by G. R. Yeates
Nothing breathed.
Nothing was alive.
The only stirring came from a whispering in the tainted air, a rich rank draught wafting out from adjoining networks of catacombs that went even deeper into the bowels of the Grey. The surface underneath Wilson was slippery and soft. Giving, crackling, sometimes hissing. The dead were everywhere, squelching under his feet. Not substitutes for duckboards here, they were the stuff and hideous substance of the ground. Every one of them having fallen through to this place from the killing grounds of Black Wood. Wilson picked his way through the grisly heaving remains. Walking across the slick backs of the lifeless, he could feel the weight of the quiet settling on him. The pressure in the freezing air. The cavern, awesome in its scale, stretched on before him into a distance where there was a tinged mist hanging as a veil. Drawing nearer to it. Wilson glimpsed something shuddering there, hidden within. It was not human, unfamiliar, nothing he knew. It was big, gigantic. Seeming to hover, to hang in the air.
Wilson felt a chill sweat peppering his brow as he approached.
The vile air flowing around the shape in the mist was thick, heady and close. Wilson could feel its deadness. He was conscious of each step he took. He heard, with unusual clarity, the sucking sound of his boots as they pushed into failing flesh and then drew back out.
He did not want to go on. He could feel it watching him. It was the rats, the wolf and the thing from the crypt. Nestled within the Grey, it had been waiting for him. A nightmare that lived and breathed and rooted about in the deep, hidden pits of a man’s mind, feeding on what it found buried there.
The rifle shook in his hand.
He listened to the rats scratching inside his skull. It was strange how he had almost become used to the raking and scraping of their claws. The shrouded shape was before him. Bulbous and distended, it hung in the air. Rippling, unsteady, abortive in its breathing. Wilson thought that he could see a light emanating from it. A tumour-white light that burned. Wilson wanted the veil of mist to stay there. More than anything else in the world. More than anything he had ever wished for, he wanted that veil not to part. He did not want to see what was on the other side. He did not want to see it but he had to. He raised his rifle. He slashed the bayonet blade into the veil.
He split it open.
Chapter Thirty-Three
And there it was, suspended in a corrupt, disintegrating womb. Deathless and wormy. Obsidian eyes, poison moons, blazing with nocturnal brilliance from its mildewed and crabby underside. Tangled vegetative fronds came weaving out from the chitinous matter of its layered hide. Reaching to the high vaulted ceiling of the cavern, weaving in with the hoary roots of Black Wood. Drinking the sustenance of blood and suffering from its noxious soil.
Wilson stood before the Vetala.
The spaces within him, the old wounds, were brimming over with the bad blood of thought, feeling and memory. He shuddered, nauseated by terrible remembrance. Some things are best left forgotten. Wilson knew now what the dead fear, what follows on, the fate that comes after extinction. When something becomes nothing. When everything of you and about you is gone from this world. When no-one remembers your name.
And my name is all I have left, he thought.
He could feel the infernal scratching worsening, raking the inside of his skull with its blinding fury. Darkened claws raged away. Scratching inhuman languages into hard bone. Every letter, a jagged point. Each word, a series of gouges.
…What’re you doing here, boy? This is no place for you…
A ripple passed through the cancerous hateful form.
Wilson looked up at it, “What is this place?”
…This is the Grey, where we dwell. You know that much…
“What am I doing here then? I’m not the same as you.”
…You are. You’re becoming one of us. Once we’re inside you, there’s no getting us out. Heh, you might say we’re like having rats in the brain…
More ripples coursed through the beast.
It was laughing at him.
“I’m not like you.”
Wilson brandished his bayonet. His stomach knotted. He held out the blade, then he inverted it, resting its point against his heart. He could feel the life-giving organ shuddering underneath. His time was almost up. He heard the voice of Brookes.
…Do the right thing…
He could feel the scratching under the skin of his arm. Wilson ground his teeth, glaring at his hand, paralysed. His fingers loosened. The bayonet began to slide free. The laughter of the Vetala shook a shower of limestone stalactites down from the vaults above. Better do it now and do it quick. He looked into the shimmering spider-eyes of the horror hanging before him.
“I might be a lie, I remember nothing about who I am, and you might well be the truth of me, but you know what? Sometimes, a lie can be noble.”
He drove the bayonet blade home. A mountainous shudder ran through the Vetala. A howl ripped out of it, a raw, hopeless, bleeding sound.
Everything stopped.
There was a moment of perfect stillness.
A wintry flush ran through Wilson. He clenched his teeth against it. Feeling his fingers and toes burn with prickling chills. Everything became blotchy. A ferocious scratching tore through his insides, burrowing into his heart, his lungs and kidneys. He let it pass through him. He knew this was it, the threshold between life and death. There was no going back. This was the point of no return. The rats inside his skull scurried over one another, scratching away at his brain, shredding his senses, trying to claw their way out, escape. But the black river came thundering through him, washing the rats, and the scratching, away forever. Wilson’s head fuzzed and went light. A strange aching pressure flared and then receded inside his skull. The Vetala trembled, shook, its carapace becoming translucent. A hissing wave of excretory fumes washed over Wilson. The Vetala was rotting, receding, crumpling in on itself. The shell of its hide crumbling, coming apart at the seams. Raining soundlessly to the ground. Fluids went gushing out in thick maggot-ridden rivers. Its eyes shattered like mirrors. Its tendrils writhed desperately over the dead bodies below, seeking to draw some sustenance from them. Wilson saw something small and black squirm its way out of the titanic carcass. The next second, it was gone. Then, with a cataclysmic groan and a reverberating crash, the Vetala fell from its cradle. Its grip on the roots of Black Wood dissolving completely.
All became quiet and still.
******
Smithy and Brookes were waiting for him, sitting on the steps of the crypt, sharing a fag, puffing out smoke through the holes in their bones. Smithy smiled a crooked smile, despite his broken jaw.
…Well done, Whiner. Couldn’t have done better m’self, and that’s saying summat…
Brookes nodded at Wilson. He was smiling, satisfied, stroking the open wound in his throat with a restless fingertip.
…Thanks, Reg. You did the right thing…
Epilogue
Wilson opened his eyes. He could see pale sky through the branches of Black Wood. He was sprawled on his back, wounded, his lifeblood pumping into the ground. His breathing was shallow. Every breath was a battle won. Wilson felt the bullet in his back grinding against bone. The still, white-eyed corpses of Smithy and Brookes were sprawled over him. Their eyes, glassy and empty. Shells whined and roared overhead. Men screamed and yelled. Everything sounded so distant, so far away. The rat from the crater was squatting on his belly. It was looking down at him, its eyes calmly regarding him. Something hurt in his side. Wilson drew it out from his pocket. Small, silver and tarnished. A crucifix. The stigmata scar it had made showing, white on his palm.
Wilson’s eyesight flickered and dimmed. The rat was swelling, spreading, dissolving into formlessness and shadow. He sighed, closed his eyes.
Overhead, he heard the black birds cry.
…We are such things as dreams are made on…
William Shakespeare
About the Author
G.R. Yea
tes was born in Rochford, Essex and went on to study English Literature at the Colchester Institute. He has lived in China where he taught English as a foreign language and he now lives in North London where he writes every day and sleeps very little. He considers his literary influences to include George Orwell, H.P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, Franz Kafka and Thomas Ligotti.
The Eyes of the Dead is his debut novel.
For news and details of future releases:
http://www.gryeates.co.uk
http://www.twitter.com/_gryeates_
http://www.facebook.com/pages/GRYeates-Horror-Author/10150248772620001
Table of Contents
The Eyes of the Dead
Acknowledgements and Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epilogue
About the Author
Table of Contents
The Eyes of the Dead
Acknowledgements and Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epilogue
About the Author
