01 May There Were Two Moons in the Sky Last Night

Have you ever looked up at the moon at night and dreamed of a better life? Maybe wished for love or simply looked for inspiration? It’s amazing, isn’t it, such a magnificent celestial body just hanging in the sky, one we’ve lived with since the beginning of time. Your parents, grandparents and forefathers have all been mesmerized by the beauty in the sky; they’ve all seen the same moon.

I used to love that sight, but now I feel terrified each night as it rises, fearing that I might once again see two moons.

* * * * * *

It was a strange set of events that finally landed me in the middle of nowhere, also known as Svalbard; a small Norwegian island as close to the North Pole as people are willing to live. Inhabited by fewer than three thousand people, all with an astonishing command of the English language.

Without Luke, I probably wouldn’t have ended up anywhere nearly as exotic, but as my best friend, he had pulled me into the field of biology after I had spent years not knowing what to do with my life.

Together with him and Samantha, another bright student with a passion for both nature and all fields of science, ranging from biology to astrology, we ventured into the unknown with a foolish dream of acquiring the ever-so-elusive doctorate degree.

Our new home would be Longyeartown, a perfect name for a city in the middle of the arctic, where everything moved at a snail’s pace.

Polar bears, northern lights, endless winter nights and everlasting summer days. Had I not known better, I wouldn’t have believed I was still on Earth.

We first arrived at the beginning of August. Greeted by our guide and teacher, Walter; A man who looked more like a bear than a human being. A massive, bearded Viking, probably born in the snow, holding a battle-axe. He would ensure our safety and assist us in studying the wild life.

It was a beautiful sight, I have to admit. Despite being at the end of summer, the weather was harsh, barely rising above forty degrees even though the sun was up for the entirety of the day. Nevertheless, there was something magical about the landscape.

The midnight sun shined bright, a perfect yellow sky to keep us company the entire night, as we celebrated the start of our new adventures.

During the first couple of weeks, Walter was very incessant about us taking a proper safety course while living there. Though rifles were prohibited in any settlement on the island, they were strongly recommended during research, due to the dangers of polar bears being curious. As cuddly as they might seem, when you’ve observed them tear apart prey, completely covering their white fur in the crimson stains of blood, you’ll understand not to mess with them.

September quickly rolled around and the midnight sun had long since disappeared, days grew shorter and nights longer, but we enjoyed every moment together. It had become apparent that Luke had a crush on Samantha, and though I would never reveal that secret, it seemed odd to me that she hadn’t noticed.

Luke had always been quite shy, even though he had an overabundance of attention from the other sex, being a sportsman and ridiculously attractive and all, but some darkness from his past had kept him from growing a proper confident facade.

* * * * * *

At the half-year mark of our stay, we’d already gathered a substantial amount of data for our research. Without going into too much detail, it included observing the Walrus haul-out behavior, meaning when they leave the water and what they do on land.

Not too exciting for most people I’m sure, but we truly loved our work.

It was the end of January, which meant the sun never showed itself, even during the day. Constant darkness surrounded us during that period, but at least we’d have times of bright moonlight and nautical twilight, which seemed like any late sunset. It kept us from getting the winter blues.

By then I had confronted Luke about his feelings for Samantha. They were both my closest friends, and though I wouldn’t mind them getting together, I wanted to make sure nothing dramatic and childish would happen. Of course, he denied it, shy as he was, but Samantha had started hinting at similar feelings for him.

Had just one of them spoken up rather than being stubborn kids, they could have been happy together, but what else could I do other than to poke at their emotions until one of them burst.

During the night we’d driven one of the cars down to the beach. Though I had always considered a beach as a warm bunch of sand by the seaside, it was equally beautiful. Walter often accompanied us on our little drunken trips, having become more of a friend than a teacher, but he insisted that even though we had driven down there, we would walk back to our houses rather than drunk driving. He said this even though the population was so sparse that hitting anything was almost impossible.

Back at the house we played cards and drank home-brewed Norwegian vodka, illegal, disgusting, but cheap, and it got to job done.

Walter was probably the biggest man I’d ever laid my eyes upon, but he honestly had the bladder of a small child. There’s something about subzero temperatures that really makes you need to take a piss every thirty minutes, but since the bathroom was occupied, he ventured outside to relieve himself.

Moments later we heard him gasp.

“Hey, come and have a look at this!” Walter called from outside.

Not wanting to leave the warm comfort of my chair, I took a large sip of my drink and yelled back at him, “It’s cold as all hell! I’m not coming outside to look at your dick!” The others chuckled, more from the alcohol than my stupid statement.

“No, seriously, there’s something wrong with the sky,” Walter said.

“Alright, coming,” I said as I pushed myself up from the chair, my legs barely wanting to move after an entire day of exploration.

The four of us went outside to find Walter frozen in his place, just staring up at the sky. I glanced up and immediately shared his confusion.

There were two moons.

We all gasped synchronously as we tried to make sense of the bizarre phenomenon in the night sky.

“What the hell?” Luke said. ”It’s got to be an optical illusion, right?”

For a second I let myself believe that was the explanation, but the second moon, though equal in size and shape, had a completely different surface. It was plainer, with less craters and a whiter tone than our own.

“No way, they’re too far away from each other, they don’t even look alike,” I said.

“So what’s your explanation then?” Luke asked.

Samantha, who had been an astronomy aficionado since she was old enough to pronounce ‘rocket’ had remained oddly silent since we got outside.

“The second moon is identical to our own,” she simply stated.

“What, it’s clearly not?” Luke asked, confused.

“No, it really is, it’s just that we’re looking at it from the back, it’s like our moon has been rotated almost 180 degrees. Just look at the edge.”

I tried to see what she meant, and sure enough, the edge of the second moon had landmarks I could recognize on our own.

“What, so the moon split in half or something?” I asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Walter interjected.

“That’s weird, but it’s kind of cool, isn’t it?” Lucas.

“Cool, or terrifying. Fuck if I know,” Samantha said.

We decided that we could get a better view from halfway up Plateau Mountain next to Longyeartown. So we rushed, Walter bringing his camera, in an attempt to capture any kind of proof that we hadn’t all just collectively gotten poisoned from the alcohol and were hallucinating.

As we climbed up we started hearing a strange noise in the distance, just vaguely at first, like an electrical humming from a generator.

“This will do, won’t it?” I asked as we were about one third up the mountain. I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, and climbing up a 1300 feet mountain wouldn’t be my choice for a good time.

We looked back at the sky. Sure enough, the two moons lingered in the sky, both full and ever so bright. The four of us just stared in silence for what felt like an eternity, the humming turning to a buzz as we waited.

“Do you guys hear that?” Walter finally said.

The buzzing sound got louder, and started to localize itself to the village, we glanced down at our neighborhood and realized we realized all the houses had moved around, jumbled up and unrecognizable. Colors were changed, streets turned directly into buildings and shops had simply vanished.

We rushed back down the mountain, but stopped before entering the village. New houses had appeared, extending the settlement to twice its normal size, even Walter who had lived there most of his life couldn’t find his way anymore. “My house was supposed to be right there,” he said as he pointed to an empty piece of land a couple of hundred feet down the hill.

A light appeared where Walter was pointing, indefinable at first, but it quickly took shape as Walter’s home. It looked like static on an old television, but it was clearly a house. As it took shape we could hear a faint screaming coming from inside.

“Shit, shit, shit, my wife is in there!” Walter said as he started running towards the house, we took chase after him.

The closer we got to the obscured version of his home the more uneasy I felt about entering it. A pit formed in my stomach and following my instincts I attempted to stop Walter. Being twice my size, he simply pushed me away and kept running.

“Walter, wait!” I screamed at him just as he passed the barrier from us to the entrance to the house.

He only got halfway in before the house vanished before our eyes, taking just part of Walter with it. He had been split down the middle, and the little part that remained of him simply fell to the ground in a pile of blood and viscera.

“Oh, my God! No, no, no!” Samantha cried as she stared at Walter’s mangled corpse, his face and chest had been stripped away alongside his arm, everything that had made it past the barrier simply cut away.

We couldn’t even process what had just happened before we were all blinded by a flash of light. A completely new village appeared in front of us, the old one mostly stripped away from reality.

Just within reach of the new village, we could hear the panicked yells from the people within. Screams of fear and agony vibrated through the air. We realized that the new village had appeared inside parts of our own, houses merging in ways not possible, people stuck inside walls or cut in half by the vanishing buildings.

We saw one man cut in two at the waist crawling for help, his entrails pouring out as he desperately tried to keep moving, not even realizing that half his body had been taken away from him.

People came running away from the village, some missing legs, one woman seemingly fused with a different version of her, joined at the head like a pair of conjoined twins.

As the people neared us we could see the true devastation of what had happened inside the village. Houses disappeared and reappeared in new locations, anyone unlucky enough to be in the same place was shred to pieces.

One older woman was looking back at the village as she ran away, and ended up colliding with me head-on. I quickly bent down to help her up, and she rambled on about something, only I couldn’t understand what language she was speaking. It wasn’t English or Norwegian, nor Russian. In fact, it didn’t resemble anything I’d ever heard before.

Some man was waving furiously at us as he passed, and even though we couldn’t understand the language, we got the point.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” I said.

“B-b-b, but Walter, we can’t leave him here.”

“He’s dead, Samantha! Come on!”

Luke and I grabbed her and pulled her with us, we were all in shock with just enough basic survival instincts to flee.

We ran away as fast as our legs could carry us, but I couldn’t resist the urge to look back upon the nightmare we were trying to escape. One moment our village was there, and in the next a completely new configuration of houses and streets, they appeared together, merged into each other, and collapsed in a mesh of wood and concrete.

The people fleeing the village seemed to have an idea where to go, so we attempted to follow them, but in another flash, they were simply deleted from existence.

“Oh, my God,” I said.

“Where did they go?” Samantha asked.

I couldn’t answer that, none of us could, things had downhill so fast we hadn’t had half a second to wrap our minds around it.

We stopped. I was starting to feel just how out of shape I was. There were no more screams coming from the village, and it seemed to have mostly settled down into an indefinable mixture of houses and corpses.

“Do you think it’s over?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know, there are still two moons in the sky,” I said.

“We should call someone!”

“I left my phone back at the house.”

“Me, too.”

Despite the chaos, everything felt pretty calm after the people had vanished. We had reached higher ground, giving us a decent view of the area. The village was still morphing at its own volition, but I couldn’t see any signs of life, I guess whoever failed escape must have been dead by then.

“What are we gonna do?” Samantha asked

“The car we parked at the beach,” Luke said.

“So what, we’re on an island. Where are we going to drive?”

“The walkie will be there, and it’ll be enough to keep us warm if it doesn’t disappear like everything else.”

“So basically we just avoid the inevitable?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

While the two of them argued about what to do next I kept watching the horizon. The way it illuminated so much brighter in the moonlight than usual was remarkably beautiful, establishing a certain calmness in the horrific landscape.

Then something broke the purity of the horizon, a creature walking across it, only showing as a silhouette; First one, then two, and before I could even alert the others there were at least three dozen large beings walking in the distance.

“Uh, guys,” I said.

They kept arguing.

“Guys, look!”

The two of them shut up long enough to notice I was pointing at the creatures.

“Shit, are those polar bears?” Luke asked.

“I don’t think so. They’re way too big,” I responded.

“Now we really have to head for the car. The rifles are still there.”

Without any better idea, we started heading for the beach. Midnight had come and gone and the temperature had dropped even further below zero, considering the weather, the clothes we had were far from sufficient.

It was a short trek through the snow, but sure enough, the car was still there, faithfully awaiting our arrival.

“Thank fuck for that!” Samantha exclaimed in joy.

We all rushed over. Samantha excitedly wrapped herself in a thicker jacket she had left in the car.

“Here, grab a rifle,” Luke said as he handed me one of the two.

“I’m not the best shot,” I said nervously.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s just supposed to be loud enough to scare the bears a bit.”

“I don’t think they’re normal bears, man.”

“Well, whatever the fuck they are, they’re not gonna like guns.”

He said it with a strange hint of confidence that didn’t normally come from him.

Samantha grabbed the walkie from the glove compartment.

“Hello?” she said.

“You gotta end it with over, Sam,” I said jokingly, trying to diffuse the tense atmosphere.

“Fuck off.”

The radio responded with static.

“Hello, is there anyone there?”

Nothing.

“I’ll keep trying different channels. Where are we heading next?”

“Well, the car’s dead, so we’re walking, but the airport is only a couple of miles away, so I suggest we head there,” Luke said.

Without disagreeing we started going. I kept my eye on the horizon, seeing more silhouettes gathering, a few were venturing into the broken village, but they were still too far, and I couldn’t fathom what the hell they were.

“Guys, I need a break,” I said after about half an hour of walking. My leg had been aching since the woman collided with me, but the cold had numbed down the pain so far.

“It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it?” Samantha said.

She stood on the side of the road staring at the sky. I had noticed it before, almost mesmerizing to see a new celestial body floating above in our sky, that had remained unchanged as far back in history as anyone could remember. We were the first to see the new moon, but if the world was experiencing the same freakish chaos as ourselves, then I feared we’d also be the last.

After a mile we could see the top of the air traffic control tower, no sooner before we noticed it, the whole structure collapsed to the ground, realizing an impossibly bright, green light as it did.

“What was th–”

Before we could react a loud roar fell over us, one of the creatures emerged from the darkness and stood tall in front of us. It had the exact shape of a polar bear, only larger without any skin covering its body. All we could see was muscle and vessels pulsating across its entire being, skinned from head to toe.

The face was the most horrific part of it. No eyes or ears, only a flesh filled, mangled piece of meat with teeth sticking through in all directions. Despite having no vision, it could somehow sense our whereabouts.

It looked directly at us for a second before charging, we started running. The creature was fast, but the vibrant green light seemed to bother it enough to allow us a head start, though it didn’t take long before it braved the brightness in took chase after us.

Once we gained enough of a distance, I turned to fire at it. To my surprise the shot hit it square in its face, but it barely fazed it. Luke turned to do the same, but as he fired his foot caught onto something and he fell to the ground.

“Shit!” he yelled.

We ran over to pull him off the ground, and he fired a second shot at the creature, he hit it in the leg, causing it to stumble for a moment. It was just enough for us to get Luke back on his feet, but he was slower from the fall.

“I think I messed up my ankle,” Luke said.

I took his arm over my shoulder. The creature was gaining speed again.

“I’m not going to make it like this. Just go!” he said.

“You’re not going to die because of a twisted ankle, you moron,” Samantha insisted as she held his other arm.

For each second the creature got closer to us, even without Luke hanging onto us we wouldn’t be fast enough to get away.

The creature reached us and knocked us all simultaneously to the ground. It reached out its deformed paw and hit Luke’s shoulder. He let out a horrified scream as the claws tore through his skin. Blood immediately started dripping from the wound.

All of a sudden the creature stopped, and a large howl could be heard from the distance, it was distorted and rough, unlike anything I’d ever heard. I could only describe it as vaguely organic, as if some massive animal was screaming out in intense agony.

Without hesitating, the creature started running in the direction of the howl, once again leaving us alone in the darkness.

I collapsed on the ground under Luke’s weight. He had always been far larger than me, a typical gym rat always bugging me to join him.

“Damn you’re heavy, Luke.”

“What was that thing?” he asked out of breath.

None of us knew, how could we, everything had fallen apart, and if I was starting to believe we were in a different world altogether. The green light on the horizon still shined bright, acting as an excellent beacon taking us where we had to go.

Luke was quick to get back on his feet, he tried to act strong, but we could both tell he was in a great deal of pain.

After a long struggle, we finally reached what remained of the airport. It wasn’t an impressive sight, only one runway and a couple of planes next to the few centralized buildings. It was desolate, not another living soul seemed to have made it there.

Unlike the village the airport still looked familiar, though the tower had fallen to pieces, replaced by the blinding green light that had guided us, a strange beacon of hope in the destruction. It simply hung in the air expectantly, waiting for something to happen.

Luke collapsed to the ground as we set foot inside the main building.

“I don’t feel right,” was all he could say.

“It’s alright, Luke. We’re gonna be safe here.”

We dragged him over to one of the office buildings that were connected to the hangar. Luke was sweating bullets. Samantha put a hand to his forehead and checked his temperature.

“Luke, you’re burning up!”

“Yeah, I think something’s wrong,” he responded with slurred words.

“I’m going to check the building for any supplies. I’ll be right back,” I said.

“Sam, I have to tell you something,” I heard Luke say as I left.

I hoped he was confessing his feelings for her, and that they could have a nice moment of happiness to hold onto. Because I suspected things weren’t going to end well for us.

By the time I got back, I had only found a packed lunch, a half-empty bottle of water and a flashlight, but Luke was barely awake, and refused any of it.

Samantha sat next to Luke and held his hand as he fell unconscious. He looked pale, already skinnier than before, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, something seemed to be feeding off him from the inside.

“How’s his shoulder?” I asked.

“It completely healed, but…”

“But what?”

“Look at his skin.”

I shun the flashlight at Luke’s shoulder, there were strange lumps moving beneath his skin, pulsating. I covered up his shoulder, not wanting to think about what these things were. Whatever was happening, we were too ill-equipped to help him, our only hope would be to wait for morning and hopefully find a doctor.

“We should try to get some sleep. It will be easier to deal with everything during the day,” I said.

We huddled up closer around Luke; even inside, it was barely above zero. Exhausted, we quickly fell asleep.

I awoke to Samantha screaming. I shoot quickly to my feet and fumbled around for the flashlight. As I shined the light at her, I could see that she was embraced by dozens of thin, black tendrils all emerging from Luke’s left arm and shoulder.

Luke’s eyes had punctured, black liquid seeping out from the holes, and his chest had been torn open, revealing his lung, infested with thousands of tiny black worms crawling around inside. He was beyond dead, but to my horror, he was still moving. I pulled out my knife and swung at the tendrils around Samantha, they were elastic and it took all the force I had to cut through them, one by one, until Samantha was finally free.

Luke screamed in agony, only it wasn’t his voice. As the tendrils retracted back into his arm, new ones shot out immediately replacing the broken ones.

I grabbed Samantha’s arm and told her to run. She took Luke’s rifle off the ground as we ran past and shoved him to the ground. It only slowed him down for a second before he followed. The tendrils kept him off the ground and pulled his body with them.

We ran into a small storage room and shut the door behind us. Luke smashed into the door at full force, opening it just enough to let the tendrils slither inside. I cut them down as Samantha tried to hold the door shut.

“You have to shoot it!” I yelled at her.

“But, it’s Luke,” she stuttered back.

“No, it isn’t, not anymore.”

She looked at me with terror in her eyes, but she knew what we had to do.

“I’m going to open the door,” I said.

She nodded.

On the count of three, I pulled open the door, and Luke stumbled inside. His face had been split in half down the middle, allowing thousands of tiny, black maggots to pour out from the head.

“Shoot!” I yelled.

Samantha fired off a shot, and it hit him square in the neck. Mixed with the damage from the worms his head tore from his torso and fell to the ground. He stumbled, but remained standing. I slashed at him with my knife and cut him further apart, trying at least to keep him at bay.

“Sam, you gotta get out of here!”

She didn’t listen, but I couldn’t see what she was doing. I could hear her rummage through some cans and equipment.

“I’m not fucking leaving you!” she said as she emptied the content of whatever can she had found over Luke, some of it splashed over onto my face. I could smell the vapors, it was gasoline.

The creature slipped on a mix of its own worms and gas that had fallen onto the ground. I took the opportunity to get away. I dug a lighter out of my pocket and carefully lit it, hoping the drops of gasoline on me wouldn’t ignite.

I threw the lighter at Luke and he immediately engulfed in flames. The worms screeched as they burned to pieces, thousands of tiny burning monstrosities crawling around, lighting up every around them.

The fire spread so quickly, faster than I thought would be possible, and before we could even get out of the way we were surrounded on all sides. The only exit had already started to burn, and I knew then we were going to die with no hope of escaping.

We embraced each other during our final moments and just prayed it would be over quickly, that the smoke would suffocate us before the fire could reach us.

Coughing from the smoke I dared to take a peek at the flames, the whole hangar was starting to collapse, and within a minute of starting the flame, the roof fell on top of us.

Just before passing out I saw the bright green light looming over us, and at its center, I could see the image of a different world, one not destroyed and inhabited by horrific creatures.

Then everything turned dark…

* * * * * *

A voice called out to me, bringing me back from the depths of unconsciousness. The voice was unfamiliar, speaking in Norwegian. I couldn’t understand half of it, but I knew he was asking if I was okay.

I opened my eyes and was hit by the dim light of day, even during an arctic night the mornings are bright enough to tell the difference.

“Where’s Samantha?” was all I could say.

“Oh, you’re English. You mean the girl you were with? Yeah, she’s fine. What happened to you two?” The man bombarded me with questions, but remained silent, still too weak to think properly.

The man pointed to a stretcher carrying Samantha. They had put an oxygen mask on her, but she seemed mostly awake, with only minor bruises and some inhalation. The airport had been fully restored, not even a hint of destruction from the previous night, and no sign of a second moon remained.

We had to spend the next week at their local clinic, trying our best to answer their questions about how we got hurt, and how we managed to get inside the hangar in the middle of the night, and how we had both suffered pretty severe damage from smoke inhalation, despite there having been no fire reported on the island.

Of course, when we recounted the events we had suffered through, they brushed it off to confusion after head trauma, or that we had gotten our hands on some nasty drugs.

Everything seemed fine in the city, nothing had seemingly changed and life went on. We asked if they had found Luke’s body, or that of anyone we knew at all, but there was no record of Luke, or of Walter, so much as setting foot on Svalbard in the last month.

I called home, and though my family was happy to hear from me they couldn’t remember I ever had a friend named Luke, the only proof that I hadn’t gone insane was that Samantha’s memory of everything matched mine.

As night approached, Samantha sat by the window staring into the darkening sky, even with eternal darkness the moon still sets and rises. We both counted the seconds, terrified in anticipation.

Only one moon ever emerged from the horizon, and I let out a sigh of relief as I saw it. Samantha did not share my enthusiasm. I asked her what was wrong and she only pointed at it without speaking a word.

I looked up into the sky and studied the moon. At first, it seemed perfectly normal, and to the untrained eye, everything appeared to be fine, but the more I stared at it, the more I noticed the differences. The landmarks didn’t match, and the color palette was slightly off.

Samantha looked at me with terror in her eyes and confirmed what we both knew to be true.

That wasn’t our moon.