by B. V. Larson
I stepped away from both the drain containing the Beast and the man who now stood atop the manhole. I hadn’t seen him step upward, but he had risen to the level of the street nonetheless. It was as if for him, the manhole was a tiny, circular elevator, and he’d just ridden it up to street level.
“It’s an animal?” I asked. “Is it your pet then, Jim?”
He watched the drain more closely than he watched me. I got the feeling that despite his confident speech, he was unnerved by this being that devoured people in the night. We both watched the flickering light of the rip as it played through the grate. If I hadn’t known what was down there, I would have thought someone had lit a fire in the sewers.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “But you attracted it somehow, and me. What did you use for bait?”
Thinking of the ring, I slipped it away. “A minor artifact,” I said.
“Ah, I see. That’s how it is with you rogues. A lord wouldn’t have the guts to risk even the slightest object of power. We horde them in vaults, rather than dangling them down storm drains. What was your purpose?”
While we talked, something odd began to happen inside the storm drain. I heard a noise at first—it was an unnatural sound, a sucking sound. The light shining up from the drain dimmed. Was it dying away? Was the rip closing? I wasn’t certain. I took another step away from the drain, however. Both Gutter Jim and I stared at it, even though we addressed one another in quiet voices.
“I was looking for you, not the Beast,” I said. “I’d hoped to gain your attention.”
“You’ve succeeded. But I think you had more in mind than that, rogue.”
“What do you mean?”
“You meant to trap me in the drain. You wanted the Beast to feed upon a lord. I know you, what they say about you. You’ll not rest until you bring our kind down.”
“Paranoid delusions,” I said.
“Maybe, but I still don’t trust you.”
“We have something in common, then.”
Gutter Jim chuckled darkly.
I figured as long as he was in a talkative mood, I might as well ask some questions. “What do you know of the Beast? And if you don’t control it, who does?”
“You’d like me to say it’s Meng’s pet, wouldn’t you? I’m not fond of Meng, but I won’t lie. It’s no one’s creature, Draith. In fact, I think it is the opposite of an animal. I think that in the Beast’s alien mind, you and I are the animals. Quite possibly, it is correct in this assumption.”
I glanced over at him, surprised by his cryptic statement. His eyes remained fixed upon the drain, and they widened a fraction as I watched him. I turned back to face the Beast.
I looked back just in time. I should have never looked away. I saw now that the light of the rip had dimmed because something was coming upward from the drain. This protuberance was long and tall. As I watched with my jaw sagging, it lifted up the grate and dropped it aside. The metal clanged onto the asphalt. The sound was tremendous and shattered the quiet night.
At first, I had difficulty registering what I was seeing. I imagined that men who’d witnessed such things in the past might have gone mad or found that their hair had turned white from fright. The appendage rising up out of the drain appeared to be a pale finger of flesh, the tip perhaps as thick as a man’s wrist. But below the tip it quickly fattened to be as thick as a telephone pole. It kept rising up and up, blindly probing the summer air. A dead odor of mold and rot washed over me.
I moved farther away. It was an involuntary response.
“Can it reach us?” I hissed. “Can it get out of there?”
“I don’t know.”
The tentacle—for that’s what I now realized it was—continued to rise. At the visible base, where the largest purplish suckers clustered and worked at the air as if sniffing, the thing was as big around as a tree. The bulk of it towered over us, some fifteen feet high. As it continued to extrude from its world into ours, it bent over and began to probe the environment with cautious stabbing motions. Like a blind man searching for a lost article, the tentacle lowered and began slapping at anything it encountered. A row of trash cans went over with a crash. A weathered picket fence creaked, then buckled, each picket snapping with a rippling sound.
I turned toward Gutter Jim again—but he was gone. My eyes dropped to the manhole cover he’d been standing upon. It looked three shades darker than before, as if it wasn’t made of rusty metal, but rather the stuff of midnight. Even as I watched for perhaps two seconds more, the metal shifted and solidified, reminding me of a disturbed puddle of water that falls still after a man’s foot has splashed into it.
Headlights flashed in my face then, and a horn blared. I stared at a car that came speeding toward me. I caught a glimpse of the occupants, three young men, possibly in Vegas for a bachelor party or a getaway weekend.
The car swerved to miss me, the tires screeching slightly. They weren’t going all that fast, and it wasn’t even a close call. They were easily going to pass by me. I felt a moment of relief, knowing another stint in the hospital wasn’t in my immediate future.
But a moment later the car ran right into the giant tentacle that probed the street. Or rather, I realized in retrospect, the tentacle dipped down to catch the car as it went by. Somehow, it had sensed the vehicle’s passage. Perhaps any quickly moving object would have captured its attention. The car stopped dead with a bang, followed by the tinkle of safety glass, which fountained and fell into the street in a glittering spray.
Injured by the impact, the massive tentacle was torn open in a dozen spots, but not severed. It dripped and ran with dark gore. Liquids flowed into the car, dribbling on the stunned passengers. The tentacle quickly circled the car, top to bottom, in a loop of its own length. Then it convulsed and began to squeeze the wrecked vehicle’s midsection. The windows starred, then popped, as the roof caved in. The doors were all sealed by the tentacle’s girth, but one of the men tried to crawl out of the broken windshield. I watched in growing horror as his foot was caught. The collapsing car’s roof had closed on his ankle like steel jaws with shards of glass for teeth.
My first instinct was to turn and run. I considered it for a second, but the keening cries of the people inside the car stopped me. I ran toward them instead.
I didn’t have my .32 anymore, having lost it in the world of white crystals. It wouldn’t have helped much in this case, anyway. The tentacle would only have been stung by my tiny bullets.
Not knowing what else to do, I jumped onto the hood and grabbed hold of the young man who was trying to escape a grim fate. The whole car lifted up under us a few moments after I did this, and we floated into the air together. Then the hood tipped, and I almost fell off into the street.
“You have to get your foot out!” I told him.
He was about my age, a small black man with a thin mustache. He looked at me with brown eyes filled with horror and disbelief.
“You have to cut my foot off,” he said, looking at the monster that was lifting the car with a loop of its flesh. “Get something, man.”
I shook my head. There was no time for sawing through bone. “Pull!” I shouted at him, and he pulled. He raved in pain but kept trying.
Seconds later, the car tipped farther to one side and that actually helped us. We fell from the hood of the car, but I didn’t let go of his hands. It was our combined weight that ripped his foot loose.
We crashed to the pavement, and I dragged him farther away. He howled and limped with a twisted, dangling ankle. It was broken and the shoe was gone, but the foot was still hanging there. We stumbled away together.
All throughout, I noted with chagrin that no one had come out of their houses to see what was happening. There were approaching sirens now, so someone must have called for emergency services. I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful for this small courtesy or angry at the lack of help.
When we reached the opposite curb, the man in my arm
s passed out. It was just as well, I figured.
His friends in the car had stopped screaming, and I assumed they were dead. The midsection of the vehicle had been crushed to half its original width. Blood, slime, and dark fluids flowed down the tentacle and dribbled from the tires. They pooled up and flowed down into the storm drain. The horn had been triggered at some point, and was now locked into a continuous, blaring howl. It sounded to me like the car’s death cry.
Before the first emergency vehicles arrived, the tentacle dropped the crushed car. It wormed into the side windows and found the bodies inside. It dragged them out, one at a time. The corpses were greedily pulled down into the storm drain, where they vanished. I knew that down there, in the darkness, they would be sucked through the rip and devoured. I clamped my hands over my ears and averted my gaze so I could not hear the ghastly sounds that followed.
When the police and a wary ambulance crew arrived a few minutes later, the Beast’s tentacle had withdrawn. They asked me questions, but I only stared at them in response. They’d seen this dazed expression in the Triangle before, I gathered, because they soon left me alone.
As they investigated the scene, the cops avoided my eyes. When I was certain the survivor I’d dragged out of the car was safely in the ambulance, I walked away and disappeared. No one called me back. No one demanded a statement. I suspected they didn’t really want to hear anything from an eyewitness. They wanted to pretend it was a freak car accident, nothing more. They all knew better, but perhaps it was easier on their sanity to maintain the fiction.
I left because I felt sure McKesson would show up eventually, and I wasn’t in the right mood to meet him. At least not with the cops watching.
After finally seeing what I was up against, I thought it was time to go talk to Rostok again. I had to convince him to help me get rid of this alien invader. I needed some major firepower or at least a powerful object that could harm something like this.
I realized as I walked to the Lucky Seven that I had no idea if there was only one Beast involved. What if there was an entire planet full of them? The idea was more than unsettling—it was terrifying. I’d faced invaders before, beings we called the Gray Men. They were technologically advanced, but not much better at crossing between worlds than we were. We’d defeated them by destroying the machine they used to travel to our world.
The Beast was an order of magnitude more serious. It had come out only a few blocks from the heart of Las Vegas and eaten a carload of people. Sure, there were millions more where that came from, but I didn’t want these aliens looking at us as some kind of easy prey. I had the feeling that right now, Earth had been categorized as a smorgasbord.
At the Lucky Seven, they didn’t give me any crap about my shoes at the door this time. Maybe they’d gotten some kind of report from the front lines. I went straight to the back and took an elevator up. Instead of a showgirl dressed in feathers and sequins, two security guards accompanied me. They kept their arms crossed and their expressions grim. When we reached the penthouse lobby, they frisked me. They seemed surprised I was unarmed.
“Lost something, Draith?” the balder of the two asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “My sense of humor.”
I walked between them and didn’t bother tapping at the door. I put my sunglasses on and rattled it until it opened. I entered and reached for the light switch automatically. There wasn’t one, but if there had been, I would have flipped it on. I wasn’t in the mood tonight for sitting in the dark, listening to Rostok’s bullshit.
“What’s the emergency?” Rostok said from the darkest corner of the room.
“I’ve been taking a lot of abuse and witnessing a lot of bloodshed,” I said. “And I’ve seen the enemy up close and personal now.”
Rostok’s manner changed. He ushered me to a chair, fed me excellent alcohol, and listened to every detail I had for him. I left out any mention of Jacqueline and her power of invisibility, but was forthcoming with the rest. He asked detailed questions concerning the monster in the Triangle.
“More bones appear every night,” he rumbled thoughtfully when I’d finished. “They now have renamed the neighborhood. They call it the Bone Triangle. And what’s more alarming, the affected region appears to be growing. The reach of the monster is greater with each passing day.”
I thought of the tentacles worming their way up into every neighborhood in town, seeking a nightly meal. I grimaced.
“Several skeletons will be discovered at daybreak,” Rostok continued. “You were lucky to escape.”
“Luck had little to do with it. I would have escaped easily if I hadn’t tried to rescue the guy in the car.”
“Yes, an unusual example of altruism from a rogue.”
I paused to sip my drink, rather than answering his insult. In my opinion, the Community was full of far more selfish individuals. The rogues were, for the most part, more generous. I could think of only one major exception.
“What are you going to do about McKesson?” I asked.
“Do? Why, nothing. He sent you to the hot worlds, as you requested.”
“He stranded me there and almost killed me. And he disobeyed your wishes.”
“Yes, I suppose. But then, you have done the same on multiple occasions.”
I stewed. “Why do you keep it so dark in here, Rostok?”
In all the time I’d known him, I’d never asked that question. It was an obvious one, but it was equally obvious he didn’t want to tell me, as he’d never brought up the subject.
I heard him moving around the room, rustling as he crossed the carpet. He’d always sounded like a big man, but I’d never actually seen him distinctly.
“You took a long time to ask. Most do so immediately.”
“I didn’t want to be rude.”
He chuckled. “That may be a first for you. But I will explain, because you have been so very patient. And I will tell you the truth, because you have asked out of honest curiosity. I sit here atop this building in the darkness so that—so that I can see.”
I frowned. “Are you blind?”
“Far from it. I can see as no other man I’ve yet met.”
I thought about that, wondering if he was trying to be deliberately vague. I considered a gruff response, telling him I was tired of his riddles. But I held back. There was something in his tone that indicated he honestly believed he’d opened up to me. In his mind, he’d let me know something private about him.
I took another sip, letting the alcohol burn my tongue before swallowing. What was it Ezzie had said? That Rostok could see the future? Perhaps that was what he meant, that in order to predict events, he must sit in darkness.
I decided to take an indirect approach in an attempt to learn more. “I understand,” I lied. “I did not realize that your power to see possibilities was related to your actual eyesight.”
Rostok laughed. “Very good! You probe and fish like that thing reaching up from the drain. Well played, but you will get no more details on this subject tonight.”
I shrugged. “It was worth a try. If you want me to find Ezzie, you will have to help me. I now suspect she went to her own world.”
“How so?”
“There are two hot worlds that McKesson identified. The world with the blazing sun and dunes of white crystal, and the lava world. I think she’s made it home to the latter.”
“No. I have checked. I have…access to that world. That is how Ezzie came into my possession.”
“Where did she go, then?”
“I don’t know where she is, but I know where she is likely to go. I’ve seen it.”
I thought about that. I figured he was foretelling the future again. “Tell me where she will be, then.”
“She is likely to go to a third world of warmth. It isn’t like the other two. They are hot and dry. This one is not a desert—it is a swamp.”
“And how can I get to this world?”
“You’ve already seen the route. You’ve glimpsed t
his new place. It lies beyond the rips that appear in the Triangle. The only other hot place I know of is the one in which the Beast lurks.”
“If she goes there, how can she live?”
“She is not made of the same materials as you are. In many ways, the Beast is closer in nature to your kind than Ezzie. The Beast would find her indigestible.”
I exhaled slowly, as I felt I knew where this discussion was going next. “I guess you want me to go into some hellish world full of gargantuan monsters and bring Ezzie back for you. Right?”
“You would attempt such a thing? For mere money? I’m surprised at your avarice. I had not thought you valued your existence so little that you would price it in terms of coins.”
It was my turn to laugh. “It’s going to take quite a few coins, and more. It’s going to take firepower, too. I need objects that can kill.”
Rostok paced quietly for a time. I’d always wondered at his thoughtfulness, and I believed I now understood it. He’d always paused and considered at length during our conversations. Could it be he was riffling through my possible futures even now? Was he considering whether or not to help me after calculating the odds I would succeed? It was an unsettling thought. I could understand how a man with such a power had come to own a casino he’d once worked for. Games of chance would never be fair if he was allowed to play.
“I must ask you something,” he said at length. “What is your motivation? I know you like Ezzie, but you cannot love her as I do. Why would you take such a risk? It cannot be to save your house from the tax men. If you took up wandering the streets again, you would lead almost the same life as you do now.”
I had to think about that one. It was a worthwhile question.
“It’s the Beast,” I said. “It doesn’t belong here. I’ve seen it kill several times. Often enough to know it won’t stop. It would gladly kill us all. Las Vegas is a pond full of slow-moving, fat fish to this being. It feels it can dip in and snatch us up, feeding upon our bodies at will. This makes me angry. I guess—I guess I want to kill it. To drive it back. To defend my hometown.”