Shores of the Marrow

by Patrick Logan

  This was followed by dry laughter.

  “It’s just me and you dad, just like it’s always been.”

  Robert… he’s gone?

  Something inside Shelly snapped like a guy-wire under tension, and this time she couldn’t even scream.

  This time, her entire body tensed, including her heart and lungs, crippling her.

  The baby’s coming! Oh god, the baby’s coming right now!

  Chapter 39

  “You came back!”

  Cal stared over The Pit.

  It can’t be.

  But it could be, he knew this deep down. He had seen the dead return, had seen them walking the earth with his own eyes. For the most part, however, these apparitions had been strangers, people with families and lives, surely but not his family, not his life.

  Never had someone he known and loved returned from the dead and even though he knew it possible, his damaged mind couldn’t wrap itself around the idea.

  “It’s not real… it’s not real… it’s not real,” he repeated over and over even as the figure started to walk along the edge of The Pit toward him.

  Cal covered his ears with his hands and closed his eyes. Then he started to rock back and forth.

  It’s the rain and the drugs. It’s the exhaustion and the stress messing with me… it can’t be real.

  The rain continued to beat down on him, but when he heard no other sound, no mention of his name, Cal stopped rocking and opened his eyes.

  Not ten paces to his left stood his childhood friend Hank, his beanpole frame stooped, hands jammed into the pocket of his jeans. Unlike the children from the orphanage, he looked exactly the way he had on the day he died.

  Cal wasn’t sure if this made it easier or harder to believe.

  “Hank?” he whispered. The rain on his face mixed with his tears, fully soaking him now. “Is that really you?”

  Hank shrugged and smiled, revealing his large teeth.

  “In the flesh, Cally-boy. In the flesh.”

  Cal just stared, finding himself unable to move, to speak.

  How can this be? I saw him die… saw him pulled under the water by the hands.

  Hank looked away from him then, and peered down into The Pit.

  Water had started to build at the bottom, and while it was still relatively calm, Cal knew that it was only a matter of time before it started to churn and froth.

  And the hands… the hands will return.

  “I ever tell you about the history of the Forrester Gravel Pit?” Hank asked, his back still turned. There was something wrong with his spine, Cal realized. It was hard to tell exactly what because of the downpour, but it didn’t seem straight. “About the Mayor and the Priest?”

  There was also a dark maroon spot between his shoulder blades. It took Cal a few moments to realize that Hank wasn’t stooped as he had first thought.

  The boy’s back had been shattered from when Cal had pushed him off the ledge and he had struck the backhoe.

  Hank turned.

  “I know, I know, it sounds like a bad joke, but there really is a deep, rich history to Mooreshead.”

  Cal didn’t say anything; he only wept silently.

  Does he even know he’s dead?

  “No? Not interested? Well how about this one? How about the one about the boy who pushed his best friend into The Pit, hmm? About how he was so jealous about his friend getting the girl that he just out and killed him? Fucking murdered his best friend. How ‘bout that one?”

  Cal’s eyes widened as Hank strode toward him.

  So much for not remembering what happened.

  The boy’s lips pulled back from his teeth, revealing a sinister grin. Only then did Cal notice that Hal’s eyes were black as coal.

  “You killed me, Cal. You were my best friend—I loved you—and you killed me,” he hissed.

  Cal shuddered and stepped backward.

  “I’m sorry!” he shouted. “I’m so fucking sorry! I didn’t mean to do it!”

  Hank continued to walk toward him in large, loping strides that quickly closed the distance between them.

  “You thought Mooreshead was boring, huh? So, what, you decided to make your own excitement? What were you thinking? Fuck Hank, nobody likes the scrawny, pimply bastard anyway. I’ll kill him, make a story for myself. Then I’ll run away like a coward. Does that pretty much sum it up?”

  Cal shook his head violently from side to side.

  “No! I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!”

  Hank turned his face up to the rain and laughed. He sputtered, coughed, then leveled his black eyes at Cal.

  No longer was his face youthful, vibrant. Like the Curator, Hank’s visage had changed.

  Only his friend didn’t become a good-looking surfer with long blond hair and pale blue eyes. Instead, he became something… horrible. Something dead.

  Mud and dirt clung to his nostrils in thick clumps, caked his swollen eyelids, and made dirty tracks down the sides of his face like tanned arteries. Maggots wriggled at the corners of his lips like tiny, white tongues.

  “You killed me,” Hank hissed. Something like a hiccup passed through his body, and moments later several thin, black legs pushed back his rotting lips. Cal watched in horror as the entire, two-inch carapace of a carrion beetle emerged from his friend’s mouth. The beetle’s beady black eyes, not unlike Hank’s own, stared at Cal as it scrambled onto the boy’s cheek where it rested. “You killed me, and now I’m going to kill you!”

  And then Hank lunged.

  Cal barely managed to sidestep Hank’s grasp. The boy’s hands passed within inches of his face, before he stumbled by him, almost toppling on top of Robert in the process.

  “Please,” Cal pleaded as Hank threw his head back, spraying wet hair from his face. His spine made an awful grating sound as he did this, and when he extricated his body from the mud, it didn’t look quite right.

  Hank’s backbone didn’t line up properly.

  “This your friend, Cal?” Hank said as he shambled back toward him.

  At first Cal wasn’t sure what he was talking about and he shook his head.

  “What are—”

  But then he realized that Hank mustn’t have seen Robert until now, what with the rain coming down as it was, and the fact that he was lying on the dark travois of to one side.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Cal said, his voice suddenly hardening. “Get away from him.”

  Hank laughed again and the beetle on his cheek reared up as if posing for its own, separate attack.

  “Oh, this is your new best friend, now? Is that it? You going to kill him, too?” Hank took two steps forward. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll spare you the trouble and do it myself.”

  Hank leaned down toward Robert’s sleeping face, and Cal immediately sprang to action.

  “No!” he screamed.

  Seth Parson’s words—not from this day, but from a long time ago—echoed in his head.

  You will one day make your sacrifice as well, Cal.

  And in that moment, Cal was certain that this is what the shape-shifting curator had meant. He would sacrifice himself in this moment, bind himself to Hank, so that Robert could rise from his coma and end all this.

  Cal was never meant to lead.

  Cal was meant to suffer.

  “Stop!” another voice rang out from behind them.

  Cal paused mid-lunge and turned.

  And in that moment, he realized that he was wrong.

  Chapter 40

  “Stacey?” Hank and Cal said in unison.

  Stacy stepped out of the shadows and approached. Her face was exactly as Cal remembered it; he could never forget the face of the girl he had lusted after for so long.

  The girl who Hank had taken from him, taken for his own by tricking him.

  “Where… where did you come from?” Cal stammered.

  Stacey looked at him, sneered, then turned to Hank.

  “What happened to you… Hank, th
at was an accident. A stupid, freak accident.”

  Hank’s face contorted.

  “It wasn’t an accident. Cal pushed me… he wanted me to die. He murdered me.”

  Cal sidled quietly toward the travois and hooked a foot behind one of the makeshift handles.

  “I didn’t want you to die!” he yelled. “You were my best fucking friend. But you… you slept with Stacey even though you knew I loved her!”

  Hank recoiled as if he had been struck, but Stacey was the one who answered.

  “I’m nobody’s property, Cal, I told you that before. You don’t own me—neither of you do.”

  Cal blinked hard, clearing the rain from his eyes.

  The conversation was strange, and had an odd air of déjà vu even though it was slightly off.

  Something’s not right.

  “But… but… he pushed me!” Hank accused, leveling a decomposing finger at Cal’s chest.

  Cal nodded as he nudged the travois a foot or so toward the edge of The Pit.

  He knew now what he had to do, what his sacrifice was, and it wasn’t to bind himself to his dead friend.

  His sacrifice was to let go. To just… let go.

  “I pushed you,” Cal admitted, eyes downcast. “And I’ve lived my entire life regretting that decision each and every day. There’s nothing I can say or do to make it better, to change what happened. I can only tell you how I feel.”

  When the only answer was a splinter of lightning, followed quickly by a rumble of thunder, he raised his eyes.

  Only he didn’t look directly at his friends. Instead, he turned to The Pit. The water had started to bubble at the bottom like a pond filled with thousand of feeding minnows.

  Not much time… I don’t have much time before they come again. And when they do, it’ll all be over. I won’t be able to access the tunnel, enter Marrow 4.

  His eyes skipped from Hank’s to Stacey’s and back again.

  “How do you feel?” Stacey whispered.

  Cal took a deep breath.

  “I feel like a piece of shit. Truly, I feel like a hot, steaming turd. I never meant to hurt anyone, let alone you two, my best friends. I just wanted… something more,” he shrugged. “I know how that sounds, I do, but it’s the truth. And I’m more sorry about what happened than you can ever imagine.”

  Stacey nodded in silent acceptance, but Hank was having none of it.

  “You can’t change the facts, Cally-boy. You killed me, and for two decades I’ve been waiting to return the favor. Now—”

  He reached for Cal mid-sentence, catching him off guard. Hank’s arms were spread wide in a massive embrace, and when Cal tried to move, his feet stuck in the mud.

  This is it… my time is up. I’m sorry, Robert. I’m sorry, Chloe and Shelly and Aiden. I’ve let you all down.

  But an instant before the dead hands reached him, Stacey moved between them, her own arms open almost comically wide. She encompassed Hank with the largest hug imaginable, one that Cal so wanted to give but couldn’t.

  “No!” Cal screamed, but it was too late. Stacey’s body immediately bucked and started to shimmer. “No, Stacey! What have you done?”

  Stacey flicked her head around and looked at him.

  “Go now, Cal. Your sacrifice has been made. The Leporidae burrow is long and deep, but it’s also going to get a whole lot more crowded the longer you wait.”

  Realization washed over Cal.

  This wasn’t Stacey—after all, Stacey would be in her mid-thirties now, while this girl, the one that Hank was now kissing hungrily with his decomposing lips, was only fifteen.

  The Leporidae burrow is long and deep…

  Cal didn’t hesitate. He flicked his foot, spinning Robert’s travois around and then pushed.

  It skittered then started down the slope of the quarry like a runaway toboggan.

  “Thank you,” Cal whispered back at the Curator. “And I’m sorry, Hank. I really, truly am.”

  Then he jumped headlong into The Pit.

  Chapter 41

  The mud was slicker than Cal remembered from all those years ago, and as a result he slid much faster than Hank had the night he died. Halfway down, he had to angle his sore body to one side to avoid braining himself on the backhoe that had taken his friend’s life.

  But while Cal’s descent was fast, Robert’s was like a marble shot over ice. The travois flew down the side of The Pit with lightning speed.

  “Fucking heeeeeeellllllll!”

  Robert hit the water first, and his travois skipped over the surface, before banging roughly against the opposing incline. The belt that Cal had used to fasten his legs to the wood must have slipped during the descent, as Robert’s unconscious body started to slide off the travois.

  Cal splashed down, taking in a huge mouthful of the strangely salty water. He sputtered, spat, and then half-waded half-swam over to his friend, grabbing him by the shoulders just before he became completely submerged. With a grunt, he forced Robert back onto the dark fabric before cinching the belt tight.

  Then he peered around.

  Cal wasn’t sure what he had expected to find at the bottom of the quarry, but all told, the result was anti-climactic. His mind drifted to thoughts of the hands that had once reached up from the depths, the hands of the workers that Mayor Partridge had condemned to die, and he felt his frustration mount.

  There has to be something… a door, a gateway, anything. There just has to be!

  Cal looked around desperately, but he saw nothing but bubbling water all around him and rain pouring down the sides of the embankment. Just as he was about to give up hope, he spotted a part of another archaic digging machine jutting from the side of the pit, and he tried to move toward it.

  Except he couldn’t; his feet were stuck. He grunted, and tried to yank his worn runners, but this only made the mud suction even tighter to his ankles.

  “What the fuck?”

  Cal reached for the travois and grabbed hold of it, trying to use it to haul himself from the mud.

  It only made things worse.

  Before he had fully comprehended what was happening, the mud had reached Cal’s knees.

  It was futile; every movement just caused him to sink even deeper.

  Cal decided that he had no other choice. With a silent prayer to a god he didn’t believe in, he grabbed the travois in both hands and then drove his heels downward as hard as he could.

  There was an audible slurp and before he knew it, the mud was up to mid-thigh. But the strange thing was, he found he could move his feet freely, as if the mud was only a thin layer and below that…

  Cal pushed again, and a second later, he found himself falling. He adjusted his hands on the travois handles one final time and shouted, “Hold on, Sleeping Beauty, we’re going down!”

  Chapter 42

  The fall lasted only seconds before Cal collapsed to the hard ground. His ankle twisted awkwardly beneath him, but he felt no associated flare of pain. Whether it was sheer exhaustion, the effects of the drugs that Dr. Transky had given him, or something else entirely, he had no idea.

  Nor did he care.

  His hands were still extended upward, his fingers wrapped tentatively around the travois handles, but Robert was still in The Pit above or worse, submerged under the water.

  For a moment, the strangeness of the ceiling caused Cal to pause: he could see a layer of wet dirt that just shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be staying in place the way it was. Like him, it should have fallen.

  It was like some sort of strange Upside-Down that made his mind swim.

  A liquid gurgle drew him back to the present, and he shook his head. Then he pulled with all his might.

  Robert et al came flying out of the sand and Cal barely managed to get out of the way. It smashed hard against the floor, bounced once, but while his friend’s eyelids fluttered, they didn’t open. At least he was still breathing.

  “Jesus fuck, why don’t you just wake up!” Cal shouted. His v
oice echoed up and down the hallway, the walls of which were covered in white subway tiles, just as they had been in his diagrams. In Cal’s book, however, the distance between the different stops along the tunnels was short, with each of the nine locations but a stone’s throw of each other. But here, inside the actual tunnel, the scale was off.

  Way off.

  As far as he could see in either direction, there was only more of the damn tiles.

  Cal stood, and his injured ankle nearly buckled.

  “Which way? Which fucking way?”

  He tried to remember from the diagrams if he should head east or west to head toward Sacred Heart—for as much as he feared the place, he just knew this is where he had to return—but nothing made sense to him.

  Which way is West in the Upside-Down?

  Cal felt his frustration start to mount and was about to shout when the lights in the tunnel suddenly flickered. Something that Robert had said long ago occurred to him then.

  The dead… they come when the lights flicker…

  “Time’s up,” he said, bending to grab the travois handles. They felt almost natural in his hands now, an extension of himself, given how long he had been holding the damn things.

  “If we ever make it out of this, Robert, I swear to God—”

  But the sound of footsteps stole the words from his mouth.

  Cal turned to his right, then to his left. Although he couldn’t identify where the sound had come from, he saw that the tiles weren’t as perfect as he had first thought: there appeared to be words scrawled on some of them. Moving quickly, he sprinted to the wall with Robert in tow.

  Marrow 4, the words read. Then, beneath those were two arrows, one leading to the left marked with Marrow 6, while the other pointed to the right, Marrow 2.

  Cal racked his brain, trying to remember which number was ascribed to Sacred Heart.

  “Two is… Jesus, which one is two, again?” Cal reached into his belt and pulled out the book, but when he flipped open the first page, he noticed that the water at the bottom of The Pit had caused all the images to smudge.