Mary whipped the oar high and brought it down on the ghoul’s head with a bone-crunching smack that nearly popped its eyes out. The thing fell into the waters, its body nudging the canoe farther out, just enough that the canoe slid free from the murky bottom.
“Reload! I have this!” ordered Mary, as she took both oars and plowed into the black waters with everything she had.
They skirted a few more feet from the shoreline, just as more of the ghouls’ flabby feet splashed in. Several of them waded into the dark water up to their waists trying in vain to grab the canoe.
Porter fumbled with another cylinder as more ghouls splashed toward them. One of them dipped beneath the surface like a swimmer as the other two farther back seemed to give up, still gibbering their mad cry. Porter snapped in a cylinder and brought it up just as the head of the swimmer bobbed up beside them, a clawed hand grasped the side of the canoe, tipping it dangerously to one side. Porter leaned hard the opposite direction. The ghoul’s puckered red mouth was leechlike.
Porter pulled the trigger and turned the fiend’s head into fish bait.
Mary strained at the oars and they sped away into deeper water.
Back on the shoreline more than two dozen of the ghouls watched them speed away across the water. Some of them devoured their fallen comrades. They pranced like maniacs on the dim shoreline, then paused their crazed antics and rapidly fled in all directions.
“What is it?” asked Mary as she still pressed at the oars.
Porter answered, “Don’t know, but I’m guessing that big wave of slime scared them off.”
“Can you see anything?’
“Not yet, just that they all scattered,” he answered.
Then Porter saw it, a glistening coming through the far darkness, the gelatinous bulk rolled over itself following their trail over the sand, heedless of the dead ghouls. The massive blob stopped at the water’s edge, extended a few tendrils of itself high into the air and some low into the water. Apparently finding the answer to its questions, it poured itself into the dark murk with nary a splash, and Porter breathed, “Awww shit.”
“What?” snapped Mary, panting hard from her exertions.
“We gotta speed this up,” said Porter urgently. “You take the starry light. I’ll row.”
“I can’t. It was given to you alone.”
Porter clenched his teeth and stared back at the place where the thing had slid into the water. He couldn’t see much of anything back across the lake anymore. They were too far into the black of the vaulted space, but there did seem to be a disturbance in the water. Beyond the stretching triangular break of the canoe, there was a slight rippling like something large was driving beneath the surface, causing a surge in their wake.
This was a bad place, in the water, in the dark, on a rickety little boat with a massive shapeless horror coming at you from unseen depths.
Mary grunted hard; she was giving this her all.
Porter hadn’t shot and hit the thing yet, but its alien morphing bulk didn’t bely something that appeared vulnerable to lead. It had at least halted its attack when he held the star up to it, maybe it could work again. Doubts crept in though, regardless the thing was still coming for them. What could stop it? The only thing that came to mind was fire, but he didn’t have any on account of this starry witch light being their torch.
The swell following them was gaining.
Last Rites
A sudden lurch forward sent them tumbling to the wet shore. Porter grappled with the edge of the canoe and murky water. He stood and glimpsed the surge in the lake coming at them fast.
“Which way is the exit?”
“This way,” said Mary, already hurrying down the shore to their left.
Porter quickly followed.
Like a cat, Mary raced ahead of even Porter’s light, she knew where she was going. Perhaps she could sense the breath coming from the small cave entrance.
At least this part of the strand wasn’t crawling with ghouls.
Glancing back, Porter saw the great rubbery bulk of the slime monster begin to cover the canoe. He heard the wooden sides of the craft snap under the weight of the blubbery thing, then it was silent as the thing completely enveloped it. Stalks not unlike a snail’s eyes sprouted from its gelatinous body and rapidly probed this way and that for a moment and Porter knew it sensed them.
Gunfire ripped Porter’s attention away from the monstrosity.
Mary cried out and rapidly fired across the sandy beach at things Porter could not yet see.
Gray shapes shambled forth, gibbering hungry nonsense. Porter couldn’t see their faces yet, but he could see their teeth gleaming.
He shot at the nearest few ghouls and they dropped, but more came swiftly behind those forward scouts.
“Where is that door?”
Mary hurried ahead only a few paces. “Here,” she cried, ducking the low passage and vanishing into the dark.
He was mighty glad she had the confidence she did to keep moving in the dark.
More of the ghouls poured along the edge of the sandy beach. The splashing of their feet in the lake told Porter there were a lot more of them than he could see yet. Their mindless chattering was unnerving.
He ducked into the exit cavern and found Mary more than halfway up the rope they had left. He guessed it was a good thing they left it, instead of having it to lasso the book atop the dais.
It was only about seven feet high, but too far to jump and awful difficult for a man with a magical star blasting out of his left hand. He fretted trying to grasp the rope and climb. Scrambling behind made him turn with a raised gun.
Ghouls were in the tunnel mouth.
Porter shot each one that stuck its head within range. At the least the dead stopped up the small opening, gaining him a moment to again try his hand at the rope.
“Just hold and kick, I’ll try and pull you up,” said Mary from above.
“I’m too heavy for you and you’re already tuckered from rowing, not to mention I know how steep that slope you’re on is, you just get going. I’m a coming.”
“No, you climb. I’ll shoot anything that comes in behind you.”
Something tore at one of the dead ghouls clogging the entrance.
Porter tried his hand at climbing the rope again. It was mighty difficult, he could only grip with his fingers, the bizarre starry light wouldn’t allow him full purchase.
He was five feet up and almost over the lip when something tugged at his boot. One of the ghouls had Porter’s heel full in its mouth. Porter kicked it back as Mary blasted it with the shotgun.
“How’d it get there so fast?” Mary asked.
“I think it was one of the ones you already shot and wasn’t dead yet, just half of its face was gone.”
Porter stepped over the lip and looked back as Mary hurried up the line. Ghouls were pouring into the bottom chamber. They glared up at Porter with open mouths and tongues wavering.
They were incapable of grasping the use of the rope and climbing after them, but Porter couldn’t help but notice that despite that handicap, they kept climbing inside and crowding on top of one another. Soon enough they would reach the top of the tubular cavern and crawl after him.
He shot six more of them then reached for another cylinder and realized he didn’t have any more.
A pile of gray scaly bodies tumbled over one another as they strained to reach the upper lip of the tunnel and pursue the human flesh.
Porter felt the tug of the rope as several of the ghouls pulled on it themselves in an effort to grasp their prey.
“Faster!” he cried, going up the steep slant as fast as his boots would allow.
The gibbering of the ghouls changed in tone to one that resembled panic, and then they went silent.
Curious, Porter looked over his shoulder.
The bodies of the ghouls, now entirely lifeless, were held together in a quivering mass as a clear gel seeped all around them.
“Aww wheat,
” he drawled. “Faster!” he shouted to Mary.
The bodies of the ghouls were tugged and suddenly ripped away into the larger cavern by the sticky mucous like tendrils of the blob.
Mary pulled herself up arm over arm until she reached the spot where they had fastened the rope. She drew a knife and slashed at the rope.
Porter took her by the shoulder saying, “Get to the door. The rope ain’t gonna slow him down none.”
She gazed down the end of the tunnel at the rising mass of gelatinous horror. Her eyes went wide with fear. “I thought it was the ghoul tugging on it!”
“It was,” said Porter, urging her on. “He ate ‘em. Let’s get!”
They scrambled over the slick rock of the tunnel and over the chaotic rock and stalagmites that now seemed intent on barring their way and slowing them down.
The seething mass of the alien blob filled the passageway behind them like a rising flood.
“Hurry sister!” cried Porter, helping Mary up as she tripped over a jagged piece of basalt. Her legs were gouged and bloody from scraping across the rim on her secondary climb. She breathed heavily and sweat dripped from her face.
The cold light of the moon shone ahead, and they could hear the strange whistling chant of Ghost Horn outside as he still patted upon a drum and chanted the song of the Sasquatch, the furry people.
Porter half-carried Mary and they hurried together out into the night. Behind them, the welling of the terrible amorphous blob filled the passage.
“That monstrous thing is right on our heels!” shouted Porter. “Help us shut the door!”
“You still got my light I see,” said Mr. Nodens, seemingly unconcerned about anything else.
“Yup,” said Porter. “Thanks, it made things… interesting.”
Mr. Nodens nodded and took the starry light from Porter’s grasp. It shrank back down to the size of a matchhead, then vanished entirely.
“Much obliged you didn’t lose it in there,” said Mr. Nodens.
Porter shrugged. “If I had, I don’t think I’d be here now. What about the door and that thing?”
“So shut it,” said Mr. Nodens offhandedly.
Porter rushed to the door. Mary looked spent; she was still gasping for breath. But they each put their shoulder to the massive gate and strained at the great green doors but could not budge the titanic flaps. A huge shadow loomed behind them, blotting out the light of the moon. Porter turned to lock eyes with the giant wild man.
“I have sung to the Sasquatch, he is here to help,” said Ghost Horn, alleviating sudden fears a fraction too late. Porter’s hand was on his empty pistol, and he was glad to hear Ghost Horn’s answer.
“Oh-Kay,” said Porter, skeptical of the huge hairy man. But the Sasquatch, as Ghost Horn called him, stepped toward the doors and, taking hold of the massive edifice, shut the left-hand gate. There was a loud groaning and the doors gasped under the pressure, almost threatening to buckle from the force used by the wild man.
Inside, the gelatinous creature was almost to the door. Its probing tendrils reached a yard or more ahead of its swelling bulk, its eye-like pustules and open toothy mouths blinked and snapped before vanishing then reappearing at various places all over its insane body.
The Sasquatch took hold of the right-hand gate and strained to shut it as well. The bottom and top flexed from the power of the huge hairy man. Once closed the Sasquatch leaned its back against the door and held it as if expecting a battering ram.
Porter realized there was no way he could have forced the doors shut, not with the help of twenty men. He was glad the Sasquatch was here, even if it was an unnerving sight.
Ghost Horn continued his drumming and chant.
“The door is shut; we are back with the book. Now what?” asked Porter.
A terrible gong sounded as the gate itself flexed and bulged as it was battered by the thing inside the crypt. The Sasquatch was flung away but stood and renewed its efforts to hold the door shut.
Ghost Horn ceased his drumming and song, and looked to Mr. Nodens who said, “You have the key. But you must lock the door.”
Mary quickly withdrew the book from her pouch. She opened it like a fan, turning it back into its spread flower-like configuration. She stared at the pounding door. The beating from the thing within shook the ground.
She looked at the door, then back at Porter with a creased brow. The Sasquatch strained, each strike from within sent it flying away. It would come back, looking a little more defeated each time.
Inspiration flew to his mind on majestic wings. “I think I know,” said Porter.
“How?” she asked.
“I don’t know how, just trust me.” He took the book from her trembling hands.
He strode to the banging door and there, at about the midway mark, split between both doors, was a slight circular depression, the center of which looked the exact right size for the center latch of the book.
The Sasquatch looked pained as it tried to hold the door, it glanced down at Porter, with a look of worry and confusion.
“Hold on,” he said to the Sasquatch. Porter snapped the circular book into the key like configuration. It went in but was not complete.
At his feet the jelly-like mass of the thing behind the door seeped out, already it had reached the Sasquatch’s feet and blood merged there. The Sasquatch bawled out in a pain filled cry that rocked the night.
Porter was shook. What to do? Flee? He fought the dread panic that threatened to fill him to the core. That horrid jelly-like substance welled up from under the doorway. Probing tendrils slithered across the ground like venomous serpents.
“Come on son, you know what to do,” called Mr. Nodens.
Each pounding on the door gave off an electrical sting, slightly shocking Porter every time he touched the metal. He didn’t know how the Sasquatch could handle it. His hair and beard were standing on end and his scalp beneath his slouch hat prickled.
“Finish it!” shouted Nodens.
Porter grimaced at the old man, but he put both hands on the key, withstanding the arcing shocks, and turned it. The book spun in place, then sunk into the door. A bluish light gleamed like the noonday sun all about the edges.
The gelatinous snaking arms, now as large as pythons, froze and fell dead in puddles of goo, while the force banging against the door abruptly stopped.
“You did it son,” said Mr. Nodens. “Always knew you had it in you.”
Porter tore off his hat and held back the burning temptation to punch Nodens. “There’s a whole lot you could have saved me the trouble on!”
Nodens chuckled. “I helped you out, but I didn’t owe you anything, remember that. If you failed, these folks would have all failed with you. Be grateful you done good, but don’t presume to know my business.”
The Sasquatch seemed near as agitated as Porter, but it just stood huffing and giving a vengeful eye to Nodens.
“You know what to do, Jerahoe, get to it.”
The Sasquatch turned and, with its massive hands, as big as spades themselves, began pulling down great heaps of the mountain and reburying the doorway.
Though Nodens appeared to be well over seventy years old, he was spry, and strode to the doorway, somehow always avoiding the Sasquatch’s great handfuls of earth. He turned the lock on the door and pulled the key out.
“Can’t just leave it in the lock, can we?” he said to no one in particular.
“Now what?” asked Porter.
“Now I put it somewhere safer than on the veritable doorstep. Ghost Horn’s people knew not to go prying into these things, but your kind don’t.”
“My kind? It was Fei Buk.”
Nodens held up a hand, brushing off Porter’s excuses. “It was modern man that disturbed the cairn. If it hadn’t been those Chinese fellers, it would have been another Forty-Niner in no time. No, I’ll have to get this put in a special place where those that don’t respect the sacred old times cannot find it.”
The Sasqua
tch and the other Indians had a good-sized pile of earth over the top of the door. The Sasquatch even grabbed boulders of a size and weight Porter found unbelievable and wedged them over the top.
“That’s good Jerahoe, you’re done for now,” said Nodens. “Go on home to Clarva and the kids.”
“Kids?” puzzled Porter.
“Of course,” said Nodens. “Everyone’s got a family somewhere. Ain’t nothing singular in this whole world. Closest thing I know to that singularity would be you, actually.”
“Me?”
“Sure, blessed by a holy man that no bullet nor blade can harm you so long as you keep your hair long. That’s mighty different. You just gotta watch your back.” Nodens grinned and tipped his hat.
The Sasquatch breathed a sigh of relief and grunted something that sounded friendly at Ghost Horn, though he still gave the stink-eye to Nodens before trotting away into the tree line, leaving big bloody footprints behind.
Porter watched him go with a sense of awe. That such a huge thing could move so silently when it wished and vanish like that was astounding.
Ghost Horn and the other Indians seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief as well and moving back toward whatever was left of their village.
Nodens stood nearby, that half-smile on his face irritated Porter more with each passing second.
Mary held out a flask to Porter. “Thought you might want a drink now.”
“You read my mind,” he said. He was thinking of a cutting word for Nodens, something to really tell the man in no uncertain terms how he should carry himself to hell, but as he brought the flask down, there was no one standing there any longer. The mysterious old man was gone despite there being no where he could have possibly gone to that fast.
“Son of a gun,” mused Porter. “Do we have anything to show for these last few days?”
“You are Big Medicine, you stopped the Old Ones from waking,” she said stolidly.
“I don’t know about that. I saw at least one open his eyes. They burned like molten iron.”
Mary shook her head. “It is taken care of, they sleep or Nodens would not be gone.”
“Yeah, but we spent a helluva lot of ammunition. We lost Zeke. Dawg lost his damn tail! What do we have to show for it all?”
Let Sleeping Gods Lie Page 11
