by Joshua Grant
“Look Tom, we’re going to get you some help but first we have to leave this hallway. Do you know somewhere where we can go? Somewhere that’s safe?”
Somewhere that doesn’t have purgatory’s Portobello breathing down my neck!?
Tom’s probing hand dropped back to his side and for a terrifying instant Julian thought he was going for his sidearm. Instead, the man abruptly turned to one of the stateroom doors that branched off the hallway. He tried the handle, unlocked surprisingly, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. If there was anything in there, it didn’t attack him. Julian would just have to take his chances that he’d be shown the same courtesy. He didn’t like being left out here with the demon growth and the stairwell haunt without a chaperone.
He pressed himself up onto his feet, again to the chorus of the irritated fungus, but it could suck it for all he cared, and headed for the open stateroom. He tried the light switch. No luck. The hallway cast enough glow to illuminate the distant edge of a bed but beyond that darkness held claim. There were plenty of blind corners too. An open doorway, presumably to the bathroom, was on the left, also beyond his vision. Too many places for something unwholesome to lay in wait.
“Tom?” His clearly afflicted friend was also nowhere to be seen. This was one of the ship’s many interior cabins so there wasn’t a window or another exit for him to escape through if the crap hit the fan.
This is wrong, the rational part of Julian’s brain screamed. Stick to the original plan. Get to the bridge and then get the hell out of dodge!
Tempting. If only it were that easy. Tom was a friend, and what’s more, there wasn’t any substantial evidence that he was beyond saving. He could just be in shock for god sake!
Until his bones start popping and he comes looking for his next closest meal!
Julian paused there at the threshold between light and dark, unsure of what to do and not for the first time on this goblin night. He didn’t just have himself to worry about. What would happen to Ricardo if he decided to parade around as the hero and got the accompanying tragic ending? But I can’t just let my friends die around me just to save myself can I? He swallowed hard. Can I?
The second thought was weaker and it terrified him that he was even considering it. There was too much at stake here. The sad part was he could probably live with it, letting them all go, his team, his friends, even the good doctor who had so innocently flung herself into this little mess, if it meant a chance at giving Ricardo a better life.
He looked back at the dark abyss down the hallway expecting to see beady eyes and a smiling face but was left only with the portrait of a broken-in door and a sludgy malignant tumor nestled in the corner. It was prodding him, whatever evil had taken hold of this place. Toying with him. It wanted to hurt him in the worst ways possible and bask in his pain. Maybe this was hell. Maybe he deserved it. This was the past decade of deaths catching up to him. What was a few more if it meant Ricardo would never have to experience it?
He half turned from the doorway. He could escape, right now, alone. He could even live with condemning the others to this dark prison. I’ll hate myself for it, but Ricardo would still have someone to care for him, to save him. Sometimes being a hero meant you had to play the villain, he decided. He took a step down the hall—
--but sometimes villains have to make the right choice in order to become a hero—
He stopped. It was something Ricardo had told him the morning he decided to end his career in crime. Corny, sure, but Ricardo believed it and that meant Julian could try to believe it too. Dammit. Just dammit. He turned and strode into the dark room ready for what horrors may come, at least as ready as anyone could be.
“Tom?” he tried again.
“In here.” Tom’s weak voice echoed slightly. Bathroom.
Julian angled slowly around the corner, trying to keep an eye on the uninspected room, the bathroom, and the hallway at the same time. The hallway’s dingy light managed to creep around the corner and barely illuminate the outline of Tom. The larger man’s back was to Julian. He stood in the center of the way-too-small tiled room. His muscular shoulders arched and lowered heavily. Either he was crying or he was having trouble breathing. Or—
Julian wouldn’t allow himself to finish the thought. “Tom? What’s going on here? What happened?”
He heard faint whispers emanating from his friend. The man was talking softly to himself. Julian could only make out bits and pieces.
“—I hate it. I hate it—“
“—We couldn’t stop it—“
“—Sasha was crying for me to come back—“
Julian’s heart sank. “Did it—did they get Sasha, Tom?” he asked as evenly as he could.
The afflicted man suddenly ceased muttering. He slowly turned to face Julian and the younger man actually backed up a step, his shoulders tapping against the wooden cabinet that made up one wall of the thin hallway. God! His eyes! Tom had clawed and ripped at his eyes! Tears of blood poured down his cheeks, his hands drenched in the glistening crimson.
Julian was too stunned to say anything. He was just a little ashamed that his hands had naturally taken up his rifle. That shame only deepened when they refused to let it drop back to a free hang. “Y-your eyes,” he said dumbly when the words finally forced themselves through his thick throat.
Tom actually smiled, smiled! Some of the blood was in his teeth adding a degree of sinister to the grizzly spectacle. “I have seen it Julian.” Despite the smile and feigned excitement, his voice sounded strained and tired. “It wants us all to be close. To be warm and wet within it. It’s going to make us immortal! Only through Watcher can we achieve everlasting life.”
Sadness tugged at Julian’s disgust-riddled gut. Tom was dead, that much was now clear. Harry was dead. And Sasha was probably dead or dying or worse. I’m dead too. Repeating Tom’s words in his mind only made him want to vomit. The empty shell in front of him was no longer a man. Just like that, a life full of laughter and honor and dreams was reduced to nothing. It would serve only as a source of information now and then he would put it down.
“What is it? What is Watcher?”
Tom smeared a hand across his face, muddying the blood trails. “The future. The past.” He suddenly balled his hands into fists and Julian braced for the attack but the larger man stayed put, the battle apparently internal. “Julian, it hurts! It’s crawling in my head and it hurts!”
Julian’s heart ached. He needed to end this, now. He levelled his firearm, took aim.
“No!” Tom thrust a stopping hand out at him. “You need to hear. I’ve seen and you need to hear.”
Against his better judgment, Julian paused. Tom was trying to tell him something important despite the pain and he couldn’t help the part of him that badly wanted to know it. It could very well be something that could prevent the rest of them from meeting a similar fate.
Tom continued shakily. “The engine room. They were all gathered there. Hundreds of them! Thousands! So many, but only one. Its name is Watcher. It’s whispering to me in my brainstem!” He winced and Julian winced with him. “It doesn’t want you to know. It doesn’t like you. It wants you to bleed, and I want you to bleed too. I do Julian, I really do.”
His body quaked with the effort of holding back. “The others are cattle. It’s saving them for something special later. But you, you killed one of the children. You don’t get to be saved!”
Julian shivered at the petulant statement. It was one thing to be in a life-threatening situation. It was entirely another to know he had a personalized target painted on the back of his head. “And what about Watcher? You said it’s the past, the future?” he pressed, his mouth sandpaper dry.
Tom smirked, a ghostly thing when someone that bloody smirks. “They made it in a lab—“
“Who? Carver?” Julian interjected but Tom ignored him.
“—they thought they could control it, but they don’t even know the meaning of control. It waited with an unequa
lled patience and watched them, studying the scientists who studied it, probing their weaknesses. And then on that horrible day it devoured them and their dreams. Took their petty flesh and used it to walk amongst them. It consumed them from the inside out, a beautiful and powerful cancer. It made them watch as it dismembered them piece by piece. They’re with Watcher now, warm and wet and safe.”
Julian swallowed hard. He had known some evil men and evil deeds in his life. Never had he met evil itself. Until now. “How do I kill it?”
Tom jerked unnaturally. It wouldn’t be long until one of the children of Watcher reared its ugly head. “Kill it!? Its makers thought they could kill it but they could only slow it down and imprison it. No, it is god, and it has no forgiveness for you.” Tom jerked again and then got very still. “You should go,” he said quietly.
The statement was final. Tom’s essence was slipping away and something darker was pouring into the empty mold. “And what about you?” Julian was surprised at how weak and tired his own voice sounded.
Tom stepped sideways into the small shower cubicle. “I think I’ll stay here awhile.” His voice was so calm and empty. He nozzled the water on. The shower hissed and he was instantly drenched in the steady flow. The blood ran pink onto his clothes. “Wet, warm, safe,” he whispered to himself.
Julian fired a single round into his skull. What was once Tom’s body crumpled to the floor and didn’t move. He stood there braced against the cabinet for a long time staring at it, waiting to plug it again if he had to. A minute crept by, several. Shit man……shit. Finally, he remembered to breathe. First in, then out. In, then out. He felt his normal cognitive functions returning and began organizing his thoughts.
Watcher had been made, so it could be unmade. With efficiency that came from unfortunate experience, he stripped Tom’s lifeless body of its spare clip and made for the hallway, violently ready to leave this dark grave behind. He’d find whoever was left. Then he’d go looking for Watcher.
Chapter 17
Deck 8, Bridge
The stink is what hit Aubrey first. Like raw meat left in a cistern for three days or a bag of souring milk. She’d gag if she wasn’t already holding her breath. An awareness of the room came next. Broken glass peppered out over the bridge consoles, a heavy curtain of mist just beyond, graying with the almost spent daylight.
And blood.
Some of it was sprayed on the navigation screen. The rest was pooled on the floor, streaked here and there from where Mac’s feet must have slipped through.
Oh please be okay Mac.
She had thought he was just being jumpy, but frayed nerves didn’t leave a mess like this. She held her pistol erect, unsure of what to aim at. No one was here. Gabe hovered close to her side. Good. Can’t protect him if he’s not close. She wanted to shield him from the sight of the blood, but he’d lived here for a week now. This was second nature to him. She was the tourist in this nightmarish place.
“We need to leave,” he whispered. She detected the slight tremble in his voice. The same tremble danced up her muscles into her gun.
You’re a doctor. You can’t run at the sight of blood. She did her best to steady the weapon. “Stay close,” she instructed and pressed slowly into the space between the room’s central islands of monitors.
The blood’s coppery aroma bombarded her, turning her stomach in loops. It was a decent splash, but not enough to kill a man. There was still hope.
“Mmm.”
The soft pleading sound came from the right. Aubrey whipped around the bank of computers, careful to avoid the crimson pool with her feet. The blood smear trailed off leading to—
“Mac!”
The clean shaven tech was now a gory mess slumped against the wall. More red poured from a deep gash in his right shoulder. His pistol was levelled at her face in his left hand. He raised his bloody right to his lips.
“Shh.”
Aubrey’s perception seemed to slow like she was seeing, sensing, smelling through molasses. First the distant recognition of the rapidly growing stench like worm-eaten meat. Then the depressing conclusion that if they had to run, she wouldn’t be able to save both Gabe and the wounded Mac, that if it came down to a choice between them it wouldn’t be a choice at all, just a sad reality. And finally a soft and rapid tick-tick-tick like dog nails on linoleum.
What is that?
The power suddenly died on the bridge, bringing her back to reality. No emergency lights kicked in this time. They were at the mercy of the unusual diffuse light cast through the misty windows and whatever their limited night vision could conjure. Her racing thoughts didn’t leave room to ask who killed the power or why. The timing was too damn convenient, like the journal entries left for her, which scared her that much more.
Mac hadn’t lowered the pistol yet. Aubrey rushed to his side, analyzing his wound as she went. It wasn’t as bad as she originally thought. Fairly deep and bloody, yes, but only surface damage. No nicked arteries or organs. Thank God! He’d live, though the next few hours would probably be hell for him. She knelt to dress the wound—
--as Mac’s stained hand came up fast and shoved her to the side. Before Aubrey could ask why, her mind registered the reason, the danger. It came around the far bank of monitors, slinking and nasty. She turned in time to witness the fleshy monstrosity creep into view and felt her reality shredding itself like Mac’s shoulder. The thing before her was impossible and yet it was real, here in the flesh—pale, mottled flesh, stretched thin over its bony skeleton like an emaciated child who had forsaken the sun and any other form of warm good light.
The gangling creature crawled slowly, deliberately, a spider sensing the prey in its web. It was the size of a dog, but the similarities ended there. Its bony arms reached to the floor, dead-ending in spindly claws that ticked with each motion. Long leathery wings of skin extended from these, folded and pointed. It was the bastard child of a pterodactyl and a man, an abomination if there ever was one.
Aubrey traced her eyes up to its face, a terrible twisted lump of flesh. Its misshapen, round head lacked all features but one gaping pink hole right in the center of where its face should have been—a mouth, nasty and pulsing. A thousand spicules of teeth lined the fleshy pink inner surface of the grotesque maw. Viscous strands of bloody saliva drizzled from the orifice. It languidly turned its attention in their direction, making a light sucking noise, the teethlets quivering in anticipation—
--and Gabe stepped into the aisle, partially blocking her view of the hellish thing. He was between her and it, too far to grab before it wrapped its snapping jaw into—
“Shoot it!” she cried almost involuntarily.
Mac opened up on the creature but his shaky shots went wide, exploding a nearby monitor. The abomination leapt upwards with such speed! It flapped its wings clumsily, squealing as it flung itself backwards over the consoles. And then it was gone, out of sight but impossible to erase from memory.
“What the fuck was that!” Aubrey asked but didn’t care for an explanation at the moment. It was still close. She heard its ticking behind the monitors, the skittering impossible to pinpoint. It could come at them from any direction, tear at them with its sphincter of a mouth.
“Can you walk?” she hissed to Mac without tearing her gaze from the darkened monitors and the deadly surprise they might have veiled.
“I think so,” Mac growled through haggard breaths as he peeled himself from the wall, “But my gun—“
Aubrey saw what he meant before he had time to finish. The discarded submachine gun lay halfway propped against a console in the middle of the room. Mac must have dropped it in the initial attack. Clumsy ass, she thought heatedly but couldn’t put any real ire behind the words. Anyone would have faltered in the face of that thing’s mutilated face.
“I’ve got it,” she said without thinking. If there were more of these things out there—and the evidence certainly suggested there were--how stupid she was not to have seen it earlier—then
they’d need every bullet they could get. It could mean the difference between leaving this place or becoming just another of the ship’s non-existent corpses.
She’s still here. She’s looking for me.
Aubrey turned her attention on Gabe. He watched the room with wide-eyed terror. “Gabe, stick close to Mac. Hug the perimeter and move towards the door,” she instructed firmly. To her satisfaction, the boy snapped out of his trance and complied immediately. Nothing like a monster to bring out the obedience in your children.
She looked at Mac who seemed to understand. The room’s outer wall would at least provide them some cover. They’d only have to defend from one direction should the thing come at them a second time. Besides, Aubrey intended to offer it a more enticing target. “Mac,” she added before they started moving, “you protect Gabe no matter what.”
‘No matter what’ meaning if the thing came for her and tore her to shreds, an image she tried to push from her thoughts. Mac nodded, another silent understanding passing between them. She nodded to the side, gesturing for them to get moving, and then swiveled to face her target.
The room was eerily quiet. She half hoped the battish thing had left the premises but that was wishful thinking at its worst. It’s still here, waiting for its chance. Aubrey readjusted her sweaty fingers on the pistol. She wouldn’t give it that chance. She moved steadily forward, wading through the blood spatter without the same care she showed before. Her boots squelched over the sticky mess.
She was distantly aware of Mac and Gabe’s progress. Almost there, she assessed, both of herself and their journey to the exit. The machine gun was just a few feet away, a treasure in the cave of a terrible sleeping troll. She reached for it with her free hand. Just a few more steps. Mac and Gabe were already at the door—