A Latent Dark

by Martin Kee

  “So you figured you’d return her to her parents and collect the reward.”

  Dale nodded again. “I didn’t know anything else. All I saw was the money.” He gave a little chuckle. His hands felt cold and he tucked them under his armpits.

  He looked down and saw that the road was not as still as he had assumed while walking. It moved with geological slowness, too slow to notice unless he looked for a few seconds. It was like watching a flower bloom, or waiting for the sunrise. The corpses rolled incrementally in the glacial current, hair fanning out behind marbled scalp.

  Melissa walked over to him until she was at eye level, her footsteps crunching along the icy surface. “Dale, I’m sure we both would change things if we could. It’s part of why we’re here.”

  Dale looked at her face. It was kind and wise. It made him feel small, the worst person in the world.

  “I just…” he said and then gave up. Even the words were too much effort to get out. And really, he thought, what’s the point? I belong here more than anywhere else.

  A cold breath brushed his ear, but he ignored it. He knew what it was, but didn’t care. He felt a slow hug as a thousand tiny fibers began to wrap itself around his waist from behind.

  Melissa grabbed his arm and pulled. “Get up, Dale,” she said. “This isn’t the time to have this discussion.”

  Something over the ridge moved again, but Dale had lost interest. He had lost interest in everything. He let the small girl tug on his arm while he continued to sit apathetically on the boulder. The icy flow beneath his boots looked so inviting.

  It would be so nice to just lie down and let that river carry me away, he thought. I could just sleep for days right now.

  He yawned and felt something slimy slip around his waist and creep toward Missy’s hand. There was a vague sense of urgency, but everything felt so dull, so muted. He thought he heard a sort of panicked crying from—what was her name?

  Mel… Melissa. Right… man, he was tired. Somewhere behind him was laughter, cold and cruel. He watched as his boots slid infinitesimally into the ice as the slimy tendrils began to work their way out from his body and along his arm toward Melissa. But that river… it looked so… peaceful. He could just—

  The slap almost knocked him off the boulder. All at once, his focus returned with a sharp clarity. Melissa was glaring at him, a tear freezing halfway down her cheek. Her eyes were like cold gems.

  Melissa. Right. Oh… “Oh!”

  Dale stood up as feeling returned to his body. Warmth flowed back into his face as he rubbed his tingling cheeks.

  “You’ve got one hell of a slap.”

  “Move,” she said. “You have to move right now or this is over. I can’t carry you and you’ll never leave this place.” She wiped the frozen tear from her face.

  “Okay… okay,” he said, pulling on his legs. His boot came free with a small spray of frost. From the corner of his eye he saw one of the dead hands reaching with brown fingernails for him from beneath the ice. His other boot came away quickly with a loud crunch.

  Melissa was still crying and he put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m up, I’m up,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  They began to walk again and Dale realized that Melissa also had to break free from the ice where she stood. He tried not to think about the consequences of what he had just done.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have wallowed like that.”

  “That was really close,” she said, her voice shaking. “You seriously have no idea what was happening below you… or behind you.” She shuddered.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” he muttered. “It just looks so… calming from up here. I look in there and I feel as if I could just drift away and forget everything.”

  “You probably would have,” she said. “What would have been left of you, anyway.”

  Dale looked back at one of the corpses that were still reaching toward his frozen footprints. Its face was a fixed scream that exposed yellow, fractured teeth, the mouth wider than it should have been, its eyes as white as marble. The gray hair fanned out in the frozen water around its head. Dale turned away from that gaze, afraid of what might happen if he looked any longer.

  *

  The river flowed out of the ravine and spread onto a beach where it eventually spilled out into a black ocean. Much to Dale’s relief, they exited the ice flow and walked along the shore. The sand was black, the beach surrounded on all sides by cliffs that could have been hundreds or thousands of feet high. Distance and measurement were arbitrary.

  Dale scanned the horizon above the cliffs and noticed that at least a quarter of it was dominated by what looked like a black volcanic cloud. It sprouted from beyond the horizon and shot up through the gray sky. Dale was shocked to realize that it was not a cloud at all, but a tree, its trunk the width of a mountain range. A root the size of a storm front twisted out from the trunk and draped over the distant cliffs before submerging into the sea.

  What Dale had thought of as part of the root moved, using massive claws to pull its long, slender body along the bark of the tree. By Dale’s estimate it was miles long, with bark-like scaly skin and a rippling muscular back. It gripped the root tightly, sinking teeth the size of metal girders into the bark, gnawing away at it with voracious determination as whiskers the length of railways flowed from around its snout, whipped by the cold wind like tattered flags.

  Dale watched the distant creature as Melissa led him across the beach. They sat facing the dark, motionless water on a wide, naked driftwood log.

  “Why are we waiting?” he asked.

  Melissa raised an arm and pointed out across the ocean. Dale strained to see what she pointed at.

  “The ferryman,” she said.

  “The what?”

  But Dale saw it, a tiny rust colored speck against the black void of a lake. It grew in size as its bow sliced through the water. It lacked any masts, its smooth hull gliding delicately toward them. A dragon’s head protruded from the front of the boat, snarling with jeweled eyes and finely crafted scales. He thought he could hear a low voice singing in the distance, carried across the water.

  The boat reached the shore and slid across the sand. It came to rest several yards from the two of them. The voice that sang was off key and deep. It stopped and a low grumble emanated from somewhere in the hull. The pilot cursed.

  An arm the width of a tree stump lulled over the side of the ship and dropped a beer bottle that was roughly the size of a barrel. The hand was coated in massive silver rings, each one as big as a frying pan. Dale stood and took a step backwards.

  A foot swung over the side of the ship and a giant, three times the size of a man stepped onto the sand, causing the ground to tremor. Marley looked at the two of them.

  “Well you better get in before—” He squinted. A white grin broke out across his upside-down horseshoe of a mustache. “Is that Skyla?”

  “No, sorry,” Melissa said.

  “Oh.” The smile disappeared. “I could’ve sworn… you two could be sisters.”

  “Yeah, we used to get that a lot. I’m Melissa.”

  “Who’s your friend?” The giant shaded his eyes as he tried to make out the figure crouching behind the log. Dale stepped out and gave a lame wave.

  “Hi Marley,” he said.

  A broad spectrum of emotions swept across the giant’s face. It began with recognition, which melted away into fury, then sadness. They all knew what it meant, seeing each other, and although Marley’s face betrayed thoughts of violence—the likes of which Dale had never imagined before—he simply glowered.

  “How?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Dale. “Short version was a guard killed me.”

  Marley nodded. “I’d kill you myself from what I heard.” He paused, a hurt expression passed over his face. “Tell me it isn’t true, Dale.”

  Dale only looked at him as Marley’s face turned a deep, pained shade of red. A roar loud enough to shake mountains er
upted from the giant’s throat as he took two massive steps and cocked his arm back. Before Dale could even react, Marley extended his arm like a piston and flattened Dale’s face with the force of a flat-ended freight train.

  Melissa shrieked. There was a loud slap, a crunch of bone, and a circular fan of blood. Dale’s neck snapped back as the man collapsed into a broken mass.

  Marley stood over Dale for a moment, deflated slightly. After several minutes, the red, twisted form of Dale stirred. His face shifted—the nose extending with a pop—then filled out as if attached to a pump. Red eyes, their blood vessels burst from the impact, rolled in their sockets. He looked up at Marley who grabbed him around the neck with one hand, then in a single motion, tossed Dale into the boat.

  He turned to Melissa. “Get in. You can explain on the way there.”

  Dale came around gradually as his body repaired itself. He felt tremendous pain in his neck and face, but was otherwise functional.

  “I guess I deserved that,” he said wiping the blood from his face.

  “You did,” said Marley.

  Dale took a handful of water from the side of the boat and splashed his face. He looked up at Melissa. “So we can’t die.”

  It seemed like a silly question, but Melissa considered it seriously. “You are already dead, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that things can’t hurt you… or destroy you…” She looked out across the water at the shore. “Or consume you.”

  Dale followed her gaze toward the cliffs. The dragon was no longer chewing on the root, but instead was frozen, looking at him. Its golden eyes burned away the distance between it and Dale. Its tail flicked excitedly, dislodging trees and boulders into the air. Dale turned away, afraid of what might happen if he continued to lock eyes with the creature.

  *

  The boat drifted silently for hours. The only indication they moved was the parting mist, inches over the water’s surface. Marley the giant sat at the back of the boat, one arm draped over the tiller. His other hand clutched a brown beer bottle, singing for his own benefit.

  “That’s the fourth time you’ve sung that song,” Dale said, rolling his shoulders. The pain was gone, but he was still stiff. Melissa’s warning replayed in his mind.

  “And it ain’t going to be the last,” said Marley, smiling.

  “You aren’t even drunk. You’re just pretending.”

  Marley gave him a serious look. “Pretending is just as good as being. Ask your friend.”

  Dale looked at Missy, who shrugged, focusing on the water in front of them. Dale looked out the aft of the boat. The dragon was no longer in sight, even though the tree still took up most of the horizon and sky.

  “So, what happened to you?” Dale asked Marley.

  Marley took another swig from the bottle and glared at him. Dale blanched.

  “I met up with some of the occupying forces,” said Marley, breaking eye contact.

  Dale stared at the floor of the boat. “Marley,” he said, “Had I known—”

  But the giant waved him into silence, refusing to look him in the eye. “You did what you did, and I did what I did. At least I got a boat out of the deal.”

  Dale looked out ahead of them and saw a sliver of land against the overcast horizon, a structure rising from its center. “Is that where we’re going?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Melissa said.

  “And what do we do when we get there?”

  “We ask for an audience with Hel, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  She looked back at him and the sliver on the horizon shimmered. Her expression was cold, as though she was talking to an impatient child.

  “Do you want to get there or not?” she asked. “I’m sure Marley would be happy to throw you overboard.”

  “I just want to know why—”

  A distant moan echoed over the void and surrounded the boat. It rose in pitch until it became a wailing howl.

  “Was that a wolf?” asked Dale.

  Melissa looked back at the shore and the structure became clearer and closer.

  “Garm.”

  “Who’s—what’s a Garm?”

  “The watchdog,” she said.

  The howl grew and fell from the shore.

  “How do you know this?”

  Melissa sighed and looked at him. As she glared at him, Dale felt a cloud pass over her face. Dale thought he could see something crawl up from behind her.

  “What happened to you?” he asked her.

  She turned around and looked back at their destination.

  “Really horrible things, Dale,” she said. “Trust me. You got off easy.”

  *

  After another hour, the boat ran aground at the foot of a colossal gate, which loomed a hundred feet over their heads. The bars were unlike anything Dale had ever seen when alive—they were impossible shapes, twisting around one another. At a glance it wasn’t very obvious, but when Dale’s eye tried to follow a corner of one bar, he was suddenly looking at the side of a different bar. There really was no way any object could exist anywhere else in the universe, in any universe.

  He marveled at the bars when he saw the ten-foot high words bolted to the top of the massive barrier. They were similar to the English alphabet, but just different enough to be illegible. He blinked in recognition.

  “I’ve seen these letters before,” he said. They were identical to the letters on Skyla’s coin, the same coin that inevitably cost him his life.

  A well manicured yard stretched from behind the gate up to the front steps of the building. People walked across the grass—they were dressed in various robes, slippers and pajamas, completely uninterested in the three visitors on the outside. The building itself was a square mountain of gray-green cold rock and concrete, dominating the landscape like a vast warehouse. Hundreds of dirty gray windows lined the walls, some open with drapes blowing out into the gloom. Dale saw clothing hanging from some.

  “I expected something more…” Dale trailed off.

  “Hell is different for everyone,” said Missy.

  “Should we knock?” asked Dale.

  Melissa made a tiny fist and rapped on one of the bars. It made a hollow, tinny sound, the sound of a ghost ship’s empty hull. She stood back and waited.

  “You could probably squeeze through the bars if you wanted to,” said Dale.

  She turned to look at him, appalled. “You can’t just walk in without being invited,” she said.

  “Why not?” Dale asked.

  “Because,” she said, “that would be an invasion, not to mention just plain rude. We’ll wait here until someone shows up.”

  As if to prove a point, another howl rose in the air, causing the inmates to shuffle nervously over to the right side of the yard. Garm sounded either very hungry or very angry. Dale imagined it was a little of both.

  Marley motioned to the front door and the three of them looked up. It was open. A figure stood at the door wearing a dark suit and tie. He was holding the door and appeared to have one foot on the steps.

  “He doesn’t look like he’s even moving,” said Dale.

  As they looked at the man, Dale realized that he was indeed moving, only with the speed of sap dripping from a branch. The door slammed behind him under its own momentum, making him appear motionless by comparison. For several painstaking minutes, they watched the man approach the first step with an inexorable slowness, reminding Dale of the frozen river.

  “Anyone want a sandwich?” said Dale. “I could go to the other shore, kill a pig, bake a loaf of bread and be back here before we get to talk to him.” He saw Melissa roll her eyes.

  What felt like an hour later, when the man arrived and the gates finally opened, Garm began to bark in loud deep bursts. The man stood, frozen. His sunken eyes followed them, out of time with the rest of his body.

  “I guess that’s an invitation,” said Dale.

  They stepped along the path leading to the front door. There came the sound of rustling w
eeds and clattering chains, and Dale felt a reflexive urge to run. The sound grew louder with the rattling of chains and hooves.

  “Just stay on the path, please,” came a voice. He looked back and saw the butler, staring at him, his mouth frozen in the final syllable of please.

  Dale shut his eyes at the sound of chains being pulled taut, followed by strangled barking. He opened one eye and looked—down. The Lhaso Apso snarled and growled at them, its pronounced underbite dripping slobber down its long, black, matted fur. Angry eyes black as coal glared at them from several inches above the grass, the chain pulled tight as a fishing line, quivering.

  “That’s Garm?” asked Dale, nearly laughing.

  “Indeed,” said the butler. “The manifestation of all things vicious and canine.”

  Dale laughed and began to reach out to the tiny canine.

  “He’s not even—”

  “Dale don’t!” shouted Melissa.

  But it was too late. Something twisted inside the animal and flung itself at Dale. It was like being inside a warm, moist corridor of saliva and red ribbons. A smell of rotten kibble blew his hair back in a tempestuous roar. He felt as though his feet were coming loose from the pavement.

  Melissa’s warning rang in his ears. I’m already dead, he thought, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be destroyed… or consumed.

  And consumed he was, as the sticky red corridor sucked him down… deeper and deeper. He saw an end to it, dark and round, a void of nothing, the stomach. It yawned at him as he slid further and further—

  A massive fist enveloped his entire upper arm and Dale felt himself slipping upward again, birthed into the world. He was on the pavement, a puddle beneath him. His skin felt slick and vulnerable, cold in the open air. Marley stood over him, holding his arm like a vice. He gave Dale a stern look and released him.

  “You see plenty of large breeds,” said the butler in his tired, yawning voice. “Nicest dogs you could ever meet. It’s the small breeds that you have to be careful of. Nasty creatures.”

  Garm tracked them with the same snarling, hate-filled enthusiasm, bouncing along the grass, until they reached the front door—nothing more than a series of gray metal squares—and pushed.