by Mark Cassell
Stevenson’s grin pushed his mouth wide, thick lips glistening. “That, young lady, is the hourglass.” He put emphasis on the word hour.
Kat clutched it and looked into the lower bulb. She shook it. “It’s old. What’s it for?”
“Put it down,” Judy yelled. Whatever it was, it was unnatural. And Stevenson had a hand in all this. “Don’t touch it!”
Kat shuddered. Her bottom lip quivered.
“No need to be like that.” Stevenson stepped around the mattress and stood beside a computer terminal that squatted on the floor. Wires and cables poked from it. The blank screen reflected the hourglass and Kat’s tiny hands. “It’s a method of extracting darkness.”
“What?” Judy’s voice sounded tiny even to herself.
The little girl’s chin trembled, tears welling.
“The clinical trial is only half of it. This…” He waved his hand over Kat’s head. “…Is what really matters.”
Judy crouched beside the mattress. She took the girl’s hand and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Kat said nothing, staring into her lap. The hourglass rested against her thigh.
“There’s a darkness within us,” Stevenson said. “Within us all.”
“We have to go.” Judy grabbed Kat’s arm. “Come on.”
Stevenson’s voice drifted over her shoulder. “That magnificent device allows us to tap it.”
Pain. Sharp at the base of her skull. An explosion of colour…
Then nothing.
Tangled images threaded together and Judy struggled to make sense of them: shadowy tentacles snatching Kat’s father into the elevator; the janitor mopping blood; black spores spreading across the walls…and the turntable, spinning round and round and round. Hey Jude. The black void swallowing her.
Judy’s consciousness sharpened, and now the sound of creaking leather, of clanking buckles, drifted through the dark. Her eyelids cracked open. Wide.
The air snatched in her throat.
She lay on her side, the cold ground biting through her clothes. Her ankles were bound to her wrists, her back hunched. Rope dug into her already-enflamed flesh. She recognised the rock walls and the archway a short distance from her. And the mattress.
Kat was on it. The girl’s eyes were closed, her breathing rhythmic as though she slept—unconscious but alive. Her legs and arms were spread, wrists and ankles fastened by leather straps. One tiny hand curled around the lower bulb of the hourglass, secured by the attached harness. The computer hummed and a series of commands ran down the green screen. Bunched wires coiled from the main unit and connected to electrode pads that stuck to the girl’s temples.
Judy’s heart lurched. “Leave her alone!”
Stevenson stepped into view. “You’re just in time.”
“What are you doing to her?” she demanded and tried to kick out, only to succeed in sliding sideways. Her back hit the rock wall. “She’s just a girl!”
“Yes, that’s why I’m seeing what her darkness will be. Your coming here is a stroke of luck, wouldn’t you say?”
“Let us go!”
“The hourglass will connect with her darkness,” he said. “It’s a 17th-century device once used to extract the evil from supposed witches.”
“What?” Judy struggled to sit up. Failed.
“A remarkable apparatus,” he added.
She glanced at her wrists, the rope binding them, and those welts, the pinches. Her stomach knotted, and she knew that she’d once been attached to this hourglass. “You’re…you’re behind the infection.”
“It could be a type of infection, certainly.” He shrugged and glanced at Kat. “But it’s more than that.”
Judy wriggled. Her back ached and her head thumped. It felt sticky from where Stevenson had evidently knocked her out. “This is madness.”
“Darkness is the root of our madness.”
A wave of nausea rushed in on her. She gulped, refusing to spew. Her breath came in gasps. She had to save Kat.
“That’s right, calm down.”
From an angle, Judy saw chalk markings on the rock face beside her. Words? Symbols? She didn’t recognise any. One, however, could’ve been a crude diagram of the hourglass itself. Silvery spots peppered her vision. Those markings blurred for a moment; they looked like real voodoo crap, some kind of occult bullshit that belonged in those absurd Hammer horror films these Brits seemed to love. Gritting her teeth, her ears ringing, she focused on Kat, and on the hourglass. The white sand in the lower bulb looked innocent enough. Perhaps extracting the darkness would somehow cleanse her, or would it infect her? But she was only a child. And what did this darkness have to do with madness? Again, Judy struggled against her bonds.
“Why are you doing this?” she shouted and kicked.
“We need to wait a while longer, then we can begin.” He watched the computer monitor. “Not long.”
More commands scrolled down the screen.
Judy thought of what the Janitor had said. “Something to do with your harvest?”
Stevenson’s eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t know about that.”
“Is it?”
“Most likely, yes.” He again glanced at the computer. “Okay, we have time.”
He crouched beside her. From a pocket he pulled out a Swiss Army knife, then cut her ankle bindings.
“Come with me.” He grabbed her still-bound wrists and yanked her up.
She grunted, pain burning the back of her head. With a final look at Kat—so peaceful—Judy swayed.
Stevenson tugged her beneath the archway. Still gripping her arm, he threw open a door with his other hand. “I’m proud of this.”
She squinted as a dozen or more spotlights burned into the gloom. The stink of vegetation, of rot, of mould, reached down Judy’s throat.
“That idiot Parker never even knew,” Stevenson whispered.
Judy’s stomach twisted. “Oh my God.”
Beneath metal framework, four gurneys lined a wall. Naked bodies occupied them. Male or female, she had no idea. Every mattress was stained brown and dotted with dark spores. Clamping apparatus held open the chest cavities where fungus growths bulged. Like gigantic black slugs, throbbing—with a heartbeat?—they seethed and converged overhead amongst the frame. The skin glistened and reflected the spotlights. Most of the ceiling had vanished in an expanse of sweating grey-black flesh, pulled taut like a grotesque canopy. Spores peppered the floor and the spotlight bases, the walls and the remainder of the ceiling.
Stevenson smiled.
Something—someone—groaned.
“Dear God, no,” whispered Judy.
One of the bodies twitched and the head moved. A man. His eyes wandered as though drunk and his agony hissed through clenched teeth. Fungal tentacles swung from his chin.
Beneath his gurney, a darkness clustered in wispy shadows. A coiling pseudopod heaved and slits along its length puffed more spores, more shadows, to cloud the air. It hurt to look at; the way it kind of played with reality. Even as she watched, another tendril of shadow reached up to clutch the ceiling. It shifted aside the tiles. One fell and smacked the floor, cracking in two.
More pseudopods whipped the air, again the slits opening like mouths and belching clouds of shadow.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Stevenson left her in the doorway and strolled into the centre of the room. He held his hands wide. “I have discovered the darkness inside us all.”
Tendrils slithered towards him and stroked his shoes. This fungus had a life of its own, so did it know this man was its creator? Did he control the fungus, the shadows? Chasing his own desire to find the darkness at mankind’s core—the very heart of madness—he’d clearly gone mad himself. Perhaps he’d inhaled the spores or even the shadows that now puffed from more slits along the tentacles. Did he once attach himself to the hourglass?
Judy gaped as the sentient clusters of darkness caressed his legs.
Those dark clouds were similar to the shadows that ear
lier had coiled from the phantom record player. She’d been attached to that hourglass at some point during her stay here, of that she had no doubt. That’s why the shadows had revealed her past, it was her own darkness tangled with unwanted memories; a madness waiting for her.
She had to stop this. She had to rescue Kat before the computer loaded and the hourglass began whatever it was going to do to her.
Judy held her breath, hunched, and darted forward. Her shoulder smashed into Stevenson’s stomach and he stumbled backwards. Driven by momentum, she almost went with him as he crashed into a gurney. The overhead frames screeched across the floor, and the fleshy sacks ruptured. Great plumes of shadow and spores fluttered. And embraced him.
He didn’t have time to scream.
Only his feet and one arm stuck from the quivering mass as it ballooned. The other gurneys shifted and the clamping mechanisms snapped closed. Shreds of black flesh flapped about and muffled the crunch of breaking ribs. Brackets and rods sprung sideways, clattering off the tiles. Some hit the fungus sacks with a thump. The main mass, once supported by the frame, had drooped. Metal groaned, shrieked, then snapped. The bulbous thing collapsed and slapped the ground.
Slime splashed Judy’s face as she rolled away.
A seething yellow goo spread across the tiles. Pseudopods whipped and jerked, lashed and clawed at the tiles.
She scrambled to her feet.
More clamps pinged and clattered across the room. One of the bodies fell with a wet thump. A splay of black matter leaked from the gaping stomach. The dark clouds, the shadows, reached out—almost as if in comfort.
Stevenson’s legs vanished.
Judy, cursing her bound wrists, staggered. She slipped, almost went down again, and lurched for the door.
Making it round the corner and beneath the archway, she dropped to her knees beside Kat. A glance at the computer and it appeared as though the column of data was slowing. She tugged the wires and the electrodes popped from the child’s head. The screen went blank.
From behind her something else clattered, the light from the doorway shrinking. Without looking, she knew the pulsating mass of whatever-the-hell-it-was filled the doorway. Or perhaps it was the shadows. She fumbled the straps that fastened Kat’s ankles, releasing them. Then those at her wrists. No time to remove the hourglass harness. The device thumped Judy’s leg as she scooped up the girl and hoisted her over a shoulder—awkward with bound wrists. The rope pinched.
She backed out from the chamber, into the dark corridor, and jogged beneath the welcoming glow of emergency lights that looped from bare plasterboard panels. The elevator had to be here, or maybe another exit somewhere.
The area widened into an unfinished mess. The plasterboard gave way to rock either side. Further ahead where girders lined the ceiling and pushed into rock, a chain-link fence stretched out and separated them from a construction area.
Kat flopped in her arms and the hourglass smacked her thigh. Judy began to limp, heading for what she assumed was a chained gate in the fence. Perhaps they’d be able to squeeze through. Beyond this, deep in shadow—natural, she hoped—were what looked like pallets piled with bricks. Yes. There were bags of cement, too. There was even a forklift truck. There had to be an exit that way.
Her legs were killing her and her arms screamed from awkwardly holding Kat.
She knew the darkness spread behind—her skin itched like a million ants crawled over her. The closer she got to the fence, the more she saw a faint light far on the other side of the construction area. Yes, she’d made it. No elevator, but sunlight? Two horizontal stretches of light cut through the gloom. From a pair of huge metal doors.
“What’s happening?” Kat’s muffled voice sounded sleepy. “It hurts.”
“Nearly there.” Judy coughed. Thank God Kat was okay.
“Hurts!” the girl whined. Blood covered her hand and dripped from the harness, the hourglass swinging.
And Judy tripped.
Her kneecaps smacked the ground, an elbow too. The girl tumbled from her grasp and sprawled, crying. Her eyes glinted in the brightening light, face screwed up.
A familiar crushing dizziness washed over Judy. She pressed the ground with her bound wrists and tried to get up.
“Run!” she shouted.
Kat stared past Judy’s head. Her eyes widened and she screamed.
Judy pushed herself up, head swimming, and scrambled to her feet. She grabbed the girl, yanked her upright.
“Run!”
Staggering, the two of them crashed into the fence. Not quite a gate. It rattled. Judy’s fingers curled around the chain. Cold. No way through. Her heart punched her throat. Her knees throbbed. She tugged the padlock. Locked. Closer to the ground there was a gap, big enough for Kat to squeeze through.
“There!” she yelled. “Under there!”
Kat obeyed and pushed her body beneath the fence. The hourglass went with her.
A glance over Judy’s shoulder revealed the darkness clawing the rock walls. She looked back at Kat, who in turn stared up at her through the mesh. Her hair clumped across a grimy forehead. Red circles marked her temples from where Stevenson had attached the electrode pads.
“Run!” Judy poked her finger through the links in the fence, pointing at the sunlight. “That way.”
With a quivering jaw, Kat turned and ran. The hourglass scraped along the ground like a medieval toy. Her footsteps echoed.
There was nothing at hand to break the padlock. Still the darkness spread across the rocks, flowing and tracing the contours, reaching for her. A combination of liquid shadow and black seething fungus crawling at her, plunging her into a deeper gloom.
She shook the fence and dropped to the ground. She pressed herself against the gap, shuffling sideways, willing herself to shrink. She clawed the ground.
Two fingernails broke. Pain exploded up her hand.
Around her, the light dimmed. The darkness closed in.
Far away, Kat shoved open the huge door. A metallic shriek rang out. The setting sun flared around the little girl’s silhouette and for a moment she swam in blinding orange, the hourglass trailing behind.
Judy stopped trying to push through the gap. Kat was safe, that was all that mattered.
As sunlight swallowed Kat, the darkness swallowed Judy.
INTENSIVE SCARE
My fingers curled around the glass tumbler, and my knuckles whitened. For one absurd moment, I chastised myself for not painting my nails that evening. Candles reflected in the glass, diluted with a darkness filling to the brim. It churned like liquid, bubbled, and swept up and into my eyes. Blinding. The stink of rot—like that time I’d forgotten about the salmon in the refrigerator—clawed up my nose, down into my lungs, tainting me to the core. Gravity snatched me, and my sight returned in patchwork flame and shadow.
Gritty floorboards thumped and pain exploded through my ass, my shoulder blades, my head. Darkness claimed me.
Nothingness.
When eventually I came to, my friends’ faces hovered in the dark, pale as ghosts. Their shadows flickered behind them, crawling across peeled wallpaper and damp bruises, brushing cobwebs.
“Catherine?” Becca’s piercings glinted in the candlelight. Her latest, the nose stud, looked raw.
Liz, whose bleached hair obscured her wide eyes, said nothing.
I scrambled upright, away from Becca’s furrowed brow, away from Liz’s penetrating gaze. Away from their clutches. What the hell happened? I pushed myself to a crouch and then stood, legs shaking. Gravity threatened to claim me once again but somehow I straightened, even managed a smile. I backed away from the Ouija board. This had all happened because I’d been stupid enough to accompany them into the derelict mansion. That building of cold stone and urban legend, too tempting a place for such a game to be ignored. These girls were my best friends, and just as foolish.
“I’m fine.” I coughed and my heart raged into a thunderclap. Once, twice, tearing through me, rattling my rib
s.
The glass tumbler smashed on the floorboards. A hundred candle flames glinted.
And I died.
I don’t know how much time passed.
Now, I stand beside a hospital bed watching my shell suck at a life-support machine. My dark hair, like splayed fingers, clutches the pillow. My eyelids cower in hollow sockets, my body thin beneath a gown as pastel as my flesh.
Where are my parents? I guess Becca and Liz are home with their families. I wonder how my story was told.
The surrounding walls fade into crushing darkness, warping shadows like torn fabric. My feet lift from the floor—I wear the same clothes as I had on the night we’d entered that building. Shadows embrace me. I am with the Darkness…and his arms are fire. Hot, pure. With him, I fly, and we return to the mansion. As one.
There, three girls, one called Catherine, sit cross-legged around a Ouija board.
The Darkness sees an escape.
The girl called Catherine snatches the glass tumbler…
MEETING MUM
“Rachel?”
Derek’s new girlfriend sat on a patio chair facing the darkness of the empty swimming pool. She couldn’t reply because she didn’t have a mouth. Nor could she look at him because her eyes had also vanished. Her flesh glistened, taut as though pulled over a balloon. Traceries of dark veins throbbed beneath.
Her head tilted, and although faceless begged for help.
His breath snatched on the chill air and he dropped the bundle of fish and chips. It slapped the paving like something dead.
Beyond the reach of patio light, the trees and shrubs crouched in shadow. They seemed to embrace his periphery, squeezing his focus on Rachel. Her green dress hugged her body, wet with sweat, and her legs stretched out before her. One foot was tangled in some kind of fungus with twisting vines that reached from the darkness of the empty pool. A peculiar smell drifted off her, like mixed spices and cooked vegetables. Heavy. It reached down his throat and he choked. His vision blurred, his mind rushing in waves.
