Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz

by Tim Marquitz

  Lester froze. “Huh?”

  Moon reached into his jacket and revealed an old coal-miner’s lantern. Lester gaped at the magic trick, as Moon handed it to Carla then touched it with a finger. The light that suffused through his body seemed to spill into the lantern until his complexion looked downright normal, and the lantern glowed like the Moon itself. Then Moon turned to Lester and reached into his jacket again. Lester moved to bring up the shotgun in defense, then remembered he was empty-handed. Moon impossibly pulled out a wooden box, a foot square, from under his jacket.

  “The lantern will light the way,” Moon said. “The box will hold the egg.” He handed the box to Lester, then leaned in and whispered to him. “When you find the egg, replace it with what’s inside the box. She’s on a hero’s quest, so you’ll have to be the thief.”

  “What’s inside the box?”

  Moon only smiled with mischief in his bright brown eyes.

  “What makes you think we can even do this?” Lester asked.

  “Because you, Coyote, and you, Eagle, did it once before when you stole Sun and Moon and brought them to this world.” The old man smiled. “I never thanked you properly for that. Perhaps when your journey is complete, I will. For now, you must go. There’s a police cruiser across the way. Very fast. Take it. I’ll distract the afflicted while you do.”

  Moon shuffled over to the statue and laid his hands on it. The large bronze figure stood and set its book aside, rising nearly twenty feet. It looked down at Moon and hoisted him up in its arms. It began its march towards the highway while Moon looked back.

  “Hurry, children. You have a long journey ahead, and it’s already past your bedtime.”

  “Can you believe this shit?” Lester turned to Carla, but she was already hurrying off in search of the car.

  ~

  Lester drove the police cruiser down a desolate interstate for nearly a half-hour—after Carla had inexplicably used Moon’s lantern to hotwire it—then drove a little while longer through back roads. They found the cave behind an abandoned farm. To Lester, it looked more like a canyon with a roof on it. Some kids had spray painted an arrow that pointed to the mouth of the cave, followed by the word: HELL.

  “Cute,” Lester said.

  Carla led and Lester followed, hugging the box in his arms. They entered a shallow chamber, but Lester couldn’t see any tunnels for them to travel when he looked around at the dripstone walls.

  “Dead end?” He watched Carla, who seemed distracted by something at the back of the cave. She walked over and held up Moon’s lantern. The wall faded like a shadow, revealing a narrow tunnel that sloped downwards into only God knew where.

  “How far do you think this goes?” Carla asked, a sense of wonder soaked in her voice.

  “Too far, by my measure.”

  The outside fell away as they made their descent. Lester kept looking back at the mouth of the cave until he couldn’t see it or the lightning flashes that lit it up.

  “Carla?”

  “What?”

  “What if we just kept going?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if we got back in that cop car and just ... kept going?”

  Carla stopped. She stood rigid with her back to Lester. He hoped she’d see his side of things, cut their losses, and find someplace to hide out until the madness ended. She looked over her shoulder at him. A resigned expression on her face.

  “Where would we go, Lester?”

  “I dunno. West? Anywhere but here.”

  “Do you really think there’s anywhere left for us to run?”

  She turned her back to him and continued down the tunnel. Lester watched her go. He still had his night-vision goggles draped around his neck. He imagined he could put them on and find his own way back. Hugging the box, he looked back the way they came—into the nothingness—then at Carla in the moonlit glow that surrounded her. He never tried to stop her when she dumped him and moved to Knoxville. She was the hero and he was the thief. Things hadn’t changed much.

  “You coming?” she called back.

  “Right behind ya.”

  After some time, a soft, amber light appeared ahead. It grew stronger as they reached an opening into a chamber. More of a chasm to Lester’s reckoning. The floor dropped down a good eight feet or so, while the ceiling stretched upward into shadows. The chamber itself must have been as wide as a football field. Massive would have been the word to creep into Lester’s mind, but one other word was consuming his thoughts: dragon.

  The source of the light was the golden scales of what he could only classify as a dragon. It lay curled about the circumference of the chamber, its sleek, horned head at one end and its tail at the other. The scales shimmered light with each breath it took. What Lester had assumed was an air current moving through a vent somewhere was actually the steady breath of the beast as it slept. Carla tapped his shoulder, and he winced and stifled a shout, then she pointed out a mound of stones and branches piled into a nest at the center of the chamber near the dragon’s side.

  “Time to shine, thief of mine.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek for luck.

  A thrill of heroism washed through his veins for a second, until he looked back at the beast below and all lingering thoughts of valor seeped out of him in rivulets of sweat. He climbed down the steep stone steps into the chamber, took the box from Carla as she handed it down, and froze when the dragon’s plated tail twitched, kicking up a cloud of silt at his feet. What was huge from the ledge became gargantuan at ground level. He looked up at Carla, who had fallen back a ways to hide the lantern’s light. She mouthed the words, “Hurry up.” He nodded and made his move to the nest.

  The structure sat chest-high and he saw the branches amid the stones were actually bones of some animal he didn’t want to imagine. He set the wooden box on the edge of the nest, gingerly climbed in, then gazed at what he estimated was an impossible task. The egg looked to be made of stone and twice the size of the box.

  You’ve got to be shittin’ me.

  He opened the box. Inside, he found large black scales, from Gulega’s hide he imagined. He set them next to the egg. The heat coming off the dragon’s belly was sweltering, the air filling his lungs felt stifling and rank. He hefted the stone egg up, ignored the twinge in his back, and prepared to set the egg on the edge of the nest next to the box to figure out his next move. But the egg gravitated towards the box, and in a mind-bending display, shrunk in size as it neared the top of the box until it was just small enough to fit inside. When Lester closed the lid, climbed out of the nest, and lifted the box, he marveled at how it was no heavier than before.

  Well, that possum’s on the stump.

  Carla helped him back up to the ledge, but the rocky edge slid loose in spots and rained down into the chamber. They stared down at the dragon’s head. Breath fumed from its nostrils and rippled the air. Its scales brightened. Then the eyelids shifted.

  Carla leaned into Lester’s ear. “Move. Your. Ass.”

  Lester grabbed the box and scrambled to his feet. Carla was already ahead of him, snatching the lantern up and leading the dash out of the cave. A fiery glow radiated behind them, followed by a roar that echoed off the walls and chased them into the night.

  ~

  The storm clouds over Knoxville rippled with lightning. Lester couldn’t believe they were actually racing towards it. He recalled Moon’s words about Gulega, describing him as a giant black serpent. Lester figured it couldn’t be any worse than the giant gold dragon he’d just pissed off royal.

  “This is fucked, Carla. I just stole an egg from a dragon. That’s the kind of thing that gets a fella dead—and I don’t wanna die.”

  “That makes two of us, but we’ve got to see this through.”

  Thunder rolled behind them, but there was something different to it. Deeper. Lester checked the rearview as they reached the city limits. He could see the horizon. A golden light plumed in the distance.

  “Oh
shit, now I get it.” Lester smacked a fist on the steering wheel. “That crooked sonofa—”

  “What?” Carla looked at him, bracing her arms against the dashboard as Lester weaved through the abandoned vehicles in the streets.

  “I thought Moon meant that egg was a weapon, but it ain’t.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Lester swung onto what the sign said was Henley Street, and aimed the police cruiser south towards the river.

  “Bait,” he answered.

  They looked out the passenger-side window and the light to the west they might have otherwise mistaken for a sunset. Twenty miles or so away, the dragon soared up until it disappeared into the clouds. Lester glanced back at the box in the backseat next to Moon’s lantern, sitting there like a damned beacon for the dragon.

  “We gotta get rid of that thing,” he said.

  “Then get us to the river, already.”

  He got them as far as the corner of Clinch Avenue, but had to pile on the brakes. The cruiser’s headlights pointed down the long stretch towards downtown and the riverbanks. Thousands upon thousands of afflicted crowded the streets. Rain pelted the car, and between thunder crashes, Lester and Carla listened to the incessant chants of the saturated worshipers. There was a third of a mile between them and the Tennessee River, all of it consumed with humanity. Like Woodstock had come to Knoxville, headlined by Satan himself.

  “I don’t reckon we’re getting any closer unless we find ourselves a cowcatcher,” Lester said with a sigh. “Got any ideas there, eagle scout, ’cause this coyote’s too spooked to think?”

  Carla hung her head, sullen, and for the first time since Lester found her holed up in her cousin’s house, she started to cry. Lester leaned over and wiped a tear from her cheek and let his hand linger. She flinched at his touch and looked away, never one to let other people see her vulnerable. Lester let out a sigh and got set to put the car in reverse, maybe find some way to go around the sea of humanity, or a ditch to curl up and die in. But Carla slapped a hand on the passenger side window, let out a gasp, and damn-near gave Lester a heart attack.

  “What … what?”

  “Go right,” she said. “I know what to do.”

  Lester turned onto Clinch Avenue heading west. The dragon’s burning aura soared closer, by the looks of the storm clouds that way. Then he saw what Carla saw. The Sunsphere tower.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Moon Man had this mapped out from the get-go.”

  He stopped the cruiser in the street and they got out. Carla retrieved Moon’s lantern, while Lester grabbed the box. After a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed the shotgun. It probably didn’t amount to more than a security blanket, but he felt a mite braver with it than without it. Turned out to come in handy in busting open the doors to the Sunsphere’s lobby. Once inside, they hoofed it upstairs. Lester had never been inside the tower before, and half-expected the place to be littered with wigs like in that episode of The Simpsons. What he found instead was a nauseating aerial view of the city skyline—and their first glimpse of Gulega.

  On the riverbanks five blocks away, bonfires bloomed like angry roses. Between the two bridges that stretched across, risen several stories high like a black spire in the river, the serpent looked down on its worshipers. Its head was the size of a damned Mack truck, and even from a distance, Lester could see the glint of lightning flash in its dark, calamitous eyes.

  “Jesus. I think I’d rather take my chances with the dragon.”

  “If we don’t do something quick, you’re going to get your wish,” Carla said and pointed out to the west. The dragon’s golden luminance moved swiftly through the storm clouds in the distance, drawing near and circling out around the city’s outskirts. “We can’t get to the serpent, so we need to make it come to us.”

  “Oh great. And how do we do that? Whistle?”

  “Not what I had in mind.”

  Carla lifted Moon’s lantern out to the large viewing windows. Its ambient blue glow strengthened until it threw out a harsh beam of light directly at the serpent. The beast’s head broke its gaze on the fires below and whipped round to glare across the rooftops at them. Lester’s bladder gave out a little bit when he met its eyes.

  “Is it just me or do you feel like a worm on a hook right about now?”

  “Lester,” Carla said, eyes fixed on Gulega as its head lowered to the ground and wound its way through the streets towards them. Pavement, glass, and bones crunched in its path. “Get ready to throw that box.”

  “Where do you expect me to throw—”

  Carla set the lantern on the floor, marched over to Lester, and snatched the shotgun by its strap from his shoulder. She racked a shell, took aim, and blew out one of the windows. Lester flinched at the blast and shattering glass.

  “Hey, Gulega!’ she shouted into the night. “We got something for ya. Come and get it!”

  “Oh my god, did you just taunt the giant demon snake?”

  “Just be ready with that box.”

  Gulega slithered across the man-made lake in the park grounds until it reached the base of the tower. Lester and Carla stared through the downcast windows at their feet and watched the serpent wind itself about the tower, climbing up. The floor trembled and the tower groaned as the thing climbed ever higher. A massive rain-slicked skull of blackness and malevolence emerged before them. It looked from the lantern to them, and Lester could have sworn it smirked.

  “Are you ready?” Carla asked.

  “No,” Lester whimpered, eyes locked with those of the serpent.

  “Well, you better remedy that.” She racked another shell in the shotgun and squeezed the trigger. The buckshot peppered Gulega’s snout, but did little more than divert its attention to her. “Now, Lester! Throw it now!”

  Carla dropped the shotgun and grabbed Moon’s lantern, swinging it round and hurling the harsh light into Gulega’s baleful eyes. The serpent’s jaws opened, hissing as it reared back from its perch on the tower, eyes narrowed against the light.

  Lester heaved the box through the window and past the gaping fangs of the serpent. The box disappeared into the beast’s gullet and looked no bigger than a pebble doing so.

  “Now what?” Lester said, looking to Carla.

  Carla shrugged. “Run!”

  They bolted for the stairwell in the center of the observation deck. Gulega’s snout battered against the glass framework, smashing its way inside. Lester shoved Carla ahead of him as the serpent’s jaws snapped inches from his back. The lantern bathed the stairway in moonlight, while Carla and Lester tumbled down the steps. The tower shook violently and they careened into the wall and fell into a tangled mess even further down the spiral steps.

  The walls around them moaned with the force of the serpent’s body squeezing tighter on the tower’s frame. Cracks appeared in the walls. Fragments fell from above. Then, a new noise rose above the din of the Sunsphere’s demolition. A deep, raptorial roar high overhead.

  “Here comes Mommy,” Lester grunted. He helped Carla to her feet and they trundled down the rest of the way. Once at the bottom, they raced out to the lobby.

  The outside was bathed in vivid light. The Sunsphere above them quaked again, but this time something gave. A bone-rattling crack joined the metallic groans. A shadow loomed outside, stretching out across the man-made lake next to the amphitheater. The tower followed. With Gulega still coiled around its base. The sphere itself crashed into the water and sent up a great plume of water that shone like gold dust in the air. Lester dove on top of Carla and shielded her from the torrent of water and glass that battered against the lobby windows.

  When they looked up, the dragon touched down next to the fallen Sunsphere, lowering her head with a growl as she glared at Gulega. For a moment, Lester felt like he was watching a Japanese monster movie. Until the dragon lunged at Gulega and chomped down on the serpent’s throat. The serpent lashed its tail, which sliced through the lobby’s
windows, raining shards of glass and other debris on Lester and Carla. The dragon seized the serpent’s tail with its front claws, then launched itself into the air again.

  Lester struggled to his feet and staggered outside.

  “Where are you going?”

  He looked back at Carla. “Are you kidding? After all this, I’m not missing how it ends.”

  He stepped out and looked up to see the shining form of the dragon climbing into the air, as the serpent struggled to free itself. Then, with a single wrenching motion, it tore Gulega’s head from its body and spat it into the river. Before Lester could react, Gulega’s brackish, black blood rained down on him, drenching him in foulness and filth. The dragon then rent the serpent’s body in two and cast the pieces down onto the ruined Sunsphere, drenching Lester even further in the black snake’s viscera.

  Saturated, he turned round to hear Carla’s joyous laughter.

  She limped to him and wiped his face clean with her sweater.

  “My hero,” she said.

  “Well done, Coyote,” Moon’s voice called out behind them. He shuffled down from the street to meet them, picking up the lantern along the way. “I see you convinced Atsila to join your cause.”

  “You crazy bastard. You set us up as bait.” Lester spat out black bile.

  “You didn’t think that little old egg was going to stop Gulega, did you?” Moon said with a smile. “We have monsters of our own to raise.”

  Moon looked up and waved his porkpie hat to the dragon, which circled overhead with a triumphant roar.

  “Atsila up there will be our sun until you return,” Moon said.

  “Say what now?”

  “Return from where?” Carla asked.

  “Your journey isn’t over, little Eagle. You have to rescue Sun. My sister’s still alive.” Moon chuckled when he looked at Lester. “And you, Coyote, will help her steal something from the Ghost Country.”

  Lester looked about at the carnage surrounding them and shook his head. “I just want to get the hell out of Knoxville.”