Old Broken Road

by Alexander, K. M.

  I nodded and Wensem and the Shalers moved towards the management buildings on the west side of the mine camp.

  Samantha was already heading towards the dynamite house. Curwen was here. Somewhere. I could feel it. It was like a buzzing in the back of my skull.

  The rain soaked my head and the shoulders of my jacket. The horns that sprouted from Samantha’s cheeks glistened.

  My torch was nearly used up. The flame hunkered close to the oil soaked rag, beaten down by the wind and the rain.

  An old oil lamp hung from the wall near the entrance to the dynamite house and I was pleased to find a splash of oil still in the font. It took a few tries but eventually I got it to light. The steady glow was welcome compared to the flicker of the torch.

  Samantha and I moved close to the building and carefully peeked inside. A few nervous rats scattered and it was clear the roof had sprung a leak. Crates labeled “Durbin Dynamite Co.” were resting among rotting straw or had fallen apart, spilling their contents over the floor of the building.

  Big red stenciled letters spelled out the contents: dynamite, flares, fuses, timers. I couldn’t tell how long the explosives had sat there but I knew it was dangerous. Age wasn’t kind to explosives. The whole building was probably unstable. One wrong move, a stray lightning strike, and boom—this whole mining camp could be leveled. On the plus side, it'd probably clear that landslide.

  We stepped back outside and Samantha’s torch winked out.

  “Damnit,” Samantha swore. A peal of thunder boomed overhead mixing with the noise.

  “Take my lamp. I have an idea.” I ducked inside and carefully picked my way to a small pile of boxes labeled “Flares” and “Danger No Smoking.” I gingerly lifted a crate of flares off a stack and quickly slipped back outside being careful not to bump any of the dynamite crates or step on any of the escaped explosives.

  “What’s that?” asked Samantha holding the lamp up high.

  “Flares,” I said. “They’ll burn longer than our torches.”

  I pulled one of the faded yellow sticks from the box. A big black arrow with the words, “Light this end” was printed on the stick. Following the directions I pulled the cap free and struck the button to the coarse end of the cap.

  Nothing.

  I tried again.

  Nothing.

  The third time was not a charm, and the flare stayed unlit.

  Damn.

  Undaunted, I drew another flare from the box and tried again. The flare popped to life, casting a bright red glow on our surroundings. I used the hot flare to light the dud and was pleased when it fired. They were significantly brighter than the torches. I stuck a few extra flares in my back pocket.

  “I’m going to go give Hannah a few. Shame to let our torches go out. Especially if this rain holds.”

  “Meet you at the machine shop,” said Samantha.

  The machine shop was devoid of equipment and seemed to only be home to another family of rats who squeaked their displeasure at being disturbed.

  It didn’t take long for the five of us to scout the camp. We met up with Wensem, Chance, and Range as they huddled beneath the overhang of the closed mining tunnel.

  The Shalers looked ashen and Wensem seemed relieved. His brow was knitted and his crooked jaw was set unnaturally. Something was amiss.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, my hand instinctively going to the grip of my pistol.

  “Nothing good,” Wensem said flatly. “Didn’t want Hannah to see. Glad it’s just the two of you.”

  My stomach dropped. Wensem’s tone was dark.

  “What do you mean?” I asked tentatively.

  “We found the sheriff,” he said and guided us into a small gray house marked “Foreman’s Office.”

  Bile rose in my throat. I rushed back outside and around the corner of the building. But I could still smell it. I could smell the thing that was inside.

  What little that remained in my stomach lurched upward. I could feel my limbs quiver. What was that thing?

  It was wrong.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as another bout of gags lurched forward inside me.

  There are clues inside, my brain said to me. I took a few deep breaths. Tried to calm my nerves. You have to go back in there.

  My throat burned.

  I took a deep breath and wiped the back of my mouth with my keff as I pulled it up over my face and pushed away from the building. Samantha and Wensem stood outside and waited for me to approach.

  “You okay?” Samantha asked.

  I shrugged.

  “I’ve been better. Come on.”

  We reentered the foreman’s office.

  The inside was a single room and a gallery of horror. The room smelled vile, the scent stronger than the reek we encountered in the cellar. Tables lined the walls, covered with an array of body parts and organs from all sorts of species. Intricate drawings stained with gore were pasted to the walls and showed some mechanism built atop the mining tower and labeled in Aklo. Next to those were drawings of anatomy, also labeled. If the chapel had been Curwen’s torture chamber, this was his workshop.

  The sight that had sent me outside quivered in the corner. Half alive, a construct roughly the height of a man made of parts taken from the victims of the Forest of the Dead. Arms and legs sewn together. Skin stretched across ribs to form rib cages that inhaled and exhaled breaths from mouths unseen, bloodshot and cataract covered eyes blinked out at us. A few tentacles jutted from the mass but were curled tightly like fiddleheads. As it seemed to register us, they uncurled, revealing twin rows of black suckers. Atop it all, watching us, was the head of Sheriff Joul dal Habith.

  The maero’s dark eyes looked at us, blinking slowly. His lower jaw was stitched to a forearm from another victim so when he moved to open his mouth the top of his head lolled backwards. A left hand somehow attached to the mass below gingerly touched the sheriff’s cheek.

  “What… is… it?” I asked, holding my hand to my mouth and pressing the keff to my nose.

  Samantha faced the thing like a soldier, feet planted to either side and arms at her sides. “It’s an abomination. A construct.”

  “It looks like one of those Curwenite altars,” observed Wensem. “Only—alive.”

  “I think it is, of a sort…” Samantha said. “I have a feeling Curwen made it.”

  As if in response, the construct gurgled. It was a pitiful sound, not far off from the mewling the gargoyles made when they first saw us. It sent a shiver down my spine.

  “We need to kill it,” she said.

  “Sam,” I said, unsure why I wanted to stop her. If the sheriff was alive he was obviously in pain, and whatever this… thing was, Samantha was right, it was an abomination. Nothing good could come from that.

  Samantha Dubois, Priestess of the Reunified Church, grabbed the Judge from its holster and moved across the small hut. She planted the barrel against the part of the mass that contained the sheriff’s forehead. His black maero eyes stared at her and a long low moan leaked out from somewhere within it.

  With a wince, Samantha turned her head and squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed loudly, and gore spattered the wall. A high-pitched squeal leaked out of its mouths and then slowly fell silent.

  As if in answer, the noise in the sky that had hounded us across the prairie and into the mountains exploded directly above us.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I BURST FROM THE OFFICE AT A DEAD RUN. A gray mist had descended along with the rain and was spreading across the ground wrapping around the buildings of the mining camp. I sprinted towards the booming sound. My knee shrieked but I didn’t have time to listen. Wensem and Samantha were right behind me, Samantha still holding the Judge. It smoked and hissed as the rain hit its hot barrel.

  Hannah backed away from the tower and was huddled near the landslide, staring up in utter horror. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream.

  He’s at the top of the headframe, I realized. That’s where the sound is co
ming from!

  The Shalers moved near her. For some reason they were in the process of lighting more and more of the flares and scattering them all around. They cast panicked glances upward. So many flares were now burning that the area around the base of the headframe was bathed in a hellish red light.

  “He’s inside!” Hannah shouted, tears streaming down her face. She pointed with her right hand at the big building. “Wal! He’s at the top! He’s at the top!”

  Samantha tossed me the Judge and I caught it mid-run and returned it to the holster.

  I nodded and moved towards the door, not breaking stride. The whole building quaked with the sound, swaying like an old man. Bits of loose dust puffed outward after decades between cracks of wood only to be beaten down by the heavy rain.

  Thunder boomed overhead.

  “Wal!” shouted Samantha, her voice nearly lost to the sound coming from the tower. “Your mask! Don’t forget your mask!”

  Blinking, I realized the gas mask still hung at my side, flopping wildly against my thigh. I looked around me.

  The gray mist wasn’t fog!

  Hannah’s scream drifted away and she slumped forward against the ankle deep grass that covered the grounds. The Shalers followed, Range giving one last hurl of a flare before dropping backward sound asleep.

  Quickly, I drew the mask from its bag and pulled it tightly over my face. I inhaled a lungful of filtered air, hoping I wasn’t too late. Wensem appeared at my side and gripped my shoulders giving me a curt nod.

  I was woozy. Sleepy, but I hoped the clean air would keep me awake. I took another deep breath and turned to look at Samantha. I felt slightly better and clearer of head. Her eyes met mine and time seemed to hang there between us for a moment. She mouthed a “good luck” before letting the mist take her and settling onto the ground.

  I looked up at the quaking headframe and then back at Sam, asleep in the grass. So much between us had slipped away. I hoped I’d be able to make things right.

  Wensem and I pressed through the tower’s door and into the darkness within. It made perfect sense that this was where Curwen dwelled. It was the best seat in the house to view the valley. From there, he could watch the citizens of Methow struggle with the horrors he inflicted upon them. Like a malevolent child studying the ant he tortured under the burning gaze of a magnifying glass.

  We moved to the stairs. I could feel the sound from above reverberate through the floors of the place. My heart pounded in my chest. My mouth was dry, and I found it difficult to talk.

  “Wensem,” I finally said, pausing on the first step and turning to look at my partner. “If things go sour, if it gets bad, you get out.”

  Wensem’s blue-gray eyes stared at me silently through the lenses of his mask but he didn’t respond. I placed my hand on his boney shoulder and looked him straight in the eye.

  “I’m serious. You leave the headframe and get the people of Methow out. Get back to Kit.”

  I could feel him sigh.

  “Is that an order?” he asked finally.

  “It’s an appeal.”

  Wensem finally nodded.

  We had work to do.

  TWENTY-NINE

  AS IF IN ANTICIPATION, THE NOISE WENT SILENT as we ascended the stairs. The roar of the hammering rain and the whistles of wind slipped through the cracks of the rickety walls of the headframe.

  The lantern light felt meager and the darkness around us ponderous, but we climbed on. My knee protested the entire way, throbbing with pain. At the top, we stopped and crouched near the trapdoor fixed into the ceiling..

  “Together?” Wensem asked.

  “Fools rush in where the wise fear to travel,” I said with a nervous smile, forgetting Wensem wouldn't be able to see it under the mask. I hoped my old man's words would be good luck.

  “On three.”

  I pulled my knees under me, and felt the old wound fight against the motion. The ache made my stomach hurt. Wensem crouched next to me.

  “One.”

  My heart hammered in my chest. My breathing rasped out through the filter.

  “Two.”

  More thunder boomed in the sky. I checked that the Judge was secure in its holster.

  “Three.”

  We pushed upward, lifting and throwing the trapdoor aside as we moved into the chamber at the top of the headframe.

  Curwen, the Lord of Chaos, was ready for us.

  I barely got a look in before something heavy caught me across chest and I was thrown backwards. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. I immediately lost my grip on the lantern and watched it tumble end over end through the air before it clattered and then shattered between two pieces of machinery. The uppermost floor of the headframe was swallowed by darkness.

  With a crack, my head collided with something solid. Sharp pain erupted behind my eyes and I could feel warm blood immediately make its way down my face from my forehead. I collapsed to the floor. The world was swimming. Even staying conscious seemed like an immense effort.

  How had he reacted so fast?

  I struggled to rise. My head muddled. Shakily I stood, spinning, looking around, expecting to see something else coming. Another slam drove me forward and behind it came a sharp tear that traced a burning sensation across my back. Something cut a deep gash through my jacket, shirt, undershirt and into my flesh.

  I crumpled to the floor, writhing in pain and scrambling in the dark for cover. Everything was pain and swimming. Dark and swimming and pain and thunder.

  “Waldo!” Wensem called out. “Wal, where are you?”

  I could hear more movement and then a grunt of pain and a reverberating gong that shook the floor. Wensem was thrown and collided with something heavy. I breathed. Tried to clear my head and focus on the fight. I felt like I was forgetting something.

  Somewhere in the darkness Wensem cursed and there was the noise of scuffling. Wensem struggled to his feet only to be thrown down a second and then a third time.

  “Wal, stay back!” I heard him shout. There was a crash and a gut-churning thump.

  “You’re a tenacious little bastard,” said a velvety voice.

  I tried to lean around the object I was slumped behind but couldn’t see anything. It was so dark. I had seen him... or at least thought I had. In that brief flash of light before I was thrown, before the lantern was torn away.

  The blow to my head must have been harder than I thought. Everything swam around me. Memories. It had been something horrible, I knew that much. Gone was Boden, the man I saw in Methow. Gone was the writhing black morass, too. Curwen had become something else… monstrous, something terrible.

  His true form.

  “I wondered when you would come,” it said.

  Wensem grunted from somewhere in the dark. The beast moved with a heavy dragging sound and then a bright flash illuminated the space for the briefest of seconds followed immediately by a rocking boom.

  I saw him. In that brief flash, I saw him. Curwen. And he was rushing towards Wensem. My partner was dirty and dusty, and blood covered his chest but he was standing. He raised his gun and fired at the thing.

  A great yellow eye, lidless and leering, occupied most of its head. Its alien hourglass-shaped iris stared at Wensem as the rifle went off. Tentacles seemed to drape the creature, writhing under the shadows of great leathery wings that stretched and moved and carried its form forward. Then it and Wensem were gone. Lost to the darkness. A loud slam and a sickening crack accompanied the dying of the light.

  “Wensem!” I called out, my own voice sending waves of pain. Thick blood ran over my cheeks. I struggled to rise but couldn’t maintain my balance and I collapsed back down.

  No answer.

  “Wensem! Wensem!” I called again.

  A chuckle rumbled through the air. “I’ll deal with you in a moment, Guardian.”

  Small bits of light, like stars in a summer sky, slipped into the headframe through the slats of the exterior wall. It was hard to focus bu
t my eyes slowly adjusted to the shadowy forms. After a few more seconds I could begin making out shapes.

  The outlines of great gears and cogs were set into the floor. By the feel of the metal I leaned on I could only guess that everything up here had long gone to rust and wouldn’t have been able to move the hoist.

  I slumped lower. A great form moved in the space across from me. Small bits of light winked out as it passed in front of them.

  I breathed. Breathed and tried to remember. There was something. Something else I could do. The floor felt like it was spinning. I looked over my shoulder. An immense shadow moved slowly back and forth opposite me. Was he looking for me? Or doing something horrible to Wensem?

  A chill traveled down my spine. He was so big. Did Wensem’s shot even hurt him?

  I felt for the handle of my pistol and pulled it from its holster. Suddenly the noise returned, flaring up in the sky above the headframe before it slipped away, becoming a quaking laugh. The sound shook the headframe, and bits of dust and debris rained down from the rafters overhead. I covered my ears and tried to block it out, but it was so loud! So vast!

  “What are you going to do with that, Guardian? Didn’t you already try to shoot me?”

  I crouched lower. Could he see me? His eyesight had to be better than mine, but could he really see that I pulled the Judge or had he simply heard the movement? Neither idea was comforting.

  “You think that tiny machine can harm me? I am an element. A force of nature! I was old when your world was young.”

  I wanted to respond but it was hard enough just to get my sense of balance.

  “Why you were chosen to be the Guardian I will never understand. You are just like that stupid sheriff. You are a impetuous fool.” His silky voice changed, lightened a bit. “Ah, maybe that is why you were chosen. After all you are shockingly similar to all who have come before you.”

  I rose, wavering, feeling sharp pain shoot through my head. I tried to gauge where Curwen was in the gloom. Tried to make out his form against the cracks in the wall. It seemed impossible. Shapes blocked what meager light penetrated the headframe and any one of them could have been the monster.