It was equally obvious that our path to the stern lifeboat—if there even was a rowboat still there—was blocked by a slithering mass of the things.
“We can get to it from below, come up from under,” Roberts said.
The thought of being trapped below decks with the creatures had me once again filled with dread, but I knew that Roberts was right. It might indeed be our only chance of escape. But first, we had to find a safe place to get below, and that in itself was no easy matter.
The things were everywhere; they clambered over the bodies of our fallen mates, sucking and feeding in a most disgusting manner. The sounds and sights assaulted my ears and eyes such that I knew they would be repeated nightly in my dreams for evermore, even if I should survive this ordeal. The vessel rocked alarmingly beneath us, reminding us, as if we needed reminding, of the need for haste.
“We need to get off this boat,” Gallagher shouted. Neither Roberts nor I disagreed with him. But the beasts blocked our way in every direction, and some were even now beginning to close in. I was considering a dive overboard—swim for it and hope for the best—when Roberts started to kick and stomp at any beast in range. They burst with moist squelches and lay still.
“The heads are their weak spot. We can make it,” he said, pointing to his left at the hatch to below decks. “Just keep kicking.”
We didn’t need to be told twice. The three of us moved quickly across the deck in a series of stomping and dancing steps, leaving a trail of slime and mucus behind us. One of the beasts wrapped three tentacles around my ankle and squeezed, sending a flare of hot pain up the length of my leg. I brought my heel down hard and the head popped; the tentacles fell limply away. I dived through the hatch after Roberts.
Gallagher was just behind and even as Roberts and I turned to pull the hatch closed, he fell through, screaming; one of the beasts had attached itself to his neck. The greedy mouth bored into the soft tissue between his neck and shoulder, and Gallagher’s screams got louder.
But to the man’s credit, he wasn’t ready to lie down and die just yet. He yanked the thing away from him, tearing out a chunk of meat and skin of his own in the process, and threw it away. It hit the wall, fell to the floor with a wet thud, then started scurrying back toward us. Roberts stepped forward and brought his boot down on its head, twice, until finally it lay still.
We stood there, wide-eyed, staring at each other as we tried to remember to breathe. There was a single scream from above, quickly lost in the wind, then we heard the scurrying and slithering of the beasts moving overhead.
Suddenly all was silent save for the creaking of the old boat and the distant roar of the storm.
19
Present day
I was brought awake with a start. Somebody screamed, and it took my befuddled brain several seconds to work out it wasn’t a dream.
The scream came again, finally jolting me fully out of sleep. George seemed to be dancing around the room, in some strange parody of a waltz with a creature in his arms that I took for a dog at first before my eyes came into focus—then I realized what it must be. It was the thing from Pat’s story—the thing from under the Village Inn porch—or something damned like it. A slimy body, with tentacles thrashing like snakes at George’s belly even while he tried to keep a foul sucking mouth away from his face and a clacking, snapping pincer away from his hands.
Old Pat was about ten feet away, over by the coffee machine. He raised the kettle and threw it hard, but George had moved by the time it reached him and the kettle went straight for the wall—and straight through it, leaving a widening ripple where it had passed. Almost before the ripple had subsided, another of the creatures came through the wall, just where the kettle had vanished, and dropped on the floor with a moist thud before starting to scuttle in my direction. I felt the now-familiar warm tingle on the skin of my face and hands. The fog was nearby—and my guess was that these things were coming out of it.
We’re in deep shit.
My first instinct was to help George, but before I got out of my seat, he was gone—he stepped back, pushing the attacking creature away from his face, but stumbled and tripped. He fell toward the floor—and kept right on going, going through it like it was water. He didn’t even get time to yell in alarm. The ripple he and the creature left behind hardened immediately, three waves in the hardwood boards that looked like they’d been there forever.
Old Pat and I looked at each other, dumbfounded, but there was no time to compare notes—the creature that had come through the wall was scurrying in our direction. Four eyes raised on thin stalks and swiveled until they looked straight at me.
“Out the back, lad,” Pat shouted. “Quickly, now.”
I didn’t need a second telling, and although I had forty years on him, Pat beat me to it. He put his hand on the door and moved it slightly, but when he put pressure against it to force it fully open, his fist and forearm went right through. The wood hardened immediately, locking the old man into it as tight as a vise. He squealed in pain, all color draining from his face.
Something slithered at our back.
“I’m done for, boy.” Pat said. “Save yourself.”
I wouldn’t be anyone worth saving if I left the old man to die. I turned back into the room, just as the tentacled thing made a lunge for my legs. I kicked out, hard, a lucky blow that caught it full in the body. It felt soft, like a deflated football, but it flew through the air well enough, hitting the stove with a dull thud and hissing where it touched the hot metal door. A rainbow shower of dust went up, then it lay still.
I headed for the panel in the wall and broke out the fire axe.
“Turn your head, old man. I’m going to get you out of there.”
Pat’s eyes were full of pain, and tears ran through the dust and grime on his cheeks, but he did as I asked and turned his head away from the door as I hacked with the axe.
I had to stop after the very first blow—it brought a scream of agony from the old man, the likes of which I never want to hear again.
“It’s no use, boy—I’m a part of it now, and it’s a part of me. Look.”
I looked—although it was as hard to do it as it had been to look at Mrs. Malloy in her kitchen. Pat was right—they were part of each other. The wood of the door and the flesh of his arm had fused so that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. I was coming to think that if I hacked through the wood, I might find veins and muscle in there—and similarly, old Pat might have an arm of little more than pulp and wood fiber.
To my amazement, the old man managed a laugh.
“What are you going to do, boy—carry me and the bloody door around with you? You know what you have to do here. Get to it.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said.
He grabbed me with his free hand.
“That’s not what I’m asking, Frank. You know what you have to do.”
His gaze fixed on the axe, and suddenly I knew what he meant.
I backed away, shaking my head.
“There’s been enough dying for one night,” I said. I was about to turn around when Pat’s mouth fell open and his eyes went wide, looking past my left shoulder.
“Come here, Frank,” Pat said through fresh tears. “Please—don’t look round. Just come here.”
Of course I looked—anybody would. The far wall of the depot was shrouded in fog. I felt the warm tingle on my face again as the floor bucked beneath me. Indistinct shapes writhed and crawled just inside the fog—some had tentacles and claws—but others stood upright on two legs, although above the waist it seemed to me that their arms were too long—and too many.
“Leave, right now, Frank,” Pat said. “Your father would have told you the same thing.”
I moved to stand between the old man and the approaching fog, raising the axe in front of me.
“Don’t do this for me, boy,” Pat said at my back.
“I’m doing it for me, old man, now shut up, I’m busy.”
My legs felt like jelly, and I could hardly hold the axe, but you know what? I felt more alive, more in control, than I had all night. This was something I could do, someone I could save. And I meant to spend my last breath doing it, if I had to.
It was as if my resolve gave the fog pause. It stopped advancing, and the obscured figures disappeared back into the murk as the fog swirled and thickened. It coalesced around a darker point at eye level straight ahead of me, a tear in space that glistened like black oil, rolling and turning and thickening into an egg-shaped droplet that hung in the air, quivering.
The walls of the depot throbbed like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious—it was growing.
It calved, and calved again.
Four eggs hung in a tight group, pulsing in time with a throbbing vibration that was getting steadily louder and more insistent. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces; blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs.
In the blink of an eye, there were eight.
I was vaguely aware of Pat shouting at me, but I was past caring.
Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.
The vibration grew louder still.
Thirty-two now, and they had started to fill the depot with dancing aurora of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the throb of the vibration.
Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light.
The colors filled the room, spilled out over the floor, crept around my feet, danced in my eyes, in my head, all through my body. I gave myself to it, willingly. The depot filled with stars, and I danced among them.
I strained to turn my head toward the eggs.
A hundred and twenty-eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six.
A hand tugged at my shoulder and turned me round.
“Fight it, boy. If you don’t fight it, nobody will,” Pat said.
The depot was filling with what I guessed to be a thousand and twenty-four eggs.
“Fight it!” Pat shouted, and I remembered—Mrs. Malloy, and George, and the bus in the hollow and the Brodie house—all the terrors of the night fueling my anger. I hefted the axe and threw it, straight at the growing mass of black eggs.
Several things happened at once. The myriad bubbles popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all. Pat screamed—a wail that was enough to set the walls throbbing and quaking. Swirling clouds seemed to come from nowhere to fill the room with darkness. Everything went black as a pit of hell, and a thunderous blast rocked the depot, driving me down into a place where I dreamed of empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until I swam in a swirling sea of colors.
I drifted.
When I got back—was given back—to what passes for reality, thin daylight lit the depot. There was no sign of the fog or the creatures it had brought with it.
Pat hung on the door, his hand still tightly embedded in the wood, his dead eyes staring up at me.
20
1856
From the journal of an unnamed seaman, discovered in Trinity town archives
At some point in the melee, I had quite lost my bearings. I thought we had descended to the area immediately above the engine room, but we were once again in the corridor that led to the crew quarters. And if the layout of the whaler was as I remembered it, there was no easy way to get to our objective in the stern from here.
“Our situation has hardly improved for the better,” Gallagher said quietly. He bled heavily from the wound in his shoulder, but waved me away when I tried to help. “I’ll have time for doctoring later, if we make it.”
I looked to Roberts for guidance. He had bent to study the remains of the thing at our feet.
“What the hell are these things?” Gallagher asked. “I ain’t never seen the like afore.”
“Ain’t never heard of the like either,” Roberts replied, standing and wiping slime and mucus on his trousers. “It’s some kind of squid, I think, but I’m buggered if I know anything more than that. Besides, what they are isn’t important. We need to get to the stern, and fast. This boat is going into the rocks at any minute, and when that happens, we’re all dead anyway.”
I wasn’t too keen on being reminded of that fact; I was still feeling happy at just having got below and away from the creatures. I looked down the corridor at the path we would have to take. Even with the presence of oil lamps at intervals, it was too dark to see more than ten yards or so, but my imagination filled in the blanks only too well. I started in that direction, but Roberts had other ideas.
“We could go farther down,” he said. “The most direct route is through the main hold.”
“But we have no idea what might be down there,” Gallagher said.
“It can’t be any worse that what’s above us,” Roberts replied. He lifted one of the few functioning oil lamps from its hook on the wall. “And the sooner it’s done, the quicker we can get off this death trap.”
I followed him as he led us to the steps that led down into more darkness, hoping against hope that his last statement was close to the truth.
* * *
We found Irish Frank at the foot of the steps.
The creatures had got him—but not before he’d taken many of them with him. Charred remains lay strewn in a wide circle around the captain’s body. A hole in his chest showed where he had finally succumbed. It hadn’t been that long ago either, for the firebrand in his hand was still warm.
“He had the right idea,” Roberts said, lifting the brand and getting it lit from the flame in the oil lamp. “We should have thought of it ourselves. See if you can find more of these. We might need them.”
I found three long brands just by turning my head; I knew from experience that a supply was often kept near the entrance to the hold in whaling vessels. I passed one to Gallagher, and we lit up from the one in Roberts’ hand.
Now we had enough light, we were able to see that we hadn’t just found Irish Frank; we had found most of his crew. They’d tried to make a stand, here in the hold. It hadn’t mattered; the creatures had found them and fed on them. They lay, piled on top of each other, or attempting to hide underneath barrels and crates or at the foot of another set of stairs where there had obviously been a fight among themselves in their rush to flee. And everywhere were the bloody trails that showed where the creatures had departed after feeding.
The boat lurched again, threatening to throw us off our feet. In a corner of the hold something scurried away.
We were not alone.
I expected Roberts to move, to head for the stern, but he and Gallagher had eyes only for the cargo. I saw that the hold was almost full; the whaler had made a profitable trip. The barrels sloshed as the boat rolled. They were full of oil.
“There’s a king’s ransom here,” Gallagher whispered. “We’ve got to try to salvage what we can.”
Roberts laughed bitterly.
“What we need to salvage is our lives.”
Gallagher wasn’t convinced, but he followed as we made our way quickly through the hold. There was no repetition of the scurrying sound, but I knew that I had heard it, and I jumped at every shadow, every creak of warping wood as we went forward.
When the attack came, it was from two directions. A fresh scurrying alerted me first. I turned toward it, just as the thing launched itself at me, tentacles reaching for my face. I got the brand between us, and hit the head square on. Something hissed, and the air filled with a stench that made me gag; hot spew filling my throat. I was aware of a commotion behind me; Gallagher and Roberts had troubles of their own, but I was too busy to pay attention to them.
The thing came at me again. I could just see that it was burned badly; one of the eyes had popped and dribbled noxious fluid on the deck even as it threw itself at me again. I poked it, twice, with the brand, and the flames took at the second attempt. The head went first. Tentacles
writhed and thrashed in frenzy. It was only stilled when I brought my boot down, hard, squishing the burnt remains underfoot.
I turned back to my crew mates, looking for congratulation. There would be none forthcoming. They had not had my good fortune of hearing the attack coming. There was indeed a second burning beast on the deck at their feet, but it had done its own damage before succumbing. Roberts was still on his feet, but he was white as a sheet, apart from where a wash of blood ran down his chest, a gaping wound at his neck evidence of where the thing had penetrated his jugular.
“I’ll be fine,” he whispered, then his legs gave way despite Gallagher trying to hold him up. He fell at my feet; dead eyes stared up at me.
Gallagher took one look at the body, let out a wail, and headed forward at a flat run. There were more scurrying sounds in the darker shadows and, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, I too headed forward, as fast as I was able to while still ensuring I was safe from another attack.
* * *
I got to the stairs that led up to the stern just in time to see Gallagher step up onto deck some twelve feet above me. I flinched, expecting him to be immediately attacked, but all I heard was the whistle of the wind and the roar of water on rocks. The vessel struck something, hard enough to make me lose my footing and drop the brand. It hit the boards, snuffed out, and rolled away into darkness.
Something moved and skittered in the shadows.
I fled up the steps, expecting at any second to be hauled backwards down into the dark. I was quite out of breath when I reached the deck.
Gallagher took no notice of me. He stood, staring, not toward the lifeboat at the stern, but forward. The lights of Trinity twinkled some quarter of a mile in the distance. By some miracle we had made it unscathed through the narrows and were even now being propelled ever closer to the main harbor.
The Dunfield Terror Page 14
