by The Behrg
Rojo’s shouting grew closer.
“They’re just ahead,” Kendall said.
Brush crashed nearby, and then Dugan heard a voice he didn’t recognize.
Multiple voices.
“Hold it! Right there!”
“Ah-ah — keep your hands where they’re at!”
“Remove your goggles. Toss ‘em onto the ground in front of you. And tell the lady to relax.”
Kendall stopped moving, his hand out, pressed against Dugan’s chest.
“These aren’t the general’s men,” he said in a hushed whisper.
“You too — goggles!”
Kendall removed his hand, and then something light hit the brush in front of them.
“Okay, now where’s this Shaman?” one of the men asked.
“What’s a shaman?” Rojo said.
The next sound was the harsh thump of something heavy striking flesh. Rojo gasped for breath, falling to the jungle floor.
“You wanna try again or should we just move on and ask the pretty one?”
“Dugan, don’t!” Kendall said, but it was already too late. Dugan had started moving forward.
“It’s me you want!” Dugan shouted, stomping through brush as loudly as possible. “I’m the Shaman!”
He heard men running toward him. In the pitch black of his imagination, he almost thought he could see them — bearded faces rising to dark goggles, each of them wearing heavy plated camo-gear that would turn a bullet into a mere bruise. One of the men raised a radio to his mouth, stating coldly, “We’ve got him.”
Three of the men closed in, spreading out as they approached, assault rifles held at the ready. Dugan stepped to his left, moving closer to a kapok tree choked by liana vines. Their thick winding stems wrapped around the tree, climbing upward to the jungle ceiling. This particular strain, however, was a Strychnos toxifera, its almost invisible thorns secreting a deadly poison. If he could maneuver the men to within reach of the vines, he might have an advantage. Or at least a chance.
“No, I’m the Shaman,” Kendall suddenly said.
Dugan glanced back through a dark amber haze, watching Kendall reach down and take hold of a heavy limb fallen from a tree. He raised it, letting it rest against his shoulder like a mallet.
“I’m the Shaman,” Rojo said. He moved in front of Faye protectively, tracking each of the men as they turned back around. “And yeah, I can see you perfectly.”
“No, I’m the Shaman!” Faye stepped from behind Rojo, her stance not that of a frightened girl but a confident warrior. In that moment, Dugan couldn’t have been prouder. The mist or haze seemed sharper around her, as if a camera had her in its focus while everything around her was softened and fuzzy. But unlike Rojo, she wasn’t looking at the men. She was staring directly at Dugan.
“What do we do?” one of the men asked another.
“Should we light ‘em up?”
A chill ran through Dugan as if a cold hand had brushed up against the nape of his neck. Faye had mouthed the words of both of the other men at the precise moment they had spoken. He watched as she continued this bizarre act of ventriloquism.
“We bring them all in. Just in case.”
A few shots rang through the jungle, though further away from Dugan and what remained of his group. The sound of an engine rumbled somewhere in the distance.
“Lay down your weapons. If you want to live.” Faye’s voice carried like some kind of ethereal entity. Several of the armed men laughed, but they all glanced around nervously.
“Take off your goggles and throw them down in front of you. If you hope to live,” Rojo said, following Faye’s prompting.
“Turn around and head back east into the jungle,” Kendall said. “Or I’ll make you kill each other.”
“Alright, that’s enough!” one of the men shouted.
“Last chance,” Dugan said. “Before we destroy you.”
“Freaking psychos.”
“I am the Shaman,” Faye said.
“I am the Shaman,” Rojo and Kendall repeated.
Dugan felt the haze fill his entire being as he breathed in deeply. He hadn’t felt this alive since the Shaman had healed him, opening up, albeit for a moment, that spiritual realm where Glimmers of pure light flashed before him, dancing and swirling and weaving patterns into existence. The fabric of creation. But while these amber smudges now raced behind his eyelids like falling rain, filling him with a sense of purpose — of power — he knew he was drinking from a different source. A foreign pond.
He opened his eyes, directing his gaze at each man individually. “I am the Shaman,” he said.
Each of the armed men suddenly arched backward, weapons falling, their bodies twisting and convulsing as if a jolt of electricity had run through them. Their mouths opened to scream but no sound came out. Instead a blackness thicker than night spewed from their lips, spilling to the jungle floor. With one of the men, that blackness swarmed in the air before him like an angry host of flies.
And then the darkness attacked.
It latched on, splashing against some, simply clinging to others, spreading like some alien liquid not bound by the laws of gravity. Everywhere it touched, it consumed — flesh, clothing, matter, simply ceasing to exist. It swept through one man’s torso like a spiraling whirlwind, his upper half collapsing before being devoured. It dribbled through one man’s face in a fine mist, his head spilling forward in a hundred thousand unconnected pieces before they were swallowed in a black pool. It swabbed one man back and forth, a black eraser leaving no remnant behind.
As the last of the dying men were snubbed out, their entire bodies and gear winking out of existence, Dugan heard Kendall retch beside him. Fearful, he glanced over, but no, it was actual vomit. No black oil spilling from his mouth.
The last of the armed men — or the fleshy blob that remained of him — was squashed together, blackness closing around him from every side, leaving not a trace of the soldier, or what killed him, behind.
This is darkness. This is death.
If there were such a thing as an afterlife, Dugan was certain these men had just been robbed of it. This was what the Shaman had warned him of — the darkness that had come to destroy the world and everything in it. And that was exactly what this was. Destruction. At a primal level.
The most frightening aspect of what they had just witnessed was understanding their role in it. Had they conjured this demon — this power — into existence? Allowing it to use them just as it had used the Shaman?
I am the Shaman.
Would it be able to now leap from them at random? Taking over whenever it deemed necessary? Or opportune? Surely there had to be more to losing one’s soul, to admitting a presence into one’s being. Dugan had never believed in possessions or the supernatural, but he was beginning to understand how people could justify belief when faced with questions that bore no answers.
As his thoughts tumbled through his head, he watched as the dark massless shapes drew in together, forming a single dark cloud. A non-entity. Then it slowly began to morph, bending and reforming until it had taken the shape of a man. A shadowy, featureless figure, standing before them. But unlike a shadow, this was no two-dimensional being, there was a depth to that darkness that defied all logic.
A voice boomed like the crackle of thunder, breaking directly overhead.
[I am the Shaman]
Dugan was thrown to his knees, crushing vines and brush beneath him. To his sides, both Rojo and Kendall collapsed, though Faye stood, her gaze transfixed upon the shadow.
It moved without moving, seeming to absorb everything within a two foot diameter. Leaf fronds, liana vines, and the base of a tree trunk; one minute there, the next gone. Scrubbed from existence. Just like the men that had stood before them.
“Dugan, what’s happening?” Rojo asked.
And though Dugan knew, he had no way to express what was truly occurring.
The Glimmers.
They were being de
stroyed.
The mass of darkness moved again, sweeping forward while everything within its path was erased. Kendall rose to his feet, hurling the large branch he had picked up at the shadowy form. The gnarled wood disappeared upon contact as if it had passed through a lumber mill’s saw. Though there wasn’t a shred of even sawdust to prove it had once existed.
“Did you do this? Conjure this?” Rojo shouted, staring at Dugan.
“We all did,” Kendall said in answer.
A trail of dried and dead earth lay in the wake of this seething mass of darkness. And then, to Dugan’s horror, it began to spread.
The shape of a man dissolved into a dark cloud that grew into an undefined orb, reaching towards them. All of them. Partial limbs of trees collapsed, their underlying branches no longer there, just a pit of blackness growing.
Pulsing.
Devouring.
No sounds accompanied the destruction of vegetation and jungle growth. Even the noise of machine guns and the occasional blast of an explosive seemed to have died off as the darkness continued to seep towards them. Distance was being eaten as quickly as the jungle life, until a single voice struck at the silence with a resounding “No!”
The darkness abated, not retreating, but maintaining its form and its present distance from Dugan and his group. Again the voice came, commanding in its tone.
“No!”
Back toward the mine’s entrance, Dugan caught sight of the man who held the darkness at bay. Quite possibly the only man who could command such a force.
Or bring it into existence.
The Shaman.
Verse XLVIII.
The Shaman’s lithe form moved next to Oso as they both ran towards Dugan and his group. They passed the fallen bodies of several women, a few girls still wandering in the dark, their arms outstretched, bumping into trees and climbing out from brush. As they approached, Oso nodded toward Dugan, more meaning in his silent greeting than words could ever articulate.
“You did good,” Dugan said.
Suddenly Faye let out a whimper. Dugan turned back to see her collapse.
“Faye!”
He ran toward her, covering the distance within seconds. Reaching out, he checked her pulse, saw her chest rise and fall, and still he had to be sure. “Faye, are you alright? Are you hurt?”
His daughter’s breathing was labored, but she looked up at him, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “Never better,” she said.
Dugan wanted to pull her in, enwrap her in his arms in an embrace he hadn’t felt in years. Instead he held his hand out, offering to help her up.
“I can manage.” She rose, deliberately ignoring his hand.
When they turned back around, the cloud of darkness was gone. Just as the men and vegetation before them had vanished, so too that power, that entity, had fled.
Fled, or hid. And of the two options, Dugan felt certain it was the latter.
“I take back what I said.” Kendall swallowed, the words not coming easy. “I’m with you. Till this is over.”
“Good, ‘cause we’ll need you.”
“You hear that?” Faye asked.
“Did all of that really happen?” Rojo asked. “I’m not going crazy, right?”
“I think we just met the real entity behind the Shaman’s power.” A chill passed through Dugan, causing his whole body to shiver.
“Whatever it was, that was power,” Kendall said.
“How are we seeing right now?” Rojo asked.
“Quiet,” Faye shouted. “Everyone just, shut up!”
The group fell quiet, everyone listening. Dugan immediately heard it. A vehicle approaching rapidly from the west.
“Let them come,” Kendall said. “We’ll just swallow them like the others.”
“It wasn’t us,” Dugan said. “It was him the whole time. It’s always been him.”
“That’s not what I felt. Tell me you didn’t feel it too,” Kendall said.
Rojo spit into the plants behind him. “I think he was … I don’t know, drawing on us. Using our strength, our … life-force, or whatever.”
The Shaman suddenly collapsed, falling onto leaves, his body resting against Oso’s legs. And then Dugan saw the blood.
“He’s hit!”
Oso reached down, also unaware that the man had been shot, as the others gathered quickly around him. Dugan inspected the wound. It wasn’t pretty. A gut shot with no exit hole, the bullet lodged somewhere in the Shaman’s already old and barely functioning organs. Blood seeped out with his every exhalation, like pus from a sore.
“He can heal himself, right?” Kendall asked.
“If not, we can patch him up,” Rojo said. “If we get out of here alive.”
Rojo was right, this was a wound Dugan and his team could handle, at least under the right circumstances. But as Dugan stared down at that leakage, he suddenly knew what he had to do.
“Calvary’s arrived,” Kendall announced.
A jeep broke through the brush nearby, sliding to a stop. Luckily it was a jeep they all recognized. It’s side was riddled with bullet holes, windshield blown out. It’s bumper had fallen off, the hood dented and smothered with blood. Chupa stuck his torso out the driver’s window, rapping against the top of the vehicle.
“Get your muku asses in now,” he shouted. “We got company!”
The men didn’t need more of an invitation. Dugan bent down, taking the Shaman in his arms with Oso helping, trying not to jostle him anymore than they had to. He heard someone inside call out for Faye, a voice he didn’t quite recognize. Kendall and Rojo complained about room, asking if Chupa had picked up every hitchhiker he could find. It didn’t stop them, however, from quickly climbing in.
Dugan halted at the rear of the vehicle, the back already propped open. The arsenal they had brought had dwindled significantly. Oso looked at him questioningly. “Go. I’ve got him,” Dugan said.
Oso took a few steps to the side but stopped, waiting.
“I said go!”
But rather than push the man to obey, Dugan’s words kept Oso’s feet planted.
“Hurry it up, Doog!” Chupa shouted from inside.
Dugan slammed the rear hatch of the jeep closed, his only answer for the man. Oso perked up, realizing what Dugan held in his hand. But he didn’t move to intervene. Dugan couldn’t have respected him more for that decision.
“You need to speak; speak,” the Shaman said.
“I made a promise,” Dugan said, “And for saving my daughter, I’ll keep it. But it was a promise to both of you.”
The Shaman’s lips curled upward in a smile. He closed his eyes, a tear leaking out.
The blast of the shotgun at such close range was like a force unto itself, a pressurized hammer detonating in Dugan’s ears and wiping out all other sound. Through the resonating ringing, Dugan watched the Shaman’s body fall. His head had splattered outward, disintegrating in a spray of gore, his body tumbling like a tree whose trunk had just been shorn. Dugan brought one arm up, wiping the plastered remains off his face, letting Zephyr’s SRM tactical shotgun fall to the ground. Neither it nor the Shaman made a noise as they bounced off the wild grass, the ringing absolute.
In his peripheral, Dugan saw several of his men come racing around the sides of the vehicle. Some armed, others not, but all ready.
Ready to defend.
The expressions on their faces, as they realized what he had done. Each of them unique. But it was Oso’s reaction that hit him the hardest. He looked away, refusing to meet Dugan’s eyes.
Without a word Dugan walked past the body, passing his men without even a glance. They would understand or they wouldn’t. He had made a promise, but it was more than that. Much more. That darkness, that force, could not be allowed to live.
Because you’re afraid of it? It’s all-consuming power for destruction?
Or because upon a single taste, you want more?
Father Remmy Shumway relinquished the front passenger’s
seat, Dugan climbing in and closing the door behind him. He looked straight ahead, not daring to make eye contact with any of his men. Though he never heard the doors close, the jeep started forward with its silent movement, only that persistent ringing accompanying Dugan and his dark thoughts.
Eventually Chupa prodded Dugan with a rolled up magazine. Some pornographic compendium the men must have found beneath a seat. But written on the cover in pen were the words The Facility?
So, they were still with him. At least some of them.
He wondered if they knew what they were committing to, for while they could now see in the deepest and darkest corner of night, it was clear the superimposed darkness had yet to vanish. Which meant they too were being changed. What had begun with the Shaman would not end with his death. And it might require all of theirs.
“Not the Facility,” Dugan said, though he couldn’t hear his words.
He popped open the glove compartment, finding his leather notebook. As the jeep fell heavily off a sharp incline, sending them all rocking, he unstrung the strap, letting the book fall open. He flipped to the last page where he had left off, scanning the lines of names.
He fanned through the pages slowly, until it fell open to the page that had always mattered the most. The page which the book naturally fell open to, born of use. The page which only contained a single name.
Selah Moanna.
Abruptly, he closed the book. There was one name he wouldn’t be adding to these pages. Not anymore. He glanced in the rearview mirror, catching sight of his daughter’s head bobbing with the movements of the Jeep. At least he had done one thing right.
He tied the strap around its leather fold, brushing the cover with his fingertips, not wanting to forget.
And not wanting to remember.
Then he hurled it through the open window at his side, not even watching where it landed.
So many names.
And none of them mattered.
Not when facing the darkness that was coming.
The darkness that may already be inside them all.
Dugan sat back against the passenger’s seat, breathing in the silence that now permeated the jeep, or at least his seat. Eventually the ringing began to fade, sounds returning, though deadened and partially muted. He listened to the conversation taking place without him, wondering if he would ever be a part of it again. But when one of the men voiced the question they all were thinking, he decided he could remain quiet no longer.