by Dirk Patton
Mattock touched Henry’s wounds to identify if they were superficial. Each of the holes oozed white liquid against his tarred black skin. Henry wasn’t talking, just looking up at them, shivering.
“We can’t do anything for him. I’m sorry.”
“Wha… What do you mean? We’re taking him to a hospital!”
Mattock studied the determination in her face. She lifted Henry’s revolver, dripping with black gunk, and aimed it at Mattock. “We’re taking him to a hospital.”
Mattock doubted the gun could still fire but decided to play it safe. “Okay. Okay.” He spoke in a soothing tone, trying to put her at ease. “You're not strong enough to drag him out of here on your own, so why don’t you put the gun down.” She didn’t move. “Do you even know which way is out?”
It took a moment to sink in, but she lowered it in small increments as common sense filtered back into her brain. She dropped the gun and wept, salty tears streaking down the black mud that had spattered her face.
Henry suddenly moaned and coughed up white, creamy fluid. He turned to his side, eyes rolling into the back of his head as his body convulsed.
“Shit.”
“Do something!”
Henry’s body ran rigid like an electric current shot through him, back arching, fingers hooked. Then his body relaxed. Dead.
Cassie hyperventilated, forcing out panicked squeals between breaths.
Mattock eyed the body, not quite believing what he had seen. Every time he’d witnessed someone die in the black woods it was different, but he had never seen someone succumb to their wounds so fast. Then he noticed movement in the holes left by the creature. It was almost imperceptible at first but as he watched, little white strings emerged. They grew at a rapid pace, in a staccato motion, gaining length with pulsating bursts of energy. The threads crept out, wagging their ends as if discovering their new surroundings. When the tiny strings found one another, they tied together. They kept growing and attaching until there was a webbing of crystal threads surrounding the body.
Mattock and Cassie exchanged a worried look, and as soon as they looked back, pods were growing at random places on the strings. They were swelling quickly, pregnant.
Mattock’s eyes widened in horror. He'd seen this before. “Fuck! Back! Back! We gotta go! Now!” Mattock retreated, but Cassie stared at him in confusion. He grabbed her arm and yanked her away from the body as the bulbs popped and released fine white spores.
Mattock dragged her against her will. “Cover your mouth and nose. Do not inhale those things!”
The cloud of spores coasted on a breeze, fanning out through the space. Mattock angled back towards the way station when a curtain of spores spiraled in, cutting them off.
They dashed left and ran as hard as they could, putting some distance between them and the threat. Mattock’s pulse thumped in his temples as he eyed the landscape, catching twinkles of light where spores still floated.
He retrieved a bandana from his pack and handed it to Cassie.
“What’s this?”
“If you inhale those things, they’ll incubate inside you and you’ll end up like Henry. You need to cover your nose and mouth.” He opened his shirt and used a Ka-Bar knife to cut up his undershirt, pouring the last of his water over the swatch and wrapping it around his face.
Mattock then broke off a black tree branch, wrapped the rest of his undershirt around the end and ignited it. “Keep your face covered and stay behind me.” The torchlight betrayed Cassie’s tear-glazed eyes. Her breathing shuddered as she managed a shaky nod in confirmation.
The sun was setting, and what little light pierced the dark… the day was fading fast. Mattock guessed they had thirty more minutes before the forest would go completely dark. They didn’t want to be in here after sunset. Not without a full squad of tar mercs to stand guard all night.
They raced through the forest until a curtain of spores drifted in front of them. The minuscule particulates hung in the air, twisting on an invisible axis. “Hold your breath. Okay? Don’t talk or breathe unless you absolutely have to.”
Cassie nodded. They took a deep breath and pushed into the veil. Mattock waved the torch in front of him. When the flames touched the particles, they emitted tiny squeals of pain.
Mattock eyed the organisms and realized they were the same shape as the tentacle’s barbs.
Cassie froze, eyes locked on something in the distance. “Did you see th—” She stopped mid-sentence.
Mattock yanked her arm, forcing her forward. She resisted, and he pulled harder until they had made it through the cloud. When they’d cleared it by thirty feet, they removed their masks.
“Did you see him?” Cassie asked with a dazed expression. She looked like a shell-shocked child, confused, lost and searching for a familiar face.
“See who?”
Cassie’s eyes locked on the woodland behind them, almost like she wanted to go back.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mattock asked, shaking her by the arm. “We need to get to the way station! We’ve got about fifteen minutes before it’s pitch black in here and a thirty-minute hike if we move fast.”
Cassie shook her head then shook off his arm and focused on Mattock. “Yeah. Yeah. All right.”
* * *
They cleared the black forest, collapsing onto the grass. The fresh, clean smell hit his nose and told him he was safe. They stared up to the sky, breathing hard, trying to collect themselves. The sun’s final luminescence painted the heavens in navy blue, with a deep fade to black.
Cassie sat up and peered into the woods. She squinted, focusing on something deep inside. “Do you see that?”
Mattock turned and scanned the darkness of the wood. “See what?” It was impossible to discern anything beyond twenty feet in. He didn't understand what she was talking about. “There’s nothing there. C’mon, we need to get back and notify the authorities.” Mattock helped her up, and they shuffled back to the way station. Every few yards, Cassie would look over her shoulder like she caught sight of something. This unnerved Mattock most of all.
Inside, Mattock flipped the power generator on and the wooden building lit up. No one else was here on the weekends. They were all most likely out drinking or gambling away their money. Nobody wanted to be here longer than they had to.
Mattock retrieved a bottle of Brennivin from his rented locker. Cassie had already found a stained seat among scattered tables and chairs. He grabbed a coffee mug from the kitchenette and parked in front her, pouring her a finger of the clear liquid. She didn’t acknowledge it, holding herself as she stared through the table.
Mattock took a slug from the bottle and let the licorice spirit burn down his throat. He took a deep breath, grateful for having survived. Again. “I called the authorities. They’ll be here in the morning.”
Cassie snapped out of her daze. “In the morning? They need to get here right now! We need to get his body.”
Mattock shook his head. “They won’t set foot in there during broad daylight. There’s no way they’re going in at night. As far as the police are concerned, their jurisdiction ends at the forest's black line. You get lost in the black woods, then that’s the end of you. There ain’t no rescue. They just write it up. Told us to stay put until morning.”
She was looking over her shoulder again, out through the window. Mattock wished she would stop. “Thirty years, and nothing’s ever come out of those woods,” Mattock said. “We’re safe.” She turned back to the table and nodded, grabbing the coffee mug and drinking the liquor without so much as a blink.
* * *
That night Mattock showered up, cleaned his guns, and lay down on a cot in the next room. He wanted to sleep but every time he closed his eyes, he saw that face floating around in that intestinal sack, staring back at him. Except it was no longer in the beast, but part of it. All three faces melted together as a part of the monster’s outer skin. Each face stared at him.
He sat up and took a deep pull
of the liquid mash, noticing Cassie wasn’t on her cot. Stumbling into the kitchen, Mattock found her standing at the window, staring out at the black woods again. “You gonna be okay?” he asked.
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
The question hit Mattock so hard, he flinched. “What do you mean, am I sure? I’m about as sure as sure as I can get,” he said, an image of those white threads growing out of Henry’s blackened face rising like a fever dream.
“Because I… I see him. He’s there. At the edge of the woods. Right now.”
Mattock hustled up to the window. She pointed into the darkness. The forest was a half mile away. There was no way she could distinguish anything from this distance. The perimeter lights were throwing anything beyond it into a black abyss.
She pointed again. “See that little dot of light? I saw him as we were running out. He was watching us. And then when we got out, he was right at the edge of the forest, staring at me. It was him, but it wasn’t him, you know?” There was a lilt of hope in her voice, but she looked confused, like she wasn’t sure if she could trust her own senses.
Mattock shook his head; he didn’t know. “You’ve been through a lot. Get some rest. We got a long day of paperwork in the morning. You should call his family.”
She nodded and pried herself away from the window. “He didn’t have any family left. I was it.”
That night, neither of them could sleep and they ended up talking about Henry. Mattock had gotten it all wrong. When he first met them, he thought Henry was the rich guy with some arm candy. Turned out Cassie was the heiress, and Henry the broke musician she met and rescued from poverty. The trip was a gift to him. He'd been talking about proving himself for so long she’d got fed up with it. That, and his constant competing against her friends. She bought this trip to shut him up. She didn’t realize she’d get her wish.
* * *
It had to be three in the morning when Mattock woke with a start. That damn face was staring at him in his dreams, but this time it was his own floating within the sickly white beast.
He took in the room, relieved to be out of that nightmare, and used the space to ground him back to reality. The perimeter lights cast soft oblong shadows inside. It took a moment for him to realize Cassie wasn’t in her cot. Probably staring out that damn window again. Still, it was better to talk to someone than fall back asleep. Mattock got up and shuffled into the main area. The door leading outside sat open. The screen door out of its hitch. Mattock looked around for her. “Cassie?”
Maybe she was on the front deck. He moved outside and found her running down the tar path, back to the black wood.
“Cassie!” he shouted, but she never looked back. “God damn it.” Mattock bolted back inside, threw on his boots, a headlamp, and grabbed his gun.
He gave chase, but she had a good amount of distance on him. Mattock kept shouting, but she ran as if she couldn’t hear. Or didn’t want to.
As he followed her back to the black woods, he spotted a glow of light at the edge of the forest. Faint. Cassie ran right for it. “Cassie, don’t!” But it was no use. He was still a hundred yards away when she stopped at the light.
As Mattock closed the gap, the glow became more defined. He froze. Henry. But at the same time, it wasn’t. What Mattock saw was an image of Henry that shimmered as if looking at someone’s reflection in a pool of water. This ghostly visage looked dead straight at Mattock and his body went cold. Mattock swallowed the dry air trying to push away the heavy, sinking feeling in his chest.
The Henry-illusion held out his hand to Cassie. With her left hand she took his, and with her right, she raised the revolver to her temple.
The shot echoed across the land and her body dropped like a marionette cut from its strings. The shimmering image of Henry still held Cassie’s dead hand. He took one last look at Mattock, smiled, letting out an extended breath of air, like someone trying to fog up a window. A slow, drawn out, ghastly laugh erupted from the thing. Then it dragged her corpse into the darkness.
* * *
The police arrived when the sun rose. Mattock told them everything in his statement and they nodded like they had heard it before. The police never even bothered to look at the scene where Cassie shot herself. They wrote it up as a missing person and impounded the Bentley.
After the police left, Mattock went back to the edge of the woods. Silver glinted in the black grass. Mattock snatched up the silver Smith and Wesson Henry had flaunted. Blood stained the ivory handle, mixing with the black tar that consumed the gun. It was a nice piece. Maybe he could fix it up. He cinched the gun in his waistband and double-timed it back to the way station.
Mattock packed up his things then took Henry and Cassie’s IDs from the folder and pinned them to the corkboard along with the fifty others. Each of the faces stared out at him, their pictures a testament to how unforgiving the black woods were.
Then there was one that stood out. The face that was in his dreams. The face that was in the belly of the beast.
Mattock swore to himself that he would never come back again. But those who did this kind of work were just as lost as those in the black wood. And no matter how hard they tried to get away, the money always brought them back to be a face on the wall.
Ragnarok
Mark Renshaw
Lost in unsavoury memories of a grisly breech in Syria, Sargent Falkner failed to respond to his unit’s coms check.
“Sarge, ready to rock and roll and boogie till we puke, on your order!” This came from Brody, a brazen behemoth of a man. Ex-Special Air Service and one of five equally imposing soldiers under his command.
Falkner nodded. “Go, go, go!”
They entered the old Burley estate via the servant quarters at the south-east entrance. Brody took point with Jones, Johnson, Douberman and Hans zipping in behind him. Falkner brought up the rear. He clocked a police enforcer battering ram among the splintered remains of the door as he stepped over the threshold. This was the only sign that a counter-terrorist unit had already entered the ancient building. Inside, his men had formed a perimeter. Beams of light from their torch attachments splayed across the mouldy walls.
“No good,” said Hans as he removed his night vision goggles. “Everything is lit up like a Christmas tree, just like the thermals. I can’t get clear visuals. Did they put lead or something in the walls back in the good old days?”
“Maybe they were worried Superman would spy on them,” said Brody.
“Zip it,” ordered Falkner. “Let’s do this old school using our eyes, ears and balls, just like God intended. Move out.”
They headed down a corridor that connected the servant’s quarters to the main building, spot checking each room they encountered. Falkner recalled the schematics he had memorised. Built in 1902, the blueprints hadn’t mentioned what building materials had been utilised, but he couldn’t imagine what substance could fool thermal imaging or cause drones to malfunction. Yet that was exactly what happened when Command had tried to throw modern technology at the mystery his men were now investigating.
The search continued, and at nearly 90,000 square feet with 130 rooms covering three floors, the abandoned mansion was an imposing area to cover. Despite this, his ‘immediate action’ squad certainly lived up to their name and completed the first-floor sweep in less than an hour. As communications with the outside world were almost non-existent, Falkner flashed Command a pre-arranged message in Morse code from a first-floor window: ‘Nothing found so far. Moving to the second floor.’
As his squad ascended, he noticed symbols scrawled on the wall. Most were faded but the odd one here and there appeared fresh. Falkner recognised some. Inverted pentagrams and similar cultish tokens. Most of it appeared to be gibberish. In his briefing, the building’s owner, self-made millionaire Joseph Burley, had tastes rumoured to be exotic, his appetites – legendary. He was a known associate of occultist Aleister Crowley, as well a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whoever they wer
e. Maybe some nutter cultists had abducted the others rather than Command’s assessment it had to be terrorists. Everything was bloody terrorists’ fault these days. If in doubt, get the terrorists out. His musings were interrupted by Johnson.
“Got something here, Sarge.” He indicated an area of the wall revealing a single word. 'RAGNAROK'. The colour and consistency of the liquid suggested it was blood. It had been applied recently as well. Streaks of the crimson fluid were still dripping down the wall.
“What the fuck is a Rag-nar-ok?” asked Brody.
“It sounds like this online role-playing game me little brother plays all the bloody time,” offered Douberman. “It drives me mum mental.”
“Are these terrorists or virgins playing Dungeons and Dragons?” said Hans. His Austrian accent made it difficult to tell if he was being sarcastic or serious.
“It’s a Norse legend,” pointed out Johnson, his voice hushed. He remembered being absorbed in Thor comics as a child. “It’s an account of the fall of the gods and the end of the world; an ancient extinction level event.”
The men’s nervous glances to each other spoke volumes in the deep silence.
“Well that’s cheered me right up,” said Brody, breaking through the gloomy atmosphere. “Let’s have an end of the world party!”
Falkner did not like the implications of such a word, or how it spooked his men. He needed them focused and disciplined. “Enough of the sightseeing, ladies,” he barked. “Move out!”
Falkner took point, leading them down the murky corridor. Thoughts of disastrous military interventions into cult compounds danced along the periphery of his mind as they continued their sweep. Something didn’t add up though. This didn’t feel like a hostage scenario, be that terrorist or cultists. Zero communication from the so-called abductors for one. All they knew was several police officers and a counter-terrorist unit had entered this building, none had returned.