by David Irons
His face contorted from the putrid smell rising from this monstrosity. Then, looking down to the bottom half of the grotesque mass, he could see the protruding ankle and foot of Kristi Montague slowly being drawn inside like the remnants of a milkshake sucked into a straw.
'Oh my god,' he blurted out.
Kelly slipped Jennifer's grasp, ran towards Matt, 'keep her back!' he shouted.
Alison grabbed the girl.
'Get off me,' Kelly snarled, 'you always hated her anyway!'
Alison, not knowing what to do, grabbed Kelly hard by the shoulders, and screamed at her, 'Just stop it, just stop it!'
Jennifer hated this sight, hated the woman she had despised for so long having her hands on the girl. But for now, it was a good distraction for Kelly; one long enough for her to run next to Matt and see the cocooned form of Kristi filling the bored-out hole in the wall.
'What the hell have they done to her?' she gasped.
'I don't know.'
'Is she alive?'
'Look at it, it's pulsating.'
'She's changing,' Jennifer said sullenly, as Kelly, struggling against Alison, bit into the woman's hand, drawing blood, giving her enough advantage to escape her grip and run over to see what they were looking at.
'Keep her back!' Matt yelled again.
But it was too late.
Kelly skidded to a halt on the dirty, chequered floor. Her eyes as wide as her mouth as she broke down into screams and tears, recognizing her mother's slim foot and ankle, the last thing of the old Kristi that was sucked into the quivering mass of liquidized horror.
'What did they do to her?' she screamed. 'What did they do?'
Tears exploded from the little girl, instantly rolling down her face like a waterfall. Alison and Jennifer pulled her away.
Matt looked back at the hellhole and then said to the others, 'let's get out of this place; let’s go back from where we came from. Now.'
He reached down for his gun in the pool of blood. Opening the chamber, he found that there were no live rounds left inside.
'Shit.'
Snapping it shut and putting it in his pants he guided the women and little girl back out. His hackles rose as he helped them back through. As long as he lived he never wanted to see another sight like this again, the hell hole transmitting morbid waves across his goose-pimpled flesh, knowing somehow he had to get them out, must find a way to safety before they all ended up transforming inside a giant pustule cocoon.
A whisper seemed to slink from the hellhole, a distant far off growl that said, 'Jennifer…'
CHAPTER 28
Jennifer staggered, her brain feeling like it would explode from the top of her head the stress of seeing one of their own transforming into something in-human… Her grasp around the girl's wrist was hard and strong but at the same time she rubbed her thumb soothingly against her skin. It was the only way while trying to get out of this claustrophobic nightmare that she could show her she cared.
Making their way back past the twisted scaffold structures to where they had come from, Matt shoulder barged the other door they hadn't entered, busting it in with a frenzied rush as the group flew past him into safety. Just as he did so, a quick, loud crashing echoed behind them. Turning back, they looked down to the room they had left the decapitated Alex in. Its door fell through in a loud cracking split of wood and dirt. Humanoid glowing-eyed creatures poured through, having finished their feed. The night crawlers still held putrid insectoid forms, but their translucent skin was filled with a more human pigmentation; their eyes still holding that strong volt-ridden charge that penetrated their irises like internal flashlights.
Matt wrenched the door shut, as the intimidating dark things took stride towards them: all legs, all slithering, all slimy and menacing. Using their weight to slam it shut, they ran off into another dark corridor, one that grew with gloom the further they went. Heading into another chamber, where above the roots of roses now twined around a maze of pipes, each one old and rusted, all reaching back to the church behind them.
They paused, coming across another room. Water dripped from corroded pipes in fat drops over a plethora of coffins, each with its lid open — either fallen off or thrown askew to one side — exposing stripped bare corpses, their clothes torn from their bodies with only gnawed bones remaining.
Food from the past, Jennifer thought, the carcasses once providing some kind of sustenance for the creatures that lurked behind them.
Looking at these ravaged coffins, filled with antique chewed bones, something rattled through Jennifer's brain. These things had been here a very long time; that yellow pulsating passage burrowing into the earth, seemed to go down to one place in particular. The place that had been speculated throughout history to have a red hue rather than a yellow one. Whether they be vampire or any other mythological creature, those soulless things that were what they ate, were only one understandable thing, hell spawn: plain and simple.
Her tattoo pulsed, she looked down at that crimson glowing face, knowing there was a reason she was here, knowing, instinctively she was a piece in the unseen, bigger picture.
'Come on,' Matt growled. 'Let's try and find a way out of here.' Still armed with a shovel, Jennifer also hauled the projector, a dead weight that somehow through pumping adrenaline had become part of her arm. Moving in-between the coffins, they avoided them as if a single brush against one would bring instant death. The coldness in these underground chambers injected ripples of gooseflesh across their skin, warm plumes of breath looked like the souls of the dead unable to escape this dingy chamber. Kelly's hyperventilating became louder and louder making Jennifer instinctively wrap an arm around her.
'What had they done to her back there?' she moaned, her voice ailed with pain.
'I don't know,' Jennifer said simply, 'I don't know.'
In a voice softer than her usual one, Alison turned to Kelly. 'When we get out of here, we'll send someone back down to get her. She'll be… Alright.' Jennifer looked at Alison, bemused.
Kelly looked up at Alison, her eyes ripe with confusion. 'You don't believe that.' Alison couldn't think how to respond. Instead she gave the girl an awkward smile then rushed on after Matt.
Jennifer grabbed the girl closer. 'One way or another, we'll find out what has happened to her. First, we have to get out. Let's worry about that for now, Kelly.' Somehow saying the girl's name out loud pricked her interest, cementing her fully in the situation here and now. The girl's mind was a swirling dark pool of information; too many things had happened in too short a time: the creatures, the woman on the wall, the things in the coffins, the priest's death, Alex's, and now her own mother. She had never felt that close to Kristi. Always knew she was just collateral to gain money from her father, a man she had nothing to do with. She was a place hold, a keepsake. A lay away on the benches that the coach only brought out when more payments were needed, a substitute to a full-time job until she ripened to 18 years of age — the age the money stopped flowing.
But tonight, Kelly had seen something in Kristi she had never seen before: a glimpse of her playing the role that had been bestowed upon her. The role that previously she had showed little to no interest in being cast in: the role of her mother.
Now, making their way through the maze of coffins, Matt led the way with his phone's flashlight. They came to a doorway embedded in another dirt wall; old rusted bolts pinned it into its stone block frame.
Matt kicked at it, wincing as his flat leather bottomed shoes slid off the wet planks sending his leg wild. 'Fuck!' he mumbled, trying to regain his balance, fatigue setting in.
'Someone give me a hand, we'll prize its boards off.' Alison ran over, enthusiastic to help, but dilly-dallied on the spot with a shovel in her hand, waiting to be instructed what to do. Matt sensed the woman's uselessness in this situation, guided the sharp end of her shovel in-between the door’s wooden planks.
'Right, pull,' he huffed as the pair of them jarred back. Jennifer gave Kelly a
reassuring squeeze then joined them. With heaves and grunts one of the boards came free, splintering to the ground in two pieces; a gored out hole that should lead to the opposite side was blocked by another plank behind it — the door was sealed shut from the other direction. They quickly moved their shovels to the board beyond, concentrating on the task at hand: getting free of this cold wet tomb.
Kelly watched them work, her senses on high alert, she was the first person to become aware of the scuffing sound behind her, the hinged high-pitched squeal as cold as the shiver that drilled under her skin.
With hairs standing up on the back of her neck, Kelly slowly turned around, looking off into the distance beyond the lines of cracked open coffins. There, in the darkness, shadows began to detach themselves from the walls; a moving flurry of small round lights began to silently slide towards her. But not just any lights, lights that poured a yellow luminosity; lights that really were not lights at all: lights that were a horde of silently moving eyes.
Her jaw jittering, hands shaking, with a quivering lip and tight dried up throat she tried to call the others, but nothing came out. Trying to move her feet forward, each step felt like it was bogged down in a yard's worth of molasses as she looked over her shoulder, fearfully fixating on the slow-moving eyes that stalked towards her.
With a quick exhalation of air, Kelly bumped into Jennifer, and looked up at the red-haired girl, still unable to speak. Jennifer jumped with their collision, making no sense at first of Kelly's wide eyes and mute mouth. The girl grabbed her arm, turned back, pointing towards the stealthy pack of glowing eyes.
Jennifer's face slackened and matched Kelly's, doing the talking for the catatonic girl, she blurted out, 'They're here!'
CHAPTER 29
Matt and Alison snapped around, seeing the moving forms of the creatures in the darkness.
'Get these boards off, NOW,' Matt yelled.
Alison raised her shovel high and jammed it between the boards in front of her, the sight of the oncoming creatures giving her a burst of energy to escape. Jennifer pulled Kelly behind her and paused for a moment. Considering the projector, she quickly picked it up, cranking its power switch on. A bright, thick stream of light poured from its lens, fired towards the closing congregation of eyes. As if its flapping reels of unspooled film were loaded, the beam of the projector brought to life a hideous three-dimensional monster-movie before their eyes. Recoiling from the bright candid beam of light, were a pile of human hybrid insect things, all stepping and slithering around one another attempting to creep up on the escaping humans. Loud high-pitched cries sounded as the light touched their forms, highlighting spindly legs of spiders and bulbous guts of grub all slowly mutating with humanoid anatomy. She noticed that unlike the fabled vampire, the light did not affect their thin skin, but seemed to extinguish the vaporous, eerie glow in their eyes, putting it out as easily as flipping a switch.
Screams spewed out as the high-powered beam acted as a weapon and started to push them backwards, making the creatures huddle towards the far wall. The fear of the bright light source manipulated and moved them around the room; Jennifer wished that with a twist of its lens she would be able to rub them out of focus and existence forever.
Behind her, she could hear Kelly's heavy broken breathing, a sound that was becoming louder than the noisy projector.
More boards hit the floor as Matt and Alison worked to rip them off. With the reels of the projector rattling, an air of confidence came over Jennifer. The creatures moving back a good twenty feet as she walked further into the room of coffins, spraying the light over them, making sure no strays were hidden as she went.
Matt paused; an almost human-sized hole had appeared in the broken boards. 'Come on, let's go!' he yelled.
Jennifer flicked her head back to look at him, teeth gritted; not until that moment did she realize the distance she had put between herself and their exit.
Turning back to the writhing creatures, she took her first step back towards the small group. Then, with a droning mechanical death, the heavy battery she had been dragging around all night suddenly lost its charge, causing the bright beam that had captured the creatures, to suddenly cut off. Slowly, the foul things turned back to her, each one of them folded around the other, each one using their own as a barricade from the now dead light they once feared. Realizing the thing that recoiled them was now gone, in unison, their heads turned towards the humans, eyes igniting like the flames on a gas stove. The upper hand was theirs again; warped grimaces and macabre smiles pulled over their awful faces as laces of hungry spittle spilled from between sharp teeth.
Her stomach dropped, knowing the tables had turned as the creeping things in front of her fanned out, widening across the room, leaving no space for escape.
'Matt… Matt…' Kelly peeped, her eyes transfixed by the slithering creatures.
Matt reached for Kelly and dragged her behind him, shielding her from the sight of Jennifer inside a shrinking frame of carnivorous monsters.
'Matt!' Alison cried. He ignored her, raising the shovel above his head, ready to go in for the attack. A futile thing, he knew, but the only thing that was possible now. As he did, he heard a metallic chink and felt a long vibration rattle down the shovel’s wooden handle. There above him, the shovel’s metal end was caught in-between a series of pipes. Suddenly, a flash went through his mind. Detective work was a thing that needed you to be good at everything, more specifically, you needed to be good lying about everything. He remembered Johnny Foree teaching him this racket, the easiest way of getting in a house was posing as a maintenance man. But rather than just giving him a jump suit and fake ID, he also gave him the skinny on the basics, bringing some realism to the lie so as not to be easily caught out. He could rewire a fuse box, test for voltages, and knew how to shut off water or… gas pipes. Now, the latter was straight over his head.
Acting fast, he grabbed for the pipe, wrenching it downwards, sliding it free from wet mud, until it was bent down to the height of his midsection. He knew there was a fifty-fifty chance the pipe was active. The building, its age: who knew if any gas had ever been pumped through these pipes? It was a chance he would have to take. It was the only chance.
Finding a join in the two pipes, he tried to twist them loose.
'What are you doing?' Alison cried out. 'Let’s just go!'
'I have to get her out of there!'
'Just goooooo!' she obnoxiously screamed back.
Her voice and his annoyance mixed into a moment of rage. He tried to channel it, tried to use it to pull the corroded pipe apart, but it didn't work. Only becoming more annoyed with the woman's whining.
The coalescing creatures were climbing onto the coffins and walls now, slowly moving towards Jennifer, each one now in competition with the next, wanting its bite to be the first into the fleshy girl in front of them.
Matt jumped back and raised the shovel, bringing it down on the pipes' join. A rattling vibration jangled through his entire body, making the fillings in his teeth stand on end. Then with another swift hard strike from the shovel, the join metallically shrieked as it snapped and broke free.
The fifty-fifty bet paid off. Bellowing gas poured through the air in a sudden stream. With no time to lose, he bent the pipe towards the creatures; hissing gas breezed against their faces, taking their attention from Jennifer. Their bulbous eye lights beamed towards Matt, staring him down as he reached for his pockets, looking for his lighter.
Raising it up to the pipe, he yelled with as much force as his lungs allowed him, 'GET DOWN!'
Only then did Jennifer see Matt holding the pipe. Knowing what was coming next, she hit the floor, rolling towards the others at the broken through doorway.
With a single flick of flint, the dark room immediately ignited with a huge streaming orange fireball. The creatures howled, the nearest ones on top of the open coffins becoming chargrilled, withering with the heat, turning them into black burning silhouettes with the blast; revealing th
e hideous faces of the others, radiated by the hellish flames that illuminated every pulsating vein and slimy fold and flap of their mutating forms.
Matt held the pipe for as long as possible before heat overtook the temperature of its metal. Swiftly, he twisted it around, now a makeshift flamethrower. Jennifer pulled herself up. Stumbling she grabbed onto Kelly, trying to stabilize herself, then reached hold of Alison and felt a repulsed flinch beneath the woman's jacket.
'Come on Matt!' Alison screamed.
Jennifer climbed through the hole in the door, making sure there were no subterranean creatures waiting in the next chamber, reaching back to pull Kelly through next to her. 'Matt, come on!' she yelled.
He turned to look at her, the orange flame outlining his shape. The creatures, backing away from the heat, sneered and hissed at the escaping humans. Matt let go of the pipe, turned and ran.
'Get in!' Alison shrieked, packing him into the hole.
It was then Alison, instead of following, stepped back into the room.
'What are you doing?' he screamed.
'We've got to get them!' she cried in her meek voice. He could only watch as the woman twisted the ignited pipe, not towards the creatures — but around towards them. Wrenching the pipe in a direction it didn't want to move, a huge screech came from the pipe as it buckled in the earth. She screamed, looking directly at Matt and the two girls, a maniac smile touching her lips, the reflection of the spewing flames filling the lenses of her glasses. What Matt had feared would happen with the pipe, did; the rear section of the pipe broke, snapping through the age of time, spewing down lapping flames that engulfed Alison's body.
She ignited like a wick, her outfit crisping with the intense heat. Her head of black curled hair burned bald under the downpour of raw intense heat. She let out a horrified shrill scream; a scream that could break glass as it bounded about the cavern. Matt and Jennifer bundled backwards, pulling Kelly with them, away from the sight and smell of the burning woman writhing in front of them.