Darkest Minds

by Bacon, Stephen

  “Karen? Joel?” My voice sounded invasive in the still air.

  And then, almost creeping down the stairs towards me, I heard the barely audible sounds of Karen sobbing.

  I was up the stairs in an instant, following the noise. There was a bedroom at the far end of the landing. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  As soon as she saw me she leapt up and clutched wildly at me. She looked terrible. Her face was a pale mask of anxiety.

  “Jason, he’s gone - Joel’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  She took a series of deep raking sobs. “He came round for a while, that man downstairs. We managed to speak to him.”

  “Where is he?”

  She ignored the question. “He told us what happened. He said he’d seen something in the forest – something horrible.”

  “Where’s Joel?”

  Her eyes widened as she spoke. “He went to find it.”

  I sat down on the bed. She resumed crying. Part of me wanted to escape, to get as far away as possible from this place. I was also irritated at Karen’s behaviour. I thought about pointing out that he was probably just poking around the trees, looking for something in the woods. And then the reason for her trembling struck me.

  “Karen.” I held her face in my hands. “Where is the man we found? The one who was unconscious?”

  She swallowed a low wail and motioned to the floor. Downstairs.

  “Jason.” David’s voice was weighted with intent as it rose along the landing. “You’d better come and see this.”

  There was something in his tone that drew a shiver from me. I leapt up and hurried down the stairs. He was standing in the doorway of the sitting room, so my view was obscured. As I approached he stepped aside and I saw what he was looking at.

  Curled in a foetal position on the low couch was the petrified figure of the farmer. The resemblance to the man we’d seen earlier was striking in its detail. Even the bulging madness in his eyes was captured. Veins stood out on his neck like tightened cords.

  “Good God, what’s happened?” I heard my voice raising the question at the same time as my brain raced ahead with insane theories.

  David frowned. “It’s the same …”

  I touched the statue’s cold cheek. It felt as solid and unnatural as the others at the compound.

  “This has to be the man we found earlier.” David sounded less than convincing. “Something’s happened to make him like this - to calcify him.”

  He glanced at me. “Where are Karen and Joel?”

  I fought a wave of nausea. “Karen’s upstairs. She’s pretty traumatised. She said Joel went into the forest looking for a creature that he’d spotted.” It felt weird acknowledging that the statue in front of us had ever been alive, could ever have seen anything.

  We left the effigy where it was and drifted into the main living quarters. I noticed the kid, Fabrice, perched on the edge of a chair. He maintained that same disconnected stare.

  We hurried upstairs. Karen was crying on the bed.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay.” I stroked her hair. “Listen, we need to go and find Joel. What did he say?”

  Tears were streaming down her face. “The farmer woke up. He was frightened. We calmed him down. He said that some kind of monster had attacked him in the forest. He said he needed to get some gasoline to burn it.” The sobs overwhelmed her. After a moment she continued. “Joel got him to say where it was. He went to look.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He said…he said it was up near where the tracks crossed, quite a way into the forest.”

  David caught my eye.

  “Karen, we’re going to get Joel. You and me and Jason and Fabrice. We’ll find him.”

  She nodded absently.

  It took David and me nearly fifteen minutes to prepare for our final departure from the farmhouse. I guided Fabrice into the rear of the jeep, ensuring he was comfortably wrapped in the blankets and pillows that we procured from the house. He gripped the little harlequin doll in his only hand.

  I ransacked the building from top to bottom. David managed to find a shotgun and a box of shells in one of the outhouses, and we stowed it in the front.

  By the time we went to get Karen she’d composed herself somewhat. Her pallid face was streaked with tears, her eyes bloodshot. I put my arm around her and we walked to the jeep. She clutched at me with trembling hands. “Why did we come, Jason? Were we mad?”

  “It’s okay, Karen, it’s okay,” I soothed. “We’ll get Joel, then go home.”

  She nodded.

  Once we were all loaded into the vehicle, David started the ignition. I felt a sudden sense of trepidation. Karen’s words had brought home to me the ridiculous nature of our trip; once again I was struck by how trivial our expedition actually was – to think we’d dared brave the insanity of this place just for a photo opportunity. Suddenly I wanted to be home more than anything else in the world.

  The rain was still falling, although less heavily, but the minute we careered into the shelter of the trees I could no longer feel the drops on my head. Nevertheless, the foliage around us shivered and hissed with the drips. I felt the vehicle slide and judder as David crunched the gears, fighting to keep the tyres on firm ground. We skirted the slopes, accelerating up the grass incline that rose to a plateau, extending as far as I could see. I tried to glance back to see the farmhouse, but the pale trunks of the trees blocked my view.

  The track led into the forest. We carefully traversed the muddy terrain, wheels bouncing to maintain purchase. Just as I felt we had gone too far, we reached the junction where the two paths intersected. The jeep slid to a halt and we paused, trying to listen, as the engine ticked and the leaves fluttered in the rain.

  My thoughts had taken a macabre turn, and I was finding it hard to keep up with events; missing members of the team, petrified humans, the fact that we were in the midst of so much bloodshed and trauma. It felt like we were teetering on the brink of something far darker.

  7

  David stepped out of the jeep and started poking around in the undergrowth. I suddenly realised how tense I was, as I jumped down and felt the stiffness in my limbs.

  For five minutes or so we searched the area. It was quite clear that the thing we were looking for – and I had no real idea what that might be, other than feeling a strange foreboding – would lie nowhere near the track, but somewhere rather more obscure. Eventually I discovered a series of rippled patterns in the soil, almost destroyed by the rain. The vegetation had been crushed, plant stalks broken, leaving a faint path cutting between the tall grass and bushes. I held back several wide fronds that extended from the trunk of a tree and noticed the mound of earth that rose sharply beyond the line of sight. Strands of mucus glistened on the loose soil, spanning the dapples that decorated its surface. I scaled the incline, my feet sinking into the barrow of earth. It was clear that this was soil that had been recently excavated. I squinted in all directions. The waist-high grasses did their best to obscure our target. And then I spotted a stretch of blackness hidden beneath the shadows of a conifer tree and my heart leapt.

  “David.” He looked over from where he was crouching by the trunk of a wisteria. I motioned him over.

  As he drew near, I nodded towards the smudge of darkness. David gingerly swept his foot in an arc, parting the ground ivy and grass, revealing the yawning mouth of a tunnel.

  I was starting to tire of this God-forsaken country, with its array of tunnels and darkness, strange vegetation and elusive places.

  I suddenly realised that I had left my camera in the jeep. David shone his torch into the tunnel, illuminating the swathes of webbing that laced the edges. The size of the hole bothered me; the diameter was probably only two feet across, and the way David was kneeling indicated he was considering crawling into it.

  “What are you doing?”

  He dug at the rim of the tunnel with his hands, dislodging clumps of soil, pulling strands o
f vegetation from the edge. Very quickly he’d opened up the mouth of the tunnel, which I now realised was much wider beyond the first few feet. It appeared to drop down and then run horizontally. We both peered into the hole. I realised with dismay that it was wide enough for us comfortably to climb into.

  “Joel?” David’s voice seemed to be swallowed by the tunnel. He moved as if to climb down.

  “What are you doing? He won’t be down there.”

  David looked at me with eyes that glittered in the shelter of the trees. “This must be the place that the farmer described.”

  “But we’ve come to find Joel. He wouldn’t have climbed down there.”

  David glanced into the hole. “He came to look for a creature in the woods. I think this is the thing’s…nest, or lair.”

  I understood we needed to check down there, but I felt torn by the idea. It seemed cowardly to allow David to go down alone whilst I waited on the surface, yet the prospect of going down on my own felt repellent. Grudgingly I accepted that it was best if we both went.

  I jumped down first, feeling my boots sink into the mud as I landed. David passed me the torch. I bent and shone the light into the tunnel, but the curvature of the walls meant that little of any interest was revealed.

  “Joel?” My voice sounded feeble.

  At least the torch beam indicated there might be enough room to bend and crouch, rather than having to crawl along the tunnel. I ducked my head and scuttled further into the burrow, while David joined me.

  The light picked out glistening striations along the surface of the passageway. It reminded me of a photo I once saw of the chamber of a gun, where it had marked the exterior of a bullet as it passed through.

  David’s breathing behind me did little to calm my nerves; the sound seemed to spiral ahead. The arc of the light was sufficient to illuminate the entire width of the tunnel, banishing any possible surprises that might lurk in the shadows. That fact gave me a modicum of courage.

  At one point the burrow dipped slightly and curved at an angle. Just as I shuffled far enough across for the torch to meet the perspective, I froze in my tracks.

  The burrow ended abruptly about fifteen feet away, opening into a roughly circular chamber, wider than the rest of the tunnel. It might have been possible to stand fully in the hollow.

  But there was no way in the world I was going any further.

  The torch beam picked out several objects gathered together in bundles, propped against the wall of the burrow. A glistening cover of opaque mucus did little to conceal the odd human elbow or foot that protruded through the wrapping. I felt the first surges of panic rising in my throat.

  And then a sound came to me very faintly from the surface. It was Karen, screaming.

  8

  We scrambled back along the tunnel. I was aware of the shapes behind us, wrapped in the mucus-shrouds, tried to force the meaning of their presence out of my head. David leapt out of the tunnel. I quickly followed.

  I could see movement through the trees as we sprinted back to the jeep. Karen’s screams injected me with a sense of terror. Through the tangle of shrubs and brush I could see a blur of motion. The air fizzed with a palpable sense of panic.

  Just as we burst into the clearing, I collided against David’s back with a gasp.

  Karen stood screaming on the rear of the jeep, her hands covering her mouth, eyes wide with terror. I turned to get a better view. For several seconds I just blinked, trying to compute the information.

  A monstrous insect writhed on the ground. It was a mass of legs and antennae, moisture glistening on the shell-like segments of its body. My first impression was of a pale, bloated centipede, the countless legs of its enormous length flexing in obscene ripples. It looked to be about eight or nine feet long, though it was difficult to tell because it was constantly coiling against the wheels of the jeep.

  It must have sensed our approach, for its head angled towards us. It was at that moment that I feared my sanity teetering; even now I struggle to describe the sight.

  The creature was something out of a nightmare, like a monster from the depths of Hell. The tip of its thorax bulged to accommodate the head. Between the grotesque mandibles I could see a pair of faceted eyes, insectoid, yet possessing a human-like semblance that was terrifying. A series of discs spanned the underside of its body. The glistening maw gaped, issuing a chitinous rattle. A shiver of muscular movement teased the legs into an undulating wave as it flexed against the back of the jeep. Karen screamed again and cowered against the glass of the cab. Fabrice remained motionless, still draped in the tarpaulin, silently moving his lips. The insect’s mandibles twitched as if tasting the air. I could see a pointed barb protruding from its monstrous face.

  Karen yelled again, breaking my reverie. I took a few steps back. David edged towards the border of trees that fringed the clearing, and scooted towards the front of the jeep. I moved towards the insect despite every fibre of my being urging otherwise.

  The centipede scuttled forward with a hostile rattling noise, trying to grasp Fabrice’s leg. He kicked desperately and recoiled. Karen attempted to drag him away. I could hear the driver’s door of the jeep open, and it occurred to me that David might suddenly drive the vehicle away, abandoning me. I panicked. There was a machete in the back of the jeep, and I grabbed it and swung in a wild arc.

  The blow connected heavily, cracking the shell-like carapace. Twisting and hissing, the creature reared up and flicked a set of antennae at me. I felt myself dropping back onto the ground, half delirious with terror. My hands grasped wet leaves, mossy undergrowth, desperately snatching at something to tether me to reality. Helpless, I bowed my head and awaited the strike.

  Instantly a sharp crack split the air, closely followed by another. Almost in a blur I saw the creature jolt and jerk, coiling back on itself. I was only vaguely aware of David in the background as I scrambled out of reach. He continued his aim, the barrel of the shotgun remained constant even though both shells had been spent.

  Then the creature was moving, scuttling low across the carpet of dead leaves with astonishing agility. I gasped at its speed. David cried out, urging me into movement. The creature seemed to be heading back towards its burrow, scurrying from side to side as its legs slid on the damp leaves. David was quickly reloading the shotgun. I ran through the trees, feeling the fronds and branches swipe at me. I arrived in the clearing just in time to see the tip of the monster’s body disappear into the hole. The soil surrounding it was patterned by those ripples, only there was something different about the scene this time. I stopped suddenly as the realisation hit; the air was heavy with an overpowering smell of gasoline. An empty canister was lying half-covered by the grass; nearby a lighter glistened in the rain. The torch that I’d discarded as I’d clambered out almost leapt into my hands.

  I peered into the burrow. “Joel!”

  My voice was swallowed by a threatening hiss. I jumped down into the hole, staring intently into the darkness; a darkness that was punctured by a light from some frantically bobbing source.

  Just then, from the far side of the tunnel, beyond the creature, a direct beam burst forth from Joel’s torch, illuminating the nightmare creature in its path. I switched on my own torch and shone it along the burrow.

  The monster rolled and arched its length as it sensed Joel’s vulnerability. He was backing away, further into the burrow, almost reaching the point where the tunnel curved. It was clear he was trapped. He threw a canister at the centipede and it bounced off its body in a spray of gasoline. That’s when I knew what to do.

  Joel’s eyes caught mine and an unspoken message passed between us. I clambered out of the tunnel and dived to one side. My fingers scrabbled around in the grass, before finally settling on the steel lighter. It took three strikes before the tiny flame caught. I dropped it into the hole and rolled away.

  A roar erupted in my ears, threatening to burst my skull. I was aware of David grabbing and dragging me away from the hole
. The air blistered with fire and, from the bowels of the earth, a shrill, desperate whistling.

  I was almost unconscious by the time David loaded me into the jeep. The creature’s dying chittering was still in my head many hours later.

  The next few days passed in a fugue. Before we left I was vaguely aware of David telling Karen that we’d seen Joel’s body in the tunnel, wrapped in the creature’s mucus cocoon. He made no mention of what really happened. Joel’s fate secured Karen’s acceptance to leave. We paid David a small fortune, though no amount of money could possibly reward him for the expertise with which he guided us back to civilisation. It was only months later that I realised his resolve might have been strengthened by his experience of the country’s religion. Maybe he’d seen so much madness that it had fortified his mind.

  One minute we were perched on a brittle chair in Kigali airport - lost in a dream of uncertainty - the next we were home, being silently taxied to our apartment. I have little memory of the intervening events.

  Karen and I endured the next year in fraught proximity. Our experience could have strengthened the bond that we’d shared, might have meant that we’d understood each other. Instead the madness and horror that we were exposed to simply accelerated the poison in our already-diseased relationship. Karen moved out. Her mind had remained in those farmlands and fields of Africa. The resentment that I’d harboured over her fling had swollen to gigantic proportions; Joel’s loss did nothing to relieve that. If anything, it martyred him. There was no way I could compete.

  The impact of what happened has lessened with time. I no longer have nightmares, although I can’t watch documentaries about Rwanda or the civil war. I quit my job, and eventually found work at my local newspaper. It’s a more sedate career. I met Joanne in 2004. Our relationship is fine, although I’ve only spoken briefly about what happened in Rwanda. We’ve been trying for kids, but we’ve had no luck so far; the miscarriages she’s had have left us raw and emotionally fragile.

  Even to this day, I find I’m claustrophobic. The thought of entering a tunnel leaves me with a tight chest and palpitations. There’s something about the safety of the city that reassures me; concrete and glass, the constant sound of humanity, the ever-present reminders of society.