Snapping bones.
Guy continued to fire. His vision blurred, his mouth opened in a wild scream…
~*~
Fran’s voice sounded shaky. “I think he’s in shock…”
Michael shook his shoulders. “Guy… you ok?”
Guy looked around wildly for a second before realizing where he was. “I’m… I’m fine.” He placed a trembling hand to his temple. “It’s just that I’ve… seen this before.”
“What about Drake?” Fran’s face was waxen, her eyes almost too large.
Michael looked up.
Drake’s twitching body was swallowed by the web-lined darkness above their heads. Lightning flashed. It seemed that Drake still had enough frantic ingenuity to hold on to the pistol that Guy loaned him. The retorts where the only sound in the world; thunder that shuddered the railing metallically in response. With every muzzle flare Michael caught a glimpse of the Drake’s flailing form. He was helpless as a fly in the webbing that snared him, gossamer ropes that sadistically yanked him up through the thin alley between the stairwells.
The click of empty bullet chambers told him that Drake was finished. The silence that followed was worse than that echoing clamor that preceded it. Michael realized that he held his breath; he couldn’t seem to find the will to command his lungs. He shot a panicked glance at Guy and Fran; they both stared upward as though carbonized in shock.
Blood rained on their upturned faces.
The crimson shower resurrected their lucidity. Michael released his breath in a shuddering gasp, gripping his knees. Fran almost bowled him over when she barreled into his chest, sobbing. Even Guy looked sickened; he gripped his shotgun as though it was a magical key to transport them away from the nightmare they were trapped in.
And in the corner Greg’s corpse lay as though mocking them.
There is no escape,
it seemed to whisper.
Look at me, and witness what will happen to you…
Michael clutched Fran protectively as they backed away from where Drake had been seized. “Guy… we can’t go up now. Not with that…
thing
waiting for us.”
“It’s one of the Others.”
Guy seemed to be unaware that Michael and Fran were still there. He muttered as though thinking aloud. “Just like the rat… it would have kept growing if we hadn’t killed it. The first time it was
insects
… one of the spiders must have killed all the others, and grew… larger and larger. Then it came up the stairwell, as a… sentry. It guards the passage…”
“Uh, Guy? Still with us?”
Guy gave a start. “No choice. We can’t go back. The Others have fully evolved by now. They won’t let us go back down. No way to go but up.”
“Are you
crazy
?” Fran’s screech almost shattered Michael’s eardrums. “Didn’t you just see what happened to
Drake
?”
“It changes nothing.” Guy checked the shells for his shotgun methodically, as though he had all the time in the world.
“Jesus, Guy. How can you be so
callous
? This was someone we
knew
, for Christ’s sake.”
Guy looked up coldly. “Would you rather it were the whole world, Michael? Don’t you get it? That’s what we’re up against.” He pulled the long dagger from its sheath. “Better men than him have been sacrificed for the sake of this war. I know, because I was there. So listen. I’ll go first, and keep this ready. If the spider tries to snag me, hopefully I can cut the strands in time.”
Michael disentangled from Fran’s clutches and stood straighter. “Look, Guy… I’m not going with you.”
“
We’re
not going with you,” Fran said, taking hold of his arm.
Michael looked at her. Staring at him so confidently, for the first time she actually looked… lovely. He looked back at Guy. “
We’re
not going up there.”
Guy stared at them for what seemed a long time. “You know you’re going to
die
, don’t you?”
Michael swallowed hard. “It… it doesn’t seem to matter, does it? Up, down… none of us are going to get through this night alive, are we?”
Guy gave a rueful shrug. “I don’t know. But I do know that there’s only one person with experience dealing with these things, and that’s not you, Michael.”
“Come
with
us, Guy. You’re the one who said if we stick together then we make it out alive. The Others
have
to better than facing…”
Guy suddenly put his finger to his lips. “Do you hear…?”
At first there was nothing but a smothering blanket of dreadful silence. Then it became worse. A thumping sound became distinctly audible; the sound of something heavy carelessly banging against the stairwells as it descended.
Guy raised his shotgun. “Get ready.”
The thumping grew louder, closing in on where they stood drenched in a cesspool of apprehension. Michael wasn’t sure what he expected, but what finally descended made him want to vomit until he blacked out; the only thing that stopped him was his throat clamped by the choking fingers of his own fear.
It was Drake.
Only his upper torso remained as he hung upside down. The rest of him was just… missing. The flesh was torn raggedly and bonded to the webbing. What happened to the rest of him was something Michael didn’t want to consider.
Ghostly strands dangled him like a macabre puppet; his head jerked spasmodically as though searching for what his eyes could no longer capture. They had been replaced with cotton webbing. The same lined his mouth when he spoke. His sound was muffled, and the voice nothing like Drake’s at all. The strands pulled; one of Drake’s arms swung as though beckoning.
“It’s safe now,” it said through its web-lined maw. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you, I
promise
…”
17
Cryptid
Trucidation
Fran turned away from the blood-spattered puppet, gagging. They had averted the flashlights, but that only made the shadowy form all the more hideous. The top half of Drake still dangled from the thick ropes of webbing that was lost to darkness above them. Something even worse waited up there; something that had torn Drake in half like a soggy piece of rotten chicken. The strings jerked again. Drake’s head and arms bobbed morbidly; the voice that was not his spoke again through his cotton-stuffed mouth.
“Don’t be scared. Nothing is going to hurt you.”
Blood dribbled from its lips.
She wished it would stop, that the disgusting thing would just
die
, even if it
was
Drake; or that she would wake up and find out that this was all a sickening nightmare. But she knew it wasn’t. Her stomach was a mire of gas and froth. She couldn’t remember any dream where she had flatulence.
“Come on up. Don’t be afraid.”
Michael held an arm around her protectively, the only comfort she had to cling to. So long as he was there, she could clutch to the foolish hope that they might make it out alive. She and Guy both had their guns trained on the Drake puppet, but neither had fired. There was no need. Drake was obviously dead; the thing that jerked spasmodically in front of them was just a pulpy wad of lifeless flesh.
They backed away slowly, creeping down a few steps until Guy stopped. The puppet continued its gibbering.
“
Don’t be scared. All you have to do is come up a few more steps.”
They tried to ignore its babble as it gesticulated impatiently.
“No way we can go up further, Guy.” Michael’s voice had tapered to a ragged whisper. “Not with something that can do…
that
. Come with us. We’ll have a better chance against the Others.”
“No.” Dry ice coated Guy’s voice. “They have fully evolved now. There is no way to get past them. You have to trust me, Michael. We can get through this if we stick together.”
“Don’t be afraid…”
“Guy… I can’t.” Michael’s sweaty face contorted in indecision. Fran wanted to cry at his expression. “This is
beyond
sick. I
can’t
go up there… you understand, don’t you? I just can’t.”
“Come on up…”
Guy looked at them for a moment before he reluctantly nodded. “I understand.”
“Come
with
us, then.”
“I can’t.”
“
Don’t be scared
…”
“You
can’t
face whatever’s up there, Guy! None of us can. You’re just going to die like Drake did.”
Guy’s face was almost hidden in the gloom, but his eyes shone with terrible intensity, making his words all the more ominous.
“You are closer to death than I am, Michael. You forget that I’ve seen these kinds of things before. If you go back, you go without me. We never look back. There is nothing except death behind us.”
For some reason she desperately wanted to tell Michael change his mind. It was something in Guy’s voice, something dark and terrible, like… prophecy. Yet her tongue thickened; her throat constricted on the words before she could utter them.
The instant shattered when Michael turned away with an inarticulate cry.
“Come on, Fran. We have to go now.” As he pulled her away, she realized how good it felt to
move
, to recede from the perverted scene. Guy appeared terribly alone as she took a last look behind; he stood in the darkness with a shotgun and a pen flashlight; small defense against the heavy gloom that coagulated with every step that separated them. The Drake puppet was a bizarre shadow that writhed among other shadows, a whispered voice that crawled in her ear in a final attempt to drive her mad.
“Come back. You’re going the wrong
way
…”
She turned and descended after Michael, leaving Guy to his fate.
“Come
on
, Fran.” Michael’s whisper was urgent as he seized her arm. It struck her then that Michael was terribly afraid. He had been able to summon a façade of boldness before, but that house of cards had collapsed when they had separated from Guy. Now that it was on him to make decisions, she could see the doubt and fear that flickered across his face.
They stopped at the fifth floor doorway. Michael looked around frantically. “Did you hear that?”
She tried to swallow the sagebrush that dragged in her throat. “What is it?”
“I thought I heard…” His eyes stretched to golf balls, but the gloom was thick and his light grew dimmer by the second. He rapped the flashlight, but it stubbornly continued to defy him.
“Damn… Let’s step inside for a minute. The emergency lights are still on. I can’t take this darkness anymore. Do you still have that pistol?”
Fran pulled the .38 from her pocket and nodded.
Michael hefted the hammer. “Don’t know what good this will do, but it’s better than nothing. Ready?”
She raised the pistol and took a deep breath. He nodded and slowly opened the door.
The red glare of the emergency lights blinded them momentarily. They winced as they frantically searched the room. Fran swiveled the pistol from side to side, gasping.
The large sifters in the center of the room shook back and forth; casting heavy shadows that rocked to and fro in almost sinister indifference. Nothing leaped out to seize them; no monstrous rats or spiders lay in wait. She sighed with relief.
A fluttering motion caught their eyes. Michael pointed with a trembling finger.
“Fran…”
A large shape clung to the ceiling, almost perfectly camouflaged. It was the wings that caught her eye, paper-thin delicate things that stirred from the movement of the sifters.
It was the largest moth she’d ever seen.
Michael motioned with his hand. There were more of the man-sized moths, clinging to the walls and ceiling so motionlessly that she had not noticed earlier. They did not appear threatening, but…
Michael put a finger to his lips, and pointed back to the door. She nodded. Better to err on the side of caution.
As Fran turned, her arm swung… and caught the edge of one of the sifters. The .38 was knocked out her hand with a metallic
clang
and clattered across the floor.
Someone screamed.
It was so desperate, so
human
that Fran looked around wildly for the woman in distress. Nothing was there.
Except for what dropped from the ceiling.
The wings were what had made it look moth-like. The rest was humanoid in shape with soft gray down covering its elongated body. Red eyes glimmered in its face, eyes that were too large, too alien to be human. The slightest flutter of its wings caused it to float from the floor as though its body was weightless. Guy had been right.
The Others had fully evolved.
It opened its mouth and screamed again. The rest became agitated, drifting from the walls and ceiling with answering shrieks. She pressed against Michael, covering her ears. He looked from one to the next with widened eyes, shaking the hammer at them to keep them at bay.
“That’s enough! Don’t come any closer!”
His voice quivered and did nothing to halt their advance. Their screams continued as they pressed in from all around in numbers so thick she could see nothing but ruby eyes and fluttering wings. Fingers touched her, soft caterpillars that crawled on her flesh.
She screamed and lashed out wildly. To her shock the hand tore apart in a cloud of powder. Michael swung the hammer; it easily penetrated a mothman’s chest. They struck repeatedly, but for every creature that fell another took its place. There was no blood, only fine powder that hung in the air. It filled her nostrils until she couldn’t
breathe
, until she coughed so hard that fire seared her lungs
.
Screams vibrated in her eardrums, causing the world to sway in washed out colors; red gleaming eyes and soft gray bodies. Fingers clutched unnaturally strong, pulling with relentless insistence. She and Michael were yanked away from each other, lost in a sea of mothmen and floating powder.