Becoming the Gateway

by Justin Roberts

  Bradley screamed, "She's coming!"

  "GO!!!" Charlene screamed back.

  They ran down the first flight of stairs and made the quick turn down to the second flight that took them the rest of the way down to the first floor.

  Charlene suddenly realized that she had absolutely no idea where to go or what to do.

  The world seemed to swirl around her, dragging her into an endless vortex of spiraling madness. She just screamed out into the house and fell to her knees.

  "AAALLLYSSA!” She sobbed, "This can’t be real! Oh, God please don’t let this be real!"

  "Mommy!" Bradley shouted, "Let's go!"

  Charlene's world seemed to snap back around her, as soon as she centered her eyes on her son, her sweet Bradley, the world suddenly jerked right back into focus again. Now was not the time to lose her mind in grief over one child when the other was still right here and desperately needed his mother if there was any chance he was going to make it out of here.

  A terrible screeching came from the floor above them, followed by a ticking sound that kept repeating, click, click, click, click, click.

  Charlene and Bradley both looked up the stairwell which seconds ago they had descended and saw the abominable thing that was once her beloved daughter and his idolized big sister coming down the stairwell, but not by way of the stairs. It was scurrying along the ceiling, its elongated arachnid legs clicking along the surface.

  "Bradley, run!" Charlene pushed her son so hard she practically threw him towards the busted front door of the ranch house. Luckily, the child kept the momentum and hardly even staggered as he ran as fast as his little legs could carry him.

  The Alyssa thing on the ceiling let out another hellish scream.

  Something let out a deafening howl from the basement below.

  They were almost to the door when the floor rose up beneath their feet and they were both knocked off their balance and tumbled into each other before both falling over just before the doorway.

  The floor cracked apart and sent chunks of wood and drywall flying into the air, leaving a thick white dust that made it impossible to see at first what had come through the floor.

  Then the dust began to clear and Charlene saw another disgusting mass of squirming anemone-like tentacles wriggling up towards the ceiling, where they began to caress and wrap around the hideous thing that her eleven year old daughter had been transformed into. The mass of tendrils from below intertwined with the squirming worm creatures that stretched at least four feet out from the little girl's eye sockets from which they protruded.

  Charlene felt Bradley's small hands tugging on her shoulders, he was yelling at her to move. She turned and picked her son up in her arms and ran for the door, she wasn't even fazed by the pain in her foot right now.

  They cleared the opening, where earlier tonight another abominable creature had broken through and left the door in pieces, and they both ran screaming down the front patio steps and out into the front yard.

  Alyssa let out another ear piercing banshee cry from inside the house behind them, causing the windows along the front patio to shatter outward, sending glass flying out into the yard with enough force to send shards flying out into the grass around Charlene and Bradley’s feet.

  “Go, go, go!” She screamed to her son.

  “Where?!” Bradley yelled back.

  “Just GO!” Charlene grabbed Bradley’s arm and pulled him across the yard toward the driveway where Dennis’ Porsche Cayenne and Charlie’s BMW were parked. It was at least worth checking. There was a chance that Charlie left the keys in his car as he had done numerous times when Charlene and he were together. It was also at least worth a look as they rushed past on the way out to the dirt road. Charlene had a feeling that if she could just get her one surviving child and herself out to the road and away from this house then they just might have a chance.

  So far all the creatures had been slow to catch up to her, which told her two possibilities; either they were awkward and uncoordinated at their time of transformation, or she was being herded towards something. No matter though, all she could do now was focus was getting Bradley to safety, if such a thing even existed anymore. If the cars were not an option then the two of them would just run into the darkness without stopping until they were safe or dead.

  Her smashed foot sent rivers of nauseating pain through her with every torturous step. The adrenaline induced anesthetic was wearing off and reality was worse than any hell she could imagine.

  Keep moving! She thought to herself as she stumbled up against Charlie’s black BMW. She gripped the driver’s side door handle and threw the door open.

  Charlie’s car keys were sitting right there on the center consul next to his charging cell phone.

  “Oh thank God!” Charlene cried out. She did not bother unlocking all the doors and having Bradley run around to the passenger side to enter the car. Instead, she picked him up and tossed him into the car through the driver’s side door. He bounced on the seat and bumped his head on the door but was otherwise unfazed.

  “Buckle up, Baby,” Charlene yelled as she swung herself into the car and swiped up the keys, “I’m going to get you out of here, okay?

  “Okay.”

  Charlene turned the ignition, and clicked the button for the BMW’s headlights, flooding the yard in front of them with bright light. Charlene did not take notice before in the darkness, but now she could see that all the grass on the property was dead and dry. Even the plants and flowers along the front porch had dried crumbled, as if the life had been completely sucked out of all the living foliage in the area.

  She also noticed the Alyssa abomination squeezing its hideous form through the front doorway. The house around it began to break apart, sending huge splinters of wood flying through the air. Huge spindling tentacles were bursting forth from inside. She only had maybe a couple seconds before the thing that was her daughter would be able to break free and be upon them.

  She slammed the gear in reverse and hit the gas before taking the time to look behind her. The car immediately slammed into something behind them.

  “Fuck!” Charlene screamed as Bradley let out a frightened cry.

  She checked the rearview mirror and saw that the creature Bethie had become was behind them, its talon tipped hand gripped the rear end hard enough to pierce the metal of the BMW’s trunk. Its other arm, the long tentacle appendage with the steel blade of the butcher knife sticking from the end, waved through the air wildly before arcing upward then stabbing down into the rear windshield, the blade broke right through the glass, which spider webbed inward. The blade tipped tentacle arm stretched in and stabbed through the back of Charlene’s seat, piercing all the way through her right shoulder. She let out a painful shriek while Bradley wailed in terror, curling himself into a fetal position on the passenger seat. Their cries were nearly drowned out by the creature’s deafening roars.

  Charlene put the gear in first and slammed the accelerator to the floor. The car flew forward and she twisted the steering wheel to the right, causing the vehicle to spin out for a second before whipping around in a U-turn. The blade ripped painfully out of her shoulder in the opposite direction it had entered, the she cried out again and sped off down the driveway.

  The Bethie creature roared after them and swiped its talon clawed hand so hard along the side of the car that Charlene feared it would tear the passenger door right off, leaving her son exposed. Luckily the door held and they pulled out of the driveway just as the house seemed to explode in a furry of splintering wood and glass behind them and the Alyssa beast sprung forth into the yard after them, scuttling along on those long, black arachnid legs with the segmented scorpion-like tail curled behind it. The long wormlike tendrils, with those circular mouths filled with rows of razor sharp teeth, stretched and writhed out from the eye sockets in front of the thing’s face so aggressively it was as though they were trying to escape its skull.

  Where the house had stood moment bef
ore, a giant mass of pulsating flesh covered with what looked like hundreds, maybe thousands of thick, squirming tentacles. They unfolded from the massive thing with an obscene look of purpose. All that remained of the ranch house now was piles of scrap wood and drywall and a section of the frame around the front porch. Just the awning and the front steps really stood, the rest was rubble. On one of the tentacles a pale, naked man, completely absent of any hair and with eyes as black as the depths of space, rode atop it like he was riding a giant serpent. It was Dennis, not transformed into a mindless beast like Clarence and the children had become, but rather he had been reformed into his welcome new self with a deadly sense of purpose.

  Charlene only barely noticed Dennis riding down on the massive tentacle as she glanced back in the rearview mirror while speeding out. She did not see clear enough to be able to tell that Dennis was smiling, with his arms held outward as if he was prepared to embrace a loved one. Nor could she hear him speak as he touched down on the now dead lawn, his voice still his but now he spoke with calm tone like that of a monk. “Soon, my darling,” he crooned out into the darkness, “Soon all will be made clear and you will take your place as my queen by my side in this wonderful, new world we are going to create.”

  No, all she noticed from then on was the road in front her as she floored the BMW’s gas pedal and tore off into the night on that dark, dirt road she had come in on. She reached over and gripped Bradley’s hand, the pain from her impaled shoulder made her cry out and the blood gushing from the wound made her fear she might bleed out before getting him to safety.

  “It’s going to be okay, Baby.” She assured her son, “We’re going to make it down this road and we’ll be okay, I promise!”

  “I know we’re going to be okay, Mom.” Bradley said, sounding like the terror of the night had not fazed him. Charlene feared the shock had broken his mind and caused a fugue-like state which had left his young voice completely devoid of emotion. Then he continued, “We’re going to be okay because you are going to be remade and then you can be our mom again. But we can’t make it down this road, not yet. Our God needs to be placated and much more suffering is needed to open the gateway, without the gateway open we can’t make it any farther than maybe a few more yards.”

  Charlene’s stomach dropped like she was plummeting down a roller coaster. “What are you saying?!” She screamed at him. She felt Bradley’s grip tighten around her hand to the point she was sure the bones in her hand would shatter. When she looked over at him she was sure she would see the face of another terrible monster, but it was still the face of her son. Only he had a vicious intelligence in the look of his nine year old face, his mouth formed an exaggerated grin that was sinister enough to put the Devil to shame.

  Charlene hit the brakes, brought the car to a skidding halt on the dirt road, and checked her rearview to make sure the creatures in pursuit were not closing in, when she saw nothing within sight she focused on Bradley. He was still just looking at her with that malicious smile, only now he had started to rock side to side as he locked his eyes on hers. An evil little laugh, which in most any other circumstance would sound cute coming from a young child, began to escape his lips.

  Charlene felt her sanity begin to crack, slowly at first, like a cracked fish tank that slowly begins to give way under the pressure of the water held within in it, then it suddenly just shattered. She not only now had to face the reality and absolutely unbearable grief of losing both her children, the only two things in the world she even had to live for, but the paranormal circumstances of the night’s events were enough to break anyone’s mind whether or not they had loved ones to mourn.

  Bradley’s face began to ripple, as if it was about to make a horrific change like she had witnessed with Bethie and Alyssa, then it just sort of settled back into place and regained its proper form. His grip tightened on her hand, she heard a crack and felt another terrible pain rocket up from her hand, adding to the symphony of suffering already screaming through her body.

  Now she screamed, and Bradley’s soft laughter instantly erupted into an insane cackling, as if he were screaming and laughing at the same time.

  “BRADLEY!!! NO PLEASE, NOT YOU!”

  “Yes, me.” The child thing said in a low, almost mechanical voice.

  “You’re not Bradley! My kids aren’t dead you’ve done something with them.”

  “No, I am and am not Bradley. He is and is not dead, through the one true God he has been remade and his sacrifice will be honored. But you have a part to play, Mother, and we have a world to win.”

  Charlene’s free hand had found the door handle while her child thing was speaking and she flung the door open behind her. The force of her already pushing against the door before it was opened created the momentum to get her almost out of the BMW. Bradley still had a death grip on her half broken hand and was not about to let go. She dangled halfway out of the car as he laughed at her.

  Then he twisted his hand, and hers, around in a full three sixty motion that somehow left his arm in no disrepair, but broke her arm almost completely in half. This created a compound fracture that caused the bone in her forearm to break in half and stab out from the skin, spraying blood and leaving a sharp point of white bone jutting out from what a half second ago was her arm.

  In most cases this would elicit a horrible scream of pain, however, in Charlene’s current state of utter shock all she could muster was a sick, gagging sound as she her wide eyes looked upon the wound. Bradley’s grip now loosened, she fell out backwards through the car door onto the cold dirt road. She immediately rolled over onto her stomach and began to drag herself along with her one good hand while pushing herself with her one good foot. She was trying to scream, but it felt as if her whole body was seizing up on her and all she could produce was a gagging, sobbing noise, “G-g-g-ghaaaa-eee.” Pain on every level, physical, mental, emotional and any other that could be imagined, left her vocabulary limited to these short, gasping utterances.

  Bradley stepped out of the car calmly and looked down at his fleeing mother. The maniacal grin was now absent from the child’s face, nor was his body contorting into any sort of ghastly, inhuman shape as his sister’s and cousin’s had. He looked just as he always had, young, sweet, and innocent. Not that Charlene had the chance to notice, she was still dragging herself along the dirt road, even though there was obviously nowhere for her to go in her condition. At least not so long as she just kept dragging herself along the dirt road.

  She let out a primal scream and forced herself to her feet, the gritting pain from her foot, shoulder, and right arm only slightly numbed by her maddening state of shock.

  Autopilot.

  She shambled along down the road for maybe ten yards, just limping forward with a vacant look in her face. She had no destination, her entire being and every sense of purpose was now lost. She just kept moving, as though her physical body knew to keep moving, but the actual who of her had no idea what purpose or drive it was moving for, she was no longer a mother, no longer her. She just limped forward into that desolate night, as if she was the only person on Earth. She did not even take notice of the heinous being that had tricked her into believing it was her sweet, precious, little Bradley following directly behind her, that cold grin creeping back across his sadistic face.

  “Where are you going, Mom?” The Bradley thing spoke to her in a voice so soft and childlike it could only be heard as a mockery of what was now lost forever in this twisted soul. “It’s not that scary, Mommy. It’s really just progress, this world is not worthy of existence with the constant death and decay it spills forth into the universe. No planet ruled by a bunch of filthy fucking primates is worthy of life. So we are going to remake the world, and it is going to be so wonderfully perfect.”

  Charlene just kept moving, not that she was oblivious to the reality around her, she was actually well aware of the world of loss and torment she was damned to. But there is a primal instinct in some of the strongest of the
human species that simply refuses to give in to any amount of grief and terror and just let themselves lay down and die. She just kept making one painful step after another, no longer concerned with where she was going, just that she kept going, and while her tear soaked, bloodshot eyes were focused directly in front of her, she was not really seeing the darkness of the road ahead.

  Instead, her mind was filled with visions of life, not her life as most people assume flash before their eyes in their final minutes of life, but the lives of her children. Starting with the birth of Alyssa, back when Charlene was such a fragile young person, a young mother with a whole new excited and scary life of responsibilities ahead of her. The she saw visions of Alyssa’s first day of kindergarten. Then she saw Bradley’s first day in the bright new world that she had every hope in him becoming such a strong, honest man who would always take care of his older sister in the fierce way younger brothers always cared for their older sisters. If she would have had more time to go just little further down that road, she would have surely gone back to visions of holidays and laughter on weekends when they would all three walk to the neighborhood convenience store for candy and soda, visions of future driving lessons and prom night, even weddings and grandchildren.

  But all that was cut horribly short by the sound of gunfire. It rang through the night and tore Charlene from the last pleasant thoughts, no matter how fanciful they might be, that she would ever experience.

  She looked down, in a complete state of stunned shocked, and saw that her right leg, the same leg that held the mangled foot from her niece’s assault with the claw hammer, was now dangling from the knee cap by just a few strands of skin. Blood from the nearly severed limb poured out in red torrents onto the dirt beneath her. She spun around backwards as her balance gave way and landed on her back. Her eyes were aware of Bradley walking toward her, and of the black .40 caliber Austrian made pistol in his right hand. She knew this to be Dennis’ gun, he had taken her shooting with it out on the property a few summers back.