Marlow

by Andy Briggs

  “There's thousands of them,” whispered Boris, his voice cracking. “What are they doing with them all?”

  Marlow knew the Infiltrators were ruthless predators but she never thought they killed for food, just for hatred. Then again, Infiltrator biology was an area nobody had investigated. She was reminded how close the Infiltrators had been to her children - right outside their door. It was heartbreaking to think their lives were at risk, but it was somehow more alarming that they were being kept alive for some unsavoury, or even savoury, reason. Somehow that seemed worse than a quick death. She gently patted her jacket, feeling Dan's mobile phone inside. She could still call them...

  “Where are they taking them?” Boris repeated. Marlow broke from her muse and shrugged, a gesture that irritated Boris. “Do you know anything?” He turned back to the line of creatures carrying their victims to the end of the street, through the portal, and into the twisted reality beyond. “We must free them.”

  “Are you nuts? There're thousands of them! How long do you think we could stand up to that many Infiltrators while we hack open them pods? Thirty seconds? A minute? And they look just like workers, what if they call for reinforcements, some of the big suckers back there? We'd be dead before we broke the first person out.”

  Boris sighed, Marlow was right, but that didn't mean he had to like it. “So how do we get the Darkmare to come out?”

  Marlow hadn’t thought that far ahead, she’d been more focused on avoiding the critters in the street, but now they were here the major problem had revealed itself.

  “Well... I was kinda hoping harsh language might’ve lured it out,” said Marlow lamely.

  “Tell me you’re joking?”

  The truth was the plan had sounded feasible back in her father’s cottage, but they hadn’t factored in the host of Infiltrators occupying the town. The scale of the invasion was shocking.

  “Then we have to go to it.”

  Marlow shook her head. “Can’t be done. No human can cross. It’s like a waking dream over there. You could Astral Walk, but you’d have to be asleep and then the Darkmare would have control over you.”

  “So we just sit here and wait?” snapped Boris irritably.

  Marlow watched the creatures' movements, identifying routes around them towards the shimmering wall between realities which was now a gap half a mile wide, severing the town in half as it accepted a constant train of captives going in.

  “Those people’re alive in there,” she mused.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So the cocoon must protect them.” She was thinking about something Dan had said, then thought about her father’s lab.

  Boris snickered hopelessly. “You want to hide in a pod? Wonderful idea. That’s assuming they don’t kill you on sight or that you can hack your way out from the inside. I don’t see many people escaping, do you?”

  “The Infiltrators infect their Conduit’s mind with a calming sedative. It acts as a lubrication between worlds and allows the beast to open the portal to come through.”

  “So?”

  “So, if we can get some of that... perhaps we can get through there,” she nodded towards the portal.

  Boris frowned. “And where exactly do you obtain this sedative?”

  Marlow’s midnight blade cleaved through the Infiltrator’s neck. The creature collapsed, crystalizing as it fell into the snow. Marlow dropped the blade and caught the beast’s head to prevent it from shattering on the pavement.

  They had retraced their steps until the came across a patrolling Infiltrator, one of sufficiently small size that Marlow felt comfortable to ambush. Luckily it hadn’t taken long.

  Boris stared at the head. “So, where exactly is this sedative stored?”

  Marlow carefully laid the head in the snow and used her blade to chip through the creature’s beetle-shaped head. It splintered like candy and Boris took a step back in repulsion as she exposed the gelatinous brain which gave a fishy scent.

  With a crunch, Marlow peeled a section of skull away, which crumbled in her fingers. Inside the skull cavity was an oval rubbery sac. Through the thin membrane the same electric blue ooze she had seen in his father’s lab was visible. She carefully held it up for Boris to see, keeping one hand over as protection from the falling snow.

  “And what exactly do we do with that?” asked Boris. “Daub ourselves in it so we glow in the dark?”

  “Don’t be dumb. We drink it.”

  For a moment Boris said nothing. He expected Marlow to add a punch line. When he saw the Hunter was serious he grimaced. “You’re insane.”

  “The Infiltrators administer this stuff straight in your noggin’,” said Marlow tapping Boris’ forehead. “The best way of getting it in there I can think of is to drink it. Then we can go right thought to the other side.” She hesitated. “In theory.”

  “What if we don't go?” he said quietly. Marlow studied Boris's pale face. “I mean, what do we really expect to do once we're through there?”

  “Find the Darkmare and kill it.”

  Boris couldn't meet her gaze and focused on his own feet. “We should have tried to wake, Dan. I mean, if he is responsible for opening this... if we just wake him...”

  “Dan's body is asleep, but his mind ain't home. Understand?”

  Boris's jaw muscles worked overtime. “I keep thinking of Bryony. My daughter’s alone with him. If anything...”

  “She ain’t alone, that copper’s with her.”

  Boris rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t know what to do!”

  “Listen, Dan's mind is in Innerspace right now.” Marlow pointed towards the portal beyond the smothered buildings. “Through there. Remember your dreams as a kid? No matter how nice they seemed, what you recall is a distorted version of that place there. There you can create anything, be anyone...” She stared at the reality rip fully aware of the irony that she had never had a dream in her life, yet was about to walk across the threshold into a waking nightmare. The very first she would experience, and in all probability, the very last.

  Boris's voice was nothing more than a whisper. “What if you're wrong?”

  “Then we’ll fry to dead trying to cross over.”

  Marlow studied him for several moments. Boris was clearly on the edge of a breakdown fuelled by raw fear. He would be a useless sidekick in his current state, and Marlow couldn't imagine him getting any better. As usual, she was being left down, forced to face the horrors alone. Nothing new, except this time she felt no bitterness. She had no doubt that passing into the abyss was the only way to save her own children, Trebor. She was doing it for them - not for money. She recognised that in Boris, beneath the dread was genuine concern for his family that outweighed personal safety and it was driven by regret.

  Empathy, she thought, that's what it's called. She had read about it once, but now she understood. After all, she was not only doing this just for her own family, but for Dan too.

  “Dammit,” she swore aloud. She had no desire to go alone, but a part of her needed to make sure the kid was safe. “You're right. You should be with them. Make sure they're OK.” The relief flooding across Boris's face was instant. “Just keep your head low and don't engage any Infiltrator in a fight. You see one, run or hide.” Boris nodded. Marlow caught his arm. “And just in case...” she trailed off, unsure how to describe her own imminent death, “Y’know... find my family. Get them out.”

  Boris solemnly shook her hand. “I promise. Good luck.”

  Marlow watched Boris disappear back the way they came, never once looking back. She wanted to hate him, but couldn't muster the energy required to be so cynical. Instead she poked a hole through the delicate sac she’d scooped from the Infiltrator’s brain and put it to his lips. It smelled like off seafood.

  “Cheers,” she muttered, then knocked the thick fluid back. It was an unpleasant sensation to feel the ice cold gunk slowly flow across her tongue and slither down her throat. She coughed, almost choking, and grabbed a handful of s
now to chase the brain-fluid down.

  The taste lingered in her mouth, but it hadn’t killed her. She retraced her steps back towards the portal. Getting past the Infiltrator Workers and through the gap would be easy. She just hoped Dan’s speculative idea about crossing to the other side would work.

  Without another thought, Marlow sprinted forward, intent on saving the world and hoping she wouldn’t be sick along the way.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bryony dabbed a dripping cool flannel against her son's head. In the last few minutes he had begun to whimper and twitch as he broke into a fever. Behind his closed lids his eyes wheeled around in REM sleep. She tried to wake him several times by talking and rocking him but she had refrained from being too rough or making loud noises. She’d read on the internet that waking a sleepwalker could kill them, but wasn't sure how true that was. In the state Dan was in she had no desire to find out.

  Officer Janet had locked every door she could, even using a sideboard to barricade the door that connected the living room to the kitchen. “Too many entry points,” she kept mumbling.

  The power was still on, the room’s main lights and the blinking Christmas tree creating more pools of darkness than they banished. Marlow’s warnings about the shadows were fresh in their mind, but with the creatures now freely walking the world, neither woman thought that was an issue any more. The terrible noises outside had diminished since Boris and Marlow had left, and they started to enter a phase of uneasy hope...

  Which was shattered when a loud crash outside drew their attention to the window in time to see a flaming car roll down the street, shedding bodywork as it rushed by.

  “Wait there,” whispered Officer Janet as she edged closer to the window and pressed her face against the glass. She could see enormous dark shadows moving at the end of the street. Even through the double-glazing, she could hear anguished screams chillingly cut to silence.

  They were here.

  She darted for the lights, plunging the house into darkness. Only the Christmas tree illuminations still danced.

  “Turn them off!” she hissed. “If it’s dark they might not think we’re here.” She peeked through the window and saw inhuman figures heading in their direction. “Hurry!”

  It took several precious seconds for Bryony’s groping hand to pull the plug out, extinguishing the tree lights. Just in time as a spindly irregular shadow crossed the window outside.

  They both held their breath as an explorative tapping scrambled against the door. Thank God they had locked everything.

  Bryony crooked her head so she could isolate the direction the noise was coming from. It had stopped - replaced with the low squeak of an opening door.

  With increasing horror, Bryony recognised the sound of the backdoor...

  The transition between realities was a lot like falling up, down and sideways at the same time.

  Marlow experienced the falling jolt dreamers did before they abruptly awoke. It was as if gravity between the two worlds didn't quite line up. To her relief, the brain fluid she had drank worked and she hadn’t been burned alive crossing into the Nightmare Realm. She felt lighter and more agile the moment she passed the cool shimmering screen of air, and equated it as a taste of what life would be like with regular exercise.

  “I'm in a dream,” she chuckled to herself, not quite believing it and trying to ignore the fact that a 'waking nightmare' was a more accurate description. The air tasted metallic and made her light-headed, almost euphoric. It would be easy to lose one’s senses here. She forced herself to focus on the task in hand. She was the first waking person to step foot in the dark world and experienced a glow of pride having finally earned a place in Cornelius history.

  The realm beyond resembled a poor Dali-like reconstruction of the real world it was consuming. Everything was covered in a disgusting crystalline membrane, which made familiar shapes, such as buildings or vehicles, appear jagged and unsettling. The sky was dark, yet a purple omnipresent light fell across the land.

  The convoy of trapped humans continued marching towards a huge structure in the distance, one that towered above the buildings around it and was not part of the original town. It was constructed from the same biomechanical resin that smothered the landscape and, from this distance, reminded Marlow of a huge stadium.

  With no other hint of where to go, she approached the tower.

  Christmas decorations made poor weapons, Bryony concluded as she wielded a two-foot ceramic snowman. At least the dangling cable made a handy whip.

  Trusting that Dan was too precious for the Infiltrators to harm, she and Officer Janet, armed with a leg broken from the newly repaired coffee table, padded through the open living room doorway into the dark corridor. Normally the streetlight outside provided enough illumination to navigate by, but now only flames danced in the chaos outside. They paused at the foot of the stairs and strained to listen over the throb of their own heartbeats.

  Upstairs was silent. A clattering pot from behind the closed kitchen door confirmed there was an intruder. The policewoman took the lead.

  Perhaps they can't open doors? Bryony thought in desperation as she stepped closer, snowman raised. No, they smash through them.

  When Office Janet reached the door, she hesitated and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. Her hand fell on the door handle. They could clearly hear the sound of something scuffling across the tiles beyond. Bryony raised the snowman and wished that her father hadn’t gone with the ghastly Nightmare Hunter.

  Fearing she would lose her nerve at any moment, Officer Janet put all her weight on the door as she twisted the handle, at the same time unleashing a wild scream of angst she wasn't aware she was storing.

  Bryony charged forward, screaming: “Get out of my home!”

  They saw movement in the darkness. Bryony swung the snowman by the cable flex with all her strength. It whirled past her ear and arced down on the beast with a sharp clash of fracturing ceramic. Now free of the cumbersome snowman, the electrical cable cracked like a whip and she swung it around for another strike. The intruder dropped to the floor with a loud thump.

  “Stop!” the policewoman yelled.

  Bryony groped for the light switch, the ancient fluorescent tube buzzing loudly as flicked to life after several false starts. They took the crime scene in with a single glance: the open back door - with a key in the lock. What kind of monster uses a key? Her victorious smile froze when she remembered that the nightmares didn't wear clothes; particularly not familiar fleece coats.

  Bryony kneeled and rolled the prone body over.

  “Dad?” Blood trickled from a scalp wound. What had she done?

  The officer cradled Boris’s head, feeling for a pulse. “He’s concussed,” she said before an ear-splitting gurgling roar came from the darkness of the garden beyond. A dozen cobalt eyes appeared and a mass of flickering ebony tentacles filled the doorway.

  A limb shot out and stuck to Officer Janet like glue. Then it yanked her outside. She didn’t even have time to scream – but the sound of crunching bones was unmistakable.

  Marlow had never been to Rome. She had never have the chance to travel abroad, yet another regret in her life that she would never have time to rectify. But she'd seen pictures and what she thought was a stadium, on closer inspection, more closely resembled the Coliseum constructed from the Infiltrators' biomechanical resin.

  She had discreetly followed the line of humans here, and watched the worker drones enter the structure through an archway. Further archways pocked the nightmarish Coliseum’s curving façade and she could see both sky and movement beyond, confirming her suspicions that it was hollow within.

  An unholy cacophony rose from the arena. Marlow was accustomed to the Infiltrators' high-pitch chittering, but this was a deep and sonorous that chilled to the core. The only way in, avoiding the workers, was through the archways higher up and that meant climbing.

  Marlow shouldered the blunderbuss and pulle
d the strap tight. She reached as high as she could, fingers finding solid purchase on the pitted surface. The resin offered plenty of nooks and she shoved her steel toecaps firmly in and hoisted herself up. Even with her slightly elevated strength her knees clicked. Not for the first time in the last hour, Marlow wished she were fitter, younger and a million miles from here.

  Grunting with every move, Marlow clambered higher. The baseball bat dangling from her waist painfully struck her knee more than once.

  What the hell have I become? she thought darkly. She used to be proud and at least moderately attractive - with a wonderful family and the world at her feet. Now she was an unfit alcoholic. She had let everything slip away. She’d always envied those who could dream; who could soar in a realm where anything was possible. Now she was here, she could feel the flip side. The utter despair only a nightmare could induce.

  Marlow tried to blank the discouraging thoughts from her mind, now wasn’t the time for introspection. She wondered if that what she really felt or was it negative vibes put out by the Darkmare as it fed on human misery.

  She suspected the answer lay somewhere between the two.

  Don't look down, Marlow told herself as she pressed ever higher. Her rebellious streak took that exact opportunity to look down. She had climbed higher that she’d thought, at least six stories up. Even though she had a firm grip, her palms became clammy and her left knee quaked, threatening to give out. The ground below was covered in jagged uneven stalagmites of gunk that threatened certain death if she fell.

  Marlow focused on her destination. The archway was only a couple of feet away.

  Then her foot slipped. She hadn't moved it and was certain she'd found a secure niche, but the ledge suddenly crumbled away - exactly as it should in all good nightmares.

  Marlow fell.

  The sensation was brief. One second she was dropping - the very next she was hanging from a noose and choking as the blunderbuss’s strap caught on a snarl of resin. The antique weapon was now bearing all her weight. She scrambled across the pitted surface and was able to draw closer to the coliseum’s facade, taking the pressure from her neck. A simple shoulder shrug dislodged the strap and she was able to breathe once again.