The Bone Triangle

by B. V. Larson

  I had to take the steps two and three at a time to catch up and nearly slipped. Reaching the next switchback, I had only a second to aim. I released a beam of energy, which lanced into the target. I kept the ray going, playing it over the target like a flashlight.

  The effect was immediate and dramatic. The appendage smoked, then flared, and quickly burned through. Leaving behind a few feet of itself, it quickly snaked away down the steps and vanished. The stub it left behind whipped and bulged. Gray smoke and the smell of burned fish filled the stairway.

  McKesson and I rushed to the janitor and kicked at the stump that still had him. It was too strong to be dislodged by human muscle, but fortunately it was dying. When it finally relaxed, we rolled it away and saw he still had a foot underneath. The ankle was a mangled mess, but there wasn’t any bone missing.

  “You’ll make it,” I told the man.

  His mouth was slack and his breathing came in gasps. “Who are you guys, anyway?” he asked.

  “Cops,” McKesson said.

  The man nodded and seemed comforted. I saw shock begin to glaze his eyes.

  “Listen,” I said, “we need to know if there is another way up from this floor to the one above us.”

  “Sure,” said the janitor distantly. “There are crawl spaces—and the elevator.”

  “How about another stairway?”

  “All the way at the opposite end of the building. But there are monsters there, too. I already tried it.”

  We didn’t get anything else useful out of him, so we decided to try for the crawl spaces—even though we couldn’t get a coherent description of their location from the janitor. We dragged him as gently as we could to a safer spot and pressed ahead. I would have liked to do more for him, but it would mean delaying, and I didn’t know how long we had. Every minute, more people had to be dying upstairs.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Draith?” McKesson asked me.

  I had plenty of predictable thoughts swirling around in my head. It was hard to pick just one. “Like we’re screwed?” I guessed.

  “No, like we should find a way out of here. Let’s spin the coin and step out.”

  I stopped trotting down a dark corridor and stared at him. He gave an apologetic shrug.

  “Why not?” he asked. “We’re going to die down here. We can’t even get through, and the Beast is about to knock the place down on top of us.”

  I frowned at him in surprise. McKesson had never shown much fear in the face of anything we’d encountered before. But maybe this time was different. A few strange-looking humanoids were mild compared to the Beast.

  The building rumbled again, and this time the lights flickered and went out in unison with the sounds and the leaking masonry. McKesson pulled out his flashlight and his coin. He crouched on the floor and reached out to set it spinning between us.

  “Don’t do it, Jay,” I said. “I need your help to beat this thing.”

  He laughed. “There’s no way we’re going to win this time. It’s too big. We’re kidding ourselves. I like to fight battles I can win. I’m going to open a rip and take the janitor with me. At least we can save one man. Would you rather all three of us die?”

  I knew he might be right, but I wanted to try for a bigger success. “Just give me one shot at the heart of this thing, and then we’ll give up.”

  He looked at me for a second, then a stubborn cast crept over his face. He touched the coin down to the floor and made ready to spin it.

  I couldn’t blame him for wanting to run. But I needed him, if only to keep me from running away, too. I didn’t want to try this alone. “It’s eating those people up there, Jay,” I said. “It’s tearing up your town.”

  McKesson’s lips pressed into a line. He snatched up the coin and shoved it into his pocket. “All right, dammit, we’ll finish this monster hunt. You’re as crazy as they come, Draith, you know that? You get one shot. I’ll watch you take it, and when you’re dead, I’m taking off.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  We never found the crawl spaces or the elevator. Instead, we found a spot where the ceiling had caved in. Climbing over rough chunks of concrete, we managed to get our hands wrapped around a broken webbing of rebar. We climbed to the next floor, which was just as dark and dust-filled as the one below.

  The interesting thing about this level was the money and poker chips that spilled everywhere. We’d found the counting rooms. I figured this might be why we’d had such a tough time getting up to this floor. The security was tight, but the Beast had disrupted all that.

  We scrambled over loose cash and quickly found what we were looking for. It didn’t take much imagination to find the rip into the Beast’s homeworld. The tentacles all led back to a central point. The rip itself was an odd one, looking like a tear in a piece of paper, rather than the usual sphere.

  “The hard part is going to be getting past that mass of tentacles,” I said.

  “I’m sitting right here, and I plan to admire your style.”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “No way.”

  “Fine. You can explain yourself to the Beast,” I said. I stood up and ran for the rip.

  Behind me, I heard McKesson cursing. I didn’t bother to look back. When I was almost there, the tentacles seemed to sense my presence. Maybe it was body heat or my scent. I couldn’t be sure—but I could tell they knew I was there. They began twitching and blindly sweeping through the air as I passed by. Pale pink suckers expanded and contracted rhythmically, as if the creature was tasting the air.

  As I passed by, I had to burn one. It came at me and I wasn’t able to jump over it. I burned it until it looked like broiled calamari and kept going.

  Then I was inside the rip, and everything changed. The heart of the rip was almost comforting with its characteristic warping of sound and distortion of sight. I couldn’t see the tentacles for what they truly were. Instead, they looked like vines that whipped in a storm—thick vines. I stepped on them, and they shifted under my feet and thrashed sickeningly.

  I reached the other side and stumbled into an unfamiliar world. I drew in my first ragged breath and immediately gagged. The air was fetid, dank, and disgusting. It smelled like an ancient bubble that had been trapped on the bottom of the sea for centuries. It was breathable, but thick and cloying in my throat.

  I staggered forward to escape the nest of tentacles. They came up in a cluster from the rocky ground at my feet. It was easy enough to get past them, as they were all reaching into the rip, and the few that chased me I burned to ash.

  When they stopped thrashing, I heard something I didn’t like—a new sound that reminded me of my own churning gut, magnified a hundred times. Something approached from the darkness to my left. I could feel it, pulsing and cold. It pushed a wave of that thick air in my direction as it came, like a puff of foul breath.

  I stared, trying to make out an outline, but my eyes failed me. There was only a shadow, which seemed to bulge forward in surging motions. What was it? A guardian of some sort? My mind conjured up a bulbous head and rubbery body.

  I had no idea what it was, but I couldn’t stand and face it. The dread and fear overwhelmed me. It was a visceral thing, the feeling a diver must experience when the shadow of a massive shark envelopes him. I’d seen too much in too short a time, and my mind broke for a few moments. I gave in to panic and fled.

  I ran away into the darkness, stumbling. I groped the walls, which dripped and oozed and bruised my fingers. When I no longer felt the ominous presence of something chasing me, I slowed and walked as quietly as I could. I reflected I’d been lucky not to fall into some hole in the floor of the tunnel. I could have snapped my ankle or struck my head. The thick air made it feel as if I was drowning when I tried to breathe too hard and fast. I slowed my labored breathing and fought to control myself.

  When I’d calmed down, I waved my hands in the air, marveling at the feel of it. The vapors seemed to resist th
e motion of my hands, reminding me of what it felt like to be underwater. I was certain of it now; the air was denser here. I could feel the atmosphere touching my face. I wondered if that meant the chemical composition of the gases was different and possibly deadly. Or maybe the physics of this place were different, as McKesson had once told me they might be in these alien places. Perhaps here, gases were thick enough to resist a man as he passed through them.

  I’d never been quite sure what to expect in this world. When I had allowed myself to think about what it might be like here, I’d worried there wouldn’t be room for much other than the Beast itself. I’d thought perhaps the monster was like the proverbial bogey in the closet, filling its tiny universe with its own pale flesh. Fortunately, there was more room than that. I was in what appeared to be a cave complex. The walls glowed faintly with a ghostly luminescence. So far so good, I thought. I’d made it through, and I’d escaped immediate death. By my calculations, I was beating the odds.

  Then I heard a familiar, alarming sound. Three sharp reports echoed through the darkness. I frowned and looked back the way I’d come. That had been McKesson’s pistol, I told myself. I knew well the sound it made.

  The gunfire echoed as if it came from a distance, but that might have been an effect of this cave and the very odd atmosphere. I listened, but the gun stopped firing.

  I took several steps back the way I had come. I wanted to call out but didn’t quite dare. He might be dead, and the thing that had gotten him might be hulking over him, feeding. Just as likely, he might have escaped. In either case, I was reluctant to call out and alert other guardians to my presence.

  I paused again for half a minute or so, listening to sounds that reminded me of mudslides and clattering stones. Things dripped and dribbled. Somewhere, a trickle of water fell and splattered, sounding like a pitcher being carefully poured onto rocks.

  Finally, I cursed under my breath, muttering a string of obscenities. I began feeling the walls again, heading back the way I had come. I took my bottle out and gripped it firmly in my hand. I directed it forward into the darkness but held my fire.

  I wasn’t certain the noise I’d heard had been McKesson firing his gun. Whoever it was, he was probably dead by now.

  But these arguments didn’t persuade me. I had come down here to hunt a monster and save lives. It was time to stop running around in a panic and to get back into the game.

  The world was dark and humid. It had the feel of a moonless night under a jungle canopy. The walls and ceiling above me were curved, and they crawled with strange, stinking mud. There were dank pools of liquid here and there at my feet. The glowing green bottle in my hand reflected off the surface of each puddle, making them look like a dozen gleaming eyes.

  The Beast was here somewhere, I was certain of that. The evidence was everywhere, the most common being the piles of rubbery wet leather that were underfoot at the bottom of the tunnel. I’d come to the conclusion these were the shed skins of the tentacles that grew in clusters.

  I put away my bottle because it would not stop glowing in my hand. I didn’t want it to give me away. I proceeded down the nearest tunnel, listening and staring in the almost total darkness.

  I heard the splash of an unseen foot in a puddle ahead. I froze, heart pounding. I raised my hands, with the liver in my clenched fist. If it was one of the things I’d come to refer to in my mind as a guardian, I would try out my new weapon on it.

  “Who’s there?” hissed out a voice.

  I sighed in relief. “McKesson? It’s Draith.”

  The splashing moved closer. “Where are you? Can’t see.”

  We moved forward and we met at a low point in the twisting passage. McKesson and I almost walked into one another. We’d both been creeping along in the dark, trying to avoid detection by the Beast, its tentacles, and its guardians.

  “I thought you weren’t going to come,” I said.

  “You riled up all the damned tentacles. They were snaking everywhere back in the counting rooms like a thousand angry hoses. I decided I might as well join the party here with you.”

  “Interesting. They don’t seem to be coming after us in here.”

  “Well, I guess they figure we are as good as digested once we come inside their domain. Remember, that’s what they’re doing, dragging people back into this world to be devoured. We just helped them along by jumping into the Beast’s maw. From their point of view, that’s mission accomplished.”

  I grunted. I disliked his summary of the situation, but was unable to refute it. “How did you get away from that guardian?”

  “The big thing that came at me out of the dark? I just shot at it and ran. Not sure if I really hurt it or not. It seemed to want me to head this way, to be driving me in this direction.”

  I agreed. We didn’t like it, but we decided to follow its wishes and advance farther into the tunnels. It was either that or face the guardian together.

  “Do you think this guardian thing is the Beast?” I asked.

  “No, not big enough.”

  I had to agree. The guardian was perhaps the size of a pickup truck, but nowhere near as big as an office building.

  As we pressed onward, the walls of the tunnel became slicker and seemed to angle downward slightly. I briefly revealed my bottle, which seemed to light up whenever I was in a tense mood. I used it like a flashlight so we could have a look around. We’d reached a point where we found dry, crispy spots on the floor of the tunnel. The air had changed, too, becoming acrid with a smoky taint in the mix.

  “What is that stink?” McKesson asked. “Smells like burned meat.”

  I could think of a dozen sources, but none were savory, so I didn’t answer. After turning a sharp corner, we saw light playing on the walls ahead of us. We cautiously moved closer and saw a dark lump moving. The walls around it were singed and hazy with vapor.

  A moment later, the lump turned slightly, and I saw familiar eyes like jewels on stalks and recognized the snail-like profile.

  “Ezzie?” I hissed in the dark.

  She turned around and regarded us. She paused for a moment, taking us in. She wasn’t what I’d call a fast thinker.

  “Are you two lost?” she asked at last.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” McKesson said. “What are you doing down here?”

  “Goading the Beast.”

  I felt a shock when I heard her words. Could it be true?

  “This is all your fault?” I demanded. “What are you doing, burning these tunnels to make the Beast mad?”

  “Mad. Yes, mad with pain.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “I want it to find Rostok. I thought if the Beast brought him, he might be my pet in this place. But I’m not sure now. I don’t like it very much. The Beast is too powerful.”

  “Ezzie, you must stop goading the Beast.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s killing people. Even now, as we speak.”

  “What people?” she asked in surprise.

  “The people in the Lucky Seven.”

  “Oh no! The Beast was only supposed to catch my Rostok and bring him here to me.”

  “Well, unfortunately, it’s taking the Lucky Seven down in the process and eating everyone inside.”

  “That’s terrible. We must speak with the Beast about this.”

  McKesson jumped into the conversation at this point. “Be a good slug and lead us to the Beast’s heart, will you Ezzie?”

  “I will,” she said, and she glided away.

  Behind her, the path sizzled and steamed. It was an easy trail to follow. While we walked in her stinking, hot exhaust, I had time to ponder what I had learned. Could this entire place be the Beast? Was the Beast not a being—but a place? I was uncertain. I was unable to get any coherent answers out of Ezzie on the subject, so we pressed onward.

  “How did you get here, craziest of lava-slugs?” McKesson asked her.

  “I traveled here. At first, when I
began to cross worlds, I couldn’t control my destination. But after doing it for a while, I became able to direct the flow. Now, I go where I like.”

  “But how?” asked McKesson. “Do you carry an artifact?”

  “Not exactly…” she said, moving her stalks far apart. “I ate one.”

  I laughed aloud. “Of course you did. What did it taste like?”

  “I don’t know. It won’t come out.”

  I tried not to think about her odd choice of words. Probably, her command of English was imperfect. “It’s stuck inside you?” I asked.

  “Yes. And I want to keep it now; it’s been useful.”

  “So, let me get this straight. You ate one of Rostok’s artifacts, and you used it to travel the worlds until you found your home. Why didn’t you stay there? Why did you come here?”

  “I was lonely. I missed Rostok. He mistreats me, but…I still want my Rostok.”

  “Uh-huh. But why here?”

  “Why? Because Rostok used to live here.”

  It took a while to get the full story out of Ezzie, and even afterward, I wasn’t sure I understood everything. But as far as I could tell, Rostok wasn’t entirely human anymore. One of his objects, one I’d never seen, gave him his greatest power. Like many of the artifacts, it had a serious side effect, and it had changed him. He’d become attached to this place, the home of the Beast, and he’d become like the creatures here. He liked the dark now. He was swollen of form and alien to look upon. From her vague descriptions, I visualized a hulking figure that felt at home only in darkness. It certainly sounded like the Rostok I knew.

  “He’s been turned into some kind of troll,” McKesson said suddenly, interrupting our conversation. “There have been rumors like that for years. A belly like a bouncer, warts, so ugly he could make a blind kid cry. I get it. Now, how do we stop this Beast from destroying my town?”

  “Follow me,” she said, and began slithering away deeper into the tunnels.

  We followed, but I was frowning in thought.