Slithers

by Mortensen, WW

  As it did, a vehicle screamed out of nowhere and T-boned them with a deafening roar.

  30

  Glass splintered, spraying wildly across Tobe, and his head struck the doorpost so hard a loud ringing filled his ears. He nearly blacked out, swimming in a dark pool in which he thought he might drown.

  Tobe blinked and the world righted itself. The vehicle that had struck them was Uncle David’s huge Dodge Ram. Its lights blazed into the Jeep, blinding him. He couldn’t see the driver but knew who was behind the wheel.

  Ethan.

  Tobe regained composure and wrestled with the wheel, gunning the engine, but the Ram was too big, too strong. The Jeep was wedged tight against the front of it, and the Ram pushed it laterally, down to the ditch running parallel to the road, towards the trees. The wilds had claimed everything up to there, reducing Tobe and Ethan’s bubble of existence to the road, and nothing more.

  Pushed sideways, the Wrangler’s left side wheels snagged the edge of one of the smaller fissures, and still pushed by the Ram, the Jeep spun. The Ram ploughed through, as though to continue past the smaller vehicle, but remained connected. The two vehicles spun, locked in a dance, and then dropped down the incline, metal screaming, branches snapping like matchsticks on all sides. They finally came to rest locked bumper to bumper—the Jeep facing forwards, the Ram facing backwards.

  The larger vehicle’s rear axle overshot the deep gully Ethan had originally been aiming for.

  It teetered over the edge. The crevasse fell away, perhaps into eternity, unfathomably deep.

  Tobe thought he glimpsed a familiar crimson colour lining the edges.

  Ethan gunned the engine. It was no good. Still locked together, they hovered at the edge, wavered there, and then slipped.

  Both vehicles reached the tipping point, and as they started the fall into oblivion, a huge shape rushed into Tobe’s vision, clamping down over the vehicles and saving them from the fall.

  31

  It rushed from out of the jungle growth, a huge, yawning mouth—bigger than the cars, big enough to swallow them whole. Tobe saw it come for them, the jaws open wide, and let out an involuntary gasp as they rushed in, snapping. He had time only to throw his arms up to his face, shielding his eyes, before the jaws latched around both vehicles.

  They half-caught the Ram, but clamped fully onto the Wrangler. The remaining glass windows shattered under the impact and metal screeched. The sound was deafening. Tobe was surrounded by fibrous flesh, but no teeth, and realised this wasn’t the mouth of some huge animal. These jaws were plant-like and ovular, like those of a Venus flytrap. They’d been caught by yet another plant that could move fast, fast enough to snare a vehicle—

  The flesh was crimson; blood-red.

  It was the same creature.

  This was the organism from the service station, the creature that had claimed Ressler and Ganson and Tory and that he had also heard slithering about in the Henderson’s loft.

  This was what the organism truly looked like—and as he looked out beyond the jaws he glimpsed the bulbous head, gigantic and squid-like, with a dozen hooded, black eyes staring at him in straight rows and blinking in unison, and then Tobe saw another set of jaws, too; twin mouths like massive, snapping beaks.

  The hyphae—the threadlike tentacles both at the service station and at the Henderson home—may have been separate, independent parts, yet they were all part of a single superorganism that could detach and fuse together as required.

  The vehicles shuddered violently as the beaklike jaws shook them back and forth. Tobe braced himself against the steering wheel. Through the blur, he glimpsed tentacles reaching up from beneath the road, through the fissures, surrounded by steam.

  Not steam. Mist.

  Red mist…

  And yet it wasn’t mist either, it was a billowing spore cloud, and amidst it the hyphae rose into the air like the waving arms of a huge cephalopod. What Tobe had mistaken for a molten inferno at the bottom of those fissures, what he had assumed may be Hell itself, was in fact the crimson, spore-enshrouded body of the creature.

  The creature was everywhere. The creature was everything.

  It lived not in plain sight, but underground—he imagined it as a huge, blood-red, subterranean river system. Did it rise to the surface to feed? Maybe, but that seemed too literal. He wondered—more figuratively—if perhaps the creature existed beyond all worlds, beneath the surface of reality, like our circulatory system exists deep beneath our skin…

  The Ram slipped. The creature’s beak had clamped over a portion of its hood, but most of the rear of the vehicle teetered dangerously above the fissure, hanging freely and with no way of gaining traction. It was heavy, and—locked with the Jeep—it pulled the smaller vehicle down with it, towards the yawning fissure. Only the creature’s maw—which had also clamped over the front of the Jeep and was now lifting it high into the air—prevented both vehicles from plummeting into the abyss.

  Tobe heard Rachel screaming.

  Partially blinded by the Ram’s lights, Tobe couldn’t see her, but sensed her fighting with Ethan.

  “Rachel!”

  He had to get to her.

  All the windows to both cars had been pulverised. Tobe climbed over the dash and through the Jeep’s windshield, slid chest-down onto the hood of the Wrangler, facing the Ram. He gripped the metal fiercely, his knuckles white.

  The cars bucked. He nearly lost his grip.

  Oh my God…

  “Tobe! Help!”

  Terrified, but with no choice, he started across the Wrangler’s hood, reached the end—

  A hand from behind grasped his ankle—Scottie’s hand.

  “I’m here, Tobe!” Scottie said. “I’ve got you!”

  With that, another hand reached across the crumpled hood of the Ram—Rachel’s hand.

  Tobe reached for it, grasped it, and was instantly energised by the connection—it was as though a circuit had been completed, an electrical current surging through the three of them. Empowered, he started to pull Rachel up towards him.

  As he did, the Ram’s headlights exploded as the creature’s bite clamped harder.

  Rachel’s hand was torn from his grip.

  No! Tobe groped for it, but caught only air—her hand was gone—and as the Jeep tilted further he had no choice but to grasp what he could of the Wrangler’s hood so as not to slide into the abyss. He sensed the jaws closing a mere foot or two above his head.

  No longer blinded, Tobe stole an upwards glance. He had a clear view into the Ram. Through the opening that had once housed the Ram’s windshield, he saw two figures in the front seats—Rachel, and Ethan.

  Rachel, having been slammed back into the passenger seat, was bloodied and dazed, likely stunned by a recent blow.

  Beside her, in the driver’s seat, was Ethan. He held Ressler’s gun, pointed directly at Tobe’s face.

  32

  Tobe braced for the gunshot. Across the hood of the Ram, he locked eyes with Ethan.

  In that moment, he understood why Ethan hadn’t revealed his face back in Uncle David’s workshop, when Ethan had driven the knife into Tobe’s lower back. Ethan was infected—his eyes were bloodshot and had transformed, like Ressler’s, so that they were now orbs of crimson with pinprick pupils of shadow.

  A flare of light erupted from the black eye of the revolver just as the cars lurched inside the creature’s jaws.

  No bullet struck Tobe, though he heard it zing past his ear and graze the roof of the Jeep.

  Another lurch, and yet again, the creature’s maw shifted, more violently this time. The vehicles dropped. Tobe lost his grip. With nowhere to go but down, he slid, disgorged from the Wrangler, skidding and bumping over the hood of the Ram. He struck Ethan on the way through, but continued past him and into the Ram’s back seat. Scottie, still holding on, came with him. The two of them impacted with one of the rear doors, which flung open. Scottie tumbled out, into the yawning crevasse. Tobe caught him as he him
self fell against the well of the door.

  Ethan ignored them both. He’d lost the gun, probably jolted free in the collision. Rachel had roused, and scrambled from the Ram, through the opening and up towards the Jeep, desperate to escape Ethan.

  “There’s nowhere to go!” Ethan shouted, and lunged for her. He was still in the Ram, but half out—

  Clinging to the Ram’s hood, Rachel—still dressed only in Uncle David’s T-shirt—screamed and kicked back at him.

  Ethan deflected the blow, clawed for her bare legs. Rachel kicked again and struck his face, climbed further up the hood.

  Gripping Scottie’s hand, his other fighting for purchase on the backseat, Tobe watched helplessly. Ethan was just beyond his reach. Tobe glanced back at Scottie, holding on with all his might.

  “Scottie—”

  Tobe was weakened by his wound. His grip was slipping. Scottie was small, but he was still too heavy.

  At any moment, his grip would be lost.

  “Scottie, you’ve got to climb up! I can’t hold you!”

  He glanced desperately about. Where was the gun? If he could find it…

  Rachel screamed. Ethan had grasped her leg.

  “Rachel!” Tobe shouted.

  The Ram slipped further, jolting them all down again.

  Ethan dragged Rachel back towards him, at the same time reaching for something tucked into his belt. He pulled the object out by the handle—a butterfly knife, no doubt the very same blade that had sunk deep into Tobe’s back.

  “No!” Tobe cried.

  Ethan leveraged himself higher, both feet now on the Ram’s steering wheel. One-handed, he rotated the knife, flicked it open.

  Rachel screamed, kicked out in terror.

  Tobe’s mind reeled. He looked from one friend to another—Rachel, up above, with Ethan moving toward her, and his friend, dangling beneath him, the crimson darkness yawning at his feet.

  “Scottie…”

  Scottie had disconnected.

  Tobe’s grip slipped—

  —and as it did, the world slipped, too, a kind of slowing, but at the same time, a quickening, and Tobe had a sense of everything becoming one, as though the threads of time and space were knitting back together, as they should be.

  Their business here was almost finished.

  The creature’s huge maw, even its waving tentacles, slowed to the point of stopping, yet that was only Tobe’s perception of things, for time also ran its normal pace. Even so, as Scottie’s voice came to him, again in his head, Tobe felt as if he had all the time he needed.

  The Min-Min lights, Tobe. Remember them? They’re not just the spirits of the dead. They’re also the spirits of the living. And there are two of them. There are only two, Tobe.

  “I don’t understand, Scottie.”

  It was then that Tobe heard another voice inside his head. It was Rachel’s, and she was talking to Scottie. She said something he couldn’t make out, and Scottie said something in return, something filled with emotion, and Tobe sensed his friend had made a decision he wouldn’t take back.

  “Scottie, no.”

  Tobe’s strength was leaving him, and his grip slackened—

  Be brave, Tobe.

  Tobe tried to hold on. “I can’t lose you, Scoop… you’re my best friend. You’re family.”

  Always will be. You look after her, Tobe, I mean it. And Rachel, look after him.

  Tears clouded Tobe’s eyes. His fingers were slipping. He could hold on no longer. “What should I do?” he pleaded.

  Take a leap of faith.

  Tobe understood, and time paused.

  As he released Scottie, and as Scottie began his plunge—reconnecting at the same time, opening his eyes to stare up at his friend, so perfectly calm and at peace—Tobe said a final goodbye, and then reached up and yanked down on the Ram’s steering wheel.

  He did so with all his might, and the two vehicles slipped free of the creature’s maw and fell.

  33

  He was sure he had closed his eyes, but realised he couldn’t have, because he saw—

  —sensed—

  —he was in an ancient jungle, a primordial landscape where trees rose from stagnant muck, somehow familiar yet entirely alien, and all around there was the sound of things feeding in the dark.

  It is always dark here.

  But not now.

  A blinding flash of light. A sensation of speed, hurtling at a velocity beyond imagining, travelling for millennia, journeying forever, across eternity and for eternity, and yet all in a nanosecond, but not that either, because even that was an amount of time, and this was instantaneous. Then a slowing. A returning. Tobe saw—

  —sensed—

  —the light disperse, replaced by a vast ocean, immense and eternal. He was floating in it, drifting in infinity, black and timeless, and he wasn’t alone. There were Others like him, endless Others all around him. They, too, floated, but they had no form. He had no form, either, and yet in order to understand, he needed to give form—to them and to himself. He reached for a metaphor, to identify these Others, these beings—because that was what they were, like him, sentient beings. They knew everything that was and everything that would be, and as he realised he could know everything—could give order and shape if he chose to—he saw the Others.

  He was surrounded by spherical bodies of light.

  From out of these bodies flowed shimmering tendrils, like long, phosphorescent streamers. The tendrils stretched in all directions, and in unfathomable numbers. He imagined these streamers as the tentacles of jellyfish—similar in look only, for they were so much more than simple appendages. From his own form, too, they gently waved, tethering his essence to endless worlds, each a part of his Being and yet separate, each a reflection of him, cast forth into infinity. He sensed a pulsing rhythm of death and life as some of the glowing tethers faded and extinguished, at the same moment that others were birthed and bloomed brightly. All of this happened with the peaceful cadence of inhalation and exhalation. Nothing was created, and nothing was lost—his Being merely ebbed and flowed, and all around him, the Others ebbed and flowed, too. They were like him, and he was like them—immense beings, their essence drifting in the currents of this vast, eternal ocean, deep and black but not an ocean of water. This everlasting blackness was an ocean of space.

  And yet if it was space, he reasoned it would be cold, freezing cold, but it was not cold here, it was warm, it was home—

  —wakey-wakey—

  Tobe opened his eyes. It was dark. The vehicle had come to rest in the ditch running adjacent to the road. The truck was nowhere to be seen.

  “Daddy, are you okay?” The tiny voice, his daughter’s, from the backseat. Crying. Tobe strained, and his lower back flared with a sharp pain somewhere in the vicinity of his kidneys. He winced, ignoring both the burning numbness and the odd sense of déjà vu, and looked around. Both kids—Madison, and his son, Dawson, were in the backseat.

  “Are you okay? Kids, are you okay?”

  He could see that they were—they were fine. No, not fine. They were uninjured, yes, but they were upset, terribly upset. Of course they were. But they were okay. Perfectly safe. Thank God.

  Thank God…

  Blinking, Tobe turned to Rachel. She was okay, too, and as she looked at him, she told him so in a trembling voice.

  Tobe felt a sting of tears, but held them back, held it together, knowing he had to act, had to be strong. As he started to climb from the car to get the kids, to call for help, he heard a voice, distant, strange. A male voice.

  His voice.

  “Hon… are you sure you’re okay?” the voice said.

  “Yes, I’m okay,” Rachel said. She hesitated. “I remember, Tobe. Oh my God, I remember.”

  “Me too,” Tobe said. “It happened, didn’t it?”

  “It happened.”

  Christ. It happened. How was it possible?

  Rachel, too, fought tears. “Tobe,” she said. “How did we forg
et?”

  “I don’t know, but perhaps the question is… why did we remember?”

  • • •

  He knew why.

  Didn’t he?

  Tobe climbed from the car, telling the kids that everything was okay, that mummy and daddy were fine, that he was coming for them, and as he reached for the rear door, the kid’s door, the movement wasn’t so much a feeling of slowness, but a feeling of being detached, as though it was someone else’s hand that reached for the door. And really, it was, wasn’t it? It was someone else’s hand.

  What had happened just now? What had happened in the instant before he’d opened his eyes? He remembered a sea of blackness. And lights. What else? The image was dissolving. He was forgetting.

  Try and remember. It’s important.

  Tethers. He recalled the tethers.

  How did you do it, Scottie?

  Scottie, his childhood friend, whom he had somehow forgotten, and only just now remembered—

  —but then… that wasn’t it, either… God no, that wasn’t it…

  How did you do it, Scottie?

  Tobe couldn’t know how, exactly. But he knew what had happened. Scottie had done the same thing as a child, hadn’t he?

  The children.

  Tobe bundled the children from the car and swept them into his arms, held them tightly, as tightly as he could, and as he did, he thought again of Scottie as a child, and how he’d drowned—died—and somehow returned. His parents must have held him close that day as well, as close as Tobe held his own children now. They could have had no idea the son they held then—the son that returned—had been different.