Nathrotep
Page 14
Without hesitation, she jumped on top of the wooden box and began gouging into the moist earthen ceiling with both hands.
“Dig faster!” Mark shouted, going down on one knee as he balanced Robin across his other leg.
“Shut the hell up!” she snapped back at him, her nails breaking as she dug into the more firmly packed dirt above the wet soil. “I’m doing the best that I can!”
“Well, it ain’t good enough! Get a move on or we’ll all be toast!”
“You think this is easy?” she shrilled. “Why don’t you give me the girl, and you get up here and dig?” She paused then, her eyes going wild as she struggled to catch her breath. “Oh my God...” she moaned, “we’re going to die down here, aren’t we?”
The silence was ominous as her last words echoed strangely in the confines of the small space.
Peering back down the now unnaturally quiet tunnel, they were struck by a sense of foreboding so profound that it compelled them into immediate action.
“Dig, dammit, dig!” Mark screamed.
The woman began clawing at the ceiling with renewed energy, her sobbing breaths echoing loudly in the air around them. As she scrabbled at the crumbling soil, the niche began to vibrate with a feeling of uncleanliness, a resonance of total repugnance that they could feel right down to their bones. Throwing Robin across one shoulder, Mark stood and then leapt onto the casket himself, reaching up to tear at chunks of earth and rock with his free hand.
They were still digging frantically when the thundering over-spill of the collapsing gate’s unclaimed power overtook them, the waves of its putrescence boiling outward like a ceaseless, oncoming tide. Their lingering, raw-throated cries were quickly swallowed up by the pulsating harmonics, the tainted energy hammering into them as they continued to gouge their way through the ceiling of the collapsing grave.
Mark was fighting against the clods of dirt and grass showering down all around them when the woman was suddenly yanked upward, disappearing through the loosened soil. Shuddering with uncontrollable fear, he wrapped his arms tightly around Robin, howling in terror as the roughened hands of some unknown creature thrust themselves down to grasp at his neck and shoulders. He resisted, but more than one set of hands had a hold of him then, and they pulled him into the stormy night of the world above. Only his convulsive grip on Robin’s unresponsive form kept him from dropping her as they both emerged from the ground and then sprawled across the dampened grass. Spitting out mouthfuls of filth, he glanced fearfully around. Of the creatures, there was no sign, but he found that there was a sodden lump of a man kneeling in the windswept darkness. The strange woman was crouching next to him, both of them covered in mud up to their shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” the man was saying, “I am so sorry –”
“It’s not your fault,” the women interjected in a quavering voice, “I’m the one who f-failed, the one who l-left him behind...”
“Now you just hush that, young lady!” the man replied. “It were a damn fool’s errand that I let you folks go on in the first place, and a selfish one at that! I thought you might be the ones to finally avenge my sweet Barbara’s murder. But, by the time I know’d you’d bitten off more than you could chew, there was nothing I could do. I had to hang round out here, hoping you’d make it out alright, hoping I could do something more iffen you did. It were all I could do with what little power I have just to locate your position under these here graves. I should have helped you more from the get-go, been prepared to take more of a risk, but, like I said afore, I just ain’t strong enough. I coulda never faced up to the sort of things that was going on down in them tunnels. Whatever’s happened to you, the loss of your friend... well, that’s all because of me, because I’m such a damn coward...”
“Jarrod!” the women cried, “it wasn’t your fault! You gave us what we needed to survive, helped us to understand what was going on in the first place. Without you, we’d all be dead! Besides, I’m the one who left him. I-I left him to die!”
It was more than Mark could take. He didn’t know who the fat man was, and he really didn’t care – all this crying and carrying on was for pussies. Struggling to his knees, he grabbed Robin under the arms and then dragged her over to a fallen grave marker. Flopping down beside her, he fought to catch his breath as he gazed up at the ominously churning clouds. They were unlike any clouds that he’d ever seen before.
Pulling his eyes away from the disturbing maelstrom going on above him, he glanced back toward the shuddering, light-filled manor instead. It was now heaving with sullen power. Thick, coiling tendrils of malignant force were flowing outward from it in never-ending waves, and, within those waves, a wind was gathering. As he watched, debris began to spiral upward from the center of the house, its rotted walls jettisoning materials in heavy streams of disintegrating particles.
When the outer edges of this energy-infused whirlwind began to sweep over him, he glimpsed a vortex appearing in the turbulent sky above the dwelling. Reaching down through a hole in the middle of those dark, swirling clouds was a creature of unimaginable proportions, a being so interwoven with the strands of evil that its very nature was a tapestry of perpetual nightmare. With a concentrated effort, he managed to wrest his eyes away from it and was shocked to then witness Jarrod’s hair turning bone-white as the man continued to gaze up at the hellish thing. Peering back at the house through tear-blurred vision, Mark saw the writhing, tentacled monstrosity from the underground chamber rising up from the bowels of the earth. It was drawn into the rift by the greater entity, and with a final rumble of thunder and a burst of electrified air, the vortex collapsed, leaving him feeling weak and sickened inside.
Falling forward onto her hands, the woman let the nausea run its course, spewing out a thin stream of bile as the fat man, his eyes now wide and empty, simply toppled to the ground. Mark was left struggling alone against the terrible events they’d just experienced, trying desperately to shake the visions of it from his fractured mind.
Above him, the light of dawn was creeping across the rapidly clearing sky, painting the graveyard in reddish colors as he searched for a distraction, something, anything, to take his thoughts away from the maddening events of the last few hours. Scanning past the heaving woman and the vacant-eyed man, they came to rest on Robin’s battered, upturned face. With a trembling hand, he reached out and brushed aside a lock of her tangled hair. Her features, although bloody and badly bruised, had an ethereal quality, almost like that of a fallen angel. There was just something about her, something that drew him like a moth to a flame.
Enraptured, he took her hand, struggled to come to grips with the confusing emotions that he was now experiencing, but when her eyes fluttered open to gaze up at him, he let it fall back from his lax grasp in acute embarrassment. As he watched, a tremulous smile spread across her bloodied lips, and he was suddenly hit by a rush of such heartfelt longing that it almost felt like a betrayal. Kelly was dead! How could he already be feeling this way about her best friend? But as her smile widened, exposing dull, white teeth in a curious grin, his traitorous spirit practically soared in response.
“Robin?” he ventured, “Robin, it’s me, Mark. You know; Mark Cook, from school? Are you... okay?”
Her response drove him to his feet and sent him stumbling backward. As he struck his hip on another upright slab, he spun around and then slammed into a headstone that the other woman was leaning against. Fighting for control, he stared back at Robin in outright shock.
She was laughing!
Howling, really. A great series of pealing cackles that were frighteningly inhuman. Her ululating cries split the morning air and, as he stood mesmerized by her twitching features, she sat up and began rocking back and forth on the cold, weatherbeaten stone, her bloodshot eyes wide yet unseeing. Not knowing what else to do, he turned, desperate for guidance from the older woman.
The woman, however, was no longer kneeling; she’d lurched up from the ground and was now standing right ne
xt to him, her face only inches from his own. Grabbing him by the shoulders, she began screaming incoherently, her blood-curdling cries alternating with Robin’s howls of deranged laughter as her fingers dug painfully into his flesh. With a wrench, he tore himself from out of her grasp, falling to the ground with his mouth hanging open in complete astonishment.
They were both stark-raving mad!
Climbing back to his feet, he decided that he was about done with all this weird bullshit. Edging away from the stricken pair, he noticed for the first time the sounds of sirens in the crisp morning air. The police would be there soon, maybe even the fire department – they would probably blame this whole fucked-up mess on him!
Staring at the shrieking woman, the fallen, vacant-eyed man, and the cackling, maddened thing that had somehow become his heart’s fondest desire, he shook his head in mute denial. Then he turned from them and fled across the field of unkempt graves.
He ran for miles that morning, not even noticing the eyes that were following his progress from the remaining burrows of that hellish place, running until he had no strength left, and then running some more. Through the surrounding neighborhoods he fled, away from the sirens and the screaming laughter, away from the ancient graveyard, and far away from everything that he had ever known.
Something inside his mind told him how it would be then, explained to him what he now needed to do.
He would leave this sacred place and then wait for the ‘call’. When it came, he would know it, and he would be ready to answer. Running from the dawn and all it revealed, Mark Cook headed for the outskirts of town, knowing that, someday, when the stars were right, he would return.
Someday.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William H. Nelson is the author of Nathrotep (2018) and Within the Range of Reanimation (2020). He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska where he attended college at UAA. During his time there, he was a regular contributor to several publications, including The Radical (Radical Publications, 1992-94), The Auroran (Denali Publications 1993-96), and Rainsongs (Denali Publications 1995-96).
After moving to the Seattle area in 1998, he eventually met the love of his life, Lisa, and now lives with her and their cat Dipso, (named from the Greek word meaning ‘thirsty’). William continues to write every day. In his spare time, he enjoys reading voraciously, playing the drums like a berserk spider-monkey, creating award-winning costumes and props for local conventions, watching movies with a passion bordering on obsession, and playing selections from his truly ginormous collection of epic fantasy board games.
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