The Plight of Dr. Grayson

by David Willoughby

  ***

  I awoke groggily aware of a subtle presence in the room with me. The cabin, having no real buffer against the outside world, was probably frequently invaded by the indigenous animals. I lazily swept my fingers towards the revolver on the makeshift night stand. As my fingers grazed the metal I felt the presence intensify, as if the thing in the room had gained psychic mass. I bolted up in my bed and swept the room with my gaze, the darkness creating indistinguishable shapes that danced in my vision. The chair in the corner of the room, the chest against the far wall, the coat rack, all of these things loomed menacingly in the darkness until at last my eye sight settled and I noticed the thing resting in the rocking chair.

  I say that it was a thing because even in my hazy state I knew that it was not human, though it sat with proper posture and rested in the chair as a human might. The thing that sat in the rocking chair, however, was anything but human. I stared at the thing, wishing I had had the forethought to bring the revolver with me when I had swung upright. I stared, not knowing the things intention. I sat there for what felt like an eternity as the thing stared back with indistinguishable features in the darkness. I allowed my hand to slowly crawl back towards the revolver. I twisted slightly, trying to hide my hand movement from the thing. As soon as my hand touched the bed stand a flash of movement caused me to blink, and in that mere moment the thing was now sitting on the foot of my bed.

  “I wouldn’t do that doctor” said the thing in a taunting voice that had the singing chorus of a thousand voices speaking in unity. The thing now sat on the foot of the bed, crouched up like a one might see a bird preparing to spring in to flight. It had the body of a human but it was elongated and boney. I admit now that I panicked. I reached for the revolver and swung it about to find the thing absent from the foot of my bed. The apparition had merely disappeared.

  I sat swinging the revolver about in my hand eyeing every stray shape that came in to my field of vision. The errant twitches of my hand convulsed down my arm, I knew that the natives often drank hallucinogenic beverages; a habit they sometimes neglected to warn visitors of, but that had seemed all too real.

   No sooner did I have that thought than did the thing crawl, and in every sense crawl, up from the foot of the bed. “But it was real Doctor” said the impossible voice that spoke in legion. A mere spasm of my hand sent lead pouring from the barrel of the revolver and rocketing towards the face of the thing. A clean shot brought on by fear sent half of the things face off in to oblivion. I felt my heart race and the cavity of my chest compress in to nothing as I was blinded by the flash of the .38. Never before have I reacted so purely out of terror, being a man of science and study. I knew not of the things that dwell in the dark and by all rights wished to be ignorant of the terror they might bring.

  I stood up from my bed and strode, with what little composure I could muster, around towards the foot of the bed. The thing that lay there was some cross hashed amalgamation of what a person might look like if one had never seen a person, but only heard of one described in rough detail. A face relatively devoid of features and a body that was lean and muscular with a collection of bones keeping the parts together in a roughshod manner with hardly the meat to cover the bones. Its skin had a sickly grey tone to it. The scrawny terror lay on the floor bleeding from the wound to its head with its face twisted in a grotesque impression of a smile.

  The hand of the fiend twitched. I thought of nothing as I jerked the revolver up and fired at the fiend’s hand, missing the appendage by inches. The loud noise and blinding flash seemed to have an effect on the monstrosity as it gurgled with its half a face, hand stretching towards me. I fired at the thin chest of the grey creature until I grew tired of the dry click of the hammer of the revolver. The creature did not move again. I half expected such an abomination to be immune to such damages, but the thing appeared to stay quite dead this time.

  I stumbled towards the door and knocked it open only to reveal an entirely alien terrain that seemed to be a hack job of the place I had visited the day before. What looked like a sun was rising in to the sky but it shed little light on to the brazenly foreign terrain. I fell to my knees as I stared out in to the dark forest. The dirt had a sandy color to it, looking more like sun scorched sand than the mud that had coated the place only hours ago.

  I saw now amidst the alien landscape that there were signs of life amidst the trees. I saw plumes of smoke that drifted lazily in to the sky. I heard the banshee screams of warriors that I had heard soldiers spread tales of on their trips back from the west.  The hollering whooping roar of some distance chant could be heard clearly through the trees. The guttural noises sounded strangely familiar, the haunting legionsness of the voices sounded similar to the strange tongue of the thing that had been in the cabin with me.

  I crept back in to the cabin and fetched the remaining three rounds form the night stand, cursing my irresponsible waste of ammo earlier. I loaded the final three rounds and flipped the revolver closed. I walked back towards the door keeping a steady eye on the lifeless corpse at the foot of my bed. It remained mercifully motionless.

  I quickly surveyed the alien surroundings as I excited the abode. It was still rather dark; the sky was bright enough for me to navigate the dirt paths towards the smoke pillars that funneled in to the sky. The trees that had seemed menacing yesterday looked absolutely aggressive today; the wind seemed to push them towards me at every turn causing their grasping branches to take on a near life like reach. My thoughts on the alien landscape distracted me from the sounds about until it was nearly too late to notice the pounding of hooves on hard pack. As I emerged from a particular path at a T intersection I saw in plain day light two naked figures of familiarly gangly proportions mounted on preposterous abominations. They rode down the path towards me but were currently too far away to have seen me clearly, I unfortunately wasted valuable seconds staring at the impending abominations and their riders. They noticed me and rode hard towards me.

  Discretion is truly the better part of valor, a line I thought in dry gallows humor as I turned and ran in pure terror at the idea of what may become of me at the hands of those impossible monsters.  I became more and more aware that there was no way I could out run them on the path. I cut hard to the right and headed up the slight embankment in to the trees. A sudden tightness around my legs dropped me to my knees and I landed face first in to the pile of dry dirt.

  The loose particles stung my eyes and gritted against my face. I twisted around quickly to notice that I had been lassoed. Of all the mystifying powers in the world, of all the horrible other worldly things that could have been rallied against me, I had been lassoed. I felt a strong tug at my feet and my face scraped the dirt. I pressed up allowing my hands to take the brunt of the dragging as opposed to my already battered head.

  I wiggled around in to my back in time to watch the first abomination dismount his steed. He was curling up the rope like a practiced cowboy, his grotesque nude form a mockery of famous western motifs. The other grey skinned thing stayed atop its steed. At this range I could study more closely the semi rotted nature of those steeds. The things looked much like grey horses with skeletal legs and very exposed ribs, bits of open flesh wounds around the shoulders seeped black pus. The wounds seemed to be a result of the bones that jutted from their shoulder; the movement of it seemed to tear apart the skin above it as if the two did not belong together. The misshapen face only vaguely resembled the head of a horse. The proportions were just off kilter enough that it seemed wrong.

  As my lassoing captor closed in I held my hands up to shield myself, it batted aside my feeble attempts at self defense. I dug in to my pants pocket and drew the revolver. Quick of reflexes the thing knocked it loose from my grip and followed with a sharp blow to my head. The world flooded with darkness.