by Joe Hart
Not long after that, both Kotis and Fellow bade goodnight and walked a short distance away to make their beds in the softer soil higher up the bank. I heard Scrim issue a short cry and Kotis grumble a colorful insult beneath his breath. I felt fortunate to have them near in a place so hostile. I shot another glance at the river, hoping to see a drastic change.
“It will drop, Michael. It only takes time. When it does, it will drop fast,” Ellius said, noticing where my gaze kept straying to.
“I know, I just want to keep moving. Stopping seems like a betrayal.”
“I understand. And do not fret about Kotis’s and Fellow’s families. They are well aware of where their loved ones are and why they had to leave. They are both very good, the only two that I would trust to travel with us.”
“They obviously trust you,” I said. “How long have you known one another?”
Ellius smiled again, the bark of his cheeks crinkling. “A long time. Since they were very young. I travel to the forest Fellow spoke of regularly, and befriended Kotis’s father many years ago. When he passed, I agreed to watch over Kotis. Surprising as it is, Kotis needed very little guidance. As harsh as his words are, his morality is only challenged by Fellow’s.”
I smiled. “I guessed that a little while after he knocked me out.”
Ellis looked horrified, but I assured him I deserved it. After a bout of silence punctuated only with the gurgle of the river and the intermittent breeze, I was about to rise when Ellius spoke again.
“I know what follows us, Michael.”
I stopped, hovering above my seat. “What?”
“The shadowed figure you’ve seen trailing behind us. I know what it is.”
I sat back down, my attention riveted to him. “What is it?”
“How long have you been addicted to alcohol, Michael?”
The question caught me off-guard. The only people that knew I had a problem were Jane and my parents, although I think both my mother and father tried to believe that I changed after the day they found me drunk beneath my table.
I sighed and realized there was no point in lying. “Probably five years, maybe more.”
Ellius nodded, his face growing grave. “I assumed so.”
“What does that have to do with what’s following us?”
“Michael, your addiction is what’s following us.”
I stared numbly at him. “What?” was all I managed after a few seconds.
“You said you saw it the first time shortly after emerging from the field of lies, correct?”
“Yeah, it was behind us before we went through the bone field.”
“I’m afraid when you crossed the river that guards the field, the worst aspect of your personality emerged from the black water. There is a reason it is called the Damning River.”
I furrowed my brow. “So you’re saying that my alcohol addiction is, what? In physical form now?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The Damning River sees the worst in those who pass above it and creates a likeness composed entirely of their failings. That is why none of the creatures that live in the fog can cross it, they would be consumed instantly by their lies.”
I shook my head as doubt pleaded to have its voice heard, but after all I’d witnessed I knew there was no room for disbelief in this world. You either believed or you died. “What does it want?” I asked.
“The same thing it wants in your world, Michael—to destroy you.”
“Listen, you don’t really know me. I have reasons why I drink, and if I want to drink, it’s my business. I can control it.” I hated the words for the lies they truly were, and I saw Ellius’s lined face fold a little beneath my harsh tone. I was going to apologize, knowing exactly where the defensiveness came from, where it lived and what controlled it, but Ellius cut me off.
“I can’t change you, Michael, all I can do is warn you of the dangers this world holds. Your addiction will follow us until the time is right for it to strike, and it has only one target,” he said, holding up a wooden finger. “And that is you. It will not tire or cease to give chase. It eventually will catch up, and when it does, neither my guidance nor Fellow’s kindness, or even Kotis’s strength, will save you. And if you fall, all is lost.”
I opened my mouth to respond but closed it again. I knew what I would say, and it would be nothing but fallacies, false bravado to condone the prodding I felt even then to have a drink.
Ellius gave me a long but not unkind look, then left the warmth of the fire’s light. I sat by myself pondering what he’d said. Jane’s voice spoke in my mind after what seemed like hours of mulling over endless thoughts. Michael? Please just a couple tonight.
I looked at the river and thought I could see the bridge’s shape beneath the current. A deep fatigue settled over me, the entire day’s exercise compounding within my muscles at once. I lay down on the poking stones near the fire, not willing to abandon its light, and closed my eyes.
I awoke to screaming.
I’d been dreaming about the shadowed figure that followed us. It had appeared out of nowhere, grown from the very ground, and stood beside Kotis. It bit the giant in the back, pulling out a huge chunk of dripping flesh. Blood spurted from the wound, and Kotis fell to his knees, screaming a death cry. Fellow leapt to his aid and tried to pull him away from the figure, but it was too fast. With a swipe of a black arm, it sliced through the ropy cords of Fellow’s neck. He fell beside Kotis, trying to stave off the running fluid that flowed from the gaping hole in his throat. The figure roared in triumph and turned in my direction, and I felt fear unlike anything I ever had before, because when it rushed toward me, intent on tearing me limb from limb, it was my own face that I looked into.
As I drifted up from sleep, I thought it was the screams created by my own mind that I heard. But then I realized there were too many voices yelling, too many overlapping sounds of misery to come from just our group.
I sat up just as the soul storm crested the nearby hill. It still swirled and leaned with its tendrils of wind, but this time the faces that cried out as they surfaced looked directly at us.
Kotis and Fellow sprinted toward the fire ring, the last dying flames just beneath burned cinders.
“Up, Michael! The bridge!” Fellow yelled, angling past me.
To my right I saw that not only had the river receded below the bridge’s walkway, it was completely out of sight.
On my feet, I ran away from the howling storm of faces, feeling a few specks of sand and dirt patter against the back of my jacket. Ellius waved Kotis and Fellow past him where he stood at the pillars.
“Hurry, Michael!” Ellius cried, urging me onward.
I ran for all I was worth, dreading the touch of the thing behind me. I wondered what it would feel like, to be enveloped by the spinning debris. Would it be instant darkness without suffering, or would the transition be strobed with pain until my face fell in alongside the undulating others that took turns gracing the storm’s surface? The thought of being trapped in eternal agony spurred me onward, and when I was near enough, Ellius ran ahead of me onto the bridge.
The cobblestones of the bridge’s surface were wide and flat, smoothed over time by the passage of feet and flowing water. Bits of green algae hung off the side that faced the water’s flow, while the rest of it was clean and clear. The bridge itself was built in a great arc that swept up beneath the walkway to support it and feathered out in its middle, where it became almost too thin for comfort, before widening toward the opposite shore.
I raced onto the bridge just as the storm hit the pillars behind me. Comforted by the sound of gravel clacking off the gateway, I risked a glance over one shoulder, thinking the bridge’s boundary would stop the ravenous souls from moving onto the narrow surface.
The pillars were gone, and the storm was only feet away.
A mouth like a car’s open hood appeared within the roiling storm and reached for me. Teeth composed of rock, leaves, and sand emerged from
beneath a curling lip and slammed shut. I turned back and leaned forward, gaining on Ellius, who ran with surprising speed ahead of me. For the first time I looked down to my left side, over the edge of the bridge, and the sight made me flinch with vertigo.
The river was at least fifty feet beneath the bridge’s walkway and receding fast. I saw a large boulder exposed on the far bank, and within seconds it hung in the open, free from the touch of water. I heard a snapping sound, and a rush of air pushed against my hair, as if a door had closed directly behind me. I looked ahead, praying that the far bank was close, and saw with some relief that Fellow and Kotis were almost there. A thick swath of trees stood at the top of the bank, and I knew that Ellius could hide us inside if we reached it in time.
The splash that shot up from beneath my left foot told me, even before my mind registered I’d slipped, that I was going to fall. A depression in one of the wide cobblestones held less than a half inch of river water, but it was enough to make my shoe slide to the edge. My arms pinwheeled and my stomach lurched. I felt the bottom of my shoe fly sideways into open air and the scrape of the bridge as it slid up the inside of my leg. My weight tipped, and I made a grab at the side of the walkway as it flew by, my hands catching but instantly snapping free.
I fell.
Chapter 8
Captured
People say the instant before death your life flashes before your eyes, or what passes for your life. Bits and pieces of experiences, happy or sad, snippets of words, all coalesced into a barrage that makes up your existence.
They’re wrong.
The few seconds it took for me to drop from the bridge to the river below were nothing but a terrible, whirling free fall. My mind conjured no comforting pictures of my family or images of God, only stomach-tearing suspense as I waited to smash into something hard. I saw the river’s walls rip by and the bridge above me turn crazily as I flipped over backward, and I had the impression of a dark wall coming up to meet me.
The river water bit into my skin like a thousand needles, and I suddenly felt as though my entire body burned in a cold fire. I tried to suck in air, and realized that I’d done half a belly flop from higher than any Olympian dared to dive. For my efforts I received a lungful of water so cold it made me convulse before the lack of oxygen did. I coughed, trying not to inhale again as I strained for the surface, my coat and pants no longer shielding me against the cool air but pulling me down as they soaked up water. I kicked again, and the roaring silence of being underwater broke.
Screams met me as soon as the water drained from my ears. They echoed down from above in a cascade of sound. Some were my name, but most were just cries of the damned. Water rushed over me, and I stroked toward where I thought the bank should be. The current rushed around me, a physical thing that pushed and pulled, sweeping me along at an alarming rate. My shoes felt like anchors, and my fingers burned with cold. The screams grew distant, like the screech of hawks far overhead. When I managed to look back where the bridge should have been, it was gone, replaced by a turn in the chasm.
Terror tapped the back of my brain with a sharpened fingernail. I was being carried farther and farther from my group, and if I didn’t stop myself soon, I would be hard-pressed to find them. The walls to either side of me were at least a hundred feet tall, and getting higher by the minute. I managed to maneuver myself so that I pointed downstream, and saw that in the distance the river made another turn. Maybe I could use its curve to my advantage and get a hold on the wall when I got close enough.
I swam as hard as I could toward the rocky wall. Weakness sapped the energy from my limbs with each stroke. The water wasn’t as cold as before; it was warmer, more welcoming. I shook my head until my neck hurt, clearing the thoughts that whispered of resting just for a moment. My foot struck something solid beneath the water, and I spun, facing the way I’d come. A rock, I told myself. That made the most sense. But then Ellius’s words came to me, making my scalp prickle. He’d said the river was miles deep. There wouldn’t be a stone that tall in the middle of the river.
I swam harder downstream, beating the water with all I had, my muscles flaring with pain. My swimming instruction from high school came back to me then. Stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe. Don’t break the rhythm.
Glancing forward, I brought my head up. The bend was approaching, and the wall was only a few yards away. With all my power, I put my head down and kicked, pulled, fought the clutches of the current, which threatened to yank me back to the center of the river. My hand brushed rock.
The wall was there in front of me, sliding by. The river’s speed was faster on the inside of the curve, and I reached to grab a protruding stone as it moved by. My fingers caught and held. With the last of my strength, I pulled myself up and grasped a fissure in another boulder. I cried out and heaved my sopping body free of the water, and found a narrow ledge to stand on, hugging the wall like an old friend. My breath puffed out visibly before me, something I hadn’t noticed on the journey before. I rested, relishing the feeling of being free of the river. With trepidation, I looked up.
The edge of the bank was out of sight.
“Fuck!” It felt good to speak, although it came out as a croak; it meant that I was alive.
I sorted my options. I could climb and risk falling, or I could stay where I was and wait for my friends to find me. I blinked. When had I started to think of them as my friends? I didn’t know, but they were and there was no time to contemplate it. Looking up again, I scanned the wall above and around me. It was made up of jagged rocks like the one I clung to, interlaced with muddy soil that dripped and ran. I felt a tremor run through my right arm, and imagined dropping back into the water. Looking down I nearly did fall.
The water was at least two stories away.
I shut my eyes, leaning as close as I could to the rock. I wanted to become part of it, to seep into the wall and rest. Without debating anymore, I reached up and found another handhold. I couldn’t wait for the group to find me, and since it looked as though the rocks above jutted from the wall, they might not spot me even if they walked directly over my position. I had no choice. I climbed.
Hand over hand, with disciplined effort, I found handholds and shelves to brace my feet against. The ever-present cold hanging from me in the folds of my clothing was no longer staved off by adrenaline. Shaking with every movement, I couldn’t feel my hands, and had to check each hold they grasped to make sure I was secure. I was without a body, merely a freezing piece of meat hanging from the side of a bank. Every few minutes I checked my progress, the first few times making the mistake of looking down instead of up. The river’s steady descent gave me false hope that I’d made great progress, and from then on I kept my gaze skyward, always looking for the next point to grab while making sure my hands did what they were told.
Eventually I reached a shelf that stuck out like an underbite. It was wide enough for me to turn and sit down. The relief of my body was unlike anything I ever had experienced, and I sighed with pleasure. The thought of the shelf giving way beneath me crossed my mind, but for a few seconds all I could do was relish the feeling in my muscles. As I prepared to maneuver back toward the wall to continue, something touched my foot. It was such an odd sensation that I froze at first, wondering if a rock had fallen from beneath the shelf and brushed my shoe. Then I felt a tapping against my shin, and I recoiled, feeling skin tear free as I dragged my calf over the ledge. Pressing my back against the stone, I tilted my head forward to look over the shelf.
A tentacle the width of a flagpole shot from beneath the rock and jabbed at my head. I saw a flash of opaque green and felt something wet flick my face before it slammed into the wall over my shoulder, tearing out a piece of stone the size of a television. I yelled, my center of gravity tipping out toward the river before I pulled myself back. The tentacle lashed away, yanking the chunk of rock with it. Spinning around, I scrabbled my shaking hands along the wall until I felt a small crevice. I did a fast pull-up, my mu
scles fueled with fear-induced energy once again, and found a brace for my feet. I climbed faster, knowing how far down the water must be, and in turn, guessing at the immensity of the thing attached to the tentacle.
With a hurried glance upward, I saw the edge of the bank was only fifteen feet away. I doubled my pace but tried to maintain a careful hold with my raw hands, in case the stones I grasped were loose. A gulping sound rose from below, reminding me of water draining from a sink plugged with pieces of wet food.
The chasm’s edge was only five feet away. I could see the tops of tall trees lining the bank, and the sight of them spurred me onward. Two more lunges and I climbed free, pulling myself onto the sloping bank.
I crawled across the rough stones as fast as I could, away from the edge, away from whatever chased me. I fell onto my side just as the bank began to rise higher, the slim forest of dead trees greeting me. My breath came out in shuddering bursts; there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world. My hands and forearms were useless as bowling pins below my elbows, and my feet were no longer there. I stood, half delirious with cold and exhaustion, and felt something wrap around my leg.
I fell to the ground with a scream, as the green tentacle slithered back over the edge of the bank. It was wound twice around my knee, and dug painfully into my thigh just below my groin. As I slid I noticed a distinct pattern within its flesh, something akin to the design on the back of certain playing cards, circles and ellipses intertwined. In other circumstances it might have been beautiful, paired with the dark green of its skin. My useless hands flung out to either side of me, raking the ground for something as the canyon drew nearer and nearer.
I didn’t notice the rock clutched in my fist until I slammed it down onto the tentacle. The rock was the size of a softball, with a broken edge revealing a quartz shine. The serrated teeth of the stone bit into and through the hide of the thing gripping my leg with amazing ease. The flesh parted and spread, white syrup erupting from within, bringing with it a carrion stink. My stomach clenched from the smell, and I struck again, and again. With a sound like wet fabric ripping, the ropy arm snapped in half and raced backward out of sight, over the bank. The portion on my thigh uncoiled. It flopped to the ground, but not before I saw an unlidded eye on the end shift in my direction.
