“Ed!” I croaked. “Turn off the lantern, right now! Don’t say anything, just do it!”
I’ll give him credit, he did it. As crazy as I must have sounded, he cut the lantern off without hesitation. Maybe he thought I had seen something, or maybe he thought I had lost my mind and chose to humor me.
Either way, it saved our lives.
Only a second after our lantern went dark, the entire far end of the pond rose like a mountain before us.
We stood frozen in both terror and awe as the black mound silently ascended to its full height. Displaced water flowed around our ankles. It was easily the size of a modern train engine, probably bigger, and that was only the part visible above the pond itself. It towered in the dim light like an ebony colossus. Yet try as I might, I could make out no feature on its oily black surface…at least not until it opened its eyes.
It had hundreds of them.
Luminescent green bubbles rose to the surface of the gelatinous mass, then opened to reveal a lunatic assortment of eyes that stared out at the world in all directions. Some were large, some small, some protruded on stalks, and some actually merged to form a strange double eyeball with merged irises. More variations appeared with every new orb, each more disturbing than the last, but they all glowed with the same hellish, emerald light
The creature rose higher and contorted itself into a more columnar form, perhaps to get a higher vantage. Apparently this leviathan was amorphous, able to change shapes as it desired.
Other than the slosh of displaced water, the creature had yet to make a sound, and I doubt anybody at the playground realized their peril yet.
On the other hand I spotted Allen’s shadowy figure now frantically pushing the wheelbarrow along the west side of the pond. He had apparently chosen to make a run for the playground, and I groaned inside as I realized his mistake. He should have grabbed his wife and dove into the trees, perhaps on the chance this titan would lose sight of him and focus elsewhere.
As it turned out, he became its first victim.
The towering monstrosity twisted in his direction and then revealed another horrific aspect of its nature.
It screamed.
The creature seemed to writhe, then scores of hideous mouths tore themselves open across its vast bulk, and they all began to scream. Like its eyes, they came in a madhouse variety of shapes and types of teeth. And those were only the ones big enough for me to see. But they all yowled and wailed like the souls of damned, as if the creature itself were a one-way portal to hell.
I caught one last glimpse of Allen’s tiny, fleeing figure before the monstrosity leaned and crashed over them like a protoplasmic wave.
I had no doubt the Treadwell’s died instantly. The horror was massive, and must have weighed over fifty tons.
The monster seemed to shift its mass internally, causing the land bound part of it to swell and the rest to draw itself out of the water. Then it reared high again, but chose a different form of locomotion to continue its rampage. Thick extrusions shot out toward the ground before it and it shifted its bulk up onto those as it moved. It did not use them as legs, instead shooting out more extrusions ahead and continually shifting its mass onto those as it withdrew the others back into itself once it had passed.
It made for a violent, jerky looking form of travel, but the main bulk of the beast moved smoothly and it bore down on the now shrieking denizens of the playground like a freight train.
They never had a chance.
Some tried to scatter, others hid in the playground tunnels, while some covered their silent children’s bodies with their own. A few even tried to stand their ground and the crackle of firearms met the horror as it descended upon them. None of it mattered.
The behemoth fired out multiple appendages as it closed, apparently capable of dealing with a large number of targets at once. I saw one man hammered into the side of a ladder by a thick protrusion with enough power to bend the steel bars, before being drawn back into the monster’s central mass. Another scrambled into a tunnel, with a wormlike appendage in hot pursuit. A mere second later the appendage sported a large swelling that moved back down its length like a snake in the process of swallowing an egg. At the same time, a woman struggled and wailed in the grasp of two tentacles holding her high over the monster. She gave one last agonized shriek before it twisted her in half and dropped the still twitching pieces into the massive mouth that had formed below.
The huge abomination slaughtered with speed, unbelievable violence, and all to the sound of a thousand maniacal howls that never ceased.
The carnage was overwhelming.
I stood transfixed by the butchery, before finally noticing Casey’s tug on my arm. It was far past time to go. I let her draw me back into the darkness before we turned and made our best speed back down the path.
We didn’t dare light the lantern and risk drawing the beast’s attention. This monster could see in all directions, and I had a feeling it came with an appetite that matched its size. Besides, I think it enjoyed the kill. The cries of people dying were already dwindling behind us, although the monster’s howls remained undiminished. Which meant the slaughter had nearly ended and it would probably be hunting new prey soon.
We needed to be out of here.
Now.
Ed shielded the lighter in his hands and flicked it on. It gave out just enough light for us to barely see the path, and he could only hold it that way for a few seconds before he would have to let it go out to keep from burning his fingers. It made our retreat maddeningly slow.
Too make matters worse, the rasp of his prosthetic seemed thunderous compared to the rest of our silence. The image of a thousand mad eyes swiveling in our direction haunted me at the sound of each step.
Every second I wanted to break into a run, and every second I had to remind myself it would be a fatal mistake.
Our lack of real light also drove home the fact we faced other threats than the beast raging behind us. Once more we entered the area with the luminous graveyard of fruit. This time I spotted one that definitely contained a human, with her hand still clutching the hammer that had obviously failed her as a weapon.
So much for my hope these had all been sleepers.
To make matters worse, I was pretty sure the woman hadn’t been there before…which made her a very recent addition. It also meant something still lurked out there in the darkness, and this was its home lair. Our heads were now on desperate swivels as we crept forward. I swear I could feel the death around me. We could only hope the howls and crashes of the nearby super-predator had sent this monster scurrying for cover.
When we finally emerged at the fork where the dead spearman lay, we were three sweat drenched wretches with every last nerve frayed.
Somewhere behind us, the horror of the playground still howled its demented chorus of death. But now it sounded more distant. Diminished. The monster had gone on the move, and apparently it moved north.
We had survived.
We had taken losses, but once again we had survived.
This time we had been lucky. At the crucial moment I had acted on information nobody else had, and it saved our lives. The fact the source of that information made absolutely no sense didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to me was it had been there when I needed it, and it made the difference.
I tried to take some small consolation in the thought that if that horror was what I had been explicitly warned about, then at least it must be the most dangerous creature in the area. I certainly couldn’t imagine anything deadlier. Now it lay behind us, and we were only two or three blocks from the utility road leading to our last leg of the journey before reaching the highway. We were almost there.
I could only hope with that last, seemingly apocalyptic creature behind us…the worst of this nightmare lay behind us as well.
I had yet to learn monsters and nightmares were not always the same thing, and some nightmares were more monstrous when your hand helped shape the horro
r involved.
Chapter Fourteen: From Hell
Now that we knew the woods beside us doubled as a food locker, we felt it prudent to leave the jogging path and go out onto Deer Ridge. I found it a bit of a relief. After the close confines of the trail, the tree-lined cavern of Deer Ridge seemed positively spacious. And with the howls of the super predator growing ever more distant to the north, Ed felt it safe to relight the lantern.
But that relief was mixed.
While the breathing room definitely improved things, seeing the line of dark cars and houses running along the south side of the street came as silent reminders of what had been lost. Not to mention, things had warped here as well.
All the mailboxes now hung open, and pale ivy poured out of each one to run along the gutter till it merged with the plants from the box next door. And those vines were occupied. Tiny creatures glowed like red sparks as they scuttled through the strange foliage. There was also a huge six-legged starfish creature grasping the entire side of one house, with a large weepy eye in its center that tracked us as we walked by.
But it never moved, and by this time such sights only concerned us if they posed an immediate threat. Since this one didn’t, we dwelt on different matters. For me that mainly consisted of trying to come to grips with the reality that we had just watched over twenty of our fellow human beings die.
Sure, I knew it had been happening all night, and I had even witnessed several of those deaths up close. But this had been different. This had been on a whole other level. This time I had stood silently by and watched my fellow neighbors get slaughtered on a large scale.
It had been horrifying, and yet also numbing. I wondered if this was how it felt for people in some of the war torn areas of the world when they crawled from the rubble of their freshly bombed villages. Anguished, shocked, horrified half out of their minds, yet numbed by the sheer scale of destruction and their helplessness in the face of it.
So, in an effort not to succumb to the numbness, I looked over to see how my two companions were holding up.
Ed had gone back to looking exhausted, but to my surprise seemed to be holding up the best. He limped forward with a look of set determination. The old man may have been pushed to his physical limits, but mentally he seemed the least daunted by the experience. He remained focused on the here and now. His eyes scanned the area as we moved, and I realized he had quietly taken it onto himself to stay alert while I had retreated into my dazed little shell.
A glance at Casey revealed a completely different story. From the look on her face, she appeared to be suffering worse than me. The girl’s face was drawn, with her eyes large and haunted as she walked between us. Her gaze focused on the ground about ten feet ahead, but I could tell she didn’t really see it.
At the moment I had no words of comfort to offer. In lieu of those, I settled for sticking close and carrying my share of the load when it came to paying attention. By this time the toll of the long night had exhausted me as well, and I had little else left.
This whole thing had started somewhere around half past midnight, and since I didn’t see a hint of dawn only a few hours could have passed. Maybe three, and only possibly four. But so much had happened in that short span it felt like we had been at this for ages. It seemed life had been reduced to a never ending walk down one dark street after another…so it came as something of a shock when Ed pointed off to our left and spoke up.
“We made it,” he announced. “Woodlawn Gardens is right down there.”
It was one of those things you could drive right past in a neighborhood and not notice. Maybe it had been designed with that in mind. A small gravel drive, lined by cedars on both sides, ran between two houses and back into the darkness. Unless you were directly beside it, it gave the illusion of the two houses using a wall of trees as a property line.
“Right this way, folks,” Ed gestured as we turned down the drive. “We are now leaving Coventry Woods.”
I could feel my spirits lift as he said it.
Finally!
It may not have meant we escaped this horrorshow, but the simple fact we were leaving the neighborhood added a spring to my step. I’d had enough of dark streets, unmoving cars, and silent houses now acting as crypts. A real honest-to-god graveyard could only be an improvement after that. Until we reached safety, putting Coventry Woods behind me would definitely compete as the high point of my night.
But as I relished the feeling, the fact our threesome had suddenly become a twosome intruded upon my awareness.
Ed and I both halted and turned to see Casey had stopped where the drive met the street. She seemed to hug herself as she stared back into the darkness behind us.
“Dodger? What is it? Is something back there?”
Although she faced at an angle away from us, I could tell she opened her mouth to answer, before changing her mind and settling for a limp shrug. And seeing that made me realize what the real problem was.
While I might be overjoyed to put Coventry Woods behind us, that came from having no real attachment to the place. I sometimes even ridiculed it as an example of all the things wrong with “suburbia”. Despite enjoying its amenities, I had only moved here to join Stella. She was the one thing this place held for me. Otherwise I never really considered myself to be a part of the neighborhood.
The same didn’t hold true for Casey.
She had grown up here. She had forged friendships under these trees, attended parties in these backyards, and walked home from school on these very streets. Here she had ridden her first tricycle and driven her first car. This was her world, and despite my somewhat sneering attitude it was every bit as valid and full of memories, people, and its own culture as anywhere else. This had been her home.
And now something beyond all reason had come along and both violated and destroyed it right in front of her eyes. I couldn’t imagine how that felt. I could only offer the hope she hadn’t lost everything yet.
“Casey?” I called softly, “come on. Let’s go find Stella. She’s where home is now.”
Her shoulders slumped as she exhaled, and I knew I had called this one right.
Head down, she turned and walked back to her spot between Ed and me. I laid what I hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder as we turned to once more walk alongside her. It felt odd touching her like that, and I wondered if I would ever get used to this “stepdad thing”. I had a feeling getting to know this girl for the human being she was would be an amazing experience…albeit with a little drama here and there, but I sensed that merely came with the territory. Hell, in a moment of weakness, I even started to lose sympathy for the poor guy who ended up with her in the future.
Which meant I had totally forgotten who I dealt with here…
“Hey, Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s with all the perceptiveness lately?” She gave me a narrow look. “This is beginning to get scary.”
“Scary?”
“Oh yeah. Scary.”
“So let me get this straight,” I looked down at her in mild disbelief, “taking other people’s feelings into consideration is scary?”
“Well, yeah,” she shrugged, “I didn’t know you could do that. And what with all the weird crap going on tonight, I’m starting to worry you might have been replaced by a pod person.”
“A pod person?” I rolled my eyes at Ed. “Are you hearing this? I put a little effort into trying to think of things from her point of view and suddenly I’m a ‘pod person’.”
“Not that I have anything against pod people,” Casey mused aloud. “I mean, if you’re actually going to keep it up then I’m cool with you being my pod dad. We just won’t tell Mom. As long as you remember to tone it down around her, she’ll never know the difference.”
“Ha…ha…”
“Oh,” she added brightly, “but the real Mark would lend me the keys to his Mustang once in a while, just to show he was trying.”
Okay, now I laughed for real.
It felt good to hear her fight to keep her spirits up, and I looked over her head to see Ed grinning as well. Maybe it was our way of dealing with stress, or maybe it came from the feeling we were making progress, but at the moment things were okay and I wanted to hold on to that.
“The keys to his Mustang, huh? It sounds like the ‘real Mark’ had a hole in his head.”
“He did,” she shook her head in mock sorrow, “but we won’t hold it against him. On the bright side, since Pod Mark doesn’t have a hole in his head, you won’t have to wear that dorky hat anymore.”
Wait…what?
“Now hold on!” I protested. “The hat is part of the package!”
“Ugh,” she rolled her own eyes. “Seriously? You know, I have to be seen in public with you from time to time.”
“Darn right! This hat contains my super powers…creativity, charm, good spelling, and it makes me look like Humphrey Bogart.”
“Uh huh,” she replied doubtfully. “Did this Humphrey Bogart happen to look like Matt Drudge’s retarded evil twin?”
Little twerp!
Well two could play this game.
“Says the troll doll wearing the do-rag!” I groaned. “I’m beginning to see the ‘real Mark’ was a misunderstood saint.”
Our mood had risen to the point we barely made note of passing through the rear cemetery gates. Not that we were being incautious…we had seen far too much death tonight to get careless. Our eyes now scanned the tombstones that materialized out of the blackness and into our circle of light as we moved into the back part of the graveyard. This was the older part, and it showed in the size and variety of monuments around us.
But at the moment they were just objects without their normally morbid significance. After what we had been through, it would take more than shaped hunks of granite to worry us.
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