Dust

by Chris Miller

  In a fluid, ripping motion, the thing drew its legs apart with tremendous force and Avery’s body was torn in two, his insides spilling in strings and splats to the muddy street. Yet the screaming continued, even as the thing whipped one leg, sending Avery’s lower half crashing through window of a building across the street and Avery’s upper half slid off the tip of the other with a wet slurp. He splatted to the mud, gathering the few ropes of his insides that were left to himself in a horror induced madness of self-preservation.

  The screams continued.

  Joining in the terrible chorus was Quentin, who Dreary glanced back to see was now tearing down the alley, the screams of horror and insanity tearing from his lungs in his flight.

  “Coward!” Dreary bellowed after him, the word hissing out of him like a curse as it slithered from his snarling lips. “I’ll see you dead for this, Quentin! I cannot abide a coward!”

  But Quentin gave no heed to Dreary’s warning declaration, instead continuing to flee through the muddy alleyway in a stumbling, terrified gallop.

  Dreary—still snarling—looked back to the street to see the lead creature leaping into the air as Bonham snapped the shotgun closed, whipping it up to his shoulder, still as casual as a man on an evening stroll. The sound the thing made was monstrous and layered with unearthly harmonies of savage rage and hate, the snarling fangs of bone exposed beneath torn flesh, dripping with gore and anticipation.

  It was fewer than three feet from the end of Bonham’s twin barrels when both erupted with fire and pellets, the boom deafening to Dreary. With the ringing in his ears drowning all other sound, he watched as the creature was split from skull to groin down the middle of its body, the red eye bursting and spritzing into the rain as the body shredded and parted to either side of Bonham where its pieces slopped into the mud, slid a few feet, and came to an eternal rest.

  Still, Bonham was unphased as he ejected the pair of spent shells and loaded two more, snapping the action shut. The second creature which had dispatched Avery in multiple directions was skittering toward them, and Dreary leaned out, aiming carefully with his small gun. The thing roared and reared up on its back four legs, six others spread out around and before it in a nightmare collage which reminded Dreary of some of the coiling spiral symbols in his book of the gods. But he did not dwell on this.

  He fired a single round, which exploded the thing’s single, red eye rising from the spine of its host, and the ribcage opened in a shrieking snarl of pain, one laced with the melodies of the distant cosmos. It began to skitter at first one way, then the other, not unlike a crab confused about which direction to go, then it began to spin in place, blind and furious and . . .

  Was it scared?

  Of course it was scared. It had crossed Gear Dreary on the wrong day, and now it would know a horror all its own.

  Bonham glanced to Dreary and the two made eye-contact. Dreary nodded once to his calm companion, and Mr. Bonham stepped forward to the confused and terrified creature. He nuzzled the barrels of his weapon against the back of the thing’s host, and fired.

  Another fountain of gore erupted into the wet day, splashing and mixing with the mud, and the thing fell motionless to the ground, only barely in a single piece. Bonham calmly set to work reloading his shotgun once more with a sniff as Avery continued screaming and wailing. More sounds came from up the street as men and women started to fill the street at the other end.

  “Gear!” Avery began screaming and Dreary spared him a glance. His face was a rictus of pain and terror, blood bubbling from his lips and coloring his beard pink as the rain threatened to wash him clean. “Help me, Gear! I need help!”

  Dreary almost laughed at this, but spared the man the embarrassment. No doubt his feeble mind was operating on fewer synapses than normal, and that was saying something. Instead, he gave the man a pitying look.

  “My dear Avery, I’m afraid you’re beyond help now.”

  Avery’s face took on a puzzled quality, though the terror never left it. His eyes seemed to widen ever so slightly. Then he was screaming again as the murmurs and shouts of the townspeople up the street began to grow as they approached.

  “Mr. Bonham,” Dreary said as he shifted his gaze away from the people and the screaming Avery, “I believe we best be on our way.”

  Bonham nodded and joined Dreary as they hustled down the alley. As they went, the screams of Avery continued, and suddenly those of several of the townspeople joined his laments. There was a terrible shrieking roar, something akin to the sounds the abominations had made, and all other sound was ended at once.

  As they slipped through the streets of Dust, Dreary thought he could hear the sounds eating behind them.

  24

  “What in the blue hell is happening out there?” Jeremiah Quince asked, wincing as he cinched a length of torn cloth over the wound in his leg.

  Mike was at the window, looking out through wide eyes perched over hard set lips. His stomach was in knots. Had been since he’d awoke that morning to go out with the other two scouts. As a matter of fact—if he was being perfectly honest—his stomach hadn’t known rest in years. Not since the preacher had found the marker and unleashed hell on this already dying town. Since he’d been drafted into the service of the Elder by the thing which had taken over the preacher’s body. The one they called The Proprietor.

  Screams drifted in through the thin glass from across town. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was most likely coming from the jail. Maybe The Proprietor was doing its work on the stranger from the ridge. Maybe Sheriff Hollis.

  “Goddamnit, I asked you a question, Ennenbach!” Jeremiah hissed as he hobbled to his feet and began to limp toward him, pulling his revolver from its holster.

  Mike pinched his eyes shut and hissed out a long breath. Jeremiah was one of the true followers of the Elder. A willing lapdog of The Proprietor. Not like Mike. Jeremiah didn’t have a family with the threat of death and dismemberment hanging over their heads. Not like Mike and so many others did. The ones forced into servitude, guarding this damned town and its damned secret and its unholy temple. Jeremiah was taken with the power of it all. A free for all to act as he wished, so long as he didn’t get in the way of the plan of N’yea’thuul.

  Mike also didn’t appreciate being referred to by his last name. It seemed somehow condescending, at least coming from such a man as this.

  “I know about as much as you, Jeremiah,” Mike said quietly, his eyes darting around, surveying the raining world of Dust outside. “Think I got a damn crystal ball?”

  “Step aside,” Jeremiah growled as he drew even with Mike and shoved him out of the way with his forearm, the barrel of his revolver clinking loudly on the glass.

  Mike stumbled but caught his footing. He wanted to hit the man. He was rude, he was arrogant, and he was mean as a snake. It was this last part that kept Mike from putting his fist into the man’s temple. The man was so goddamned mean. Once, Mike had been sent out with a scavenging party—something Mike was loath to partake in, but his family’s lives depended upon his compliance—with Jeremiah and two other men. They had found a couple traveling by carriage, having come through Winnsborough not more than a day hence, on their way East. Jeremiah, Mike, and the rest had stepped out onto the trail, blocking their path, and the man had pulled the reins on his horses, halting their progress.

  Mike could remember the man’s face then, concern etching deep lines through his face, his shoulders tense and rigid, his woman beside him, clutching to his side. They had been scared, and rightly so. Regardless of time or circumstance, a band of armed men stepping into the trail from the woods brandishing weapons was never a good thing. He supposed the man thought they were about to be robbed. If only they had been so lucky as to have encountered an actual band of bandits.

  Oh . . . if only.

  Jeremiah was the deputy, the rest of them like Mike—forced into servitude. The deputy had stood there for a long moment, and Mike had been certain the man
was savoring the moment, drinking in the obvious fear on the couple’s faces as though it were a fine bottle of spirits.

  “W-we ain’t lookin’ for no trouble,” the man had said, raising his hands as his wife seemed to be trying to fuse into her husband’s side. “Just heading East is all. We have some foo—”

  Without a word, Jeremiah had jerked his revolver free of its holster and put a round through one of the horses’ skulls. Blood and brain and bone spewed as the confused animal—not yet aware of its death—bucked up on its haunches making a terrible whinny that still haunted Mike’s nights to this day. The other horse had reacted similarly, but before it could take more than a couple of steps, its eyes wide and confused with the terror only an animal who knows no violence can experience, Jeremiah put a round through its head as well.

  With the horses lying dead on the trail before the carriage, the couple could only stare in stupefied horror at the scene before them, clutching each other so tightly that Mike thought perhaps they might fuse into one being, after all. This had only seemed to throw fuel onto Jeremiah’s blazing cruelty, as what followed had been the singular event that made Mike feel like a true coward. He’d served the Elder, done all The Proprietor had demanded of him up to that point, but with the soothing balm of telling himself he was protecting his family. He could have stopped Jeremiah that day. He knew he could have. Should have stopped him, he reminded himself daily, but had found he did not possess the fortitude to do so.

  As he had watched Jeremiah pull the couple from the carriage, screaming and pleading, Mike had done nothing. As Jeremiah had blown the man’s left knee off and kicked him repeatedly in the stomach, Mike had only watched. As he forced the woman to the ground, tearing her clothes from her writhing and screaming form until she was naked and soiled with earth, Mike had only cried. As Jeremiah violated her on the trail in front of her wailing husband, Mike had only listened.

  He had been unable to watch.

  The couple’s end had been far worse, and Mike was reminded of it almost daily as he saw the soldiers still bearing their bodies, now rotted and shriveled, skittering through the streets of Dust.

  Yet even now, Mike did nothing. Jeremiah was a mean man. A cruel man. And Mike was, quite simply, scared. In the years since the evil had been unearthed in this damned town, it seemed every ounce of manhood had been drained from Mike as his fear for his family had taken its toll on him to the point there was no atrocity he would not sit idly by and allow to happen.

  And he hated himself for it.

  “Sounds like it’s coming from the jail,” Jeremiah said, not seeming to address anyone in particular. “Goddamn mess! What the hell was that stranger trying to do, anyhow?”

  Jeremiah’s focus shifted from the gunfire and screams outside to Mike. Mike only shrugged.

  “He was headed here, I told y’all that,” Mike said. “Ain’t seen the man before in my life.”

  Jeremiah stared at him for a long moment, then a smile which held no humor split his face softly.

  “Hmm.”

  Jeremiah pushed away from the window then and hobbled up the center aisle toward the cube and the black woman—whom he’d earlier cut free from the binds shackling her—and her child huddled before it, weeping quietly on each other’s shoulders.

  “So that spook’s your man, huh, lady?” Jeremiah asked the woman, as though asking a stranger where they’d bought their coat.

  The woman looked up at him, her eyes puffy from tears but unable to hide the hate they held within. She didn’t say anything.

  “What’s the matter, bitch? Cat got your tongue?”

  Jeremiah started laughing quietly and hobbled a bit closer to them. He reached out with the revolver, the barrel now aiming at the back of the boy’s head. The woman’s face seemed to recoil into fear, her lips peeling back over her teeth in a grimace of terror as she gathered her boy closer to herself, trying to put herself between the gun and her child. Jeremiah laughed again and tapped the boy’s head with the barrel.

  “How ‘bout you, cub?” Jeremiah asked, his tone dripping with condescension. “That your daddy was out there? Huh? Think he was coming to rescue y’all, did ya?”

  The boy only burrowed into the crook of his mother’s shoulder and they both heaved with sobs. Mike watched as he had for years now—impotently. A tear stung his own eye as he saw the grief in the woman’s face, knowing all too well how he would feel if the threats against his own family ever were to come to fruition. His hands were trembling, and the skin on his cheeks began to quiver as he felt a sudden and shocking rage well up inside of him.

  “Jeremiah!” he said, trying to sound forceful and strong, betrayed by a small crack in his voice. He ignored it, hoping Jeremiah had missed it.

  Jeremiah’s back stiffened just a bit and he rose to his full height, still looking down at the woman and her child. After several agonizing seconds, he finally turned and faced Mike, his face set hard, eyes like ice.

  He didn’t say a word.

  Mike’s lips moved several times before any words came forth, his sudden rage shriveling back into him like balls from cold water. Jeremiah’s look bored into him with heat and intensity. The man didn’t like to be interrupted when he was having fun.

  “The-these folks are set aside,” Mike managed to stammer, issuing a curt nod to punctuate the sentence. “They ain’t fodder for anyone but—”

  “I know who the fuck they’re for,” Jeremiah spat, vitriol lacing his words. “Think I’m a goddamn idiot, Ennenbach?”

  Mike took a step backward even though they were twenty feet apart. He retraced his step back to where he had been with an effort.

  “I’m just saying, is all,” he said in a quieter voice. “We’re supposed to watch them. The rest is up to The Proprietor.”

  Jeremiah glared at him for a long time. So long, Mike began to wonder if the scene had devolved into some sort of sick joke, one that wasn’t funny in the slightest. He squirmed in place on his feet, uncomfortable and frightened, and was preparing to say something—anything—to break the terrible silence when Jeremiah began hobbling toward him down the aisle. When he was five feet away, he stopped, breathing hard and beaded with sweat. The wound in his leg was getting to him, but Mike knew the man was meaner than any gunshot.

  “They’re a sacrifice,” Jeremiah said in a low tone, as though he didn’t want the woman and her child to hear him. “Ain’t nothing says I can’t fuck with a sacrifice, so long as they’re still breathing to be sacrificed when the time comes.”

  Mike felt ice slink down his spine and fill the crevice of his buttocks. Had he not been acutely aware of his swirling bowels, he might have evacuated all over himself then. As it was, he cinched every muscle in his gut and glutes and stumbled for one of the pews. He sat down hard on the wooden bench and sighed harshly. He was sweating too, now, and Jeremiah had noticed.

  “Don’t shit your britches, Ennenbach,” Jeremiah said in a soft chuckle. “Now sit tight and keep an eye on the street. I’m gonna go blow a load in this bitch.”

  As Jeremiah turned from him and headed back up the aisle, Mike’s horrified face met the woman’s across the room. Jeremiah may have been talking low, but she’d heard every word. The abject terror on her face told him she had. And the boy was looking at him, too, he noticed. The look on his face was too much for Mike to bear.

  He buried his face in his hands.

  “I think I’m in the mood for some dark meat, bitch,” Jeremiah said from the front of the sanctuary and began to cackle with laughter which echoed on the walls of the small church they had all come to know as The Temple of N’yea’thuul.

  When the woman began to scream, hot tears spilled down Mike’s face.

  25

  Quentin ran.

  His breathing came in wheezing heaves, punctuated by phlegmy coughs and curses as he weaved his way through the sloppy streets of Dust, the sounds of monsters and gunfire and dying men filling his ears, echoing off the dilapidated structures a
ll around him.

  He’d seen the abomination when it had gone into the jail, but his mind had simply not been prepared for the other thing, the thing like the first, but with the terrible mouth of bones and organs split down the side. He had not been prepared to see it tearing Avery apart with such speed, precision, and ease.

  And oh, God . . . the screams.

  Quentin thought perhaps the scream he heard now, the wet, gurgling cry assaulting his ears as he sprinted through the mud and rain, might be Avery’s. He wasn’t sure how it could be, the way he’d been torn apart, but the voice underneath the anguished wails was too familiar for him to dismiss, and it carried with it a haunting foreshadowing of doom.

  This town was damned. Its residents were damned. It was infected with some form of evil too alien for his mind to reconcile and he feared the abominations were only the tip of the iceberg.

  His mind, reeling as it was, managed to focus in on all the things Dreary had preached going on several years now. From his damned book. Quentin had dismissed these sermons as often as they’d arisen in his time with Dreary, casting them aside as the ravings of an obsessed madman. He hadn’t cared about Dreary’s singular purpose and drive. He only cared that he got to tag along and enjoy the spoils of his leader’s warpath. The coins, the goods, the women. Quentin had been able to satisfy his basest urges in Dreary’s company at whim, which was all that had ever mattered to him.

  But now, seeing the awful truth of those mad homilies was tearing at the seams of his sanity. He could handle seeing a monster, but he could not handle the actual threat of one.

  And of N’yea’thuul . . .

  That was the true horror of his dawning realization. That his insane leader was indeed mad was evident, but his raving declarations were anything but. It was true. All of it. And if the abominations were any indication of what else lay ahead of him in this damned town, Quentin wanted no part of it.

  He’d heard Dreary calling after him as his resolve had turned to so much toxic pus, oozing out of him in sheets as he sprinted away. Dreary was a tolerant man. But there were a handful of things he would not abide. Liars was one of them, but something he despised even more than a liar was a coward, and Quentin knew that if he didn’t escape this dreadful place, the abominations would be only one of his worries. Dreary would come after him, maybe even sic Bonham on him. And Christ on his Throne, that thought was as terrifying as any of these otherworldly creatures.