Undead as a Doornail

by William F Aicher

  Even though Eitherspace seems empty, it really is anything but. All kinds of beasts and beings travel through there and inhabit the darkness all around you. The issue is most of the time you can’t see them since all the levels of reality are folded onto one another, and for a clear view of any specific reality you have to visit it. And I still hadn’t figured out any way to flip through realities, or timelines, for that matter.

  So anyway, just because I don’t ever really die … or at least, stay dead once I do … it doesn’t mean dying doesn’t hurt. And this one hurt. But it was either that or get caught by the fuzz, and I wasn’t about to get pinned for a teenage girl’s disappearance. I had no reason to be in that house, and to begin to explain how I got into her room would have been a nightmare. But that’s the life of an international monster hunter. No one takes you seriously. And you sure as hell can’t show up at the front door of someone’s house asking to be let in so you can start your investigation. No, they want to see your “badge” or “identification.” And even then, if you had something meaningful to show, they’re not going to believe you anyway. All people know are those stupid ghost-hunter shows on TV starring a bunch of charlatans out to make a quick buck through some ham-fisted entertainment … or they saw that godawful Van Helsing movie and think I’m some kind of half-ass Hugh Jackman cosplayer.

  Most of the time, though, they either end up slamming the door in my face or calling the police. Neither of those is very helpful in the thick of a hunt.

  That’s why I travel through Eitherspace. Every dark place is connected to it, and there’s generally nothing as dark and as prevalent in homes and businesses as closets. When you ask a kid where the monsters are hiding, the answer is almost always in the closet (or under the bed). And the reason is that’s how they come and go. When Daddy opens the door and sees nothing inside it’s because there really isn’t anything inside. But there was. The creepy crawly just traveled back into the Eitherspace from its own secret doorway in that shadowy cavern and isn’t there anymore.

  One of the biggest benefits of Eitherspace travel is speed. Much faster than driving or flying. Cheaper too. Especially when it comes down to plane tickets. I always wondered how Indiana Jones and Lara Croft managed to galivant all over the planet. I mean, I know Indiana had the funds of the University of Chicago behind him. And then some of the work was government-funded. But still. There have to be some limits. And regardless, I don’t have any of that. Just a petty salary from my work at the county. Not the best government job. Though at least it does have decent benefits. Problem is, health insurance isn’t all that useful when you have “abilities” like me.

  Actually, that’s not exactly true. I’m not a superhero: not a Deadpool or a Superman for sure. I catch colds and diseases and get hangovers. It’s just that once I die, I tend to come back in much better shape than I was from the injury that killed me. Still, I can’t help but think all those deaths are pretty hard on my system. I’m no expert, and I haven’t seen a doctor specifically about the issue, but there do seem to be some lasting effects from all of this back and forth between corpse and regular old person. Like this cutlass in my chest? Rusted as hell, and I know I should have taken the time somewhere along the way to clean it up some … but I frankly wasn’t all that concerned for cleanliness when it came to how I planned to chop some zombie’s head off. Shame on me. Even though it’d heal up, it didn’t mean none of that rust wasn’t going to get caught in the wound. Thank God I stay current on my tetanus shots.

  As I regained my composure and slowly came back to that state of undead that allows you to actually move around in Eitherspace, I took the opportunity to take in my surroundings. Other than the floating glob of blood and the massive stain on my overalls, nothing seemed different from when I first came through. But now that I knew something had come through before me … the worms and bugs were enough to give that away, not to mention those damn parafairies. Something had come through, and it was something nasty. Had to be if those were the kind of things it was dropping as it moved.

  Speaking of fairies, they’re far more common than you’d think. Pretty much everywhere, if you know how to spot them. They’re the ones that cause the twinkles in the corners of your eyes. Half the time when you see a butterfly flapping around what you’re really seeing is just a fairy in disguise. And for the most part, they’re sweet little things. Spreading joy and happiness as they pop around from dimension to dimension.

  But parasite fairies? They’re nasty fuckers. Think of a cross between Dobby the House Elf, a mutated mosquito and a flukeworm. All slobbery and drippy as they flap around, they don’t spend much time in the air at all. Not like their cousins (though if you ask me, I personally doubt if they’re really related at all), they’re mostly hopping from one foul thing to another, latching on with their suction-cup mouths and burrowing their little tongue straws down into whoever or whatever they decide to feed on.

  And since they don’t travel much on their own—at least not for spaces of more than a few dozen feet, the chances of finding a nest of them in Nancy’s second-story bedroom were pretty unlikely. Sure, Nancy could have been up to no good herself, spending time in graveyards or summoning demons for teenage kicks. But she didn’t seem the type. I haven’t met many goth kids who were into My Little Pony, and they sure as hell didn’t take selfies and hang them all over their bedroom walls.

  So, as I scanned the emptiness, instead of focusing on a destination, I focused on my surroundings. This wasn’t about figuring out where to go next. It was figuring out what I might be tracking. With parafairies, you’ve got a variety of possibilities, from werewolves to zombies to mummies and vampires. And that’s just the paranormal-type monsters. They’ll latch on to people often enough as well and are pretty common in crack-houses and homeless tent cities. Kind of like bedbugs, they gather where they can survive and tend to stick around until someone—or something—comes in and eradicates them—all the while spreading out to new areas as they find a host and get dragged off someplace altogether different.

  Here in Eitherspace though, I couldn’t find anything. It’s usually the case since the darkness eats everything, and eventually either disappears from existence over time or flips through a tripdoor into another dimension as it hits its decay plateau. So, I went to plan B and put on my goggles and flipped on my thermal vision. Night vision wouldn’t be of much help here since there’s nothing to focus on. Everything kind of fades out unless you’re following a path, and I had no path. What I needed was to find one. Shit, find anything.

  As my eyes adjusted to the view, a faint trail of light appeared before me, heading from the closet door I’d dropped through and winding off into the distance. Kind of like a neon vapor trail, or like one of those photographs people take of a sparkler moving fast in the dark. Even as I stood there, the trail ahead of me faded, and I pulled myself together and started to follow.

  The further I went, the brighter the trail became, snaking up and down, side to side—every which way possible. Soon I was out of the view of the door I’d left behind and enveloped again by total darkness with only my neon trail to guide me. When it comes to travel in Eitherspace, you can’t really run, since there’s nothing to run on. You’re kind of gliding, like an astronaut lost in space. Part swimming, part tumbling, you’re at the mercy of the vacuum to get where you’re going.

  But space isn’t the same here, as you’ve likely learned. And distances can be traveled quickly if you know where you’re going. I only prayed whoever I was following had a destination of his own in mind, and whatever path I followed wouldn’t be a twisted maze to nowhere.

  The light of the trail continued to bloom until eventually, it became too bright for my goggles. Before I burned my retinas, I took the headset off and picked up the trail with my bare eyes.

  When you’re coming in from reality to Eitherspace, you’re dragging reality with you. What’s stuck on you comes along, and it leaves a stream of existence in its wake—
like wet footprints after you step out of the pool. But like how those footprints eventually fade away from the sun, reality trail fades from time decay.

  This trail had blossomed into something strong and bright, meaning I was on the right path, and I was likely gaining on who or whatever left it. But it also threatened to fade soon. Again, though I had no real sense of how far I’d traveled, I also have come across enough of these echoes to know reality doesn’t stick around for long. If I didn’t find where I was going soon, I’d lose the trail completely—and even a set of night vision goggles can’t pick up something that isn’t there.

  Just as I was certain the trail was about to fade, a crack of light appeared in the distant emptiness. Kind of like a floating crease of light in space, the crack shivered and pulsed, as if alive. And with each tiny pulse, it seemed to shrink, as if closing itself up. If I didn’t act quickly, I’d lose it. And if I lost it, there would be little chance of ever finding this exit again.

  Whatever had come through here had departed at this point of spacetime. At least that’s what the trail was telling me. I had no choice but to go through. Holding my breath, I gripped the edges of the split and pried the crack open, and stepped through into the light, all the while praying I wouldn’t reenter reality someplace underwater or, worse, outer space.

  As I came through, I was blinded by the rush of light as I reentered reality but was quickly plunged back into darkness as my feet touched down on the cold, hard ground. A musty odor surrounded me, and the air had taken on a deep, moist chill. I had to be underground.

  The night vision goggles didn’t do much good here. The place was completely absent of light so had nothing to key off or amplify. So, I did what any respectable adventurer does, and flipped out my phone and tapped on the flashlight app.

  The room took on a harsh glow from the bright white of the phone’s flash. All around me was stone and textured walls. Rough and bumpy. A breeze flowed past me, stinking of rot and death.

  I stumbled to the wall and set myself down with my back to the textured stone, feeling the bumps behind my head as I sat. The gash in my chest was healing, but my energy lagged. Even taking those few steps nearly took me down to the ground. I had to rest. Give myself a little time to recover.

  But no sooner had I taken a seat than the clack of scurrying claws erupted from the silence. I turned my light in the sound’s direction, and a rat the size of a Studebaker stared at me with a pair of beady little eyes, gave a hiss, and ran off. As I watched him disappear into the dark, my eyes slowly became accustomed to the glow of my phone, and the room took on a greater definition. Everything seemed to be carved out of the same type of stone, like a tunnel dug straight out of the bedrock. But the walls, they seemed different. Pocked with black holes and divots. I dropped my left hand and reached behind me, feeling the wall I leaned against. My fingertips felt grooves and pockets, matching what I saw across the room. I slowly turned and leaped back to my feet when I realized the walls weren’t made of stone at all, but instead a ghastly display of stacked skulls. Ancient ones. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years old. Floor to ceiling, running left to right as far as the light traveled.

  Another breeze blew through, and the smell returned. But the death stink didn’t rise from the skulls. They’d been here far too long to have anything left on them to rot. Whatever the smell was, it came from a fresh kill. Or, at least something fresh enough to still have some flesh to feed the rats and bacteria and fungus and God-knows-what-else that enjoys gobbling the soft bits from bone.

  I could have left then. I could have gone back into Eitherspace and followed my rope back home. But I’d come this far, and I was on the trail of something. What kind of something, I had no idea. But whatever that something was I was gaining on it.

  The problem with rope, though, is it has an end. And at only about twenty feet of length, I was at the end of mine. I cut my lifeline, dropped my guide home to the floor, and followed my nose deeper into the tunnels.

  The space I’d emerged in turned out to be a larger room branching into narrower tunnels, and as I left the chamber, I also left behind the skull walls. In these narrow caverns, little shelves were carved from the stone, most of them holding partial skeletons. Whatever this place was, it was a place for the dead. With no way to know how far in from the entrance I’d popped in and no way of knowing how much deeper it all went, the number of remains could have been into the thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. The dead were everywhere.

  As I followed the smell, the tunnels kept branching off into more and more tunnels, some of which had completely caved in. I soon recognized this confusing hive was some sort of catacombs, and I started to regret having cut my line. Popping back into Eitherspace from a place like this, there was no telling where I’d end up. But I’d worry about getting out later. For now, I had to keep going.

  The tunnels snaked on and on, and with every twist and turn the smell strengthened until I eventually had to do something about it. Having left my gas mask at home, I did the next best thing and tore a strip of cloth from my undershirt and wrapped the material over my face like a scarf. My crappy little air filter didn’t help much, but at least it stopped me from throwing up.

  Eventually, my journey led to a dead-end tunnel. Or so I thought. Here, at the end of my path, the smell threatened to eat through my makeshift gas mask. As I searched the space for the source of the stench, bile rose in my throat. I tore the cloth from my face just in time and ralphed all over the catacomb’s stone floor. The viscous fluid, spattered with chunks of chicken nuggets and French fries I’d eaten earlier, spattered the ground and I tried to look away so I wouldn’t reflexively cause myself to barf again. Then I saw the slippery wet bits of the mess begin to disappear before my eyes.

  Down a slight slope in the floor, my half-digested lunch flowed, like a stream of yellow acid, until vanishing into a small hole at the base of the back wall. I ventured closer, careful not to step my goo, and upon closer inspection discovered the wall had been built of stacked stone and boulders. Someone or something had blocked this area off, and from the looks of it, quite some time ago. I ran my fingers along the stone, searching for a loose rock like a game of ancient Jenga. Mixed in with the stone were a variety of aged bones: femurs, skulls, bits of rib. All human and all gold with age.

  The only way through this barricade was to break it down. But with stones the size of suitcases, there was no way I could shove the barrier over myself. A stick of dynamite might have helped, but an explosion would risk a cave-in. And although I can bring myself back from the dead, if I died buried under a pile of rock and for some reason couldn’t get into Eitherspace, I’d come back to life under the same rock. Then starve to death, die, be reborn, starve, die, and be reborn, pretty much for infinity. Not a very fun option. And besides, I left my dynamite at home.

  Back down on the floor, the slimy part of my puke had pretty much disappeared under the stone, leaving only the chunkier bits behind in a nasty little snail trail of vomit. I dropped to my knees to find a better view at where my French fries had slipped through the stone and was welcomed with a fortunate, though disgusting surprise. At the base of the makeshift wall, a small crevice opened in the stones and, shining my flashlight through the opening, was clearly where my little river had gone. A three-foot-wide puddle of barf and water glistened back at me from the divot in the floor, with a six-inch opening between its surface and the stone above. Probably not enough space to squeeze through but that depended on how deep the puddle went.

  Pulling back my sleeve and holding my breath, I reached out to the sick pool and swallowed back another torrent of puke as my fingers slithered beneath the oily surface. Down went my hand, then my wrist, and forearm. Nearly two feet of stone-free space greeted me until I finally hit bottom.

  I slipped my phone into a Ziploc bag, closed it up, and slid in headfirst.

  When I surfaced, the odor hit me like a swing from Harley Quinn’s mallet. Whatever had been stinking up
the joint had been doing it from in here, and the smell burned my nostrils like a ghost pepper in a vaporizer. That any of it managed to seep its way through the walls and out into the larger cave system no longer surprised me, and I thanked my lucky stars I’d already tossed my cookies and didn’t have anything more to spit up.

  In the air of the room, a faint glow permeated the atmosphere, and I didn’t have to turn on my flashlight. A good thing too, since I didn’t want to announce my presence to anyone who might be lurking off in the shadows. The yellow glow of flickering flame against the tunnel walls gave off barely enough light to indicate something lay ahead, just beyond the corner … and if I was going to find out what that something was, I’d have to keep moving.

  Along the stone floor, I crept, careful not to let the whet schlop of every footstep announce my arrival. My hand over my face, I blocked out as much of the smell as I could … and somehow, by the time I reached the spot where the tunnel turned a corner, I’d grown accustomed enough to the stench to mostly ignore it.

  What I found around the corner stopped me dead in my tracks. A pile of bodies stacked at least four-feet-high lay slumped together in disarray on the floor. Half-rotted, they’d moved well past the early phases of decay, and the bottom layer had already entered the stage of putrefaction. As the stack grew, the freshness improved, until the top layer, where a few naked corpses stared at me, their hollow eyes lifeless in their sockets. Flames of candlelight danced around the room, casting wicked shadows against the walls. Not seeing anyone or anything living in the space, I crept closer to investigate.

  There was something different about these bodies. And the closer I examined the mess the more obvious that difference became. Most of the bodies had been drained of blood. Exsanguinated is the science-y word. All that remained was a pile of flesh, bone, meat, and organs—piled up in a fleshy mountain and wasting away like leftovers.