The Shores Of The Dead: Omnibus Edition

by Josh Hilden

  “My dear, you are about to make history!” Rudy proclaimed as he dumped her next to the black pool in the center of the room. When her head cleared from the fall, she saw the podium with the book on it, and the corpse of the middle aged man behind it. Her blood ran cold as she turned her head, knowing what she would see next to her. Less than five feet away from her was the heavily decomposed body of Sandy Sutton.

  Lisa wailed in pain and anger while Rudy laughed.

  10

  Kyle

  Kyle stepped on something on the ground. It had a metallic feel to it. He felt down onto the wet and slimy ground, but drew his hand back quickly because he nearly cut off a finger on the machete. He reached down again, and lifted the blade by the handle and tested the weight, it wasn’t as well balanced as the Fangs the Wolverines carried, but it would do the trick.

  He must still have had some of the residue from the strange journey across the astral plane, because he heard the faint scraping noises of an approaching figure. Kyle turned and could just make out the rotting form of a man reaching for him. Kyle wondered how the thing could see him, but he didn’t take the time to ask considering he was sure one of the Dead would lie anyway. He brought the machete around, and cleaved the head straight off. The days where the action would have given him pause were more than a month and thousands of miles away. The head plopped to the ground, and the body slumped into a heap of fetid meat.

  Kyle’s heart pounded in his chest as he approached the chamber at the end of the hall. He’d not been this scared since he opened the restroom door and charged out into the breakroom. But this time, he didn’t have Benny at his side to watch his back. Of course he’d been a scared boy then. Now for better or worse he was a warrior, and the bastard ahead had his friend.

  He paused when he reached the end of the hallway and scanned the room. There was a large black pool of evil looking water in the center of the room. Light spilled in from the many cracks and holes in the dome far above. Clarke had Lisa bound upright at the podium standing at the edge of the water.

  She was a chanting over the book on the podium.

  Kyle stepped into the room, and began to work his way toward the people in the middle. He’d improved his ability to be stealthy since hitting the road, and thought he had a fair chance of getting the jump on the Dark Priest. When he was within 20 yards, a voice cut through the stillness and snuffed his hopes.

  “Still alive, are you boy?” Clarke laughed and turned to look at him. “That’s just fine. My Master will be hungry when he rises.” Behind him, the waters were boiling. At the podium, Lisa was chanting in a language which hurt Kyle’s ears.

  He drew back his blade and advanced.

  11

  Lisa

  Lisa didn’t understand why she was reading from this book, or how she was accomplishing the task. The butter colored pages were covered in a squiggly language that hurt her eyes. She was sure it’d never been willingly been spoken by a human being. The sounds coming from her mouth were guttural and phlegmy sounding in her ears, and forming them was quickly rubbing her vocal chords raw. With each word she uttered, her vision seemed to double and become unfocused. Half way through the chant, she looked up at the pool and saw the faint outline of a gigantic winged beast staring down at her with glowing crimson eyes. In her mind, she heard a harsh raspy voice speaking directly into her brain.

  “Yes…yes, when I am freed from this place, I will feed on your world! You insects will never be able to stop me again, my legions will lay waste to you and you will be meat for beasts!”

  The sound of the voice made her stomach turn over and caused tears to stream from her eyes. She felt fluid collecting and sloshing in her auditory canals. Then there was a loud popping sound in her ears like she was in a quickly ascending or descending in attitude. A few seconds later, she felt the hot liquid run from her ears and down her neck.

  When she had finished the second full read through of the passage, there was a jolt like the one in the basement of the Jacobson farm house, and she felt her essence separate from her body again. This time, there was no transition to the mental plane. Instead she hovered a dozen feet above her own body, and was treated to a clear view of the situation. On this level of awareness, the monster trapped in the pool was clear and horrifying.

  Back near the entrance to the chamber, she saw Kyle creeping toward the still figure of Rudolph Clarke. She saw Rudy was also detached from his body, but there was a tether running from his mental body to physical body. She watched as he controlled his body like a remote controlled aircraft, and addressed Kyle who froze in place.

  Lisa wanted to scream, she was unable to do anything but watch as she destroyed the world.

  12

  Kyle

  Kyle rushed Clarke and swung the blade right at the man’s head. Clarke didn’t miss a beat. He grabbed the blade with his bare hand and snapped it in half. The machete dug into his hand and blood spurted all around, but when he dropped it the wound healed instantly.

  “Stupid,” Rudy Clarke said and then punched Kyle in the chest.

  Kyle flew back into a half collapsed pillar. He felt at least two of his ribs snap as he slid to the ground. The man was fast and strong. When they’d tried to kill him in Michigan he’d been impressive, but this was night and day. Kyle knew there was no way he could stop him by himself.

  Rudy turned back to Lisa at the podium and put his hand on her shoulder. Kyle struggled back to his feet, and started walking toward the edge of the pool again. He couldn’t think of anything else to do, he had no weapons and no support but he had to stop this. He summoned every bit of strength he had left and pushed it to the balls of his feet. Then he exploded forth in a charge at the figures standing at the podium.

  He’d never run so fast in his entire life. Then he was back on the track field at school. It was a warm spring day and he was running sprints, and feeling in that moment he was the only person in the world. He remembered that day. It’d been a good day, one of the few when he’d been in high school, and he was anticipating the win he would eventually score in the meet with Miamisburg. After he finished his fourth set and the sweat was pouring off of his lean frame, he looked into the almost empty stands and saw a familiar face.

  “Hi Kye!” Scarlet Parker yelled down to him.

  He waved in surprise and then trotted over to the fence separating the track from the stands. She came bounding down the steps and met him at the low barrier. He was struck for the first time by just how beautiful she was, hadn’t she just been a gangly 12 year old girl?

  “Hey you,” he said and smiled at her and was shocked to see a blush climb up her neck and cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

  The smile disappeared and he saw a much older person under the youthful surface. She let her right hand dangle and fidget with the straps on her backpack as she spoke. “My mom is picking me up, I have to go to the orthodontist and have the ironmongery adjusted.” She flashed her braces at him with little humor in the smile accompanying the gesture.

  “They are not that bad,” he said lamely. She glared at him with some irritation.

  “They are ugly as sin, and they make me look like a fucking freak.” She said with considerable venom in her voice.

  “I think you’re pretty,” Kyle blurted out. Then wished he could pull the word back into his mouth like an angler working a fish into the net.

  She grinned at him and then before he realized she was going to do it, she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. “You are too fucking adorable.” She said. Then before he could react she turned and headed toward the school parking lot.

  He touched his lips lightly, and grinned.

  Now he was running toward his probable death. It was that perfect memory that sustained him as he charged the figure who was the cause of so much death and misery. His last rational thought before he made contact was, “I love you, Scarlet.”

  The die was cast for good or ill.

  13
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br />   Rudy

  It was actually working. Rudy had seen the events of the initial ceremony on the day the Dead had risen through the eyes of the corpse laying rotting on the floor. He knew what his predecessor’s mistakes had been, and he had not repeated them. He could have brought them here as soon as he’d restrained the bitch and her boy servant. But he’d allowed her to direct them through the mental plane and exhaust her strength instead of his own. Now she was unable to fight the process, Ast-Murath the One True God was coming forth, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

  He was too enamored with the process to realize the boy was not only back on his feet, but he was charging him. He heard the last few steps, and his reflexes were heightened enough that he was able to turn completely around before the impact, but he wasn’t fast enough. The strong and lean form of Kyle Carson slammed into Rudolph Clarke, Lisa Sutton, and the podium containing the book.

  “NO!” Rudy screamed as all three of them and the book plunged into the dark abyss.

  14

  In the Dark Pool

  The black water was boiling when the three disparate human beings plunged through the surface, but all heat was drawn from their bodies and replaced with liquid ice. Time stopped and all sense of space and orientation was robbed from them as they descended through the depths.

  Kyle felt panic setting in as he struggled to try and fight the descent, and gain the surface of the pool. But it felt as if he’d loaded his pockets down with chunks of lead before hitting the water. As hard as he tried he could not even slow the drop. He shook his head back and forth in a vain attempt to keep his mouth and nostrils from betraying him. His heart pounded in his chest and thundered in his ears with each pulse beat. He couldn’t let it end this way. Then he inhaled a lung full of water, and as his body spasmed as the icy vitriol burned its way into his lungs, Kyle Carson stopped falling.

  Before Kyle struck Lisa from behind and toppled her into the pool, she’d been going insane inside of her own mind. She was hovering over her own body and watching as she methodically chanted the doom of the human race, and every living creature on the face of the Earth. With every word her shell uttered in the alien tongue, the shadowy demonic form trapped in the pool became more and more substantial. She screamed at her own body to stop, but the only one able to hear her had been the astral form of Rudolph Clarke, who grinned at her and laughed.

  Then she watched as Kyle pushed all of them into the pool. Her astral body was dragged down into the water with her physical form. She watched as the podium with the book plunged quickly past everyone and disappeared. The three human bodies descended at their own rate to the bottom. Horror filled her as Kyle and her own physical body breathed in the black liquid, and then settled to the bottom of the pool.

  The floor of the manmade well was littered with several feet of collected muck and the bones of the creatures, human and inhuman, who’d met their end there. Although it was buried beneath the muck and gore, Lisa could sense the great mystical circle carved in the floor of the pool holding the being once known by the people of At-Lan as Ast-Murath. She could still see the spectral form of the demon trapped in the pool, but when her body stopped the chanting its spectral form began to discorporate once more. The creature began to scream in the middle of her head.

  “NO!”

  The pain of the mental assault was unbelievable. But this time, she knew what to do without having to think about it. She reached her mental hand out, and grasped the invisible handle to the door to the other plane. When the door opened and the light of the astral plane was shining through it she stepped, bravely this time as opposed to the fear she had felt before, over the threshold, and the voice was silenced.

  15

  Lisa

  The Astral Plane

  “Hi Lisa,” Sandy said to her sister the instant she stepped onto the soft creamy ground of the mental realm.

  Lisa looked at her little sister. The beauty of Sandy’s mental form was enough to bring tears to Lisa’s eyes. Never had Sandra Marie Sutton looked so beautiful and perfect. Lisa stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the other woman, taking her into a firm and loving embrace.

  “Sandy,” she said and the tears, tears of happiness as opposed to sadness and fear, rolled down her eyes.

  “You’ve been so strong Lisa, everyone is so proud of you.” Sandy said. Then laughed at the look on her sister’s face and hugged her back again. “It’s almost over with, Sissy.” She giggled and used the version of her name Sandy used when she was little.

  “But I’m dead. I fell in the pool and drowned.” Lisa said as she looked around the blank plane that was now transforming into a beach at sunset.

  “Yes and no,” Sandy said and took her sister’s hand in her own as they strolled down the beach with the warm sand cushioning their bare feet. “Time has no meaning here, right now you are still falling down the abyss, but you have not died. You will have one chance to stop Clarke, here on this plane of existence.” She seemed very stern again, but the light danced in her young/old eyes as she spoke.

  “We tried in Michigan, he’s too strong.” Lisa said. She was only half paying attention to her sister, as the red gold glow of the sun hypnotized her with its beauty.

  Sandy grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. “If you don’t defeat him, he will be able to finish the ritual, now that you have finished picking the metaphorical lock on this prison. If Ast-Murath comes bodily to the Earth, all creatures that die will Rise and the human race’s days of freedom on the planet will be counted in weeks … maybe in days.” There were tears on the surfaces of Sandy’s nonexistent eyes. “I started this and managed to put the emergency brake on things, but now sis it’s up to you to reverse this as much as you can.” Sandy was fading now.

  “Will I see you again?” Lisa asked as her little sister became first translucent and then transparent.

  “Yes,” Sandy said and then disappeared.

  The scene around Lisa began to shift and transformed into something darker and more sinister. In the distance, something inhuman laughed, and the blood that didn’t actually flow through her veins turned to ice. Randolph Clarke stood before her, and he was sheathed in crimson fire.

  16

  Kyle

  The Astral Plane

  “Hey kid, wake the fuck up.” A very familiar voice said to Kyle Carson as he lay on the warm sand, letting the gentle waves wash over him and caress his skin. He looked up and saw the grinning form of Liam Harrison looking down at him. But it was a Liam who was 40 years younger and looking strong and virile.

  “Why? I’m already dead, and I want to enjoy this.” Kyle said and rolled over to let the sun beat down on his bare back.

  Liam kicked sand on him. Then he laughed as Kyle cried out irritated. “No, you’re not, you are taking a rest, and now it’s time to get back to work. There is still a bad guy to finish off.” Liam said, and held a soft yet strong hand out to help Kyle up off the beach and onto his feet.

  “What are you talking about?” Kyle asked. It was obvious he was irritated. Kyle had been pushing hard since this all started, and what he wanted now more than anything else was a long rest. He felt that he had earned it.

  “The only way that this is going to be ended is for Clarke to be taken out of the equation.” Liam said.

  “He is. I took him with me into the pool.” Kyle snapped.

  “The pool isn’t a pool. It’s the prison that has been holding his Master for tens of thousands of years. Right now, the three of you are all in a holding pattern. If you and Lisa win, then things will get better, and if Clarke wins things will become much worse.” Liam sounded very sad and very old.

  “How the hell are we supposed to do that?” He asked Liam.

  “You’ll know,” Liam said and then he began to fade away. “I’m proud of you kid.” Liam said and then he was gone.

  Then things changed, and the last song of the dance began.

  17

 
Kyle & Lisa

  The Astral Plane

  Kyle and Lisa saw each other through the gloom and the smoky murk of the space they found themselves in. The smells of rot and hot iron were strong. The ceiling of what was apparently a cave was invisible through the gloom, but all around stalagmites thrust up from the floor of the cavern like miniature volcanoes.