by Guy Riessen
Derrick tried to look down at his legs. There was blood, but he couldn’t focus. He shook his head and regretted it when a wicked pain lanced from the base of his skull to rip at his optic nerves.
Squinting his eyes, he tried to resolve the two giant skeletal figures into one. The creature was pushing its body up through the shattered floorboards. Grave dirt pattered a grim tattoo matching the wet slopping sounds of torn and pulped organs falling free from the bones, the earthen placenta of some obscenely large desecrated grave.
Derrick fought to remain coherent against the mental assault of what he was seeing. Too many organs, he thought watching thick ropes of intestine spill to the floor, loops catching and tearing on the splintered jagged edges of the hole. Then more, tumbling out with slick masses of wet earth ... and more.
Where’s that dirt coming from ... we’re on the second floor?
Why can I only see black beneath the floorboards? What if it grabs Howard and pulls him into that abyss?
Seeing the rip in reality was like staring at a sheet of black carbon nanotubes ... flat-black, nothing. There was no howling sound, but an opening, a void, a gate ... to somewhere else.
With a thick sucking sound, the colossus pulled its giant rotten emaciated feet from the hole in the floor. Chunks of gelatinous flesh sloughed from the bones, sounding like jello squeezed through fingers. The peeling flesh looked strange with skin of different colors mixed with the gray-green pallor of rot. Loose muscle stripped off like string cheese, but didn’t seem to match the bones and tendons. The thing squatted, covering the shrinking rip in reality that had birthed it, hunched in the squalid room that was much too small to contain it. Derrick gasped as the gate between its feet snapped shut.
All he could hear was his own rapid breath and blood shushing through his inner ear ... then the sound of a grinding stone mill rumbled, and the massive skeletal head swiveled toward Derrick.
Broken antlers jutted from the sides of its head, and where eye sockets and nasal cavity should be, the cracked and yellowed bone was rough but featureless. A dim glow like swamp light poured from the thing’s jagged mouth, rotated about the room, casting sulfurous beams through the thick swirling dust.
What the heck is that? No, wait. Where’s Howard? Derrick thought. A vision of half of Howard’s skull, spilling brains and blood as it rocked on the ground where the open gate had been flashed through his mind, and he called Howard’s name, but he couldn’t hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears. One or both of his earplugs must have fallen free when he was blown through the door.
Derrick’s head lolled forward, as his sight began to fade.
Was Howard still teaching his afternoon class? Derrick tried to focus, the sound of clattering and grinding bones just audible over the keening whine; his ears ached. He tried to raise his head, to look toward the sound, but his head felt impossibly heavy.
No, not in class. We were on a road trip ... and ... oh man, we’re in some kind of a real fix, aren’t we?
How the heck did we get into this situation anyway ... oh yeah, Derrick thought, as his brain dipped further into the enticing blackness, that’s right .... We drove here in that stupid VW Bus that Sarah always makes us take on these bug hunts. Never the helicopter, oh no, always the frakkin’ bus.
Dang ...
I hate ...
that stupid bus ...
Derrick could only see contrast variations, grays on blacks. But the darkness was coming. He could hear the chalky grind of bone against wood getting ever closer. The cloying scent of rotting flesh and marrow was so strong that Derrick was panting to avoid breathing deep. His empty stomach clenched again right before he passed out.
DON’T STOP THERE, MAN! Continue reading right now—buy the book on Amazon.com!
About the Author
GUY RIESSEN HAS BEEN a devoted horror, sci-fi, and fantasy fan from day one...maybe it was year five, I dunno, those early years are a little hazy from this end. A fervent gamer, and role-playing zealot who has been happily creating worlds within any system from D&D to Call of Cthulhu for his gaming groups, Guy found the siren call to write speculative fiction impossible to ignore, so he loaded up his truck, and he moved to Beverly....
No wait, hold on, that’s jumping the gun a bit ... he was a phlebotomist—before it was even cool to be a phlebotomist. Then, not ready to give up the ‘ph,’ he spent several years managing a photolab back when cameras had to be filled with stuff called film, which despite the name, had almost nothing to do with soap scum. Oh, and there were a dozen years spent drawing pixels on a computer screen and calling it video game art ... followed by another dozen years drawing pixels on a computer screen, but this time calling it visual effects for motion pictures. There was some other stuff mixed in there—construction, computer programming, a degree from UC Berkeley—but, man, when there’s a siren call, you answer it, right? I mean, it ain’t Avon, it’s an effin’ siren, yeah?
So, he decided to start creating high-octane thrill-rides, made of cool words and rad punctuation, about badass Miskatonic Researchers laying down the hurt on the minions of the Mythos, and other sweet dark fiction thrillers jacked up on nitrous and a wide-open throttle. And that’s when you guys join the story, so buckle up, man, it’s time to rock and roll!
Or you could do the tea thing, in a comfy chair, kickin’ back with your paperback or your e-reader. There’s always that, and Guy won’t judge. He’s cool like that.
But what about Beverly Hills? What? Nah, man, the dude lives in the tiny town of Sebastopol, CA.
VISIT HIS WEBSITE AT www.guyriessen.com for FREE FICTION & NEWS
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