The Darkness at the Edge of Noon: a Thalassia novel

by Patrick McClafferty

  It only took three hours before Bel came running back into camp from the direction the scouts had departed. She was puffing, but she had a wide grin on her face. “We found a trail! It seems to lead up and out of this soggy mess.”

  “Good job!” Logan was on his feet. “Pack it up, people. You heard what the lady said. We’re outta here.”

  It was a little wider than the normal game trail, and it was leading up, out of the foggy ooze-filled valley and into what looked like bright sunlight, winding between boulders that ranged in width from house-sized to thimble-sized, with every size in between. And it smelled better. Both the scouts met the advancing party this time.

  “Logan.” It was Tiana this time, and her usually unruffled voice sounded excited. “There are voices ahead. It sounds like children. Could it be the minister’s kids?”

  Remembering the bedlam on the other side of the doorway, Logan shook his head, recalling the clawed hands holding the screaming children. He didn’t want to think of cook-pots, but he couldn’t help it. “I don’t think so, Tiana. Let’s go take a look at these children of yours.”

  Staying 100 feet away, they could see a young boy of about seven or eight and a girl of ten or twelve. Their clothes were clean, but patched and threadbare, and their shoes were scuffed. Definitely not rich folk’s children. He made a curt hand gesture to the two scouts: Watch and Follow. The two women nodded and vanished into the rocks.

  “It’s odd.” Logan told the rest of the group, as soon as he returned. “Two children don’t usually walk through a strange forest all by themselves unless they are very very sure of their surroundings.”

  “Think that they were brought here?” Ryanne asked carefully. Her blue eyes were intent.

  “That’s what I would guess, and by someone who can keep them out of the trap, too.” Logan rubbed the edge of his bandage, wincing at the soreness. “I think that we should follow them and stay well out of sight. We can make further plans when we see where they’re going.”

  Ryanne nodded, and pushed her auburn bangs out of her eyes with a growl of irritation. They were all getting scruffy after so many days on the trail.

  Moving slowly out of the swampy lowland, cedars began to lend a resinous crispness to the afternoon air. The fog here was thinner, the sun brighter. Logan wondered what power had kept them in such an inhospitable soggy stretch of land. He didn’t have an answer. The trail turned rougher as it wound up a low rocky hill, and then the children seemed to vanish between two oversized boulders into a cave. He was about to follow, when the sound of a stealthy footstep made him shrink back, signaling the rest of his small squad to take cover. A shadow momentarily blocked the sun. It was big, whatever it was, and it walked on two legs. Logan’s grip on his spear tightened as the creature disappeared between the boulders. And it had green skin.

  Judging that surprise was his best tactic, he got up and ran. The entrance to the cave was narrow, but after he squeezed in between the boulders, widened to about thirty feet in diameter. The children were standing in front of a dark crystal wall and they were talking to it in low voices. The wall itself was glowing, sending a dim white radiance throughout the cave.

  “You have to go!” A woman’s voice was saying. She had the sort of deep and mysterious voice that made men ache to see the body behind it. It was Logan’s experience that women who had voices like that were usually less than five feet tall, with thinning gray hair and warts. “There is something here, something dangerous. Go!”

  The little boy stepped forward, his chest puffing out. “I’m not afraid.” He brandished a knife small enough to clean fingernails. Not to be outdone, the bigger sister stepped forward too, pulling out her own knife. It was larger than her brother’s. It might have been used for peeling carrots.

  “I’m not...” Her voice froze as the creature stepped out of the shadows. Fully seven feet tall, the greenish skinned monstrosity had four clawed arms, although one hung limply by its side. Logan took a deep breath and tightened his grip on his weapon.

  His spear thrust took it low in the side, just below the ribs. In a man, Logan knew, the wound would be fatal, but in this creature ... the room burst into pandemonium and the monster howled in pain.

  “Run!” He shouted to the children. “Get out of here. Run!” The monster slashed at him with inch-long claws, but Logan ducked easily. He swung the spear, using it as a staff now, and caught the creature on the side of the head. The monster thundered in pain. Logan risked a glance over his shoulder. The back of the last child disappeared from the cavern, but his squad still hadn’t showed up. “Watch out!” The woman’s voice called.

  He spun just in time to take the clawed swipe across the arm, rather than the throat. He stabbed blindly with his spear and as luck would have it, struck the beast in the right eye. Payback, he thought numbly. The monster went crazy. With a huge backhand swipe the monster flung him through the air and against the stony wall at the back of the cave. The pain of his ribs breaking made him pass out for a moment, and when he came to he coughed and spit up a wad of blood.

  The monster was crouched in the center of the room, holding its head and wailing thinly. Taking his spear in both hands, Logan jumped on its back and plunged the blade into the monster’s skull in one smooth motion. The four armed creature stiffened for a moment, then crumbled, landing, of course on top of him. It took several tries to get himself free, and finally he lay against the side of the rapidly cooling creature, panting. He could feel the gurgling in his chest as his lungs filled with blood. He knew what it meant, but he was satisfied. The children were safe as were his troops.

  “Are you all right?” It was the little girl’s voice, and he looked up and smiled.

  “No, my dear, I’m not all right.” It was getting harder to talk, now. He just didn’t have the wind.

  “What will you do?” There were tears in her voice, and Logan saw the little boy standing by her side, holding her hand. His eyes were huge.

  “I will die. Now you had better get home. Never come back here. Not ever!” He began to cough.

  “I won’t. I promise, Mister.” The girl sniffed.

  “My name is Logan.”

  The girl smiled sadly. “Mine is Silvie, Silvie Lanaire. Goodbye, Mister Logan.” She wiped a tear, and turned to go. “Take my hand, Kenzie.” Her little brother complied, glancing over his shoulder once, and waving with the other hand.

  “That was very touching.” The woman’s low voice said from behind his back. “Now, can we please get back to work?” There was a hint of sarcasm in her words.

  Logan coughed again and more blood came up. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m dying.”

  “Just a minor and temporary inconvenience; I’ll take care of everything. You just sit back and relax. You’ll have real work to do later.”

  Logan couldn’t help but laugh. The pain in his chest made him laugh all the more. Wheezing, he wiped his eyes. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re crazy?”

  The voice seemed to ponder the question for a moment. “Not this week. Now hush...”

  Logan almost said something. He hadn’t been “hushed” since he was seven.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move. It was a hand. An age spotted, wart-covered woman’s hand, and it was sticking out of a slab of rock, well, crystal really, and it was making complicated gestures.

  “That your hand?”

  “Yup.” She replied, obviously concentrating on something else.

  “You’re the person that the children were coming to help free, aren’t you?”

  The hand kept waving, and suddenly he couldn’t move his body. He didn’t really mind too much. At least his ribs didn’t hurt anymore. She had frozen him.

  “My squad will be here soon, but I doubt that even Medic Aileen can repair me this time.”

  “They won’t find us. Right now they’re chasing the children down the mountain. They’ll remember you soon, and come back. We should be done by then
.”

  “Done with what?” He was getting exasperated.

  “Never mind.”

  The conversation was definitely one-sided. He was about to complain, when something else caught his eye. It was a large black slug, probably two inches long, slowly crawling out of the corner of the green monster’s slack and drooling mouth. He watched it as well as he could from the corner of his eye. Trailing greenish ichor, the slug made its way down the creature’s chin, dropped onto its chest and slowly crawled toward Logan’s outstretched arm.

  “Ahhh, that thing is heading toward me, do you know that?”

  “Yup.”

  “I really don’t want that thing touching me. I really don’t.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Are you going to stop it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Dammit to hells, at least you can let me die in peace.”

  “You’re not going to die.”

  Logan was so surprised by what she said that he never noticed the slug touch and then crawl up his arm. He did notice, however, when it pierced his skin and began to crawl inside him. His screams shook the walls of the cave.

  Vaguely, and from a great distance he heard the woman’s voice again. She seemed to be talking to herself.

  “Oh, well.” The sensual voice sounded disgusted. “If I can’t get the children to do my bidding, I guess I’ll have to use what I have at hand. I think this should work.” Logan didn’t care for the word “think.”

  It began as a scream, a long drawn out agonized scream, and came from inside his mind. It also didn’t come from him, which seemed to be a bit odd. The scream trailed off, and he thought that he could hear... well, he didn’t think that “hear” was the right word, but it would do until he came up with something better. He thought that he could hear words. There was also a sense of confusion, loss, fear. It was a perplexing mass of feelings and Logan pulled his thoughts away.

  “Ahhh, hello?” He said to the voice of the unknown woman trapped in the crystal wall. “Just what have you done to...” He was pushed roughly aside in some way as the ability to speak was wrested from him.

  “What’s going on here?” The voice that came out of his mouth was higher pitched, and sounded superior. “I demand an answer!”

  “Your attempt to use the Zzzkntti to host your kind didn’t work out too well, did it?”

  “We...I...” The voice in his mind dissolved in confusion.

  “The Zzzkntti weren’t really unintelligent. They had just regressed. Your meddling jerked them back to a reality they couldn’t understand or cope with any longer, and they went crazy.” The woman’s voice was cold, remorseless.

  “Nooooo.” The voice in his mind wailed.

  “Your hosts became violent. When the humans landed here, the Zzzkntti destroyed their vessel and killed half their number. Twenty five hundred brave pioneers, men, women and children, gone. Since the hosts were mad, so in essence, were you.”

  “We couldn’t... You must be wrong.” The voice in his mind seemed to be cowering as far back as it could get.

  “Look at your own memories, K’Dreex. Look at the memories of the beast that lies dead on the floor, and then look at the memories of the human you now inhabit. Compare the two. I dare you.” There was a smug note to the woman’s voice. “Look at what your pride has wrought you.”

  The voice in his head began to scream, and the shriek went on and on and on. Finally, because no one can scream forever, the voice in his head became quiet.

  “What can we do? What can I do?” The voice sounded humble, but Logan suspected that it wouldn’t last.

  “You can begin by fixing this human you now inhabit. His name is Logan, but you already know that, don’t you? At least he’s sane.” There was almost a laugh. “He’s not happy, but he is sane.”

  There was a pause for a few minutes. “I can’t do it.” The voice said with his mouth. “I lack the strength. He’s dying.”

  “Then you seem to have a problem, my little K’Dreex. You know as well as I, that if he dies then so do you. I helped you to escape your old host, the dead Zzzkntti, but there is no one left to transfer to.” The hand in the rock made a gesture. “There... I’ve given you the energy you will need to repair the human—now get to it.”

  Fire seemed to pulse through Logan’s veins. His ribs screamed. His face and arm burned and searing fire tore at his ruined eye.

  “He’s... he’s fighting me.” The voice said out of his mouth.

  “Why should he be doing that?” The woman’s voice sounded puzzled. “Ohhhhh.” A note of sadness crept into the tone of her words. “We may have a problem.”

  For the first time the woman with the incredible voice sounded unsure. “I know what to do, but I’m not sure that we should do it.”

  Logan felt tired of being used like a lab rat. He was a man, dammit.

  The voice in his mind said quietly. Although it was not as alluring as the voice in the rock, the voice in his head was most definitely feminine, resonating in the mezzo-soprano range.

  He replied abruptly.

 

 

  The thing in his mind pleaded.

  He thought about it.

  Her voice was cautious.

  There was a chuckle deep in his mind, and then he was bombarded with a confusing welter of lights, sounds and smells. Colored swirls danced and played in his mind, and he was washed over with the feeling of the deep green forest and the deep green sea. His thoughts were incredulous, his mind stunned.

  The voice seemed to be laughing at him.

  He thought back over the wash of sights, sounds and smells he had felt. There was silence in his mind now.

  came the whispered reply. Her voice sounded shaken.

  Logan took a deep breath. “You can do whatever you need to, to keep us alive.” He said aloud.

 

  Logan cursed.

 

  Logan could sense the laughter behind the words.

 
 

  The woman in the rock answered the question for him. “Now you can get me out of this $x%##* rock.”

  The word she used was not familiar to Logan, but he heard Jade gasp in shock.

  she said, sounding stunned. Logan suddenly had a mental picture of a young girl twirling barefoot pirouettes in the middle of a grassy field. Her voice bordered on ecstasy.

  He could feel her sift through his memories.

  S
he sounded shocked.

  He replied flatly.

  She dug some more.

  Logan smiled ruefully.

  “Not before you get me out of here!” The voice interrupted.

  Logan stood and stretched, and took a deep, pain free breath. Then he turned. The wall was rough black quartz from floor to ceiling. There was a woman’s hand sticking from it. Two feet up from the hand was a small indentation, in which he could perceive eyes, a nose and mouth. He started to laugh.

  “It’s not funny!” The voice snapped. Logan laughed harder. Sitting on the ground was a heavy mallet and a chisel. The woman in the stone must have recruited the children to free her. “Don’t just stand there, pick up the damned chisel and get me out of here.”

  He picked up the chisel, looked at the glaring eyes and smiled. “Remember what it feels like to need, lady.”

  “Remember I saved your life.”

  “I didn’t want to be saved. Shall I free your other hand first, or your head?”

  “The head please.”

  “Shut your eyes and mind the flying bits.”

  It took him several hours to free the trapped woman, and finally, after the last chisel stroke, she stepped out of the crystal wall. Logan stepped back and looked. She was just as ugly as he had imagined. Standing three or four inches over four feet, she was short, fat, bandy-legged, and her thinning gray hair hung in long greasy strands across her stooped back, while a huge hairy wart adorned a large and bulbous red nose. In a stark contrast, her glorious eyes were a shade of violet Logan had never before seen. And she was stark naked. It made him shudder.

  She took in his stunned look and sighed. “Oh, bother. This happens every time I deal with humans.” She waved a hand and a loose white robe appeared about her. “Now...” Her nose wrinkled. “You!” She pointed a crooked finger at Logan. “Bathe! There is a pool at the back of the cave. You will find some soap there. The children brought it with them to clean themselves.”

  Logan gratefully stepped out of his filthy uniform and walked toward the end of the cave. The woman pointed an age-spotted finger at the dirty clothing, and it vanished to return an instant later clean and folded. She frowned.