by Darcy Coates
The basement window—!
Pam did a double take, but the window was empty. She felt her mouth open a fraction as her heart rate shot up and sweat slicked her palms. I didn’t imagine that, did I…?
“Ready?” Paul asked, and Pam knew for certain her smile was shaky.
You’re so close, Pam. Don’t lose the sale.
“Of course,” she said, sliding into the front seat of her car, trying to erase the image of the sallow, furious face watching them through the basement window.
35
Diagen
Pascoe sat near the back of their small canoe, one hand braced on the side of the boat and the other holding the motion picture camera as steady as he could. Behind him, Guide used a long pole to slide their canoe through the marshy water systems.
It wouldn’t be clear in the black-and-white film, but the surrounding landscape was a thousand shades of green. Grey-green lichen hung like giant curtains of lace from the towering moss-coated trees. Clouds of tiny shimmering insects hovered above the water’s surface, setting up a constant drone that steadily worked itself into Pascoe’s brain.
“A little to the left,” he instructed Guide, pointing in the direction he wanted to ensure the message got through.
Guide spoke just enough English to be hireable, but no more. Communication was so difficult that Pascoe still hadn’t figured out his ward’s name. The short, perpetually smiling man responded to the title “guide,” though, so that was what Pascoe called him.
Guide obediently turned the boat, and Pascoe let the camera pan across the landscape. Details like the scum floating on the water’s surface and the birdcalls wouldn’t come across in the theatrical release. Even so, the landscape was dramatic enough to earn him a good sum for the footage, even if he never found the Diagen.
Rumour had it that a giant water creature resembling a crocodile lived in the swamps of Venezuela. The legends contradicted each other more often than they concurred, but all agreed the ancient beast was more than twice as long as a man and had rows upon rows of vicious teeth.
When he’d started the expedition, Pascoe had been thrilled to discover that Guide claimed to have knowledge of the Diagen. Of course, after hiking across the country for three days, Pascoe had realised Guide would have sworn he was capable of flying to the moon if he thought it would earn him a few coins. Still, the local was pleasant and eager to please, and he hadn’t tipped Pascoe or his expensive equipment into the water… yet.
Pascoe raised his head from the camera and squinted at a dark shape in the distance. “Guide, what’s that?”
“That? Yes, yes,” Guide said, misunderstanding and directing the boat towards the dark shape. Pascoe sighed but didn’t bother trying to explain himself. As the craft drew closer, weaving through the thin, drooping trees, Pascoe saw it was a structure made from rocks, almost like a small mountain rising out of the water. Perhaps there’s a system of caves running through it? That would make excellent film.
Pascoe waved his guide to the left and felt a thrill at the sight of the cave opening not far ahead. Its dark rock arched high above the water and was filled with stalactites.
The audiences will love this. I could even claim this was the Diagen’s home and that I encountered the fearsome beast in the darkness.
“Inside,” he told Guide, and bent behind his camera to direct its lens over the rock formations and glistening stone. A steady wind blew through the caves, ruffling Pascoe’s hair and drying the sweat on his face. He knew that meant the caves likely continued for a long way and probably had another opening farther into the water systems. They wouldn’t be able to travel that far, though; the camera could only capture film when there was a certain amount of light. Pascoe had brought a large lamp, but even that wouldn’t be strong enough to penetrate the repressive darkness.
Pascoe let the boat drift deeper into the cave, going farther than he knew the camera would capture. His curiosity was gaining on him, and he raised his head in wonder as he gazed at the moss-coated stalactites and stalagmites. The wind blew tiny insects into his face, but he hardly cared.
Guide gasped sharply then yelled something in his native language.
Pascoe turned towards him. “What’s the matter with you?”
The short man was gesticulating wildly and speaking in broken English. “Sir! Sir! Air! Big air, comes fast here, goes fast there!”
“What on earth are you saying?” Pascoe leaned one arm on the side of the boat as he frowned.
Guide had lost his perpetual smile and was digging his pole into the water, trying to draw the boat back towards the exit.
Then the cause of his assistant’s alarm struck Pascoe, and he turned back to the cave with mingled shock and incredulity.
The wind’s direction had changed. When they’d entered the caves, it had been coming from deep inside the tunnel. But while he’d been engrossed in examining the walls, it had changed to blow in from the outside. Almost like…
“Breathing.” Pascoe turned towards the cave’s entrance and saw the stalactites—no, he corrected himself, the teeth—descend to block out the light.
36
Bunker
James frowned as he poked the tip of his walking stick into the soft ground. The last thing he’d been expecting to see in the vast Murrambungee National Park was concrete.
He’d gone off-trail to get a closer look at a huge gumtree that had been half-strangled in vines, and from there, it had been all too easy to follow a trail of small blue flowers farther into the forest. When he’d pushed through the thick vegetation and into a glade, James had been hoping for a natural clearing or possibly even a spring. Instead, he found something that definitely didn’t belong so far from civilisation.
The concrete stood a little higher than his head and rose from the ground at an angle, like a misplaced art exhibit. James approached the shape and stepped around it carefully. He quickly realized why the structure was sloped: on the other side, which was straight and horizontal, was a door. It’s a stairwell, then. But to where?
James glanced back the way he’d come. He could still just barely see the vine-choked gumtree, but he was a good way off the regular trail. The stairwell’s builder had apparently wanted it to stay hidden. And judging by the moss growing across the door’s handle, that was exactly what had happened.
James didn’t expect it to open, but he tried the door, anyway. The plain metal handle felt cold and slimy. He gave it a tug and was surprised to find the door hadn’t been locked. It was gummed in place after years of neglect, but he was able to worm it open a crack with a few good pulls.
Stale, repulsive air came through the gap. It carried undertones of rot and death, and James pressed the back of his sleeve across his nose to block out the smell. What on earth is this place?
James didn’t have a torch, but he’d brought a camera with flash, so he raised it to the narrow opening and took a picture of the inside. The photo flashed up on his camera, and he saw stained concrete walls and dirty concrete stairs leading downwards. The angle was bad, though, and he couldn’t see the stairs’ end. Is it some sort of military bunker, maybe?
James pocketed the camera and pulled on the door again, trying to widen the gap. Dirt and organic debris had built up around the doorframe, but it ground open slowly. Once the opening was barely wide enough for a human to fit through, James stepped back, panting, and held his camera inside for another photo.
The new picture was a little clearer, though his efforts to open the door had stirred up long-still dust, which became white blobs in the flash. The stairs continued for what seemed like a long way. Clearly, no one had ventured through the door in many years—possibly even decades. James cast a final glance in the direction of his trail then slipped through the narrow doorway.
The noises inside were magnified so that James’s footsteps sounded like echoing thunder, no matter how carefully he placed them. He stuck to the left wall and ran his hand across the cold concrete as he
followed the stairs. The narrow band of light from the outside world didn’t penetrate far into the blackness, so after a dozen steps, James took another photo. It showed twenty stairs more, then a landing.
As he moved deeper, James tried to guess how far down the structure went. I’d have to be well under the forest by now. Possibly even under the tree roots.
The air chilled, and he was shivering by the time he reached the landing. Rounding the corner, he saw the stairs continued. He shook his head, dumbfounded, as he took another photo of the new stairwell. The disturbed dust was too thick for him to see any sort of end, though.
What the hell is this place?
James’s heavy breathing mingled with the echoes of his footsteps as he followed the stairs deep underground. He paused every five or six paces to take a new photo and ensure he wasn’t about to walk into a wall or fall off the edge of a dropoff. At last, after more than a hundred steps, the path levelled out into a corridor.
James took a photo and examined it, struggling to see through the floating dust. The stark concrete walls were bare except for dark shapes set into where the walls met the floor. James knelt, took another photo, and found the dark shapes were actually grates. They seemed to open into an even deeper area, though he couldn’t see inside. Sewerage, maybe? Or ventilation? The grates were spaced ten feet apart, and James tried to count them as he moved through the hallway. With only his camera to show him the way, it was easy to become disoriented and lose track of how far he’d come, but he’d passed at least twenty of the grates before the hallway ended.
James, confused, stared at the photo of the empty wall in front of him. There was no door. There was no anything. The hallway simply ended, as though it had no greater purpose than to exist. James turned and took a photo of the length of the hallway, but he’d disturbed too much dust on his trip down, and couldn’t make out anything except a blur of white.
As he retraced his path up the hallway, James kept one hand on the wall while he held the camera in the other and skimmed through the photos he’d taken. He was cold and eager to get back outside, but as he neared the halfway mark of the hallway, he stopped.
One of the pictures—one he’d taken to check he wasn’t about to walk into anything—had focussed on the walls rather than the dust motes, and it showed the grates a little more clearly than the other images had. And in one of the grates was…
No, that can’t be possible. But it looks so much like a face…
James gasped as the bone-thin fingers, having slipped through the grate, fastened around his ankle and pulled.
37
Skin House
Cold skin caressed Ron awake. He glanced towards the mottled hand draped across the pillow, squeezed his eyes closed, and rolled away from it. The fingers twitched, seemingly beckoning him back.
He dipped his feet over the edge of the bed. Something scraped his toes as he slid them inside his slippers, and he recoiled with a barely muffled gasp. He turned the shoes over, and a dozen human molars clattered to the floor. Some rolled under the bed; others glittered on the polished wood. He considered not wearing the slippers then resolutely pulled them over his feet and went to the bathroom.
If you relent, you lose.
Three human fingers lay in the toothbrush holder. He ignored them as he took out his brush, even though one of them curled over at his touch. Ron watched his own face as he scrubbed his teeth. Human skin had been stretched over the wall behind him, and it pulsed from the effects of a non-existent heart, but he didn’t stare at it.
If you give it attention, you lose.
The shower had hair tangled in its showerhead. He tried pulling it free, but it had been woven through the tiny holes and refused to come out. Showering would still be possible, but it would mean letting the long, wet curls brush across his back. It was too much, even for him. He dressed and went downstairs.
A human head stared at him from the second shelf of his fridge. It had been there the day before, too, and the mottled skin seemed to be puckering from where the refrigerated air was drying it. The blanched-white eyes twitched to follow his movements as he retrieved leftover pizza. The flesh was blackening around the severed neck, and rotting fluid seeped from its open mouth, but he ignored it.
He knew what was happening. It had happened to his mother, too. She’d been consigned to the madhouse before his eighth birthday, where she incessantly screamed about her blankets being made of human flesh and fingernails scratching over her legs as she sat in her chair.
Insanity. If you give in to it, you lose. You go to the madhouse. You scream until you die.
Ron sat at the small kitchen table and ate his pizza. A dismembered tongue rested among the stack of unopened letters, its moisture soaking into and discolouring the paper.
Unlike his mother, he was holding it together. He’d inherited her insanity, but he’d learned from her mistakes, too. He wouldn’t go shrieking to his neighbours about human body parts littering his home. As long as he kept his experiences to himself, the men in white coats would have no reason to visit.
Will it eventually go away, or will it be like this forever? Something wet dripped onto his hand. He refused to look towards the ceiling; he didn’t want to see what was seeping onto him. Instead, he dried his fingers on a tissue and shifted the chair a foot to the left. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up.
It had started a week previously, when he’d found a severed toe on his living room floor. He’d almost called the police over it, except the toe had twitched. That clue had told him it was all in his head. If he called the police, they would come, and when he pointed at the twitching member, they would see nothing. And so he had to keep quiet about it. He had to ignore the steadily growing collection of human parts appearing around his home, to not let anyone suspect that he was cracking apart inch by inch.
It was Monday. He would need to be at the school in an hour to welcome his class. The previous Friday, just before leaving for the day, he’d found an ear in his drawer. He’d managed to squash any reaction that would alert his students, but he was dreading what he might find there that morning.
How bad will it get? There’s more of it every day. Will my home eventually turn into nothing but an unholy collection of human fragments?
He shook his head and closed his eyes. No. These images, these smells, these sensations—they’re all in your head. They’re not real, no matter how real they seem. You can endure. Just don’t crack. Don’t let anyone know.
Faint, sing-song chimes ran through the hallway. Ron stood and turned towards the door. He could see a uniformed figure through the frosted glass. A delivery man, young and cradling a parcel, waited outside.
Stay calm. Stay normal. Ron approached the door then recoiled as his feet landed in something soft. The skin from a human’s torso was draped over the hallway runner. He’d squashed it just above the bellybutton.
It took immense willpower not to make a noise. He kept moving, stepping over the flesh and reaching for the doorhandle. Smile, Ron, he coached himself and exposed his teeth as he pulled open the door.
“Mr. Killborn?” the delivery man asked, holding out his clipboard. “A parcel for… what the hell?”
Ron followed the man’s gaze. He was looking inside the apartment, his jaw slack and his eyes bulging, as he stared at the pulsing flesh covering the carpet.
“Oh,” Ron said, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. “Do you see it, too?”
38
Abandoned
From a distance, the collapsed tent looked almost identical to the dark rocks dotting the snow-blanketed slope. Angus didn’t notice the flapping canvas until he was nearly on top of it.
Angus paused, his walking stick raised in preparation for his next step, and stared at the structure. Mount Onglavia wasn’t a popular mountain-climbing destination, so he hadn’t expected to see anyone else on his weekend trip.
The tent had collapsed and become half-buried by the snow, which didn’t bode wel
l for its occupant. Angus wasn’t high enough for altitude sickness to be a serious concern, but there were still a multitude of other hazards that could maim or kill an unprepared climber. Angus quickened his pace, struggling through the knee-deep snow to reach the tent. “Hello?” he bellowed as he neared it, even though he didn’t expect any answer. “Anyone hurt?”
Silence. Angus circled around the tent before drawing closer and tugging on the canvas. To his shock, the fabric pulled away in a thin strip. Something had sliced through the tent’s walls, and only the poles and the weight of the snow held the remainder of the structure together.
What’s strong enough to cut through this? Angus examined the frayed edges of the thick cloth. A knife could do it. Or maybe a bear… except there aren’t supposed to be bears around here.
Angus pulled on the fabric, throwing off the heavy layer of snow to see underneath. Any thought that the tent might have been abandoned due to a defect left him. Inside was fully stocked with food, spare clothes, and hiking equipment.
Angus turned back to survey the harsh white landscape. The pine trees, spindly and dark green, were the only life he could see. The average climber would take more than a day to reach the mountain’s base from Angus’s current location. Whoever owned the tent surely wouldn’t have gone down without his supplies, would he?
A knapsack sat in the corner, nestled in the snow but still full of clothes and equipment. Angus swiped his gloved hand through the white powder coating the tent’s floor and found the sleeping bag underneath.
Angus didn’t like to think about what had happened to the tent’s owner. Mountaineering was a dangerous hobby, especially when done solo. Angus cast his eyes across the hills, wondering if the mystery climber’s body was out there somewhere. The tent wasn’t completely buried, which meant it must have been set up only a few days before.