There were enough chunks of rubble in the corridor they were in to support the idea.
The air was different too; heavy and dry, like how Sasha imagined a crypt or tomb might feel. High as he was, he didn’t like this, but Alena seemed unworried and he tried to take some comfort there.
They came into a room where the lights from the dance floor, what must have been meters overhead, flashed through. It didn’t make sense how it was possible — some mad alignment of gaps and chinks in the structure, perhaps — but that’s what they saw.
“Whoa,” Alena said, stumbling to a stop. She turned and squeezed his hips, letting the glow stick drop to the floor.
She pulled him closer, tugging him forward, spearing his mouth with her tongue. Then she wasn’t pulling so much as he was pushing, leaning into it as much as he could without knocking her down. He was so hard it hurt, despite his balls having retreated somewhere else entirely.
Alena pushed his jacket off and then his shirt over his head, gently leading him lower with her mouth, forcing his to seek hers. Underneath the fusty smell of the dust and bad air, he could smell her and, he was sure, the drugs. They’d been sweating buckets since taking the pills — maybe it was some kind of heightened reaction? Sasha was new to this, but there was a definite tang to her odor.
One of his hands molded to one of her breasts. He tugged at the side of her shirt, sliding it up as she had his. He didn’t bother unfastening her bra, but pulled the cup down and found one nipple with his mouth. Sasha felt more than heard her gasp. They sank to the floor, his head moving back and forth between her breasts, rubbing their springy resistance against his face.
Alena’s own hands were busy. She dug in with her nails, looking for the swollen ache between his legs. Scrabbling at the remains of their clothing, they cast off what they still wore. The hard floor beneath them laid individual strands of coldness on their skin.
Sasha didn’t think, didn’t worry, didn’t consider if he was doing any of it right. He just did it, because he understood somewhere in the back of his mind that he might not get another chance.
Alena straddled him, nudging at his penis with her nose, where it twitched and tightened. She ran the tip of her tongue along and around it, then raised herself up and slid down, impaling herself on the shaft.
It didn’t last long, but the high broke down the flow of time so it didn’t matter. Sasha lost all sense of separateness. He was deep inside her, deeper than he reckoned possible.
When he came, she shuddered to a halt on top of him, grinding fitfully to tease as much out of him as she could. It hurt for a moment, but not in a bad way.
She lifted herself up again and turned to face him, legs spread to either side of his body and his limp dick.
“Why did you face away?” he asked. Alena shrugged. “Didn’t think it mattered.”
His skin felt warm and wet where her legs were parted against his body. Absently, she licked one thumb and slid it down to her vagina.
“You want to watch me?”
Thinking it would impolite to say anything, he only nodded and let her guide his hand to her breast. She spread his fingers and rubbed them against her nipple, which went taut at his touch.
“Fuck.” He could feel his cock stirring again, however impossible he thought that to be.
She moaned and her thumb stroked faster and faster. She gyrated, grinding against his hips and stomach. Behind and around them, shafts of light flashed through the insane and impossible gaps in the ceiling, framing her for brief seconds.
Something scraped against the floor, but Sasha ignored it, almost never heard it. Took it for her foot knocking against a loose piece of stone.
Alena was gasping, her mouth making Os, first silent and then not. Her head came down towards his, her mouth brushing against his chest and neck before it found his lips.
Their teeth clicked, but neither of them noticed.
Sasha heard grunting noises, but couldn’t tell if they came from his throat or hers. His chest was warm and wet, and Alena started jerking as she came.
He’d closed his eyes when she came down to kiss him, then he opened them, thinking she’d do the same to see his reaction. That was when he saw the shadow, lit for brief seconds by the lights snaking through the imperfect stone work.
The shadow loomed over them, and he realized the wetness was Alena’s own blood pouring over him.
1916
Whenever we look at it and turn away, it reconstitutes itself. We think it has always been doing this, likely since before it arrived here. The precautions and warnings now no longer seem so farfetched as they once did. Maria, I do not know what we have brought here, but I fear for what it means.
Maria, if you do read this, I urge you to stop here. I know you will not, but I have to say it.
Today in the lab, we subjected the rock to a simple test, only to determine its reactive properties under different conditions. It does no good to say what we subjected it to, or rather planned to, because it reacted first.
I have difficulty in reconciling what happened in my mind. I will try to lay it out here in the hope that clarity will present itself.
Osif went inside first, with our two assistants between him, myself, and Medvedev. It was early morning, but we were ready – I would not say eager – to subject the rock to tests. As much as it repelled and perhaps terrified us, we wanted to know more. We’d spoken the night before on just such a topic.
“It displays no sign of sentience,” said Medvedev.
We three were in his rooms and it was late at night; I remember looking at the clock on the mantle, and it was near midnight.
“Are you suggesting an animal reaction, absent higher intelligence?” asked Osif. “Because it definitely seems to display some sort of cunning in what it does, wouldn’t you agree?”
All of us felt it now, whenever we turned our backs on the rock. We knew it was moving, reconstituting itself into something other, though what and for what purpose were unknown to us.
“It killed before.” I’d wanted to phrase it as a question, but it came out wrong.
“The Institute was unclear, exactly, which we can take for a tacit ‘yes’ on their part.”
We discussed it in circles for the rest of the night before retiring. Now, we were making our way inside the chamber, wearing such protective clothing as the fort provided us.
The rock was as it had been the night before, when we had left it to its own devices. One of the assistants — I confess I never learned his name — went to the rock and readied to move it. I happened to be looking in his direction when it happened.
Maria, I saw it, even if the others did not.
The rock’s surface rippled and expanded quite rapidly, forming into a slender-looking spike that pierced the assistant’s arm.
He screamed and fell, snapping the growth as he toppled. I was the first to reach him and the wound did not look so bad at first; simply a clean stab, mostly through muscle and flesh. I stripped his sleeve away, no longer caring about damned protocols, and saw what was happening underneath.
Black threads like necrotized veins were spreading outwards from the wound. One broke the skin and reached for me. It reached for me and I flinched back, scrabbling away on my hands and knees like a crab.
The assistant went into convulsions, his feet beating out a mad staccato on the floor. His back arched, and I heard something snap and then grind together as he shook spastically.
Osif took me under the arm and lifted me up, pulling me into a run towards the door. Behind us, the rock was growing more spines, perhaps seeking the rest of us. We sealed the door, leaving the poor unfortunate inside to his fate.
I know how fantastical this will sound to you, Maria, but it is the truth.
An hour ago, we three met again, still shaken by what we’d seen. I suspect this was the event the Institute referred to when they spoke to Medvedev. It had likely done something similar in its previous place of confinement. I say ‘co
nfinement’ because one does not confine a rock. One does, however, confine a living creature, which this thing most assuredly was.
The island was evacuated, while we decided to remain. We had a duty to see it through, Maria. I am sorry for it.
“If we get back inside, what in hell’s name do we do about it?” Osif asked. It was a practical question not easily answered.
“Can we kill it?” My hands worried against each other between my knees, and my neck felt tense. killed.”
“We don’t even understand it,” Medvedev said. “But it’s alive, so I imagine it can be “It’s not from our biosphere. What could kill it?” Osif asked.
“It’s organic…at least, it has to be,” I added. “We’ve seen it react in such a way.” “Fire should do it,” Osif reasoned. “It ends most things.”
They went to the stores, looking for chemicals with which to incinerate what lay within the lab.
My left hand had balled into a fist and it would not unclench. I had to pull the fingers apart; a nest of black veins had taken root in the palm of my hand, similar yet different from what I’d seen in the lab. They were tinged with red, pulsing along my fingers and down my wrist to my arm.
Maria, I will not see you and the children again. I will finish what was started with the assistant in the laboratory.
I will try to be firm. I must be firm.
2014
The room David found himself in was strewn with fragments of people’s lives. Smashed cell phones, torn pieces of clothing and other things spotted with dark stains. It put him in mind of a slaughterhouse, which was no doubt the desired effect.
“Who are you?” He’d read somewhere that getting to know your captor, however little you managed, could make a difference.
“I had a name. A girl used it once, but I can’t really remember it. Not since the fire.” “You’ve been here since then?”
The tattooed man didn’t answer, but stopped, bent down, and picked something up from off the floor. David recognized the phone, shattered screen and all. He wondered if his last message had delivered to it first.
“I remember this one, it was only tonight.” He offered David a sympathetic smile. “You’re lucky he sent me back out to the city. He said I did such a good job.”
The room was badly lit and most of it was shrouded in shadow, but David felt something moving in the darkness past where he stood. The air seemed to displace as if a large presence was settling itself down, though he heard nothing.
His captor forced him to his knees, slicing with the knife in quick, economic strokes.
David’s coat and shirt fell in pieces on the floor, mixing with the other shreds of former people brought here before him. When the knife came back up, it sliced quickly into the side of David’s face, leaving a neat line along his cheek.
“I told you, he likes to taste first.”
David couldn’t see anyone else in the room with them; he wondered if the man was going to taste his blood himself. Instead, he turned and walked towards the wall, where the shadows gathered thickest. David watched as he held out his hand to the darkness, and then caught a sound like sucking.
“What do you think?” The tattooed man paused, as if he could hear an answer David couldn’t. “What?” Another pause. “No, no, you promised…I don’t care if you need him, I need him more!”
The blade flashed once, but never connected with whatever was in the shadows. Instead, something struck the man’s head from his shoulders with barely any sound save for a quiet crunch as the bone and muscle were separated. The knife fell somewhere, clattering to the ground and bouncing out of sight. The man’s body tumbled limply without so much as a jerk or convulsion.
David thought about getting up, but couldn’t. He realized his crotch was warm.
I haven’t pissed myself since I was a kid, he thought in a detached way.
He’d not really thought the man was talking to anything, despite the feeling that there could be something there in the darkness. Maybe he was sharing some of the now-dead man’s madness, if that was possible.
Whatever it was, it slid from its place and stepped forward. It was almost silent and seemed to drift rather than walk towards him.
David looked once, wishing he wouldn’t, but the desire was too strong. Its skin had the texture of flaky pastry, and it was the color of turned milk and riddled with black veins underneath. Much of its face was hidden by the shadows near the ceiling, but its head bobbed as it walked.
Its eyes were the most terrible thing. Its eyes saw, and they wanted. More than that, David realized they were his eyes. Even in the brief moment he’d seen them, he knew it. The same color and unusual misshape to the left pupil.
It stopped in front of where David knelt, looming over him. It offered something that could have been a smile, if not for the shape of its mouth and position of teeth.
David no longer felt afraid; he no longer possessed the capacity to feel anything beyond what he wanted. The softer parts of his mind had burned away with the thing’s approach; just a piece at a time, so he wouldn’t notice.
By the time he did, the last little trickle melted away and he was left as Sasha – he knew the dead man’s name now, and he knew more than that besides – had been. Only he would never end up like him; family does not hurt family.
Extras
Otherwhere: initial concept
Otherwhere: study of ravens
Otherwhere: raven in the rigging
All We Have: character study
All We Have: concept
Borderland: initial character design
Art Terroir: initial draft
More R.L. Robinson at Digital
Variant Reflections: Science Fiction Short Stories (Digital Science Fiction Author Collection)
Cosmic Hooey: Digital Science Fiction Anthology (Short Story Collection Book 5)
A Moment of Clarity: Digital Science Fiction Short Story (Cosmic Hooey Book 8)
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Forgotten Places
A Sightless Place: The Prelude to No Light in August
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Copyright
No Light in August
By R.L. Robinson
Illustrated by Pedro Elefante
Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection: R.L. Robinson
These stories are a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in the stories are either the product of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or ghosts, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.
No Light in August – by R.L. Robinson: Copyright © 2016 by R.L. Robinson and published under license by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp., Illustrations and Cover Image: Copyright © Pedro Elefante. This version first published in print and electronically: April 2016 by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp., Windsor, Ontario, Canada—Digital Horror Fiction and its logo, and Digital Fiction Publishing Corp and its logo are Trademarks of Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. and Michael A. Wills.
All rights reserved, including but not limited to the right to reproduce, copy, and/or archive this book in any form, electronic or otherwise. The scanning, uploading, and/or distribution of this book or the individual stories contained herein via the Internet or any other means without the express written permission of the publisher or author is illegal and punishable by law. This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This Book may not be copied and re-sold or copied and given away to other people. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Please support and respect the author’s rights.
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No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) Page 14
