by Sam Cheever
The gravelly voice reverberated in my ear, still chanting in the strange language that I now recognized as Hades. It tickled my eardrums with its thundering force. Like a drug-induced vision, I saw my inner spirit rise above my body and hang there, like an innocent bystander watching me struggle with my nonresponsive body. I saw myself sitting there, staring zombie-like at the whirring screen, completely and helplessly motionless. Somewhere inside this false, exterior calm my heart was pounding in fear, I could feel my eyes widening and tearing as they projected the mute terror of my complete helplessness. I fought the immobility of my body with every fiber of my being. I struggled to move even the tips of my fingers, locked on the keyboard of the information unit. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t break the psychic bond I’d somehow been locked into.
The voice in my head softened and began to alter, a few grooves at a time, like an old vinyl record that was being played backward in my aching head. I continued to fight to recapture the use of my hands, my legs, my head, but it was as if I’d been painted with six inches of cement and baked in hell.
Sweat poured down my face and under the reverberating audio playing in my head I could hear myself whimpering with the struggle to break out of the trance.
Then abruptly the audio stopped. The visual stopped almost immediately after, as the screen on my intelligence unit faded to black with a tiny, spark-like blip. I held my breath and wondered what would happen next.
That was when I realized I was no longer the only one in the room. In microscopic but determined increments, the air around me began to thicken with cold, gelling around my static body in a clammy, tension-filled embrace. My ears, which I realized had been ringing in my head since the chanting had stopped, gradually began to pick up the dark sound of something heavy and wetly dense shuffling across the floor behind me. I sat there, a small, sweaty statue in a fake leather desk chair and felt the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up in response to whatever was coming at me from behind. Goosebumps filled with horror popped up along the length of both of my immobile arms and down my useless legs.
With every newly awakened pore in my body I wished I could turn and see what was about to kill me, but I was hopelessly trapped in my cement hell. As the thing behind me stopped shuffling and sent out a shuddering breath that smelled like a garbage dump in Florida in August, I thought about whimpering but decided it wouldn’t be very manly of me and might even give the thing behind me an excuse to torture me a while before eating me. Nothing turns a bully on like whimpering, slobbering fear.
The foul odor of its breath hit the back of my neck and poured around me. The smell was so putrid and thick that it was difficult to breathe through it. It painted the inside of my nostrils and formed a nearly impenetrable plug in my airways. My eyes watered with it but I couldn’t blink. I really wanted to blink.
The air temperature in my living quarters had dropped to the point that it could probably preserve my mangled body for weeks once I was dead, like a self-contained cooling drawer at the morgue. My body shivered mentally, but outwardly remained completely still. It was a weird sensation but it made me realize that only my outward movements were locked up, I could still use my will and my spirit.
The thought was almost enough to make me feel better. Almost. But then the thing behind me leaned close enough to touch my back and, breathing its garbage dump breath into the side of my cement face, extended a long, rough, purple tongue and licked my ear, leaving behind a cold, slimy trail that dripped, green and oily, onto my right arm. I thought that was really bad. I mean, it was REALLY bad. But then I heard the heavy shuffling sound again and the thing moved slowly and clumsily to stand in front of me, where I could see its whole disgusting self with my immobile eyes. It was then that I really knew what bad was. I realized I’d never really done bad before. I was doing it now. I felt all of the blood in my body fall to my feet, where I had no doubt it would be found, still pooling, when the Strange Death Detectives found my mangled, green-slimed body.
The thing had arms but no legs. Its head merged with its “body” if you could call it that, without an apparent break in the line of horror that was its physical makeup. Except, I decided as I peered at it more carefully from inside my flesh and blood prison, although it had the appearance of being a very large pulsating snake with tiny, waving arms that ended in claws which were ridged at the edges like deadly, curved hacksaws, it wasn’t really a physical creature. It had no real physical density or form.
As I watched, the thing’s shape kept slipping away from it, morphing into something that jutted out here and dipped in there, like it wasn’t really sure what it was supposed to look like but was trying really hard to hold it together nonetheless. Watching its wide, rippling face I saw that its expression and features were constantly changing, like the screen of an endlessly running bad movie with a single, repeating theme. I’m gonna eat you, I’m gonna eat you, I’m gonna eat you.
The monster’s eyes were particularly disturbing. They flashed at me from within the morphing face, changing color and shape constantly as if they were the gateway for a collection of lost spirits who were trying to find a way out of that horrible body. As I watched, a jolt of electrical power emerged from the carpet under the thing’s base and trailed upward in curving arcs that caressed its moldering shape. The lights in the house flickered and weakened and I realized that it was somehow draining the power from my living quarters and using it to stay in one piece. For several, whole seconds after I saw the jolt of electrical lightning leave the floor and enter the thing in front of me, I noticed that it took on a more substantial quality, as if the electrical power it had sucked from my quarters had given it the juice it needed to appear real.
I threw out my sensing power and discovered that there was nothing to sense. No soul. No spirit. Nothing there but a nightmare on trolley tracks. Driven by electrical power. I also realized that I was looking at the thing that had been in my office. The thing that had thrown me out of my window. The thing that had dragged the Viper and me to the devil-filled warehouse. Dialle’s lovely pet. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!
It moved suddenly and, at least internally, I jumped. It had been watching me as I was watching it and, immersed in fascination, I had almost forgotten for a few seconds that it was coming to eat me. Now it was doing that heavy, wet, sliding and thumping thing toward me again and something in its face was opening. As the long, slime-painted tongue slipped out I realized with a jolt that it was the thing’s mouth. The monstrous conglomeration slithered and bumped toward my helpless, rigid self, leaving a trail of slime on my rug like a slug. I watched the thing that was its mouth open and keep opening, to an impossibly huge size that looked wide enough to swallow me whole. My heart jumped into overdrive as I realized the thing was gonna lower that graveyard of a mouth over me and swallow me like a huge jungle-dwelling snake. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut on the mental picture of that long, wavering column of electrically charged matter undulating and bulging as my helpless body moved down its length and then, lodged like a large marble in the neck of a balloon, waited to be sucked dry in its tomblike innards.
Inch by inch it moved toward me, the putrid smelling mouth gaping open with nothing but that evil-looking tongue and black, stinky air to fill it. I watched the tongue lap at the air around the mouth, swinging here and there as if searching for something and spraying globlets of gore as it danced on the thick, fetid air that was draining from the thing like an open sore.
I gagged as a wall of the stuff hit me full in the face and gave a mental jump. Tears ran from my stinging eyes as the thing reached the table between us and bumped it as if it hadn’t realized it was there. Well duhhh, I guess I wasn’t dealing with a great intelligence there.
It stopped and seemed to be thinking, but I knew that was probably a skill it didn’t have. Then slowly, almost tentatively, it tried to move forward again and bumped the table, a little harder this time. The table crashed toward me, hitting me just under my
breasts and rearranging my ribs just a wee, damn bit.
At no time since I had become immobile had I wished to be able to scream more than when that table remade the physical geography of my ribs. Although I couldn’t move or scream with the exquisite pain, I noticed that my breathing was now coming in quick, sharp, painful jabs and my fingers had found a way to spasm. This was good.
Apparently pain could override whatever was holding me hostage inside my body. I wondered briefly what else would have that effect. I didn’t have a lot of time to wonder because the thing shoved its wandering column of ions into the table again and my ribs collapsed inward with a huge cracking sound. My chair flew backward on its small efficient wheels and rolled to a reluctant stop several feet away from the table.
This time it felt like one of the jagged ends of my ribs had pierced a lung. Tears of pain filled my eyes and my hands flailed around on the arms of the chair. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the knife-like ripples of pain in my chest. I realized that another hit on my ribs would probably finish me off.
I couldn’t, of course, let that happen. I opened my eyes and realized that the thing was still pushing against the table, which was now moving toward me at an alarming rate. Without being able to move my head, it was hard to figure out exactly where I was in the room, but I thought I was probably not too far from the door to my sleeping quarters. If I could just get through that door at least the table wouldn’t be able to reach me. What I was gonna do then was a problem for another moment. One problem at a time, that was my mantra. I’d just figured out that mantra but it was going to be my guiding chant from then on.
Now. How to get to the door? The table had moved to within a few inches of me when I realized what I’d have to do. If pain would loosen my rigid limbs, then pain I would have to inflict. I closed my eyes and took the biggest breath I could manage and my chest exploded. I was sure I felt another rib surging through the tender wall of my right lung and then an even deeper, darker pain rode into town on the heels of the first shock of exquisite agony. That was when I realized that my heart had taken a hit.
It felt like a fire-tipped arrow was poking through the throbbing wall of my heart. My legs went completely numb with the wave of pain that followed and my whole body became instantly drenched with a cold, unhealthy sweat. It almost made me forget what I was trying to do. In fact, I heard the scraping rumble of the table moving toward me and even felt the treacherous edge of it brush against my flesh before my newly loosened feet managed to jab against the floor and propel me backward, through the door of my sleeping quarters.
I heard the table hit the door as the rolling chair hit my bed and I toppled backward. I bounced off the bed and was propelled toward the floor between the bed and the wall. As my head hit the floor with a resounding bang, my chest caught fire again. It was finally enough. I let out a scream of rage and pain that surprised even me. And then I lay in a panting, pain-racked pile on the floor. Wishing the cursed thing would just put me out of my damn misery.
The only good thing, I finally realized, was that my body seemed to have broken completely free of whatever force had been binding it. I could now move my arms and legs and, if I hadn’t been squashed between the hard, unmoving platform of the bed and the equally hard, unmoving surface of the wall, I could have turned my head.
Breathing was a nightmare and movement was an even worse torture, but I was working under my own steam again. Life was as good as it was gonna get for a while.
I heard the electrical monster slamming against the table and pulled myself up painfully, with much cursing and panting, to look over the bed at the door. I was surprised to see that it had changed form again, becoming shorter and more square as it tried to muscle past the dense, heavy imitation wood of the table. My information unit was now resting on its side just inside the doorway, smoking and sparking indignantly. I knew how it felt.
Just as I managed to push myself to my feet, the hideous electrical thing broke through the table with a roar and then just disappeared. For a moment I thought it was really gone. Then the hairs on my arms jumped to attention and my ears picked up the low, keening moan that I remembered from my office experience. Life was decidedly less good.
Moving as quickly as I could, I dropped to my knees and crawled along the wall toward the door. When I hit the end of the bed I looked around for something else to shield me. If the thing had trouble dealing with physical obstacles, I would give it as many of those as I could. The door into the personal hygiene room stood ajar. I quickly crawled behind it and slammed it shut, locking it and praying the thing wouldn’t make too quick a job of bashing through it to get to me. My eyes flew around the room looking for a weapon. I couldn’t see anything that the freak of nature on the other side of my door wouldn’t view either as surmountable or edible. Finally my eyes landed on the flat, black box that hung from the far wall just beside the shower unit and I gave a shout of triumph. That’s when the thing on the other side of the door decided it was time to intrude on my personal hygiene. The door exploded inward, nearly blowing me to the back wall. My body crashed against the wall. I felt my head split open from the impact. As I slid to the floor blood, hot and sticky, gushed down my face, nearly blinding me.
The force, invisible again, bashed into me and I grabbed the cross hanging from a chain around my neck and held it out. It had worked before, maybe it would work now, just long enough to hold the thing off until I could reach that black box. As extra insurance I tried to throw up my shields and managed to put up a weak resistance that was fed by the power of the manically vibrating cross.
When the monster came up against my shield and the platinum cross, a howl of sheer rage filled the room and the thing took shape again before my stunned eyes. It stood a mere five feet from me now, its mouth still gaping open, the tongue flailing frantically through the air, spewing goo around the room as it tried to find a vulnerability in my shield. Fortunately for me the shield held just long enough for me to swipe an arm across my eyes to clear the blood so I could see and then reach with one hand to flip open the black box on the wall.
Just as the disgusting creature moved in, pushing against my shield and ripping it apart, I slammed the palm of my hand against the power bar at the top of the board and pushed it to two hundred percent power, a level that was never meant to be used on the interior circuits.
The room erupted in sound and spark as a jolt of pure, unadulterated nuclear-powered electricity tore through the walls and sent every electrical thing within a one-block radius of my living quarters into overload. There was a second of hesitation in the circuits, while the lights wavered and my appliances spit and danced against the flood of electrical juice and then everything went black and silent as the power source shut down in self-defense.
The slavering, gaping, electrically charged conglomeration of trapped spirits that hung over me gave one final shriek and then dissipated in a shower of sparks. It was gone. This time, I hoped, for good.
I slid to the floor and dropped the arm that had been holding the cross, laughing in giddy relief as I rubbed my throbbing shoulder. “Take that you ionic asshole.” I felt pretty good for about ten seconds and then a jolt of hot pain helped me remember my mangled interior parts. “Shit, I think a painkiller might be in order.” It would have to be a damn frunkin’ big one.
Chapter Twenty
…and Into the Fire
The maiden’s friends did beg her flee and find a kinder plight,
But the devil came and made her plea, for further dark delights.
The doctor at the hospital, accustomed to seeing me all beaten up and looking like I’d gone twelve rounds with a demon, which usually I had, simply shook his head, pushed my ribs ruthlessly back into the shape God had originally intended them to be and guided me into the bone-mending pod to set them. After a mere twenty minutes of ultrasonic mending treatment, my ravaged ribs were at least well on their way to regaining their former healthy state.
I
watched quietly from my seat on the healing table, as a cranky, overworked medical care assistant keyed in a terse scrip for follow-up marrow building drugs. Trying valiantly to ignore the woman’s foul mood, I looked around the Unplanned Care unit, swinging my legs and clicking the metal heels of my boots together like the innocent I’ve never been. I bit my tongue as the harried, unpleasant woman pushed the send button on the hand-held scrip unit and centered her glare between my eyes. “Dissolve two of those on your tongue twice a day for a week. And try to stay out of trouble long enough to let your poor body heal this time, Astra.”
I gave her my brightest smile but she was having none of it. Jumping down off the table I leaned to kiss my sister on her pale, cool cheek. “I could have healed the ribs myself but I’m sure you’d rather I came to you.”
Darma’s scowl deepened and she threw her hands over her ears. She looked so petulant I half expected her to stomp a foot with temper. “Don’t even tell me that. You know how I feel about all that magic shit.”
Boy did I. Older than me by five years, Darma had always tried to mother and boss me. Since our real mother had led a busy and secretive life, which apparently hadn’t been entirely compatible with her role as a mother, Darma’s inclination toward mothering had worked out fine for everybody but me. She’d always felt it was within her rights to tell me how to live my life. And she’d always been dead set against the way I make my living.
Darma’s the sturdy, serious, dependable daughter. I’m the hotheaded, passionate and borderline psychotic spawn. I’m the dark side of a pairing between a devil and an angel. Darma is the cranky and all too serious, but light side. She has no powers and, with her size nine feet resolutely planted on terra firma, she appears to have a severe allergy to all things unearthly and magical. I think she must have been adopted, but my parents won’t admit it.