Marlow

by Andy Briggs

  The Infiltrator yelped in confusion as the blade lobbed off both its forearms, the wound crystallising in an instant. It bellowed in rage, but Dan quickly silenced it with a backswing - decapitating the beast. The head shattered into fragments as it bounded into the van.

  Dan whooped victoriously as he expertly whirled the sword in his hand. Then, in the blink of an eye, both sword and shield ceased to be. He was relieved that his theory held true; he was half in the dream he'd opened with his Grandpa. Although awake, he had scored certain privileges while the portal was open. It was a two-way street. The Infiltrators could walk out of the netherworld; and he could operate as if he was some sort of dream warrior inside it.

  Dream Warrior - he liked the sound of that.

  The sound of the blunderbuss deafened Marlow. After the initial shot all she could hear was a high-pitched tinnitus that hadn’t cleared from earlier. The flash from the barrel briefly lit up a chamber of horrors: bodies of townsfolk and pets in various states of digestion were heaped around. The floor was a seething bubbling mass of stomach acids, which must have been very mild as Marlow was still in one piece. The walls were a slimy mass of black flesh that heaved as the Darkmare breathed except where Marlow's point-blank shot had torn a gaping hole through to the world beyond.

  Like pulling the plug out of the bath, Marlow and the unfortunate victims were swept out of the stomach and spilled onto the dais in a tidal wave of vomit. The katana skated past her. She gripped the blunderbuss tightly, sliding on her back away from the Darkmare. The giant thrashed in agony. It was no doubt roaring too - but all she could hear was a monotonous whine that hurt her ears.

  It was as if time slowed. Marlow saw the wall of Infiltrators around her surge forward to protect their master. Against countless opponents she didn't stand a chance.

  One Cornelius against the world. It was her family’s duty to slay the beast.

  Still sliding, Marlow reloaded the gun. She used her heel to brake as she neared the dais edge, but it slowed her only a little. Her heart was in her throat - this close, and from this angle, she had the perfect shot.

  Her miserable childhood rushed past her eyes - each little vignette of Carlos forcing her to read the handwritten Hunting tomes, the macabre denizens described in detail within, until she could recite every line. Each minutely detailed picture had been indelibly burned into her mind’s eye. Never before had she truly appreciated the attention to detail her forefathers had captured with mere ink. And now here was the Darkmare - every detail captured from vague sightings her father had made. Only now, at the foot of the beast, could she truly appreciate his attention to detail.

  Far above, the ring of eyes on the mushroom head, as dead as a shark’s. The huge vertical slit of a mouth that had devoured her once already, opened again. More importantly, just above the eyes, recessed in the Darkmare's overhanging crown, was a blue band that throbbed like jelly. It was the brain cavity - or so Carlos had indicated on the page. An Infiltrator’s main weakness, and he suspected, the Darkmare’s only one.

  Marlow couldn't aim as she was still sliding too quickly, but the blunderbuss was not a precision tool and she’d always been good at trigonometry and angles. All she had to do was point and click.

  She heard the report from the barrel through her arm. She felt the recoil as she propelled off the dais and into the surrounding resin pond.

  Her shot couldn't have been more perfect.

  The top of the Darkmare's head split open like a cantaloupe. Foul blue ichor dribbled from within. The creature violently trembled.

  Marlow skidded through the sticky volcanoes, but instead of trapping her, the coating of Darkmare’s stomach gunk acted as lubrication and she sailed effortlessly through.

  The Darkmare toppled backwards into the wall of the coliseum.

  The brute's weight shattered the resin walls and cracks raced out in all directions. As the beast quivered in its last death throes the entire arena began shattering. Massive chunks toppled onto the Infiltrators below, crushing and impaling those too slow to scatter. The ground beneath the remaining cocoon-pyramids fractured and the piles collapsed, bowling into yet more Infiltrators.

  Marlow skidded to a halt against a mean-looking insectoid nightmare. It's flat head rotated towards Marlow and it jabbed a barbed arm at her. Unable to reload, Marlow parried the arm with the blunderbuss - which was violently knocked from her hand. Fight-or-flight kicked in as her flailing hand improbably landed on the hilt of her katana – with all the luck of a dream, she thought.

  She roiled to her feet as a dozen Infiltrators surrounded her. Closing ranks with an assortment of lethal appendages and slobbering mandibles.

  Marlow swung the sword, decapitating one - and then another. A volley of fists, tentacles, feet, forearms and several unidentifiable body parts, struck her in rapid succession. She was too weak to put up a real fight. Her sword dropped as she felt her arm break from a savage blow. The pain was so intense she briefly blacked out only to wake on the floor as she was punched again. She could taste her own blood, but the pain began to fade from each impact; even her tinnitus faded. It felt as if she was being removed from reality. That’s what death must feel like.

  An ugly five-legged Infiltrator straddled over her and readied a killing blow through her chest. Then something distracted it–

  Other Infiltrators were tossed in the air with such force they shattered as they struck the floor.

  Carving a path through them was Dan, shield in one hand and a sword in the other. He was whirling and pivoting with impossible speed and grace. Infiltrators were smashed aside with his shield, others stabbed with such acute precision they shattered where they stood. The kid resembled some far off Spartan warrior, carving his way through the hordes. The sheer quantity of blue gore that smothered him made him look almost inhuman.

  Marlow must have blacked out from the pain because the next moment Dan was standing right over her, slapping her cheeks.

  “Wake up!” screamed Dan.

  Marlow looked around in surprise. The Infiltrators had been slain, their icy innards rapidly crystallising and evaporating. The sky was a tornado of purple nebula that shot down to the still twitching body of the Darkmare. The creature was absorbing it all, its corpse swelling with ghostly purple light. The ground shook, increasing the collapse of the arena around them.

  “The world is caving in!” Dan shouted above the chaos. “I don’t think we should be here!”

  Dan helped Marlow to her feet. She could barely stand. The kid was right - the nightmare realm was contracting into its creator. Beyond the shaking walls, the fracture into their own world was rapidly diminishing. Marlow didn't know what would happen if they were trapped inside, but every instinct told her it would be bad.

  She stumbled again, leaning on Dan's shoulder for support. It gave her chance to study her unlikely saviour who was still clad in Infiltrator ichor.

  “What happened to you?” Marlow wheezed. “Are you real?”

  “I am, but this is still my dream. Well, together with my grandpa. So I'm the hero.” Marlow couldn't argue with that. The sheer number of dissolving limbs around them and the fact monsters were running for cover from the kid were testament to his fearsomeness. “I'm the Dream Warrior,” Dan added in just the right tone of voice to make him sound like the voice-over guy of a movie trailer. “Now - move it!”

  Together they ran through the crumbling arena, towards the arched entrance through which the Infiltrators had carried the numerous cocoons. The wall was already shaking violently enough for clumps of resin to rain down across the exit. Marlow suddenly stopped and looked back at the sea of cocoons filling the arena, each one a captive person.

  “What about them?”

  Dan scanned the pods, and briefly wondered if Maven and the other bullies from school were in there. If only Jade Harrow could see him now; then again, she’d always ignored him. He felt relieved that he didn’t care. “There's nothing we can do for them. If we stay here we'
re gonna get killed!”

  Marlow felt a twinge of guilt, but the kid was right. She had a duty to return Dan back to his family in one piece. She had done it before, she'd damn well do it again. She tried to ignore the fact Dan was actually rescuing her.

  “Maybe the pods’ll protect ‘em,” Marlow volunteered, partly to ease her own conscience.

  They charged through the Coliseum’s archway as cracks spread across it with the tinkling sound of breaking ice. They burst into the arena beyond, into the tangled streets of both worlds, just as an Infiltrator sprinted in front of them, attempting to get back into the arena. Dan raised his sword high and bellowed at the top of his lungs.

  The monkey-creature screeched. It was a sound that Marlow had never heard before, and suddenly realised it was a cry of alarm. Dan swung the sword, but the creature adroitly sidestepped - eager to put as much distance as it could between them. No sooner had it run under the archway when the entire wall quivered, then collapsed in fragments on top of it.

  Marlow's head was still reeling, and she was thankful Dan was guiding her in the right direction.

  The earth tremor grew steadily worse as they approached the dwindling portal. The clouds forming the walls between worlds crackled as lighting licked across the surface and occasionally strayed free to stab the landscape.

  Marlow stumbled, dropping to her knees, cutting them open on the sharp shards of crumbling residue. There was no way she could make it. Dan was already several yards ahead before noticing she was down.

  “Go without me!” shouted Marlow. She knew she was finished. Dan had a life outside the dream, what did she have? “RUN!”

  He saw the indecision on the kid’s face as he slowly turned away.

  Then, to her surprise, Dan turned back - and he looked furious. He sprinted back to Marlow, hauling her back to her feet with strength that could only come from his weird dream-hybrid.

  “You coward! How dare you!” screamed Dan. “I'm not going to explain to your kids that you couldn't be bothered running out of here! They care about you! I care about you - so stop being so damn selfish and MOVE IT!”

  The words shocked Marlow so much she suddenly found new reserves of energy. She grit her teeth, ignored the pain that consumed her. She ran.

  The portal was yards ahead and now nothing more than the size of a doorway. Marlow increased her pace, shoving Dan ahead. The gap was closing so rapidly she doubted any amount of positive thinking would get her through.

  Dan vaulted through it like an Olympian.

  Marlow didn't have his otherworldly energy so closed her eyes and jumped headfirst. She expected to feel the portal cleave her in two - instead she landed heavily in soft snow. She rolled onto her back in time to see the portal close with a loud pop, slicing the soles from her boots which just hadn’t made it across the line. The seething bubble of dream-world energy imploded with a hurricane blast that didn’t affect the real world, but vaporised any Innerspace residue left behind.

  The atmospheric force made Marlow’s ears pop. Then silence.

  She slowly stood and looked around. The town centre was almost demolished, but the cause was nowhere to be seen. Not a scintilla of evidence remained. Groaning bodies were scattered in heaps where the nether realm used to exist. Marlow had guessed right, the cocooned townsfolk had been protected from the multi-dimensional implosion that vaporised their protective pods. Now they were slowly regaining consciousness with no recollection of what had happened. Most looked confused and embarrassed to find themselves lying on top of total strangers.

  Dan was bent over, hands on his knees as he fought to catch his breath. His sword and shield had vanished the moment the dream imploded, as had any illusion of superhuman prowess.

  He smiled at Marlow, too exhausted to say a word. Marlow grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. But Dan wasn’t looking, he was peering behind her. She turned to follow his gaze.

  Three kids were staggering through the throng, looking just as dazed and frightened as everybody else.

  “Maven,” said Dan with a slight scowl. Then gave a brief nod to the blonde girl he was leaning on. “Jade.”

  Maven raised a shaking finger and spoke through dry, cracked lips. “I saw you...” He frowned, desperately trying to recall an intangible dream.

  Dan shrugged nonchalantly. “I get around.”

  Maven’s bullish self-confidence was gone, he could barely get the words out. “They... came. T-trapped us...”

  “D-did he save you?” said Jade, unable to keep the awe from her voice.

  Dan looked bashfully away.

  “Kid,” said Marlow, catching the girl’s attention. “Dan just saved the world.”

  Dan soaked in their awe and admiration. Then they all swapped a puzzled look as they looked around.

  “What happened?” Jade asked.

  Marlow burst into laughter. Dan looked at her with wide eyes.

  “Well that didn’t last long. Welcome to the fortune and glory of being a Nightmare Hunter, kid.”

  Dan's second reunion with his mother was just as emotional as the first. Unlike those who crossed into the other realm, her memories were intact. This time she was a lot more civil to Marlow, although she still was unsure what to make of her. In their smashed home, she recalled how she had made it to the ring road with Boris unconscious on the back seat, before the portal had contracted. The blast of displaced air had forced the car into a snow bank. Boris had woken up, rubbing the lump on his head and looking very confused.

  He had been the last anchor the Darkmare had to the real world. Even in its final moments it clung to him to keep the portal open, but the further Boris was taken the weaker the bond became.

  “So, I won't be having those nightmares anymore?” said Dan with a massive yawn. While he had been walking between both worlds his narcolepsy hadn't affected him. Now it was all over, he was fighting to stay awake.

  “That's right kid. The Darkmare's not around to use you no more.”

  Dan nodded thoughtfully as he raised a cup coffee to his lips. He stopped, then placed it down. “Then I suppose I don’t need this.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “And I supposed I won't see you again.” Dan had tried to keep his voice level but a slight tremor gave him away.

  Marlow and Bryony swapped looks.

  “I think Miss… Marlow will be welcome here anytime. She may still have to keep an eye on you.” She threw a glance at her father. “The both of you.”

  Dan didn't respond. He was fast asleep.

  Marlow pulled up at the end of the street. This side of town had suffered the least from the Infiltrator's invasion. Most windows were boarded up, but people had banded together and covered the repairs with festive decorations as the town and authorities tried to come to grips with what had happened. The official excuse had been a gas explosion that had unleashed noxious vapours that caused memory loss and the occasional hallucination. Desperate for some excuse and a return to normality, the public hadn’t questioned it. Now snow fell, making everything brighter and softer, eradicating even Marlow’s terrors from the previous night.

  She had spent hours in a trashed emergency ward to get her broken arm set, and scars sewn. She’d just have to live with the ribs until they healed. The nurses had told her how lucky she was surviving the gas explosion. Many people were still missing.

  Marlow returned to her apartment to shower and sleep a thankfully dreamless slumber. The water had turned black as she scrubbed her skin until it was red. She stared in the mirror as she painfully pulled a comb through her clean hair. Despite the recent hardships, she looked years younger. She was almost a stranger to her own eyes.

  Then she took the most terrifying decision of his life. Facing the Darkmare had not been as frightening as choosing to visit her family.

  She knocked on the door with a trembling hand. Then considered running before it opened. But she was too late. The door slowly opened, the faces of Jamie and Molly peered out from around the jamb. For a second they
saw the face of a stranger.

  Then they both broke into smiles.

  “Mummy!” exclaimed Molly, running forward and hugging her tightly.

  Marlow lost herself in the moment, then pulled a small wrapped package from her pocket and handed it to Jamie. For a second his son hesitated, unaccustomed to gifts from her, but then a smile creased his face and he took it.

  “Happy birthday, son. I didn’t forget.”

  Marlow was guided inside, into a whole new life.

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  COMING 6th DECEMBER 2020:

  ALSO BY ANDY BRIGGS

  by Tanglebox Books

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