by Troy McCombs
"You don't want to go down there, trust me. It's unnecessary to our objective. Upstairs is where the real problem awaits."
"I want to see it, John. I gotta see this for myself. Now, you can wait here for me, or come along. Whatever the hell that sound was, it sounded like it was dying a horrible death. Didn't you feel the vibrations through the floorboards?"
John sighed. He was not about to fail his mission because Charlie was curious to see one of these beings face to face. And he was not about to let him go into the pitch black basement alone, either.
"We'll just take a look. If anything goes wrong, we'll come right up." Steera led the way through the doorway, through the dingy, disgusting old kitchen, and over to the basement, whose door was lying in many pieces across the pantry room floor.
The gun gripped firmly in his hands, and his index finger hot on the trigger, the Sheriff turned and aimed into the dark expanse of nothingness. Neither man could see a thing but for three steps down from the top. Some green goo was splattered on all of them.
Charlie removed a mag-light from his belt, clicked it on, and shined it. The large, direct beam better illuminated the organic fluid, which bubbled in response to the light. It had an adverse reaction to 75 watts of tungsten—a staple of human necessity.
"Wow." Steera was intrigued. A look of childlike wonder appeared on his chubby face. "Incredible. Look what happens when I point my beam away from it."
"Yes," John sighed, amazed also at the extreme biomechanical complexities of the bizarre substance. It bubbled, deflated, bubbled, and deflated again as Charlie continued to point the flashlight to and fro. John got the idea after the first few times. "Can we?"
"Sorry." Charlie headed down the basement steps slowly, stepping over the green stuff, John right behind him. They maneuvered around some broken boards on the way.
Once at the bottom, Charlie stood in place and shined his beam around, panning from the far left corner to the far right. The entire room was doused in the olive-colored matter: the floor, rafters, walls, windows, and shelves. It seemed that wherever Steera aimed his light, there were more bubbly reflexes. "It's like something died..."
John didn't like this. He knew it was the bodily fluid, or blood, from the shrub that had almost ended him. Now something more powerful had ended it.
This theory was proved a second later:
"What in the hell is that thing!" Steera focused the light with a hand. The beam diffused and illuminated John's worst fears: the deceased and mutilated form of the massive carnivorous vegetation slumped over in the far corner. Thousands of thin branches and vines had been shredded apart. Petals were brown, blackened, smelling like rancid garlic. The entity had been burrowed through thoroughly. What John assumed was its head—the large, once-united spherical mass of tendrils—looked as though it had been blown apart by a bomb. Nothing moved except for the disembodied blood.
"John, was this a living...thing?"
"Yeah, and it almost killed me. That's why I didn't want to come down here."
Steera pointed the light at the plant's face and stared. It quickly made him uneasy. "So, if this tried to kill you, then is it dead? It looks it. Smells it. What killed it? Could it have been the boss of this hellhole?"
John had overlooked D'kourikai as the cause of its death. It was highly possible. Maybe D'kourikai had done a meticulous cleaning of the house prior to Rollings' arrival. Dust the chess board before you play.
"It could have been a number of unknown things that killed this—organism. I can't say for sure. But I don't want to stay to find out. We should not be down here now. You, Charlie, should not be here at all."
Steera took a few steps toward the deceased vegetation, astonished by its structure, its octopus-like tentacles. He thought about—wanted to—take a sample back with him, have it analyzed, maybe win some prize.
"Charlie, this is the last place we need to be. Trust me."
"I know, I know. I just want to leave with evidence of the otherworldly." He removed a small plastic baggy from his pocket and bent over, reaching for a small, severed tendril covered in green blood. His fingers met with the specimen. It was hard, slimy, and felt tingly against his flesh. Awe-struck, he looked back at Rollings. "You wouldn't believe what this stuff feels like. It's—I can't explain how—" He trailed off.
John stood still, waiting, watching as Charlie dicked around.
"Do you have any idea what this could be worth in the scientific community?" Charlie continued, unaware of the faint, vague movement occurring right before him.
"It might—" John began. He stopped speaking when he looked back down at the Sheriff and saw the substance floating out of the messy assemblage of damaged shrubbery.
"Watch out!" John pointed.
Steera fell backward. His head swung forward. He dropped the plastic baggy containing the small branch, but not his Glock. His eyes connected with a new, fresh, living entity neither man had ever laid eyes on before. It was not D'kourikai, and D'kourikai had not killed the basement-dwelling plant. It was a pink gas, or smoke. It swelled from the insides of its recent victim, through the gaps between the branches and leaves, searching for its next victim. And it found one in Charlie. Perhaps John, also.
"Come on," John said softly. Loudly, he said, "Ruuuuun!"
The Sheriff didn't run, didn't move at first. He simply stared at it: a working, living sentient being in the form of pillowy pink smoke. His eyes saw it, but his mind could not process it. His ears absorbed the soft, quiet whirling sound it made—like a small motor wrapped in cotton.
Slowly, it conformed to its own shape, from a dense, thick, compact blotch to a thin, transparent fog Charlie could somewhat see through. It was oval at first, stretching apart at the molecular level, ready to devour the bizarre humanoid thing knelt down a couple yards away.
Instead of running, Steera first aimed his gun at the thing, paused, then fired. Fire burst from the barrel. The bullet went through the pink mist and lodged into a wall, without incident. The molten piece of lead did nothing to hurt it.
"Don't make it mad!” John grabbed the beginning of the banister railing with his right hand, ready to flee. "Easily, cautiously, stand up."
Steera did, gun still raised, face puddling with sweat.
"Lower your gun gently, turn, and run as fast as you can my way. Until you run, take your moves light and slow."
The Sheriff lowered his gun.
The predator continued to expand, shifting fluidly from ovoid to rectangular to triangular to a star shape. The outside edges billowed out quickly, the first swift movement yet from this unbelievable manifestation. Swelled to ultimate, absolute opaque capacity, it made its move. A thin string of throbbing pink matter flew forward and went to wrap itself around the white being's throat...but Steera swung around and ran, catching up to Rollings before Rollings even had a chance to react. They almost hindered each other's progress trying to run up the steps at the same time. Neither man looked back as they reached the summit. Steera clumsily and repeatedly reached for a door to close, but there wasn't one anymore. It had been broken earlier. John grabbed his hand and pulled him in through the kitchen and into the living room, out of harm's way.
"We gotta get outta here!" Panicked, Steera pulled away from the psychic. He went to the front door, which was sealed shut.
Next, he went to the window by the side wall and kicked it with all his strength. It did not budge.
"It's not going to let us leave!" John stated. "We have to confront it. Upstairs is our only way out of here!"
Steera didn't listen, wasn't hearing it. He aimed his gun at the glass and fired. The bullet bounced off it land tinked to the floor, steaming.
John started upstairs, halted, and waited on the third step for the man who wanted out of this hellhole. "Come on, Charlie! We aren't getting out. Not this way."
Again, the stubborn cop aimed his piece at the window and fired. Dink! Another smoldering bullet fell to the floor, landing beside its casing
.
"You gotta be kidding me!"
The smoke that drifted out of the spent shell was white at first...then pink. It intensified hastily and was not from the burned gunpowder; it was coming from the basement. The smoky phantom was resurfacing through the cracks in the floorboards, a gathering presence unwilling to let its victims go.
"Look!" John pointed. This time, his index finger quivered.
Steera rotated, looked down. Beads of sweat ran off his jawline. He had no time to aim or really move. All he could do was stand still, hope for the best, and look farther upward as the pink mist rose high into the air.
I'm fucking dead.
John stood quietly on the staircase, out of ideas. The thought of a diversion didn't even cross his mind. He pictured the Sheriff's obituary in the next week's paper, seeing him lying in the casket at the funeral home, and watching them lower him into the ground. That was if he was still in one piece after the uncertain nature of his demise.
What is it going to do to him?
Steera didn't want to look at it anymore. If I can't see it, it can't hurt me. So he shut his eyes, puckered his face, tensed all his muscles, and dreaded the next few moments of his life.
The smoke finished gushing through the floorboards. It filled almost a quarter of the small room and was not just one shape, but many unruly geometrical figurations, like a floating pink bodily version of a crop-circle field. Is that what this entity was? John wondered. Was it just a living form of geometry? A shape shifter?
Steera's eyes were closed when the cloud of shapes took his own shape, a massive bubbly outline of himself with the same taut facial expression. John noticed thousands of tiny particles intertwined within the gas, as if maybe it was made out of some physical matter: perhaps a powder of extremely low-micronic size. Despite its true nature, its native origin, it was going to attack. And it did so with brute speed and force.
The apparition swarmed and overwhelmed the man, in a cloud of rage. The sound it made was neither faint nor bassy, but now loud and piercing. It shifted shapes, this time wildly and hastily. Rollings could not discern any definable one in his limited vision. He watched as Charlie was spun, lifted, scratched, and battered effortlessly by the substance. He listened to his horrific, defenseless screams and his pleads for help, for which he could offer none. The man's clothes were yanked and torn from his quivering body. Minute amounts of blood appeared from sudden wounds and floated upward, where it vanished into the hidden bowels of the mist. His hair spiked to full extension, yet did not flutter. His eyes spun in circles, but he could not see any way out. The gun still never left his hand.
"Joooohn!" he screamed, reaching out for him.
A second later, his outstretched arm was blocked by complete pink.
I can't allow him to die, John thought.
You can't afford to help him, he heard his mother tell him.
If I save his life—
If you save him, you will fail many others.
Rollings stepped down and went to save Charlie. The poor man's continuous screams dulled to groans and whimpers. He could barely breathe anymore. This gas—this poison—was sucking the air from his lungs. His heart was skipping beats. His eyes were glassy and rolling. His legs were twitching.
Before John could speak or take another step forward, there was a sucking sound. A new sucking sound, coming from the nearest corner of the room. It sounded like a freight train flying through a narrow tunnel. It was being caused by the other presence that had suddenly materialized. The one and only—D'kourikai.
The unthinkable happened. The pink haze was pulled forcibly away from its partially digested victim: Charlie. D'kourikai was inhaling it through its own expanded orifices, and even through its semitransparent flesh. John watched in disbelief. Steera regained his breath, his bearings, and was released by the smoke milliseconds before passing out. He fell to the floor, wheezing, and looked up at the spectacle as it happened. The thing that had almost ended him was now being absorbed by another thing that should not have been.
A thin stream of pink turned into a thick stream of red. It was consumed swiftly, a colored rocket-fuel trail traveling in reverse. It started to screech, emit shrills of pain and panic similar to those of an injured whale. The remaining section transformed into a long cord-like shape and struggled desperately to grab hold of something, anything, but was unable to. The thrashing appendage almost knocked Steera's head off during its fight for survival. D'kourikai hung from the ceiling, mouth gaping, a vacuum cleaner sucking up a powdery ghost like it was everyday business. Pink matter continued to disappear. D'kourikai began to grow moderately in size.
Then, there was silence. Neither human so much as exhaled. Their eyes did not blink or move. The smoke entity was gone without a trace, replaced by the gravity-challenged entity with twenty-two eyes, a more formidable opponent.
"Ah! I'm glad you both have come together. There is business between you humans yet to be unhatched. You men didn't think I was going to let either of you be eaten by that unimportant creature, did you? I, instead, have eaten him. Just like your bodies consume nutrients, I can consume odors and liquids in ways you cannot grasp. Gaseous beings are lacking in intelligent matters. They go on instinct, nothing more. Kind of like the beings of your world. Except in your world, unimportant things matter."
John clinched his fists. He wanted to punch this thing. End it.
Sensing the animosity, D'kourikai looked at him, smiling. "Minutes, my friend. Soon, we will finish our conflict. You will get your chance to fight me. I, however, will destroy you. And this planet. First, I must go upstairs and ready the battlefield. You must help out your friend here. He's okay now, I do believe. When your business is finished here, climb the stairs and pick the right door at the top, if you dare, for the entrance to the attic is sealed."
Slowly, the creature faded away into the air, until it disappeared wholly from both men's view. John unclenched his fists.
He glanced over at his downed companion, who was trying to get up on his own.
"No, wait. Here, I'll help you." John walked over, grabbed his hand, and pulled him to his feet. "Are you okay? I am so sorry that—"
Steera raised a hand. "No, just a few scratches, bumps and bruises. I'm okay."
"Are you sure? Let me see your—"
Charlie turned just far enough for John's eyes to catch sight of the mark on his upper back. It was not a battle mark from his near-fatal encounter with the pink haze; it had been there a while, and was faded quite a bit. It was an emblem Charlie, himself, had perhaps picked out at a local shop. A self-designed slogan of the Sheriff's personality, perhaps.
It floored Rollings to the point he almost fell. His eyes studied the bodily symbol, yet his soul could not believe the truth. Was this a mirage, a gag, a hallucination?
No.
"What's wrong?" Charlie looked at him, in question.
John reeled away. "Don't tell me it was you!"
Charlie had no idea what he was talking about. The mark on his back was, in fact, a tattoo. A tattoo of the Grim Reaper! It was the one John had seen in a vision. It was the same one he'd seen inked on the man who killed Mary, Steera's wife.
It was Charlie.
"You did it!" John backed away, shaking his head.
"Did what, John? What's the matter with you?" He came forward.
"Your wife wasn't just kidnapped and never found. You killed her! She sent me a message from the other side: that tattoo. It doesn't lie. You, all this time, have lied to me!" John backed against the wall. "It was you who broke into my room to steal the dream catcher, wasn't it? You did something with Ben's phone so I couldn't call Jennifer..."
The new enemy smiled, grinned like an innocent child. "What's done is done, John. The past is gone. I did what I had to do nine years ago. That nagging bitch got on my nerves! She drove me crazy. I thought I loved her, at first. I wanted nothing but to be with her forever. But after marriage, everything went straight downhill. Saying I d
o to her—to anyone—is like signing your soul over to the devil, himself. She argued and bickered with me about everything under the sun. She never listened to me, never considered what I had to say, and never did anything but break my heart and make me feel like shit. My love turned to hate over time. I resented her. I wanted her to pay for hindering my entire existence. Murder was not really on my mind then. Why go to prison or be put to death? No, I let it go, until I saw her cheating on me!" Charlie continued coming forward; John, backward.
"She kissed some other bastard and never even saw me standing there across the street. That was the last straw! Well, we definitely fell apart after that. She wanted a divorce, but I wanted her dead, gone, never able to kiss any other motherfucker ever again. Still, I had few options. I could have possibly gotten away with it. My being an officer of the law, I know ways to hide evidence, clean crime scenes. But I wasn't taking any chances...
"Then came the day when I chased that junkie into the woods out here. He ran into the clearing, where I went after him. I saw him sneak into this house. I took out my pistol and sneaked in, myself. I barely began to enter before I saw him being eaten by the—that thing that was just in here. It left no trace of that man. Nobody would have ever found him, period. The monster—whatever you wanna call it—somehow knew my thoughts almost before I did. It could sense things it had no way of knowing. It knew how I felt about my wife and what my intentions were, so I made a deal with it. I would bring it a lock of hair from a young, undeveloped, male human soul with mystical powers, and it would wipe Mary off the face of the earth forever. Nobody remembers her, John. Nobody cares about that dirty slut. I was doing the world a favor by bringing her out here to this house after I drugged her coffee. She's gone, and so what? There are billions more to replace her. Don't fuss over one meaningless soul."
John's back was nearly imbedded into the wall. Steera's face was in his, not an inch away. His eyes were filled with malice. "Are you going to hold it against me, John? Can't you just...forget? One measly person and she was no contribution to the world. Can you let it go? We can still be friends."