by Jon Fore
When the two girls returned, Shannon was holding Kayla’s hand. She led her over to Ethan, and Kayla sat to have a quick breakfast while Shannon got dressed.
“What do we do now?” Shannon asked Ethan around a mouth full of granola bar.
“Well, we could try making it through the fog or we can wait and see if it goes away.”
“I don’t want to go in the smoke,” Kayla said flatly. “The monsters are in there.”
She sounded so adult but looked so young and helpless. It was an odd contradiction for Ethan.
“I’m with her; I say we—”
A building sound cut her short, the sound of an old man inhaling, an old man that should have given up his life to his nicotine addiction long ago. Chills ran down Ethan’s spine.
They all at once looked towards the source of the sound, and found the smog rushing away into a single focus, drawing tight into a single spot. The sound began to rise in tone as the smog cleared away from the opening of a shallow cave, and Ethan felt his stomach sink into a frozen ball of dread. It was the very cave he had escaped from, the opening not more than twenty feet away. Then the cave seemed to exhale the smog back into the clearing, washing them all with its fetid breath before the fog broke, leaving them in the same clearing, but with the cave’s mouth, squat and agape at one end.
Ethan stood, drawing the rifle up with him, leveling its killing end at the stone opening.
“Ethan, what is it?”
“This is where we came out, me and Abby. This was where we escaped.”
Shannon turned towards the hole and stared, drawing Kayla closer to her. They stood like this for what seemed an eternity before anyone spoke.
“What did Madison want from you last night?” Shannon asked, not breaking her stare on the cave.
“She wanted me to join her with something she called The Culture—some being that she claimed has been around for thousands of years.”
Shannon immediately pictured a Petri dish, a fungus-like bacteria growing across the clean pinkish gel like a video fast forwarding. She suddenly became nauseous. “I’m not going in that cave.”
“No, you won’t be going in that cave…just me,” Ethan replied thoughtfully.
“No you won’t,” Shannon commanded.
“They want me, only me.”
“You don’t know that!” Shannon shouted angrily. “How could you know that? Let’s try the fog, Ethan!”
Ethan began to walk slowly towards the cave mouth, “Just me… I can make them let you go… Just me…” His conviction of self-sacrifice became stronger with each step. If he offered to join them willingly, he hoped they would let the girls go alone.
Kayla began to cry softly.
“Ethan! No!” Shannon screamed as she began to stand.
A trail of jet-black mist began to trace its way out of the opening of the cave. The three of them froze where they were, transfixed by the seeping blackness.
It began to grow, become more substantial, stretching forth in many directions now and infecting even the rotting forest floor with its inky blackness. It did not rise, but fell to cover the ground. Then a head began to raise, a greasy, longhaired head followed by a soot-coated and torn blue uniform. Ethan knew it was Captain Black, the thing he had fled from while in the prison. The creature still wore the glowing cinders, each embedded deeply in its flesh. In its one hand, it held a rusted cutlass, in the other, a cinder stick.
It hauled itself out of the opening and stood, its head dangling to one side, the greasy hair reaching into the black mist obscuring the ground.
Another head came out, this one with the same matted hair and filthy rotting flesh. When it stood, its head fell to one side limply, its hand clutching a crosier with a single large ember smoking at the top, hidden just under his grip.
They parted sloppily, in a stumbling gait, to allow room for Ethan to continue towards the cave, but he remained frozen, transfixed by the tortured corpses before him. They waited patiently for Ethan to regain his composure as best as he could. Somewhere, back in the still-Ethan parts of his mind, he heard Shannon screaming the doom of the world.
“Let these two go!” Ethan screamed at the smoldering monstrosities. “I will come willingly, if you let these two go.”
“No…” the pair hissed together. Their voices were wet and gravelly but dry at the same time, a disembodied voice of ruined throats. It made Ethan’s skin crawl.
“Then I will not come!” Ethan shouted. His voice was becoming excited, almost too highly pitched to be the voice of a man. His hands were shaking violently, and he would have bolted right then had it not been for the oppressive gray fog surrounding them.
“Come…” they beckoned in unison.
“No!” Ethan yelled again. His mind snapped back to him like an over-stretched rubber band. Everything came into sharp focus, and he raised the shotgun again.
Father Burns leaned to one side a moment, and then began a slow, shambling walk towards Ethan. Ethan brought the gun over and fired. The retort made the girls scream again, and the flesh of the thing’s chest exploded out its back in a black sticky mass, coating the rock wall behind it. The priest did not slow.
Ethan fired again, this time joined by a couple of shots from Shannon’s pistol. It still had no effect, and Father Burns reached for Ethan’s face with one large boil-encrusted hand, the cinders in its arm trailing an oily smoke.
Kayla suddenly rushed forward and began spraying the thing with her bottle of cleaner. It reacted immediately, melting the flesh of the corpse’s face and neck, boiling down its chest where it stripped more as it went. It screamed a high-pitched, many-voiced scream. Ethan thought immediately of Hell and that this was the many voices of its victims.
Burns turned in the same sloppy fashion and tried to get away, streaming its flesh behind it in violently sizzling puddles. It screamed again, and Ethan almost lost hold of his bladder. He gently worked the bottle from Kayla’s small hand and rushed up behind the creature, spraying its back with the cleaner, like some murderous housekeeper. It screamed again and finally pitched forward to dissolve into the forest floor.
Captain Black stood stationary for a moment, and then rolled its head onto its shoulder atop the neck long shattered by a hangman’s noose. “We cannot die, we are forever…” it hissed. Raising its cutlass, the corpse began walking towards Ethan.
Ethan rolled the nozzle over to stream and began spraying the thing, its flesh reacting in the same violent manor as the priest’s, but the captain’s screams were more hideous, more voice-filled and ruined.
Ethan found himself backing away, spraying the thing repeatedly before it toppled from lack of muscle and the sinew that held them. He continued back until he met Shannon, still holding the spray bottle before him like a flamethrower.
He turned to Shannon, and then quickly looked away, seeking out his little savior. When he found her, he scooped her up in a full hug and began to sob with her on the little girl’s shoulder. Shannon embraced them both in one large hug.
“Thank you, Kayla,” Ethan whispered softly into the girl’s ear.
“Yes, thank you. You were very brave, Kayla.” Shannon sounded as if she were about to begin crying herself.
“It’s not over,” the little voice came from between them. “There is more to clean.”
“Clean?” Shannon asked as she leaned back to see the girl’s face.
“Mommy always said that dirty was bad, and that all bad things came from being dirty. There is more dirty in that cave, and we need to clean it up!” This last she said more like a girl at a carnival.
“Do you think we should go in there, Ethan?”
“It’s that, the fog, or we wait. You remember what you were saying to me yesterday, that thing about being the people who save the world from some biblical evil. I am beginning to think you might be right.”
Shannon gazed at the dark opening of the cave and then at the dissolved corpses still smoldering to either side. “Do you t
hink we can kill the Culture, whatever it is?”
“No, I don’t think so. I do know if this spreads, if this Culture thing decides to keep expanding, the world will be unlivable.”
“Yeah, and we would get to watch it come to an end knowing we did not try to stop it.”
Chapter 34
They stripped themselves of everything they would not need. Ethan knew that this nightmare would be ending today, and either they would come out of that cave or they would be dead. Either way, most of the things they carried were useless unless they came back out of the cave. These they left stacked and wrapped inside the collapsed tent in an attempt to protect them should the smog close off the rest of the campsite.
“Ethan?” Shannon whispered softly from just behind him.
“Yeah?” Ethan replied as he handed her a gallon jug of bleach.
“What about Kayla? Should she stay out here?”
“At this point, Shannon, I think she should make her own choice.”
“She is going to want to stay with us.”
Ethan looked at Shannon for long moments before responding. “I don’t think it is going to matter either way.”
Shannon’s face drooped slightly before she nodded.
“You’re not really going to go in there, are you?” the bum asked with his fetid breath.
Ethan looked up at him for a moment but did not reply. “Ready?”
“You’re gonna die in there, ass scab.”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Me, too!” Kayla chirped. She seemed happier now than she had since they found her.
“Fuck!” the bum shouted as Ethan ducked down and began working his way into the cave.
Each of them carried a flashlight, the long metal cylinder kind that could double as a club and produced very bright light. The glare played around the stone tube in maddening flashes of sight then darkness as they made their way deeper.
Ethan had to crawl, just as he had when escaping the first time. The settled calm of his suicidal decision began to crumble under the strain of fear, which grew with each waddling step. He had just recently fought so hard to be free of this place, and now he battled within himself to get back in.
Kayla was almost able to walk upright, but still had to bend at the waist. The flashlight was difficult for her to hold with one small hand, but the other was still carrying the almost full bottle of bathroom cleaner. She seemed immune to the terror she was walking towards, most likely too innocent to know her real danger.
Shannon brought up the rear, duck-walking just behind Kayla, trying to watch behind them for fear of attack by some outside smog dweller. The bleach she carried was heavy, but proved too effective to leave behind. If a spray of cleaner could dissuade those two horrors, even kill them, it might be their key to survival. She was not sure if it would ward her against everything in the cave, but she would be holding at least this bottle when she found out.
As Ethan came into the cave itself, he immediately saw the changes. The black water that had been so still, so dead when he came through the first time had now stretched and sought out the walls of the chamber. It was oozing up and over the shores and cavern walls, coming close to the ceiling. It was apparently moving, but so slow he could not see it. Except for the light of their flashlights and the gray filtered sunlight working its way through the cavern, the cave had become like glistening pitch.
The lake at the center had given itself to coating the walls with its dark ilk, and so the depth had dropped dramatically. Ethan was shocked at the number of corpses that polluted the lakes bed. There were so many skeletons, bones with flesh, shattered, denuded bones, and other bits of death’s debris in such quantity, it was impossible to identify the creatures that had fallen victim. What was certain was the violence used to bring them to their end.
“It’s stinky in here!” Kayla said loudly, and Ethan winced at the volume.
“Oh dear Christ!” Shannon hissed as she played her light over the walls. “What is that?”
“I don’t know…” Ethan trailed off.
“It’s the Culture, and it’s going to kill you and me!” the bum shouted into Ethan ear painfully. “Leave here now!”
“I think it might be the Culture,” Ethan repeated thoughtfully, as if it where his idea. At this point, he was not sure if it actually had been his idea or not. His voice echoed through the cave distortedly with the sound of dripping water.
The flashlights tried in vain to be everywhere at once, playing across the blackness creeping along the walls, sweeping frantically this way, then that. Motion seemed to be all around them but always just outside the circles of light. It was as if the place had come to some dreadful life, a life bent on their capture and its own stealth in plain sight. The oozing motion of the blackness gave Ethan a chilling, clammy feel, and he suddenly wished he had tried surviving the smog instead.
“Is it alive?” Shannon asked in a whisper, attempting some form of her own stealth.
Before Ethan could answer, there came the sound of wet motion from the center of the lake. He played his light across the surface with Shannon, and even with the utter blackness, they could both see a hole in the very center of the lake. It was difficult, the shadows of its shape swallowed almost entirely by the dark surface, but a hole it was.
“I think it is the Culture,” Ethan said, trying desperately to keep the terror from his voice.
“It’s very dirty, Mister,” Kayla commented, not attempting to speak softly.
The volume of her voice made both Ethan and Shannon cringe, but they said nothing.
“Can we please go?” the bum pleaded.
It was the first time in his cruel existence that he had asked something of Ethan, pleaded with him for anything. This frightened Ethan even more.
A deep rushing sound came from the hole as the lake began to swell near its shore. It was a long whispering sound, deep voiced and clearly inhuman. Ethan felt the fine hairs along his arms begin to stand on end. He suppressed a shudder, but Shannon did not.
“Let’s get out of here,” she whined.
“I’m not totally against that,” Ethan answered, “but what about the smog? Do you want to try and get through that?”
Shannon remembered what had become of Stan when he forced his way into the smog. “No.” She sounded close to crying.
The rushing sound stopped, and there was a short pause of silence. Then the rushing came again, followed closely by a deep bass note that warbled and sputtered loudly. A stench hurried through the cavern, the smell of the long dead and mostly rotted. The tone carried for a few moments like a large tuba, then began to change swiftly, as if the lake were trying to speak. Ethan’s light revealed that the edges of the hole vibrated rapidly as it flexed tighter.
“It's trying to speak; don’t listen to it! Run, God damn you, run!” the bum screamed.
Ethan could tell that he was scared. This figment of his own subconscious was afraid and trying to get him to flee.
“Come…” The sound exploded from the hole in the surface. Even without the control of lips and tongue, the word was unmistakable.
“Run!” the bum screamed desperately.
“Ethan?” Shannon could not seem to form a question around the terror raging through her head.
The inward rushing sound came again, this time edged with a hissing sound. Ethan’s mind screamed to be away, louder than the bum, and he felt himself begin to tremble along the back of his knees. Just a simple crawling of the flesh, but it was the first time Ethan could remember fear being his master.
“Ethan… Come…” the black water hissed in its deafening baritone voice. “We… Wait…”
“Run!” the bum screamed. His voice had become high pitched.
“I think we should get out of here, now!” Ethan declared, no longer concerned about hiding his fear.
“Yeah, let’s get the hell out of here,” Shannon agreed readily.
They turned towards the tunnel they had crawled th
rough, but it was gone, consumed by a wall of the sludge. Ethan felt a snap in his reality and began searching frantically for the tunnel. His desperation gave his fear free reign, and his thoughts began to scatter as he rushed to where the tunnel should have been.
“Shit! Where is it? Shannon! Where is it?” he shouted.
Kayla began to sob lightly, more afraid of Ethan’s attempted flight than the horror of the lake.
“I don’t see it! It’s gone!” Shannon screamed.
“Don’t touch that black shit!” the bum cautioned.
“Don’t touch the black shit!” Ethan repeated the warning.
“How do we get out?” Shannon asked, trying to bridle the rampant fear in her own chest, if not for her, then for Kayla.
“You… Don’t…” the lake replied wetly, its consonants barely perceptible. “You… Join… Culture…”
“I want to go home,” Kayla whimpered around her sobbing.
Shannon drew her close and embraced her. “Me, too, sweetie, me, too.”
“What do we do, Ethan?” Shannon asked, her speech rapid and shallow breathed.
“I…” Ethan could not seem to put words to his overwhelming feeling of hopelessness.
“Clean the water,” Kayla said softly. She lifted her bottle of bathroom cleaner and squirted the wall. The thin stream caused a violent reaction to the black sludge, and it hissed, sputtered, and released much too much vapor as it fell from the stone to become a puddle of rapidly evaporating gray.
“No…” the black water hissed. “So… Many…”
The threesome stared flatly at the sizzling puddle of hope on the ground, unsure of what they were seeing.
Kayla suddenly ripped from Shannon’s arms with a screech cut short by her impact with the cavern wall. The black ilk splashed around her and began to coat her into oblivion.
Ethan saw the stiff black tendril extended from the lake and into Kayla’s back just before Shannon retrieved the spray bottle and began squirting the appendage. It snapped instantly and began to sputter and writhe on the ground as it released Kayla. She slid down the wall a moment then fell onto her back, her front coated thickly with the black sludge.