by Dan Rix
I fell to my knees. “No . . .”
We were right back at Major Connor’s house, right back in Santa Barbara.
It was all gone.
Vandenberg Air Force Base, Space Launch Complex 6, Space Shuttle Endeavour, the giant sphere that held our only chance of escape . . . all gone.
It had taken me eleven hours and every last ounce of my strength to bike there.
It had taken an instant to undo it all.
Chapter 22
I found Sarah sprawled on the dining room table.
Hissing and snarling, the shadow creature stooped over her, its head dipping in and out of her chest as it munched on what was inside her.
“Let her go!” I cried, tears burning my eyes.
The shadow ignored me and continued to feed, making a hideous sucking sound. Each time it lunged in for more, Sarah’s body twitched and her spine arched violently off the table. Her unfocused eyes stared at the ceiling as she took frantic, hyperventilating gasps.
A horrified sob rose in my own throat.
I reached for the nearest weapon—the foot-long carving knife we’d used to cut the turkey. My fingers locked around the hilt, and I jabbed it into the creature’s side.
“Back . . . get back!” I screamed, knowing it was hopeless.
The blade plunged into its blurry form with no effect. Like stabbing smoke.
The thing looked up at me. No eyes. Just an elongated lump of a head, gaping jaws packed with razor-sharp teeth dripping tendrils of a silvery-blue substance.
Sarah’s soul.
I gasped.
A circle of singed fibers marked the spot on the hoodie where the creature had bit into her, but otherwise it left no wound.
The wound was inside.
In a place that couldn’t be touched.
The creature ignored me and went back to its meal, its shadowy head sinking into Sarah’s chest to gnaw on something inside her rib cage.
“No, get away . . . don’t touch her!” I looped my arms around Sarah’s torso and began to drag her off the table, jerking the knife back and forth to protect her.
The shadow scurried up her body and roared in my face. A head that wasn’t even a head, just a giant mouth lined with rows and rows of glinting teeth, like a lamprey eel. It swooped back and prowled possessively across her torso, a predator defending its kill.
Sarah fell from my grip, and I backed away, terrified.
As I stared, more teeth sprouted in its mouth.
Sarah’s eyes locked with mine. “K-k-kill . . . kill me,” she begged, before the creature latched on again, crunching and chewing and sucking, and her body convulsed and her eyes rolled back in their sockets.
The knife fell from my hand, clattered on the floor.
Nothing left to fight for.
I cowered in a corner, hugged my knees. Nothing to do but watch as it slurped up the last silvery smears of her soul, licking her insides clean.
Nothing to do but wait my turn.
At last the creature finished eating and straightened up, swallowing the last of its meal. In its translucent belly, the glowing wisps of Sarah’s soul twisted and writhed like they wanted to get out, tendrils straining helplessly toward her now hollow body.
The creature shimmered, and for an instant, patches of its blurry skin took on a pinkish color before melting back into shadow.
It was taking on a body.
Silvery threads still dripping from its mouth, it turned away from Sarah’s quivering remains and ambled away. One of the silky threads floated to the ground, where it lay, fluorescing, like a glow-in-the-dark spiderweb.
Like the ink Ashley had used . . .
The shadow being floated out the front door, leaving me alone with Sarah.
I ran to her side.
“Sarah?” In my palm I cupped her cheek—ice cold—and a hot tear splashed onto my hand. My voice cracked. “Sar . . . Sarah?”
Her eyelids opened, revealing a hollow, tormented gaze. “It’s gone,” she whispered. “My soul, it . . . it ate it.”
“I didn’t . . . I couldn’t stop it,” I choked on the words, eyes stinging. “I couldn’t get us out of here. I couldn’t get us home. It . . . it was my fault. I’m sorry.”
“It’s gone . . .”
A silent sob warped my face. “I couldn’t . . .”
Sarah winced and curled into a ball. “Feels like . . . like ripping open . . . hurts so bad . . .”
I kissed her waxy forehead. “It’ll all be over soon.”
“It won’t,” she moaned. “It won’t let me die. It’s going to keep me like this . . . forever.”
A shiver went down my back.
“It’s coming for you next,” she said.
I turned away, mouth dry. “I know,” I croaked. “It’s like you said—it brought us here to feed. We’re its prey. And that’s why there’s no way off this planet . . . this is its hunting ground.”
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
I had no energy left to do anything, so I crawled under the dining room table and waited to die. My heart jittered feebly, my tongue scraped circles around the inside my mouth. So thirsty . . .
A fog descended over my brain, blocking out everything but a deep-down horror that flowed through me like tar. What had happened to Sarah would happen to me too.
My soul would be eaten out of my chest while I writhed and screamed, and I would be left to suffer for all eternity as a wretched shell, haunting this nightmare planet like a ghost. At the image, a sharp panic pinched my nerves and accelerated my breathing—my body’s last few ounces of adrenaline, sputtering to waste.
Dark.
A creature that fed off souls. Weak souls.
Maybe it couldn’t digest a pure soul. Maybe a strong, pure soul would be okay, would survive unscathed, would stay intact. But not mine. My soul would suffer forever, squirming and ripping open in its belly because I had never confessed my sins.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wincing against the onslaught of emotion. I deserved it.
Sarah didn’t deserve it. Ashley didn’t deserve it. I deserved it.
I’d come so close to confessing, too. I remembered being lost in Emory’s arms, the words had been on the tip of my tongue, but I’d hesitated. One second. One second too late.
And then . . . here.
Maybe that hesitation had been the final nail in the coffin—my weak soul getting separated from the herd so the hunter could close in.
I shivered, clutched my knees to my chest, teeth chattering. The sun had set thirty hours ago—thirty hours of darkness, not a single ray of sunshine. The cold was catching up.
A faint luminescence lulled my eyelids open, and I found myself staring at the silvery strand pulsating on the floor. The scraps.
What kind of a creature ate souls, anyway?
Follow the breadcrumbs . . .
The final words in Ashley’s diary came out of nowhere, taunting me, reminding me I hadn’t solved her riddle, never would. And because of me, no one else would, either. The diary was gone, and with it, the truth.
Her last entry. That glowing blue substance . . . I understood now. She’d been so desperate to get a message out, she’d inked it with her own soul.
Follow the breadcrumbs.
It was a reference to the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel, though I doubted a freshman would have known that. I only knew because of my second period elective, Self-Knowledge and Mythology. A weird lump formed in my throat at the thought.
I would never go to school again.
In the fairytale, Hansel and Gretel’s stepmom led them deep into a dark forest and ditched them there so the rest of her family could have enough food, since there was a famine. But clev
er little Hansel left behind a trail of white pebbles, which glowed under the full moon, allowing them to retrace their steps and find their way home.
Why my mind picked this particular memory to slog through, I had no idea. Glowing white pebbles . . . kind of like glowing white strands of soul, maybe.
The stepmom, of course, tried again. But this time Hansel and Gretel left behind breadcrumbs, which the birds ate, so they couldn’t find their way back home and ended up getting enslaved by a witch who wanted to boil them alive and eat them, yada yada yada.
Some disturbing similarities.
The silvery thread wiggled in front of me, creeping toward me like an inchworm . . . or toward Sarah, who lay moaning on the table above me. Another glowing strand caught my eye as it wriggled into view in the foyer.
Where had the creature run off to? Why not just stay and eat me? Finish the job? Clearly, I was here for the taking. Wasn’t like I was going anywhere.
No way off of this rock.
After me and Sarah, dark matter would probably abduct more humans—maybe all humans—and bring them here to feed off their souls. Once it did, maybe it would create dark matter duplicates of all of them and send them back to Earth, like Ashley’s evil double . . . like the monster that had just fed off Sarah and looked to be taking on her body. But why?
Follow the breadcrumbs . . .
Wait.
I felt my eyebrows scrunch together as a crazy thought took hold. I pushed off the ground to a throbbing headache and stared at the silvery wisp clinging to existence. The breadcrumbs . . .
I knew where the creature was going.
Of course. I had always known. Sarah had known, too.
She had said something earlier . . . It’s been trying to eat my soul so it can take over my body on Earth.
The creature was going back to Earth.
Coming here . . . it wasn’t just a one way trip. After a human showed up here, a fake human was sent back. That was how it worked. Something always got sent back—Ashley, Salamander the snake, my cell phone.
Something always got sent back.
Which meant a wormhole was about to teleport the creature back to Earth. A wormhole. From here. To Earth.
And if there was a wormhole that connected back to Earth—my heart began pounding—maybe I could hitch a ride on it.
Maybe I could still go home.
All I had to do was follow the breadcrumbs.
I grasped the edge of the table and hauled myself to my knees, squeezed Sarah’s hand. “I think I know a way out of here,” I said. “I know how to get home.”
Her glazed eyes stared through me.
“Sarah . . . Sarah—” I shook her gently. “We can go home.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “You,” she whispered. “You go . . .”
She was giving me permission to leave her.
I had to leave her. I had to go back to set things right, with or without her.
She wasn’t really alive without her soul.
I nodded, biting my lip to stop from crying again. “I’m going to come back for you,” I said. “I promise . . . It might take a while, since I’ll be serving time in jail, but I’m going to come back for you, okay? I promise.”
She nodded weakly.
I kissed her cheek.
Then, using the last of my strength, I staggered to the front door, following the trail of silvery threads left behind by a monster.
I tripped on the steps and collapsed into a barbed succulent garden, took a palmful of thorns. Wincing, I dragged myself to my feet on the other side, then stumbled down the driveway, lurching left and right.
I slumped against Sarah’s water generator, and my lungs heaved to get enough air. Standing upright, the blood drained from my head, leaving me dangerously lightheaded.
Had to keep going . . . just one last push . . . one last push.
I took a lurching step, head swimming. A wisp of silver glowed on the curb, and I collapsed in front of it, gasping.
It had gotten looped around a blade of grass, its end stretching weakly toward the house. I helped it loose. The substance flowed over my finger, warm and soft and liquidy.
Like dark matter, only . . . different.
I peeled my eyes off the thread and scanned the black neighborhood. Another wisp glimmered farther down the street. Jaw clenched, I pushed to my feet and hobbled after it.
The frozen air slipped under my loose tank top like icy talons. I rubbed my arms, squeezed them to my chest, frantic to hold on to what little warmth I had left. Still, violent shivers racked my body, my teeth chattered.
I reached the thread and fell to my knees, feeling my last wisp of hope flitter away. It clung to the edge of the storm drain, crawling free like a piece of radioactive spaghetti.
The storm drain.
The creature had gone down into the storm drain. Like before.
I would have to chase it down into the sewer.
The concrete dipped, giving me just enough space to squeeze through. I lay on my stomach and scooted backward, feeling like one of those pieces of spaghetti as I wiggled my butt under the grate. My legs dangled off the edge, heels scraping a back wall as I eased myself through an inch-deep sludge of mud and silt.
My grip slipped, and I shrieked as gravity yanked me backward, my head banged the grate, and my body slithered into nothingness.
I came to on the floor of the sewer, bruised everywhere, surrounded by pitch black. The rectangle of starlight from the storm drain floated a mile above me.
I sat up with a groan, slimy algae oozing between my fingers. I wiped it off on my shorts and rubbed my sore, trembling limbs. A faint silver glow winked in my periphery, tugging my gaze down the tunnel.
Another breadcrumb.
I clambered to my feet, and bumped my head on a four-foot ceiling. Oh, perfect height for it. Crouching, I hobbled toward the glow, slapping the narrow walls for guidance. My blundering footsteps slopped in the mud. Too much noise.
It would hear me coming.
I forced myself to slow down and advanced on tiptoe. As I went deeper into the tunnel, the walls seemed to cave in around me. My throat reflexively tightened into a straw, breaths shallow and clipped. My pulse flittered in my ears.
I was going to die down here.
The source of the light came into view. A silky strand wiggled in a puddle like a bioluminescent glowworm, throwing rippling waves of neon blue around the tunnel walls.
I stepped to the other side, scraping my elbow on the gleaming rim of an aluminum pipe jutting out over the puddle, and shuffled on into the blackness. But soon my footsteps faltered.
Nothing glowed ahead. No light, no silvery strands. Just pitch black.
Had I lost the trail?
I paused to listen. No sound. Just me gulping down air. Just the steady drip drip drip from the pipe behind me. I turned back to watch. Each droplet rippled the puddle’s neon surface.
My gaze slid to the pipe.
Not . . . not the pipe?
I squatted in the puddle and peered up into the pipe’s throat, into a circle of blackness scarcely a foot and a half wide. At once, the back of my neck bristled. Something faint glimmered at the other end.
The next breadcrumb.
I backed against the wall and slid to the floor, devastated. I could never follow it in there. My chest rose and fell, lungs exhausted. The opening . . . too narrow.
Just let me die already.
But as I shivered and hugged my shoulders, feeling them squeeze inward, I noticed they were narrower than I’d thought. My gaze returned to the pipe. I might actually fit.
“No . . . no, no, no,” I rasped, going rigid in panic.
But it’s my soul.
Di
d I have a choice? Just check. Gripping the aluminum, I knelt under the pipe and stuck my head in . . . then my shoulders. My torso slid right in. Inches to spare.
I didn’t have a choice.
Gritting my teeth against the fright, I crawled the rest of the way into the pipe. It clamped around me, suffocated me, and the metallic echo of my heartbeat reverberating in the tiny space. Zero elbow room. I gasped, overtaken by nerve-tingling stabs of panic.
Don’t think don’t think don’t think . . .
I wiggled deeper into the pipe, scrunched my shoulders for purchase, kicked off the ground. My shins scraped the jagged rim, and then I was all the way in.
This fucker was going back to Earth, and I was going back with it if I had to follow it down to hell.
The corrugated ridges provided toeholds, and by squeezing my shoulders and pushing with my toes, I could slide a foot at a time, to a deafening chorus of echoes and bangs. Cold metal pinned my arms uselessly to my side.
A dim circle swam ahead, and I squirmed toward it, practically choking on claustrophobia. I passed another glowing strand, which looked happy to see me, and kept going.
A shadow flicked across the circle.
Gotcha. I slowed to a crawl, heart racing. Couldn’t make a sound now. Inch by inch, the circle expanded into a dim concrete chamber lit by those same wriggling threads, splattered on the walls like glow-in-the dark paint.
The shadow creature paced in the center of the room, its lumpy silhouette blurring against a backdrop of tunnel openings guarded by rusted, eroded bars. Its hideous, toothed face came into view, jaws still dripping strands of Sarah’s soul.
I recoiled and shrank out of view, hiding in the pipe.
What was my plan?
I hadn’t thought this far.
As I watched, the creature’s limbs flickered and turned opaque, took on a pinkish color, and freckles—Sarah’s skin—like a grainy projector coming into focus. The head morphed into a face, growing red hair before it melted back into a blurry mess. The creature continued to pace like a caged animal . . . waiting.