by Brian Harmon
That thing was no animal. It was intelligent. It had been watching them from the darkness, probably the whole time. It had seemed cautious to him, as though it were avoiding confronting them all at once, as though it did not want to risk being overwhelmed, but if that was true, then why didn’t it pick them off when they were separated? Wayne and Albert had both made themselves very vulnerable.
Whatever it was, he suddenly knew that it would not let them escape. Nick and Trish were gory proof of that. At any moment, it would come bounding down those steps, a hulking, murdering creature, and tear through him like a machine.
He backed away slowly, beyond its sight, his eyes fixed on the shadows of that stairwell. If it charged after them, he would be the first to die. He was right in its path. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, and hoped that the others kept moving, that they did not try to turn back for him. They might still have a chance if they ran straight for the basement.
Suddenly, he heard a thud overhead, followed by a rapid shuffling of heavy feet, and he realized that it was not coming down the stairs, but instead rushing down the hallway above. It was going to cut them off at the other stairwell.
He spun around, terrified, and saw that the others were already past the solarium doors. “Stop!”
But the creature was fast. It dropped down from the darkness above and glared at them from the shadowy landing between the third and fourth floors. Startled into screams, Wayne and the girls froze.
“Oh God…” Brandy groaned. Her voice was hardly a whisper.
“What do we do?” asked Nicole.
Wayne stood several steps ahead of them, staring into the gleaming eyes of the thing that had killed Olivia’s companions.
Albert hurried down the hallway toward the others, his eyes fixed on the pale, naked form before them. He stepped in front of the girls, placing himself between them and the monster, and then crept forward and tugged on the back of Wayne’s shirt. “Come on,” he said.
But Wayne did not move. “It’s playing with us, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” admitted Albert. “I think so.”
“If we go back it’ll either chase us or cut us off again, won’t it?”
“Probably.”
It was standing almost thirty feet away, but it might as well have been an inch. The thing was fast, much faster than it looked. It had crossed the distance between those stairwells in only a few short seconds. They could not possibly outrun it.
“We can’t stay up here forever. We’ve got to try something.”
Albert took his eyes off the creature long enough to give Wayne a startled glance. “What are you thinking?”
“I think the two of us can take it. There’s only one of it.”
“You didn’t see what that thing did to those people,” Albert said. He was whispering, but he knew his voice was carrying to the girls in spite of his efforts.
Wayne eyed the thing. It was shrouded in shadows. Only its eyeshine was clearly visible. But its pale flesh reflected enough light to reveal that the creature was massive. Crouched like it was, it vaguely resembled a bald, white ape. “Does it really matter?”
“Yes, it does. It took those people apart. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Wayne considered this for a moment, his courage faltering, and then cursed. “What do we do, then?” He looked down at Albert, his eyes begging for an answer.
“I don’t know,” Albert confessed. “Maybe we—LOOK OUT!”
Wayne turned back toward the creature, but it was already too late. He stumbled backward, too surprised to react, and an instant later an enormous hand threw him against the wall.
“Get back!” Albert screamed at the girls. He had stepped back and to the side when the thing rushed out of the stairwell and even as he spoke he was struck across the chest and thrown to the floor.
Brandy grabbed Olivia by her arm and jerked her toward the solarium door. Nicole ran back down the hall from where they’d come, not realizing that the others weren’t right behind her.
Wayne tried to stand up, but something that felt like flesh but was as strong as a machine clamped down on his face and lifted him into the air.
For a moment, Albert could not move, the wind knocked from him. He lifted his head and stared. The thing that held Wayne looked almost human, but its proportions were all wrong. It was built short and thick, dwarfish, yet it was a giant, almost as tall as Wayne even with its broad back hunched and its knees bent. It looked like it should barely be capable of crawling and yet it was as swift as a cat and stronger than a dozen men. It held Wayne out in front of it in one stubby hand as though he were weightless. As he watched, the creature lifted its free arm over its head, its massive hand curled into a fist that was no doubt as hard as a sledgehammer, ready to beat the life out of its newest plaything.
Mustering all the strength he could find, Albert threw himself at the monster, shouldering all of his weight into its massive side, but it was like slamming into a brick wall.
It dropped its ape-like hand and looked down at him. Its head was as grotesquely disfigured as its body. Its mouth took up most of its face, its broad, rotten teeth a hideous mockery of a human grin. Its nose was flat and wide but short vertically, as though squashed by the growth of its massive lips. Its eyes were small, but an enormous brow hung over them. It had no hair and its large ears lay flat against the sides of its head like fleshy, diseased toadstools. It did not seem to have a neck and its body from feet to shoulders was not as long as its huge arms.
Brandy and Olivia stood in the solarium and watched in horror as the creature took hold of Albert with its free hand and lifted him up, holding him by his face as it did Wayne. There was not a thing they could do. Albert and Wayne were as powerless as rag dolls in the hands of a destructive child. It lifted them up high, almost touching their heads to the ceiling tiles. Both of them were kicking and clawing at those meaty hands that held them in vise-like grips, but they were no match against its incredible strength.
They hung there a moment, helpless, and then raised their voices in twin screams as the creature simultaneously began to squeeze their heads. It was going to pop their skulls like grapes.
Brandy screamed.
Olivia staggered backward, away from the door, her hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide and terrified.
At the far end of the hall, near the stairwell where Albert first locked eyes with the murderous thing, Nicole was also watching in horror, certain that she was about to see them die.
But Albert and Wayne did not die. Their screams continued, drawn out for several more seconds as the creature stood there, staring with its gleaming eyes through the glass and into the solarium where Brandy and Olivia stood. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it dropped them both and fled back down the hall and up the stairwell.
For a moment, Brandy stood shocked, not really believing that her boyfriend was still alive. Albert and Wayne were both writhing on the floor, their heads pounding from the monster’s grip, but they were not dead.
“What just happened?” Wayne asked, but he would get no answer.
The brief silence of Gilbert House was suddenly swept away by an explosion of shattering glass, splintering wood and screams.
Albert’s pain was forgotten at once. He jumped to his feet. The solarium! The girls!
Wayne was slower, but no less determined to get to his feet and into the glass room.
The two of them burst through the doors. Directly in front of them, the windows that had enclosed the outside of the solarium were gone. A huge, gaping hole now remained, and through it they had just enough time to glimpse Olivia as she vanished into the darkness, carried off by something unimaginable, something that was darkness swallowed in more darkness.
Wayne raced across the room, far too late to save her. “OLIVIA!”
But Olivia Shadey was gone as quickly as she’d come, carried off into the same darkness from which she’d appeared.
Brandy was lying on the flo
or, rocked by the explosion of glass and debris, and Albert went to her and embraced her.
Nicole came through the door, her eyes wide and afraid. “What happened?”
“Something came through the window,” Brandy sobbed. “It got Olivia.”
Albert hugged Brandy fiercely. “Thank God you’re okay.”
“I thought I was going to lose you,” she cried as tears streamed down her face.
Wayne stood at the edge of the hole, staring out into the darkness. For a while, he could still hear her screaming out there and then he imagined that he could, but at last it was silent. A cool breeze tickled his cheeks and the air he breathed from that dark world was stale, but he noticed none of this.
Are you here to save me?
Those were the first words that Olivia spoke to him when he found her. He promised her that he would. He told her he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her…
Albert let go of Brandy as Nicole took her into her arms. He turned and walked over to where Wayne stood. The things below them were swarming the courtyard, crawling over the tops of one another. There was no shuffling-rattling noises like the creatures in the temple had made, but the eerie silence that prevailed over these things was somehow worse. Before, they were mysteriously formless, his view of them distorted by the dusty glass in the windows. But now he could see them a little better, and though it was still too dark to make them out in any detail, he thought they resembled the living dead, hordes of zombies converging on Gilbert House, hell bent on getting at their flesh. The thought made him shiver. Whether those things down there were anything like the flesh-eating undead of the movies or not, he was sure that they should all get the hell out of here right away.
“Come on,” he said to Wayne. “We can’t help her now.”
Wayne shook his head. He looked down at the things below him, hardly interested. “I said I’d take care of her,” he said.
Albert put his arm around him.
It didn’t seem fair. After all they had been through, Olivia was the only thing in all this madness that made any sense. She was the only logical reason for them to be there. For a fleeting moment, it had seemed that they found what they came for, only to see her torn away from them. Now that she was gone, there was nothing left, no reason for them to have come to this dreadful place. It was all utterly pointless.
Brandy and Nicole stepped up beside them. Both of them noticed the activity below them, and Albert did not have to see their expressions to know that they were alarmed.
From down the hall came the soft ring of a cell phone. Trish’s cell phone.
Albert turned and rushed out of the solarium and down the hall to the room where he found Trish’s body. Her purse was still where he left it, lying on the floor and splashed with her blood. Carefully, he opened it and removed the phone.
Wherever they were, he strongly doubted that the phone had any sort of signal. He had a hunch the call might be for him.
As he stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him, he met Brandy and Nicole in the hallway.
“What’s in there?” Brandy asked.
“Trish,” Albert replied without thinking. There was no name or number on the display. This didn’t surprise him. He pressed the call button on the cell phone and held it up to his ear. The voice he heard was not from the phone but from inside his own head. It was so strong that even Brandy heard it.
Another day.
“Come on,” Albert said. “Let’s get Wayne and get out of here.” He dropped Trish’s cell phone onto the floor and the three of them hurried back to the solarium.
Chapter 26
Albert grabbed Wayne by the arm and pulled him away from the gaping hole that had swallowed Olivia. “Come on,” he said. “She wouldn’t want you to stay here and die.”
Wayne turned and followed. As he left the room, he realized that Olivia’s flashlight was still lying on the ground where she dropped it, still glowing in the darkness. He stared at it as Albert pulled him from the room. He considered resisting him and going back for it, but somehow it seemed wrong to take that light. Somehow it seemed that turning off that light would be like turning off Olivia, so he left it.
The four of them made their way back down the stairs. This time, no creature waited in the darkness. Every hallway and stairway they shined their flashlights into was as empty as the last and nothing came plunging from the darkness above.
Wayne lagged behind, still not wanting to give up on Olivia, but unable to do anything for her now. It was by blind chance that he found her once, and wherever she was now was much bigger than Gilbert House could ever prove to be. As they descended the stairs between the second and first floors, he paused and looked back up the way he’d come. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to her, wherever she was.
They reached the basement without incident and Albert closed the door behind them, sealing in the horrors of Gilbert House. He thought about replacing the cinderblocks, but decided not to. The longer they lingered in the darkness, the more chance there was that the thing that attacked them would come looking for them. Besides, Brandy was already pulling at his arm, urging him forward, afraid to pause for even a moment.
“I’m sorry about Olivia,” Albert said as they walked through the hallways of Gilbert House’s basement. “I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again knowing what happened to her.”
Wayne didn’t respond. His eyes were open and he was watching the empty doorways they passed for any sign of danger, but he was not really aware of what he was looking for. “What do we do now?” he asked.
“I’m going back to the temple,” Albert replied. “I’ve got to find out why all of this had to happen.”
“Me too,” said Brandy. “It’s about time we did.”
“I’m going with you,” Nicole insisted. “There’s no way you two are leaving me alone after what I saw up there.”
“And so am I,” said Wayne.
Albert looked around at his companions, surprised. He’d thought that they would want only to go home where it was safe. “Really?”
“I’ve been through hell today,” Wayne sighed. “I’m not going home until I’ve at least tried to get some answers.”
Albert nodded. “Okay then. We all go together. But it could be dangerous.”
“I don’t care,” Wayne said, and he meant it.
They turned the corner into the tunnel that led back to the cellar door. Twenty yards ahead, the concrete steps were softly illuminated by the fading daylight beyond and the sight was blissfully welcoming.
Wayne glanced over his shoulder as they hurried down that last tunnel. He did not know what awaited him ahead, but he knew exactly what he was leaving behind.
###
About the Author:
Brian Harmon is an author or horror, suspense and dark adventure. He grew up in rural Missouri and now lives in Southern Wisconsin with his wife, Guinevere, and their two children.
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