Shadows Bend

by David Barbour

  Just then, the two odd men dematerialized and reappeared standing over Glory. Howard was hardly halfway there.

  “Tekeli-li!” said the larger shadow.

  A puzzled expression crossed Howard’s face. He hesitated momentarily.

  “Tekeli-li!” said the other shadow.

  “Oh, my God!” cried Lovecraft. “It’s true. It’s true!”

  “Tekeli-li!” the odd men said in unison, and they leaped forward.

  No human power could have stopped them, but as they attacked, and Lovecraft’s will melted before them, some primitive fury awoke in Howard. His vision went red, and a battle madness came over him, leaving him unrestrained as only those without hope can be. He met the odd men’s onslaught head-on, grabbing their shadowy limbs with all his animal strength, ripping at their torsos, digging rigid fingers into their strange papery flesh.

  Howard’s grip held firm in one odd man, but the other literally tore away from him, leaving pieces of himself dangling in Howard’s clenched fist. The nearness of death woke a frenzy in him, and Howard fought like a mortally wounded beast. He had no illusion of winning the fight, but intended only to expend all his fury and hatred-everything hateful he had ever felt for anyone, all the anger and resentment toward the world he had lived with until now-he extinguished on the odd man.

  There was little resistance. The odd man’s body seemed to absorb all the physical and emotional intensity Howard could produce; it grew thick and heavy, as if it were waterlogged, and then it began to press upon Howard from every direction though it engaged him from the front. Howard struggled with a new fury, but felt his strength beginning to flag. It could not last much longer.

  Lovecraft was pressed against a wall of stone by the other odd man’s unnatural weight. He felt as if the darkness itself were crushing the breath from his lungs; his vision began to dim. With his last remaining energy and will, he reached into his trouser pocket and, producing his flint dagger, brought it up and around with all his might into the odd man’s left eye. Lovecraft collapsed, fully expecting, even in his diminished state, that he was dead, but then, unexpectedly, there came a peculiar sound from above him. The pressure on his chest and lungs relented, and Lovecraft opened his eyes to see the odd man rearing back, clutching at the mangled shadows where once his eye had been. Part of his face seemed to have become smoke, and it was curling away, leaving an eerie, flat black convolution of tissue where the eye socket should have been. Lovecraft quickly grabbed a stone and smashed it into the odd man’s head. When the form fell, he lifted another, larger stone and bashed its skull until it did not move again.

  Howard concluded his fierce wrestling match by using the last iota of his brute strength to lift his odd man off the ground. He held him crushed to his chest in a bear hug, and when he felt something give in the shadow’s torso, he quickly stepped back, and like a weight lifter doing a clean and jerk, he hoisted the odd man up to shoulder level and shoved upward with all his might, impaling him on a low-hanging stalactite. He heard the sickening sound of crunching gristle, but what truly disturbed Howard was the fact that he could feel the vibration of the rock grinding through the odd man’s body. He let go and stepped aside, watching the odd man give a few weak twitches before he hung limp and his deadweight pulled him down to the ground, leaving the stalactite dripping his dark blood.

  Lovecraft could not help but queasily watch the driblets of blood splash onto the shadowy form. Howard quickly lifted another large rock and brought it down solidly on the skull of the shadowy man. The dull explosive thud startled Lovecraft, bringing him out of his distraction.

  Now the men turned their attention to the portal, which was more than half-open. Something was emerging from the other side, something oddly indistinct like the faces of the odd men. To Lovecraft, the thing had the appearance of a giant tentacle, like the monstrous appendage of a prehistoric sea creature oozing primordial slime. To Howard the thing was a gigantic black serpent with glistening scales. Both of them saw it slithering toward Glory’s still form.

  “Glory! Glory!” Desperately, they called out to her to awaken from her trance, but she could not hear them. They rushed to her and grabbed her from either side, pulling her from the dark serpentine thing, but she was frozen in place. Now the dark tentacle suddenly sprouted other, smaller appendages, and these coiled around the two men, entangling them before they could disengage. In moments, they were gasping, their breaths crushed from their lungs.

  The giant tentacle touched Glory’s body and then, instead of encircling her, it began to envelop her like a fluid. Had it begun at her head, it might have appeared to be a black oil dripping down her body, but it started at the bottom and crept upward in a spiral, tendrils sprouting the way pseudopodia of water stream out of a droplet blown in a heavy wind.

  In a few moments, Glory’s entire body had taken on the black sheen of the tentacle. To Howard, she had become a statue covered in gleaming, black serpent’s scales. To Lovecraft, she appeared to have become infinitely faceted like the sculpted compound eye of a gigantic insect. The surface moved and pulsed as, inside, Glory somehow began to struggle. As the men watched, helpless, Glory began to squirm and twist inside her black shell; they could not imagine what agony she must be enduring, but her openmouthed scream was clearly visible, though covered in the faceted stuff that killed all sound. Glory’s struggle became more and more violent, and then, quite suddenly, the texture and color of her covering. changed. The form inside-they could not believe it was Glory-spun at an incredible speed, and then, as if the covering were the final stages of a chrysalis, it exploded away_ and what remained of the tentacle drew back in a sudden twitch that was clearly pain.

  Glory stood there, covered in a grayish, gelatinous slime. Her eyes opened, and she blinked, still stunned by what had just transpired.

  “Glory!” called Howard. “Glory! Wake up!”

  She turned toward his voice. Her expression changed into one of recognition and then, unexpectedly, she smiled. It was a smile so out of place that it somehow undid all the terror of the moment, and both Lovecraft and Howard felt themselves suddenly full of hope and energy and life. The pulse of the Artifact behind her seemed to grow dull.

  “Now!” cried Lovecraft. “The Artifact! Place it in the other slot!” Glory looked back in confusion, and then, with a visible act of will, she thrust the Artifact into the rough-hewn slot and violently averted her eyes when it exploded with an entirely different sort of light.

  The Artifact’s cold light and the light surrounding the portal seemed to come from inside the cavern, but this light, which was warm and full of a living energy, clearly came from outside. It was sunlight or somehow born of the sun-and it blazed in not from the slot, but through the strange Stone-Age technology that the old Hopi and Anasazi had rigged over the centuries. The containers of fluid on the wooden tripods were aligned so that when the Artifact’s cold glow reached them, a beam of blue light shot out into the darkness of the cavern. And then, as if pulled in by the blue beam, a blast of yellow white light returned like an echo from the sun. It was blinding in an entirely different way: where the Artifact’s light was intrusive, their bodies welcomed this light, wanted to open up to it as if they were flowers in a field. As the light leaped from tripod to tripod, amplified each time, it also brought a dull rushing sound with it. When the beam touched the Artifact, the slot turned black and the Artifact fell out, having changed from its cold form into something bright and golden.

  Now Glory thrust the new Artifact at the dark tentacle, which was already drawing back from the light, and the creature began to recede whence it came. It was ungainly now, like some appendage too large to carry its own awful weight, and it was too slow to pull back into the portal before the removal of the Artifact caused the doors to close.

  Everything was still for a moment, basking in the new light. Fabulous colors shimmered through the cavern. Then, like a worm shriveling in the sun, the giant black tentacle thrashed violently about
, snapping stalagmites and stalactites like so much tinder as the doorway grated on its hidden gears, and, deep in the stonework, an ominous rumbling sound began. The vibrations spread throughout the cave, gradually rising in volume as it reached a resonant pitch that shook the very air. Stalactites fell from the darkness of the cave’s roof like icicles in spring, some of them impaling the monster’s giant tentacle, causing it to thrash even more violently, spewing black ichor that sizzled where it touched stone.

  Now that Glory was free and he could breathe once again, Lovecraft started the chant which he knew would seal the portal. The words rushed nearly unbidden from his lips, and the weird sounds, unintended for the human vocal apparatus, resonated through the cavern like animal noises and subhuman utterances, mixing into an insane gibbering noise. The sounds echoed in chamber after chamber as if it were a call being answered in kind, and each echo came accompanied with the noise of collapsing stone. The entire cavern was beginning to collapse.

  “HP! We have to get out!” Howard motioned to the falling stone. He pulled Glory by the hand, and when he met resistance, he dragged her. “It’s all coming down, dammit!”

  Again, the light changed, dimming, growing in intensity, dimming again as the tripods shook and then finally gave way. The cavern was plunged into blackness when the tripods collapsed, breaking the beam of light, and suddenly they were all blind, seeing only the purplish blobs of afterimages. For what seemed the longest time, they groped around until Glory located her flashlight and flicked it on to provide a pathetically weak light.

  “Bob!” she called.

  Howard appeared at her side. He took her hand for a moment, but didn’t know what to say. Before he could articulate anything, Lovecraft was there, shining his own beam at them.

  “Do you recall the way back?” He shouted to be heard over all the echoes of the collapsing cavern.

  Howard pointed, and the three of them ran toward the lake, splashing into the water as rocks and stalactites fell all around them. Behind them, in the blackness, the gate was buried for all time.

  AS THE CAVE-IN subsided, a fog of dust settled over the surface of the lake, and Glory, Lovecraft, and Howard swam back, struggling to keep their flashlights above water. They were so exhausted they could barely get their limbs to move through the resistance of the water, which felt icy after their exertions. Lovecraft and Howard clutched their rafts and kicked their feet, moving ever so slowly behind Glory.

  “Why did it let you go?” asked Howard.

  “I don’t know,” said Glory. “I don’t want to remember what just happened.”

  “Neither do I,” said Howard. “I ain’t sleepin’ again as long as I live.”

  “May I suggest we refrain from speaking in order to preserve our energies until we are safe?” said Lovecraft.

  Howard grunted. They swam on in a solemn silence, hearing only the wet rippling and splashing of water and the occasional aftershock of the cave-in. Glory, the better swimmer, began to draw ahead.

  The flashlight beams, jostling about on the rafts, illuminated eerie swatches of color and bizarre formations of rock, all the stranger because they were glimpses out of context. Glory began to imagine what the things might be: giant convolutions on the inside of a stone womb, the wrinkles at the edges of a mother’s aureola, the smooth texture of an infant’s belly. She tried to soothe herself as she slowed down and floated, waiting for the men to catch up to her. She wanted desperately to be out of the water, and yet she could not bear the thought of emerging by herself and waiting, all alone, not knowing whether they would ever reach the other shore of the lake.

  Suddenly Glory heard a sharp intake of breath-almost a squeak behind her. She turned her head to see Lovecraft’s face go under, then bob back up, mouth agape and gasping wetly. He went down again even before he could cry for help, the water bubbling at the edge of his raft, where Glory could see his pale fingers clutching.

  “HP!” cried Howard, flailing at the water. “Help him, Glory!”

  He tried to keep Lovecraft in the beam of his light, but it was unnecessary. Glory spun in the water and swam quickly toward Lovecraft’s light, which jerked wildly underwater as he struggled with something, the dark thing that pulled him from below. Glory could not quite make it out, but in her imagination it seemed to be tattered fragments of blackness that reached upward from below, irregular bubbles of darkness attaching their weight to Lovecraft’s already exhausted frame. She dove down just as Lovecraft lost his grip on the raft and sank, trailing a froth of bubbles from his nostrils, his expression a grimace of fear and disbelief.

  Kicking through the water with all her might, Glory caught Lovecraft before he was too far down, and she sank with him, struggling with the thing that had wound itself around his legs. She had to scissor her own legs around Lovecraft’s waist and contort her body downward to use her hands on the black stuff. It clung like viscous gobs of crude oil; it had an icy texture where she touched it, a debilitating coldness that cut into the flesh of her fingers. She clawed at the stuff, hooking her nails into it until she could feel Lovecraft’s skin underneath. A large, gelatinous clump came off in her hands, and she shoved it away as if it were some hideous black afterbirth, ripping and pulling at it, imagining the membrane of an unholy placenta, watching with surprise as it oozed a black blood that puffed into clouds like the inky discharge of a giant squid.

  Glory held on as long as she could, until her lungs burned and her vision dimmed, and then she gave a final, desperate double-legged kick at the black mass. She suddenly felt it give, and she let go of Lovecraft to fight her way back up to the surface, where she broke the water with a tortured gasp.

  “Glory!”

  She heard Howard’s voice and squinted as his light caught her in the eyes. She tried to ask about Lovecraft, but was only able to sputter and wheeze until she heard the water break again.

  Lovecraft’s purple face emerged, eyes red and bulging. He let out a frightening cry and broke into a terrible fit of coughing as the air entered his lungs. For a while there was nothing but the sound of coughing and labored breath echoing through the cavern; Lovecraft was too traumatized to offer his characteristic commentary.

  Glory made her way back to her raft to catch her breath; she stayed afloat by bearing her weight on the raft, but when she stopped kicking, her legs sank into the water.

  She was poised like someone with chin and arms along the top of a wall, looking over to the other side when she felt her legs grow suddenly heavier. The raft bobbed, and water splashed her face. She gasped in alarm and the sound echoed over the water.

  “Glory?” came Howard’s voice.

  “I—” The weight suddenly yanked her under the water, and as her flashlight tumbled down, spinning its light before it went out, Glory saw the large shadowy form of a multi-limbed creature, which she knew now, with an inexplicable certainty, was her death. She knew this calmly, as if were no surprise to her. She knew that it was impossible to fight its grip, which pulled like the force of gravity itself. She knew that her body would never be found. And yet she felt no anxiety at all. Not even the urge to breathe one last time as she glided down in the pristine water.

  By the time Howard and Lovecraft had frantically paddled their way forward to respond to Glory’s cry, she was receding into the depths, already so far down that it was impossible for them to reach her. All they could do was watch, feeling sick and helpless as they trained the beams of their lights on her.

  Glory’s wide green eyes looked up at them, and she reached her arms toward them as if to embrace them through the distance of the eerily clear water. But she did not struggle at all as the shadow engulfed her and pulled her down, farther and farther until finally she was lost in the darkness. A flurry of bubbles trailed up for a few moments, then fewer and even fewer, until only a last bubble or two marked her passing.

  The water was still. Glory was gone.

  Howard’s first impulse was to dive after her. He plunged his head in the
water and angled himself downward, only to remember, suddenly and sickeningly, that he could not swim. While Lovecraft held on to a ledge of stone jutting into the water, Howard clung to his raft, and the two of them vainly shined their dimming flashlights down into the black shadows beneath them until the terrible futility was too much to endure any longer.

  They spoke not a word to each other as they made their way back up to the pueblo and the star-filled night sky that awaited them outside. They had saved the world from an unpredicted Armageddon, but all they could think of was the ultimate sacrifice one woman had made for them.

  20

  ALL NIGHT THE DUST STORM did not abate. They drove on, south on Highway 285 down into Texas, both of them anxious about what might happen if the Chevy were to overheat and yet unable to make the rational decision to stop. They had to keep moving, to get as far from the caves as they possibly couldas if mere physical distance could somehow mediate the tragedy of what had happened-but as they drove it seemed that the car was simply humming in place, the tires spinning idly as the clouds of red dust whirled by in the dark. Toward dawn-at least it seemed to be dawn-the horizon lightened and they could see the road ahead of them, far enough to make out the boxy shapes of old adobe structures. Nothing stirred among the buildings as they approached, and the sign that read “San Robardo” was only a hundred yards from the first reddish wall.

  “I’m stoppin’ here,” said Howard. “Give the car a rest, dust out the radiator before we go on. Maybe the storm will pass.”

  “Thank you, Bob. That greatly diminishes my anxiety.”

  “What is it you’re worryin’ about? We’re alive, ain’t we? It’s Glory that’s dead.” There was a touch of anger in Howard’s voice.

  “Let’s not argue,” said Lovecraft, wearily. “I am in terrible need of something to drink.”

  After an uncomfortable silence, Howard pulled over at an adobe building with a single, decrepit gas pump in front. Over the open door of the garage, a Phillips 66 flying-horse sign flapped gently back and forth, squeaking on one remaining hinge. The place seemed deserted.