My flesh hissed like a lobster in the pot as my fingertips bubbled and smoked before my eyes. Agony crippled me, and I shook from the pain and shock. I wiped my smoldering fingers on my shirt and screamed louder when my flesh sloughed off like burnt chicken skin. White bone glared at me in accusation from my two ruined fingers. My next scream was not from pain, but horror.
Suddenly the pain in my leg flared to a level I had not believed possible outside of death, the muscles clenching and quivering in uncontrollable spasms. The old injury had not tortured me so since I first received it. I doubled over and bit down on my uninjured fist until my knuckles bled. The pain in my leg subsided after what felt like half of my life, yet could not have been more than a few moments, for the sun still clung to the horizon.
I heaved and vomited over the side of the longboat, keeping well away from the surface of those poisonous waters. My half-melted fingers thrummed and tingled, but no longer pained me, oddly enough. I watched in horrified fascination as the half-digested hardtack and salt pork steamed and dissolved away, leaving the view as flawless and crystalline as before. In the last light of that dark day, I saw what truly lay at the bottom of this waterless ocean.
Bones. Countless bones, from all manner of creatures, painted crimson by the fading light of the sun. A triangular skull longer than the Raven glared up at me, connected to a spine I could not see the end of. The skeleton of a three-headed horse lay beside that of a bird with wings like the mainsail of a Chinese junk and a hollow tube instead of a beak. But most of the bones appeared—to my unlearned eye—human. Countless skulls and ribcages, pelvises and finger-bones. All seemed no farther away than I could reach, and stretched out farther than the eye could see. An entire seafloor, an entire world, built of bones.
This biting sea was not brine, but hunger. Why it did not consume the boat, I could not fathom. Perhaps the acid had no taste for wood. Even as I thought this, I glimpsed shipwrecks scattered along the bottom. Masts and hulls, keels and sails, the outlines of sailing vessels and skiffs all lay in pieces beneath me, unmolested since their sinking. This ocean revealed new horrors every time I looked.
Then came the monsters.
The sea boiled to life not with howling winds or whitecaps, but with odd bulges moving at speed toward the Raven. Hundreds of them. Thousands. They made no noise, no waves. They skimmed below the surface without breaking it, like rats scurrying beneath a blanket. All sped toward the Raven like moths to light.
I leapt to my feet to cry a warning, but it caught in my throat as the first of the monsters breached the surface. The grotesque silhouettes stood out in stark relief against the last light of the dying sun, each one powerful enough to tear down the main mast with a gesture. The hunchbacked fiends had too many limbs and tails like paddles, their backs covered in spines, those unthinkable jaws filled with too many teeth that stuck out at odd angles and dripped with fluids. They threw their heads back and howled to the sky, a noise like shattering glass and crumbling stone and the tortured pleading of the damned.
Wood shattered and splinters flew in all directions as the beasts dug their claws into the Raven’s hull. Some tore pieces from the ship and fell back into the bitter sea without a splash or a sound. Other slithery bodies fell onto the deck with wet, heavy flops.
They swarmed the ship within seconds. Those aboard had no time to launch an attack or even sound a warning. Less than a minute after the first leviathan scaled the hull, the Raven was no longer recognizable as a sailing vessel. Only a writhing hulk of flapping tails and thrashing limbs remained, outlined sharply against the last violent, blood-red light of sunset.
My mates’ death screams I heard only too well. I clamped my hands over my ears and stifled my own cries by biting down on my vest. I could not help them. God save me; what could I do against monsters like that? My ears resounded with the cries of brave men being eaten alive. I huddled down in the floorboards, shuddering with each cry for help or mercy that went unanswered. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and stung my wounds.
I looked up at the sky, longing for the scant and hollow comfort of friendly stars, and could not keep myself from moaning in despair. The stars winked out as I watched, one by one. Not masked by clouds or drowned out by moonlight, but snuffed out as one snuffs out a candle flame. Gone. I was left in utter darkness.
I cowered in the dubious shelter of the longboat long after the screams of the dying faded away, lest any noise or movement on my part alert the demons to my presence. I remained curled in the floorboards until the longboat rose and fell as one of the monsters passed directly beneath me. They were gone. I waited a few more minutes before I dared lift my head.
The only light in the world came from the swaying lanterns aboard the brigantine. I could no longer see her silhouette, but I had heard her masts fall. I had seen pieces of her hull ripped away by claws I did not want to imagine. She would sink soon, and if I did not untie the rope that bound my longboat to the Raven, she would pull me down with her.
Perhaps I should have sat there and waited to be taken under. A few moments of suffering, and then all that would remain would be my naked bones. They would tumble down and become yet another addition to the macabre collection at the bottom of this alien sea.
But when I felt the first tug of the line pulling me toward the wrecked Raven, I leapt forward, knife in hand, and sawed at the rope until it fell away.
I sat back down, my heart pounding. The knife slipped from my shaking fingers, and I startled when it clattered to the deck.
My heart sank into that murderous ocean along with the lanterns aboard the Raven. One by one they hissed and winked out, leaving me in darkness and silence.
Something shook the bow and startled me awake. I did not remember falling asleep, and I was not certain I was awake even then, for the blackness that surrounded me was darker than the void behind my eyelids. But something had made the boat move. Something heavy. Something that was still there, for the longboat listed forward.
Then I saw them: two tiny specks, bright only in this inky darkness, hovering at eye-level above the bow. At first my heart leapt, thinking they were stars or perhaps even the lights of an approaching rescue vessel, until I heard the breathing. Wet and whispery; jagged breaths like those from a sick old man. My mouth went dry and I trembled all over as the lights winked out and came back in tandem. I tried to control my shuddering breath and the pounding of my blood in my ears. In a world so devoid of sound, such whispers were deafening.
The creature blinked again. I could not tell what light was reflected in those black eyes. Perhaps some inner fire lit them; I did not know.
I dare not move. I dare not breathe. For hours the creature has sat there, watching me, blinking and breathing its wet and whispery respirations. I fight down the urge to scream at it, to leap across the boat and attack it until it either leaves or devours me. I do not know if I can bear this stalemate much longer.
The pain in my leg flares again, white-hot and virulent, and I cannot quite suppress a whimper. The monster before me growls and snaps its jaws at the sound. A hundred tiny lights flash as its teeth spark against one another, and for an instant I see the monster’s face.
It was the face of death itself. Of burnt and gangrenous flesh, crawling with slithery, corpse-white insects. Its eyes are so black and so fathomless they could devour the world and still hunger. Its teeth are rusted metal and splintered stone. Its tongue is the bloated, purpling mass of a dead animal left to rot and float in stagnant waters. Steaming white saliva drips from amorphous jaws. Shivering, shapeless growths stick out from its head, jiggling bonelessly and oozing poison.
How had I not noticed the smell before? Of carrion and infection, of cesspools and vomit and shit? If there had been anything left in my gut, I would have emptied it into the acid sea once more.
The sound of my retching sets the creature to snarling again. The boat moves as the beast quits its perch and crawls down inside it. Unseen claws carve gouges into the
wood and something wet plops and slithers across the floorboards.
I push myself back, back away from the monster until I have nowhere left to run. The stern digs into my back and I lean out over the water behind me. I brace myself against the bench and my bad leg spasms and crumples. I wail and fall down into the floorboards, clutching my thigh. The creature echoes my howling and falls back; whether in surprise or something else, I cannot say.
When the pain eases, I find myself huddled into a ball in the bottom of the boat, shaking and drenched in sweat. The monster sits back at the bow, watching me in silence. Perhaps it does not savor the taste of pain not inflicted by itself. I do not care. It has retreated, and my tiny world is safe for a few moments longer.
I wish for the sound of wavelets splashing against the hull. I long for the swell and bob of the rolling ocean beneath me. Even the crack and liquid fire of Mary’s scolding tongue. Anything. Any sound but the diseased breathing of the monster. Any sight but those shimmering black lights at the bow, waiting for me to give in and die.
When will the sun rise?
Once more, the carrion-scented wind whispers an unwelcome answer in my ear:
Never.
The monster before me makes a garbled sound that I pray is not laughter.
As the hours pass, I know that I shall never see the sun again. My life is over. The only choice left to me now is how to end it. Slowly, so as not to alarm the creature, I pull myself up and sit on the gunwale. For a few moments, I balance myself there between one choice and another, and then I fall backward into the ocean.
The monster screams and flies at me when it senses my intent, but it is too late. I plunge into the liquid. My whole body spasms and shrieks in agony as the acid begins its work, liquefying me one layer at a time. It burns and freezes and stings and shreds. Pain beyond imagining. I open my mouth to scream and the scorching liquid pours into my mouth and down my throat, setting my insides afire. My memories flicker and desert me as the acid trickles into my ears and devours my brain. Still I burn.
It does not stop. Oh, merciful God in Heaven, why will it not stop? How long, how long? When will I die? I burn, I burn!
I burn for days. Forever. It will not end. The acid is not death, but torment.
Then, through the agony, I feel myself begin to change. The monster above lurks in the longboat still, watching me twist and scream but doing nothing as my arms soften and split into four, five, seven limbs. My fingers are reduced to jelly before they harden into bony talons. The liquefying skin of my face, chest, and legs thicken into quivering, fleshy growths. My teeth splinter into daggers that project from my too-large mouth at weird angles. My eyes blister and clump into hard black orbs. Tiny maggot-like fishes swarm over my face and peck at what remains of my old flesh. My bones melt and reform as scaly armor that lessens the burning, but does not end it. Nothing will end it.
Others fly around me as my agony dulls to a nagging ache. This cannot be water, for I can breathe. We do not swim; we fly. The air-ocean above is a tasteless void we cannot move through, and as the hours pass, it fills with the hateful light of a fiery demon-god I once called the sun. All day my brothers shield me from the light. They show me how to hide from it in the skeletons of the monsters who once lived in the air-ocean. All day I change, growing more familiar with my new body, even as my hunger grows.
As the demon-god slowly retreats, the others grow excited. I follow them and join the hunt.
Dark shapes loom above us. The others chitter and swirl around one another in excitement. They say the dark shapes carry meat. My brothers swarm toward the larger shape before the demon-god is gone, but I linger behind, uncertain. I let the others feed and rend the unnatural shape asunder until it collapses and joins the bones below us.
I watch the smaller shape instead. There is meat here, but the others are long gone, fat with the bounty of the larger shape. I have no competition for this one.
I wait for the light to fade completely, for my eyes are new and more sensitive to the light of the demon-god than the others’. I breach the surface and realize I can breathe a little, though I am not comfortable. The meat does not move as I crawl into its container. It appears blind and deaf in this air-ocean. I watch it for some time. Something about it seems familiar. But that makes no sense, for there was nothing before the burning.
The meat clutches its leg and makes a noise. The noise reminds me of things I cannot remember, and it vexes me. I grind my teeth until sparks fly all around my face. The meat makes more sounds, which irritate me further. I move toward it, hungry and angry. My body is clumsy in this void, and the meat hears my approach and it retreats to the back of its container. I open my mouth to bite its head off when it clutches its leg and howls.
Memories flash through my skull at his cry of pain—memories of Men and ships and the world before this one. His pain is mine. I remember the pit in his thigh. No; in my thigh. It is gone now, replaced with armor and bulbous growths, but I remember.
I try to speak to the man, but he cannot understand me. He huddles down in the bottom of the boat—I know its name again—and lies still.
I am distracted when I smell tiny deaths in the floorboards. Weevils. Tiny, soulless things. I crushed them for stealing my not-meat.
I watch the man for some time. I try to comfort him, to assure him I am no longer hungry, but he seems more horrified than ever when I attempt to speak. So I retreat to the bow and watch him in silence. It is easier to breathe now. I could stay here a long time.
He finally rises and sits on the edge of the boat. He stares at me, then smiles and falls backward into the ocean. I know his intent, for it was mine—ours—once, and try to call out a warning. But my mouth is no longer shaped for human language, and he cannot understand me.
I watch from above as he fizzles and boils, his mouth open in a scream I cannot hear, until he changes. Again. Eventually, I slither home and let the liquid sky wash the memories away once more.
Tonight I will feast with the others.
Becky Regalado lives in north Texas with her husband and son. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading and jewelry-making. She is working on her degree in Library Science in between working fulltime at a university library and querying her first fantasy novel. She was a semi-finalist in the 2005 L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest, and one of her satirical works was the Editor’s Choice piece in the May 2011 edition of Writer’s Beat Quarterly. Her short horror piece “Awfully Disappointing Either Way” was also published in The Fringe online magazine in June 2011. You can view her blog at beckah-rah.blogspot.com and follow her on Twitter @Beckahrah.
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They were in the walls; he saw them, on occasion, when they were bored and decided to reveal themselves to him. He would be sitting in his chair, reclined and relaxed with a good book or a crossword puzzle, a cup of tea or coffee—depending on his mood—in hand, when all of a sudden one of them would poke their spindly fingers through a plug-socket, wiggle them as if to taunt him, and then snatch them back in, quick as a flash. He would notice, from the corner of his eye, something glistening, only to turn and find an eye staring up at him from between the unlit faux coals of his gas-fire. Most of the time he would tip his drink down before clambering to his feet and chasing the things away; though they were always gone long before he managed to climb from his chair.
They were simply playing games with him. He didn’t know how many of them there were, but he had it at around six, perhaps seven. What they were was also unclear. He knew that they had two eyes, like humans, but their hands seemed to be limited to three fingers each, and the central one—the digitus medius, he supposed—was much longer than the others, almost twice as long, which was why it always shocked him to find it probing from electrical sockets and the like. There were no fingernails attached to the elongated appendages, and he doubted the presence of fingerprints simply because he had, on two occasions, managed to grab onto th
e hand, hoping to frighten the thing, or at least make it realize that enough was enough. To touch, it was one of the smoothest things he had ever come into contact with; a strange, undeviating skin that felt as if it had been grown that very morning. That was the first time he had heard one of them make a noise; perhaps him latching onto its hand had frightened it, forcing that terrifyingly shrill sound out of its mouth. The noise had caused him to release the hand, and the thing had snatched all three fingers back into the wall.
The second time he’d made contact had been pure chance. He had been drilling a hole to affix a newel post to the staircase when his hand slipped. The drill shot straight through, his fist plunging with it. The pain had been almost unbearable, but nothing compared to the strange texture beneath his mangled fist. Unable to move—momentarily—he’d slid his hand across, trying to fathom what he was stroking; and then he knew, for it shifted quickly away, also aware of the impending danger. He’d pulled his hand back through to his side of the staircase, and stared into the darkness; but it was too late.
It had gone.
And tonight, during his silent supper, two of them had pushed him to his wits’ end. He had been enjoying cheese and crackers, as was his wont, when he heard them beneath the kitchen sink. There was a hole back there—something to do with the plumbing, he guessed, though he wasn’t entirely certain—and they could clearly be heard scratching about just behind the plasterboard. He’d listened discontentedly as they had skittered around, no doubt mischievously searching for something to break or cause him alarm. How stupid did they believe him to be? The initial fear he had once felt at the sight of them had abated; all that remained now was anger and disgust at having to share his house—his dead mother’s house—with hominid vermin.
Darkness Ad Infinitum Page 2
