The Cellar: A Post-Apocalyptic Novella

by Cruz, Richard Dela

  But in the end, it’s really my fault, Daren thought. No one should have to starve to death. He should’ve done more out there, tried harder to find more prey. He should never have returned home with such a paltry amount of game. He had failed the village.

  He walked to the shack he shared with his mother and sat on the ground outside, his back against the shack’s side. With head bowed and knees to his chest, he closed his eyes and imagined what the villagers would look like in a few weeks. He saw them around the fire with their skin stretched taut over their bones, their joints almost poking through their flesh. How long would they wait before they gave up looking for rats and stripping off bark? How long before they began to eye their neighbors and lick their chops?

  He had to think of something else. He had to focus on something wonderful to keep the horrid images from infesting his mind. So he allowed himself to think of blazing red hair and emerald eyes.

  He first met Lara several months before, when she had calmly strolled into his hunting grounds, making no effort to conceal herself. He should’ve driven her away. It was hard enough finding food without someone else muscling in on his territory. But he didn’t. Perhaps the desolation of a dying world made him yearn for company, and it gave him a strange comfort to know that in the barren expanse, another human wasn’t too far away. Or perhaps he simply found her pretty.

  For many weeks afterwards, Lara had showed up in his territory regularly, but they’d given each other a wide berth. Then they had started talking to each other. It had started with a “hello” and “nice weather we’re having.” Soon they were sitting at a campfire, talking about life in their respective villages, sharing hunting tips, watching each other’s back. It was a great relief for Daren to be able to spend time with someone outside his village.

  He remembered the cheeky smile Lara would flash whenever he would show her what he had caught, and the way she’d raise an eyebrow and smirk whenever she’d show him her superior catch. Hunting was never a duty whenever she was around. Some days he’d linger at hunting just so he could see her. But she was gone now, and he was bereft of reasons and goodbyes.

  Where could she be? Could the raiders have gotten her? He dismissed the idea quickly, as if doing so would make it less likely. He considered other possibilities. Prey had been hard to come by lately, and both of them putting pressure on one hunting ground meant less game for each of them. What if she just decided to look for a better place to hunt? If that were true, she could have at least said something. But then again, why should she? Their closeness had its limits. Complete trust was too precious to give to an outsider. Nothing bound them together; nothing obliged her to inform him of her plans. He wasn’t her husband, her boyfriend, or even her friend, however much he wanted to be. The connection he thought he’d felt between them during those fire-lit evenings was likely nothing more than just two strangers keeping the loneliness at bay.

  “Howdy, hope I’m not being a nuisance.”

  Daren looked up to see an elderly, white-haired man hobble towards him. Old Man Murphy gripped his twisted walking stick and leaned most of his weight on it. He shuffled his way closer until he was standing over Daren.

  “Did my mom ask you to talk to me?”

  “Nope.” Murphy bent down slowly and took his place beside Daren. “She figured you wanted to be alone. I just wanted to make sure that was true.”

  “She’s right,” Daren said. He was in no mood to open up to anyone.

  “Well,” Murphy said, setting down his walking stick and rubbing his knees with his palms, “you should’ve said something before I sat down. With my joints the way they are, it’ll be a big to-do to get back up again.” He grabbed a piece of cloth from his pocket and coughed into it. It was a hacking, wheezing, geezer-like cough.

  Daren groaned in irritation as he heard Murphy clear the gunk from his throat and flinched when a glob of phlegm hit the ground at his feet.

  “You don’t have to get back up, Murphy.” He quickly shifted forward preparing to stand. “I’ll find some other place to be.”

  Murphy grabbed Daren’s shirt and kept him in place. “Humor me, boy,” the old man grunted.

  “Why are you here anyway?” Daren huffed sulkily.

  Murphy didn’t answer straight away. He looked over in the distance at the other villagers gathered around the fire. They had begun to shuffle back to their dwellings. He picked up his twisted branch of a cane and pointed in their direction.

  “Don’t ever think that you didn’t do everything you could for them.” Murphy shook his stick. “It takes guts to go out there and find something to feed those ingrates. You did the best with what you had.”

  “I wanted to give Elsie’s boy my food,” Daren said with a grimace. “I wanted to be generous…but I couldn’t do it.”

  “You wouldn’t have done that kid any favors by giving him your meal. You’d have gone hungry, and what good is a starving hunter to the rest of the village? You need to keep your strength up.”

  “What’s the use? Sooner or later we’re all going to die of hunger anyway.”

  Daren waited for Murphy to contradict him. He wanted the oldest and wisest person in the village to tell him that he was wrong…that there was a way out of this mess.

  “You make a good point, kid.” Murphy rested his head on the shack door. “The world’s dying, and there’s not much we can do about it. It can’t support us anymore.”

  “You came here to cheer me up, right?” Daren turned to face Murphy. “I mean, that was the whole idea coming here, wasn’t it?”

  Murphy merely grinned as he scratched the white stubbly mass on his chin. “I’d like to think that the world has the capacity to heal itself.” He looked up at the sky. “At least that’s how it used to be many years ago. Before The Event, the world was a lush, bountiful place with enough food for everyone. People used to live past eighty, if you could believe that. Now I’m almost fifty, and I’m the oldest damn creature this side of sundown.”

  “The Event?” Daren said. “Isn’t that when the Unseen One smashed the earth with his fist to punish the sins of our ancestors?”

  “So the story goes,” Murphy answered.

  “You’d think he’d be done punishing us by now.”

  “You remember those strange people who used to come over?” Murphy stared off into space. “The ones who called themselves prophets?”

  Daren remembered the people wearing coats of multicolored fabric all meshed together. They claimed to dream about the future and warned people to repent before it was too late. “They’re the ones who kept talking about the Dark Days, when all the food would run out.”

  “You still remember the sign that would foretell the end of days?” Murphy turned to look at Daren.

  “A cloaked figure would appear,” Daren replied. “The Angel of Death would walk the earth…” He swallowed before he could continue, the mysterious events on his journey home coming suddenly to mind.

  “For the final harvest of the damned,” the old man intoned.

  Daren noticed how sunken Murphy’s eyes were and how much his cheekbones jutted out. It made him more aware of the skull lurking beneath the old man’s flesh.

  “What if I told you that I saw the cloaked figure?” Murphy kept a level stare.

  The hair on Daren’s neck stood up. A tingling feeling spread down his back and arms. The old man admitted to seeing the strange apparition, which probably meant Daren wasn’t imagining things. He felt like he was being dragged back into the dark corners of his childhood terrors.

  “Murphy, if you’re joking, I swear I’ll—”

  “I don’t joke, kid. Last night, I went outside the gate to take a piss when I saw it over by the trees. It had a hood over its head and it carried a sack.”

  “Maybe it was just some traveler.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Murphy continued. “But then I hollered out to the figure and, wouldn’t you know it, it moved like no human I’d ever seen.” He m
ade a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Whoosh! Just like a spirit would. And”—he paused for effect—“it gave out a weird, greenish glow.”

  A part of Daren wanted to hold on to the reality he was used to. He wanted the stories of the Unseen One and the Angel of Death to remain stories. He didn’t want them invading his world and wrenching away any control he may have over his fate.

  “Maybe you were imagining things?” Daren asked with some hope. “Or maybe your eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”

  The old man thumped his stick on the ground. Dust flew up and curled in the air.

  “I should’ve known better than to tell anyone about it!” The “t” sound made his mouth shoot a fine spray. “Everybody second guesses the old person!”

  Murphy dug his cane into the earth and gripped it with both hands. He groaned as he tried to pull himself up. Daren could see that his knees were giving him trouble, so he reached out to help.

  “I can manage on my own!” Murphy slapped his hand away. “Why don’t you bother some girls or do whatever it is boys do.”

  Murphy hoisted himself up and trudged away, bent over and holding his lower back. Daren wanted so much to tell Murphy that he’d seen the figure, too. But he kept his mouth shut and just watched the old man hobble his way home. He wanted to believe it was just the gnawing hunger that was causing these hallucinations. And that all they needed was a little more food so they would stop seeing things.

  ⊕ ⊕ ⊕

  DAREN LAY WIDE AWAKE. IT wasn’t because the wind had found its way to him through all the tiny gaps in the wall. Or because he slept on a rug covering bare earth. Or because the only thing shielding him from his mother’s snores was a thin sheet hanging between their sleeping areas. He couldn’t go back to sleep because of what he had dreamt.

  In the dream, he was standing in a dark place. There was a strange metal door in front of him with a wheel on it. He reached out towards the wheel, and it turned rapidly, like some unseen force was spinning it. When it stopped, he heard a clanging noise. The door swung open to reveal a brightly lit room. He stepped inside the room. In front of him stood a tall figure clothed in a gray robe. Its bowed head was covered by a hood. But then the figure slowly began to raise its head, and Daren was about to see its face…meet its eyes. He didn’t want to, but he was frozen in place…

  Daren had woken up at that point, and for three straight hours, he had kept his eyes on the door…waiting. He told himself he was being stupid. There were no angels of death that roamed the earth collecting souls in a sack. It was all a big, macabre joke. Murphy must have laughed or coughed himself to sleep.

  There was a knock.

  Daren sprang into a sitting position and stared at the door. He could feel his heart climbing up his throat with every beat. Arianna hadn’t heard a thing. He could still hear her snoring from behind the sheet.

  The knock came again.

  Fighting his fear, he slowly got to his feet, crept towards the door, and peered through a crack. He exhaled slowly when he saw Logan’s features illuminated by a torch. It was strange to feel relief at seeing the sentry who had almost sliced his throat. He carefully pulled open the door so as not to wake his mother.

  “Is something wrong?” he whispered.

  Whatever relief he felt quickly drained away. He could tell by the look on Logan’s face that he was haunted by something he had just seen. The torch trembled slightly in his grip.

  “Is Arianna awake?”

  “She’s asleep,” Daren replied. “What’s going on?”

  Logan hesitated. “Uhm, I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean you’re not sure?”

  Logan raised his free hand and rubbed his forehead. He stood there for a few seconds while he shut his eyes and drew in a long breath.

  “Never mind.” He looked up at Daren. “Sorry I disturbed you. You can go back to bed.”

  He turned to walk away when Daren stepped forward and grabbed his jacket. Logan looked startled as he turned around to face him.

  “You saw it, didn’t you?” Daren asked him. “The cloaked figure?”

  Logan paled. “How did you know?”

  “I saw it too. And so did Murphy.”

  “You both saw it?” Logan’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “I don’t know.” Daren gave a shrug. “Maybe I wasn’t sure what I saw. Maybe I was afraid people would think I was nuts.”

  Logan turned to the north side of the village and pointed his torch at a portion of the rock wall.

  “I was standing there looking over the wall when I saw it walking near the edge of the forest,” he said. “It glowed bright green and there was also something about the way it moved.” There was a slight tremor in Logan’s voice. “It didn’t seem to be walking. It was sort of…gliding.”

  This was the third person who had admitted to seeing the phantom. Daren didn’t know what it all meant. Was it a raider trying to find a way into the village? It didn’t sound like something a raider would do. Raiders usually came in a group and attacked villages by force. Skulking around in plain sight wearing a hooded robe didn’t make sense at all. And what was causing the weird green light coming from within the robe? No ordinary lamp could do that.

  “Could you show me where you saw it?” he asked, acting more bravely than he felt.

  “Don’t you think we should alert Arianna?” Logan looked over Daren’s shoulder to peer inside the shack.

  “I think my mom should have her rest.” Daren stepped out and closed the door behind him. “Besides, both of us could probably handle one crazy person in a robe if it ever came to that.”

  Logan looked a little uncertain. “I think she needs to know about this.”

  “Go wake her up then,” Daren said. “Tell her you saw a mysterious ghostly figure gliding around. Let’s see how far you get with that story.” He folded his arms and looked at Logan. “I think we should find out what it is first before we start sounding the alarm.”

  “Okay fine, but don’t go outside the wall, you hear? Arianna will roast me on a spit if anything happened to you.”

  Daren followed Logan as they walked past several shacks. All the lights were out and no one seemed to be awake. Eventually, Logan’s torch shone on the base of the wall, which was made of large boulders. The stones became gradually smaller the higher the wall went. Right next to the wall was a wooden platform just three feet shy of the wall’s top. On the side of the platform was a ladder, which they used to climb up.

  They both stood on the wooden planks as they looked out across the valley. There hadn’t been any stars or moon for as long as living memory. The ash clouds would have shrouded the night in total darkness were it not for a series of torches placed at six-foot intervals all across the entire length of the wall. The torches flickered as a gust of wind swept over the entire village. Daren hugged himself, regretting leaving his coat behind.

  “Where’d you see it?” he asked.

  Logan pointed over to a line of leafless trees about forty yards from the wall. The combined glow of the torches made their branches cast eerie, fingerlike shadows.

  “Somewhere over there,” he said. “I nearly pissed my pants when I saw it. It had a gray robe, and it looked like it was floating.”

  “Was it floating a few feet up in the air?” Daren asked.

  “Not really. The figure’s robe was sweeping over the ground. But you could tell it wasn’t walking.”

  Daren took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He wasn’t sure how he’d react if he saw the ghostly figure once more. He could always use a rock or a knife if a raider came after him. But an otherworldly being was something else entirely.

  He scanned the valley as far as the torchlight could pierce the darkness. There was no movement save for whatever the breeze tossed around. The wind whipped against Daren, causing the bottom of his shirt to flap about. Flying dust stung his cheeks, and he raised his hand to protect his eyes. He braved the weather fo
r ten minutes while the cold crept into his bones.

  “I don’t think there’s anything to see out there.” Daren rubbed his upper arms to warm himself. “I’d better get back before I freeze.”

  “It’s a good thing you talked me out of waking Arianna,” Logan said, zipping his jacket up to his chin, “or I’d look like a total idiot right now.”

  “Good to know,” Daren muttered as he walked over to where the ladder was.

  He placed his foot on the top step and started on his way down. He was about halfway to the ground when he heard Logan call out to him.

  “Daren! It’s back!”

  The platform creaked and shook as Daren scrambled his way back up. As soon as he planted his feet on the wooden boards, he glanced over to where Logan was. He saw him leaning over the top of the wall trying to get a good look at something in the distance. Daren rushed to his side and squinted at the same area Logan was staring at.

  “Where is it?” Daren asked. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Over there.” Logan leaned out farther and pointed his finger to a dense portion of the woods. “It slipped behind one of those larger trees.”

  With only flickering torches keeping the darkness at bay, all Daren could see was a line of trunks in the shadows. The branches were buffeted by the wind but there was no other sign of movement. Nothing alive seemed to be in the forest.

  Then he saw it. A piece of gray slipped out from behind one of the trees. He held his breath as the edge of a hood emerged, then the head, then the body. The specter was bathed in the same eerie green light he saw in the forest. Its head was bowed down as if in mourning. The wind sent ripples through its robe as it moved along, the gray fabric betraying no stride. There was no lifting and lowering of limbs. The figure seemed to stand motionless, and yet it somehow kept moving. It glided over the earth, the hem of the robe quietly sweeping the ground.

  “What should we do?” Daren asked, finally finding his voice.

  Logan said nothing but stood transfixed. His eyes moved to follow the specter’s movements but the rest of him remained frozen in place. It was unnerving to see him that way: staring, open-mouthed. Logan usually didn’t scare so easily. Daren placed his hand on Logan’s shoulder and shook him, making his head bob from side to side. He turned to Daren with a bewildered expression.