Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (9 page)

Too much. He'd needed the escape. The pills were a common enough sedative. But one in thirty-five experienced hallucinogenic side-effects. Teller was that lucky one.

Like she could read his mind, Fynn opened a desk drawer, removed something and slid it into his hands. Another pill bottle. But the clicking of the pills against plastic sounded wrong. "Lower dosage," she said. "Make these last five days. Withdrawal might be a bit more acute, but stay with it. This is the hard part. If you make it five days, we can get you off the pills in two more weeks." She moved to the doorway, body language making it clear it was time to get out.

He did.

"I have to get back to surgery," she said, closing and locking the door. "Let me know on your next run to the incinerator." She hurried down the hall toward the hospital section.

Dismissive. In charge. Telling him what to do.

At least she didn't want to fuck.

If he'd just gone to another doctor, told him about the pills, that he wanted to get clean. In too deep, now. If he went to Colonel Brice, told him everything, she'd get a slap on the wrist. An officer. A surgeon. He was a junkie corpsman. The stockade. Or transferred to infantry.

Tongue dry, imagining the bitter pill dissolving on his tongue, reality warping. His junkie mind's automatic reaction to stress.

But he was close to kicking the habit. He'd resisted the tickling need to get high until he couldn't stand it. Each time longer and longer. He'd beat it on his own. He wouldn't need her.

But his junkie mind needed to show her she'd fucked with the wrong guy.

*****

Shelling pulled him up and out of dreamless sleep.

Body well-practiced, he had on his pants, helmet, boots before fully awake. A shirt in hand, he sprinted to the bunker, joining the group funneling for its depths. The night exploded yellow-red, bits of gravel raining down on them.

Fynn would be headed there, too. Hunkered down, waiting it out, tapping into her damn tablet. Then into surgery for those who'd been hit.

Crazy, but this was his shot. He broke off from the group, running between a low, wide supply shed, its corrugated metal sides rattling in the concussions, and the main administrative building. Flattened out on the ground, arms over his head, he fought against digging into his pants pockets. Fynn had been right—they weren't as strong. Only lasted about two hours. But kicked in quicker.

An explosion spit light and heat, gravel peppering against his helmet. Someone screamed: "My leg! My fucking leg!"

On their own, hands dug for the bottle, opened it, and popped a pill into his mouth.

Each concussion lasted longer, deeper. Ancient gods furious he could plumb the depths of their ancient wisdom.

When the sound of men and machines replaced the explosion of shells, he stood, brushed himself off and wandered out into the base's grid work of gravel roads. He moved quickly, purposefully like the soldiers and vehicles around him. They shouted orders and reports about damage and causalities. Fires lit up the compound, sirens sounded, people screamed. He stumbled over a piece of rebar, scorched black, and picked it up.

Suitably high, either his courage stoked or fear deadened, he made his way out toward her shed, hoping he moved like someone with purpose and not a junkie well into his high.

Reaching the shed, he slid the rebar into the lock's clasp, settled one end against the frame and yanked. The lock popped and he opened the door.

An ozone smell and something else—fleshy, meaty—made this stomach roll. Running his hands over the wall, his eyes and ears told him something moved just as he found and flipped the light switch.

Fleshy things skittered and flopped across the floor. A creature of eight arms, joined at the shoulders, moved like a spider, palms slapping as it scampered toward him. Two legs led up to a metal box, a head emerging from its top, strode back and forth. A torso without a head, but arms emerging from both shoulders and hips, marched in a circle. On tables along the walls, more of these things moved among tools, scraps of machinery, vials and beakers, rolls of that fine silver wire.

She'd slipped something into the pills, Teller told himself. Fucking him over. A hallucination, fueled by what he'd seen on her tablet. If what he'd seen on the tablet had even been real—

The door clicked shut. A thing of three legs meeting in a swollen torso wobbled at the door, one of its three arms pressing it closed.

Not realizing he'd wandered into the middle of the room, Teller turned 360, the tables bowing and sagging. A creature of two hands, attached at the wrists, with a single eyeball perched where the hands met, flitted across it.

"Who are you?" something asked.

It was the two legs and head.

"What the fuck?" spilled out of Teller's mouth. "No. Nonononono."

The two legs and head tottered toward him, the arm-spider following. Something in the legs-head monster whirred. "You should not be here." It whirred again. "Mother said so."

"Mother?" Teller backed up toward the door, not sure how he'd deal with the tripod that guarded it.

"Mother." Whirring. "She was Dr. Fynn, but gave us life. That makes her mother." Whirring again. Some kind of fan. That's how it spoke without lungs. "You shouldn't be here without mother's permission. Mother said we must keep her secret. No one can know."

The arm-spider rushed him, six arms propelling it, the front two extended.

How does it see? shot through Teller's mind, taking a step back before the arm-spider was on him. Front arms wrapped behind Teller's knees, the rest pushing forward. Teller went down hard, pain shooting up his tailbone, shocking him out of his high. A second set of arms wrapped around his legs. The two-hand thing climbed down the table. Something he didn't see slapped across the floor. Things of all shades of flesh crawled and slithered.

His eyes fixed on silver threads holding the arms together. He swung a fist down on where they met and felt hard, sharp edges beneath the skin. Its grip weakened for a moment, but a third pair of arms grabbed him, the front pair shifting to reach around his waist. He swung again, loosening its grip, allowing him to roll over, pinning it squirming beneath him. If he could crawl for the door—

A blur of motion. Something small sprang at him. The two-hand thing, headed for his throat. Teller managed to catch it, hands grasping its fingers, and tried to pull them apart. Silver stitches popped, gray-black liquid seeped from where they came loose. The fingers of the things twitched in Teller's, the eyeball shifting back and forth. He angled his hands up, not just pulling but cracking. His eyes fixed on the thick black hairs on the back of one hand, the smooth skin of the other. The two hands came apart with a wet crunch. He threw them as a snake made of finger joints, two feet long, slithered close.

Fynn's voice: "Stop!"

The snake halted, curling into a coil. The arm-spider, still trapped beneath him, ceased squirming. Teller kicked it off.

The head-legs whirred and said, "Mother, we were doing as you—"

"I meant him!" she screamed. "Tell me what you're doing here." The things circled around Fynn as she moved into the room.

"You're insane!" Teller shouted, getting to his feet.

"Answer me! Answer—
Oh no!" She sobbed, sinking to her knees and cradling the remains of the two hands Teller had ripped apart. "What did you do?" she wailed.

"You're—" he began, making for the door. Words failed him.

"You're high," she said, laying the hands down gently. Almost lovingly. "Doesn't matter what you think you saw. Who will believe you?" She stood, turning, following Teller out the door and into the cool night. In the doorway, half-lit from the shed's light, she said: "In an hour, Colonel Brice will know you're addicted to pills and suffering hallucinations." Reds and golds danced on the shed's sides from the fires burning across the compound. She turned back. "I'll protect you," he heard her say before the door slammed shut. "I'll make sure no one finds you."

Teller turned for the base, heading for the administrative building at the far end of the compound. She'd tell, he knew. He had to go to Brice first. Tell his side. He jogged a dozen steps, stumbled and vomited into the sand. After the final wretch, he looked back at the shed. Light spilled out around the door's edges. Shadows of things horrible and inhuman moved across a narrow window high on the wall.

He stopped between two tents, cloaked in shadow, spitting bile. How much of a fall would he take for the revenge of exposing Fynn? He'd have to admit to being on pills, stealing them, everything. Even implicate Sallen.

What if Brice didn't punish her, but rewarded her? Those things were recycled soldiers. Warriors. The pills still working, he imagined a battalion of body parts scrambling across the desert toward the enemy. Hands blown off arms, then hands combining into another creature that kept advancing on the enemy.

The adrenaline rush fading, nausea's warm, damp fingers slid around him. His head went light, cold sweat on his scalp. Fuck it. He had to tell. Come clean. Get free of her.

Looking up, the administrative building seemed further way, pulling back down a tunnel. Ears ringing, head light—

—wiping sand off his face. Dawn touched the eastern horizon pink. Pushing himself to his feet, memories of the previous night flashed across his mind. He was clean, he knew. He felt it and, with sunrise at 0530 hours, it meant he'd been out almost six hours. The drugs would be out of his system.

Ahead of him, the base moved as it always did. Soldiers walking at a brisk pace, vehicles roaring from one place to another. Overhead, drones circled, waiting for a pad to drop off wounded.

What had happened?

She must have seen or found out he hadn't been there for the headcount in the bunker. She'd gone looking for him.

Everything else had to be the pills. Pills cut with bad shit to really make him freak out.

Behind him, the shed's lights were off, its door open and banging against the metal wall in the hot desert wind. He moved toward the shed in an arc so he could see in its door from a distance. Yet the doorway remained flat and dark, the sunrise at the wrong angle to illuminate the interior. He moved closer, slowly, finding wheel tracks in the sand leading to the shed door. Narrow, not too deep. A light duty jeep.

Close enough to make out shapes within—all blessedly flat and angled—he approached the doorway. The shapes resolved into tables and crates, but not the elaborate set up of last night. And without the jumble of materials, there was no place for the things to hide.

Had any of it happened? Or had she packed up her gear? But where would she take it? He knew one thing for certain—with the shed empty, he had nothing. She'd played him again, still held all the cards.

Not sure where to go, he moved to the hospital. He had a shift that would have started at 0400 hours. The jones for a pill grated on him. Their promise of sweet oblivion called to him. Needing them to get through another shift. He dug in his pocket, knew the withdrawals he'd faced, and threw the bottle as far as he could.

The duty sergeant gave him an earful. There was a load to go to the incinerator. Teller grabbed the cart and took the elevator to the lower level, wondering if Fynn would be waiting with another bottle.

The elevator doors opened and he wheeled the cart forward. In the shadows, he fought to ignore motion in his peripheral vision. His junkie heart, trying to scare him, make him want that fix. The scampering sounds were rats, the dull slapping sounds the machinery of the place.

Rounding the corner, the door to the incinerator room hung open. Slowly, he wheeled the gurney forward. Two sets of legs lay on the ground, partially obscured by another gurney. One in scrubs, the other an MP's black fatigues. Black medical bags covered the gurney. Most empty, but a few remained zipped shut, their contents twisting and squirming against the black plastic.

Bile rose in Teller's mouth. He backed out into the hall. Sallen and Fynn, something within him concluded. She's gathered those things and bought off Sallen. She was going to destroy her children. In case Teller told. Then find another junkie. Start someplace else.

But they'd rebelled. They were warriors, after all. Killers.

He turned. Shadows moved and slithered. Impossible shapes, like a spider made of eight human arms, hovered in the shadows. Behind him, zippers slid open, flesh slid against plastic.

Teller bolted for the staircase. The flat slapping of eight palms pursued him.

Lawrence C. Connolly

Lawrence C. Connolly’s books include the novels
Veins
(2008) and
Vipers
(2010), which together form the first two books of the
Veins Cycle
.
Vortex
, the third book in the series, is due in 2013. His collections, which include
Visions
(2009),
This Way to Egress
(2010), and
Voices
(2011), collect all of his stories from
Amazing Stories
,
Cemetery Dance
,
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
,
Twilight Zone
, and
Year’s Best Horror
.
Voices
 
was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award
™
, Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. He teaches writing at Sewickley Academy and serves twice a year as one of the residency writers at Seton Hill University’s graduate program in Writing Popular Fiction.

Kevin paused by a frozen creek to check his GP
S
. He was in deep, miles from the road, surrounded by old growth pines. It was getting late, but there was something about the stillness of the frozen valley, the soft shadows of the trees, and the shimmer of light on the glazed rocks that made him want to savor the place. He snapped some pictures and continued on.

The creek valley was steep, naturally contoured by centuries of flowing water. He climbed out, pausing beside an ancient pine, roots exposed along the brink. He took a long, slow piss against its trunk, then turned and headed south toward an even deeper valley. And it was here that he found the charred remains of a derelict farmhouse, scorched beams standing upright amid drifting snow and ash. It had been recently burned, the smell of char still fresh in the air. He snapped some more pictures. Then he continued east, moving along a flood plain, finally coming to a draw that brought him into sight of a deformed hillside: right angles, stunted trees, tangled weeds. He knew the signs. Years ago, the slope had been mined.

He pushed on, taking pictures as he went, then putting the phone away as he climbed along a series of bench cuts to the crest of yet another valley, deeper than the others. And here, a hundred yards below, stood a dozen buildings: dark, silent, abandoned.

The sky ahead was deep blue, almost purple. Behind him it was black. He took out the phone again, checking his weather stats to verify what his eyes already told him. The sun had set. It was time to go.

He took a wide-angle shot, marked his location on the digital map, then turned and started back, making good time until his sense of solitude was broken by five men approaching through the trees on his left. There were more to his right. One of them carried a shotgun.

They spread out, surrounding him.

He reached for his phone.

"Hold on!" the shotgun man stepped closer. "Just hold up right there." He wore a patchwork of animal hides, fur turned inward for warmth. His hat was a hollowed out raccoon, head facing front, jaws molded into a dead snarl. "Right there." The gun looked heavy, with two iron barrels that became 12-gauge holes as the man took aim at Kevin's head. "You out for a stroll?"

"Yes. I mean...no. Not really."

The man sighted across the barrel. "Which is it?" His accent wasn't local. It came from somewhere to the east. New York, maybe Boston.

Most of the other men carried railroad shovels. One carried a pickax. 

"You with the government?" the shotgun man asked.

"No." He was trembling now.

"What then?"

"Nothing...just a blogger. I write about ghost towns, abandoned houses, old places--things like that."

"Why?"

"It's interesting."

"People pay you?"

"No. I just do it. Like a hobby." He looked at the others. "Listen. I don't represent anyone. I'm not with the government. I'm just—"

"Got a name?"

"Kevin."

"Where you from, Kevin?"

"Pittsburgh."

"How'd you get here?"

"Car."

"Who drove?"

"No one."

"It drove itself?"

"No. I drove. It's just me."

"Where's the car?"

Kevin pointed. "The county road. I'm heading back now."

The man considered, then said: "What's in the pack?"

"Not much. Just stuff. A little food. Some water."

"And that?" He pointed to Kevin's hand.

"My phone." Kevin showed him. "I use it to—"

"All right, Kevin. I know what phones do. Now here's what." The man stepped closer, still aiming. "You're going to put everything you're carrying and wearing into that pack of yours. Understand?"

"Why?"

"You're going to mash it in real tight, as much as you can fit. Everything else I want you to just fold up and set on the ground."

"My clothes too?"

"That's right."

Kevin studied the gun. It was a breech loader
. Two shots
.
Then he reloads. If I run, maybe
. . . .

"I don't have all day, Kevin!"

"I don't understand."

"It's not complicated"

"What do you want?"

"I told you."

"Listen." Kevin slipped the pack from his shoulder.  "You can have my stuff. Take my phone. It's got a camera, GPS, Internet—"

"What I want you to do is put it in the pack!"

Kevin fingered the screen. "I'm calling 911."

"And tell them what? Come get you? Even if you have a signal, how long will that take for them to get here? This isn't the city, Kevin." He aimed at the phone. "Truth be told, I wouldn't mind blasting that thing. Give me a reason, and I will." He stepped closer, barely three yards between them now. "In the sack, Kevin. Just do it. Phone, clothes, everything."

"I'll freeze."

"Not if you hurry." 

The others stared, and Kevin felt something break inside him, a realization that resisting would just piss them off, make things worse. "All right." He pulled off a glove, felt the wind against his skin. Then he pulled off the other, put them in the pack, unzipped his coat.

The shotgun man turned toward the pickax man. "All right. Get it done."

The pickax man looked young, wispy beard, rash of acne. College age. He paused beside Kevin's pack, lifted the pick, brought it down hard on the frozen ground.
WHUMPH!
Dirt flew, the impact echoing from the trees. Another swing.
WHUMPH!

"What's he doing?" Kevin asked.

"Digging."

WHUMPH!

"Why?"

WHUMPH!  WHUMPH!

"We're waiting, Kevin. And you're wasting time." The gun had two hammers. The man cocked these now, one at a time. In the cold, the leavers popped like cracking joints.

Kevin took off his coat and tried shoving it into the pack. It wouldn't fit. He set it on the ground and unbuttoned his shirt.

By now the pickax man had cut a two-foot trench and was stepping back as the shovel men advanced. They looked to be in their mid-twenties. One had a full beard. The others had maybe a month's growth between them, dark shadows against the lines of their cheeks and jaws. They set about clearing the trench as Kevin removed his boots and socks. The snow bit hard against his soles, but he kept stuffing the pack, straining the seams. 

"Can you zip it?"

Kevin tried. The seams popped, but the bag held. Only his coat and boots remained outside.

By now the shovel men had piled the dirt into a berm beside the trench. The thing looked like a miniature grave.  Too small for a man . . . unless that man were chopped into sections with a pickax.

"It'll do." The shotgun man turned to one of the diggers. "Trevor. Come on. Let's get this done."

Trevor raised his shovel, then looked at Kevin. "This isn't personal, you know." Trevor's accent was different from the shotgun man's, more Midwest than Boston. "This isn't against you,
per se
." Then Trevor swung the shovel, bringing it down hard against the side of Kevin's pack, knocking it into the trench. A few more swings took care of the coat and boots. Then Trevor and the others set to work putting the dirt back in the hole. 

"You got anything else, Kevin?" the shotgun man asked.  "Things I can't see? Hearing aid? Implants?"

"No."

"Contact lenses?"

"No!" He was freezing now. "Nothing. What're you going to do?"

The man nodded toward the others, and one of them tossed something at Kevin. It landed, rolling like a severed head. It was a canvas sack.

"Honest clothes," the shotgun man said. "Shoes too. Put them on before you freeze."

The sack had a pair of loop handles tied together to secure the things inside. Kevin fumbled with the knot, shivering as he pulled it apart. Inside he found a wool sweater, flannel shirt, vintage jeans, rawhide belt, leather boots. No underclothes. The pants were wide and long. He cinched the belt and rolled the legs to his ankles. The boots were of a straight-cut pattern, no curves to differentiate right from left. The innersoles were contoured with the impression of another man's toes. 

"You need to put that sack on too. Over your head, cover your face."

By now the trench in the ground had been completely filled in, his personal effects buried beneath a mound of earth. If they killed him now, there'd be nothing above ground to prove he'd ever been here.

"The sack, Kevin. Put it on."

"You going to—" His voice cracked. "You going to shoot me?"

"Not unless I have to."

"So why do I need a hood?"

"To keep you from seeing."

"Seeing what?"

"Put it on, Kevin. Now!"

Kevin pulled the sack over his head. Then someone came up behind him, tugged the handles, tied them tight.

"All right. Let's go." A hand took his arm. "Walk with us. Slow and steady."

*****

They moved for what seemed a quarter of an hour. Then the hand tugged hard, making him stop. "There's a stoop here." The voice belonged to Trevor, the one who had told him this whole thing was nothing personal.

Kevin's next step thumped on wood. A moment later the wind fell away. He felt warmer. His footsteps echoed. He was inside. A left turn. Then a right. Then pressure on his shoulder, easing him down. "Just sit still a second. Almost done."

Hands grabbed Kevin's feet, lifted his legs, removed his boots. Then something cold touched his ankle, encircled it, clicked into place. He felt the weight of a chain.

"Like I said, it's nothing personal." 

Footsteps receded. When Trevor spoke again, his voice was far off, maybe a dozen feet away: "You can take off the sack now, Kevin."

Kevin tugged the knot, yanking the canvas from his head as the men exited down a dim hallway, leaving him in a wooden room with a high, plastic-covered window. 

He was sitting on a pressboard sheet atop rough-hewn legs. A quilt covered the board. That was it. No mattress or pillow. Two buckets sat on the floor beside him, old metal things, dented and empty.

A cast-iron stove burned in the corner, throwing a ruddy glow toward the hall. He got up. The chain dragged behind him, going taut after three steps. He called toward the door. "Hey!"

A knothole popped in the stove, sparks spewing through the grate. There was no other sound, no sense that his captors were still in the building.

"Anybody out there?"

The floor felt cold. 

"Can I have those boots back?"

No sound but the crackling fire.

Standing at the limits of the chain, he saw the edge of another room as the far end of the hall. He seemed to be in an old farmhouse, the kind of place he blogged about, but tidied up as if his abductors had been squatting here for a while.

"Hey!"

Still no answer.

He returned to the cot, stood atop it, tried seeing out the window. The plastic sheeting snapped in the wind. He turned an ear to it, listening as something banged in the night, lonely and intermittent:
Whump.  Whump-ump.  Whump!
 

"No!" A voice spoke from behind him. "You can't do that!" A woman had entered from the hall. "You can't see out that window. It's plastic, not glass." She wore a coat over a loose-fitting dress, frayed around the cuffs and collar, hem dark from dragging. She carried a tray. "There's nothing to see anyway." She set the tray on the floor, then stepped back. "Besides, you shouldn't mess with things you don't know."

"You mean the window?"

"I mean things you don't know."