EverFall

by Joe Hart

  “Can’t get out,” came the echoes from dozens of other mouths. They began to ring us in on all sides, their legs tapping closer and closer.

  “Michael ...?” Jane’s voice wavered and broke. She hugged me from behind, both of the kids between us. I reached back and held out my hand, taking Sara’s and then Jack’s fingers in my own, intertwining, holding on tight.

  “I love you guys so much,” I said.

  A massive spider approached from directly in front of me, its grinning face that of a crew-cut young man. I aimed the pistol at him just as the rain began to fall in freezing drops. Lightning raced across the sky, splintering the dark clouds above. I hadn’t envisioned my death like this, and definitely not my family’s. The depression of knowing that I’d failed them in the worst possible way crushed inward, as if I were a thousand feet underwater. Thunder broke overhead again, and I cringed, hating myself as I did so, hating my fear and weakness.

  “Daddy?” came Sara’s voice, high and frightened. Jane sobbed, and Jack’s hand clutched my own.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s going to be okay.” My finger began to squeeze the trigger as the spider neared, and I held on to the small solace that I would take as many with us as possible.

  “Stop!” The command rang out over the storm and resounded across the interior of the crater. The voice was deep, full of confidence, and my heart surged as I looked to where the call came from.

  Ellius stood at the mouth of the tunnel, his hands held out before him.

  The spiders froze, and a few turned to stare at the figure above us. As one, they moved away like a receding tide. Rain fell around us, each drop a silver streak that plummeted to the ground and mixed with the blood in the crater. Ellius kept his hands out before him as he moved down the ramp toward us. One by one the spiders retreated, their legs skittering, slipping at times, as they made their way back to the holes and folds of flesh they’d emerged from.

  I watched in awe as hope filtered through the promise of death, which moments before seemed imminent. Ellius strode with confidence through the muck and mire, his face serene as he neared us. Some of the spiders remained, but shrank far enough back to allow me to lower the gun.

  “Daddy, who is that?” Jack asked.

  “He’s a friend,” I said, stepping forward. In all of my life I had never been more thankful to see another person. Ellius strode closer and stopped a few yards away, his face gentle and smiling.

  “Ellius,” I said.

  “Michael, you went ahead without us.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I had to get to them,” I said, stepping to the side to reveal my family.

  Ellius nodded. “I know, Michael. I completely understand, but you risked everything by coming alone. They might’ve killed you before I could get here,” he said, gesturing to the few remaining spiders that watched from a distance.

  “You’re right, I’m sorry. But I have them now, we can go.” I put the pistol in my pocket, and grasped Sara’s and Jack’s hands before walking toward the tunnel.

  We took two steps, and Ellius hit me in the chest with an open hand.

  The blow caught me just above the solar plexus, and my lungs expelled all of their air in a single whoosh. I lost my grip on Sara and Jack as I flew backward, propelled by the power of the strike. My back connected with Jane, and I heard her shriek as she fell. We landed in a heap on the wet muscle.

  I coughed and tried to pull in air that didn’t want to come. It felt as though I’d been kicked by a horse. I shook my head, reaching out to find my kids and wife. They were there, and Jane was already on her feet, her hands cold, grasping at my wrist, trying to pull me up. I managed to prop myself on one arm, and stared at Ellius, who stood motionless with a small smile on his lips.

  “No,” I croaked, just above a whisper.

  “I’m afraid yes, Michael,” Ellius said, walking toward us. “Yes, we are finally here. Yes, you found your family. And yes, I just struck you.”

  “Why?” I asked, sitting up. Sara and Jack huddled close to me, their knees soaked with bloody water, their arms around my neck.

  “Oh, that is the question of questions, isn’t it?” Ellius said, stopping a few feet away. I looked up into his face. The worn lines in the bark that covered his face no longer looked humble and wise. His cheeks were cracked and etched with age, and something else—malevolence. A keen hatred graced his features, pulling them into unkind angles. “Well, Michael, I would have to say freedom is why.”

  I stood, letting the pain ebb from my sternum with each breath that drug in a little more air. “Freedom from what?”

  “From this,” Ellius said, turning in a slow circle. “From the captivity of this crater and the forests around it. This world of twilight is too small for me. It fits like a tight coat, strangles my air and restricts my every move. I need space and free range.” He stopped and looked at my hand that was in my pocket, clutching the pistol. “Go ahead, Michael, it makes no difference to me.”

  I pulled the handgun out and pointed it at him. “Don’t come any closer. You’re going to let us pass.”

  Ellius took a step forward, the same evil smile playing at his lips.

  “Stop,” I said. My finger flexed on the trigger, yet I hesitated. For even though he’d struck me and the words he spoke were anything but kind, I wondered if he was my friend, corrupted in some way I was unaware of but still my friend.

  “Like I said, Michael, I’m not one of the lesser beings of this place. I won’t bleed like that piteous fool Dagnon.” Ellius took another step, and as a group we shrank back. “I’m not afraid of your pathetic mechanical threats. I’ll see you begging for death before I’m through.”

  I fired the gun into his face.

  The cordite smoke obscured his head for a second before he leapt through it, a black hole just above his left eye. His gnarled hands grasped my jacket, and then I was airborne, the world sideways as I flew. I landed on my shoulder and rolled, the muscle and tendon, thankfully, a relatively soft cushion.

  Rain beat down on my face when I finally came to rest, and I looked up at the clouds, moisture fogging my vision. The storm swirled above the crater, and lightning walked across its folds in jerking steps. I levered myself up and raised the pistol over my head like a bludgeon. Ellius had his back to me, and seemed to be focused on my family.

  “Don’t you touch them!” I yelled as I walked forward. “I’ll kill you if you touch them!”

  Ellius turned, and he looked larger, more substantial. He smiled. “Oh Michael, it’s not them I want. It’s you.”

  It took me a moment to register what he’d said. I stopped in mid-stride and waited. My family inched back, closer to the rounded wall of the crater. Ellius sneered unwaveringly, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “It’s you that is important, not these walking husks of flesh,” Ellius said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “You’ve been the one all along.”

  My jaw worked up and down, but no sound came out. “What are you talking about?” I said at last.

  Ellius sauntered toward me, his gait so out of character it was stunning. “Let me answer your question with a question. Did you ever wonder why storms frightened you so much?”

  My blood chilled. “How do you know I’m afraid of storms?”

  “This is a fun game, let’s do it again, shall we? Did the tunnel above this nest seem familiar to you?”

  The moment of déjà vu rushed back. I swallowed.

  “I thought so,” Ellius said, coming closer, his voice sarcastic and conspiratorial. “You remembered something, didn’t you, Michael?”

  My arm tensed, and I wondered if I could lash out and bash his head with the pistol, but my brain slowed involuntarily and pondered what he said. Flashes of my past flitted out of the corner of my mind’s eye. Twitching shadows of memories moved forward and back, in and out of scrutiny.

  “You recall that place, don’t you?” Ellius
said, standing even closer.

  I looked at my family as my arm lowered to my side. They huddled together, Jane standing over the kids with her hands on their shoulders. Her eyes were lances of pain and worry that begged for salvation from all this, and I wanted nothing more than to give it to her. But something held me back.

  “You remember this place, Michael, because you’ve been here before.”

  There was a beat while the words soaked into me, and despite my denial, they rang true. I clenched my eyes shut as the memories came flooding back, choking my mind with their colors and sounds.

  I saw the shimmering hole hovering in the evening light, a rippling haze against the shadows beyond. My shepherd, Gunner, barked in his way to tell me not to go any farther.

  “You remember, Michael,” Ellius said.

  I reached toward the unreflecting mirror, sure that my hand would meet emptiness, but it vanished and, before I could cry out, I fell inside. Darkness enfolded me, caressed my eyes until I thought I was blind.

  “You came here by accident, and saw.”

  In the memory, rain pelted down on me from above, and I realized that I was at the mouth of a tunnel, standing over a depression. Thunder shook the air and rattled the hurried breath in my chest. Lightning stabbed the bloated clouds above, feigning a flickering dawn against the black. Something moved below me, something pale and huge. Its head was wide and ungainly, its legs and arms disproportionately long, layered with muscle. My breathing stopped and I froze, unable to move as the thing turned to look up at me from where it crouched over an unrecognizable bloody carcass. Its eyes were orange flames of malice burning in the gloom, and when it opened its mouth, the smile was the same as the night my family was taken.

  “You ran away, fear clawing at you, shredding you from within,” Ellius whispered.

  The memory sharpened as I ran through darkness, frantic to be anywhere away from whatever climbed into the tunnel and chased after me with scraping steps and strangled grunts. I tripped and fell, my heart sure of the death that would follow my stumbling. But cutting blades of grass bit my hands when I landed, and Gunner’s soft fur brushed my face before he fell over me, his tongue licking my face fiercely. Terror still coursed through me, and I scrambled up, ready to run from the thing in the tunnel.

  When I turned the shimmering was gone and night was complete around us. The riverbed was still and the woods were quiet. But the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning was all I could see as I ran home, a storm in my mind that wouldn’t leave, roaring and consuming with a horror I couldn’t name and refused to remember.

  My eyes came open, and I sucked in air tinged with rain. Ellius watched me from a few paces away, his branchy head nodding, his eyes knowing. I gagged and nearly doubled over with nausea. My muscles shook with weakness.

  “So glad I was able to lubricate your memory,” Ellius said. “I’m sure you were curious about the origins of your fear.” He raised his soaked hands to the sky. “When you mentioned storms before, I realized what had happened. You had a transference, of sorts. Instead of remembering what you’d witnessed, you focused on the lightning and thunder. Everyday occurrences that would shield you, give you a crutch to lean on, so you wouldn’t have to face the true fear of what you’d seen.”

  My arm twitched, and I wanted to whip the pistol into his temple to silence his tongue. But deep within, I knew he spoke the truth. The flashback was a memory, true and unbiased, exactly the way I’d seen it and subsequently blocked it out.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Oh, just all the blood in your body spilled on the sacred ground you stand on,” Ellius said, and struck me in the face.

  I reeled back and fell. The empty gun flew from my hand and bounced away. I rolled to my feet and rubbed my cheek, expecting a gaping wound but finding only a sore swelling of tissue. I glanced at Jane and the kids and then shifted my vision to the tunnel, pleading with them to run while they had a chance. Jane gripped the children tighter and sidled behind Ellius, guiding them with the whitened grasp she had on their shoulders.

  “Why?” I said again, trying to think of something to draw his attention away from my family’s escape. “Why do you need me?”

  “Because you are the only human to have ever crossed the boundary and returned to Earth,” Ellius spat. “So many have come and died. They lose their way, or blunder here and the vent closes behind them. They become trapped, lose sanity, and die at the hands or teeth of the things that inhabit this land. But you ...” Ellius said, circling me. “You were special. You came here, to that very tunnel, and saw this place, only to somehow find the way back to your world without so much as a scratch!” He pounded a fist against one of his legs, and spittle flew from his brown lips. “No one has ever done that, Michael. No one.”

  I edged backward and to the right, trying to keep Ellius’s back to my family, who moved toward the ramp in the distance. “So what?” I asked. “I came here and saw it, what does it want me for?”

  Ellius stopped and stood stock-still. His brown eyes roamed over me, as if examining a feast. “You brought something back with you that night, a part of this world, breathed into your lungs and clinging to your skin. You took the essence of evil along with you when you escaped.”

  My stomach roiled, and I resisted the urge to glance at my family’s progress. “You’re lying.”

  He laughed, a callus and cruel scraping sound. “Oh no, Michael, but you’ll wish I were soon enough. You see, the energy inside you was trapped like a splinter encapsulated by a cocoon of flesh. It festered and grew, slowly gaining power without your knowledge. Your fear of storms only fed it and encouraged its black malignance to expand further.” He gazed at me coldly. “That’s why your blood’s so precious in this world. Human blood is a rare commodity, used for many things, but yours ... yours is powerful beyond measure.”

  Anger flared inside me. “You were in league with it all along. The horrible evil you preached to me about, you were its servant while you led me here to be slaughtered. And for what? What was the price you sold your soul for? Freedom? From traveling only in the forest? Is that it?” Pure rage consumed me, and I stepped forward in spite of the power Ellius possessed.

  He lowered his head and nodded, his arms clasped inside of his shawl. “I am bound to the trees in this form, a cruel construct of having destroyed the thickest forest when I fell here. Unable to change, unable to expand my reach, I am bound.” His eyes met mine, and they were full of anticipation. “But I knew when you came here that someday I would find you. I knew the power your blood would hold. It was only a matter of time before a vent opened close enough to see you, the beacon of darkness that you are.” Ellius grinned.

  I stepped back, the implications of what he’d just said wreaking havoc inside me. “No,” I breathed.

  “Oh yes, Michael,” Ellius said, except his words sounded different. Deeper and without life, a corpse voice spoken with a living tongue.

  His arms began to lengthen, the bark and wood cracking and flying free. His eyes expanded, and the branches on top of his head formed curved, leathery fins that ended in sharp points. The shawl he wore split as his body grew, and his skin became pale, roughened sandpaper. His legs thickened with muscle, striated with black veins. A vibrating roar erupted from his mouth, which was ringed in an orange glow, as he threw back his arms in terrible glory. His eyes found me, flames burning in both slits.

  Pure evil incarnate stood before me.

  I found my family, cowered at the edge of the clearing near the totem of tangled nerves. They were awestruck, staring, open-mouthed, at the creature that had brought them here.

  “RUN!” I screamed.

  Jane snapped out of her trance and yanked the kids away. I saw a flash of Jack reaching for me before they disappeared from sight.

  “They’ll not get far,” it said, taking a step toward me. The change in Ellius’s voice was complete. It spoke in tones of sepulcher bass. “My minions will attend t
o it.”

  Even as the words left its mouth, I saw Jane and the kids backpedal into view, a dozen spiders herding them with snapping teeth and shouts of delight.

  “Just take me,” I said. “Kill me and let them go.”

  It laughed. “I will kill you, Michael. It’s the only way for my life force to expand.” It widened its arms and gestured to the growth that covered the crater floor. “I will be free of the curse of the forest, and my realm will cover this world. And perhaps I will find a way to spread it to Earth.”

  I looked around me. There was nowhere to run or hide. An immense heart beat just below a layer of translucent fat to my left, and a sheet of white bone was to my right. The thing without a name approached, its slanted eyes studying me with hunger. My back met the crater wall, and only then did I realize I’d been retreating the whole time.

  “I’ve waited patiently, and now the moment is here,” it rumbled. “I’ll savor every ounce of your blood.”

  My heart hammered against my chest, as thunder racked the clouds. The spiders cried out above the storm, and I sobbed. I’d failed them for the last time. There would be no other chances at redemption. The freedom from addiction was too late and too little; it made no difference now. I only hoped that it would kill me before I saw what the spider’s teeth had done to my wife and children.

  It raised a giant hand studded with razor claws, their tips catching the flash of lightning just before the arm fell like an executioner’s ax. I closed my eyes and waited for the ripping of my flesh.

  It didn’t come.

  “Not so fucking fast, you pale bastard.”

  My eyes snapped open at the deep, grumbling voice that sounded like it was straight out of Sydney.

  The creature’s hand hung suspended at its apex, but now gray fingers encircled its wrist, holding it from dealing the killing blow.

  Kotis stepped out from behind the demon and swung a fist at its surprised face. The wet smack of knuckles connecting with bone was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. The thing’s head rocked back, and it snarled with pain. Kotis swung again, bashing his fist into the same spot. His third strike stopped short as the thing that had been Ellius caught his fist in an oversized palm. It pushed Kotis back, creating space between them before thrusting a kick into his midsection. Kotis flew back and landed beside me. His eyes fluttered, but when he opened them, they were clear.