Thrall

by Mary SanGiovanni

  “I know, sweetie, but the monsters are here. We have to go.”

  “Can’t we hide in the jail cell?”

  “No, not this time.” Mia looked up at Jesse. “We need to find a way out of here.”

  At the top of the stairs came a dull screech, like metal scraping along concrete. From where he stood, he could see a dirty brown hand. The long claws raised paint and cement powder as they dug into the wall. The whispering grew louder.

  ***

  “I can see. Their voices are making pictures in my head. I can see them.” Murdock pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “They’re saying the most awful things.”

  “Do you know what else is out there, Murdock? A head count would be great.” Tom leaned his back against the door, checking the ammunition in the gun.

  “There are seven—seven at least. They’re alone now, but won’t be for long. Some of the organs—I can see some on Ridgeville Road and some on Poulter Circuit. The eyes see them. They’re using the eyes to find us.” Murdock touched the door gingerly. “It’s time. It’s time, and we’re dangerous now. We’re sitting on the secret.”

  “Okay, Murdock, you’re going cryptic on me. What are you talking about?”

  Before Murdock could answer, there was a bang on the door. It rattled the shack and knocked Tom forward. He turned around and pressed the gun against the door, which banged again, this time accompanied by the cracking of wood.

  “I can’t take the whispering,” Murdock said. His voice was calm, his face serene. “What they’re saying...I can’t take what they’re saying. I can’t accept it.”

  “What are they saying?” Nadia touched his arm and he flinched.

  “It’s nothing. Their words are heavy with it—sheer cold, unending nothing of words. Words drenched with emptiness.”

  “Murdock, you’re scaring me,” Nadia said.

  He turned to her, and for a brief instant, Nadia saw the nothing, too, transferred to his eyes. It was indeed cold and endless. She knew that if she stared into it for too long, it would consume her, a fire without light or heat.

  “It’s nothing,” Murdock repeated. Then he yanked open the door and threw himself into the darkness outside. That darkness, Nadia considered briefly in one anxious, tilted thought—that darkness was waiting for them, breathing malice, crouching on its haunches. It was anything but empty.

  “Murdock!” Tom shouted, and followed him out into the night. Nadia looked frantically for something to fight with. She swooped and seized a broken-off chair leg almost without looking at it, and after a second thought, grabbed a handful of the clunky CB radio parts, too. Then she darted out the door behind Tom.

  The moon had come out and it shined sparsely down into the park. About twenty feet in front of Murdock, the eyes of Thrall hovered above the ground. There were seven of them gathered along the path to the guardhouse, catching glints of moonlight. The short wiry strands of black hair standing up on their heads snapped like lashes and then hung there, vibrating slightly. The muddy-colored optic nerves beneath the heads were bundled into humanoid body shapes, the trunks and arms swathed in a red gel that pulsed softly. The shriveled legs dangled in blue sheathes of membrane. But what struck Nadia as most impressive and simultaneously, most horrifying about them were the eyeballs themselves. The entire expanse of each face was taken up by a large alien orb, clear and intelligent and very much self-aware. The gray irises swung in unison from person to person, and Nadia saw recognition there, and contempt. She shivered. If it was true, even in Thrall’s case, that eyes were the window to the soul, then she had seen something bigger even than Thrall itself—its life-force, the true spirit of the entity it really was. And it was cunning and treacherous and thoroughly evil.

  Amidst the stream of static whispering came clear words, distinct to them all. “You’re going to die, dollies. You’re all going to die.”

  The hands of six eyes hung at their sides. The seventh and foremost eye caressed Murdock’s cheek with its palm. Its fingers were missing.

  “Murdock,” Tom said evenly, “back away from it.”

  Murdock gave no indication that he had heard Tom. The eye, however, turned a sudden sharp gaze on them. Its gel and membrane rippled and changed to a texture eerily reminiscent of clothes (like the thing in the stall of the bathroom, Nadia thought) and its stumpy hand cupped Murdock’s chin. From the dark around them, above them, over their shoulders and close to their ears came the whispering of several voices overlapping, some staccato, some drawn out in echoes. This time Nadia heard the rhythmic emptiness, the cold void of deep space, of icy wastelands that never see the sun, words soaked in liquid nitrogen. She shivered.

  Thrall was speaking to them.

  “I see you. I watch you always. There is no place that you can go that I can’t find you.”

  Tom took a couple of steps toward them. “Murdock, for God’s sake, get away from it.”

  “Mine are coming. And Mine will consume you.”

  With its good hand, the one with all the fingers intact, the foremost eye made a clean swipe across Murdock’s throat.

  Nadia cried out, tears sudden and hot on her cheeks. She saw his eyes grow wide and his mouth work in a fish-like gape. Blood cascaded from the widening slash in his skin and stained the front of his sweater. She pressed a hand to her mouth. His half-choked gurgle intermingled with the whispering, which had once again grown non-distinct, and then he was silent.

  Murdock collapsed. Tom blew the offending eye to jelly before the anthropologist hit the ground.

  There was a faint wail from the depth of the sky above, and the eyes shrank back as one. But then they surged forward again, chattering loudly in words Nadia couldn’t understand.

  “Tom...Tom I think we better—`”

  Tom blasted another eye and it exploded like the onset of a sudden storm, raining a gelatinous gray onto the path. He turned and took out another two after that, but they kept surging out of the darkness. She counted three, maybe four that had hung back beyond their line of vision and now drew closer. The wailing in the sky grew more furious, a howl of pain and anger, and the eyes in unison started swinging.

  Shots from somewhere in the shadowed park took out one eye and then another from the back of the ranks. Nadia ducked into the doorway and turned just in time to bury the piece of wood straight into the iris of an eye that had drifted up behind her. Her hand shook as she drew it away, and she wiped it frantically on her skirt.

  A claw grazed Tom’s cheek, drawing blood, and he turned and blasted it. Another eye crept up behind Tom and drew back its arm in an attempt to bury its claws near Tom’s spine. Nadia hurled a piece of the CB electronics and caught it straight in the pupil. It reeled, pulled back, and lunged at Tom. But Nadia had given him enough time to see it and pump the shotgun. As it connected in its fury with the barrel of his gun, he burst it open. A third dropped following another shot from the obscurity beyond it.

  “Whoever that is,” Tom muttered to Nadia, “I hope to hell he’s on our side.”

  “Tom—” She saw the last of the eyes, the one that had slipped into the shadows for most of the gunfight, rise up over Tom’s shoulder, but the words couldn’t come out fast enough. Tom saw the expression on her face, though, and ducked just as the jagged fingernails swiped the air above his head. One of the shriveled leg bundles of nerves shot out like a whip and connected with his back. With a grunt, he pitched forward and then rolled onto his back and aimed the shotgun up at the eye.

  Before Tom could fire, the eye exploded above him, and heavy wet chunks plopped down onto his chest and legs.

  “Fuck.” Tom sat up, visibly shaken. “Holy fuck.”

  “Talk about mud in your eye,” a familiar voice said.

  Tom got to his feet as Carpenter emerged from the darkness, bruised and a little bloody. “Hey, man! You made it!”

  “Everybody okay? Miss Nadia? Tom?”

  “Better now,” Nadia said. “Thank God you’re back.”
/>
  Carpenter ushered them back into the guardhouse. “Quickly now, get inside. Where’s Jesse?”

  “With Caitlyn,” Nadia answered, then added, somewhat strained, “and Mia, if she’s made it back yet. They’ll be meeting us here.”

  Carpenter looked up with a smile from the candle he was relighting on the floor. “He found her? Oh, I’m so glad to hear it! That’s excellent news. I was pulling for the boy.” He stood, scooped up the fingers on the table and tossed them out the door, then wiped his hands on the back of his pants. “Really great news.”

  Tom leaned against the door frame. He swiped at the blood on his cheek with his sleeve and glanced at the cooling form just outside the door. “What do we do with Murdock?”

  “Murdock...?” Carpenter leaned out the door and squinted. He discovered the body and sighed. “We can’t leave him there. He’ll draw...other things. The smell of his blood will bring them out in droves.”

  Tom nodded grimly.

  “Wait a minute.” Nadia’s gaze swung back and forth between them. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. For Chrissakes, he’s a person, not—”

  “Begging your pardon, Miss Nadia, but you can’t think of him as a person anymore. He’s a liability. He’s a danger to us. Either we have to move the body, or we have to move ourselves.”

  She considered it for a moment. “We can’t leave Jesse,” she said weakly.

  “No,” he replied. “No, we can’t. So we move the body, right?”

  “Where?” Tom asked.

  “The woods.” Carpenter’s face was grim. “And pray to God nothing’s waiting for us there.”

  “Someone should stay and wait for Jesse,” Nadia said.

  Carpenter and Tom exchanged glances.

  “Stay with her,” Carpenter told him. “I can move him myself.” He swung out into the night.

  “Carpenter.”

  The old man turned. “Yes?”

  “What have you got stashed here?” Tom asked.

  “A chink in the armor. You’ll see. I’ll tell you all about it when I come back.”

  ***

  Jesse aimed the gun at the creature as it drifted down the stairs. The minute he saw the white of its eye, so to speak, he shot it with the pistol. It fell heavily on the step and tumbled down.

  “Okay, cool. Crisis averted.” He glanced around, at Mia shielding the sight of the thing from Caitlyn, at the cells that Mia claimed would offer them no protection, at the thing spilling a steady stream of fluid into a growing pool at the bottom of the stairs. The majority of its face, if Jesse could even call it a face, was a mess of jelly and tiny red veins. Trailing behind its head was a ruddy system of bundled nerves whose pulsing slowed and finally stopped.

  “No, not yet.” Mia touched Jesse’s arm. “They rarely ever travel alone.”

  Jesse nodded. “Then we leave now. Lesser of the two evils.”

  “They’ll be upstairs, all of them, waiting for us. We’ll have to try that way.” She jogged to the caved in door.

  “Mia, we can’t move that. It’s bent in its frame. We’ll never—” He stopped when he saw her eyes. They reflected an odd mix of crazed desperation and determination, flickering between him and Caitlyn.

  Without another word, he took a place alongside her and they both pulled on the door.

  It didn’t budge.

  “If the eyes make it down here, we’ll all die.” Her voice was calm and quiet, the words meant only for Jesse’s ears.

  “Pull again,” he said, and braced himself. He threw every ounce of strength he had into pulling at the door. Just as he was about to let go, it scraped infinitesimally along the floor.

  “Did it move?” Mia sounded hopeful.

  Upstairs, the whispering grew louder, staggered voices blending into occasional peals of laughter.

  “Hurry, Daddy. The monsters are coming. They said they want to give your insides to....” Caitlyn gasped. “I think that’s a bad word.”

  “Pull!” Jesse groaned with the exertion and the door slid a couple of inches. Mia wedged herself as best she could into the opening, and pushed while Jesse pulled.

  He glanced back once and saw shadowy shapes moving around at the top of the stairs. His arm muscles tensed and something spasmed in his back, but he pulled harder. He took a deep breath and let it go with a yell as he yanked on the door.

  It slid again.

  Mia quickly moved out of the way. “Caitlyn, go through.”

  “What about you, Mommy?”

  “I’m coming baby. Now go!”

  Caitlyn turned sideways and slipped through the door.

  The eyes had gathered on the top step and hovered there, watching. The first of them glided forward. Jesse shot it and it tumbled down the rest of the way and onto the first. The others hung back. The whispering stopped.

  Mia tried to squeeze through the opening, pulling in her stomach and as much of her chest as she could with a deep breath. Her ribs caught and she whimpered in frustration.

  “Throw your weight into it, Mia. Push.” She did as he told her. He pulled again. The door budged another inch. With a moan of pain, she slid through.

  Jesse glanced back. They waited, glaring down at him. Shoving his backpack through ahead of him, he wedged himself into the opening. He pushed against the door, but it wouldn’t give. He worked his arm and shoulder through and then part of his ribs by sucking in his gut and turning his head. The pressure on his chest midway forced air from his lungs. The pain in his right side told him he might have bruised or maybe even fractured something, but he pressed against the opening, hoping that all the walking and the lack of substantial food for several long hours might make just enough difference to get him through. He closed his eyes and felt Mia’s hands on his arm, pulling at him.

  “Mine will kill you, dollies.” The voices were close to his ear, almost inside his head.

  Jesse opened his eyes and looked straight into the iris of the closest eye. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. Reflected back, he saw strange architectures burning and alien forms screaming in agony and fear, fleeing from the things in the Raw. He saw buildings and statues hardening and softening, saw walls splattered with fluids he instinctively knew to be blood. He saw a cold wasteland in a place so vast, so utterly, cosmically enormous, that it could house a population of towns just like Thrall. He saw memories, Thrall’s memories, and before he managed to tear away from its gaze, Jesse saw Thrall’s savage delight in those memories. Others had come before, and others would come after.

  Then the eye lifted something very much like a clawed hand, and Jesse wriggled further through the opening. The eye landed a blow that caught the fabric and grazed the skin of Jesse’s shoulder. With a final grunt, Jesse pulled himself through the doorway.

  Behind him, through the narrow opening, the eyes peered out with seething hate. Then, one by one, they drifted away.

  Jesse backed away slowly, rubbing his ribs. “They gave up awfully easy.”

  “They’re going around to cut us off. We need to get out, now, Jesse! If they make it to the doorway before we do, we’re trapped.”

  “Where are we now?” The place was dimly lit by a single greenish bulb where they stood. A few feet beyond was pure darkness.

  “A fire exit hallway. There are some steps leading up and out the side door. We’ll have to backtrack a little to get to the park, but it’s a way out. Provided there’s nothing waiting for us out there.” She offered a shaky smile and squeezed his arm.

  “Want me to go first?”

  “Nope, you follow Caitlyn. Take her hand. Baby, you go right after me, okay?”

  “Mommy, are we going to the place with no monsters now?”

  Mia smiled, but it was a grim flicker of her mouth, almost sickly in the green light. “Yes, honey. We’re going to go now.”

  She led them along a cool concrete wall for what seemed like a long time. He felt along ahead of him as he crawled. His hand pressed into something with a hard edge like a rock
and he winced. He thought he could feel the ceiling and the walls pressed close to him and he closed his eyes. It made no difference, anyway, and for some reason, the cramped, oppressive feeling of the hallway didn’t bother him as much behind his eyelids.

  His chest and ribs were sore. The air grew warmer and Jesse sucked in harder, more painful breaths. He was just about to say something about maybe being claustrophobic when he kicked a step and almost tripped. They had stopped.

  Instead, Jesse said, “Everything okay?”

  “Yup. We’ve reached the stairs. I’m just trying to—ow—to maneuver here so that—oh!—I can get us around this broken step. Ah, okay. Move over to the right a little. It’s more sturdy there.”

  At what Jesse assumed was the top, they stopped again. He heard Mia grunt a couple of times and then a rectangle of moonlit night filled the mouth of their hallway. She and Caitlyn passed through the doorway into the open air. Jesse followed.

  Around them as far as Jesse could see, nothing moved. There were no signs of the eyes anywhere.

  “They can’t be far,” Mia muttered. “Where could they—?”

  Then they heard the gunshots.

  “The park. The eyes found them.” Jesse drew his gun from the backpack. “We’ve got to hurry.”

  “Jesse, maybe we should wait.”

  “I can’t leave them, Mia. I—”

  The expression on her face was accusing. You left us, Jesse. You could do that. But I suppose these people are more important?

  “I need you to trust me, Mia. I won’t let anything hurt you or Caitlyn. I promise.”

  She nodded slowly. “I do. I trust you.”

  FOURTEEN

  The shots had stopped about halfway into the park. At the end of the broken trail by the guardhouse, Jesse saw someone, a form bent over something crumpled and wet-looking on the ground. Around the figure, deflated dead eyes were strewn about the grass, their jelly glinting in the occasional hints of moonlight. Jesse squinted in the dark. “Carpenter?”

  The form straightened and waved. “Jesse, my boy! You made it back. I’m thrilled!” He met them halfway, clapping Jesse on the back and beaming. Then he handed Jesse his keys back. “Great to see you. And this lovely lady, I assume, is Miss Mia.” He swept up her hand and kissed it.