Nightcrawlers

by Tim Curran

  39

  St. Aubin was not dead.

  Maybe not truly alive anymore in the normal sense of the word, but he was certainly not dead. His mind was some trembling yellow thing that skulked and shivered in the dim corners of his brain. Now and then sanity would rear its head and tell him in no uncertain terms the levels of madness and horror he had sunk to, but mostly he kept it locked away in a musty trunk.

  But he was still a man and still had a sense of identity, even though he had trouble remembering exactly who he was or how he’d come to be in this predicament. He subsisted mostly on the raw, rough gruel of instinct. It was this that fed and filled him, kept his limbs moving and his mind focused and resilient. If it wasn’t for this atavistic drive, he would long ago have drawn into himself and slammed the door shut.

  He was crawling through sloping, narrow tunnels on his belly. Tunnels so small and cramped that the sides brushed his shoulders and the roof brushed the top of his head. Caked with filth, he crawled on and on through that black, sucking mud. Like some insane mole, he was quite blind now in the absolute darkness and moved only by feel, his fingers constantly searching and divining the suffocating dimensions ahead.

  Part of his brain remembered, but his conscious mind kept these memories buried.

  It was important not to recall certain things.

  Like those grubby, fleshy hands that had pulled him away from Kenney and dragged him down that endless, meandering tangle of pest holes, finally depositing him in some profane den where still more hands accepted him and noses sniffed him and fingers explored him. He could remember this part very well, for the uneven walls were lit by a dim illumination that radiated from what appeared to be a peculiar blue-green mold imbued with some weird bioluminescence. He could not see clearly, but well enough as in twilight or pale moonlight.

  That’s when he began to put things together.

  They thought he was dead.

  They had tucked him into a tight, cloistered cell that had been dug out of the slick, dripping clay walls. And as they did this (and he let them do it, God yes, he had, paralyzed both physically and emotionally with terror), he saw other forms pressed into countless other cells. And knew, despite the grainy light, that those tangled, knotted things were the bodies of men and women that had been stuffed into those holes so they could soften to pulp, and decay properly before being eaten.

  And he was just another one.

  Yes, yes, the food is the flesh and the corpse is the meat, the blood is the wine and the unplucked, untasted cadaver is the bread to be broken by grisly hands to stuff in the mouths of ravenous ghouls. It all fits and it all works and it all makes a beautiful sort of sense, doesn’t it? Well…DOESN’T IT?

  And, God, but it did, oh sweet Jesus in your lofty throne high above the charnel pits far below, it made perfect sense. Not men and women down here. Oh, no, no, no, no, perish the fucking thought, friends and neighbors. These were not men nor women nor humans exactly, just…just…obscene, debased, degenerate things that cannot walk in the light but must creep in the tomblike darkness. Worms, human maggots that feast upon the dead, sharpening their claws on coffin lids and their teeth on pitted bones.

  And if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands and no one laughs when the hearse goes by…hee, hee, haw, haw.

  His mind swam in and out of this self-perpetuating sea of dementia. He recalled waking and seeing that the others had left and there was only some ancient, stick-thin creature in attendance. It looked to be a woman, incredibly old, her face invisible beneath a mop of dun, colorless hair woven with sticks and clods of dirt. Her chest was writhing with some horrible podia like teats on a mother hog. She crouched there in the corner, oblivious to all and everything, nibbling at her own fingers. St. Aubin could hear the grinding of her teeth, the wet and abominable sound of her smacking lips and investigative tongue.

  And it was bad enough, plenty bad enough being trapped in that hideous lair where human beings were tucked away like fat spiders in a hornet’s nest, but it got worse. For there began a bizarre, offensive melody of guttural squealing and yelping sounds. And he saw that the sounds came from the wall directly opposite his own, echoing from countless holes sunk into the clay…and in those holes, squirming, distorted, ghastly things. The old lady dragged herself across the floor and began rending something in a cell directly below St. Aubin’s. He heard a wet, pulpy snapping and something like rotting cloth being torn. He was thankful for the gloom, for he couldn’t see what she carried and what she fed the things in those grisly holes.

  Maybe he couldn’t exactly remember his own name, but he knew one thing: He was in a nursery, being seasoned and softened for those appalling and toothless, infantile mouths.

  He might have passed out then or crawled into some crack in the floor of his mind where it was dark, cozy, and safe. When he opened his eyes, the mold was shining brightly, revealing something that made his eyes roll in their sockets and his teeth chatter wildly until his gums ached.

  That…that…that…what is that I’m seeing? What is that thing that comes out of the darkness?

  He could not be sure, only that the sight of it made him piss himself.

  There was a thing standing there…well, not exactly standing, but suspended by wires like a marionette, only they were not wires but dozens and dozens and dozens of ropy strands of the pink fungal material that infested the subterranean world of the corpse-eaters. And they were not exactly hooked to her—because, oh yes, it was certainly a her—but growing into her and out of her, connecting to a huge pink and pulsating mass of morbid tissue that looked almost quilted, soft and spongy and dripping pearlescent red tears. The strands pulled her, stretched her, flattened her and elongated her, making her into a woman and something quite beyond a woman.

  At the sight of it…of her…of it, St. Aubin made a sound somewhere between a giggle and a low shrieking.

  A stink came off the woman-thing.

  It smelled like sour urine and polluted tidal flats and corpses in green ponds.

  She’s astride a lovely pink web, can’t you see that?

  Yes, now it was apparent: a glittering pink web that grew within her and without her because she and the fungus were one. The webs were strung with shining silken cases and ruby blood-egg clusters all done up in a finery of feathery tapestries spun from spider-mesh and spider-gauze, a threadwork and maze, a black widow’s deadly nest.

  Listen, listen…can you hear her? Can you?

  There was a scrambling of limbs, a wet sound and a dry sound, a slithering noise and then the sound of fleshy tearing. The woman split open and something repellent bubbled out of her. It was vile and undulant, a pink and creeping horror limned by soft light. It was the fungus and it poured from her, it gushed and foamed and when its flowing mass retreated back into her…there were something like glistening eggs strung on the strands like beads on a thread.

  In his mind, St. Aubin saw that each one held a squirming larva.

  In the light, of course, there was no way he could really see this, yet the image was quite vibrant in his mind. He tried to think it away and blink it away, but it remained. And when he looked over at the woman who had sewn herself back up again, she was a globular mass of bleeding eyes.

  She was the haunter of the dark.

  She was the despoiler of men’s minds.

  She was a living flux of plastic tissue, of fungus, of woman, a biological machine that reinvented itself with a child’s aberrant imagination. It sprouted malformed heads that were huge and bulbous. It became a pale writhing thing like a fetal termite. It threw out a dozen limbs that were not exactly arms or legs and a dozen grasping human hands sprouting chest to crotch like the teats of a cow. Its face became the grotesque, cartoonish saw-toothed grin of a jack-o’-lantern and a veil of gray fungus. Its head mutated into a cluster of blind white eyes and then a semihuman monstrosity that looked like something dumped from a bucket in a dissection room.

  She/it/they were slithe
ring and writhing and viscidly alive. Something made of a thousand moving parts…mouths filled with teeth and fingers tipped by claws and tentacles and bat wings and accordions of gleaming bone. But for it all, she was still oddly embryonic and unformed. She was forming herself into everything she had encountered in every murky crawl space and stinking drainage ditch she had crept through, every putrefying corpse and roadkilled animal she stumbled across, every fly and worm and crawling thing that had infested the corpses she fed upon. And much of it was just pure subjective impression.

  Regardless, all of it, every bit of it was not intended to frighten him and he knew this. There was a very real agenda behind it all and when he realized it, it was a ray of light chasing away the darkness in his head.

  It’s for your benefit, all for your benefit. She’s trying to amuse you. She does not want you to be scared. She wants you to be amused so you will not be afraid. Whatever she was and whatever the fungus creature was, they are not hateful creatures.

  “But I don’t want this,” he found himself saying. “I don’t want this at all. I want to go…don’t you see? I want to go!”

  Now she was a thing of glossy pink webs. The great strands and ropes of tissue connecting her to the ceiling and walls and even the floor were thickening, replicating themselves until they were a tangled forest, darning and hemming and sewing themselves into mantraps and funnels and nooses. She would stop him. She would knot him up and snare him because she wanted him to stay forever.

  Come to me, she said inside his head. Come to mother. Join me as the others joined me and were remade by me. I’m soft and warm and comforting. Come dream with me.

  St. Aubin could no longer seem to think.

  His fingers fumbled around him until his left hand clutched the phallic shape of a mushroom. At first, it felt greasy and foul…then, like velvet. He held it in his hands, the silkiness of it bringing a sort of tactile rapture that made him moan. It felt so wonderful. Somewhere during the process, he brought it up to his mouth and kissed it.

  His lips tingled.

  It was amazing. It was so soft, so very tender. It was like the cheek of a baby or the down of a chick, both and neither. A bunny’s fur felt almost coarse in comparison.

  He licked it and it fired his taste buds into new realms that made him tremble and gasp, whimper for more.

  He bit into it.

  Dear Christ.

  It was a rare delicacy, sweet and savory and mouth-watering. It triggered the release of endorphins in his head that flooded his body with a sense of contentment, satisfaction, and pure biochemical joy.

  You have eaten me…now enter me.

  The sound of her voice made him feel like he was drifting on a lofty, featherbed-soft cloud through a sky of cotton candy. He could not be certain in those dizzying moments whether she came to him or he came to her, he was only aware of contact. Of his own hands reaching out to touch her and bisecting her central, webby mass, which felt warm and seedy and joyously pulpous like the guts of a pumpkin. That was the ecstasy of it, the tactile delight. He wanted to run his hands through her and swim through her.

  And she was only too happy to accept him.

  It was like being buried in the cold guts of a fish, being sucked into a bog of wriggling entrails. He melted like tallow as he fell into her and there was no pain because unlike Godfrey, he was not frightened of her. She pulsed and purred, coiled and bled pink rivers of tissue until he was engulfed in her depths.

  There was a purity to it.

  And a beauty beyond words.

  40

  Chipney had been stumbling through the underground maze for so long now he couldn’t be sure where he was.

  The creatures had entered the tomb and dragged him back below, down one passage and into another. They could have killed him, but that hadn’t seemed to be their primary motivation. It was like they just wanted to keep him down there, good and lost.

  But why? What could the possible point of that be?

  Somehow, he still clutched the riot gun but the flashlight was dimming. It wouldn’t last long now. The passage he was in twisted and turned, offered endless offshoots and, Jesus, he was moving in circles for all he knew. He had trouble remembering where he was and how it was he had gotten to be there.

  He had to dig himself out, but he feared that was impossible now.

  This place was a stagnant, compressed, opaque envelope of filth and decay and pestilence. It was all over his skin, in his hair, up his nose, on his tongue, running from his eyes like dirty tears.

  But for all that, he could feel a small, weak breeze on him.

  So he kept following it, hoping, praying it would lead him out of this madhouse. He could hear rustlings and squeakings and chitterings and now and again a leathery wing brushed his face. Bats. Rats. How harmless they seemed when you were faced with worse things.

  Sounds now.

  Them? Was it them? Had they tracked him down and were, even now, slinking forward to claim him? Was that it?

  No, listen, dammit, listen!

  Yes, a rushing noise. Like water. Like a waterfall, in fact. Loud and getting louder. Maybe a subterranean river or steam. And maybe, possibly a way out or just a way deeper into this stygian hell.

  He began moving quicker through the tunnel now, the water splashing around his ankles. The breeze was much stronger and, Christ, how sweet it indeed smelled. How wonderful. He had forgotten what fresh air felt like against his face, in his lungs, the cool whisk of it against his teeth. It was a joyous thing really, but it only served to amplify the atrophied, stagnant reel of the tunnel system.

  He kept moving, the fresh air pulling him along like a thread of hope. Maybe this is why he had seen none of the creatures for so long now. Fresh air and, possibly, sunshine would have been unthinkable to them, abhorrent. They would have avoided it like fumes from a septic tank—unclean, tainted even.

  The sound of water was very loud now and the tunnel was still unwinding before him and when would it ever end? His feet moved faster, his breath rasped in his lungs, his heart pounded fitfully. And the flashlight dimmed and dimmed, began to flicker and, oh, dear Christ, not now, not now! He slapped its cylinder against his leg and it came back brighter and dimmed just as fast. He found that if he kept whacking it against his thigh, it would brighten for a moment or two.

  Goddammit!

  And then the passage veered off to the right and there was a chamber ahead. The air was still fresh…but he smelled something stale and noisome and, without thinking, he stepped into the chamber…and dropped fifteen feet in a slimy, viscous pool. And all around him, squeaking and rustling and clawing and snapping. He thrashed and fought and pulled himself up out of the festering muck and it smelled just about worse than anything. It was all over his face and down his shirt and up his nose. He still had the riot gun in his hand and the drop had jarred the flashlight and now the beam flickered and exploded with life.

  And that’s when he saw them—the rats.

  With a deathly realization, he looked upon them and they looked upon him. Ranks of them crowding for space in a grim, verminous circle that tightened and tightened. Huge, fat, with greasy pelts and trembling tails, eyes leering with rabies. They were grinding yellowed teeth and making ready.

  He started to scream and couldn’t stop.

  He pulled himself to his feet and realized what he’d fallen into was a collected pool of dung, waste material from the meals of the creatures. A vile, diseased stew of bacteria and filth. A sewer.

  He started shooting with his Colt 9mm and got off maybe two rounds that echoed like rolling thunder in the chamber and the rats were in motion. He could never be sure if they were attacking or just stampeding out of fear, but they were everywhere. He could feel their dirty, furry bodies pressing against his legs and their teeth nipping at his waders and feel them clawing at his legs, but by then he was running, stumbling, and he fell into the filth again and little fangs ripped at his face and hands and he kicked and slapped
them away.

  The flashlight went out for good and a darkness thick as coal dust descended on him.

  He plowed drunkenly through the rats, guided only now by sheer instinct that told him to run, run. And he felt the fresh air again and climbed out of that pit and the rats had retreated and, dear God, he probably had rabies. And then he was crawling down another passage on his hands and knees and he saw light. Filmy and gray, but light all the same.

  A few pallid fingers of it issuing from a cleft in the rock ahead and he dove straight at, slamming into rocks and laughing as he cut and bruised himself, but not caring, not caring—

  And then the floor disappeared beneath him and he was falling, falling, end over end towards the sound of rushing water.

  41

  Kenney’s world was chaotic and unbalanced. It was a barrow pit and a madhouse, a hot-blooded nightmare and a subceller freak show. He had escaped the mutants, but they had badly battered him. His head hurt; his face and neck stung from the acidic secretions of their fingers. He was out of rounds for the riot gun, but he held on to it for the flashlight and its effectiveness as a club. He still had his service weapon—a Colt 9mm—and flares. So he was not down and out just yet.

  In the darkness, hip deep in the foul brown drainage, he leaned against the wall, unable to go another inch.

  Where the fuck is Hyder and those reinforcements? What the hell are they doing up there? He should have sent a rescue team down thirty minutes after we stopped checking in.

  Kenney knew he had to remain calm, but with each passing second in that awful place it became harder and harder.

  He was lost, he was scared, he was confused. His mind was filled with dusty cobwebs. He was so damn tired he couldn’t seem to think straight.

  Keep awake. If you do nothing else, keep…awake.

  But it wasn’t easy. God, no. He was so exhausted from the shock of this entire nightmare and slogging through the stygian depths of the flooded underworld and crawling through cramped tunnels that he could have slept standing up. In fact, he could have gone right out leaning against the warm, mucky wall.