Nightmare Abbey

by David Longhorn

  “Okay, who goes first?” asked Matt, standing at the back of the group.

  “Not you, apparently,” Denny replied, and stepped inside. Gould's flare emitted a bright pinkish glow that made the circular chamber look even more unworldly. The murals, in the flickering light, almost seemed alive. She clicked on her flashlight and picked her way carefully down the stairs, keeping her attention focused on the mass of stone in the center of the room. Behind her Frankie followed, filming the screen while keeping Denny's head and shoulders just in shot.

  “I got that screech in my cans again, like feedback only worse,” Frankie said, lifting her headphones with a grimace. “Could be a sign of something wicked coming this way.”

  Denny reached the cellar floor and paused for a moment, taking in the scene. So far as she could tell, nothing had changed. She swept the flashlight beam across the floor, picked out their own footprints in the dust. Then she paused, swung the light back to the altar. Shadows danced, but so far as she could see, they were all cast by her light.

  “Heads up,” warned Frankie, “I'm getting visual interference now. Snow on the screen.”

  At the same moment, Denny's flashlight began to flicker then faded to a dull orange glow. Gould struck another flare, threw it over by the altar past Denny.

  “Hey you guys, I need help!”

  Everyone turned to look up at the top of the stairs. Denny could just make out a stocky figure staring down at them.

  “Jim!” she shouted. “Did something happen?”

  “It's Brie,” came the reply. “Hurry!”

  Frankie swung around and pointed her camera up at the doorway just in time to see Jim look to one side then run off along the corridor out of sight.

  “What's wrong with Brie?” Denny called, dashing up the stairs. “Jim?”

  She heard Gould shouting something but could not make out the words. She rounded the corner, hesitated. A figure was standing about ten yards away, just outside the feeble glow of the light in the corridor.

  “Jim?” she said, suddenly doubtful.

  The being that had mimicked Jim crouched, its pale limbs elongating, and bounded towards Denny. She saw small, black eyes, a face that was flowing even as the creature hurled itself forward. It snarled, held up claws that now only bore a vague resemblance to human hands. Denny screamed and ran back into the cellar. In her panic, she stumbled halfway down the stairs, fell, and landed hard. Piercing pain shot through her right ankle.

  “Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Matt, who was halfway up the stone stairway. “What is it?”

  “One of them!” shouted Gould. “Get it on film!”

  “Still running,” Frankie said, aiming her camera up at the doorway. “Poor quality, better than nothing.”

  They waited for the Interloper to appear in the doorway, but the portal remained empty. Denny glanced round, seeing puzzlement vying with anxiety on her colleagues' faces. Then she saw something else. The air behind Frankie was starting to shimmer. Denny remembered Gould's description, and opened her mouth to shout a warning. Before she could make a sound, however, a pale, elongated figure materialized. The Interloper wrapped long, thin arms around Frankie, who yelled out in alarm and let go of her camera. Denny was struggling to stand when the first creature appeared, bounding down the stairs. It shot past Gould and Matt before the men could respond and joined its companion. Between them they easily lifted the struggling Frankie off her feet.

  “Help her!”

  Gould and Matt were both frozen with shock, and by the time Denny had staggered upright, Frankie had been dragged into the shimmering sphere. The abduction had taken seconds. Denny fell to her knees, starting to weep with anger and confusion.

  “It was her all along,” said Gould, in a stunned voice. “They sensed her. I thought it was one of the psychics, but it was her.”

  “What are you talking about?” shouted Denny. “We need to do something!”

  “You gonna go into that thing?” demanded Matt, pointing at the sphere of turbulent air as he backed towards the stairs. “Because I'm outta here!”

  “Sure, run away!” Denny cried. “That's your specialty!”

  She stood again, sobbing at the pain, and started to limp forward. Gould grabbed her arm, refused to be shaken off. She began to beat at him with her free hand.

  “You can't,” he said firmly. “Believe me, it's pointless. It's been tried. If you knew what–”

  Gould stopped, staring past Denny, who turned to look into the weird gateway to an unimaginable reality. The shimmering globe was darker, pulsing, growing. It turned almost opaque, and then a hand appeared, clawing at the air. Denny stopped struggling, fell back against Gould.

  “Don't just stand there, you assholes!” Matt shouted from the doorway. “They're coming for us all!”

  “No!” Denny shouted, hoping against hope. “It's Frankie, she's trying to get back!”

  She staggered forward and made a grab for the hand, only realizing as she grasped the fingers that it was way too large to be Frankie's. She tried to pull free but now she was gripped tight. A vague bulk was materializing in the air in front of her, forming three feet above the floor.

  “Get away!” Denny shouted, breaking free with a tremendous effort. She fell backwards just as the stranger emerged fully from the weird portal and collapsed onto the cellar floor. A wave of the now-familiar stench washed over Denny then the shimmering globe vanished.

  “What is it?” Matt yelled.

  Good question, thought Denny, as she pushed herself on her behind away from the grotesque figure that had appeared. Is this a human or not?

  At first, she thought the figure might be an Interloper taking the form of a Halloween scarecrow. But then she saw the tell-tale marks of old wounds on the head and hands, and a few strands of gray hair on the head. Denny decided that she was looking at a tall, painfully thin man clad in ragged clothes that – she realized – must once have been expensive finery. The newcomer wore a long coat, now mostly black with dirt, but she glimpsed of a lining of red silk. A single, tarnished, silver button still clung to the coat, which had lost most of one sleeve.

  But the man's face was far more ravaged than his garments. It was much-lined, deathly white, with dark staring eyes that showed white all around. Denny's flashlight, dropped in the confusion, suddenly flared brightly, restored to full power. At the sudden illumination, the stranger gave a choking cry and covered his face with his hands. His fingernails were long and ragged, but again they looked distinctly human. Then the stranger croaked out a single word.

  “Light!”

  “Is it one of them?” Matt asked, his voice revealing uncertainty. “It doesn't look too dangerous.”

  No, he's not nearly agile enough, thought Denny, as the stranger huddled on the floor, quivering. This looks like a regular human.

  “Who are you?” she managed to ask, trying to sound nonthreatening.

  The stranger uncovered his face, gazed at her open-mouthed.

  “Who,” he said, as if sounding out the simple English word. “Who?”

  The ravaged face contorted in bafflement, as if Denny had posed an immensely difficult problem. Gould stepped forward, bent over the prone figure.

  “Is it George?” Gould asked, in a coaxing tone, as if speaking to a small child. “George, yes?”

  The ragged man uncovered his face, gazed up at Gould.

  “George?” he gasped, then gave a crazy grin. “Yes. Yes!”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I think this is our host. Lord George Blaisdell.”

  “Aw, you're crazy!” scoffed Matt, who had paused halfway up the stairway. “That guy vanished, what, two hundred years ago. Right? How could he be here now?”

  “George,” the stranger repeated. “Lord, yes. Was a lord.”

  The newcomer accepted Gould's offer of a hand and got slowly to his feet. Denny stepped forward and took the man's other arm, helped lead him to the steps, where he sat down. As she helped George hobb
le slowly across the chamber, she saw that the back of his coat had been torn open lengthwise, as had the garments underneath.

  “Gould,” she said. “There's something on his back.”

  The object sticking between Blaisdell's shoulders was like a huge cyst. A little larger than a baseball, it was dull brown and pulsed like a beating heart. From it radiated black strands that vanished under the man's skin.

  “Don't touch it!” Gould warned. “It might be dangerous!”

  “I wasn't going to touch it,” replied Denny. “I'm not crazy! But what the hell is it?”

  The growth on the man's back looked something like a fungus, but its pulsation reminded her of documentaries about weird deep-sea creatures.

  Could it be some kind of disease, she wondered. Or a parasite from the Phantom Dimension?

  Gould began to fire questions at the man, repeatedly calling him George, trying to establish his identity for certain. But the stranger just stared, open-mouthed, at Gould. Denny raised her hand for silence and drew on her own journalistic experience.

  Okay, never ask a question with a simple Yes or No answer. Always get the person to tell their story.

  “George,” she said gently, “where have you been?”

  The thin, shabby man looked up at her, and for a moment Denny feared that he might be too far gone to tell them anything. She thought of traumatized veterans, accident victims, and the abused and damaged who struggled to face their pasts. But then the stranger put his hands to the sides of his head and screamed.

  “Hell! I have been in Hell!”

  ***

  Matt ran along the hallway, fuming silently at the idiocy of Denny and Gould, determined to get out of Malpas Abbey as soon as possible.

  Screw the goddamn show, he thought. To hell with them all. Captain Matt's not gonna go down with this ship.

  He reached the main hall and was about to head back toward the kitchen when he stopped, struck by a simple idea. The Mercedes was, according to Jim, still at the gates. The keys would be in the ignition. Even if they weren't, Matt could hot-wire a car. It was one of many skills he had acquired in his adolescent years.

  They'll still have Gould's car, he reasoned. It's not like I'm actually abandoning them.

  Smiling to himself, he went to the front door and opened it. As the chill night air blew in a spray of rain, he hesitated.

  What if there are more of those things outside?

  Matt looked around, gazed for a moment at the jumbled heap of rotten remains that Jim had dropped onto the hall floor. That Interloper was safely dead, and he had seen two others drag Frankie through the gateway. He hefted his flashlight. The large, rubber-encased torch made a decent club.

  How many of the sneaky little bastards can there be? Maybe they're all gone now.

  Rather than dwell on possible answers, Matt set off into the night, slamming the door behind him. The noise was so loud that he flinched slightly. Anyone nearby would have heard it. Or anything. He set off at a steady jog along the driveway, the flashlight flickering between full power and near-failure. As he got further from the house, though, the light from the torch became steadier.

  Gould was right about his weird physics stuff, Matt thought. A lot of good it will do him if more of those things come through after that George character.

  Now he could see the bulk of the Mercedes ahead, gleaming in the rain. The driver's door was open, and as he climbed in, he saw Jim's keys dangling from the ignition. Slamming the door, he started the engine, flicked on the headlights. The beams illuminated the way to safety. Matt felt himself grow even more tense as he saw how little separated him from freedom and safety.

  Put that pedal to the metal, he thought. And in five seconds, I'm on the road back to the sane world. Back to reality.

  “Were you really going to leave me, baby?”

  Denny's face, her eyes huge and dark, appeared in the driving mirror. At the sight of her, Matt felt his all-too-familiar emotions wash over him. There was confusion and guilt at his decision to run out on her, his intense desire to possess her again, but above all, resentment at the way she had ended their relationship.

  “Denny?” he said. “How did you–”

  “I ran after you,” she said simply. “Remember, I was a track star? You always said I had great legs. Among other attributes.”

  She reached over and ruffled his hair, and he saw that she was naked.

  No, he thought, with a sudden stab of fear. No way is this really her. This is one of them.

  “Get out,” he snapped, picking up the heavy flashlight. “Get away from me you freak!”

  “Aw, you got me,” said the Interloper, leaning forward to put her face a few inches from his. “But I had you fooled for a second, right? You really wanted it to be her. For her to come crawling back to you.”

  Matt did not bother to reply, but instead brought the torch down on the creature's head. There was a sickening crunch, and the monster emitted a pathetic yelp, and fell backwards.

  “Oh, you really hurt me, Matt!” it whined, holding its pale hands over the wound. Dark fluid oozed between its long fingers. “No wonder they always end up leaving you!”

  “Shut up,” he grunted, trying to land another blow. But this time the Interloper was too quick for him. Sharp-clawed talons grabbed his wrist, and they began to struggle for the flashlight. Matt punched at the creature's face but it dodged, moving with alarming speed. Its limbs seemed to be elongating during the fight, the pale body that had been so like Denny's became distorted, a caricature of humanity. And as it lost its seductive form, it became stronger.

  Gotta kill it quick, he thought desperately. Beat its goddam brains out.

  “Should have played along, baby,” the Interloper hissed through its hideous, needle-like teeth. “Now there's gonna be none of the pleasure, just all of the pain.”

  ***

  “Calm down, George,” Denny said, patting his shoulder. “You're safe now.”

  “What do you mean, George?” Gould asked. “Why do you say you were in Hell?”

  “Because the Devil took me there, you silly girl!” replied George, his British accent now very obvious. “I taunted him, took his name in vain, and he came for me. He killed the others, I saw him do it – but me, he took. He chose me to torment for all eternity. Or so I thought.”

  Denny detected a hint of pride in the way George talked of his abduction. The man was pleased, even after his horrendous ordeal, to have been singled out by the Prince of Darkness – as he undoubtedly saw the Interloper that had taken him.

  Maybe he is an old-time aristocrat, she thought. He gives off that kind of vibe. But could someone live for over two hundred years in the Phantom Dimension?

  “What was it like?” Gould demanded, leaning over George. “Is it a world like ours?”

  “Like?” said George, quietly. “There are black stars in a pale sky, living stars that watch you. The sky hurts your eyes, the stars mock you! Cruel stars, hungry stars! And there are things like trees, but with eyes, and mouths, and they walk on their roots. The demons that took me can change their shape, strange beasts. Some squirm, some burrow! They took me into their vile catacombs to be tortured, humiliated, starved. But everywhere is in a great turmoil, a fierce wind blows down from the black stars, sears the skin, scours the mind of reason …”

  The monologue trailed off and George stared vacantly. A thin trickle of drool fell from one side of his mouth.

  “How long were you there?” Denny asked.

  The pale, withered face turned up toward her again.

  “No days or nights in Hell,” George mumbled. “No way to tell the time. An eternity, a moment, who can tell?”

  “A night under the hill,” murmured Gould, eyes wide. “That fits.”

  Denny frowned at her colleague, but before she could ask him what he meant, he went on, “We have to get this man some medical help.”

  Gould helped the stranger to his feet.

  “Come on, Geor
ge,” he said, “let's get you to the kitchen, at least it's warm there.”

  Denny joined Gould and between them they aided the limping, wheezing George up the stairway. At the door, they paused for a moment to look back. There was no sign of the spherical disturbance that marked the gateway to the Phantom Dimension.

  “What if it's closed for good?” she asked.

  “It always opens again, eventually,” Gould replied. “Come on, let's get him to the others. That First-Aid kit will come in handy again.”

  ***

  “Did you hear a scream?” asked Jim.

  “Maybe,” whimpered Brie. “They shouldn't have gone back to that evil place!”

  Jim was changing the dressing on Brie's cheek while Marvin paced back and forth in the kitchen. The single light bulb that lit the room faded again, flickered, then returned to full strength.

  “Hold still,” warned Jim. “I need to swab it with antiseptic. Then I'll put on a fresh dressing.”

  “Does it look real bad?” asked Brie. “It feels numb. Frozen. What if it's infected with something – something alien, something nobody can cure?”

  “It's fine,” Jim insisted, finishing up. “Just a nasty scratch. You'll be good as new after a few days.”

  The hell she will, Marvin thought, looking at Brie's face. That's a festering wound. If she looks in a mirror, she will lose it big time.

  Even in the weak light, he could see that the injury had turned black and seemed to be spreading via dark filaments under Brie's skin.

  “God, you people are idiots,” snorted Marvin, resuming his pacing. “We should just leave.”

  “If you want to help,” said Jim, “you could go and get the Mercedes. The keys are still in the ignition. I might even have left the engine running. Take my flashlight.”

  Now you're taunting me, Marvin thought. Calling me a coward. They're always mocking me, trivializing my contribution.