For the last time that morning his head made intimate contact with a sharp rock lodged in the earth above him. His back ached from the posture he was forced to assume and his knees, exposed through threadbare slacks, showed the abuse of months upon them. This was enough. This was not the life for him. There had to be a better life out there, something better than the slow destruction of his body and soul scratching out an existence that was not worth living. He was sure of this and over the months, the memory of his earliest employ merged with observations made on his road west to inspire his last resolve in this hell-hole he had dug.
Since he stepped onto the docks at 17, he had worked hard and strenuous jobs when not spending time staring down rows of blazing guns. He had always gravitated to the most physical or demanding professions. He realized that the men who had the money weren’t the ones doing the hard, physical work. He didn’t mind such work, not at all, but he wasn’t wanting to do that forever. In every town he’d passed through on his way to Baird’s Holler, and even there, the one person he always had to at some point visit was the local general store. The proprietors of such were always the same, regardless personal appearances. They lived with roofs over their head. With this in mind, he worked the earth those few months, worked it and steadily prised a significant fortune from that vein. He kept his treasure in that saddlebag which was nearly full, and this he kept banked in the side of the gully beneath a few significant boulders dislodged from his tunneling and cleverly hid behind that scrub of manzanita. He had enough, surely, to begin such a life for himself somewhere. Open a dry goods market perhaps…but not here, not in Baird’s Holler.
He had been daydreaming of a mythical place further west where a peaceful ocean sent cool breezes over a warm, sun-kissed paradise. A dry goods purveyor with a comfortable routine could live a pleasantly dull life in such a place. He had his start-up, both in his saddlebag and the leather pouch he wore around his neck in which he placed the nuggets he would cull as he dug. He had enough and had planned just one more quick scurry in the hole before packing up his mule and heading out. He would avoid Baird’s Holler completely, his distaste for it complete, but head north to Prescott. There he’d figure out how to get to California. Just a quick look down the drift to grab a few final nuggets or chips or flakes. Every little bit would help. Then he hit his head just one too many times.
He began to back out of the tunnel. At that depth, he had no choice. It was his freshest push and he hadn’t widened it to fit yet. As he edged backwards, a glint caught his eye. He leaned forward with his feeble wick lamp and sure enough, there was a sizable nugget lying right in the open he’d missed. How he’d missed it, he couldn’t imagine. It was larger than any he’d picked in the last week and he’d just scoured that area with hand and eye before calling it quits.
With muted oath, he reached forth for the nugget. When he tugged at it, it yielded. It was heavier, larger than it appeared with the bulk buried. This got his interest and he nudged his way as close as he could with the flame held forth. About the nugget, which at this point showed the size of Minie ball, was a small pool of glistening surface, black like oil. Where it came from he knew not for it was not there one headache ago. He pulled at the nugget and it began to ease forth ever so slightly. It was jagged allowing him to hook his finger around part to gain purchase. The more he pulled, the larger it grew before his eyes. Twice the size, now thrice and all with a steady pull. He grabbed the nugget firmly, the tips of his left-hand dipping into the inky fluid, and pulled.
Out it came, twice yet the size last visible, black goop stringing between the chunk of gold and the small puddle the nugget came from. He flicked his wrist and pulled, freeing the nugget from the oily slime but sending one strand swinging back and looping around his hand. He casually wiped his hand on his pants as he squinted in the dim light at the gold before him. Nodding in satisfaction, an unexpected bonus at the end of his last hour in the mine, he opened the pouch and stuffed the nugget in. Yes, he was done.
He stuffed the pouch back in his shirt where it lay over his heart. This brought his left hand close to his face. The scent of the oil on his hand was delicious. It hinted of berry, but one unfamiliar to his tastes. He sniffed his hand and then stuck out his tongue to timidly taste this syrup he’d stumbled upon. It was as delicious as it smelled so he tasted a pool of it gathered on his wrist. He looked back at the little pool and froze. There was movement in the pool or around it, he could not tell. He drew his lamp closer and there, on the surface of the pool, rose dozens of thin stalks, pitch as the pool itself and indistinct from it. Some rose as high as three inches before they would bubble at the top, swelling to burst in miniature explosions of mist. Then the stalks would collapse and reform, the fallen cannibalized to form the next to fall. Then one stalk kept rising. It failed to bubble but twisted and writhed, a perverse, blind tendril seeking his hand.
He scrambled backwards in abject terror. In panic, he twisted and turned there at the narrow end, where his body had no room to turn and twist. Through sheer panic he contorted his body around, his feet dislodging one of the simple braces he’d set. As he scrambled, the earth collapsed down upon his trailing leg, crushing it between freed stones. He screamed, and as he did so, the sweet berry on his tongue turned to putrid flesh. His stomach revolted and he choked on his bile while trying at the same to draw breath to scream. He was left coughing over a pile of vomit, his right leg trapped beneath unstable rock.
The collapse had been isolated, only sealing off the very end of the tunnel. The black tendril, that thing that reached for him, was on the other side of the cave-in. He had traveled enough by sheer terror to ensure this separation, or so he hoped. His foot was trapped though. He could feel where his shin was pinched, where it was trapped between sharp stones. He could move and wiggle his foot a little, the limit being the available space. He also took heart that he did have some control over his foot. He could wiggle it. Now if he could just figure out how to get out of there without bringing more down on him, or at least ease his leg enough to pull his foot through. That was his intent but he was having trouble still heaving emptily over the vile pool beneath him. He could not get the taste of rotting flesh and unclean earth from his mouth.
Then he felt a scratch, a purposeful movement against the heel of his trapped boot. It was the slightest of pressures, the faintest touch, but it was not where or how such should or could exist. Behind him was nothing his sane mind could conceive making such a gesture. No animal, no beast or serpent or even insect he knew was behind him under that collapsed portion of the tunnel. All that was behind him was an insanity in writhing ink and his imagination could not grasp what possibilities there might be. He froze, cold sweat on his skin and a taste of fungus and forgotten flesh in his mouth, horror at the impossible unknown building to a pitch as the probing focused on a spot. When the scraping and scratching stopped and the pressure on the heel of his boot intensified at a point, that horror erupted and panic seized him. He pulled, he twisted, he dug with his hands furiously but he could not budge his leg from the trap it was in. All the while he could feel that black thing, that inky, amorphous awl steadily boring through the heel of his boot.
He was soaked in sweat and vomit, his panicked exertions having occurred without concern for the pool his stomach had left. His breathing was labored and his air growing short with wheezes between his gasps. His fight was giving out. Whatever it was that slowly assaulted his foot had delayed its advance enough that he began to ease in his concerns allowing the exhaustion of adrenaline spent to take hold. He looked up to the entrance of his mine and saw the oak tree framed. The sunlight played on the leaves, a light wind orchestrating their dance as they mocked him with their freedom. He pulled and twisted and strained once again for naught as he reached out his hand for that distant oak, that receding freedom. His perspective of the tunnel was shifting, his vision lengthening as the adit shrank and his eyes focused on the ruin of his outstretched hand.
Th
e tips of the fingers on his right hand were corrupted with pustule growths while black fuzz sprouted from the backs of his fingers. He brought his left hand forward to catch what light he could. It was worse, much worse. Where the black tendril had touched, a thick, scaly surface was forming with white pus beginning to show between the plates. As soon as he saw this infestation, it began to itch intensely. He thought of his mouth immediately and realized the taste in his mouth wasn’t a mere memory lingering. He had been too focused on the fear slowly working the heel of his boot that he’d taken himself for merely parched. It wasn’t thirst and the aftertaste of vomit but worse and as he realized this, he heaved again and again and again though only a few small chunks of blackened bile fell forth. And of that pool of vomit, further horrors he saw for it stewed and swirled of its own, bubbles forming on its surface only to pop in fine mists. Wherever that bile had been splattered in his frustrations, stalks were growing in every ichorous color or puffballs deathly white began to bloom. He was infested from within and covered under his own bile. The unbearable itching seized dominance. He tore at his flesh without mercy with hands themselves enraged. A new frenzy took hold, his exhaustion unable to contain the panic and this new level of discomfort.
There was no respite. There was no collection of moments wherein he could pause and reflect. Mercy holds no such measure in the maw of mindless malevolence. The drilling on the bottom of his boot ceased with the surrender of the sole. With that he froze again, the discomforts of his deterioration swept aside as expectation dreaded the absence of that steady drill. Horror anticipated is worse than horror known in the experience of the lucky or the secure. Anticipation is but a phantom though when horror reaches beyond the bounds of sanity and backs up its promise with shrill and direct pain…and pain it was.
He felt a point like the tip of a needle press against and then pierce the thick callous on the bottom of his foot. Above all else, he felt that needle slide into the flesh of his heel. He felt it reach in despite his frantic exertions, his kicking and thrashing, and bore slowly through the sparse meat to the bone. His screams were choked, his throat raw and rotting. Chunks of flesh and fungal slime flew from his mouth as his eyes shed all pretense of sanity. He thrashed violently as the needle forced its way through the bone of his heel. It bore, this dread spike, and he raged in helpless pain until he crashed his head into a rock above and plunged into a restless oblivion.
When he woke, it was to the sweet taste of exotic berries and the hope that he’d had but a dream. He lay there with his eyes shut savoring the warm comfort which enveloped him and the soft pillow beneath. He had memories of pain unbearable and horror beyond bounds but now he lay on a soft pillow of…rotten meat. He opened his eyes in dismay as the soreness in his leg and foot returned in a dull, throbbing ache. He was unmoved in his tunnel and the angle of shadow on the oak beyond the adit told of a setting sun. Beneath and around, his mattress had grown, a fungal padding blanketing the tunnel. The nausea returned but he had no stomach to purge. When he did heave, he choked on the growths which had taken root within. He choked and gagged and spat until a hint of air reached his tortured lungs. He struggled at his leg but was too weak to accomplish even a pretense of effort so he lay his head down and cried.
Samuel Delrosa knew he was doomed. Even were his foot not trapped, even were he to crawl out of that hole right then, he knew his damnation was assured. Something inside him had turned. That horrid black pool had poisoned him, that he knew. It had infected him and it was rotting him from within and without as he watched. He could see the boils rising and popping on his arm, spreading infection at a visible pace. The corruption didn’t hurt beyond a low and enduring itch across and within the whole of his body, an itch that would demand attention were it not the least discomfort present, were it not his least lament. He lay there weeping for his loss, for his life. He wept for the future promised by the saddlebag he had hidden and the pouch tied around his neck, that engorged bag of gold pressed beneath his heart. There would be no cool breezes off pacific waves. There would be no future, no comfort of friends found or families formed. He knew he was doomed and wept for the loneliness which he knew was his. He wept until he almost found peace in the rhythm of his suffering.
It was as if a child inexpertly plucked at the strings of an untuned harp, the string being the nerves that ran through his wounded leg. First the flesh around the hole in his heel began to burn as if acid had been injected with the needle. Then the bone that had been bored cracked as the tendril which had pierced it pulsed and bulged and grew. And then, as he his eyes shot wide and he choked on the loosened lining of his throat, that finger of black plucked at his sciatic nerve. It plucked once again, then slid as if a roughened bow over strings up his leg in staggered movements. It did this for a perceived eternity, a direct and intentional assault on raw receptors until once again the host lay unconscious and oblivious. His contractions and exertions through the ordeal left him with weakened bones in arms and legs cracked under the sheer pressure put upon them by muscles contorted. The pillow beneath his head now included more than just the contents of his stomach but much of the stomach itself.
When he woke, it was to the scent of sweet berries and a warm sensation in his crotch. He almost hoped. He never had the chance. Death filled his nose and choked his mouth. Anger inflamed every nerve within his groin. He tried to scream and more came from his mouth than he could clear. When, after hours of this singular torture he still hadn’t drawn breath, his dismay and fear became complete. His tormentor was cruel. This thing which gripped him, which had bored through his foot and twined itself around his every nerve, knew no such thing as mercy. It was cruelty manifest, eternal anger and malevolence unbound. It had no name, none he could understand but he knew it now, knew the reason he dreaded this valley. Knew that until the end of time here would reside this perdition, and until the end of time he knew that his tormentor would tease him such.
In this eternal solitude, the loneliness of an undying soul, he suffered. He felt his flesh blister away to feed that rot which he had become. He watched the days turn to weeks as the sun played upon the oak outside, the tunnel filling more and more with the odious growths until at last his sight was lost and his eyes, unneeded, dissolved to his unabated agony. Every second of every existence he gasped and sucked for air but he knew he had no lungs with which to breath. There was a beat, a throb which resounded from his chest, but it was only the pulsing, burning nerves twined tight around a heart of gold. All that remained of Samuel Delrosa were his nerves stretched throughout the tunnel in mockery of their former frame, inflamed and cruelly caressed by tendrils of black ink and malice. And his bones, his relics, they spread slowly throughout that mass, pushed by the noxious growths which sprang from his flesh, pushed to their destined reaches; the light at the end of the tunnel. There, at the head of the fungal flow, there only did he succeed in reaching that open, free air. There only did the tip of one finger, trembling to agonies unending, poke through that horrid drum trapped behind a bramble of manzanita which grew wild around an ancient oak tree at the back of an unnamed wash in mountains of central Arizona.
TREACHEROUS MEMORY, by Glynn Owen Barrass
Her new client had chosen a conspicuous spot for a meet. Intentionally so, if Cassey had interpreted his manner on the telephone correctly. Ted Cruise had sounded paranoid and scared.
The place she waited outside was called: ‘FIKA Espresso Bar,’ a quaint looking café built below a brownstone. The café was painted black, the name written in large silver metal letters above the front window. The area fronting it was dedicated to outside seating: red metal chairs and tables lined the sidewalk, protected from the vehicle traffic by a barrier of small bushes in large rectangular iron planters.
The seats were filled with people talking to one another or into cellphones. It being the end of summer, with an autumn chill already in the air, many patrons had their coats and jackets on.
Cassey could feel the encroachi
ng cold through her own jacket, and held her paper cup of espresso two-handed, relishing the warmth. She was halfway through it now, and Ted Cruise was late.
Cruise where are you? He had called the night before with a tale of a missing wife who had disappeared two years earlier. She had reappeared three weeks ago, claiming a complete lack of memory for the missing time. He was concerned about her. Selene was acting differently, and in ways that frightened him.
“Two whole years,” Cassey said, staring at the diminishing brown foam inside her cup. Her theory was that Selene had left him for another man (or woman), and with that new life having failed somehow, had returned to him with a story of amnesia. People don’t just disappear to nowhere; she’ll have left traces, definitely. And is that what Cruise wants me to find?
“Er, hi… Are you Miss Bane?” A shadow crossed the table.
Cassey looked up. The voice she recognized, but the owner was of course, new to her.
He was tall and thin, dressed in black slacks and a thick grey woollen coat. His complexion was pale, which enhanced the dark stubble on his face. His dark brown hair was mussed up, like he had just gotten out of bed.
“I’m Cassey Bane yes,” she said, and waved at the empty seat facing her. The man was getting stares from the other patrons, and just before he sat, he glanced around suspiciously.
“Mr. Cruise, I take it?” she asked.
He nodded, his lips forming a hint of a smile.
“Want a coffee?”
He shook his head. “Not right now, I’d just rather get down to things.” Cruise looked behind him, scanning the other patrons again. He turned back to Cassey, reached into his coat’s left hand pocket, and removed a black iphone. Placing it on the table, he went to tap the screen, hesitated, and placed his hands in his lap.
The Third Cthulhu Mythos Megapack Page 16
