Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror

by Joe Hart

  All right, he thought, let’s do this then. David walked through a small pool of water and began climbing the skull-encrusted hill. He positioned his feet on the top of each successive row of skulls and used the next for handholds. Three-quarters of the way to the top, his foot slipped on a forehead, and he nearly fell all the way to the bottom.

  He repositioned himself as he listened to the slamming of his heart, then continued on until he had reached the top of the steep grade. His hand grasped something round and smooth, and David pulled himself up over the edge of the rise. He looked down at what he had thought was a rock and realized his stupidity as he yanked his hand off a skull that was buried in the ground. A worm squirmed sluggishly from one eye socket, and David’s stomach did a flip-flop for the second time and threatened to release what it contained onto the muddy ground next to him.

  His breathing came out in ragged gasps as he looked up into the slate-gray sky. Rain battered his face for a few moments before he rolled onto his side and began to stand up. Pain buffeted his head like a series of cluster bombs going off as he stood. David pressed his fingers to his temples in an attempt to hold his head together, just in case it decided to fly apart in several directions. The world spun for a moment. He took one step forward to steady himself, but only thin air met his foot where solid ground should have been.

  David fell off the edge of the small cliff with a startled cry. His hands flew out instinctively and hit the ground first, while his head and shoulder came next. His body bounced and rolled down the side of the hill into the valley for several seconds before he was able to stop his momentum and lie quietly in the fetal position.

  When the adrenaline rush began to die down, he could feel pain starting to seep into several areas. He quickly did a damage assessment. He was bleeding from his elbow, his knees were bruised, and he could feel blood beginning to ooze from a cut on his forehead.

  David slowly sat up and wiped the blood and rain mixture off his forehead. The clay that was stuck to his hand burned in the cut as he pulled his hand away. His vision dimmed slightly, and he feared he would pass out. But after a few beats of agony in his head, he realized he would stay conscious. He gingerly pushed himself onto his feet and wiped some of the muck from his clothes, then looked around the area where he had landed.

  He was standing in a valley that reminded him of a bowl. In each direction the clay-covered ground rose up steeply into a cliff like the one he had fallen down. The valley seemed to be around a half mile long, but it could have been more since the falling rain obscured the distance. In the center of the depression grew the tree that he had spotted earlier. His first estimations had been wrong—the tree stood well over two hundred feet tall. The knurly base was at least sixty feet across and slowly narrowed and branched out as it climbed. The bark was pitch-black and fairly smooth.

  David couldn’t discern a pattern in the bark that would distinguish which species it was, although he knew he had never seen anything like it in his life. The branches of the tree all reached skyward, reminding David of worshippers in a gospel church with their hands raised in supplication as they cried out to a God they hoped was listening. David took in all of these details, but one feature dominated the scene in front of him.

  Spinal cords hung from the tree like macabre Christmas decorations. There were hundreds of them, each spaced several feet apart. They lined nearly every branch, and they had been tied to the tree with some sort of glinting steel wire. The bone columns were bright white, in stark contrast to the black skin of the tree. They swayed slightly in the wind, and some clinked together like horrid wind chimes.

  David stood in the soft ground, awestruck. His muscles spasmed slightly, and he shook as the rain poured down on him harder than it had before. Another detail caught his eye as he gazed at the tree before him. Something was caught in its uppermost branches, above where the last scattered vertebral columns were tied.

  Someone had hung a scarecrow upside down in the crotch of several branches. The figure’s hands and arms hung down toward the ground over its head, and its hips and legs were wedged in an odd position, making the figure look like a forgotten puppet in a deranged puppeteer’s traveling trunk. Its face was obscured by one of its arms, but for a moment David thought he recognized something about the figure. Something was beginning to surface in his mind like an enormous submarine coming up from below the waves of his subconscious. Before he could truly grasp what was forming there, movement caught his eye near the base of the tree.

  A dark figure stepped out from behind the trunk. David recognized its shape as the one from the hill when he had been walking. Now it stepped boldly out in front of the tree and stopped in full view.

  It was not human—David knew that much at a glance. Its skin was a deep, shiny black, almost the black of a killer whale’s skin but darker. From what he could tell, it was completely hairless. Muscles lined every inch of the creature’s solid form. David could see claws protruding from each finger, as well as from each toe. Its face hung above large shoulders and was trained directly toward him. It had the general countenance of a human visage, but it almost looked as if it had been in an intense fire. Its eyes were dark ebony and set deep in its skull, and its thin cheeks were pulled tight over angular bones. It had no lips to cover the permanent horrific grin that was fixed on its face, and its gums were fused flawlessly to its cheeks. Its teeth were also black, and they were elongated more than normal human teeth should be.

  It remained as still as a statue and stared at him through the rain. David stepped back as his fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and instantly flight elbowed past fight to take the driver’s seat.

  Suddenly, the monster’s hand flew up to shoulder height in a “halt” sign. David nearly shrieked as his feet obeyed the creature’s command. RUN! his mind screamed at his frozen legs. His eyes bulged in their sockets as he watched the figure raise its muscled arm higher until it was pointing one bladed fingertip toward the sky.

  “Reembla, doo tala kaam,” it said in a baritone that rumbled like crushed rocks in a bass drum. David’s eyes followed its pointing finger, and he gazed upon what he had initially thought was a scarecrow in the tree.

  David stared into his own eyes. The body that hung in the uppermost branches of the godforsaken tree was his own, or was at one time anyway. It was his corpse that he was looking at now. He could tell from the vacant look in the eyes that there was no life whatsoever in them. The gaping hole in the side of the skull also gave it away.

  He realized what had been surfacing in his mind a few moments earlier. He had recognized his own clothes on the figure. The other David wore the same dark slacks and dress shirt that he did. Its body was twisted in the tree at an odd angle, the spine seemingly no longer performing its duty. He could now see one leg that was badly broken, the white of bone protruding from just below the knee.

  For a few long moments, he stared at the corpse, wondering how he had gone insane and why. Just as he was about to sit down on the ground and let his mind give into the madness that was battering it, the body in the tree moved. It jerked as if the muscles had been delivered a shock by some unseen source. David watched in horror as the arms—his arms—twitched and the head snapped back and forth. David’s eyes dropped from the jerking corpse in the tree to the black creature that stood on the ground. If something could smile without lips, the monster was doing it. The hideous grin somehow elongated in response to David’s horror.

  More movement in the tree drew his attention back to the body. It had stopped twitching and was now reaching with both hands for the area where its legs were lodged. It pulled and shifted its gangling body back and forth. Finally, both legs slipped free and it fell.

  The other David flipped and crashed through the branches. Small pieces of wood and bark flew off as the body fell downward. Spinal columns snapped and clacked against each other as they jounced from side to side with the body’s passage.

  David watched, mouth agape, as his dead bo
dy flopped off of the last large branch and landed in a soft heap at the dark monster’s feet. David watched the unmoving form for a few seconds before the creature repeated its earlier incantation.

  “Reembla, doo tala kaam.”

  Before the words had died in the monster’s mouth, the heap of clothing and flesh jerked and planted a hand in the soft earth. After a moment the other hand and arm shot out and pushed the upper body into a rough sitting position. The corpse’s head flipped upward, and David looked at his own ruined face. The nose had been flattened in the fall, and the left eye looked up and to the left while the other stared straight ahead at David.

  “Oh Jesus. Oh God,” David whispered, as the body slowly began to get to its feet.

  The legs that surely had been broken in the fall somehow held under the thing’s weight, and when it raised its head again to stare in his direction, its shoulders sat at different heights. David took one step back as the horror smiled at him, noting that it had several teeth missing.

  Without hesitation the corpse began to run at David. It wasn’t a smooth or graceful movement. The thing lumbered awkwardly toward him, its arms slightly upraised. The feet tripped and hopped in the clay as the body began to pick up its jerky speed.

  For some reason the melody of “Mr. Bojangles” drifted into David’s head. Jerry Jeff Walker’s voice chimed in merrily, and soon his corpse had its very own theme music.

  David needed to see no more. He turned and ran. He ran for his life, for he knew if the thing that looked like him caught him, he would die. He could see in its eyes that it wanted one thing: to bear down on him and bite him with what teeth it had left. It wanted to tear at his skin with its bloody fingers. He began to wonder what the sound he was hearing was. It was a high-pitched keening that came and went with his breathing, and only then did he realize he was screaming.

  He ran until he reached the hill that he had climbed over and began pawing his way up the side. He risked a glance back and saw that his corpse hadn’t slowed; in fact, it had picked up the pace of its shambling and horrific run. It was now less than fifty yards from him and closing. David scrambled up the hill, each injury aching as he pulled himself up slowly—too slowly. He would gain a few feet and then slide back.

  And now he could hear the thing approaching. Its ragged breathing was audible above the falling rain around him. The sound was wet, as if a rib was sticking through its lung, which was filling with blood.

  Good, he thought. I hope you fucking choke on it and die! he screamed inside his head. The breathing got closer and closer, and David scurried up the steep embankment until he could reach the top. His hand found another skull, and he pulled himself up onto the plateau. When he looked back, he nearly screamed again.

  The corpse was only a few feet away, awkwardly crawling crab-like up the side of the hill. Its broken fingers clawed at the clay with the desperation of a starving man hungrily seeking his dinner.

  David rolled several feet away from the edge and hoisted himself into a standing position. He glanced quickly over the edge of the side that held the skulls. After getting his feet positioned on the topmost row, he began to sidestep down the skulls with his hands out to both sides for balance. Just as he neared the bottom, his corpse loomed over the top of the hill and looked down at him. It waited only a moment before it dove off the embankment and began rolling end over end.

  David jumped off the last few rows with a shout and landed in the pool near the bottom. The body flipped over one last time and fell in a twisted heap several yards behind him. The figure remained motionless a moment, and then it heaved itself up onto its feet and stood.

  “Jesus!” David yelled, as he turned and began to run again. His feet slapped through the mud and his arms pumped at his sides. He tried to control his breathing, but as soon as it dropped into a rhythm, he would hear the corpse behind him cough or splash though a puddle and it would become erratic again. His legs threatened to drop him at one point, and his breathing became so forced and labored that stars began to bloom at the corners of his vision. He shook his head and waited until the stars receded, and then glanced back over his shoulder.

  The body was there. It was still loping after him in its broken-legged and all-too-eager shamble. But now another figure was following him. The monster from beneath the tree trailed them both. It walked at a quickened pace and somehow stayed within sight. Its muscles glistened in the rain, and David could see the black teeth flash in its lipless mouth every so often.

  David tried to follow his own path back the way he had come, but in certain areas he could no longer make out the footprints he had made only an hour earlier. The race he was running was becoming a marathon, and he knew it was one he would soon lose. His legs began to hurt, even more so than they had earlier. His lungs burned with each breath, as if every molecule of oxygen was coated with razor blades. Every so often he would glance back as he crested a hill to see how far away his pursuers were, and every time he would be jolted into running as fast as he could by the sight of them because they were even closer than they had been a few moments earlier.

  After what seemed like an eternity of running, David came over a hill and spotted the pond that he had woken by. Another feature stood out to him as he clumsily tripped and almost fell headlong down the rise. There was a rock sticking out of the wet clay near the edge of the pond. He didn’t recall it being there when he had woken up, but he had also been in a lot of pain then. He did note with some concern that the deer carcass was gone, but that wasn’t what he was after. David dug down to the bottom of his strength reserves and sprinted the last twenty yards to the edge of the pond.

  When he reached the rock, he risked a look back to the way he had come. The corpse was trotting down the hill toward him. Its eyes still looked in different directions, and blood poured out of the broken nose onto its mouth. As David watched, he could see the lips part and the last of his fairly straight teeth glistening in blood.

  “Come on!” David yelled at his doppelganger. He bent down and tried to pull up the rock that was embedded in the soil. It moved only a little. The rock was much larger than he had anticipated. He began to dig frantically with his nearly numb fingers, his breath still heaving in his chest. As he dug around the rock and uncovered more of its girth, he realized it would serve no use as a weapon. He had uncovered almost a foot of the surface, and it still ran into the ground.

  David stood and watched as his body made its way across the ground that separated them. His hands slowly balled into fists, and in that moment he became comfortable with the fact that he was about to die. What chance did he have at beating this thing, his own corpse? It was dead; you can’t kill what’s already dead. David lowered his head and braced himself as the body covered the last few yards and launched itself at him, its hands and twisted fingers reaching for his face.

  David threw a punch with all of his might and felt it connect with the thing’s chin. The skin on his knuckles tore, but he felt the satisfying snap of bone as he fell back under the corpse’s weight. The thing landed on top of him and was surprisingly light. It reached with outstretched hands at his face and tried to snap its jaw that was now hanging limply off to one side. David held it back at arm’s length the best he could. He shoved with all his might, only to have the corpse lean farther in and coat him with its breath that smelled of decay and rust. Black fluid began to drip out of its nose and mouth onto David’s face. He screamed out of revulsion and twisted his head from side to side and tried to throw off his attacker.

  Once again, David dug into his last remaining strength and pushed with all his might. At the same time, he brought his legs up under the thing’s chest. As the body tried to fall upon him and to smother him in its embrace, David slid his feet up farther into the thing’s soft solar plexus and kicked out as hard as he could.

  Two things happened nearly at the same time. The first was the corpse was launched back nearly six feet in the air, its arms flailing about as it still tried to gr
asp its prey. The second was two huge black tentacles that looked like something out of Jules Verne’s worst nightmare shot out of the pond and caught David’s corpse in midair. David could see that the tentacles had large bony hooks protruding from the suckers that covered their undersides. One tentacle quickly wrapped around the body’s legs while the other encased its upper torso. In one motion the tentacles tightened in an impressive display of muscular strength, then flew away from each other.

  The corpse was torn neatly in two. Entrails flew like tails from kites, and blood arced out in a solid sheet. Its arms still thrashed with life, but it was no match for the appendages that held it. The tentacles began to slither back beneath the pond’s surface, and David stood and watched in awe. Slowly the huge snakelike arms disappeared, and the last thing David saw was the waving fingers of his corpse slipping beneath the ripples of the water.

  For a moment all he could hear again was the pounding of his heart and the constant patter of rain around him. Then another sound poked against his thudding eardrums, and he looked to his right to find its source.

  The monster was walking toward him over the soft clay. Its black eyes shone in the gray light, and its teeth parted slightly to reveal a vividly white tongue. Its large clawed feet squished in the mud as it approached.

  David spun away from the creature with a cry and began to run again. His feet pounded into the soil, and he made no attempt to look back over his shoulder to see if the monster was following him because he knew it was there.