Shallow Veins

by Brian Martinez

  He checks one last time to make sure he's alone. When he's satisfied with what he sees, more specifically what he doesn't, he climbs in.

  The sides are just solid enough that when he grabs a root to hold onto it doesn't pull free, but the climb down is still treacherous. He lowers himself down a foot at a time into the dark place, choosing his footholds, testing roots before trusting them with his full weight. After ten minutes that feel like an hour, his descent is over. His boots touch bottom.

  His eyes adjust to the dark and he begins to make out shapes- gravestones buried at angles in the earth. Coffins broken in half. Bits of bone stuck up from the mud. At the bottom of one puddle, the empty sockets of a skull stare up at him.

  “Evening,” he greets the skull. “Can you point me to the Mayor?”

  As he sifts through the sunken graveyard, he thinks back to the first time he met Father Curtis. The old man had pointed out the Mayor's skull in what at the time seemed an interesting aside, curious trivia told off the cuff to a visitor. What Butcher understands now is nothing Father Curtis said was unimportant. He was a man who chose his words carefully, who said what he needed to, when he needed to.

  “If only you paid attention,” he chides himself. “Drunken idiot.”

  After a few false alarms, Butcher finds the skull of Mayor Billings. He sets to digging the man up, clawing the mud away from the skeleton with his nails.

  The first torch that lit up Shallow Creek, that's what Father Curtis called the Mayor. But what connection could this man who lived so many years ago have with the creatures that threaten the town now? Why in death would he guard a book sought after a century later?

  There was something else Father Curtis had said. When Butcher asked him why he'd asked for Butcher by name, the first time he came out to see the sinkhole.

  “In dark days, we need as many torches as we can get.”

  Torches. It's what Father Curtis called those people descended from the monsters. “That's it, isn't it,” he whispers into the skeleton's ear. This skeleton half-buried in mud, this dead man, shares more in common with Butcher than almost anyone he's known. So strange to feel a connection with bone, he thinks. Now if only the skeleton could speak, he might tell Butcher where he's hiding the book.

  Butcher keeps digging the man free, hoping for a clue. As the rain pummels the two of them, and thunder crashes overhead, the mud caked inside Billings' ribcage waters down. It loosens up and pours out of his chest cavity, and when enough has fallen free, something inside the man's body catches Butcher's attention.

  The corner of a tin box.

  “Sneaky as a politician.” Butcher grabs onto the dead man's ribcage and, like a wishbone, pulls it apart until he hears a wet snap. He tugs the bone loose, sticks his hand into the emptiness of the skeleton's chest and pulls the box free.

  He scrambles free of the body and opens the tin box, half-expecting it to be empty. Fortunately, the book is inside. It's big, leather-bound, and very old. Symbols in an alien language are stamped into the cover.

  “We tthank you for your help.” A voice from far above- Kevin, at the top of the sinkhole. “You've ssaved us precious time in our search.”

  “You're too late, freak. One touch from me and the book is gone.”

  “Yyou can't ddestroy it.”

  “We'll see about that.”

  Butcher places his open palm on the book's cover. He braces for fire, but fire doesn't come. He tries slapping the book. Then pounding it with his fist.

  Kevin laughs in more than one voice. “You still don't unnderstand. You haven't accepted that you're mmore like us than you were ever like them.” He licks the rain from his face with his long, black tongue.

  "I hope that isn't true."

  Kevin descends the wall on a dozen, black tentacles that grow from his back and dig into the mud, bringing him to the bottom of the sinkhole to face Butcher. "What is sso good about being human? Do you prefer to be a brittle, sentimental animal, devoid of power and purpose?"

  "I don't know about all that. I just mean if I was anything like Kevin I would have to kill myself. He's one creepy, little prick."

  Kevin's eyes fill with black worms, his skin, his hair, even his teeth darken to nothing. "Your insults don’t affect us. Wweak words from wweak men."

  "I'm sure you'd like to think that, but you're actually pretty sensitive, aren't you? I think this tough guy stuff is a cover for the fact that deep inside you're just a little kitten. A very scared, very disgusting kitten."

  Kevin's oily-black skin erupts in dozens of sharp tentacles. Intestine-spears shoot out of his chest, grab Butcher up by the ankles and yank him off his feet. The tin box falls to the mud and Butcher is dragged in front of Kevin, kicking and shouting through puddles.

  "You have a loud mouth," Kevin growls.

  "And you have a little something right here." Butcher taps himself on the cheek.

  Kevin falls on Butcher and beats him with necrotic fists. Slimy tentacles wrapped around Butcher's arms and legs squeeze the feeling from them. As he takes the hits, Butcher sees images of The Self, memories through its eyes. He sees a painful birth into this bright world, spit out tiny and naked and weak, not much more than a heart-brain. He sees it crawling through the dirt. Sees it run from the birds that peck at it, crawl through a basement window and hide in a dark, safe drain in the ground.

  Butcher head-butts Kevin. The blow stuns Kevin but himself even more. He shakes it off to fish through the cloudy water, searching for something to hit the man with.

  His fingers find sharp stone- a jagged piece of gravestone. Gripping it tight, he brings it up and jabs it into Kevin’s eye. Again that sound, the same Mary made earlier, a voice of a thousand screams. Butcher uses the chance to crawl out of Kevin’s loosened grip and struggle through the mud and rain to reach the box.

  As he reaches for it, the water beneath him bubbles. A boney hand reaches up out of the water and grabs him by the arm, a hand belonging to one of the bodies buried in the cemetery.

  He's not proud of it, but a scream escapes Butcher, the kind found in horror movies.

  Looking closer at the skeleton hand, he learns its secret: Self veins entwine the bone like black ivy. A matching hand emerges from the water just ahead and grabs onto the box, grips the tin in a literal death grip.

  Kevin's tentacles pound into the ground and tunnel through the mud to seek out flesh and bone. Around Butcher the puddles bubble, the mud shifts, and as the movement builds and builds, he comes to a logical conclusion.

  "I'm in deep shit."

  With his free hand Butcher snaps the brittle wrist of the hand that holds him, re-killing it. He tosses it aside, gets to his feet and fights the second hand for control of the tin box.

  From every angle the sinkhole comes alive with the dead. Arms reach out from the walls, hands beckon, snakes of tentacle and bone chew their way out of the muddy ground and slither-scrape toward him, eager to eat him up.

  He curses at the skeleton hand and demands it let go. Finally it gives. Butcher pulls the box free and stomps the hand into the mud for good measure, grinds it under his boot like a used up cigarette. “That's enough evil hands for one day,” he says.

  Butcher looks up in time to see the rest of the graveyard closing in on him. Stumble-falling corpses with needle-thin hair. Animals built from human bone and cured muscle. Bits and ends slugging through the mud. And at the center, Kevin, like a sick child with a sicker play-set, vomit-giggles into the rain.

  Butcher sets to bludgeoning. Using the heavy box he swings down on skulls, shatters ancient jaws and crushes bone into the ground. He becomes the fury of the living, sending the dead back to their resting places, leaving the Self veins to wiggle and wither like worms in the cloudy water.

  Butcher heaves for breath. The air stinging at his throat and lungs, he notices a Self-vein on his bare forearm as it crawls and seeks out its master. Even that small, he can feel its thoughts and wants, feel the heat draw down int
o his skin.

  A thought occurs to him. He drops the box, turns and faces Kevin, the two men less than ten feet apart.

  He pulls his gun.

  “You're out of bulletss,” Kevin reminds him.

  Butcher wipes the rain from his eyes. "That little bastard hand told you that?” Kevin nods, self-satisfied. “Well you’re right, but I've been thinking about that. And here's what I came up with."

  He pulls the trigger. The mouth of the gun flashes and explodes white fire. Flames leap from the barrel and hit Kevin in the stomach, the force so strong it melts the side of his torso, then continues into the wall behind him and punches a hole in the soggy earth.

  Dead meat crackles in the rain.

  “Energy,” he tells Kevin’s shocked expression. “Energy is the answer, the answer to the question I’ve been asking myself all night. Which is: what do lightning and thought have in common?”

  He fires again. This time he takes a chunk out of Kevin’s other side. The hole in the wall behind him grows wider, dirt shifting, rocks tumbling down from the lip above.

  Kevin collapses to the mud, cut in two. Butcher walks through ankle-high water and stands over him. “Brain waves. Electricity. I’m no scientist, Kev, but as far as I know they’re both energy. So it seems, that’s my gift.” He aims at the center of Kevin’s chest. “I guess what I'm saying is- with friends like you, who needs ammunition?”

  The ground rumbles beneath them and around them, the sinkhole cranky from too much disturbance. Kevin leaps forward on new legs and jumps on Butcher, knocking him to the ground. He pins Butcher by the chest, making sure not to touch his skin, and pushes his head under to make him choke on muddy water.

  As Butcher swallows and chokes on the muck, the sinkhole becomes unstable, expands outward. It reaches the church, and a thick crack forms in the building's foundation.

  Kevin pulls Butcher out of the water. “Wweak,” he screams, “weak and tiresome! You don't deserve this world!” He beats the ground with black tentacles, causing even more disturbance in the weakening sinkhole.

  Butcher gasps for breath.“That's not such a good idea,” he says before Kevin pushes him back under.

  The crack in the earth widens. The church quakes in its foundation and splits in two, up the center. With the frame split open and the structure failing, the steeple shakes at the top, the steel cross rocking back and forth in the billowing wind.

  Butcher doesn't have much fight left in him. He tries to grab for skin, to pull something out of Kevin, enough energy to fight him off, but he can't reach it.

  The steeple can't hold on, either. It breaks free of the church's roof and tumbles off, wood splintering all the way. It falls to the ground and shatters, losing the top into the growing sinkhole. The top half slides down the curve of the wall, pushing heavy water and mud out of its way on the way down, heading toward the two men.

  Kevin pulls Butcher's head out of the water one, final time. Oblivious to their collapsing surroundings, he pushes his black eyes in Butcher's pale face. “It's unfortunate the old priest isn't around anymore to help you.”

  The steeple's cross pierces Kevin’s back and bursts through his chest, the tip of it stopped an inch in front of Butcher’s wide eyes.

  “I'd say he's doing alright,” Butcher croaks.

  Kevin's dark tentacles rip the cross from his chest and swipe the rest of the steeple away, smashing it against the far wall. In the hole left by the cross, Kevin's heart-brain is visible- wounded, but intact. Kevin notices Butcher staring at it.

  “You mmust be human,” Kevin growls. “You lay powerless as an infant, victory inches away, yyet you do nnothing.” His chest parts further to reveal the entire heart-brain, legs and all, and he leans forward to shove it in Butcher's face. “You see? All you need is to reach out and crush it, but your arms are too wweakk. Yourr weapon out of reach. Yyou have nothing left to fight us with. Nnothing left to save your kind from us.”

  Butcher lunges forward, pushes his face inside Kevin's chest and clamps down on the heart-brain with his teeth. As Kevin roars in pain, Butcher gnaws the cold heart-brain out of Kevin's chest, its legs wiggling against his tongue.

  He pulls the heart-brain free, snapping the vein-roots, and with all his strength he bites down and crushes it between his teeth. It squeals before it dies, and he spits it out into the water.

  “I always have my appetite,” he tells Kevin, a face full of the man's blood.

  The side of the sinkhole gives way. Above, the church succumbs to its pull and begins to fall in, the entire building now rushing to fill the void.

  Butcher pushes out from under a crumbling Kevin and scrambles to reach the other side of the sinkhole. As he runs he spots the tin box in the mud, and he grabs it up before jumping out of harm's way.

  The pieces that made up the church come crashing down on Kevin, pulverizing his already disintegrating body. The pile of wood and glass tumbles like a tsunami of blades.

  After a long, slosh-crumbling rumble it comes to a rest at Butcher's ankles. Yet he won't breathe comfortably until he's out of the sinkhole and back on solid ground. The walls are still unsteady, and he knows a lot can happen in a climb.

  **

  With the box tucked inside his shirt, he climbs. Again using the gravestones and roots sticking out from the earth as hand and footholds, he makes his way up. As he climbs, the sky settles, the wind dies down, and the rain calms to a shower.

  Near the top he grips a thick bunch of roots with one hand and with the other pulls the box out of his shirt and throws it up and over, out of the sinkhole. He readies himself to climb over the lip, breathes in once, out twice.

  Butcher makes his move, but the roots give out, pulling free from the mud. He grabs for the ledge and manages to get a hold on a large rock embedded in the earth. He dangles at the top of the sinkhole, sharp debris below, and struggles to keep his grip.

  “Rock and a hard place,” he notes with little joy.

  The rock starts to come loose. With no other options left he looks below for the landing least likely to kill him. The options are grim.

  It gives. The rock dislodges and Butcher falls. He keeps his eyes down, ready for whatever landing may come.

  Something grabs his hand.

  A human hand, attached to a human man- a welcome change. He's thin and bald, with a gray goatee and a dark, circular scar at the center of his forehead.

  “How about we save the introductions for later,” the man says, his voice strained.

  “I can agree to that.”

  Butcher reaches up and grabs the man's hand with both of his. Together they pull him out of the abyss and onto solid ground. Butcher catches his breath, the cool rain on his face, and sizes up the stranger. The darkly-dressed man doesn't look any older than fifty, yet he has some rough miles on him.

  Butcher wipes his mouth and comes away with a palm covered in thick, black blood. “Don't worry,” he says, “it's not mine.”

  “Good thing. If you bled that color I'd have to kill you.”

  Butcher throws him a look as he stands.

  “The name's Messenger. I'm a friend of Father Curtis, or I was until you let him die.”

  Butcher leans in close to the man. “You think that doesn't piss me off?”

  “It had better downright devastate you. He was a good man.”

  “I know that.”

  “He was also your best chance at understanding the pile of dog crap your life just became. Now it'll take a bag of luck the size of this sinkhole for you to live more than a few months.” He looks Butcher up and down. “I don’t know what he saw in you, but I had a lot of respect for that old man. That's the only reason I bothered coming here.”

  “If you’re so intent on honoring his memory you could have shown up ten minutes earlier.”

  “I wasn't needed then.”

  “You could have fooled me, I almost died down in that damn pit.”

  This time Messenger gets in Butcher’s
face. “There’s a lot more going on here than your brain can wrap around, kid. Rule one: I go where I’m needed, when I’m needed. There’s not much say in the matter.”

  “Sounds convenient.”

  Messenger scowls at him. “You can just forget about convenience and coincidence from here on in. You think it's a coincidence you came to this town? You were drawn here like the others, pulled in by its energy. What you do once you get here is on you.”

  Butcher picks the tin box up off the ground and holds it out. “Now it’s on you.”

  Messenger shakes his head. “I have my own burdens.”

  Butcher steps away from the man and sighs, exhausted.

  “What's the problem now,” Messenger asks.

  “Father Curtis called it a gift. But it's a curse.”

  “It's neither- it's a choice. As strong as the Gods are, choice is always stronger. Choice is the one immutable currency in existence. The Gods can trick us, they can influence and terrify and confuse us, but in the end the choice is always ours.” His face softens. “As is the guilt that comes with it.”

  Butcher looks like he's going to be sick. “I stopped going to Sunday school because I didn't believe all that stuff, now you're telling me there's more than one?”

  For a moment Messenger relates to Butcher. He remembers when it was all so new for him, too, the terror that came with vast knowledge.

  He says, “Let me tell you a secret, Butcher- people who talk about God as an old, white man in the sky have something to gain from giving power to old, white men. There are Gods, I assure you, but they don’t come in long, flowing robes, or any other form you’d be familiar with. They live outside reality. Outside time. Their voices are like a hundred billion whispers, repeating, echoing, mocking, agreeing and disagreeing all at once. So if someone ever tells you that God speaks to them, don’t believe it unless they’re screaming and trying to rip their ears off.”

  Butcher motions to what's left of the church. “How could Curtis know all that and still be a priest?”

  “Because true faith isn’t blind. Curtis believed in a world in which all things are possible. Now that you're on the path, you might be inclined to agree.”