by Egon Grimes
—
Stalactites dripped white from the ceiling like sharp teeth. As they walked, a silvery glint ran along both sides of the path and began to grow brighter. The walls were unreasonably smooth, as if cut and polished by craftsmen.
Rhoda wanted to cry out, noises rumbled from ahead, unknown heavy noises, hungry noises. Ivan saw glimpses of animals and men and hybrids of the two, scurrying just beyond sight. The fear grew with each step, but neither could turn back to run, neither could hide. After what felt like hours within the tunnel, they came upon a circular opening, the silvery liquid cast light over the entire space, several different tunnels showed options and Ivan forced his feet to stop.
“What’s this?” Vadrossa said aloud.
Ivan moved at a sloth’s pace, attempting to face his captor. Visions swirled. Ghosts and beasts flew at him, the power inside tugged at him and he let out a wallow, not in fear or pain, but defeat. He turned and continued walking.
I shall feast and then take the woman, Dhaksa spoke into Vadrossa’s mind.
“No,” Vadrossa muttered and Rhoda’s feet dragged to a stop.
All about her great flashes of light and rumblings of hungry machines rattled and sputtered. They closed in on her, chomping with their great steel mouths, filled with greasy teeth and rusty tongues. From the walls, from above, from below, from everywhere the great machines overtook the cave, the machines dined on flesh, she saw it, she knew it.
No, what? Dhaksa said.
“She’s mine.” Vadrossa dared to defy the voice in his head. He turned his thoughts to blocking his brother’s and managed to unlock Rhoda. “Run,” he said between clenched and ground teeth.
Rhoda ran further into the darkness, the mechanical devils chasing quickly in her wake, crunching, chomping, squealing, grinding, and banging, she ran and ran, never getting far from the sounds.
Vadrossa followed her, but slowly.
Ivan continued walking.
57
Crunch, crunch, crunch they continued, mouths dry and backs wet, wishing that either bothered to consider rehydration before it was too late. Maurice’s foot found a hole along the path and he tripped, throwing his arms out to cushion his fall. There was very little medicine left coursing through his veins and he let out a sharp yelp.
Lou stopped and looked back. “You okay?”
Maurice stood, gracelessly, and reached into his pocket for the pill bottle. He unscrewed the cap and dropped a pill onto his hand.
“Pain killers?” Lou asked.
“Yeah, the doc gave’m to me.” He popped the pill and chewed after he found his mouth to sticky to dry swallow.
“Think I could get one? Broke my ass when I fell out of the Jeep.” Really it was dread demanding a pill.
Maurice tossed the bottle to Lou.
“Tastes downright awful, wait a minute,” Lou said, his mouth tingled and saliva ran as the drug loosened something. “That’s kinda wild.”
The good sensation wore down, but not off.
—
They reached the small rock face, it was jagged and climbable, but tough and they were inexperienced and not at their peaks. Maurice rested his hands over his head against the stone and leaned forward. It was cold. His mind swam, considering his options, he knew he’d need to turn, but turning the wrong way could cost his wife her life and his daughter her soul…or being, or whatever it was stolen from her grave.
“They went up,” Lou said.
“How do you know?”
“Red nail polish, Rhoda had it on.” Lou pointed just out of reach as he stood tiptoed.
Anger burned away all other notions. “Shit. This is no good. No damned good. What do you think?”
“Keep that spot in mind, and we circle for an easier path.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Before they took another step, Lou said, “Did you see anything strange about the mountain?”
“Huh?”
“I mean when you were, uh, at the bottom of the lake.”
Eyes closed and thinking hard, Maurice attempted to recreate the vision. He saw the kids, the trail, the animals, and the mountain, all of it vague. Too vaguely. Too slowly. As if to test and prod at his patience, the strange sight rolled into view. Detail after sparkling detail unfolded and there it was, a dark spot, he saw the spot. A spot darker than all of the other shadows lingering on the mountainside.
“A black spot. A cave!”
Lou stepped back to look up the mountain. “I don’t see it, but it doesn’t look like we have to climb very far to get over this slab. Maybe we could walk around and find a shorter wall and then spot it as we go.”
“Man, I don’t know.”
With a quick glance around, summing the terrain and the trees. “Just…we’ll walk around until we can climb up without breaking our necks. We won’t go up the hill until we come back to this spot and see our marker.”
“What marker?”
“Look,” Lou said and then walked back ten-feet and picked up a large stone. “These in a circle and stand an old log up between them.”
They got to piling stones.
—
It was not long before the men found that the ledge began a gradual descent and once reaching a lowly six feet, the men dragged themselves up, rocks scratching against their chests. Maurice groaned against the pain. It was too late for pain. Too late for anything worldly or common, they’d gone too far to stop.
58
Vadrossa followed at a distance, stalking, uncertain of how he’d progress with her. His life, he’d dreamed of being with a woman. The parts him, the physical nature he shared with humanity and his brethren ached. Sex was for reproduction and he was the lesser La’aklar… “If I am low why do I breathe while the others don’t? Why do I move while my brother cannot?”
Dhaksa scoffed at his brother’s thought. I am still here my brother and if you do not bring the woman there will be trouble.
Vadrossa tried to ignore, tried to dissociate from his brother. For the entirety of his life, he’d been his brother’s errand boy and helper. His brother, in turn, was his teacher and protector.
He slowed and then stopped, Rhoda sat ten feet ahead, balled on the ground, sobbing and covering her eyes.
Vadrossa hunkered down to watch her.
“No, God, please no, Jesus,” she muttered.
What she feared sat well beyond the scope of Vadrossa’s understanding. The cave had a way with human imagination, a power over lust and fear, dark and light. It was everything to everyone, but in reversal to the effect Dhaksa placed on Ivan and the girl named Alice.
He reached out a hand.
She squirmed further, great fiery vents of steel and rot surrounded her inching closer to her, clouds of greenish yellow smoke puffed. Voices from within the smoke explained in detail how to prepare flesh for dinner. She would be the main event, the meal for the masses of mechanical giants. The vents shifted and spun, knives protruded from the cracks wheeling closer. The blades grazed her skin and she tore at her clothing, first her shirt and then her bra.
Vadrossa felt his cheeks flush as the woman tore at her clothing. Rhoda was unlike the whores he’d devoured at his brother’s will. She was more. A clean woman. And her scent…
Although irrational, Vadrossa wanted her to want him back, it made little sense even to him. His life was a call to action, his reason for existence, none of those things seemed real. Humans were real. The La’aklar should have left the world millennia earlier, if they indeed should ever have existed at all.
“Take them. Take them!” Rhoda shouted, stripping off her pants, tossing them to a hungry, mechanical beast with bloodied eyes, and boiling slobber. The burning vents inched closer and burned her back in neat lines of bubbling flesh. “Stop! Stop!” She thrashed, slamming her head against the stone floor.
Vadrossa crept forward several inching, slow-paced steps. His boney fingers ran out of the shadows and glided gently over her thigh she didn’t scream or move at h
is touch. He tried again, encouraged by her lack of reaction to his fingers. Dirty with dried blood under the nails, he ran his finger under the edge of her panties, lifting them enough to see the soft fleshy mounds that parted around a lovely pucker. Control failed him and he tore away the cotton.
Her nude body enticed his already alert erection, but her lifeless body left him in dismay. His long and slender form stretched over her motionless figure. He licked up her neck, across her face, before finally jabbing his tongue into her mouth. Still nothing. He lifted her head. Blood ran down his arm, he dropped her, scared. He placed his warm cheek between her breasts and listened, a heartbeat.
She had knocked herself unconscious.
Dhaksa shouted into his mind, do not poison the well! Please my brother.
“There is no we, just you. They’re all dead.” Vadrossa opened his heavy jacket and unbuttoned his trousers. “She will love me.”
You will perish at my hands.
59
Leering ugly, familiar, yet grotesquely disfigured, faces peered from the shadows and cracks in the rock walls. Fear gripped Ivan, he attempted over and over to move his body against the pull, but it was of no avail, he would go, the faces would see him do so.
Since the beginning, Dhaksa held tight control, but felt it slipping. His brother quickly revolted when he needed him most, at the cusp of the return of the greater people. All was not lost, not even close. He focussed hard on Ivan’s troubled mind, clearing away his demons and, in truth, all were his demons, the mind created its own walls and the cave strewed and manipulated. Ivan straightened, automatically pulled the bag from his shoulder and progressed forward into the blackness. It began to let. Bright smoke fluttered and danced about the rock floor, circling a great stage and alter. There, another strange figure waited. His face shimmered like a hologram, new and old, fresh and putrid.
“You,” Ivan managed to push beyond his puppet lips. He held forward the bag.
Dhaksa snatched the bag and fed, first on the brain, taking it with three long bites and then the tongue, it slid effortlessly down his throat. His body shook and convulsed, Ivan stood furious, mostly with himself, the man was so close and he couldn’t exact retribution.
As the tongue disappeared power coursed through Dhaksa and the world slowed. His sight turned inwards and he gazed over the plane he mastered. His family waited. All would return once he brought about the second coming of the tribe. Those eaten, but not of La’aklar blood, the sub-species, stood in unknowing wait, some for several decades. They would never return, but in him they would remain.
Ivan gained a little strength, but only enough to wander his view. The figure’s legs appeared wooden, but fleshing by the second, like Pinocchio, he thought and for the first time in a while, the hand on his mind loosened its grip.
With a grunt and a groan, Ivan stepped forward, the beautiful figure lied helpless on a stone bench. The faces returned and flashed and swung across his sight, yelling obscenities and stabbing into his flesh with hot daggers. He ignored all around him. Knowing. Understanding. Willing to die to kill.
“Dead,” he muttered and wrapped his hands around Dhaksa’s throat, squeezing and digging in his nails. “You will die!”
The eyes flew open and Ivan’s hands dropped to his sides, Dhaksa lunged, face first into Ivan’s abdomen, teeth tore away his shirt and spat it out. Again, again, again he stabbed with his mouth, sucking out intestines as if it were especially fat spaghetti. Ivan saw his looming failure. Death embraced him, locking him inside the inescapable prison.
60
Unreasonably certain he’d receive at least one more sign, Maurice almost missed the opening in the rock face only twenty-feet to his left. “That’s it,” he whispered only half-believing.
“You sure?” Lou asked.
Maurice tightened the grip on the choicest swinging branch he’d snatched up. “Gotta be,” he said and led the way.
Lou pulled the gun from his leg and followed closely. The darkness enveloped them, almost welcomed them into the madness, the slimy incandescent trail guiding a little ways in.
“Something isn’t right,” Lou said, attempting to start his cell phone. “Shit, this thing worked only a few hours ago.”
“Just keep up… Wait, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Shut up and listen.” Screams and grinding gears. “It’s children. A lot of children, somewhere in the cave. They’ve got kids in there.”
“I don’t hear anything at all,” Lou said, a cold chill passing over the nape of his neck like a late autumn breeze.
Maurice sped up, sensing immediate danger. “Come on, move.”
Lou could hardly listen and fluorescent yellow millipede ran up his hand and arm, finally finding his shirt, he shook. “Jesus, shit, get it, shit. Get it off me!” he squealed and dropped the ground, began rolling.
“Get it together.”
“You didn’t see that bug?”
Maurice didn’t dignify that with a reaction. They jogged a little ways, the screams growing loud for Maurice’s appreciation and the quantity of bugs lining the walls growing for Lou’s.
A dog barked at Lou and he stopped dead, aiming his pistol at the frothy-mouthed monster. He let off one round that would kill any dog. He watched it enter and exit through the center of its head. The dog growled.
“What is it? What?” Maurice asked.
“Dog. I hit it right between the eyes. It has to die now, it has to die,” Lou said readying himself for a second shot. “A dog can’t live through that, no way, not a chance.”
Maurice saw nothing. “Where is it?”
“Right,” he shot again, “there.” He took a step toward the beast, “Right,” he shot again, “there!”
The dog didn’t move, but to flash its long pink tongue.
“Where is it?” Maurice asked, swinging with his club.
“Watch it. Watch it.”
“Where is he?”
“You’re on him, in him. I don’t understand,” Lou said, holding out his empty hand to touch the dog.
The dog snapped at his fingers, drawing blood. “Fuck!”
“It isn’t real?”
“It bit me! Stand back!”
Maurice considered the path that took them to that spot, everything worked because the mind allowed it. “Not there, Lou, it’s all in your head. It’s just like Alice.”
“Stand back, it bit me. It’s real.”
“A trick to waste your rounds, all part of some twisted game. I think whatever is here, wants us here, but doesn’t like our ability to defend ourselves. Think about everything we saw, the border crossing, the police chase. That’s how he controls people.”
Still wanting to shoot, real or not, the idea got through and he lowered his pistol. “Lead the way then,” he said cradling his injured hand to his chest. Lou sidestepped the dog without looking at it.
They jogged until they came to a multi-lane intersection, the phantoms blowing about them wildly and both men tried their best to ignore.
“We have to split up, Rhoda could be in trouble.”
Lou nodded and took the furthermost left tunnel. Maurice took the furthermost right tunnel, leaving the center two unsearched.
It took some time, too much time, to discover, but Maurice pulled the lame duck tunnel. Sound wrenched at his heart and shook his soul, but he turned back.
Lou ran, half from urgency to save and half to outrun the animals, insects and smoggy clouds of death chasing behind him. He came upon a room and lifted his gun, a man stood, his guts pouring out of him, but dead on his feet. It was the guy from the night vision shots.
The man tumbled to the floor, revealing a covered figure on an altar. Lou ran. A dangling hand brushing against his own. “Rhoda?” He lifted the shroud. It wasn’t Rhoda, but Denise. Her body damaged and naked beneath the cloth.
“Please, Lou, I’m sorry, you have to help me. Chuck Nagel kidnapped and raped me. This is all a trick. He we
nt crazy after his wife died and he wants everyone to suffer. You have to stop him. We can be together forever.” She sobbed in his eager arms.
Lou sneered and spun his head. Looking for that motherfucker. “Stay put,” he said and smacked his lips against his wife’s. “I’ll come get you when it is safe.”
—
Dhaksa watched Lou leave the room and head back into a tunnel. He’d never been kissed by a human before.
Power surged into his body…eyes watching him and he felt family watching him from within. Vadrossa needed punishment and it seemed he’d come to pay what was owed.
“Come out, brother,” Dhaksa said, his voice echoing throughout the chamber as well as within Vadrossa’s skull.
Slinking back in a dark crevice, Vadrossa watched in worry. He questioned his ability to overcome. The new ambitious, confident being he’d been had fleeted in the sight of his brother.
He left the shadows and stepped toward the altar, ready to die, knowing the likelihood of that, he asked the deceased La’aklar to forgive him with silent prayer. Dhaksa caught the prayer and laughed.
“It was a mistake, a mist-t-stake,” Vadrossa stammered, as he approached his ailing brother in slow, steady steps.
“You’ve hurt me brother.” Dhaksa set downcast eyes upon his brother.
The room tightened, and darkened, Vadrossa’s cheeks flushed, knowing that no matter what, he was no true La’aklar blood or no.
“Brother, we will try again, perhaps you can succeed.”
Vadrossa shook his head, the long braids slapping about his shoulders.
“But yes, brother, all is not lost.”
Vadrossa remained silent.
“Am I often wrong, brother?”
No answer.
“Brother?” Dhaksa crooned sweetly at Vadrossa.
It worked, Vadrossa lifted his sad face. “We can fix it?”
“Of course.” Dhaksa opened his arms. “Come to me brother and we will begin, we need but one oddity, one woman able to bring about our species.”
