Colony of the Lost

by Derik Cavignano

  Billy let out a garbled scream, clutching his neck with frantic hands. His lifeblood seeped into the pool, dripping into the swirling black waters ... death begetting life.

  ***

  Helen awoke slowly, climbing through staggered levels of consciousness. At first she was aware only of darkness. But gradually, a sound filtered through her muddled thoughts, a sound like the thrashing of water.

  Soon the sound subsided, and all she could hear was the lapping of tiny waves. Wetness seeped across her cheek and formed a seal between her face and the floor. She sensed that she was lying down, one arm curled between her breasts, her bare legs pressed against cold stone. Pale light filtered in through her fluttering lids and revealed the inside of a monstrous cavern. The ceiling and floor were lined with stalactites and stalagmites, like a lion’s jaw frozen in a snarl.

  She struggled to her feet and rubbed her eyes. A Lightning McQueen backpack lay on the ground before her. Beyond that, a few feet further into the shadows, stood a massive beast.

  Helen screamed, and all at once her mind was flooded with a memory only days old.

  ***

  She stood in the darkness of her kitchen, checking the lock on the sliding glass door. A noise emanated from outside—a hollow bang followed by a rolling thud.

  For a moment, the sound paralyzed her with fear. But then she realized it was only the barrels falling over. Fear dissolved into anger. Those damn raccoons were into the trash again. She grabbed the nearest thing she could find—a plastic kitchen broom—and stormed outside, weapon in hand. She kicked a barrel aside, flinging trash into the air. She expected to see a whale of a raccoon.

  But nothing was there.

  She turned around, aware suddenly of a presence, a strong sense that she was being watched. She swung the broom like a hatchet, eyes shut tight, and smacked the raccoon. But the broom connected with its target long before it should have—no raccoon was that tall.

  When she opened her eyes, the broom slipped from her fingers and dropped to the ground. She staggered back in silent terror, pressing her body against the chain link fence.

  A creature stood motionless before her, crouched down on all fours, its mottled gray-green skin ridged and scaly. Its eyes bored into her as its lips peeled away from its fangs. It uttered an awful shriek and propelled a jet of sticky goo into her face.

  And then, later, came the nightmares, the horrible images of knocking children unconscious with a rolling pin, dragging them through the woods to ... to a cave.

  ***

  It was then that she burst through the final level of consciousness, then that she realized it was never a dream, never a nightmare.

  The lips of the creature spread apart with a sickening slurp and revealed the jagged yellow of its fangs. It seemed to be smiling at her, its head cocked to one side, blackened tongue slipping out over its jaws.

  Its name is Trell, she thought, and then it was on her.

  Its fangs tore into the soft flesh of her throat, and she was vaguely aware of a medallion around its neck smacking against her cheek. The beast mounted her, forcing its bulk deep inside of her. She screamed with the last of her strength, blood bubbling out of the wounds in her neck. As she breathed her dying breath, she thought of poor, stupid Bill, and how he would never learn the truth of her unfaithfulness ... or of the fitting way in which she died.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tim sat on the first floor of the library and leafed through a book on the history of Glenwood and Washaka Woods. According to the bio, the author taught at Glenwood High, although Tim didn’t think that was true anymore. The book was written in 1982 and the small black and white photo above the bio could easily have been an obituary picture, snapped on the old man’s deathbed.

  It was printed in large type, accompanied by a number of crude sketches that depicted scenes from the 1600’s to the 1980’s. He flipped past the drawings of the Washaka Indians dressed in loincloths and hunting deer, and turned to the chapter entitled: Local Attractions, Landmarks, and Points of Interest.

  He read the chapter closely, looking for any mention of a cave, but it was silent on the subject. He snapped the book shut and tossed it onto the pile with the others. After two hours in the library, all he’d managed to find was a trail map of Washaka Woods. Talk about wasting a Saturday.

  He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. There had to be some caves in the woods. The kids at school probably partied in them on Friday nights, probably sat around a bonfire and drank beer. But then again, if that was true then the first kids to disappear would have been teenagers rather than fifth and sixth graders.

  Somewhere behind him, a book crashed to the floor. He slammed his knees against the underside of the table and whirled around, expecting to see a man standing over him with luminous red eyes. But it was only a girl in tight jeans and a concert tee shirt stooping to pick up a book.

  He made a copy of the trail map and tucked it into the front pocket of his backpack. A glance at his watch told him it was 4:30, a couple of hours before closing. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  He slung the backpack over his shoulder and exited the library. The temperature had dropped ten or fifteen degrees since he’d arrived, the sun obscured by a swollen mass of storm clouds.

  He zipped up his windbreaker and glanced into the sky. Maybe the rain would hold off until after he got home. He started toward his house, walking along the route he’d only recently memorized, and thought about Trell. They had to stop it before it killed again. Four more kids had disappeared today and it wasn’t even nightfall yet.

  He kicked a stone, sending it rifling through the grass. It was only a matter of time before Trell killed him. It knew where he lived, it knew where he went to school. It probably even knew where he was right now. And if Jay was right about the way it could seize control of a person’s mind and body, then that meant any one of the people passing by on the street could be Trell’s assassin.

  It was crazy. And the scary thing was, there was no way to tell who Trell was controlling. Jay had said that Frank was himself except for when Trell needed him for something. Then he fell into a trance and Trell took over. If that was true, then his own parents could be used against him and he wouldn’t even know it until it was too late, until he saw the gleam of red in their eyes.

  The thought of his parents hunting him brought up another question—could Trell be inside two people at once? It didn’t seem likely. The key had to be the black stuff it sprayed into Frank’s eyes. That had to be what allowed it to control people. Frank said that the stuff had seeped beneath his eyelids and had been absorbed into ... into what? His blood? His brain?

  What if that black goo was a living extension of Trell, a piece of its brain that fused into the brains of its victims? If that was true, then Trell could probably command a group of people to do its bidding simultaneously, provided they had all been sprayed with the goo. And then, as it had done with Frank, it could fully transfer its consciousness into the mind of whoever it chose so that instead of simply telling that person what to do and the person being forced to obey, it would be physically inside that person’s body, seeing through his eyes and using his body as its own.

  But where would its own body be in that situation? Would it be catatonic whenever it transferred its consciousness into a single individual? If so, wouldn’t it be vulnerable? Wouldn’t someone near its body be able to approach it and kill it before it even knew what was happening?

  He shook his head. What have I been smoking?

  But he brushed the thought aside ... because in a weird sort of way, it made sense.

  It was growing darker by the minute. Tim glanced into the sky, into the heart of the approaching storm, and felt dwarfed by the raw power of nature. Above him, the sky groaned. And behind him ... voices.

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  Three guys were walking in a close knit group behind him, all of them his age or older and coming up
fast.

  Randy?

  He didn’t dare steal another glance. If it was Randy, there was a chance he and his goons hadn’t spotted him yet. He turned left at the next intersection, strolling casually, trying to project the image of a kid with nothing to fear. Maples lined the street, their trunks gnarled and gray and bent over the road. He held his breath and continued walking. Then came the sound of sand grating beneath shuffling feet, and Tim knew that they had turned the corner too.

  Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe they live on this street.

  But his gut told him it wasn’t a coincidence.

  “Get him!” someone shouted.

  I hate it when I’m right, Tim thought, and darted across the street.

  Randy and his goons were gaining fast. Tim could hear their feet pounding the pavement, their breath hissing as they closed the gap. His backpack was slowing him down. If he didn’t do something quick, they were going to catch him.

  He summoned a burst of speed and made a sharp left into someone’s backyard. Randy and his goons continued past him for several strides before skidding to a halt and changing direction.

  Tim grinned and cut through one yard after another.

  Somehow Randy and his goons made up for lost ground.

  He broke left, tore through a gap in the hedges, and sprinted across another yard. Randy and his goons followed. One of them caught his foot beneath a branch and fell headlong into the grass.

  Randy jumped over him. “Gonna kill you…”

  But Tim barely heard him. He dashed through the yard at full speed, skirting the edge of an inground pool, and weaving around a maze of plastic patio furniture. He knocked the chairs down one by one, flinging them into the path of Randy and his goons.

  But it didn’t work.

  He headed toward the house. Sweat trickled down his face and stung his eyes.

  Randy almost had him.

  Tim faked left, then spun right.

  Randy stumbled past him.

  Tim scrambled up the stairs to the deck. He yanked open the door and stormed into the house. Randy and his goons were there a moment later. They plowed through the door and raced down the hall toward the front of the house.

  In the kitchen, a middle-aged woman in a bathrobe dropped a glass and screamed.

  Tim ducked into the living room, then backtracked toward the door he originally came through. He crept down the stairs and ran across the lawn. Out front, Randy and his goons crashed through the door and flew down the porch steps.

  Tim made it three quarters of the way to the next yard before they spotted him. He glanced over his shoulder and tripped over a patio chair. He jumped to his feet an instant later, kicked aside the chair, and headed toward the next yard. He plunged through the bushes, emerged onto an unfamiliar street, and darted into traffic.

  A van screeched to a halt and swerved onto the shoulder. The driver leaned on the horn.

  Randy and his goons stepped into the street.

  Ahead, Tim spotted a dirt road running through a gate. It looked like a business property, some sort of storage lot. He hurried toward it.

  Maybe he could find some help. Maybe he could find a place to hide.

  He charged through the gate, then skidded to a halt … and swore.

  He was trapped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jay awoke to bright sunlight and rolled over with a moan. He peeled away the crust from his eyes and blinked curiously at his surroundings. Sometime in the middle of the night, he’d rolled off the sofa and passed out under the coffee table.

  He crawled out like a wounded animal and stretched his back before trying to stand. His gorge rose as he straightened, and he barely made it into the bathroom before he dropped to his knees and vomited. When he was through, he rinsed his mouth and shuddered.

  He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and frowned. His dark hair stood in spiky tangles, his face bearded and swollen. A one-inch gash marred his cheek, set against an impressive fist-sized bruise where Frank had clocked him.

  God, he looked like hell. But worse than that, he looked like his dad ... like the wasted shell of a man who had died in a garbage-strewn gutter, face down in a pool of his own vomit.

  You’re on your way, my friend. Another few years of drinking like this and you won’t need Trell to kill you.

  After a shower and a shave, he felt a little better. He dressed, drank a cup of coffee, and leafed through the morning paper. It was the same old story—more disappearances in Glenwood, no arrests made by police.

  If he didn’t figure out how to kill Trell soon, the whole town would be wiped out, just as it had been over three centuries before. And unfortunately for the residents of Glenwood, the fate of the town rested in the hands of a worthless drunk.

  You have the vision, Samuel had said. You can see what others cannot. That is why you must be the ones to destroy it.

  Jay laughed. I’ve got news for you, Samuel. I think the only reason I saw you was because I was drunk off my rocker. The part of my brain that knows there’s no such thing as ghosts was fermenting in a pool of alcohol. You should have given your message to someone else, someone who could stand up to Trell, someone who could deal with the situation without getting plastered every night.

  His cell phone caught his eye. It showed a voicemail waiting for him. But when had it rung? And then he remembered. Last night as he sat on the sofa, drinking himself into oblivion.

  What if it was Tim? Or Sarah? What if they’d needed help? He pictured them tangled together in some dark corner, bloodied and mangled beyond recognition, arms and legs bent at ghastly angles.

  A cold feeling settled over him as he retrieved the message. There was a slow hiss, followed by a crackle of static. And then a voice.

  “Jay, it’s Frank. Call me as soon as you can. I think I found a way to kill it.”

  ***

  From the street, Frank’s house appeared dark and foreboding. Jay stood before the picket fence and bit his lip. Exactly who would be there to greet him when he walked through the front door?

  He drew a deep breath. How lucky do I feel?

  He pushed through the gate and stepped onto the weed-choked walkway. The gate swung shut behind him, struck its frame, and bounced back open. He glanced at the darkened windows set on either side of the door like a pair of watchful eyes.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  He climbed the stairs and fumbled for the key he’d swiped from Frank’s house yesterday afternoon. The smell hit him as soon as he opened the door, a noxious mix of spoiled meat and wet dog. He drew his gun and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  An oppressive silence permeated the house, and he wondered if that was a good sign or a bad sign. He crept through the living room and into the kitchen, his muscles tensed like piano wire. The door to the cellar was just as he’d left it, both the eyehook and the slide bolt still engaged. He glanced at the floor. A smear of blood gleamed on the linoleum. He crouched down and dabbed it with his fingertip.

  Still wet.

  That’s not possible.

  He stood up, his heart pounding. If it wasn’t his blood from yesterday’s struggle, then whose was it?

  Had Frank escaped from the cellar? And if so, how? He’d checked the perimeter of the house last night. There was no way out of the cellar, not a single door or window.

  Could Trell have sent someone to let Frank out?

  He raised the .45 and tiptoed to the cellar door. A spatter of blood glistened on the frame.

  Don’t go in there. It’s a trap.

  But he had to go in, had to talk to Frank. He pressed his ear against the door.

  Silence.

  “Frank? You down there?”

  No answer.

  Jay uttered a silent prayer and yanked open the door. A stairway descended into darkness. He aimed his gun toward the bottom and probed the wall for a light switch. His finger happened upon one and flicked it up … but nothing happened.<
br />
  He fished his cell phone from his back pocket and angled it before him. The display cast a faint, silvery light that failed to penetrate more than a three foot radius.

  This is stupid. Really stupid.

  The stairs creaked beneath his weight. When he reached the bottom step, he glanced up at the white light glowing through the doorframe. What if someone closed the door and sealed off the only exit? What if he got trapped down here, imprisoned in the dark?

  Or worse—what if Trell was down here? Crouched in the dark, watching … waiting.

  He turned in a slow circle. His cell phone illuminated a desk and a brass banker’s lamp. He pulled the chain to the lamp, and the room flooded with light.

  Frank lay on the floor a few paces away, his mouth frozen in a silent scream. One of his eyes hung from the socket; the bloody sphere rested on his cheek, still attached to the optic nerve. Blood pooled around his body, most of it concentrated around the ruined stumps where his legs should have been. Both were gone, torn off at the thighs in a ragged, crimson mess.

  “Oh God,” Jay muttered, backing away. His foot kicked a cordless phone and sent it spinning under the desk. The battery compartment yawned open, the battery severed from the wires.

  Jay glanced back at Frank and noticed a sliver of paper protruding from the front pocket of his jeans. He bent over the body, careful not to step in any blood, and pinched the paper between his thumb and forefinger. He unfolded the note beneath the greenish glow of the banker’s lamp.

  Scrawled in blood in the center of the page were the words: Trell Arrow Wol— The last letter ran off the page in a sharp streak. Below these words, Frank had drawn three strange symbols, like runes from a Tolkien map. On the back, he’d drawn an obelisk with a key at its center.

  Jay stared at the paper for a long time, trying to make sense of it. Then he shook his head and frowned.

  What were you going to say Frank, what were you planning to tell me?