by S H Cooper
Crows called from high-up boughs. A pair of chipmunks chattered noisily and chased each other in circles through the pines. Even with generous streams of sunlight pouring in, the ground was hard and cool through my clothing. I sat back against the rough tree trunk, the barrel of my gun cradled to my shoulder.
A pine needle fell into my lap. I brushed it away with a lazy flick of my wrist. Another took its place, and I felt a third land in my hair. I only looked up when I heard the claws skittering over bark.
The Daughter dangled headfirst, like a spider on its thread, from the lowest branch above me. Tangles of untamed hair curtained her face, leaving only slivers of her pale features visible. Four of her arms were already snaking downward, fingers half-curled in anticipation. As soon as she realized she’d been discovered, she retracted into a coil. A guttural growl rumbled in her throat, and she sprang. I tried to pitch myself into a sideways roll, but she caught me by the shoulder and flipped me on to my back, pinning one arm beneath me. My shot gun was wrenched from my fumbling grip and tossed out of reach.
“Sash—” I wasn’t able to get her full name out before the Daughter pressed in with her whole weight.
Drool from her gnashing mouth splashed across my face. Searing pain tore through my trapped arm as I held her at bay with the other pressed hard against her throat. A dozen hands raked at me from a dozen directions, snagging on my jacket, ripping at my hair. She tossed her head in the struggle, revealing glimpses of burned flesh above her ear through her mane.
“Hey!” The unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped overlapped Sasha’s yell.
The Daughter reared slightly to face the new threat, lessening her hold just enough for me to wiggle my arm out from under me. I dragged the flare gun from waistband. She snapped her attention back to me in time to catch its muzzle between her teeth.
She snarled.
I fired.
Her face glowed from within, turning her skin translucent, revealing thin veins webbing through her cheeks. White eyes gleamed pale pink. Smoke billowed from her open mouth as she clutched at her neck with two hands and shoved off of me with the rest. She gagged and heaved, spitting up dark blood as she thrashed about. The air grew choked with the stink of her smoldering throat. The Daughter abandoned her ambush and lumbered away from us, squalling in agony. I pushed myself up, throwing an arm in the air to keep Sasha, who had her shotgun raised, from shooting.
“Are you insane?” she shouted. “I could’ve hit you!”
“Wait,” I said, still fighting to catch my breath and gesturing after the fleeing monster. “Follow her first! Let her lead us to one of their tunnels!”
Sasha set off at a run. I tucked the flare gun back into my waistband, crawled to my shotgun, scooped it up, and followed slowly after. The left side of my chest where the Daughter had landed burned with white hot intensity that had me seeing double. I kept my arm tucked close against it and gasped through each new stab that accompanied my steps.
A shot from ahead, ear piercing even from a distance, sent a flock of birds scattering into the sky.
I quickened my limping pace until I was alongside Sasha. She lowered her gun, breathing slow and unsteady, and kept her gaze forward. The Daughter was still half out of the ground, her many arms spread around her, unmoving. A red hole had blossomed across her back.
“You didn’t say how far I had to let her get in,” Sasha said.
I advanced toward the Daughter, guard up in case we were playing a game of opossum, and nudged her with my foot. Nothing. I still put two more rounds of buckshot in her. “One down.”
I ground my teeth together and helped Sasha drag the body from the trapdoor. I could hardly breathe through the grating throb in my side, but seeing the charred remains of the Daughter’s face made me delight in every anguished second.
“You alright?” Sasha took me gently by the upper arm. “You’re pale as a ghost.”
“Fine.” I brushed her away and wiped the gathering beads of sweat from my brow. “There are still two more.”
“Faith —”
“I said I’m fine, Sasha.” I made sure to leave no room for argument in my statement.
She looked me over doubtfully, lips pursed with concern, but nodded. She held open the Daughter’s leaf-covered door, which dropped down into a tunnel, and let me slide in first. Once I gave the all clear, she came too, and the hatch slammed shut, casting us in perfect darkness.
Sasha used her phone to light the path before us. We padded along slowly, alert to every small sound. The tunnel started out tight and narrow by its entrance, but broadened into a passageway that allowed us to walk side by side. Its packed dirt walls were smoothed over from years of regular use. There were no branches or intersections, just a single hewn route that gradually sloped downward, leading us into the earth.
The atmosphere became stuffy, until we were both drenched with sweat and panting, and the further we went, the stronger a cloyingly sour odor, like long spoiled milk, became. My head pounded and my side screamed in protest. I had to use the wall as support while Sasha kept a watchful eye over me. I could see the urge to ask me to go back dancing on the tip of her tongue. But I pushed through it and kept walking.
Up ahead, outside of our small illuminated bubble, came a scuffling sound. I grabbed the back of Sasha’s sweater and pulled her to a halt. She muttered a curse at the unexpected stop and lowered her phone in surprise, leaving us almost completely blind.
The scuffling continued, closer and closer.
Thinking quickly, I shoved my earplug back in, aimed the flare gun toward the sound, and fired. A hissing streak sailed down the tunnel. Caught in its red trail, the second Daughter, identical to her dead sister, screeched against the sudden light. She crawled up one wall, leapt across to the other, and charged furiously from above. I let the flare gun drop and lifted the shotgun in its place.
Sasha and I unloaded.
The Daughter was shredded almost beyond recognition before she crashed to the ground. Her limbs twitched a few times, as if in denial of her fate, before relaxing into stillness. The kickback from my gun had sent dizzying shock waves ricocheting through me and I had to pass it off to Sasha to reload. When she motioned for me to remove my earplugs as she gave it back, I shook my head and stepped stubbornly over the fallen Daughter.
One more. One more. One more.
Sasha stooped to retrieve the flare gun with an understanding smirk and jogged to catch up.
She had almost reached me when a shadow detached from the tunnel behind her and pounced.
The third Daughter landed heavily on Sasha and the pair rolled to the ground, screaming and tearing at one another in the flare’s flickering glow. They grappled, the Daughter forcing Sasha’s arms out to the sides to keep her from using her weapons while Sasha kicked her feet, landing blow after blow against the creature’s stomach. I trailed them in my shotgun’s sights, but I couldn’t fire, too afraid Sasha would be caught in the spray. Instead, I swung the gun like a club and brought it down on top of the Daughter’s head. Two of her spider-arms caught me in the chest and I dropped to the floor, colored bursts flooding my vision.
With Sasha flattened against the ground, the monstrous woman hunched over and struck, snakelike. Sasha rocked hard at the last second and the Daughter’s teeth sank into her shoulder, only just missing her neck. A second bite landed closer.
Sasha’s tortured screams cleared the stars from my eyes.
I hauled myself to where my shotgun lay and used it to stand. Sasha had gotten her feet up again and pressed them against the Daughter’s bare chest. Her legs shook with the strain of holding the beast back. I staggered forward, the shotgun almost too heavy to hold. The Daughter grabbed Sasha by one ankle and twisted viciously so her foot hung at an odd, wrong angle. Sasha seized in pain, back arching, her head flung back. Caught in the throes of bloodlust, the Daughter was slow to react when the still-warm muzzle kissed her cheek.
She batted the barrel as I sque
ezed the trigger, but not quickly enough. The blast ate away half her face in a shower of blood and bone shards.
She reeled to the side with a gurgling whimper and retreated on uncooperative arms that carried her into walls and tripped over each other on her way down the tunnel. Sasha remained on her back, the leg with her shattered foot curled up to her chest. She grabbed at her lacerated shoulder with tears spilling from her eyes. I knelt next to her and pulled at her wrists, trying to get a look at the damage, but she shoved me away with what little strength she still had.
“Go,” she ordered loudly enough to be heard past the earplugs. “Finish her.”
We clasped hands until our fingers were white, and I groped first for my shotgun, then the flare gun.
For Nina.
For Mom.
For Dad.
I would end this. One daughter to another.
In The Heart of The Mountain
Flares led the pursuit after the Daughter, washing the tunnel in crimson. Wet splashes had been left like bloody breadcrumbs in the dirt, telling the tale of her passing. I was slow and clumsy, but dogged, and I teetered down the dark passage with one earplug dangling so I could listen to her mad scrabbling.
A single flare remained.
I sent it chasing after the monster. For a moment, it illuminated more of the same, compact dirt on every side that had become claustrophobic. But then the walls fell away, and the flare landed with a muted thud just inside a yawning cavern. I put my back against its arched entrance and waited, my shotgun balanced against my hip with my finger on the trigger. All I could hear was the slow sizzling of the flare and, further away, the Daughter’s burbled breath.
I dared to poke my head around the corner.
Similar entryways to the one I was in appeared throughout the cavern. The Daughter was pulling herself across the ground, some of her long arms trailing limply after her. She wobbled, started to fall, caught herself, and continued her laborious journey toward a giant, pale figure in the center of the chamber.
I froze, mouth falling open.
The thing took up more than half of the cavern and stretched almost all the way to the ceiling, dozens of feet above. Like the Daughters, it had at least a dozen arms, but all had atrophied into skeletal appendages hanging uselessly from its obese torso, which had three pairs of sagging, flat breasts. Smooth and completely hairless, with a head devoid of any features aside from a slit I assumed was its mouth, it looked like it could’ve been made out of white wax that had been left in the heat too long. The only indication that it was even alive was the rise and fall of its chest.
It showed no concern for the Daughter bleeding before it.
It did nothing at all.
Electric fear jolted through my limbs, at once rooting me to the spot and commanding me to turn back and run. But I had come too far. There would be no more running. I fought back the insistent scream of self-preservation and stepped fully into the cavern, racking my shotgun.
The Daughter dragged herself around to face me. On one side, her jaw was attached only by blackened muscle and sinew. The eye above it was gone, leaving an obliterated, empty socket. I could see the tattered remnants of her tongue through the gap where her teeth had been. The few arms still able to hold her up trembled beneath her weight. Still, she tried to growl. All that came out was a weak, bubbling sound, like a drowning man before going under for the last time.
The malformed giant still did not move.
I closed the gap between us in faltering, uneven steps. The Daughter swiped with one arm, but it was feeble and fell short. My shotgun didn’t.
After she lay at my feet, very little left of her head, I turned the gun on the giant. I poured myself into a banshee’s scream and emptied the remaining rounds until all that was left was hollow clicks.
The buckshot bounced harmlessly off of its rolling flesh, and the giant remained undisturbed, a living statue in the heart of the mountain.
I stared up at it, out of breath, drained, numb, and let my shotgun slip from my fingers. It landed in the Daughter’s spreading blood, and that’s where it stayed when I could finally bring myself to back away. I kept my gaze on that hellish creature until I was too far down the tunnel to see it anymore.
The flares were growing dim and I staggered as fast as I was able back to Sasha. I found her sitting up, clutching her phone for its light, just as the first flare I’d set off went out. We clung to each other, letting the uncertainty that we might never have seen each other again dissipate, and I got her to her feet.
Wounded, aching, we leaned on one another and made the long journey back to the surface. Along the way, I told her what I’d found.
I scrambled out of the hatch first and, with great difficulty and my help, Sasha followed. We squinted against the sun and looked at each other, both bloodied and bruised like a pair of prize fighters fresh from the ring. The laughter that followed was excruciating and relieved and, most of all, victorious.
“So, you have been to see the Slumbering Mother.”
That voice. I knew that voice.
A short, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair thinning at his temples stood on the other side of the hatch. He wore large, wire-frame glasses, neatly pressed khakis, and a button-up beneath a patterned sweater vest.
“Marcus?”
Sasha looked between us. “You know him?”
“Kind of.”
“We’ve been playing telephone,” he said, the expression on his round face warm. “But I thought it was time we meet properly. It was what the Father wanted.”
“Shit, he’s your cult contact?” Sasha went from wary to belligerent. “Let me go back down there and get my gun. We’re not quite done after all.”
I held her by her sleeve to keep her from going over to Marcus and knocking his glasses off. “What did you mean about the mother? That giant thing?”
He nodded cheerfully. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“What the fuck is she?”
“Yshka. Mother to Gorrorum’s offspring. Brought here with three of her daughters by the sacrifice of this sect so many years ago.” He sighed with a slight frown. “But the ceremony was interrupted, and she is caught between worlds. Her body resides here, but her soul remains in Ibsilyth. It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?”
“Oh, terribly,” Sasha said, sneering. “Especially when you know Mommy Dearest is all alone now. We made sure of that.”
Marcus pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, bushy brows knitting together in displeasure.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded before he could be baited.
“The Father showed me that you would be here.” He kept his eyes pointedly on me, blocking Sasha out. “I had to come see you, Faith. Now that you’ve witnessed His power and know the truth, that they are already in our world, you must know it is only a matter of time before Gorrorum joins his bride. Once he does that —”
“His power? Your insanity almost got a little boy killed!”
“That was terribly unfortunate.” Marcus bobbed his head. “Matron Greer went against the Father’s wishes. He never wanted to reclaim Passit. We had already put it behind the veil, written it off every map. We’d locked that devil inside a hell of his own making. No one was meant to go there ever again, but she had selfishly longed for a place at Gorrorum’s side and thought doing that would earn her it.”
Sasha’s laugh was furious and bitter. “Locked him in? Your daddy-god couldn’t even do that right! My sister died because of what you insane assholes brought here!”
“I’m very sorry about your sister,” Marcus conceded. “The veil may have weakened in recent years—”
“May have? Forget the gun, I’m just going to strangle him.”
“Stop, stop.” I put an arm out in front of Sasha to stop her one-legged charge. “You can’t kill him. At least not until we get rid of the sleeping bitch.”
“Faith,” Marcus admonished me.
“Fuck off, Marcus,” I sa
id, putting an arm around Sasha’s waist to steady both of us. I’d heard enough. “Come on. It’s a long walk back to the car.”
She draped her arm across my shoulders and extended her middle finger with a flourishing gusto at Marcus as we turned our backs on him.
“You’re making a mistake, Faith. You have been chosen to join his flock! The Father calls to you!” he cried passionately.
“Let him,” I shouted back.
I’ll keep answering each time, I silently assured him, until there are no more ungodly left on the line.
“So,” Sasha said, grimacing as we hobbled through the woods with Marcus staring after us, “if bullets didn’t work on the mother, what do you think will?”
I shrugged, and then immediately wished I hadn’t as the pain rushed down my ribs. “No idea. But won’t it be fun to find out?”
We shared a brief, rueful smile, and painstakingly made our way off of the mountain.
About The Author
S.H. Cooper is a Florida based author with a penchant for horror. She has penned short story collections, co-wrote the podcast, Calling Darkness, and is a regular contributor to the award winning anthology series, The NoSleep Podcast. You can visit her online at www.authorshcooper.com or on Twitter (@MsPippinacious).