He didn’t know if it was his heightened intuition giving him a warning, or some deep primal human sensitivity, but either way, he was suddenly sure: there was something bad down there, something much worse than Joe Santini.
It would obviously be smarter to call for backup, but then he’d have to tell Enid everything and put that young woman into the hands of The Order without having a chance to speak with her first, which he didn’t want to do.
And also, being honest with himself, he was very curious to see what might be waiting for him down in that darkness.
Something out of legend, perhaps?
He took a deep breath to steady his aim, and started down the steps, taking care to place his feet very softly, finger resting on the trigger, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice.
At the bottom he found himself in a nondescript concrete room about 50 feet square.
Even with the See-All right up against his eyes, he still didn’t have enough peripheral vision in the darkness to take in the entire space, but he noticed several long metal tables covered with what appeared to be lab equipment.
He didn’t give this much thought, however, because right away he realized that Joe was there waiting for him, standing in plain sight, slightly to his right, about 20 feet away.
Or at least there was something standing there, something that was almost Joe.
It had Joe’s face and shape, but it was hairless, and its skin was shiny and gray with diamond-shaped brown patches all over it, like a snake.
The Joe-thing wore no clothing. Its eyes were totally empty of emotion or thought.
He almost pulled the trigger then, but he couldn’t quite do it; perhaps it was because the thing looked too much like Joe, or maybe because it hadn’t actually done anything threatening yet.
There was also a vague sense in the back of his mind that he had the situation under control. He was staring down the sights of his gun after all, and this thing was unarmed, and there was plenty of distance between them.
Of course he never would’ve dreamed it would be able to move so fast.
One second it was standing there seemingly unconcerned by his presence, and then, suddenly, without making any sound or doing anything to warn him, it was hurtling forward, moving like it had rockets coming out of its ass, covering the distance separating them in a fraction of a second.
Thackery fired when it was only inches from the tip of his gun, hitting it squarely in the chest.
It continued forward without seeming to notice, crashing into him, knocking him to the ground.
His See-All and gun both went flying, plunging him into total darkness, and leaving him essentially helpless.
Hands gripped his throat with ungodly strength, pushing down, crushing, and the rest of the creature’s weight settled onto his torso, pinning him to the ground, making it impossible for him to get any leverage.
He reached out desperately with his right hand, feeling along the concrete floor in the direction where he thought his pistol had gone, hoping that the gun would miraculously be close enough for him to reach. He found nothing of course, so he reached out with his left hand and checked the other side even though he knew it wouldn’t be there either.
Then he tried with all his strength to pry free the hands that were choking him, but it was immediately clear that he had no real hope of success—the thing’s strength was unreal. The arms may as well have been made of iron.
Meanwhile, the lack of oxygen was already having its insidious effect. Every cell in his body screamed, ached, for breath, but at the same time a little voice had begun to whisper in the back of his head, urging him to surrender, to just let go, to let it happen. Unconsciousness—presumably followed very shortly by death—was only seconds away, and there was a part of him that was, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, perfectly okay with that.
Then suddenly there was a bright flash in the darkness, and a moment later he felt something heavy slam into his right hip and bounce off.
He reached down towards the spot where he’d felt the impact and found his gun lying there next to him. There was a brief moment of confusion, and then he dimly realized the flashing light had been the mana-thread he’d created to protect himself before he came down here, finally activating on his behalf.
About damn time…
He grabbed the gun and immediately put it to use, aiming into the creature’s rib-cage from the side and firing twice.
This had no effect whatsoever, so he brought the gun inward, and pushed the barrel up between the arm’s that were choking, trying to aim for where he thought the underside of the chin should be, and fired again.
He heard a sound like a watermelon bursting, and something—bits of bone and brain, he hoped—landed on his face.
The grip around his throat loosened slightly. He could breathe a little bit.
He fired again, and this time something larger—a bigger piece of skull he supposed—fell onto his cheek and slid off onto the ground where it clattered.
The grip loosened more and the creature’s weight sagged to the right.
He wriggled free, staggered to his feet, gasping, dizzy from the lack of oxygen.
The darkness was total, he had no idea what was happening. He could still hear movement coming from where he’d just been lying, so presumably the thing was still alive, though obviously no longer doing well.
He would never find his See-All in this darkness, but he could discern the vague outline of the stairway, illuminated from above by the rays of the sun coming through the open hatch.
He remembered the light-switch near the top, and scrambled up the steps, running as fast as he could until he got high enough to reach it.
There was a slight delay after he flicked it, then a fluorescent panel on the ceiling above the stairs flared to life along with dozens of additional lights in the chamber below.
He hurried back down the stairs.
Now that he could see, his eyes were drawn immediately to the figure struggling on the floor. The thing that used to be Joe Santini was lying on its side, kicking its legs uselessly as though trying to walk, spinning itself in place. It reminded Thackery of a wind-up toy soldier that had fallen over.
The entire top of its head was gone.
The sight of it made him ill.
He raised his gun, aimed for what was left of the head, and fired again. And again.
The second shot finally did the trick. There was a short period of violent shaking and then it was still.
He fired again anyway, and then pulled the trigger one more time, but the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber.
He reloaded his gun before holstering it—there were no other obvious threats in sight, but he didn’t feel remotely safe—then, finally, he took a moment to really examine the space around him.
The first thing to catch his eye were the three tall metallic tables, each about twelve feet long, standing in the center of the room. Two were covered with what appeared to be chemistry lab equipment, and the other held several glass aquariums and cages. A tangle of wires stretched across the floor towards the lab equipment and he immediately got the sense that the tables, and the work that was done on them, was the primary reason for the chamber’s existence.
The space along the rear wall was set up as a makeshift living quarters with a sofa-bed (currently in bed-form), a TV set, a sink, a fridge, a stove. It was definitely a bare minimum kind of arrangement, and Malcolm couldn’t imagine anyone as soft as Joe would want to spend any significant length of time living under such spartan circumstances.
On the right side of the room a computer and desk were pushed against the wall—Malcolm was pretty sure they were the same ones that had been in Joe’s living room previously—along with some vintage looking filing cabinets and a bunch of cardboard boxes full of random junk. Since the computer was down here, Thackery guessed that the boxes probably contained the arcane objects and books that had been notably missing during his search of the house.
The area along the wall to the left was unused but there was a doorway there leading to a dark space—presumably a toilet, though obviously it hadn’t seen much use, because there were little brown piles of human shit everywhere he looked, along with puddles here and there that he assumed must be piss.
He walked over to Joe’s body, and, suppressing his revulsion, knelt to get a better look.
Malcolm had never seen anything like it with his own eyes, but he was pretty sure he knew what it was.
Even demon spores could do terrible things to people who weren’t strong enough to handle them. Linking with a Titan, because they existed so much closer to our own reality, would naturally be much worse.
The diamond pattern on Joe’s skin superficially resembled something you might see on a snake, but the texture wasn’t snakelike at all—there were no scales. Instead, the surface was unnaturally smooth, like plastic.
He forced himself to look at the ruined head. The mouth hung open and it was full of small sharp teeth that looked as though they’d been coated in silver plating. One eye had been destroyed, but the other was still perfectly intact, and he could see that it had an unusual fiery orange color.
The Lemon smell was much stronger right here next to the body.
Some kind of musk, I guess…
He stood back up, wiping his hands on his pants unconsciously, fighting a sudden wave of nausea. He knew there were bits and pieces of Joe’s brain and skull on him, and the place was so filthy, and the smell…
He wished he could run out of there right then and take a bath in disinfectant.
Unfortunately, there were still things to do first.
He stepped away from the corpse, and took a moment to search for his See-All. It only took a second to locate it lying in the floor up against wall near the doorway to the stairs. It appeared to be undamaged, which didn’t surprise him—over the years the thing had survived much worse.
He went over to the table with the animal cages and aquariums.
There were rats, and guinea pigs, and rabbits. All dead, but they didn’t appear to be decaying.
All the animals were hairless and had grayish skin covered in diamond-patterns just like Joe, along with sharp metallic teeth, and orange eyes.
Thackery went over to the lab equipment, and didn’t recognize much of it, but of course he didn’t know much about alchemy.
There were tons of strange chemicals in the shelves built into the table, and also classical potion ingredients like bat guano, frankincense, and lavender.
Lots of evidence, he thought. He needed to go through as much of it as he could. The computer alone might contain crucial information that would help him get to the bottom of this.
But before getting started on that, there was something he had to take care of first.
He went back to the sofa bed and stripped the sheet off it, then went over to Joe’s corpse and draped it over him.
He stood there a moment, reflecting.
“Sorry I had to do this to you, Joe,” he said in a low voice. “You weren’t my favorite person in the world, but it’s a shame things had to end up this way.”
Chapter 9 - Reflex
When Simone woke up, the first thing she noticed was the overwhelming aroma of grass, so strong it was almost a taste.
Then she felt the texture of it, tickling the skin of her face and hands and bare arms, the thickness of it cushioning her body where she lay on the ground.
She was on her side, legs drawn up like a fetus, and she felt good lying there, didn’t want to move, didn’t want to open her eyes.
All the details of her crazy dream—the imaginary pine trees, her porch turning to jelly, the strange British man spouting craziness—were still fresh in her mind.
So real… And I guess I was actually standing in my yard while I dreamed all that.
It was becoming very clear that she’d suffered a psychotic break, probably due to a brain tumor. The severity of the headaches that hit her before and at the very end of the experience argued very strongly in favor of the theory. Normal headaches didn’t make you pass out.
I guess I’ve been dying a long time, and I didn’t even know it.
There were other signs, too, she realized: those crazy impulses at the grocery store (Poking her eye out, Jesus Christ! An obvious sign of derangement), and the way she woke up all sweaty this morning for no good reason.
It’s probably a slow-advancing cancer tumor, just been getting worse and worse all these years.
She felt rather detached about the whole thing, oddly unconcerned. What could she do about it, after all? Whatever was wrong with her, it’d been going on since she was 13. If it was cancer, as seemed likely, that was plenty of time for it to reach the point where doctors couldn’t help anymore.
Mostly, thinking about it just made her feel tired.
Maybe if I just stay here and go back to sleep, I’ll wake up in my bed and none of this will have happened.
It seemed like a good plan, and she would’ve lain there longer just to test it out, but then she heard something shifting in the grass very close, somewhere behind her.
She opened her eyes, rolled over, and looked up.
There was a man looming there. The sun was shining down directly behind him, making his profile into a grim silhouette so that she couldn’t see his face at all.
She screamed and thrust herself back away from him, scrambling to her feet as he continued to slouch there, unmoved by her terror. Then she squinted, angling her head away from the sun to compensate for the glare, and her eyes adjusted enough to let her see his face.
It was Chance Garnett, hands in his pockets, staring at her with that same creepy expression he’d shown her at the grocery store.
“You feeling alright?” he asked.
For a moment she was too stunned to respond, and—more importantly—she was embarrassed; for being caught sleeping in the yard like some kind of weirdo, for screaming and showing her fear, for seeming weak, for seeming stupid.
And the embarrassment quickly turned to anger, because she hated to be embarrassed more than anything else in the world. Her image was vital to her. She didn’t like to look stupid or weak or vulnerable.
At first the anger was directed inward—blaming herself for failing to keep her composure, for failing to be on guard—but it quickly turned outward. It was his fault, after all, for being here in the first place. He’d invaded her privacy, put her in an awkward position. She was furious with him. “Goddammit! What in the hell are you doing here?!”
“Whoa, Jesus! Chill out. I was just trying to help. You looked like you might be dead or something.”
“You scared the fucking shit out of me.”
“Not on purpose.” His barely suppressed grin made it clear that he found her outburst amusing, which made her even angrier.
She took a second to wipe the sleep out of her eyes, and noticed his pickup truck, a big brown thing with giant wheels, was parked behind her car. “What were you doing here in the first place?”
“I was just driving by. I saw you from the road.”
She thought about this for a moment, decided it didn’t sound quite right. “So you just happened to be driving by my house—way out here in the middle of nowhere—on the same day we randomly bumped into each other at the grocery store?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what happened.”
“It’s a pretty big coincidence, don’t you think? People don’t usually just bump into each other twice in one day, in two different places, 20 miles apart.”
He shrugged. “I have a friend who lives just down the road. I pass by here two or three times a week.” He glanced up towards the house. “Is your mom home?”
“My mom? Why?”
“I thought maybe since I was already here, you might want to hang out and catch up on old times or something.”
“No, I’m busy — how long were you standing there before I noticed?”
He shrugged. “Not
that long.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I don’t know… You seemed so peaceful laying there, and you look so pretty when you’re sleeping… I guess I just didn’t want to spoil it.”
“And it didn’t occur to you how creepy it was to just stand there watching me sleep, thinking how pretty I am?
His face hardened. “I gotta say, I’m not really liking your attitude that much.”
“Well, I don’t like being stalked by perverts.”
“You’re calling me a pervert? I take the trouble to stop in the middle of a very busy day just to check on your safety, and you start taking shots at me?”
You’re not fooling anybody, you worthless motherfucker.
She was getting a very rapey vibe from him: his body language, the questions he was asking: “is your mom home?”
Had he come here hoping he’d catch her alone? What did he think was going to happen?
For some reason this didn’t really frighten her. Instead she found herself growing even more hostile. She wanted to confront him, to argue, to battle.
And that’s when she realized how confrontational she’d already been—she hadn’t given him an inch since she first laid eyes on him. And it felt really good, too. She wanted to continue, to press him further, squeeze him even harder, to see if she could crack him.
But that wasn’t smart. It didn’t make sense.
You don’t want him here, so just get rid of him…. Smooth things over, and get rid of him.
She took in a deep breath, and held it with her eyes closed for a few seconds, then breathed out slowly.
“Look,” she said, trying to keep all the harshness out of her voice and facial expression. “I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. If I misjudged your intentions, then I’m sorry, but I’ve had a really weird day, and I still have several things I need to take care of, so it would probably be better if you left.”
“Busy day huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Doing what?”
“All sorts of things.”
“Sleeping in the grass? Stuff like that?”
The DARK Trilogy: Titan's Song Chronicles Volume 1 (Books 1 - 3) Page 9