On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 245, of 266 so far.

Uncanny

Mostly I was just glad to get out of the rain.

It had been coming down without respite since the early hours of the morning, and the only saving grace was that it had melted the scattered snowfall of the previous day. Instead of white roofs, there were rivers in the gutters, and all I wanted to do was go home and get into a hot bath.

But I followed her, as usual.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked, turning to glance at me briefly before gesturing expansively at the soaring darkness around us.

I said of course I did, because I drove us here and I used the car’s navigation system. She threw me a look that would curdle milk. I chalked it up as a small victory. And a rare one.

“But do you know what this place is?” she persisted, and I shook my head.

“Presumably not the discount furniture warehouse it used to be, judging by the old sign above the loading bay over there.”

She didn’t respond to that observation, instead gesturing that I should follow her — a thing which I always did, and was already doing at that moment. As if I ever wouldn’t. We reached the far wall, and there was a locked door which she opened with a key that seemed to appear in her hand from nowhere. Beyond the door, improbably, there was another one: much more recent, and much more serious.

Her palm print on the scanner panel beside the featureless portal quickly gave us entry, and the small chamber beyond seemed to be a lift. We got in, and I asked why there were no buttons, immediately realising that it was hardly the most pressing question at the moment. She gave me another of her looks, and then the lift was in motion, moving downwards.

Either it was impeccably balanced and engineered, or it moved very slowly indeed, because it was barely possible to determine that we were descending. It seemed to drift languidly downwards for a long time, and then it came smoothly to a halt. She turned to face me.

“Do you know what the uncanny valley is?”

The term was familiar, but under the circumstances I had to cast around in my mind to recall what it described. Then it came to me.

“It’s when they make something that looks really similar to a human being but not quite, and instead of feeling attached to it, we feel revulsion. Like the robots at consumer electronics expos. They end up just being creepy instead of lifelike.”

She nodded. “That’s exactly what it means, yes.”

I was about to ask her what relevance the question had, but then the lift doors opened again, and I wasn’t especially surprised to see that there were four heavily-armed men in military uniforms standing just beyond. They were in a chamber whose walls were bare rock, cut to precisely vertical, with lighting fixtures strung at even intervals. I felt my stomach clench.

“I sometimes think you have more secret installations than I’ve had hot dinners,” I said, and she just flicked her hand dismissively at me as she strolled out. She was five-foot-five in her kitten heels, and all four of the soldiers stepped back out of her way as she passed by without giving them so much as a nod. I followed behind her, opting to avoid eye contact with the men too, just in case.

I don’t remember exactly how many corridors we walked along, or how many doors we passed through, or how many more wordless soldiers we saw. I do remember that there was a second lift at one point, which also went downwards into the earth. Eventually, we reached a place that I do remember, in every detail. I’ll remember it for the rest of my days. I only wish I could forget.

The room was large; more of a cavern, really, but still precisely excavated and evenly lit with too-bright fluorescent strip lights, except at the farthest wall. Here, there were ten soldiers, positioned in two staggered rows of five with at least twenty metres of space between the front and rear rows. Amongst other things, they had an artillery nest, what looked like a rocket launcher, and something I’m fairly sure was a flamethrower like in the movies. They all wore breathing apparatus, and not one of them even glanced at us when we entered.

It was that last detail that bothered me the most at the time. A minute or two later, I had something else to be most bothered about for the rest of my life.

She led the way to the darker area at the rear, and I saw that it held a sort of high-tech prison cell, free standing but bolted to the rock floor. It was fully sealed with a transparent front, and I could see some sort of gas distribution system within it, mounted in the four topmost corners. There was a bench in there, and a man was sitting on it, bent forward with his head between his knees, as if he was ill.

He was wearing the same uniform as the soldiers upstairs, strangely, and it was only when we got within a couple of metres of the cell that I felt all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“I don’t need to ask if you know what they call the feeling you’re having right now,” she said. I thought I detected a hint of tension in her voice, which would have been unprecedented. I chose to believe that I was mistaken. I still choose to believe that.

“The uncanny valley,” I said, and she nodded, then she took another step towards the glass.

To my surprise, I instinctively reached out to grasp her arm and stop her, but I controlled my reaction just in time. She glanced at me, though, and there was only understanding on her face.

“It’s a secure holding unit,” she said. “We’re in no danger.”

“Who the hell is he?” I asked, half-nodding towards the soldier beyond the glass, feeling my skin crawl for no reason that I could determine. “What did he do?”

“Today is the day you learn that the uncanny valley is actually an evolutionary holdover; an ancestral memory,” she replied. “Like all instinctive fear responses, it’s a protective mechanism. Those responses warn us that we’re in the presence of those who will harm us or hunt us. Our predators, you might say.”

I became aware that despite the leisurely pace of our progress through this strange facility, and the cool air in the large room, I was nevertheless sweating. My pulse was also far faster than it should have been, and I seemed to be hyper-aware of my immediate environment.

“It can’t get to us,” she said. “But if it could, … it would.”

It was at that moment the man in the cell raised his head, and it was at the next moment that I stopped being able to get a good night’s sleep.

It was so very close to perfect. It was so lifelike.

In fact, it was difficult to even consciously pinpoint what was wrong with it. Hair, eyes, nose, ears, mouth; all present and correct. Complexion and proportions. Movements. Like the most sophisticated videogame character-model I’d ever seen, or a cutting-edge android prototype, or the very best of Hollywood practical effects.

A creature that was a man. A man that was so very close to looking like a man. A living waxwork of the highest artistry — but not quite high enough.

But I hated it, instantly and utterly. If I’d had the opportunity, I would have killed it then and there. I would have taken a gun and fired until the magazine was empty. I would have stabbed it and burned it, and dissolved the ashes in acid. And then I would have found its… what? Its family? Its nest? And I would have killed every one of them too.

“They’ve been here as long as we have,” she said. “On Earth, I mean. They’re in the fossil record. Though you have to know what you’re looking for.”

The face of the man that was a thing became indistinct for a moment, like melting rubber, and then it was the face of a thing that was very nearly me instead.

I turned away, doubled over, and threw up. When I straightened, none of the soldiers were looking at me. They were all focused on the thing in the cell. It was then that I realised why it took military men to do their job: they didn’t just have to kill it if that became necessary; they also had to restrain themselves from killing it just as a natural reaction.

“Our predators,” I said, and she nodded.

“They’re mimics. Thank god they’re not perfect. But we’re studying just a handful that we’ve been able to capture. And we have a real problem.”

I felt sick all over again, because I knew what she was going to say. In the end, I said it for her.

“Because they’re getting better at it.”

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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