Dead Five's Pass

by Colin F. Barnes

  “Looks like someone cracked a rock on his head,” Marge said. She looked at Carise with her eyes slightly squinted as if she were observing her. Could she tell she was lying? Or was it something else? Could Marge tell she was different somehow…like the girl…

  “Have you or Frank done anything to the observation room yet?” Carise asked.

  “No, we haven’t—”

  “I need to take another look.”

  Marge placed her hand on Carise’s shoulder. “Are you sure you want to—” but Carise stood up with such force she knocked the old woman off the chair and onto her knees.

  “Shit, I’m sorry, Marge. I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s okay, darlin’, you just let me be, I’ll be okay,” Marge said, backing away from Carise, all the time wearing a frightened and bemused expression on her face.

  Carise wanted to do something or say something to ease Marge’s…what, fear? They’d known each other for over a decade. Why would she be so scared of her? “Marge, I didn’t mean anything by it, I’m just a little stressed with this situation—”

  “It’s fine, darlin’, really.”

  Shaking her head, Carise turned and walked across the station to observation room one. Marcel and Frank exited the second room, looking serious. Marcel caught Carise’s eye and gave her a stern “don’t say anything” kind of look as he approached her.

  “Everything okay with Frank?” she almost whispered.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Follow me,” Carise said, opening the door and entering the hellish room. Only this time it didn’t seem so hellish, which in itself was cause for alarm. She remembered the sheer awe and terror of the last time she looked upon this scene—and on the girl as she cut herself to ribbons.

  They both stood in the spot the girl had previously sat. It was barely the only place not covered in blood or shit. The room stunk and made her stomach roll in on itself. Marcel was holding his jacket over his mouth. Despite that, she closed the door and ignored the looks Frank and Marge were giving her.

  “Do you see it?” she said, pointing to the symbols and tracing a route through the various star shapes. “The constellation…and the message. It’s a story. The girl was giving us a warning. Like some kind of sick prophet.”

  Marcel took the camera from his pocket and looked at the photos from the lake’s chamber on the small LCD screen. He held it up and scanned the room. “She must have been there. Look, the symbols match. But no one could have that good a memory, those markings and angles are just so unnatural. It’s like they—”

  “Draw you in,” Carise finished. “To another world, or dimension or something…into the mind of that…thing.”

  “We have to destroy it,” Marcel said. “Derry has a small mining outfit just a few kilometers from here. I have a key to his yard… I did some consultancy for them early this year. We could get some of their blasting equipment and finish this for good.”

  “But what about Frank and Marge, and what of Smith? They know all about this, we have to get rid of all the evidence so no one else is subject to this madness or tempted to go up there and find the cave.”

  “We’ll have to clean this room for a start,” Marcel said. “And delete those emails. I can take down the forum posts and the… Wait a minute! Have you thought about how this all came about? Those damn satellite images of the location. Someone must have taken them for a reason and posted them on the forum. Someone else knows about this. You mentioned those stones were sacrifice stones—well they must have been used at some point, right?”

  “They’ve been there for eons,” Carise said with certainty.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I…I can see it. That thing is ancient. Perhaps those standing stones were some kind of calendar, and this is the right time for it to wake, and well, someone fed it. I think it’s the wound…perhaps it left something in me, I feel…I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but I feel a pull to go back.”

  “Same here, although I think for perhaps different reasons,” Marcel said grimly. “But listen, what perfect way to feed this beast than send up some eager cave explorers? Someone who had access and knowledge to that forum must have known this.”

  “It has to be someone involved with the university. The club is secret outside of its walls, apart from us,” Carise said. But the one thing she wasn’t voicing was how she and Marcel were so far the only ones—that she knew of—to go to the cave and come out alive and sane. Michael had clearly turned on his friends in a fit of rage. The girl was also clearly mentally disturbed and her boyfriend ran away leaving her all alone: not the actions of rational humans. Why weren’t she and Marcel equally as crazy?

  “Adolescents,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It feeds on adolescence. It’s why we haven’t completely lost our minds like those kids.” As the words escaped her mouth, a twinge of darkness and chaos played on the edges of cognition, a nagging thought, growing and feeding on her.

  “I’d rather not depend on that. I’d rather see the damn thing dead and buried in its own mountain tomb. There’s plenty of time to study its effects later.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  From the next room came a hideous scream, followed by a smashing sound as the door crashed within its frame.

  Carise and Marcel ran out of their room to see Marge backing away from the second room’s door, which was now buckling and bending under the assault from inside. Frank pulled her away just in time before it smashed open and the corpse of Michael, now reanimated, lunged at him with frightening pace.

  Michael slammed Frank to the ground, covering the older man with spittle, blood and froth. A gurgling, twisting sound emanated from somewhere deep within the reanimated boy, and Carise understood every damned syllable.

  11

  Michael’s body continued to spit those guttural words and as Carise tuned into them like they were some far-off AM radio station, she started to see images, a narrative like a radio play. Everything else blurred into the background as if they were hidden behind a dark curtain.

  In the pictures in her mind, she saw great multilimbed creatures traveling through space within meteors. At the front of their great mass was a pair of conical bones with great sawlike teeth twisting around the bone like a screw. Its massive unreflecting eye sat inside a bulbous head canopy that inflated and deflated like a hot-air balloon. Within the darkness of that meteor, its long and agile tentacles writhed and manipulated the interior. And she knew it was one of those creatures that had burrowed into the mountain with those huge drill-like front limbs.

  Millions of years before humans ever came to be, she knew “they” slumbered in their mountain tombs, for there were more than one. How many, she couldn’t say. Meteor upon meteor, they arrived on Earth, devouring the rock and stone and burying themselves in the cold and long-forgotten places.

  But now it was time for them to wake. She felt their pull on her mind as surely as she felt the coming winter. That long chill wasn’t just the season’s wind and snow, it was something far worse, far darker. It was them. They were coming back from their long death, and they needed to feed.

  “Back off him, you undead bastard!” Marge screamed, and then with an explosion that shook Carise from her epiphany, the boom of the shotgun erupted, spraying Michael’s head onto the back wall, turning his neck into nothing more than a torn stump of tissue.

  “Holy Jesus’s baby! Frank, darlin’, are you all right?” Marge placed the shotgun on the desk and hurried around to where Frank was pinned to the ground by Michael’s now-headless body.

  Marcel, standing beyond Frank and facing Carise, blinked the gore from his face. “Is everyone okay?” he asked, as bits of Michael’s body dripped off his clothing and onto the floor. Carise nodded, although she knew she’d never be okay, not with that knowledge now festering in the dark vaults of her mind like some insidious shadow.

  Frank heaved the body to one side, and with Marge an
d Marcel’s help, managed to stand on his shaking legs. With a handkerchief, he wiped the foul-smelling spittle and froth from his jacket and face.

  “You said he was dead,” Frank said to Marcel, pointing an accusing finger.

  “He was! I was the one that killed him.”

  Silence.

  “Well, darlin’, that makes two of us now, don’t it,” Marge eventually said, shaking her head. “What in God’s green earth have you two brought down on us, eh? What is all this?”

  Carise finally spoke. “You’re right, Marge. This is all fucking crazy. But we’re going to stop it right now. You and Frank clean this place up and destroy any reports or notes or anything you have about this situation. You understand?”

  “But, why, what…oh, I don’t know what I’m doing,” Marge said in despair. She sat on her chair and sobbed, the shock of everything she had seen and done clearly agitating her now. Even Frank, one of the most down-to-earth men in the village, was choked by a sense of panic.

  “Marc, tell them,” Carise said. “Tell them we have to end this.”

  “She’s right, Marge, Frank. No one would believe us if we told them. We look like crazy murderers. There’s something up there in that cave Carise and I have to deal with—alone. But we’ll get the bodies of those other kids out of there so their families can grieve properly. We’ll explain it was a caving accident or…I don’t know, we’ll think of something. But whatever happens, no one can know about all this crazy stuff: the symbols, the bodies, the cave, nothing. We can’t afford this to blow up into some huge story. You understand?”

  Both the old-timers nodded. Their eyes suddenly much older. With a weariness, Frank and Marge hugged each other tenderly before setting about cleaning the station.

  Marcel gripped Carise’s arm and whispered, “What happened to you back there? You were in some kind of trance. What did you see?”

  “Them, Marc. I saw them—it was if through Michael they were speaking to me.”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “So many…slumbering beneath the earth, beneath the mountains…it’s futile…we need to do something, at least with the one we know about, until we learn more about them. I suggest we continue with the plan. Erase the data on your laptop, delete the emails, and we’ll pay a visit to Derry’s and see what we can use. Can he be trusted?”

  “I doubt it. They only hired me because Janis wanted me to leave the rescue team. I don’t really get along well with her family…or her really,” he added. “It’s basically over between us.”

  Carise wasn’t sure how to respond. Plotting the destruction of a cosmic god-being wasn’t really the time to go into relationship stuff. “So, we’ll have to sneak out the explosives, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I have the key and the codes. We’ll be in and out in five minutes. But first we should get you into some proper gear.”

  She looked down at her clothes, the spare set from Marcel’s pack, and nodded her agreement. “Let’s go back to my place, get tooled up and make preparations,” she said.

  “I’ll go speak to Smith, see if he’s up for this,” Marcel said. “Oh, and Carise, you will try and warn me if things get…you know…a little crazy up there.” He pointed to her head.

  “I’ll try.” She forced a smile, but worried that the shadow lurking inside her would grow too soon, too quickly, and one way or another, she’d end up like Michael, or the girl.

  * * *

  The drive back to Carise’s cabin felt to her like a funeral march: forced to drive slowly because of the increasingly heavy snowfall and blustering winds. Each mile stretched out with a taut silence between her and Marcel, who was sitting back in the passenger seat, eyes closed. She wanted to ask what he was thinking, but if it was anything like the thoughts rattling around in her brain, she didn’t want to know. She took her mind off the fact that it felt like a last journey home and concentrated on keeping her truck on the road. If it was to be her last ride home, she was glad to have Marcel by her side.

  Almost sensing they were getting near, Marcel woke from his light sleep, rubbed his eyes and said, “You got a cat?”

  Carise stopped the truck outside of her cabin and pulled the parking brake. The cat sat in the kitchen window, silhouetted by a single light on inside.

  “I wanted a bit of company, you know? She’s not particularly fond of me, but she tolerates my existence and occasionally stays in my bedroom at night. Not quite the same as…” She sighed, not wanting to reminisce too much. It wasn’t exactly the right time, what with the great evil lurking in the shadows just beyond in the distance, but then, given the way the bodies were stacking up, perhaps it was the right time.

  “I miss you, Marc,” she finally said as she hopped out of the truck and rushed through the snow to her front door, and under her breath she muttered, “I always did.”

  Before he had time to respond, Carise was already boiling the kettle and moving into her bedroom to find a fresh set of clothes more suitable for hiking and caving in frozen temperatures. Although, given her dip in that hideous lake, she doubted if she’d ever feel warm again.

  “Shower’s down the hall,” Carise said, “and there’s clean towels in the hall closet.”

  “Thanks.”

  While she waited for Marcel to shower, she washed herself off in the kitchen sink, then went to her bedroom, and searched through her wardrobe, selecting various warm undergarments and heavy weather-proof outerwear for their second assault on the mountain—and what stirred within it. She couldn’t but help imagine its enormity resting within the rock and stone in a tomb of its own making. Just how many years had it slept there, waiting, biding its time?

  “Heavy thoughts, huh?” Marcel said, making her jump. She hadn’t heard him leave the shower and approach her bedroom.

  Marcel cast a shadow into the room as he stood in the door frame. He had a pained expression on his face, like he had the weight of humanity dragging him down.

  “You look tired,” she said, and realized how dumb that sounded. “I mean, weary, like you’ve got a lot on your mind.” And that was no less dumb, she thought. “Sorry, I don’t mean to say the obvious, it’s just, what with—”

  “I never stopped loving you, you know,” Marcel said, cutting her off, and simultaneously sending a bolt of electricity into her chest, jump-starting her heart into a frantic beat. “Even when you didn’t call for months after…the loss…even after I proposed to Janis, it was you I wanted.”

  “What happened to us?” Carise said, ignoring the wardrobe and moving around the bed to face Marcel. “Why couldn’t I have kept you closer, instead of pushing you further and further away?”

  Marcel moved farther into the room and stood close to her. His chest expanding and retracting in time with hers. Were they really going to do this—now? And then the thought of a potentially short mortality made it all the more urgent. She reached up to his face, and he placed his arms around her waist. Together they joined and kissed, before collapsing onto her bed.

  For half an hour they both forgot about cosmic horrors, dead bodies, and the job that awaited them, and rekindled the fire they both had always carried for each other.

  * * *

  Huddled beneath the covers and wrapped in Marcel’s arms, she wished that it could last forever: that feeling of warmth and security. The feeling of everything being as it should. But within minutes she felt the chill in her bones again, and the images of that unfathomable thing’s great unblinking eye in its bulbous head dominated her thoughts and turned the world dark and cold again.

  “We have to destroy it,” Carise finally said, breaking the spell.

  * * *

  In silence, as if shrouded in the quietness of a doom yet to come, they checked their gear: ropes, carabiners, knives, glow sticks, first-aid packs, radios, axe, flare gun, water. It seemed to Carise like they were preparing for war, only they were the only soldiers, and the fight was hidden from the world in the dark recesses of some anc
ient tomb, against an enemy they knew next to nothing about, except its desire for destruction and domination.

  “This is crazy,” Carise said after packing the last of the items into her backpack. “That this thing exists…makes you wonder. What else is out there? Are UFO sightings real? Abductions? What about fairy tales and monsters?”

  “I don’t know about any of those things. But what I do know is this thing, whatever it is, can be hurt, and it’s still hiding in its mountain like a scared recluse. We go to the heart of it, stare into it and end it.”

  “What if it stares back?” she said, reminding herself of Nietzsche’s ideas about staring into the abyss. “What will happen to us? Will we be like Michael and the girl, will we take some of it with us?” Deep down she could already feel she had. Her little dip in the lake and subsequent wound had seen to that. And whether actual or psychosomatic, her ankle itched beneath the bandage.

  Although no longer painful, she noticed the creeping black rot had grown up and beyond the cut and was encroaching on the smooth skin of her shin.

  In the dead of night, they packed their equipment into the back of Carise’s truck and headed to Derry’s yard. The snow had abated, but still the chill winds blew through the sparsely populated village. The place was in darkness; everyone tucked up in their beds dreaming good things. Carise felt like some phantom, lurking through the shadows ready to face the evil in the darkness.

  She pulled away from the mining yard and switched off her lights. They both sat there in the warmth of the truck’s cab observing the place, looking for movement. There was none.

  Marcel turned to Carise. “We go in, fill a couple of bags and get out. Follow my lead, okay?”