by Stephen Laws
“Duvall!” said Rohmer.
“So the bastard does have a gun,” said Jimmy.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Cardiff shoved, Frye aside to peer out into the darkness. Something was burning out there, not in the car wreck . . . but beside it. The storm, the wind, the rain and the continually fogged glass from Cardiff’s breath was obscuring the view.
And then something hit the reception doors with tremendous force. Gilbert screamed, a high-pitched squeal of fear, as the reception doors burst open and a dark flapping shape hurtled through on to the floor. Gusts of rain and snow flurried through the opened door as the shape scrabbled on the floor.
Jimmy and Cardiff both saw Rohmer reach into the inside of his overcoat. In one fluid movement, he had drawn what both men could see, even in the darkness, was an automatic pistol. He levelled it, straight and calm, at the shape that was thrashing on the tiles of the reception floor.
“No, Rohmer! It’s me!” said the shape, resolving itself into Duvall.
Scrabbling to his feet again, he hurled himself back through the throat of the storm, seized the reception door and savagely slammed it shut.
“Duvall, what the hell . . . ?” began Rohmer, lowering his gun.
Gasping for breath, soaked and dishevelled, Duvall backed away from the doors. He still held his own automatic in his left hand, and he was raising it towards the door as he backed off.
“I’ve . . . never . . . never seen one like . . .”
“What happened?” shouted Cardiff. “Where’s Pearce?”
“We . . . we doused it with paraffin in the car . . . Not easy in the storm . . . we . . . set it . .. alight . . .”
“Where’s Pearce?”
“The bloody thing just came alive . . . tore out of the car at us . . . Christ, it was . . . it was . . . it nearly got me, Rohmer.”
Cardiff turned back to the window and wiped the fog of his breath from the glass. He leaned close to it and peered out into the night, trying to see what was out there . . .
Just as Pearce’s wild and screaming face slammed against the glass on the other side, less than an inch from Cardiff’s own.
Cardiff recoiled in shock.
The others pulled away from the window into the centre of reception, watching in horror as Pearce continued to scream in panic at them. He drummed on the window with the flat of white, spectral hands—eyes turned to his left, in the direction of the glass doors, and filled with a fear and horror that paralysed Cardiff.
“Let me in! Let me in! LET ME IN!”
Pearce was staring wildly at Cardiff now, hair plastered by rain to his head. There was mud on his face. He glanced back to the doors again in terror. But whatever had been there must be gone, because now he was whirling in alarm, looking around him. He turned frantically back to the window. Behind him, lightning flared, turning him into a stark silhouette against the windows; flooding the reception with white light.
But no one, it seemed, was able to move.
Pearce began to move along the outside of those windows now, hand by hand on the glass, staring inside; as if he was walking on a ledge out there, fourteen storeys high, casting wild and terror-stricken looks from side to side.
“Help me . . . for God’s sake help me . . . it’s out here . . . God, Cardiff!”
And Cardiff remembered the screaming from the walls and the floor and the ceiling; remembered the familiar voice that had screamed his name. At that instant, his paralysis vanished and he moved quickly towards the glass doors.
“Get away from that door!” snapped Rohmer, and Cardiff half-turned to see that the automatic was now levelled at him.
“We’ve got to let him in!”
“Another step towards that door . . .”
“And what, you bastard? You’ll kill me?”
“No . . . but a bullet in the leg won’t be pleasant for you.”
“You . . .”
And Pearce was screaming again, but this time not in fear.
Cardiff whirled back to see that Pearce’s face was squashed up close to the glass, still thirty feet from the reception doors; face contorted, mouth wide and agonised. There was an engulfing, indeterminate shadow behind and over him . . . something huge. Steam or fog seemed to be wreathed around that massive shadow. Rain hissed all around it . . . and now Pearce was screaming in agony and distress.
Frye was saying “My God, my God, my God. . .” over and over again.
And Pearce was being somehow lifted from his feet, still squashed against the glass, hands and feet drumming in a frenzy against the windows. The monstrous shadow was lifting him.
Then blood began to splatter on the glass from Pearce’s open mouth.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .” Frye clutched his hands to his mouth.
The splattering of blood became a dark and arterial gushing.
Duvall lunged forward and fired at the shadow. The roaring detonation filled the reception area like a miniature lightning strike, stabbing pain into everyone’s ears. A fist-sized hole was punched in the glass two feet to the left of Pearce’s screaming, crimson face.
Something inhuman screeched and bellowed in the storm, and Pearce was swept away from the glass by the shadow, out of sight and into the night—leaving a bloody smear. Pearce’s screams were borne away on the wind.
Duvall moved forward to fire again, but Rohmer held his arm—pulling him back.
Lightning flashed outside again.
There was no shadow, but the drifting tatters of smoke from something that had been burning were still swirling in the wind and rain.
“Move back,” said Rohmer. “Away from the windows.”
Thunder growled in the sky again, and they were all backing away slowly and carefully. Another growling seemed to be coming from outside, and the sound of something breathing heavily. Something large. Or was it only the storm?
Prowling, scuffling, moving around out there somewhere . . .
There was another crash of thunder. The darkened lobby was again lit up in stark, nightmarish black-and-white. Jimmy scanned the dripping windows, waiting for something hideous to crash through those vulnerable glass panes in an explosive maelstrom of glass and storm-driven Wind and rain.
Rain hissing on scabrous flesh that was not flesh, dousing the flame, runnelling in scarred troughs . . .
In dreadful anticipation, Cardiff waited, aware of Rohmer and Duvall scanning the windows with their weapons.
Blind, deaf, but able to smell; able to find them by the food smell, even in this raging, wind-swept, rain-driven night . . .
The wind lashed at the frontage, rattling those panes . . . and Gilbert was whimpering again. ‘
Feeding angrily and briefly on what it had taken. Discarding the remnants on the pavement, in the rain. Feeling the strength returning, the hate returning. . .
They waited.
The thunder seemed to shake the foundations of the building. Lightning flickered; jagged fractures in the sky—making shadows leap and leer, in stark black and white.
‘They waited.
Something scraped against one of the windows.
And then Frye began to scream, the sound of it paralysing everyone with fright again. Frye was screaming over and over now in alarm and desperation.
“Frye!” hissed Rohmer. “Snap out of it!”
“For God’s sake.” Cardiff moved through the shadows to where Frye was crouched against the wall, next to the reception desk. “Don’t snap! That thing will hear . . .” Cardiff reached out to grab Frye and shake him back to his senses.
Jimmy grabbed at Cardiff’s arm and pulled him away.
“What the hell . . . ?”
Cardiff saw the look of glazed horror on Frye’s face, heard him mumbling: “Oh no, no, no, no . . .” And then he saw the same look of horror on Jimmy’s face as he pulled him roughly back.
“Don’t touch him,” said Jimmy in a voice almost too quiet to hear.
Frye was turning slowly in hor
ror to look behind him, at the reception wall.
And now they could all see what was happening.
Frye’s left hand had vanished into the wall to the wrist. He looked at it as his forearm began to slide inwards after it; the wall perfectly seamless, with no sign of irruption, no disturbance to its surface. Frye staggered—and then tugged backwards, trying to drag his hand out of the wall.
“No, no, no . . .”
He flung out his other hand towards them in a desperate plea, and Cardiff moved to take it.
“No,” said Rohmer. “It’s a Darkfall strike. We can’t do anything to help him.”
“Oh Christ!” screamed Frye, his upper arm sliding inexorably and impossibly into the wall. He staggered again, his knee connecting with the wall—and sticking there. The knee itself began to slide into the dark, smooth pastel paper on the wall; smoothly and neatly. “You said it was too early, Rohmer!” screamed Frye again. “Too early . . . too . . . I wasn’t wearing . . .” Frye’s voice broke up into sobs and his other slashing arm connected with the wall and stuck there. “Please! Someone HELP ME!”
“For God’s sake, Rohmer!” pleaded Cardiff. “There must be something we can do.”
“Please, Rohmer! PLEASE!” Frye’s shoulder had vanished into the wall, as had his leg and his hip. His other arm was in the wall to the elbow. He strove to keep his face from that wall as it inexorably pulled him closer. His screams broke into hysterical laughter.
“I’m the tar baby . . .” he gibbered.
And then Duvall stood forward, placed the barrel of the automatic on the back of Frye’s head . . . and blew his brains out.
Jimmy and Cardiff recoiled, but Rohmer remained calmly where he was, as the impact flung Frye’s sundered head forward, his shattered face smacking into the wall . . . and rapidly becoming absorbed there. The bloodied stain on the darkened wall around that head vanished quickly, blood and tissue absorbed like ink into blotting paper; leaving no trace. Frye’s quivering body slumped and then, turning slightly as he was sucked into the wall as if into some vertical view of a bizarre quicksand, he was quickly absorbed—the wall closing around him; unmarked and to their eyes, as solid and impenetrable as ever.
Gilbert was still sobbing.
Only Frye’s left calf and foot remained protruding from the bottom of the wall, shuddering slightly as it was drawn in. Thunder resounded again—and they all felt a sudden change in pressure. Cardiff’s ears popped.
Only the foot protruded from the wall now. It juddered again, twisted . . . and fell from the wall on to the tiled floor; severed clean at the ankle as if with a butcher’s knife.
Mesmerised, they stared at it. A ludicrous but hideous spectacle. Rohmer was the first to break the shocked silence.
“The effect of the strike has worn off. Now you know how the severed hand got there, Cardiff.”
“The poor bastard,” said Jimmy.
“The effect is escalating even more quickly here than ever before. Keep your gloves on. No skin contact.”
“We must get out,” said Cardiff.
“Past that thing outside?”
“Is it still there?” burbled Gilbert.
Duvall crept nearer to the glass frontage. There were no monstrous sounds out there in the storm. The hideous blood smear on the window was a running crimson blur in the rain. But there was no way of telling whether the thing was still outside.
“Christ,” muttered Duvall. “If you’d seen it. I’m surprised it wasn’t attracted by the screaming.”
Jimmy was still looking in horror at the wall where Frye had disappeared. “What the hell do we do now?”
“Underground,” said Cardiff. “Like Gilbert said earlier. That’s the only place we can be safe. We can lock ourselves in the basement, away from that bloody thing outside—and until this Darkfall storm blows over.”
“Amazing how quickly you adapt, Cardiff,” said Rohmer. “Might find a job for you after all.”
“Go to Hell. We could have saved Pearce.”
“No, we couldn’t,” said Duvall. “That thing was behind me. It was at the reception doors. Its taking Pearce probably saved our lives. Otherwise it would have been in here.”
“You’re the ones with the guns, pal. Are you saying that thing can’t be stopped with a bullet . . . ?”
“You irritate me, Cardiff,” said Duvall. “Why don’t you go outside and try to talk it to death?”
“Underground,” said Jimmy. “Like the man said. Let’s get the hell in the basement and bar the door.”
“We’ll need my equipment,” said Gilbert weakly. “The acoustic effects of continued strikes could deafen us. My equipment can be set at a frequency to emit sound waves that will obviate that effect. We need . . .”
“Get it,” said Rohmer.
Gilbert retrieved the portable equipment which Frye had been using and led the way gingerly to the ‘corridor, asking weakly: “Which door? Where?” Cardiff pushed past, and now they were all heading down that corridor past the two elevators on their left; still looking back to the reception doors lest that monstrous shadow should suddenly reappear.
“We should warn people,” said Cardiff as they moved.
“How do we do that if the telephones are out?” asked Rohmer.
Gilbert had reached the door marked “Basement”. He began to reach for the handle with a gloved hand and then pulled nervously back, remembering what had happened to Frye. Thunder growled, and Gilbert looked around with nervous, pleading eyes.
“No . . .” said Cardiff. “I’m not going down there. Take Devlin down with you, but I’m going back.”
“Back out there?” said Jimmy. “Past that . . . thing?”
“It’s prowling around outside. Anyone passing by on the road or the walkway is in danger.”
“There’ll be no one outside in this bloody storm,” said Jimmy.
“You’re either brave or stupid,” said Rohmer. “I can’t work out which.”
“I’m neither,” replied Cardiff. “I’m a policeman, that’s all. It’s my job. The thing is . . . What the hell are you, Rohmer?”
They exchanged a long, hard look.
And then Cardiff turned, heading back for the reception. The windows flared again in nightmarish black and white as lightning split the night once more; the explosion of thunder rattling those panes simultaneously.
What am I doing? thought Cardiff as he walked. Am I really just doing my job?
“You’re cracked,” said Jimmy behind him. “Come back and don’t be a bloody idiot.”
No, you’re not so altruistic, said a small voice inside Cardiff. It’s that thing outside, isn’t it? That thing that can’t possibly exist. You think it has the face of the man behind the wheel, don’t you? The face that was hidden from you. You think that thing out there has the answers. It’s Death . . . and you want to ask it face to face. Ask it.
Gilbert cried out; a hoarse, guttural grunt of fear and surprise. The others were cursing in alarm. And Cardiff turned back to look.
They were shrinking back from the basement door.
And something was happening to that door; something that he couldn’t make out, because it was screened by their bodies.
No . . . not the basement door. But the wall beside the door. There was movement there; movement and light, as if someone was shining a torch beam on it, swinging it wildly from side to side. There were somehow moving shadows on that wall; crawling, shifting shadows.
“What is it?” Cardiff called out.
Gilbert turned to stare in Cardiff’s direction as if contemplating another mad dash for the reception doors and then remembered the thing that lay beyond them. Rohmer, Duvall and Devlin were all pulling away from that wall, step by step. Cardiff moved to join them . . . and at last he could see what the others were seeing. There was a spreading stain of movement on the wall; a shifting undulating wave of shadow and light which made absolutely no sense at all. Cardiff spun back to look at the windows to see if that biz
arre shifting and swirling of shadows was somehow caused by a lightning flash through the glass panes. But apart from the grumbling in the sky and the hissing of rain, there was no lightning; no reason why this peculiar shadow show should be taking place.
There was something else now; something that hadn’t been immediately apparent to Cardiff, but had been seen by the others straightaway and which was causing them to back away from the wall.
There was other movement on that bare plaster wall; movement other than those strange, creeping, shifting shadows. There was a sparkling, fizzling white light in there, too . . . and Cardiff walked forward to look as the others recoiled. That streaked, spluttering light was also crawling on the wall, amidst the shadows. It was mesmerising. The wall looked like a dark and mysterious fresco over which black, swirling thunderclouds were roiling; and within the thunderclouds, the occasional jagged crackle of lightning; an arterial stab of fractured light, like a lightning strike.
And then the wall bulged outwards.
Cardiff froze in his tracks, and now the others were right beside him; all staring back at this impossible sight.
The bulge was taking place about midway in the plaster wall. The dull grey plaster was now completely alive with the shadows and the crawling light, and that wall had somehow become like grey leather or rubber at its centre, where the bulge was taking place. There was a noise now. It was the noise of something stretching and straining under enormous, impossible pressure; as if the very fabric of that wall must suddenly explode inwards, enveloping them in a deadly blast of shattered brick and concrete. Impossibly, there were no cracks in the wall, no tears or fractures. The grinding, stretching sounds were rising to a pitch and behind it all, another low-register noise. Almost inaudible at first, but rising in volume, making their eardrums vibrate.
“Now what?” said Jimmy in amazement. “What the hell is this?”
Incredibly, Jimmy could see that Rohmer had something akin to a smile on his face. “Amazing,” he said quietly. “Amazing. I never thought I’d . . .”
“The place is falling apart . . .” began Cardiff, as Gilbert blundered into him again, not knowing where to go.
