by Dan Dillard
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
…Big Jacques
Hands came out of the hole while Loretta watched. Hands followed by a head and shoulders that belonged to something unearthly. Leathery wings were folded against its back. She could hear them scrubbing against each other and smell the animal stench of the thing. Loretta backed up and huddled against the wall of the tunnel. The muscles on the thing’s forearms rippled as it pushed its naked body upward, pulling up a knee and propping it before stepping out of the hole completely.
“You did well,” it said.
Loretta shuddered and slid back even further.
“What are you? Are you here to reward me?”
“No, dear lady. I am merely a vessel.”
Amber fumes leaked out from the pit and filled the surrounding area, hugging the ground like creeping mist on the English Moors. It stared at her with blazing eyes. Red eyes like marbles full of blood. She thought if she poked one of those eyes with a pin, it would pop like a balloon and splatter red about the walls. She felt threatened. After a lifetime of work, Loretta wanted praise and reward, not threats.
The winged thing hissed at her. “Don’t be greedy,” it said.
It hears my thoughts.
“Indeed,” it said.
She pushed up on one knee and stood, ignoring the white hot aches in her hands and all of her other joints. “Who are you?” Loretta asked.
"Three are we. Always three. Despair, Pain, and Fear."
"I only see one. Which are you?" Loretta asked.
"I am all. Three are we." The creature chuckled, a rough, rasping sound. A sound so deep and heartless and devoid of real joy, it caused Loretta to step back again, this time bumping her back on the stone wall. She was scared.
It moved forward, only a few feet away from her and as she watched, fingers poked through the skin on the sides of its belly. There was a moist, ripping sound as the fingers became hands, and then a pair of arms raised the shell of the creature’s upper body, tearing it loose from the lower half. The second thing set the torso of the first aside and revealed another monster within. The monster stepped out of the first like a matryoshka nesting doll, leaving the hull of its legs standing in place.
"I am Despair," the second monster said and stepped away from the one which called itself a vessel. “We are old friends.”
She slid further away, back down the corridor toward the first platform.
Despair giggled with the voice of a child. It stood tall and bowed its thin chest. With a grin on its slime-coated face, it looked down to see new fingers pushing through its own sides, followed again by hands and arms. Again, it set the shell to one side and another, slightly smaller demon stepped out.
"I am Fear," it said. “We are new friends.”
Loretta felt the strength drain out of her. The digging was finally complete. After seven generations, she had finally brought it forth and she regretted it. She was paralyzed, her feet glued to the floor, her muscles weak, her breath shallow.
Once more, the body was split and laid aside. Once more a smaller beast stepped from within, leaving the legs standing, three pair now. It also spoke.
"I am Pain," it said, a shrill voice—painful to listen to. “We will soon be very close.”
It approached her slowly, wiggling clawed fingers at her with menace. Fear and Despair slid their broken bodies together as if by magnets, sealing at their middles before standing and joining their brother. The original body, the one that claimed three are we, disintegrated.
Loretta cried out—a cry of exhaustion. She was terrified, disappointed and finished with it all. She ran, but they caught up with her, barricading her exit. She ran back to the edge of the hole within the hole and considered jumping, but their hands were on her holding her back.
“In time,” they said. “In time.”
Loretta broke free of their grasp and ran back toward the lift again. Again they blocked her. It had become a game. She looked into the eyes of each of them and found them all familiar. They had been with her all along. Fear, despair, pain and many others she dared not name even in her mind. Would they all come up from that hole?
I can’t fight them. If they want me, they can have me. Karma is a bitch. A bigger bitch has yet to be met.
She opened her arms to them as a mother opens her arms to a child. Each bit into her flesh filling the cavern with crazed chewing sounds. As they drank her in, her mind melted, and soon Loretta Gates was gone. A chorus of shrieks filtered upward through the hole within the hole, and a burst of yellow mist came with it.