by Paul A. Rice
Red nodded in understanding as he recalled the ‘looking-glass’ description that George had given him before. He looked across at Junior, the tall young man grinned in acknowledgement of the tiny portions of Darkness he had inherited from his grandfather – his evil, dead, grandfather.
And so it was to be, for more than two days they stayed hidden within the bowels of the cave. The snow lashed their surroundings mercilessly, huge drifts began to form all over the woods and every few minutes there would be a sharp cracking noise as yet another branch surrendered to the burden of several feet of thick, powdery snow. The first time it happened, Ken and Mikey were on their feet in seconds with their rifles in the alert position and eyes frantically scanning what little they were able to see of the area just outside the cave. Seconds later there was another loud creak, followed by a vicious snapping noise, this time they caught sight of the falling branch followed by an enormous clump of snow thumping softly into the ground beneath the offending tree.
Ken laughed softly, saying: ‘Bloody hell, for a minute there I thought we’d been caught out!’ After spending a few more moments peering into the blizzard, and seeing no sign of anything else other than the blurring whiteness, they turned away from the entrance and went back into to the warmth of the cave.
Much later and only having left the cave when the occasional call of nature demanded to be answered, or perhaps to sneak out and retrieve one of the frozen meat-parcels, they were thrilled to notice that the atrocious weather appeared to be ending as quickly as it had started. With a last ghostly howl, the wind blew itself out, and within minutes a feeble glow of sunshine started to permeate the darkness of the overcast sky that had hung above them like some bringer of bad news. One hour later and it was almost impossible to see through the blinding glare of the bright sunlight as it reflected off the brilliant white façade that covered each and every part of their wooded surroundings.
Michael and Tori suggested that perhaps they should wait until the next morning before departing. The idea pleased Ken, who, having spent some time in his previous life in freezing conditions, knew exactly how tough the going would be if they tried to walk through such thick snow without the proper equipment. Yes, waiting for one more night would definitely be worth it, hopefully in the morning the snow would be gone, then they too would go, and go quickly!
They spent that last night in preparing themselves for the final leg of their journey; Ken carried out all his usual checks on their weapons and equipment and made sure that everything was properly stowed. The rest of the time was spent in getting plenty of food and drink inside themselves – the supply of meat and fish had, amazingly, been exactly enough for the period of their stay.
When Junior asked if they should go and set some more traps so they had meat for the rest of the trip, Mikey had looked at him and said, quietly: ‘We won’t need any more food. The time for eating is over, just take some water and a few of those boiled-sweets, if we’ve any left, they will be all that we need.’
That statement alone was the only thing the others needed to hear, and with an added burst of energy they all set to the task of the final preparations with great enthusiasm. By late evening the temperature had risen sharply and the melting snow was now running away down the ravine in sloshy torrents, every now and then there would be a loud splash from the distant pool as yet another thick sheet of it plunged over the lip and cascaded into the freezing water below.
They started a decent fire going and then allowed Red to cook them a massive stew made from all of their remaining rations. In a few moments the old grenade tin was bubbling away, the concoction smelling like it was due to be served on the top table of a five-star hotel somewhere. They gathered around the blazing fire and waited patiently for the red giant to serve them with their helping of the fine-smelling stew.
The heat from the fire had warmed the inside of the cave to such a degree that steam was now starting to lift from their damp clothes. Soon, a fine haze of mist had cloaked itself around them, its presence giving rise to a ghostly atmosphere, one that made Ken stare in fascination. He watched as the firelight flickered and danced amongst them, glowing within the halo of mist and sending strange shadows to scurry like wild animals across the damp walls of the cave.
A primeval atmosphere filled the room, a scene played out in every parallel there had ever been, played out for thousands and thousands of years beforehand. Ancient hunters preparing to meet the beast, meet it, conquer it – kill it! Ken looked around at the shining faces of his friends; their eyes like coals burning within their darkly-silhouetted skulls. He thought back to all the things that had happened, all of the strange, wonderful, and often horrifying events. Ken remembered the first time he’d realised that all was not quite as it had seemed to be…
He thought of George and, of course, he thought of Michael Wyppen.
The memories flooded into his mind, those shocking things he’d felt when he looked into the dying man’s eyes, the dark-skinned attacker who he and Red had questioned on the banks of the water channel down by the old windmill, Ken remembered the horrendous rush of power he’d felt as those awful eyes dragged him into their inner depths.
Those sickening words: ‘Who am I?’
The sound of that voice, the rusty malevolence, came rushing back like a storm of blood and horror. He felt the awful, sliding sensation creeping into his head, but this time he couldn’t stop it. Ken remained in a trance for what…to him…seemed like hours. He was powerless against the memories of all he had seen and done, visions of death, deep feelings of love, hatred and passion, immense rushes of fear and of joy – everything, all of it. His whole life flashed into his head. Every sensation he had ever felt chose that precise moment to parade through Ken’s sub-consciousness. He saw the Demon.
Its filthy, black, smoke-filled eyes zoomed inwards and stared him right in the face. Ken heard George laughing and watched as the Demon was blown away like smoke, blown away by a searing wave of green light. In the face of all of those lightning-quick memories, the worn-out old soldier still managed to do the one thing that had seen him through some of the worst moments of his life. He grinned at them and held on tightly to the fact that he knew they weren’t real.
‘Nothing more than someone playing silly bastards with my head again – well, come on in, whoever you are, there’s nothing but acres of space in here anyway, make yourself at home and don’t mind me!’ Ken laughed at his own thoughts and in an instant the flashing melee of memories had ceased.
Hearing a loud voice, he blinked and looked up into the eyes of the man who had tried to kill him – had killed him – in some other place.
‘Ken, Kenny…are you okay, man?’ Red said. ‘Pass me your plate, dude, the stew’s gonna be stone-cold by the time you finished with all of your daydreaming!’ The big man shook his head in a gesture of sympathy and took the empty plate from Ken’s outstretched hand. ‘Two more minutes and I was just gonna have to eat your share all by myself!’ he said, placing a hefty dollop of the stew onto the plate before passing it back. ‘There you go, sir, eat it all ‘cos we don’t have as much as a bean left!’
With all his previous thoughts now dispelled by the fact he’d forgotten to bring some Tabasco sauce, Ken grinned and sat back to tuck into the flavoursome stew that the big man had so lovingly prepared for this, the Hunters’ last meal in the cave.
***
In a place not too far away from where the Hunters sat and calmly enjoyed their meal, the Demon was having somewhat of a less-than-pleasant time. In fact, he was almost beside himself with rage, the total lack of success he had encountered whilst trying to locate those pathetic bags of flesh and bone, the ones who had taken it upon themselves to venture onto his final stage, had sent him into an almost apoplectic frenzy.
‘The bastards are coming here, here!’
Coming here to his most fertile and most treasured piece of land, the place where his carefully-planted seeds of evil had been so lovingly nurture
d and cared for, they were daring to come to the place where his complete and utter attention to detail had ensured that all of his plans were now on the verge of completion, of bearing him the fruit which he so craved.
‘How dare they even think of coming here? There’s a whole universe for them to go and play sheriff in!’ The Demon snarled into the icy wind as it lashed the bleeding face of its host. ‘Well, that’s just fine and dandy, come on up here and play then, come on! We’ll see who laughs last, you pig’s pricks!’
He turned the feeble eye of his rotting host onto the slope that wound its way down from the towering lair, the storm he had sent them was still raging and he sincerely hoped that the advancing Hunters were currently in the process of having their balls frozen off, wherever it was they may be, the bastards! Still, at least the storm would delay them, of that he was certain, and the knowledge of the extra time that delay would grant him, filled him with joy.
He had felt them arriving, they had used something strange to come to him this time, something new, he hadn’t felt the spaces in-between moving like they normally did when the Hunters travelled amongst the dimensions in search of him. No, this time it had been different, without warning those who would see him banished forever had appeared like an annoying rash, and annoying rashes were something the Demon was painfully familiar with.
The body of his ancient host was now well on the way to total decay, it was literally falling to pieces – why, only yesterday its cataract-covered left eyeball had decided to take leave all of its own accord. The pleasantly squishy, popping noise that the orb had made as he’d inadvertently stepped on it, was the only signal the Demon received that all was not well, not so well at all. The rest of the old one’s body wasn’t in such good fettle, either. Most of it was actually one giant rash, and several long strips of skin had already been stripped away by his endlessly-scratching fingernails.
The Dark One quivered in disgust, snorting: ‘When will the time arrive that these pathetic lumps of meat will last me more than just a few years?’
It had been with this host for a long time now – it had looked inside his mind, it ruled his mind, it knew everything about this one, everything and nothing, for it did not really care about any pathetic, human emotions. Fear and love, jealousy and hatred, greed and avarice – that’s all these bags of meat seemed to be cursed with. No, it only cared about how those things would allow it to complete its work, and this particular one, this host, well… he had been the best the Demon had ever known.
He had been so clever, so brilliantly gifted, and so terribly angry!
Taking root within him had been child’s play, and together they had achieved so much. Even now, as it stood there contemplating what to do with those who would interfere, it knew its work was done – the machine was in its hole and the silver box with its little lights was busily flashing away. The Demon had no idea as to what any of those things actually were, it didn’t need to know about boring stuff like that, all it needed to know was that when the flowers bloomed, and bloom they would, then all hell would break loose!
The dogs of war and the Hyenas would enter the game, and there would be no stopping them. Oh, what joy! It was a shame that his host would not be alive to see such carnage, but, hey-ho, such is life, or death in his particular case. Flicking away a loose fingernail, and whilst greedily licking pus from the festering stump of a rotting fingertip, it turned its raging thoughts back to those who would interfere with its so nearly-completed work.
‘Yes, well come to me then, come and I’ll change your feeble warrior blood into fuking diarrhoea, you’ll be bleeding liquid shit through your blinded eyes by the time I get through with you!’ Casing a last one-eyed glance at the heavy snow clouds above, followed by an almost uncontrollable giggle of anger and hysteria, the beast turned back to the cave.
In all honesty, the Dark One couldn’t have cared less about the state of the weather outside his lair. In fact, he couldn’t have cared about the weather anywhere in the universe. He was far too busy finishing off the last few details of his plan to set fire to all that remained of humanity.
And when his fire ignited, it would be enormous.
For millennia the darkness of his being had toyed with these fools, these complicated, intricately-designed, organisms who called themselves humans. But, now the time had come for him to go, the deepness of space and the endless abyss of time awaited him. His was an existence based upon nothing other than a strong desire to see chaos and mayhem. There was no plan, no big end-game to be striven for. His entire design was one of random events, the immeasurable microns of his being endlessly fluttering through space, through time, through everything. His entire reason for living was based upon doing nothing more than seeking out the hosts from within which his miniscule seeds of mischief would perhaps garner some nourishment, merely to stay a while and see exactly where his terrible influence would lead the game.
Sometimes the game would be played for decades of the humans’ unbelievably slow measurement of time. In his own method of calculating time, and what other method was worth using, their decades were more akin to a few of his micro-seconds. The fact that his influence was able to cause such misery for so many, and for so long, was of no importance. That the effect upon mankind from those he had infected would last for decades, was immaterial. The reality that this would be the cause of so many changes, never even crossed his mind. In fact, to describe his thought processes as being cognitive, or being carried out by something as complicated as a ‘mind’ would be hugely wide of the mark.
No, his reason for ‘living’ was much simpler.
Like a starving dog standing before a bowl of raw liver, there was no thought, no considerations to be made, only actions to be taken. The dog would eat the meat, and the Demon would unleash the havoc. The truth of the matter is that the Demon most certainly didn’t think of itself as a ‘he’, either. It didn’t think of itself as anything, there was no thought, no self-awareness, no anything. Any thoughts involved with this thing, for it was nothing more than just that, a thing, only came from the person within which he – it – had pupated itself. As black is to white, as darkness is to light, as matter is to antimatter, and as dark matter is to dark energy, the Demon was the antithesis of everything that humans would ever possibly be able to imagine.
Whatever they considered to be normal, it would be the opposite.
The Demon is not the darkness, it is in the darkness. It was not space, it is in space. It is in everything. It is part of everything. And it changes as it sees fit, as it requires. It changes in order to maintain its existence. Only when those who can, manage to find where it is hidden, those like George and his descendants, only then can the true colour of its evil be really seen. Then, and only then, can the overwhelming effects of its occupation be finally flung into the light. And then, as we’ve seen so many times before, the sparks will really fly – the sparks and the blood.
16
No More Tomorrows
The sun was out, and that was fortunate for the advancing Hunters because the air was freezing. This time there was no doubt about how cold it was and the breath flew from their mouths in long exhausts of steaming vapour. As they climbed higher the altitude made them breathe harder and faster, the lack of oxygen making the blood pound in their temples. It was difficult to remain focused on the mountain rising above them, its blackened peak seemed to be a thousand miles away. The idea of being able to make the summit today seemed almost unthinkable.
They had set off from the cave just after dawn, having finished one last hot drink and then waiting patiently whilst Junior scratched all of their initials onto the wall of the cave, his efforts producing a long list of letters in what was probably the first case of inter-dimensional graffiti. Folding away the blade of his small knife, Junior hefted the last pack onto his shoulders and picked up his weapon.
‘Right, that’s me done, maybe someone will find our names one day, find ‘em and wonder what in the hel
l we were doing here?’ He grinned, then turned to Tori and gave his mother a hug. ‘You okay, Mum?’ he asked, releasing her from his iron embrace.
She gave him a long look, standing and staring into his eyes for a few seconds, before stretching her neck and gently kissing his forehead. With a nod in assurance of the fact that she was just fine, Tori picked up her own rifle and looked at Ken. He glanced around their faces, all of them nodded as his eyes met theirs; they were ready and it was time to go.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s do this. It’s going be a long day, but we’re going to the top, no matter what…’ They nodded silently. He smiled at them, saying: ‘Right, keep spread out and we’ll take things as they come – let’s go!’ Ken turned towards the edge of the wood and headed uphill, aiming straight for where he saw the light of day filtering through the dark trees to his front.
His previous guess of their wood likely being the last vegetation they would come across for a while, turned out to be a well-educated one. As soon as they stepped out from the final line of trees, they were greeted by the sight of a terrain that may as well have been from a different planet. The immense slope in front of them was bereft of anything other than bare rock and some occasional tufts of wiry grass, which, by the looks of things, didn’t extend much beyond the first few hundred yards. The slope was like a giant whale’s back, a huge, almost featureless hump that seemed to go on forever. As they trekked upwards, a black pinnacle began to expose itself through the mist still clouding the summit. The higher they climbed, the more it began to show itself.
Ken turned to the others and pointed to the top. ‘There he is,’ he said, loudly enough for them all to hear. ‘That’s the top, isn’t it?’ He looked questioningly at Mikey. They all saw the young man nod his head in confirmation. Ken grinned and turned to carry on plodding up the hill.