearing a baseball cap and a flannel shirt.
"I'm Abe. Rumor had it someone like you was in town." He looked down the empty road ahead of them. "Glad I caught you before you went too far."
Doran crossed the street, studying him. Abe had gentle features and an easy smile, but there was a hint of uneasiness in his eyes. Tufts of blond hair peeked out from under his cap.
"Someone like me."
"Yeah. You know, an expert." Abe fiddled with his wedding band.
"And you're certain that you require the services of an expert? They aren't cheap."
"Yes."
Doran nodded to himself. He could afford to stay in the area for a few more hours. He walked to the passenger side door, which Abe opened for him, slipped his pack off his shoulders, and got in.
"What's your name?"
"Doran. I'm a specialist, as you gathered."
Abe was having a hard time placing his age. Doran's hair was a pale, almost ashen color, and though his face was youthful and his skin smooth, his thick beard and his way of speaking implied a certain maturity. Abe pulled a tight U-turn, heading back toward town. He considered turning on the radio, but his new companion seemed like the type to prefer silence. And in silence they rode, Doran hugging his backpack to his chest and Abe stealing occasional sideways glances at him.
"Did you enjoy your stay here?" Abe asked eventually. "It's not much, I know. Someone like you has probably seen a hundred towns like ours."
"I was just passing through."
"Oh, okay. Did you stop by Wayne's at least? Best damn apple pie in the midwest—or so I'm told."
"I did not."
Abe adjusted his cap. Doran produced a metal flask and took a swig.
"Where you headed after this? Got a big job?" Abe asked.
"Not exactly."
Silence descended on them again. The man was a stone wall!
"Why don't you tell me about your problem?" This time Doran initiated the conversation.
"Right. Okay." Abe cleared his throat. "My wife and me, we've been trying to have a kid for a while now. Turns out, the doctor says we . . . can't. But back in April, we found out Tina—that's my wife—was pregnant!"
He smiled a little, remembering the face she had made while holding up the pregnancy test. "Doctor couldn't make heads or tails of it. I told him it was a miracle, and he laughed and said maybe it was. We were happy, of course. Overjoyed. But I think we were both worried that this might be our one and only chance. We had to get this right. And we did, I thought. Everything was going great."
Abe could feel the words beginning to stick in his throat. He glanced at his passenger. Doran was watching him intently.
"Last week, Tina suddenly went into labor."
"When was she due?" Doran asked.
"Not until after New Year's. Another two months, at least. We had been planning for an at-home birth. Tina wanted it and the nearest hospital is pretty far anyway. So I called the midwife, and she panicked a little and wanted to send Tina to the hospital, but Tina said no and . . . It all happened so fast."
They were passing houses tucked among the trees now. Abe could still feel Doran's eyes fixed on him, but he wasn't sure how to continue.
"Maybe it's better if you see it yourself. We're almost there."
"It?"
He began drumming the steering wheel with his finger.
"Abe, what condition was the baby born in?"
He didn't answer. Doran shrugged to himself. He would find out soon enough.
Abe's home was cozy if nothing else. It wasn't cramped, certainly—Doran had seen much tighter accommodations—but it was not the kind of house that belonged to a family with many children. There was a delicate lavender scent, and the comfortable warmth soon had Doran sweating in his thick jacket. Abe led him to the kitchen, where a woman was sitting at a table for four.
"I found him," Abe said.
She rose, looking as though she had awoken from a dream.
"I'm Christina. Nice to meet you." She put on a small smile and carefully extended her hand, which Doran shook.
"I was just explaining to Doran our . . . situation," Abe said.
"Before that, why don't you put down your things and sit? Can I get you something to drink?" Christina asked.
Doran watched her. She wore a loose t-shirt and sweatpants. Her mouse brown hair was pulled back in a small ponytail. She was likely no older than her husband, maybe even younger, but there was a senescence that hung about her eyes and mouth. Aside from her initial greeting, she made no effort to make eye contact with him. Her hospitality was likely founded only on cold and polite obligation. Doran nodded as he pulled off his pack and jacket. It could have been worse.
"Thank you, but that won't be necessary. Do you mind if I ask you some questions, Christina?"
She sat back down. Doran remained standing, and Abe hovered nearby.
"When did you go into labor?"
"Last Friday."
"Are you in any physical pain right now? Anything beyond normal postpartum symptoms since Friday?"
She shrugged. "I don't think so. Just cramps."
"Are you lactating?"
"Yes. I'm taking care of it."
"Would you allow me to feel your belly?"
Christina frowned but stood without protest, tucking her arms behind her. Doran unzipped a pocket of his backpack and retrieved a small wooden box. Inside was a collection of corked vials, each no bigger than his thumb. He pulled out a vial containing a teaspoon of auburn-colored powder, checked the label, then opened it. As he held it beneath his nose, a burnt, musty smell rolled up his nostrils and tickled his brain. He quickly sealed the vial and waited for the effects. A few moments later, the room began to shift and shimmer like a layer of incandescent film had been superimposed on reality. He hated using this stuff.
"Should I lift my shirt?" Christina was scrutinizing him.
"You don't have to."
She kept her arms pinned behind her. Doran knelt, carefully pressing his hand into the soft flesh of her abdomen. He closed his eyes and reached out. Heat washed over him in waves, a rhythm sounded out by the march of a beating heart, directing the flow of blood across the system—muscles contract and release, lungs fill and empty—two organisms have left their mark, one of them human—great histories are etched into the walls, into the bones, into the blood—beyond it all lay a glittering globe, pulsing and probing and thinking—above that a tongue of flame, a sun, a mirror reflecting blinding light—a voice like trumpets and spinning gears: Your work isn't done—
Doran pulled away and inhaled deeply, touching the floor to recollect himself.
"Is everything okay?" Abe asked.
Doran stood up slowly. "Yes. As far as I can tell, Christina will be fine."
Her expression softened somewhat, but Doran could still see an untold story behind her eyes. He looked at Abe, who eventually motioned for him to follow.
"We'll be right back," Doran said.
Abe took him to the garage. Lavender warmth was replaced by stale cold. There was something else too. The world still glittered around him; impossible fractals appeared and disappeared in the pattern on Abe's shirt; translucent balls of light passed through the floor and up to the ceiling. Doran rubbed his eyes, trying to focus. Two things caught his attention. The first was the empty space where a second car could have been. A sedan was parked at the near end of the garage, probably Christina's, but Abe had left his truck in the driveway. Was that significant? Doran couldn't keep his thoughts organized enough to reach a conclusion. The second was the bucket on the far end. It was an unassuming thing made of black plastic, but it reminded Doran of a bucket from his childhood. One day, a young Doran suddenly became sick to his stomach, and his mother grabbed the closest container she could find. Even in his earliest memories of it, it was well-used, its handle beginning to rust at the hinges. For many years afterward, that bucket would not leave his side whenever he caught a stomach bug.
Doran pulled himself out of the recesses of his mind. He was not surprised to find Abe pointing silently at the bucket. While the rest of the garage was alive with color and motion, it alone somehow remained dead. Doran approached it cautiously. Inside was a lump of red. At first glance, it might have been a chunk of raw meat, perhaps beef or pork. Then it moved. It moved like a giant slug, stretching out its limbless form and creeping across the cotton blanket that covered the inside of the bucket.
Abe stayed at the other end of the garage. He watched Doran kneel and reach into the bucket, then rise several seconds later, a grim expression on his face.
"We . . . I didn't know what else to do with it," Abe said.
"Have you gone to a doctor?"
"No. I don't know how to even begin to explain this." He lowered his voice. "And I think Tina is worried they'll take it."
"Which one of you is supposed to be infertile?"
Abe bowed his head. "Tina."
Doran nodded. "Come on. I'll explain."
Doran placed three items on the table: a legal pad, a ballpoint pen, and a black, unlabeled hardcover. Before he began, he took a drink from his flask.
"Have either of you had any unusual experiences before last week? Anything that might be considered supernatural?"
They exchanged a glance and shook their heads. Doran drew something on the legal pad, then pushed it across the table so they could see. It was a circle, and inside of it a small stick figure.
"This is us." He tapped the circle. "You, me, this house, the country, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe. Our reality. It has its own rules and its own space and time. Now, we understand frighteningly little about our universe. I've drawn it as this quaint little circle, but in truth we live on an island in a vast ocean of unknowns. That's what makes this next part a little unnerving for some people."
Doran drew several more circles scattered about the page.
"You see this in fiction sometimes—alternate realities. It's speculation. We have no way to prove or disprove that other universes exist, and I personally don't think we ever will."
Abe and Christina stared blankly at Doran's drawing.
"Don't get too caught up in the alternate universes bit," he said. "If it helps, you can think of them like planets. Each has its own soil, its own flora and fauna, its own gravity, et cetera. I'm not so interested in 'planets' other than our own. What concerns me is the void in between. Space."
Doran scribbled in the area around the circles, shading it.
"My peers and I believe there is something analogous to outer space beyond the limits of our universe. A gap between realities. But unlike our outer space, this space does not simply lack atmosphere or gravity."
He darkened the circle in the middle of the page.
"We call the thing that separates realities from this space the veil. It might be a physical structure, or it might be something more complicated. Whatever it is, the popular hypothesis is that outside of the veil, there is only chaos. No space, no time, no order—a place that defies human understanding and rejects human existence. Certainly, it is inhospitable to life as we know it, but that does not mean that nothing lives there."
Abe was barely following. "Are we talking about aliens here?"
"In a sense. If a lifeform from a planet beyond earth is an extraterrestrial, then one from a reality beyond ours would be an extrauniversal. But if it comes from no universe, it would be something else entirely. Sometimes we call them extraplanar organisms. Commonly, though, they are known as outsiders."
"Outsiders," Abe repeated. The way Doran had said it unsettled him.
"We call them outsiders because they are exactly that. We know nothing about their existence beyond the veil, but from time to time, they cross over into our reality." The specialist laid a hand on the black hardcover. "This is where we move from theory to observable fact."
They waited as he opened the book and began flipping through it. Abe was surprised to notice that every page was handwritten, with notes crammed in the margins and an occasional picture drawn in.
"Here. The cuckoo." Doran pushed the book toward them.
"Like the bird?" Christina asked.
"It's . . . a cruel name. Our cuckoo—some species of them, anyway—is known for leaving its eggs in other birds' nests. Its namesake kills the unborn, and leaves nothing of its own behind."
Abe looked at him, then down at the book. The words swam and danced and taunted him. Somewhere, a clock ticked.
"Are you saying this thing is inside my wife?"
Doran's expression was a mask. "It was, for a brief period of time. I confirmed earlier that she is harboring no additional life, human or otherwise."
Abe's chair creaked as he leaned back. "How?"
"You're going to need to be more specific."
"Wouldn't we have seen it? Known something was wrong?"
"You did know something was wrong. Christina went into labor months earlier than expected. As for seeing it, many outsiders do not have a physical form we can perceive. Think of them like the wind, or ghosts."
"More like demons." Abe's head was beginning to ache. "This doesn't make sense."
Doran watched him put his face in his hands and felt a strong twinge of pity. He opened his mouth, then closed it. What could a stranger possibly say to comfort the man? Besides, that wasn't what they paid him for. The specialist's purpose was to solve problems—no, Doran thought, that's not right. No, his purpose was to clean up the mess.
"Why?" Christina broke the silence. "Why would it do this to us?"
Her words were like daggers. The enhancer had mostly worn off, but Doran swore he could see ominous clouds building up around her. He realized suddenly what the hardest part of this job would be.
"You're asking about the cuckoo's motivation," he said carefully.
She didn't respond.
"Among the recorded cuckoo cases, I'm not aware of any clear patterns or . . . "
He stopped himself. Christina's dark, watery gaze was fixed on him.
"Why did it kill my boy?"
Doran gritted his teeth. He had nothing.
The truth was, nobody knew the answer to her question. It wasn't just a lack of understanding, it was a question of the capability to understand. How does one deduce the intent of an entity from outside his universe that defies the rules of space and time and energy and life? How does one decipher Chaos? No matter how many decades Doran spent investigating outsiders, talking with researchers and other specialists in the field, resolving and documenting cases—no matter how many volumes of black hardcovers he wrote, there would never be a page that could answer Christina's question. Neither of them would be at peace with that until the day Chaos was destroyed and a true, eternal Order was established.
But in the meantime, the specialist's role was to clean up the mess.
"I have no answer for you."
She sank into her chair and stared at nothing. "I see."
Abe touched her shoulder, then glanced at Doran. They stepped out into the hallway that led to the garage, where Abe could keep an eye on the kitchen. On the wall was a picture of the married couple at some tourist spot, all smiles. Looking at it, Doran could not shake the feeling that he had made a mistake.
"The thing in the bucket," Abe said quietly. "Is it alive?"
"Nothing more than a corpse."
"But it moves."
Doran shrugged. "Jellyfish move without brains or blood. I know I compared it to a corpse, but it's a little more complicated. The remains a cuckoo leaves behind are . . . arranged."
"Arranged how?"
"You've seen it. Does it look anything like a seven-month-old fetus?" He sighed. "Most everything is disintegrated, but there's still a nervous system of sorts left over. But it can't see or feel or eat. It just moves. Eventually it will stop moving, but that can take years. Can you really call that living? Can you call that human?"
Doran bit off the rest of what he was going to say.
"God have mercy." Abe rubbed between his eyes.
"There's a kind of spiritual death as well. Studies have shown that cuckoos kill all traces of their victim's genetic identity, meaning any two victims are indistinguishable on a fundamental level. Humanity, by any definition, is erased."
They fell silent. Doran watched Abe struggle with his emotions behind a tortured expression. He clenched his teeth and waited. After a while, Abe took a shaky breath.
"Now what?"
There was only one thing Doran could do for this family now. "My advice is to destroy it as soon as possible."
Abe raised his hands defensively. "That's a very extreme option, isn't it?"
"Can you get a glass or bottle of some kind?"
Abe blinked, then returned to the kitchen. He leaned in toward Christina and said something to her in a low voice, and she left without looking at him. Then he opened a cupboard and produced a glass. Doran grabbed his flask.
"This is not water. Do not drink it," he said as he filled about an inch of the glass with a colorless, thick, slightly glowing liquid.
Abe held it up to the light. "Didn't you drink some earlier?"
"Do not drink it."
"Right," Abe said. "What am I supposed to do with it?"
"Pour it in the bucket."
"Is this for the best?" he asked, setting down the glass but still looking at it.
"Abe." Their eyes met. "That thing is no longer your child. It is a curse. As long as it stays in your household, it will torment you. It might tear your family apart if you let it."
"Can't we . . . Couldn't you take it? To study it, or whatever."
"Is that really what you want? Like it or not, this is your responsibility. No one else should make this decision for you."
Abe ran his thumb along the corner of the table.
"Something horrific has happened to your family. I can't even begin to imagine what this must be like for you. It must seem terribly unfair, and it is. If you need to rage, then rage. If you need to hate, then hate me. But do not—" Doran realized his voice had grown loud and cleared his throat. "Do not turn away. Do not run. Stand your ground."
Abe exhaled something between a laugh and a sigh. "Do you hear yourself?"
"It hurts. I understand that much. It's like you're on fire, and everything hurts, but you don't want to put the fire out because healing is going to hurt far worse."
Doran pushed the glass closer to him. Abe said nothing.
"At the end of the day, it's your choice. I've given my advice. If you insist, I can take the remains."
"No," Abe said without looking up, "I'll do it."
Doran nodded. "One more thing. I'm not aware of any instances of women being unable to conceive after being visited by a cuckoo. In fact, there is some evidence suggesting that they become more fertile afterward."
That got his attention. "You mean . . . ?"
Doran held up a hand. "No promises. Yours is an unusual case."
Of course, there was no such thing as usual when it came to intruders from beyond the veil. He had spent enough years in this line of work to understand there were no rules, only patterns, and there were always exceptions. But sometimes the exceptions worked in humanity's favor.
"Alright. I'll talk to Tina in the morning and work this out."
"No."
Abe stared.
"Do it tonight," Doran said. "Tomorrow, when I'm gone, you'll second-guess yourself. You'll want to think it over again. Maybe he was wrong, maybe there's another way, maybe, maybe, maybe. And between you and me, I wouldn't involve your wife in this decision."
"What?"
"You sent her to bed for a reason, didn't you?"
Abe's expression darkened. "It's late."
Doran shook his head. "You knew how she would react to this talk about destroying the remains, and her reaction is not going to change in the morning."
"Can you blame her?" Abe asked, throwing out his arms.
"No—in fact, her understanding of the situation is better than yours in some ways. She's interpreted this as an attack on her family, and now she's looking for the enemy. She wants to fight and protect, even if it's not in her power, and even if there's nothing left to protect. What she needs is someone who can stand with her and guide her, someone she can trust to make the right decisions. That should be you."
Abe fingered his wedding band. "If there's nothing else, you should probably leave."
Doran nodded. He gathered his things, shouldered his backpack, and headed for the door.
"Wait," Abe called after him, "how much do I owe you?"
The specialist turned and cast a sober glance back at his client. "Nothing." Then he disappeared into the cold darkness, his burden a little heavier than he remembered.
Abe, suddenly very tired, lowered himself into a chair. He wondered—if he fell asleep at the table, would he wake up with a blanket around his shoulders and the smell of bacon and eggs in the air and his wife beside him and a cooing, crying, living baby in her arms? He forced his eyes open and looked at the glass of glowing liquid in front of him. Doran's words churned in his head. None of it made sense. No, some of it made too much sense. Abe considered himself a decent judge of character, and at no point did Doran strike him as a liar, which was the scary part. Were their lives really so easily derailed by the inexplicable actions of these outsiders? Perhaps he had made a mistake in talking to a "specialist." In the morning, he could go to the doctor with Christina. But then what? This was not a problem that a doctor could solve. Doran had called it spiritual death. Abe had understood from the beginning that something unnatural and obscene had happened.
At some point, he stopped thinking and started praying. He remembered something his father had said years ago: "Don't think yourself into a corner." So he prayed, and then made his decision.
Christina was still awake. She was lying on her side, facing away from the door, but Abe could tell. He walked around the bed, and she opened her eyes.
"I'm going to take care of it. Try to get some sleep."
She sat up, looking at him. There might have been a hint of surprise in her expression.
"I love you," Abe said, caressing her cheek.
He returned to the kitchen to take the glass, then went to the garage. He slowly drained the liquid into the bucket, his hand shaking. He watched and waited until it was done.
When Abe finally went to bed, his wife wrapped her arms around him and cried.
It happened that Doran found himself in that area again two years later. Although he had no reason to do so, he took the road into town. The region was recovering from a particularly fierce winter. The trees were beginning to bud, a pleasant, earthy scent was in the air, and Doran spotted a red cardinal perched above him, vigorously chirping. He took it as a good omen.
He began by chatting with the locals, as was his habit. Rumors were powerful tools if one knew how to make use of them. A talkative elderly woman eventually told him what he wanted to know. There was a rumor that something strange had happened with Christina's pregnancy two years ago, but most of the townspeople seemed dismissive of it—"nobody pays dark gossip like that any heed," as she put it.
More importantly, Christina was pregnant again.
His curiosity satisfied, Doran decided to leave, but the universe had other plans. Not ten minutes after speaking to the elderly lady, a familiar pickup truck screeched to a halt on the road beside him. Abe threw open the door and jumped out, his face glowing in the spring sunlight.
"Doran! I never thought I'd see you again!" He grasped the wanderer by the shoulders.
"I heard your wife is expecting."
Abe's smile somehow widened. "Yes! All thanks to you."
Doran shook his head. "I didn't do anything."
"Are you joking? You saved us."
That surprised him a little. Abe was not saying this out of exaggeration or politeness, Doran could tell by the earnest look in his eyes. Were two years enough to heal the wound left by losing a child in such a cruel way?
"Come on," Abe said, climbing back into his truck, "Tina will want to talk to you."
Doran hesitated a bit, but eventually joined him.
"I'm sorry I couldn't do more for your family. I regret that I left on the terms I did," he said.
Abe turned down the radio. He drove quietly for a while, then said, "Do you regret helping us at all?"
"Of course not."
"It took a long time for me to fully understand everything you said that night. Not about the outsiders, I mean, but about me. When you told me we might get a second chance, though . . . that kept me going for a while. I guess I just really wanted to be a father, even after everything that happened. Does that make me sound crazy?"
Doran smiled. "No. Not at all."
"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is—thank you."
Just like that, the knot in Doran's gut untangled itself, and for the first time in a long time, he felt his chest swell with self-satisfaction. Was it really that simple? Life was complex, humans were nuanced, and reality itself was convoluted. But what was wrong with living simply? A man becoming a father and starting a family. A woman who wants to protect her child. A specialist who uses his knowledge and experience to help others, and takes pride in his work. Deep down, Doran had understood that these things were good, sublime even, but at some point he had forgotten.
"What's wrong?" Abe was glancing sideways at him.
Doran breathed a shaky sigh. "I'm cursed, you know. I made a mistake when I was young and attracted the attention of something unpleasant. Now if I stay too long in one place, every living thing there dies."
"Oh."
"It's a long story, so you'll have to forgive me for telling the abbreviated version." Doran cleared his throat. "I was miserable for a long time. I wandered aimlessly, ran out of money, and started helping with outsider incidents when I could find them. I suppose I saw the worst of humanity and inhumanity—suffering, hate, betrayal, insanity, death, chaos. I resigned myself to it at some point. In my mind, it was all just part of the curse. But that curse brought me to you, and now you've reminded me why I do this, why it's worth doing, even if it makes me feel like shit sometimes."
"Maybe, sometimes, there are blessings hidden in the curses," Abe said.
Doran laughed. "Maybe so."