S79 The Horror in the Swamp

by Brett Schumacher

  Moments later, the creature moved out of the room and chittered as it turned right. He waited until he could hear it no longer and tried to push the door open. It was caved in at his stomach and he had only an inch of clearance. He pushed at it with both hands. The metal groaned but didn’t open. There wasn’t enough room for him to get leverage. His legs and feet had more room. He kicked his feet fast and furiously against the door in a manner that reminded him of one of Lilli’s temper tantrums a few years back when she had lain on the living room floor and pounded her feet and hands up and down while crying because Mommy wouldn’t let her have chocolate cake before bed.

  The noise was horrendous and deafening, but it worked. The bottom of the door gave, and Robert pushed it up and out of his way. Scrambling out of the locker, he hauled the lantern and axe with him as he half-crawled across the other lockers and off the side. The creature was headed back to him; he could hear its maddening cry growing louder even through the ringing in his head.

  Running to the other side of the room, he hunkered down by one of the overturned and nearly demolished sets of lockers. The row had landed on the long bench and there was room enough for him to crawl into if he needed to get farther out of sight. Keeping hold of the lantern’s wire handle, he let it lay on its side as he got on all fours. His fear was turning to anger again, and he could almost taste his hate for the damnable creature. Injured and muzzy headed, he knew he didn’t stand a chance going toe to toe with the thing. He needed time to recuperate a bit before squaring off with a mutant lab experiment gone wrong.

  The creature did not run headlong into the room this time. Instead, it slowed to a walk before reaching the open doorway. Was that a sign that it did indeed know fear, or at least caution? Robert thought so. Did it consider him a threat? He thought maybe. Or it was injured and weak and was being slowed by those factors alone.

  It stepped to the threshold. Robert saw the stump of its lower left arm. The monster had it pulled close to its body as he would imagine a human would do in a similar situation. As it leaned forward to look around the room, Robert ducked his head and peered under the lockers, watching for the hybrid’s feet.

  The sound of hushed, muffled voices filled the room. The creature moved slowly and haltingly toward the locker Robert had escaped, the voices becoming louder. Before it reached the locker, the sound of sneakers on tile began to accompany the voices.

  The damn thing is trying to lure me out, Robert thought, amazed. It has enough reasoning power to use human voices to lure a human.

  The good doctor had written in her notes that they could not know if there was any humanity beyond physical features left in the creatures they had created. Robert thought there was a lot of humanity left in this one—but it was all bad. It was all the murderous, cunning, conniving, and underhanded powers that resided in some humans. At least in the ones like Robert’s father.

  The creature was smart, but it also had intelligence—two different things all together. That intelligence allowed the creature to think things out, reason, weigh options, choose the best course for the future dependent upon past experiences, and that made it a lethal adversary.

  Stunned, Robert watched its progress across the floor. Its progress in no way coincided with the sounds of sneakers on tile. It was like watching a Chinese movie in which the English dubbing didn’t quite match the movement of the characters’ mouths. It was terrifying and fascinating.

  Turning the new information over in his mind, Robert tried to figure the best way to use it to his advantage. But he could not think how to outwit something that possessed alien intelligence. He had no way to gauge how it would react in a given situation.

  He needed to get out of the room, evade the monster’s wrath to live. But if it heard him move, it would cut him off before he reached the door. It was closest to the exit, and with that freaky backward-facing head, it would see him long before he reached the door. In that scenario, the thing would kill him.

  If he left his axe and lantern lying on the floor and moved unnoticed to the halfway point of the room, he stood a fair chance of escaping before he was spotted. But that would leave him completely defenseless in any future confrontations with it.

  Think, Robert! Think, think, think before you get fucking killed! His mind raced in circles like a dog chasing its tail, always coming up empty handed.

  Glancing down at his hands, he saw small bits of metal and a broken screw, most likely from the lockers as they were being torn apart. Very slowly, he uncurled the fingers of his left hand, letting the lantern handle go silently to rest on the floor. He plucked the broken screw from the floor. It was a sturdy, industrial sized piece of hardware.

  He looked toward the creature’s feet again. It had reached the locker but kept imitating the two voices that never said any real words. It obviously did not know human language, or it would have imitated actual words rather than just the sound of voices. How close had the two men it was imitating come to being its victims? Where had the thing heard the sound of sneakers squeaking on tile if not inside the building?

  Kids were always looking for a place they thought was cool to hang out, smoke, drink, and just party hard without the bother of having the cops called on them. Had that been the case? Had a couple of young guys found the place by accident, and thinking it was completely deserted, found a way inside? Had the creature killed them after all?

  If that was the case, it was intelligent enough not to imitate the screams of horror it heard. It could distinguish between neutral and stressed emotions in voices.

  He thought back to the room partially filled with swampy water and alligators. Why hadn’t the creature simply escaped there? Was it afraid of alligators? Did it know they would kill it? The rotting remains of the broken alligator he had seen negated the idea that it was afraid of one alligator—it had eaten part of that one. But maybe it had enough knowledge to know that many alligators together could kill it.

  At that moment, Robert thought he might opt for taking his chances with the gators if he had it to do over again. The creature put one foot on the bottom of the locker, grabbed the door and tore it from its hinges and then slammed it against the other lockers repeatedly.

  Robert pushed his body farther down toward the floor. The creature let the door drop from its hand. As he watched, it leaned down and lifted the end of the lockers as if they weighed nothing. One wrong angled glance from its other head and it would see Robert. Before that could happen, he tossed the screw to the front of the other set of overturned lockers and grabbed the lantern handle again.

  The creature dropped the lockers and spun toward the sound. Again, its advance was slow and cautious. It went exactly where Robert wanted it to go and that put both sets of locker and benches between them. He edged his feet underneath his body as the monster turned sideways, neither head facing Robert.

  Springing to his feet, he sprinted toward the door. Before he reached it, the creature was on the chase, clawing over the fallen lockers and toward Robert. He didn’t want to slow down, he wanted to keep running. But he had to slow enough to grab the doorknob in his right hand, the axe bouncing wildly against his leg. As he spun to exit backward, he was greeted with the sight of the snarling creature. Its eyes were wild, and its face twisted into an expression of ferocity and hatred.

  Yes, he thought, it’s human enough to know hate. He had seen the expression on his father’s face more than once. Several times it had been directed at Robert. Things like that don’t leave a man; they stick with him for the rest of his life for better or worse.

  Robert ran backward, pulling the big door, his eyes never leaving the creature’s eyes. It dropped to a hunker and shot a hand through the opening, hooking his hip with its claws. The door slammed on its arm and it screamed. The hand curled involuntarily into a fist as the monster yanked it back. Robert never let the pressure off the knob. He put his foot against the wall for more leve
rage and grabbed the knob with both hands, pulling with all his strength.

  The hybrid succeeded in pulling its arm back through the opening, but not before Robert heard and felt the bones in its hand snapping like dry twigs. The door slammed hard into the jamb, and Robert held it in place for a moment longer before working up enough bravery to let it go.

  With one hand still on the knob, he stepped back. Three black claws lay on the floor just outside the door. He trembled as he palmed them and stuffed them into his pocket. At the time, he wasn’t sure what he meant to do with them, just that it was important that he take them.

  Looking up as he backed away again, he was shocked to see the creature standing on the other side of the glass, cradling its wounded, clawless hand to its broad chest. The hate seethed from its face as it moved closer to the glass.

  Robert was transfixed by the humanness of its expression; so terrible in such an inhuman abomination. Its chest heaved a few times and just as Robert started to turn away, he saw it slump toward the floor.

  Warily, he eased up to look through the glass and saw that the thing lay on the floor on its side, both faces lax and eyes rolled back showing whites. Its chest moved up and down with a regularity that let him know it was not dead, nor was it dying. It was merely unconscious. Dark fluid stained its chest where its wounded hand had been, and lying on the floor, it leaked more fluid.

  It bleeds. If it bleeds, it can die, he thought, giving it one final look before turning away to take advantage of the head start.

  As long as the creature was unconscious, any noise Robert made would not draw it to him.

  The main entrance offered no escape route. Robert didn’t waste his time going back there. He continued down the hallway and ended up in a familiar place. He pushed open one of the double doors with ease. On the other side, a chain and a broken Master lock lay to the side. The chain was piled neatly. The broken lock sat atop the links. Rust had taken over and there was no silvery shine left, only reddish-brown decay.

  Someone had found a way into the place. He couldn’t imagine the creature breaking the lock and then piling the chain and lock neatly to the side and out of the way. He wondered if the poor soul who had broken in ever got back out, or if the beast had killed them, leaving the corpse to molder away in some dank, shadow-darkened corner of the place.

  The windows were barred, and the large bay doors had been sealed, some with cement and blocks, others with welding. Daylight poured in through the barred windows set high up in the walls. Robert checked each door he came to only to find them sealed. The metal was warm under his hand. He could literally see and feel freedom. Mere inches separated him from the outside world.

  The roll-up doors had long ragged gashes torn in them, and he could see and touch the cinderblocks used to seal the opening. There were deep white scratches in them, too. The beast had been to the room. From the looks of all the claw marks in the doors, it had paid the room several visits over the years. Had it been desperately clawing at the doors to gain its freedom, or had it been reacting to the raucous noises of the building being sealed?

  Robert inserted his fingers into a set of gashes and traced them two feet down the door to their termination near the concrete floor. Standing straight again, he pulled the three claws from his pocket and held one up to a gash. Roughly the same size as the marks. Bits of tissue stuck to the ends of the claws. Robert grimaced, disgusted, and shoved them back into his pocket.

  Thunder rolled in the distance and birds called from the forest. Life surrounded the place. Nature had begun the process of reclaiming the property and the building; the elements had worn away at it year after year after year. All nature needed was the slightest chink in the armor to come inside and stake its claim.

  Vines grew through a few broken places in some of the windows. Insects buzzed lazily in the shafts of sunlight. Somewhere in the cavernous building’s corners, crickets and frogs sang, and the sound echoed through the large enclosure. Making his way to the opposite end of the building, he turned and surveyed it again.

  Discarded and forgotten ladders lay against the wall opposite the truck bays. Old folding chairs were scattered throughout, most lying on their sides and broken. A handful still sat upright, and climbing vines had grown around the legs, covered the seats, and reached toward the sunlight above. A few worktables with tools and ruined papers stood down the center in between the support columns. Other than the occasional rat scuttling through rubbish in the corners and the large spiders, though, there was no movement.

  Turning to the door behind him, he pushed it open. Darkness. He looked back at the sunny room and groaned, feeling sick to his stomach that he was going to have to leave it so soon. There was no guarantee that he would find anything but more grief down that dark hallway, and he loathed the idea of going in after tasting the sunlight again.

  Eyeing the lantern and setting his grip on the axe, he stepped into the bleak dark of the hallway and let his eyes adjust. Depending on the size of the place, his last hope might lie in the darkness before him. Everywhere else had been scoured for a way out—at least as well as he could scour with the threat of the monster chasing him. If he couldn’t find a way out, he thought he would not be able, physically or mentally, to go back to the lower level to search again. Not with that creature still alive.

  It crossed his mind to go back and finish it off, kill it, while it was unconscious. He actually started back that way and stopped, realizing the thing might no longer be unconscious. If it had awakened and got out of the room, it didn’t know which way he had gone. But if he showed up full of bravado thinking to kill it, it might see him or hear him, and then the chase would be on again in grand fashion.

  The creature was injured, angry, and possibly hungry for human meat for all he knew. Animals that are injured often become the most violent as death closes in on them. They will thrash out blindly with a ferociousness not possessed before. His dad called it their Hail Mary play to take somebody down with them, to make somebody suffer for the pain caused to them.

  Then a shred of wisdom handed down to him by his mother came to him. It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie, she had often told him as they sneaked through the den where his father was snoring by an empty bottle of Jim Beam. He had known she was calling his father a dog, but a lifetime later, as he stood contemplating the death of an otherworldly beast, he understood what the saying meant.

  He reconsidered his plan and turned back to the darkness. This time, it was probably safer to let the sleeping thing sleep. It was much worse than a drunken, snoozing father who might throw a tantrum upon being awakened. It would do much worse than beat the shit out of him or send him to the emergency room. The beast in the facility would kill him. He had seen it in the thing’s eyes. It wanted him dead. It didn’t have to have a reason.

  Closing the door behind him, he squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to rush the adjustment to the pitch. When he opened them again, he squinted straight ahead. At first, he thought the paper-thin line of light he saw was a leftover from squeezing his eyes shut too hard, but it didn’t fade away. He blinked several times while looking toward his feet and then raised his eyes again.

  The light was still there. He walked toward it, mindfully scooting his feet in front of him in case of obstacles, but he didn’t look away from that strip of light. As he got closer, the light brightened and three more lines came into view, making the outline of a door. He could see the end of the hallway, which meant he was looking at the exit door.

  Letting out a breathy chuckle, he ran the last ten feet to the door and set the lantern aside. Putting his hands flat against the metal, he could feel warmth. The heat and the outline of light seeping in around the door meant there was no cinderblock wall on the other side. There was no way to weld the door shut unless the hinges had been welded from the other side.

  Letting his hope build, he gripped the round barrel of the push-ba
r and slowly depressed it. There was a loud rusty squeak and then the latch clicked as it moved out of the strike plate. Robert didn’t push the door. He just stood there relishing the normalcy of the door and its unlatching, letting his mind relax before the big moment.

  “This is it. This could be the moment I get out, or the moment I go stark raving batshit.” He stuck his face close to the crack at the door jamb and inhaled deeply.

  He smiled as he pulled his face back. “The smell of freedom isn’t as fresh as I’d imagined.” He pushed the door.

  It didn’t open. It hit an obstacle and stopped dead. The clank and rattle of a chain didn’t register in his mind, and his body kept its forward momentum, determined to step out into the sunny day beyond. He thudded against the door. Crashed into the door was more like it. And then he rebounded, the push-bar still in his hands.

  Looking down at the bar, he pushed again, thinking it had to be a mistake. The door opened only far enough for him to be able to see out. Just enough to tease and tantalize and torture him. His hand fit through the opening, but his fingers wouldn’t reach the handle or the chain holding him prisoner. He bellowed through the opening and pushed against the door with all his strength.

  It was too cruel to be real. “This isn’t happening. No, no, no!” He backed up and kicked the door. The echoing thud ensuring him that he was indeed still trapped even though he could see outside, he could see the sidewalk leading away from the door. If it would open just a little bit more, he could get his hand out there and loosen the chain maybe.

  Pacing like a caged animal, he thought. At the door again, he forced his hand farther out, the metal scraped away skin as he pushed. After a moment longer of trying to lay hold of the chain, he realized the chain couldn’t be holding the door. It didn’t cross the opening at all. He pulled his hand back through. Maybe it’s just stuck on something, he thought.