Firestone Key

by Caroline Noe

  “Gwynie!” Myrrdinus positively screeched, but it was too late.

  Gwyneth climbed on to the boulder and leapt up and down while the snake prepared to strike. Lunging forward with incredible speed, the snake’s fangs descended in Gwyneth’s direction. At the very last second, she dived backwards off the rock, falling into the thick powder coating the ground, behind. Unable to alter its direction due to force of momentum, the snake’s exposed fangs thundered into the vacated rock with a staggering crunch. The snake shook its head, swayed back and forth twice and dropped to the ground with an earth-shuddering thud.

  A moment of stunned silence followed this extraordinary event, during which Gwyneth’s eyes nervously appeared over the boulder.

  “Be died?” she asked.

  Myrrdinus regained his feet and staggered over to the prostrate reptile. Gingerly placing his hand on its side, he felt the continuing rise and fall of its breathing.

  “Nockered,” he replied

  The victorious woman emerged from behind the rock, surveyed her vanquished opponent and wobbled a dance of triumph.

  “Be…I…,” Myrrdinus stuttered, grasping for the right words. “That be most…”

  “Cleverly?” offered Gwyneth, holding her arms wide for the expected embrace.

  “Dangerly…Dimly…” Myrrdinus continued, angry with her for no discernible reason. “Telled ye…Never listen…”

  “Try thanking me, for once,” Gwyneth snapped, disappointed with his reaction.

  “Rivet!” croaked Frog, loudly, whilst bouncing up and down on the top of the unconscious snake’s head, forcing an intermittent hiss from its nostrils. She only ceased from her triumphant jig when Myrrdinus raised his sword and announced that he was about to remove that head.

  “Why always doing that?” remarked Gwyneth. “Something wrongly with ye, I think.”

  “Ye want it waking?” shot back Myrrdinus.

  “Carry on, be sure.”

  Once Frog had safely installed herself on Gwyneth’s shoulder, Myrrdinus swung his sword at the snake’s head, utilising all his muscular strength and letting fly with a lusty yell. The sword penetrated barely inches into the reptile’s neck and lodged there. Ignoring Gwyneth’s cackling, he eventually managed to remove the sword by placing a leg either side of it and heaving. Success meant flying backwards into the dust, releasing a great cloud into Gwyneth’s sensitive nostrils. When the dust and snot finally settled, it became apparent that a torrent of gelatinous glop was pouring from the snake’s neck.

  “Thank ye, soooo muchly,” said Gwyneth, edging backwards as the bilious liquid flowed towards her.

  “Rivet,” agreed Frog.

  “By way,” commented Gwyneth, turning her head to look at Frog, who was meekly perched on her shoulder, “where be Key?”

  Frog opened her mouth extra wide and pointed down it with one long digit. The mime ended at her stomach area.

  “Rack, fyke and pilt,” swore Myrrdinus.

  * * *

  Squeezing through the rock tunnel, Harlin, Elaine and Drevel emerged into a spectacle of light and water. Within the body of the cliff, water had sought out tiny crevices in which to widen its pathway. This had resulted in an array of waterfalls which bounced down the walls of the cave and formed picturesque steps in the rock. Daylight shone through these crevices, pools of light that fed the lush vegetation within. Eden could not have contained more beauty than this secret incubator of life.

  Transfixed by the glory of this idyll, Harlin’s fingers found their way to Elaine’s and softly intertwined, right at Drevel’s eye level. He sat in silence, patiently waiting, while there was a barely perceptible movement of the lovers towards one another, their scarred faces edging closer and closer as their gaze locked.

  Exercising discretion, the dog glanced around the magical cave. Peering up, he spotted something glistening, high above, embedded in the rock itself, something that resembled metal. As he excitedly turned back to Harlin and Elaine, his eye caught movement amid the lush vegetation. A single green root, clinging to the rock, shrivelled and turned blood red as though a poison crept along its length. While he watched, the root rose up and snapped at the green vegetation like a predator with prey. The vegetation fought back, engulfing and strangling the root, but the evil had already begun its infection and was spreading.

  Drevel barked a warning to Elaine and Harlin, but they were transfixed by one another, oblivious to their surroundings. Drevel howled with every ounce of strength contained within his body, but still they couldn’t hear him. Streams of sunlight blurred, twisted and reformed into nightmare shapes. The water decayed into putrefying pools of bubbling green mire while grotesque vegetation revealed the strangled corpses of animals, caught in its web.

  Harlin and Elaine’s handhold became a death grip. They fought to tear apart, but were bonded together in horror. Drevel watched, in growing desperation and confusion, as his friends reacted to a nightmare only they could see. Somehow, the mind of the dog/man was shielded from the cave’s evil; he was already living his worst nightmare.

  Inside their joint suffering, Harlin and Elaine could only watch as each was subjected to the trauma of the past:

  Hundreds of leather clad soldiers filled the forest, lounging and laughing around an eighteen year old boy, strapped to a wooden table. Terrified and alone, Harlin struggled to move, but his limbs were rendered immobile by leather straps that bit into his skin. Beside him, smiling with amusement, stood the handsome, athletic and psychotic Adam. Barely able to raise his head, Harlin watched in terror as the Torturer approached: a man with lifeless eyes, showing no mercy. He was carrying a sword, its blade red hot from the fire. All dignity flown, Harlin begged for his life, begged for mercy, but his fate was not in his hands.

  “Please. No. Not know what ye want. Telling anything. Please.”

  “Not want anything,” Adam admitted, with a shrug. “Cept ye screaming. Like that.”

  His soldiers tittered, mostly bored, as Harlin wet himself with fear.

  Simultaneously inside his own nightmare and hers, Harlin watched as twelve year old Elaine, her fresh face free of scars, cowered in a cellar, hiding behind boxes of spanners, screwdrivers and jagged saw blades. Muffled argument and the thud of crashing furniture filtered down from above, growing ever closer.

  “She broke it,” her father roared. “Took it to bits to see how it works and broke it.”

  “I’ll get another one. It’ll be alright,” pleaded the desperate voice of her mother, but she already knew that it was too late to appease the beast.

  “She’s gonna learn, she does what I say!”

  The cellar door burst open and Elaine’s father stamped down the stairs in his torn jeans and stained T-shirt. Although he was razor thin, he was also mean and stupid, and able to inflict severe amounts of pain on a defenceless little girl.

  “Come here you,” he growled, grabbing Elaine by the hair and dragging her out from behind the boxes. “What I tell you? What I tell you? Don’t touch my stuff.”

  Having learned from experience that struggling only prolonged his anger and made the punishment worse, Elaine became a dead weight in his hands, but she wasn’t yet old enough to smother her cries.

  “Think you’re so clever,” he told her, repeatedly punching her back and legs.

  Elaine watched the glow of the sword coming closer and closer to Harlin’s face. As the red hot metal touched his skin, he screamed in agony.

  Inside their joint horror, the screams of the child and teenager merged into one. They swapped places within their memory.

  Elaine was lashed to the wooden table. She stared down at her right hand; the bones were already smashed. The Torturer returned with his bloody hammer. He raised it above her right leg and shattered the bones with an unearthly crunch.

  Elaine’s father was dragging Harlin by the hair across the floor of the cellar, when he suddenly emitted a grunt and dropped him. The brute stared with surprise at a small knife, lodged in his
shoulder. For some reason, that Elaine never came to understand, her mother had suddenly chosen this moment to try to defend her child. She failed. The man simply pulled the knife from his shoulder and sunk it deep into the heart of the woman he had purported to love. She died instantly.

  Homicidal with rage, Elaine’s father channelled all his hatred into one massive uppercut. Harlin left the floor, flying backwards from the force of the punch, heading directly for an exposed saw blade. He tried to save himself, but his face sliced open with the sickening sound of ripping flesh.

  Man and woman, locked together in the death grip, writhed and screamed inside their nightmare, unable to hear the howls of their canine friend. Unlike the torturous passage of time within the joint vision, barely a minute had passed in the cave, but Drevel’s short patience had already run out. Grasping Harlin by the sleeve, he snapped his head back and forth, frenziedly worrying at the garment, but the young man gave no sign of release from the nightmare’s grip. Drevel was forced to resort to the only course of action left open to him; he sunk his teeth firmly into Harlin’s backside. The sudden stab of real pain had the desired effect; Harlin snapped back into reality with a jolt.

  “Drevel?” he shouted, his body drenched in sweat. “Where be I?”

  The screams coming from Elaine, and her death grip on his hand, rapidly cleared his thoughts. Feeling the pain in his backside, he glanced back and saw the fresh bite mark.

  “Ow,” he muttered, rubbing his sore bottom and glaring at his unheralded saviour. “That better not be turning sickly.”

  Drevel was too busy to reply; he was howling in Elaine’s ear, trying to get her attention, and failing.

  “Elaine!” Harlin shouted, shaking her and trying to prise loose her grip. “Wake up!”

  She continued to scream, showing no recognition of their presence at all.

  “No choice,” Harlin told Drevel. “Bite her.”

  Drevel vehemently shook his head.

  “Worked with me.”

  Drevel shook his head, again.

  “Hurry up.”

  Drevel emphatically shook his head and growled.

  “Not hitting her. Not again.”

  Drevel just gave him a fixed stare.

  “Be yer turn have her hate ye.”

  Drevel peered at Elaine and back at Harlin.

  The young man finally gave in, moaning, “Ye not fair, Drevel. Be remembering this.”

  Harlin steeled himself and gently slapped her face. It had no effect. Drevel barked so loudly that the sound echoed off the cave walls.

  “Ye do it then!” Harlin thundered, receiving only a moderate growl in response.

  Already hating the necessary action, Harlin slapped her again, much harder this time. Elaine was stung back to consciousness as, all around them, the foul cave returned to its idyllic form.

  “Did you just hit me?” she bellowed at him. “Again!”

  “Just punch me back,” he replied. “Hurt less in long run.”

  He looked so miserable that Elaine couldn’t help but let a snort of laughter escape her fierce façade. Then she remembered what she had just been forced to witness and endure. “I saw your…Did you see…?”

  “Aye,” he replied, his fingers tracing the place where her mirror image scar now lay. “Feeling too.”

  She squeezed his hand before letting it go. Now was not the time or place for the conversation that must come. Elaine surveyed the cavern in a new light. It had returned to its previous beauty, but the idyll remained tainted.

  “Where’s this Key?” she asked, scanning the walls. “I want out of here.”

  Drevel barked to draw their attention. His nose was pointing straight up. Imbedded in the wall, high above, was the metallic glint of the missing part-Key.

  “Erm, not able to climb,” Harlin reminded her.

  Drevel whined to the tune of ‘I’m a dog.’

  “I know,” Elaine sighed. “I’ll have to do it.”

  Wonderful, she thought, now I get to add rock climbing to my ever expanding list of talents.

  * * *

  With the colour already beginning to drain from his face, Myrrdinus gulped and grasped his slime covered sword. Inserting it back into the wound, he began to saw, back and forth, through the snake’s thick skin, every movement producing a fresh jet of goo.

  Frog tapped Gwyneth on the shoulder, repeatedly, but the stubborn little woman refused to stand back, seemingly unaffected by the noxious substance spurting around her. Though naturally a shade of green, Frog’s colour was deepening with every passing second. With nausea imminent, she slapped one hand over her mouth and began frantically hopping up and down, bruising Gwyneth’s shoulder.

  In contrast, Myrrdinus was now sporting a deathly pale mask and his skin was turning cold and clammy. To his relief, the head of the snake finally fell away from the body with an odious squelch. To Frog’s dismay, Gwyneth peered inside the cavity, left by the head’s removal, trying to spot the elusive Key part. The view of guts, intestines and slime was truly appalling and produced nothing useful.

  “Not see Key. Must be inside body,” Gwyneth commented. “Stomach maybes. Need cut open.” She turned back to Myrrdinus, just in time to catch him swaying on his feet and gagging. “Give me that,” she said, grabbing the sword from his clammy hand. He didn’t even try to resist.

  Inserting the sword into the cavity, Gwyneth sliced through the whole length of the snake, as though gutting a fish. The body separated, releasing a gush of slimy entrails. This was more than frog or man could bear and both began to vomit in nauseating syncopation. Scraping the offending amphibian from her shoulder, Gwyneth threw her at Myrrdinus who, thankfully, was still in sufficient control of his muscles to catch her, albeit after some juggling.

  “Go to river, both ye!” a disgusted Gwyneth ordered, brushing frog vomit from her shoulder.

  Myrrdinus slung the prostrate Frog over his sagging shoulder and began to stagger back through the nightmare forest, heading for the nearby stream.

  “Be not minding me,” Gwyneth called after them. “I wonderly by meself. Again.”

  Left alone with her odious task, Gwyneth did her best to ignore the smell and sliced into the entrails. The resulting stench almost knocked her off her feet. Leaning the sword against the corpse, she tied her scarf over her nose and mouth and, squaring her shoulders, poked about in the slime. She discovered rock, various pieces of crushed, semi-digested animal, something utterly indescribable which she hoped never to see again and, finally, a small piece of metal. Pouncing on it with a triumphant cry, Gwyneth grasped her prize in one hand, the sword in the other and speedily headed for the stream.

  She found Myrrdinus looking rather more attractive than previously. Colour had returned with the cold touch of water and he was stripped to the waist, washing vomit and intestinal glop from his clothes and body. Gwyneth paused for a moment, watching rippling, wet muscle glisten in the weak sunlight.

  The newly bathed Frog was lying on her back on a rock and managed to weakly raise one hand in greeting, whereupon she burped a little water and groaned. Seeing the gesture, Myrrdinus turned, catching Gwyneth engaged in unabashed voyeurism. He swiftly tried to clothe himself.

  “Be not that tunic wetly?” Gwyneth pointed out.

  Myrrdinus didn’t care. He did care, however, when she held up the metal half-key, something putrid still dangling from it.

  “I finded Key,” she announced, but Myrrdinus was too busy being sick to hear.

  * * *

  Elaine had surveyed the steep rock face. The ascent was undoubtedly dangerous, but at least there seemed to be plenty of small crevices in the rock. She might have thought the matter over, discussed her possible route with Harlin and contemplated the nature of her footwear. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which way you look at it, there was no time for such deliberations. The cave could attempt to wield its terrifying power at any moment. Taking a deep breath, and giving Harlin a feigned look of confidence
, she had climbed.

  Harlin and Drevel peered up at Elaine, who was currently clinging to the rock face, way above their heads. They had trembled, shrieked and barked with every tortuous step and they were truly getting on her nerves.

  “You’re not helping,” she called down to Harlin, following his latest plea for her to be “carely.” Testing her next foothold, she levered herself up, but her fingers slipped off the wet rock. Grasping again, she clearly heard the echo of Harlin’s shout and Drevel’s bark. Clinging to the rock, she shouted, “When I get back down, I’m killing you both.”

  “Watch what ye doing and not talk so muchly,” Harlin scolded.

  Elaine almost laughed. No-one had ever accused her of speaking too much, not even her father. As though sensing the dark turn of her thoughts, a green shoot shrivelled and turned blood red, directly beside Elaine’s fingers. The rock face swam before her eyes, causing a corresponding blur in Harlin’s vision.

  Harlin grabbed hold of Drevel’s ear and ordered, “Bite me. Now.”

  Drevel crunched down on Harlin’s fingers without the slightest hesitation. Harlin hollered in pain, but his mind cleared.

  “Ye enjoyed that,” he said, accusingly.

  Drevel snickered in response.

  Harlin stared up at the obviously ailing Elaine. He couldn’t tell her to inflict pain on herself – she might fall to her death – but how else to distract her mind?

  “Listen to me voice,” he called up to her and began to sing,

  “I be throttling ye in sunlight.

  Mangling yer ugly face.

  I be burying ye in moonlight.

  Never to be no trace.”

  Had his voice been in any way melodious, the scheme would probably not have worked. Luckily, the song was so completely off-key that the pain of it focussed Elaine’s thoughts like a lens. The effect was enhanced by the addition of Drevel’s howling counterpoint. She would have laughed, had her situation not been so precarious.