Wormwood Dawn (Episode VI)

by Crae, Edward

  As they went on, Dan thought of the shadow people. Toni said she had seen one. As far as he knew, she was the only one—her and the kid on the bulletin board, that is. Dan had not only seen them, but had witnessed them tearing apart the Robert creature. He was sure he had seen it. But maybe keeping that fact to himself was a good idea. Drew and Jake didn’t seem to believe him. Vincent had, though.

  But Vincent was dead.

  “I wonder if there’s anything left of the church,” Eric said. “I doubt it burned all the way down with the rain and all, but I bet it’s mostly gone.”

  “If there’s anything left,” Dan said. “It would likely be the basement. I already told you what I think of church basements.”

  Toni chuckled behind him. “Something happen to you in a church basement?”

  “Yeah,” Dan replied. “We got attacked by a mob of toddlers.”

  “Oh,” Toni said, regretfully. “I thought maybe… never mind.”

  Eric snickered.

  “Shut up,” Dan said. “I didn’t get diddled by a preacher.”

  Eric and Toni laughed out loud.

  “Here we are,” Dan said, stifling a laugh. “Aaaaaand it’s still up.”

  The clearing was scorched, littered with bodies, and the church itself was somewhat intact. The roof had caved in, along with most of the top floor, and the corner of the first floor that faced them was burnt and crumbled. The stone chimney was collapsed directly away from the siding, and lay in pieces.

  “You guys burned down a church, huh?” Toni said, shaking her head. “Are you guys a Norwegian metal band or something?”

  “Not quite,” Dan said. “But I’m impressed with your knowledge of real music.”

  “Black girls don’t always listen to R&B,” she said. “Some of us like to get jacked and fuck shit up. You can’t do that to Mary J. Blige.”

  “Who?” Eric asked. Toni shot him a look, and he grinned. “Just kidding,” he said.

  “Alright, let’s go in,” Dan said. “Keep it down and listen for any movement. If Mason’s men are here molting or whatever the fuck it’s called, we don’t wanna wake them.”

  They crept up to the collapsed corner, lights off and silent as they could be. Dan peered inside, scanning the darkness for any movement or odd smells. There was nothing but black, and the smell of soot. Hesitantly, he lifted his rifle and shined the light inside. The chapel was just as they had left it, other than the huge pile of burnt rubble from the upper floor.

  He climbed up and waved the others inside.

  “This is where the big stalker was,” Dan said, pointing to the remains of the creature’s cocoon. “That’s what it came out of.”

  Toni scowled in disgust. “That’s nasty,” she said. “And this thing was human?”

  “Two of them,” Eric said. “Stuck together for some reason.”

  “What do you mean?” Toni asked. “Like back to back or side to side, what?”

  Dan and Eric both shook their heads. “Not sure,” Dan said. “It was like they were just… one.”

  “Okay,” Toni said, raising her eyebrows.

  Dan stood and swept the room with his light. There was no movement, or anything unexpected. He continued on, motioning for them to follow. They made their way through the rubble, going behind the pulpit where the doors to the back still stood. In their previous visit, they had fled through the door on the left. It was gone now, along with half of the wall. Dan decided to go right.

  He put his ear against the door for a moment, listening for any movement inside. When he was satisfied it was quiet, he gently turned the knob and slid the door open. His flashlight revealed nothing but an office. It was mostly intact, with only the wall on their left partially destroyed. There was some fire damage, nothing more.

  “This must be the pastor’s office,” Dan said. “It looks about as boring as it could possibly be.”

  There were very few furnishings. Only a large desk with a leather office chair, one book shelf with various Christian texts and encyclopedias, and a globe on the far wall for some reason.

  A large Bible sat open on the desk. Dan went over to look at it. It was open to Revelations. Figures, Dan thought. Ignoring it, he reached down to open the side drawer. There was a .38 revolver inside, a box of rounds, and a small, leather bound book. He grabbed all of the items and stuffed them in his pocket.

  “Dan,” Eric said. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

  He looked up, seeing Eric and Toni transfixed on something that decorated the wall. He went over and shined his flashlight on it. His stomach flipped when he saw it.

  “Shit,” he said.

  It was a photo of middle-aged male twins; identical twins. One of them wore the garments of a preacher, the other, a priestly collar.

  “It’s them,” Eric said. “Or… it.”

  “Holy shit,” Toni said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Dan was speechless. All he could do was stare at the two faces. They were two brothers, born from the same egg, sharing the same womb, bound together until their death at the hands of some sociopath from the armpit of Indiana. Evidently, they had been so close that their transformation was mutual. Their cocoon was as mutual as their mother’s womb.

  “What the fuck,” Dan whispered in disbelief. “How?”

  Eric was silent. He looked like he was about to explode. Maybe the thought of the twins melding together into one monstrosity was just too much for him to handle. It was almost too much for Dan to handle.

  “Guys,” Toni said. “I know this is fucked up, and you want some answers, but we came here for a reason. We need to get to it.”

  Dan nodded, still fixated on the photo. Eric rubbed his eyes and turned away from it as if it were causing him excruciating pain.

  “Alright,” Dan said. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  They left the office and went to the door on the left side of the chapel. Dan and Eric had been here before, but this time the rooms were blackened and filled with puddles from the rain that had dripped in from above. The ceiling was collapsed for the most part, and all of the cabinets had been crushed by the falling debris.

  Dan looked up through the massive hole in the ceiling, shining his light up to the remainder of the top floor. Only a small section of roof was left, and everything else was black and crumbled. The door to the stairway was gone, as was the stairway itself, from the landing on up.

  “It’s all gone,” Dan said. “I don’t see anywhere else they could have come.”

  “Maybe we were right to begin with,” Eric said. “The coyotes got them.”

  Dan shrugged. “That’s possible,” he said. “But then where is Melanie’s cocoon?”

  Everyone was silent as they swept the ruins. Eric paced, shining his flashlight on every single surface, looking for any clue he could find; no matter how small. Dan sighed and leaned against the wall, letting his rifle rest against the floor. That’s when he realized that there was a large rug rolled up on one side of the room, along the wall with the closet they had found on their previous visit.

  He raised his rifle again, running his flashlight along the floor until he found what he was looking for.

  “Guys,” he said. “Look at this.”

  There was a trap door in the center of the floor, barely noticeable among the hardwood planks. It had no handle, only a wide cavity that served as a pull. Dan reached down and gripped the door, looking up at Toni and Eric.

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  Eric moved over to the opening, pointing his shotgun downward in case something tried to escape when Dan opened it. With a grunt, Dan tugged, and the trap door came open. It squeaked as he laid it down on the floor, and a wave of heat blew up from the cellar below. It smelled terrible; like rotting fish and sewage.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dan said, covering his nose. Eric and Toni did the same.

  “I don’t see a ladder,” Toni said through her fingers.

  Dan leaned over the opening,
shining his light straight down. The floor was about six feet down, paved in crumbled red brick, and damp. On its surface were the muddy and smeared footprints of several different non-humans. Dan swallowed in anticipation.

  “I think we found something,” he said.

  “So who goes first?” Toni asked.

  “Well,” Dan said. “We could lower you down there and—“

  “Nope,” she said immediately.

  “I’ll go first,” Eric said, surprisingly brave all of a sudden.

  Dan leaned back as Eric shouldered his shotgun and began climbing into the hole. He lowered himself down with his arms, straining a little against his own weight. Then, he dropped, hitting the floor and immediately unshouldering his rifle to search the darkness.

  “See anything?” Dan asked.

  “It’s a small room,” Eric whispered. “But there’s a brick corridor ahead.”

  Dan looked up at Toni, who shrugged and shook her head. “After you,” she said.

  Dan dropped down into the cold cellar right next to Eric, who stood off to one side pointing his light at the tunnel. Dan moved aside so Toni could come down.

  “Careful,” he said. “It’s slippery.”

  Toni slipped a little when she landed, but recovered quickly, drawing one revolver and a large buck knife.

  “Not going guns akimbo?” Dan asked.

  Toni shook her head. “Do you have any idea how loud a .44 Magnum is in a tight space?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  He went forward, sweeping the floor with his light. The muddy footprints led right into the corridor, disappearing into the darkness. He adjusted his beam to make it wider, hoping to light more of their path. Everything was the same; all of it damp, red brick.

  “Whoever built this wasn’t much of a decorator,” Dan said.

  “With no stairs or external entrance,” Toni said, “this may not have been meant as a usable space. It was probably a storm drain or something.”

  “Or possibly a cistern,” Eric added. “Or emergency storm shelter.”

  Dan entered the corridor first. It was roughly four feet wide, with a five foot ceiling. All of them, even Toni, had to duck to go through. Like the small entryway, the corridor was damp and smelly. The footprints were smudged from here on out; and completely gone by the time they had gotten about ten feet in. Here, the floor was wet with tiny rivulets of muddy water that leaked in from the walls.

  Ahead another ten feet, the tunnel opened up into another dark room, and Dan could hear the gentle trickling of water.

  “I think we’re going downhill,” Dan said.

  When they reached the end of the tunnel, Dan’s suspicions were confirmed. The tunnel opened up into a large chamber whose floor was another two feet down. Water trickled over the lip and into a brick-lined trench that spanned the length of the new room. Dan plopped down, shining his light around. The ceiling was about the same height as the entry way, but sloped and crumbled; a few bricks missing here and there.

  The smell was getting worse, and the heat was getting more intense.

  “It shouldn’t be this warm down here,” Toni said. “Should it?”

  “Probably not,” Dan replied. “But I’m no scientist. Something’s making it warmer though.”

  He could Eric sigh behind him.

  “Sack up, Eric,” he said. “This may be your moment to shine.”

  “I’ll be a lot shinier when this is over.”

  After they had all dropped down into the room, Dan crouched again and shined his light into the darkness ahead. The current room was around fifteen feet long, and led to another small tunnel. The trench continued into the darkness, and Dan could hear a slightly more intense trickling of water.

  “You know,” Toni said. “This has got to be one of the strangest situations I’ve ever experienced.”

  “What do you mean?” Dan asked.

  Toni gave him a look of disbelief. “Seriously?” she asked. “I’m crawlin’ around in a damn dungeon with two white boys. That kinda shit doesn’t happen every day.”

  Dan grinned and started forward again. The strange smells were changing and intensifying. In addition to the rotting smells, there was the smell of mildew and what he could only guess was piss. He came to the sudden realization that this may have been not only a storm sewer, but also a cesspit. He shivered at the thought. However, that would explain the heat. Decomposing waste gave off heat.

  “Shit pit,” he said out loud.

  He could hear Eric gag.

  He led them into the second tunnel, noting how the warm breeze had picked up. It was very noticeable now, but mixed in with outside air. He could barely make out the faint smell of pine. They emerged into a large, round chamber, lit from a ventilation shaft in the peak of the dome-like ceiling. There, hanging near the peak, were a half a dozen cocoons.

  “Holy shit,” Dan said, shining his flashlight at the larger, deflated one.

  Eric’s flashlight lit them as well, revealing that the five others were still occupied, but were motionless and dripping with green fluid. Dan studied them closer, seeing that they were covered with deep lacerations. The half-mutated torso of one of the occupants was hanging out, lifeless and mutilated.

  Dan shined his flashlight in the middle of the room. There were at least two dozen bodies in various stages of composition; from almost freshly killed down to nearly bare skeletons. One of them, a fresh one, was riddled with bullet holes. Dan recognized the body as one of the men from Oolitic.

  “Mason’s men,” Dan said. “And some other poor victims.”

  “The cocoons,” Eric gasped. “Melanie must have hatched first and killed the rest.”

  Dan nodded. “That looks like what happened.”

  He carefully went across the room to get a closer look at another body. It was naked and pale, resembling one of the ghouls. He flipped it over with his boot, gasping as the thing opened its eyes.

  “Shit,” he said, putting a round in its head.

  The creature groaned as its head was pulverized, and slumped down lifeless. Dan looked at Eric and Toni, who were still in shock.

  “We got what we came here for,” he said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  There was a rough tunnel on Dan’s side of the chamber, with foul water and other things floating down it in a small river of filth. Fresh air wafted in from the outside. This was likely the final drain that led out into the nearby creek—which was obviously some kind of effluent system.

  Dan squatted down to peer into the round, stone-lined tunnel. It was roughly four feet in diameter; large enough to duck walk through. He turned to his friends with a questioning glance?

  “Shall we?” he asked. “It’s better than going back the way we came.”

  “What if it’s blocked at the end by a grate?” Eric asked.

  “It’s not that sturdy,” Dan said. “We could probably knock it out.”

  A sudden splattering sound startled them. Buckets of green and brown fluid splashed down from the darkened dome, covering the floor and splatting on the walls. Eric shined his gun light up, seeing a newly opened cocoon still flapping and dripping.

  “What the fuck?” Dan growled.

  He searched the ceiling with his own light. All he could see were shadows, and the veiny flaps of torn cocoons. He started to back into the tunnel and drag the others with them when a low, echoing hiss pierced the silence.

  There, attached head down to the wall, was a monstrosity of bone and bare flesh. It clung to the wall like a lizard, flicking its snake-like tongue in and out. It was roughly human shaped, but with no discernable skin; only the glistening red fibers of tightly corded muscle and exposed bone. Its long tail flitted from side to side menacingly as it began its slow, threatening descent.

  Eric fired his shotgun immediately. The blast pounded the bricks near the creature, and it jumped to the opposite side. Dan raised his rifle, flicking on its laser sight. Toni had already drawn her other revolve
r, and her rapid firing filled the chamber with its deafening power. Dan fired several shots at the creature as it jumped from surface to surface, its bone chilling hisses echoing in the small dome.

  “Fuckin’ go!” Toni shouted, pushing Eric into Dan and down the tunnel. “Move!”

  Dan backed into the shadows, keeping Toni and Eric in sight. They were all faced backwards into the chamber, waiting for the creature to drop down and give chase. Finally, it did. Toni’s revolvers went into action again. She emptied the remaining rounds into the beast, splattering its thick blood on the walls and pissing it off something fierce.

  She pushed past Eric and Dan, reaching into her pockets for more rounds. The two men unloaded on the creature as it crawled rapidly down the tunnel like a fairy tale dragon. Dan removed and replaced his magazine just in time. The creature’s tongue shot out at Eric, who was frozen in fear. But Dan fired just in time, hitting the creature square in the face, and it drew back its tongue.

  “Go!” he shouted, turning to push Toni down the tunnel.

  Toni yelped suddenly and fired her revolver down toward the exit. Dan turned to look, seeing the headless corpse of a shambler slowly settling down into death. Eric continued to pummel the creature with shotgun blasts, drawing more intense howls of pain and fury from their pursuer. Still, the creature came.

  “Dan!” Toni shouted. “There’s another chamber!”

  “What the fuck?” he whispered.

  He turned around, following Toni as she jumped down into the opening ahead of them. He grabbed Eric, pulling him along. They landed in a rocky cavern, where all of the waste from the tunnels gathered into a chunky, smelly pool. Fortunately, they were able to avoid it.

  They backed away from the large hole, their weapons pointed into the shadows, waiting for the creature to emerge. One claw appeared, then another, and then the red, glowing eyes. They unloaded into it, splattering the walls with its blood. It backed away quickly, and hid in the darkness.

  Dan turned around and shined his light in every direction looking for the exit. There was a cave to their right, leading down. Dan pushed them toward it, but then shined his flashlight upward for some reason he couldn’t fathom.