A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

  Jack instinctively ducked his head, even though huddled beneath the archway beside the old boiler they were as low as they could get. The sound came again, and crouched within it was something like a low, coughing laugh. Catherine moaned.

  “What is that?”

  The sound seemed to surround them. The walls shook. The crunching and crackling rose in pitch and then faded, replaced by a hollow clunk and then silence. In a matter of seconds it was over.

  “Jack?”

  “I think the foundation is giving way.”

  “Oh Jesus. What are we going to do?”

  He swallowed and she heard the resulting click. “Well, we can’t stay here that’s for damned sure.”

  “But this is supposed to be the safest place, isn’t it?”

  “Not if the whole house is going to come crashing down on top of us. We have to get out before it buries us alive.”

  “I’m scared, Jack.”

  He rose to a stoop and guided her up with a hand on her elbow. “So am I, but I think coming down here was a big mistake. In fact I think we did exactly the opposite of what they tell you to do in situations like this. We need to get out of the house.”

  “But what’s happening? Is it an earthquake?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been in one before. Sure feels like it.”

  He stepped forward, their hands joined until Catherine pulled him back. “What is it?” he asked. The fear made the whites of his eyes seem almost luminous.

  “Tell me we’re going to be all right, Jack. I need to hear you say it. Please.”

  Jack nodded. “We’re…” He stopped, turned his head toward the old wooden stairwell. Catherine tugged on his hand, frightened. “What? What is it?”

  “Perry. He’s stopped barking.”

  Together they listened for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Jack yelled for the dog. Silence.

  “C’mon,” he said. The worry was evident in his tone.

  Jack let go of her hand and batted away a veil of cobwebs that had draped itself over his face. Catherine looked around at the trembling walls.

  Please, God, don’t let us die down here.

  Jack moved slowly toward the stairs, eyes darting to trace the origin of the slightest sounds. The light flickered. Catherine felt gooseflesh tap dance across her cold skin.

  “Hold my hand,” she whispered. Jack felt blindly for her and then a loud, resounding crack made them both cry out. The room shifted. Jack gasped and grunted as the stone surface upon which he stood separated, buckled and split.

  “Oh Jesus,” he moaned. Planting a firm hand in the center of her chest, he pushed Catherine away. Another crack and then Jack dropped a notch. His arms and hands were now stretched out on both sides, as if he were walking a tightrope. “Shit Cathy, the floor’s giving way.”

  Catherine began to weep. She jammed her knuckles into her mouth. She stepped forward and then back and then forward again, uncertain what to do but dreading the thought of watching him fall to his death before her eyes. “Oh God, Jack, what can I do?”

  “N-nothing. Stay where you are. I’m going to try to make a jump for the steps.”

  The seven wooden steps leading to the basement door were only a few feet away, yet circumstance made it seem an incredible distance.

  Jack stood stock still, not breathing. He was little more than a silhouette framed by the lazy amber light drifting down to them from the bathroom beside the basement door. The floor had become a pane of ice, liable to break at the slightest move. Catherine’s eyes were fixed on Jack’s feet, willing them to float above the danger.

  “Please be careful.”

  She thought he might have nodded but couldn’t be sure.

  “I’m going to go on the count of…”

  The floor cracked again and this time a sliver of stone shot into the air and spanged! against the steaming boiler. Catherine ducked and wrapped her arms around her head. Jack yelped and tried to keep his balance.

  “Oh shit…oh shit!”

  “What can I do?” Catherine wailed; she was still dancing over and back, indecision tormenting her soul. “Please Jack, I have to do something.”

  “No!” he yelled back. “Just stay there. If I can make the stairs, you’ll be able to jump across and I can help you from there. But for now, just stay still.”

  The room seemed to draw away from her; the doorway and the trembling outline of her husband pulling back. Now it was nothing more than a scene from some terrible dream. Catherine heard a cry in the distance. No, not a cry. Sirens! Police?

  A spark of hope ignited in her chest. She began to whisper another prayer, hoping it would be heard and that they would live through this madness.

  Jack edged toward the stairs. Another crack. Another step.

  “Oh, no.” A long breath.

  And the floor caved in beneath him.

  A startled cry, his body falling, here and then gone. Catherine rushing forward screaming, her caution forgotten. The floor rattled and jerked away from her. She slipped, wailing. The angry ground rose to collide with her face, shattering her nose and scissoring open her lips. Looking up from where she lay, she whimpered, confused, numb to the pain; tasting blood and dust. She saw her husband’s face, and time slowed with malicious glee.

  She watched a pit of deeper darkness yawn wide beneath him; saw Jack reaching to grab onto the sides of the hole but slipping, slipping, then salvation wrenched away from him. She saw his eyes widen, mouth moving, struggling to form a scream as the edge of the hole leapt upward to meet him, his face twisted into that horrifying awareness that accompanies impending death after horrible agony; and then the ragged edge, joining flesh in a fixed battle for dominance. The bricks and stone shearing away the skin of his handsome face, her loving husband’s beautiful face, grinding through bone and shattering the very map upon which his beauty was drawn.

  And finally the flutter of his hair as he sank below the edge, leaving a crimson signature on the concrete behind. A sobbing gurgle and nothing more. The ensuing silence was ephemeral; it lasted only long enough for realization to dawn on the bloodied, shocked woman lying on the floor, her fingertips inches away from the hole, that she was next.

  The quiet—mere seconds—hurt her already pounding head. She deigned to break it with a scream of anguish that echoed off the still-quivering walls. They breathed a chuckle of dust in response.

  “Why? Why is this happening?” she cried, weakening. She dropped into shock, her blood turning to smeared paste in the dirt.

  The city answered in the only way it knew how.

  Upstairs beneath the kitchen sink, Perry cowered and shook, deafened by the screams of an outraged deity.

  The house swallowed itself.

  ««—»»

  “Walt, are you seeing this?”

  Inside the police cruiser, forced into stopping with the front wheels mounted on the curb, the real wheels garroted by broken glass, Brad Haines stared out the windscreen at the miasma Lake View Estates had become.

  Beside him, his partner, Walt Greenwood, nodded silently. “I am, but I’m hoping any minute now you’re going to tell me I’m asleep.”

  Lake View Estates: Stanchion of the wealthy, complete with private pool, was now nothing more than a mass of rubble and bodies. The two policemen had been forced to sit stunned as a buttress the size of an Oldsmobile toppled and crushed to death Senator Mayfield and his wife and daughter. What little water remained in the swimming pool was now crimson and host to innumerable floating corpses. The half-mile long semi-circle of three- and four-story houses now looked like a war zone, blood and smoke drifting into the breeze to summon flies.

  The palaces of the rich were tumbling.

  “What do we do?” Haines asked. His face was pale, mouth agape. His gaze was still glued to the apocalyptic scene beyond the windshield.

  Greenwood had to struggle to keep his voice calm. “It doesn’t look like there’s much we can do, but getting our asses out of here
sounds like a reasonable course of action at this point, wouldn’t you say?”

  He moved his hand to the door handle but Haines stopped him. “Wait, what in God’s name is that?”

  Haines was pointing up at the sky, over to their left where the horizon was reddened by fire and seething. Greenwood looked and his eyes went wide. The blood drained from his face, leaving nothing but the broken capillaries visible on his drinker’s nose.

  “What the hell?” he gasped. “Is that a fucking octopus or something?”

  Off in the distance, above the fires and toppled citadels of Delaware, enormous white tendrils reached far into the sky; writhing and snapping, forcing the smoke to shift to accommodate their very real presence. Chunks of stone and glass tumbled from one as it erupted to ricochet away as another appeared; each rose up as if greedily sniffing the filthy air.

  Greenwood’s panicked mind managed to register that there were eight of them but then his partner’s fumbling hand on his shoulder, beckoning him to look in the opposite direction, immediately proved him wrong.

  From the ruins of Lake View, three more of the creatures sprouted, sending debris flying in all directions, rising into the air and twitching…

  “Oh my God, Walt. What are those things?”

  Of course Greenwood had no idea, either. He doubted any sane person on the planet did. Up close, the things looked like oddly slimy, bleached redwoods without limbs; they were swaying liquidly to and fro, like something from a snake charmer’s darkest nightmare.

  “Jesus, Walt. We have to get out of here.”

  After a quick look in the rearview mirror confirmed his worst fears, Greenwood sighed and barked a nervous laugh. “Sure, but to where? The damn things are popping up all over the place. Where can we go?”

  Eyes brimming with panic, Haines spun around and looked out the back window of the cruiser. More monstrously tall shadows were swaying at the end of the street.

  “Oh, fuck me.”

  “Somebody damned sure has.”

  Greenwood stared at the shattered street in front of them and unclipped his holster. Haines’ frenetic flinching ceased for a moment as he watched his partner withdraw his gun.

  “What are you doing?”

  Greenwood shook his head, eyes watery, and nodded at Haines. “There’s no way out, buddy.”

  As if on cue, the hollow in the road ahead of them, the road that had once led to a beautiful row of houses coughed smoke. The tip of something red-gray and slimy began to wriggle free of the debris. The ground rumbled, the police car squeaked and groaned. Greenwood shoved the barrel of the gun into his mouth.

  “Oh Jesus, WALT!”

  The bang deafened Haines. He already knew before he looked it was too late for his partner. The steady, dripping wetness on the side of his face told him. The car filled with the smell of copper, cordite and human waste.

  Haines kicked open the door. He fell to his knees on the sidewalk. Warm vomit burst from his mouth. “Aw shit, Walt…” he began to cry but knew there was no time to grieve. A tremor pulsed through the ground. It knocked him over. He rolled onto his back, tears streaming from his eyes. Night had fallen without warning, the dim light stolen by an impossibly tall shadow looming over the squad car.

  “You can have the fucking city then,” Haines mumbled. He spat bile and reached for his own gun.

  ««—»»

  The weathered man named Kane grinned, but without mirth. Caressing his chin with a hairy forefinger, he raised an eyebrow at the sound of the gunshot down the street. She’s stripping them.

  The room he and Isaac occupied was calm, steady and completely untouched by the chaos.

  Across from the old man, on the other side of one of the small round tables taken from the stack propped up on the bar, Isaac was concentrating on a scarred pattern he’d engraved on the wood.

  The bar was deserted, but for them and the dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra pouring softly from the radio behind the counter. Set ’em up and let’s drink to our friends…

  “She’s just a baby,” Kane said. He shook his white head in amazement. Isaac picked up his pocketknife and, sweeping aside a bundle of wood shavings, carved a circle in the center of the intricate pattern. He dug the point of the knife into the shape and twisted it until a respectable hole was made before he answered.

  “Yes. She’s one of the youngest. This city is an infant. That makes it much easier to get them to listen. The book says that the older ones will often prove more difficult.”

  Kane nodded. “How soon?”

  “By sundown she’ll be ready to break free of her moorings.”

  “What about the survivors? The ones she doesn’t eat, I mean?”

  Isaac gave him a wry smile. He nodded at the small holes in the center of the carving. “The Magroth Points inspire suicidal ideation. We don’t like to use that particular spell, but the damned survivors just migrate to other cities, other children, and infest them like ticks. So that just means more work next time around. And as for me, I’m getting too old for such concerns.”

  Kane returned his smile. “Then it’s my turn.”

  “Indeed,” Isaac said. “I think you’ve watched long enough. If you remember how long they’ve slept, and treat them like the cranky children they are, you’ll be fine. They were bred to guard this spinning rock until the Old Gods saw fit to return. Our responsibility is to guide them, to ensure the children don’t forget their place in the scheme of things.”

  Kane nodded. He looked at the garish orange and red light flooding through the mullioned window of the bar. “Seems like an awful waste of life though. You’d imagine there’d be some use for the humans. I mean, considering the sheer number of them.”

  When Isaac looked up, his eyes had reverted to their natural opaque luster, broken only by a vertical black slit in the middle. He glowered with impatience. Something harsh and inhuman infected Isaac’s voice and Kane trembled. “It’s thoughts like those that keep you in the position you hold now, Kane. There is no room for such specious considerations when dealing with something of such…immensity. The guise you hold now is that of a human. Imagine being confined to it, stripped of your power and a myriad of extra senses. Does such a primitive existence strike you as being of much use for anything?”

  Kane shook his head. “No, of course not. Forgive me.”

  Isaac returned to the engraving in the wood. He drew a crude ‘S’ shape in the center of the table and flicked the knife closed. Returning it to his inside pocket, he sighed. “Relax. You’ll understand eventually. There is no higher education than the one offered by the gods.” He took a moment to brush the shavings from his trouser legs then stood. “Come. The last of the restraints lies right beneath us. My human voice would seem far too loud and callous, now. I must speak her language if she is to hear me at all. Let us go outside and take in the majesty of her release.”

  He held out what passed for a hand. Kane took it and they shared a smile as they walked outside and into the hot, suffering rubble.

  ««—»»

  It is awake at last.

  Its joints are young and underused. For too long it has served as a slave to humanity, crouched into submission while mankind treads a path of disrespect across its holy, asphalt flesh. The release takes longer this time, because the strength has been siphoned from its body; those human tunnels are like gaping wounds; buildings, statues and monuments are needles jabbed into its body.

  The path to freedom brings agony, but this kind of pain is sweet. The sensation of their crude structures sliding from its back is blissful as it gathers its first breath, sucks the wind into its mud-choked lungs…and roars.

  What is left of humanity is deafened by her bellowing birth. She raises her head to the sky, sees familiar faces. Her parents, brothers and sisters…smiling. And of course, Father of them all.

  The Old Gods are pleased, for she is but the first.

  _______________

  “Birth and death are so closely relate
d that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible.”

  —Samuel Butler

  Blacktop

  This miserable world and Father Time have conspired to make me an old man who rocks all day in the shadow of the reaper. Most people talk down to me like I don’t know spit, but there’s a meat packing plant east of the home I’m in, and when the wind comes in off the plains it smells of dead things.

  That’s what made me remember.

  Sit down. The cancer is going to take me shortly, so I have a need to speak of this. It all happened one summer in the high desert, when the black two-lane highway was like a pool of melting tar. First, you got to picture this: A wicked white sunshine that is so blistering hot it smacks the parched earth like a fist; there ain’t a sound but the breathing of your horse and the demented buzzing of thirsty insects. Northern Nevada in 1942 was a quiet corner of the world where animals still did a lot of the hard labor, and thin, weathered old men could be seen around town wearing guns. FDR was President, that racial stuff hadn’t even got started down south, and most of the other boys were off fighting the second big war. Me, I was a little too young and, anyway, my left eye doesn’t work so well.

  You can call me Zeke, but my given name is Ezekiel Collins. I was a skinny sixteen-year-old kid that year; working on my Grandpa’s cattle ranch, maybe twenty miles south of Dry Wells. It had been bleached bone-dry and scorching hot all danged summer and that August day it was the worst I’d ever seen. It plumb squeezed the sweat out of a man, left you with an empty canteen and a mouth full of ashes. If you were smart, you carried a pinch of salt to avoid passing out and getting nasty headaches. I got headaches a lot, in part because of that bad eye.

  My grandpa was in Ely on business that day. I was helping Injun Tom take twenty-odd head across the highway and up into the shade of some cherry trees at the foot of the mountains. A lot of this is a blur now, but as I recall it, Tom generally wore blue jeans with a vintage Colt tucked in the belt, boots stained with tobacco juice, a patched brown work shirt and a black cowboy hat with one forlorn eagle feather sticking up from the band. That feather had some kind of Indian meaning, but Tom would never say what. He had dark brown skin, some Negro in him for sure; white hair and crow’s feet deep as scarred claw marks. He was on Blackie, a talented gelding with a broad chest and a sorry attitude. I was riding little Blaze, my favorite palomino mare.